Penny

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

I followed Hadrian and Ortega into the primary control chapel, keeping well behind the combatants. To my horror I realized that most of these poor folk were simply loyal Imperial subjects who had been misled by their corrupted masters. That wasn’t entirely true as I saw a handful of Haverni tribesmen cut down by three rapid coughs of Ortega’s weapon. He let the empty shotgun drop and snug up on its sling as he unshipped his powermaul and brought it crackling to life, driving the but off it into an onrushing zealot hard enough to spurt blood from the unfortunate man’s mouth.

Lazarus pointed to a wide arched door through which the cable conduits poured so thickly you couldn’t walk on stone to reach it. A half dozen enemies were forming up to block our progress, though how they planned to do that was unclear. It became a moot point as Lazarus fired his trans-uranic arquebus into the group. The report of the weapon was so loud and so bright that it stunned everyone in the room with its report. Most of the leading three enemies simply dissolved into a prismatic burst of expanding tissue. The survivors were hurled backwards like ragdolls, already dead from the hydrostatic shock of the blast. It is easy to think of Lazarus as a techpriest but he was also a soldier, scrambling up over the conduits with the speed and acumen any Imperial Guard trooper would be proud of. I followed with considerably less grace, the archway looked like a mouth with the conduits forming a braided and extended tongue, an image I did not find comforting. Cables rolled and twisted beneath my boots but I kept both my feet and my grip on my force staff. From somewhere ahead of us the opening bars of Gloria Imperator began to play, crackling with the traditional vox static.

The broadcast was starting.

The control chapel itself was a massive circular room with a raised central diaz. Atop the diaz stood a stone altar laid out with relics and incense burners. Great column soared three stories into the air, oozlite chased with gold, which supported a domed ceiling painted with sporting cherubs around a triumphant Emperor. A large gilded aquila hung behind the altar backed back carvings of the lives of the Emperor and his Primarchs. Thousands of niches marked the walls like the holes in Cembrian cheese. Each of these had once been an ossuary, but the bones of the faithful dead had been unceremoniously dumped onto the floor to form a knee deep carpet of tangled bones. Each ossuary now held a scroll. I tried to make a quick mental count but there must have been hundreds of thousands. Statues of saints, twenty feet tall, ringed the circular space. Perhaps half of them had been draped with chains which suspended cages in which naked men and women were suspended. Electrical cabling and neural linkages had been plugged into their eyes and spines, spilling outwards like a spiderweb towards the altar but not visible by the pict casters which would capture the service. This was why the Under Council had been interested in buying black market psykers. The broadcast was not just to be physical, but psychic. They were making the broadcast station into a psychic antenna. I shuddered to think of how many millions it would reach.

Behind the altar stood a priest in full vestments including a golden mitre. The distance was too great for my eyes but I was sure this was the priest I had met in the underhive. He raised both his hands, beginning his address. I lifted my pistol and fired, the bullet ricocheting off the altar. I tasted violets in the back of my throat as psychic energy began to flow outwards from the captive psykers.

“Lazarus!” I shouted but as I turned towards the Skitarii I saw three figures burst from side alcoves. They were squat and heavily muscled, twisted and grotesque. They plowed through the bones like snow clearing engines, flinging cracked remains in all directions. At first I took them for mutants, but then I registered the stim injectors and pacem visors wired into their skulls, as well as the long neural whips which had been grafted to the stumps of their arms. Arco-flagellants. Men and women who had been condemned for blasphemy to serve as living assault engines, their nervous systems rewired for pure aggression. I could smell the stink of chems from here as their biology was hyper charged for war and pain and suffering was pumped into their cerebrums, filling them with the raw need to kill as the only answer to their agony. The charged in eeire silence, with only the clatter of flying bones, like a million rolling dice, to accompany them.

