There was a large bonfire burning close off, in the distance. The sounds of grinding Nu-Ouze music and cacaphoneously wild, feral, raucus laughter bellowed a soft, low booming, grumble of distant artifical thunder into the pass above.
"Too easy.", Ruma thought.
She spotted a great sprawling grove of Spruit trees overlooking the party.
"What are we doing here?", Pilsner had asked Antilles, later that night, with a flat resigned tone in his voice that was too exhausted to battle wits with the stone-hearted Commander, anymore. The imbecile had won. He was too defeated to argue stupidity a moment longer.
The Commander's response was most entirely unexpected and way too long overdue, perhaps, even, much too late.
"I told Admiral Krang how much that I had eagerly wanted to die after losing my wife, Valaxia, to the farmer's raid, then I urinated in the plates he had brought out specially for the Lhogg Senator's who were on loan from his home world. After that, they had gone and made a specially made file, just for him and he thought I needed an 'insidious reciprocation'.", the insipid Commander made air quotes and had laughed, unmockingly, at his own sad non-ingenious.
Corporal Pilsner shot him a searching look. The Commander shrugged. Reaching for his liquor, he forced a large guzzled nip of it down the Corporal's throat, until he gagged on it, then took a pull of his own large swig on it, with the luminescant alcohol streaming down his chin like a glowing party favor. Sucking in air, he belched the start of the Nuvo-Achaedianblundtt alphabet, then returned to his tale, "Anyway, he had me analyzed and, turns out, I'm ready to throw my life away. So here we are. Decoys! I have never once had the codes. Idiot! Those are the recipes for Un da Trifla Twist honey dishes. We're here to breathe our last, so don't be such a snivelling whiney butt about it, okay?"
The Commander grinned, "Look, braniac. While I'm being hunted, the real codes are launching a Neumidian Corps airstrike against the Gouadd Nal's upper grand vice palace and the Shri Lauk Menji's allies. See here, you Naxster nut'brained overthinking numbskull of a buffoon, without their Steourmhearst palace, they'll soon fall like Ahkvad flies."
The Corporal began scanning the dark horizon for any would-be assasins lurking nearby. One Menji Gouadd Nal assasin is skilled enough to assassinate a crew three times their size and they left no witnesses.
The Commander drew spittle from his mouth from laughing at the Corporal so hard and, said, to Pilsner, between breaths, "Look at you, freak! Always so serious!", then the overly loud and boisterous Commander Brevick Jayt Antilles stopped talking. He had a new hole in his head.
20 years later ...
"First Captain, Aldebauss Jorrad Pilsner. Says here, in your service record, that you were the solitary survivor of the legendary, 'Angulodd Ribbon Massacre'. Is that true?", asked Litten, the gruffened higher-up who stood before him.
Pilsner nodded the affirmative, not sure where this was going.
"Thanks to your teams diversion we won the Rhiavulette War without too much effort. I was a Lieutenant in the fifty third brigade and took a Thauron grenade to the leg saving a Warrant Officer and two Commodores. Earned me a field promotion and it fueled my career. Great war!", beamed the surly General-Secretary of the Interior, Arthur Primpendulimm Litten.
Pilsner disagreed, but had chimed in, "Yes, sir."
General-Secretary Litten asked, "Tell me, what kind of man was the infamous, world renowned, Commander Antilles? I've long been inspired by his courage and sacrifice. You'll forgive me for prying, won't you, but, you see, official public reports don't indicate that anyone survived, so you are a sweet treat, if I do say so, myself."
Pondering a bit, then, shoring up his resolve, First Captain Pilsner said, "He was a most loyal patriot who, laying down his life, protected the home worlds he loved so dearly. He was a great man and I've nothing but the choiciest pick of words for any who would say, otherwise."
The General-Secretary was delighted, "Good! All that I imagined him to be."
"I'm promoting you, sir, to Under-Secretary of Communications. You've quite the head for it and your last assignment gained you a lot of political points. Points I can use, if you catch my drift. But first, ...", the General-Secretary, closing the manila, color-coded file, with soft, manicured hands and then peering closely with enigmatically intense eyes, queried, "how on Great Gaulite's Mines did you ever survive?"
Pilsner, half-shrugged, murmuring, "I reminded her of a rabbit."
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