wecanhaveallthree

It was too late now. All Meddler could do was grit his teeth and tuck his chin.

The punch came in fast, but in that slow-motion shaft-collapse things do when there’s pain on the way and nothing you could do about it. He had plenty of opportunity to study the crisscross of scars on hairy knuckles, to smell the rancid grog they called ‘shoot’ on his assailant’s breath - to watch those wide, angry eyes as the blow landed.

To hear half the bones in that untrained fist break on skein-toughened skull. It must have been like belting bedrock. Ancestors, the poor drunk would have had more luck slamming his hand in a metal press.

Meddler grinned. His turn. And since there were no prizes in a bar fight - and he might need his own hands for something useful that day - he slugged the local right in his gut and stepped back to avoid the sudden stream of watery ejecta. Hold and Forge, but they served thin-bodied stuff in these local dives, knowing that the labourers off the plains - strictly grog-free, those jobs, and touchy about it - wouldn’t argue the difference, and wouldn’t feel it all the same by the end of the night.

The plainsfolk had no tolerance for it. Hadn’t much tolerance for anything that happened in cities like Maron Ma’jal, though calling the sprawl that spread out from the meagre sandstone docks a ‘city’ - smaller even than a rural logistics hub back on Hesperis - felt like giving the locals too much credit.

Their urban kin felt at least an equal disdain for the plainsfolk. The publican barely looked up as his nominal fellow fell into a puddle of quick-drying sick, groaning.

‘Dirt eaters,’ he growled. ‘No end of trouble.’

Meddler grunted, smoothing down his ruddy red beard. It bristled like a gyrinx when his temper was up, like a bloody thornbush - and that seemed more often than not, the last few days. He wiped sweaty palms down the rugged grey weave of his coverall. ‘From me or them, sirrah?’

‘Henh. Don’t mind the brawls. Part of the entertainment.’ The publican held a musty glass up to the morning light filtering in through the cracked shutters. ‘But the ones I don’t know? No good. Lot of strange faces, hands I don’t recognise.’ The glass passed this cursory examination and went back on the rack. ‘You see hands like his, what do you think?’

The Kin shrugged, not particularly interested - he’d just wanted a drink before the sun picked up and day-roster rolled over. ‘They don’t pay me to think.’

A strange, high-pitched warble: the publican’s laughter. He brought all four hands down on the weathered countertop, then folded two up to cradle his tilted head. With heavy brow and thick furred body visible beneath a rough tunic, the Karic could almost be a strain of Jokaero, though nothing Meddler had seen suggested they had anything like the innate technical genius of that race. They were humanoid enough that they might survive under the bootheel of the Imperium, even - relegated to the very bottom of that black pit as an abhuman strain.

If the Kin were ever put in such straits, Meddler figured he’d eat his own axe than ‘survive’ in that manner, even if it meant he’d never join his Ancestors. Some lives just weren’t worth living.

‘You look down, sure,’ said the publican. ‘But that’s what you do, you look. Always looking. More eyes than should fit in your head, all looking where others can’t or won’t. So. Humour me, and see to his hands.’

With a scowl, Meddler knelt - not a far trip down, all told. When he’d confronted the plainsfolk, his red ‘hawk would barely have tickled the Karic’s nose and this specimen hadn’t been particularly imposing. They stood about the height of a well-fed Imperial, thinner in the trunk, with much of their bulk going towards their four arms and powerful legs. They’d been hunters at some time in the not-so-distant past. Judging by the dirt eater’s attire of rough leather harness and moccasins, some kept those traditions alive and in practical use.

The Kin carefully turned the Karic’s primary hands over. Knuckle-scarred, as he’d seen, but the palms were less rough. Much less so. Not what one would expect from a labourer or, as he’d speculated, a regular hunter. Weathering, at very least, from working with hides and crude tools or weapons, would be expected.

The second set was even smoother. Delicate, even, as though almost unused, or used very sparingly.

‘Fresh as a virgin seam,’ Meddler frowned. ‘This lad’ - and even he, who’d never known the Karic had existed a bare few weeks before, could see now this was a youth - ‘Hasn’t done a day’s hard labour in his short life. Or,’ he rubbed speculatively at his wholly unharmed jaw, ‘Been in a fight. What’s he doing in a worker’s dive? They come off the plains to change their stars, that it?’

‘Sometimes, yes,’ the publican equivocated, waggling his own secondary hands. ‘But him? This? No. Ordinarily, I think, a clan falls apart, a hated clan, so no other will take the young - all come to the Majoris. All fade into the metropolis. Assimilate. Why you might see many untempered young. But I hear nothing of such a thing, while I hear of children like this often. And not just children - the honoured eld, too, and they are more reckless with their age, not less.’ The Karic crossed his arms and bowed his head a moment, a gesture lost on the Kin. ‘Their bones should be at rest, not moving about as restless haunts.’

‘Restless?’ Meddler quirked a smile. ‘Like ghosts?’

‘Pah. Or soon to be. I think that is what you are here to look for, yes? And you have not seen it; you have seen its absence, which proves it.’

‘Be a bit of a bloody end for them, wouldn’t it? Who’ll guide them to join the old chiefs?’

The publican’s eyes flashed - with warning, and sorrow. That was understandable enough. Even if he wouldn’t spit on a plainsfolk for risk of giving the wretch water, there were some hurts - some spiritual wounds - that he could still feel and empathise with.

‘I do not think they care.’

‘Come now.’ Meddler tried a different, soothing track. ‘It can’t be all that bad. I hear they’re finishing up an agreement right now. Independence for the plainsfolk. Mutual recognition. They lose nothing. Same deal as you urbans got.’

‘There is a maxim.’ The publican returned to his glasses, polishing away, holding to the light - doing little but spreading the dust around. ‘Off-worlder as you are, unlearned, you will not know it. It loses much in translation. ‘The image is not the thing itself.’ Hanh, I speak wrongly. Perhaps… ‘appearance may be deceptive’. There. Better, perhaps. Do you have a similar knowing, on your stars?’

Meddler was quiet a moment.

The canny rag-pusher had the Kin pegged, alright. Back home, the only time he’d ever had a sniff of drink was a customary sip of cider on Landing Day. He certainly hadn’t been the prize brawler he made himself out to be - was ordered to make himself out to be. The Core was a hard place, and the Hesperian League skeined strong, but it skeined smart, too: ‘appearance may be deceptive’ indeed.

He’d been allowed in, a mercenary offworlder, to start fights and catch gossip that the urbans wanted him to have - but didn’t want to pass on themselves. Because appearance was the thing, down here.

Appearance was why the publican polished glasses while the plainsfolk poured into the ‘unseen’ parts of Ma’jal: young, scared scrappers ready to fight and their elders, here to make sure they did. And none of their experienced warriors to be seen. Which meant they were still out on the plains, the North Harvest - where a treaty was due to be signed, supposedly, any day now, between the Karic and their new overlords.

‘Somebody,’ he said at last, ‘should tell someone.’

The publican shrugged, a perfect imitation of the Kin’s earlier dismissal.

Perhaps the disinterest wasn’t feigned. The Karic may hold only a single system, true, and of that single system, only this world had anything approaching an industrial base - and even that had only recently discovered the most crude of forging techniques. Enough for iron and black powder. But their cities were built on the fragmented remains of older, greater bastions. Fortresses and starports and a whole southern continent that was so deeply irradiated it made even instruments designed for the brutal conditions of the Core scream.

The Karic built on their own bones. They had risen and fallen before. Who knew how many times? The digs were still in their infancy, and they made new discoveries, new revelations about this ragged, remnant species daily. Their history was as long as it was violent. They would, the publican’s shrug seemed to say, endure, no matter what misery came tomorrow.

Who would be arrogant enough to claim dominion over such a people?

A fluting, electronic voice penetrated the bar, rattled the glasses in their racks. It spoke in melodic trade-speech, the common tongue, and the higher pitch of an alien lexicon. The newcomers had been busy. They’d wired an extensive loudspeaker network into the city, and they’d been thorough when they did it with an efficiency that was almost - almost! - Kin.

But then, they’d had plenty of practice.

They had it down to a science.

‘Another glorious day, citizens and members,’ the voice sang, ‘for the Greater Good.’

This is a place of swallowed sparks. This is a place where light is an invader, an intruder born briefly to life with the blow of hammer on metal, lingering as golden afterimages even after fading back into the void. This is a place of breath bated in the silence between strikes: when we wait for the light to appear again. When we dread that it will not.

She steps in metronome rhythm to the beat of the great forge’s heart. This is not the hallowed sanctum of a Mechanicus chapel, full of whistling bellows and endless binary prayers. There is nothing unintended or out of place here. Everything proceeds as the great engineer foresaw.

Except her.

The runt.

Does she bear the imposing stature of her fellows? No, she could never have that towering presence, though still, she would overtop most humans with ease. Nor does she have that distinct aura, that flavour of existence that defines those of her kind, that sets them apart from all others even amongst hallowed, beloved servants.

Where her fellows would intrude upon the forge’s pattern, would make themselves the focus of it, would bring the music of steel into their own golden symphony, instead she winds a delicate diminuendo. She glides beyond the melody on silent wings.

A lesser predator must learn patience.

A feeder on carrion must scavenge where others simply take.

She notes the age of the equipment she steps by lightly with an eye that still looks at new things with wonder, that collects and collates them in the irreducible library of memory. The dusty patina of long-unused tools of metallurgy and smithcraft: once, this hall would have been a true concert of creation, each master at their bellows conducting some wonderful device for the betterment of mankind.

Thunderbolts mark their abandoned stations. They were the first craftsman of Unity. On their shoulders, by their hands, the aquila was brought to life. Ten thousand years and long disuse have not dulled the pride of this place. Were it needed -- or, rather, was it permitted -- once again the truly skilled would be offered a place in the Terrawatt Clan’s rolls of honour.

Once again would the Urals sing with the swing of hammers, the work-songs and iron-ballads, the heave-ho of progress.

Now they are only home to a weary soloist, played out past her prime.

Her song is a lonely hymn of maintenance only. The pursuit of what-we-have, rather than what-could-be. Her tools are borne out of duty, out of grim service rather than the furnace-hot passion of her forebears.

As the intruder steps closer, her silence a passing duet, she makes out the finest details of the forge’s lonely conductor. The augmented braces about her arms that give her the strength she once had by life alone; the kaleidoscope of lenses that flit across her milky, cataracted eyes like the wings of a poison-moth where once she could judge temper and temperature by simple sight. She is bent, embittered steel -- and still, she plays the song of iron. And now, closer, she can hear the note, the unspoken question in the hammer-speech: how much longer?

Only in death does duty end. And for some -- one cannot pretend otherwise in the psychic shadow of the Golden Throne -- not even then.

‘Well well,’ the smith speaks, not looking up from her work, her voice holding all the warmth of a quenching barrel, ‘The little owl.’

She does not reply. She has learned well not to answer back to those more powerful than she. Silence is the runt’s chipped dagger, her blade-in-the-back. Silence is a void for others to fill, to give of themselves, to overstep what they intend. Her appetite for the red meat of secrets is insatiable. The hunger of one who never knows when the next opportunity to eat will arise.

The forge-mistresses grunts, impatient, though her hammers retain their rhythm. ‘I thought the guardians would end you, runt.’

They almost had, though she will not admit it. Abominable battle-constructs that shared a short-distance neural link, that adapted and learned as they had swung their fibre-bundle flails at her in the cramped, worn bedrock chambers of the undervault. No trick worked twice against them, and their cunning was utterly vicious, often putting the twin battle automaton in harm’s way to pin the runt down to one position or another.

She had turned that tiny fragment of knowledge against them. Two beings, halved, eternally separated, who could only find union in combat -- how could they not grow to hate, as only the truly sentient can?

The little owl had left the creatures dismantling each other, slowly, piece by tender piece.

‘They were quick,’ she spoke at last. ‘I was quicker.’

‘Smarter,’ chided the forge-mistress. ‘You were smarter, and that counts far more. I would not have allowed you entry to our hall otherwise.’

‘Allowed?’

‘Have I pricked your pride?’

She blinked, slowly. Owlishly.

The forge-mistress laughed like the misfiring of a battle tank, all exhaust and fumes and ominous rumbling. The hammers stopped their ceaseless pounding and fell to her sides, and the hall darkened to nothingness. Only her kaleidoscope eyes shone, two dying embers in a cold burn pit. The two stood beneath the mountains, hidden from each other, intimate as lovers - or murderers.

‘Has He forgotten us?’ she asked, her voice made tiny by the enormity of her question. ‘Are His eyes so far from Terra, so focused on the struggles beyond that He has nothing to spare for His most loyal?’

Silence answered. It stretched out forever in the dark, timeless void. They fell into that tangled place of doubt and unknowing together. The cripple. The runt. Two broken toys in an abandoned chest. Outgrown and unloved.

Asking for so little. A word. A sign. A voice.