Above me the priest was beginning to drone into his opening address. I fired at him again, this time the shot glanced away not from the alter, but from a shimmering veil of psykannic energy he was drawing in from the unwilling donors. Cursing I turned and shot twice into the nearest captive psyker, his body jerked twice and went still, blood dripping from the cage as his body went limp, the power moving down his neural plugs sputtering and dying. If I could kill all the donor minds perhaps I could shoot the priest… but there was no time. Lazarus fired his weapon again, reducing one of the arco--flagellants and six feet of bone covered floor into a blue-white flare of calcium fire. The remaining two charged on as though they had not noticed. I fried at one of the onrushing brutes. A slaught injector on its shoulder burst in a spray of chemicals. I had just enough time to be proud of hitting something with my handgun when the bow wave of bones hit me, throwing me from my feet and down into the swirling maelstrom of the dead.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

The wreckage of the Valkyrie tumbled from the antennae in what looked like slow motion. It turned a half rotation in the air and then struck the edge of the turret emitting a dull whump of combusting petrochems as it tumbled off the edge and into the abyss. I didn't want to think of where it would land.

"Damn," Ortega commented laconically, "you people are hell on equipment."

Perhaps it was the stress, perhaps it was a kind of mania, but at that moment despite my history with Ortega I couldn't help but snort a laugh. I tried to choke it back, failed, and redoubled my laughter, the sound echoing weirdly off the forest of antennae and the oozlite walls of the turret. Hadrian was smiling through gritted teeth and even Lazarus managed a short binaric burst that I had learned to interpret as amusement.

"You should see the other guy," Clara deadpanned clearly thinking of the destruction we had wrought on the heretic operation back on Havernos which brought another round of laughter. I think that Ortega even managed a slight smile at that, though he assures me that it never happened.

"Alright, lets move," Hadrian declared leading us to one of the ornate stained glass windows which he casually shattered with a round from his sidearm. I suppose once you crash a gunship into the side of a building, you have kind of given up on stealth anyway.

The interior of the broadcast station was a study in contradictions. Soaring Imperial architecture had been combined with the techno-sorcery of the Mechanicus in a way that was inherently jarring to my sensibilities. Great ropes of snaking cabling had been draped over statues of Imperial Saints. Votive candles had been plastered over the top of Mechanicus prayer slips in a way that seemed designed to start fire. Cogitator banks had been jammed into confessional alcoves and generators and power splicers lay atop what must once have been devotional altars. The whole place reeked of the techno-sorcerous smell of hot plastec with an overlay of tallow candles and old incense.

"It is remarkable that these machine spirits continue to cooperate," Lazarus remarked acidly, plucking one of the prayer slips and scowling at the date inscribed.

"Any chance you can give us some insight on to how to make them less cooperative with our enemies?" I asked sweeping the area with my force staff as though it were a firearm.

"The main control chapel is two levels down, if we reach it we should be able to..."

"For the Emperor!" screamed a half dozen voices in unison followed by the unmistakable roar of chainswords. Six figures burst from an alcove, all of them were naked save for simple leather armor and prayer scrolls attached to an impressive number of body piercings. The flesh beneath was heavily tattooed with Imperial cult iconography and verses from the scriptures. Each carried a chainsword nearly as tall as a man with incense burners hanging from their pommels and wore a thin strip of cloth over their eyes. Judging from the way they moved the blindfolds didn't do much to impair their vision.

Ortega swung his shotgun around but the zealots were already on top of him, he batted away a slice that would have disembowled a grox and sprang sideways, driving an armored fist into the side of the first attacker. A muscular male leaped at me, intent on cleaving me in half but I pointed my force staff at him and screamed, focusing my terror through the weapon. Without contact with the ground the psychic blast punched him back through a cogitator bank in a shower of blue sparks. Clara tried to duplicate Ortega's move but was a heartbeat slow, the las carbine she was carrying sheared in two by the whirling teeth of the chain blade.

"Inquisition, cease and desist!" Lazarus boomed, a holographic representation of the Inquisitorial Electoo blossoming in front of him.

"The Heretic will approach in pleasing guise, with signs and portents of authority! Be not deceived as Saint Kayban we will cast out the unclean!" one of the zealots roared.

