Take as Prize Ch. 06

Rynoldes beamed. "Ah, yes! So, the Victory served as the line breaker. We drove right into the middle of the Dominate's lines above this little gas ball. They were defending three moons in close orbit, each one serving as a shipyard, but those marvelous Halifaxian armored drop regiments had already shut down the long nines they had down there. You can just barely see that great big hole they left behind, hah, one of their tanks drove into the depot, set its own engine to detonate with some jiggery pokey, and the whole crew bailed and got scooped right up! Like that!" She snapped her fingers. "Near cracked the moon in half, hah hah!"

Vynn nodded, trying to not begrudge the valor and heroism. But despite her ship's place in the formation...she had arrived five days after the battle. Five days after the Victory, soaking up enough enemy fire to vaporize a small continent, plunged between two retrofitted Universe class mass conveyers. Immense and slow and wallowing, a Universe was an easy target for even a Sloop, save for when their hulls had been covered in asteroids and their dorsal spines had been covered in every gun the Dominate had managed to lay hands on. But while their guns were plentiful, their aim had not, and the Victory had opened up!

"Two broadsides! Hah!" Reynoldes snapped her fingers. "Right. Down. Their. Centers! Point blank, with those pen-drop mass exploding rounds. Boom boom boom, right in their crew cabins, oh, they're still pulling out the bodies!" She shook her head. "While they shuddered under our guns, our carriers did close air support - well, I suppose, close void support, as neither moon had so much as two gasps of oxy on them for the poor bloody infantry. But without air nor much of a well to bother with, the Furies were able to park right over enemy concentrations and rake them with the lascannons. Why, yes! General!"

She hurried - well, hurried as much as she could - to a burly looking woman with coppery red hair and a pair of augmetic eyes connected in a gleaming visor.

"What did you call the Furies, again?"

"Ah," the General - her Low Gothic accented in a musical, alluring tone. "They were, ah, how do you say Anges de Feuia?"

"I have no bloody idea!" Reynoldes blustered. "I don't speak your heathen tongue, you half-backwards savage. Ha ha ha!" She slapped the furious General on the back, turning to Vynn.

"I see where you get it from," Jon remarked, having appeared beside Vynn as if teleported. She started, then glared at him in mute incomprehension. Before the conversation could continue, Jon put in his oar and said: "I believe the translation is Angels of Fire."

The General appeared mollified.

"Then, well, the wolfpack hunted down the ancillary ships, and as a group, chased off this ruddy big ork ship from the battle, chased it right into the Dominate reinforcement fleet. It put paid to half their ships before crashing right into one of their other moons," Admiral Rynoldes said, nodding. "With their forces in disarray, two moons cracked near enough into new rings, and the third being taken by those insane motherfrakkers from Catachan, the Dominate forces offered their complete and unconditional surrender."

Vynn nodded. "Ah. And how is the interim governor handling it?"

Reynoldes looked dark. "Well, as he's the one who gave the surrender order. Piker thinks he can walk off smelling like roses..."

Vynn nearly spat her wine over the window, and she hadn't even taken a sip for what felt like hours - she was more holding the cup to have it be held. She looked from her to the man she had taken as a new arrival, not someone who had been in the system for the past few years, directing the forces of a secessionist power against the Imperium. She growled and almost stepped towards him, but Reynoldes put her hand on Vynn's shoulder. She was not strong, but Vynn's respect for her stayed her as effectively as an entire Chapter of Space Marines.

"It's simple, my dear Vynn," Reynoldes said. "There are, oh, two dozen moons with folk on them. Population is nearly five, six billion, even after these past few years of war. We have taken worlds, been struck off, retook them again, again and again, sucking up ships and such. This fellow, this Fiorie, he smelled the turning tide with that little victory of ours. The way he spins it, most citizens here were forced by that mad man Severus to jump off a cliff, and he'd durther not have even a single more dead civilian on his soul. And we'd durther not winnow Battlefleet Calixus down to half strength to root every single damn Dominate out of this place, not while that bloody ork, Grimtoof is mustering his strength. So, we take the surrender, smile, clap hands with him and..."

"And the Imperium's memory is long," Vynn muttered.

"Aye," Reynoldes said. "But be polite. Don't tell the bloody traitor that you'd durther space him."

