by Andy Hoare
‘What…?’ he stammered. ‘How did you…?’
‘And that,’ she said as a second, far stronger rumble brought a wave of panicked shouts from the crowd in the main part of the palace, ‘was your secret clearing house on the ridgeline seventy east.’
‘You spoiled little harpy!’ the baron spat, his rage exploding as several of his guards pressed into the archway with concern and confusion writ large on their faces. Brielle simply smiled and remained outwardly nonchalant, though she knew the moment of truth was at hand.
‘Give me the icon,’ she said flatly, ‘and your little pleasure lodge on the coast doesn’t get flattened.’
His eyes wide with dumb horror, the baron reached up to the icon at this throat and grasped it in a fist. ‘You’re mad! I’m not giving you a…’
In the blink of an eye, Brielle was up off of the cushioned sofa, propelling herself through the air in a cat-like leap that brought her into contact with the stunned baron. The two went down in a confused tangle, and when they came up again, the guards pressing in with pistols raised, Brielle had Gussy by the neck. One hand was twisted about the thong on which the eldar icon hung, constricting his neck and cutting off his breathing. Even now, each segment of his patchwork face was going a different shade of purple. The other hand was reaching under the upturned table, retrieving something mislaid but a moment before.
‘Back, meatheads!’ Brielle shouted, putting as much authority as she could into the order. ‘Ganna! Are you there, Ganna?’ she shouted as the guards took a step back, clearly not knowing what the hell to do.
‘Here, mistress!’ the pilot’s strained voice sounded from somewhere behind the wall of hired muscle. ‘I’m a little…’
‘Let him go or your boss gets it,’ Brielle demanded, one hand twisting the thong still more and causing the baron to squeal in sudden panic while the other deposited a small object in a voluminous coat pocket.
‘Do it!’ he managed, his voice high-pitched and breathless. ‘Do as she says!’
There was a moment of tense, uncertain silence, before the guards lowered their pistols and started backing out of the alcove, though they moved slowly and were obviously ready to react to any sudden movement.
Brielle jerked on the thong and shoved Gussy forwards, using his stumbling body as a shield should any of the goons open fire. It was a somewhat hollow gesture, she knew, and one that relied on them being more concerned that their boss lived than that she died, but it seemed to be having the desired effect. Within seconds, the goons had all backed out of the alcove, revealing Ganna and the servitors, the former’s concern etched across his face, the latter as blank-eyed and vacant as ever.
‘Time we were leaving,’ said Brielle, moving backwards towards the entrance. Ganna voiced a word of command and he and the two servitors set off after her, the already spooked crowd scattering at the sight of so many drawn weapons.
Just then, one of the guards made the worst move of his career. Raising a knock-off Arbites-issue stubber, he shouted, ‘Let him go or I’ll shoot your damn head clean off your…’
The idiot never got to complete his sentence, a shockingly loud blast filling the air and turning his entire chest cavity into a smoking, ragged mess even as he looked down with incomprehension. A moment later, the guard crashed backwards to the deck, revealing Ganna, his concealed, forearm mounted bolt pistol ready to fire at anyone else that fancied early retirement.
‘Now it’s time we were leaving…’ said Brielle, dragging the squirming Baron Gussy by the neck as she reached the hatch.
The flight back to the landing pad took far longer than Brielle had planned, for the entire town was in uproar. It wasn’t the panic at the Quagtown Palace that Brielle had unleashed that had got the population so stirred up, but the continuous stream of fire lancing down through the murky clouds to strike death and destruction at seemingly random points out in the swamplands surrounding the settlement. Though the target of every bombardment was in fact one of Baron Gussy’s holdings, the rest of the criminal fraternity weren’t to know that. Every petty crime lord in the town thought he was the target of the attacks, and that they were being mounted by some bitter rival suddenly possessed of an overwhelming weight of orbital firepower.
