[b][color=9e0b0f]"Not like I have that many Thrones just laying around Smiles. Don't get rich on Navy pay. Besides, being nearly dead on an operating table wasn't the time to be concerning myself with 'Hmm, wonder if these new augmatics will still taste properly or not."[/color][/b] Stukov didn't really mention that Armsman typically did no really get paid, period, they merely got stipends on the rare days that a Naval vessel might pull into a world where they could take any meaningful level of shore leave. Getting paid didn't do much good when they would have their gear issued, quarters issued, food issued, and orders issued. No real need for money at that point. So he didn't really comment further on her follow up statement, not wasting the breath.

Money could grease palms, twist arms, kick and scream, but it wasn't the only method of gaining what one desired. A swift, firm, and near lethal strike could convince someone to aid just as well. Interrogation and intimidation worked just as well, if not better at times, than complete obliteration. Buy the loyalty of a rebellious planet, within a few cycles it was wanting more Thrones or it would revolt again. Decimate a population of a rebelling planet, and demonstrate in the process the ability to utterly obliterate if the whim reared its head, and they would not rebel so likely again. Fear was potent, sometimes more so, than bribery. Besides, the Imperial Navy and, by extension, the Naval Armsman, did not engage in such things as far as his experience was. When you could leave a planet devoid of all life, bribes were typically unnecessary.

[b][color=9e0b0f]"Considering the warp's unnerving habit of breaking through just about anywhere, at a typically unhelpful moment? And a Naval ship can launch into Warp Space from about any place within range of the Astronomican. Figures the warp is waiting behind any backdrop of reality to bleed over."[/color][/b] The thing that Smiles went on about next, humans that had no resonance with the warp and lived cursed lives, was well and truly above his paygrade. The Armsman had no idea what she was on about there, but didn't pursue that particular train of thought either. It had little impact on the current situation, and he sat himself up before she continued, since she was going somewhere with this whole spiel.

Sure enough, the staff was thrown at him with little warning after a speech about the warp being like fire. Well, if fire routinely vomited daemons and abominations, randomly caused men who were too closely connected to explode, become possessed, or worse, and only a small population of individuals could utilize its heat, then yes it was just like fire. But holding the staff was strange, and as Smiles explained it being a tool of safety and control for psykers, his focus wasn't on that. It was on the end of the staff, where her blade was kept, and how it did not maintain the same feel. It wasn't safe, it wasn't control, it was a weapon. Without even thinking about it, a flick of his wrist exposed the blade on the staff. If Smiles had given him the staff not even a day before he would have been clueless on its operation.

[b][color=9e0b0f]"Safety is nice and all, but save it for those who are not sworn to fighting against the enemies of Man. Control, however, has its place. The blade is foreign compared to the rest of your staff. Sickening, somehow. Why?"[/color][/b] As he asked his question he replaced the sheath on the bladed end of the staff and handed it back to Smiles, not holding her focus any longer. The waves of discomfort and background noise came back full force, and he snarled subtly, beating them back again. He was standing, the temperature as cold as it was before as he left his arms rest at his sides, squared off from Smiles with an expressionless face. Her explanation would hopefully explain the blades foreign nature to the rest of the staff. As far as he understood, force weapons were foci, regardless of style and construction. Why would such a foci then, split between blade and staff, have such a disparity between ends? He continued, arms moving to his pockets, something snapping as the cold dropped well into dangerous levels for anyone not suited up like Smiles was, eyes blazing sapphire the farther he got into his counter speech.

[b][color=9e0b0f]"You have yet to answer my other question, Smiles. What. Would. You. Have. Me. Do? You've given me a fine spiel on the warp, nature of pyskers and their opposite, the greatest concerns of sanctioned psykers, which is all fine and well for others. I'm no sanctioned psyker, no navigator or slum renegade witch, I'm an armsman well in over his head. Whatever increase in value that, whatever the hell this will turn out to be, is, gets countermanded by the [i]small[/i] fact that it takes a considerable time for you lot to get sanctioned. Let alone deployed, and we don't have that kind of time. For sanctioning, or deployment. And it sure as hell seems, for all that has happened so far from this damn condition, that it has had [i]nothing[/i] to do with your powers in any relation. The warp may not be evil to you, not inherently so after all the training and practice, but facing the warp in its rawest form, pouring in from a Gellar field failure, watching reality fail and the raw energies of the void coalesce into Daemons and worse things I, to this day, cannot speak of, watching over three fourths of a crew that was family from birth get slaughtered whole sale against a foe they could not even harm, and only by the grace of the Emperor and damn luck that we escaped warp space, [i]DISAGREES[/i] with that statement, Smiles. The only time I have yet to see the warp not actively try to kill me was in your hands, Smiles. One instance, among a lifetime of counterpoints. What would you have a man, who has spent his life fighting against the very essence of the Warp, when he is suddenly having a condition fueled by the very thing he fought a lifetime against, [i]THRUST[/i] upon him with no say in the matter, do, [i]ADRIANNE[/i]?."[/color][/b]

Stukov was under a great deal of stress before this point, fighting against Chaos would do that to a man. Couple it with being saddled with powers that are fueled by the very thing he despised? Alongside the grating noise, heavy levels of pressure from the warp, and utter lack of real rest or respite from shortly after they left the cafe at the landing site? Now being confronted with the fact he could not escape this so readily and that he was cursed like any other psyker? It was a miracle of the Emperor he did not snap right then and, as the Sisters feared, become a raw conduit of the warp. Being overextended as he was saved him as the energy from all the rage and despair failed him and he collapsed backwards, lights in his eyes blinking out and a brief, blessed silence descending onto his mind. For the moment, it had been driven away by his outburst. But he was near silent now, the cold and the mental image of his face, with burning blue eyes, still haunting his mind's eye. [color=9e0b0f][b]"Enough speeches, Smiles, your the sanctioned one here. Before the Sisters decide to come up here and put a bolter shell through my skull. Before the damn noise comes back. What does a man who has stood against the warp his whole life do, when he is forced to embrace it or be lost to it? And its not as simple as 'Embrace it, Armsman'. Don't even try to feed me that line."[/b][/color]