Vynn frowned. "How many Dominate assets are still intact, ma'am?"

Reynoldes paused. "We're in orbit about one. Half a dozen long lances, aimed right at our belly. Makes the wine kick a tad harder, eh? All we need is peace to last two days, three, and the Mechanicus will have rooted out the last of the traitors who might turn hand, and we can turn those lances on the orks coming."

"He has to know that he's doomed," Vynn raged as she walked with Jon through the corridors of the Hegemony. The full, fattening meal of the banquet rested in her belly like a half dozen stones, but she could hardly regret it, considering how fine it had all been. She rubbed her belly, laughed at the belch that emerged, then turned to face Jon, her fury returning a moment later. "This whole system is a bloody mess. If we had arrived before the damned politicians took over and stole five million thrones from under my nose like that!" She snapped her fingers.

"A tad dramatic, that," Jon said, casually.

"Only by a slightest hair," Vynn scowled. "I saw the reports. If the Hegemony had been there, that wolfpack could have boxed the ork. Boxed her, burned her, and bailed behind like so much trash! And rather than smashing the Dominate fleet into flinders and getting not a single prize from it, oh, the havoc we could have plucked our choices. That reinforcement fleet was made of upgunned transports and its flag was an Orion! An Orion, Jon! An Orion!"

"You keep saying this name as if it supposed to mean something," Jon said, shaking his head.

Vynn scowled, about to explain when she saw the emotionless face of Lieutenant Desna standing paitently behind Jon. She looked as if she had been waiting there for quite some time. Vynn cut herself off, then gestured to Jon. Jon turned and saw Desna.

"Lieutenant, how may I help you?"

"Where were you on the day 237 of this year?" she asked, her voice utterly flat.

Jon shrugged. "In my quarters, researching a new book I had purchased, translating it from what the writer clearly thought was High Gothic to Low Gothic."

Desna nodded, then walked past, saluting Vynn as she walked past. Vynn watched her go, then smiled at Jon. "Still, at least I've sent an astro to my prize agent, and we should be in system long enough to be paid." Her eyes sparkled. "Five billion souls means quite an economy. Say! That reminds me! Have you ever hear of the Qeng Ho Dictate?" She grinned.

"Is this some naval theoric? If so, no," Jon said, amused as they continued on. Desna heard their voices fading as she continued towards her chamber. There, she went to her large sheet of paper, covered with notes and bits of information that she had been gathering through storm and shine. She made a note next to Jon's name, drawing line between it and several voidsmen who had sworn on their copy of Lex Divinus that they had seen him up and about with the Space Marine Khar'Toba on the day 237. Desna stood there for some time, considering.

"When all else is excluded, the remainder - no matter how impossible, must be true," she said.

And then...

Desna did something that Desna had not done in many years. It had been seeing a nobleman on her homeworld of Triskellion, whipping a slave for not bowing swiftly enough. The blood had not distressed the eleven year old, nor had the cries of pain. Rather, it was a simple calculation that that slave, her father, would go back to the cane-yards to drag up shooka root, which would be processed to make promethium. That whipping would leave him bed ridden for a day, or two. He could, daily, drag up almost a hundred shooka roots - a pace rapid enough to buy his daughter's freedom within a year, if nothing stopped him. That was roughly equal to a gallon of promethium, all things considered.

That whipping had robbed the Imperium.

It had caused Desna...

To frown.

###

Jelkos sat in his chambers and, within his mind, was master of an infinite possibility space. Five billion souls, each one trading, buying, selling, desperately scrambling, salvaging, fighting, killing. There were several hundred thousand space based vehicles in this system, with dozens of moons of varying levels of habitability. There were half a dozen or more Imperial ships, a few prizes that were being hastily fixed, an orkish battlefleet rushing towards them. This system, this fleet, was a pin. A central connection that he had spent decades wandering and striving to find.

There had been no concrete plan to bring him here. Nothing as grandiose as saying that he had set foot on a ship and let himself be carried here by a series of falling domino. Such a thing would have been literally spitting in the face of his master, his true master. Chaos and planning - finding that paradoxical balancing point. That was what he had done. He had drifted between short term and long term schemes, moving himself closer and closer towards the Spinward Front and its delicious possibilities.

The Calixus Sector and this entire front of the Imperium rested on the head of a pin, at this moment.