At length however Brielle, her prisoner, who was by now being carried between the two servitors, and Ganna reached the head of the ramshackle iron stairway leading up to the landing pad. The deck was a riot of activity as the ground crew fought to get craft ready for a hasty departure, but Brielle’s shuttle was, fortunately, still present, and intact. The guards she had employed to watch over the shuttle, largely as a means of announcing her presence to the local crime scene, were milling nearby, more interested in the distant, blossoming explosions than doing their job.
Knowing her small party had but seconds before they were noticed, Brielle rounded on the baron and gripped the alien icon hung about his neck. ‘Mine, I think,’ she said, before tearing it free with a savage twist.
‘The shuttle!’ Brielle yelled to her pilot. ‘Run!’
Ganna and Brielle powered forwards, but the servitors were left behind, the struggling Baron Gussy still held firmly between them in their vice-like, biomechanical grip. In seconds, the pair had reached the shuttle and the access ramp was lowering on screaming hydraulics. The baron started raving at the guards to apprehend Brielle and her pilot.
The ramp seemed to Brielle to be lowering far slower than it ever had. The roar of a handgun split the air and a hard round spanged off the hull right by Brielle’s head, forcing her to duck down as Ganna tracked the firer with his concealed weapon.
A burst of stubber fire from off to the left told the pair that a stand-up fight wasn’t a great proposition, and an instant later the hull where Brielle had been standing just a moment before was peppered with rounds, sending up a riot of angry sparks.
Fortunately, the ramp was now lowered enough for Brielle to throw herself inside, and within seconds Ganna was in too, scrambling for the cockpit even as Brielle threw the hatch into reverse and hard rounds continued to ricochet from the hull.
At the sound of the engines powering up to full output, Brielle collapsed onto the deck, her head spinning with a potent mix of adrenaline and relief. Those, and something more, she thought as she collapsed in a fit of dirty giggles.
It took Baron Gussy’s minions almost an hour to prise the mind-locked servitors’ grip off of his arms, and by the time they had, he was beyond furious. Stalking back to the Quagtown Palace, his guards barging the panicked locals out of his path, he raged at this turn of events. He had sought to take advantage of a rumour that the fortunes of the Arcadius were on the wane thanks to a decline in trade from the eastern fringe, but he was lucky to have come away with his life. Lucien Gerrit’s daughter was a she-devil, he saw, but she had made one crucial mistake. She had left him alive, an enemy at her back. That thought fired him with a curious mix of dread and desire. How he longed to break the Arcadius, he thought, and how he’d like to…
Before he realised it, the baron was back at the palace, its main hall now empty of patrons and the floors strewn with the detritus of panic. Drinking vessels were scattered or smashed across the ground and tables and chairs were upturned. His mouth twisting into a nasty sneer, Gussy made for his alcove, determined at least to recover the ring Brielle had offered in exchange for the eldar icon.
It wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t, he thought. That harpy must have snatched it up in the confusion of her escape, and left him with nothing at all to show for his attempted double cross.
He could really use a drink, but it looked like the serving staff had all fled, along with the stampeding patrons. Resolving to fetch his own, he looked about for a discarded bottle, but instead, his eyes settled on the stasis crate Brielle’s two servitors had carried into the palace. They had set it down by the alcove, he realised as his eyes narrowed in suspicion,
at her word…
‘No…’ he breathed as his eyes darted nervously about the dark, empty hall. Several of the stitched-together segments of skin on his forehead began to sweat, and one of his mismatched eyes started to twitch involuntarily. ‘No, no, no,’ he stammered as he closed on the box, his gaze fixating on the status panel on its side, a red tell-tale indicating that the stasis field had just deactivated. ‘There’s no way you…’
But she had. Three seconds after the blinking light turned solid, the overloaded core of the plasma charge that had been placed in stasis an instant before it went critical detonated. Baron Gussy saw his fate an instant before it overtook him, the second to last thing to enter his mind a curse on the Arcadius and all their daughters. The very last thing to enter his mind was the ravening nucleonic fires of the plasma charge as its core went into meltdown, the discreet blast wave expanding to neatly and utterly destroy the shabby interior of the Quagtown Palace whilst leaving its exterior with barely a scratch. To the denizens of Quagtown, the bass roar was yet more evidence of their impending doom, touching off a stampede as hundreds fled to be anywhere but in the centre of their tumbledown settlement.
