THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

You watch him go with a lingering, irrational sense of abandonment, then catch Bel watching you.

"It's weird," you say defensively, squaring up your shoulders. "This is weird. Fuck off."

Your commander doesn't have any time to fuck off because Ironfist's ship is docking. It's bogglingly vast, studded with spines and cannons all painted up in brilliantly gruesome rainbow swirls, and could probably rip through your Sunslammer like a dragon out of a paper sack should it so choose to neglect docking procedure. Thankfully, it doesn't, settling into its berth quickly and neatly. Clamps engage, bay doors close, air pressures equalize, it settles.

Nothing happens for a good long while. Of course he's going to make you hurry up and wait. He's probably pressed against on of the windows just watching you do it, while fondling himself.

"I hate this guy," you remark.

Finally a hatch opens, a gangway descends, and a fairly enormous Subjugglator captain comes barreling down, bellowing some sort of horrid clown nonsense as he goes. He grabs Heinsz by her neck as she tries to salute and drags her like a doll.

"DISRESPECT," he shouts at you when he gets close enough, "NOT EVEN FIT TO LICK THE MOTHERFUCKING CRUST CRUMBS OFF MY NOOK, YOU UNFUNNY SACK OF SOGGY PUNCHLINES AND THEN YOU GIVE UNTO ME GARBAGE! YOU MAKE ME LOOK AT GARBAGE! YOU MAKE ME TOUCH GARBAGE." He shakes Heinsz viciously.

"You gross nasty piece of landlicking shorescum, I am Captain of this vessel and current Sea Lord of the local parsec and as such I still outrank you. You will salute."

Ironfist, leering, goes to put Heinsz head in his mouth.

"Commander, I trust you can manage regular docking procedures while I entertain our guest," you tell Bel, and shove him hard enough to send the blueblood staggering a few steps back. You don't need any heroics right now. Then you take four strides, tremendously greatful for your little nonstick heel pad thingies, and headbutt Ironfist as hard as you can in the gut. He folds up around you with a guffaw, grabs one of your legs, drops Heinsz, and you're off to the fucking races, if the races involved a lot of sweaty and painful clown wrestling you're probably not nearly healthy enough for.

 

Even with advance warning, and with the good of the ship at stake, it's still taking every drop of willpower you possess to keep from equipping pistolkind and delivering a medium caliber, high velocity, steel jacketed Hands Off My Man message to Ironfist's left eyesocket.

Pale-lipped, white-knuckled, you force yourself to turn away. Busy yourself helping Heinsz up and determining whether she needs the medbay. "Crust crumbs on your nook sounds like a You Problem," you sneer at Ironfist's back, but quietly. Just for Heinsz's hearing. Because you are a good officer and you're not going to get your ship wrecked over a point of pride. If Erskin can whore himself out to keep the Slammer flying, you can refrain from doing murders. Extremely justified murders... no. You are ice. You are a glacier.

 

It's a long couple nights. Even with nearly every hand on board working around the chronometer to get Ironfist's clowncar refitted and Galley driving the Sunslammer fast enough you can feel the stressing through the deckplates, your crew drops from the 150's to the 140's: secondary clowns are a problem. The casino's a hit, though, and you know dimly Whitey and Lainey are working together on that.

Everyone but you gets screaming dayterrors. Everyone including you doesn't sleep much.

You're holding up better than expected: Ironfist wants breaks between war games to eat and drink and fuck, though he takes his own friends instead of you, apparently even more delighted to be getting off while you lick your wounds than he's ever been to get you off. It makes keeping your promises to Bel easier than you'd expected: miracles.

Bel is angry and difficult and not at all keen on staying on track. He's worried for you, misses you, but you're too tired to indulge him in anything.

Jethro and Pancho are kind and dilligent and keep you handily in working order. Soup, stitches, and stimulants: you should have gotten a combat medic ages ago. You can't promote them-- nowhere to promote them to!-- so you settle for increasingly outrageous compliments.

