The
man’s face was impassive as it wove its way around and above the crowd,
towards the boarding terminal. Any hope of blending into the general background
was cruelly dashed by a second figure trailing at the grim-looking man’s
heels, though. Time-worn gears, rusted in spots yet lovingly maintained and
sound as though still on their day of forging, nevertheless offered slight
creaks and groans, regularly, with each heavy fall of feet accustomed to the
strain, and servo-assisted. The figure of the pit slave was, however,
discernibly diminished, even to the gaze of one not inured to the kind’s
oddities of appearance; two metallic constructs, pistons and drives that usually
powered them now silent, ended in rudimentary hand-like appendages, each
sporting a blocky, uni-articulated digit, with smaller opposable thumb. These
two arms were augmented by a third, although this further, smaller limb bore no
functional tool or other construct; the tip simply ended in a rounded metal
plate, connector sockets brutally visible against the naked steel.
The
hunched creature bore a bulky case, slung by grox-hide strap over its broad left
shoulder just inside the fusion of synthetic construct and human flesh. At
least, the outward join; neural interface wires and heavy-duty locking lugs
burrowed into the unfortunate’s shoulders and chest. Despite this hardship,
the creature stooped along at a reasonable pace behind its evident guide; the
downcast set of the face, though, betrayed its feelings.
Kolok
was upset. To travel through the boarding officials’ steely gazes, the more
offensive parts of his body had had to have been removed. In the titanium-lined
case, immune to a casual scan of its contents, were the disassembled components
of a mining drill, shears, and the barrel and firing assembly of a combat
shotgun. Ahead, Dio Kraeger lugged a similar case, with a deal more distress
than his hulking companion, towards the portal.
Security
was not a real concern to the two, on the run from the powers of the underhive
guilders; in most instances of Hive City-level spaceports, the actual checking
procedure only stopped short at blatant firearm-toting, or someone strolling the
promenade with a whirling chainsword growling defiance. And once they were
aboard the St. Euryalus, the pair would be able to rest easy.
Kraeger
thought back over the inopportune circumstances that had brought him to this
juncture; he remembered well the Glory Hole trading post’s hunt notices; a
couple of outlaw gangers thought to be nosing around the area, a guilder warrant
for the apprehension of Merv Donan, as if the idiot didn’t have enough worries
without the law’s least presentable associates sniffing around for him; and a
notice about runaway slaves. Something reasonably easy; the forced labourers
were thought to have scarpered from a caravan plying the wastes to the
settlement’s east, about a day’s travel away on foot. No mention of any pit
slaves among them; unarmed, they would be small trouble to a hardened bounty
hunter who had seen all the tricks twice and used half of them himself at one
time or another.
But
easy it wasn’t to prove, as slave-pursuit turned into guilder slave-racket
discovery; illegally snatching any able bodies from isolated villages, gangs of
guilder goons had been funnelling the human traffic into an encampment, to the
east of Glory Hole, about a day and a half’s travel on foot… Attack by
guilder henchman whom Kraeger had taken for outlaws produced a lot of dead
goons. The guilders had found out who was responsible almost before the warmth
escaped the last cadaver, slaves had scattered to the Emperor’s winds, all but
one who had followed Kraeger. Not the only follower; bounty hunters, Kraeger’s
own ex-compatriots, now stalked the pair, in anticipation of the 15,000 cred
reward, dead or alive (at least in Kraeger’s case), they now represented.
He
now knew of the career Kolok had led, why the guilders considered him such a
prize; four years ago, the unfortunate had been snatched by the very same goons
who now fed the milliasaurs, and had been shoved into a slag-mine in search of
useful metal ore. Around a year before, the shotgun had been added to his
repertoire of metal limbs, and the hapless slave had been dumped into the arena.
And had survived. From that point to his liberation, the slave had made quite a
name for himself as a fighter, winning his illicit owners a whole heap of prize
money.
At last the ramp was visible beneath the press of travellers; at last they could board. Kraeger heaved a sigh of relief, and set about finding their assigned berth.
Two faces watched the ship’s boarders from beneath hooded cowls. These figures, too, bore carrying cases however, the cases were of a formless, synthetic textile that bulked in places according to the contours of whatever was contained within. This second pair moved towards the ramp, noticing the clanking figure of a pit slave moving through a miraculously cleared space that seemed to form around its movement. The bulkier of the two cloaked bodies smiled sardonically beneath his hood; slaves like that were sometimes clumsy, no sense in being in the way without a good reason.
