Forty
I'm kind of ploughing through this because I find if I go fast enough I don't worry as much, and it mostly turns out alright anyway. This whole thing was always kind of a mess.
This is also about the end of stuff I'd had already written, so from here on out I'm going to have to go entirely from scratch. Eurgh. Least I have a vague idea of where it's going.
Off the rails, hopefully…
Jarrion was in despair. Minor, low-level despair - despair that hummed along in the background of his thoughts and bubbled quietly beneath an outward veneer of businesslike cheerfulness, to be sure, but despair all the time. It gnawed.
Even the meeting with the Commander hadn't helped much. If anything it had only given solid shape to what had previously been amorphous, undefined despair. Before, he'd known his brother was present and that had been bad enough. Now, he knew his brother wasn't merely present but active, and off ruining all of Jarrion's hard work and besmirching his good name while he was stuck in orbit on a wounded ship, unable to do much of anything about it.
He pestered the tech priests and work crews who were busy mending the Assertive, only stopping when he noticed that his visits were slowing down the rate of repairs. He took personal interest in the resumed unloading of cargo down to Home Away From Home, only to discover that the bulk of it had been done already and so there wasn't really anything left for him to do. He visited a shrine the crew had set up to honour the martyrdom of some priest or other who had apparently done something worthwhile in repelling the collectors following the ramming attack. The crew had been delighted to see him - the crew were often delighted to see him, simple souls that they were - but it still didn't do much to improve his mood.
Jarrion knew by now that his brother's ease at navigation in this odd, Astronomicon-less galaxy came as a result of Altrx having passed along a copy of the book he had written to Torian for proofreading, and this copy being copied and that copy being given to Macharius along with who-knew what else.
He knew this because, while having a meeting with Altrx - as he did on a semi-regular basis, such free-and-easy contact with the captain being one of the many perks of being a Navigator - he had mentioned off-hand his mystification with how quickly Macharius's and his ships had got to grips with the problem and Altrx had quickly cheerful remarked that it was probably because of his book and how well-written and useful it was.
There followed the bit about having given it to Torian, and a bit of speculation, and so on.
Altrx was thrilled that his observations and techniques on how best to negotiate the unnaturally calm, reference-point-lacking galaxy were already demonstrating such a high level of practical value, though his thrilling did temper somewhat when he saw the look on Jarrion's face. At that point he quickly offered up some words of sympathy about Torian, finished his drink, and left.
Thus concluded the meeting, and thus deepened Jarrion's despair. He needed to do something, but there was nothing to do. Worse, he was sure there were things he could be doing but didn't know he should be doing, because he didn't know anything. No-one brought news, and all available manpower was devoted to returning the Assertive to full working order, so no-one could be spared to attempt to get the Imperial ship to interface with and understand whatever local communication systems might be present that might be carrying news.
Feeling blind and deaf, Jarrion remembered off-hand and quite out of the blue the existence of the extranet, something he had encountered in his travels of this odd galaxy and had been mentioned to him once or twice by the locals. The Commander had even mentioned it here or there, he was sure. Jarrion's grasp of what it actually was was limited as his interest in it had been limited, but it was enough that he knew it would be a means of finding something out.
There were still Kowloons in the hanger. At a loose end (and nearing his wits end) he headed down on the off-chance that maybe one of them had some cogitator or terminal or whatever that he could use to access this extranet, and thence some sort of information on what might be going on.
Some information on what his brother might be doing. Something concrete he could feel anxious and worried about, rather than just feeling those things about nebulous possibilities.
And so down to the hanger Jarrion went and onto a Kowloon he strolled, immediately starting to fiddle with anything that looked like it might be useful - particularly those bits most covered in purity seals because they'd been deemed possible sources of moral and technological corruption.
Jarrion supposed that the freedom to do this sort of thing was one of the perks of being a Rogue Trader, though right then it didn't feel much like a perk. How much better the honest work and comfortable, dutiful ignorance of the labouring masses? Free of the responsibilities and burdens that came with power. They didn't know how good they had it.
At length he found a console through which he could access the extranet, and at further length he actually got it to work. The process was, for him, deeply unpleasant, all of it being very new and the true provenance of the device being, as he knew, not wholly certain. Still, his only alternative was doing nothing, and that had been driving him mad.
The console took a little getting used to and he didn't feel especially clean using it (and he certainly wasn't going to let any of the tech priests see him using it, freedom to do so or not) but soon enough he was perusing the extranet, skimming articles. Much of it was junk and incomprehensible gibberish and gossip that annoyed him on a very base level with how tawdry it was.
Quickly though he found something of note, and his despair deepend further still.
News reports. News reports of attacks, and not the batarian-organised ones on human interests, though those were also there. The attacks receiving most of the attention, however, were the sporadic, apparently disconnected attacks on asari, turian, and salarian outposts, stations and minor colonies, at seemingly random spots the length and breadth of space.
Disconnected, that is, except that in every instance it was an Imperial ship involved.
Jarrion swore extensively and inventively under his breath as he read through article after article of this research station being atomised or this remote outpost being glassed from orbit or this vassal colony getting lasered in a flyby.
What was Macharius doing?
It was plainly scattershot, and without knowing exactly what it was Torian had told his brother, Jarrion had to imagine he wouldn't know just what assumptions Macharius was operating under. Would likely never know now, what with Torian dead. He didn't expect Macharius would explain himself, not at least until it was too late, at which point he'd probably be more than happy to gloat.
So Jarrion was reduced to guessing.
Macharius hadn't picked just one target. He had split his forces - most unlike him - and picked several. And what had they been? What was the link?