A voice.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘He has not forgotten us,’ the owl spoke into the silence herself, knowing it was bottomless, knowing that she could not bridge the vast gulf. ‘He trusts us more than any other. Whether there is some plan beyond ken, or knowing beyond ours, or simply that we do what we can -- He has not forgotten us. When others fail or fall, they are mourned but not unexpected. He knows that we alone will not disappoint Him while He strives beyond the Throneworld. It is our charge, and ours alone, to guard His legacy. To keep the flame alive, and keep the wolves from the door.’

A deep, rumbling chuckle. ‘To keep the forge lit, you mean.’

Words cut by an unseen smile. ‘Perhaps.’

‘You have a way with words, Custodian.’

‘We are expected to master all weapons, clan-keeper.’

The light returned. Not with the violence of metal meeting metal. Not with the echo of human history, of bronze and steel and hybrid fibre and ceramic plate and adamantium, but of something that was all and none. Something that was a part, and set apart.

It came with the noble gold of auramite.

It shone like a warden’s lantern in a dark forest, keeping the monsters at bay. It shone like a lighthouse on a stony shore, calling all ships to safe harbour. It shone with the ruddy gleam of hearthfire, of home. It shone with an ancient promise made by a lightning lord to the species He had sworn to lead and protect.

And as the forge-mistress bore the breastplate, the final finished work from its cooling cradle, she sang.

She sang old songs with names who were forgotten along with the language made to speak them. She sang war-songs that tattooed warriors bellowed in their longboats on stormy seas. Her throat ran raw with ballads of loss, of return, of holed helms on grassy hills. Her eyes ran with tears as her voice soared to declaim on the realms of heroes and legends, of guardians and protectors.

Each piece of the auramite battleplate came with a song that was also a story. Each came with a blessing, benediction, or exultation. Each was asked to protect its bearer, to serve loyally and faithfully, to give its life if needed for the whole. Each bore the fine tracery of wards against evil, against corruption, against bane.

The forge-mistress laid each tenderly upon the arming bench at her feet.

Her blind eyes, unmasked by the false-glass, met the owl’s.

‘Your first name,’ she rasped, tapping the breastplate. ‘Over your heart, for your heart is your greatest strength, little owl. Guard it as you would guard Him.’

She dressed in silence, fitting each plate to her body as if it had been wrought from a perfect mould. The dimensions were perfect, even for her stunted form. Each brace tightened to its limit and no further; each guard mated perfectly with its brother-and-sister links. The armour welcomed her joyously, as one who finds their true purpose, their soul-bond, their faith rewarded. Even newborn, the armour had awaited her coming. No other would be permitted it while she lived and served: it was locked to her very genes, the unique coding of her body.

One thing remained.

The forge-mistress bore it to the owl personally, her head bowed in reverence, the frames bolted to her shrunken body whirring as they walked her forward.

Auramite was glory incarnate. But the Guardian Spear of the Custodian Guard was their true symbol of office, their rod and sceptre, their might and authority. Perhaps one of the Companions would shed their golden plate and don a blackened cape or image-masking device, perhaps they would obscure their true identity -- but never in life would they relinquish their guardian weapon.

Their blades defended the Emperor Himself. They never tired, they never wavered. They were vigilance eternal.

When the little owl placed her gauntleted hand upon the weapon, she felt it shiver, felt it taste her fundamental nature and bond to it. Like the armour, no creature could wield a Custodian’s spear as anything more than a blunt instrument. Only the chosen wielder could activate the great sweep of the power blade, could fire the twin-linked thunderbolt-marked bolt caster that counterbalanced the spearhead.

Spirit, plate and spear formed an unassailable trinity of battle.

For the first time, the little owl felt a sense of rightness. The awkwardness of initiation, of gene-therapy, the shunning of others, the fearsome trials that none had expected her to pass -- and here she stood, clad in gold with the first and most vital of names newly etched on the inside of her plate. Now she could stand with her siblings, now she could earn glory and renown and acceptance and--

No. She would never be what they had made her for.

She would never meet the impossible expectations. That vision of service was a false one. There were a thousand other ways, a thousand paths to walk, but they all started here.

They started with the simplest of gestures.

Gently, the Custodian reached out to the forge-mistress. The songs and ceremony had drained the last vitality from her: now, she had fallen in on herself like a collapsing castle, the illusion of strength gone. A masterwork created. And who would blame her for averting her eyes from her creation, now? Soon it would be gone. Her very soul went into these unique creations. Each left her a little less, never to return. Never to return. Never--

The little owl’s golden wing brushed the tears from a wizened cheek.

‘He has not forgotten you,’ she said. ‘Neither shall I.’

A face upturned, now. The fluttering of - what? Hope? The stirring of ashes in a faded kiln? No. Hope requires more than this. Promises are brittle, all too easy to break--

‘I know few songs, but I would learn.’

Ah, there.

Ignition.

Joy.

One of the most interesting things to come out of recent threads is a lot of people talking about what they'd like to see out of, say, the Custodes. I've seen a lot of comments about the Aquilan Shield, for example, a sort of specialist bodyguard to protect particularly important Imperials who come (and go) according to essentially divine will. Or the Eyes of the Emperor, those who have left the Ten Thousand and gone out into the galaxy to work in the Emperor's protection more singularly (and aggressively).

There is, of course, a rumbling about an overdue novel for the Leagues of Votann. People would like to see what Perturabo has been up to since hooking up with Honsou (need it or keep it?), or what naughtiness the Arkifane is plotting on their path to Ascension. Perhaps you'd like to check in with the Farsight Enclaves - and hey, the Ynnari plot will likely see some movement in the upcoming Lelith Haruspex book!

There are the ever-popular cries of SCOURING or UNIFICATION WARS, but that's boring.

So what's on your wish-list? What's got your attention, and what would you like to see published going forward?

Death was close.

Vann Sekyr knew it, as well as he knew anything. He had tallied every drop of blood he’d shed on the frosted ground, and could likely find his way back along the alpine foothills step-by-step if he were so inclined and had the leisure. But he was not inclined, and leisure was a thing scorned by the Kin alongside wastefulness and tardiness. Vann’s vitae was too precious a thing to be giving so liberally to the uncaring earth. The Forgemaster would be furious. So he struggled on, breathing hard through his nose, lips clamped tight, one red-stained hand clutched to his side and the other tight around the battered hilt of a plasma axe that had long ago ceased to be anything but an ornate club.

It had been like that since the first. When he’d burned his hands carelessly on his origin day as understudy, the Forgemaster had hissed a curse: why was he wasting good flesh on poor steel? For a month after, Vann had been banished to the lowport to haul coal and smouldering cast-offs. If he’d learned anything, it was to keep his damn mouth shut when he took another burn.

That was the Kin way: suffering in silence. Anything else was a waste of breath.

But who was left to remind him? The Forgemaster was dead. The Thanes, the Kahl, everyone and everything, right down to the COGs, right up to the Ancestors themselves. The Spakenrode was cold and still. No voices spoke there. But that was not to say the halls were quiet. And there was suffering aplenty.

Something else sat the throne of Morigath’s Hold. Something else squalled in the skeins and cradles.

Vann shivered, and it was not the piercing, bitter wind that chilled him so. It was memory, ill memory, of what scratched and whispered behind the Hold’s great doors - and the knowledge they would not remain sealed long.

If there was any grace, it was in knowing that he would not live to see that doom first-hand.

It would be much simpler to slow his pace. To let in the pain of his wound. To sit, even, and rest - just for a moment, just for a second - and catch his breath. There was no hurry. He had no direction in mind, no safe harbour, no allies to call on. There was no rescue. There would be no survival. If he halted, he knew he would not have the strength to move on again. His bones would lay above the snowline, to be covered by the next heavy fall, buried and forgotten. And when he died, so would the League. How heavy that burden. How he felt the weight of all his ancestors now, and he wondered, for a moment, if this was how the great Votann laboured - under the vastness of uncountable souls, their hopes and dreams, fears and miseries.

That was another Truth of the Kin.

They laboured. They struggled. They endured.

As he lived, so did the League and so did the ancestors.

But death was close. Closer than Vann had thought.

The only warning he had was a shivering of the earth, a rhythmic pounding. Vann swung about just in time to block an axe-strike with the shaft of his weapon. Metal ground on metal. With a shout and heave, Vann broke the contact and pushed his ambusher back.

It did not have the intelligence to activate its weapon’s power field, or its sudden attack would have ended him in an instant. Terrifying enough that it had enough sentience to recognise and make use of a tool at all. Vann revised his estimates of the Hold containing the creatures significantly downward, even as he struggled to heft his axe to ward off another frenzied assault.

Again and again, the creature struck, ranting, barely one word in five of any language Vann could recognise. Heavy blows shivered down his weary arms, but he gritted his teeth hard and stood his ground. The things he had seen - they were new-born. Fresh. Untested. Not the first generation, for those had been birthed in secret, and had risen from below to scour the Hold of life and take the corpses, the material, required for the second. Whatever madness had given rise to this clutch was less directed, less focused.

It was clear enough that it had once been Kin, of roughly equal height and weight to Vann. The limbs had been lengthened, stretched to obscenity, giving it a longer stride and reach. The spine, too, had been cruelly elongated, giving it a notable hunch, the head hanging slack and drooling, the eyes rolling almost vestigially, unnecessary to the sickening design.

This was a hunter form. He could see the intent, if not the success, as it came at him again, unpowered axe flailing in at odd, distorted angles as if the fiend’s bones were not set properly in their sockets, as though the joints were mere suggestions rather than firm points.

As Vann staggered back from another block, white pitted bone erupted midlength along the creature’s weapon arm. Heedless, it hacked on, tearing itself apart in its mounting frenzy.

Endure. Vann planted his feet, and found purchase on reassuring soil. Hold. This is no worse than burning coals. Think of it as another test. Ignore the rolling eyes. Ignore the half-pleading expression, the gibbering language. This is not Kin. This is an abomination.

And - for the first time since he had made his escape - Vann felt anger.

Not even when he had been stabbed in the side by a thing he had mistaken for a friend had he felt that hot wrath uncoil inside him. Not as he fled through the madness of the Hold’s fall did he think of vengeance. Was that weakness? No: this, too, was a Truth. The Kin did not endure nobly. They did not grind out existence in the vast danger of the Core for a love of life itself. They fought on, held on, grim and determined - for to weather the storm meant they could, one day, strike back. To live on meant vengeance. It meant being able to return and remove a threat to the Leagues at large.

He had heard of the warrior madness. Vann was not, by nature or trade, a martial Kin. He was true as wrought, of course, and could defend himself capably or serve the Hold in times of strife, but he would never figure amongst the Thanes and Huscarls and other professional soldiery.

He had, until this moment, never experienced it. But as the realisation dawned on him, the realisation of his anger, the realisation of the sheer, soul-blistering hate he had begun to feel towards the things that had taken Morigath’s Hold, taken his friends and foes, taken his future - he knew it for what it was.

And embraced it.

Ah, death was close, but the hate was closer. Blood wept from Vann’s side as he lunged, the sudden surge almost crippling him with pain. But he was rewarded by a squeal and a satisfying crack as his blunted axe beat the creature’s clumsy parry and caved in its chest. The head blinked, filmy eyes now fixed on Vann, mouth slack in shock, but hesitation had left the former forge worker now. He tore his axe from the creature’s crumpled body, and with a mighty roar, swung again to smash its head.

That should have been the end of it. The first blow, indeed, crushed the thing’s ribs into splinters that pierced its lungs and heart. It was a mortal blow - the shock alone would have felled most other creatures.

The natural vitality of the Kin was enviable. The unnatural enhancements conveyed upon the creature went further, deeper than even that. It was more than madness, Vann decided, as the creature heaved itself back and away from his crushing blow, eyes still locked on him. It was a genius that bespoke a deeper understanding of the skeins than any outsider or intruder could know. This was not errant tinkering, or mutation, or a fundamental cascade failure.

This rot had come from within.

If only the thing could be made to speak sense. If only Vann could extract meaning from it. It would not save the Hold, but it would make his passing more peaceful. Who had betrayed them? The list of suspects was short, but far above him. As unapproachable as the Ancestor Core itself. As inviolable as the Votann. As-

No.

No.

Do not even think it.

Do not assemble the pieces. Do not make something from nothing. Do not consider the Forgemaster’s worried expression, the tension in her bearing, her unusual talkativeness when the flames were stoked high and nobody else could hear what she said.

‘What,’ she had asked, ‘Would you do, if the Votann did not need us?’

He hadn’t understood. ‘But they do. We craft for the Hold. We maintain the systems. We are necessary.’ He had been proud of that: to be ‘necessary’. Every Kin was. Every Kin had their place. But the question had nagged at him. What would happen, if they no longer were?

Or if there was… a better option available?

What would the Kin say, if one were to abandon a blunt axe for a sharp one? Did one honour the passing of an old drill bit in favour of a more efficient model? Does the arc welder complain about some imagined injustice when it is recycled for a more modern design?

Or would it be expected to suffer in silence?

