Penny

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

Sel had not driven a chimera since training on the long warp jump to her first war zone. Well that wasn't quite true, the sentinel pilots had stolen C company's command vehicle and crashed it into that mud pool but that hardly counted as field experience. The big engine roared as she threw the throttle open and the tracks jolted it forward, over the sally ramps of dented steel which sloped to the sandbag ravetment. It titled dizzily at the top and then they were racing down the front of the bald and out into the badlands. For the first few moments she jinked unnecessarily before remembering that she wasn't in a nimble scout waker and could just plow through sparse vegetation.

"Lead, would you slow it down a little, over?" a voice crackled through her vox bead. Sel glanced at the reflectors and saw that the other two chimeras were lagging behind. The throttle gauge was ticking towards the red but she wasn't flat lined.

"Negative, we aren't running juvies to school here, if you all have sore heads from too much rot gut that is your own fraking look out isn't it, over?" She probably didn't need to be so harsh with them, they were falling behind because they lacked her natural agression which might have been an asset in some circumstances but wasn't now. They were accelerating too, vanishing into her dust trail as she tore across the terrain at well beyond maximum recommended speed. The fact that they were charging blinding into orks didn't help either but she prefered not to admit that she might be afraid.

"Move up into ..." Sel paused, realising she was about to order a redeployment without reference to her erstwhile commander. Frak it. "Move up into line abreast twenty meter seperation." If Kayden objected he didn't comment and the other two carriers moved up into the formation she had ordered putting more guns in the line and getting them out of the choking dust plume. She edged the throttle down slightly as they roared into the badlands. What little shrubbery there was vanished to be replaced with an endless stretch of dried mud shot through with heat cracks like a madmans mosaic of nothing. Auspex was returning a strong signal ahead, and Sel adjusted her course slightly to center on it. If Kayden was wrong about this he was never going to live it down, he would be lucky not to find himself drumbed out of the regiment, there was a sinking feeling in Sel's guts that told her that she wasn't going to be that lucky.

"I see heat haze in the air, but no roks," Kayden's voice announced over the comm bead. For a moment Sel thought he had forgotten to sign off but then she realized he was on the vehicle channel, something she very much doubted any of the rest of the crew was monitoring. She clicked her commbead.

"You wouldn't it looks flat but it actually shoals off in about ten clicks, impact should be just beyond that... uh sir," she added hastily, peering through the armorcrys viewslit. She could see the heat haze he mentioned, but something else besides, the greasy flicker of static charge in the air.

"Shit," she muttered to herself.

The shoaling Sel had mentioned was sudden, it was as if whatever the badlands covered dropped away abruptly like a continental shelf. It probably had been that in the distant epoch when Kaurava III had been covered with water, before an asteroid strike or a stellar flare or the Emperor alone knew what bloody thing, had turned it into the inhospitable hellhole that Sel was cursed to be standing on. Unfortunately the Bimini, as the scouts had termed this vast, lowlying, maybe-once sea was not very deep. As the reached the edge the landscape canted downwards at perhaps thirty degrees and feel for almost a kilometer to the lower plain. The desolating beyond was destroyed by a half dozen massive rock formations that seemed to errupt at the end of long trails that had been scoured in the sand. The looked distrubingly like parasites, or diagrams of spermatazoa Sel had seen in pictslates in the medical tents. The head of each trail was an immense asteroid, they were blackened and in places glowing with entry heat and the sand around them was crisped into black powdery glass. Great jointed metal legs sprouted from them at odd angles, spearing down into the ground to steady the great rocks in place. Sel felt her mouth go dry. How many orks did each of those things contain? Already she could see tiny figures tumbling from the nearest rok, a little under two clicks down range. It must be hell down there on that half molten rock, but you couldn't expect an ork to care about mere physical pain.

