Penny

Swords and Silver: The Southern Contracts

Bianca started to follow but Lavarak stepped infront of her hefting his shovel in bar. She tried to push past him but the dwarf would not be budged. The activity of the sappers had changed. They had ceased to clear the rubble and had begun to chip away at the ancient stone work, forcing bags of powder in behind the joists that Grimgi's miners had used to reinforce the ancient aqueduct. They were preparing to blow the tunnel to seal the breach into the city once the knights returned.

"No good lass, you'll never catch them without a mount," he pointed out.

"Someone has to guide the dwarves back to the tunnel," she objected, though even as she said it she knew it was foolish.

"Sure, guide a stunty to a tunnel, teach the bees to shit honey while you are at it. You are the First Scout, get your ass above ground and report. Or pick up a shovel and help," he suggested.

"Well fuck you too," Bianca replied, but she turned and ran back down the tunnel.

____

The city was in absolute chaos when Bianca emerged. Bells were ringing and armed men were rushing for the walls. Bianca joined the rush, heading for the gatehouse that she knew the Captain would be using as a command post. She climbed the step to the wall, smelling the reek of gunsmoke from the company's artillery pieces. The guns had been silent while the siege took form, a waste of time and powder to fire them before time. Now that the enemy were coming down on them in a tide, they were belching clouds of grape shot as fast as the crews could serve them. Not that it seemed to be helping, the whole plain was seething as the mass of frothing fanatics charged towards the walls, some of them literally frothing at the mouth. The Norgard sent sheets of arrows arcing down into them, the powerful weapons scything down men as they scrambled over the bodies of their fallen comrades. The attack wasn't entirely suicidal. The enemy carried hundreds of hastily constructed siege ladders, some little more than poles with knotted sting. One slapped the wall next to Bianca and she grabbed it and shoved it away. She felt something snag her glove and looked down to see thorns protruding from the leather.

"The ladder tops are poisoned!" she shouted, brushing the glove clean. Ahead of her a fanatic crested the wall, whirling a flail around his head. Bianca discharged her pistol into his back, sending him tumbling over the wall and into the town. She ducked uner another man's polearm and darted along the wall, squeezing between two Norgard rushing to repel the escalade.

"Captain!" she called, trying to make herself heard over the roar. Smoke was rushing up from the pyres but she could see the flash of steel back among the smoke. Torm had obviously reached the enemy. SHe just hoped they could rescue the mercs and get clear before the fanatics realized they had a force at their rear.

Pax Astra

It was difficult for Sabatine to see what was going on. She had brought breathing apparatus for the dive, but it was still crated. She hadn't anticipated Tiber taking such a direct approach. She peered down into the disturbed silt and bubbles, wishing she had thought to grab a pair of goggles.

"OH shit!" she cursed as she caught a flash of scales coiling around Tiber. She pulled her gladius free and aimed it down into the water. Plasma was minimally effective through water. Normally if she were planning water ops she would have used modded penetrators, not that she would have liked her odds of firing through water to hit a snake coiling around Tiber's body.

"Neptune's fucking cock," she cursed, then tossed the weapon to the ground and drew a heavy fighting knife. Ignoring the stab of panic at the idea of facing such a beast in its natural element, she dived into the water arrowing down through the cool sea. Tiber partially broke free at the last moment and surged upwards. The crown of his head caught her in the jaw and stars flashed before her eyes. Twisting in pain she blindly reached out and caught the snake. Scales rasped under her hands, making her queasy with their glassy texture. She slashed the knife downwards and dark blood exploded out into the water like a cloud and the snake went berserk. It thrashed with manic energy its coils battering Sabatine's body with the force of a kicking horse. She took one blow beneath the ribs and another across her thigh but it had let go of Tiber. They both broke the surface gasping and bloody. She tried to track the snake but the water was too disturbed to allow it. She could taste blood in her mouth and her vision was swimming. A few strong strokes carried her to the shore and she flopped onto the beach gasping.

"Not good with animals," she gasped, "good to know."

Pax Astra

"Well, if they are hassling me its only a matter of time before they start hasling you, probably planned on coming over here after they were done with me," she pointed out. Obviously, they were done with everything now, unless the priests were better informed than Sabatine believed they were.