The two men, for they were both male, also moved towards the ramp. They, too, were interested in embarking the St. Euryalus, although for a slightly different reason…
Buzzing, hardly a rarely-heard noise within this particular departure bay; still, to a certain mind, it was by no means restricted to background noise. Many among the crowd wore long, hooded cloaks, such as the two figures even now ascending the transport’s boarding ramp. However, the choice was not a concession to the latest in tourist travelling-fashion; many present wished to remain anonymous, for a variety of reasons; some were merely naturally private, while other were naturally paranoid. Then again, some were justifiably so, or maybe merely cautious. A pale hand reached under the robe to massage an equally pallid brow, just visible in the dim shadows below the hood, and a slender figure, perhaps somewhat frail, made his own way to the ramp. Less people onboard; less buzzing. And an escape from the planet, with its inhabitants numbering in the tens of billions; Necromunda was certainly not a quiet world. From any point of view, let alone Darav Chein’s.
His own tale was somewhat sinister, out of the ordinary even among the towering hives full of the whole spectrum of humanity. Driven from it all by the Emperor’s self-appointed crusaders; how he hated the Redemption, and its Chaos-damned followers. His… abilities, made him no less able to revere the hallowed father of mankind, if only the pyromaniacal fools could see that. He had tried hiding, skulking in fear for his life, in the stinking depths of the underhive. It mattered little, they seemed to smell his fear, and root him out of the most remote holes he could crawl into. At least they wouldn’t be able to smell through hard vacuum.
Incantations of Ignition recited; plasma injector-assemblies opened. A quick prayer to the machine god to ensure His guidance and benevolence were properly forthcoming; and with a roar like the ravening cries of a bestial horde, the St. Euryalus rose imperceptibly, the slight bending of her landing legs due to the ship’s considerable mass acted on by the planet’s gravity straightening before finally parting company with the landing platform. The transport, in fair shape for her seven hundred-year vintage, creaked only minutely, at least from the outside this appeared to be the case.
In a lower deck berth, electro-torches glowing dimly, sputtering occasionally, Dio Kraeger regarded the screamings and shriekings of the ship’s aged bulkheads with more than slight trepidation; a grizzled veteran of the underhive, he wasn’t used to gigantic metal constructs rising suddenly from the surface of the a planet; he was even more anxious about the cacophony of noise erupting from the ship’s metal innards. Kolok appeared unfazed by the happenings, of course; after all, he probably had more in common with the nearest diagonal support-brace than Kraeger, in terms of anatomic construction. The pit slave’s eyes dulled after a few moments, and his crouching pose became rigid. Standby mode, he would be offline for a few hours. Asleep. Kraeger wondered inwardly at the true nature of his companion, not for the first time. At least, the majority nature; Kolok was no longer fully human, but neither was he exclusively machine. There was still humanity there.
The two figures from the docking port, still cowled in darkness accentuated rather than banished by the half-hearted illumination of the lower deck, settled themselves into a berth half a kilometre to the stern from Kraeger and Kolok. On a ship that was more than three kilometres long and a klick from port to starboard and dorsal spine to keel, this was no real distance. They had had little money available when purchasing their place aboard the transport; the facilities in this habitation area were far from what they considered themselves used to. Still, if it would gain them their objective, the pair were each willing to put up with the comparatively light hardship of no light and no space. The broader man was hard-pressed to contain his form on the slim bunk, flimsy-looking, below that of his companion as the two had agreed upon the bed above to be singularly incapable of supporting his weight.
Their carrying cases had been discarded in a corner, out of sight but still within mind and accessible. That would perhaps not be necessary on the voyage, but it was always better to be prepared than remorseful. And of course, it would not do for the luggage to be stolen; the contents of those cases were their futures.
Elsewhere on the same deck, the Darav had also found a niche to occupy on the journey. He warded it jealously from other passengers, having learnt the underhive laws of possession: something was yours until you didn’t have it anymore. Simple, blunt, deadly. That just about summed up the code he had lived by since age 14, when life in Hive City had become too much, and to stay would have been the his ruin.
St. Euryalus was not the speediest of vessels plying the void between worlds, and even the immaterium of the warp. She was an aged craft, laid down long ago at some anonymous forgeworld, and her stately passage through the stars befitted a lady of her years. The journey, to the populous world of Cestus IV, should not have taken more than a handful of weeks. However, due to warp distortion, this figure could fluctuate; part of the trip was from a warpgate in the Necromunda system to nearby Tylia, preparatory to a sublight cruise in to their target system. But time was not to prove the problem of this trip, ironic though that seemed to one of the ship’s passengers.