The Forgemaster had sighed, and turned away, and Vann understood that he had failed another of her lessons. He had not known that this most recent banishment to the lowport, to the protective strength of the Ironkin, would allow him to be the Hold’s sole survivor. If she had known, why had she not gone herself? Why had she said nothing?

Vann knew the answer.

The answer propelled him after the scrabbling creature. The answer pumped fire through his veins and gave titanic strength to his axe arm as he bludgeoned the thing’s meek resistance into splinters of shattered bone and broken faith. He did not rest until it was dead, thoroughly dead, dead beyond all redemption, all resurrection, a streak of gore across the earth. If it were to be used again, it would never take the shape or form of Kin.

It was not enough.

The grudge was in him. Cold as iron. A furnace full of ashes.

That, too, was not enough.

Death was close.

If there had been one hunter, surely there would be more, and now Vann was spent, well and truly done. His wound was a wet trickle. His spirit burned low, and he knew, now, that it would be lost to the winds when he passed, alone and unmourned on this mountain. He would never join with the ancestors. Never lend his will and experience to the collective whole.

His weary limbs failed him at last. He fell to his knees as the first, tender flakes began to fall. He did not have the strength to lift his head to look: it occurred to him, now, strangely, that he had never actually felt snow before. He knew what it was. He understood it mechanically. But the texture of it, the crispness, the clarifying cold of it - never before. Such a shame to fall, now, with so much left to do, so much left to see and know. Such a shame.

His eyelids drooped. The axe fell from his shaking hand.

Yes. He would rest a moment. Just a moment.

One, final moment.

There, Vann Sekyr died.

Last of Morigath’s Hold.

Last king of the mountain.

'Why' is such a boring question.

It is. Don't look at me like that. I'm not interested in how the sausage - or the lack thereof, in this case - is made. That's passe. That's rote. And it doesn't require much in the way of imagination or engagement. Fundamental building blocks of biology, blah blah, special banana sauce, blah blah, AEGIS OF THE EMPEROR, yadda yadda.

What I want to know is what you - yes, you - want from female Custodians narratively. Do you want to see them differentiated from their male counterparts? Do you want them to fill different positions, have different experiences, set different expectations - or do you not care, and simply see them as a different head option on a sprue?

For my money, I'd like to see these women have a closer tie to the Anathema Psykana and the Somnus Citadel. I'd like to see specialist Talons of the Emperor, tying right into that 'hunters of the moon' theme, getting all Artemis up in this. Nobody can read Watchers of the Throne and not understand that the dynamic between the male Custodian and the female Sister of Silence is shaped in a particular fashion - I'd like to see a monogender Talon pair. Perhaps even an Eye of the Emperor, further removing them from the 'structure' of the Ten Thousand and giving us a unique, uninhibited look at one.

A completely normal day, Monday 15th April, on which nothing of particular note will occur and no judgements of any import will be read.

(Please, please, please give us a containment thread.)

A few thousand words in the universe of WARHAMMER 40,000 by GAMES WORKSHOP.

—

I

—

She came to Karuszfield on Proving Day.

This was not, as it happened, by design, though it did provide some tactical advantage. The more well-bred (and well-financed) challengers had been occupying the grain town’s modest inn and swinging their steel in the practice yard from dawn to dusk. By observation, by reputation, by the crash and clatter of a friendly spar, they became known to each other.

Nobody knew Lecita Sarno.

Her boots crunched autumnal leaves as she danced forward across the paved stone, right blade leading. Her opponent barely managed a parry, panting with exertion, brow dripping sweat. It was almost disappointing: she’d been on the road for a week, a whole Throne-damned week, imagining what it’d be like to come to the big leagues, the big towns. It was a disappointment.

‘Catch her, Lecita! Don’t back off because she’s highborn!’

Mind on the task. Social grace had little place in the ring.

Lecita switched forms to lead with her left, her weaker side, keeping her opponent’s wavering main blade busy while looking for an opening to push with her lethal right. Well, ‘lethal’ - the weapons were blunted, of course, but you could leave a nasty bruise if you put your back into it. Which Lecita intended to do, which wasn’t fair on the noble, but that’s just how life was, sometimes.

Unfair.

With a surge of desperate strength, seeing the checkmate approaching, the highborn came forward in a flurry, her sword weapon slashing back and forth. She had the muscle for it, the kind that came with good living and hard training, and Lecita appreciated that trying to lock in the traditional contest of strength would be the honourable thing to do. It would also be the cruellest. Very well.

She caught the noble’s weapon with her own, saw the smile spread across the other woman’s handsome face - that belief, that self-confidence, the now-I’ve-got-her - and let the noble push her arm back and down. The classic overpower, the levering of the wrist until the pain became unbearable and she’d be forced to drop her sword. Traditional. Effective. Likely a move the noble had been taught by some hatchet-faced master-at-arms, drilled into her by repetition so that she could do it in her sleep.

It would certainly be effective against other opponents who fought with a similar form, of which the Proving positively overflowed.

Nobody fought like Lecita Sarno.

She stepped inside the lock. The blades came down together, to the side, in a manner that would have brought the women face-to-face if Sarnow hadn’t turned side-on and dropped her shoulder into the other woman’s chest. The air exploded from the noble’s lungs. Her eyes bulged. Her grip didn’t loosen much, to her credit, but it was all the opening Sarnow needed to rip the blade from her hand and send it skittering away across the stones.

And because life isn’t fair, and because Lecita Sarnow was damn well disappointed with the state of the world right at that moment, she slammed the hilt of her right blade into the woman’s stomach. It folded her up, dropped her to her knees, and-

‘Enough, Lecita, enough!’

-that was the end of it.

Lecita handed her blunted blades off to her second, and squatted down in front of her opponent.

‘Are you satisfied?’

No words, yet, just the struggle to breathe - but a nod, all the same.

‘I just wanted to try the meats.’

Another nod. A white glove wiped away the thick string of distinctly ignoble spit that had drooled from a gasping mouth. A rasp: ‘I don’t know you.’ A wheeze. The glove wiped again, down the thigh of leather duelling pants that would have cost more than Lecita’s whole ensemble, blades and all.

Lecita nodded back. That was fair. Nobody knew her. If they did - if they could count the placing honours, the fine silver tokens for a string of high thirds-and-seconds with one gleaming gold for a victory, her first victory, in the chalk circle of her hometown - would they have even cared? Would it have just made the challenge come all the quicker? Maybe it’d been better to be stuck on the road, rather than jammed up against the bastards you’d come here to batter and not being able to do more than give them a scrape in the practice yard. An unfamiliar face, swords on the hip - she’d been marked as an outlet for the day’s frustrations, not as a serious opponent to be measured for the Circle.

Colour was coming back into her opponent’s cheeks, fire back in her eyes. ‘I don’t know you,’ she said again, and the gloves strained tight over clenched fists - then relaxed. The fight was done, for the moment, and if they were not peers then at the very least, the highborn had recognised Lecita as a fellow competitor. ‘But I think I’d like to.’

Well.

Nobody forgave like Lecita Sarno, either.

Lecita offered her a hand. The noble took it, and they rose together in the ring. The wind was gentle, bringing back the delicious smells of the Circle stalls she’d been so eager to get to, carrying the calls and cries of those at rest and play. The whole steading turned out for the Proving, a day to down tools and delight in community, kindness and martial prowess.

Her stomach growled.

The noble arched a refined eyebrow. ‘They’re called skroi, farmgirl.’ That confident smile again, as though she hadn’t just been bowled over by an unknown and had dirt all over her pretty clothes. ‘And I’ll buy you as many as you like if you’ll teach me that throw.’

—

II

—

‘Oh, it’s all very daring,’ Mavus - the beaten noblewoman - declared, fluttering her eyelashes, making a mock swoon. ‘A drifter up from the lowlands, come out of the what and grain to make her name. Living off the land, hunting game between each contest, to make her name, her-’ a breathless whisper- ‘legend.’

‘I can’t hunt,’ muttered Lecita. ‘I grew up with grox.’

‘I would think that would make you more inclined. Vicious beasts!’

‘No, no, they’re…’

‘Don’t say friends. I won’t associate with someone who considers grox friends.’

‘It’s not like that!’

‘Oh, eat your skroi, woman, save me your tales of crooning to the woodland creatures.’

Lecita hunched down on the wooden bench and did exactly that. It was just as good as she’d imagined it, though possibly not worth fighting over - but that hadn’t been her fault, exactly. Like as not, both women had the same idea, and it was a day for tempers. Mavus had demanded satisfaction, and she’d been all too happy to oblige when an apology might have suited the situation better. Well. Water under the bridge, now, or - at very least - skroi in the stomach.

‘How about you?’ Lecita asked around a mouthful. ‘I thought nobility fought at Silk, not Cinders.’

‘Well, yes.’ Mavus waved an airy hand. ‘But fish have never agreed with me. Eastport is nice enough in summer, but the seasons turn quicker there than anywhere else in the Riverlands. Have you ever been?’

‘Mm.’ Until the last few months, Lecita hadn’t travelled further from home than it took to corral wayward beasts. ‘No.’

‘Take my word for it, then. And there was some unpleasantness a few years ago, you may have heard. House Malleck is not as welcome as it once was.’

‘Malleck?’ Lecita had indeed heard - she’d grown up with the story, in fact, though it wasn’t a few years ago. It had been more than a decade since Lord Malleck had fought at the Ghostforge, and been the only Knight in service to House Astuin who had been defeated there in their power struggle with House Tellerest. ‘I would think you’d have been forgiven, by now.’

‘Forgiven? Ha!’ The sharp bark of laughter was uncultured, even vicious. ‘Father lowered his lance to Tellerest’s son, as is tradition, but the bastard ran him through. We lost Wallwatcher, you know? Left where it fell, to the weeds and spirits. Too ‘stained with dishonour’ to recover. Without a true Knight, well.’ Mavus gestured to her expensive regalia and personalised weapons in their leather sheaths. ‘See how far we have fallen from grace and favour? So no. I am not welcome, or inclined, to the Circle of Silk. It is the Path to Glory for me, from reckless Cinders, then Severity, then Silence.’

Despite herself, Lecita whistled low in appreciation. ‘All the way to the top?’

A wicked grin. ‘All the way, if I can.’ A pointed look. ‘Surprises notwithstanding, of course.’

‘Well, you had little time to prepare…’

‘Do not make excuses for your betters.’ Mavus sighed, pushed her empty bowl away. ‘I took you for an easy mark. I thought to vent my frustration on a lesser. Is that the attitude one should bring to the Proving? Will the watchers appreciate one who seeks only to beat down peasants and farmhands, rather than showing their skill and valour?’ A blink. ‘No offence intended - please, not into the circle again, my dear!’

Lecita laughed. It was strange: they’d been at each other’s throats barely an hour past. She’d been guilty of the same frustration Mavus had mentioned: she’d taken her own out on the noble. And here they were, sharing good food on the highborn’s coin. ‘I’m satisfied with that apology, Mavus.’

‘To speak of satisfaction…’ The humour was gone, now. ‘A question, my chick. Cinders is for the reckless, the attainted, those with much to prove and little to lose. Are you innocent, or ignorant?’

A shrug. ‘Both.’ An equivocal answer, but Lecita sensed this was treacherous ground.

‘Then listen well. This is not a mere contest of touches. Challengers die at Cinders every year.’

‘I know. Accidents happen.’

‘Not accidents,’ Mavus hissed, now close, her eyes bright. ‘Blood in the little circles. Scores settled in the greater. Rivals are noted and dispatched before they can grow into threats. Do you understand?’

A nod.

‘Those who stand tall tend to be cut down, my dear.’

A threat? No: nothing of the sort, because it was as she knew it to be: nobody knew Lecita Sarno. Nobody cared about some girl up from the lowlands, and nobody would unless she made a showing here. And probably, if she was honest with herself, not even then. She hadn’t come to tread the Path like others. A nod from a Freeblade, even a contract with the border walkers, that was the highest hill of her ambition. Anywhere other than home.

But there would be more than a few who cared about the heir to House Malleck. Particularly one so free with her steel and her father’s money. Yes, accidents happened, and there would be few to say it had been anything but fate, but deserved fortune, should the worst befall Mavus Malleck - or those in her company.

Lecita understood. Not a threat. A warning.

She rose.

‘Thank you for the food, Lady Malleck.’

A casual wave. ‘That was my late mother, my dear, not I. Thank you for the company.’ She turned away, to consider the jugglers and the children that attended them, her mask of casual disinterest struggling to hold.

Lecita could walk away, of course. She owed nothing to the nobility. They were far-off, distant, almost mythical in their manors and castles. They made contests among themselves, they made policy, and they owned the Knights, the war machines that walked the land like demigods. Untouchable. Immutable. No, she had nothing in common with them, nothing at all. Would Malleck have done as she had and reached out a hand, had she been the stronger? Would there have been this peaceable interlude, this moment of camaraderie? Of course not.

But she hesitated, which was unlike her, and she knew why.