"All units halt in place!" she shouted over the comm, unable to keep her voice to the calm timbre expected of an NCO. The vehicles slewed to a halt and Sel felt her nostrils prickle as the wave of dust and exhaust fumes they had been running ahead of broke over them. If the heavy vehicles slid down the ridge, it would take precious seconds to climb up against the pull of gravity, and there would be no cover beyond the lip of the slight ridge. It didn't look like the orks had seen them yet, but it would be only moments before they noticed the dust up on the high ground. A half dozen orders rattled around in Sel's head but for a moment the world seemed to hang on the edge of a knife, frozen until Kayden gave the command.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

Sel's nochalance melted somewhat at Kaiden's words. She didn't know if the green Lieutenant was right in his suspicions but she had enough experience of Ork's to not want to be taken by surprise. Unfortunately, though she knew a few troopers in the unit by sight, she didn't know any of them besides Matalow by name. That was a dead loss. The sergeant was still unconcious and in no condition to review service jackets.

"You!" Sel called, grabbing one of the soldiers by the front of his tunic as he tried to cringe away.

"Where are your Chimera drivers," she demanded.

"I drive, then there is Hoskins," he guestured to another man half slumped against one of the water barrels, delerious with drink. Sel resisted the urge to grind her teeth in frustration. It had been a long couple of hours already and she should have been relaxing and playing cards with the scout troop rather than playing nursemaid to these retreads.

"Get all three fired up," she called over her shoulder as she strode over to the semi-comatose Hoskins. A bottle rolled out of his hands as she grabbed his shoulder, spilling the acrid sawgrass liquor that the stills were turning out on this dustball. Kel kicked the bottle away and grabbed the trooper by the lapels.

"Hey. Hey!" she shouted shaking the man vigorously. Hoskins bleary eyes fluttered open, wandered for a moment, then seemed to focus.

"Y'new, wanna y'know ave some fun," he slurred hopefully. Sel's smile would have warned a sober man, but Hoskins was too drunk to do anything other than grin stupidly at the expression on her face.

"You know what? I do," she admitted, then shoved Hoskins' head and shoulders into the water barrel. The trooper began to thrash in blind panic, shouts and curses rendered into streams of bubbles. Sel yanked the dripping, spluttering soldier from the barrel a second or two before he would have drowned.

"What the frak are you doing!!!" Hoskins spluttered. Sel shoved him back into the barrel, gratified with the improvement in his sobriety. He tried to kick at her but she drove her knee into his kidney, then banged his head against the side of the barrel before pulling him free once more.

"I think what you were trying to say is what the frak are you doing coporal," she reproved him midly.

"Now are you sober enough to drive or do you need another rinse?" she demanded.

"I..." Hoskins began. Sel shoved him into the barrel for a few more seconds just for good measure before giving him a shove toward where the chimeras were already coming to life with gouts of prometheum smoke. By now she had an audience, troopers in flack jackets with expressions ranging from muzzy to concerned. Sel rounded on them placing her hands on her hips.

"First, second, third squad," she bawled, "Mount up, gear and rations for combat patrol. Move it you lice bitten sons of whores!"

There was a good deal of cursing and clattering as men grabbed canteens and weapons and kit. Sel wouldn't have sworn they were all sober, but she wagered being rattled about inside running chimeras would take care of that well enough. She climbed into the drivers seat of her on chimera, straining her mind to remember long ago training as she brought the vehicle's multilaser array online and test rotated it. She turned the trottles forward and led the chimeras out in a passable line astern centered on the communications dugout. She clicked her comm bead and synced it with the vox set in chimera, hoping that Kayden had already tuned in to the platoon net.

"Ready to roll Lt," she reported.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

Lieutenant Campion - The Colonel's aide de camp

SGT - Crispin (strict disciplinarian)

Female Troopers

EGS1 Spade - aka Sparks - Red headed enginseer
Pvt Nexis - Slim blonde
Pvt Elara
_________________________

Vehicle Operators

Pvt Hoskins

________________________
Pvt Kolcek - the guy who accidentaly shot Sel

Sgt Greer - Rat voiced, burned face black marketeer from E company.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

Sel let out a slow breath and slung her las carbine. There was no way to know how the boys might have reacted to the scene, anything from meek obidence to the unfortunate death of a replacement officer and his driver just to name a few. Sel had been more than willing to spray them with full auto while she leaped back into the jeeep but she was very happy she hadn't needed too. If a platoon of pissed of guardsmen decided they didn't want any witnesses to an annoying officer getting fragged she would have been in heavy bolter range for far longer than it would have taken them to reduce the jeep to flaming scrap.

