Penny

Bodacious Bounties: Bounty Hunter AU

"Well that was just unfriendly," Jocasta commented. She holstered her energy pistol and turned to give Neil a stern look, hands on hips. Neil paused from going through the one of the dead gunman's pockets. He cocked an eyebrow in question.

"What did I do?" he demanded.

"This is the second time you have got burning people smell all over my ship!" she occured. Cygi appeared behind Jocasta waggling her finger at Neil in admonishment.

"Hey it is not my fault!" Neil objected, taking one of the bottles of liquor and taking a quick slug. Jocasta gave him a skeptical look and Neil went back to his looting. He made an aha sound and pulled a comlink from a pouch. It was a single use disposable model, meant for encrypted chatter between two points.

"Damn it is encrypted we cant...." Neil began but Jocasta snatched it out of his hand and plugged it into a data port in the wall. Cygni appeared over the pool table which was overlaid with a chessboard complete with a shadow opponent. Her hands moved so fast that they blurred to the eye, though Jocasta knew that the framerate was too high to allow for an actual visual blur. They raced through several chessgames at lightning speed before Cygi grabbed her opponents king. As she lifted it it swelled into the size of club which she used to cave in the skull of the simulated opponent.

"Ah encryption broken," Jocasta said with a smile at Neil's shocked impression. It was easy to think of Cygi as a basic assistant if you didn't know she had started life as a signals intelligence AI, more than a match for most civilian encryptions.

"Looks like an address in the lower station," Jocasta reported as the data flashed across her implants.

"Maybe someone else can fit the bill for cleaning out the burnt goon smell?" Neil suggested.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

Veterans develop a trick for sleeping through anything not actively life threatening. Probably because 'not-actively-life-threatening' was th best you could hope for in the Imperial Guard. Sel had learned halfway through her first deployment on Cormarant, where the damn thunderstorms never seemed to let up. This proved to be a detriment as the cup of lukewarm recaf which was dumped over her head was not an active threat to her live but a clear and present danger to both her sleep and her uniform. She launched upright, her body jackknifing almost without concious thought. It took her a heartbeat to remember that she had opted to bunk with second squad because they were still two men light and their bilet was tucked away in a seprate subcompartment, a fact which she hoped might limit the number of times pepole might be tempted to seek her out for bothersome duties. Plus it had a pool table. By the end of said heartbeat she realized a fist was flying at her head. The Langeroth blow connected smashing her head back into a bulkhead and exploding stars across her vision. The Langeroth were a rough rider unit, and the had the typical arrogance that seemed to stick to cavalry as doggedly as the smell of horse shit. In battle the wore heavy chestplates over long leather backed chain shirts. They weren't wearing that in barracks, so as Sel crashed into the bulkhead between the bunks she let it take her weight and drove foot into her attackers groin hard enough to get him a place in the choir at the next Ministorium service. The stunned Langeroth went down, clutching his regimental pride and Sel delivered two more vicious kicks to his kidneys. There were some lessons that you learned in juvie gangs which translated well to the Guard: Thou shalt always put the boot in.

The barracks room was a chaos of battle. Troops from second and third struck and kicked at Langeroth men. Some had improvised weapons, Sel saw Trooper Soto smash a bottle over the head of one of the horse fuckers, then gouge a bright red runnel along the arm of another before somone broke a chair over his back and he went down like a sack of ploins. Just to prove she was a non-com Sel tried shouting to bring the mess to a halt, but either no one heard her or no one was minded to much bother. A second Langeroth man was coming at her, eyes wide with fury. Sel whipped the bedroll from her bed and tossed it over his head. He batted at the fabric instinctively and Sel surged forward driving a knee into his guts hard enough that a spray of vomit jetted between his clenched teeth as he doubled over. Sell brought her other knee up to connect with his chin, there was a crack of breaking teeth and he tumbled to the ground mewling.

"Bastards all!" she yelled, the warcry of the 2nd Gendarmes. "Bastards all!" returned from a dozen throats. The cry had originated during an argument about what the regiment's words should be. One of the junior officer had suggested as joke, given they were stitched together from so many other units. Obviously it had not won out as the offical slogan, but it had stuck among the troops. The Langeroth were bigger on average, being all men and cavalry to boot, but the Gendarmes surged forward battering their opponents with fists, boots, and improvised weapons of every kind imagnable. Sel even saw Kirkland bludgeoning a mustachioed Langeroth with a copy of the Uplifting Primer. Out of the corner of her eye Sel saw Kolcek pull a las pistol from a webbing pouch. It was a short barreled non-issue model he must have scrounged somewhere.