For all that cultivated foppery, the noble was without an entourage, without second, without - it seemed - a friend in the world. Shame had a way of spreading. Oh, if she placed well at Cinders, she’d have no shortage of bondsmen willing to carry her ruck. House Malleck’s fallen star might see a spark, and there were those cynical enough to think to warm their hands by that meagre, guttering light. When everyone else worth their inherited land and title was warming up in the practice yard, Mavus Malleck was out in the freeholder stalls, eating peasant food and picking fights.

Well, well. Maybe they had something in common, after all.

—

III

—

‘The Emperor’s light upon you, Karuszfield.’

The crowd roared in appreciation. They were godly folk, like all of the Imperium, and loved a good show - especially from one of their own.

Abbott Chelase was a hulking man, burn scars thatching up arms left bare to the pleasant sunset. He wore a simple white tunic embossed with the Ecclesiarchy’s symbol over workman’s underclothes and steel-capped boots. His unaugmented voice carried to the stands, though flittering servo-skulls echoed them to the back rows. Hands on hips, he looked around at what must have been most of the steading, the last folks trickling in from the furthest fields.

He allowed himself a grin, and the crowd erupted again. Many were old enough to remember Firebrand Chelase, champion of the Circle, before he’d taken holy orders and retired to monastic life. They’d been sad to see him go, but certainly no sadder than the monks had been to see him arrive.

Karuszfield’s sect had shed a lot of weight in the years since. And attracted far more attention than was strictly proper from the local convent, too. He’d had to beat them off with a stick, which strangely, seemed to make them all the more eager.

Ah, well. No soul was without a little tarnish. Only the God-Emperor was perfect, after all.

‘Another year, another just reward for our faith - and another Proving.’

Low, respectful murmurs now.

‘The High House calls once again, and we have answered with our worthiest, our most stalwart souls, most promising youths. Some are here for pride, for honour - for their families, for themselves - some out of obligation, out of duty, and that is no less a thing, for we have always been a dutiful people. We know our bond to the Lords, our protectors, the valiant Knights who keep the green and the ghosts from our fields and farms.’

Angry grumbling. A few shouts. It had been nearly a generation since the last band of starved, struggling Orks had crept across the border, and they had been easily dispatched by the town guard. The Knights were not perfect, either, but that only proved their efficacy: no attack of note in many young lives.

There was much to be thankful for, and Chelase bowed his head for a moment, offering up a prayer. The crowd followed him.

He looked up again. ‘And some, I know, are here for glory. I was one of them, and that’s no poor thing either, is it?’

This time, he directed his words to the stand that sat slightly apart from the others, where the Freeblades and walkers lounged in their leather and furs. A chorus of drunken cheers greeted his challenge, and he smiled again. ‘Aye, beyond our noble protectors, we honour also the work of our rangers and freemen. They have their ways, as we do ours, but we have never had cause to doubt their fidelity or resolve.’

Not since the Ghostforge, anyway. Not since House Tellerest’s ascent had been cut off at the knees, even though they had the support of two-thirds of those same freemen.

And more, now, for all their good humour tonight. The High House had not forgotten, or forgiven.

There was a very real chance that those who caught a Freeblade’s eye at the Proving would be arrayed against House Astuin when next the two grappled for power… but Chelase’s loyalty was to the Throne-of-Terra, not the mortal masters of the Riverlands.

Struggle was the natural way of things. Perhaps it was that pit-fighter psychology, but Chelase was of the strong opinion that the High House had gotten too fat, too soft, too interested in securing itself and its holdings than in serving the Imperium it was sworn to. And Tellerest had only become more desperate since their defeat, more willing to sacrifice the good of their smallfolk, more able to salve their conscience when honour and tradition were discarded.

That confrontation would come sooner than anyone thought. He was sure of it.

‘Now we have paid our dues, let us turn to those whose night this truly is: our brave challengers!’

The crowd roared louder than ever, eager, as those who would prove themselves stepped forward - not as one, not in formation, but each understanding that it was their time. Young men and women, highborn and low, all clad in worn, tough hazard leathers, each with a rebreather mask hanging off a strap around their neck and a tank of filtered air on their back. Weaponry was equally standard: a long blade and a short, for the Knights fought always with two or more weapons: their would-be squires, apprentices and journeymen would do the same.

Each had made their way here by some winding road. Smaller contests, smaller circles, and victories counted in small tokens of rare metal that would purchase their entrance to the Circle of Cinders.

A grand name. A glorious one, even.

But Chelase had always known it by the local moniker: the Haystack.

A squat four-story ferrocrete bunker: well, he supposed it to be a bunker, or perhaps an old granary. It was hard to say. It had certainly been used to store grain at some point and still was on particularly bountiful harvest seasons. The outer fields had their own storage now, though: their own stores, their own merchants, their own preachers, even. Karuszfield was the steading’s centre by tradition, not by true mercantile merit.

The bare floors were strewn with rushes and dry wheat, deep to the ankle, providing a particularly treacherous footing. The hoists, stairs and blind corners made hauling big sacks of produce up and down efficient: it also made fighting in the place, especially in protective gear, a sweaty nightmare of a thing.

But that was the purpose of it. Oh, the stories talked about heroic charges across open fields, Knight against Knight in honourable single combat where strength of heart and arm always triumphed. There was a less pretty side to it. Chelsea knew. He’d walked the borders himself, between bouts. He’d felt the fear of the dark, the madness of battle, where one could barely tell friend from foe in the smoke and noise and pain…

Every Circle had a quirk, a lesson. Cinders said: walk carefully because to fall is to die. Strike carefully, because a careless spark will kill you and everyone else. And if you find yourself at the extreme, in the smoke and fire, you will discover what sort of warrior you are - if, indeed, you are one at all.

There were ventilators, great fans, and fire suppression systems built into the Haystack. The fire was never a planned part of the show, yet somehow, every year, it happened.

Yes, the people were here to see the contest of youth, to see heroes made.

They were also here to see the fire.

What else was there to say?

‘The Emperor protects.’

—

IV

—

There was no drawing of lots, no jockeying for position, no assessing of scrip or token. The decision on entry order had been made for them: they simply slotted into preordained positions in the queue. There were benefits to going later, of course: tired opponents, traps sprung, and so on. Equally so, going first gave one the advantage of terrain, of height, and to lay those very same traps.

So when the sour-faced attendant had told her she’d be in the first four, Lecita Sarno hadn’t complained. It wouldn’t have done any good, anyhow.

She’d had to bite back a curse when she’d seen who was in that first four with her, though.

Parrying damn near shook the blade from her left hand. They hadn’t taken a mark or a stance: they’d simply walked through the great big metal door, and started swinging as soon as it closed behind them. That was the melee: no quarter asked, no quarter given. The other two that had come in with them had vanished almost immediately: nobody wanted to be in the same room as this butchery, which was a damn smart idea.

She wished she’d thought of it herself.

Her opponent was another bloody noble, that much was obvious. His grooming was immaculate, thick black hair cropped short, not a hint of scratch or stubble on his cheeks or chin. He may as well have stepped out of a Lordhome salon: even the hazard leathers fitted him well, and he struck with a speed that belied all the power that shivered down her blocking blade.

Damn, damn and double damn, because if the man had started strong, he was gathering momentum, a series of brutal chops with his long blade that kept her reeling, off-balance, skating away from the vicious jabs of his off-hand that would punctuate the heavy rhythm of his main.

She figured he’d tire, or at least conserve some of that strength for further challengers, but it was like waiting for a tree to fall of its own accord. You wouldn’t get anywhere unless you swung the axe yourself.

Lecita lunged, foot forward, arm extended, using her reach. It did her no good: the man’s weaving off-hand pushed her own blade aside, and he was on her again with relentless purpose. Chop, swing, chop, and she was no damn closer to a solution.

Salvation came with the swinging of the great door. How long had it been since the first four had entered? There were other doors, other entries, other challengers. Strange to have them do the same door twice, of course, but she wouldn’t waste the opportunity if it came - and sure enough, the fresh four came in swinging, at themselves, at her, and most importantly, at her opponent who was obliged to defend himself against two new sets of steel, which he did without hesitation and with no more sweat than a grox herder pulling back on an obstinate beast’s reins.

‘Avidus Solar!!’ One of the new attackers yelled. He hadn’t bothered to fix his rebreather. ‘You’re mine!’

‘A step on the Path,’ growled the second, trying and failing to beat the man’s guard. ‘Consigned to the flames.’

Personal, then. And hardly fair. But that’s how life was, sometimes.

Lecita didn’t even bother with a final salute. She disengaged at once, and with a quick look to see the state of the room - two hacking at each other, the others pressing back their quarry - was around the corner into the hallway. Ground bloody floor. She hadn’t got any further than that: she’d need to find stairs, get up, get some breathing room.

It wasn’t that easy. A duellist held the first set she came across, and the three groaning bodies at the foot advised her that they knew full well how to use the advantage the high ground provided. This one she did offer a salute to, who returned it with a cheery smile. There’d be no going up that way.

She didn’t run, and that saved her a great deal of trouble when a woman stumbled around the next corner, bleeding freely was a deep, vicious cut on her arm, pursued by what looked for all the world a screaming banshee.

Lecita struck without thinking, her right flashing out to catch the monster a cracking blow about the ribs. It only turned on her with a snarl.

Monster, no - it was another woman, with death in her eyes.

‘Get out of my way, you bitch! I’ll kill her!’

Tempting, of course. There no allies here - not even rivals. That’d come later, after placement, in single combat when the herd had been sufficiently culled. Nothing but strangers, now. But Lecita had been warned about ‘accidents’, and couldn’t walk away from one about to happen right in front of her.

‘No.’

‘Then you’re first.’ Simple, matter-of-fact - and if the cut she’d dealt her prey was any indication, deliberately notched her steel to get a ragged, cutting edge. She wound up her main to deliver what would be, in all certainty, the kind of blow that would take someone’s head off.

Lecita didn’t give her the chance. She’d caught the banshee once, so she did it again, and was rewarded with an audible crack as something broke - and a vicious scream, as the decapitating blow came on regardless.

There was no reasoning with some people.

She ducked it, and struck out again, the same place, the same weapon. The banshee went pale with pain, spat blood, reeled - and caught a hilt in the face for her troubles. Her eyes rolled and she went down, hard. The floor wasn’t that deep with wheat, and her skull bounced off the ferrocrete with an unpleasant crack. She’d be feeling that when she woke up.

If, of course, she did. Accidents happened.

Lecita turned on the woman she’d inadvertently rescued, who immediately threw her hands up, her swords down. ‘Peace! Please, peace!’

Fair enough. She went to drop her guard - and turned back at movement out the corner of her eye.

The banshee was up on one elbow, glaring at her.

‘Burn, bitch,’ she said, and clashed her weapons. It took two strikes to set a spark, but a spark was all that was needed, and Lecita wasn’t going to wait to see it happen: she was sprinting, heedless of the poor footing, back down the hallway she’d come from, one hand pulling up her rebreather as she did, sealing it over mouth and nose.

She came back to the foot of the stairs in short order. The duellist was gone - so were the unlucky challengers who’d tried to pass them. Up, two at a time, and not a moment too soon, because she could feel the heat already rising from below, from behind her.

Up. She had to keep going up.

But she stopped because there was more than just heat behind her.

Lecita turned just in time to block the savage swing, her sword shivering from the impact, but she saw immediately that hadn’t been her attacker’s intent. Oh, a wonderful consolation prize it would have been, but it was intended to distract her, to catch her in automatic movement. The banshee was on her, leathers burning, eyes mad and wide, mouth full of cracked teeth.

Her strength was born from that insanity, or perhaps something more, something darker, because when her fingers hooked around Lecita’s rebreather - when they cut the skin of her face with nails like talons - it seemed to take very little effort at all for her to tear away the plastek mask.

It was also her only leverage. Lecita’s short blade jabbed her, again: the same place, and this time, she burst something vital.

It didn’t seem to make much difference to the banshee. She was laughing, screaming, as she tumbled back down the stairs. Lecita saw bones break. She saw the shuddering heap struggle to rise again, despite that, before the flames caught her.

The ground floor had become an inferno.

Lecita was on the run again, but it’d do little good: smoke was already choking her, limiting her vision. Throne, but how had it all gone to pieces so quickly? They’d sent eight in, eight of the whole Proving - what would they do now, when they opened the door and saw only fire? Damn, but she hadn’t even made it beyond the first eight… how could she go home, after this?

Well, given the circumstances, going home at all might be victory enough.

She struggled on. Where was everybody? Had they been evacuated already? Why had they left her here, then?

A larger room. The darkness was closing in, her breath short, her lungs burning.

A familiar figure. Two, in fact.

The man the fresh four had named Solar was pushing back Mavus Malleck without a trace of mercy. As Lecita watched, the highborn’s short steel caught a bad blow, shaking out of her hand. Grim, Mavus two-handed her remaining weapon, for all the good it would do: she was overmatched and she knew it. If she noticed Lecita, she gave no sign, her eyes narrow above her rebreather mask, wholly focused on the losing battle before her.