It didn't look like it was going to be a problem just now. Matalow had been drunk, but the rest had merely been drinking and retained enough of their wits not to try conclusions. Right now at least. Sel supposed if someone rolled a grenade into Lieutenant Caladwarden's bunk that wouldn't be her problem.

"This way sir," she replied, hesitating for a moment before Morek nodded to her, letting her know that he would keep watching the men if she turned her back. Feeling a little better she turned and led the way to the center of the fortified hill top were a prefab shack of flackboard stood at the base of a ten meter antenae secured to the ground by six thick guywires. Sandbags had been stacked around the hut to the height of its courgated metal roof and the cogwheel sign of the Adeptus Mechanicus had been artfully rendered on the door with a tin of spray paint. Sel pulled the handle and found it to be locked, then pounded on the door with her fist.

"Open up!" Sel called and recieved no response. She glanced back over her shoulder at Caladwarden, sighed and leaned back with the intent of driving her boot into the door jam. It swung inward while her kick was in the air and a las gun barrel jammed out and into her chest. Sel let out an unsoldierly eep but batted the barrel away by a reflex born in many a bar fight. A red headed woman held the other end her teeth drawn back in a snarl. She didn't fire, which was good because with Sel's grip that closee to the flash suppressor it would have been a second degree burn to the hand at least. Three other women stood inside las guns leveled and back lit by the auspex units and the blinking lights of the data caches. Sel realised that she only had a second before someone got twitch and blew her away. Her guts dropped into an icy pit and she did the only thing she could think of.

"'tenshun!" she shouted in her best seargent major's voice. All four women stiffened to attention lifting their weapons away awkwardly.

"Macharius' balls," Sel cursed stepping back. Confusion crossed the faces of the female troopers. "What the frak is going on here."

"Sorry sir," the red head who had jabbed the las gun at Sel said. The name sewn above her right breast pocked red 'Spade' but it had been artfully vandalized to read 'Sparks' instead and she wore the amulet of a lay member of the Adeptus Mechanicus, common enough for trooper's whose roles required them to commune with machine spirits more intimately than the daily litanies of motion and accuracy.

"I'm not a sir, since this morning I work for a living," Sel replied wrly, then hooked a thumb over her shoulder at Kayden. "He is though, this is the new CO and I'm sure he wants to know that the bloody buggering hell that was." Sparks flushed almost as red as her hair.

"Sorry Sir," she called over Sel's shoulder, "we started locking ourselves in here since the rest started getting drunk on the regular, don't want no misunderstanding you know." Sel did know and she felt her spirits sink even lower. God Emperor this assignment was going to get her killed for sure.

"Well at least someone is manning the auspex sir," Sel called, stepping out of the way and guesturing the female troopers out to present themselves to their new and doubtless very impressed commander.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

If this Lieutenant Caawhatsit wanted to be fingered for snipers by a salute, Sel supposed it was none of her business. Just had to make sure she was standing far enough away when she did it. The little jeep exited the firebase, turning onto the flatpack desert which formed most of the Jebin basin. There was no road as such but it was flat enough in most places that it was safe to use a fair amount of speed. Sel opened the throttle as soon as they were outside the wire. The tires kicked up a plumb of dust behind them like a rooster tail as she pushed the engine up to the gate. If you weren’t sneaking, you should be speeding as the saying went.

“About four years,” Sel called, raising her voice slightly to be heard over the engine noise. She angled down into a shallow depression, instinctively seeking the lowest point to minimize enemy sightlines.