"No!" she shouted and lunged across the room. A Langeroth hit her across the shoulders with a pool queue and she staggered, twisting in agony, but she managed to catch Kolcek around the waist. A brawl was one thing, but a killing was quite another. She drove Kolcek from his feet and both sides hesitated for a hearbeat to see two Gendarmes attacking each other. The lasgun went off in blinding flash as it discharged something struck Sel in the back and drove her into the ground hard enough to split her chin. She ripped the weapon from her fellow troopers hand.

"You stupid bitch," Sel gasped reaching behind her to feel blood running down the back of her fatigues. "You shot me?!" Sel could smell the tell tale stink of burned cloth and burned flesh. This is what she got for trying to do the right thing she reminded herself. The shot had stunned the room sufficiently that the only sounds were the groans of the wounded and fourty pairs of lungs desperately sucking in air.

"What is the meaning of this!" roared a voice that Sel was sure would have been audible over an artillery barage. Everyone still capable of movement swiviled to see the grim form of an Imperial Commisar standing in the access hatch. Kayden was approaching from behind him with a stern look on his face. Sel pressed a hand to the wound in her side and looked down at the las pistol in her hand. She looked towards the commissar but her eyes strayed upwards to a simple representation of the Emperor in gilt that had been affixed above the hatch, dozens of prayer slips attached to either side so that they looked like wings.

"Why?" she mouthed to the statue and then slumped back onto the floor in resignation.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

"Corporal..." Sel groaned and rolled over making a batting motion with her hand. It was still a few hours before dawn and she badly wanted to sleep. She had hoped that an upside of transport detail in a relatively stationary position might be that there wasn't that much to do and she could pass the time napping and playing cards. Unfortunately everyone seemed to feel that she really ought to be seeing to every little Emperor damned thing. Arrange this, inspect that, issue this, review that.

"Go away," Sel tried to call but her mouth made a sound that was more like 'gahwar'. A hand grabbed her boot and shook vigorously. Sel kicked out by reflex but then sat up, smacking her head against the canvas field shelter that she had rigged up despite the fact the last time it had rained on this cursed place Horus had been in diapers.

"What throne damn it!" she growled. The unvield stars shone overhead and a warm wind blew in off the badlands. Sel could taste the fisolene residue on it, along with the rather less appealing smell of burned mushrooms. The bald was quiet, its light out save where a few tell tales reported the status of vox sets or power pack charging units. Boffin and Sparks squatted at the end of her tent.

"If this is another question about watch rotation I swear I'm going to rip your guts out and hang you with them and then I'm going to have goats eat..." she trailed off as she saw Boffin and Sparks squatting at the end of her tent, both gripping las rifles white knuckled.

"The frak is going on here?" she demanged, scooping up her own carbine, convinced they were about to come under attack. That didnt make sense though, the orks had been obliterated so thoughrouly they might never be a problem here again, the certainly weren't in a position to launch a commando raid. Sel felt a distinct itch between her shoulderblades.

"The patrol went out Corporal, Sergeant Matalow's patrol," Boffin almost exploded, his words tumbling over each other. To everyones amazement Matalow had not been stripped of his rank despite Caradwalden's wishes. He had filed a protest but it had been ignored. Whether Matalow had friends in high places, perhaps linked by some unpleasant vice, or this was just commands way of showing their new lordly subordinate that he couldn't order the guard like his own househould she didn't know. The official word was 'too much change in the command structure in too short a period' or whatever guilt and beshit term. The bottom line was Matalow had remained sullenly in command, all the more sullenly because Kayden was suddenly the hero and he had missed out on an action that the rest of them could score drinks off for years.

"Ok fine, whatever," Sel replied, her fear melting back into irritation at having been awakened. "He is supposed to be on the patrol, it is on the schedule." Boffin and Sparks were both nodding as though this was some deep insightful statement. Sel felt her irritation flare brighter.

"If someone doesn't start making sense I'm going to..."

"He didn't take the assigned troopers, it's like you know... all his buddies, you understand?" Sparks blurted. Sel swore sulphrously because she did understand.

