- Chapter 3 -

Previously...

At around midday, Freeport time, when the artificial suns were at their highest and hottest, Strides-Tall finally arrived at Dock twenty-five, where the Reclamationist ship was berthed. She presented something of a different image from the one she wore whilst dancing - she wore dark leather shorts and a waistcoat under a knee-length, wide-lapelled coat of rich, dark red leather - but her love of thigh-high boots still shone through.

The boots she wore that day were quite simply the finest she had - deep brown, with a natural shine, trimmed around the tops with oval jewels of exquisite smoky crystal, the largest at the front, with others arranged in decreasing size to either side. She had been told by Ashyra, a trustworthy expert on the subject of boots, that these particular boots were the product of a race called the Q'Lshei, and they were a rather exclusive and expensive product at that.

Make the best impression you can, girl, she told herself as she strode up to the foot of the gangplank. Some of the crew recognised her, and she them, from previous expeditions, but only the captain or Bresquet could grant her permission to come aboard.

"It's good to see you again, Mistress Strides-Tall", said Captain Lemmesk, a stocky, broad-faced man with many years of well-tended beard growth. Master Bresquet said we should expect you."

But did he tell you anything else?, she wondered. Did he mention last night's private dance, perhaps? And if so, was he entirely truthful...?

Strides-Tall prepared herself for stares and giggles from the crew, in case her employer had been less than discrete, but the first member of the crew that she encountered on-ship barely noticed she was there. Quite without warning, a huge shape emerged from below decks, apparently cursing in a coarse growling language she had not heard before, and the creature nearly ran over both the captain and his elven guest.

"Gaaah - damned Murgands", spat Lemmesk. "They can't handle having anything other than miles of rock under their feet..."

Strides-Tall had never seen a Murgand before, although she had heard much about them. They were not unlike the trolls her own people occasionally had dealings with - the descendants of creatures brought to her two-mooned birth-world by her space-faring ancient ancestors - but, as she had been told, the Murgand was nearly eight feet in height, and nearly half as broad across the shoulders as it was tall.

Looking more closely, Strides-Tall came to the conclusion that this Murgand was actually female, with breasts well in evidence, but little more in the way of feminine curves. Like the rest of her kind, she was short on hair on the top of her head - the fringe of hair running around the back from ear to ear was twisted into beaded braids that hung down past her shoulders - and even had the rudiments of a beard, in the form of a faint haze of light-coloured whiskers under her chin.

"Bah! It's no better inside!", grumbled the stout giantess, squinting through eyes narrowed against the unfamiliar fullness of the midday sun. "How can anyone stand this?"

"We tolerate it in silence, and are thankful that things aren't worse", declared the captain.

"Worse? They can't be any worse!", retorted the Murgand. "Your tunnels're too narrow..."

"Try widening them, as you would back home, under the earth, and things will be worse", said Lemmesk sternly. "Much worse - pierce the hull, and we'll all be dead."

Strides-Tall just failed to stifle a giggle, and eyes like lumps of polished coal fixed on her. "And what's this then?", snapped the Murgand woman, stubby-fingered hands forming fists on her hips. "My suffering is funny, is it? Well - is it?"

The elf fell silent. Murgands were as quick to anger as her homeworld's trolls, it seemed.

"This is Mistress Strides-Tall...", the captain began.

"'Mistress'...? This is a woman?", exclaimed the giantess. "Where's yer beard, girl?"

"I don't have one - and never will", answered the adventuress.

"Gafweh! Which god did you insult to earn such a cruel punishment?", the Murgand murmured, somewhat cautiously, as though she feared the same curse would strike her if she was heard to talk with such an afflicted individual.

"It's the way things are for my people", Strides-Tall explained. "Only the men of certain tribes ever grow face-fur, and then only after about five hundred years or so."

"Poor girl", sighed the Murgand, shaking her head sorrowfully. "Poor, poor girl..."

Strides-Tall giggled again, but this time the response was far more welcome. "I am Broxka, of the Clan Brightstone, little one. I suffer all these ordeals so that Jaglundar's Rock can be returned to its rightful masters. May the honour of victory be worth the hardship."

"I hope I can help you earn that honour", the elf replied. "Tunnels too narrow for you will surely be wide and spacious for me."

"You will join us, then?", asked Captain Lemmesk.

"I haven't decided yet", responded Strides-Tall. "Show me more, Captain..."

The elf's words were a lie. There was no way that she could turn down an adventure, even if she would be going on the expedition just to spite Skylla. She did want to know more, however, for an expedition that could coax Murgands onto a star-sailer was, without a doubt, something rather out of the ordinary.

Strides-Tall and Lemmesk eventually found Bresquet in one of the cavernous cargo bays of the Brilliant Future, overseeing a meeting at which the Murgands were being introduced to some of the Reclamationists' more exotic weaponry. The Murgands were normally a race of close-quarters fighters, each armed with a heavy, two-handed hammer-axe, but they were still clearly impressed when Bresquet's master-of-arms, a craggy-faced solemn character who seemed to have been bred to fight, revealed something very special.