For many months after, only the toughest of mutants would be able to survive the radiation within that ramshackle shell. By that time, Brielle Gerrit would be light years away, perhaps visiting the golden shores of a paradise world that had recently come into her possession…
Star of Damocles
Chapter One
Lucian Gerrit, rogue trader and master of the heavy cruiser Oceanid, stood before the wide viewing port of his vessel’s bridge, his arms crossed behind his back.
‘Any minute now…’ Lucian muttered, scanning the black vista. ‘Any minute…’
Without warning, the low growl of labouring plasma drives rattled the deck plates and the bridge lights dimmed for just an instant, before flickering back to full power. Lucian grunted his satisfaction as a turquoise and jade orb swung into view across the viewing port, to settle in the dead centre as the Oceanid’s helmsman steadied the ship’s course.
‘Sy’l’Kell in range, sir. Closing as ordered,’ the helmsman called out, working the great levers and wheels that controlled the Oceanid’s bearing, speed and altitude.
‘Thank you, Mister Raldi,’ replied Lucian, turning his back on the viewing port and striding across the bridge. ‘Continue as planned,’ he said, sitting down in the worn leather seat of his command throne.
With the press of a control stud on the arm of the throne, the area in front of Lucian was filled with a static laced, greenish projection. The holograph, a priceless example of nigh extinct technology, projected a three dimensional image into the air, a grainy, flickering representation of the space around the Oceanid. Lucian’s vessel was at the centre of the image, and a shoal of other icons formed behind him, each representing another starship.
‘Station three,’ Lucian called, addressing the half-man, half-machine servitor hard-wired into the communications console. ‘Open a channel to the Nomad.’
In response to his order, the bridge address systems burst into angry life with white noise, before the servitor slowly nodded to indicate that the communications link was established with the other vessel.
‘Nomad,’ said Lucian, ‘this is Oceanid. Do you read?’
‘Aye, Lucian,’ came the reply over the address system. ‘This is Sarik, and I hear you loud and clear. Are you sure you’re ready?’
Lucian chuckled out loud, refusing to be baited. ‘Yes, Sarik, I’m ready. Just don’t bite off more than you can chew. Lucian out!’
As the communications servitor cut the link, Lucian grinned as he imagined the expression on Sarik’s face. Sarik was a Space Marine, and Lucian did not doubt he would be outraged at having been spoken to in such a manner. But Sarik could take a joke, of that Lucian was sure.
‘Sir?’ Helmsman Raldi interrupted Lucian’s chain of thought. ‘The Nomad is accelerating to attack speed. Match her?’
Lucian glanced out of the viewing port as his helmsman spoke, catching sight of a distant point of light speeding ahead. The Nomad was a frigate, far smaller than Lucian’s heavy cruiser, but being a Space Marine vessel it was far more deadly than the average ship of her displacement.
‘Well enough, helm. Offset by one-fifty as planned.’
The speck of light that was the Nomad sped off towards the rapidly enlarging globe that filled a large portion of the viewing port. The planet was called Sy’l’Kell, but the vessels were not headed towards the world itself. Studying the holograph, Lucian saw that his vessel was still a good distance from its target. He scanned the other ships holding formation with his. The Rosetta sat at three kilometres astern, a rogue trader cruiser captained by his son, Korvane, and another two kilometres further on, the cruiser Fairlight, commanded by his daughter, Brielle. He was gratified to see that both were exactly in position, for he had cause to keep a close eye on Brielle’s actions, following her increasingly unpredictable behaviour of late. Dozens of other vessels were spread out across an area of space spanning fifty kilometres port and astern. Battlecruisers, cruisers and escorts arrowed towards a single point in high orbit around Sy’l’Kell, while half a dozen smaller vessels, frigates of a class similar to the Nomad, formed up with Sarik’s vessel, more Space Marine frigates, each carrying a deadly cargo of the Emperor’s finest.