At three weeks and a day out from Hive Primus, the transport was making her ponderous way into the Tylia system’s asteroid belt. The belt, a loose association of large high-density ore-rich rocks, supported several mining outposts on its perimeter. No miner dared to enter deep into the belt’s interior, however, for there were tales of sips having entered the area, only to disappear before they reached the other side. There was a slight channel through the belt, twisting and undulating with the orbit of the asteroids, that was reckoned to give safe passage; this was the only route out of the Tylia system that was trusted, bar the warpgate.
It was for this gap that St. Euryalus had headed. She had suffered minor problems with the portside plasma arrays, which had necessitated a temporary reduction of the starboard engines’ output to compensate for the sudden tendency to swing to port. That had delayed the passage several days while tech-priests chanted litanies of restoration, servitors wordlessly performed repair routines and ratings clattered up and down with bulky replacements for the heavy machinery. The result was that the ship was no longer in position to attempt the channel through the asteroids; even flank speed would only bring them to its mouth after about eight days at best- the orbit speed of the asteroids was just too much.
The transport’s captain, mindful of the delays already encountered, and the prospect of even more, faced a tough decision. The cargo included, between row after crated row of various ores and hardy foodstuffs, a consignment of processed Stinger mould, bound for Cestus. The underhive fungus had never been successfully cultured in controlled conditions, and grew only at certain temperatures at the site of contact between particular varieties of toxic waste and organic sewage. It was highly perishable, and even with the various preservation seals in place on the batch it had to be delivered within two months at most or would decay to a state at which it was useless.
This cargo was extremely rare, and as such tremendously valuable. The two dozen crates of processed mould would potentially account for a quarter to a third of the ship’s profits, if delivered intact; should the shipment decompose, it would cause substantial loss of capital and much hardship for the shipping firm. Best to brave the asteroid belt. The risks were surely outweighed by the obscene profits that could be had…
The asteroid field was not on the whole particularly dense, and the most sluggish of ships could have navigated its easier regions. St. Euryalus, for all her faults, could be considered at least as manoeuvrable as was average for a merchantman; she took as swift a route as possible, her captain guiding her into a patch of asteroids slightly closer than their neighbours. The patch was rather large, extending to both sides of the transport for several hundred kilometres, and augurs divined that it stretched away almost a thousand kilometres ahead. It was not until they were thoroughly committed to passing through the patch that surveyors detected the first hulk.
The ship had been a transport, similar in size to the St. Euryalus but of a markedly differing configuration, with naval-style angled prow. The wreck was lodged on a smaller asteroid, its starboard side gashed open along several decks. The brief notion of shuttling a search party over to the ruined metal carcass vanished in light of more hulks appearing on surveyors. One of these even proved to be a naval frigate, bridge smashed and spine shattered as it spun slowly in place. Aboard the St. Euryalus, ship’s officers decided to keep these findings from the passengers in general, although shipboard armsmen were put on heightened readiness and guns were unlimbered.
They came in the night. Outside it was perpetually dark, of course, but at 0147 ship time, the tactical surveyors picked up to hits, both incoming hard on fast intercept vectors. The two unknown contacts resolved themselves on the bridge displays as the forms of two light attack craft, energy-detection crediting them with high-powered laser battery armaments. It was too late to run; in fact, by the time the marauders had revealed themselves, St. Euryalus couldn’t have escaped even if it had meant the Emperor’s undying wrath upon them for failure.
With a partially successful attempt at not alarming most of the passengers, armsmen were rushed to positions to repel boarders and the colossal macro-cannons were loaded and run out. Attempts at hailing the unknown assailants met with silence; this was to end in combat. The captain’s face set grimly. A transport against two heavily armed raiders…
But for the vacuum, the St. Euryalus’ broadside would have crashed out in a mind-numbing roar. The leading raider’s shields buckled even as both ships opened their own fusillade, and macro-cannon shells fired a half-second later from the transport’s dorsal battery ripped through the raider’s lightly armoured prow. Gouts of ardent flame thrust their way out as the shells penetrated the ship’s innards; a tearing explosion shattered the forward section and the fragmentary remainder spun wildly away, before colliding with a stray asteroid. For the St. Euryalus was a Q-ship, upgraded with naval targeting systems and outfitted with a far heavier broadside than any comparably-sized freighter. She was designed to be the iron fist within the velvet glove of a convoy, providing ferocious firepower until escorts could bear on any attackers. Part of the reason why the Stinger mould was so valuable to her was that, to make space for the extra ordnance, almost a half of her original cargo-space had been occupied with weaponry.