“I got swept up on Kalin, packed me off as part of a replenishment tithe,” Sel explained. Replenishment tithes varied greatly in quality, often enough the authorities just rounded up a set number of people of low class and the right approximate age and shipped them off to be cannon fodder. Sel had been a juvie ganger with the misfortune to be pinched at the wrong time. In the blink of an eye she had been whisked from the two hab blocks in which she had spent her entire life, been packed onto a troopship, and hurled through the Immaterium to war. She wondered how many of those who had been swept up with her were still alive. Precious few. Fortunately an education as a petty criminal wasn’t the worst preparation for a certain kind of soldier. Years spent stealing groundcars had gotten her noticed by an enginseer who put her to use driving for the motor pool until she had been promoted to fill a sentinel slot when casualties had been heavy enough to outstrip recruits. That happened with sentinels, they were often fine after you hosed out the remains of their pilots.

The ground infront of them was forked with dry water courses choked with fist sized rocks mostly tumbled smooth by the once a year rain storms which flooded the place. On a distant ridge great promethium dericks rose and fell with stately precision, occasionally belching colossal jets of flame. On the plain before them were several small stone hills, each rising less than five feet from ground level where rocky outcrops caught blowing dust. Each of the balds was topped with sandbags and razorwire, the positions stretching like beads on a string with separations of a few hundred meters between. The formed a notional line between the dericks on the ridge and the real badlands beyond, though mostly they were just there for the regiment to practice working together. As the approached the bald where the unit Kayden had been assigned was bivouacked she reached for the jeeps vox set. Kayden reached out and put his hand on hers.

“Let’s not give them any more warning than we need to,” he said wryly. The platoon was just going to love this guy. Sel took her hand away from the vox set and slowed down as they approach the grandly named ‘Hill’ 23, following the old vehicle tracks up the side of the bald, the sand bagged auto cannon didn’t track them, which wasn’t a great sign.

They passed through the sandbags without incident or challenge from the sentries who should have been there. The camp itself was erected around a low steel shed that housed a mobile pump unit that drilled into the aquifer to provide water. It was surrounded with dozens of plasteel barrels which Sel hoped had been thoroughly rinsed of promethium before being repurposed as water butts. A sloppily dressed private, evidently returning from the latrine by his hasty closure of his fly, finally spotted them and turned to shout to the rest of the unit who were sitting around catalytic cookers heating rations and drinkin what Sel was pretty sure was grain alcohol fermented from stolen sand grox feed. There was much cursing as men tried to stash liquor or tossed the contents of their canteens as they scrambled to their feet to grab weapons and kit.

“Who fuck gave you permission to come up here without clearing it by vox,” a heavyset sergeant demanded as he half staggered towards the car. Sel killed the engine with a sigh. Sergeant Matalow was unshaven, and hadn’t gotten rid of his bottle of liquor. Sel didn’t know him well, but she knew he was an unpleasant man when he had been drinking, and he had certainly been drinking for some time.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

Sel reached into the car and pulled her lasgun from where she had clamped it in the butt holster of the open top jeep. It was a carbine model with a folding stock, a compact weapon meant for the last ditch in the case of a vehicle prang. The weapon was perfectly clean though this was less a comment on her dilligent maintainence than the fact she had never actually needed to fire it. A guardsman was supposed to carry her weapon at all times, even to the showers or the latrine. No point giving her new commander a chance to put her on report and give Captain Rubio another chance to stroke out.

"Sir," Sel greeted, neither saluting nor standing to attention. The Chaos worshipers they had fought were not above sniping, though the orks lacked the skill and the temprement for it. Which, come to think of it, was exactly Sel's excuse for her average drill and ceremony skills. This new officer looked like he had been issued brand new as well, all clean cut and ramrod straight. Sel wondered if that was part of her punishment as well. The orders she had been given attached her to a Lieutenant Kayden Caladwarden until further notice. This one had the look a noble or highborn, though what he had done to be assigned to a patchwork shitshow like this one she had no idea. Maybe he had money, that brightened her mood somewhat, perhaps a few gelt might stick to her hands if she played her cards right.

