Penny

The Pavonis Campaign - Warhammer 40000

Katiya considered it for a long moment. Her teachers at the scholam would have said that she had an admission of guilt and she ought to make a judgment on the spot. Of course that was easy for the Drill Abotts to say as they would probably never find themselves on a hostile world surrounded by troopers who were both scared and heavily armed.

"Well I suppose, if it were reported, I would have to have you flogged," she said, a slight smile tugging at her lips.

"Of course I would also have to have the sergeant shot for impeding an order of the Commissariat, so it is probably better if the incident is never reported to me," she concluded. Gripping the dashboard of the ground car as a heavy delivery truck roared passed them in a cloud of promethium fumes. Katiya scowled at the vehicle as it pulled away, where were the praetors when you needed them. Ahead of them the Adeptus Arbities Sanctum rose into view, it was a five story tapered spire, faced with the traditional black granite to demonstrate the implacability of Imperial Judgment. Positions in the Arbities were sought after in the scholams, safer than the Commissariat or the Stormtroopers but still promising action and glory in His name. Katiya hadn't been tempted, having viewed even the Commissariat as a consolation for not being assigned to the Navy. The Emperor of Mankind had his reasons she was sure, and she would serve Him in whatever capacity.

Low buildings, administrative complexes and habs, surrounded the citadel like the roots of a great plant. Stalls and kiosks lined the road, hawking cheap goods and food of various quality. A preacher stood atop one of them, screaming about the end times and the emperors coming, unfavorable judgment. Ahead of them the delivery truck swerved suddenly disappearing down a ramp below the spire. There was a sudden crash and spatter of gunfire before the scream of rending metal. A moment later there was tremendous flash and a concussion that hit the ground car and flipped it like a tiddly wink. Katiya's word was a callidiscope of confused images and colors as she was whipped against her restraints and a vast cloud of dust rushed out to obscure the sky. With a crash that was barely audible after the roar of the explosion the roof of the ground car hit the pavement, the blast of the explosion diving them several more meters in a shower of sparks before they came to a stop.

Katiya could taste blood in her mouth as she blinked the dust from her eyes, suspended by her seat belt upside down. The peaked hat had fallen to the floor and her long blond hair, gathered into a tight braid hung downwards. Dust chocked her mouth and eyes and she struggled to breath as her weight pressed down against the belts. It was probably only the flak armor she wore beneath her great coat that had prevented her from breaking her ribs. Outside in the swirling dust came the familiar crack, crack of stubber fire and she tried to order her thoughts. Someone had set off a bomb in the basement of the Arbities citadel. Instinctively she thumbed her palm in the Valhallan gesture of a half-aquilla. A moment later there was a screaming sound of disintegrating masonry as the tower itself, cloaked in the dust, collapsed into the void created by the blast below it. Shouts of victory and stubber fire increased, close enough now that Katiya could see the orange star of the muzzle flash. A figure in miners coveralls resolved out of the fog, holding a stubber in one hand and shouting in triumph.

"Death to the Oppressors!" he howled, oblivious to overturned car and its passengers. Katiya pulled her bolt pistol from its holster and fired. The round detonated in the joint between leg and pelvis and the bursting bolt flung the rebel aside in a gout of blood. He howeled in pain for a few seconts before the massive bloodloss quieted him. Another figure emerged beside the first and triggered a burst of stubber fire at the car, it raked the top section in a spray of sparks before Katiya's bolt struck him in the throat, decapitating him neatly. More figures began to converge on the firing, clearly the rebels had been in position to sweep up any surviving Arbities. Katiya's pulse thundered in her head as she dropped another of the rebels. This wasn't going to end well.

The Sinful Stars

Annika exchanged a look with Orion though Filenia ignored the confessor as she might any minor servant. The last vestiges of her dark twin flashed with irritation before her training took over and she picked up one of the plastic paddle and began to help Ragnar and Logan drive the raft towards the beach. The thief and the priestess together were barely able to keep the stroke with the Vuldrok but fortunately the slight curve wasn't a large detriment to reaching the shore. Annika considered for a moment how strange it was that they had lost virtually nothing in the crash. As an Estakonic cleric she was expected to carry everything she owned and beg for her supper, Ragnar didn't own anything she was aware of other than weapons and armor, Logan's possession were few, illegal and mostly hidden within folds of his clothing. Only Orion had any real luggage and the majority of that had been the sacred banner he was charged to deliver. She hoped that the strange fact was a good omen of some kind, perhaps a moral from the Omega Gospel, but for the moment she couldn't think of it.