But the attackers’ weapons were not without their own effects. Bright beams of radiation-amplified light lanced into the port flank of the transport, devastating the weapons array on that side. Before the dorsal battery could reload, the speedy raider had closed to within a kilometre of the crippled port side, beyond any remaining weapons’ ability to bear on them. Boarding pods thrust their way across the narrow distance, latching onto the gothic buttresses and arches of the St. Euryalus’ flank, and initiated breaching.
The first Kraeger had known of the fight, and the peril that the ship had gotten into, was the booming of the mighty broadside, which shook the entire lower port passenger deck, if not the entire port side. Their own berth was within spitting distance of the inner port bulkhead, and it was with alarm that Kraeger had snapped awake, certain that the end had finally come. Kolok was online within an instant, and stared around for the source of the disturbance. Passengers outside their berth began to dash around and scream frantically.
A second blast reached the bounty hunter’s ears, and he thought that they must be under heavy attack. However, the sound hadn’t the hundredth-part of volume as the previous, and the ship failed to disintegrate around him, so Kraeger was forced to seek a new answer; his thought-process was derailed a handful of seconds later, no longer necessary, when the cry of ‘Boarders!’ broke out from towards the stern. Then, a crackling, staccato eruption of noise that both hunter and pit slave knew well; the voices of dozens of small arms.
Darav was startled into wakefulness by the broadside, as well. A minute later, his mind buzzed with the force of several hundred new creatures. The sign was obvious- his ship was under attack, and they would presently be boarded. The man whirled round and flew to his personal possessions. He virtually ripped open the carrier he had borne onto the ship, hands questing for what he sought.
They came, a horde of dark-clothed men armed to the eyeballs with wicked-looking shotguns, pistols and hand-weaponry. Outnumbered armsmen were beaten out of the way, or simply engulfed by the stream of boarders. Kraeger had just hauled a slim sabre from his baggage, when a group of half a dozen raiders appeared at the doorway. The bounty hunter drew a deep breath, and advanced with naked blade at the guard. The lead pirate noticed his approach, and turned to face him.
The man wore a massive black coat, with an equally dark eye-patch covering his left eye, and non-descript, grubby clothing below the coat. He raised a massive axe, its head larger than Kraeger’s own by at least twice, and laughed cruelly.
“Hah! You think yourself a swordsman, old man? Give us room, boys, this one’s mine!”
Kraeger shrugged slightly, and grunted before replying.
“I am when I have to be.” So saying, the hunter swept his sword round in a weak slash, intended for the raider’s midriff, but the mighty axe swatted the fine blade aside. The pirate laughed harshly again, and dove into the attack.
Kraeger parried, barely, his movements seeming forced and stumbling next to the fluid power of the raider. Axe met sabre, the latter nearly snapping under the onslaught, the bounty hunter forced up against a bulkhead barely outside his cabin. A final swing with the axe, and a premature roar arose from the raider chief. Soundlessly, the axe-head passed through the sword and on down. The top half of it clattered on the floor, and the triumphant growl was cut off.
The glowing power sword, the hunter having just activated its powered blade, cleaved through the larger man’s shoulder and down, exiting his body at the opposite hip. Both halves of raider tumbled deckward, even as another collapsed headless. Kolok stood in the doorway of their cabin, the drill-head on his left arm whirring viciously and the claw attached to his other snapping in anticipation. When it came to quick-swapping bionic attachments, there were none to beat the ex-slave. Kraeger threw himself into the attack, even as the towering part-mechanic man in front of him crashed into another raider.
The two mysterious figures, still wearing their seemingly ever-present hooded cloaks, had sealed their cabin upon learning of the boarders. They finally cast aside cowls, and pulled on stranger garments, before finally bursting from the room.
Darav took aim at a raider and loosed a stubber round, the bullet ricocheting harmlessly off a bulkhead. Enraged, the blood-frenzied boarder charged the frail-looking man with chainsword raised. However, as he came within three metres of the other, his movement slowed. The chainsword swung toward seemingly vulnerable flesh, but Darav twisted effortlessly out of the way, a nasty-looking flail whipping round like lightning at the pirate’s neck, a loud crack! Signalling the large man’s exit from the fight, and indeed the material universe. Another thundered on toward the small man, incensed by the death of his comrade; again, the flow of time slowed to a trickle before two stubgun shots buried themselves in the man’s chest.
A fireball from Darav’s fingertips engulfed another pair of raiders, and the armsmen desperately trying to repel them with heavy Navy pistols and boarding pikes let up a ragged cheer as the bemused pirates fell back. The Wyrd smiled grimly. It was for these talents that the Redemption had hounded him from the underhive, yet here he was, protecting the Emperor’s shipping from marauders. Irony was indeed a demanding mistress.