"Cast out the unclean!" the rest howled in unison. One of them charged through the hololithic projection only to discover that Lazarus was a soldier as well as a priest. He had used the distracton of the light to slip to the side and as the zealot charged passed he smashed the butt of his trans-uranic arquebus into the side of the chainswordsman's head with a crunch of splintering bone. The berserker dropped to the grounds convulsing and spraying a mixture of blood and brains from his nostrils. Hadrian, with his duelist reflexes parried a whirring chain blade in a shower of sparks and side stepped, neatly running another attacker through beneath the armpit. Normal attackers might have broken at this point but these men and women were beyond reason, literally frothing at the mouth to kill for the Emperor. I thought of the Inquisitor we had encountered on Havernos, doubtless the cult had prepped them by plying them with lies about us.

"Emmaline!" Hadrian shouted as one of the two surviving attackers, an incredibly muscular woman, leaped at me, swining her blade overhead in a two handed cleave that showered through electrial cabling like an axe through butter. I dove out of the way but she was ready, landing gracefully and pivoting to give me the coup de grace. I lifted my force staff and focused my will.

"No!" I yelled. I could not have broken her mind in time to prevent the swing, but I didn't need to. Severed cables sprang forward like living things, wrapping around the woman's wrists, ankles and midriff, catching her in the air as surely as though she had ran through a web of spiders silk. The cables wrapped around her hands and discharged sparking electricity into her until the chain blade fell from her hands, its blades whirring down to as stop once the activation stud was freed. Ortega's shotgun boomed and I looked up to see that the remaining attackers were down.

"Die Heretic filth!" my suspended zealot raved, jerking this way and that hard enough to rip cabling from the walls but without enough strength to free herself entirely.

"We are no Heretics!" I shouted, driving the point home with my will, pouring in images of our battles on Havenos, with Baphomet until I felt the edges of her mind strain. I caught glimpses of her life, begging for food outside a templum. Sneaking in to steal from the offetery with a hunger in her belly so hot it nearly made me cry out. Golden light pouring through a stained glass window, so beautiful it made her fall to her knees in awe at the divinity of the Emperor. Preaching on a street corner while she stood atop a stylus that had once held a statue while people threw her coins. A confessor touching her on the shoulder and speaking words of service. She let out a despairing wail and slumped.

"Inquisitor!" she wailed as the weight of what I had shone her crashed home.

"Forgive us!" she whimpered. Ortega looked on skeptically above the sights of his smoking shotgun. Hadrian was grimacing in pain. Clara was bleeding, a deep gash on her arm she was binding with tape.

"Elektra," I said, her name on my tongue from the psychic contact.

"You will take us to the control chapel, do you understand me?" I demanded. She quivered, her lips moving rapidly in what must have been a prayer but too low for me to hear. Sparks and smoke rose all around us from the wreckage of conduits and cogitators cut to scrap or shot through in the brief firefight. Her eyes cut sideways to Hadrian.

"Yes Inquisitor, I will obey," she gasped, tears cutting runnels through the grime on her face.

Death's Edge: A Warhammer Story

My vision was cloudy. I cannot explain it save by comparison with the fugue of some drug or wine laced with the milk of the poppy. Something strange and alien was burning through my blood like a days worth of fever come all at once. Someone was shaking me and I could hear voices far away. The voice seemed wrong somehow, as though it were speaking in a language I had forgotten I had once spoken. A jolt brought me fully awake. I screamed and scrambled away from whatever it was that had burned me. To my shock it was Kian looking concerned and surprise. My hand went to my neck and found it clean and unbroken. For a moment I thought maybe I had imagined the whole thing, and I might have, save for the faint scent of sandalwood in the air.

"Camilla?" he asked, his eyes wide and worried. I pulled my hand away from my neck. Had Kian's touch burned me? Perhaps he had been trying to wake me with some spell.

"Guy," I managed, "and..." I trailed off getting unsteadily to my feet. The fire in my blood was still there, burning away my confusion and fatigue. I managed to stumble out the door and to the railing. Below in the courtyard were four dead men. Of the woman, the wagon, and Guy du Pounce there was no sign save for a swinging open gate that banged in the wind.