"We certainly picked a nice spot to crash," Logan observed as they reached the shallows and Ragnar dropped his oar and jumped into the thigh deep water. Annika waited a moment longer then hiked up her skirts and followed suit, feeling the warm sand between her toes beneath the cool clear water. Filenia extended her arms to Orion imperiously. The knight looked from the woman to the case, repleate with its seals and gold filigree.

"I got it," Logan said, a little too eagerly and snatched up the case, leaving Orion to lift Filenia in his arms and step into the water, carrying the woman to the shore. By the time they reached the fringe of beach where sear looking grass swept down out of groves of tended fruit trees the had already been noticed. From the northern spur of the bay a dozen horsemen were racing towards them, colorful pennons snapping from laser lances chased with heraldic designs. Ragnar growled and reached for his heavy pistol, thumbing back the hammer with one of his massive hands. Annika touched his hand to prevent any precipitous action.

"These are not our enemies," she said in Vuldrok, happy to see a slight flash of worry from Filenia at her use of the barbaric tongue. Of course a Hazat would be amazed at such a thing, they were a provincial house compared to the learned and cosmopolitan al'Malik Annika thought accidly.

"Says you," Ragnar rumbled, but he relented and tucked the weapon away. The horsemen were only a dozen meters away now, their horses slowing to a trot. None of them were leveling their lances, though their faces were closed even if not exactly hostile.

"It might be better if you didn't tell them who I am," Filenia whispered urgently. Ragnar shot Annika an 'I told you so' look a moment before the leader of the group, a handsome young man, wearing armor and carrying a sword and pistol on a tooled leather weapons belt, swung from his saddle. The nobleman's spurs clinked as he stepped away from his horse, keeping his weapons hand clear. He glanced from Ragnar to Orion, taking in Annika's ecclesiastical garb. He seemed wary, thought not quite overtly hostile.

"Ho, strangers," he called in a thick Arogonese accent, "what brings you to my fathers duchy?"

The Knight's Song

Julliette hissed in alarm as the newly acquired arming sword nearly dragged her to the ground, the weight of the thing throwing her. The knight shouted something but his words were lost in the vast hall, that seemed to drink even his full throated bellow. The guesture to the horse was understandable but the eerie dancers between her and the beast made it less than useful. One of the dancers whirled towards her grabbing for her with a long hand taloned with painted nails that gleamed like metal hooks. She swung the arming sword, in a clumsy arc that nearly pulled her off her feet again. The very crudity of the strike saved her life as her opponent assumed it a feint until the moment it bisected the things waist, there was no more resistance than a sharp knife meets against butter and she sprawled to the floor amidst the nauesiating yellow robes the thing wore and the painted nails. Scrambling to her feet she heaved the sword at the group around the knight with both hands, the flat of it crashing across the back of one of the dancers and sending him tumbling into another who instnctivly struck out, ripping a chunk of bloody rotting flesh from the first.

Knives sprang into Julliette's hands and flew like darts to other dancers as she cleared a path for herself, exhausting her meagre store of preciously balanced daggers in a few heartbeats before scrambling up onto the back of the warhorse. For it's own part the beast lived up to its name, kicking and biting at the strange assailants with an almost human enthusiasm. She grabbed at the reigns but the horse showed no signs of recognizing her authority other than to flick its ears irritably as she sawed at its bridle.

"Work with me here," she snapped at the horse and it lurched forward, driving its weight into the close packed attackers surrounding the knight, with a shatter of bones and unearthly screams.

