Take as Prize Ch. 06

Teshan felt himself frozen...

But then, he was decided.

And in that moment, he lowered the telescope.

"Gunny?" one of the gunners looked to him. The firing pins were locked. The hammers that would strike the shells were readied. Even the masers were sizzling, ready to launch. Again, his rank: "Gunny?"

I am an Gun Captain, damn it! He thought. If I will damn myself, I will at least make it official.

"Belay that order," he said, his voice firm. "Stand down." He picked up the vox. "I will not fire on civilians, not civilians that are not even firing at us first!"

And there, on the bridge, Jelkos the Space Marine, turned to chaos ten thousand years hence and with five centuries of subjective lifetime spent planning and scheming, betraying and manipulating the darkest parts of the human soul, gaped at his vox and found himself utterly at a loss. And behind him, Vynn had stood. And drawn her sword, the metal rasping against leather.

"Let us dance," she snarled, caring not for cracked ribs nor throbbing pain. "Traitor."

The Space Marine turned, frowning. He walked forward, picking up an officer's saber that seemed toylike in his massive grip. His face was pure fury, and it seemed that he would at least bring down one Imperial today. His sword clove the air and Vynn only evaded by ducking low, her mohawk tugging as locks were cut free. She brought her sword up, and the Space Marine caught her wrist with his immense fist. He twisted and her wrist snapped like a twig. Vynn gasped and Jelkos slammed his knee into her gut. Ribs grated and she felt herself flying backwards. She hit the floor, caught up against the lowest bar, one of the few guide rails that the Space Marine had not ripped free. She coughed up blood, her sword dropped.

Jon scrambled to his feet - finally becoming senate. He hefted up his pistol, but Jelkos was faster. He leaped forward, rolling his immense bulk behind a cogitator, near a cowering middie who screamed in abject terror. Las bolts slammed into the cogitator, filling the air with smoke. Jelkos leaped up the instant the fire paused and threw his sword like a spear. It rushed towards Jon's heart and Vynn managed to scream in fury and despair.

And the sword shattered. The hilt clattered, and a single fragment of blade skimmed along a single pale cheek, leaving a line of blood. A mousy cheek. Round, and soft, the face of a woman that only someone who loved her could really call beautiful, but none might call homely or ugly.

Regencia's carapace armor had not even a single scratch.

And she had drawn her own weapon. Pitiful, really. A small, buzzing chain-dagger. A mockery of the heroic Sororitas with chainsword and bolter. And yet, she stood as tall as Saint Celestine as she glared at Jelkos, who charged towards her and Jon, who was trying to find a way to shoot the Space Marine without striking Regencia. As he did so, the door started to grind and crack and grind open. Armsmen stepped backwards, crying out in fear as sparks flew from the straining metal and sparking techno-sorcery that fought against the door opening.

Regencia swung her whirring blade at Jelkos. He lifted an arm to block. She dropped the blade to her other hand, plunged it up into his side. It grated against fused rib-bones and blood sprayed and Jeklos roared, then spat. And Regencia staggered away, face clutched by hands that hissed and smoke, by skin that peeled and blackened, her shriek loud enough to cover the scream of the door. Jelkos ripped the chain-blade from his side, blood already clotting. Thus armed, he looked ready to slaughter the entire ship if he had too.

And standing there, ringed by armsmen more afraid of her than the door that opened despite all logic, and the Space Marine with fury in his eyes...was a twelve year old girl.

"Pipsqueak! Run!" Vynn shouted.

Mary Belisarius, of the Familus Belisarius, saw Regencia, clutching at her smoking, steaming face, saw the pain on Jon's face, saw the bodies, saw the Space Marine. Her eyes widened. Jelkos sprang forward. To grab her? To twist her young neck and leave her as dead as poor Twelti? Vynn did not know. She would never know. For at that moment, Mary's cybernetic occulus, the ring of brass and steel affixed on her forehead, opened with a snick that was audible in the shocking silence that came before the storm. Vynn watched, her eyes wide, unable to look away as a spear of searing purple flames leaped from that swirling, infinite madness of that third eye...and plunged into the eyes of Jelkos.

He stood, frozen. Transfixed.

