The Bear Trap

[Eppy]

*Shunk!*

"Agh! Mah bleedin'-uuuh..."

Corrine Whitacre smiled with grim satisfaction as her gas rifle's tranquilizer pellet smacked into the back of the exposed Scotsman's neck, dropping him to the ground into a deep sleep almost instantaneously.

"Bastard." She tossed her aubrun hair over her shoulder, putting the safety back on the gas rifle, and flagging Brett over, as she jumped up out from underneath the tree root and strolled over to the man. She frisked him, removed a high-power pistol and a large neuroshock rifle, designed to kill game without harming the animals' body.

Damn poachers.

"You're the man with the big triceps, you get to carry the meatbag," she teased, removing the power pack from the neurorifle as they strolled back along the path he'd made. Whatever he'd been aiming at, (she suspected a Bloodwolf-supposedly their flesh had qualities as an aphrodisiac) it bolted off into the very leafy brush, which rustled promptly.

"You bloody ingrate," he snorted, grabbing the poachers' wrist and began dragging him in the direction of the Dromedary they'd seen when they landed.

"So how's your thesis coming?" Brett asked, grunting slightly through his teeth from dragging the large man. "We haven't been talking as much as we used to."

"It's coming along. I've started mellowing the political references so the general public can't accuse me of stopping the industrial machine..."

"Sounds good." He lugged the scotsman up the ramp into the Dromedary's hold, then tied him to an exposed pipeline in the back of the crew compartment. "I'm not that far into mine, I'm afraid, I'm still assembling the conclusion...right, I'll take this thing up to orbit, you want to get the Alatariel airborne and pick me up once I've got the computer locked out and the SOS set?"

"Obviously." Corinne placed the neurorifle prominently on the control console and slid towards the door. "I'll see you in ten minutes." She withdrew her neural net pad and opened her Gaea Permission File, logging the intended launch of the old Clydesdale Alatariel the Whitacre family owned; she'd gotten it as a hand-me-down from her father. It was going to be Sarah's, but Sarah had run off with the Hellfire Circus, and apparently ended up flying with the Outcast Guard last she'd heard. Anyways, it was a free ship, and considering it saved her the cost of buying one that was very good; ecology doctorates at University of Cambridge were not cheap.

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Quick comment - we thought that Panzer was the Leader, Swift. -Agmen

Which Dreadnought was that?

One of your nine.