"You need to take this to the LT if..." they were both shaking their heads and Sel fell silent because she understood this too. These weren't just Matalow's buddies. They were Boffin's and Sparks' also. If Sel told Kayden there was a potential mutiny brewing it would tear the entire unit appart, whether it was true or not moral would be posioned and a half dozen men might go to the firing squad. Which Sel supposed was fine with her, but given that she would have to loiter about here with these people for the next six months she could hardly afford to have a bunch of heavily armed people bearing grudges.

"Frak," she cursed and struggled to her feet, pulling the laces tight on her boots and unfolding her carbine stock.

____________________

The would be mutineers were meeting in a gully a half click from the bald. Sparks had used a routine radio check and her equipment to pick up a bearing, and Sel had known at once where there were. Just beyond line of sight of the bald one of the ancient creekbeds had been scoured deeper than the other by long forgotten rain. It would have been a pool back then, but now it was a shallow depression filled with tumbled rocks ranging from the size of a fist to the size of a man. The patrol was sitting among them while Matalow stood in the center, hurranging them with invective. Sel was struck by how easily the whole situation might be dealt with if she tossed a frag grenade into the bowl.

"Stay here," Sel instructed to Sparks and Boffin as they lay against the dirt at the top of the rise.

"Where are you going?" Sparks demanded.

"To get myself fraking chilled most like," Sel grumped and started down into the bowl. She was quite open, presenting no weapon and making no effort to conceal herself. Even so she still nearly reached the dim glow cast by their half dozen lho sticks before they leaped with the startled surpsise of guilty men.

"Haven't we all heard enough of this shite?" she demanded, brazening in where no amount of stealth or wheedling would have worked. They relaxed for a moment as they recognised her uniform and then tensed again. Matalow stared at her mouth open and eyes blazing.

"It is his lordships little lackey!" he cursed her, lips drawn back to show white teeth in the moonlight. Sel held up a hand and opened and closed the fingers and thumb in pantomime of a yapping mouth.

"Blah blah blah, you men, get your shit and get back to base, my tits on a plate are you dim?! Hoof it!" several of the men who had been with the chimera attack shied back from her gaze, a few even turned as though they might simply disperse.

"Hold it right there!" Matalow yelled. "You have us all stitched up for the commisariat is that it? Going to turn us over to your lord and master."

"Throne of terror does he ever shut up?" Sel asked, rolling her eyes theatrically. That got a few nervous chuckles.

"Yeah ok, thats me, I'm a commissar and I have you surrounded with a squad of crack storm troopers," she made a theatrical guesture around the empty landscape with the flat of her hand.

"Now if there are no more stupid questions, lets hop it back to base while this was a bad idea and not a whole pile of paperwork for the only bitch who can fucking read," she snarked.

"Sparks?" one of the troopers suggested. Sel chuckled, never having felt so greatful for anyones sense of humor in her entire life.

"Right, we dont want that for poor Sparks, now get ..."

Matalow leaped down from his rock and strode towards her. He grabbed a holstered pistol at his waist and tugged it free.

"You bitch I'll..." Matalow was pitched back as Sel whipped her carbine up and fired three time. Two bolts struck him center mass, blasting him back over the rock on which he had been calling for Kaiden's murder. The third bolt missed high, scooping a handful of dirt ten meters up the rise. Matalow fell awkwardly, his skull cracking of one of the large boulders but he was clearly already dead. Everyone stood frozen, some had hands on weapons others looked ready to run.

"Guess he does shut up," Sel remarked. She lowered her weapon and turned to the remainder of the men.

"Well?" she demanded, "don't we have paper work to avoid? Get back to base and for the Throne's sake check in on the raido first in case somone got jumpy when I dropped my las rifle and it misfired." There was a pregnant pause. Then the man who had joked nodded, scooped up his pack and turned and headed for camp. One by one the others followed. Sel waited until all the troopers were out of sight, then sank down to rest on a boulder shaking so badly she could hardly stand. Throne of earth, what a fraking outfit, and here she was out in the bush in the middle of the God-Emperor damned night. What a frakking life.

____________________________

"You are telling me that Seargent Matalow was killed by an Orc straggler?" Kaiden asked. Sell stood to attention in one of the large mess tents. A table had been stripped out and Seargent Matalow lay on a table covered with a plastic sheet. Even in death the man looked hateful, his features a snarl, his muscles corded and standing out.

"He became seperated from his patrol and must have been picked off sir," Sel replied, her eyes fixed on the back of the tent above her commander's shoulder. Kaiden looked at the very obvious las burns on his chest and then back to her.