"Maybe Gorm will learn a lesson and let it go," she offered by way of an olive branch. Tiber snorted.

"Yeah and maybe I'll marry the Empress and move to Rome," he grumbled.

"You are too tall for her," Sabatine remarked off handedly, earning an arched eyebrow. Sabatine sipped her drink but didn't elaborate. She hadn't yet advanced as far as a plan but as he spoke an inkling of one began to grow in her mind.

"How many tools do you think you can fit into say... six cubic meters?" she asked.

The answer, it turned out, was a considerable number. Considerable enough that the grasshopper sport flier wallowed dangerously as Sabatine lowered it towards the coral atol. The flier was a twin turbofan model, poorly balanced for hauling gear the four hundred clicks from the mainland. She boosted power and nosed down to compensate, the fans throwing up a wall of lime dust. She vivffed the fan to carry them out of the dust and set down with a crunch. She popped the hatch, letting in the salty iodine tang of the sea.

"This is the place?" Tiber yelled. Sabatine made a guesture to the lagoon at the center of the atol. The water was a cool cerullean blue but there was a dark shadow at the center, barely visible. Sabatine jumped down, boots crunching into the coral. She walked to the edge of the water. It was perhaps twenty meters down, large and vaugley arrow head shaped.

"A Vigilae 220 D assault shuttle," she told him, "lost during the Imperial pull out twenty years ago."

"Sabby..." Tiber began, "she is going to be a rusted bunch of bolts by now."

"Assault gunboats are heavily sealed against atmo way worse than the bottom of a lagoon," she explained. There had been cases of them operating in ammonia rich atmospheres for months. She knew of at least one case where a gunboat had been excavated from beneath the sand after more than a decade and been airbone with little more than a tune up.

"Surface level electronics will be toast probably, but the bones will be good," she assured him.

"Which means that the two of us just have to raise it from the bottom of the ocean," Tiber said skeptically.

"Exactly!"

Pax Astra

Sabatine's gait was slightly awkward, for the first time in well over a year she had her gladius slung over her shoulder, snubbed up tight so it wouldn't stop her operating a bird. The powerful plasma rifle was the standard issue for the Legion. It was reliable, powerful, and used a standard rechargable power cell. Like most Legionaires she had customized it heavily. The fore stock was folded and wrapped with tape to accomadate her firing style. The left hand plasma baffel had been partially stripped so that the discharge vented backwards and away from the user at a slight angle. It gave the weapon a tendency to singe her arm if it wasn't protected by a flight suit, it was a small price to pay to minimize the torque it imported when she fired it in zero G. Carrying the weapon again felt odd, both strange and familiar all at once. She didn't expect to need it, but she was carrying it now because by Minerva she really wished she had been carrying it earlier.

"A couple of Gorm's bully boys came around earlier," she told Tiber bluntly, spinning a chair so she could rest her crossed arms on top of it.

"Wanted to extort a gift from me they said," she continued in a studdied neutral tone. Settled Legionaires were exempt from all local taxes by Imperial degree. This made it much harder for local elites to subvert large numbers of soliders, as they were tough to put into debt and felt a natural sense of superiority to their neighbours.

"You have anything to drink?" she asked, suddenly feeling foolish for bringing a gun rather than a bottle of cider.

Lilaethan: A High-Casual/Low-Advanced Warhammer 40,000 Aeldari Roleplay

I'm sort of tempted to try my hand at farseeing...

Pax Astra

There was an old saying that there were no certainties in life save death and taxes. Sabatine Blackburn had spent long years contemplating death. Years with knuckles pressed white against flight yolks, years pressing herself into the dirt and praying to Minerva, Mars, and anyone else who would listen, that the cavalry would make it on time. Lonely hours strapped into crash webbing as particle beams rattled the hull of the fragile collections of electronics and explosives that carried men through the stars. Taxes had been less of a concern.