______________

Rumor had filtered down to the streets before midnight. All three Triumvir's had fled, Marco to his estates in the south, Imelda to Luccini. Romeo was rumored to have seized a ship and sailed west, though quite where remained uncertain. The condottieri had rallied and installed Livonia de la Camarilla as Dictator until new elections could be called and the city guard had ratified the choice. She seemed to be a minor noble known in the city, but quite how she had acquired enough gold bribe the condottieri into following her was a mystery to the populace. I thought I had a pretty good idea, especially seeing it was rumored that Guy du Pounce had pledged himself to protect her until 'the danger' had passed.

I didn't dare go back to the palace, not even for my lute and few possessions. The image of the woman still pulsed powerfully in my mind, and there was a dark attraction to returning to her side. Instead we went to a boarding house on the west side of the city. Remas had no port, but this was a place where merchants and beached sailors gathered. We purchased a room with our few remaining coins and I collapsed into sleep, too tired to answer any of Kian's questions or ask any of my own. I had uneasy dreams. I saw vast deserts and strange courts, odd writing on ancient sandstone walls. I tasted sandalwood, incense, and the bitter taste of something astringent and unpleasant.

When I woke, Kian was dozing in a chair across from me. He stirred as I sat up giving me a crooked smile.

"Aren't I the one who is supposed to fall straight to sleep after?" he quipped. I smiled, feeling better for the jest.

"Seems to have done you good though, damn," he admitted frankly. I turned to look at myself in the mirror. My skin almost glowed, my features seemed subtly different, a touch more precise and sculpted some how. I touched my cheek and was relieved to find that it was warm.

"We should go," I declared, standing up as though to run out the door right that instant. Kian held up a hand in bar.

"Yes but go where. Word came an hour or so ago that the Dictator has closed the port at Astia," he explained. Astia was the major port of Remas, at the terminus of the Via Caravansia that lead to the city. Good were treked overland by a guild of wagoneers, the adminstration of which was so rich a position that no Triumvir was ever elected without their tacit approval.

"Apparently one Hortiman Shultz and his escort were on the last ship out," Kian told me stretching his arms over his head in an exaggerated yawn.

"I should have told him to keep his tail between his legs on the way here, we would have made way better time."

"Kian..." I began, unable to think of quite what to say. I sat back down on the bed.

"I'm sorry."

Bodacious Bounties: Bounty Hunter AU

Alpha Centari was an old system. Like Trantor, it had been one of the first human colonies, reached in the ancient past by slow boat generation ship. Unfortunately old didn't mean important. FTL travel had been invented just a few years after the colonists arrived, and they had no doubt been shocked when ships from Earth appeared above them, having taken only a month to cover the distance that had taken generations. With unfettered access to the stars, humans had moved on to brighter prospects, leaving Alpha Centari as a backwater. AC did have one advantage however, and that was the generational wealth that the colonists had brought with them. After nearly five hundred years of star travel, every colonist that arrived on AC was a billionaire due to the miracles of compounding interest and the fact that Earth hadn't collapsed during their long voyage through the dark. With that huge wealth AC had become the banking capital of human universe, investing their new found wealth far and wide. Even after the collapse AC had remained safe and secure, a place of banks, counting houses, and above all casinos.

The Dragonfly shuddered out of subspace some distance from the primary. Even so it was only a moment or two before guardships hailed them. The guardships were sleek destroyers, painted in the colors of the banking clans which paid their upkeep. They were fancier than any frontline Hegemony warship, but there was no doubt they were as deadly as anything aloft.

"Can confirm, I am an armed yacht seeking repairs," Jocasta said into her comm unit. The past few days had been tense but Neil hadn't yet tried to jump her. He sat in one of the bridge consoles, fiddling with the comm system. Behind him Cygi stood with a comically large hammer, arching an eyebrow at Jocasta. Neil turned and the AI vanished before he could catch sight of her. When he turned back she reappeared this time dressed as a pirate with a long and evil looking knife with which she pantomimed cutting his throat. Cygi, it seemed, had opinions about collecting that bounty. Jocasta wrinkled her nose, the smell of cooked human still hanging in the ventilation system.