"And you maintain this despite the fact that you know I have spoken to the members of his squad? A squad that he wasn't scheduled to take outside the wire?"

"Yes sir," Sel replied. Kayden watched her for a moment, an unreadable expression on his aristocratic face.

"That will be all Corporal Seldon," he said at last. Sel snapped him a parade ground perfect salute, turned on her heel, and marched from the tent.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

"Frak, frak, frak, frak frack," Sel cursed as she wrestled with the controls. The orks had run through the artillery barrage now, though the shells continued to howl overhead, plunging down into the assembley area, now out of sight save for plumes of rising smoke. It would probably help if someone could spot the fall of shot, but it would be very hard to report if they were all chopped into grox meal by greenskins. The new Lieutenant was doing a good job of that the Emperor be praised. The ork vehicles were armored after a fashion, but at this close range the multilaser blasted appart crude welds and sent showers of armor plating in all directions. The second chimera had stopped firing its main gun, probably due to an overhead or a traverse issue due to the constant firing and the dust and grit which was suddenly poured into the turent rings, though its heavy bolters continued to chatter. Those had to be running very hot too and Sel prayed they wouldn't have a cook off before the ammuniton was exhausted. Given this lot had been drunk around their cookfires a half an hour ago she supposed she should be happy that the ammuniton belts weren't still in crates back at the bald.

Another truck exploded, rising on a fireball of its own burning fuel. A greenskin pinwheeled through the air and crashed into the vision slit. Sel had a momentary vision of a giganting blood shot eye before it slid off and the chimera bounced as it ran over something. The armorcrys panel was smeared with blood and Sel cursed and popped her head out of the hatch once more. The engine was starting to overheat and the pull from the track she had damaged was getting worse, gritting her teeth she kept her weight on the sticks, muscling them straight.

"Waaaaaaargh!" One of the surviving trukks came barreling in, crashing against the side of the chimera with a shriek of protesting metal. Whether by low cunning or brutal experience the orks had realized that if they didn't knock out the multilaser it was going to chew them up. Orks being orks, they opted for a boarding action as the course that would solve their probelm and fulfil their desires. The chimera rocked as a half a dozen of the brutes leaped aboard from the trukk. Sel wrenched the carrier side ways and by the series of thumps at least one went over board. The engine lugged dangerously as the sudden addition of several hundred kilos of orks, in addition to the extra troopers almost choked it. Screaming obscenities that left even Elara shocked, Sel through the mixture wide open, smoke gouted from the exahaust as she hyper oxenated the fuel mix, the air rammers in the carborator banging to life. Even so they weren't going to last much... A giant axe blade arced down and Sel ducked just in time to avoid having her skull cleaved open. A great drooling green skin stood above the hatch hammering at the ring with an axe half as big as Sel. Showers of sparks poured down and the chimera lurched drunkenly as Sel lost control. She extended her carbine one handed like a pistol and emptied the magazine in a long burst on automatic. The ork staggered as craters burst in its chest and shreded its crude armor. The weapon clicked empty and the beast grinned down, horibly wounded and with one eye shot away. It unshipped an enorumous pistol the use of which it had obviously forgottedn until this moment. Sel stared down the tea cup sized barrel for a moment and then a flash of metal batted the thing off like a scrum ball drive. It took Sel a second to realise that Kayden had deliberately swung the turent around to knock the thing off.

"If you can keep us on the track Corpral Seldon that would be appreciated," Kayden remarked in a tone of amazing calm that stunned Elara more than the ork had done. Sel gripped the controls and muscled the labouring carrier back onto something like the bearing back to the defensive line, not that any of them were going to make it if the remaning orks hacked the chimera open like a tin of corpse starch.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

Sel's lips were pulled back in a ricktus as she pushed the throttles to the gate. Everything was chaos and confusion. The multilazer whined its deep bow lossening pulse and the heavy bolters roare in antiphonal chorus, spent brass clattered onto the deck, and las guns spat from the gun ports which could bear. Elara was screaming into the long range vox set, though her words were lost in the assault of noise and chaos. It was difficult to see what was going on through the slit in the armorcys.

"Change shooters when you reload!" Sel yelled into the troop compartment, though whether she was heard or obeyed she had no idea.

