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Posted at 2014-08-21 20:33:32+00:00

PROLOGUE

Anton Strom, rogue trader and captain of the cruiser Blessed Enterprise , braced himself as the ship dove out of the Sea of Souls.

The mighty ship's prow broke through the thin veil between reality and unreality, thrusting the ship and crew once again into realspace. Aboard ship, a little less than a week had passed, though that had no bearing on the rest of the universe. The Warp obeyed no laws, natural or otherwise, and time melted and flowed however it wished in that realm.

That weighed heavily on Anton's mind as he gave the expected orders. "Lower Gellar Fields, trim the warp vanes, and sound the chime. Aetherics, full sweep and time coordinates, if you please." He paused. "Helm, adjust course six points to starboard; your deceleration is good," Lord-Captain Strom confirmed, a point of calm in the furious but quiet bustle of the bridge.

Chimes sang on the bridge moments later, echoing throughout all the ship's decks. Massive and ancient voidships developed traditions over centuries of service. The Blessed Enterprise was millennia old, and while its crews had died out, their traditions found a way to be resurrected.

Anton sat back down to his command throne, sensitive to the added stress his straight-backed stance gave his bridge officers. He activated runes set into the throne's arms, shifting a projection only he could see through various decks of the ship. Songs were being sung--hymns mostly--and many made the sign of the aquilla as he did, even if only for apperances. Incense was burned on the manufactory decks while the guncrews engaged in coordinated dancing. He gave it no further thought as the ship pierced the system's outer edges and new alerts demanded his attention.

Voidships like the Blessed Enterprise entered the Warp with velocities acquired in realspace through sheer brute force. The cruiser was now plummeting towards the system's star at a significant portion of the speed of light, nearly the same velocity the ship entered the warp with. It would take a few days for the cruiser to reach the star even at the tremendous velocity, but even now the ship's drives were shunting plasma to the fore thrusters and power directed to the momentum arrestors.

Good helmsmen used a system's natural gravitic waves to slow or accelerate their ships' velocities. Garlin Kem, ensign and a distant relation to the lord-captain, was learning to become one. He sat at the main helm, traditionally placed at the centre of the bridge, forward of the command throne, and was surrounded by other ensigns and some midshipmen, fingers clacking away at cogitators or drawing corrections into the air with their holoquills. Anton watched him surreptitiously though hidden picters, sometimes from the glow-green eyes of hovering servoskulls, willing the child to stay calm.

Commander Bain Iosef, the man Anton had been grooming to become his new executive officer, stood behind the boy. Anton did not need to see his face to know it was locked in a grin aimed right at the back of young Ensign Kem, who was now beginning to swelter under the gaze.

There had been no reply to his order--and while Naval traditions varied from sector to sector, there were still a few constants. Such as when the Master and Commander of the Ship, not to mention an Emissary of the Emperor, spoke and gave an order he was given the courtesy of a response. Some demanded immediate responses but pragmatism ran through Anton's core and he knew that a few moments' delay was forgivable for good reasons.

Commander Iosef spoke. "Well?" Bain asked, drawing out the question quietly so that only the main helm, and he, could hear.

Ensign Kem, his mind filled with his duties, quickly caught up to the situation. "Yes sir, lord-captain. Course adjusted six points starboard! Thank you, sir," Garlin said clearly though a little too loudly.

Anton nodded. "Very good, Mr. Kem. Aetherics, what bloody day is it? How long did we sail the Empyrean this time?" Hoping, quietly, that time had moved forward along with them this time.

"Today is Tuesday, my lord-captain. We have spent eleven days in the Warp, sir," Lieutenant Miri sang out, her voice proper and confident. "The Furibundus system is clear of any unusual hostiles, though there appears to be an ongoing exchange of fire near Footfall. We count thirty three ships, of which seven are clearly of xenos-make. We are receiving challenges from several nearby ships, do you wish to review sir?"

Anton hid his smile. Lt. Miri would be confirmed soon to lieutenant commander--he hated to lose her, but he needed the officers he could trust in command of ships.

"Yes, I believe I will." Anton turned to his right side. "My compliments, Navigator Idris," Lord-Captain Strom spoke into a fluted pipe near his throne's headrest, "and my congratulations on yet another--"

The klaxon repeated once before Anton moved. Reflexes born of decades in command of various ships, all but the Blessed Enterprise in the Emperor's Navy, had him moving and shouting orders before his conscious mind caught on.

A cackling shell of coruscating energy bled into existence around the Blessed Enterprise as flames sped towards it. The first volley pierced the still-coalescing void shields, slamming at terrific speeds into the cruiser's prow and port flank. An auxiliary augury vane was blasted off, some turret nests burnt, but the shots didn't pierce and wouldn't as long as the void shields held.

Red and gold shimmered into view over the bridge as the ship's augurs struggled to gaze on the slippery target. Sweeping, organic curves and the sheer brazen arrogance of the attack told Anton all he needed to know.

"Broadvox!" Anton ordered and began speaking as the aetherics crew leapt at Lt. Miri's orders.

Silence held the bridge until Anton spoke.

"She's alive."

Posted at 2014-08-22 17:06:22+00:00

CHAPTER 1

The army came by small craft; cutters and shuttles mostly, but even lighters and barges were used by the larger formations. In the void, they were fat bodied insects leaving their dilapidated hive of Footfall, looking to sting the gleaming cruiser that refused to come near. The Blessed Enterprise 's armsmen were ready for them, crowding and sealing corridors, luring the invaders along winding, steel paths to the prepared battleground.

A bubble of void-glass, a hardened crystal less than a metre thick, covered the open area. The invaders rushed in, their missions drilled into their minds and they found their waiting counterparts, prepared and well-equipped with trays full of fruits and pastries as well carafes of recaff and decanters of water and tea. There was a profound silence as the tables and conferences and meetings were joined. Then introductions were made and the two armies sat down and battled.

The Second Negotiation at Footfall began for the Strom Dynasty.

Anton Strom made the rounds on the seventh day of the Negotiations, like he had done every day. It was a personal tradition of his to tour the ship on the eve of battle, or make surprise appearances in extended combat missions: it let him see what was truly happening.

This was no different, though the ones doing the fighting were not his gun crews and armsmen, but the dynasty's Seneschal Corps, who were far more dangerous. Unlike his crew, these men and women craved his attention, fearing it appropriately but appreciating it enough to schedule his "drop ins" to unsettle the opposition.

Lord-Captain Strom paused after politely interrupting one meeting. The privacy screens blurred their forms and squelched their voices, making the table appear behind their own dome of glass. He had walked in, with the requested stance, gait, and expression, and left within minutes as his negotiators renewed their assaults. Stepping out through the privacy field was refreshing--the fields were cool but the sight of the void through the dome was always breathtaking.

He stood for a moment, gazing at the shielded and unshielded islands of conversation then looked back up at the naked stars above. Then went to his next appointment, remembering to plaster a smile as this negotiation team requested. The back of his mind readied a bawdy joke as well, should it come to that. He remembered the team's notes: he needed to be seen as uncouth and dangerous.

It was hours before the masquerade ended for him and the negotiators retreated back to their own lines. The business of keeping the dynasty in business would require them to work through the night.

"Still no word from the xenos?" Anton asked, his power armour hissing as it uncoupled. The lord-captain's private armoury, adjacent to his own quarters, was a solemn vault of stasis fields, weapon racks and armour mounts.

Overhead, a lion's head kept vigil. Gene-tasters sampled anyone who went inside and would receive worse than a lion's roar if they were not authorized. One foolish serving girl, rescued from a depraved dynasty years before, had to be scraped off the arched ceiling.

"None, my lord," replied his Lord-Seneschal. He was also the ship's second-in-command. "We may not receive a communique..."

Anton laughed shallowly as the squire-servitors pulled off the last pieces of the suit before retreating into their alcoves. Another servitor would come later to clean it. "Yes, they may attack again, Goddard. But I will not suffer a second insult." Goddard bowed.

Lord-Captain Strom stretched in his bodyglove, feeling the aches of a day's stomping around in a war suit. His quarters were far less sparse and stark as his armoury, and a fresh uniform waited for him. Goddard followed patiently behind.

"It's not going well, is it?"

Goddard shook his head. "No, my boy, it isn't."

Anton put down the decanter of water and hid a smile. They were both ancient by the common man's standards, and both incredibly wealthy besides. The best rejuvenat treatments had been theirs since they entered adulthood, a regimen they continued despite the dynasty's decline. But it could do nothing for the aging mind.

He quickly filled two glasses and thrust one into his seneschal's hands. They sat, relaxing for the first time that day. Anton nodded.

"It's the dead rogue traders," Goddard said simply. "Dasser, Haught, another Blitz, and a Scion of the Lurio Dynasty. All dead. Their ships entering the service of the only two survivors. It shows strength, yes," Thraves said quickly, "but it also means we're desperate for allies and support lest the four dynasties come after us."

Anton drank from his glass slowly. "I suppose it doesn't help that Belle," Madam Charlabelle Armelan, "is here as well, does it?"

Goddard shook his head.

Haught had official Imperial backing. Anton knew that from the Imperial Guardsmen he had somehow inherited when he took over the man's ships, which were on loan from the Imperial Navy. They were the less immediate concern. House Dasser was Belle's concern, having absorbed many of the fop's ships.

The fact that she transferred her flag to one of Dasser's frigates was certainly not appreciated by the dying dynasty's factors. They wielded considerable wealth and influence still, and that has always mattered more than any piece of paper--real or otherwise.

Anton had killed Conway Tor himself, Blitz's named heir. The dynasty lived, the Warrant wasn't aboard the heavy cruiser. Anton thought back to Jeremiah Blitz, a dangerous man he wanted removed, and remembered giving the word to kill him in a conversation much like this one. It was foolish, but it did secure Damaris for his dynasty alone.

The Lurios, dystant, wealthy and capricious were unknown. They would bluster and cry out when it suited them, but as a Child of Dynasty himself Anton knew he had done at least another Lurio Scion a favour. No matter the arrangements made with Alsbeth Tay's subordinates, they would quickly become enemies if it benefited the Lurio Dynasty.

Their deaths, no matter how he tried to avoid it, would kill the system they had died trying to free. It was an irony Anton was not prepared to laugh away.

"The auctions for the old charters begin tomorrow," Thraves volunteered. "The original holders have long since disappeared or died off, most of them anyway. We had to surrender two of the five charters, but the bidding for the remaining three will be spirited."

Anton shifted in his seat, preparing again for his seneschal's pleas. A charter, the right to sail a warp route, meant little in the lawless Expanse. What was up for auction was a portion of a system's output at fixed, and heavily discounted, prices.

Goddard began once more. "I know your fears that the guilds and corporations will simply undercut the locals, force them into a rush to the bottom to sell to any free captain or dastardly rogue trader that comes by. That has happened before--"

"--To us--" Anton reminded his seneschal.

"--But will not happen again; this time, we have the option to negotiate change."

Anton shook his head. "Once a decade, and with only a majority of the charter holders agreeing."

"Yes, and we shall hold half of the votes!"

"So we only need to convince one of the remaining five to vote against their own interests?" Anton held up a hand. "Goddard, no. We need commerce, not money."

The Lord-Seneschal bowed, retreating again. "We are blocked at every turn, my lord. House Dasser, though a newcomer to Koronus, has many trading allies. I only want the same for us. We need support, we are cut off. The House was abandoned in its last days--as you know, of course."

The glass of water tasted like ash.

"Cancel the auction. Tomorrow's the last day of negotiations," Anton said rapidly. "We tried, Goddard, we tried to keep it local." The older man's head lowered. "We wanted to be less exposed. Shorter lines of communications, travel, and liability." Anton shook his head. "Svard can't supplant Footfall if we just build bridges between the two. We'll take this through The Maw and take our chances there."

Anton looked at Thraves who began nodding as he spoke. Did you lead me to this, old man?

Goddard, ever the mind reader and defuser, looked up and smiled. "It's bold, my lord. I agree, for what it's worth. Only..."

"Only?" Anton repeated.

"Who will tell Navigator Idris?"

====================

Once, the Navigators on the Blessed Enterprise lived in a palace that towered from behind the command spires like a cathedral of glass and iron. Inside, it was alabaster marble walls and floors with sapphire columns and beams, filled with the servants of the three Navis Houses that had enjoyed millennia old friendships with House Strom.

That was before the Blessed Enterprise was lost. By the time the ship had been recovered, all that remained of the Navigators' Palace were its alabaster foundations, naked to the void. There were plans to rebuild its glory, but the master of the spiraling rod of adamantium that replaced it had other plans.

Navigator Idris, of the Navis House Tesanno, was the ruler of her realm. Anton stood at the obsidian deck that separated his ship from her domain and tried hard not to look at the massive statues that stood at each side of the gate. He knew them to be powerful combat servitors, and knew more waited inside, though Idris hadn't shared that knowledge. It was Magos Binar who revealed it to him, confessing to a poor attempt at scanning one of the things. The Magos was ruler of his own fief too, the Enginarium and the machine decks were all his and his order's, as well as the small temples that housed vast technologies Anton had no names for.

The ship was his, a kingdom unto its own, but it had embassies and consulates of foreign powers within its walls. Learning to respect those had been instilled in Anton since birth.

"Stop staring at them, they can see you."

Anton straightened. "I--yes, well. We need to--"

"--You've said that already," the Navigator murmured from underneath her hooded robes, stifling a yawn. It was not an affectation, Idris strode around the ship's decks quite openly in sometimes tight-fitting or revealing clothing. It was night cycle, and her vanity prevented anyone from looking at her unprepared.

The Lord-Captain cleared his throat and spoke again. "By right and ancient covenant, by providence of He Who Sits On Terra, do I--"

"--You are positively awful at this, do you know that, Anton?" Idris yawned. "Really, 'He Who Sits on Terra'? It's "He Who Sits on the Throne' and 'Him Who is on Terra', did they not teach you that at...", she waved her right hand, searching for the words. "Navy school?"

"There's no need to be... you , Idris," Anton said with a smile. He was tired, realizing it now. "I just feel that--I need to go back to Port Wander."

The Navigator lowered her hood. "Finally! You're making me stand here like a petitioner outside my own Spire in the middle of, well the night's just started. And all you want is for me to guide this ship, this ship that you insisted on taking out of the loving hands of the Mechanicus before they were ready, and thrust it in between several of the largest Warp Storms known to thread a tenuous path back to the Sector that you feverishly hate. Is that about right, dear Anton?"

Anton sighed. "Yes, just about correct. I--"

"--Fine."

The gate sealed quietly, with only a rush of air despite the swinging of the massive and heavy doors.

"But after we get back Juna!" he yelled after her.

The gate opened again, revealing the Navigator waiting with her arms crossed. She hadn't moved at all.

"Oh now it's 'Juna' and not 'that Eldar witch', is it?"

The gate closed one more time before Anton could respond.

====================

"She was 'teasing'," Magos Binar offered.

"Idris was being herself," Anton shook his head. "She's not as old as either of us, not as old as she even appears."

The Magos approximated a thoughtful noise with a low, continuous beeping. It was unsettling how much of the man he knew had become machine, and how much of the machine was becoming more like the man.

"Idris does not like ceremony," Binar said. "Very few aboard do, save for the lord-seneschal, but that is his function."

Anton saw what was being asked. "No, I didn't choose you all for your lack of manners and propriety."

He was answered with a short, continuous beeping. Not once had the Magos looked up, though Anton knew the tech-priest had no real need to. He had entered the laboratorium--Binar's private retreat--after submitting to several scans. His identity was more thoroughly vetted here than it was in his own armoury. They were in Binar's office, a large rectangular space overlooking the vaults and the dens that housed his experiments and equipment. Once again the Magos had been freed from his shipborne responsibilities to focus on research.

"No," Binar pre-empted, "I have not made any further progress with the fragment."

Anton, chagrinned, smiled. "Do you still think it best to return it to the Lathes?"

Finally, the Magos looked at him. "Where else? You would return directly to Holy Mars?"

Anton knew he had overstepped. He steeled himself. "Some free captains report trading with an Explorator Fleet passing nearby Lucin's Breath. We could ask Trelany to call out and perhaps rendezvous?"

No response.

"Cog," Anton coughed, "I mean Vail. They owe us do they not?" A nod. "Well, if we turn over the fragment to them, and they turn it over to the Lathes--"

"--They would be the ones to receive the glory."

Anton nodded. "You would as well."

"Of course."

"But they would owe us, Vail would owe us even more."

Magos Binar nodded once to himself and stood. Hovering servoskulls floated out of his way as panels in the floor, walls and ceilings opened, revealing a great many esoteric tools and arcane devices floating in cylinders or held in stasis fields. One in particular held the attention of both.

"I will get credit."

"Of course--"

"Listen." Binar softened. "Please." Anton nodded for the Magos to continue. "No matter what, I will receive credit. I will receive a suitable increase to my voice and ideas. That will not change whether we deliver this holy fragment ourselves or allow Vail to do so. I have made sure of it."

Anton nodded, imagining the labyrinths of power and politics that Binar worked through that were so similar and unlike those he himself walked.

"The reward for this holy fragment's return will be substantial." Binar understated. "It would be given to Magos Tevla, of Vail, to distribute as he wished. Then a portion of that will go to the dynasty. Lord-Seneschal Thraves is fond of 'cutting out the middleman'. This is the same. It is better for your dynasty."

The rogue trader intuited that himself. But a binary outcome was not all that was possible. He waited, absorbing the information first, if only to show respect. "What if?... What if we did both?"

Binar looked at him again. "What if we bring Tevla with us. We present the fragment ourselves and Tevla, by association, would benefit. Would he not?"

"Not as much as if he returned it alone."

"But enough. More than nothing if we do it alone, correct?" There was a nod.

"So we take full credit, and any excess gratitude will fall on Magos Tevla who will then have us to thank."

"You wish to oblige the forge moon further? To what end?"

Anton shrugged. "Profit." The rogue trader leaned in and explained his plan.

Binar listened intently. After a few solemn moments, he spoke. "If we claim of discovering this in the Svard system then Magos Tevla will receive ridicule for not being part of its recovery." Binar whispered, "It will be said that the Omnissiah thought him unworthy."

I forgot . Anton nodded. I forgot that he truly believes .

The rogue trader recovered and smiled. "It would be said that of him if we continue with our claim, regardless if he was part of its recovery or not."

"Yes."

"Then Vail will need new leadership." Anton knew he had Binar's full attention now. "The forge moon has lacked a true Fabricator for years now."

A pause. "What of Tevla?"

"He nearly allowed Vail to fall, did he not?"

Magos Binar nodded once.

"You have already promised me the 'Bulwark'," Binar said evenly. "You have promised me Bala, the Stromport, and the adamantium mines of Salvator. I have none of these."

"We will not make false claims. Not for this holy thing." With that, the Magos turned away.