Jarrion wracked his brains and pored through his limited understanding of this aggravating galaxy. It took him a second. All Council races, the major players, or at least their assets and interests. Going out of his way to hit the ones in charge. Why? Fairly obviously to get a response. What kind of response? An unhappy one, it could only be expected.
(The news reports had been very light on any detail pertaining to what the local defensive response - if any - to any of these attacks had been, suggesting to Jarrion either failures or embarrassing failures. Had they succeeded, after all, you'd expect to see at least one triumphant picture of a wreck. Official, formal response was as-yet undecided, but Jarrion assumed it was going to be forceful whenever it did get going.)
Since Jarrion had already been reduced to guessing - and sprinkling in both a little personal experience of his brother and also what his brother had directly said to him - he further guessed that this was all action specifically tuned to sour Jarrion's tenuous relationship with the locals, and push them into acting rashly or at the very least making them assume that Jarrion's intentions were not good.
Or something like that. Macharius was trying to ruin what Jarrion was doing, basically. Trying to make it so that the locals became unfriendly, so that Jarrion's friendly efforts would be doomed to failure and this whole excursion would be a waste.
Would his brother be so petty? Go to so much effort to spoil something that had so little to do with him, purely to spite Jarrion?
Yes. Yes he would. And was, clearly.
Not wanting to keep reading such depressing news, Jarrion stopped scrolling through it and slumped dejectedly back into the seat, staring at some distant point far beneath the deck of the freighter. It really was all falling apart…
Jarrion shook his head and sat up, his face setting in an expression of fresh resolve.
No. No, he could salvage this. He could turn this around. The Emperor had blessed this whole endeavour after all, had He not? Fortune had favoured just about every step up to this point, so perhaps now Jarrion's faith was simply being tested? Perhaps the appearance of his brother was simply an obstacle he had to bend his piety to overcome?
After all, nothing worthwhile mankind obtained was ever gained without suffering.
An entire galaxy lay waiting to be put to use! A galaxy free of so many of the ills that bedevilled his home. A galaxy that could, if soothed and coddled, supply all the Imperium might ever seek to ask for, with nary a shot needing to be fired. A galaxy who's resources might allow humanity to push back against the alien, the mutant, and the heretic. A galaxy Jarrion couldn't allow to be snatched away from him.
So he had to do this. He had to.
Was it likely to be easy? No. Not only was there going to be violence (the comparatively easy part) there was also going to be smoothing things over with the locals. Diplomacy, negotiation. The soothing of frayed, xenos tempers. No mean feat at the best of times, and this was not the best of times! Not only were these xenos they were talking about, they were venal, political xenos. Petty by nature, aliens in positions of leadership were especially unpleasant, in Jarrion's experience. Always working an angle, always getting ready to trick or trip or trap you.
But it had to happen, he had to do it. And then again, no-one had said being a Rogue Trader (or the son of one, if one wanted to be picky) was easy.
"I'll do it. Because I have to, because I must. Because the Emperor himself blesses my purposes here and desires me to continue. Because Macharius thinks I can't," he said, adding after a moment of indulgent imagination: "And then I'll kill him."
And then kill anyone who'd seen him do it, of course.
A death by misadventure was a lot more tragic (and convincing) when it happened with no survivors, and with no-one around to muddle the story with inconvenient details.
-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-
Faryar. A system without much of note.
To be sure, it wasn't empty. Very few systems within easy reach of a relay went unexploited. Even if there wasn't a whole lot of value there was always at least something of value, and that meant someone would go to the effort of trying to take it. The alternative was someone else making money you could be making, and very few could tolerate that.
But some systems were certainly busier than others, and Faryar was not one of those.
It was quiet.
And the arrival of an STG ship didn't make it that much noisier. Unsurprisingly.
The departure of the Assertive from Illium following the formal diplomatic function had been keenly observed, not to mention monitored and subsequently studied. And while the manner in which it had left the system remained a mystery - some manner of wormhole, the nature of which was deeply unclear - the myriad of readings it had given off while doing so had been clear as anything. Confusing in a lot of ways, yes, and also quite inexplicable, but clear, and now easily recognisable.
If they happened somewhere, they could be spotted. Assuming someone was watching. Assuming something was watching. And even in a system as quiet as Faryar there was always something that was watching.
Orbital infrastructure, helium-three refineries, control stations for robomining operations - all of these had eyes and ears, because being blind to space was typically a bad idea. They noticed things. Usually the things they noticed, if they didn't fall into a specific set of pre-arrange criteria of interest to the owning party, were quietly ignored by whatever VI was in charge of keeping an eye on things.
And of course, sometimes the interested party wasn't the owning party.
The STG (and, the STG suspected, not just them) had been making use of these eyes and ears to see when and where Jarrion's ship liked to pop up, to see if it gave a clue as to where he was ultimately based. Not Horizon, they knew about that and knew that wasn't where he was from. They wanted his real base of operations, the place where his monster vessel had been built.
So the STG had been trawling reports from automated systems and the hijacked sensors of however many dozens or scores of satellites and the like, all of which had been quietly informed via surreptitious routes - backdoors and vulnerabilities either explicitly inserted by the STG or else simply known about and exploited (it all worked out the same, functionally) - to keep watch for specific readings.
Most were not that interesting, simply informing them that he appeared somewhere and then left a short while later. Since the places he usually appeared in tended to be already-surveyed systems already occupied by minor human colonies this told them nothing. Their frustration over what increasingly started to feel like a wild goose chase almost made them miss the only trip he made that would matter to them, and it was only one sleep-deprived analyst noticing an unusual length of time between arrival and departure that caught it.
The Assertive had arrived in Faryar, and then left. But it had taken much longer to do this than it normally did and, what was more, observation revealed no human settlement in the system, no obvious reason why they should have gone there. Closer observation and thorough data-scraping revealed the real prize though: at some point in the Assertive's visit to Faryar, it had vanished.