And that pin was here...

But when he most needed it...he had no fingers to tug them. In that possibility space he kept within his mind, he had an image. In heavy, black painted armor - the colors of several Legions that he had long since foresworn and left behind - he would drop, bearing a bolter infused with daemonic energies. He would need speed and stealth and shocking brutality to cave through Guardsmen hard points and Skitarii search-kill-secure teams. But then he would get to the long nines, the immensely powerful ground based lance weapons. With their shields down and their posture belly-down, the Imperial ships would burn. The Victory would crack in half. The Dominate would throw their yoke off, and be entirely unprepared for the Orks that would arrive.

The Orks, then, could use the industrial and mineral wealth of this system. Asteroids affixed with warp engines, bearing rapidly trained and swiftly bred orkish warriors. And who would the war leader listen too? Why...why...

There was a reason for his grandiose Salamander disguise. The training to adjust his skin tone had unlocked a new subtly to Jelkos' repertoire. Blasphemous, without a doubt. But he was a touch beyond blasphemy, was he not? He looked down at his hand, opening his eyes to slits, and let his control grow finer and more focused. His skin darkened, then shifted in shade, to a rich, deep green. With his musculature and his ability to mimick voices, he could already see the name he'd earn. Throk Tuskless, or something equally as brutal and orkish. But use his strength to split some heads, his cunning to bring some slave-castes onto his side...he'd have Grimtooth's ear.

And each of those roks would go to worlds of his choosing. And his grand plan, the epic scheme, would be so much closer.

Horus had conquered much of the Imperium with a single betrayal.

Jelkos would outdo him. He would outdo Horus. He would leave Abaddon as a faliure, mocked when set against his name. Jeklos the Master of Whispers. Jelkos, the Ork Tamer, the Chaos Walking As a Man. Jelkos, who conquered an entire sector with but a single silver tongue.

And it could still work.

He smirked and stood.

###

Vynn was on the bridge, watching the moon they orbited. It was one that had been touched by war, aye...but this particular orbit. Green fields still sprawled under her - grass, growing under an atmosphere worth calling that name, with trees and rivers flowing from mountain peaks. A tiny Terra, seemingly small enough to hold in the palm of her hand. This world had been the first to surrender, and it was where the whole of the Imperial fleet was moored now, for its heavy defenses would serve a perfect place to break the orkish fleet's spines on.

Ah, yes. The augeries from the Admiral's pet psyker said they would arrive anywhere from a week to three months from now. Nothing for her to complain about. The factories of the system were feeding the munitions that the Hegemony needed. And she planned to more than distinguish herself and her ship - and she knew her crew stood behind her. The door hissed open behind her and she turned, to find Desna striding into the room. Her face was...was...for the first time in her life, Vynn felt actual fear while looking into the eyes of a subordinate. For Desna...

Was furious.

Her eyes flared and sparked and she seemed to crackle, her whole body quivering. She thrust a folder at Vynn. Vynn took it, wordlessly. "I see you have been quite busy, Lieutenant."

Before Vynn could open it, though, the door opened again. This time, the familiar and - to be honest - quite welcome face of Kar'Toba filled it. Vynn chuckled, nervously, and stepped forward, past Desna. "M'lord, what-" And then she was falling backwards, her chest feeling as if it had been struck by a hammer. She skidded, fetched up against her command throne, and gasped. Her hand went to the flak vest underneath her uniform, and felt that it had been bent inwards by a blow not unlike a sledge hammer. Her legs refused to work, her breath refused to come as Desna was sent flying, her arms flailing. She crashed into her beloved Auspex pit, while poor brave Blightly rushed at Kar'Toba and fell, his face stove in, blood fountaining.

Vynn tried to grasp what was going on, but before she had even managed to grab onto her command throne, Kar'Toba had slain ten more men, breaking necks, shattering noses, staving in heads with blow from elbow, fist, even his head. A middie, a girl named Twelti, no more than eleven was picked up and dashed against the wall, leaving behind a smear of red blood - a smear that awoke a fury all the greater by Vynn needing to make nice with that traitor governor earlier. But her legs still did not work.

Then, Desna's voice - rising over the cries of alarm, the shouts of pain from those lucky enough to merely have limbs shattered.

