Penny

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Solae Falia. The name, the family name at any rate, as dimly familiar from long ago lessons on the political make up of the Empire though he couldn’t imagine that made much difference at the moment. Rene supposed he would have helped anyone whom the Gids were hunting but he wasn’t so much a fool as to believe that the fact that she was noble and attractive didn’t move him. Some instincts couldn’t be ground out of you even in the brutal year long induction that the marines used to grind down the individual.

Gunfire crackled in the distance an echo from the horizon rather than anything to do with them but it served to break Rene out of the adrenaline induced reverie he seemed to be falling into. In the wake of any successful rebellion, and the destruction of the marine outpost and the embassy certainly meant that this one was successful at last locally, there were likely to be executions both of loyalists and those not sufficiently enthusiastic in their loyalty to the new regime. That was rarely the end of it however. Common people had grudges to settled, people they owed money, someone who stole a wife or girlfriend, and anyone unlucky enough to fall in the way of the mob.Columns of smoke already rose dark against the horizon. One of those would be the embassy and perhaps other official targets but some would be the result of an excess of excitement, alcohol and arson.

“Yes ma’a… Solae,” Rene corrected himself, deliberately keeping his eyes from focusing on her tears. He wondered how she had survived an attack on the embassy, he didn’t kid himself that it had been anything other than luck that saved him during the attack on the Rat Trap. If the attack had been anywhere near as well executed it a miracle she was alive at all. His stomach growled as the adrenaline left his system and his body reminded him that it had been well over a day since he had eaten anything. Going to ground made sense, he had been focused on reaching the embassy, not because it was the best plan but because it was a plan. With that gone they needed time to regroup.

“We should get under cover,” he agreed crouching down to strip the webbing belt from the dead soldier. He pulled a canteen free and drank greedily before offering it to Solae who took it eagerly. The strapping as of unfamiliar design so he hoisted it over his shoulder rather than try to put it on. It would have made sense to take the jackets of the dead men, but in all three cases they were sufficiently spattered with gore to make the prospect unappealing.

“I’m not very familiar with Armistice,” he admitted, the few leaves he had been granted didn’t give him much confidence, “do you know of a place?”

Solae did. It took them an hour to circle around the outskirts of the city, keeping to hedgerows and the light manicured woods where they could. Several times they had to stop and hie while patrols passed close by but the killings seemed to have drawn the manhunt eastward. The Gids had to assume that Solae, whom Rene now realized was the real target of the manhunt, was trying to get out of the city rather than back into it. They approached a small manor house along private drive flanked perfectly manicured Xhasson trees. The trees were from Pyris Reach originally but were cultivated extensively by the rich and powerful throughout the empire. The bark was a brown so dark as to be almost black but shot through with traceries of bright gold. The leaves were the same metallic hue though they shifted from gold to silver in slow pheromone mediated waves which passed from tree to tree. The sight woke an unexpected pang of homesickness and Rene wondered if the gardener who devoted so many hours to the plants had been swept up as a loyalist or was part of a drunken rampaging mob.

The door of the large two story house was ajar, broken from its frame by a ram when the rebels had come for whomever had lived here. Rene gestured Solae down with a marine hand signal that the woman had no way of recognizing, fortunately his intent was clear enough and she flattened herself behind a nearby bush. For long minutes he watched the house, the door swinging open and then closed banging against its warped frame as the wind willed. Finally he relaxed.

“Looks like the rebels have been and gone,” he said with obvious relief lowering the rifle from his shoulder as he looked at the beautiful, if disheveled, marquesa.

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Camilla’s heart thudded in terror as the great beast thundered across her improvised barrier. It burst from the burning pine tree trailing great tendrils of smoke. The shaggy tufts of fur coating it smouldered in stinking wispy patches. If the creature had been any more intelligent than a boulder it could have scattered the flames enough to let its smaller brethren through to finish the job but instead the wind of its passage merely fanned the flames to new and alarming heights.

There was no time to appreciate the reprieve though. A fist with knuckles the size of Reikland hams sailed over Camilla’s head and smashed into the stone wall with a spray of dust and gravel. The quarters were too tight for her rapier so she pulled her dagger from her belt and another knife from her leather boot. With a shriek she drove one of the blades into the brutes upper tight, burying it to the hilt. The ogre didn’t even slow, merely whirled around and snapped at her with a mouth full of foot long incisors.

Cydric’s sword came down in an over handed slash which sliced six inches into the cable like tendons of the thins arm and it whirled away from the Tiean courtesan. Behind her spears lurched blindly through the flames, hurled by opportunistic skaven on the other side. Gripping the edge of her cloak see fanned the flames back towards the rats and was rewarded with inhuman screams as the flames caught several who had strayed too close. The stink of skaven musk and burning fur was indescribable.

With a prayer to Myrmidia Camilla leaped onto the things back driving a knife into the corded muscle around its shoulders. The ogre roared in irritation as Camilla clung to the knives using the weapons as improvised hand holds as she rode on the ogres back. It tried to smash her against the wall but she twisted acrobatically up onto the things shoulders. Rage burned inside of her, she wasn’t going to give Cydric the satisfaction of being right about the need to flee!
@POOHEAD189

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene stood shivering slightly despite the morning heat. Adrenaline still surged in his system making his skin prickle unpleasantly in time with his thudding heart. The woman who rose from behind the stone wall was beautiful despite the filth and blood that caked her. It wasn’t the kind of beauty that occured naturally, no natural face was as perfectly symmetrical or as crisply defined. Her hair caught the light of the rising sun glinting like gold as it refracted the radiation. It was the kind of beauty that only the scions of the nobility could afford. For a moment his heart throbbed painfully in his chest and he was standing over Amellia’s body, as it lay on the blood stained sheets eyes wide in wonder or terror.