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Emmaline giggled brainlessly. She had been doing so frequently for the past hour or so of travel, conscious that it annoyed both the Sheriff and his hung over guardsmen. They had been walking for perhaps three quarters of an hour and the forest around them was growing taller and wilder. The tidy farmsteads had vanished also, giving way at first to charcoal burners huts, then isolated hunters cottages, before signs of human habitation ceased all together. There was some traffic on the road though, a merchant and a wagon of goods, a trio of trappers bringing furs to market, all of whom nodded personably at the party of soldiers and their strange guests. They were mounted on horses from the city watch stables, Emmaline, having stolen a few in her time managed to keep a saddle, though the effort made her legs ache and her bottom hurt. Riding wasn't a skill you could afford to get too out of practice in she supposed.

"We must be approaching the sight of your... alleged attack yes?" Vandershute asked as the hunter vanished out of view behind a small hill.

"You couldn't have run very far to escape beastmen afterall?" he pressed, his tone as always faultless and yet somehow mocking.

"Not much further I think, perhaps the reputation of you and your men scared them too much to continue the chase," Emmaline replied, unable to avoid needling the sheriff just a little. She didn't know what game he was playing, but whatever it was he was clearly getting ready to make a move. Emmaline didn't much like their chances, nine versus two wasn't great odds, especially if they didn't have surprise on their side, and both Vandershute and his men were clearly watching them carefully.

"There," Emmaline said, pointing to some ripped bark on a large oaktree by the side of the road.

"Claw marks from the beasts," she asserted, it was as likely a regular bear as anything else, but she had been on the look out for anything that might give credence to her made up story and this was the first likely candidate.

"Ah, then let us dismount and see if we can find tracks in the woods," Vandershute declared. Emmaline hoped he might dismount first, giving them a moment to allow their horses to bolt, but the sheriff merely waited for the two strangers to slip from their saddles to the leaf covered roadway.

The Sinful Stars

Annika had not ridden in an escape pod before, and she found little to recommend the experience. No sooner had they been violently thrust from the dying transport, the impact slamming all of them against the walls of the pod, than the deck bucked upwards under the power of the breaking thrusters. Annika was somewhat fortunate in that her fall was cushioned by Orion's body, though the knights muscled chest was scarcely less yielding than steel might have been. A slender hand grabbed her and hoisted her upwards with surprising strength, the pilots concubine had somehow managed to strap herself in and Annika took her help gladly getting the crash harness around her own shoulders. Logan Christopher, better and anticipating disaster than the rest of them had also managed to, more or less, keep his feet and was strapped in, though he seemed to be praying rather than offering aid. Annika supposed that as a member of the clergy she ought to have applauded that, but as someone in need of help she found her piety somewhat strained. Her instructors had liked to say that the Pancreator helped those who helped themselves, Annika preferred the way the al'Malik guardsmen back on Istkar put it. Praise the Pancreator and pass the ammuntion.

Alarms began to sound as the sickening sense of falling increased. Ragnar and Orion had managed to get to their feet now and though they looped the crash webbing around them, neither buckled themselves in completely. Annika did pray now, invoking the Pancreator to guide them to a safe landing and asking forgiveness for the use of her other, less holy arts. The crash webbing smashed downward into her shoulders as the final stages of the breaking thrusters fired, and then, with a shattering crash of rending steel, they hit. For a few seconds Annika's mind went blank, shocked out of coherent experience by her brain bouncing of the inside of her skull, then she was lucid again. There was hiss of invading steam and then a gush of water as the outside environment infiltrated the escape pod. Annika pulled free of her crash webbing without difficulty, it having been set for a larger person than her slight form and stepped across to the exit panel, slapping the manual release. There was a dull crump as the explosive charges in the lining of the door, designed to free a warped hatch, went off and the door flew from its hinges, water rushed in, almost but not quite knocking the priestess from her feet. Bright sunlight flooded the compartment, refracted into rainbow brilliance from the billowing steam hissing of the surface of the friction heated pod.

Annika stepped out onto the lip of the hatch and surveyed her surroundings. The pod had come down a hundred meters or so from an idyllic looking shore. Gentle surf lapped at the pod, hissing as it found high points on the hull that had not yet been quenched. Colorful coral spread out between the pod and the beach where strange twin headed trees rustled in the breeze like palms. The pod was only about a quater submerged having landed on the reef, smashing the coral beneath without quite punching through it. Around them were numerous dead fish with twin tails and flat leaf like profiles. Their skin had been blanched a pale pink by the heat of the pods decent. She turned and looked back into the pod, iris flaring to adjust to the interior lit mostly by emergency chemical lights. To her immense relief Orion was up and moving, helping the strange servant to get free of her own tangled restraints. Ragnar frustrated by Logan's lack of progress, grabbed the scraver by the neck and pitched him bodily out of the hatch to splash into the hip deep water. The pod shifted and began to tip backwards towards the deeper water on the far side of the reef.