Typically, the ship was easy enough to track about a system if you cared to do so. Cross-reference sensors from surface installations and satellites and you could easily trace the blazing path it made through any system. If you wanted to. Mostly you wouldn't, because it was a waste of time. Here though, the path just stopped. At a certain point - they weren't sure when, as coverage in quiet Faryar wasn't as blanket as it was elsewhere - the Assertive disappeared.
Stealth? Some secret installation? Who knew? All the STG knew was that this was the first time it had done anything like it, and it had done it in Faryar, so there had to be something there worth taking a closer look at. Preferably before anyone else got the same idea.
And if they'd had the idea, someone else would too. Eventually. Slow as everyone else was.
So the STG dispatched a stealth ship of their own, a frigate, to investigate, to snoop. To see if anything stuck out, to see if there was anything of interest in the system. Anything that might shed some light, maybe, on the true origin of these ships, the true background of the humans crewing them.
Given recent events, finding out as much as possible as quickly as possible had become rather important.
They didn't find much though. Or anything, in fact. Planet after planet seemed much as it had on initial survey and indeed in all years since. Faryar ticked on much as it had since anyone started paying attention to it. In orbit of Nephros, the crew started to wonder what it was they might be missing.
It was still quiet.
And then it stopped being quiet. Very abruptly.
-X-X-X-X-X-X-
Duffsnik realised he'd screwed his eyes shut and quickly opened them before any of the boys noticed. Luckily for him, most of the rest of the orks on the bridge had also done the same, their raucous enthusiasm tempered somewhat by their experience of what anything involving the Warp could sometimes involve.
Not that any of them would admit it.
Still, he wasn't sure anything had actually happened. He'd pressed the big button, they should have been well through the thing, but he hadn't felt anything. Other than the rattling of the ship, of course. He hadn't felt any weird Warp stuff, which is what he'd been bracing himself for.
"We're 'fru?" Duffsnik asked.
"We are 'fru, Kaptain."
"Huh."
He'd expected more fanfare. Lightning, maybe. The whole ship creaking and heaving like it did sometimes. The grots screaming like they did sometimes. Squigs going wild or just exploding. Something, anything. Having nothing happen was oddly quite a bit more unsettling.
Not that Duffsnik had much time to dwell on this, however.
"Target, Kaptain! Dere!"
Didn't matter what the target was or where it had come from or where it was going, Duffsnik knew what had to happen, the only thing that could happen.
"Fire the zzap gun!" Duffsnik bellowed, thrusting an assertive and commanding finger forward, in what he assumed was the direction of the target.
The Chin Busta's zzap gun had originally, a very long time ago, been an Imperial lance weapon, claimed by the former Kaptain (the one Duffsnik had killed to become the present Kaptain) as a prize after a particularly enjoyable fight. It had since been extensively modified by the Chin Busta's extensive cadre of mekboyz - each and every one of them a self-proclaimed expert on 'humie teknology' - and was now more-or-less unrecognisable in both form and function.
It remained, however, big and scary, which was all the various Kaptains of the Chin Busta had ever required of it. Standard practise was to keep it fully charged and ready at all times, even if it meant sometimes life support on some of the lower decks was a bit sketchy. The ability to fire on anything that might suddenly appear was considered valuable enough to be worth it.
The whole ship jolted when it discharged, and more than one light on the bridge blew out. That was how you knew the gun was working properly.
Rather predictably for Orks the shot went wide of the mark, spearing off into the blackness of space to presumably go and ruin someone else's day, but not so wide that a crackling, bright-green arc of energy didn't spiderweb off from the beam and smack right into the unidentified ship they'd been firing at, overloading just about every system and leaving it tumbling and drifting through space. Success!
"Kaptain! The zzap gun's done that fing again!"
"Good! I meant it to do that!" Duffsnik said.
He hadn't, but now that it had he had. A large part of being a successful boss was understanding that whatever happened was what you'd meant to have happen and was a result of your excellent planning and natural talents. Assuming that what had happened was good. If it was bad, well, that was someone else's fault, and they'd be punished appropriately.
Reaching up Duffsnik grabbed the nearest Nob to hand, hauling them in to give an order:
"Send a boardin' bomba. I don't know wot dat fing is, and I wanna know, now! So get some lads an' find out! 'Op to!" He said.
Boarding bombers being one of Duffsnik's craftier ideas. His reasoning - delivered at volume to the meks when they'd questioned him about it, and which had quickly got them working - being that if you stuck bombs onto one of the boarding ships they had then they'd be able to bomb anything that needed bombing on the way to (or way back from) anything that needed boarding.
Having it explained to them, the meks could see that it was actually a really good idea, not to mention a blindingly obvious one in hindsight, and they all wished they'd thought of it themselves. Not for nothing was Duffsnik the boss, it seemed. Or rather, not just because he was big enough to beat up anyone else on the ship (though that was the main reason).
"Yes Kaptain sah!" The Nob said having been released, snapping off what might charitably be called a salute and then moving off to yell at some boyz to get the process moving properly.
Duffsnik sat back, the squig-leather of his throne creaking, and narrowed his eyes and watched the weird little ship helplessly drift. Didn't look like any sort of ship he'd seen before. Maybe it had big guns? Maybe it knew where that fancy humie ship had gone? Who knew?
He would, soon.
"We're gonna find out wot's goin' on around 'ere…" He muttered to himself, doing his best to steeple his fingers. It made him look more cunning, he felt, although he could never quite manage to do it on anything less than the second attempt.
-X-X-X-X-X-X-
Captain Melor, in the emergency-lit semi-darkness of the bridge, paced. Every so often he nearly floated as the haywired systems of the ship shorted and gravity momentarily gave out. By all accounts that really shouldn't be happening. By all accounts none of what was happening should have been happening.