The warmth of the afternoon was a pleasant companion as Sabatine plucked opal fruit from her trees. Each fruit came away with a little snap as she pulled it free and set the small darkly reflective fruit into the pannier she had slung over her shoulder. She was a curious mishmash, her features squarish and romanesque, with her short hair held back by a red bandana and a gray sleeveless farmer’s smock, she could have been any peasant in the Empire. The navy surplus fatigue pants and heavy infantry boots, as well as the tattoos her smock left uncovered, told a different story. There were other signs as well, the muscles of her body were not those developed by a lifetime of laboring in an orchard, for all that was her current occupation.

Opal fruit trees stretched off in both directions in neatly ordered lines, running nearly a hundred feet down toward the stream bank where she had built a small dam out of stones and industrial plasticiser. The blades of a small windmill turned, lifting water from the pool to water the trees. The broad heart shaped leaves of the trees made shady corridors that channeled the breeze. Nearly two entire acres were now dedicated to opal fruit, which were her principal cash crop. Potatoes, carrots, corfu, trevet, and a few other food crops were planted in neat rectangular beds, adding their more intense green to the panorama. Small walls of stacked river stone, less than two feet tall ringed the trees. These were to discourage the local ungulates, though the sacrificial trees she had planted down by the woods did a better job of simultaneously dissuading pets and luring fresh meat to her gun. Sabatine sat the full pannier down and covered the gleaming fruit with wax cloth, then picked up a rake to gather the last few fruit from the top most boughs.

The sound of a buzzing engine drew Sabatine’s attention to a battered ATV rattling down the dusty track that linked her hundred acres to the Via Ateria. A driver and two passengers clung to it as it pulled around in front of her home. The house was a standard colony pod which had been improved by the addition of a wrap-around pouch and an open second story roofed with glazed tile. It was somewhat dwarfed by a large modular shed of corrugated iron that emanated the soft background hum of a fusion generator. Stretches of dirt, yet to regrow their covering of grass, telegraphed the location of recently buried conduits.

The atv rattled to a stop and the three men disembarked, two of them hopping from the sideboards while the third struggled to cut the engine. All three men were armed, though one of them probably felt like the pistol under his cloak was concealed. They swaggered over towards her, marching through her carrots in their haste to show her how much contempt they held her in.

“Mistress Blackburn,” one of them, a beefy looking man in early middle age, called in a surprisingly nasal voice. Sabatine watched them skeptically, leaning on her rake as they tramped through her vegetables. He clearly thought of himself as the leader, but it was hard to imagine that the little possy had enough structure to be in need of such a lofty office.

“Something I can do for you gentlemen,” she prodded, impatient to be done with whatever game they were playing at so she could get back to gathering her opal fruit. If she hustled she could be finished with this in time to take a swim before the sun went down. She whetted her lips at the thought of some of the passable beer she had brewed last winter.

“We missed you at the Ketcharch’s feast, we had hoped the whole community would show up to celebrate his elevation,” Nasal-voice scolded with false disappointment. Sabatine gave them a weary look. These puffed up dregs and their amateur theatrics. Truthfully she had forgotten about Ketcharch Gorm and his damned Founder’s Day celebration. She had little to do with the community, save for the factor that sold her opal fruit for her and an occasional shipment of tech from the star port.

“I’m not interested in local politics.” she tried. “Now If you don’t mind, I’ve got a lot to do.”

“It isn’t about politics,” Nasal-voice wheedled, “it is about respect.” He leaned up against one of the trees, clearly not understanding that the sap in bark would give him a serious burn once the sun photo metabolized it.

“We made it clear that everyone was supposed to bring a gift,” Nasal-voice continued, his words growing harder as he finally made his way to his point. Sabatine turned slightly to show her shoulder tattoo. It was a Lily atop a large stylized letter M, with the letters SPQR in pride of place.

“I don’t pay taxes, remember, I already did my service,” she reminded him. Nasal-voice and his goons bristled. Local toughs didn’t like it when the Galactic toughs showed up. It wasn’t necessarily smart to rub their faces in it, but she hadn’t spent the last ten years putting Mercedez Vilantre on the Imperial throne to be pushed around by rank amateurs.

“You aren’t in the fucking Legion anymore!” Nasal-voice snapped. “Maybe it is time you realized that. This is the Ketcharch’s territory and don’t get a pass because of some fucking tattoo!”