Lucian spared a thought for their target, but only a brief one.
‘Comms,’ he called, ‘give me the Rosetta.’
The bridge address system burst into life once more, the white noise even greater than before, the channel laced with a harsh, almost sub-sonic growl.
‘Korvane?’ Lucian called, ‘Korvane, do you read me?’ The channel hissed and growled, before a voice cut in suddenly.
‘…ferance from the outer belt, attempting to compensate. I repeat. This is Rosetta. I read you, father, but the planet’s outer rings are playing havoc with our transceivers and primary relays. Over.’
‘I read you, Korvane,’ Lucian replied. ‘I’m picking up the interference too, and I can only see it getting worse as we close on the target. We’ll just need to let the Astartes carry out their mission and cover as best we can. Oceanid out.’
Lucian glanced out of the viewing port once more, noting that Sy’l’Kell almost filled the armoured portal. Its glittering, icy rings scored the blackness of space, causing Lucian to wonder what manner of substance or reaction might be generating the interference they seemed to transmit across a wide area of the void.
‘Fairlight,’ he said, the communications servitor at station three patching him through to his daughter’s vessel at once. The channel opened, the interference bursting through the address systems before the Oceanid’s machine systems curtailed the signal.
‘Duma’s rancid left foot!’ Lucian cursed. ‘If you can’t invoke the buffers I might as well work the vox myself.’ The servitor nodded in mute response, incapable of taking offence at its master’s scorn. Before Lucian could continue his invective however, another voice emerged from the howling comms channel.
‘Oceanid? Oceanid, this is Fairlight. I repeat, do you read me, father?’
‘Receiving, Brielle,’ replied Lucian. ‘Proceed as planned. No deviation. Do you understand?’
The comms channel howled its cold white noise for long moments, before the reply cut through, Brielle’s tone as chilled as the interference plaguing the communications system. ‘Understood. Fairlight out.’
Lucian sighed, but put aside his frustration at his daughter’s continued obstinacy. He looked instead to the flickering holograph, the device, or more accurately, the sub-space sensor banks that fed it, evidently beginning to suffer from the same interference plaguing the communications systems. Amid the grainy, imprecise projection, he finally saw the target. Looking up, through the wide viewing port now entirely filled by the globe of Sy’l’Kell, Lucian
could just make out a tiny, blue pinprick of light.
Lucian felt his pulse race as adrenaline flooded his system. These were the moments he lived for.
‘Begin approach, my lord?’ Helmsman Raldi enquired, Lucian noting the sardonic tone in the man’s voice. Evidently, the master of the Oceanid was not the only man to enjoy the rush of ship-to-ship combat.
‘Mister Raldi, you have the helm.’
Lucian leaned back into the command throne as he felt the pitch of the Oceanid’s mighty plasma drives deepen. The bridge illumination switched to a bloody red, and the apocalyptic wail of the general quarters’ klaxon sounded throughout the vessel. The tone of the ancient drives grew lower as their volume increased, and every surface of the bridge shook visibly as virtually immeasurable power was bled from the plasma core and squeezed through the engines.
Lucian smiled as he watched the holograph, the relative positions of the other vessels swinging wildly as Raldi brought the Oceanid into a stately turn to starboard. Only the Nomad was ahead of Lucian’s vessel, the small frigate all but lost against the lurid glow of the planet’s oceans far below.
‘Shields up,’ Lucian ordered. ‘Frontal arc, minimal bleed.’
Memories of his last space battle still only too fresh in his mind, Lucian determined not to take any risks against this foe. He looked at the holograph to check that the master of the Nomad had done likewise, when a curse from a sub-officer caused him to look up.
‘What?’ Lucian demanded of the man seated at the astrographics station.
‘It’s hard to tell with all the interference, my lord.’
Lucian rose to his feet and crossed the bridge to loom over the man’s shoulder. ‘Let me see.’
Lucian stared at the man’s console, reams of data scrolling across its banks of flickering screens. His mind raced as he tried to piece together exactly what he was seeing. Interference, certainly, and there was something else, but what?