But it was, so there wasn't much use complaining about it. Just had to focus on the immediate.
"Any word from engineering?"
"Nothing yet, sir. Internal comms are still spotty."
"Check again. If it still doesn't work we may need to send someone."
"Aye sir."
The blast from that unidentified ship had instantly and overwhelmingly put them out of commission. There had been overloads and burnouts and cascade failures across the length of the frigate, across just about every system you could name, even ones that should have been properly insulated against that sort of thing. It seemed a minor miracle they still had lights and air, really.
Getting engineering back working was the primary concern, with exterior sensors a close second, and the rest all vying for third place and all making convincing arguments for why they were more important. Being able to move and knowing which way to move and what to move away from were paramount, though, particular with that alien ship still out there.
That ship. Melor hadn't ever seen anything like it. Hoving out of nothing, appearing from nowhere. He still wasn't entirely sure what he'd seen was actually what he'd seen, just because it couldn't be what he'd seen. Spaceships didn't look like that, shouldn't look like that.
Trailing smoke! Rivets! In space!
And that had just been the look of the ship, which shouldn't really factor into any proper, sober analysis of the subject (although the bits on the prow that had looked like tusks had stuck with him). The readings he'd been able to look at - before everything had been fried - were where the real meat was, and they just didn't make any sense. The unidentified ship was all over the scale, to the extent it seemed like the instruments just didn't know what to make of the thing yet.
Melor knew for certain, at least, that it was big. Very big.
Not to mention unfriendly.
He kept pacing.
-X-X-X-X-X-X-
Being a Blood Axe, Duffsnik put great store in and just-so happened to have an awful lot of kommandos. Being a Blood Axe with his own ship, he had also taken the time to get a lot of those kommandos properly clued up and ready for boarding actions. That was just sensible.
And this meant that the boyz who'd been rounded up and sent to the boarding bomber were all kommandos - or 'boardin' kommandos', if one were to be pedantic. They crammed into the dimly-lit, theoretically space-worthy interior of the bomber, checking pilot lights on burnas and making sure they had enough bullets. The Nob who'd been sent by Duffsnik to get it all organised stalked about, making sure no-one was lollygagging.
"Alright ladz. There's some weirdo ship out dere we don't know nuffink about. We is gonna go over dere and get on dat ship and find out about it. First job is killin' anyfing wot shoots at us when we go over, but the bigger job is gettin' da boss!" He said, loud enough everyone in the bomber (and most of those outside, too) could hear.
"'Ow do we know which is da boss, uh, boss?" Asked a nearby kommando, needlessly raising a hand.
This was a good question. So good, in fact, that the kommando who asked it got headbutted full in the face for having asked it, dropping like a sack of potatoes.
"Figure it out! Do I 'av to do everyfing for you lot?!" Shouted the Nob.
That answered that. There were no more questions.
-X-X-X-X-X-
"What was that?" Melor asked, to bemused looks from the others.
The whole ship had just shuddered, and not gently.
If they'd collided with the alien ship he would have expected more - indeed, he would have expected to be dead - and he couldn't imagine what else they might have bumped into, floating free in empty space. He didn't expect it was anything good.
"Are any of the external cameras still functional?" He asked.
"Yes sir."
When was the last time he'd ever had to use the external cameras? Most forgot they were even there! Whoever needed to look outside? Right outside?
Melor did, right then. And he did so, switching through them rapidly. Most showed nothing useful, just views of space. One or two showed odd angles of the distant, looming alien vessel. The majority were plain defunct.
And one showed the problem.
A craft, not a whole lot smaller than their frigate, had latched itself on with clamps and chains and magnetic seals. The ugly, squat thing had wings and was bristling, Melor could easily see, with weapons. He didn't recognise most of the weapons but he didn't need to to know they were weapons. Underneath the belly of the thing he could see some sort of docking umbilical extending, suckering onto the skin of their ship like a leech.
What they had docked to was not a port, it was just spaceship, just plating. Regardless, it was obvious what their intention was.
"Boarders?" Melor breathed to himself. With their ship out of commission they must have looked like sitting ducks, but then why not just finish them off? Obvious. They must have wanted something on the ship. Dry as his throat now was Melor still managed to say: "They're attempting to breach the hull!"
"Captain? Breach the-"
An alert sounded, garbled and warped by system damage, but still unmistakable.
"Hull breached!"
That hadn't taken long.
"All crew! Prepare to repel boarders!" Melor shouted, drawing his own sidearm.
A ship as small as theirs, dedicated as it was to covert action and observation, did not have a specific security contingent. Why would it? They hadn't expected to need one. Their mission was purely one of reconnaissance, with explicit orders to leave the scene if the situation had turned dangerous. Some STG teams rolled very heavy indeed, it was true, but theirs was not one of them.
If the ship had been functioning properly, if at least some of the systems were working, then maybe they could have stood more of a chance. Maybe they could have jury-rigged some of the damage control systems to better hold off their attackers - repurposing and overcharging the mass effect fields designed to maintain atmosphere in event of a hull breach? The ones that had been activated moments before because of a hull breach? Could you get one of those to keep an attacker out? It was a possibility, they could have found out.
But nothing was working. So they couldn't.
"We may need to scuttle the ship," Melor said, as the crew about him readied and checked their weapons, barriers now active.
"Sir?" One - the nearest, crewman Ish - asked.
"If they're boarding they want something, and if they want something I don't want them to have it," Melor said, thinking some more but realising that his options were too limited. "Are internal comms still down?"
"Yes sir."