He blinked back to the present his mind registering that she had spoken to him and that it was rude not to respond. A noble could be cruel, but they should never be rude. It wasn’t a maxim that had served him very well as a marine but it was deeply ingrained in his psyche. Muscle memory compelled him to make an abbreviated courtly bow.

“I am Rene Quentain… My lady,” he responded, realising as the words left his mouth that what she really meant is what are you doing here. He was acutely embarrassed to be still holding the pistol and lowered his arm to hold the weapons muzzle down close to his thigh. The barrel still warped the air slightly as waste head cooled the barrel. Electromotive slug throwers were extremely powerful but the flux needed to accelerate the slugs heated the ceramic barrel after even a few rounds.

“Ma’am,” he tried seeking to clarify his earlier statement and switching to the appropriate form of address. My lady as a form of address between nobles and not something a lowly marine as he now was ought to adopt.

“I’m with... or that is I’m an Imperial Marine my garrison was attacked…” he trailed off and made a gesture to the three slain soldiers with his free hand. The sergeant had been nearly decapitated by the wire and the air stank of blood and worse things. He looked over the dead as though seeing them for the first time. Rene had trained to kill but he had never actually don it until today. Irrational embarrassment washed over him to be standing amidst such carnage with a highborn lady.

He wondered what he looked like to her, his own aristocratic features drawn and haggard from the exertions of these last few hours. He was at least partially dressed as a marine, brown on green camouflage pants with tan boots and a tan PT shirt but he lacked armor and his only weapon was the looted pistol. Blood leaked slowly from the graze on his chest and older blood stained the side of his head from a pressure cut. Self conscious, he ran his fingers through his dark hair feeling the slime of mud and sweat which coated him. His eyes fixated on the blood that stained her pale skin.

“I don’t know what is going on I thought I would head for the embassy and…” he trailed off again uncertain where to take the conversation and aware that the shots would surely bring other Gids before too long. He reached down and scooped up the boxy assault rifle the sergeant had flung away in his death spasms and reflexively checked the safety.

“Are you ok ma’am?”

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene woke in darkness. Pain blossomed across his chest and the world went black again. Consciousness returned in stages, somehow the stepped increase of pressure and pain made it more bearable. He seemed to recall he should be doing something but the particulars slid away from his intellect like pieces of oiled glass. The details of the attack, present in his mind only as disconnected facts, crashed over him like a shower of winter rain. The vision of Bowie’s body smashing against the berm, Van Heck spinning into the dirt and the flashing reports of automatic weapons echoed in his mind shocking him into crystal clarity. With a strangled shout his body convulsed but the sandbags pinned him more secure than security restraints could have done.

Forcing down his rising panic he steadied his breathing and tried to relax his muscles. Bunching his shoulder he managed to move his left wrist precious inches towards his belt. The belt was gone, torn in the fall or in the avalanche of sandbags. Something sliced painfully into his palm and he bit down on his lip to keep from screaming. It was the razor wire of course, the coiled ribbons must have come down with the sandbags, he was probably lucky not to have been wrapped in the stuff and sliced to bloody ruin. Carefully, he found one of the small metal bladed and took it between blood slicked finger tips. With swift sharp strokes he began to slash the canvas casings of the sandbags, spilling the dirt into the interstices of the pile.

Progress came quickly after that and fifteen minutes later, gasping for air and covered from head to toe with dirt adhered to sweat, Rene pulled himself free of the pile. The humid night air was the sweetest thing had ever tasted and for long moments he could do nothing but suck in great lungfuls. Everything hurt, it was amazing that he had avoided breaking any bones, but he had received enough bruises and contusions to compensate. Pushing it from his mind he forced himself to take stock of the situation.

The base was quiet in the deeping twilight. Fires, started by grenades or by enthusiastic Gids in the aftermath, still smoulderd at a dozen points. Thick ropes of acrid smoke curled from the windows of the communications trailer and all three barracks units. The whole place stank of burning insulation, burning flesh and the sweetish reek of corpses beginning to superate in the tropical heat. Of the Gids themselves there was no sign, a good thing because Rene hadn’t given them a second thought in his desperation to escape entombment beneath the sandbags. The armored vehicle was gone, the impressions of its tracks evident even in the uncertain light of burning buildings, as were both of the marine patrol vehicles. Looted by the Gids Rene presumed.

There were bodies also, a haphazard collection laid out against the berm. Rene stumbled towards them, realizing as he did so that he had lost a boot in the collapse, the lack making his gait awkward as he crossed the twenty meters to the rank of bodies. All of them were dead, Rene hadn’t held out any hope but there was a finality to seeing the dead that he hadn’t been prepared for. Most had been killed in the initial volley, though a few had received a coup de grace in the form a shot between the eyes which distended their features horribly. The Gids had obviously dragged the bodies to the berm to search and count them. It was a reasonable step though there was no way they could have accounted for the bodies that had burned up in the trailers. Bowie’s body was at the end of the line. He had been dead when the Gids found him, killed by the blast which had sheared the antennae. There was surprisingly little visible damage, overpressure from the blast Rene figured, dredging the information from a half forgotten military first aid course. Bowie’s face was frozen in a sardonic smile, doubtless the result of random muscle contraction rather than a genuine expression of emotion, but it suited his friend so perfectly that it made Rene’s heart lurch. Tears welled in his eyes and he sank to the ground beside his friend and stared sightless at the uncaring stars.