Sigmah tries to check on you once: you register big and purple and try to tear his head off. He's very polite about it afterwards, but you put off any further appointments till Ironfist's been packed off.

Your leg loses all the plastic bits and gains an extremely unwelcome layer of subjuggraffiti. Still glittery as fuck. You try to remember to tell Bel about a joke about it, whenever you see him next.

No reason not to have a laugh where you can get it, times like these.

 

You're just barely holding things together, and without your friends you'd have gone ballistic at least 48 hours ago. Jethro tells you what he sees when he tries to bring Erskin lunch or get him to do physical therapy, or at least what he saw before Erskin shoved him fiercely out for fear one of the subjugs would rip him apart for sport. They've been killing your crew, those clown cultists, and Erskin can't do anything about it, apparently. You were trying so hard to be good, to be trustworthy, to not go off the rails and cause casualties like you did when you took out Wavebane's last appalling pet.

But then one of the assholes has the nerve to come to you, her greasepaint still dripping with jack-and-faygo, and demand you make Murfey give up the 'shitblood' crewman who threw a drink in her face for grabbing his crotch. And you just. Can't not kill her. You just can't. You make a submissive expression and gesture humbly for her to lead the way, and the moment she turns her back you put a hollowpoint through the base of her skull.

You look around and see that the few people in the corridor are all Slammer crewmen, and far from being horrified, they look from the corpse to you with their alarm turning to gratitude. And then they pointedly go back to their business as if nothing happened.

You understand what you need to do.

It's so much easier than it should be. Ironfist's crew is soft with self-indulgence, too used to bullying lowbloods and massacring aliens. Not one of them puts up a fight worth the name.

When Ironfist shows up in the dock, you're able to approach him with calm, if chilly, professionalism while your crew hurries to get out of range, solely by thinking about the ten unfunny jokes whose stripped corpses you've composted. One for each of your crew his crew has killed. "May I help you, sir."

 

It's been sixteen fucking hours since you got a sit down and Ironfist's finally managed to get your eye out for this visit--four days in isn't your worst time, but certainly not your best-- so you're forced to give Bel a stern warning glare only half as stern or warningly as usual. As you expected, it doesn't take.

Ironfist goes, "I GOT SIX PLASMA CANNONS AS NEED MORE PLASMA JUICE, SHITBLOOD. THEY AIN'T DOING THE PLASMA THING I UP AND MOTHERFUCKING NEED MY MOTHERFUCKING PLASMA CANNONS TO DO. I ASK YOUR SLIMERIND CREW VERY FUCKING NICELY TO PUT MORE MOTHERFUCKING PLASMA IN THOSE BITCHES AND THEY SAY NO. YOUR ROTFUCK FILTHBLOOD CREW WOULD RATHER BE SAT AROUND WITH THEY THUMBS UP THEY CAVERNOUS SPHINCTERS AND SAY UNTO ME NO. I ASK YOU, SHITBLOOD, WHAT I SHOULD DO TO PROPER MOTIVATE SUCH A COLLECTION OF EFFLUVIA TO UP AND DO THEY MOTHERFUCKING JOBS!? BECAUSE YOUR BROKE-ASS TOY CAPTAIN AIN'T GOT THE FIRST FUCKING CLUE."

 

Ignoring Erskin's warning glare because what the fuck did he let this shitweal do to his face, you level your cool stare at Ironfist for three silent seconds longer than is polite. Then you reply coolly, "Take it up with your own crew, sir. They killed the only technicians qualified to work on those weapons systems."

 

"DID YOU MANAGE TO LEAVE YOUR BRAINS IN YOUR OTHER BUCKET, LOWBLOOD?" the indigo enquires. "MOTHERFUCKING GET SOME NEW MOTHERFUCKING TECHNICIANS QUALIFIED. NOW!"

 

"Of course, sir, right away." An evil smile begins to spread across your face. "As it happens, I have the paperwork all drawn up. I'll just need your signature in about fifteen places. For your illustrious sake, Highblood, I'm sure the Admiralty will expedite the crew transfer as much as possible -- no more than three or four weeks."