"Frak this," she muttered and pulled open the drivers hatch, yanking the seat hyudralics to lift her head out of the vehicle. She cursed and pulled her dust goggles from her webbing and slapped them on, blinking away tears brought on by hot dust and gunsmoke. Immediately Sel felt better, it was much more like piloting a sentinel when she could see what was going on, and if that meant a bullet splashed her brains over the turret facing well, this was the guard and you shouldn't have joined if you couldn't take a joke.

"All units follow me to..." she took a moment to consult the compass built into the hatch coming, "point 223 and for god sake keep your distance. Dust leaped up in twin tracks which crackled across the ground ahead of her, she glanced up in time to see some kind of ork gyro bearing down on then trailing streamers of thick prometheum smoke, she yanked the controls in towards it just as a bomb came clear of its rack. The ugly red munition crashed into the course she had been following a moment before. Amazingly it didn't detonate and the following pair of chimeras split left and right of it. The gunfire was doing terrible damage, the multilaser and heavy bolters at an rate, she saw las gun hits which blew craters in green flesh but the orks barely seemed to notice, they were doing far more damage to each other as they laid two with axes and crude bolters. Sel saw a metal jaw the size of a sentinel' top hatch get blown into the air, winking in a glittering arc. The smell of hot air, charred earth and burnt ork was intense and she wrapped her dust scarf around her mouth and nostrils to block it out.

They were around the first rok now, barreling towards the second one still spewing light, smoke, and devestation. A giant section of the second rock fell away, hitting the desert floor with a crack she could feel through the treads. It wasn't a ramp exactly, more of a controlled rockslide. Ugly armored vehicles began to raced down it at speeds which would have been insane on paved roads. A pair of rockets lit in bursts of ugly fireshot smoke. One rocket whipped between the three racing chimeras missing the rear of the second vehicle by less than a hands breath, the second curvetted in a series of crazed loop de loops until, in a coincidence not to be believed by those who hadn't seen combat, it struck the ork gyro on its return pass, detonating it in a giant fireball which showered debris for a click in every direction. This was bad, as Kayden had feared they were getting their armor, if such a grandiose term could be applied, unshipped. They would never get up the ridge with vehicles shooting at them, even ork vehicles.

"Hold on! Brace! Brace! Brace!" Sel shouted and yanked at the controls. There was just time to frame a quick, and certainly blasphemous, prayer to the Omnissiah, before the chimera smashed into one of the landing legs of the rock. The sideways impact knocked everyone off their feet and drove Sel's chest against the hatch combing, her flak armor converting broken ribs and internal injuries into a full body bruise that would be real pretty to see, assuming she survived. She fought for control of the carrier, fish tailing wildly before pulling herself back onto something resembling her original course. The dented landing leg gave a grown of tortured metal, then gave. The entire rok seemed to wobble, and then in slow motion started to topple.

"Gun it!" Sel shouted as though everybody wasn't pouring on all the juice they could already. Like an accelerated veiw of a crystal growing the rok tilted gaining speed. The legs on the oppisite side ripped free from the ground with vast plumes of dust, tossing clods of earth bigger than a man hundreds of meters into the air. It came down with a boom that shook the earth, flattening the partially debouched vehicles and several hundred orks beside. A wave front of dust blasted out and Sel ducked inside and slammed the hatch closed above her, limited visibility be damned as dirt and debris sand blasted the side of the vehicle. Elara was staring at her open mouthed, the vox handset squaking in her hand, completely forgotten. The mutlilaser was still firing, how in the Emperor's name had Kayden kept his feet? and blowing glowing traces as the beam converted the filty air to glass and burning mud. There was a sound like a buzz saw being murdered with a hammer as the whirling treads ripped appart the armored coverings which Sel had just dented to ruin. She leaned on the sticks, compensating for the drag of the injured tread, her eyes flicking from the dust obscured vision slit to the compass bearing with metronomic intensity. They burst out of the expending dust cloud in time for Sel to slew them sideways so that they didn't hit the base of the rise head on. The abused engine shriked but the began to climb. The right reflector was gone, but Sel caught first one, then the other chimera emerge from the wall of dust. For the thousandth time in her life she swore she was going to go to temple for real this time. Reaching out she snatched the vox reciever from Elara's hand.

"All batteries this is Charlie Two Three, fire on established coordinates, all batteries fire for effect, danger close!"

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

The Cloisters were as close to deserted as any place in Altdorf. Once they had been part of a Shallyan nunnery but they had been in a state of ruin since the time of Magnus the Pious. It's claim to fame in these fallen days was that it formed a borderland between the city and the Arcane Colleges. By day they were lively places where activities of questionable legallity, like duels or meetings of outre academics movements, took place. By night they were deserted, even the most desperate homeless unwilling to risk the proximity of so many wizards in the dark.