New Concordia - Day Two

The soldier zipped up his fly and tossed his tab stick into the irrigation ditch. The burning end of the stick fell so close to Rene that he could have reached out and grabbed it. He didn’t move. He tried not to breath. The soldier let out a sigh of relief and ambled back towards his companion. Rene relaxed by a minimal increment. He had reached the outskirts of Armistice, the administrative capital of New Concordia in a little under two hours. The base had been thoroughly looted by the Gids and he hadn’t been able to find a weapon or any functional communications gear. He had made his way to one of the nearby hamlets and stolen one of the six wheeled trucks the locals used to deliver crops to the Starport in Armistice.

At first Rene no plan beyond to get away from the slaughter at the Rat Trap but as he had driven along the darkened country roads a plan had began to form in his mind. Rebellions were not uncommon in an entity as large as the Stellar Empire. Usually it was a matter of the local army crushing whatever aggrieved section of the populace had been forced into an orgy of looting and destruction. This had to be something different. The Gid attack had been carefully planned and well executed, not a spontaneous riot of drunken or mutinous troops. That kind of attack only made sense in the scope of a much larger rebellion. Rene’s duty was clear, he had to report what had happened to his commanders, the simplest way to do that was to reach the Imperial Embassy.

Unfortunately that plan had hit a snag when he reached the first roadblock. Gid troops were searching vehicles coming in and out of the city. Rene had pulled off onto a side road before he was noticed and ditched the truck behind a stand of trees. He had thought to approach the city through the semi rural suburbs but had almost ran right into a Gid patrol as he crossed a field bordered by a low stone wall. It had been pure good fortune he had managed to dive into this ditch when the locals emerged from behind one of the low stone structures.

“Why are we out looking for this bitch again?” one of the soldiers, still only ten or a dozen meters away griped. Rene frowned, he had imagined they were trying to stop him, or someone like him, from getting into the city.

“Look how the fuck should I know?” another voice responded. Rene had seen three soldiers in the brief instant before he took cover, this one had the bored superiority of non coms the galaxy over.

“You gotta know something Xui, I saw you talking with the captain before we got sent on this miserable goose chase.” There was a long pause and then a long suffering sigh.

“All I know is that some broad bolted from the embassy earlier, or so they think, couldn’t match her body to any of the stiffs they pulled out of there.”

Rene’s stomach sank. The embassy was one of the few places on the planet sure to have a PEA. Positronic Entanglement Arrays, or PEAs, were insanely expensive communication devices for real time transmission across interstellar distances. Because they were so expensive and because each PEA could only send to its partner device, they were only used for sensitive military and diplomatic traffic. He had planned to use it to call off world to report the attack but that hope seemed dashed with the soldiers world. Who was this woman though.

“Sarge!” it was the first voice again, and it had dropped to a low whisper. Rene risked a look over the lip of the trench. The three soldiers were focused on a low stone wall, their backs to the marine. As Rene watched he saw movement. It was a woman, moving slowly but not quite as well concealed as she evidently thought.

“By the stars we will all be rich,” the Sergeant breathed his voice hungry for more than money. Rene stifled a curse as the soldiers began to fan out. He had no idea who this woman was, but her couldn’t stand idly by and let her be taken by these Gids. Steeling himself he pulled the length of razor wire he had bought with him and pulled it taught between his fists. These were very poor odds. The soldiers spread out like the claws of a scorpion, anchored by the sergeant. The woman froze and dropped behind the stone wall, either spotting her hunters or simply spooked by the sudden quiet.

“Stand up slowly and keep you hands where we can see them!” the sergeant shouted. Rene sprang from concealment like an uncoiling spring. The sergeant was only ten strides from him and didn’t even realise the marine was there until a moment before the loop of razor wire closed around his neck. Rene reefed with all his strength. The wire sunk into the man's throat with shocking ease, cutting to the spine with a spray of arterial blood. The other two soldiers spun, alerted by the sudden commotion. Rene let go of the wire, his right hand snatching the pistol from the sergeant's belt, letting gravity complete the draw as the corpse slumped to the ground.

As a squire Rene had spent countless hours training with both pistol and blade. His body settled instinctively into a dueling stance which would have made his Mistress-at-Arms proud, profile to the first assailant, pistol leveled. The stolen weapon boomed, powerful electromagnets accelerating the round down the coiled bore. The round punched into the mass of veins and arteries just above the soldiers heart. He was already pivoting to the surviving Gid when the spinning man opened fire. It was wild and from the hip but something hot plucked at his shirt a heartbeat before he fired the second round. Rene hadn’t corrected for the lift of his first shoot and the second round smashed the right cheekbone of the soldier, dropping him in a boneless heap. For a moment the night was silent as the gunfire died away. Rene let the pistol drop to his side while his left hand reached down to his chest. Blood welled from a narrow graze across his ribs. He examined his fingertips with a combination of exhaustion and wonder.

“This really isn’t my day.”