"Shit," Melor said, in an uncharacteristic slip of professionalism. Scuttling the ship would have needed him to contact engineering. He hadn't been able to do that, and still couldn't. The only option was to go there in person, as had been his plan before the boarders. But now there were boarders, and they were between the bridge and engineering. If anyone went, they'd meet them halfway.
Staying put seemed the best option, out of a handful of very bad options. Staying put in a defensible position, seeing what the enemy's next move was and acting accordingly, or at the worst holding them off at the bridge and maybe sneaking someone around them.
There were noises beyond the door of the bridge. Heavy footfalls and a muffled language he couldn't recognise.
"This is it for us," Melor said.
"Sir."
"Bel. There's a maintenance hatch there. We'll hold them here. You get to engineering. If they're still alive you tell them what to do. If they're not, well…"
"I know how to initiate the destruct, captain."
"Good. Good. Go."
Bel had just started wriggling through the access hatch when the intruders began cutting their way through the door of the bridge. A blinding spot of heat began working its way around, spitting dribbling rivulets of molten melted that spattered the deck or sprayed weight as the gravity continued to fluctuate and fail.
All having put their helmets on, the salarians hunkered behind the largest bits of bridge equipment available, watching through polarised visors, guns raised, aim unflinching.
Having cut a glowing arch through the whole of the door the spot of heat deactivated, and all was quiet a moment. Then the cut section of door fell inward with glacial slowness, clanging deafeningly off the deck. Nothing came through the breach, and nothing could be seen. It was just smoke, impenetrable smoke. It curled lazily into the bridge.
Then something moved. Fast. It dashed from the smoke and Solik went down with a scream as a ball of teeth and legs leapt through the air faster than a trigger could be pulled. The screaming continued - muffled - for maybe half a second longer before a wet crunch cut them off. Not that anyone had the luxury of noticing this - the ball of teeth hadn't been the only thing coming into the room. Stepping through the swirling smoke came the intruders.
For a split-second Melor thought maybe, from the size of them, they were krogan. They weren't though. Just as big (some of them bigger) and maybe just as loud, but not krogan, no. Something he hadn't seen before.
Could soak up damage like krogan though. Their fire didn't seem to be doing much of anything. They were hitting the things, that was beyond doubt - they could see the blood - the things just didn't seem to care. One went down, but whether it had slipped or they'd managed to hit something vital Melor had no idea, and he had no time to check either as a hard round of considerable mass caught the barrier on his shoulder, the force knocking him off-balance and spinning him to the floor.
More rounds chewed up the console in front of him and he had to shield his head briefly as it exploded, showering him with sparks and debris. He looked up in time to see an intruder swing a bladed weapon so big and heavy it hacked Ish in half at the waist with barely a hint of resistance.
Melor, dazed, ears ringing, raised his pistol and fired. He saw the shot, he saw that it was good, saw it strike the alien clean in the chest.
Saw the thing flinch slightly and look down at itself, then saw it notice him. He saw beady red eyes flick to his rank insignia, saw what looked horribly like some sort of grin. Saw it step forward and kick the pistol clean out of his hand before reaching for him.
Big. Green.
Violent.
-X-X-X-X-X-
On return the boarding craft, owing to the excitement of its pilot, failed to properly land in its docking cradle. It got into the launch bay, just not how it was supposed to. Unorthodox would be the word, if any of those involved had known it was a word that existed. Still, the only ones to suffer from this unusual landing were some grots who failed to get out of the way in time, so it wasn't that big of an issue.
They'd hose off easily enough.
-X-X-X-X-X-
Not all of the kommandos who'd been involved in the boarding had come back to report. This was because a bunch of them were still on the weirdo alien ship, keeping it safe and also keeping an eye on the gaggle of meks who had decided to take an impromptu trip over to see what it was like, and a few other kommandos had just slunk off after returning. Kommandos did a lot of slinking.
Not that it mattered. You didn't need many kommandos to show off an alien to the Kaptain.
"Dis one's got the fanciest uniform we saw, Kaptain, so we fink it's da boss," said one of the two orks holding the captive upright, pointing to the fancy bits in question on the uniform. Duffsnik nodded sagely.
That made sense. Small ones always had to figure out some way of showing who was in charge. Duffsnik had seen fancier uniforms, though. This one wasn't even shiny, and the shoulders didn't have anything on them, either, none of that nice gold spangly stuff the human navy liked. And no hat! A shame.
Humans had good hats.
"Dis is a boss?" Duffsnik asked, disappointed, looking the captive up and down. It was not an impressive sight. He'd seen beefier Eldar.
The alien had tried to run not long after being brought aboard - where it had hoped to get to was unclear - but the kommando looking after them had, in a burst of quick thinking, caught them by the collar and stamped on the thing's leg, snapping it like a twig. It wasn't running anywhere anymore, this was for sure, but it also meant it had to be held up by two kommandos to keep it from flopping onto the deck.
To all appearances the alien was only barely clinging onto consciousness, but orks generally didn't notice this sort of thing, and Duffsnik - an unusually perceptive ork - only noticed it in passing and did not consider it of particular importance. It was not his fault if non-orks were weedy.
Leaning forward on his throne he gave the alien a hard and deliberate poke in the chest, drawing out a pained yelp as his taloned nail dug deeper than he had perhaps intended.
"Oi, you," Duffsnik said, doing his best to keep a moderate, diplomatic tone (having learnt this was a good way of getting questions answered by prisoners). "Wot are you? Where are we? Wot was dat space hole fing? Wot's all dis about?"
The alien, having briefly raised its head to squint at Duffsnik with the one eye not swollen shut with bruising, let its head loll again and then just started muttering something. The something it muttered it muttered at length, seemingly repeating itself, and all of it delivered in a language that none of the Orks present could comprehend.