 

You try to pull Ironfist's attention off Bel. "You disgusting excuse of a vertebrate, I was just telling you—" your hoarse rasp cuts off into a pathetic ngk when he grabs one of your horns and shakes you. You immediately start in on clawing his forearm to strips, but he hardly deigns notice. "—TELLING YOU IT WASN'T FEASIBLE. OR DO YOU NEED IT IN SMALLER WORDS!?"

Ironfist's attention doesn't shift from Bel. Their eyes are locked. He asks, dangerously quiet: "And just what do you suggest I do for four weeks, shitblood? Because I don't think this slice of sushi's gonna last too much longer."

Fuck. He's figured out why Bel's so pissed— not that Bel can dissemble worth a damn. Not like Bel even thought not to let everyone in the entire parsec know exactly how he's felt about all this.

"Ironfist, if you don't get your deformed fucking flippers off my horn this instant you're going to lose your hand," you tell him. "I'll shove your arm up your asshole, see if I don't."

You get a utility knife into his wrist and he throws you casually into the nearest bulkhead. You've got a lot less bounce than usual, and it takes you an embarrassing amount of time to find your feet again. He's never discarded you before, and your guts are on fire with fear and preemptive grief.

The ringmaster subjugglator's squared off with Bel, head and shoulders taller, twice as broad. "HEY, YOU JEALOUS, SHITBLOOD?" Ironfist booms. "AIN'T A SINGLE MOTHERFUCKING REASON A STRAPPING PUNKASS LIKE YOU SHOULD BE. FIRST RIDE'S FREE, FUCKER." He spreads his arms wide in mocking invitation.

 

"Of course I'm jealous," you smile sweetly as your favorite weighted knuckledusters settle onto your hands. "That's my rival you've been mauling like a rawhide chewie, you disgusting mutt."

He's not coming at you yet. He wants you to make the first move. Well, if he wants to wait you out, you have plenty more to say before you're done with the talking part of this utter fucking fiasco. Plus, more time for less durable crewmen to get the hell out of the way.

"The Sunslammer's worst troublemaker," you begin, "has more discipline, duty, and loyalty to the Empire in his thumb claw than your entire shitshow of a crew put together. Your ship is in terrible shape because you have no goddamn idea what you're doing. I could have let you fly out of here with your plasma canons ready to blow themselves up from halfassed repairs with the wrong materials and you wouldn't even know, because you are pants-on-head retarded and you basically wipe your ass with the Alternian flag every night you continue to breathe." You take a deep breath, shift your weight, and let him have it: "On top of all that, you're not a joker, you're a joke -- and the joke's not even funny."

(ooh bel u gon die)

 

Well, alright then. You sit back down against the wall, exhausted, because fuck it. Fuck it.

Ironfist lets out a whoop of berserker laughter and goes for Bel, incredibly fast for a troll his size, or basically any size, a spiked maul in one fist and an enormous iron-slab gauntlet on the other.

 

Fuck, he's fast. You're faster, but not by enough. It only takes you a second and a half to realize you're going to lose this despite being more skilled, because he can take your hits better than you can take his. But by damn you are going to make him earn it.

There's no black joy in you, fighting Ironfist; instead, you enter the zone of serenity you occupy on battlefields and in sniper nests. You have no pain, no fear; not even his chucklevoodoos can reach you, because you're not processing emotions at all. You are just a beautifully designed and perfectly balanced machine for doing murders. Marines don't have opinions, they have kill counts.

You make the fight last long enough that people are edging back in to watch, though they keep back far enough that you can use some of your planted items. At one point you spring one of your traps and actually get him hoisted on a cargo hook, and think you might've won -- which would be bad, you can understand that when your mind is layered with ice like this, you can not win, he would kill everyone -- but he rips his shirt off and drops back down, leaving the shredded cloth on the hook, sodden with his blood. You're limping by that point, one eye swollen shut and a tangy hole in your mouth where he knocked a tooth out, your arms weigh a ton, your hair's come half unbraided and is stuck to your face with blood and sweat, and you're leaving little blue crescents with your right boot heel where blood's trickled down from a cut on your leg. But you still have enough left in you to pick your poison, make sure he takes you down with the slab, not the maul.