"Im Serg...errr that is to say Corporal Seldon, I've been assigned to be your driver," she said, her eyes sliding over to the abhuman with some surprise.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

There seemed a very good chance that Captain Rubio was about to have a stroke. Certainly the way his face was turning red and the visible throb of his pulse said nothing good about his vascular health. Sergeant (for the moment) Lorica Seldon known as 'Sel' to her friends and enemies, two classes that were both alike in both number and dignity, stood at attention her eyes focused on a patch in the tent canvas behind Rubio's desk. She was very familiar with that patch, having counted its stiches many times since coming to the Can as the informal troop slang had dubbed Kaurava III.

"You expect me to believe that you had nothing to do with this?" Rubio bit out, leaning forward to rest his knuckles on the pile of crime scene picts on his temporary desk. He picked up a data slate and activated a grainy pict feed that showed several sand grox, one of the few feed animals that could survive on this desolate ball, grazing on a rocky hillside. There was a sudden white flash and the grox scattered, save for one which lay on the hill its head missing. Several blazing tumble weeds skittered away before the pict feed went still.

"Nothing to do with what sir?" Sel asked blandly, her eyes not leaving their fixe point behind Rubio's head.

"This animal, an animal of considerable value to a local land owner, was killed with a las cannon Seregant. The very weapon mounted on you sentinel, and the only such weapon in the company. Do you have any comment on that?" the Captain raged, his laboriously groomed mustache fluffing with his fury.

"I have no recolletion of firing on any local grox sir," Sel continued with studdied neutrality.

"Your famous memory issues are known to me seargent, so do you know what I did? Rubio demanded dangerously. Sel remained silent until it be came clear the question was not rhetorical.

"I uhhh... don't know sir," Sel responded for lack of something witty to contribute. Rubio's furry increased and Sel became concerned that the officer might actually begin frothing at the mouth.

"I went to check with your squad, and do you know what they were doing?" he demanded.

"Serving the God Emperor to the best of their abillity sir?" Sel quiped unable to keep herself in check as wisdom doubtlessly demanded.

"They were having a frakking barbeque!" Rubio screamed slamming the dataslate down so hard that several items of stationary jumped off his desk and papers flew up into the air.

"If I could prove this poaching was your doing I swear by Him-on-Earth as my witness, that I would have you packed off to a penal legion and count myself lucky!" Spittle was actually flying from Rubio's mouth now. Command must have gotten a hell of an earful from whatever local land baron had owned that ranch. He stalked round the table and thrust his finger into Sel's chest but she held her gaze fixedly and kept her balance.

"The very fact that I can't prove it means you have engaged your unit in a conspiracy, falsifed your after action report, and the god emperor alone knows how you modified the navigation logs of your vehicles!"

"Well if there is no evidence against me sir perhaps it..."

"SILENCE!" Rubio roared. His eyes were entirely rimmed with white and his face so suffed with rage he looked like he had been splashed with scarlet paint.

"Consider yourself busted back to corpral, two month stopage of liquor and lho, and six months fatigues to be served in the motor pool!" Rubio snarled, grabbing the rank tab on her shoulder and ripping it off with a sound of tearing cloth. He tossed the insignia at the waste paper bin but they fluttered aside to land on the dirt floor of the tent.

"The motor pool sir? I'm a..." Sel began her anger overmastering her discipline.

"If you aren't out of my sight in the next five seconds the remainder of your service to the Emperor will consist of digging latrine pits. Do I make myself clear!"