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

"Well thank you for noticing," Junebug replied with a tight grin. The seat backs above them puffed and sprayed foam and splintters into the air. The boom of gunfire and the screams of crowd were magnified many times over by the excellent acoustics and the thrum of sound was unpleasant at the level of bone marrow. Sayeeda wiggled off the protesting Aiden who had given up on the jammed communicator. The prince wasn't paniced but the situation was clearly well beyond his frames of reference.

"We should get of here," Aiden declared glancing towards the paniced crowd. A fresh burst of gunfire ripped overhead.

"I see four, maybe five problems with that," Junebug remarked dryly. She lifted her head to peer over the seat and ducked again as a pair of plasma bolts flew over her head with a sizzling shimmer of heat.

"And if I had to guess I'd say problem six and seven are probably covering the upper and lower exits with automatics, at least they would be if I were in charge." In Sayeeda's experience you rarely went wrong assuming your enemies were as competent as you were.

"Well what are we going to do?" Aiden demanded glancing toward one of the sprawled body guards who lay lifelessly atop the landing. Junebug hiked her skirt up revealing the body stocking beneath her gown. Aiden looked at her in shocked amazement. A thin garter belt encircled her upper thigh.

"What are you..."

Sayeeda pulled a small four barreled pistol that she wore tucked into the belt and snapped the action back with a metallic click. The pistol was a tiny plamsa weapon which traded everything for reduced size. The barrels were single use tubes which would be deformed by the shots they fired.

"Am I the only one without a gun?" Aiden asked a little plaintively. Sayeeda snickered despite the gravity of the situation.

"Taya's still young its hard to know how far along she is," Neil commented with a chuckle.

"What are we going to do?" Aiden demanded, unmoved by the banter.

"We are going to wait," Sayeeda said before touching her mastoid inplant. The unit was shut off due to the jamming. SHe would have to trust Taya to move when the option presented itself.

"Are you crazy? Wait for wha..." the prince began. The fire alarms began to wail as the burning insulation blocked the infrared sensors. A moment latter the sprinkler system fluttered to life dousing the room in a shower of icy water that cut visibility to almost nothing. The lights died and the emergency lights flicked on in the space of a heartbeat. Sayeeda stood up and fired the first of her four barrels into the assassin at the top right corner of the stairs. The rain shower attenuated the plasma bolt into a ball of super heated steam which struck the unfortunate killer in the neck. Grabbing Aiden by the hand she pulled him to his feet and took three quick strides towards the right exit. With deliberate aim she put the remaining three rounds into the point between to sprinkler heads. Plaster flamed and then the water delivery pipe beneath burst like a bomb transforming the stairs into a waterfall. Neil, Sayeeda, Aiden and a moment later Taya dived through the concealing cascade of water and into the stair well, soaked but alive.

"I thought you said they would have someone covering the exit?" Aiden asked, the prince took an odd looking device from his belt and held it before him.

"Yeah well, one problem at a time," Sayeeda replied casting aside her useless derringer

@POOHEAD189.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

New Concordia - Day One

The summer heat pressed down like a steaming wet blanket. Clouds of tiny barely visible insects swarmed around the sweating, shirtless men. The pinhead sized bugs were native to New Concorida’s Earthlike biosphere and were not sufficiently interested in human biochemistry to bite or sting. They were feasting on the microscopic algae the men were disturbing as the labored in the muddy field a feast unlooked for in the usually placid surface of the rice paddy. The lack of malice made them no less annoying.

Rene Quentain straightened having finally managed to get the synthetic strap secured beneath the komo. The big beast, a reptilian equivalent of a draft horse on as many planets as their were humans, hissed in distressed confusion. The komo had trod on one of the local rock snakes and the resulting bite had sent it into a panicked bolt. Unfortunately for it, and its owner, that had landed it sunk waist deep in the boggy rice field.

“Alright, spin her up! Slowly for the Stars sake,” Rene yelled. He wiped a mud slickd hand across his brow in a forlorn effort to mop away sweat. The action succeeded only in replacing the sweat with a broad streak of brackish mud. Rene was of slightly more than average height and of a somewhat rangy build. Four years in the Imperial Marine Corp had clothed his spare frame with a sheath of wiry muscle though he lacked the bulk of the dedicated gym rats. His face, lacking its current adornment of river mud, was a handsome one in a lean and aristocratic caste. The slightly angular planes of his face might have made another man look grim but his lively green eyes recovered his features remarkable.

An electric winch began to whine from the solid embankment a few meters away. The rice paddies were arrayed in loose rid patterns which followed the curve of a low walled river valley. The southern lowlands of New Concordia’s single continent were largely given over to agriculture of various types but it was low tech local production, at the ‘komo level’ for the most part. Fortunately this particular field was close to the shoulder of the valley and the roadway embankment which served as its border was solid enough to permit a rescue attempt.

The braided wire tow cabled drew tight, pulling the improvised harness Rene and his partner had spent most of the morning fashioning and fighting snug against the beasts underside. Fitting the damn thing had been the real problem, passing the cloth support straps beneath the stranded beast with nothing but an entrenching tool had been a hell of a job. Rene’s eyes followed the cable up to the improvised derrick of high pressure plumbing tubing. From there it ran back to a massive gnarled oak which squatted readily along the bank of the paddy, eagerly drinking from the abundant water for untold generations. Beyond that and as out of place here as a formal dinner, sat a dusty marine patrol vehicle.

