The Lost Goats, 55

[avevale_intelligencer]

"We've got a bearing," Galen reported, as he entered the lab. "They're headed for Wuk."

"Wuk?" Probity queried. "That's not a very informative name."

"Story goes the scout captain was about to name the planet when his tie got caught in the navigational gyro," Dik said, with a grin.

"That doesn't sound very plausible." Probity frowned. "Are you sure it's not a humorous anecdote?"

"Not that humorous," An remarked, "apparently."

"How did you get a bearing on them?" Cesar said. "Zander's ship's beacon's turned off. Mine's not got one, far as I can tell."

"Dik tagged the Nyrond counter-agent," An said. "Soren was broadcasting a regular pulse on seventy-seven point one five nine THz right up till about two minutes ago."

"Which would be when the last of it got metabolised," Dik said, "and can we say king of the lab?"

"But we're sure of the heading," Galen said. "Wuk is where Snood was hiding out, where he captured Adhemar. It's also a known pirate base. With the Poppo threat now neutralised, the Vigil can clean it out for us."

"I think you're relying rather too heavily on the Vigil," Imbiss said, forestalling an explosion from Cesar. "They have no actual official standing, after all. They're basically a very well organised and privately funded neighbourhood watch group wiith quasi-religious pretensions, and people tolerate them because they're occasionally helpful, but their group psychopathology is extremely dubious."

Probity snorted. "What the witch doctor here should say is that--"

"Viscera, stop it," Galen said. "I get all that. They're not the kind of people I want to owe too many favours to either, but Wuk is basically lawless and we need ground troops."

"All right," Cesar conceded with ill grace, "but I'm calling in my own troops. Don't want anyone arrested accidentally, do we?"

"More Nyronds?"

"Every one I can get," Cesar said. "Reckon at least three of 'em owe Zander and Soren a favour." He produced his N-band com unit from a pocket and moved away, speaking into it in a voice too low to be heard.

"Well," Jonquil Hedaya said, "this should be fun."

Comments

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Crow: (imitating Probity) "Scout captains seldom wear ties. They're very undisciplined."

Tom Servo: (likewise) "And since I am a Vulcan, I am bound to be the One Who Does Not Get The Jokes."

Mike: But it's all right, guys, we plugged the plot hole. Now we can continue with the exciting movie.

Tom Servo: I thought the Nyronds and the Vigil were like these deadly enemies.

Crow: Yeah, when's somebody going to ARREST somebody, for Pete's sake??

Mitchell and Anael: (together) Hey, you three! Down in front!

*ZAP*

Crow: (singed) All right, all right. Jeez, some people got no sensayuma...

[jahura.livejournal.com]

Anael: What the -

Mitchel: I didn't do it!

(giggle from behind)

Anael: Lethiel! What the Sheol! Where'd you get the WDL?

Lethiel: It's Mom's. Just in case someone wearing a gas mask and body armor should walk in here -

Mitchel: That's not funny!

Crow: HEY! Down in back there! We're trying to watch here.

Tom Servo: Trying being the operative word here...

[hurdle1gal.livejournal.com]

[man, I loved that show]

[soren-nyrond.livejournal.com]

The N-Band worked something along the lines of a (fictional) jungle-telegraph. A Nyrond transmitted a message, on the wavelength, to generate outwards. Receivers picked it up and were supposed to retransmit it, on a directional vector continuing the "outward" heading. They were also supposed to suppress messages which had either already been received, or which had been tagged as malicious. In practice this meant that the less startling a message the more likely it was to propagate.

Cesar's was by way of a Call to Arms. This wasn't exactly the most common of Nyrond messages, since few Nyronds wanted to broadcast either that they were in trouble, or that they had (potentially) found a possible target too large for only one Nyrond fully to encompass bleeding it. Many recipients retransmitted it at once, on the basis that such a message needed to be propagated as widely as possible, for the safety of Nyronds-In-General. Some retransmitted it without reading, because their owner was low-profile but had elected to stay in touch with wider events. Several, for reasons best known to themselves, suppressed it because they Didn't want to get Involved. And one or two loaded up smallships and headed for the disaster zone both to help and to scavenge whatever their might be by way of unconsidered trifles (also mousses, cold collations, and roasted viands).

Soren, noting it, winced -- he knew, as did Cesar, but with less concern, that the Vigil also monitored the N-Band and that their little ears would prick up. In fact, Vigil Regional HQ, made aware, decided that eight ships were quite enough, and that Poppo, with addictive aspects, was probably the sort of problem with which they ought to deal. Nyronds were prone to recidivism: they could bag them next time round.

Snood himself, and DNAP Jenny, were unaware of the kerfuffle. Likewise, in general, were the members of the broader pirate fleet. But, one by one, hints of the Call To Arms began to percolate to the better-informed among the buccaneering brotherhood. And just as the N-Band passed news on, so did they.

One Nyrond (or two) was one thing. An unchecked multitude, with the possibility of Vigil as well (the Vigil, not surprisingly, didn't approve of piracy), was Another Thing.

Jolly Gentleman Pandrax walked among his crew and tested the mood. To his utter unsurprise, the majority of them were uneasy. Girls (and DNAP Jenny was one of those, in their eyes) weren't generally taken as strong on strategy, and Pandrax' crew were high on self-preservation. Their ship quietly dropped behind the others, and a transmission hinted that they had drive problems. Something so minor wasn't worth bringing to Jenny's immediate attention, but when three other ships, all of them relatively close to Pandrax' in position, also began to slip from onward motion ....

By the time anyone hailed Pandrax, his ship was outside immediate weapons range. And, as soon as the hail, demanding that he get back into formation, was made, his drives lit and he was heading for the metaphorical farther horizon.

Two more ships followed suit, before threats got the others back into line. But, foreseeably, the desertion of three and the pulling-in of others engendered a broader "ooh-err" response, and Jenny found that comforting Snood needed to take a back-seat to explaining, at length and for free, to her fellow captains, why they were risking so much for Snood, whose Poppo would now yield little if any booty, and the vague possibility that a Nyrond could be valuable of himself. An that last thing Jenny could afford to tell them was that her longer-term aim was the seizure of a homeship and, effectively, her coronation as Pirate Queen of Space, since most of them, as egotistical as Jenny herself, would have had contrary concepts of the forehead on which the putative crown ought to rest.

[jahura.livejournal.com]

Mitchel: Is that why there was so much Vigil chatter over OO?

Anael: So much as compared to what?

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Probity snorted. "What the witch doctor here should say is that--"</>

Oo, ee, oo-ah-ah,
Tíng-táng, wálla-walla-bíng-bang.
Oo, ee, oo-ah-ah,
Ting-táng, walla-wálla-bing-báng.