Edited August 22, 2014 by Marwynn

Posted at 2014-08-26 17:10:27+00:00

CHAPTER 2

Footfall's unique aroma flooded Anton's nose as the voidlock seals tightened and the portal creaked open. Though the portals were well-used, all the hissing and gnashing of metal teeth only deepened Anton's mistrust of the haphazard assemblages of void stations that was Footfall. He sneered harshly at the sight of the domed vault as the portal yawned open, its rough hewn and cratered rock stretching hundreds of metres high.

Anton stomped forward, squishing squiggling things that escaped from some nearby broken crates, mixing with the patina of oils, lubricants, blood, sweat, and worse already on the deck. He walked forward with all the surefootedness of a voidfarer, not even slowing down as the gravitic plating shifted and altered the balance of things for the briefest of moments. It was enough to stagger several, some to the muck, but he stepped by them, sweeping his coat behind as he wove his way past.

Orks, grinning and punching, scuffled underneath a sign that vaguely read "mercs" in very crude low gothic. The rogue trader didn't pause to watch the demonstration, the greenskin's audition Anton supposed, for the newcomers like him filtering in from the voidlocks. He'd had enough of Orks.

Hawkers cried out their wares, promising fresh foods and fine goods as he meandered deeper into the station. "Sacra! Naranj! Warp Paint! Twileran nuts! Authentic bolt pistols!" It was a chorus with no repeating words sung from a dozen dozen throats. The rogue trader gripped the pommel of his sheathed blade and angled away as best he could.

An Eldar, wrapped in spikes and malice, floated by on an unnecessarily heavy palanquin, and forced him to yield as the sea of humanity swerved to avoid it. Its slaves writhed with pleasure and pain as their bodies were slowly crushed. Their chains pulsed--tubes that fed liquids of some kind to the bearers--with all the rhythm of a beating heart. They saw nothing with their own eyes, responding vaguely the Eldar's orders who was trailed by slaves on foot, wielding arms that appeared no less lethal if a little impractical. A Kroot band stepped aside to let them pass and Anton saw their faces contort in disgust at the rotting slaves.

His pistol was humming wickedly in his hand before he caught himself. The plasma pistol, ancient and still appearing new, was set to belch a small star at the xenos--which one Anton didn't know for sure. He did know that it would've killed the humans flowing around either, minding their own wretched businesses. Still, it took great effort to holster and safety the weapon and begin moving again. The armed slaves had paid him no mind.

Like any good voidfarer he flowed with the currents while keeping his destination in sight. The rotting stone ceiling of the longshore gave way to the sullen frescoes of the lower markets. Rickety wagons pulled by vendors bent at the waist clacked along the deck. Snaking tubes and uneven weldings made for tricky footing, forcing everyone to slow and listen to the barrage of calls and rapid-fire bargaining.

Anton, moving with a bubble of cold, sneering superiority, went untouched and unhindered even by the beggars and thieves. He stepped into one of the least dilapidated buildings in the lower markets, a soiled banner fluttering in the breeze, a greyed lion's head roaring silently.

The deep but vibrant blue of his coat matched the one worn by the shopkeep. Anton waited patiently, admiring the rack of rifles--some archeotech copies, some authentic laslocks--as the shopkeeper finished his business with a patron. The woman laughed lightly and kissed him on the lip as she turned away and couldn't keep the look of shock on her face when she saw him. Anton flashed the same smile his uncle had given her, and she looked at both of them before she bowed and made her way past.

"How'd you do it?" the elder Strom asked.

There was no need to be circumspect. "The Warp," Anton said with a shrug. The shopkeep sighed and nodded his understanding.

"It's been less than a year, you know, since you and the tatters you bound together puked outta the Maw," Novan Strom laughed. "Did right by me, paying your respects," he added in a whisper. "But you caused a dustup last time, proclaiming you'd be the one to free Damaris after those cowards brought word."

The older man beckoned for Anton to join him in the back. "A few months back, we get word that you succeeded. Emperor's cramped buttocks, boy! I was flush with business, drinks, and women for a time!" There was coughing. "Then we get the particulars. Two dead rogue traders? It happens, but it was awfully suspicious. Then, soon after, we get word about Svard. I sent them letters, you know."

"I know," Anton said. "I read them."

"Hmm. Well, at least someone did. There was an awful lot of attention then to the Old House. A lot of interest as well. Five, or was it six? However many fool rogue traders went ahead and ran headlong to that disaster. None came back. Again."

There was a question there. "I had nothing--the first ones, from Damaris, yes--but not these," he stammered. Anton sat down and laughed. "How quickly you make me feel like a boy again, admiral."

"Hmm." Novan breathed deeply. "I lost three Stromgard in as many weeks. You know what it takes to kill one of them? Well, yes I see that you do. It's getting worse, now. That fine little lady, oh she's a killer in more ways than one, Widow Wendy! She once--well, that's not important--but she's my only regular customer left. Buys things she has no use for. Sweet lady."

Anton let the man ramble on about his life. "Uncle" Novan Dercius Strom was once an admiral of the dynasty fleet, as far removed from the line of succession as he himself was. If "Stromfall" as the House's remembrancers were calling it had happened a few decades earlier, Anton would be serving under Lord-Admiral Novan Strom, and would have done so gladly. He was family.

Finally, he held up a hand. "It is being settled. House Dasser has been appeased, we have given them preferred status for trading for the next decade." Novan's gaze was piercing. "Yes, with all dynasty assets. It had to be done." He paused. "The Lurios are being handled."

Both nodded at that. As Children of Dynasty themselves they knew all about the infighting and the recriminations following the death of a scion, no matter how far removed from the line of succession. It wouldn't even be a fiction to say that one or several dozen other scions plotted the very same end for Alsbeth Tay.

"But the Blitzes," Novan coughed, "they remain. Father and son dead, within the same year, by the same man? It is Vendetta, then."

The rogue trader nodded. "It is. It was a mistake to remove Jeremiah Blitz; I could have edged him out of Damaris given time. But that Warrant of theirs--"

Novan coughed again and drank an amber liquid to soothe his throat. "Yes, the Blitz Warrant--or rather the Torma Warrant. One of those rare few pieces of paper that grants anyone who holds it the power of a rogue trader. How very sad."

Anton smiled and Novan did after a while. Rogue Traders were raised regularly by the High Lords of Terra, and more recently by the Sector Governors such as Hax of Calixis. They were awarded to capable people or people who would more useful elsewhere. Some earned the enmity of some capricious power broker and arranged for an Unnamed Warrant to be given. It made them targets, forever.

They both knew that the Warrant etched on the Blessed Enterprise 's keel was also Unnamed. Eventually, news would spread. As it always did. Then the Stroms would flee for another sector, start anew, leaving behind vestigial holdings and branches of the family all over the Imperium.

"Vendetta or not, I have need of you."

"Blast it, boy. Do I look fit enough to be gallivanting around the Expanse with ya?"

"I didn't say that."

"Oh." More drinking.

"Lyza--Anherjar's and Tumia's daughter--is on her way to Damaris now. She has it in her mind to rebuild the Strom Academy, and it could use a headmaster."

Novan sipped as he mulled the words. "Lyza?" he spat out the liquid. "That crazy bi--"

"--Yes," Anton said holding up a hand. "She'll save my life, several times."

"Alright, **** it, I'll go. I'll go!" he shouted. "I'll go and freeze my ass off for House and Dynasty!"

" Ever forever! " Anton repeated the family words, earning him a disparaging gaze.

"Now, help me pack my rifles. Did you bring me a new one? I--"

Anton leapt and tackled the old man as the wheezing streaks of fire carved through the air. The bolts punctured through the wood paneling, the armaplas sidings, and exploded deep inside the struts made vaguely of some kind of metal.

Hot shards pierced his thick coat, stopped barely by the hard plates inserted in between the blued leather. Anton felt blood inside his clothes, but paid it no mind as he rolled off his screaming, cursing uncle, and fired his plasma pistol into a nearby wall. The shot, still at maximal setting, exploded the flimsy wall apart, setting a dozen fires in the blast.

The chattering fire swerved towards the opening, hoping to catch their targets escape, but the two Stroms ran forward for the rifle rack. Novan lifted one and tossed it back to Anton who quickly checked for the charge and sought cover while the older man grabbed three ornate rifles.

"They're my favourites!"

"Do they fire?"

"Oh my no!" Novan cackled. "But this does!"

Anton missed what his uncle was gesturing at as the first of their attackers peered into the burning hole in the wall. A staccato burst of lasfire sent the curios ganger scattering away. The rogue trader, chagrined at his poor showing, put the rifle down and drew his heirloom laspistol. It earned a whistle from his uncle, and the next fool to poke his head earned an extra hole in his forehead--for the brief moment before the flash-steamed liquids exploded the head apart.

A loud tearing noise drew Anton's attention away and he laughed as streaks of heavy shells sawed through the remnants of the storefront. Uncle Novan was cackling as the belt-fed autocannon tore into their attackers. The heavy bolter fire stopped almost at once and slugs and stubs flattened themselves uselessly at the remaining armaplas sidings.

The two Stroms then leapt out of the tattered front, guns blazing at the few survivors cowering behind overturned rickshaws and wagons. Their corpses were cool by the time the constables arrived.

Neither Strom bothered to remain and file a report.

"You lied to me!" Novan swung his right fist. "Blast it, boy! I'm blood!"

Anton ducked. "It wasn't a lie--whoa!" the kick almost caught him unaware. "It wasn't a lie! I need you at Damaris! The Academy! But first, I need you at Port Wander!"

An inarticulate scream answered him, and the rogue trader pirouetted and blocked. All around them, longshoremen under guard from his armsmen kept watch as various goods were loaded into the Blessed Enterprise 's cargo bays. Novan Strom's private belongings had already been loaded, again under armed guard.

Heavy cargo-servitors ambled past them, and the two danced between their legs as one attacked and the other evaded. Finally, exhausted and coughing, Novan sat down on a crate. The servitor coming to haul it had to be waved away as it picked up the box with Novan still sitting on it. Anton tried not to breathe too deeply, the older man still had it.

"Port Wander? Just Port Wander?"

Anton smiled weakly. "To start with."

Posted at 2014-08-26 21:03:46+00:00

CHAPTER 3

"So you're not staying for the auction?"

Anton shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Belle," he said. "These freighters need escorting back to Svard. We're still rebuilding..." It was the truth, though incomplete.

Madam Charlabelle Armelan was testing her new title as Lady Belle. With the new name came a certain playfulness. Anton was not sure how much he liked it, knowing that she made the change not long after meeting him.

"Not even the little bit interested in the 'Dread Pearl' my dear Anton? Surely you've heard the stories!" The holofeed was crisp and clear, showing the Armelan Warrant Holder in a more military cut of dress than Anton had seen her yet. "Some say it's a treasure ship while others claim the treasure is the ship, that it is a long lost battleship of the crusade."

Both laughed at that, a battleship was worth far more than any planet that didn't have a full STC library. "Oh and what else do they say?"

"A world of unimaginable wealth and beauty, where live flows from every drop of water, radiates from every blade of leaf. Frankly," Lady Belle's expression lost its superior mask, "I'm only interested in the auction itself. Something this valuable will attract the richest bids."

"No mad dash for forgotten riches for you then, Belle?" Another shared laugh. "Well, the Emperor guide you then. I need to see to raw resources and shipments."

The snort was very unladylike. "Like hell, Anton. You're off to some war or another, by the looks of you." Anton pretended innocence. "You've got blood on you still, didn't you wash after that firefight? Oh don't bother protesting. What are you truly up to, dear Anton?"

"Just boring dynasty business, Belle." It wasn't quite a lie. "Have you heard anything from the Heathen Stars? Lately?"

"We've heard nothing, same as you, same as everyone." She breathed out. "A free trader claimed his ship was turned aside when he made sail for Zayth, but there's a good chance they were simply lost. Other ships have made it through, still the Sea of Souls is becoming restless in that benighted place."

Anton nodded silently.

"Have you had any more clashes with those pirates?" Lady Belle asked, almost innocently. The Arrowhead and Buckler were prizes taken from a pirate squadron molesting the systems around Svard. Simplistic privateer hulls, but they were uncommon in the region, though less so as more and more convoys were struck.

Does she know their link with Battlefleet Calixis?

"None, thankfully for their sakes!" Anton smiled. "We did cycle through the jump limits of several systems before making our way here. But there has been no sign of them. I've heard they're raiding the route to the Realm."

"Indeed. I told you I've been putting the late Dasser's ships to good use, yes? Convoy protection is a rather lucrative use for them."

And a convenient way to keep your stolen ships from sight .

"Oh come now, dear Anton," Lady Belle said, unctiousness returning. "You've spurned the Liege's invitation but now you simply must escort me to tonight's auction, as my guest of course. It would send all the tongues a flutter!"

"My dear Lady Belle, I must decline," Anton responded in equally formal and superior tones."If those tongues waggled more about me they'll surely fall off and blame me all the more."

Lady Charlabelle Armelan laughed, rose and bowed as the holofeed cut out. She was swiftly replaced by the Armelan sigil before the holoprojector shut off.

"What are you afraid of?" he asked.

Trelany shook her head. The Chief Astropath had listened quietly throughout the conversation, sipping tea and watching from another chamber.

"She isn't," Trelany responded. "Not especially, anyway. She needs you there tonight, perhaps to blame you for something that will happen."

"So it's not my gregarious charm?"

"Hardly," the young woman laughed. "This new 'Lady Belle' is a relaxation of her former persona. I'd imagine she'll wear a cunning power sword of some kind tonight, just to show it off. Probably sensible shoes as well."

He snorted.

"Trelany?" Anton asked after a moment, a lighthearted jest ready on his lips until he saw her furrowed brow. He stood slowly, feeling vibrations thrumming through the decks.

She turned to him, her white eyes mixed with fear and fury. "Boarders."

-----------

It began in the voidlocks. The ring of armsmen protecting cargo was not unusual, but the growing numbers of angry and armed men were. They shouted, pushed against each other, then drove all of their anger towards the ship.

His voidmen had acted quickly, knowing that the tide was turning, and carefully stationed several squads at the voidlock. Just out of sight so as not to provoke the crowd any further. At the brink of a mad rush, the hidden squads appeared, all brandishing heavy weapons. The surging tide was stopped without firing a shot.

Then the voidlocks broke seal. It was just for a moment, a lapse in the machine-spirit's vigil of the magnetic flows and air pressure. Perhaps. But it was too large a leak and lasted too long to be an accident. A dozen voidsmen were sucked into the voidlock's rim, ripped apart as the gravitics of the station and ship warred or crushed as the seal was locked again.

It was a handful of seconds.

The heavy weapons were thrown aside and the remaining armsmen opened fire as the mob surged forward and ripped them apart.

Moments passed before enginseers clamped down the corridors and voidlocks on the Blessed Enterprise , but hundreds had streamed through and overwhelmed the crew and ratings in the cargo bays.

Several managed to make it to the ship proper. Anton cut one down as he lead a charge of hastily armed ratings against a fragment of the mob.

"Thaar!" Anton yelled into his microbead. "Where are your flamesmen?"

"Burning some Throne-forsaken idiots above you!"

Anton bit back a reply. The so-called "Captain" Thaar had been a valuable hired gun since encountering them on Hopp, one of the Svard system's many moons. He had attracted a certain kind of warrior, the distasteful but capable kind. Anton kept him around to take the hits and preserve his own armsmen.

The smell of burning prometheum was unmistakeable, filtering through the deckplating and life sustainers. "Then tell them to stop! You're on the liquid container section of the cargo bay, and that's not water in those tanks!"

Anton plunged his twinblade into some narco-ganger's throat, ruining it with flashes of power and metal-teeth. The teenager, Anton realized, died slowly. He watched his last moments and didn't hear an armsman run up and salute him.

"Sir! We've sealed the cargo bay!" the young soldier repeated. The long vowels and clipped diphthongs Anton recognized as belonging to Svard. The young woman was a new recruit, newly inducted into the Stromgard from the Svard Planetary Defense Force. She had no time for warstruck officers.

He nodded. "Good. Helm!" Anton spoke loudly as a few stragglers were put down by his armsmen. "Port thrusters for five second burn. Now!"

The Blessed Enterprise unlatched itself from its berth, firing the thrusters on the left side of its hull at full. The station would be damaged, scored by plasma most likely, but Anton didn't care. The seal became a few centimetres, then dozens of metres, and finally a few hundred as the cruiser pushed through Footfall's void shields.

The voidlocks were semi-rigid corridors, tendrils and tentacles that snaked towards a ship's cargo bays. On a modified military ship like the Blessed Enterprise , those corridors lead to multiple areas of the ship. Some of the rushing mob had made it to the less guarded sections, forcing his armsmen to spread themselves thin just to contain the threat. There will be changes to security protocols, Anton vowed. He would vouchsafe any armsmen that opened fire first, for starters.

"Cut off the air," he ordered the bridge. Anton turned to the armsmen, "You. Grab three squads and follow me. Leave one here at this junction." He pressed down on the microbead. "Thaar! Meet me outside your tavern."

"What the hell for? They're all dead or dying!" There was disappointment there, but not enough to mask the glee.

"Because I said so," Anton said openly.

---------

Thaar's Tavern had been quickly carved out from the more illicit parlors aboard the Blessed Enterprise 's living quarters. Even with the ship's armsmen and a barracks full of soldiers, he hadn't been able to crush the obscura dens and somna rooms. The largest concentration of this was now Thaar's, burned out and rebuild to become a somewhat more respectable drinking establishment. Lho-sticks could be had, along with vin, the rare sacra, cheap amasec, and all kinds of rotgut.

It was just a few decks above one of the port cargo bays, making trafficking in illegal substances all the easier. The area had been known to smuggle people as well as proscribed materials. They were a dangerous canker, growing in the shifting populations of the ship. Anton knew this was his fault. The deaths of so many crewmen had left a void filled by common voidsmen. They were capable but they had vices that the ship hadn't learned to deal with. Crime was now a problem aboard the ship, not just a background statistic.

Anton had kept Thaar's men under a hundred as best he could, but the naturally sinister drifted towards him. The man had five times that under his command. This was an opportunity.

He made it known to his armsmen that he believed infiltrators had made it aboard. They passed this along with Thaar's men, who were technically armsmen as well. They even wore the same void-sealed flak armour. White was not the most practical of colours, but it set the armsmen apart and quickly, which was essential in the depths of a ship.

The three armsmen squads paired up with Thaar's men, under orders to kill anyone that couldn't prove they were crew.

After the fifth reported execution, Anton ordered the reports to cease. He and Thaar both knew the mercenary was now in charge of the ship's smuggling. Forcing him to send out his own lackeys to kill his own "fares" was a lesson. The cries of "Hey I paid Thaar!" and "You again, I've already paid!" before the inevitable burst of auto or las fire resounded on the vox.

Anton drank an expensive bottle of sacra without pouring it into a glass. Thaar didn't drink, listening and cringing at every burst of fire through the voxpack in the middle of the table.