"All armsmen to the bridge! All armsmen to the bridge! The Space Marine, he's-"

And then a metal pole, yanked from a guard rail by a single jerk of Kar'Toba's hand, plunged through Desna's back, exploded from her chest, pierced the console and sent sparks and flames into the air. She sagged, clutching to the pole, jaw clenched against the pain, blood staining her blue jacket black. Vynn dragged herself to her feet. But the first two through the door were not armsmen. They were clearly those who had been nearest. Jon, his pistol drawn. And beside him, Regencina, wearing her customary carapace armor in black and white and gold.

Jon snapped up his pistol and cried out: "Good Emperor, what in his name is-"

But then another bar, another guide rail yanked from the command plinth, caught him in the belly. Swung, rather than thrown, it fetched him against the wall and sent him sprawling. Regencina, a Sororitas by training but a Famulosa by inclination and career, cried out: "Jonny!" And so, she was brought low by the reverse strike, cracking against her shoulder and breaking something despite carapace plates. As she staggered, the Space Marine put the bar through the lock and snapped it off. Furious tech-sprites exploded out of the boxy controls, smashing the door shut in the face of a half a dozen armsmen rushing forward.

Vynn had gotten one leg under her.

Jon groaned, trying to grab for his pistol.

Regencina shook herself, her eyes wide, her face white with pain.

And casually, as if in a country park, Kar'Toba - his skin softening to a pale white as he walked, his disguise slipping, revealing that he was no Salamander at all - walked to the gunnery control console. The console Vynn had so lovingly updated and augmented, changing out brass tubing and runners with vox links and intercoms. He picked up the vox and, in a remarkable impersonation of her voice - taking full advantage of the grainy, crackly sound of even the best a vox created, and Vynn's own throaty alto was closer to match even with his normal bass - he said: "Gunner Keets, ready every gun - those damned Dominates have boarded us! Lock on their cities and fire!"

Vynn forced herself to her feet.

And knew despair.

She had kept every gun loaded, every cannon readied, for the orks that might arrive at any moment. And she knew Teshan Keets, the able voidsman who had distinguished himself so well, promoted to Gun Captain. She had been proud of him, proud to sign his name into the rolls as a non-commissioned officer, proud to see him take a gun under his hands. And now, that very diligence and valor that she had respected would doom not only millions of innocent civilians, but the Imperial fleet as those vast Dominate lances fired back in vengeance.

And there was not a thing she could too, still gasping for air.

Standing beside his vox, Teshan needed no moment. The Voidhound, the woman he had once cursed as a tartan bitch but now loved with every fiber of his being, had given an order. He turned and bawled out. "Ready guns! Run them up, run them up!" It was a needless order. Every macrocannon, every maser, every gravitic culverine, every pot and pan that could be flung at the enemy had been readied and itching. The men and women waiting near their weapons ran forward and let out great cheers as pushed their guns to the ports. And Teshan, being the gun captain, plucked up the telescope and peered through, sighting the targets.

And there, he stood, looking.

Green fields. Large cities - a few pock mark craters from earlier battles, but nothing so much of a much. He paused...and felt his throat dry as he saw what the city was built near. A great river, branching and expanding, and threading outwards. He had not thought of a river delta like that in many years, not since he had left Vedas for the Navy. But that had been his last, great sight of his home - a view of the sacred river valley, where it was said that one of the Hundred Faces of the Emperor had mediated beneath a tree for a hundred days and ninety nine nights, then strode off to continue his quest of vengeance.

Vedas hadn't been reconquered. It had welcomed the Great Crusade with open arms. It had been as if their entire world had waited with baited breath to worship one such as the Emperor - one of his many faces had been carved into the faces of one of the sacred mountains that fed that great river delta. That face, that stern, bearded face was the face that the Shook tried to emulate with their taciturn, stoic faithfulness.

Teshan saw those rivers.

And he remembered bathing his younger brother in their waters. He remembered that girl, what had her name been? Aliyshanipurti? She had been so beautiful, and her laugh had been like musical. He remembered his mother, watching as they made the pilgrimage. He remembered his father. Oh, his father. How simple, to take joy in a farm and in a small shrine and in the weekly visit to the theater, to enjoy the comedies. Slapstick xenos being carted off by Wiley Lasjack with his net and his eyepatch, that xeno pirate shaking her fist and claiming she'd get him next time. And always, next time.