The attack had lost momentum somewhat, frenzied raiders meeting their match in the grimly determined armsmen and armed ratings, to say nothing of several militant passengers who had joined in the fray. On the mid-level passenger deck, for example, an ex-guard captain laughed maniacally as he crushed marauders all around with his issue-power fist. Finally the man was overcome by a barrage of auto-rounds, nearly a dozen raiders lying dead at his feet.
Kraeger and Kolok had worked their way towards the inter-floor ascenders, and now fought at extreme close quarters as they moved haltingly up the cramped stairwell, mechanical transport between-decks having been shut off from the bridge to prevent the spread of the boarders. The pair had paused long enough to grab their ranged weapons; Kraeger placed accurately-aimed stubgun rounds between the eyes of many a pirate, while his auto-shotgun roared its vengeance. Kolok’s own gun, a belt-fed shotgun also auto-capable, smashed chunks of doorways and bulkheads flying as often as it hit one of their attackers. Kraeger’s thinking was that the bridge was most likely the best-defended area of the entire ship, and therefore they had a greater chance of survival if they could make their way there. That is, if the defenders didn’t mistake them for pirates and shoot them down.
He was not the only one with such an idea. Darav crept onward towards a stairway at the stern port side of the ship, intent on escaping the main throng of boarders on the lower passenger decks. As he scuttled onward, the sounds of fighting dies away somewhat behind him. Turning about at the neck in an attempt to spot any pursuit proved to be a mistake, however; an improperly fastened deck plate sent the Wyrd stumbling, and he tumbled to the ground in a heap. He looked up to see a flash of movement, and tried vainly to throw himself out of its path.
A sticky mess of semi-liquid fibres wrapped themselves around his sprawled body, and the force of the impact rolled him on his back up against the bulkhead. His head smacked into the protruding metal of a structural support beam, and pain exploded in the mind that had been struggling to cast an enchantment on the time-flow in this suddenly claustrophobic gangway. Terror gripped the still-functioning portions of his brain as a shockingly alien-looking visage appeared upside down above him.
Yanus Ilren peered more closely at his latest catch. The little man could hardly be a pirate, he wasn’t nearly large enough, would probably not even reach chest-height to one of the powerfully-built boarders; as for the long trench coat he wore, such extravagances wouldn’t have lasted long aboard the pirates’ ship before becoming tattered and worn, and that without the attention of fellow pirates. So, not one of the marauders; a passenger then. Yanus reached the clawed right arm of his Malcadon suit down to the struggling form, and sliced through the web he had so recently created.
The man surprised Yanus with his reaction speed, leaping to his feet with stubgun raised, and suddenly time seemed to grind haltingly to an almost-stop. The man moved with frightening speed in this new reality, gun raising to the firing position, and Yanus closed his eyes. A cry from in front of him brought both lids snapping back up, however, and he smiled to see the colossal fist of his brother Narsus’ Orrus rig clamped over the small man’s gun-hand. Time abruptly returned to normal, and all three antagonists ceased their various movements.
“Who are you, little man?” Narsus’ voice boomed, amplified somewhat by the Orrus suit’s various vocal enhancers.
“Get your hands off me. I’m not one of these scavving pirates… What are two Spyrers doing aboard a transport ship headed away from Necromunda?”
“Nevermind our reasons,” Yanus cut in, “tell us who you are, so we can decide whether or not to collect your skull as a trophy.”
The man sighed, and seemed to shrink slightly into his coat as the defiance leeched from his eyes.
“My name is Darav Chein, I’m what you might call a Wyrd. Half the scavving Redemption was after my hide, don’t think for a second that you’re the most fearful foes I’ve met…”
“Well, Darav Chyne, where are you headed? I take it you’re trying to get away from our unwanted visitors!” Narsus grinned at the other, amused at the thought of flight from such desperately uninspiring opponents.
“Going to the bridge… most heavily defended part of the ship, it’ll be safe there…” The Wyrd seemed somewhat distracted as he replied. Without warning, he whirled around and brought both hands up, stubgun tumbling to the floor as his fingers stretched out in front of him. Before Narsus could react, twin bolts of flame coursed seemingly from the man’s palms. Yanus, quicker on the uptake than his brother and helped by facing in the right direction, spotted the wave of attackers that had been rampaging towards them, just as the fireballs engulfed the leading men. The power of the Wyrd’s psychic energies flared on through the ranks of marauders, scorching clothing, hair and flesh; the ferocious war-cries the pirates mingled with the newly emergent screams of the burnt and afire.