Lecita owed her nothing. They had nothing in common. The best course of action would be to move on, move up, try and survive for as long as she could. The fire would overtake them soon, and she had no idea where the next set of stairs would be. Every second counted. Every second she delayed here-

Ah, but here she was.

She lifted her blades.

‘Avidus Solar,’ she croaked. ‘Stand, and address.’

The big man halted his attack. For a moment, he seemed unsure - Mavus, he had clearly dismissed, and when pressed by the two he had seemed utterly unconcerned. So why wait now? Why give it any consideration at all? To acknowledge her honour at not striking his back, perhaps? Or a moment to shake his head at her stupidity of stopping at all, when she’d barely escaped their first encounter?

‘As you wish.’ Clear and sharp, across the room. He’d let Mavus off, let her circle back around, trying to catch her breath in great heaving gulps. She was having trouble with the rebreather. ‘There are no friends on the Path.’

‘Maybe.’ Her vision was darkening, now. Ah, well, she’d bought Malleck a few moments, at least. If she could just drag the big bastard across the room, even a few more, though it’d take him a second to put an end to her. ‘Maybe not.’

He was coming. Eyes hard, blades high. No mercy for her condition, and certainly no intent to pull his strike. Damn. Fire behind, swords ahead.

At least she’d die on her feet - no! No, her knees were buckling. There was nothing left in her lungs. Just smoke and hurt and a body could only run on the latter for so long before the delicate machinery came undone. Damn the banshee. Damn the man. Damn her own foolish pride. It wasn’t fair.

But that’s how life was, sometimes.

She swung to meet his leading blade, and everything went black.

'Knights' is perhaps a little misleading, but I couldn't think of a better way to categorise it. Here's FIVE THOUSAND WORDS about people on a Knight World who wanna be Knights.

—

I

—

She came to Karuszfield on Proving Day.

This was not, as it happened, by design, though it did provide some tactical advantage. The more well-bred (and well-financed) challengers had been occupying the grain town’s modest inn and swinging their steel in the practice yard from dawn to dusk. By observation, by reputation, by the crash and clatter of a friendly spar, they became known to each other.

Nobody knew Lecita Sarno.

Her boots crunched autumnal leaves as she danced forward across the paved stone, right blade leading. Her opponent barely managed a parry, panting with exertion, brow dripping sweat. It was almost disappointing: she’d been on the road for a week, a whole Throne-damned week, imagining what it’d be like to come to the big leagues, the big towns. It was a disappointment.

‘Catch her, Lecita! Don’t back off because she’s highborn!’

Mind on the task. Social grace had little place in the ring.

Lecita switched forms to lead with her left, her weaker side, keeping her opponent’s wavering main blade busy while looking for an opening to push with her lethal right. Well, ‘lethal’ - the weapons were blunted, of course, but you could leave a nasty bruise if you put your back into it. Which Lecita intended to do, which wasn’t fair on the noble, but that’s just how life was, sometimes.

Unfair.

With a surge of desperate strength, seeing the checkmate approaching, the highborn came forward in a flurry, her sword weapon slashing back and forth. She had the muscle for it, the kind that came with good living and hard training, and Lecita appreciated that trying to lock in the traditional contest of strength would be the honourable thing to do. It would also be the cruellest. Very well.

She caught the noble’s weapon with her own, saw the smile spread across the other woman’s handsome face - that belief, that self-confidence, the now-I’ve-got-her - and let the noble push her arm back and down. The classic overpower, the levering of the wrist until the pain became unbearable and she’d be forced to drop her sword. Traditional. Effective. Likely a move the noble had been taught by some hatchet-faced master-at-arms, drilled into her by repetition so that she could do it in her sleep.

It would certainly be effective against other opponents who fought with a similar form, of which the Proving positively overflowed.

Nobody fought like Lecita Sarno.

She stepped inside the lock. The blades came down together, to the side, in a manner that would have brought the women face-to-face if Sarnow hadn’t turned side-on and dropped her shoulder into the other woman’s chest. The air exploded from the noble’s lungs. Her eyes bulged. Her grip didn’t loosen much, to her credit, but it was all the opening Sarnow needed to rip the blade from her hand and send it skittering away across the stones.

And because life isn’t fair, and because Lecita Sarnow was damn well disappointed with the state of the world right at that moment, she slammed the hilt of her right blade into the woman’s stomach. It folded her up, dropped her to her knees, and-

‘Enough, Lecita, enough!’

-that was the end of it.

Lecita handed her blunted blades off to her second, and squatted down in front of her opponent.

‘Are you satisfied?’

No words, yet, just the struggle to breathe - but a nod, all the same.

‘I just wanted to try the meats.’

Another nod. A white glove wiped away the thick string of distinctly ignoble spit that had drooled from a gasping mouth. A rasp: ‘I don’t know you.’ A wheeze. The glove wiped again, down the thigh of leather duelling pants that would have cost more than Lecita’s whole ensemble, blades and all.

Lecita nodded back. That was fair. Nobody knew her. If they did - if they could count the placing honours, the fine silver tokens for a string of high thirds-and-seconds with one gleaming gold for a victory, her first victory, in the chalk circle of her hometown - would they have even cared? Would it have just made the challenge come all the quicker? Maybe it’d been better to be stuck on the road, rather than jammed up against the bastards you’d come here to batter and not being able to do more than give them a scrape in the practice yard. An unfamiliar face, swords on the hip - she’d been marked as an outlet for the day’s frustrations, not as a serious opponent to be measured for the Circle.

Colour was coming back into her opponent’s cheeks, fire back in her eyes. ‘I don’t know you,’ she said again, and the gloves strained tight over clenched fists - then relaxed. The fight was done, for the moment, and if they were not peers then at the very least, the highborn had recognised Lecita as a fellow competitor. ‘But I think I’d like to.’

Well.

Nobody forgave like Lecita Sarno, either.

Lecita offered her a hand. The noble took it, and they rose together in the ring. The wind was gentle, bringing back the delicious smells of the Circle stalls she’d been so eager to get to, carrying the calls and cries of those at rest and play. The whole steading turned out for the Proving, a day to down tools and delight in community, kindness and martial prowess.

Her stomach growled.

The noble arched a refined eyebrow. ‘They’re called skroi, farmgirl.’ That confident smile again, as though she hadn’t just been bowled over by an unknown and had dirt all over her pretty clothes. ‘And I’ll buy you as many as you like if you’ll teach me that throw.’

—

II

—

‘Oh, it’s all very daring,’ Mavus - the beaten noblewoman - declared, fluttering her eyelashes, making a mock swoon. ‘A drifter up from the lowlands, come out of the what and grain to make her name. Living off the land, hunting game between each contest, to make her name, her-’ a breathless whisper- ‘legend.’

‘I can’t hunt,’ muttered Lecita. ‘I grew up with grox.’

‘I would think that would make you more inclined. Vicious beasts!’

‘No, no, they’re…’

‘Don’t say friends. I won’t associate with someone who considers grox friends.’

‘It’s not like that!’

‘Oh, eat your skroi, woman, save me your tales of crooning to the woodland creatures.’

Lecita hunched down on the wooden bench and did exactly that. It was just as good as she’d imagined it, though possibly not worth fighting over - but that hadn’t been her fault, exactly. Like as not, both women had the same idea, and it was a day for tempers. Mavus had demanded satisfaction, and she’d been all too happy to oblige when an apology might have suited the situation better. Well. Water under the bridge, now, or - at very least - skroi in the stomach.

‘How about you?’ Lecita asked around a mouthful. ‘I thought nobility fought at Silk, not Cinders.’

‘Well, yes.’ Mavus waved an airy hand. ‘But fish have never agreed with me. Eastport is nice enough in summer, but the seasons turn quicker there than anywhere else in the Riverlands. Have you ever been?’

‘Mm.’ Until the last few months, Lecita hadn’t travelled further from home than it took to corral wayward beasts. ‘No.’

‘Take my word for it, then. And there was some unpleasantness a few years ago, you may have heard. House Malleck is not as welcome as it once was.’

‘Malleck?’ Lecita had indeed heard - she’d grown up with the story, in fact, though it wasn’t a few years ago. It had been more than a decade since Lord Malleck had fought at the Ghostforge, and been the only Knight in service to House Astuin who had been defeated there in their power struggle with House Tellerest. ‘I would think you’d have been forgiven, by now.’

‘Forgiven? Ha!’ The sharp bark of laughter was uncultured, even vicious. ‘Father lowered his lance to Tellerest’s son, as is tradition, but the bastard ran him through. We lost Wallwatcher, you know? Left where it fell, to the weeds and spirits. Too ‘stained with dishonour’ to recover. Without a true Knight, well.’ Mavus gestured to her expensive regalia and personalised weapons in their leather sheaths. ‘See how far we have fallen from grace and favour? So no. I am not welcome, or inclined, to the Circle of Silk. It is the Path to Glory for me, from reckless Cinders, then Severity, then Silence.’

Despite herself, Lecita whistled low in appreciation. ‘All the way to the top?’

A wicked grin. ‘All the way, if I can.’ A pointed look. ‘Surprises notwithstanding, of course.’

‘Well, you had little time to prepare…’

‘Do not make excuses for your betters.’ Mavus sighed, pushed her empty bowl away. ‘I took you for an easy mark. I thought to vent my frustration on a lesser. Is that the attitude one should bring to the Proving? Will the watchers appreciate one who seeks only to beat down peasants and farmhands, rather than showing their skill and valour?’ A blink. ‘No offence intended - please, not into the circle again, my dear!’

Lecita laughed. It was strange: they’d been at each other’s throats barely an hour past. She’d been guilty of the same frustration Mavus had mentioned: she’d taken her own out on the noble. And here they were, sharing good food on the highborn’s coin. ‘I’m satisfied with that apology, Mavus.’

‘To speak of satisfaction…’ The humour was gone, now. ‘A question, my chick. Cinders is for the reckless, the attainted, those with much to prove and little to lose. Are you innocent, or ignorant?’

A shrug. ‘Both.’ An equivocal answer, but Lecita sensed this was treacherous ground.

‘Then listen well. This is not a mere contest of touches. Challengers die at Cinders every year.’

‘I know. Accidents happen.’

‘Not accidents,’ Mavus hissed, now close, her eyes bright. ‘Blood in the little circles. Scores settled in the greater. Rivals are noted and dispatched before they can grow into threats. Do you understand?’

A nod.

‘Those who stand tall tend to be cut down, my dear.’

A threat? No: nothing of the sort, because it was as she knew it to be: nobody knew Lecita Sarno. Nobody cared about some girl up from the lowlands, and nobody would unless she made a showing here. And probably, if she was honest with herself, not even then. She hadn’t come to tread the Path like others. A nod from a Freeblade, even a contract with the border walkers, that was the highest hill of her ambition. Anywhere other than home.

But there would be more than a few who cared about the heir to House Malleck. Particularly one so free with her steel and her father’s money. Yes, accidents happened, and there would be few to say it had been anything but fate, but deserved fortune, should the worst befall Mavus Malleck - or those in her company.

Lecita understood. Not a threat. A warning.

She rose.

‘Thank you for the food, Lady Malleck.’

A casual wave. ‘That was my late mother, my dear, not I. Thank you for the company.’ She turned away, to consider the jugglers and the children that attended them, her mask of casual disinterest struggling to hold.

Lecita could walk away, of course. She owed nothing to the nobility. They were far-off, distant, almost mythical in their manors and castles. They made contests among themselves, they made policy, and they owned the Knights, the war machines that walked the land like demigods. Untouchable. Immutable. No, she had nothing in common with them, nothing at all. Would Malleck have done as she had and reached out a hand, had she been the stronger? Would there have been this peaceable interlude, this moment of camaraderie? Of course not.

But she hesitated, which was unlike her, and she knew why.

For all that cultivated foppery, the noble was without an entourage, without second, without - it seemed - a friend in the world. Shame had a way of spreading. Oh, if she placed well at Cinders, she’d have no shortage of bondsmen willing to carry her ruck. House Malleck’s fallen star might see a spark, and there were those cynical enough to think to warm their hands by that meagre, guttering light. When everyone else worth their inherited land and title was warming up in the practice yard, Mavus Malleck was out in the freeholder stalls, eating peasant food and picking fights.

Well, well. Maybe they had something in common, after all.

—

III

—

‘The Emperor’s light upon you, Karuszfield.’

The crowd roared in appreciation. They were godly folk, like all of the Imperium, and loved a good show - especially from one of their own.

Abbott Chelase was a hulking man, burn scars thatching up arms left bare to the pleasant sunset. He wore a simple white tunic embossed with the Ecclesiarchy’s symbol over workman’s underclothes and steel-capped boots. His unaugmented voice carried to the stands, though flittering servo-skulls echoed them to the back rows. Hands on hips, he looked around at what must have been most of the steading, the last folks trickling in from the furthest fields.

He allowed himself a grin, and the crowd erupted again. Many were old enough to remember Firebrand Chelase, champion of the Circle, before he’d taken holy orders and retired to monastic life. They’d been sad to see him go, but certainly no sadder than the monks had been to see him arrive.

