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Rally Point Delta-9010, Uninhabited System

The medibay was still busy, each bed and Emergency Healing Pod - EHP - occupied. Chief Medical Officer Kathleenas Nalen was bent over her work station, a datapad in one gloved hand, the fingers of her other tapping away at the work station's interface. All around him, nurses and doctors feverishly went about their tasks and amongst their ranks he spotted Medical Sergeant Derron Strazen and Field Medic Theo 'Spike' Cantorus helping heal the wounded that had been crammed into the space like sardines. More of the injured had spilled out into the corridor beyond and a couple more were laid up in Nalen's office.

'Can I help you, Captain?' Nalen said, exhaustion making her words thick.

'When was the last time you took a break?' He asked, pulling his helmet off and tucking it under an arm.

The plump Panzaarian woman stared at him a moment, taking on a bewildered expression.

'A break?' She repeated, her large, yellow eyes going wide. 'I can't afford a break! Not after what's just happened! Are you [i]mad[/i]?'

JD held up a placating hand. He had only managed to upset the doctor once before. He had no intention of doing it again, learning very quickly why Panzaarian women were feared and respected among their species on his first outing as Captain of the [i]Jinx[/i]. His synthetic kneecap was a daily reminder; though it worked perfectly and allowed him freedom of movement just like a natural one, it still clicked regularly. And he had no doubt in his mind that she could do terrible, creative things with the stylus she was now waving at him admonishingly.

'Okay, okay. Just... put the stylus down, we don't want an incident, do we?' He said as soothingly as he could.

She put the stylus down on her desk and gave out a set of orders to a pair of nurses loitering nearby. 'What brings you down here, Captain?'

'I need a little pick-me-up. I have a meeting in a couple of hours aboard the Eclipse with our clients, and I can't afford to fall asleep half-way through it. Or it could be a chewing-out, depending on how badly it all goes.' He added thoughtfully.

Nalen eyeballed him, scrutinizing him from head-to-toe, her thin lips pursed.

'You didn't report to the medibay after the battle, so I have no idea if you have any injuries, so therefore, I have no idea what strength of this pick-me-up you're after to give you. Or even if I should be giving you one at all.' She pointed to a computer-loaded booth in the corner of the medibay, away from the gurneys and beds. It was wedged between the bulkhead firewall and the row of five EHPs, all of which were occupied. He walked over to the bank of computers in the booth,trying his utmost best to not peer through the portholes in any of the EHP tanks to see who was inside, with Nalen following close behind. He popped a small hatch on his breast plate as she unwound a thin strand of fibre optic cable that was capped with a small, rubbery suction cup with two golden pins encased within. She plugged his battle armour into the examination booth's computer system and waited for the suit to grant access to the medical programme. A minute later, she was examining his medical read-outs as provided by his suit. Five minutes later, struggling not to fidget and grumble with impatience, he suppressed a sigh of relief as she un-plugged the cable and keyed the command to update his medical file.

'No serious health problems that I can see. Just plain old fatigue and a few bruises.' She announced brusquely. She hurried over to a heavy door at the other end of the EHP row and vanished into the room beyond. A moment later, she came back and placed a small, grey pill in his gloved palm. 'Take this now. It'll slowly take effect, but it'll get you through this meeting of yours without you yawning your head off. It lasts five hours, so get some rest once it wears off. I mean it, Captain. I have had to sedate you once before and by all the Gods, I [i]will[/i] do it again. And this time the sedative will be fired from a needler gun at close range. Into your ass. Got it? And when this is over and done with, you need to come back here for a proper medical examination, because I won't have our Captain keeling over whilst on duty.'

JD stared at her, open-mouthed, the pill still in the flat of his palm. He felt five years old again. Another habit which Chief Medical Officer Nalen had turned into a fine art. He dry swallowed the pill, grimacing at the sour taste it left on his tongue. He gave his thanks, saluted her and exited the medibay, leaving her to her job. With Spirit overseeing the [i]Jinx[/i] with Commander Locane at her side, Kieron helping make sure the repairs were well in-hand and Bonnie herding the remains of the ships' Legionaries to bolster the damage control crews' numbers, there was very little he could do until the order to move out had been given.

He stopped by his quarters, took a chance and removed his battle armour, and stripped off his smartweave, the nano-fibre 'second skin' intelligent armour clothing peeling from his body with a soft, wet sound. He grimaced at the amount of sweat that had built up over the course of three days and dumped it in the wash receptacle at the foot of his bed before stepping into the 'fresher. He scratched and rubbed at his crimson and jet skin and scalp as the gentle sonic pulses scrubbed away the sweat and accumulated grime of a stricken warship, glaring at the plain white wall, his fatigued mind churning through the recent events with acidic curses about Candara and its ruling classes frequently slipping into the gaps between his ruminations and dissections.