_________________________________

Sel stepped out into the blistering heat of the Can. Firebase Yalta was a huge square atop a hill that, while extremely low, dominated a large basin for several miles in every direction. The six massive earth shakers which formed J-Battery dominated the center of the square surrounded by sandbag ravetments and lazily deployed concertina wire. Around that nucleus stood dozens of canvas tents, flack board prefabs, sensor antennae, and the other minutiae of a guard base. A shallow burm of rubble and dirt surrounded the whole area with dug in positions for 3rd company's chimeras to act as heavy weapons emplacements. Six months in the damned motor pool. Sel reached into her rolled up arm sleeve and withrew a pack of lho sticks. She lit one and put it between her teeth, then pulled her keppi from her pocket and covered her head before sunburn could set in. Five years in the guard had left her permenantly suntanned despite the fact she spent most of her time in the cockpit of a sentinel walker, but even so the sun here would put you in the infirmiry if you werent careful.

"What is the damage sarge," Boffin asked, emerging from the shade beside a neighbouring tent. Boffin was a slight man who wore a pair of wire spectacles that didn't stop him from running rings around you with his chicken, as slang termed the sentinels.

"Copral again," she told him, tapping the bare patch on her shoulder where her rank had been.

"What is this, the third time they busted you?" Boffin asked as they ambled away towards the motorpool.

"Fourth," Sel confessed running her hands through her short brown hair. She wondered if the motorpool would make her cut it back to the crew cut that was standard for the Guard. Sentinel pilots typically got some slack, but she couldn't count on that.

"Well worse things happen..." Boffin began.

"They stuck me driving trucks for six months," Sel cut in with a sigh.

"Things like that... listen Rubio will cool off, he always does, just keep your head down and you will be back where you belong in no time," Boffin reassured her.

"Seldon!" A seargent from the logistic section came striding up from the motor pool where a dozen vehicles ranging from big cargo tens to four man gun jeeps sat in neat rows.

"Need a driver for some big wig and you're it," he told her, thrusting a movement order into her free hand. Sel opened her mouth to object but the seargent was alread striding off shouting something about making way for a delivery of shells. Sel pinched the lho stick between thumb and forefinger and then flicked into a nearby firing trench.

"Duty calls," she told Boffin glumly.
@POOHEAD189

Death and Desire: A Warhammer Fantasy RP

Intellectually Calliope knew there was a real chance of of her dying today. Many people were literally betting on it afterall but inspite of that the emotion which reigned supreme in her head was anger. Did the camel buggering ragheads really thing these things were boats. It offended her at a level so deep it made her eyelids twitch. These barges would tip over in any swell beyond that of a millpond, and god help them if they ever got a sail on, not that it would even be possible with the mockery of rigging. If any wind at all came up they would probably be smothered by the bloody shroud.

"Push off!" she roared, it wasn't till Bahadir yelled the same thing in Araybian that she realised that in her anger she had spoken in Reikspiel.

"Stroke together you bastards!" she shouted to the would be rowers as they wavered into action.

"Who died and made you the leader," a scarred slave demanded looming up and flexing his knuckles on the haft of polearm. Calliope hacked into his neck with her saber, sending spray of blood fountaing up to stain the ersatz sail with gore. The slave opened and closed his mouth for a moment before Calliope kicked him over the side. He plunged into the water without a sound.

"Anyone else?!" Calliope demanded. No one did anything other than work their oars and avoid her gaze.

"Good, Stroke! Stroke!" she yelled. They were picking up speed in marked contrast to the other barges which were wallowing in disorder. She stepped back over to Bahadir, jumping up onto a bulwark and gripping one of the ropes to judge speeds and angles.

"Are we going to board pirate?" Bahdir asked.

"Not unless we have to she replied tersley. One of the enemy barges was looming up quickly, slaves clustered at the bow brandishing weapons.

"On my word, throw that tiller hard over," she instructed.

"Do what?" Bahadir asked. Calliope resisted the urge to snap.

"Turn hard to the right," She explained, counting down the seconds.