Duffsnik leaned a bit more forward and cocked an ear, to no avail. He leaned back.
"Mouthy, ain't it? Wot's it sayin'?" He asked, looking to the kommandos keeping the captive upright. They shrugged.
"Dunno Kaptain. Don't sound like anyfin' we 'eard before," one of them said, adjusting his grip on the alien.
Duffsnik considered himself something of an expert on alien languages. He wasn't, but he considered himself one. He listened a bit more to the reedy, rapidfire speech of this particular alien before quickly getting annoyed at not understanding what it was saying. He reached down and squeezed it by the broken leg so the talking stopped and kept squeezing until the screaming stopped. The alien was definitely unconscious now.
"Hmm, nah. Dunno this one," he said, stopping squeezing and letting go. "S'not a humie, definitely," he added and there were nods - the Kaptain was quite right. It was not a human. They'd all been thinking it, but only he'd had the authority and the presence to actually say it.
Reaching out again Duffsnik this time took hold of the alien around the middle. His hand wasn't quite big enough to encircle the thing's waist completely, but then again it didn't have to be - the alien was slender enough and Duffsnik was strong enough that he could easily hold the thing up with one arm. With a look he got the two kommandos to let go and, now holding the captured captain, he lifted it up and brought it in and gave it a good squint and a good sniff.
Nope, still nothing. Something new. Annoyed, he grunted and hurled the alien across the room where it thunked into a wall and landed into an unmoving, gently bleeding heap. If it was alive he'd think of something to do with it in a minute. If it wasn't, well, he'd think of something else.
"Dunno wot it is. Puny though," Duffsnik said, slouching on the throne and glowering.
"Ded puny, Kaptain. Shoulda seen 'em on the ship, they wos rubbish," said one of the kommandos to general nods of agreement from the others present.
"Oh?" Duffsnisk asked, raising an eyebrow. Or, rather, where an eyebrow would have been.
"Yeah. Got 'dese naff little zippy guns, too. All zip-zip like 'dose humie lasergun-fings but dey fire little bullet fings. No good at all."
"'Dey 'urt?" Duffsnik asked. The kommando, several very obvious fresh wounds spattered across their person, shrugged, which opened up at least half a dozen of them. Not that they cared overmuch.
"Well yeah, 'dey 'urt, just a bit embarrassin' gettin' shot wiv' such a weedy shoota, ya know boss?"
Duffsnik did know.
"Dat's Kaptain - don't wear dis hat for nuffin'. Well, good job gettin' da boss, ladz, even if it's just some runt. You knock off for lunch, eh? Go 'ave a drink."
"Thanks boss. Uh, thanks Kaptain," the kommando said, saluting, or at least performing a gesture approximate to a salute. Such affectations were important to Kommandos, and particularly to Blood Axes. It was the mark of a professional.
And they left. Duffsnik sat for a moment or two, chin resting on one hand while the fingers of the other tapped angrily on the arm of his throne. He then glanced over to the side of the bridge.
"Oi, you," he said, pointing. The ork nearest his point jumped.
"Uh, yes Kaptain?"
Duffsnik moved his point to the unmoving alien and gave it a nudge with his boot.
"Dat fing still breathin'?" He asked. The ork checked.
"Yes sah, Kaptain," they said.
"Get da weirdboy."
Nothing immediately happened.
"Wot you waitin' for?" Duffsnik asked. The first ork looked to some of the others ones nearby, who all pretended to be somewhere else.
"Well...which of us are you askin' to go get the weirdboy, Kaptain sah?"
Duffsnik was in no mood for this. Lunging to his feet and snatching up his choppa from where it had been leaning against the side of his throne, he brandished the thing in front of him and started advancing.
(Incidentally, Duffsnik's choppa was, he was ever-keen to point out to other bosses, a custom-job he had had commissioned from a turbine blade dug from the wreckage of a humie bomber he claimed to have shot down himself. Whether or not Duffsnik did actually shoot down a bomber was open to debate (albeit best not debated in front of him). That it was indeed a former piece of a human aircraft was beyond dispute, however. It was distinctive, effective, and eminently practical. Not to mention intimidating to have brandished at you.)
"IT DON'T MATTER WHO I'M ASKIN' JUST DO IT!"
This sent a dozen or so orks scrambling to follow his orders, which was gratifying. Duffsnik returned to the throne and sat back down again, setting his choppa across his lap and shaking his head.
"Honestly…" he grumbled. Shirkers, the lot of them.
The weirdboy was duly summoned, minders and all.
"Oi, you. Oi. Oi!" Duffsnik said, starting with snapping his fingers in front of the weirdboy's face and finally resorting to clapping loudly and shouting. This got the weirdboy to at least look in Duffsnik's direction, though it was obvious he still wasn't giving the boss his undivided attention.
It would have to do. Duffsnik held the captive alien up by an ankle.
"Find out wot this wotsit 'ere knows. Don't make his 'ead explode until you get somethin' good, right? I wanna know wot's goin' on around 'ere and I don't wanna 'ave to get another puny alien tah find out. Got dat?"
Duffsnink found the weirdboy's whispered, muttering response unorky and, frankly, unsettling. It was also unhelpful. He swung the alien at the minders who fumbled to catch it.
"Chop chop," he said, giving them and then the weirdboy a significant look. The minders got the point and, using their skills at weirdboy wrangling, quietly coaxed the psyker into probing the captive's brain.
From the way the alien convulsed and started drooling bright green something, Duffsnik figured it was probably lucky for the runt that it was still unconscious.
After some more wrangling and whispering it seemed they had something, and one of the minders stepped back towards an expectant (and increasingly impatient) Duffsnik.
"Well? Wot?" Duffsnik asked.