So many had been lost in a matter of hours.

So much damage had been wrought; damage that could have been largely avoided had the Candarans stuck to the plan, or at least been courteous enough to share their last-minute tactical changes with them, so that the correct adaptions could be made. But no. Admiral Meeshan had entered the system out of formation, his dreadnought leading the fight instead of letting his destroyers, corvettes and frigates do their duty as a defensive escort force. The fighter screen was also launched too late and their tenders - the small fleet of re-supply ships that had accompanied them - had also jumped to the system, loitering just outside the edges of the combat zone, which, naturally, had expanded during the course of the battle.

He muttered another string of obscenties and slapped a palm against the controls of the 'fresher, switching it off. He stomped into the main room of his quarters and pulled a fresh set of smartweave from the closet and pulled it on, checking that the hems of the body-hugging leggings, shirt, gloves and soft, moccasin style boots had all sealed with each other properly. He then pulled his armour from the rack that was ensconsed in the corner of his room. The unit's built-in 'fresher systems hadn't had a chance to fully clean the battle armour, but it was good enough. Had the meeting been with anyone other than a Candaran at that time, he would have gone for his dress uniform and a vacsuit, but he currently did not care enough to make himself look the part of a 'Noble' Captain at that moment. Nor did he dare to toy with the Fates by walking around a stricken warship without some form of serious protection from the elements on him. The emergency force fields had held well during transit through the slipstream, but that was all the more reason to distrust them - they were severely weakened from it and operating at twenty percent efficiency, thus the reason for him ordering his crew to stay sealed up in their armour.

He checked his chrono. Three hours left until the meeting, which was just enough time to gather together the data he needed and issue his last set of orders for the next few hours. He thumbed the comm device on his desk and settled into his chair.

'Go for Banshee Queen.' A laboured voice said.

'Queenie, I need you to free up a shuttle for me. I've been summoned to the Eclipse to hear what Admiral Meeshan has to say for himself.'

'You mean, what he has to say about [i]us[/i].' She replied deadpan. 'I got fresh fuel cells going in Banshee Two as we speak. When d'you need her?'

'Make it two hours from now. And tell your pilot to land in the Eclipse's fighter bay. Their shuttle bay's off-limits until further notice.' He said.

'Right you are Boss. I'll go tip someone off their rack and have them ready for launch in two hours.' Queenie acknowledged.

When the line cut, he signalled through to Bonnie. She answered immediately and JD heard faint bickering.

'What's up Boss?' She asked without preamble, her deep, dusky voice surprisingly alert for the hours she had been pulling since coming back aboard the ship.

'Is anyone free to go on a jaunt across to the Eclipse for a couple of hours to play security guard?' He asked.

'How many bodies you need?' She asked curiously after a brief, thoughtful pause.

'Two. It's just a precaution, and Blacktip suggested it. I don't think he has any faith left in Admiral Meeshan and the Eclipse took a solid hit to one of her soft spots.'

'Which soft spot, dare I ask?' She asked slowly.

'Shuttle bay. Some Lishni warheads made it through their defences. I haven't seen the damage, but he said he lost everything, including the shuttle and bomber crews.'

'Mother fuckers...' A moment of silence, then she came back. 'I can let you have Anusi and Tristan. They've just gone for a power nap, so they should be on form enough for guard duty.'

'Excellent. Let them know that I want them in full armour and ready to board a shuttle in one hour fifty minutes, Standard.'

'Message passed on. Anything else?'

'Nothing else as of yet. Carry on, Chief.'

'Will do, Boss.'

The comm link went silent once again. He reached over and activated his desk comp, and went over the various reports and messages that had been sent to him. Nothing new showed up. Everything he read was the same as the last time - the ship was damaged but the crew were making good with what repairs could be made. There were no more fatalities reported and the current head-count of the living was holding steady at 217 of 250 souls. He pulled a blank datachip from a drawer in his desk and inserted it into the comp, downloading choice cuts of the battle report to it for Admiral Meeshan's sake - it was law that each mercenary outfit had to provide a battle report to their clients upon completion/the ending of their contract. It was a law that was mostly in place to help ease the more belligerent expansion of a lot of civilisations and even some companies throughout the galaxy. A lot of the smaller merc outfits and solo mercenaries chafed at the idea of doing so, but refusing to hand over a battle report for the client to officially file away was punishable by life in a penal colony and in some systems, it was punishable by death on the mercenary's part and a huge fine on the clients' if any of them were caught 'fiddling the accounts'.