"Now!" she screamed. Bahadir did as he was instructed and the barge slewed infront of the onrushing enemy, so violently it generated a literal wave. The two bages struck with a splintering impact of colliding timbers. As Calliope had hoped the enemy barge hit them broadside. A dozen enemy tumbled into the barge, some jumping, most simply knocked off their feet to crash to the deck. The two clumsy water craft bounced appart as the crew grappeled and stabbed at each other but all was not well with the enemy barge. Calliope watched with satisfaction as the enemy barge came appart in a handful of loose timbers dumping half its crew splashing into the shark haunted waters. The barges were simply logs lashed together and disguised to look vauglely like real boats. They were strong enough on the beam, but a blow to the prow knocked half a dozen timbers back through the knots which held them, shattering the hull into a handful of logs and tangled ropes. Half the crew had gone into the drink, few knew the trick of swimming, but those who did struck out towards Calliope's barge to be greeted with skull crushing blows from paddles and polearms.

"One down," she grinned as the crew hacked and stabbed at those few survivors who had found their feet.

Death and Desire: A Warhammer Fantasy RP

This night there was no plates of food nor any ale. They pair of slaves were tossed without ceremony into the pens with the others. Calliope was woozy from the blow to her head, though probing with her fingers indicated that nothing was broken. Bahdir looked none the worse for wear beyond a corpse like coating of gray dust adhered to the sweat he had kicked up in the arena. The other slaves gave them a wide berth, some even went so far as to shoot them hateful looks. Calliope didn't doubt the fact that they had been wined and dined last night had made its way down to the slave pens, possibly even deliberately.

"So," Badhir asked as he handed her a bowel of the gruel that had been slopped out as the evening meal, "Do you... have plan for escape?" The pitfighter's Riekspiel was bad, but it was a more secure tongue than Arabyian down here. Calliope nodded, not in agreement but as a place holder as she slurped the gruel down. Landlubbers might find the stuff atrocious, but they had never been at sea for fifty days with nothing but tack so hard you had to soak it in rancid beer before you could eat it. She had expended tremendous energy in the fight and she was hungry even for such poor fare.

"I'm working on it," Calliope admitted. She flexed her fingers and leaned back against the cool stone. "I think... if we can survive to they make us fight each other, there might be a way."

"What way?" Badhir demanded. Calliope smiled a lopsided piratical grin.

"Bad luck to be telling, savvy?"

The next day dawned with an unusual chill. Notionally it dawned, there was no sun in the slave pens. Calliope didn't notice it but Bahdir looked uneasy, muttering prayers to his god and touching the stone with the palm of his hand.

"You don't like the cold?" Calliope asked. It was cool technically, cold was when a gale blew in from the Sea of Claws and you had to stand into the wind till it blew itself out and the Daemons take you if the winds changed faster than you could set your sails. Bahadir looked at her as though trying to decide if the stone which had brained her had driven her senses from her body.

"This is summer in Araby, it cannot be cold," he informed her. Further discussion was interrupted by the arrival of the armed stewards. They shouted for slaves and kicked and beat them into lines for the tunnels that lead up to the arena. They were divided into two relatively equal lines. Calliope was somewhat surprised and gratified to see that many slaves tried to get into Bahadir's line most of which were brutally shoved or clubbed back into place by the overseers. They were marched to the point where the tunnels diverged to lead both teams up to the arena. At the point where the tunnels separated two old slaves sat beside buckets of foul smelling paint. Each slave was splashed with paint as he entered the mouth of his tunnel, blue for left, red for right. Calliope squeezed her eyes shut and suffered a splash of the paint across face and left side, spitting the blue muck at one of the overseers on general principles. The guard bared his teeth and kicked Calliope in the hip but Bahadir shoved past to prevent any further retaliation. The mouths of the tunnels were colder yet, worse they ran with rivulets of water. Calliope frowned but said nothing shuffling up the tunnel and following the curve towards the light and the roar of the crowd. They reached the armory room and took their weapons, Calliope selecting a heavier sword than she had used the previous day and a long fighting dagger with a broad hand guard.

