Mortal Protection Services Chapter 43: XI.TCB: The Calm Before

Read chapter 43 of Mortal Protection Services by B.T.Skull on NovelPedia.

XI.TCB: The Calm Before Ingamar Ma-ana Marta's world On the way back to the Amish Papacies I ordered Ensign Yoto to call Dilt and tell him to open up and send us a fleet of defensive platforms, ships, scanning stations, heavy mining machinery, the works. We were claiming this naked rock, and this star too! In the name of the Children of Sol! Heavy reinforcement required. The Scourge was probably going to be extra pissed at us for moving in. Expect a fight, but we are establishing a beachhead here. Hopefully get a new portal station set up here real soon too, but standby on sending that shit through in pieces until the beachhead is secure. We had just flown up high enough to throw Marta safely into orbit before heading back down to save Jimmi's ass. Her crew sent a collection shuttle for her and another for Marta. Man, it's nice to have a bigass carrier ship nearby that can spit out shuttles and fighters at a moment's notice. After I talked to Yoto, I advised Jimtarng to run the tong test on Marta asap. Then we headed back down and secured Jimmi's safety. I got back to my ship and immediately marched into the armory and took off my personal marine powered armor suit. Every marine had one, I had one, Lt. Commander Berlin and Commander Wolf had one, and Jimmi had borrowed one of the five spares. "I'll come back and do the maintenance after I return from Jimmi's ship." I told Chief Bilkins the marine Armormaster. "I can do it for you, sir, if you want?" Bilkins was a mountain of a manly man, with a manly man's manly mustache. Was it well out of regs? Hell yes. But was I ever going to correct him? Hell no, the man could probably kill me with a twitch of his mustache muscles. "No no, I'll do it when I get back. I want to tweak the servos in the legs a touch too. That landing could have been smoother." My knees were still feeling the jump from twenty meters up. "Aye sir, but I am gonna clean it, charge it, and refresh the consumables. I'll leave the actual maintenance to you though." "Thanks, Chief." I patted him on the shoulder. Like slapping a boulder. I swear, the armor plates are softer than his muscles. I went to my quarters to take a quick shower before heading over to Jimmi's ship. I stank, I knew it, always do after an Op in armor. I asked Commander Wolf to get us docked while I cleaned up. I'm not really terribly comfortable commanding the ship while it docks with my sister's ship anyhow. Just... makes me uncomfortable. I felt the ship jostle and reaffix grav grid while I was in the shower. About a tenth of a second without gravity was extra fun in the shower. Docking tends to do that to the smaller ship. Hardcore science vessels don't have that problem, but then a blip in the gravity for them might mess up highly sensitive, and important experiments. We were running no such science experiments aboard my ship. Before I left the command quarters and headed over to Jimmi's ship, I moved the datalink for Lucifer to my wrist device from the command terminal.This way I could check what he was up to as I walked to the docking port. Target Designation: Marta Species: Human Status: Emotionally distressed Action: Simulate purring. Execute cuteness maximization protocols (become baby). That's my boy. No assigned engineering tasks, so he's out there sluttin it up for pets and loving from the strangest person he can find. At least he won't come back all sticky this time... probably. I swiped away the hologram displaying his info and pulled up a holomap of Jimmi's ship. I know my own ship down to the nuts and bolts, but Jimmi's out here flying a fucking city around, so I used the vagoogle maps app to find my way around. I found my way from the docking port for larger vessels to the turbowonk system access point not far away. Look, elevators go up and down, wonkavators go every what which way. And a lift is just an elevator... so we got turbowonks. They wonkavate you where you're going, lickety-split. The turbowonk's people mover pod drop