"Yes I have docking fees," Jocasta responded. There was a burble in her ear.

"Sorry I said I have docking fees, not that I wanted to buy the dock," she responded. Another burble. Evidently they had heard that one before. She transmitted her credits and a green navigation beacon lit up, aimed at one of the palatial orbital stations.

"Well we can land, but we are going to need to find some cash and fast," she said.

Death's Edge: A Warhammer Story

I held my hands up, under no illusions that my reflexes would best a seasoned Brettonian Knight. All I had for a weapon was a knife for Myrmidia's sake. The knight made a negligent gesture to a bed in one of the plater walled rooms.

"Sit down Signoritta," he directed. Reluctantly I complied. Du Pounce was a knight but I knew too many men who spoke of high principles only to abandon them to temptation. I sat down, my hand positioned as closely to the hilt of my dagger as I could without being too obvious about it. The mattress was clean and newly filled with down and straw, for all the outside evidence of dilapidation, it was obvious that Marco had been using the place.

"So what now?" I asked, shifting my hand slightly closer to my knife.

"You needn't worry about your virtue Camilla," a sensual female voice declared. Through the door came the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I know that phrase gets thrown around alot but you have to understand, I was brought up in the Convent, where women fit for marble statues teach your lessons and tuck you in at night. This woman was beyond gorgeous, her skin seemed to glow despite a slightly exotic caste, her cheekbones high, her lips full, her face heart stoppingly lovely. Her figure was slim and classical, lacking my curves but making up for it with a mathematical precision of proportions. I started at her in amazement and Du Pounce sank to his knees.

"My Lady," he whispered reverently. My mind told me to spring to my feet and plunge the dagger into his neck but I couldn't even twitch an eyelid for fear it would take my gaze off her.

"My you are a pearl before swine aren't you," she declared, seeming to float across the room towards me. She was dressed in the height of Tillean fashion, a dress of dark burgundy with black lace accents, corseted with dark leather inlaid with gold and semi-precious stones. Expensive jewelery of a foreign fashion I didn't recognize was at her wrists and throat, glistening with blood red rubies.

"Perhaps there is more than one treasure to be found this night," she mused, then paused and cocked her head at me in a peculiarly avian motion.

"You are one of Xanthippe's girls?" she asked in amazement, her beautiful lips curving into a delighted smile. "Goodness she will be furious."

I had no idea who Xanthippe was, not that it much mattered because I couldn't speak, I was still paralyzed by her beauty. She was very clos now her dark hypnotic eyes holding mine. I could feel my heart thundering in my chest, I could smell the soft scent of sandalwood on her, like the wind of the desert. She leaned closer and I thought she was going to kiss me, which was fine with me I am ashamed to tell you. She put one of her hands on the back of my neck and wrapped the other around my waist, cradling me like a lover. She was very cold, like the marble statues she reminded me off, but the cold was forgotten as my own heat filled my body as she kissed my neck. I felt an electric tingle and something sharp the pulse in my neck wobbled and I felt something being drawn out of me. I started to swoon, then something began to pulse into my veins, making my nerves tingle with fire.

"Mistress!" the voice came from very far away. I wasn't at first convinced it wasn't mine, but then it repeated and this time I could make out Du Pounce's voice.

"Mistress!" he called again, urgent and insistent. The lips lifted from my neck and she let out something between a sigh and a snarl. The sense of loss was unimaginable. I tried to reach out for her, but she let me go, dropping my stunned body to the bed.

"Deal with him and bring me the girl," she ordered Du Pounce, dabbing at her lips with a silken handkerchief that came away bloody. My skin prickled like sun burn and I tried to force myself to move, to go after the vision of loveliness, but I couldn't move. My nerves were as fire, burning in my body without giving me leave to move. I heard the rattle of the wagon as the horses took up the strain. Groaning I forced myself to roll, falling off the bed and hitting the floor as my muscles refused to take the strain. Du Pounce was gone but I could hear shouting. Inch by painful inch I forced myself to my knees, reaching up to touch my neck, my finger tips came away with black brackish blood.

