Voyage of the Dawn Rider

Chapter 6

Voyage of the Dawn rider 4.

Finally we were able to board our ship. Too much beer required everyone to make a beeline for the "head" the ships bathroom, only Elansa stayed in the cargo area. Seeing me watching her, she placed her case on a bench and prepared to open it. "Captain, I hope you don't mind, but it's time you met the final member of our intrepid crew." with that, she opened the case, immediately something flew up out of the case and fluttered in mid air. I scowled, and shook my head, no doubt about it, what came out of that case was a damned Pixie. Moving over to where Elansa seemed to be daring me to say something, I sighed and said, "Ma'am what are you doing with a Pixie?" Elansa glared at me "be very careful captain, Nessa is with me, she will be accompanying us, don't' try to change my mind, you'll be dealing with queen Kolee if you do." I frowned, and looked up at the tiny figure hovering overhead. "a Pixie, OUCH! What was that?" A sharp pain had shot through my brain. Elansa snickered, "That's just Nessa's way of telling you not to f**k with her, as you may or may not know, Pixie's can't speak, however they communicate through telepathy, anyone with the exception of Ogres perhaps, can pick up Pixie think." I looked up at the Pixie and realized It was a lost cause, I knew when to surrender. "Very well Elansa, Nessa can stay and is welcome." Looking up again I thought," Come down Nessa, let's get a look at you." By now the rest of my crew had returned from relieving themselves, and gathered around. Nessa quickly dropped down to the bench, I bent down to get a better look. "You know, as much as I've "been around" I don't think I've ever seen a Pixie up close, let's take a look at you little lady." "Lecherous old f**k!" Flashed through my mind. I could see she was glaring at me. Pixie's simply didn't wear clothes for obvious reasons, for her size, Nessa was quite attractive, very well proportioned and…"OUCH! Damn it, why did you do that?" "I don't like randy old men eye f*****g me," flashed in my mind.

This time, rather than speaking, I focused my mind and thought. "I'm sorry Nessa you're a very attractive little lady, so tell me, what are you bringing to the table, besides an appetite?" In the first place I'm no lady, in the second place, I'm tired, and want to take a nap, if you want to know about Pixie's ask Elansa." Amazing, even though we elves, along with Faeries as well as Pixies had inherent telepathic abilities, I had never really communicated this way before. Nessa then flew back into the case again, and was apparently communicating with Elansa. I could tell the two were speaking telepathically as Nessa allowed Elansa to carefully close the case and ask, "I should like to take Nessa here to my room captain so she can rest." "All right," I announced, " go pick out your cabin. Save me the closet." Actually, they saved me a nice room, but since all six cabins were the same size and had the same features, I needn't have worried. While they were busy checking out the accommodations, I was checking out the pantry and the arms locker. As I suspected, there were no weapons at all in the locker, the ships galley was rather compact, containing a small conventional oven just about large enough for a small batch of scones or a mini cake. A two burner hotplate and a micro oven. The cold storage unit was somewhat larger, the galley also had something I found rather interesting. The freezer section was built into a partition support beam, you opened a small door, and removed your selection. By holding down a button, a vertical conveyer moved up to the next compartment that contained whatever you had put in there, I figured there must have been at least freezer compartments that held the food entrées, the freezer must go down into the bowels of the ship.

Returning to where everybody was chatting, I announced, "Looks like there's no groceries to speak of except for one carton of emergency rations, there seems to be table wear, standard galley stuff, but it looks as though we'll have to visit the commissary as well as the armory to draw weapons." Lieutenant Starle stepped forward and produced two cards, taking a closer look, I saw that one was a Royal Credit card, and the other a weapons authorization card. "I forgot to show you these earlier, mother thought we might need them, however I'm in charge of the credit card, you the weapons card." Spanner had been talking to Elansa and hadn't been paying full attention, now he remarked on something he wasn't fully knowledgeable of. "Isn't that sweet, we get to use your mother's credit card." Magiere glared at him, prompting me to say, "Uh Spanner, I think you ought to know that this is a Royal credit card, I meant to tell you, the Lieutenant here is the queens daughter Magiere Starle." Spanner gave me a look that spoke, "What the f**k?" "Get out of here, captain, the queen doesn't have a daughter!" Magiere was getting angrier by the moment, I needed to put this one out fast. "I beg to differ Spanner, I not only had dinner with queen Tianna and queen Kolee, but these ladies as well. Now if the lieutenant here isn't the queens daughter why did she introduce me to Magiere here AS her daughter?"

Spanner had no answer for this one, so I rested my case, Spanner said no more, just stood around looking confused. "Mother said that everybody could choose one thing they really liked, to take along in the way of food or drink. However, I'm in charge of this thing, all receipts WILL be saved and turned into me, and be advised that royal accountants will go over everything with a fine toothed comb, understood?" "Well if there are no more questions, let's go shopping," I said. "As far as a favorite food item, I know what I want, Elansa, how about Nessa, have any idea what she might want to eat or drink?" Elansa thought for a moment, then shook her head, "Pixie's eat very little, she's never indicated to me whether she had any favorite foods or not, they do seem to have a taste for honey, so I suppose a small pot of honey might be in order." So without further ado, we strolled over to the commissary which was about a city block away. "shopping" at the commissary consisted of sitting in front of a computer and selecting whatever it was you needed , and in what quantity. Magiere and I did the purchasing. The lieutenant slid her card into a slot, the computer "read" the data on the card and stated the limit, if there was any. In our case, there wasn't, so we proceeded to go through the various categories and select what we needed.