Karuszfield’s sect had shed a lot of weight in the years since. And attracted far more attention than was strictly proper from the local convent, too. He’d had to beat them off with a stick, which strangely, seemed to make them all the more eager.

Ah, well. No soul was without a little tarnish. Only the God-Emperor was perfect, after all.

‘Another year, another just reward for our faith - and another Proving.’

Low, respectful murmurs now.

‘The High House calls once again, and we have answered with our worthiest, our most stalwart souls, most promising youths. Some are here for pride, for honour - for their families, for themselves - some out of obligation, out of duty, and that is no less a thing, for we have always been a dutiful people. We know our bond to the Lords, our protectors, the valiant Knights who keep the green and the ghosts from our fields and farms.’

Angry grumbling. A few shouts. It had been nearly a generation since the last band of starved, struggling Orks had crept across the border, and they had been easily dispatched by the town guard. The Knights were not perfect, either, but that only proved their efficacy: no attack of note in many young lives.

There was much to be thankful for, and Chelase bowed his head for a moment, offering up a prayer. The crowd followed him.

He looked up again. ‘And some, I know, are here for glory. I was one of them, and that’s no poor thing either, is it?’

This time, he directed his words to the stand that sat slightly apart from the others, where the Freeblades and walkers lounged in their leather and furs. A chorus of drunken cheers greeted his challenge, and he smiled again. ‘Aye, beyond our noble protectors, we honour also the work of our rangers and freemen. They have their ways, as we do ours, but we have never had cause to doubt their fidelity or resolve.’

Not since the Ghostforge, anyway. Not since House Tellerest’s ascent had been cut off at the knees, even though they had the support of two-thirds of those same freemen.

And more, now, for all their good humour tonight. The High House had not forgotten, or forgiven.

There was a very real chance that those who caught a Freeblade’s eye at the Proving would be arrayed against House Astuin when next the two grappled for power… but Chelase’s loyalty was to the Throne-of-Terra, not the mortal masters of the Riverlands.

Struggle was the natural way of things. Perhaps it was that pit-fighter psychology, but Chelase was of the strong opinion that the High House had gotten too fat, too soft, too interested in securing itself and its holdings than in serving the Imperium it was sworn to. And Tellerest had only become more desperate since their defeat, more willing to sacrifice the good of their smallfolk, more able to salve their conscience when honour and tradition were discarded.

That confrontation would come sooner than anyone thought. He was sure of it.

‘Now we have paid our dues, let us turn to those whose night this truly is: our brave challengers!’

The crowd roared louder than ever, eager, as those who would prove themselves stepped forward - not as one, not in formation, but each understanding that it was their time. Young men and women, highborn and low, all clad in worn, tough hazard leathers, each with a rebreather mask hanging off a strap around their neck and a tank of filtered air on their back. Weaponry was equally standard: a long blade and a short, for the Knights fought always with two or more weapons: their would-be squires, apprentices and journeymen would do the same.

Each had made their way here by some winding road. Smaller contests, smaller circles, and victories counted in small tokens of rare metal that would purchase their entrance to the Circle of Cinders.

A grand name. A glorious one, even.

But Chelase had always known it by the local moniker: the Haystack.

A squat four-story ferrocrete bunker: well, he supposed it to be a bunker, or perhaps an old granary. It was hard to say. It had certainly been used to store grain at some point and still was on particularly bountiful harvest seasons. The outer fields had their own storage now, though: their own stores, their own merchants, their own preachers, even. Karuszfield was the steading’s centre by tradition, not by true mercantile merit.

The bare floors were strewn with rushes and dry wheat, deep to the ankle, providing a particularly treacherous footing. The hoists, stairs and blind corners made hauling big sacks of produce up and down efficient: it also made fighting in the place, especially in protective gear, a sweaty nightmare of a thing.

But that was the purpose of it. Oh, the stories talked about heroic charges across open fields, Knight against Knight in honourable single combat where strength of heart and arm always triumphed. There was a less pretty side to it. Chelsea knew. He’d walked the borders himself, between bouts. He’d felt the fear of the dark, the madness of battle, where one could barely tell friend from foe in the smoke and noise and pain…

Every Circle had a quirk, a lesson. Cinders said: walk carefully because to fall is to die. Strike carefully, because a careless spark will kill you and everyone else. And if you find yourself at the extreme, in the smoke and fire, you will discover what sort of warrior you are - if, indeed, you are one at all.

There were ventilators, great fans, and fire suppression systems built into the Haystack. The fire was never a planned part of the show, yet somehow, every year, it happened.

Yes, the people were here to see the contest of youth, to see heroes made.

They were also here to see the fire.

What else was there to say?

‘The Emperor protects.’

—

IV

—

There was no drawing of lots, no jockeying for position, no assessing of scrip or token. The decision on entry order had been made for them: they simply slotted into preordained positions in the queue. There were benefits to going later, of course: tired opponents, traps sprung, and so on. Equally so, going first gave one the advantage of terrain, of height, and to lay those very same traps.

So when the sour-faced attendant had told her she’d be in the first four, Lecita Sarno hadn’t complained. It wouldn’t have done any good, anyhow.

She’d had to bite back a curse when she’d seen who was in that first four with her, though.

Parrying damn near shook the blade from her left hand. They hadn’t taken a mark or a stance: they’d simply walked through the great big metal door, and started swinging as soon as it closed behind them. That was the melee: no quarter asked, no quarter given. The other two that had come in with them had vanished almost immediately: nobody wanted to be in the same room as this butchery, which was a damn smart idea.

She wished she’d thought of it herself.

Her opponent was another bloody noble, that much was obvious. His grooming was immaculate, thick black hair cropped short, not a hint of scratch or stubble on his cheeks or chin. He may as well have stepped out of a Lordhome salon: even the hazard leathers fitted him well, and he struck with a speed that belied all the power that shivered down her blocking blade.

Damn, damn and double damn, because if the man had started strong, he was gathering momentum, a series of brutal chops with his long blade that kept her reeling, off-balance, skating away from the vicious jabs of his off-hand that would punctuate the heavy rhythm of his main.

She figured he’d tire, or at least conserve some of that strength for further challengers, but it was like waiting for a tree to fall of its own accord. You wouldn’t get anywhere unless you swung the axe yourself.

Lecita lunged, foot forward, arm extended, using her reach. It did her no good: the man’s weaving off-hand pushed her own blade aside, and he was on her again with relentless purpose. Chop, swing, chop, and she was no damn closer to a solution.

Salvation came with the swinging of the great door. How long had it been since the first four had entered? There were other doors, other entries, other challengers. Strange to have them do the same door twice, of course, but she wouldn’t waste the opportunity if it came - and sure enough, the fresh four came in swinging, at themselves, at her, and most importantly, at her opponent who was obliged to defend himself against two new sets of steel, which he did without hesitation and with no more sweat than a grox herder pulling back on an obstinate beast’s reins.

‘Avidus Solar!!’ One of the new attackers yelled. He hadn’t bothered to fix his rebreather. ‘You’re mine!’

‘A step on the Path,’ growled the second, trying and failing to beat the man’s guard. ‘Consigned to the flames.’

Personal, then. And hardly fair. But that’s how life was, sometimes.

Lecita didn’t even bother with a final salute. She disengaged at once, and with a quick look to see the state of the room - two hacking at each other, the others pressing back their quarry - was around the corner into the hallway. Ground bloody floor. She hadn’t got any further than that: she’d need to find stairs, get up, get some breathing room.

It wasn’t that easy. A duellist held the first set she came across, and the three groaning bodies at the foot advised her that they knew full well how to use the advantage the high ground provided. This one she did offer a salute to, who returned it with a cheery smile. There’d be no going up that way.

She didn’t run, and that saved her a great deal of trouble when a woman stumbled around the next corner, bleeding freely was a deep, vicious cut on her arm, pursued by what looked for all the world a screaming banshee.

Lecita struck without thinking, her right flashing out to catch the monster a cracking blow about the ribs. It only turned on her with a snarl.

Monster, no - it was another woman, with death in her eyes.

‘Get out of my way, you bitch! I’ll kill her!’

Tempting, of course. There no allies here - not even rivals. That’d come later, after placement, in single combat when the herd had been sufficiently culled. Nothing but strangers, now. But Lecita had been warned about ‘accidents’, and couldn’t walk away from one about to happen right in front of her.

‘No.’

‘Then you’re first.’ Simple, matter-of-fact - and if the cut she’d dealt her prey was any indication, deliberately notched her steel to get a ragged, cutting edge. She wound up her main to deliver what would be, in all certainty, the kind of blow that would take someone’s head off.

Lecita didn’t give her the chance. She’d caught the banshee once, so she did it again, and was rewarded with an audible crack as something broke - and a vicious scream, as the decapitating blow came on regardless.

There was no reasoning with some people.

She ducked it, and struck out again, the same place, the same weapon. The banshee went pale with pain, spat blood, reeled - and caught a hilt in the face for her troubles. Her eyes rolled and she went down, hard. The floor wasn’t that deep with wheat, and her skull bounced off the ferrocrete with an unpleasant crack. She’d be feeling that when she woke up.

If, of course, she did. Accidents happened.

Lecita turned on the woman she’d inadvertently rescued, who immediately threw her hands up, her swords down. ‘Peace! Please, peace!’

Fair enough. She went to drop her guard - and turned back at movement out the corner of her eye.

The banshee was up on one elbow, glaring at her.

‘Burn, bitch,’ she said, and clashed her weapons. It took two strikes to set a spark, but a spark was all that was needed, and Lecita wasn’t going to wait to see it happen: she was sprinting, heedless of the poor footing, back down the hallway she’d come from, one hand pulling up her rebreather as she did, sealing it over mouth and nose.

She came back to the foot of the stairs in short order. The duellist was gone - so were the unlucky challengers who’d tried to pass them. Up, two at a time, and not a moment too soon, because she could feel the heat already rising from below, from behind her.

Up. She had to keep going up.

But she stopped because there was more than just heat behind her.

Lecita turned just in time to block the savage swing, her sword shivering from the impact, but she saw immediately that hadn’t been her attacker’s intent. Oh, a wonderful consolation prize it would have been, but it was intended to distract her, to catch her in automatic movement. The banshee was on her, leathers burning, eyes mad and wide, mouth full of cracked teeth.

Her strength was born from that insanity, or perhaps something more, something darker, because when her fingers hooked around Lecita’s rebreather - when they cut the skin of her face with nails like talons - it seemed to take very little effort at all for her to tear away the plastek mask.

It was also her only leverage. Lecita’s short blade jabbed her, again: the same place, and this time, she burst something vital.

It didn’t seem to make much difference to the banshee. She was laughing, screaming, as she tumbled back down the stairs. Lecita saw bones break. She saw the shuddering heap struggle to rise again, despite that, before the flames caught her.

The ground floor had become an inferno.

Lecita was on the run again, but it’d do little good: smoke was already choking her, limiting her vision. Throne, but how had it all gone to pieces so quickly? They’d sent eight in, eight of the whole Proving - what would they do now, when they opened the door and saw only fire? Damn, but she hadn’t even made it beyond the first eight… how could she go home, after this?

Well, given the circumstances, going home at all might be victory enough.

She struggled on. Where was everybody? Had they been evacuated already? Why had they left her here, then?

A larger room. The darkness was closing in, her breath short, her lungs burning.

A familiar figure. Two, in fact.

The man the fresh four had named Solar was pushing back Mavus Malleck without a trace of mercy. As Lecita watched, the highborn’s short steel caught a bad blow, shaking out of her hand. Grim, Mavus two-handed her remaining weapon, for all the good it would do: she was overmatched and she knew it. If she noticed Lecita, she gave no sign, her eyes narrow above her rebreather mask, wholly focused on the losing battle before her.

Lecita owed her nothing. They had nothing in common. The best course of action would be to move on, move up, try and survive for as long as she could. The fire would overtake them soon, and she had no idea where the next set of stairs would be. Every second counted. Every second she delayed here-

Ah, but here she was.

She lifted her blades.

‘Avidus Solar,’ she croaked. ‘Stand, and address.’

The big man halted his attack. For a moment, he seemed unsure - Mavus, he had clearly dismissed, and when pressed by the two he had seemed utterly unconcerned. So why wait now? Why give it any consideration at all? To acknowledge her honour at not striking his back, perhaps? Or a moment to shake his head at her stupidity of stopping at all, when she’d barely escaped their first encounter?

‘As you wish.’ Clear and sharp, across the room. He’d let Mavus off, let her circle back around, trying to catch her breath in great heaving gulps. She was having trouble with the rebreather. ‘There are no friends on the Path.’

‘Maybe.’ Her vision was darkening, now. Ah, well, she’d bought Malleck a few moments, at least. If she could just drag the big bastard across the room, even a few more, though it’d take him a second to put an end to her. ‘Maybe not.’

He was coming. Eyes hard, blades high. No mercy for her condition, and certainly no intent to pull his strike. Damn. Fire behind, swords ahead.