"No...more..." Mary said, voice high. Piping. Her hands clenched and she stepped forward and a man that could rout armies with a fist and a sword stepped backwards. His fingers twitched, and the chain-blade dropped. And Vynn, unable to look away, saw the edges of her vision blurring. The walls were shifting and warping and rippling. Metal peeled away, revealing squirming flesh and muscle and bare white bone. Screaming faces filled the consoles and yet she could not look way. She felt her eyes burn. Her lungs burned. Someone was screaming, someone was making that noise that came from all around her.

That someone was her.

And Jelkos.

"You don't get to hurt anyone anymore!" Mary snarled, stepping forward again. "You hear me! No one! No more! Not on my ship! Not my friends! No more!"

Jelkos hands, fingers spasming and snapping, lifted to either side of his head. Bones thrust through skin tough enough to blunt lasfire as his muscles writhed. His eyes were bulging and burning and he was screaming and screaming and screaming and Vynn felt the flesh-walls of her own ship closing around her. Then a force slammed into her broken ribs, breaking that hideous vision. She fell onto her back, and her face was filled with the eyes of Jon. He looked into her eyes, gasping, and they needed no words.

Jelkos, though, kept screaming. And screaming.

And then Mary twisted her head and jerked it to the side, as if sending a whip-crack forward. The purple flame pulsed and rippled and the bulge of energy she sent along it reached Jelkos' head, moving slowly enough that the part of him not driven mad by the faces of all those he had killed and failed and the stern, glaring eyes of that ravened haired grandfather who judged him most of all...could know fear.

Jelkos' knees hit the deck.

And he fell to the side.

His eyes were holes, pits into hell, smoking and bare.

Mary sagged, her iris snicking shut in the silence - as loud as the opening had been.

And it was over.

###

Regencia woke to a soft: "Reggie..."

Her eyes opened. And she had eyes to see. The view was blurred, at first, then became clearer. She could see the ceiling of the medical ward. And she could see Jon's face. He looked into her eyes with that serious expression she had become familiar with, when he had checked over Mary after every trip. The memory of Mary should have evoked within Reggie's breast an intense desire to sit up. To find her. But instead, to her shame, she felt nothing but fear.

Her lips parted, and she felt something laying against them. She could still speak, though her voice sounded like a ruined rasp.

"How...bad?"

Jon sighed. "The...acid," he said. "Ate through the upper layers of skin and lower, though we neutralized it before the bone was damaged. Your eyes, too, were below the splash sight, and so we saved them with only minor scarring. But...your nose, lips, chin. They're all badly scarred. Gone, in the case of your upper lip." He frowned. "Keeping that from you would only make it worse to know."

Reggie nodded, as stoic as she could. She felt...an urge to cry. And yet, she could not. She put her hands to either side of her face, starting to breath faster. Faster. Oh Emperor! Oh Emperor!

"I can't cry!" she gasped, and hated herself for how weak she felt. She should have been praising the Emperor for such a gift - she had shed tears when, as a teenager, she had been brought to the Schola Progenium. The Cannoness had whipped her then. She'd be whipped now, if they had known of her weakness.

"The acid ate through some of...ah, hell, Reggie..." Jon said, shaking his head.

Her hands slid to her face, to her mask. For it was a mask. Made of some smooth material, it had to be there so as to not frighten and horrify those around her. Her eyes closed, closed so that she might not see her own face. She knew it was impossible, and yet a horror of that filled her. Jon's hand closed around her's squeezing. He rumbled, his voice close to her. "Mary is fine - just tired. Vynn is overseeing the burials - thirteen dead, all with bare hands and improvised weapons. Desna is recovering, over in the bed."

"Good, good," Reggie said, trying to sound as if she meant it. But then, quietly. "A-At least...as a nun...it is good...good that this happened..."

Jon leaned forward, she could feel it.

"No one will want me, anyway..." She whispered, and squirmed, feeling the twist of a knife in her gut. How banal was that? How petty was that? Was she some noble girl, to be married off like a grox breeding stock? Did her looks matter one single solitary throne? No! But still, that horror filled her, a horror inculcated by her youth, not by her time in the Schola Progenium. A horror that lingered and grew the more she tried to ignore it.