Inebriated or intoxicated crewmen had been dragged out of the tavern. Many were supposed to be on duty, and they were shot and executed, their bodies flung into the bio-reclamator chutes and their names logged. Enginseers sent by the Magos quickly identified illegal taps into the ship's power, air, and other essential resources while Mr. Iosef had taken to collecting the contraband. There was a vast array of personal weapons, some xenotech, along with rarer Imperial weapons. Spaces that were filled with ship's stores had been co-opted to store luxury, and illegal, substances.

It was nothing Anton hadn't seen before. A ship the size of the Blessed Enterprise was expected to have its own criminal underground. It was tolerated, to a point.

"You got greedy, Thaar," Anton said, swirling the thick liquid in the bottle. "Who paid you to cycle the voidlocks?"

The "captain" straightened, fear now taking over his face. "No-no one!"

"So you did this yourself?"

"What? No! No!" Thaar moved to stand then realized that every armsman in the room had their weapons aimed at him. He slowly sat back down and kept his hands on the table. "I didn't--why would I?" he asked with a shrug towards his empire. "Haven't I fought good, cap'n?"

"The term you're looking for is 'skipper', Elasius. Only pirates say that."

The fist on the table was an honest, angry strike. "It weren't me! What'd be in it for me, anyway?"

"Well," Anton took a swig. "Well, I don't care how you'd profit. Only that you had the capability. Enginseer Torus?" There was a slight delay before an augmented voice responded. "Can you please summarize what you've been telling me in private?" Anton tapped the microbead in his left ear.

The summary lasted five minutes. Technical, brief, utterly devoid of anything but facts outlining the crimes against the Omnissiah for the tampering with holy technologies, and of course the destabilization of the 'organic component's integrity'.

Anton pointed his laspistol at Thaar's head. "Your men have been apprehended. They've been co-operating for the last hour, giving us names, places, codes... Do you wish to share any names? Places? Codes?"

Thaar looked up and spat through gritted teeth. It turned into a smile. "Lyza Strom."

The rogue trader weighed his words, tasting them as he tasted the sacra's complexity. Thaar itched under the scrutiny, ticks and flexing, snorting and fuming.

"I believe you," Anton said slowly. Then he squeezed the trigger.

Posted at 2014-08-27 19:01:45+00:00

CHAPTER 4

The Blessed Enterprise hung in the void, thrusters firing as it dropped anchor and reached the minimum safe distance for its kilometres-long banks of plasma cannon to fire. Its ancient lance weapon presented a stylized lion's head, ready to roar into the station. Hangars and landing bays all blinked open and a combat void patrol circled the ship. It was the privilege of any rogue trader to defend himself and his vessel. Not that the five kilometre long vessel would survive a battle against Footfall.

Words had been exchanged: Furious, calm, threatening, even pleading until an agreement was reached. The longshore had been cleared by the station's mercenary guards and the cruiser would not dock again to claim its remaining cargo. Barges would be allowed to pick up the crates. No more blood need to be spilt.

Fat, slow barges made two or three lazy trips. Mercenaries guarded the voidlocks, armsmen guarded the inside.

Wise men would have accepted that Footfall had been closed off to them. Prudent men would avoid the station altogether. Anton had never claimed to be either.

Halo Barge A-73, the 'Bucket Comet' to its crew, soft-sealed into the longshore's waiting grapples. It was the third and last trip for the barge, and the mercenaries and longshoremen had gotten lax.

Footfall, for all of its decrepitness, was well protected. The sprawling station sprouted macro and lance batteries like weeds in an untended garden. Smaller scale, and far more oftenly used, were its defensive turrets. Volcano cannon, megabolters, hydra flak cannon, even smaller weapons like vehicular lascannon or autocannon protruded from every surface not taken by macro weaponry, augury vanes, vox spines, or crystal vista-screens.

Any one of those weapons would have been enough to hull the barge. They were overkill for a single man in a voidsuit.

Anton fired the grapnel gun and waited for a solid seal from the rune on its handle before activating the motor. Stealing aboard a station had been a pastime of his in a different life; the instincts of that time still clung to him, which is why he didn't choose the more obvious blindspots. Too convenient.

The grapnel pulled him in, black against the black of the void, towards a blinking vox spine. His feet were ready for the mag-seal as he made contact with the surface, and quickly fired the grapnel again to the station's hull. These were prime insertion vectors. Augury vanes were more plentiful but few had external access hatches. All vox spines did. The difference was that augury vanes were too complex to be repaired in the void and had to be retracted into the ship--hence being called vanes--while the vox spines were solid-voidsteel protrusions with powerful but easily repaired equipment.

As an ensign he had to voidwalk several times to lead repair teams on these vanes and spines. Almost everyone preferred working on voxes.

The hatch was not especially secure. Still, Anton unholstered his laspistol and fired at one, two, and three different vox spines, targeting different sections each time. Micrometeorites, a maintenance worker would determine before sending a repair crew. The twinblade sunk several inches into the hatch before the thing struggled free. The blade's power field did all the work--its adamantium teeth had been preserved.

The rogue trader emerged in the lower markets half an hour later.

The highwayman hat hid his face well enough, but he strode the thoroughfares of Footfall differently. No sneer accompanied his features, just a roguish smile and a wary eye. His blade's pommel peeked out from his brown, not blue, coat as was expected. He was a well-to-do freelancer, perhaps a down-on-his-luck free captain judging by his voidstepping gait.

Certainly no rogue trader. Certainly not the one agitators stood on discarded crates on every corner cried out to murder. They were only half as effective as the hawkers they shouted over but still had twice the crowds of the street preachers that spat fire and venom at the relentless slaughter perpetrated against the innocents of Footfall.

A few of the priests reminded the people that Anton Strom was the Emperor's Chosen Servant, bearing a sacred Warrant of Trade, and pleaded not to provoke the rogue trader further. He gave handfuls of gelt for street toughs to listen to these priests, and to protect them should things turn sour.

It took minutes more for Anton to confirm the shadow following him. A glimpse of a pair of eyes was all he caught. But the sense never left him, nor did the queasy vagueness of the man not being human at all.

He spent the hours listening, talking, eating and drink, and all Footfall could talk about was the auction deeper and deeper into the station. Anton curved his path back towards the longshore, into the collection of stations lovingly called the midheap. Waste processors and water purifiers built from an ancient STC pattern kept Footfall livable. Life sustainers were littered throughout the whole station, but the maintenance of the vital food and air were entrusted to a few tech-priests no doubt banished here as some form of object lesson.

The midheap, despite the acrid tang of its air, were where the bosses of the those living, working, and dying in the lower markets or longshore lived. They were as vital to the station as the place they occupied, and were as hated for it as the machines were loved.

Drifting wanderers had no place here. But officers, say lieutenants, frequented the area. They had the pull and authority to make arrangements, and were hungry enough to make it with the men that lived here. The stumbling, carefree gait was gone. Anton walked like an officer; brash but light on his feet. He nodded to a few, exchanged pleasantries with the more pleasant looking officers, and proceeded to the nearest bar.

The fistfight was winding down by the time he arrived. The drinks weren't watered down, a good sign, but the food was cheap and untouched. That wasn't a place where business he was interested in would be discussed.

The next established had the reverse. No fistfighting but a lot of wenches to be had. Anton stayed and spoke with several of the merchants, exchanging stories as the men and women decided who would join them for their next, more private meals.

Bento Benner spotted him immediately.

The 'free' captain of the Luccenzo had been the first to journey to Svard and made a tidy fortune doing so. He had made a few more trips during the whole war and ate at his table more than once. None of that was worth a thing at the moment.

Robed men, concealing thick armour and heavy weapons, followed him in. They ringed Anton without a word. One made a gesture and Anton nodded, stood, then followed.

Another familiar face greeted him moments later, just heartbeats before Anton planned to cut his way free. She wore her hair red, her eyes blue, and her weapon silver. The bolt pistol was the length of her forearm, but it didn't look at all ridiculous at the moment.

"What?" Anton said with a smile. "You're not going to show me your... sigil ?"

The blow to the head was as expected as it was painful. Anton felt the hot wetness of his blood mingling with the sawdust before all turned black.

---------

Reality returned in dribs. The taste of a dry mouth. Gargles of conversation. A sharp pain. Experience and training gave Anton back the use of his body quickly. Noetic engrams, drilled into his brain at a young age, formed and filtered thoughts even quicker.

"So was that a no?" Anton spat, not even testing the bindings that held him down. "You seemed pretty eager to show it to me the last time... Hello, Doyd," he added quickly without knowing why, without even opening his eyes. "Don't bother hiding. Did Commander Iosef grant your request for the hydroponics bay? It does give the midshipmen something to look forward to."

"Yes, lord-captain," Petty Officer Cabro Doyd said earnestly. "We do have enough seeds now, and well--"

"--Oh do be silent, 'Doyd'," Rose said, inhaling sharply

Anton opened his eyes. The betrayal was expected. The Strom Dynasty's final years lead to a near-fatal loss in manpower. Outsider recruitment was necessary just to survive. Doyd was one of the experienced petty officers Anton had signed off on personally.

"When were you activated, Doyd?" Anton asked automatically. "I'm thinking Damaris."

"Yessir." A pause. "Sorry sir."

The rogue trader nodded, forgiving the man. "You, however," he gestured with his chin towards the woman. "It's dangerous to be flaunting your master's rosette so carelessly."

"Is that why you didn't bother confirming if it was real?" the woman he called Rose asked. "Or did you already know?"

Know what?

Anton Strom nodded, accepting that he was to die here. That was the only reason she was answering so openly.

Rose exhaled. "Your family--I'm sorry, your House --has such reach. I'm astounded at the resources you can bring to bear. And the fact that you didn't." Anton shrugged. "Did you know there's another ' Blessed Enterprise' flying around near--well, it doesn't matter."

Rose walked closer towards him. He shifted in the seat, assuming the relaxed posture of a captain on his bridge. She almost missed a step.

"How did I know?" Anton said, almost involuntarily. His mind was lagging behind his indoctrination. "Need to make sure your master's masters", that felt right to him, "won't have you discarded?"

She paused.

"They won't. Too useful." Anton smiled. "Reliable prostitutes are so hard to come by." The expected blow didn't come. "What I don't understand," Anton said truthfully, "is the Eldar."

Rose's heart skipped a beat. Anton saw it even with hooded eyes.

"Those xenos contacted your master, previous relationship or something, and said that I was needed. Me, specifically. One of their Farseers sacrificed their lives to avoid killing me. After that, they sent one of their own to watch over me, and I know she has compatriots aboard."

I do know! Emperor rise up and slap me! Anton coughed to clear his dry mouth and hide his surprise. T hat damned witch! When I see her next!--

He breathed in, slowing his racing pulse. "Well," the rogue trader said after a moment. "I'm sure you know best. My agents might miss you. Theirs won't." He raised his head. "In fact..."

Doyd's head flew off his shoulders. The man had kept watch, or was meant to. He seemingly felt that there was enough protection covering this room that he didn't need to be especially wary. His spurt of blood was explosive, angled towards Rose who sidestepped the spray and fired blindly. The whizzing booms of the bolt pistol flooded Anton with adrenaline--but he was no master legerdemain, and the manacles remained.

"Your cell is dead," the Eldar said.

Boom. And another.

"Your true masters want him alive, do they not?"

Rose stilled, her eyes widening. Anton was only moments behind her realization: the xenos was about to kill him!

"What do you--" Rose began.

"--Flee. Run back to Fygold."

A name! An Inquisitor or a broker? A place?

Rose left without looking back.

Anton waited several minutes before calling out. Frustrated, he tested his bindings again to have them fall on the bloodied floor. His weapons were waiting for him, leaning against an open door's jamb.

He needed a drink.

Posted at 2014-09-02 19:52:59+00:00

CHAPTER 5 - Available on Google Docs .

"There is a price."

"Always."

The shadow spoke. "You have heard of this evening's auction?"

The rogue trader shifted, trying not to appear insane to the passersby by conversing with the air. Above him, the crumbling hab-fane howled with the sounds of life in Footfall. In the few minutes since stumbling out of the dank tenement and into the warrens of flakboards and tarps, Anton had heard no less than seven gunshots and three cries of pain.

"You want this item?" Anton said quietly, gauging his saviour's intent.

A whisper of a laugh. "The item is already ours. I wish it to remain ours."

"What is it?"

"A world." Anton raised an eyebrow. "A path to one of our worlds. I wish for it to remain hidden from you mon-keigh ."

The rogue trader knew the word, but tasted how it was said, feeling the displeasure and distaste in those few syllables. The Eldar was being open, for an Eldar. Months spent with one of their kind had only enhanced Anton's appreciation for their subtlety, and their control. But they had raised inscrutability to an artform.

"And?" he said as the eighth and ninth gunshots--lasfire this time--echoed in the alley.

"There are humans ," the word was offered as an apology, "already there. We can slaughter them, but it will taint the world. Our leaders," the shadow shifted slightly, "believe it would be best to purge the humans ourselves. Even if we do, we lack the strength of numbers to do battle against nine rogue trader fleets."

"Nine?"

"You'll be the tenth, of course."

"Of course." Anton chuckled. "And you believe I can help you against nine others?" He shook his head. "I owe you, personally, Eldar. I may kill a few of my people, and as many xenos as I can, in payment for that debt," the rogue trader shook his head again and turned towards the shadow. "But nine dynasties? A million men or more, just from the crews of the ships."

"You will not do this?"

"No. It is short-sighted," Anton said quickly. "And it won't stop more from following them. Even a single flotilla, a lone ship, is easily tracked in the Warp, especially if you happen to observe its translation," Anton explained unnecessarily. "Do you know what's coming?"

The shadow became very still. Silently, the ranger moved forward. "You have seen it then." Anton nodded, though it wasn't a question. "The Heathen Storm."

"Yes, from the inside." He barked out a weak laugh. "More, I've seen Karrad Vall's fleet, along with the Orks he’s tricked to fight with him, or for him. Nine, ten, twenty dynasties couldn't muster enough force to fight them all." Anton looked the ranger in the eyes. "So why throw away these nine?"

"I agree," came the unexpected response.

"And your leaders?"

"...Are open to the possibilities."

The Geltway meandered the areas between the lower markets and the Houses of Trade, creating a miasma of communities slaved to rising merchant families or disreputable guilds. Rockcrete gave way to ferromarble and hab-blocks decorated with sigils and giltwork instead of patched flakboard and blood. The middle-class, as it existed on Footfall, were skilled workers drawn in by promises of housing and regular pay and ensnared by the trappings of wealth.

Inside, Anton knew that the families were only slightly better off than the Footfallen squatting in the hab-fanes. They had meals, clothes, and some furniture and plenty of luxuries but devoted most of their time acquiring more wealth to appear even wealthier. The air was clean, Anton liked that at least, and the passage of two oddly dressed but well-armed gentlemen elicited no overlong gazes or second looks. They were too busy to care.

One passed by, gold chains clinking as he passed between the two, following the shouted instructions of his employer from his silver-wrought wristcomm. He looked happy to Anton.

A tram ran through the main streets, bells clinking as it slid alongside a stop. The gathered crowd had lined up and entered the tram one by one, depositing gelt as their own chains clinked. Thick, thin, double-linked, everyone wore chains of some kind.

He paid for the two of them to ride and take them most of the way to the distant corner of the Geltway. The tram was long empty by then, well past the commerce plazas and business-blocks. Away from the glinting hab-blocks and the manicured parks bereft of children, a black dome towered above untended trees.

“Ominous,” the ranger offered.

Anton nodded. The air cooled and staled as they walked closer to the structure, joining the milling throng just below the dome.

“Why is it here?”

“Someone forgot it,” Anton said with a smile. “It was meant to be a cathedral, a black cathedral, paid for by some bishop for a colony now lost. It’s made out of a single piece of black crystal-stone, obsidian they say but I doubt this was from a volcano. Too regular.” They joined the line of waiting observers, people like them who clearly did not have the means to bid in this auction but were tolerated for the ambience they provided.

“They forgot it?”

“Abandoned, years ago when this was the longshore, the docks of Footfall. I don’t know when,” Anton shrugged. “The sculptors had wormed their way inside and chipped the cathedral’s innards from within.” He pointed. “You can make out the transepts from this angle.”

The ranger nodded, peering through the bulb of darkness to see the hard edges.

“No one claimed it, or at least no one could lay claim to it for long. The black cathedral became the Obsidian Emporial in time.”

“Your people would defile a holy structure so?”

The rogue trader shook his head. “I thought you said you’ve lived with humans? For many,” Anton held up a single throne gelt, “ this is holy.”

“No, fifteen--fifty! Fifty thousand throne gelt!” the bidder screamed though the monster in front was no longer paying any attention. It had shaken its head and continued scanning the crowd just as it had for the last hour. Rough hands, one pair riddled with scales, lifted the man from his place in the pews, gently set him down on the aisle and began to walk. The merchant gave himself a few seconds to straighten his robe, earning him a shove from one of the guards.

Anton barely paid attention to the mutants. He had seen his share of them recently. No matter how well the Blessed Enterprise’s Gellar Fields worked, the raw stuff of the Warp was the pure stuff of change. There were at least a dozen crew who suffered a change, at least something visible. Once, he discharged the duties of their executions himself. Now, he merely watched as his younger officers were taught the way of a Strom officer.

Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean. The words echoed in his mind, though he doubted it had ever been spoken in this cathedral. He shivered and gazed up at the monster presiding over a wooden lectern where the cathedral’s altar should be.

It wore vestments of a dull red and its mechanical limbs were burnished silver. A hood had covered its head as it was lowered down from the vaulted arches by tubes. The lines pulsated lewdly, feeding liquids into the mostly metal thing.

The rogue trader had seen men given almost wholly to mechanical implants and replacements. This was several degrees worse, made all the more horrific for the unblemished face it wore. Somehow, Anton knew it wasn’t the face the auctioneer had been born with.

“How many can I win?”

The question rang out clearly despite the furor of rejected bids. Anton was surprised to hear the echoes of his voice spreading through the cathedral.

He stood to catch the Intercessor’s eye and waited. Finally, it raised its left arm, the one terminating with a gavel, and smiled at him. “You may win them all, Lord-Captain Strom!” The smile grew wider. “Though any rejected offers will require you to cease bidding. And,” the auctioneer paused, “forfeit all that you’ve bid before. Is this agreeable?” the monster turned to ask the assemblage.

There was no reply. Too many were stunned to hear the name. Lady Belle, sitting in a private balcony, couldn’t hide her surprise and Anton couldn’t resist. He waved at her and blew out a kiss. The swerving of heads was audible over the furious whispering.

He raised a finger. “I bid one planet, dead to a plague of algae.”

A pause. “Accepted!” the Intercessor said, thumping the gavel on the head of a nearby servo-skull.

Anton cleared his throat. “I bid a moon, corrupted by the Yu’Vath--”

The gavel thumped again.

“The secrets of the raiders operating Rimward of Footfall.”