“Ill take it under advisement,” Sabatine said solemnly, hoping against hope that the thugs would just give up and leave. Judging by the nostril flare, that wasn’t going to happen.

“You won’t just take it under advisement! You will…” Nasal-voice began. Sabatine’s hand shot out and seized the wrist of one of the goons who was reaching towards the basket of opal fruit. The thug froze in shock and Nasal-voice’s eyes widened with anger.

“Look here Mars,” Sabatine said in resignation. Nasal-voice went for his gun. Sabatine wrenched the thug’s thumb back with a sickening crack. The thug screamed in agony as Sabatine yanked him forward, tripping him over the low stone wall. Her other hand whirled the rake in her massive left handed arc that drove the metal tines into the second henchman’s face. Blood flashed red in the sunlight as he reeled back, clawing at his bloody face. Nasal-voice pulled a showy chrome pistol free of his cloak. The rake spun like a bo-staff cracking into the gunman’s wrist and sent it spinning away into the carrots. Broken thumb half pushed himself up off the wall, just in time for his face to meet the sole of her boot, driving his head down into the stone with a crack that sprayed blood and teeth from his mouth. Nasal-voice was back peddling fast, but not fast enough to avoid the straight armed lunge the drove the end of the rake into his solar plexus. The wind exploded out of his chest and he went to his knees, eyes building. These rubes might think they knew something about violence, but even bar fighting in the Legion taught one more about the actual practice. Sabatine brought the rake back up into a guard, then drove it down hard into the back of Broken-teeth-and-thumb’s head. The thin bone crunched and the thug thrashed and then went lip, a pool of blood spreading out into the dust.

“No!” We can work this out,” Nasal-voice, wheezed, trying to scramble backwards away from Sabatine.

“Sure we can,” Sabatine agreed, stepping over the wall and pressing the flat of the rake against his throat. Further words choked off as she closed his windpipe, his fingers scrabbling at the bloody tines.

“Look..here..Mars!” she grunted leaning her whole weight on the rake until she felt cartilage pop and collapse. Leaving Nasal-voice gasping his last, she picked through the ruin of her carrots until she found the pistol he had dropped. Rake-to-face was desperately trying to get the ATV started, blood masked his face, one of his eyes torn away by the blow of Sabatine’s improvised weapon. Sabatine thumbed back the hammer and fired. It took her three shots to bring him down with a shot to the chest. He slithered off the ATV and collapsed to the ground in a heap. Sabatine looked down at Nasal-voice who was turning an unhealthy shade of purple. Sabatine sighed. Now she was never going to finish in time to take a swim.

Swords and Silver: The Southern Contracts

The irony was that if Torm hadn't driven the enemy to insanity with his hair brained attack they would have been well and truly fucked. Of course that didn't mean that they weren't well and truly fucked now Bianca thought as she heaved on a heavy pry bar to shift another ancient stone out of the way. The aqueduct was huge, but so old it had faded entirely from the memory of the people of Palona. How Grimgi had discovered it she had no idea. Probably it had been stumbled across while working on the sap to bring his guns closer, or perhaps the innate tunnel sense of dwarven kind. In long years living with Cadger and his folk, she had learned the knack of keeping her bearings beneath the earth, the same knack that made her a good scout, but she lacked the kinship for rock and stone the dwarves seemed to be born with. Grimgi's dwarves had cleared up to within a dozen feet of the cellar, but they had been waiting for the siege to begin before they cleared the last few feet. The dwarf who had brought the warning had torn through the last few feet in a frenzy, but Bianca and the sappers were working furiously to widen the gap enough to allow for horses. Left to her own devices she would have just sent infantry true, but concerned as he was for the fate of fellow mercenaries, the Captain wanted men on horseback to make the rescue attempt.

"We got this Bee if you want to go," Lavarak, one of the senior sappers told her. He heaved a shovel full of silt forward through the hole they were enlarging. There was no time to establish a bucket line to take the spoil out.

"You sure," she asked, dropping the prybar.

"You scout and I'll sap," he responded sourly. She was well known among the sappers as Cadger's niece, but that respect didn't go so far enough that she could tell them how to do their jobs and except no come back. Bianca nodded and drew her sword.