It had taken considerable time to arrange the buy. If she had been an accredited wizard it might have been easier but as an apprentice anyone who would deal with her could simply go over her head to her master. It had taken a series of decreasingly vauge letters to get the name of an Ameythst Wizard named Ethelbert and another series too arange a price and meeting place. The cloisters were a natrual enough place, and while Emmaline disliked doing it at night she could see that it made sense for everybody.

The appointed cloister was in better repair than most, its ancient fluted colums curled with green ivy and its floor swept almost clean. A statue of a man perhaps a priest or saint stood on a plinth in the middle, a hand up stretched to beesech the heavens. Emmaline opened a small bag and set to work. First she marked several flagstones with a stick of fine chalk, carefully sketching out strange sigils and designs. Once this was done she painstakingly removed all of the wildflowers within ten feet of the statue, plucking of each petal and casting it to a different cardinal point finally she took a bag of coarse salt from her satchel and tugged the drawstrings open, walking backwards and widdershins she spilled out a trail of salt in a circle which passed through each of the runes she had marked. She then drew a second smaller circle that interescted with the first, half on one side of the line and half on the other.

"How do you know it has worked?" Neil asked, looking a little nervous. Emmaline couldn't exactly blame him. Explaining to the Templars what he was doing watching her cast salt and flower petals around in the dead of night might be beyond even his silver tongue. As if in answer to his question the salt suddenly rustled like a snake, forming itself into a perfect inch thick circle which touched the glyphs without covering them.

"You know, I sometimes forget you are actually a wizard," he admitted candidly. Emmaline stuck her tongue out at him and made a beckoning guesture. Neil stepped over the circle rather gingerly and layed the case with the wyrdstone in it down at the base of the statue. Emmaline knelt and chanted for a few seconds in the arcane tongue, her last syllable seeming to hang in the air like the echo of a distant bell.

"And this will stop your death wizard friend from turning us to dust to save a few gelt?" Neil asked. Emmaline cleared her throat awkardly.

"Well, it will make it so noisy to try that he probably wont want to risk anyone from the College investigating," she hedged. Neil's eyebrows lifted but he didn't make any further comment. The hard truth was that Emmaline with her hodgepodge and often interrupted education simply wasn't a match for a full fledged wizard. The best she could hope for was to make the cost of ripping them off too high. Further discussion was interupted by the distinctive 'tap-tap-clack' of someone walking with a cane. Apparently the two thieves were not the only ones arriving early. At least Emmaline hoped it was their buyer, it was going to be pretty awkward if some random passerby found them in a magic circle with proscribed artifacts. That fear faded as a man in a long purple cloak and a pointed conical hat emerged from the gloom. He carried a long crooked staff in his right hand and his face was a mass of twisting shadows, a simple spell to conceal his idenity.

"Good evening," the figure intoned. The accent was Averlander rendering good as 'gutt' and seemed vaguely familiar.

"Good evening master wizard," Emmaline replied politely. The wizard nodded his head and looked to the case, though how Emmaline could tell he was looking there with his face disguised she wasn't quite sure.

"Ju did nickt troost me?" he asked, leaning forward to tap at the salt circle with the butt of his staff. The crystals stubbornly refused to move no matter how much he prodded.

"Zis ist gut vork, your meister must be proud ja?" the wizard continued. Again Emmaline had a sense that she had heard this voice somewhere before. If she could have thought of a way to call this off she would have but she was committed now and had to follow through, the circle trapped her inside as much as it kept the stranger out.

"Fascinating speculation aside, maybe you just hand over the coin and we can both be on our way? she suggested. The wizard cocked his head as though amused.

"And how vill ve do that vith you locked away in your little magik circle hmm?" he asked.

"Let me see the gold," Emmaline demanded, "then I will tell you how will will exchange it." The wizard reached into his robe and produced a heavy purse. He pulled the draw strings open and showed it to her, thick shining crowns rattled over each other, glittering in the moonlight. Emmaline felt her stomach sink.

"What is it?" Neil asked in concern.

"They are fake," she whispered. Emmaline might be a poor wizard, but gold was her element and even at this range she could tell that the gold in the bag was a clever illusion.