Angry grunts and shouts came, all silenced by the third gavel strike. Suddenly, the Rogue Trader gallery fluttered with movement.

“The Thirteenth Station of Passage!--”

“--moon of Luggnum!--”

“--I bid the Palace of Moonlight where--”

“--the wreck of the mighty battlecruiser Heart of Majesty!--”

More and more bids came quickly and loudly. Four quick thumps of the gavel later and the gallery was split into those who had succeeded and those who were being quietly, but quickly, ushered away.

“I bid a passageway out of the God-Emperor’s Scourge! Out, not in,” Anton said, feeling the gavel crack through the bewildered noise around him. “I bid a day’s work for one Jokaero!” Another crack. The anger had turned into silent incredulity. The Emporial had been emptied by the quiet dismissal of several hundred bidders in the last few hours. One rogue trader had bid for and won five.

The Intercessor smiled. “One spot remains.”

“I bid,” Anton began then shook his head and sighed. “I bid a chart of the warp storm engulfing the Heathen Stars.”

The gavel thumped one last time.

“You can’t have it.”

“Idris…”

“It’s not yours, it’s mine. And you can’t have it,” the Navigator repeated. She was not pouting, not quite.

“It’s that or my head.”

“It’s worth more than your head! And it’s filled with more useful things!”

Anton held up a hand. Then both hands. “I just need a copy.”

The Navigator quivered. “Just a copy?”

“Yes,” Anton said, relieved.

“Just! A! Copy!” The Navigator strode forward and slapped Anton painfully. “You cannot bid what isn’t yours!” She slapped him again. “Do you know what this cost my House?”

What it cost you. Anton said the words silently for her. He knew, though he didn’t have a right to know.

“Censure!” Anton said through the pain. The palm stopped in the air.

“What?”

“Come now, Idris.” Anton felt his jaw. “One word from one of your House’s enemies and you’d be at war. Against the Navis, against the Inquisition, it wouldn’t matter.” He pressed in, hating himself. “You have mapped a small portion of a raging warp storm as it fell on an entire region of space!” The rogue trader looked into the Navigator’s two eyes. “How long before cries of heresy would come? Out of jealousy or spite? You know this,” he said slowly.

The Navigator treated a few steps back. “This is your solution? We’d be surrendering a fortune--”

“--that neither of our Houses would survive to enjoy.” Anton smiled weakly, earnestly. “We need to get this out there. It’s happening already, and I don’t think the storm will dissipate once the Midnight’s Lair is destroyed either.”

“You don’t think so?” Idris sniffed. “Only because I told you so.”

“Even if we retain the only copy, against the agreements you made,” Anton added quietly, “we’d only become targets ourselves. The only dynasty to enter the Heathen Storm at will. Imagine how quickly we’d be hunted down! No, let them fight for this copy.” The rogue trader held up a blank piece of holopaper. “Then, we sell another copy, fulfilling your agreements completely.”

She took the sheaf of holopaper from his hands, threatening to crumple or rip them apart. Anton stood back.

The two years spent in the Heathen Stars had been grueling beyond what Anton believed they could bear. There was a weight, one that even the open void couldn’t release. The haphazard and desperate coalition he had hammered just to survive against larger forces allowed Idris’ work to be possible.

A map, a charting of the warp storm as it fell and as it changed the few mapped routes of the Heathen Stars was valuable in the extreme. But it had been just another way to survive. All of the stranded Navigators wanted copies sent to each of their Navis Houses. They would also share in the profits for any sale of the map; a minimum of two sales were required.

Those were fantasies. No one believed they would ever leave.

“I don’t need a copy of the logs,” he said slowly. Idris looked up at him. “I don’t need the transitory charts, all the journals you’ve collected, the interviews that you held. I know what this means to you, Idris.” Anton sighed.

“You’re not planning on making any profit from this venture, are you, lord-captain?”

Anton shrugged. “Profit? Maybe, and I’ll share any gladly. Between you and I, I’d rather we simply survive to reflect on the experience.”

The Navigator crossed her arms. ”You’ll get your damned copies.”

The obsidian gates closed with a muffled thump.

Edited September 3, 2014 by Marwynn

Posted at 2014-09-04 18:55:38+00:00

CHAPTER 6 - Available on Google Docs

“Here are the charts,” Anton said nodding to the adamantium case carried by a hulking combat-servitor. The Intercessor smiled with its unnaturally pristine face and bowed. “I trust my seneschals have seen to the Writs?”

“Oh my, yes,” the Intercessor sibilated. “And the Jokaero?”

“A day’s work,” Anton said. “They have a workshop aboard my ship.” It was half a lie. “You will take what you wish worked on there. Leave it at midnight tonight, collect it midnight tomorrow. Agreeable?” Anton asked in the Intercessor’s own tone.

Another smile. “Quite.” Other Intercessors quietly, and reverently, took the documents from the automated brute. “The secrets?”

“Ahh!” Anton said, snapping his fingers. A hololith fell from his left sleeve and he handed it over. It disappeared quickly into the metal man’s dull orange robes.

Minutes passed as one by one the Intercessors all turned towards Anton and smiled, approving each piece of holopaper the servitor had given them. The rogue trader smiled even wider as the other rogue traders arrived with their own payments. Some bared their teeth in return.

Anton paid them no mind. “I’ll need a receipt for all of these things.”

“Of course,” a female Intercessor said handing several bound scrolls to him. She spoke softly. “Tomorrow. Midnight. Come here, and you will be lead to the cell--”

“--No need,” Anton said, accepting the scrolls and handing them to the combat-servitor which painstakingly began to insert each one into the adamantium case.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, I won’t be attending.” Anton spoke just loudly enough for the entire abandoned cathedral to hear him. “Pick up your item, or items, by tomorrow midnight off the Blessed Enterprise after a full day’s work by the Jokaero--you can even send an observer to wait there. But I won’t be staying after that.”

“But--why?”

“I have no need, as I said.” Anton stepped forward, realizing that the combat-servitor was still only on the third receipt. “I already know where it is. I just wanted less competition to start with.”

The Intercessors’ smiles fell.

“Oh, I won’t interfere. These four,” he nodded in their general directions without looking at them, “can have their minds violated by however many witches they wish.”

The combat-servitor finished its precise work and took a step forward, echoing his own step. Anton nodded, took another step then turned back quickly, enjoying the servitor’s literal interpretation of the order to follow his every step.

“The Heart of Majesty ,” Anton said. “You know, one of the bids you rejected?”

“Yes?” the female asked.

“I’d like to buy the hulk’s location, if you gauge it warp-worthy.”

The Intercessors bowed. “We will contact the master of the Alter Locus at once.”

“Don’t tell my seneschal.”

Lord-Seneschal Goddard Thraves looked weary. Anton hoped the man was only letting it show just now. The day had been busy with re-negotiations and recriminations that he had entrusted to the man and his servants.

“That shouldn’t have happened.”

Anton poured himself a glass of water. There was an irritation in Goddard’s voice that he couldn’t identify.

“Six? You bought six of the ten seats!” the seneschal whispered furiously. “You’ve sold away some of our holdings, and for what?”

Anton drank the water, slowly. It took a few moments but Thraves gradually regained his composure. He bowed his head in defeated obeisance.

“Have I ruined your carefully crafted plans for my dynasty, lord-seneschal?” The words cut. “A moon, tainted by the Yu’Vath, whose crystalline mountains are receding like melting glaciers. Any ship that enters Svard will be subject to customs and tariffs. We’re practically forcing them to do business with us and in the shadow of a forge world. There will be no cold trade there.” Anton swirled his drink. “Do you worry for the dead world? You had plans for that? It’ll become a pirate base on its own--let the excavators plunder and keep raiders away. We can even offer escorts.”

“What of the ‘pirates’? Would Battlefleet Calixis care--”

“--No, they wouldn’t. They’d punish whoever was in charge of the operation for being found out. Privateering should not be the Navy’s way, in any case.”

Goddard began nodding, the anger seeping away with every breath.

The rogue trader continued. “A passage out of the God-Emperor’s Scourge is, well, unique. But it required the Jokaero’s aid for us to survive that, and look what happened to us.” Anton exhaled slowly. “Yes, I bid a day’s work--which should be finishing soon--for one Jokaero. It’s unlikely anyone knows they’d need the orange space apes’ help with their Gellar Fields to survive the journey out, though I don’t even know if there are any passages into that warp storm.”

“Which leaves the Stromchart.” The lord-seneschal was not giving up.

“Don’t call it that,” Anton said, putting down the glass. “Idris was never going to share it. She’s admitted that much to me, and that would have been catastrophic. One copy I bid away, another copy we’ll sell, fulfilling all our obligations. A small bit of profit, a loss really, for a piece of curio. But it will be proven correct, in time. That’s when we’ll truly profit.”

“Cut your bull, son.”

Anton’s eyes widened. Then he laughed, long and hard, he laughed. Sinking into his chair he pulled off his boots, still cackling.

“I taught you how to lie like that, didn’t I? It makes sense, but don’t you dare claim you planned it all out.”

“No,” Anton said, wiping away the tears, “I never claimed that.”

There was silence and Anton drained the rest of his glass.

“You’ve humiliated all the dynasties in attendance.”

“Did I?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it. Are you still that angry that you became the Warrant Holder?”

The question caught him off guard. “I’m not--”

“By the Emperor’s cramped buttocks, you are! You sneer at your peers every chance you get. You plot their deaths! How many died in the Heathen Stars?” Anton reeled. “How many did you let die? Oh, in Svard,” Goddard raised a hand to forestall Anton’s response, “you tried to assuage your conscience, thinking of your fellow voidsmen who’d die if you didn’t reveal your brilliance to their masters. But you didn’t even try to convince them at Svard. You knew exactly how they’d react, how they’d ignore your warnings.”

“I gave them all the augury logs we had!” Anton shouted. “What else could I have done?”

The older man shook his head. “I’ve had it, boy. I’ve had it with your misplaced anger! Do your duty to the dynasty or make way for someone who will!”

Anton’s jaw clenched. “Is that why you let Lyza buy off Thaar?”

“Yes.”

The word resounded in the cabin as the lord-seneschal stood. He was waiting to be dismissed, or dragged off by armsmen, or even be shot on the spot. Anton considered all three.

“Sit,” the rogue trader said wearily. The old man sank back down to his customary chair.

“You’ve met the Eldar ranger?”

Goddard nodded.

“I have made a deal, with him and,” Anton said quickly, “with his leaders.”

“What have you done?”

“What every officer on this ship should do: I sacrificed four to save six.”

A single and long piece of brutal rectangular voidsteel had been set on a few pegs and called a table. Slightly more comfortable chairs were brought in to ring it, and benches were set just behind those. Anton had appreciated the meeting room for what it was; a reminder to not deliberate but act.

His senior officers had chosen the more comfortable galley instead, and he preferred that for its informality. Anton had true few peers, and the ones he did have he did not trust. So they had conducted their private meetings there since, attended to by fine servitors as they partook of drink and delicacy. Then, he saw to his officers in this sparse place. It was the first time all his senior officers had been here in a long time.

One by one, the senior officers of the Blessed Enterprise stumbled into the grey room. Anton had made one adjustment in all the time since the cruiser had launched; the glow-globes were too bright so he had them shrouded--and embedded with picters. Once the last officer entered, the armsman at the door bowed and sealed it behind him as he exited.

No armsman remained. No servant waited to bring refreshments.

Flutes of water waited for each of the officers, and several decanters rested in the middle of the long table. Hololiths and quills waited for each one as well.

Anton sat at the head of the table, in full uniform. Goddard Thraves sat to his right, and Bain Iosef sat to his left. Various lieutenants sat further away, allowing for the delegations from the Adeptus Mechanicus, Navis Nobilite, and Adeptus Astra Telepathica to sit closer to him, his senior officers at their head.

He held staff meetings here. The officers, the lords of their own domains, he met in the galley. They were all uncomfortable and Anton realized he didn’t care. He nodded and the lights darkened to reveal holograms above the table.

Commander Iosef stood and began the briefing. “Our recruitment drive has ended, and has done so quite successfully,” Bain smiled, “despite having just a little over a day.” Tight smiles and muffled laughter spread across the room.

Anton nodded his thanks to the officers. “I know there was little warning. I saw an opportunity to effect changes--no, to restore the dynasty fleet to its traditions.” The lord-captain looked at each one willing to meet his gaze. “Discipline, Duty, and Danger ,” Anton added to the smiles of the few remaining original officers. “Those are the Stromfleet’s words, though the third should go without saying. We were never about the lash.”

They were unconvinced. Most had gone through other dynasty fleets or the Imperial Navy, not promoted from within. Not nurtured as professionals, but beaten and forced to learn, to obey. He had to start now, even if it meant flushing the press-ganged crewmembers and ratings off to Footfall and taking on newcomers.

The lord-captain nodded for Bain to continue.

“The Vivat , Toriah , and Lord Hantel have finished their exchange of cargo. Finally.” There was laughter. “You may not be aware, but we tried to return these three to their owners. Or their owners’ creditors. None have been found.” Bain paused for any questions before continuing. “Commander Vers of the Lady Zhar and Commander Tuch of the Bocephus have arrived in-system and are holding position. Both the Arrowhead and the Buckler are on final approach and will escort the transports, Lt. Miri will coordinate with them,” the commander nodded towards the distantly seated master of aetherics.

The holograms changed. “The transports will lead the convoy we’ve assembled to Svard. Mission accomplished,” Bain said with a smile. Anton mirrored it. “They’ll take on cargo and will join us for our journey through the Maw.”

Incredulity spread through everyone’s faces. Some hid it better than others.

“But,” Lt. Miri began. “Sir, may I ask a question?” Bain nodded. “I thought--Lord-Captain Strom bought six and--are we not searching for the Dread Pearl?”

Anton shook his head. “We are not. Mostly because we already know where it is.” He nodded for Bain to continue.

The commander cleared his throat. “We will proceed to Port Wander where the transports will, of course, unload their cargo. The frigates will remain on escort duty. The cruisers will remain with the Blessed Enterprise as we journey to the Lathes.” Magos Binar and Magos Tevla both seemed pleased with that announcement. “Then, we’ll return for the Dread Pearl.”

Confused glances and murmurs accompanied the returning lights. The younger officers had the sense not to speak too loudly.

“The Dread Pearl,” Anton began, “is a world encircled by PHX-2879-1jc.” He smiled. “If that makes no sense to you, then you need to brush up on your stellar cartography. It’s a warp storm, localized, much like Raakata there is no penetrating it. Not unless it is acted upon by another warp storm. And of course, we know of one. In fact, we know exactly when it will fall.” He looked at each one that could hold his gaze. “We will be there when it does.”

“Sir?” Ensign Kem raised a hand.

“Yes, ensign?”

“What will we do in the meantime? I mean--while we wait for the transports’ return?”

Anton nodded approvingly. He didn’t grant that honour for anything, especially as many looked about confused. The convoy would take a month, maybe two, to journey to nearby Svard and transfer cargo. Maybe another month before it can journey back. With the Blessed Enterprise already en route to the jump point, it was unlikely they would remain stationary.

“Are you that eager for more work, ensign?” Commander Iosef called out. “The void barnacles could use some attention...”

The ensign’s hand sank back down.

Anton laughed along with the room and pressed a rune engraved on the cold metal. “Ensign, do you know that I believe in second chances?”

Posted at 2014-09-05 19:27:51+00:00

CHAPTER 7 - Available on Google Docs

It was a race. The Witnesses, as the winning bidders were being called, rushed to their waiting flagships and burned to the edge of the Furibundus system. None of the ships sailed on their own, each of the four dynasties had escorts and transports in tow.

Anton admired the vessels, rare and common alike, as they began to overtake his own convoy. The proud cruisers, the sleek forms of escort ships. They were all a welcome sight.

Perhaps there is a chance we can fight the Midnight’s Lair.

The Blessed Enterprise burned at sixty percent of its full military power so as not to tax the gaggle of merchantmen it was preceeding. The three transports rescued and salvaged in the Svard system followed directly behind in an approximation of a reverse chevron. Each lead two more freighters. These burned at three quarters of their full power, straining their enginariums, but otherwise maintaining pace.

All six belonged to a host of trading concerns, merchant guilds, noble houses that had a sudden change of heart the previous day. He trusted them little, but accepted them anyway.

The first pack sped past their formation after half a day’s acceleration, the sharp-edged frigates, raiders, and clippers bore the colours of House Arcadius. Somehow, Goddard Thraves recognized the ships at port and conducted all the niceties required when two ancient dynasties met.

Lord-Captain Strom ordered the running lights on the Blessed Enterprise to activate in an ancient sequence, a greeting. The gesture was returned with just a small delay, the sequence repeating in reverse order.

One scion in a frigate with two raiders for escort, and a pair of star clippers gathered on the way from the Eastern Rim . It was difficult not to feel envy at what the Gerrits could muster. All I can arrange for our own scions are officer berths in other dynasties’ fleets.

Hours later, the Arcadius ships broadvoxed a warning, ghost returns on their auguries, and they requested secondary verification. Anton gave permission from his quarters and all ten ships of the convoy swept the void with their own augurs and shared the results. The approaching Arrowhead and Buckler destroyers likewise did the same.

The other Witnesses did not deign to respond.

The first torpedoes struck the Arrowhead minutes later.

One and a half kilometres long, double-prowed--a catamaran to voidfarers, the Arrowhead and Buckler once belonged to pirates that plagued the stars near Svard. They were known by the free captains that littered the area. Only, they were not pirates but privateers. Battlefleet Calixis was directly interfering in the area of operations for Passage Watch 27-Est, or “Battlefleet Koronus”. Anton didn’t know why, only that the re-classified destroyers would only bring trouble.

The original plan was to press the ships into the dynasty fleet. All the Writs had been prepared. Under the guise of requiring extensive work, and the need for his experienced officers elsewhere, the two ships Arrowhead and Buckler were refitted in Svard. Other officers were transferred aboard, people Anton knew had loyalties to Stroms other than he.

He had the two ships crewed with the scum of the Svard system, virtually emptying the moon Geijer and its fungal-like dockyards. When those ran out, criminals and deserters were pressed into service.

They were always meant to be expendable.

Lord-Captain Anton Strom strode angrily onto the bridge, not quite running to the command throne. “Report!” he yelled as the throne rumbled to life. The scream sent servo-skulls and cherubs fluttering away.

“The Arrowhead is abandoning ship,” Ensign Arrys said, leading the aetherics station in this watch. “Lt. Cmdr. Donnar was reportedly killed by the first torpedo.”

Anton slammed his right fist onto the throne. It was the first display of anger he’d made on the bridge, not counting the few times it had been breached.

“Another salvo!” A pause. “One torpedo,” the ensign continued shakily, “struck the Buckler ’s aft sections. Lt. Frya is reporting massive casualties and believes she has found the attackers. She’s opening fire now.”

The holodisplay above the bridge shimmered, showing the two destroyers aflame, runes tattooing every surface to indicate damage. The Buckler was listing to the side, its dorsal macrobatteries already firing.