"Go!" Orion shouted and handed the slave woman up to Annika who grabbed her by the wrist and tossed her into the water with as little ceremony as Ragnar had shown Logan. The Vuldruk ripped a survival pod away from the wall and clambered up through the hatch a heartbeat ahead of Orion. The Priestess the Knight and the Reaver stepped off onto the coral shelf a moment before the pod toppled backwards into the deep water beyond the fringe of the reef, hissing and spitting as it filled with water and began to sink out of sight. Overhead large birds began to circle and caw, attracted by the dead fish.

"Well," Annika said, taking the emergency pod from Ragnar and withdrawing the auto-inflalting raft.

"At least wherever we are has nice beaches..."

Penny's Pencils

The Sinful Stars

Chapter II

"Are we really going to die for a stupid flag?" Ragnar roared over the increasingly violent screams of the dying transport as it battered its way though the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Metal screamed as bulkheads buckled and superstructure tore away. Unsecured luggage clattered around as the ship continued to try to shake itself to pieces. Annika gripped one of the stantions and avoided being thrown of her feet by a sudden violent jolt that banged her against the steel hull paneling. Paneling she noted, that was growing alarmingly hot. The several thousand tons of steel that made up the Encomienda's hull was a considerable heat sink, but compared to millions of tons of onrushing atmosphere, not considerable enough.

"You are welcome to run for the escape pod," Annika commented sourly, trying not to clutch too desperately at her Jumpgate medallion.

"Oh sure, considering only our noble master can trigger the launch," Logan Christopher replied. The thief was crouched in an agony of indecision, clearly torn between the desire to run for the sole remaining escape pod and wanting to stay close to Orion, the only practical agent of salvation.

"Can you use you arts to save us witch?" Ragnar asked. Annika smiled tightly.

"I can pray for your soul," she offered tersely.

"Pray?! That is the best you can do?" Ragnar snapped, carefully suppressed fear adding an acid edge to his voice.

"Well yoga lessons would be a little impractical at the moment," she returned. There was a resounding crash and a sudden rush of air as something ripped apart forward. The vibration, grew significantly worse and air roared through the compartment, thick with the stink of burning metal and cooking insulation.

"Yoga?" Orion shouted as he stumbled out of the cargo bay, clutching the ceramsteel case that contained the ancient banner the Duke had given to the knight back on Gwyenneth tucked under his arm. Sir Pentecost's surcoat appeared to be smouldering the rushing air igniting and snuffing the flames like a guttering flame. Snarling the knight ripped away the burning fabric tossing it away before the rushing air ripped it from his hand.

"Let's say we get out of here before the Kurgan come back and kill us all, or we smash into the planet?" Logan whined.

Penny's Pencils

NSFW Emmaline

The Pavonis Campaign - Warhammer 40000

“You will put me through to him, and now,” Katiya all but snarled at the tech priest on the other end of the vox link.

“The Omnissiah has provided no vox links commissar,” the synthesised mechanical voice of the tech priest replied, sounding calm even if its owner wasn’t. Katiya resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose in frustration. Executing a cog boy wasn’t out of the question, but it would cause alot of trouble and it sounded like this one really was trying. All of her efforts to reach Captain Raloch had thus far failed. The Captain was consulting the local Adeptus Arbities and their citadel in the center of the city. That was just Raloch attempting to be a good junior officer, doing a job that would bring him to the attention of Colonel Bradstreet. That was well and good, what Raloch didn’t know was that he was the senior guard officer on Pavonis right now and that the fragment of the regiment was all they were going to have for six months at least. The at least part grated on Katiya’s mind as well. Most warp storms passed within a matter of weeks, but there had been times when they had lasted for months or even years. The companies they had to hand would be alone for all that time and only Third Company was really a line unit. The logistical companies had all, in theory, been trained but most of them had not fired their weapons in earnest since they completed their training. Worse still, most of thirds officers were fairly junior, having been promoted to replace casualties during their last deployment. Until a few months ago Raloch had been in command of the regiments heavy weapons platoons and wouldn’t have been due to earn his captaincy for several years.