"Right, sorry," she said and then slithered through the hole. The interior of the aqueduct was massive and crumbling. She moved swiftly along the ancient structure, noting that in places the stone had crumbled and been buttressed with fresh cut timber. It was possible whoever was in command of the enemy army didn't even know about the passage. A human miner would certainly have crowed about such a discovery, but dwarves were secretive when it came to tunnels, even when they had no reason to be. She followed the stonework for a minute or two before emerging into a gravel pit, with one face gently slopping up. A large spoil pile lay infront of it, along with mining equipment and the other tools of digging work. Pressing stealthy up the slope, she peered over the rim. Trumpets were beginning to sound as the enemy army prepared to try their insane escalade. Two large structures had been built over night, pens to hold prisoners. Grass had been piled up against the side and was already blazing as the fires were kindled to begin the sacrifice.

"Shit," Bianca cursed, and bolted back down the tunnel to relay the information to the Captain.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

The Helix 2 was probably the best weapon credits could by when it came to taking down a big apex predator. As a weapon for confronting a blood mad group of feral tribesmen, it had severe disadvantages. I fired again, blasting the arm from one of the onrushing natives. It wasn't a great shot, merely the result of a target rich environment. The spent powercell ejected and clattered across the deck of the cargo-10. I fumbled for another shell but the wave of natives was already breaking around the vehicle. Several fetched it blows with axes or clubs, as though it were a great beast. Iducked and pulled my side arm from a holster in my imitation hunter garb. The gun was an Amrak Arms Thousander, a heavy chromed pistol with two barrels, one large and one larger. I gripped the weapon with both hands the way I had been shown in the simulator. Two tribesmen were already trying to clamber over the side, stinking of sweat and the rancid grease they used in their hair. I leveled the pistol at the nearest but before I could squeeze the heavy trigger, the man was yanked away so violently his shoulders joints popped free. Lucius Raj, smashed the unfortunate tribesman against the side of the cargo 10 like a whip. Bones cracked and blood flew in all directions. The Thunder Warrior dropped the body as two of the enemy, braver or stupider than the rest, hacked at the post-human with weapons that had been old before M1. He crushed the skull of one with a fist and then seized the second with both hands, ripping him in half in a bloody display of strength. I watched in awestruck amazement, captivated by the shocking level of violence that Lucius could summon. A las bolt glanced of the combing beside me, singing the small hairs on my hand. I pulled the trigger on reflex and the gun hammered, the round flying Throne knew where.

Lucius raged through them like a human scythe, his building rage venting itself explosively on the hapless ferals. They came on regardless, shockingly willing to confront the Thunder Warrior and the spatter of gunfire. Their experience of las weapons had obviously stolen their fear of firearms, but that didn’t explain their willingness to die. I fired three rounds from the thousander, dropping one of them, wincing each time as I felt the shock in my wrists. Then I clicked the fire selector to the second chamber and fired. The breaching found roared and cut down three tribesmen as they tried to clamber onto the cargo 10. I saw two of our local guides go down to a raging berserker with a double handed axe, beheading one and then the other with a quick reversed stroke before a las pistol bolt blasted his skull apart. As he fell a dozen men screamed and fell to the dirt, twitching and convulsing.

A minute later it was over, the last of the raiders pulled down by Lucius who raged off into the woods in search of further victims. That was a better result than him venting his fury on us so I didn’t try to intervene. I climbed down from the back of the cargo 10, shocked at the extent of the carnage.

“Hadrian?” I called out in concern. He emerged from behind cover, smoking weapon in hand. I relaxed when I saw him and remembered my own weapon. I slid the thousander back into its holster, unwilling to risk trying to reload it in a manner that might cast doubt on my supposed expertise.

“Savages with las guns,” Selencia mused. I bent down and picked up the las gun. The weapons are, of course, ubiquitous across the Imperium. This model was pearl white with brass accents, its handle fashioned to look like natural wood.

“Very nice las guns,” I observed. It was far better made than the simple stamped metal models I was familiar with. Nice as it was, it was still rusted from lack of maintenance. I wondered if the locals even knew how to reload them.