Beside the air cushioned jeep stood Konrad Bowie, shirtless with combat pants and boots, and one hand on the manual control lever for the winch. Bowie was a five year veteran who would have been a sergeant by now if he could watch his mouth for more than a minute, a skill which seemed as far beyond Bowie as piloting a starship most days. His skin as dark copper in contrast to the paler Rene but it had the virtue of being mostly mud free at the moment. Bowie was a wise assed, bragart who found trouble for himself and anyone near him at every opportunity. Rene had liked him immediately.

“You know this aint gonna fucking hold Galahad! I can’t imagine why they didn’t send you to the engineers,” the other maine called, gently backing the throttle from the which as the motor began to whine.

“Yeah well if not you told me so,” Rene shouted back. Beside Bowie a small sun darkened farmer in a broad brimmed hat of woven reeds and a shapeless smock rocked back and forth in a mixture of fear and hope. Rene could understand his concern, the komo probably represented a good portion of the fellows survival margin. Still he would have had no chance of ever getting the thing out if Rene and Bowie hadn’t come pasted on their afternoon patrol. Rescuing animals was no job of the Marine Corp but it was a job and Rene wasn’t the sort to let something go undone simply because no one explicitly required him to do it. Bowie on the other hand had objected loudly and continually to the proposal despite the fact that Rene was handling the dirtiest most unpleasant elements. Bowie would complain if the Emperor himself arrived and offered him a palace on Capella and his daughter's hand in marriage but despite the continuous stream of complaints he hadn’t made a serious effort to derail the plan. Obligatory bitching aside service on New Concordia as boring. Days and months of the same patrols, the same sweeps of routine maintenance, the same faces and the same places, could drive a man insane. Without relief from routine a man could go crazy. Turn to booze, put a gun in his mouth or simply run off into the torrential monsoons in the strange seasonal madness which loomed so large in Neo Concordite folklore. Rene’s scheme at least promised diversion in a life which sorely lacked anything to differentiate one day from another.

The mud around the animals six legs began to bubble as the winch took up the weight. Rene spared a concerned glance for the pressurised tubing and then leaned his weight against the komo, feeling is scaly skin rough against his shoulder. He began to rock back and forth, trying to create air pockets to break the suction.

“Give her a bit more!” Rene shouted at his fellow Marine. Dutifully Bowie pulled back on the lever and the motor increased its power with a rising wine. The komo hissed like a steam line as the cloth straps bit into its underside and then, with a suddenness that shocked all three onlookers the paddy gave up its hold on the animal. With a wet pop the seal broke and the winch lifted the animal free. The beast screethed in panic and kicked Rene hard in the chest, sending im sprawling face first into the muck.

“You are three hours late because you got lost?” Lieutenant Van Heck’s voice was dangerously pleasant. Van Heck was a small neat man with a neatly manicured mustache. His blue eyes bored into Rene and Bowie as the two marines stood at attention before his desk. Van Heck’s office as a small room constructed of used supply boxes and furnished sparsely with a simple desk, a small holo projector and a number of printed flimsies marked with watch and patrol assignments. A single large filing cabinet stood in a lonely corner, it had not been opened in the three years Rene had spent rotting in this backwater.

“Yes sir,” Rene and Bowie responded in unison to precise to have been rehearsed. Rene couldn’t actually hear the Lieutenants teeth grinding but his ruddy skin turned a noticeable shade darker. With a visible effort he picked up a faded flimsy and made a show of studying it.

“You got lost on a patrol route that both of you have been driving twice a week for three years?”

“Yes sir, no excuse sir!” Bowie snapped. Both Marines kept their eyes focused on the wall behind the officer, refusing to make eye contact in a technique which had existed as long as there had been soldiers. It hung there for a moment. There was no way Van Heck could prove anything so long as their story hung together, which Van Heck had enough experience to know it would. Rene doubted the officer was primarily angry at them, they just provided a convenient outlet for his frustrations. People didn’t get posted to a black hole like New Concordia if their carers were going well. Isolated bases like this were dumping grounds for the chronically insubordinate like Bowie and the politically embarrassing like Rene. As the throbbing vein in the officers temple slowed, Rene wondered what sin had bought Van Heck to this Star’s forsaken place.

As the officer opened his mouth to decree the punishment for their tardiness, the chain link gate began to squeal on its oil starved track. All three man instinctively glanced from the single window. A column of men in green on green mottled fatigues were marching into the camp. They carried assault rifles, slug throwers rather than the more powerful plasma rifles the Marines used, but were otherwise lightly equipped. Only their officers wore any armor at all and they only had ceramic chest plates hinged open against the oppressive heat. Behind them an armored fighting vehicle, a locally constructed light tank by the looks, chuffed along on what smelled like a diesel engine.

“What are the damn Gids doing here?” Van Heck wondered, his pique momentarily forgotten, “Its early in the year for them to be exercising.”

Gid was catch all and uncomplimentary term used to describe locally raised soldiers. Allegedly it derived from General Indigenous, a force organisation term from local soldiers outside the Imperial hierarchy but Rene had heard several other less flattering etymologies. The Empire consisted of many thousands of worlds and maintaining an Imperial organization that spanned such a reach of space and cultures was a practical impossibility. The solution, for this as most other problems was delegation, local nobles were entrusted with raising, training and equipping forces for their, and in theory, the Empire’s, needs. In return the Imperial bureaucracy paid a portion of the raising costs. The practice was a predictable focus of corruption, any fool could create paper soldiers who ate no rations, and received no training but nonetheless were paid for. So long as it didn’t get too out of hand, the Imperial government was content to let it slide.