“Track their solution. Tell me what they’re firing at,” Anton ordered and leaned to the fluted pipe on the throne. “Enginarium, I need full military power. Helm, full speed when you can.” His senior officers arrived one by one, taking their stations, seeing to their duties.

“Combat void patrol reports no hostiles,” Commander Iosef reported.

“Very good, double the squadron strength.”

“Aye sir.”

“Guns?” Anton asked the lord-seneschal. They did not look at each other.

“All weapons reporting ready, lord-captain,” Goddard said formally. “Awaiting targeting solutions.”

The lord-captain nodded. “Be ready to shoot at anything,” he said gravely.

“Yes, lord-captain!”

Lt. Miri entered the bridge and walked quickly to the aetherics den, relieving the grateful ensign. Anton nodded to her. “Get me Lord-Captain Gerrit, if you please.” He activated a well-used rune on the throne, and a privacy field settled around it.

“Lord-Captain Strom, do your ships require assistance?”

Anton nodded. “I would be most grateful, Lord-Captain Gerrit,” he said. “But I would be more grateful if you can find what’s doing this.”

“Eldar, lord-captain. We can’t track them, can’t tell how many of them--Brace for impact!”

“Lord-Captain!” Anton yelled as the tridlink faltered.

The image slowly returned as the master of aetherics struggled to maintain the connection. “--I’m here, Lord-Captain Strom. We’ve been hit. The Gambit is on fire and… we lost... the Jennared. No.”

Anton looked up into the holodisplay just as it updated with a torpedo launch and the confirmed destruction of one of the Arcadian clippers. The lead ship had been unharmed, though a raider was blowing out plasma from a wound to its side.

He’s not commanding from the frigate?--

“My son was aboard,” Abel Gerrit said suddenly. It was almost a question. His scarred face stared into the void.

The rogue trader’s heart clenched. He met the man’s eyes that were slowly widening in horror and pain.

What have I-- Anton cleared his throat.

“We’ll kill them for this,” the rogue trader promised hoarsely. He could feel his seneschal’s eyes on him. “Abel. Abel, listen to me: We’ll make them pay.”

Lord-Captain Gerrit grit his teeth, shaking his head. “I will hold you to that… Anton. We’re coming about.”

The Buckler continued firing at the blurs of red and gold. A deadly, curved ship of the Eldar flitted in the void around it, appearing and disappearing hundreds of kilometres from where it had been. Maybe the macroshells were hitting it, maybe the Buckler was swatting at ghosts. Lt. Frya was determined to ruin the guns to find out.

Three precise pulses of light ended the Buckler ’s service to the Strom Dynasty. It died only one hour after the Arrowhead had come apart, tortured by the catastrophic damage the torpedoes had dealt it.

Already, scavenger ships from Footfall raced for the tattered pieces of the two. Intra-system monitors, halo barges, even a salvage ship undocked. Anton saw their returns through the cloud of transports behind the cruiser.

The Blessed Enterprise had raced ahead, leaving behind its convoy. Anton had made a show of ordering his three transports, as much as they were his, to protect the other ships. It was a broadvoxed order, all of Furibundus heard it.

Then they all saw the other six ships turn on his three.

Even the meanest transport in the Imperium carried macrocannon to swat entire cities from orbit. A slow-moving and large target in close proximity was almost too easy even for the inexperienced gunners. The Toriah , a carrack of greatly expanded girth, bled fire from its insides as the two freighters that trailed it attacked. It listed to the side and began to signal its surrender as its engines faltered.

The Vivat and the Lord Hantel fared better, their shields holding just long enough to absorb the greater volleys. The Lord Hantel , no more than a Jericho-class pilgrim ship, followed the Vivat into an arc to bring their guns to bear. It faltered in the turn and the combined fire of three transports killed most aboard.

Anton screamed into the void.

No! He slammed both fists on the throne. He turned to an armsman. “Ready my armour!” he ordered, then to Commander Iosef. “Launch bombers. Bring those traitors down. No matter what.”

The broadvox rune on the command throne was still active.

The Vivat was not a threat. It was big and well-made, but it was also clearly unarmed. The conspirers clearly hoped to capture her mostly intact. Why it was turning about, as if to present non-existent guns, was clearly the reaction of the fool lieutenant in command. There must have been some damage as great slabs of voidsteel and ceramite fell away from the ship.

Minutes later, the heavy-bore macrocannon on the Vivat ’s dorsal spine spat shells, each embedded with dozens of massive melta-charges. The kinetic impact of the first salvo was enough to shatter the leading traitor’s void shields, but the shells, robbed of their momentum, detonated on the transport’s armoured hull.

Instead of plunging deep within, the melta-charged shells gouged molten craters on the freighter’s prow large enough to fly halo barges through. The second and third cycles of fire detonated the shells deep within the ship. The freighter’s mangled keel tore free in its dying moments, tearing the ship into pieces as the superstructure’s foundation melted.

The Vivat was not done killing.

Its prow cannon bore fire as it came about, catching a second traitor amidships. Its void shields lasted much longer, but the prow batteries wanted blood. Instead of dying to the third cycle, the reeling freighter died to the fifth, thoroughly and utterly blasted apart.

Anton watched the Vivat ’s last moments. It had killed two of the six ships in just under twenty minutes of fighting. The Q-Ship lost power as it was trying to kill its third; the panicked survivors poured all they had into the roaring lion in their midst. Their screams of triumph lasted another thirteen minutes as the Vivat burned and tumbled away.

Then the Starhawks arrived.

Stubby and brutish, the bombers had been the Blessed Enterprise ’s main weapon since it had reborn into a carrier. Anton used them sparingly lately, aware of the damage his orders had done to the flight crews’ morale and materiel. Their time in Svard, after the fighting, replenished both. It was time to renew their edge.

Four transports survived. Four bomber squadrons were launched.

Deathspike Squadron was the first to arrive. Veterans of the Imperial Navy, veterans of the Blessed Enterprise . They bypassed the freighter’s turrets easily, firing their upgraded weaponry into the ship’s hull. Melta and plasma cannon carved holes for the guided plasma bombs as the squadron swept past and came about to sting the kilometre-long ship again and again. Its innards melted and broke apart as the plasma bombs detonated within, setting off generatoria and munitions

Anton kept an eye on the attack craft as he ordered the Blessed Enterprise to slow and come about. The Vivat was crippled and they could still render aid.

The Emperor’s Messengers attacked next, killing the Vagabond’s partner much the same way. An hour later the recently recruited bomber crews of Squadron Three and Squadron Five, both not serving long enough to earn names, killed the fleeing traitors.

The cruiser completed its turn, earning the helmsman Anton’s compliments as the cruiser slowed, slewed, then burned on a return vector in precisely timed bursts. Ensign Kem was not on the bridge, and Anton spared no attention for the man.

House Armelan’s ships were approaching from the port. House Ma’Kao’s ships were racing head-on towards them.

Edited September 5, 2014 by Marwynn

Posted at 2014-09-09 21:00:38+00:00

CHAPTER 8 - Available on Google Docs

Magos Binar bowed and his hologram flickered away, eager to return to the emergency repairs aboard the Q-Ship. A score of support craft swarmed over the molten, and in some cases, still burning holes in its hull. Macroshells that didn’t detonate inside had simply punched through, tearing through support struts, power lines, and crewmen alike.

Gravity was sporadic. Life sustainers were shredded, and the Vivat was slowly warming because of it. One salvo had been aimed directly at its cargo hold, and the processed ores and foodstuffs bled outward from the ship.

Anton carefully pressed down on a rune, lifting the opaque privacy field from around his command throne. Clad in his power armour, he stood on the balcony before his command throne, overlooking the bridge. The same runes on his command throne were cunningly built into the railings, though over-sized for his gloved hands.

Four servitors carefully bore the adamantium casket on their shoulders. Gifts from the Magos, to aid him in the proper donning of the power armour, they were deceptively slender but strong and very dextrous. The gates to the bridge swung open as they returned to his personal armoury vault and to allow crewmen to enter.

The Blessed Enterprise ’s senior officers returned one by one, and station crews were dismissed and rotated, bringing in officers wearing their void-uniforms. It was an optimistic precaution to wear the void-uniforms. Any hits to the bridge would almost certainly lead in nearly everyone’s deaths, but giving the order allowed Anton to relieve the tired bridge crews with a fresh watch.

Under orders, the previous watch, already overdue for relief, would eat, drink, and sleep for four hours then report to their secondary stations. They would relieve the watch currently attending to those stations who would relieve the ones on the bridge.

Anton hated that schedule, remembering just how difficult it was to rest while the ship was at alert. All their battles so far had been short, brutal affairs. They’d been strained and stressed, but it was over weeks and months, not a true naval battle that could last for days and have dozens of engagements.

No rogue trader fought this way. Not even the man who called himself a lord-admiral.

Lord-Admiral Bastille the Seventh was resplendent in his uniform. Honours overflowed from his chest, and the pommel of his power sword glinted even in holo.

Everyone knew most of those ribbons were self-awarded. Only a few appreciated that the man had accomplished feats that were worthy of medals and decoration, though there were few organizations that could award them. Bastille the Seventh had few friends in the Imperium’s vast bureaucracy and the brutal man had fewer friends in the Expanse.

Anton had hoped to be one.

“Lord-Admiral,” he began. “Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.”

Bastille nodded slowly in response.

“I regret that we did not have a chance to meet in person. I’m afraid I was too preoccupied with the filth of Footfall to request an audience.”

A smile.

“Congratulations!” Anton said suddenly, stunning the lord-admiral. “Your ambush was a masterstroke. Oh, I don’t mean the Eldar,” Anton held up a hand, “I would never insult you so, sir. Not many can launch a surprise attack with all their forces out in the open.”

“You are mistaken, lord-captain,” Bastille said finally. “On the contrary, I cautioned against this very thing.” The lord-admiral leaned forward. “I have heard of the Blessed Enterprise and her lord-captain, of course. One light cruiser and two squadrons of escorts? Out in the open void? Bah, they’re fools to attack.”

Anton feigned relief. “That is assuring to hear, lord-admiral. Ma’Kao I can defeat. Armelan I can crush. But I dare not pit a Dictator against a battlecruiser,” he added with a laugh.

Bastille returned it. “No, you’re no fool, Lord-Captain Strom. Though you did almost play us all for fools during that horrid auction!” Bastille laughed and Anton joined in. “How many years in the Battlefleet?”

“Thirty two, lord-admiral.”

“Hah! Two years more than I!” Bastille thumbed runes into his command throne without looking. “Will you kill Lady Belle for all of her treachery and plotting?”

Anton shook his head. “No, lord-admiral. But I will take something from her.” He paused to lend the statement some gravity. “But now that I actually have a chance to survive this, I had hoped to enlist your aid in another endeavour.”

Bastille’s smile grew. “Did you now? And pray tell, what kind of endeavour, lord-captain?”

“The kind we’re best suited for: War.”

A clang reverberated as the final halo barge, the Bucket Comet , docked with the Strom flagship. The Vivat was salvageable, and with months of work it could be rebuilt even in Footfall’s berths. It was time they did not have. Anton waited until the Magos reported before giving the order.

Thirty megatons of voidship accelerated away from the jade vessels of House Ma’Kao, the ship turning to starboard at the sharpest angle it could manage. The flagship Nihontu was intricately adorned with a jade and gold dragon, and almost as ancient as the Blessed Enterprise . Under Lady Sun Lee, Ma’Kao had gained considerable wealth in the Expanse. Anton had studied her history well; her House was on the decline before she took command.

He valued her instincts and cunning. She fought battles she could win, overwhelmingly. That was laudable as well, though in Anton’s limited experience, not always possible. The rogue trader had learned to call survival a victory on its own.

As the cruiser leapt towards the Nihontu , the much closer Armelan frigates neared the broken Q-Ship, the other ships barely keeping formation. One destroyer peeled away, slowing relative to the abandoned hulk.

Deathspike Squadron coalesced from the detritus of the Vivat . The recommissioned Cobra-class destroyer scrambled to fire its defensive turrets--Anton noted they had been upgraded at Vail, as thanks--but it was too late. The veteran squadron docked with the Blessed Enterprise twenty four minutes later, leaving behind another wreck to join the Vivat as noth drifted towards the system’s star.

To her credit, Lady Belle Armelan didn’t flinch at the sudden loss of a ship. Another ship fell from the formation, already straining its engines to match the raiders and frigates at cruise, to see to the survivors of the destroyer.

“Helm, ready Maneuver Four,” Anton said as the ship neared the plotted waypoint. He had worked out the maneuvers with Bain first before he had the commander bring it to the Helm. Ensign Kem took the instructions carefully, though Anton noticed Commander Iosef lingered to make sure there were no mistakes.

On their present course, the Blessed Enterprise would enter the maximum range of its batteries in just under fifteen minutes. The enginseers had promised to make the engines sing, and it was roaring a ballad of plasma behind the cruiser as it accelerated at velocities to match the lighter vessels pursuing it.

Lady Sun Lee adjusted her course, timing her approach just after the racing Armelan ships would reach the Blessed Enterprise ’s range.

The waypoint was near. Anton was about to give the order when two Stromgard suddenly seized the Master Helmsman. Ensign Kem tried to scream, but the armsmen wielded Nadueshi stun-staves, and he fell limp in his arms.

“Ensign… Nurovant,” Anton said with only a slight pause. “Take the Helm. Come to new heading! Now!”

The prelaid coordinates were perfect, as perfect as the cogitators would allow. The Enginarium had known of the maneuver and shunted the raging fire of the engines to the maneuvering thrusters. It was smooth, though Anton saw blowouts on several decks.

“Damage teams,” Anton ordered. “Focus on the fires first. Leave the dead thrusters for later.”

The course correction to starboard placed the Armelan ships directly at their aft, the Ma’Kao vessels a little to their port. Then the engines blared to life again and the Blessed Enterprise sped forward. It would lose to a chase, no matter how furiously the enginseers prayed.

A second engine cutout caught the pursuers by surprise. The starboard guns were firing as the engines returned to life again as the ship finished firing its maneuver jets, bringing them back the way they came. Back to the Vivat . Cruisers did not cutout their engines, they powered through and burned arcs in the void. The lighter ships attempted to copy the maneuver, overshooting or misfiring their engines in the mad rush to follow the tight turn.

Two bomber squadrons aimed for another recommissioned Cobra and a privateer of unknown origin. They too had their defenses upgraded at Vail, but the Fury flight crews escorting them knew and planned accordingly. Neither vessel put up enough heavy fire to worry the bombers; several interceptors sacrificed themselves.

Neither vessel survived the Starhawks’ fury.

Barrage after barrage of the Blessed Enterprise ’s plasma batteries hammered the nearest frigate. It had leapt ahead, eager to pierce the cruiser with its lance. Its own macrobatteries were useless at this range, but it fired anyway as the plasma shattered its void shields, then its prow, its lance and forward instrumentation.

Pure white light struck the ailing Pride of Weslan from the Blessed Enterprise . Anton looked through the forward vista-panels to gaze at the massive weapon pouring baleful and unknown energies from the ship’s prow. The frigate, another former House Dasser escort, died quietly, tumbling over into the void as savior beacons littered its passing.

“My compliments to the gun batteries, lord-seneschal,” Anton said evenly.

There was no doubt that the Mars-pattern plasma-cannon had been worth holding on to, despite what the Vail tech-priests had wanted. The cannon were carefully ensconced in armoured battery rows along the Blessed Enterprise ’s port and starboard sides, just over a kilometre long and reaching deep into the ship. Even then, the heavy barrels protruded from the hull.

They were retracting now, Anton was familiarizing himself with the ship’s new sounds and reverberations, so many repairs and refits had changed the Blessed Enterprise in recent times. He noticed another course correction on the Ma’Kao ships in his personal displays.

“Aetherics, show me what Lady Sun Lee is doing.”

The merge happened almost as Anton had predicted it. He had counted on Lady Sun Lee using Belle’s ships as a screen for her own, but not the speed in which she would reply. She sensed blood, even as their ships tried to overcome their momentum and close in at the same time.

Regardless, the distress call came more or less on time. “--under attack! We’re being boarded! I repeat, this is the Grace of Sopha requesting help… By the Emperor! They have boltguns!--”

The Grace of Sopha was the former flagship of House Armelan. The same one Lady Belle had used to secure her current squadron, with Anton’s help and collusion. It had served her dynasty faithfully for millennia, and had been the only ship left in the ruined Armelan fleet.

Anton knew what it meant for Charlabelle Armelan.

It had broken off to render aid to the dying Cobra destroyer and in haste to rescue the crew it had not swept for any additional threats. Not that it would have helped. The guncutters had loaded themselves in the open wounds on the Vivat , magnetically grappling to the hull, deck, or whatever remained that was solid. The armsmen aboard those craft had one objective: to secure the Grace of Sopha for boarding.

An army had waited aboard the Vivat , patiently in their armoured voidsuits, carried over as the crew had been evacuated. The Q-Ship fired its thrusters one final time to bring it close to the ancient transport. Boarding lines snaked out and the Vivat grasped onto the Grace of Sopha like a many-limbed, fat-bodied insect.

Agonizing minutes of broadvox pleas for help ended with the static-wash of a close bolter explosion. Anton listened to the battles through the sanitized battle-cant of the Stromgard. He recognized Damaran and Svardi accents now, new recruits deemed worthy to serve by the Stromgard.

“This is Trelany. Lord-Captain Strom, the Grace of Sopha is ours. Shall we plant scuttling charges?” The message was broadvoxed.

“Ask Lady Belle,” Anton replied in the open.

“No,” came the cold reply. It was a denial more than an answer.

Anton waited for the surviving ships of House Armelan fell away one by one before giving the command to stand down, ending the broadvox. The surviving Armelan frigate and her escorts banked away, sullenly watching the Blessed Enterprise approach the Grace of Sopha as its bombers launched again towards the slowing Ma’Kao ships.

“Prepare to adjust speed and bearing, helm,” Anton called out. “Commander, how’s our rendezvous looking?”

Bain Iosef nodded his head. “Good, lord-captain. They’ll finish laying charges almost as soon as they finish looting her.”

Goddard Thraves was by the command throne in an instant. “You can’t!” the seneschal whispered fiercely, keeping his face and expression away from the rest of the bridge.

Anton did not look at the man. “I must.”

Lady Sun Lee looked down enigmatically at Anton. Both wore power armour, though the Head of House Ma’Kao wore a jade lacquered suit. She had the very image of a dilettante wearing a costume as ill-fiting as Lady Belle’s martial uniform. If it weren’t for the few records of Sun Lee’s personal skill with the blade that his seneschal had acquired years ago, Anton would have dismissed her despite what she had accomplished.

“I trust the Orks were not too troublesome?” Anton was saying. “We were in no shape to pursue after breaking their main force at Damaris.”

She smiled beatifically. “Rabble are easily divided. And destroyed.”