Death's Edge: A Warhammer Story

The house was of the old villa style, four walls around a central court yard ringed by stone walls that had been topped with wrought iron. Beyond the wall gardens that had once been neat but were now rather wild and gone to seed provided a ring of greenery. The stucko walls had not been painted in long years and patches flaked off here and there. To my complete lack of surprise the place was guarded, not obviously, but I saw silhouettes passing behind windows and picked up the occasional murmer of conversation.

I knew I was right, Marco was using this place to stash the gold while things settled down. That was a wise move condotierre could be relied upon to follow orders of those paying them, but a chest of gold like the one the Imperials had delivered was a pay day no mercenary would likey ignore. In the palace it would be seized by whomever Marco set to guard it. Here in an old town house, he could depend on a few trusted men to safeguard his ill gotten windfall. Just a few men. It was all that stood between me and enough gold to set myself up for years. Maybe a nice villa in Luccinni seeing I seemed to have made a friend in Maximo.

Getting in was easy, a simple matter of climbing the wall and vaulting across the open space to a second story windowsill. I pulled myself up and onto the terracotta tiles, crabbing my way along till I found an attic window. It was locked, but it only took a knife a few moments to pry the old glass out of the half rotting frame, then I slid inside. The attic was dark and musty and I took care to place my feet on ceiling joists as I crossed to a small door which I lifted up and slipped down into a dusty servants chamber. Peeking round I saw that the gold was in a wagon in the central courtyard, covered by a tarp but guarded by four men.

All four men were very still. Not very still. Dead. Dead at their posts so as not to appear that they had been killed. My stomach dropped.

"I am afraid that this gold is not for your signoritta," a voice from beside me said. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Guy du Pounce stepped from a doorway and lifted his longsword to point the tip at my neck.

"You will be my guest until the new governess of this town is installed I think," he declared loftily.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

"We have Magistratum en route," Ortega confirmed over the howl of the valkyrie's turbofans. The Arbite was now dressed in full black tactical armor along with the black cloak of his office. He carried a powerful looking automatic shotgun along with the battered and much used power maul with which he had ended the life of the cultist in the manufactorium a subjective lifetime ago. Hadrian clung to a stanchion, his face pale. Selenica had said that the drugs she was giving him could only keep him going for so long. He needed to give his augmetic kidney time to proper bond with his tissues. He was risking worse damage by being upright at all, much less preparing to attack.

"What about the PDF?" Hadrian demanded. I knew that he had issued orders for troops to be brought to readiness, but I hadn't heard of any plan for their deployment. Ortega shook his head.

"They haven't moved from their deployment areas, though they assure me they are about to move out at any second," he reported. Hadrian gritted his teeth.

"Could their commanders be compromised?" he asked. Ortega shrugged, the heavy armor making the gesture surprisingly diffident.

"Corruption, incompetence, graft," he spat, grinding out each word as though it were a curse in the eyes of the God-Emperor. It wasn't unusual for PDF units on peaceful worlds to be far below their listed strengths, with the rations and equipment that the Munitorum provided for non-existent troopers to line the pockets of their commanders. I suspected that if that were the case here things were not going to work out for the would be entrepreneurs.

"You are sure of the target?" Ortega asked as the aircraft banked hard, climbing the hive spire in a narrowing corkscrew. It was my turn to nod. Once we had realised that the cult needed to broadcast its message the only possible choice was to use the holovid systems which serviced most of the upper and mid hive. The only broadcast stations with access to the whole thing were the Governer's emergency address system and the Ecclesiarchy Prayer Mandate, which broadcast sermons and blessings planet wide several times a day. That thought had led back to the priest who had purchased me from the gang. A quick search through one of Lazarus' data grafts had revealed that the cleric in charge of the broadcast station was one Joachim Pressler. The holo image was younger and there were less lines on his face, but it was clearly the same man.

"We are sure," I responded tersely. In the time it had taken to whistle up the gunship I had taken the opportunity to remove the glyphs that had been painted on me. This had to be done with an industrial solvent and my skin prickled as though with a gentle sunburn despite the counterseptic Selenica had applied. I had dressed in a black body glove with soft inlays of silver and gold. My hair was tied back in a hasty bun and I had my force staff as well as a heavy naval pattern revolver.