Of course some Imperial forces were required to maintain Imperial power. The Marines and the Imperial Navy were outside of the chains of command of local magnates and tended to more direct Imperial needs. Regional nobles were theoretically barred from operating warships but the ban was laxly enforced both because it was impossible to regulate armed merchantmen and because a certain amount of anti piracy activity was necessarily a local affair. Relations between Gids and Imperial forces were seldom good, but it tended to run towards bar fights rather than battles.

“Are we dismissed sir?” Rene asked with courtly politeness. It as the wrong thing to say, Van Heck whirled on the pair with a malicious gleam in his eyes.

“Why yes corporal, why don’t you take the private here and clime the southern sensor mast, the receiving head needs replacing and maybe the exercise can help you to get the lay of the land straight in your lofty aristocratic head yes?” Rene though the venom reserved for aristocrats in the officers voice might hold some clue as to why Van Heck as exiled here but it wasn’t the time for speculation.

“Yes sir!” both Marines chimed in sing song perfection but the Lieutenant was already waving a hand and punching buttons on his holo terminal doubtless looking for the movement orders of the recently arrived Gid detachment.

Rene stepped out of the office and into the cooling afternoon with a sigh. Outpost Romeo Tango Two Six, or the Rat Trap as it as known to its inmates, was not prepossessing. The firebase was located on a small bald which rose from the highlands which bordered the river valley. It essentially consisted of a hundred square meters of bulldozed hilltop. The waste earth had been scraped into a low defensie berm which had been treated with an industrial plasticizing agent to stabilize it. A few extra feet were gained with a crown of sandbags and razor wire. Several large cargo containers and command trailers were laid out to provide housing, storage and command and control. In the summer it was hot, in the winter it was cold and in all seasons it swamed with insects of all types.

“Galahad, remind me to punch you in the mouth the next time you open it will you?” Bowie asked morosely as he pulled a tab stick from he pocket and tapped the contact ignitor against a dirt stained fingernail. Rene nodded solemnly and made a motion of zipping his lips. Replacing the sensor head meant climbing the thirty meters to the top of the antennae and then laboriously disconnecting and replacing the old unit. It was two hours work even in full daylight and that was failing quickly.

“Whats the good word Gid!” Bowie called around the tab stick to one of the local soldiers. The boy, he couldn’t have been twenty, turned and looked at the two Marines with an expression of abject terror. Rene cocked an eyebrow at the reaction but the man as already turning and hurrying away towards his fellows.

“What is his problem?” Rene asked as they strode towards the antennae at the southern end of the compound. Bowie puffed smoke out of his mouth and shrugged his shoulders apathetically.

“What am I the fucking Gid whisperer now?” the veteran demanded. They reached the bottom of the antennae, a triangular ladder like structure three meters to a side and with a heavy sensor box suspended from the top. Rene shrugged himself into a canas climbing harness and began to climb the metal superstructure. He had just set the first safety clip, clamping his line to the metal structure of the antennae when grinding of metallic gears sounded across the camp. Rene looked out from his elevated position and frowned. Most of the Rat Traps thirty two Marines were outside. Some were heating ration packs on chemical stoves, others were just taking the opportunity to relive their boredom by watching the Gids. Rene saws Lieutenant Van Heck speaking to one of the Gid officers. The grinding was the tank, it appeared to be backing up as though intending to turn and exit the camp. Gid soldiers were spreading out throughout the camp though Rene doubted that as obvious to anyone without the advantage of his elevated view point.

A sudden cold chill flashed through Rene as his mind collated the various inputs he was receiving. It seemed impossible to contemplate but there was no arguing with the stark logic of the situation.

“Bowie get-” he started to scream a heartbeat before the Gid officer drew a pistol and shot Van Heck in the chest. The fussy little Lieutenant staggered back with a look of comic shock on his face before a second round sent him spinning to the dirt. The camp exploded in chaos as Gid riflemen unslung their weapons and opened fire on the unsuspecting marines. They weren’t crack troops, but they were trained, they were close and they had modern automatic weapons. Rene saw a half dozen marines go down around a cook stove, one of the rounds striking the propellant tank and spraying the screaming wounded with burning kerosene. Grenades sailed through open doorways and windows blowing storms of glass and smoke from every opening as they detonated with hollow booming crumps. Below him Bowie unslung his plasma rifle, a marine never went without a weapon, and sent two terrified looking Gids toppling to the ground, their combat webbing blazing where the plasma bolts spent their energy in blasts of heat and light.

“Get the fuck down here!” Bowie screamed as he scanned for a target, rifle to his shoulder. Rene tried to jump but his webbing as still attached to the safety line and snubbed him up with a chest crushing jolt. He screamed in frustration and grabbed for his belt knife, not trusting himself to find the release catches in time. The tank fired with a world ending crash, the recoil of its heavy electrochemical canon rocking it back on its poorly maintained suspension. Bowie seemed to leap sideways as the base of the antennae erupted in fire and smoke. The shockwave drove Rene upwards but his climbing harness again caught him like a fish on a line, biting white agony into his shoulders as it arrested his motion. The world spun drunkenly and steel screamed like all the butchered animals in the universe as the antennae began to topple. Amazingly Rene still had his knife in his hand. Frantically he hacked at the climbing harness as the multi ton array began to topple with the peculiar grace of the truly catastrophic. One of the canvas straps parted a omnt before the antennae hit the berm. The final jolt snapped the mutilated harness and Rene flopped to the ground, gasping desperately but unable to suck in any air to clench the fire in his chest. He had just enough time to look up and see the shattered remains of the sandbag wall tumbling down the berm towards him. He made a single feeble attempt to rise but his muscles refused to do anything more than desperately suck at the air. A moment later the world disappeared in an avalanche of sandbags and razor wire. Pressure. Air. Darkness.