“Quite so,” Anton agreed. He had truly run out of things to say to the woman. She pursued, or rather followed, with her ships in the hours since the Grace of Sopha had been boarded. The watch had rotated out, and Anton had spared an hour to lay rest, though his mind had not let him.

The call finally came as Anton searched for another topic of conversation.

“You heartless bastard!” Charlabelle Armelan broadvoxed. The aetherics crew quickly tied in Lady Belle into the conversation.

Lady Sun Lee raised an eyebrow at him. “What have you done?”

Anton leaned back into the command throne, careful not to strain it too much with his bulk. “I do not suffer rivalry well, Lady Sun Lee. I do not suffer my foes to continue either, not after they have drawn blood.”

Sun Lee bowed gracefully. “So you slew the four in Svard, after all.”

Lady Belle held her tongue, staring furiously at them both.

The rogue trader shook his head. “No, I slew one. The son of Jeremiah Blitz, Conway Tor.” Her eyes widened. “You’ve met him.”

“I sold an escort to him.” Sun Lee paused, her inscrutability cracking slightly. “Nothing more.”

“I killed Blitz.” Anton admitted. “In the final hours of the War for Damaris he plotted to take a Drusian relic and flee. A Traitor ship, the one I believe to be responsible for the whole invasion, went after him. I killed him because I refused to abandon the war to rescue him.” The lie rolled off easily, especially since it was almost easily the truth.

“He had believers among his crew who didn’t appreciate the relic’s holiness being sold for profit. Or to pay off gambling debts.” Anton wafted a hand. “They turned it over to me, and I returned it to Damaris and the ship to his creditors. For that, his son came to ambush me as we fought to free the forge world Vail."

He stood, continuing. " While Yu’Vath monsters crawled over the foundries and manufactoria. While crystal ships fought and killed his fellows. He turned tail and went after us as we were docked, killing an Avatar .” He stared at Lady Sun Lee. “These are his guns I’ve been killing your ships with, by the way.”

The rogue trader gave time for his words to be heard. Not just by the two powerful women in front of him, but by everyone else in the system.

“I warned him,” he continued after they did not reply. “ Just like I warned everyone who came to Svard. They didn’t listen.” He almost looked at Thraves. “Is it my fault they wouldn’t believe the augury logs?” Anton smiled. “Well, one listened,” he added, nodding to the fuming Lady Belle.

“How many?” she almost screamed. “How many melta-charges did you plant--?”

“One hundred,” Anton said. “Exactly.” The two were stunned to hear a seemingly honest answer. “It’s not the charges that should worry you.”

“What is it, then?” Lady Belle spat. “What should I fear from the mighty ‘Yu’Vath Slayer’?”

The rogue trader laughed. “Why Lady Belle, I do believe that’s the first honest thing you’ve called me since I got here.” He breathed in, still chuckling. “I am a Yu’Vath Slayer. And a Rak’Gol Slayer. Before that,” Anton paused, almost mentioning the pirates he had slain and was still killing in the Heathen Stars, “I slew Orks. All of them en masse.”

Silence.

“I did it with mostly one ship too.” Anton turned to the Head of House Ma’Kao, before returning his gaze to Lady Belle. He held up a leatherbound tome.

The broadvox conversation ended. Requests for a private channel came in quickly.

“Sir? Lord-Captain?” Lt. Miri stopped just short of the command throne.

Anton looked up from the dataslate and handed it back to his armsman. “Do what you need to,” he whispered. Then he turned to the soon-to-be-promoted officer. “Yes, lieutenant?”

“How did you know, sir?” She took a step forward, unsure if the question would be welcome. He nodded for her to continue. “That House Ma’Kao--Lady Sun Lee--would back off? Over a book?”

The rogue trader smiled. “You saw her, larger than life, holier than the Emperor, above there. Tell me what you think of her.”

“She’s noble, a noblewoman. Born and raised in privilege.” She paused, searching for the words. “She probably thinks herself the Emperor’s Emissary?”

“Hah, we all do, lieutenant! Every single rogue trader does. And we’re right.”

Lt. Miri stood straighter.

“Do you think her a fool? A popinjay or pretender?”

“No--” Anton’s look stopped the lie immediately. “Yes. Yes I do, sir. She struts around in that power armour of hers and her fancy sword with her fancy armsmen, I wonder if they’ve ever even seen combat--” She stopped one more time as the senior officers on the bridge began laughing.

“How fancy is my armour? Or,” Anton turned to face the nearest Stromgard, “that of my elite armsmen?” He held up a hand, knowing she had recognized that error but still missed his point. “What does it all point to? What kind of person is she?”

“Proud. Like you.”

Trelany, the Chief Astropath, snorted loudly. Anton saw the loss of decorum throughout the entire bridge and cleared his throat.

“Yes. Proud, very proud. She had given her word, most likely, to join with House Armelan and Lady Belle’s attack. Honour would have bound her to die to us.” He looked at her then, as she struggled to keep her face blank. “You doubt we would’ve won?”

“They were… close, sir.”

He nodded. “A light cruiser and three escorts--two destroyers and a frigate--approaching from port-aft. Two of those ships would have died before they entered our range to our bombers.” She nodded, unsure. “The rest we would have killed in close quarters. We would have won, but at some cost.” His smile grew from reassuring to cunning. “In fact,” his voice rising, “all junior officers will prepare an after-action report as well as a tacticae on that possible engagement. Thank you, Lt. Miri.”

The groans were muffled.

The young lieutenant accepted the berating she would receive from her peers, but still a question remained. “‘Pride goes before a fall,’ is that it sir?”

Anton’s eyes widened. Does she know where that is from? He shook his head.

“The Emperor’s proverb is ‘Pride goes before destruction; a haughty spirit before a fall’, lieutenant.” Her nod confirmed her traditional education, which raised her far higher than even most Imperial Commanders.

“You, lieutenant, will give me the answer as to why Lady Sun Lee pursued us then broke away almost as if her ships run out of fuel.”

The lord-captain nodded once and dismissed her. He had a dinner party to plan.

Posted at 2014-09-10 20:26:05+00:00

CHAPTER 9 - Available on Google Docs

A platter of freshly cut fruits and vegetables was the focus of four rogue traders’ attention. Another tray, this one of drinks followed it, then one oveflowing with sweets. They glided on their own and stopped when one moved to take a morsel or a glass. After one orbit they slowly hovered to the middle of the table.

The room was garish to Anton’s eyes, but it was understated compared to how his guests were dressed. They were girt for war, for a running battle, but in the most opulent way possible. He himself wore only the Stromfleet’s dress uniform; white epaulets and belt on a high-collared dark green coat and blue slacks. It was armoured, of course, but all dress uniforms were.

“Archeotech silverware,” Abel Gerrit said slowly. He elbowed his son to his left, still bearing bandages and smiling meekly. The young man had not died after all. The scarred rogue trader exuded relief with every breath.

“My seneschal wanted to impress…” Anton said by way of apology.

“He succeeded!” Lord-Admiral Bastille said gruffly, a hint of a smile on his lips as he tasted the amasec. “Vaubaton?”

Anton nodded. “From our own vintners.”

Bastille drank more and motioned for a refill. The tray rose on its own and the lord-admiral took another glass.

“Each bottle must be worth more than a plasma torpedo now.” Lady Charlabelle Armelan said, skewering a citrus fruit with a tine. “What with Vaubaton nothing but ashes.”

The agri-world belonged to the Strom Dynasty. It wasn’t an old world, founded only centuries ago as a joint venture to secure a chain of worlds for greater food production. The Emperor’s armies were always hungry. Vaubaton was the last world in that chain to be founded, and it proved all too ideal for orchards and vineyards. Its wines and amasec proved to be equally popular. It had burned along with most of the dynasty.

“Not a lot of ash,” Anton said evenly. “I visited the crater that had been my childhood home there, before coming through the Maw.” No one but Thraves knew that. “It’s more of a cratered dust-storm--bombardment cannon,” he added with a nod to the lord-admiral.

“Bombardment--What in the hell were they trying to find?” The massive ordnance the cannon fired was meant to puncture through solid rock and adamantium bunkers and explode from within.

“The water,” Abel said suddenly. “I bought one of those bottles when I came to Calixis. It said that there were underground springs that ran through the planet from deep-water reservoirs.”

Anton laughed quietly. “Oh I wouldn’t call them ‘reservoirs’. They were small oceans, with fresh water ecosystems, and a crystal bowl for a sky. Fishing was a secondary export,” he added. “But yes, good on you for grabbing a bottle.” Anton nodded to the glasses on their table. “That’s from the last one I have.”

Lady Sun Lee bowed, her suit’s servo-motors whining almost inaudibly. She reached for a glass and the tray rose towards her. Abel and his son did the same, and Anton took one as well. Lady Belle, sweltering under the gaze of the other Witnesses, took one sullenly.

The rogue trader raised his glass in a toast. “To what we’ve lost and what we’ll gain.”

“Even,” Abel held up a hand, “Even if we could trust your Eldar, we cannot trust the others. Agreed?” The scion of House Arcadius looked at his peers. They nodded, slowly.

“Of course not,” Bastille said. “I’ve had my fair share of battles against those Crow Spirits. Mark my words, they’ll turn on us as these Craftworlders have.”

Lady Sun Lee shook her head. “To be fair to the Craftworlders ,” she had little interaction with the Eldar, “the lord-captain--Anton--did say they were against his plan. Did they not?”

Anton shrugged. “It wasn’t much of a plan: stop as many rogue traders as possible from journeying to the Dread Pearl; come later with ships and evacuate the humans stranded there.” It was mostly the truth. “For the life of me, I cannot see how that would be disagreeable.”

“They are quite a territorial species. These Maiden Worlds,” the lord-admiral hated the word, “they’re just there for decoration? No? They’re not moving in, repopulating their fiendish species, and using it.” He shook his head. “I would rather colonize these worlds, Anton. You say you were going to bring in transports? Fill it with people and dump them on this world. Let’s take it!”

The silence was not out of disagreement. Anton nodded slowly to himself.

Finally, Charlabelle Armelan spoke. “Do we stand against Kaelor’s fleet then? All of us? A squadron of cruisers, at most, and maybe two squadrons of escorts. Need I remind you all of what had just happened?” Lady Belle looked at him squarely in the eyes. “One puny Eldar ship was able to wreak so much damage.”

Bastille laughed roughly. “Most of the damage was your doing, Belle-y.” Rikarn, Abel’s son, snorted his amasec at the nickname, earning him an elbow from his grinning father.

“All this,” the Arcadius scion said, “you would make deals with the Eldar, all to repay a debt?” Anton nodded once. “Did it not occur to you that you may have been manipulated?”

“Yes,” Anton said. “And I do not discount that I was or am being manipulated now.” He rose, waving a hand across the glowing lights that dimmed.

Above the table, familiar and distant stars materialized. “Naduesh, Zayth, Raakata, Vaporious, Salvator,” each glowed briefly as Anton named tem. Other stars, unnamed or unknown, filled in the spaces. Snaking lines, elegant and nowhere near the truth, connected them together. The Heathen Stars floated in front of them all.

The hologram pulsed. Rimward of it, a dark, shadowy thing pulsed. The strands that connected the stars unravelled, then finally they came apart. The lights became polluted, as if oil had begun to cover the crystalline stars. Then lightning and clouds covered the whole region.

“The Heathen Storm is coming.” Anton said as the simulacrum pulsed. “It has already begun, and no ship that enters it will be able to leave. Except for one.” The lights returned on time.

“Heresy,” Lady Sun Lee said, half in disgust and half in awe. “You--you fool!” You should’ve hid for however long you needed to!”

“It was just a few years.”

“‘Just a few years’?” Abel spat. “By the Emp--Anton, I saw a merchantman sent into a star, with its entire crew, for arriving the same day they had left.”

Anton nodded. “What would you have done?” He turned to Lady Belle. “Hide during that time?” He looked the silent lord-admiral in the eyes. “Turn yourself over to the authorities?” Anton leaned forward. “I wanted to build--rebuild--my dynasty in the Heathen Stars. Then I had to beg and steal just to survive as that warp storm roiled around us. And I found a way out.”

“How?--”

“--Through the dead,” he replied. “And from that Warp Storm I entered another.”

Lady Sun Lee nodded. “The God-Emperor’s Scourge. That’s why you had a way out.”

“But not in?” Rikarn asked.

“No. But there must be a way in. When we crawled out of there, we thought we reached a safe port: Damaris.” He sat back down. “The Orks were just beginning their invasion. We went to Svard, to hide,” he said quietly. “That didn’t turn out as I hoped.”

“I should turn you over to the Inquisiton at once!” Lord-Admiral Bastille shouted. “Heretic! Blasphemer!” he raged. “You’d dare sully the Emperor’s Will?” the older man shouted, reaching for his weapons.

“Was it the Emperor’s Will for you to destroy His Ships?” Anton asked calmly. “To slay his own servants? Of course I know, lord-admiral. Please sit back down.”

Long seconds passed before Bastille the Seventh returned to his seat. His fists did not unclench from his sidearms.

“If,” Anton swallowed, “if we trust that the Emperor guides as through the Warp. If we trust that His works are mysterious. If we trust that the Emperor to maintain reality, then I must trust that He foresaw this.”

Abel shook his head. “That is thin reasoning. We are not,” Abel glanced at the fuming lord-admiral, “easily swayed by petty theology.”

“What are you planning?” Lady Belle said over the scion.

Anton chuckled to himself. He let the weariness show on his face. Here, in the company of his peers was where he faced the most danger. All other threats could merely damage him, damage the dynasty. They could destroy it all.

“A war,” he said, still chuckling. He gathered his breath. “I have reason to believe that Battlefleet Koronus will mobilize. Of course it will. There is a space hulk that needs to be killed, only, as always, the Navy is too late.” He looked around. “If I am right, and my petty faith is right, then all of this has already happened. That means the Midnight’s Lair will survive for the next two years, or so.”

“That ‘or so’ is not particularly…” Rikarn began, but stopped and drank more amasec.

“We saw it. The Midnight’s Lair was lying in wait in the God-Emperor’s Scourge. It had travelled through the dead like we had, maybe it made the route in the first place.”

“Why?” Belle asked, gritting her teeth. “Why should we believe you?”

He chose to answer the first question only. “Vall. Karrad Vall raised a call a decade ago, didn’t he? He was going to found a new empire out here. Linked and shielded by warp storms, he’d be unassailable.” He looked around the table. “I want to strike him now.”

“This is death, mine and my dynasty’s.” Abel Gerrit walked out. His son stood, bowed formally, and hurried to follow.

“I’ll see you burn, heretic.” The lord-admiral loosened his grip on his weapons. “If we meet again, pray I do not blast you out of the void,” he said stomping out the room.

Lady Sun Lee stood, bowed, and left without a word.

Charlabelle Armelan drank her amasec. “That went very well.”

Her nails traced furrows across his back. Anton yelped in pain, biting Belle’s lips. They tousled, angrily, hungrily, and retreated for more. Pleasure was easily had. Challenge, a difficulty, that was satisfying. Somehow, they had rolled into Anton’s dining cabin.

“You and your guilt will get you killed,” Lady Belle said, resting her head on his shoulders.

“They needed to know,” Anton repeated. They had begun this conversation so many times in the last few hours, only to be interrupted by some new need. “But why,” he stopped and kissed her, “why did you want me at that auction anyway?”

She punched him. “To be at my side, idiot.”

“We can’t make this official,” he kissed her.

“Just make your tongue flutter.”

The hours melded together.

Exhausted, refreshed, and sated, the two finally ate their late breakfast. A sullen serving girl provided the meals then excused herself. Belle watched her walk away.

“Get rid of her. You’ve been with her.”

Anton looked up from his meal. “Once. Maybe thrice. It was a long time ago… In fact, it will happen in about a few months.”

“I will not suffer any of your wenches about,” she said.

“I like that you’re jealous.”

“You won’t like me when I’m jealous,” she said honestly.

Anton coughed. “Right, I’ll transfer her to another ship.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” he resumed eating.

“They should be leaving for it now,” Belle offered. “Weeks, months. Where do suppose they’ll end up?”

He ignored the question. “You should have told me you were bidding.”

He was ignored in turn. “Will they be killed? I do like Sun Lee...”

Anton remained silent as he ate.

“Of course I was bidding, Anton!” She threw away the dataslate he was looking at. “I wanted you, at my side, and rub it in your face--shut up--when I won the Dread Pearl! How was I supposed to know you were plotting our deaths?”

The rogue trader stood and searched for the dataslate. “I wasn’t. I’m not.” He looked up at her, admiring him hungrily. “I was just going to let you all be killed by the elder,” he added. “Well, not you.”

“I am reassured.” She looked around. “Where are my books?”

“There,” Anton pointed to a stack of crates covered by what appeared to be their clothing. “It’s all there.”

“Honestly, Anton,” Lady Belle said, rifling through the clothing, “you do plot the most intricate ways to get rid of people. I don’t know if I would have written off two ships so easily if you hadn’t convinced me.” She looked at him. “Does Trelany know?”

“That she killed your former seneschal?”

“No. That she was performing a hit?”

“No, of course not. I didn’t want her leading that attack anyway,” Anton admitted. “But she has a rapport.”

She began pulling on clothes. “With your armsmen? Is that… wise?”

“As wise as last night.”

The Colossus was the first to translate into the Warp. A Firestorm-class frigate, the Aberrant followed soon after. Both trailed fire that didn’t escape from their engines.

House Arcadius’ ships signalled their farewell, departing hours later, along with the Nihontu and her escorts. The latest battle had been a brief exchange of fire, a loosing of torpedoes and dashing lance strikes. Bastille the Seventh’s crimes were coming to light, and the bystanders around Footfall had found another target. More ships moved to follow, their auguries and warp instrumentation judging the lord-admiral’s most likely route.

Only the Wisdom of Luthien remained near the Blessed Enterprise , standing watch over the remains of the Vivat . The Grace of Sopha had proceeded under own power back to Footfall, and the recommissioned Cobra was left to whirl into its own orbit around Furibundus’ sun. If the failing House Dasser wanted it back, it was theirs.

It had been Anton’s suggestion to leave the destroyer’s hulk alone. The Dassers could try to recover it, if anyone was willing to listen to them. If they had money and favours left.

House Dasser had expended considerable influence in arranging the ambush--that had not been part of Anton’s or Belle’s plans--and those merchants had lost it all. One by one, the wrecks were paid for, bankrupting the concerns and guilds, and they were towed back to the station.

The seneschals bound them to adamantine-clad contracts--enough to keep Svard supplied--in lieu of the throne gelt they did not have. More ships left, in ones or in pairs, over the week, bearing new cargo for Svard.

“Sir,” Lt. Miri said uncertainly. “I’m getting a recorded message. From the… Administratum Oeconomica Imperialis?”

Anton nodded, allowing the privacy fields to settle around the command throne. He thumbed a blinking rune.