"This", informed Warrior First Class Kotadan, brandishing a stubby, multi-barrelled portable cannon, attached by tightly-curling cables to a heavy back-pack, "is a personal lightning-gun. It's just like the big ones fitted to just about every star-sailer, and stationed in the watchtowers overlooking every harbour in The Realm, but it's light enough to be carried into combat by one man, without weighing him down much..."

"They like it", whispered Bresquet gleefully as he came over to greet Strides-Tall. "They like it!"

"It's a bit small", grunted one Murgand. "That may be fine for you runty little folk, but it's not much more than a toy to us!"

"We have larger versions", said Bresquet. "They can be easily adapted for your use."

"Show us", growled the giant warrior, leaning on his hammer-axe so that the iron-shod spike at the bottom end dented the metal-plated deck.

The Reclamationist nodded, and reached into the pocket of the long riding coat he wore over his usual waistcoat, fine breeches and riding boots. He produced a rectangular black box, no longer and no thicker than his outstretched hand, pointed it towards the far end of the cargo hold, and pressed one of the many small coloured buttons.

"This is what I mentioned last night", he said to the elf. "Watch..."

A harsh whirring sound, and the noise of metal grinding on metal came from behind a large stack of boxes. A huge shadow emerged from behind the boxes, spreading out across the far wall as...something started to move. Slow, heavy footsteps rang out through the cargo hold as a man-like shape came out of the darkness - a man-like shape clad from head to toe in dull, articulated metal.

It reminded Strides-Tall of human warriors from her childhood days, riding around on horseback, clad in armour not dissimilar to the outer plating of this ten-foot-tall monstrosity, but the whirring and whining that came from its joints told her that there was nothing living inside that armour . This was some kind of machine, constructed in the crude form of a man.

"The grey box was an essential part of the internal workings of this beauty", Bresquet explained. "A pre-Rage war machine..."

"Gafweh gajja!", exclaimed the previously-unimpressed Murgand warrior. "Now that is worth coming all this way for."

The machine-man came to a halt in front of Bresquet, and stood to attention. Its head was nothing more than a blank helmet, with two slits for eyes with lights blinking within, its hands were heavy, three-fingered paws and a multi-barrelled lightning gun was mounted over each shoulder, attached to a frame originating from the armoured battery-pack on its back.

"Combat Unit 6-Zero-5-A52 reporting for duty", the mechanical giant announced in a flat, droning voice. "All systems nominal. Awaiting orders."

"Stand by, 6-Zero-5", Bresquet replied, and pressed another button on the box in his hand. Half the lights inside the machine's eye-slits went out.

Kotadan stepped forward, and gestured towards the lightning guns the machine carried. "At present, we only have the one functioning war-machine", he said, "but we have plenty of spare parts, including the heavy lightning guns. We brought a few with us, along with some power-packs, and they'll be ready to hand out to your men...and women, before we reached Jaglundar's Rock."

The Murgands all bowed their heads at the mention of the lost colony. "Honour the fallen heroes", they whispered, speaking as one.

"Will the machine join us in battle?", enquired one Murgand, his heavily-rivetted iron breastplate covered with kill-symbols and sacred runes, marking him out as a war-chief.

"As a mark of our commitment to this venture, we will be sending this precious resource to fight by your side", assured Bresquet.

The Murgand war-chief looked to one of his younger subordinates. "Fetch the wiseman", he told the warrior. "The machine must be sanctified."

"Murgands take war almost as seriously as they take mining and metalwork", the Reclamationist told Strides-Tall. "So long as they don't do any damage, we let them carry out whatever rituals they feel they need to perform."

A few minutes later, the young warrior returned, followed into the cargo hold by what looked to be an ancient Murgand, his head completely bald, his beard plaited into a belt wound about his waist. Old he might have been, and bent over by the weight of many, many years, but he still towered over the Reclamationists' master of arms, who was himself easily over six feet tall.

"Tollen, a keeper of wisdom", explained Bresquet as the old Murgand walked slowly up to the war-machine, and looked it over. "He was there when Jaglundar's Rock was taken. He knows the internal layout better than anyone alive - and some say he's only lasted this long because he's been waiting for his people to take the Rock back."

"I should talk to him", said Strides-Tall, but Bresquet held her back.

"Let him do his work first", advised the Reclamationist. "We need to keep the Murgands' morale as high as possible. If a ritual should be missed, or isn't completed, they'll take it as a bad omen, and we'll be retaking Jaglundar's Rock all by ourselves."

"And can we?", enquired Strides-Tall.

Bresquet did not answer. He either didn't have an answer, or chose not to reply, watching Tollen instead as the ancient Murgand nodded approvingly, and began a ritual of sanctification dating back to the dawn of Murgand civilisation, thousands of years before the great disaster that nearly tore The Realm apart.

Strides-Tall watched too, and saw how the old sage's eyes had brightened. His movements had also become more confident, less shaky, suggesting that he felt that the liberation of the Rock was almost at hand. The elf hoped he was right to feel that way.

 

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