"Yeah. So. I decided to change the mission parameters. Our captors were watching us - but so were my Dendarii. I fell in with this guy Suegar, who'd gone a bit nuts - not unusual, in that hell-camp - and carried around this scrap of paper that he happened to have on him when he was captured, torn out of some book. Claimed it was scripture. It went, let me see... 'For those that shall be the heirs of salvation. Thus they went along toward the gate. Now you must note that the city stood upon a mighty hill, but the pilgrims went up that hill with ease, because they had these two men to lead them by the arms; so they had left their mortal garments behind them in the river, for though they went in with them, they came out without them. They therefore went up here with much agility and speed, through the foundation upon which the city was framed higher than the clouds. They therefore went up through the regions of the air...' God, it comes right back to me."
He shivers a little.
"I took this textual fragment as a starting point, and began to preach our new religion. A very practical religion. I Managed To Convince enough people to join the cause that by the next chow call, we had enough to capture the pile and redistribute it fairly, exactly-one-to-a-customer, as opposed to the whole population of the dome mobbing it in a desperate brawl the moment it appeared. I had us divvy it up into fourteen sub-piles, fourteen being the number of combat drop shuttles carried in total by the Dendarii fleet, not that I told anyone that. And I drilled us and drilled us and drilled us some more, and more and more of the camp came over to our side, and when my fleet arrived they ferried us up to the troop ships twenty-eight hundred at a time, two hundred to a shuttle, from our fourteen neat tidy chow call lines."
A slight smile, wry recollection.
"I remember one of my fellow prisoners who'd been helping me out, Beatrice... when I explained that I was part of a paid rescue and she'd better get us organized for our final chow call, she said 'Mercenaries?' - in just that disgusted tone - and I told her that no, under the circumstances, the appropriate exclamation was 'Mercenaries!', with a glad cry."
Then he shakes his head.
"And Lieutenant Murka was decapitated by a plasma blast while guarding us on the ground. And the enemy blew away two of our shuttles in the air, killing two hundred and six people. I went up on the last shuttle, and we took damage from enemy fire - the hatch jammed - Beatrice got it unjammed, but she fell out. Whoosh. Gone. I don't have the happiest job in the universe. But hey, I rescued ten thousand people from the pits of hell. That's got to count for something."
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-09-13 01:20 am (UTC)He shivers a little.
"I took this textual fragment as a starting point, and began to preach our new religion. A very practical religion. I Managed To Convince enough people to join the cause that by the next chow call, we had enough to capture the pile and redistribute it fairly, exactly-one-to-a-customer, as opposed to the whole population of the dome mobbing it in a desperate brawl the moment it appeared. I had us divvy it up into fourteen sub-piles, fourteen being the number of combat drop shuttles carried in total by the Dendarii fleet, not that I told anyone that. And I drilled us and drilled us and drilled us some more, and more and more of the camp came over to our side, and when my fleet arrived they ferried us up to the troop ships twenty-eight hundred at a time, two hundred to a shuttle, from our fourteen neat tidy chow call lines."
A slight smile, wry recollection.
"I remember one of my fellow prisoners who'd been helping me out, Beatrice... when I explained that I was part of a paid rescue and she'd better get us organized for our final chow call, she said 'Mercenaries?' - in just that disgusted tone - and I told her that no, under the circumstances, the appropriate exclamation was 'Mercenaries!', with a glad cry."
Then he shakes his head.
"And Lieutenant Murka was decapitated by a plasma blast while guarding us on the ground. And the enemy blew away two of our shuttles in the air, killing two hundred and six people. I went up on the last shuttle, and we took damage from enemy fire - the hatch jammed - Beatrice got it unjammed, but she fell out. Whoosh. Gone. I don't have the happiest job in the universe. But hey, I rescued ten thousand people from the pits of hell. That's got to count for something."