[@Quinntessential][@DrunkasaurusRex][@BCTheEntity][@Hank][@TemplarKnight07]


Merchant-Captain Niklaus Leopold Nico watched the flashing images of his command console as the gun-cutter continued its trajectory into one of the many large holds within his converted Endeavour-class Cruiser, a vessel of over sixty-seven thousand crew and twenty-two megatonnes, named [i]The Pride of Thran[/i].

Along with a handful of escorts, he had been commanded by his superiors to follow in the wake of the automated assault-craft which had first ejected the mercenary contingent into the very bowels of the colony, and to swoop into action if anything seemed to be going wrong – and something had most definitely gone wrong! He had watched with his own eyes the plasma explosion, which could be seen from orbit with the naked eye, as it devoured what had once been a promising asset to the Ordos Thran Conglomerate and was now nothing but vapour.

“Those fools,” he hissed and wheezed through the grille that had long ago replaced his mouth, raising himself up on eight spindly legs of metal and clacking toward the door, “who do they think they are?!”

Making his way through the corridors of the mighty vessel, sweating ratings and officers in their pristine uniforms moving aside at his approach, the Captain burst into the allocated hangar with a terrible fury – the vast holding cell for space-faring vessels decked out in the sickly yellow of the Conglomerate, banners fluttering from the almost cathedral high ceiling, servitors milling about and other craft sitting like silent giants all in a row.

Once the gun-cutter landed with a slight bump Niklaus was there, his hands tapping impatiently against the metal where his hips would have been, his bulk robed in garments of yellows and greens and a hood of red obscuring his pallid face for the moment.

As the ramp lowered and the mercenaries disembarked, the Naval troopers flanking the ramp on either side, his piercing blue eyes went from one face to the next before he finally spoke up, his augmented voice sounding as if it were coming from a megaphone rather than a person.

“Who can tell me what the Emperor happened?! Which one of you destroyed my precious colony...[b]why[/b]?!”