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

"If you think I'm going to leave you.." Camilla demanded, her voice heating at the suggestion. Cydric grabbed her and kissed her fiercly and then shoved her towards the hole.

"Go I'll follow!" he yelled but she could taste the lie in the words. With tears stinging her eyes she stumbled towards the shaft. An alpine down draft rushing over her like a chimney. Her body resisted her efforts and she turned back again. There had to be some other way, some path they hadn't seen.

"GO!" Cydric roared in a voice that could have been heard across a battle field. With tears stinging her eyes she scrambled up the narrow shaft, cursing herself with each inch. SHe could hardly see at all by the time she pulled herself out onto the thin rind of new fallen snow. Her heart lurched in her chest and she turned to see, as she had imagined, that Cydric wasn't following.

"Climb curse you!" she yelled her voice echoing in the shaft.

"I'll never make it," came his reply filled with grim resignation. Fury like she had never known blazed in her breast.

"Climb you wooden headed northern idiot!" she screamed. It would not end this way, she would not allow it to there had to be something she could do. Desperately she looked around her, without even a notion of what she might be looking for. She was on a low hill not unlike the terrain they had covered on the way in. It was lightly forrested with pine trees, though several of those nearby were sick and dead as though poisoned by exposure to the wound in the earth. A pair of them were fallen not far from her limb brown and dead like skeletal...

Her thoughts trailed off in a sudden burst of insane hope she scrabbled across the snow and sized the nearest tree. It was taller than her but not larger than the trees northerners decorated thier homes with for mid winter. She heaved against the tree with all her might, it gave with a snap and she fell on her rump in the snow. A moment later she was on her feet dragging the tree towards the hole. Desperation and rage gave her energy she could not normally have called upon and with a Tilean curse she shoved the tree into the hole. It fell part way down and bound but she was already gone ignoring the startled shout from Cydric. THe second tree was smaller and moved easily and within moments she shoved it into the hole as well and then leaped into the air like an acrobat, bringing her weight down on the strong boughs at the bottom of the tree. The whole structure gave and she plunged into the earth at the top of an avalanche of desiccated pine needles and snapping tree limbs.

She landed with a crunch atop a pile of pine bough a few feet from Cydric. The Ostlander's face was a ricktus of horror at what she had done.

"What are you.." he began but she cut him off with a snarl.

"Shut up!" she snapped the same hot fury burning through her at the thought of Cydric sending her away while he made some self adsorbed last stand. The chittering was nearly overwhelming and she could see red eyes at the end of the passage way. Springing too her feet she pulled a flask of lamp oil from her belt and spread it across the dry pine needles. Without a second thought she pulled her pistol free and pressed it to the brown leaf matter and pulled the trigger. THe pistol barked and the spark from the pan set the oil ablaze, the dry needles igniting like naptha and illuminating the onrushing skaven. Within moments it would be a wall of flame.
'
@POOHEAD189

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Gleaming golden posts supported a heavy red velet rope that sectioned the royal viewing area from the rest of the enclosed amphipheter. Sayeeda judged the distance with her eye. Up onto the seat infront of her and two bounds to reach the nearest post. A half second to unhook the rope and she could club the nearest royal guardsmen before he could possibly get his gold chased holster unsnapped. No time to retrive the weapon but she could get into the access stairway the man was guarding. Maybe she could aim her blow to drive him through ahead of her that would give her a moment to grab his pistol. The heavy twelve round slug thrower ought to be enough…

A comment from Aiden drew her out of her fifth exit strategy. She made a polite vaguely affirmative response to some social program or another he was planning for one of the outlying worlds. The opera was interminable. It was delivered in a barely intelligible archaic dialect and the best she could tell it told the story of the rise of the monarchy after the collapse of some sort of democratic forerunner. The various democratic figures represented each of the seven deadly sins, or so she gathered from the program.

Sayeeda had been raised in the middle class of a wealthy world and had at least an intellectual appreciation of the arts inculcated into her as a child. Years spent in battle, bars and brothel had atrophied he ability. She was dressed in a diaphanous gown composed of layers of chiffon fabric over a bodystocking which was patterned with ivy. The result made her look as though she was some sort of nymph shrouded in mist. Tasteful gold jewelry claspsed her neck and wrists and small intricately carved emeralds glinted in the shifting light. The clothiers had fretted over her wounded arm in despairing tones before wrapping her wrists and forearms with fine traceries of ivy patterned gold. A piece of similar design hung from her bare shoulders, covering her upper chest with more golden ivy leaves and supporting three large rubies which formed a decolletage.

Her hair had been its own problem. It was far too short to indulge in the elaborate curled styles that were currently popular at the court. Instead it had been gathered into a simple bun atop her head and pinned into place with gold and emerald brooches. Junebug was fairly certain that the whole ensemble cost more than all the clothing she had ever owned put together.