"I again recommend we neutralize the power plant," Lazarus interjected. Hadrian shook his head but didn't respond. As he had explained earlier there was no way to know they didn't have some kind of backup generator and we wouldn't know about that until it was too late. We circled around one of the gilded sub-spires of a mercantile house, weaving through the occasional air traffic. Ahead of us I saw the Cathedral of Saint Arestus, a gargantuan sub spire, encrusted with turrets, buttresses and leering gargoyles.

"Approaching broadcast station now sir!" the Valkyrie pilot yelled over the thrust noise, his face antonymous behind a visored helmet. I could see one of the turrets ahead, easily ten stories tall in its own right. It nearly doubled that with the bewildering array of vox antennae that were clustered around the feet of a stone angel blowing a great trumpet. The overall effect looked like mold growing up around the statue's feet.

An alarm blared in the cockpit. The pilot whipped his head back to the controls.

"Auspex painting us!" the pilot screamed, a moment before I saw a half dozen flashes light up among the antenna. Missiles rose like fireworks, riding upwards on trails of smoke that wove together as they tracked.

"Evasive action!" Hadrian shouted, but the pilot was ahead of him. The valkyrie lurched sideways, the fans screaming as he climbed for height. I saw one missile slash by to the left and then one struck the starboard fan. The blast threw me into my retreats as the craft slewed sideways and plummeted, my stomach dropping out as alarms hammered my ears. Black smoke poured from the ruin of the starboard engine is the port screamed with the redoubled strain. The drop, for a mercy, carried us through the rest of the salvo before they could correct.

"Brace for..." the pilot screamed a moment before we hit the arm of the statue with another shriek of rending metal. The pilot wrestled with the controls, arms building as he tried to keep us level by main force. The forest of antennae rushed up at me like impaling spikes. There was a tremendous crash as we hit, the remaining engine running so hot that I could feel the heat on my cheek. I squeezed my eyes shut as we ricochet down through the pylons, metal shattering and bending all around us. The passenger compartment filled with smoke that was whisked away into the turbo fans as we finally slammed to a halt, thirty meters in the air atop a bent transmission antennae. I opened my eyes and glance forward. The pilot seat and the cockpit had been pulped to ruin, blood leaking from the ruined corpse of the heroic aviator.

"We should extract before the fire spreads," Lazarus announced calmly.

Death's Edge: A Warhammer Story

The city was quiet. Not peaceful quiet, but nervous quiet. The restaurants were shuttered and doors were bolted. Trash and wine bottles lay scattered around where they had been abandoned. The people of Remas were not unused to civil strife, it was like a spring storm, something that couldn't be avoided but only weathered. Luckily both Kian and Muller were willing to listen to my advice as to the route of march and we were able to avoid quarters that were historically loyal to any particular Triumvir. Occasionally we passed a group of soldiers huddled around a small manor or town house. These were the Republican Guard. In theory they were the soldiers of the Republic, but in practice they were paid for by subscriptions from wealthy merchants and minor nobles, over the years they had become something between private bullies and fire brigades. It was of no surprise at all to find them guarding the homes of their patrons at times like this. For the most part they were beardless boys and old men, and more than one hand trembled on the handle of a crossbow or haft of a pike as we passed.

As we approached the western gate there was an audible sigh of relief. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw the silhouette of the Kestus hill in the waning light. To my surprise I saw a light burning in one of the town houses on the hill. I knew the place to be an old family possession of Marco, but it had been empty for many years as his status had carried him higher than his modest birth.

"The gold..." I murmured to myself. He must have moved it out of the palace. I like to think that I'm not a greedy woman, I'm not some blonde chit from the Altdorf docks, but even a few handfuls would set me up for months. Besides I was going to have to set myself up somewhere new, I had somehow managed to offend ever single one of the Triumvirs, though Romeo probably didn't know that. I glanced at Kian and the Imperials as they picked up speed towards the gate, then slipped across the street and started up the hill.