“It is an Espair Pattern VII, probably manufactured on the forge world of Memdon or one of the subsidiary manufactorum worlds,” Lazarus supplied, picking up one of the weapons and working the action open to examine some internal detail. He sounded as though he had written a dissertation on the subject, though knowing the Skitarii, it was simply something he had encountered and uploaded into his internal data banks.

“Right, but why is it so nice?” I persisted, setting the gun down on the wheel guard of the transport.

“It is manufactured under limited license for specific clients,” Lazarus explained, without providing any actual information.

“What clients?” I pressed.

“Some noble houses, but primarily for the Eclesiarchy,” Lazarus allowed.

“Of course the Eclesiarchy has no need of las guns,” Hadrian said dryly, “being forbidden from keeping men under arms and all.” Everyone laughed at the notion that the church might abide by the ancient and toothless edict.

“So why are las guns made for Fraternis Militia in the hands of people who probably worship the Sun and the Great God Goo?” I asked. No one had any ready answer.

“Why did they keep coming like that?” Clara Strong asked, idly feeding shells into the rotating drumb of her weapon.

“If they are savages they ought to have fouled themselves when Lucius went berserk, I know I felt the urge,” she admitted. I turned over one of the corpses with my boot and looked into the dead man’s eyes.

“Mental conditioning,” I said after a moment, “someone used memetic conditioning to make retreat impossible.”

“Warp trickery and smuggled weapons, it sounds like the spor of chaos to me,” Clara mused.

Penny's Pencils

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

Something about the situation didn't sit well with me. I had met a number of Inquisitorial operatives and to a woman they had been hard bitten and capable. Samara had been on a world reknowned for its hunters, it made no sense that she had been taken by surprise. I had spent some time trying to learn to use my gifts in a more forensic fashion, but it was still a work in progress. I was confident that with time I could contribute something but problably no way Hadrian would be comfortable with, and that wouldn't send the local running screaming. I wasn't ceratin that would be an entirely bad thing. I wasn't sensing any overt deception from any of them, but they would certainly gossip once they got back to the starport. If there was a chaos presence on the world, they would certainly have links in the port.

"There are enemies approaching," Lucius rumbled, his eyes drawn to the woods to the east. A flock of the native aviforms were alighting from the trees. He stood up off the fender of the cargo ten, the suspension relaxing at least a foot to be rid of the thunder warrior's weight. Pure aggression radiated off the trans-humans mind and I felt my hands flex in an unconcious urge to rend and tear. I tried to calm him but his rage was beginning to build.

"Let us move on," I declared formally. Getting Lucius away from potential battle might stop him going berserk.

"Hostile's approaching," Lazarus stated, spinning to face the treeline. The locals were begining to pay attention now, as the tension in the air became general.

"Let's mount up," I began. A blizard of las fire ripped from the treeline. Bolts flew everywhere. A nearby fruit pod exploded into steam and dropped burning fragments down onto the sand. Several bolts struck the Cargo 10s pinging away with flecks of burning paint. I jumped over the edge of the cargo 10 and rolled into the compartment to take shelter, then, remembering I was supposed to be a bad ass hunter, crawled froward to where my weapons case was stowed. The las fire was a blizzard, light was everywhere, snapping and crackling overhead. I opened the case and touched the controls as Lazarus had shown me. The rifle was nearly two meters long, a Transvasuer Helix 2, meant for heavy game. It lifted on grav compensator units which made it possible for one person to handle. I swung it towards the trees and sighted down the autotargeter. The trees jumped into view and I saw our attackers. They were dressed in furs with coats of chain mail and leather that clashed with the las guns they were firing. I was no soldier but even I recognised they werent doing a great job of it.

"They don't know how to use them," I said, then squeezed the trigger as my sight drifted over a one eyed brute with a pair of weapons he was firing one handed. The weapon crashed, a minaturized las cannon blast ripping from the barrel. It struck the inept gunman in the chest, blowing his chest appart in flaming steam, his arms and legs flying off in different directions from his vaporized torso. With a howl, the natives charged, firing wilding as they came, some throwing away las guns to draw swords and axes.