The Union Chronicles (RP environ open to all Unioners, tagged or not)

[Arno Schultzky]

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Subject: Gunda Riehl.

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Pacifica, from a distance, looked vaguely like a potato.

One of Gunda’s prime duties as the highest ranking field member of Wing-Com was blatting derogations such as this one - but it was true. Pacifica, from four hundred kilo-kilometres carried a dangerously tuber-ish appearance. The illusion wasn’t reduced by the fact that the potato was budding sprouts.

Within the dockyard gantry sat the unarmed, unsprayed, untamed hulk of fibre and plasteel plates that would formulate a Hel cruiser. A foreign eye would have mistaken her for complete, her engine cowls radiant in the furious sun, her tungsten frame not yet patina-d with the cresote of rock and ash that were the mark of a wise, combat weary warship.


“Virgin ship. N-74.” She noted, pushing gee prograde, a half-eye on the antics of the home support wing like a babysitter with a gaggle of children who can’t quite figure out how not to soil themselves, but are tenacious enough to know where the bleach bottles are kept. “Steady, Lambda four, you’re cutting the waypoint close.”

The Lucifuge decloaked, unfurling itself from the veils of ether with enough aplomb to send her proximity sensors snarling.

Her cockpit glass fuzzed as the forgelight of the star as the bulk of the corvo painted her Arbeiter in shadow. She resisted the urge to raise her fingers to her vizor as the asteroids shone the emerald flood of the recon vessel’s nav lights. A smirk glimmered in contrails of her lips as she saw lambda four’s arbiter pull out of a seven gee bat turn, his shields firing like sparklers, his weapon siren ableat as he pulled back, chastened, to the formation.

Gunda revelled in being a leader of men - it meant she got to delegate the emotions that made her feel small.

“This Commander G.Riehl to Lucy local; tell the navigator he’s getting a too good at cloak rendezvous. Fresh-heads get skittish. Tend to shit themselves when small towns materialise off port.”

The vessel hung against the infinite, recursive desert of asteroids like a massive spectral dagger, basking in the halo of its propulsion gas as it reversed, haloed in plasma. It was dissimilar enough from the Union’s usual aesthetics to make Gunda fidget. Absent were the bullish, prominent plates, the wolfish, triangular bows of most Unioner vessels, designed to deflect debris and gunfire alike. Gone was the confident keel, the prominent propulsion section, the flying bridges, the naked, sinuous tells of a vessel Instead, the vessel hunched. Where there should be silver, it shone a pearlescent, ceramic white. Where there should be a magazine, there was a house-sized sensor dish. Most criminal; there were too many windows. It stunk of a vessel that did not expect to be shot, a prey animal, and at that, Gunda sniffed.

When did we start naming our ships after Goetic demons?


“Lucifuge to Lambda One. Maintain current distance in manual flight. Engage cruise engines and and roll automatic ECM.”

Preternaturally, the Lucifuge’s engines redshifted, and Riehl’s thrusters flashed white inside her wake. Tabbing off her comm unit, she kicked the levers with her feet, pushing back into the couch as the gees led her by the lungs. She realised with some cynicism they’d cruised on her mid-transmission.

“Lambda wing, follow package in cruise, stick to three vee, one kilo distance.” One kilo. That was eight hundred metres further than the Lucy’s CO would have her push. Fuck ‘em.

Riehl pressed her visored eyes to the photons speeding down the velocity vector and watched her potato, in real time, grow to fill the screen.

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