Without a word, the small man turned tail for the second time in as many heartbeats and rushed further to the stern, and the ascension systems situated there. Yanus glanced cursorily at the other Spyrer, who shrugged. As one they dashed after the Wyrd, swarms of boarders already heading to replace those who had been immolated.
The scene on the St. Euryalus’ bridge was one of pandemonium. Officers screamed orders through vox-casters to groups of crewmen who were either engaged or headed towards and away from the boarders. Tech-adepts, interfaced with the bridge systems-monitoring consoles, droned through damage reports and system-malfunction announcements by the dozen. Armsmen and a small squad of arbitrators, accompanying High Judge-Arbitrator Erasmus (himself ensconced in a corner of the bridge, cursing his lack of a weapon and desperately trying to stay out from underfoot), were hunkered down behind various make-shift barricades and bringing a withering fire to bear on raiders that had penetrated as far as the command deck main corridor terminus. There were two other, smaller entrances away from the ship’s control centre, both opening onto upper gantries with metal stairs leading down to the bridge floor. At each of these a pair of armsmen waited, nervously, checking the other side of the sealed ceramite doors by way of video equipment mounted for just such a purpose.
It was one of these men who noticed the cautious approach of a shotgun-armed man wearing a long, dark-coloured coat. He proceeded to the door and hammered on it with a fist; the crewmen were debating on what course of action to take when louder cries came from below.
Arbitrators and armsmen both watched as the imposing form of a man, industrial-grade bionic attachments snapping and whirring, assaulted the rear of the pirate group. A shotgun mounted on the man’s shoulder spat hot spark-like buckshot, and his drill and shears ripped through pirates indiscriminately. The defenders ceased fire, watching in a state of semi-transfixed amazement as the cyborg massacred marauders, themselves unsuspecting of attack from this second front. It wasn’t long before they were all neutralised, many dead, the rest dying of blood-loss or grievous injuries to chest or head.
The armsman at the door above finally saw sense to open the portal, admitting an anxious Dio Kraeger who swept on down the metal grille-stairs to meet his partner. It was the High Judge-Arbitrator who spoke up first:
“Well, captain, it appears that our prayers have been answered,” he turned to face Kolok and Kraeger, “I believe that we are in your debt, sirs. Arbitrators, advance. Search the pirates for any explosive contingency-traps they may have rigged, then secure the terminus. Execute.”
The seven remaining arbites rose from their positions behind the barricades, then moved forward in close, disciplined order to the antechamber, so recently occupied by pirates, that held near-exclusive access to the bridge. Armsmen stood in the wake of their passing, and at an order from a lieutenant followed on behind.
The pirates were on the retreat as Wyrd and Spyrers headed full-out for the bridge. The cramped corridors, with their many twists and forks, heralded many surprises as the three collided time and again with gangs of desperate raiders, intent upon as much pillage and plunder as possible before their evacuation.
Narsus’ wrist-mounted bolt launchers boomed in staccato succession as he mowed down three such raiders, emerging suddenly from a side-corridor. Yanus wove around, using walls and ceiling as well as floor to launch attacks, in the manner he had been taught as a Malcadon novice. Whereas Darav, moving along at the rate of a normal human and lacking the enhanced strength and reflexes afforded the Spyrers by virtue of their hunting rigs, relied on the subtle differences in pressure upon his mind caused by the approach of sentient creatures to act as his warning, and his other mental capabilities to supplement his stubber in defense; the weapon was running low on the solid leaden slugs it used as ammunition.
Their route to the bridge by necessity took them somewhat to the vessel’s aft; indeed, between them and the main ascendance wells were grouped the main body of the attackers. Therefore, it was not surprising that their journey was to run through the outlying regions of St. Euryalus’ engineering section, located on the upper decks towards the stern, positioned at the metaphorical small of the transport’s back. This area was, on the whole, closed to passengers; those travelling on lower decks were unlikely to even gain access to the ascenders into this stronghold of the Machine God’s will. However, the armsmen who would normally oversee the repulsion of hapless lower deck fares were unsurprisingly absent.
There were still problems, however. For one, the raiding forces were moving hard on the heels of this small group of resistors, partly in retreat from the bows and partly out of a sense of wrathful vengeance at the woes inflicted by the three men upon their comrades. Upon reaching the base of the aft stairwell, levering open the access portal that remained stolidly locked against all their efforts to override, Yanus sealed the entrance behind the trio with a brief yet precise blur of his suit’s web-spinners, the titanium-strong, micro-fine strands it secreted forming a formidable barrier against passage and even most small-arms fire.