“He is at an Arbities citadel, are you telling me we cannot get in touch with an Arbities unit?” Katiya asked mildly.

“Apologies Commissar, we have not yet had time to sync the machine spirits of our vox equipment with theirs, the ritual is…” Katiya cut the link in frustration and rested her head in her hands for a moment. The office was unpleasantly hot, but then everywhere she went seemed that way. She had only lived on Valhalla, an ice covered world of massive glaciers and ferocious winters for five years before her parents, both senior naval officers, had been killed when the Heretic fleet broke through at Absalam. After that she had been sent to the Schola Progenium, a reward for the children of Imperial Officials who died in the line of duty. Even at such a young age however the cold of Valhalla had never really left her bones. A knock on the door interrupted her bitter musings and the corporal she had sent to the palace poked his head through.

“Corporal…” she paused for a moment to dredge up the man’s name. She had only been with the regiment for six months and most of that had been in transit. That had been more than enough time to get to know the troublemakers and hard cases of which this man was neither.

“Connors isn't it?" she asked, dredging the name from one of the dozens of promotions she had certified. Katiya was already grabbing her great coat and settling her peaked hat on her head, and fastening her weapons belt around her slender waist.

"Tell me about the palace on the way, can you drive a ground car? We need to get to the Arbities Citadel immediately."

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

"Huodan", Rene echoed, "I like it."

"Huodan," Dasin corrected, placing the emphasis on slight different syllables. Rene chuckled but didn't make a second attempt to pronounce the Syshin word. It really was going to be a whole new sector if, when, Solae took power.

As the trek progressed the grassy savanah gave way to light scrubby woodland. Rene was no biologist but he recognised some Terran standards. Other plants though showed signs of many generation of basking in the slight radiation of Huodan's atmosphere. They passed a pine tree with spines protruding from its trunks and needles that dripped with sap that Rene suspected was venomous. An oak that depended tentacle like vines which might once have been strangler figs but had fused with their victim to choke out smaller trees, creating strange almost conical trunks as the various offshoots grew together. It would have been difficult to keep a sense of direction as the trees grew thicker, but Solae's improvised relay provided them with updates whenever they turned too far of course and as early afternoon approached they climbed a slight ridge to look out across another of the shallow valleys that spread like fingers from the foot of the mountain. On the far side of this one the delapidated ruins of what had once been a human settlement glinted in the rosy light. More to the point, a pair of escape pods were on the valley floor, within a hundred feet of each other, the burnt out patches of their landing thrusters still black against the greenish carpet. A small stream ran across the bottom of the valley, running high with recent rains well. Fern like plants and other succulents seemed to crowd its banks, fronds reaching across in the fashion that reminded Rene of a military honor guard at a wedding.

Gesturing the others down Rene took a pair of binoculars from his pack and focused in on the escape pods. One was a standard civilian model exactly what Rene would have expected a freighter like the Corsica to carry. Canvas awnings had been rigged from the side of it, giving it the appearance of an open seed pod and crates of supplies had been stacked around it in an orderly semicircle that would also serve as a wall to provide shade and a wind break. The second pod though. Rene zoomed and focused the binoculars, his thumb spinning the wheel from x32 to x64 and engaging the gyroscopic stabilizer. The pod seemed to jump closer and the image steadied. Rene cursed quietly under his breath and turned to look at Solae.

"The second pod is a military model," he explained, "according to the ledged it's from the Zandi Tremane, an Imperial destroyer that wasn't assigned to the Eastern Cross when I got here." Rene didn't know the deployment orders of every ship in the navy of course, but marines were routinely briefed on fleet movements in their area of operations. At the Rat Trap the briefings had been kind of a joke: on this day, nothing happened. Rene didn't know what the presence of an escape pod from the Zandi meant but whatever it was, it was unlikely to be good news.