Even larger mercenary companies, such as the Shadow Stalkers, the Jes'wan run Ca'nathrid Association and the Voidclaw Hunting Party Ltd of Nymex disliked the idea greatly, but grudgingly kowtowed to the law so as to avoid adding to their troubles, regardless of the fact that handing over a battle report held potential to greatly harm their business and even give away some of their more specialist tactics among other things, which could leave them wide open to devastating attacks in the future. Which is why they all put aside their differences, put their heads together and hunted down as many loopholes as possible to exploit; the favourite being the fact that nowhere in the law, was it stated that the mercenary group involved had to supply their clients with a [i]detailed[/i] battle report. So until that loophole got sealed up, all their clients ever got was a basic run-down of what had been planned, what had happened during the interim and how it had ended. No weapons, shields, countermeasures or names had to be detailed. The fourteen page long text-based report of fancy, beaurocratic rambling lawyer-speak would be supplimented with a bog-basic holotac map, showing the courses each ship had taken, a rundown of ship damage in the most basic way possible and nothing more.

It was all suitably vague and very few people complained about it. Those that did complain were put in one of two camps: The Financially Troubled and the Too Dodgy To Bother With. Afterall, it lessened the paperwork on both sides and no government would admit to hiring mercenaries, even if they were threatened with death. The larger companies would only admit to it in a vague fashion if found out and then promptly set their home-brewed army of lawyers on deep-sixing the files to the point of outright deletion. On the whole, regardless of the bumps in business it made, it still made life that little bit easier, regardless of what the socially detached Elders who sat at the top of the Galactic Council pile said about mercs being dishonourable thieves and actively sending out their council warships to try and 'stanch the flow of the ill-willed pirates and vagabonds in the name of all that is good and just.'

A sour smile twisted onto JD's lips as he remembered the last annual Galactic Council tirade that was broadcast two months ago across all media channels. The main focus of the moment was the Antaris Incident, with a grey robed, wrinkle-laden, stooped Jes'wan Council Elder crowing about how the genocide of an entire star system could have been avoided if only the Golden Star Freedom Movement had stayed away and not interferred with the Antarisan's trade agreement with the Tenglaar. No one was quite sure exactly what the trade agreement was between the Tenglaar and Antarisans, but the prevailing rumour was that it involved the Antarisan government legalizing slavery in their system, something which the Tenglaar are always eager to attempt to take the lion's share in. The Galactic Council had been told all this from the start by various governments, interstellar businesses as well as various military bodies including mercinary groups from all across the galaxy. When no help was forthcoming, an Antarisan colony grouped together with its neighbouring colonies - two Imashan and a Jes'wan mining settlement - to try and put a stop to the trade meeting between Antaris and Tenglaar, which, naturally, had gone catastrophically wrong.

Truth be told, no one foresaw the Antarisans setting fire to the atmosphere of the main world - their oldest and one of their most successful colonies - and destroying as many orbital and inner-system installations as possible, including a 70,000 tonne mining facility and a small military shipyard located in the system's outer asteroid belt. Every world connected to the MediaNet went wild and the moment the Galactic Council got wind of the parties involved, the Golden Star Freedom Movement was immediately branded as mercenaries in some circles, pirates in others - the perfect scapegoats for the GC's fuck up and serious lack of foresight in anything Tenglaar related. The Tenglaar, meanwhile, had buggered off and were staying quiet and minding their own business, and the Antarisan government had gathered its heads of states together from all their worlds and were playing the victim card to its fullest extent, putting as much of the blame onto the Golden Star Freedom Movement as possible, even going as far as calling them terrorists.

JD sighed and pulled the datachip from the slot in his desk when his comp chimed softly and placed it in a hard case which fit snugly in a small, armoured pouch at his hip. [i]Damn do-gooders and narrow-minded idiots will kill us all.[/i] He thought bitterly. Still, the story was ongoing, and he was intent to follow it, as were trillions of others; it was more than just the Shadow Stalkers that were convinced that something big was brewing. The best rumour thus far was that someone, or multpile someones, deep in the GC's circle were involved with the Tenglaar in some way. There was just no way the Galactic Council could sit on their haunches, turning a blind eye to the Tenglaar's bloody rampages for much longer before someone with some common sense and honour finally caught on to the little play that was happening in their gilded theatre high in the clouds of the council's Throne World.

He sighed again and checked the time. The Tenglaar and the ever-decaying Galactic Council were a problem for another time, and hopefully with any luck, a problem for someone else to deal with. He had an hour left before departure. He sent out his final orders and shut off his deskcomp before signalling Spirit on the bridge.

'I'm now leaving for the Eclipse. You have the ship until I get back.'

'Aye, Captain, I have the ship. Good luck and try not to kill any Candarans. There's only so far the friendly-fire excuse can stretch.'

He suppressed an irritated curse, 'I am well aware of that, XO. Just make sure you don't break my ship anymore than it already is while I'm gone.'

'I'll do my best, Boss.'

He cut the connection and left for the shuttle bay with a half-hearted annoyed grumble.