When they finally reached the mouth of the tunnel Calliope slitted her eyes against the sun and stepped out onto an unfamiliar wooden platform and peered out in amazement. The entirety of the arena had been filled with water. It still chattered down through wooden sluices at four points combatting evaporation and whatever leaked into the sublevels. Each entrance to the arena had a platform to which two twenty foot rafts had been lashed. Single masts stood in the center of their decks and cloth hung from them in imitation of sails. The sides were built up in imitation of real ships though it was all a gawdy show. It was an incredible achievement and a statement about the wealth and power of the Sultan that would last a century. The crowd were already cheering themselves hoarse and trash and confetti, flung in their exuberance floated atop the imitation sea.

"There are ships," Bahadir blurted in wonder.

"Boats," Calliope corrected absently, "Ships have three masts." There was no possibility of 'sailing' the ships, but long poles stacked on the decks would easily sink the six feet or so to the arena floor to propel the floating abortions.

".... the pirates of Abukar Bay!" an announcer was shouting through a brass speaking trumpet. The crowd leaped to their feet and howled for blood. Calliope could see the other team of slaves coming out onto their own 'dock' looking equally shocked by the spectacle before them.

"And to drive this filth to Allah, the brave Sailors of Sultan Kayem!" There was another roar, somewhat throatier at this. Calliope presumed this was some reference to an ancient battle she neither knew nor cared about. She smirked to think how far back the would have to have gone to find a naval battle the Araybian's had actually won.

"And just like on that great day the seas will run red... with blood!" There was a boom as one of the Sultan's guards fired a jezzail. The Slave two places down from Calliope sighed and tumbled forward into the water with a splash. The other slaves cringed back, though Calliope stood her ground, determined not to give these camel fucking sons of third rate whores any satisfaction. The body floated in the water for a moment and then there was an explosion of froth and fury as something dark struck from beneath the wave. Calliope had only a split second, but the fins and teeth were unmistakable to a sailor.

"Well I will be damned," she muttered, "They have sharks and everything."

Wealth and Warpstorms

Camilla and Yvrine exchanged glances. Camilla eventually decided that the probater was speaking Gothic, though the violence he did the language was considerable. Either an accent or he had suffered a stroke.

"We took picts so you wouldn't have to go back to the scene," Yvrine pointed out testily. Alcander picked up one of the hololithic plates and examined it without apparent interest.

"You took picts of what you though I wanted to see. That might not be what I actually need to see," Alcander pointed out reasonably. Yvrine shook her head in irritation. Camilla laid a hand on the Seneshal's arm for the second time.

"Now Yvrine, it wouldn't make much sense to locate an expert and then ignore his expert advice would it?" Camilla pointed out. She opened the door and led the way out, striding back down the corridor.

Twenty minutes later they were aloft in a small personnel shuttle heading towards the murder scene. Camilla sat at the controls the inlaid circuitry in her forearms linking her to the craft with more than mere physicality. She loved to fly and did so at every chance she got. Wind buffeted the craft erratically throwing them ten meters in any given direction no matter how well Camilla anticipated.

"How long will the storm last?" Alcander asked, looking less excited than Camilla at the the continual hammering of wind and the sibilant hissing of hundreds of tons of blown grit scratching across the hull every minute.

"Storm?" Camilla asked innocently, "this is just a breezy after.. whoa!" The shuttled dropped suddenly and the auspex readings lit up in concern. The thrusters roared as Camilla corrected keeping them on target.

"You said you would tell me what your Captain was doing on this world?" Alcander pointed out. Camilla wasn't sure whether this was to distract him from the choppy flight or simply because his mind was engaged with the investigation. No reason it couldn't be both of course.

"The salt they mine here is mildly psychotropic," Camilla reported as she threw the shuttle into a long bank. They were only a few clicks from where the body had been discovered but she didn't want to overfly the site and possibly disrupt it.

"Mildly to humans, but there is a Xenos breed out in the Hook, that is mad for the stuff. The Captain was going to haul a cargo of salt there in exchange for navigational charts and a look at their technosorcery, maybe some other baubles as well. It was supposed t be the first leg of an exploratory run out past Kaskar."