They hurried up the great staircase, only to be faced by the thick, permaglass retracting doors at the top, firmly shut against enemy advance. The clear doors afforded the group a fine view of a siren lamp-bathed corridor, a techpriest leading a party of ratings from one end to the other as they watched. But, it did not accept any efforts at breaching made by the three. It was Yanus who spoke up, somewhat startling Darvan out of a minor reverie that the Wyrd had slipped into, contemplating their plight:
“Step aside, brother. I see an access panel at the side there, perhaps I can get us through that way.”
The hulking Orrus looked somewhat doubtful to Darvan, even in the dim, intermittent gloom of emergency access-way lighting and red siren lamps.
“How long would that take, Yan? We don’t have time on our side at the moment, surely you can hear the wretched pirates below?”
The large man was right. Straining his ears, focussing his mind, he could hear and sense a press of bodies in the shaft below. Evidently, the web-barrier had only worked so far; this was not unexpected however. The smaller man’s mood took on a darker tone, as the buzz of pressure on his mind eased inexorably nearer with the raiders’ advance.
“To the sump with this. Stand back, Yan, you too little Wyrd,” Narsus spoke the words of his latter address with somewhat less mocking, somewhat more grudging admiration than in previous exchanges, “I’ll blow out the gate myself. How tough can that glass be?”
Darvan nodded absently, before realising what the Orrus was setting up to do. Narsus had squared his stance off against the portal, one bolt-launcher glove pointed directly at its right-hand panel, when Darvan made it behind a supporting structural brace. Just in time, for as the huge form fired, a spray of shards from the armour-grade permaglass sprayed out from the point of impact. A barrier of energy flashed blindingly between the Orrus and the deadly needles, and thus saved his thick armour from having to stop the pummelling it would have received.
“That glass is a little tougher than you might think, Spyrer… It’s designed to hold off attacks, and the designer would only show good sense by providing some form of ablative layer in its construction. Wouldn’t you agree?” The Wyrd looked petulant, as though he had been against the barrage all along.
“Sump-rats take it then,” was the Orrus’ only reply, before he charged the two-and-a-half-metre distance between his firing position and the door, fists powering into the glass with irresistible-seeming force. The first pair of blows cracked the barrier; the third succeeded in making a small opening, and the fourth was finally too much- with a rending craack the right-hand glass panel shattered into a hail of fragments.
Shouts from not unreachably far below galvanised the three, and they leapt through their new opening with a fury, Yanus again stopping to somewhat close the entrance, a more careful process this time, against their enemies. The small group of men then marched onward down the corridor in the direction they’d seen the hurrying crew-party take; this led them round a couple of corners, and then right into the middle of the ship’s main engineering chamber. The room’s occupants were preparing for a siege.
The salient group from the bridge, arbitrators spearheading the assault with armsmen, Kraeger and Kolok dashing along behind, chased towards the aft of the ship in search of pirates. The bounty hunter and pit slave had been ‘deputised’ by the ship’s captain, and as such could now officially kill the marauders. The High Judge-Arbitrator himself had seen fit to talk with Kolok, and from the look of grim satisfaction on the pit slave’s face, Kraeger could only guess as to what their topic of conversation had been.
The lieutenant in charge of the detachment of armsmen stopped at a vox-caster set in the wall in the traditional style of merchant shipping, and hit a button. The garbled voice of a bridge officer emerged from the speaker-grille, and evidently the mangled communication meant something to the lieutenant; he started off at a fast jog down the corridor, signalling the armsmen to kepp pace with him. As the arbites on point were about to enter the stairwell on their way down to the passenger decks and cargo holds, the man indicated that they too should accompany him further aft.
At a questioning glance form Kraeger, the lieutenant, who was a talkative man by nature, and disposed towards civility at all times, informed the bounty hunter that the engineering section had just fallen under attack form the marauders, and that they had been ordered to assist. The bounty hunter offered a virtually sub-vocal tch before moving off down the hallway. This game was getting boring, it’d better be over soon…
Boots pounded metal decking as the party eventually neared their goal; indeed, a charge around the corner of a three-way junction brought the leading arbitrators right into the teeth of the assault. Raiders were hunkered down behind ripped-up deck plates and various heavy-duty piping sections of a type that littered the innards of almost every ship the like of St. Euryalus. Laser weapons and mass-drivers combined in the wide, vaulted hallway outside Engineering, heading in both directions in a brilliant, strobing array. Heavier bolts gouged chunks out of the deck and bulkheads hear attackers; evidently the defending crewmen had broken out something a little heavier than the standard navy-surplus heavy pistols, and boarding shotguns. Another rippling droplet of plasma melted partway through a crawl-way access hatch, dragged up from its housing to offer protection to a pair of thuggish pirates. A third stream of incandescent superheated energy removed the rest of the hatch’s top half, along with that of the larger marauder; his partner evidently lost the will to battle on, and scrambled about for more solid cover.