“Lord-Captain Strom! We greet you in the name of the Emperor! Greetings!” Anton struggled not to smile at the audio. It was the ‘grand admiral’ speaking, he couldn’t recall the name. “We are uhh, messaging you to express our thanks for your generous gifts!” The ruined cargo from the various wrecks were near-useless for his purposes. They were at treasure trove to the scammers. “Under your direction, we have bartered and traded away most of it and fed the Footfallen in your name! Truly, you are one of the Emperor’s Finest Ambassadors!”

“Which is why we are sending this vox-encoded message instead of broadvoxing our thanks, which you seem to prefer.”

The rogue trader’s smile faded as he continued to listen.

Edited September 10, 2014 by Marwynn

Posted at 2014-09-11 17:21:01+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Cherubhim pulled at the curtains to reveal an open voidsteel hatch. The thick materials absorbed the sound--the music, the laughter, the dozens of conversations. A taste of lho sticks and obscura was in the air, leaking from behind tapestries, though sweet perfume mixed with burning incense dominated the large space. Servo-skulls dangling stablights and glow-globes hovered in the air, providing the only illumination.

This was Auxiliary Cargo Hold 7C. The officers’ shared these holds. Anton allowed them leeway to carry their own cargo, earn their own gelt, as long as it didn’t interfere with the Blessed Enterprise . It had been difficult, especially since their travels had not been to any hubs of commerce, save for Footfall. Holds 7A and 7B were stocked full of various crates; 7D and 7E were full as well, though of items for personal use.

It wasn’t bribery so much as privilege. Hard work was rewarded with luxuries. That was the way. Contraband was to be expected, but those that rose to earn these rights were also expected to use their judgement.

He had granted one request from a non-officer to store his personal items there.

Anton found him sat at the head of a gleaming plasteel table, like a monarch dining with subjects. A few officers, from long-serving families, littered around him and hung on his every word.

“Lord-captain! My boy!” Novan Strom stood, interrupting his story.

Anton smiled and watched the awestruck officers remember themselves. They stood from their chairs and saluted. Tradition was that he’d offer a salute and they’d return to what they were doing. Otherwise they would stand there until he verbally dismissed them.

“We need to talk,” Anton said and walked away.

Azure liquid flowed into a clear bulb of glass. Another bulb was filled and set in front of the lord-captain. “Walking around in your uniform?” Novan said, shaking his head. “At this hour? You need to learn when to relax.”

“Do you have a vacant obscura den I could use?” Anton said, harshly.

His uncle looked up from his drink, but continued sipping. Finally, he put the bulb down. “I remember pulling you out of one of those before.”

“A long time ago. From one that one of our family owned,” Anton nodded.

“We used to own many things,” Novan whispered, taking another sip. “Tell me about the battle! My boy, I didn’t even get a call to stand on the bridge.” The elder Strom paused. “In fact, no one did…”

The rogue trader shook his head. “I’ve discontinued the audiences.”

“Then you shouldn’t wonder so much why the dynasty is in the state it’s in.”

A bitter laugh. “Denying nobles with no titles, no lands, no utility the right to dress up for the bridge and watch as it was a performance--that’s what’s wrong,” Anton said, nearly incredulous.

Novan shook his head. “What else is there for them to do? They breed and churn out officers, I’m sure, but how valuable are they? They’re not crew, they’re not passengers, they’re--” Novan raised the bulb up, “--they’re your native population. Why have you discarded them?”

“Have you ever seen them?” Anton asked, knowing how hurtful the question was to a man denied the Blessed Enterprise . “Those balconies, above and behind the command throne. Dressed in their fineries. Ordering drinks and gossiping. Oh, we can’t hear them.” He shook his head. “The bridge crew can’t see them. But they’re there. They get in the way.”

“So you removed them. Like you’ve removed nearly all opposition to you. Hmm? Charging ahead, forging whatever destiny you wish, and just removing anything that doesn’t move. No matter what right they have to stand in your way.”

Novan Dercius Strom drained the bulb and stood to refill it. “When will you remove me?” he asked, after another sip.

“I was surprised,” Anton said slowly. “You were so… informed. I knew, of course, that the Seneschal Corps favoured you. Even Thraves does.”

“I saved his life. Thrice,” Novan said, circling his room.

“That’s to be expected. You knowing the dynasty’s business--you can’t shed the Strom name after taking it after all. But you knew how the Blitzes would react. What House Dasser wanted. Even Haught’s connections...” Anton watched his uncle drift to the racks of weapons on his quarter’s far wall. “I’ve had them all disabled.”

Novan smoothly changed his course and sat down on a plump chair.

“That too.”

The elder Strom reclined instead, allowing the chair to adjust to his form. There was silence for long minutes.

“You sent them.”

“Bloody right, I did.” Novan said bitterly, still relaxed in the chair. “Once your Navigator arrived here, aboard a Navy battlecruiser --for the Emperor’s sake!” He shook his head. “She revealed all to her House. They revealed most to me. I’ll have you know, it wasn’t easy to gather those dynasties together. Even that mob of idiots was difficult to rile up from a distance.”

“Do you judge me unfit? Or do you want the Blessed Enterprise that badly.”

“Yes. And yes.”

“You’re too old,” Anton said and left the quarters, echoing the same words the family had. He stopped by the door. “Someone once said, before Stromfall, that ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand’.”

“You’ve read it then?” Novan asked quietly. “You are becoming quite the recidivist. ‘Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand’. I prefer that translation.”

The rogue trader shook his head. “You didn’t tell me it was a house of daemons.”

“I shouldn’t have to.”

The bridge of the Blessed Enterprise was large, even for a cruiser. Its ancient systems had been ruined when the ship was lost, and more of the ship had to be consumed in order to replace the efficient cogitators with databanks and servitor-alcoves. More stations, dens, set into the deck of the bridge’s main floor, had to be dug into thick adamantium.

A gallery hung above and behind the bridge, overlooking even the command throne on a raised platform in its middle. The balconies and terraces had been long unused, their lights dimmed. Below them, to each side, sat the rebuilt gunnery stations and the new flight controls.

Today, it was full. All watch officers, all servitors, the full gallery audience were in attendance. The last time this was was done was when the ship had finally arrived in Damaris, so recent and so long ago.

Cherubs flew in formation, dragging banners and scrolls between them, as the ship’s choir--its mundane choir--sang a very familiar hymn. The astropathic choir sang their own songs into the void, into the Empyrean.

Then silence. Then three bells were struck, followed by five chimes and finally seven drumbeats.

He spoke the words in High Gothic, as clearly and as confidently as he could muster.

The crew responded, repeating words most did not understand. All the crewmen knew was that their lord-captain had been victorious yet again in battle, and that it was right to give thanks to prepare for a long voyage. Some knew more, but spoke little save to a few.

The Navigators chanted. It would sound like sorcery to most, but Anton knew that old tongue. Other stations, entire decks, then proceeded with their own traditions. Decks would be scrubbed, statues of saints painted, and raucous singing and even debauchery on the deep decks.

Reality blinked. A pool of light and energy coiled out from nothing as the Empyrean yawned open before the Blessed Enterprise . Tendrils of energy flicked out, bleeding into realspace turning into clawing tentacles, toothed and jagged.

Then the ship plunged in, swallowed and drowned by the Empyrean, as the wound closed and reality healed.

END OF PART ONE

Posted at 2014-09-15 21:10:56+00:00

PART 2

CHAPTER 11

The ships of the convoy became eight, then nine as the Vivat and Toriah dove out of the Sea of Souls. Energy, in its purest form, from the highest bands of the Immaterium bored all the way down through to the Materium, tunnelling into reality. Crackling tendrils bled out of the two rents in reality, converging and mutating into aetheric tentacles and burning shadows.

Tortured, bulbuous, but still strong, the Vivat returned to realspace trailing ephemeral wisps of energy. The damage done to its hull had been repaired, quickly under the threat of its owner’s displeasure, and the Q-Ship began to fire its retros. The Toriah followed after, though less solidly as the lead ship; it had suffered more damage in a shorter amount of time than the Vivat , but it too had been repaired.

Both arrivals had been presaged by the Navigators of the convoy, their senses attuned to the potentials in the skeins of the Warp. Anton knew of their arrival because he had ordered it so; and the astropaths aboard the two transports had sent continuous reports on their progress.

Ordinarily, a short jump from Footfall to the Touchstone would have required only a handful of messages. The Touchstone was the unofficial gathering place for those who wished to return through the Maw into the Calixis Sector. In the deep void, blanketed by distant stars, it was a place of refuge enforced by the strictest pacts, favoured for the short transit from Footfall. Lord-Captain Anton Strom insisted on daily sendings, taxing the psykers greatly for such a short trip. The messages had included more than just their status updates; it also included the ships’ Navigators’ feelings about their environs. Specifically, if they were being followed.

In the Empyrean, where physics and mathematics failed and intuition and emotion ruled, a Navigator’s feelings were worth a whole planet full of cogitators. The sendings had been consistent for the last week, though it was uncertain at first. Something was following. Not just on the same course to the Touchstone, but on the same tack, following the aetherial wake of the two ships.

The Blessed Enterprise , flagship of the Strom rogue trader dynasty, waited with its broadside cannon rolled out and its launch bays open. The two transports adjusted their courses with the flagship’s guidance, pulling them away from the potential translation horizons and from the cruiser’s batteries.

Lightning surged first, never a good sign in Anton’s experience, and the iris of the empyrean translation portal--the preferred Naval term for the giant hellhole--blurred then bled into reality. The rogue trader stood far from his command throne, at the bridge’s port vista-panes. The red and violent pinprick of light had hurt to look at, even at this great distance and through the lacquered protections and oils to preserve them from the madness of gazing at the raw Warp.

By his order, all vista-panes were sealed under pain of execution while the ship was in Warp transit.

Behind him, above the dens of bridge stations and their teams, hovered a grainy holograph. Green lines intersected and encircled the translation event horizon, runes indicating relative strength and potential ‘vectors’--whatever it was that could cause such a thing. The aetherics teams, those locked in vaults seeded around the bridge, put forth their prediction, that of a light cruiser, at the top.

The hellhole spat out a burning ship moments later. Anton nodded at the Master of Aetherics who passed along the compliment to her den-team.

Alter Locus ’s distress call arrived less than a minute later. A squadron of guncutters, barges, and rescue craft were already launching.

“How did you know?” the man asked, gritting his teeth in anger and pain. “How did you know they’d--?” The servitor unceremoniously injected him with a needle full of blue liquid. Pain ebbed away.

“I didn’t,” Anton confessed, “but considering what they had down to both ships the first time…”

Free Captain Rudson Daviles nodded. “I was a fool, then, agreeing to cover your freighters.” He spoke clearly, without any pain, despite the wounds the servitor-chirurgeon was working hard to seal and staunch.

Anton shook his head. “Not a fool. Merely a man of worth.”

“Tell that to my dead.”

“They know what kind of man you are,” Anton said quickly.

“Hah!” Daviles said. “I bloody well hope not. If they’re at the Emperor’s side I don’t want them to colour…”

++Lord-Captain Strom. Please evacuate.++

Anton nodded and stepped back, watching the chirurgeon-servitor attend to the ailing master of the Alter Locus . He remained and waited until the man died, though Daviles had fallen unconscious hours before.

“I regret to inform you of your captain’s death,” Anton said hollowly. The surviving senior officers of the Alter Locus stared daggers at him, at least those that could hear him. “You knew him better than I,” he said honestly, “but we will give him, and all your dead, full honours.”

Third Officer Matina Vudow shook her head. “We’re simple voidsmen, lord-captain. He--they--would want simple burials.”

Anton nodded.

“What do you intend to do with us?” she asked.

“Free Captain Vudow,” Anton said slowly, allowing the rest of the senior crew to recognize her and her new rank, “that is entirely up to you.”

The rogue trader nodded again and left them to grieve. In the Expanse, in the edges of the Imperium’s rule, the laws of Terra were often discarded. A more primal, a more human, law rose among ships and crews that discovered freedom beyond the Imperium. He knew what that was like, as a Navy man who had to deal with voidfarers that were little more than barbarians or pirates, and as a rogue trader who had begun to live far from the Imperial ideal. The title of "free captain" required no writ in the lawless wilds. It was a polite way of referring to pirates and scavengers.

A pair of armsmen followed him discreetly as he left the guest quarters for his own. There had been a time when they were ceremonial. But with fresh voidsmen recently recruited from Footfall, and with the actions of a few that had been on board longer, assassination was a very real danger. It always had been, but it was closer now.

One of the armsmen spoke quietly under his breath. Anton smirked as he heard it.

How many teams were sweeping ahead and behind him now, as he moved in the upper hab-spires? Where the greatest concentration of the armsmen were located to keep the officers secure?

It needs to be this way .

He sighed, then realized his feet had not taken him to his quarters to rest. Instead, he stood in front of the senior officers’ private meeting room. Their trophy room.

He hadn’t assembled them together, in private, for months now.

That needed to change.

“Please ask the senior staff to join me,” he said to one Stromgard, then stepped in.

“Maybe four hours,” Anton answered. “That was how long we spoke. Less than an hour the first time, haggling about the price and the details.” He took a drink. “Another hour or so when we pulled into Footfall, again, after the ambush… then the rest when I manipulated him into escorting the two transports.” He drank the glass in one motion.

“Sevia is dead,” Magos Binar said suddenly. Anton raised his head in anger. “I do not understand why you are confessing your sins. We do not care.”

“We do,” Chief Astropath Trelany said. “We do.”

“I only meant that it does not impact our perception of the lord-captain.”

That’s… worse .

Anton deflated then looked up and saw Trelany nodding sadly in agreement.

Navigator Idris uncoiled herself from her favoured chair and refilled her glass. “Why the guilt, Anton?” she asked, not unkindly. Here, in their shared private domain, the formality should have been relaxed. Idris was far above Anton’s station, even as the Heritor of the Strom Warrant of Trade. She was doing him a kindness by speaking to him familiarly.

“More dead?” he offered. “More innocent dead.”

“Anton,” Commander Bain Iosef said, still respectful, “the Alter Locus is far from innocent. That Matina--Free Captain Vudow--she’s wanted in three systems. I know, I wanted to see if I could capture her myself.”

Everyone looked at the young officer. He shrugged. “I can have hobbies.” They all laughed.

“You never did tell us how you got that thing,” Trelany said, nodding at the pinkish crystalline skeleton floating in a stasis-tube.

“Vaporious,” Magos Binar said.

“Right, right,” Bain said with a smile. It lasted for a few moments until they all remembered: Vaporious had been bombarded from orbit, the only survivors they knew had been some missionary officials. They all looked at the beast’s skeleton again, possibly the last perfect thing to come from the desert world.

“I wasn’t hunting it,” the commander offered. “I was chasing those,” he looked around wryly, “those Unquenched ,” he whispered. The ghosts of the desert, rumoured to be psykers that died of thirst even after drinking the world’s Warp-tainted water.

Anton’s thoughts clouded, earning him a disapproving look from Trelany. He had wanted to lance the planet from orbit, vapourizing all of that Warp water in fire. They all saw the water’s effects. Still, he forced himself to join the here and now, and to listen.

Idris’ laugh was the tinkling of wine glasses. “Weren’t you supposed to be on patrol? Hunting down the Priest-King’s sworn-swords?”

“That too,” Bain said with a nod. “Anyway, I was settling in for the night…”

Free Captain Matina Vudow saluted crisply. Anton returned the gesture, almost successfully ignoring the stripped-down Navy uniform she wore. The hologram faded from the command throne as he released the salute.

Moments later, Lt. Miri spoke. “ Alter Locus is entering convoy formation,” a pause, “and is relinquishing turret defense to us. Vox-link protocols sent and acknowledged.”

“Very good, lieutenant. Keep an eye on her, will you?” the rogue trader said.

“Always do, sir,” she said smoothly.

Anton had no choice but to smile. He had no intent of showing favouritism, but Sylvia Miri was a bright officer, slated for a command of her own.

“And what of the other light cruisers?” he asked sternly, though with a smile on his face.

Lt. Miri straightened. “The Bocephus reports some trouble with her port augury vanes, but Captain Vers assures it won’t be a problem. Commander Tuch reports that,” a cough, “he’s proud to be the ‘hen-mother’ of the other transports.”

Tuch had been rapidly promoted, first to the captured raider, then to the Vivat , then finally to the Endeavour-class light cruiser Lady Zhar . Anton had wanted to rename the ship into something else, but it and her sister ship the Bocephus did not belong to him. They didn’t even belong to the late rogue trader Zandr Haught. They were on lease from Battlefleet Calixis, to the soon-to-be defunct Haught Dynasty.

Endeavours were relatively new ship classes, only a few hundred years old. Anton had served alongside a few other ships from the innovate Voss forge world in his time with the Battlefleet, but most had been relegated to system defense or the reserve fleets. If there was anything the Imperial Navy prided itself on, it was tradition; and ships less than a millennia old were unproven, and would be until some calamity would force the ships to the fore to replace battle losses.

Anton had heard rumours that the Lathe Worlds had begun manufacturing the Voss designs locally. Odd, even if Battlefleet Koronus would be more than willing to embrace any hull that drifted their way. Passage Watch 27-Est, a somewhat independent formation of Battlefleet Calixis, had been given charge of the entire Koronus Expanse. Colloquially known as Battlefleet Koronus, Anton had hoped to meet with its fleet captain and negotiate for the light cruisers’ continued operation with House Strom.

“My compliments to both,” Anton said. “Give me the broadvox.”

Three chimes sounded in the ship, repeating throughout the bridge stations, even in the somewhat-full balcony above and behind, then to all the ships in the convoy.

“This is Lord-Captain Strom. Though the Maw trembles, our wise and skilled Navigators have found a route through. The Blessed Enterprise will lead the formation. Our destination is the Garden, then straight on to Port Wander. Our time at the Touchstone has been providential. Make ready for translation. May the Emperor be with us.”

Posted at 2014-09-17 19:15:41+00:00

CHAPTER 12

“All I see is a disk. A silver plate,” Ensign Garlin Kem said slowly. He did his best to stand tall and firm, almost defiant, but the weight of his chains made that gesture difficult. “Why is it called the ‘Garden’?”

Anton stared out of the vista-pane in the forward observation deck, a few levels below the bridge. His feet were on the table and he leaned back in a chair, swirling a clear drink in a glass. “You were this ship’s helmsman for months, ensign. And stationed to the Helm for a year before that.” Anton sipped his drink. “Are you telling me you never looked into our old logs and cruises, even out of professional curiosity?”

The young man sighed and remained silent.

“This is not a visit. This is an interrogation. Answer,” the rogue trader said, in between even more sips.

“No, sir.” A pause. “I did not think to look into our--the Blessed Enterprise ’s--logs.”

“You’re unnaturally uncurious for a Strom.”

There was anger in the young man’s voice. “I’m not a Strom. Not like you.”

“**** right you’re not,” Anton said, not moving. “I would have succeeded.” He drained the glass.

