Yesterday’s piece is here.
Copyright J.B. Norman
“I just wanted a nice, easy delivery job,” Kathryn groans back aboard the Dolphin. “And now elite mercenaries are trying to kill us. Again.”
“I know,” Amarantha says. “It is terribly exciting, isn’t it? Like something out of a holo-serial!”
Kathryn groans louder.
“No,” she says through the hands she’s buried her face in. “You’re not supposed to enjoy it when mercenaries are trying to kill us!”
Dunstella reaches up to consolingly pat her sister’s shoulder.
“Didn’t you say you’ve dealt with this lot before, Captain? How elite can they really be?” Amarantha asks.
“I guess,” Kathryn concedes. “But it’s just so much work to have to deal with them!”
Dunstella reaches up to consolingly pat her sister’s shoulder.
“Well, it’s a big galaxy, Captain. What are the odds of encountering them again?” Amarantha offers.
“Yeah. Keep thinking that,” Kathryn scoffs, settling into the pilot’s seat and powering up the Dolphin. “It’s only a matter of time before they’re shooting at us and we’re all running and screaming.”
Dunstella reaches up to consolingly pat her sister’s shoulder.
“But,” Kathryn says resolutely, “We’re getting this cooling coil to Ledu and I’m not let any marauding band of mercenaries with squids on their hates stop us, just as sure as Ozym’Neferu the Star-Farer is Pschentifer of Seventh Pentarchical Dynasty of the Duat Galactic Arm.”
Amarantha stares blankly.
“It’s, uh,” Kathryn mutters. “He’s a character in a game I like.”
“Oh, yeah,” Dunstella says. “Kathryn’s got a whole pile of these little plastic fighting dudes! She likes the robo-skeletons with the funny hats!”
“You play with toys?” Amarantha asks. “I wouldn’t have expected it from you, of all people, Captain. But who am I to judge?”
It’s a weird thing to say, Kathryn reflects, since her tone seems to be indicating she’s doing nothing but judging…
“They are not toys!” Kathryn protests. “There’s lore! And backstory! There’s, like, five hundred books about it.They are miniatures to be used in tactical wargame to enact epic battles between the factions locked in uneding war a fantastical galaxy. The box says 12 and up! It’s a perfectly normal and mature, adultful hobby for mature adultful individuals like me to play—”
She catches herself.
“—have in their spare time when they’re not being mature, adultful individuals.”
“What you are describing is literally what a toy is, Captain,” Amarantha notes with a smirk.
Kathryn ignores the Alvaraean princess and continues flipping switches.
“You might want to sit down and buckle up, Princess,” Kathryn says. “I’ll be booting up the engines on the count of three.”
She glances over her shoulder at Amarantha.
“Three,” she declares suddenly, punching the Dolphin’s engines to life.
The ship lurches forward, sending Amarantha tumbling to the deck with a startled yelp.
“Very mature,” Amarantha mutters from her position upside-down and tangled up in her own limbs.
“She really likes those robo-skeletons,” Dunstella notes, helping Amarantha untangle herself from herself and get back to her feet. “You should see how she got when she wanted this one new dude and the closest place she could get one was three sectors over.”
“It was a limited edition!”
Inspired by the fact that I myself collect Warhammer little plastic fighting dudes, Kathryn collects little plastic fighting dudes — specifically, Osirium Sepulchrites, which are essentially not-quite Necrons.
This is a bit like Dunstella’s fried chicken from a couple days ago, in that I’m implementing the same joke in a way that’s actually more integrated into a actual story.
I’ve had an idea for a while for a scene of Kathryn and Amarantha playing a round of not-quite Warhammer that I think has potential.
Also, that header image isn’t an accurate depiction of what an Osirium Sepulchrite is supposed to look like, but it was the coolest thing that came up when I typed in “Skeleton.”
If you’ve enjoyed my content, please consider supporting me through Ko-fi or Patreon, or through Paypal by scanning the QR code below:
Follow Realmgard and other publications of Emona Literary Services™ below:
Subscribe to the Emona Literary Services™ Substack newsletter here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author prohibits the use of content published on this website for the purposes of training Artificial Intelligence technologies, including but not limited to Large Language Models, without express written permission.
All stories published on this website are works of fiction. Characters are products of the author’s imagination and do not represent any individual, living or dead.
The realmgard.com Privacy Policy can be viewed here.
Realmgard is published by Emona Literary ServicesTM