Before the wretched creature could begin to head towards the nearest bulkhead cross-brace for safety, a blurred shape darted from the crawl-way that had been left with half-a-cover, and proceeded to fall upon the hapless raider. Two quick slashes with a double-pair of indistinct, gleaming needles sprouting from the hunter’s spindly-looking arms dropped the other. Kraeger gasped, even more grateful for the nearly half-kilometre’s distance that separated him from the event. Spyrer!
Like a free radical, deprived of his partner, Yanus burst into action at a level hitherto only glimpsed by the remaining pirates seconds before they woke up some nights, drenched in sweat and screaming nameless oaths and fears. The ‘needles’, barely visible to the newly arrived bounty hunter and company, were in actuality 50-centimetre long honed adamantium-alloy blades, easily capable of tearing and rending the most substantial body armour available to anyone who wasn’t a member of the Adeptus Astartes. The twirling, spinning effortlessness of the Malcadon’s gliding death-dance took every one of his victims by shock, the most dreadful surprise of their lives, and certainly the last. Within heartbeats, he had taken down seven of the pirates. Even then, their fellows struggled to bring weapons to bear on this new threat.
The struggling, for some, ceased in vain; with a bellow, the newly-arrived relief force cut loose their firearms. Arbites Executioner rounds flitted through the air before locking inexorably onto their victims. Flashes of hot lead from navy pistols brought down many a foe at the close ranges the new arrivals stormed into. Kraeger added a volley from his own stubber to the mix, shotgun shouldered for want of ammo, and swung his power sword at the exposed neck of an enemy. Another headless corpse. The old bounty hunter paused to take stock of the situation; his pit slave partner didn’t afford his foes this small mercy. Kolok’s onslaught brought fountains of life-fluid from angry wounds, grave gouges opening in chests, arms and heads as fast as the ex-slave could swing his drill or snap his shears. The shotgun attached to his third arm hung forgotten, un-powered, nestled close to his side like the unneeded landing gear of a space craft in full flight.
The raiders died. They died as they fought, caught between a hammer and an anvil; they died as they ran, headed desperately for their boarding craft. Some died instantly, while others bled out a slow, terrible death. Eventually, they were all gone.
Kraeger checked briefly through his few possessions, making sure that nothing important had been disturbed by the pirates during the fury of the raid, then dropped down onto the mattress of his bunk. Kolok still stood just inside the doorway to their berth, bemusedly, seemingly deep in contemplation of the datapad in his small prosthetic hand, reattached to a bare bionic stump in the wake of the battle, all weapons having been disarmed and packed away again. The pad, Kraeger realised, was certainly worth considering; its content was a single file. The file was signed with the personal encrypt of High Juddge-Arbitrator Erasmus- it seemed to be the result of Kolok’s earlier words with the arbitrator chief.
The gist of the piece was an unconditional emancipation order, stating that the ex-slave was truly exempt from servitude; guilders could track him down, but they would never go against such a high-placed official of the Imperium. His escape was now complete, and in a way more satisfactory than either man could have hoped.
A large shape appeared in the doorway behind Kolok. Oblivious, the cybernetic man continued to gaze at the piece of plastic and metal circuitry in his hand, but Kraeger rose, alert for trouble. A booming laugh met him from the new arrival. Kolok looked up at last, and moved back out of the way to admit a sizeable figure sheathed in a hooded cloak, as broad as Kolok and maybe ten centimetres taller still, a slender man similarly dressed, and a small, early middle-aged specimen who hid his hands in the voluminous sleeves of his coat, arms crossed over his stomach.
“Well, I’m intrigued. Which one of us calls the other hunter?” Kraeger said, a slight grin touching his lips as he recognised the bulk of the Orrus from the fight in Engineering.
“Haha, you have a point. But I feel we have a better one,” the figure replied, and both anonymous men slid their hoods back to reveal un-helmeted faces, “My name is Narsus, and I present my brother Yanus and our new-found companion, a psyker who goes by Darav Chein for name. We understand that you are in search of gainful employment on any world save the one we departed some weeks back. Well, we have a proposition for you…”