“You look lovely tonight my dear,” Aiden said, the sincerity of the statement evident in his voice. The prince as well turned out as well. A tunic of gleaming white silk with subtle silver piping was offset by a scarlet sash and a golden lanyard. His pants were black with slightly reflective onyx patterns inlaid into the fabric. Aiden had remarked that it was a dress uniform from some regiment or another of which he was the honorary colonel when she had asked about the vaguely military cut of the garment. It was a wonder that the thing wasn’t dripping with inventive medals and honors, although perhaps Aiden had been astute enough to realise her likely reaction to such boasting.

Junebug squeezed Aiden’s hand, he was pleasant enough company but she found it difficult to talk to people in civilian settings. Most her stories and anecdotes were wildly inappropriate for polite social gathering. The thought brought a smile to her lips which seemed to please Aiden.

The opera house itself was a vast enclosed ampipeter, the royal box in which she and Aiden as well as a handful of lesser members of the royal family sat was a balcony centrally located and halfway up the semicircular enclosure. Guards secured access stairwells at either side. The acoustics were marvelous and even at the distance enforced by the size of the room she could catch every nonsensical syllable the performers uttered. It also made use of state of the art holographic technology to render amazingly realistic background to the sweep and thrust of the action. Many of the audience members used glasses to view the action but Sayeeda didn’t have the interest to make a closer inspection necessary and viewing something through optics too easily transported her into a headspace she didn’t need on what was ostensibly a date. She considered the distance between her and the security guard again, not that she needed much encouragement.

Neil and Taya had been seated as close as possible to the Royal box without actually being inside of it. Both of them had cleaned up nicely although Neil’s suit was worn in deliberately informal fashion. She wondered just how the pilot had avoided climbing the walls in boredom. Maybe he was an opera fan. Taya certainly seemed to be chatting animatedly enough for the pair of them. This was an odd place for the girl, she was an aristocrat on her own world but Fornax was rustic compared to the sophisticated splendor of Dar'monad.

“I know is a little on the boring side,” Aiden whispered, “but these are the sort of things expected of a Prince.

“And a king as of tomorrow,” Junebug pointed out with another smile. Aiden groaned as though physically pained.

“Stars don’t remind me,” Aiden rejoined, though he was smiling too.

“Whatever you say… your majesty,” Sayeeda said with a wink. Aiden laughed in full throated good humor.

“Do you know what I love about you Junebug?” Aiden began. Two black coated men walked onto the stage from left and right. There was the slightest of hesitations in the performance although they didn’t so much as miss a note of the gibberish they were singing. Junebug narrowed her eyes at the way the cloaks hung around the newcomers.

“It is that you are so..” Junebug uncoiled like a spring as one of the black cloaked men threw back his garment to reveal a boxy looking assault rifle. With a twisting leap she caught Aiden across the chest and knocked the Prince to the ground a heartbeat before the chatter of automatic gun fire ripped the room. White hot plasma flashed over her head blasting the cushioned seat back into a cyclone of burning splinters. The nearest security guard unlimbered his weapon just in time to be hit by a plasma bolt between thigh and chest. The pressure wave of vaporizing tissues slammed the guard into the wall. He bounced off and fell over the guardrail plunging into the pit below. Terrified screams echoed around the auditorium.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please remain calm, we have come for the tyrant Aiden on the charge of murder of his own blood!” The words boomed over the public address system, though the screaming and the gunfire continued. Aiden pulled a communicator of some sort from his pocket and tumbed it on. Even over the cacophony of the opera house the squeal of radio frequency jamming was evident. Leopard crawling to the edge of the box Sayeeda looked up the steps towards the emergency exit. She ducked back just in time to avoid the stream of plasma bolts that a gunman crouched in the exit sent flying towards her. A fat man cowering a floor below her took one of the rounds to the top of the head, his toupe spinning away in a smokey arc.

“I really hope it is how I am so not going to die in the next few minutes,” she shouted to Aiden over the tumult.

@POOHEAD189

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Camilla tried to pull Cydric to his feet but it was beyond her ability. The rents in his armor scratched at the leather bracers and her hands were slicked with skaven blood. The illusion of the open hillside was gone as though it had never been. The winter sky was open above the cave in, though the mounded icefall was far to slumped to climb. Snow flakes swirled down into the cavern in silent reminder of the worsening night above. Steam rose from the corpses that littered the ground.

Camilla pushed herself to her feet and staggered to where Von Eikenhausen lay. The Justicar lay amidst the carnage. His body was shattered, both forearms were broken, clearly evident by the unatural angle that they splayed. The arcane discharge of the eye’s destruction had blasted his armor to scrap, shredding the front of his stomach and the top of his thighs. Blood welled lazily from a thousand small wounds, staining his trousers and shirt crimson. Incredibly the Justicar still drew breath, slow wracking gasps that grew rapidly shallower. Shakily he reached out and took her wrist.

“Justice…” the mortally wounded man managed, words distorted by his shattered jaw. The grip slackened and Thaddeus’ sighed into stillness.

“Dovremmo andarcene da qui,” she hissed. A distant chittering sound, as familiar as it was horrifying began to sound from one of the side passages. Slipping Cydric’s arm over her slender shoulder and heaved. There was no way she could have lifted Cydric unaided but the big Imperial managed to get his legs under himself, pressing his weight against his sword like a cane. The scrabble of claws and the lashing of great whips grew louder by the moment. Camilla cast a glance at the sky above, the lip of the cave in unreachablely high, and staggered towards the side passage from which Theodric had come. She could only hope the Skaven would delay long enough in the throne room to give them a head start.
@POOHEAD189