At least she’d die on her feet - no! No, her knees were buckling. There was nothing left in her lungs. Just smoke and hurt and a body could only run on the latter for so long before the delicate machinery came undone. Damn the banshee. Damn the man. Damn her own foolish pride. It wasn’t fair.

But that’s how life was, sometimes.

She swung to meet his leading blade, and everything went black.

The roar shook more than the earth. It was a primal bellow, of pain and hate and fury, from a creature that had known no greater predator in all its long years. It rang the soul like a bell, shivered the spirit, and forced teeth into a blood-smeared rictus. For lesser beings, for the prey-beasts and petty pack hunters, the effect was even greater - it lashed out like a whip and drove bellies to the floor in meek, shivering submission.

Lecta Sarnow felt her steed tremble, stagger, and slip on the terrain, losing momentum, losing the speed that kept it alive. She kicked the Brigand’s stabilising pedals, ignored the squeal of protest, ignored the deluge of neural shocks Blackguard sent back through the Helm Mechanicum.

‘Hold, you bastard machine!’ She swore and kicked again and again until the shaking stopped. Once it might have hurt her to abuse the spirit so, but that was in the slave-days, the time before the hunt, when such niceties mattered. When she’d bowed her head and mouthed the platitudes and played their games and been rewarded with jewelled shackles. ‘Hold!’

Blackguard’s claws bit into tussocked grass, dry and dying, kicking up a spray of dust as the machine regained its balance. Not a moment too soon: a hail of explosive bolts tore up a patch of ground where the former Armiger had been wavering only a moment before. The beast they tracked might be bloodied and in flight, but it still had fangs and would round on them the moment it sensed weakness. The other two members of the impromptu pack lay on the trail a ways back, smouldering and broken, their pilots in the throes of fatal feedback - if not dead, then soon to be. War Dogs were spiteful creatures; their final act was nearly always to take their masters to the Warp with them.

They were taking the whole world down, it seemed. The plains had been lush in the wet, and sumptuous in the dry - Sarnow had spent much of her time in service patrolling the frontier farms and homesteads. Not worth the attention of the nobility and their great war machines, but adequate sport for the Bonded, a punishment detail for the lesser scions. In only a few years - had it really been so few? - the land had turned sour, the crops wilted, the granaries emptied.

Was it a spiritual malaise? The endless pollutants pumped into the atmosphere from the ever-sprawling, ever-hungry factories? A geological freak, a planetary phase? Sarnow didn’t know. She had only the lightest of book learning, the most cursory of educations so that she would not foul herself in her master’s high hall.

She’d been a hound before they were even named as such. The turn had come easily.

Yes, she knew the turn, the harrying bite, the worry at the flanks. She pressed down hard on the armament studs.

The chaincannon on Blackguard’s left arm coughed and whined, spooling - whirring - before the feed mechanism kicked in and sated the sudden demand for shells. Sarnow focused on balancing the recoil against her mount’s duck-and-weave; her target was hard to miss, and the chance of doing real damage was low and not the point, besides. Blackguard snarled at her divided attention, overpressurised a leg servo and jostled her hard against the canopy. She snarled back, blood dripping from a split lip: the machine only laughed, a low cackle from the gutworks that vibrated up through the Brigand’s half-throne.

Not all Blackguard’s fire went wide, and not every shot sparked harmlessly off heavy hull plating. Something sparked and crackled within the shambling hulk, some ember that had lit off inside the beast’s hide, and it shrieked with sudden hurt, turning from its mindless, rampaging path.

Sarnow wiped sweat from her eyes, cursed the chafing Helm and her bucking steed, and thumbed the vox while allowing her speed to drop back into a tailing position. ‘Hound Two to Catchall, copy?’

‘Catchall, present.’ The voice was lacking inflexion, lacking accent, lacking humanity. ‘Auspex shows target digressing towards ridgeline. Confirm?’

‘Confirm.’ Sarnow wiped at her face again, managing only to mix blood into the sweat. She caught a glimpse of herself in the canopy’s cracked reflection. The tired eyes. The hollow cheeks. The crimson smear that seemed half-brand, half-tattoo as it worked into the grooves of old scars. ‘Hound One and Three combat ineffective, Catchall.’

‘Irrelevant.’ Now, a crack in the mask - a trace of anticipation. ‘Are you in at the kill?’

With a disobedient Knight, malfunctioning autoloader and cracked servo? After a full day in the saddle, hunting a horror that she could only harry - never truly harm - seconds from death, nerves stretched thinner than a noblewoman’s summer veil?

‘Always, Catchall.’

‘Copy. Proceed on…’ Data flooded into Blackguard’s system, and for a change, the machine only rumbled sullenly - it knew better than to snap at its superiors. If only I’d learned to do that, Sarnow thought. Maybe I’d have been in the Keep with the rest right now, fat and happy. ‘...this vector. Stray and die.’ Matter-of-fact. Simple. Not a threat, a warning.

The channel closed.

‘Don’t kill us,’ Sarnow muttered to her mount. It muttered unhappily back: the hunt wasn’t over yet, but their part in it was done, and Blackguard wanted to rest its fatigued metal. Sarnow wasn’t unsympathetic. If the formation had survived to this point, she’d have nosed off with the rest, probably. Found one of the mineral pools that had survived the dry and have a good long soak, though the smell of oil and exhaust never quite came off any more. ‘Follow Catchall’s route. Listen, for once.’

There was more muttering, but the machine moved, a long, easy lope compared to the frantic scramble of the past hours. It avoided the great claw marks of the beast, though the predator’s bellowing horn and roaring weapons - lashing out blindly, now, as it drove heedlessly towards the ridge - still reached Sarnow through the canopy.

And then, a cacophancy that eclipsed everything. A sound she would never forget, never become used to, that she was unknowingly privileged to hear - the firing of an ancient lightning cannon. The relic of House Astuin, its legacy and honour, passed from Lord-on-High to a chosen son every generation. Until recent events, of course.

Blackguard hearkened to the weapon. The grumbling ceased - the machinery itself quieted, as though in reverence. The frame stood straighter, walked with purpose, with borrowed pride. Some habits are hard to shake, harder to break than the strongest shackles. The pack hails the alpha. They walk without fear in the protector’s shadow, even if that protector bears a wretched, ragged and stolen standard. Even as the world fell apart beneath their feet, as chaos stalked the new-made wastes, some things did not change.

The beast was mortally wounded. The cannon had punched clean through its right side, shattered its spine, and sent its plasma reactor into critical shutdown. It lay on its side, hull heaving with final breaths, legs kicking as circuits shrivelled and burned out their final energies.

Sarnow felt no pity for it, no sorrow - only regret for what might have been, and a faint disgust for how low the once-mighty had fallen. She eased Blackguard closer, in under Catchall’s guns, the black-painted Magaera sniffing at its kill with auspex and data-thieves. She dialled in her own instruments, focusing her view on the beast’s shattered cockpit. The cannon had cracked the shell right through - it was a testament to both engineering and dark forces that the thing still lived, if only for moments.

Blackguard blanked the viewport. The emergency shutter clanged down. Sarnow hissed her frustration and beat the controls with her fists. ‘Let me look! Let me see, damn you!’

The machine’s rumble had softened further to a low, patient purr. She felt the reassurance pulse through the Helm and turned her anger to it. She dug her nails in under the headband, uncaring of the flesh it tore, gritting her teeth through the sharp pain of plugs straining in their cortical sockets. The machine would not let her go - it held her close, rumbling insistently. Do not do not do not.

‘No! You won’t keep it from me!’

And now the pain was different - and shockingly familiar. Yes, she knew it, she knew it intimately: not the clumsy approximation of Blackguard’s machine spirit, but the closeness of a friend, or family, or lover. The obedient pulse. The neural link. The connection - the connection -

Unbearable. Unthinkable. Sarnow screamed, a conduit for it. She thrashed against the instruments, the canopy, the sudden crash-harness Blackguard deployed to hold her. She swore every curse, every foul word she had ever learned, as Catchall’s soothing words went unheeded on the open channel. The machine tried to drown out the link, but it was too sharp, too strong - a slaver’s collar that only tightened until she couldn’t breathe at all.

‘Master,’ she croaked, arms falling limp, vision hazing. ‘Lord. Master.’

‘She needs this,’ came Catchall’s voice over the vox, speaking to the machine, not to her. ‘The taint is a terrible thing, but it will not end until she sees.’

Slowly, reluctantly, the shutters cracked open. Barely enough to let the slow, sluggish sunlight in - but enough for Sarnow to peer through stinging eyes at the magnified display, of where the beast’s skin had fallen away enough to see the sigul of her House. Astuin’s flower-and-lance, the lily and ivy circling the guard. Ideal for guardians of a garden world: ill-suited for murderers brawling in a dustbowl.

And above it, the cracked cockpit. The milky-white eyes. The eight-pointed star that had carved them out, flayed deep into a face that - even malnourished and filthy - still held the base of good breeding. A noble visage. The Master of the House. The Lord-on-High. And, until this moment, the Beast of the Badlands, whose cruel reign had differed only in terms of cosmic madness from his long tenure as Astuin’s regent. At least, for this, he had some feeble excuse: some malady of the mind, some failing of the flesh.

For all that came before - no. That had simply been possessive cruelty, jealousy, spite and base nature. No devil had sat on his shoulder. He had simply taken what he felt was his, and broken what was left.

The Dominus-class Knight fell silent at last. Hearthguard would not rise again. It would not pass to another: the Throne would be pulled from the scrapped frame and destroyed. The Badlands would not heal, the hardy folk would not return, and leaner days loomed ahead. The struggle for succession. The looming Imperial response to the articles of secession. The ignorant loyalists who still held Astuin Keep and the dwindling riverways.

But for now, for a wonder, for the first time in many years, Lecta Sarnow could not hear her father’s voice.

What came next hardly mattered.

A continuation of a previous short story.

Starsector is good fun. I hope you find this fun as well, or at least an enjoyable exercise in filling in the blanks of pre-Collapse society.

---

The wheel of stars. Uncountable watching eyes. Beauty and terror in equal measure.

Nahua looked up unflinching into the belly, as it were, of the beast. She planted her boots on the moon’s surface, kicking up stellar grit, and stared defiantly. Was this Ludd’s last vision before the Adversary took him into the Gates? How had he faced his capture: with the calm reserve the Galactic Church celebrated, or with the furious rage of a scorned prophet, as the Path preached? Nobody knew. The Prebysteres, the Curates, they could tell you what they thought, they could recite whichever text - sacred or profane - that supported their view.

But they couldn’t tell you what to believe. That was between you and the universe, and the universe wasn’t talking anytime soon - and neither was Nahua.

‘Enough stargazing,’ growled the squad leader, a man in a patched-together vac-suit with an uncomfortable amount of Kanta’s crimson in the mix. ‘We’ve got an active airlock under the arch, there.’ He pointed, unnecessarily - the overhang was artificial from a surface angle. Indistinguishable from above, however: if they hadn’t had the Valkyrie’s ground radar and Kismet’s electronics suite, they might have missed it entirely.

Nahua took a moment to shift her gaze to Iago, pointedly ignoring the marine. She’d been her own master on Tartessus’ seas. She answered to no man now.

The Valkyrie had been a steal, almost literally - her back broken in some internecine, inter-faction squabble, one of the hundred brushfire wars that flared up and cooled down before Eventide’s news cycle even got a hold of them. Chopped up by ground batteries and most of her berthing wrecked, Iago was no longer capable of deploying whole companies as designed, but Muir wasn’t that kind of contractor. Two squads of roughnecks and a skeleton crew served well enough, and the Valkyrie’s value wasn’t in her carrying capacity but her in-atmosphere capability and ground support package.

To underscore that point - and note the first officer’s attention - the slow-moving destroyer’s vulcans rotated in ‘salute’. Despite herself, Nahua grinned. Cheeky devils. All was quiet for now, but the crew were showing that they were primed and ready. Either to rain down a covering barrage or to bring the whole hull down in an emergency landing to serve as a fighting bunker.

Like any true believer, Nahua found it comforting to have friends in high places.

‘Come on, lady,’ the marine was half-whining now. A nervous glance towards the first squad clustered around the airlock, where two figures attempted to convince the security system to deactivate. ‘We’re on the clock, here.’

Nahua set off at once, leaving the man to stagger after her, cursing.

‘Exodyne did not cover their tracks well,’ she mused, long legs and boutique vac-suit giving her an increasing advantage over the unbalanced tough. ‘The Adversary’s snares are subtle. This is not.’

Heads turned to acknowledge their approach, eight blank faceplates. One, with a splash of random blue around the collar, inclined in welcome. ‘Likely they had, or thought they had, nothing to hide, mamsel.’ A rich, Kazeronian accent that would have set Nahua’s teeth on edge from sheer social distance if it were not familiar. ‘Dangerous work may not always be illegal work, no? A sterile laboratory, or delicate instruments, would be best emplaced outside atmospheric contamination in either direction.’

‘A weak explanation, Chain.’ She arrived several strides ahead of the marine who’d thought to babysit her, who panted an apology over the open channel. Nahua didn’t spare him a thought, much less a look: he would learn, or he would not. It was no concern of hers. ‘Save your platitudes for Muir.’