Jon reached forward. His finger caught her chin, then tugged the mask up and away. She flinched, knowing he had seen her before, unable to stop herself from caring. Then, softly, Jon rumbled.

"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, Reggie..." And then he proved it by leaning down and kissing her on her ruined lips. His lips, so soft against the rise of scar tissue that was her upper lip, against the pockmark that was her lower, made Reggie wish she could cry all the harder. Her hand cupped the back of his head, tentative and shy, her fingers lacing through that dark hair as his tongue slipped to her mouth. There, undamaged flesh met undamaged flesh. His nose pressed to scar tissue and she realized she could not smell him - save for where his mouth and hers met, where their tongues played.

And a desperate fire lit between her legs. Despite the fact Jon started to draw away - clearly, knowing that this was far from a sane idea in a crowded medicae - Reggie's other hand grabbed his hip, then levered him onto the cot, which groaned under their weight. Her mouth remained locked with his and her teeth refused to let him draw away lest his lower lip join her upper. And slowly, resistance faded, and Jon was kissing her with the same eager, desperate passion. His hand fumbled outwards, dragging a privacy screen around them - doing nothing to stop the cat calls and whoops of the crew.

Drawing his mouth back, Jon panted. "Reggie..."

"Ignore them..." She whispered.

"But...your vow?"

Reggie's hands went to the filmy gown that she wore, a hospice cover. It tore most satisfyingly. "There is no vow of celibacy among the Sororitas, Jon." Her breasts were untouched by any but the scars of training. Her nipples, rosy and perky, thrust into the air. Soon, Jon - apparently casting aside the last of his hesitation - had closed his mouth around her and was sucking on her with the desperate eagerness of his teenage youth. Reggie rolled her head back, and when she moaned, she whistled. And...despite the knowledge of why she whistled, her lips unable to quite form the same sounds they had before...

She laughed.

It was such a silly sound. A charming sound.

Then her leggings were slipping off and Jon was tugging off his shirt, and then his nude body was pressed against her, all of it moving as fast as she could imagine. His cock was long and thin and just as warm as she remembered, hot against her belly. His cocktip teased her belly button due to the incorrect position of his hips. Soon, he corrected and teased the thick thatch of brown hair that grew above her wanting, desperate sex. Reggie looked up at him, grinning shyly - and Jon did not recoil as he smiled at her.

"You remember how, yes?" she murmured.

His palm cupped her knee, lifting. Her sex spread wider and Reggie crooned, her eyes half closed. Jon did not hesitate. He buried himself to the hilt, balls slapping against her rump. It wasn't a forceful thrust, for she remained as welcoming as she had ever been, and the slickness of her sex made her as smooth an entrance as anything he had ever felt. Instead of speed and pounding passion, Jon simply began to thrust into her. They made love like an old married couple - as if they needed to be careful of bones and creaky joints.

They didn't.

They did need to be concerned about a cheap cot, which squeaked and groaned as Reggie arched her back, her breasts transcribing gentle circles as she moaned and whimpered and breathed through her ruined lips, slurring slightly. "Jonhyyy!"

Her cunt, as feather soft and comforting as an old home, clenched and Jon let himself lose. His balls clenched and he gritted his jaws, his eyes closing to slits, looking only at her ruined face and seeing nothing but those beautiful brown eyes. Welcoming and loving and filled with joy as his balls twitched and cum spurted into her sex. Warmth rushed into her, filling her. She felt it, and then felt cum starting to drip from her sex, sliding along the crack of her rump. She wallowed, happily.

"Well, hah, that's one way to check the health of a woman, I suppose!" Vynn said, her voice booming, boisterous and cheery. Jon snapped his head around and saw Vynn standing there, hat in hand, cheeks ruddy red. Beside her was a woman in a robe, a toothy smirk spreading across her chocolate-dark face.

"Slicer..." Pyros said. "Never change."

But a third and final shock hung from around Pyros' neck. A gleaming, gold stamped rosette of his Holy Majesty's Imperial Inquisition, the skull marked with the subtle symbols of Ordos Hereticus. Jon gaped, not even withdrawing from Reggie, who slowly plucked the cast aside blankets and tucked them shyly over her breasts. Jon sprang to his feet, scrambling away from Pyros, who walked towards him and chuckled throatily as she looked up and down his body with a roving look. "You do know I've seen it before," she said as he covered himself with his palm.