Garlin turned towards him as quickly as the chains allowed. The four armsmen in the room didn’t move; their lasguns were still firmly aimed at the ensign.

“Everything was handed to you!” Kem said through gritted teeth. “Everyone bowed to you, said how wonderful you were, you--you get things without trying!”

Anton nodded along as he spoke.

“Nothing, absolutely nothing, you’ve accomplished in your life wouldn’t have been possible if you weren’t born a Strom!” The anger was deep and it came out uncertainly.

“Is that it?” Anton said, holding out his empty glass for a servitor to refill. It was done quickly and precisely. “Thank you,” he said to the servitor. “Was that it? I had the gall to be born into a privileged family, no, one of a privileged House’s leading families, and I managed to succeed with it?”

“Yes. You deserve none of this!”

“Agreed,” Anton said, raising his glass in a toast.

“That’s not--”

The rogue trader sighed. “--I didn’t want you aboard,” he confessed suddenly. “The Kems broke off from the Strom line, what? Three centuries ago? You were doing well, very well, without the House backing you. How many even knew you were related to the family?” he looked up to see the young man staring back at the distant silver disk.

“Death marks. You have one, so does your mother and all of your sisters.”

“You’d dare!--”

“--Idiot!” Anton pronounced. “Lazy, angry, idiot,” he said slowly. “Listen with open ears, not an open mouth: We all have death marks. All Stroms. That’s why I asked Thraves to take you, your entire damned line, on board. The same for the Suddemoors, the Eforzas, even the Gallipshids. Distant relations, at best. All marked for death.”

“That’s the price of heresy,” the young man spat.

“It’s the price of doing business,” Anton said with a shake of the head. “Guilt made me give you a slot on the helm you didn’t deserve. It made me promote you to Helmsman, and you were willing to let us get pincered for it.” He shrugged. “Besides, if it was heresy, if the fabled Officio Assasinorium did get involved, we would never have come through the Maw in the first place.”

Anton stood swiftly. “You knew about the mark on my head,” he said, joining the ensign in front of the clear vista-pane. “You know there’s one on dear uncle Novan. On Lyza too.”

“Yes.”

“So why help?”

Garlin Kem turned to face him. “Lyza--she’s the kind of Strom you read about. Crazy and creative with it!” He shook his head, chains jangling. “She’d tear the dynasty apart--and your uncle Novan? Old Dercius?” Garlin took a step closer. “He’s an obscura addict. A flect user. Not like you.”

“Not unlike me,” Anton said unflinchingly. “Once, at least. Privileged upbringing and so on.”

The young man seethed. “You’re not worthy to be the Warrant Holder, the Heritor--”

“--I keep hearing that--”

“--but you’d succeed. Somehow. Like you’ve done--I have read some things, did my research on you. A highborn brat, through and through, and worse you think you’re different. You think you’re better.” Garlin almost took another step forward, but one of the armsmen yanked on his chains. “I want to see this dynasty burn.”

“Astropaths.”

“What?” Garlin sputtered, fearing it was an order.

The rogue trader nodded to the distant disk. “Before the known Stations of Passage were mapped, there was a need to coordinate the various suicidal attempts through the Warp storms. A Lathimon, I forget which, came up with the brilliant idea of leaving Astropaths in their Solus pods, sacrificed in the vainglorious search for ‘the bountiful gardens beyond’.”

Anton turned towards the glowering man.

“A few dynasties avoid this place. Humour me one last time: Why?”

“I don’t care.”

The rogue trader sighed. “Details. Solus pods. You know your high gothic.”

“Solitary. It means solitary,” the ensign said after a few moments of silence.

“What if I told they’re all there, right now?” Anton pointed at the disk. “That years before Purity Lathimon broke into the Koronus Expanse she had been sending astropathic messages to the rest of her fleet--yes, she employed dozens of vessels--and back to Calixis without knowing just how it was being done. It would be decades before the disk would be found. Somehow,” Anton said turning back towards the clear pane, “the Solus pods all found each other. And joined.”

He watched as the young man looked at the distant disk again, in growing horror.

Anton nodded to the armsmen who quickly bundled the ensign up. “And you’re wrong, Garlin,” using the young man’s name for the first time. “I don’t think I’m better: I know it. That’s what separates you and I, not blood, not money nor privilege. True freedom,” he jerked his head back to the silver disk, “is knowing what others have planned for your life and not giving one bloody **** about it.”

Edited September 17, 2014 by Marwynn

Posted at 2014-09-19 14:28:44+00:00

CHAPTER 13

Laughter escaped in drips and deluges as the senior officers gathered to share a meal. Lord-Captain Anton Strom had been punctuating the story with jabs of his fork, a delicately cut slice of grox hanging limply from it. He was wiping away tears with his other hand.

“You are a madman,” Bain said, coughing, “sir.”

Idris held out a hand, gasping for breath. “I saw him! Hah! He was so-so-so very red and sweaty.”

“I don’t think it’s that funny,” Trelany, the resident astropath said. “Those things end up being true sometimes.”

Silence fell on the table. Then a more raucous round of laughter followed. Even Magos Binar exhaled air, if not in amusement then at least in camaraderie.

“I know,” Anton said, sighing in relief. “I had to think fast, say something ominous and dark and--”

“--Disturbing?” Trelany volunteered.

“Disturbing, yes.” He chuckled. “How else could I possibly make an abandoned arboretum even more creepier. That was the question.”

Bain shook his head. “So you didn’t tell Kem how these supposed Astropaths managed to--”

“--Amalgamate?--” Binar offered.

The commander nodded. “Amalgamate together?”

The Navigator drank her sweetened juice. “I think this dear old rogue was trying to underscore his insanity.”

“His pretend insanity,” Anton corrected.

Magos Binar wheezed out air again and the table devolved into more laughter.

“He’s convinced,” Sergeant Vlary said, “that you, my lord, are quite insane.”

Anton suppressed a chuckle, not successfully enough as the armsman’s eyes widened slightly in alarm. In formal settings, the sergeant was a soldier sword to die for his warrior-king. In quieter places, the Stromgard were trusted confidantes. None more so than the ones who had taken bullet or blade for their liege. Vlary had earned the right many times over the last few years.

“Is he now?” he said ominously, lips creeping towards a smile.

“Yes, my lord. He’s said as much to a few other Stromgard, and I’m sorry to say they’ve repeated the same thing to others. There are whispers of ‘heretic’, which I’m sure you’re used to by now,” Anton shrugged, “and also of ‘recidivist’ and ‘renegade’. It’s… strange?”

The rogue trader coughed, hiding his laugh. “You think so, sergeant?”

The larger man shuffled in his armour. It was the only way to show chagrin in an otherwise all encasing carapace.

“These… traditionalists ?” the sergeant ventured, and Anton nodded. “They’ve said all along that you’re no true Strom. That Lyza is; all daring and danger. But she has always taken the safer route, far as we’ve seen. And these traditionalists, my lord, they always said that you were too strongly tied with the Imperium and that was no way for a proper Strom to behave.”

The rogue trader smiled. “And you’re wondering how they can use the very qualities they champion as proof of my unfitness?”

“It just doesn’t make sense, my lord,” Sergeant Vlary said earnestly. “I thought that you wanted this to go out, this dangerous visionary rogue image, cultivate that to win them over.”

Anton shook his head. “No, sergeant. I just wanted to see who would speak with whom.” He sighed. “And I wanted to see if Kem was bright enough to see through it. It wasn’t my best lie, after all.”

Sergeant Vlary nodded, stood at attention, and left.

Anton wrote his name down in the ledger.

A mechanical spider descended on a spun web of tubes and filaments, each leg ending in a strange protuberance. Its maw opened, disgorging a self-illuminated glob on the Starhawk bomber. Already stubby with its short wings, this bomber had lost both in the battles in Footfall.

Anton watched as the spider spun the glob into intricate patterns, blasting with white flames or purple light, as heavy gauge servitors handed it spars, plates, and tubing. The tech-priests working around the bomber were in the throes of their electro-chants, adding a sombre bass to the high-pitched repair rites.

++Lord-Captain Strom.++ Magos Tevla said, bowing obsequiously. His face was lost in a tangle of tubes and implants. Only the barest whisps of skin could be been of the man’s forehead. Anton admired the way Tevla had bundled the tubes snaking out from his mouth and nose, gathering them the same way a squat would their beard.

“Magos Tevla,” he said neutrally. “I trust you have been--”

++Thank you for coming,++ the Magos interjected, having spent his quota on small talk. ++I have much to show you.++

The rogue trader bowed, familiar with the red priests’ abrupt ways. He joined the magos’ invitation to walk alongside him, and they began to circle the Starhawk.

++This Starhawk, a Scintilla pattern; one of only twelve of your original complement. It is being restored to its original specifications.++

Anton nodded, confused. “Isn’t that why I petitioned for the repair bay in the first place?” he asked innocently.

++Apologies. I was imprecise. It is being restored to its original pattern’s specifications, not the degraded form you were given. The uncorrupted specifications are safely within Vail’s datastacks.++

“I know that our bomber crews have not shut up--been singing the Omnissiah’s praises for their new weaponry. They say the machine-spirits are more… alive.” The magos seemed pleased with that characterization. Anton nodded to the gleaming melta-cannon on the bomber. “Are you saying there’s more?”

++Much more, lord-captain. Though what we can achieve here is limited. We have installed a force shield on this one.++

Anton stopped, trying to look for any outward differences.

++Forward of the cockpit,++ Magos Tevla supplied.

He nodded his thanks, spotting the nondescript off-colour panel. “Thank you, Magos, for your continued dedication in the preservation of our men and machines.” The memorized line was said smoothly, but also genuinely.

++We hope to do the same for your remaining seven Scintillan-pattern Starhawks, lord-captain. But that is not why I have asked you to come.++

Posted at 2014-09-23 20:47:55+00:00

[REDACTED UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE HOLY ORDOS]

Edited September 29, 2014 by Marwynn

Posted at 2014-09-29 17:31:03+00:00

[As I'm taking over the campaign as GM, and this backstory fluff is now completely mine, I've retconned the previous chapter as it was far too limiting. Instead, I'm proceeding with my original plan. Sorry for any confusion.]

CHAPTER 14

Green wireframe pulsed and flickered as the hologram coalesced, giving it metallic solidity and weight. High Gothic words, in glowing blue, flitted around as the hologram rotated in the small space. The tech-fane was heavily used by the enginseers to commune with the Omnissiah, and scroll-work cut into the arches and bulkheads were of a precise mathematical pattern, embellished over the years. Candles ringed the fane, guttering as gases leaked from above and below. The flowing script caught the candlelight and the hologram’s colours oddly, unevenly.

The rogue trader felt expectant eyes on him. He read the words and numbers, understanding what they meant individually but not together. Anton knew runes even more obscure and arcane to him should have been displayed instead, and that this was for his benefit.

“I will not pretend to understand,” Anton said honestly, “but I don’t need to pretend to be impressed.” Magos Tevla bowed his head. “A frigate?” he asked.

++Indeed, Lord-Captain Strom.++ The Magos’ voice was almost emotional, though the words still came from an electronic throat. ++What do you know of Vail? Of its founding?++

Anton chose not to lie. “Only from what my insane ancestor managed to write down. I know that Fabricator Orseil was the first, and so far only, Fabricator of Vail.” The Magos nodded. “He sailed, for a time, with An--my ancestor.”

++A grand reward for years of service.++

The seeding of a new Forge World, even if it was technically a moon, was one of the few bright spots during Antonil Strom’s insane reign. That prestige has never quite left the dynasty, and the Mechanicus had looked on the Stroms slightly more mercifully because of it. Just how it was done was never quite explained.

“The Strom Dynasty is generous with its allies,” Anton said evenly. “But as for your question, I only know that the particular moon was chosen due to the fear that over-pollution would wreak havoc on the frosted ecosystem of the main Svard moon.”

Magos Tevla nodded. ++It was the logical choice. Our records indicate that the Svard system’s primary purpose for colonization was the study of the Yu’Vath battleship. According to Antonil Strom.++

Anton didn’t react outwardly, and a normal, unaugmented human would have assumed he had not heard. But the Magos saw things that some auspexes missed, and had some social skill to gauge his reaction.

“Yes, he’d be insane enough to have tried that.”

++Is it not writ in your Warrant that you must exploit xeno species and artifacts, to determine their worth and danger, with the aid of the Priesthood of Mars?++

“It is.”

++Then how is this insanity?++

“The Warrant itself isn’t a very sane document,” he said with a smile. “I did not say it was not in keeping with family history, after all.”

The Magos conceded the fact with a bow, the tubes of his beard reaching the deck.

“And have you?” Anton asked, pre-empting the Magos’ reply. “What progress have you made in studying the Yu’Vath vessel?”

++We have conducted experiments to ascertain its power, and influence. You have seen the inner moons? Crystallized and xenoformed?++

Anton nodded once. They were oddly beautiful for a hellish rockscape. The moon Hopp had been undergoing the same transformation. He blinked.

“Experiments? You mean, you allowed the Whisperer to exert its influence?”

Magos Tevla nodded once.

“Even at the cost of so many lives? Resources?” Anton said without heat.

Another precise nod.

The rogue trader sighed. “What have you found?”

++Too much.++ The expression caught Anton off guard. ++A datastack has been prepared for your perusal. Primarily, we have confirmed that Yu’Vath technology is inherently linked through sub-space--the highest levels of the Warp bands--and that capital ships act as an anchor and focusing lense for pure Warp energy.++ The Magos caught himself from expounding further. Anton realized this was the man’s life’s work.

++We have also observed the precise sub-molecular manipulation necessary to xenoform matter into the various crystals of the Yu’Vath constructs. Secondary research was performed on the phenomenon known as the Cloud and all its plasmatic applications.++

Anton cocked his head. “There’s more than one type? They all look the same--”

++--Much more,++ the Magos interrupted. ++They are interwoven lattices. Quite complex. Very robust.++

Training took over. Anton turned to the Magos and performed a full bow. “The Strom Dynasty is grateful for your loyal pursuit of our ancient agreement.”

Magos Tevla returned the bow, his head carefully not bypassing the hologram’s integrity.

++The Strom Dynasty is a loyal servant of the Emperor, as are we.++

Theatrically, the Magos swept his hand. “This,” Magos Tevla said with a shaky and very human voice, “is the first fruit of our labours. Behold the Svard-class frigate.”

Anton slammed the life button on his personal cogitator, then murmured a catechism to apologize for the rough handling. A day spent pouring over the schematics did not uncover much beyond his humbling ignorance of scientific matters.

Instead of decoding the scripts catalogued by lex-mechanics, he focused on the enginseer reports, not of those tech-priests who were prone to expound on theoretics. The enginseers wrote about mechanical matters, explaining improvements in terms he could understand, in relation to STC tolerances he had vague familiarity with.

Magos Tevla had been keen to bridge the gaps in his knowledge as it concerned history and not science.

The distant Voss forge world produced patterns of hulls that were considered innovative. The Lathes of Calixis had struck a bargain, according to Tevla, once it became clear that Svard Prime’s atmosphere would roil into the void as escaping plasma. A delegation from Voss arrived and performed plasmatic research, all the better to understand it.

Anton could not fathom why. How could a forge world lack understanding of plasma technology when they produced so many new voidships?

In exchange, some voidship technology was shared. Patterns, diagrams, Anton did not know what. The Svard , the first of its class, looked like no Voss voidship he had ever seen. Nor did it share the same pattern as most STC warships. It was angular, with a jutting chin instead of a solid prow. A massive weapon ran the length of its dorsal spine, not the keel.

It was long too, maybe to fit its two massive weapon systems. The Firestorm, Anton knew, was from Battlefleet Obscurus itself, built out of broken Sword hulls, sacrificing a battery to fit a single lance that ran most of the ship’s length. The completely new Voss-made Falchion, however, had a pair of torpedo tubes but retained the Sword’s traditional dual battery armament.

The Svard combined the main weaponry of both, forgoing batteries to dedicate more room for its torpedoes and lance systems. What wasn’t devoted to the two weapons was taken up by powerful plasma drives.

If the new frigate had just those specifications, Anton believed it could have eventually been accepted by Battlefleet Calixis. But the torpedo launchers were a rebuild of an ancient STC pattern, launching four torpedoes at a time with plasma accelerated bursts from the keel, of all places. That would require significant changes to doctrine. And the lance shared the same rumoured capabilities as the Apostate variant of the Chaos Infidel raiders. Rumours to some save the crew of the Blessed Enterprise that had felt those lances’ touch, and a few Navy voidsmen who survived the wolfpacks.

It was too innovative, and though he had no proof, he knew the enhancements to the hull that made the Svard possible came from observing the Yu’Vath’s effects on Svard’s moons. Frigates did not have ample room for such weapon systems without sacrificing hull integrity, or armour, and both of those improved compared with the either parent vessel.

What was it Tevla said? ‘Interwoven lattices’? He took a closer look at the hull schematics on the dataslates in front of him, finding duplicating patterns and an interconnectedness that sent a shudder through him.

A part of him wanted to turn around, steal the Svard , and send it into the nearest sun. Another part wanted to turn around and take the Svard as an escort.

The hologram of the frigate still hovered over the room.

What a grand monument to madness .

Magos Binar wasted no time delivering his judgement. He rose, the red robes of his office and station hanging limply on his massive form. The hood had been pulled back, revealing a head infested with technology.

“It is heresy.” Binar looked at each of the senior officers. “It must be destroyed.” With that, the Magos sat back down into his chair, leaning forward to indicate interest. Or challenge.

“Is there nothing that can be salvaged?” Anton asked, hating himself for it.

Binar’s head swivelled slowly towards the rogue trader. “Individually, some components may be redeemed, lord-captain,” the Magos said softly. “But their inclusion here, without sanction, is heresy. They are tainted by association, at the very least.”

“It’s a pretty ship,” Idris said disinterestedly.

“It’s pretty something all right,” Trelany said, analyzing the interlaced patterns of the ship’s schematics.

Commander Iosef blew out a breath and replaced the lost volume with the nearest drink on hand. “Couldn’t they just have, I don’t know, rammed that lance underneath--on the keel?” He shook his head. “I don’t share the lord-captain’s fascination with the Falchion-class, and torpedoes, but I do appreciate a solid lance strike. A Sword, think of it, with the Firestorm’s lance,” he shook his head, “that wouldn't have been too heretical would it?”

Magos Binar did not register any insult outwardly. “The combination of two patterns is often not heretical, though it would still require centuries of verification, if a thing were possible.”

Anton stood, the motion slow and exaggerated in its nonchalance. Their attention was drawn to him, and to the sound of a thick liquid refilling the bulb in his hand, the splashes and tinkling of ice as he swirled it.

He asked the only question that mattered to him.

“How do we get these hereteks off my ship?”

Posted at 2015-04-04 04:26:40+00:00

Great story here - if you ever come back to this I think a lot of people would enjoy reading it.

Into the Strom