You blink awake at the end of a blue skidmark on the floor a few seconds after making that choice, trying to hold together the shreds of your awareness enough to make yourself stay down. You spot Erskin watching and give him a blue-toothed grin.

Then you turn the grin on Ironfist, who's nearly as blood-soaked and swelled up as you are. "Good fight," you slur.

 

Ironfist laughs: not a deranged war-whoop, but an actual expression of mirth. He leans down and knocks his big gauntlet to Bel's loosely curled fist.

"PASSABLE, SHITBRO," he rumbles. "IF THERE'S ENOUGH OF YOU LEFT TO DO THIS AGAIN TOMORROW, LET'S DANCE."

Then he shakes himself like a wet animal, spattering blood against the floorplates, straightens up, and strolls out of the docking bay to the racous cheers and whoops of his crew. They are going to get intensely fucked up today, but that's— that's probably more Whitey's problem than yours.

You get to your feet very carefully and pick your way over to Bel. You're not sure if you want to fuss over his broken body or just fucking finish him off for scaring you so very badly.

"That was some stunt, Commander," you say hoarsely.

 

"You have to let me do my share of the work, Captain," you rasp back, reaching for him. You're both entirely 'stove up', as Jethro would say, but you still want to taste the blood in his mouth. It's been nights and nights.

 

You get him upright, mostly by the scruff of his mangled uniform jacket, because if you sit back down you're not getting up any time soon. He smells like sweat and blood and nothing else, no fear or anger, no passion, and it feels bizarre and wrong. Sterile. You're fairly sure you yourslf reek of several nights' fear and anger all stacked together.

He sways on his feet and you catch him around the waist. "Think we got a free day," you say unsteadily. "Fancy spending it vacationing in scenic medical block?"

 

"I'd love to, Trouble, but I didn't bring my swimmies." Hanging on to him, you steal a brief and stinging kiss, then let him steer you toward medbay. "I don't know how many more fights like that I have in me," you confess when you're well away from listening crew. "Not three weeks' worth. But I wasn't lying, I have all kinds of personnel requisitions written up and waiting -- I wonder how many I can get him to sign off on before he notices he's doing us a favor?"

 

You give a startled laugh. "God, you're smart! I would never have thought of that."

It's not so far to medbay, but you suspect someone's going to try to escort the two of you and you want— just for a minute, you're alone— you push him down a corridor off the proper path and push him gently against the wall. You're tired. You've been treating him rather poorly, all things considered. And he is beautiful. You can take a few minutes.

You put your arms very carefully around his neck and kiss him thoroughly, until he smells right, until he smells like he wants you nearly as badly as you want him.

Only then do you ease back down. "There," you rasp out. "I— there, I'm sorry. I-it's. It's been so busy."

 

Forehead resting against his, arms around his waist, you breathe in, and things aren't so terrible after all. "Yeah, yeah, your noble martyrdom for the good of the ship, I'm mad but I can't really complain, can I? I just earned as much ass-whooping from Pancho as you're due from Lainey." You sigh forgivingly. "Just... can we plan it better from now on? So I can pull my weight? You let him take your eye out." Your voice cracks a little at that.

 

"Let, hell, I lasted four days!" you say, stung. "I mean I usually last longer but I'd still like to see you try."

Actually, no, you wouldn't, you're very glad Bel's still got nearly all of his bits. You kiss his bruised, sticky throat in apology.

 

"I'm sorry -- I know -- you hated seeing me try, Erskin, don't think I didn't see that." Maybe the apology and the way you kiss his horn and hair now is a little reddish, but... "His parody of blackrom is so gross. He doesn't know what rivalry is. He just wants to beat someone up. It makes me so mad that it has to be you." You give a bitter little laugh. "Think we could requisition a few more marines just to take up the slack?"