"Should I shoot him?" Neil asked. It was a serious question, he had a pistol on him and Emmaline suddenly regretted not having taken the time to ensorcell the ball.

"No, best not to break the circle," she told him.

"Ju are nicht fooled I see," the wizard said, sounding more impressed than irritated. He let the bag drop to the ground, and rather than clank with coins it simply deflated and was suddenly empty.

"Vell ju cannit blame a man for trying," he said philosopically. Shadows exploded from the cloister walls. Corpse light shadow figures that screamed silently with hyper extended jaws. They rushed forward in a wall, crashing against the invisible walls of the circle where they burst in showers of golden sparks. The whole thing was competely silent save for a soft keening which Emmaline eventual realised was her own scream, and the sound of Neil cocking his pistol and pointing it at the space he had last seen the wizard. Visions of leering sepulcral horror danced on the warding for perhaps half a minute and then, as suddenly as they had appeared, they vanished. The wizard was gone. Emmaline's mouth worked in shock and spun to find that the case had vanished.

"It's gone!" she gasped, the fear of a moment ago being transmuted into anger she kicked the inner side of the warding circle and it collapsed.

"Hurry we have to catch him!" she called to Neil and set off at a run towards the Amythest college. It only took a few minutes before the realised that the cloisters were deserted and the wizard had slipped away by some means beyond their understanding. Emmaline slowed to a jog, then to a walk before coming to a dejected halt. She had carried those damn stones all the way from Nuln and now they were gone.

"What do we do now?" Neil asked, gently easing the cocked pistol to take the pressure off the spring. Emmaline glared at the distant college. The sane and sensible thing would have been to let it go. There were plenty of places to make gold in this city that didn't involve going up against a member of the College.

"Wan't to break into a Wizard's Tower?" she asked.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

The Amalthea Zephyr was impressive. I had seen great cathedrals and mighty starships of course, but both of those things were built for simple and brutal purposes. The Zephyr was not brutal. The engine was over fifty meters long and half that thick, a great blunt nosed wedge of ivory and bright brass, studded with observation turrents, smoke stacks, and vox antenaes worked to look like saints holding aloft scrolls of Imperial wisdom. The cars it pulled were scarecelly less ornate, twenty of them, each thirty meters long and lined with armorcys that was opaque from without, but so clear from the inner side as to seem open air. The advertisments claimed that every amenity was to be found on board: Three restuarants, gambling tables, gaming of all kinds, massage parlors, even an indoor sports arena.

It was said that any pleasure you could imagine was available about the Zephyr, and pleasures you couldn't would be provided upon request.

The platform was already crowded with people looking to explore those very pleasures. Some of them were nobles, whose retinues kept the crowds back with staves or ceremonial two handed swords. Others were bussiness people, ship captains, guilders who were springing for a few days of luxury before heading back to their important lives, distinguished by bussiness suits or gowns cut to some imitation of court fashion. Some were on honeymoons, or simply well to do commoners who had saved to experience the trip of a lifetime. All were presenting carved ivory tickets which were themselves a work of art while the great locomotive took on water for its powerplant from thick hoses that fed into it like tentacles emerging from a cephalopod.

Luggage flowed into the belly of the beast on guilded servitors, each artfully wrought to resemble a beast of burden in silver and onyx. Our own luggage had already been collected, Hadrian having been compelled to pay extra for the security of unsearched baggage given the nature of some of our possessions. These would be kept in the void shielded cargo bellies of the cars. Ledgend had it that more than one heist had been attempted, the value of so many wealthy patrons personal effects being beyond easy calculation, but those ledgends assured customers that those attempts had been repulsed bloodily by state of the art combat servitors engaged for the purpose.

I stepped out of the air car dressed in my finiest. My finest in this case being a black dress that fell clingingly to my hips before dropping to the ground with a side slit which revealed black lace stockings of surpassing quality. A ring of static charge kept the hem of the dress from every quite touching the ground, giving me the appearance of gliding. Nor was that the only surprise the dress held. It's midnight black silk was microslited over a peralescent white under fabric, so that when the fabric pulled tight over my body the slits tended to open making me appear to shimmer with emphasising starlight. I had ice diamonds and neck and wrist and a rather unncessary cumberbund of white shimmer silk around my waist. The entire ensemble was finished with a coronet of wrought silver from which depended a black veil which fell to my crimson painted lips.

"Shall we alight?" I asked Hadrian with a smile.

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

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Pvt Kolcek - the guy who accidentaly shot Sel

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