My "selection" was "Highland black tea" or "swamp water" as Spanner called it. A fellow cadet introduced me to it when I was at the academy, I've been a fan of it ever since. Magiere "allowed" me two cases, she surprised me with her choice, "Potsie Pies." "I didn't know you liked those," "Magiere smiled at me and said, "I could "live" on these. When I was with the "Riders" and we would be out for days on training flights and patrols, we'd pack several of these little "beauties" with us. Down along side the cockpit in our fighters there was a heat exchanger that kept the flight computer cool, someone figured out that if you placed a "Potsie Pie" just under the exchanger case it would get piping hot in around an hour, those things would take care of you for pretty much the whole day." As it turned out, Spanner liked them as well, however Garet had never heard of them, and Elansa wasn't sure. For the " uninitiated," Potsie Pies, are medium sized baked pastry's containing minced meat, chopped potato's turnips carrots onion and pepper. While I had never "lived" on them as Magiere had, they really filled you up when you were too busy to eat a regular meal. We took a chance and ordered six cases, since they came frozen we weren't quite sure if the freezer on board would handle them all. (As it turned out, we were able to put two into a compartment thus filling the whole freezer with them.

Spanner's weakness was "Mifurda stew," a thick and rather bland Dwarven dish, that was practically a national "treasure" in Dros Del Noch. Elansa thought it was disgusting, but the concoction she chose didn't sound much better. It was something she called "Anasgiah" which the main ingredient was goat cheese. Fortunately for the rest of us they didn't carry anything like that, Elansa then settled for a few bottles of summer wine. Garet didn't have any preferences either, settling for a few bottles of wine as well. We rounded out our grocery list with assorted fruit, loaves of bread, condiments, "Gas-Po Fizzes" and other assorted items. Magiere caved under pressure and allowed four cases of beer, they didn't have any Weidners Dark , so we had to make do with a popular Elvin brand. Spanner grumbled about it being nothing more than "Horse Piss" but he agreed in the end that it was better than nothing. We arranged to have our order delivered to our ship. Our next stop was the armory, again Elansa and Garet catching grief being civilians. Because there were three of us in the navy, we were able to get our civilian crewmates inside. Waiting for us at the window was a very disinterested female dark elf. Her rank indicated she was a Lieutenant like Magiere. I stepped up to the window and announced, "I'm captain Demlin, and my crew and I are here to draw weapons." Handing her the royal authorization card, she casually looked at it and said, "What's this?" Figuring "sugar" would get us farther, I held my tongue and instead said, "That Lieutenant is a royal authorization card allowing us to draw whatever weapons we see fit, considering our mission." All I got for my effort was, 'Uh huh, I don't think I've ever seen one of these, how did you get it?" I looked at Magiere, who was starting to go into a slow burn, Spanner was starting to glower as well. "Lieutenant, we received the card from the queen herself." The dark elf burst into laughter, "Oh that's rich, look captain you're going to have to do better than that, I'm going on break in another five minutes so I can't really help you now." All of a sudden Elansa stepped forward, since she was a bit shorter than the window, the armory officer couldn't really see her. Waiving her hand she said, "Ma'am, uh ma'am!" the lieutenant not seeing anyone but hearing someone call her peered out her window, "Eh what's this, Oh I'm sorry children aren't allowed in here." Looking at Elansa, I had a good idea what was coming next, so did everyone else. Elansa made a quick gesture with her hand, the lieutenant seemed to freeze, still staring at Elansa. "Lieutenant, you suddenly realize you have all the time in the world to help us, you will escort us back to weapons storage, where we will help ourselves to whatever strikes our fancy. Furthermore, you will permit us to help ourselves to as much ammunition as we can carry, and have what we can't transported directly to the Dawn Rider, is that completely understood lieutenant?" "Absolutely, excuse me for any misunderstandings I'm here to serve, will there be anything else?" "Not at this time lieutenant , please accompany us now," instructed Elansa.

All of us looked on in amazement as the lieutenant opened the side door for us to enter. Not knowing how long Elansa's "spell" would last, we wasted no time in following her into the bowels of the armory and the "goodies" that awaited. As we followed the lieutenant, I whispered to Elansa, "Sweet, very sweet!" and gave her the thumbs up sign. Entering the vault itself, took your breath away, a veritable "playground" of hand held death. My first choice was a Kryer M-6 auto rifle. It wasn't for use inside of a spacecraft, the chances of destroying something unintentional was too great, plasma weapons for inside "work" only. I had a decent pistol I'd been issued a while back, an Omma Plasma pistol . Spanner selected a Vymont ten bore auto shotgun, someone built a solidly as Spanner was the only one strong enough to use it. Magiere also selected an M-6 as well, along with an Omma plasma rifle with quick change power cells, this was the top of the line for plasma weapons, instant vaporization up to 100 yards. Elansa declined a weapon, however I made her take an Omma pistol along with Garet I also drew a Ping sniper rifle, a heavy caliber rifle with auto adjusting sights that was actually a mini ballistics computer, even if you were only a fair shot, you could never miss. Surprisingly, both Elansa and Magiere drew falchions, slightly curved short swords wickedly lethal in the right hands. Elansa choosing one I could understand, but elves hadn't carried these things in over two centuries. I questioned her choice with my eyes, "Tell you later." was all that she'd say. We grabbed up all the ammunition we could carry, even Elansa and Garet carrying two boxes each. With a little re-arranging of my loot, I even found room for a sack of plasma grenades. I signed off on all the serial numbered items, then we bid the lieutenant goodbye and departed the armory as fast as we could go, "Man! What a haul!"