"Don't really know, Kaptain. 'E says dat dis one 'ere is a kaptain 'oo came 'ere to look 'fer somethin'. Not sure what. But they's like, uh, kommandos, I guess. But skinny kommandos fer aliens, ya know? Sneaky gitz, lookin' fer stuff."
Duffsnik grinned. Threadbare this might have been, but it was threads he liked.
"Sneaky gitz, eh? I can work with dat. Sneaky gitz know fings!"
And knowing things was important, this Duffsnik knew - knowing that knowing things was important was, in fact, one of the more important things to know. And he knew this. The minders flinched back in surprise as Duffsnik lunged to his feet. To be fair, just about anyone would have flinched if something of Duffsnik's size did any lunging near to them.
"I'm goin' over to dat ship. Gorbag, yer in charge - an da bosun is in charge o' you!" Duffsnik declared, pointing to Gorbag and then jerking a thumb over his shoulder.
The bosun was the name of the large bomb Duffsnik had on the bridge to ensure compliance by whoever he left in charge. The bosun was his most loyal and stalwart companion, never done him a wrong turn.
Some may have questioned the wisdom of having a bomb on the bridge, of course, but those people were unlikely to have ever had the experience of being locked outside their spaceship 'accidentally' by one of their lieutenants and having to break back in again. It was not an experience Duffsnik particularly wanted to repeat.
-X-X-X-X-X-X-
Duffsnik found the alien ship tiny, cramped, and thorough unimpressive. Also swarming with meks who were already halfway towards stripping the whole thing down to nothing, from the look of things. After making it clear (very clear) that he wanted to keep the thing in working order for the time being, Duffsnik headed for the bridge.
The first thing he saw there was another mek, elbow-deep in some hole they'd clear cut into a bulkhead. What they hoped to find was unclear, and, moments after Duffsnik entered, there was a thunderous crack and a blinding flash and the mek was then the other side of the room, smoking gently. They were also laughing uproariously.
"Hoo! Dat was a good one!"
That would be Lugnutz, the most senior of the meks. Duffsnik was familiar with Lugnutz.
"Wot are you doin?" Duffsnik asked. He couldn't even find it in himself to sound angry. Lugnutz never cared.
"Oh! Hi dere, Kaptain! I am investigatin'!" Lugnutz said cheerfully, getting back onto his feet and only twitching slightly. Duffsnik cast his eye around the bridge. It was also cramped and unimpressive, and also quite badly shot-up. He nudged half an alien with his foot. The other half was being chewed on by a squig. The squig growled at him. He kicked the squig.
"Dis is a right rubbish ship, Lugnutz."
"Could be worse, Kaptain. Could be another twiggy one!"
Twiggy in this case being Eldar, obviously.
Actually managing to board and capture an eldar ship had been a particularly cunning moment for Duffsnik, in a career of cunning moments. Agreeably the actual triumph of the event had been undercut somewhat by the feeble fight the skeleton crew had put up against his lads and also by how the ship itself had been filled with boring shiny rubbish and not proper loot, but still.
As a thing to have done, it remained a very cunning thing.
"Enough messin' about from you, Lugnutz. I got a job for ya."
"Job, Kaptain?"
"Yeah. Find da computer. Alien ships always got a computer. It'll 'av stuff on it wot we can use."
Ideally for Duffsnik it'd have somewhere to go next. Somewhere with stuff and a proper fight.
"Ooh, computers! I'm ded good at computers me, Kaptain! Don't you worry!"
Duffsnik was worried, obviously, but there wasn't much else he could do. He watched the mek start tearing the bridge apart and hooking cables and wires together however the mood took him, tapping at buttons and squinting at flickering screens. Duffsnik rested his bulk on something waist-high and turned his back on the sight, clicking his fingers at a passing ork who was just wandering past.
"Oi. Go get some guns, eh? Get some alien guns. Bring 'em here."
Nodding, the kommando went off.
The kommando came back. He had no guns. He just had a sack.
"Where's da guns?" Duffsnik asked.
"Here, Kaptain."
The sack was emptied and out cascaded a few dozen firearms of various sizes, clattering into a heap. That this was not a particularly safe way to handle loaded weapons did not cross the mind of anyone present.
"Dese are da guns?" Duffsnik asked, not bothering to hide his disgusted disappointment. "Dey's puny!"
He knew that the kommando from earlier had said they were puny, but he'd sort of been hoping that he'd just been wrong. The truth was a letdown. The guns were tiny. He picked one up and let it dangle pathetically between forefinger and thumb, like a particularly disappointing minnow-squig.
"Wot am I meant tah do with this? S'so little!"
"Could strap a buncha them togevver, Kaptain," the kommando suggested.
Lugnutz's ears pricked up.
"Ooh, dat's a good idea!"
Duffsnik was honestly quite surprised that Lugnutz hadn't come up with that on their own already. He put it down to the mek being distracted working on the computer and tossed the gun at him, watching him fumble to catch it and nearly shoot himself in the foot.
"See if dey got any bombs or anyfing like dat, eh?" Duffsnik said to the kommando, who saluted.
"Aye aye, Kapn'!"
Bombs were always good.
From behind him, Duffsnik heard a particular vicious electrical crackle.
"Aha! Ta-dah! Done it Boss! Uh, Kaptain. I got it working! Da computer!"
Lugnutz had linked every single available console and terminal on the bridge into one single station, which just-so happened to be the station with the smallest available screen. Cables of every thickness up to and including formidable ones of the size of Duffsnik's wrist snaked across the floor or stretched taut from places the far side of the room. Lugnutz looked immensely proud of himself.
"It's working?" Duffsnik asked, dubiously.
"Oh, definitely! Wot you wanna know?"
"I dunno. Find out where we are, where dese aliens is from. Wot's near 'ere we can duff up?"