"You have?" Vynn asked, then laughed. "Jon! Did you know that our passenger was an Inquisitor in disguise! Hah! And you thought her dead just from a some humors, oh ho ho!" She put her hands on her belly. "Remind me to always get a second opinion when you check a corpse!" She shook her head, laughing. "Though, I can see why you might have got confused, do tell him how you did it."

Pyros shrugged one shoulder. "My psyker talents blunted the las-bolt of that dastardly Space Marine." She said, brushing the curtain backwards, revealing that Lieutenant Desna was watching the whole thing going on, her face emotionless. Pyros smirked at Jon. "I aped being dead, as I knew that Jelkos would surely do great harm if he thought I was still on his trail. Tumbling from the seal-lock was a tad troublesome, but I simply prolonged the air in my lungs until I could grab onto some of those gargoyles on the edge of the ship. Dragging myself in, I joined some pressed crews and laid low. Easy enough with several thousand faces to hide among." She spread her arms. "And when Jelkos acted, I countered him with minimum force and maximal effects."

"Such as?" Jon asked, voice tight.

"A whiff of nostalgia," she said. "And a door. And that was all that was needed."

Vynn slapped her back, careless of the intimidating aura Inquisitors were supposed to emit with their very presence. She beamed at Jon. "Isn't that the most remarkable thing you've ever heard, Jon?"

"I must thank you, Doctor Balthazar," the Inquisitor added. "Your diagnosis did make Jelkos not look close to me. So, in a way, you assisted me in this dangerous mission." Her eyes sparkled.

Jon nodded, his hand still covering his crotch. "My pleasure, m'lady."

Desna watched this. Her face remained impassive. And later, when she was pronounced fit to walk with only a mild concussion and an already healing hole in her chest - every vital organ missed by the pipe that had transfixed her - she walked to her quarters. There, her effects had been gathered, including the dossier she had created. Filled with dates and times and evidence, it was now flecked with blood. She looked at it, then quietly, tossed it into a can. A match followed it and she sat on her bed and watched it burn.

She nodded.

"Efficient," she said, and slept without guilt.

A week later, the Hegemony was part of the engagement that shattered the orkish invasion fleet. The broadsides of the Victory shattered rock-built ship after rock-built ship, while the wolfpack frigates dogged the zzap gun ladened, weird-boy tower sprouting artillery frigates. The orkish admiral, Kaptain Trugfuut, and his flagship, the Roknrull, burned and burst with a flare of plasma so bright that it was visible from the most distant moon of the system. With a promotion waiting in her pocket and the head money for half a million orks waiting at Scintilla Prime, Vynn stood on the bridge and reflected that this was going to be her last voyage with the Hegemony.

She was to be made post, after all - a true captain. With that, maybe a prize frigate and a chance to work to Lord. From there...who knows?

Her palm caressed the edge of the repaired railing as she watched her crew bustle about their tasks. Jon stood beside her, his own face settled and calm. He looked only slightly sallow, but that was normal.

"The pipsqueak says all is ready," Mr. Khan said, jovial and casual.

"That pipsqueak killed an astartes with her brain," a middie hissed to his partner.

"I was there," the other middie hissed right back.

"Quiet down there, Mr. Babbington!" Janus' voice cracked out. "Pipe down and mind your sensors."

Vynn shook her head, then looked at Jon. He was looking to her.

"Will you sign on for another voyage, Jon?" she asked. "I can imagine the offer Reggie made you is...quite tempting."

"Marriage?" Jon asked, sounding amused. "A chance to settle down as she retires? What do I have to offer her? Little, bony old me?"

Vynn snorted. "The millions of thrones you get as part of your share, of course!"

Jon chuckled. "I have time to decide." He chewed his lower lip. "What is your plan?"

"My plan?" Vynn asked, then looked to the vista plates slowly grinding shut, men grunting and heaving and pulling to get them closed. "Why, my plan is the same as Jelkos, that bastard. He might have been evil, but he had been right about that. The future is always changing, but it is out there. And you know what I shall do?" She turned to face him, smiling.

"I intend to take it as prize."

THE END