Bodacious Bounties: Bounty Hunter AU

"A little," Jocasta agreed, her own weapon was out of reach. Several of the dragonfly drones who had been playing at the edges of the cockpit vanished into ventilation vents and crawl spaces looking for all the world like startled birds. In truth they were making their way through the air vents trying to find some kind of advantage. Cygi shifted in a tall biomechanical figure with a dark suit and a red laser sword. Jocasta shook her had imperceptibly. Cygi had used that gambit once before, gassing both Jocasta and her opponent and then dealing with the unconscious bodies, but Neil wouldn't pass out fast enough to stop him from shooting her.

"He is responsible for the smell in the galley," Cygi reported, shifting into a facsimile of Jocasta and wrinkling her nose. There was a slight blur to the side of her face that Jocasta could see. Jocasta shook her head again, that wouldn't work either unfortunately. Cygi flickered back to her own form this time wearing a bulky old flack vest with the runes F B I emblazoned on them and a bull horn in her hand. Jocasta didn't get the reference but now wasn't the time to discuss it.

It was time to be sensible about this. Negotiate now or get a bullet in the stomach later.

"You owe me 5.4 million..." she cast an eye at Cygi who mouthed additional numbers. "Two hundred and twelve thousand six hundred and ninety one credits." Cygi cleared her throat. Jocasta rolled her eyes.

"Fine. Two hundred and six thousand six hundred and ninety one credits," she corrected. Neil blinked in surprise.

"What is the discount for?" Neil asked inspite of himself. Jocasta sighed.

"Cygi apparently feels I should refund your commission on the car," she explained.

"I'm soft hearted," Cygi explained opening up her chest as though it were a cabinet and retriving a heart. She peered at it skeptically for a moment and then hurriedly stuffed it back inside when it began beating.

Bodacious Bounties: Bounty Hunter AU

Jocasta charged up the gangway towards the bridge. The two crewmen guarding the hatch opened fire blasting her with flechettes and las beams. She staggered and fell, hitting the deck and rolling to a stop. One of the guards, a broken nosed man with a shotgun, stepped forward and kicked her in the chest. Or tried to. The boot passed clean through her with a shimmer.

"What..." he demanded as the woman sat up. Despite dozens of hits she bore no wounds, not even damage to her clothing.

"Charge!" Jocasta cried and a dozen Jocasta's came charging out of a side passageway, brandishing pikes and swords. One of them even had a silken standard depicting a emerald dragon fly.

"What the fuck!" one of the guards screamed, and then opened fire, filling the corridor with the flash of gunfire. This time it only took a moment for them to realize that the guns had no effect. The army of Jocasta's crashed over them passing through them harmlessly.

"They are all holograms?" one of the guards asked.

"Not quite all of us," Jocasta admitted, as she stepped out of the crowd and stunned both crewmen.

____

"Where is my gravity?" Jocasta demanded as she came back aboard. Cygi was back in her transfer chip to be uploaded to the main database. She wrinkled her nose. "And why is something on fire?"

Jocasta rotated herself around and disengaged the airlock controls. There was a soft hiss of venting air as the clamps disengaged and the two ships began to drift appart. Jocasta only had her inner airlock left owing to the way the enemy had cut their way in. There was a snap and the lights came up. Cygi appeared beside her, wearing a sleeping robe complete with a cucumber face mask.

"We are back, I do not detect Edwards aboard," she admitted.

"No time to worry about it," Jocasta said, kicking off down towards the bridge. She slipped into her chair and kicked her engines live. Behind her the missile boat was also beginning to maneuver. It sluggishly turned its bow towards the second bounty hunter ship, the converted freighter, that was now only a hundred thousand miles distant. The whole bow of the missile boat lit up as the preprogrammed attack Jocasta had planned on its bridge computer began to launch, hurling dozens of swarm missiles at it would be partner.

"Thirty seconds to jump," Jocasta told Cygi, although the computer knew to the microsecond. She slid more power to her engines, taking ever watt the reactors could squeeze as they spun up.