If there wasn't anything nearby then this whole trip was just a waste of time. That fancy human ship had apparently gone this way, sure, but Duffsnik was rapidly losing interest in that. He needed something to help him unwind. Like a proper fight.
"Right you are Kaptain. Where we is, let's just…hmm…" Lugnutz poked and prodded some more, yanking out a couple wires and twisting a dial that looked to have been made by him on the spot and jammed into something that had no business having a dial on it. The tiny screen provided tiny pictures and tinier, alien words.
"I got some news, Kaptain."
"Wot?"
"Lookin' at 'dis - and maybe I'm readin' all dis alien junk wrong - but lookin at 'dis and I fink dat warp hole put us in a 'ole 'uvver galaxy, Kaptain!" Lugnutz said.
He was able to say this and easily entertain the idea because, as an ork, these sorts of things just kind of happened. It was what you did with them that actually mattered. While a human might have had all sorts of doubts or questions or concerns an ork was concerned more with what to do next, and whether it'd be a fight or not, and if not how to make it one.
"Fancy dat," Duffsnik said, blithely unconcerned and not really believing the mek anyway, or at least not caring enough to actively disbelieve him. "It say where dese runty alien come from?"
"Uh, fink so. Lemme 'ave a - ah! Yeah! There ya go!" He said, stepping aside to Duffsnik could have a look only to quickly lean in again. "Lemme just see if I can make da alien words proper orky - ah, dat's close enough! There! Dat's da one!"
Duffsnik bent almost double so he could see the screen properly, his brow furrowed as he tried to read Lugnutz's half-translated work. It kept snapping back to alien nonsense, and was often backwards when it wasn't, but it got the point across well enough for Duffsnik.
"Surr…Kessch? Kesh? Wotever. Dis place. Dis one looks good."
-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-
Duffsnik was in much higher spirits when he arrived back on the Chin Busta. He had a metal keg of fungus beer tucked under one arm and in his other hand he held what Lugnutz had assured him was precise navigational information to get to this Surrkessch place. This he tossed to whichever member of the bridge crew was closest while he himself moved to Gorbag, who did his best to hide his trepidation.
"We's gonna need more lads. Gorbag! Got a job for you!" Duffsnik said, grinning ear-to-ear.
"Yes boss? I mean yes Kaptain?" Gorbag asked.
"I want you ta take da little ship, go back 'fru 'da space 'ole, an' round up some of da boyz, yeah? Get da lads togevver, the ovver Blood Axe lads. You know."
The little ship was a gunboat that had been escorting the Chin Busta but which had, in a bout of excitement-induced clumsiness, accidentally crashed into the back of it. Rather than have it removed though, Duffsnik had instead - cunningly - had it wired into the systems of the main ship and now used it as an extra engine, given it was pointing in roughly the right direction.
(He had also personally disembowelled (and a few minutes later, decapitated) the captain for crashing into his ship. You couldn't let that kind of disrespect slide, and it wasn't like the little ship needed a captain anymore anyway.)
The cunningness of all of these decisions was now made clear. Not only could Duffsnik and the Chin Bursta carry on towards this planet and get the fight started, but they could go and get more boys at the same time! That was the kind of efficiency you'd only get with Blood Axes. Would a Goff have thought of that? No. And don't ever get started on Snakebites.
"Yes, Kaptain! I'll go back and spread the word Kaptain!"
"You do dat. Den you come back, eh? Don't want to miss out, do ya?"
The practicalities of how Gorbag was meant to do some of this was a matter Duffsnik was leaving to his second-in-command. He had full faith and confidence in Gorbag. Gorbag, for his part, was simply gripped with excitement at the prospect of a lot of lads getting into a lot of fighting.
"No sah, Kaptain!" He shouted happily.
"Too right! Now get going, I wanna go start early!"
Gorbag departed at speed, and Duffsnik settled back onto his throne, working on peeling off the top of the keg. He'd give Gorbag until he finished drinking it before hitting the button and starting the ship. Lifting up the keg with both hands he upended it and promptly poured half of it in the direction of his throat. Most of it got there.
Wiping beer from his chin onto the back of his arm, Duffsnik watched as a picture of a planet flickered into view on one of the bridge's Big Screens.
"Wot an excitin' opportunity…"
-X-X-X-X-X-X-
"You have messages at your private terminal, Commander."
"I'm sure I do," I said.
"I think some of them might be from the Council."
"No doubt. We'll know for sure once we're back, eh Chambers?"
They could wait. Galaxy got on fine without me for two years, it can get by fine without me for however long it takes to destroy the collector base. What? Like an afternoon? Maybe a little longer?
Not like it won't be there when I get back.
It'll be fine.
Everyone wants to scuttle their ship, apparently.
The STG and Salarians in general are actually one of my more favourite things in ME, being as how they're lethally pragmatic special forces types, and are pretty upfront about it. That, and them stealing the Normandy stealth tech - ballsy!
Also, I never actually played Lair of the Shadow Broker until a few days ago, give or take, so didn't actually know the Shadow Broker was, you know, not that far away from Faryar, making it a little less isolated than I might have thought. But hell, it's space. Whatever.
And as a final and quick PS one of my definite fondnesses for ME is that, when you're off looking at all the various planets, most of which have nothing to do with what you're doing, basically all of them have some level of exploitation going on. Space-based infrastructure and robomining and gas-giant-fuel-conversion is everywhere, just everywhere.
You basically see none of it in-game, of course, because why would you? But if you're the kind of lunatic who reads the descriptions on all the planets (ie me) you really do just see that, even in small ways, space is infested. I tend to imagine 40k in much the same way (only with more skulls, obviously).
All that stuff is right there, why wouldn't you?