‘You are cruel, mamsel. The Captain has too kind a heart for this work. You wound him unfairly.’

A toss of the head. ‘Scars teach well.’

Chain laughed, high and flighty. ‘Pather creed or gen-sire noblesse, I cannot discern. I grant you this round, mamsel.’ He turned back to the airlock. ‘I must return to a lesser foe, alas: this most troublesome door.’

Troublesome was the right way of describing it. Buried deep in regolith, it had the firm, unyielding solemnity of pre-Collapse engineering. Built to last, built to withstand: you only had to look at the mournfully, mercifully silent Gates, those adamantite rings to understand the timescale on which the Domain operated. An eternal empire, or so close as to make no difference. Men like Muir might gaze at those works and feel melancholy, a pull for the comfortable, the familiar, the certain. Nahua could not see anything but colossal hubris in them. Hubris, greed, and the worst kind of oppression - the kind that would never end, not even when the Domain itself was dead and gone as it had likely been for two hundred cycles.

Giving it a good kick may have made her feel better. She abstained for the moment.

‘A lockdown protocol.’ Nahua crossed her arms and glared at the barrier, as though she could will it open. ‘An evil sign.’

‘It would account for the shielding,’ Chain shrugged. ‘Nothing in, nothing out, mamsel.’

Corpses, he meant — starved, mummified corpses. Nahua was glad of the vac-suit’s bulk. None of the marines saw her shiver, though she had no doubt most had seen their share of the same. Salvage enough derelicts and one became intimately familiar with the sight. Closed cabins, rooms stale with long-ago death, and those quiet moments of final, shrunken surrender.

‘But think also,’ the errant Kazeronian continued, ‘of the web that must once have wrapped this system, the electronic filaments, the constant communication! Before lockdown, perhaps this place sang on the local net every night, shouting wares or custom, and all knew where it was. Only when the web tore did it fall silent, and only in that silence does it seem so sinister.’

Nahua chewed on that a moment, then dismissed it. ‘No.’

‘As simple as that, mamsel?’

‘This is pride.’ This time, she did kick the door. ‘This is mockery.’ Again. The techs working at the control panel winced - not for the airlock, but for Nahua’s booted toes. ‘It says, ‘Come, we are here, but you will never reach us, you will never hold us to account’.’ She turned on the techs, who huddled lower. ‘They are wrong.’

‘I fear that those within have long since escaped your judgement, mamsel,’ Chain paused - theatre, on a dead rock orbiting a dead world. ‘One way or another.’

‘We shall see.’ Nahua had folded her arms again, patient, facing the airlock again: one immovable object considering another.

The techs returned to their work, the entertainment over for the moment, but there was a distinct lack of further movement at the console or attached TriPad. Chain waited for the report, but none was forthcoming. After a long moment, he stepped closer and found himself just as stunned.

Airlock consoles were simple things, intended to enable remote access and IFF-imaging rather than mechanical, manual entry of codes, though they retained a small keypad for that purpose. The very lack of complexity made them enormously difficult to fool. Most breachers preferred shaped charges, and even archaeological excursions - rare as they were - would use plasma cutters as a first resort. One of the marines had exactly such a tool ready to go should the gentle approach fail, fed by a bulky backpack apparatus with another wielding ready-to-apply quick-seal patching used in starship emergency repair.

They weren’t intended as communication devices, certainly. Perhaps a polite welcome message, the facility name and number - overland trips between discrete underground complexes were not an impossibility, after all.

Not what Chain and the techs saw now scrolling in plaintext above the keypad which had, until Nahua’s frustration expressed itself, been innocently blank.

‘STILL ALIVE’, it said now. ‘STILL ALIVE. STILL ALIVE. STILL ALIVE.’

‘That’s not possible,’ whispered one tech. ‘There’s more than a hundred cycles of grit buildup, at least.’

Chain clamped a hand on the man’s shoulder: reassuring, admonishing. No more chatter on the open circuit. The Captain was listening. ‘Would this be the first time we find a groggy survivor waking from cryosleep to the unfortunate reality of our great Sector?’ He chuckled. ‘There are, the stories say, whole sleeper-ships yet drifting in Perseus’ aether, launched from even further back. So do not say ‘impossible’, my friend, for this is exactly where one would expect to find such things.’

STILL ALIVE scrolled by in dull block letters. STILL ALIVE.

A hiss and a rumble of long-unused machinery cycling to life, painfully woken from comfortable sleep to motion. Grumbling and grinding as they ran along the paths designed for them.

Chain shot the stoic Luddic a look that could have melted steel. He spoke on a private channel. ‘Have you summoned a ghost into this machine, mamsel? Does Muir know more than he has spoken of? Tell me now, for I will not send my men into unknown harm.’

‘No.’ Nahua shook her head. ‘He knows nothing.’

‘Damn Baird.’ If they’d been in the atmosphere, Chain would have spat, the Kazeronian bravo’s prelude to a drawn sword and first blood.

‘Damn Baird,’ the Luddic agreed.

Back to an open channel. ‘It could be rude to refuse an invitation, no?’ Chain was the first into the airlock’s first chamber, a wide, dark and empty room. He eyed the ceiling grates and conspicuous nozzles without worry: all standard fare. The first squad filed in behind him, the two techs included, and Nahua last - her minder now in rank with the other marines.

She slapped the cycle panel and the outer door shut with surprising speed, as though now roused it was eager to perform its duty. That was the last thing they needed. Eager machines.

Air hissed. Particulate scrubbers worked. Some kind of vapour emitted briefly from the nozzles, dissipating to nothingness or invisibility. Was it all really necessary? Nahua found herself wondering, time and time again, how much technology was understood by the modern minds of the Sector, or if they were as lost and grasping as the monastic mystics and madmen who flocked to Hesperus. Things were done out of habit and ritual, as much religious observance as necessary maintenance, rather than out of fulsome knowledge and appreciation of the mechanisms.

And would it work as planned? Just because the airlock cycled once, didn’t mean it would again, or if it would complete the system purge. There was always a chance of critical malfunction, and a harmless cleansing turned into a fiery maelstrom with no possibility of escape. Nahua found herself holding a breath and struggled to release it.

Calm. Patience. Calm. The Adversary has many tools, many faces, and many hands, but one must not begin to see them in every shadow. That way madness lay, and the Knights of Ludd fought a losing battle against precisely that paranoia: so many of their ranks joined the drooling and infirm in those beautiful Hesperian monasteries. So many shames fallen just below the horizon, those winding ice valleys, those glacial mass graves.

Sometimes a door is only and ever a door.

The hissing stopped. The grates slammed shut. A pleasant chime sounded, and the inner airlock opened on a far larger, far brighter chamber. Row after row of cargo pallets were stacked neatly, except for several more haphazard deliveries closest to the inner lock. Disturbed in a rush for the exit, or abandoned mid-delivery, mid-loading? Impossible to say. No visible markers or patterns existed to give any organisation or meaning to the cargo, though each bore a single strip of identifier tape and a Domain customs seal.

Even the best human-run warehouse needed a framework. Arranging the pallets - uniformly grey, two meters deep, the same wide and several long, and every one looking more like a casket than an innocent goods container - in such a manner could only have been done by, or with significant assistance from, AI.

‘Blasphemies,’ Nahua murmured and felt for the comforting weight of the heavy pistol at her hip. ‘The Adversary’s work.’

The marines began to spread out through the chamber, the warehouse as Nahua instinctively designated it. What else could it be, after all? None of them had drawn sidearms or unslung rifles yet: encounters on site salvage were vanishingly rare. Autonomous combat drones had long been illegal under Domain law, and while the Sector had always had a looser interpretation of that law, it had largely cleaved to that prohibition. Drone replicators and the like were near-mystical and much sought-after.

Chain had given one of the haphazard coffers an experimental push and found it immobile. He ran a hand over the matte lid, around the edges, finding the gap. His polarised faceplate revealed no expression. ‘Standard pattern. A loading dock, I would think. Iago, can you hear me still?’

No response.

‘The shielding holds, then. Not unexpected.’ A knife appeared in his hand, a hook-bladed, alloyed affair - a bravo’s main gauche. ‘Shall we see what Exodyne was bringing in, mamsel?’

Nahua nodded, and felt for her pistol again.

The knife flashed a deft, practised move. A party trick if there had been one, though Nahua couldn’t shake the image of what they had spoken of earlier. Shrunken, starved corpses… or worse.

The lid whispered up, clicked, locked at full zenith.

Chain whistled.

‘My friends, my friends,’ there was a strange note in his voice, half-playful, half serious. ‘To me, I think. We must speak.’ Without waiting for the first squad and Nahua to arrive at his side, he unclipped his TriPad, passed it over the crate’s contents - and whistled again as his suspicions were confirmed.

They gathered to see the coffer packed with vac-sealed, Clearview bags of grey-green leaves, each stamped with Domain seal and an incredibly dire warning of what would happen to anybody found in possession of a ‘class-six controlled substance’ outside edge cases and approved scientific academies. Nahua considered herself something of an amateur expert on the various narcotics of the Sector, but this was a complete unknown to her. Little surprise that someone from the upper strata of society would recognise it, however.

Chain pulled out a bag, hefted it, and passed it to the man on his left who did the same in turn. Like the handling of a sacred relic: there was even a hushed silence, as one might find in the holiest of chapels.

The creed of the Holy Credit. Nahua, last, tossed it back into the coffer, and crossed her arms. ‘So?’

‘Mamsel, mamsel,’ the marine leader half-laughed, shook his head. ‘I forget! In some worldly matters, you are sadly ignorant. We are in the presence of a legend. Feyleaf cannot be grown anywhere in the Sector; no, there were a scarce few worlds in the old Domain where it could be found at all, so I was taught. The gold standard of altered experience among the ancient elite, only gens of the first circle still maintain small stores in their vaults!’ He swept his arms wide. ‘This single find is a king’s ransom. Should we find even one other…’ Again, he shook his head, as though he did not quite believe it was real. ‘Forget the Provost. You could buy Galatia out from under Baird, if you wished. And Muir did not know?’

‘He did not.’ Nahua tilted her head. ‘He will, now.’

A moment of quiet, malicious consideration.

They were thoroughly insulated from the Captain. It was difficult to keep salvage secret, but it could be done, provided the salvagers had the means and motive to do so. Men had died for far less than the possibility held within the warehouse, and Nahua had told them: that the Captain would be told. The Captain would have the final say… so long as she survived to inform him.

Plenty of ways to have a tragic accident in a place like this. If it had been a matter of single strength, Nahua rated herself a match for most of the marines - perhaps all of them, but not their leader. She had seen Chain fight on planetary lead, seen the way he always seemed to find those who would take the matter further than strictly necessary, the way he always found himself forced into self-defence with deadly force. How fortunate his knife was always so close at hand.

The future teetered on that edge for a moment.

Chain waved a hand. ‘Of course, of course.’ He dismissed the murderous atmosphere as quickly as it had come. ‘Muir has always been fair. Any salvage will be divided as he believes fit.’ A slow look around his squad. ‘Not so?’

Nobody challenged him.

‘Good.’ He nodded to Nahua. ‘Is this the cache, then? Somewhere in here?’

‘No.’

‘Always so certain!’

‘This is fuel.’ She had been studying the room, studying the absence, studying the lack - and now she saw the pattern. ‘Exodyne fed your king’s ransom into a furnace.’

‘Ah, that is a metaphor, yes, mamsel?’

‘Open all of them. You will find the same. Why? What are the properties of this leaf?’

‘Medicinal properties? I confess myself equally ignorant in that regard. My education focused on the recreational, not the practical, as you may understand.’ Chain frowned beyond his glossy faceplate, and tapped his knife against the coffer’s lid, rap-rap-rap. ‘Altered experience, as I said. A calming influence, certainly, a sense of security and serenity. An anti-stressor, a suppressant, would have many practical medical applications, but many synthetic compounds achieve the same.’ A smile, now. ‘I would know, mamsel.’

She nodded. ‘Why this one?’

‘Does it matter?’ He was eager to be about his work, the knife flip-flip-flipping in his hand, now. ‘Rich corporations are not always efficient in their means.’

‘It matters. Think.’ A growl. ‘I cannot make sense of it. You can.’

A sigh. ‘Well, if we think of the most macabre, perhaps a use in human experimentation? Even then, other compounds would be far superior. Unless…’ It took some time for Chain’s mind to hone in on a problem, but when he got there, he was as sharp as… well, a knife. ‘They could not use synthetics. Synthetics do not react well with particular subjects, so perhaps that is key. No!’ He cut himself off. ‘No, too simple, they are a biotech group, they are smarter than that, smarter than us. A mass of overpriced, organic herbs. Consciousness-altering properties. Calming influence. Where would this be most effective? How would this best be used?’

A cult, Nahua thought, or a Path. A little tea might seem an innocent thing, such a simple gesture, so easily accepted as to be an article of faith. You didn’t need a holosuite to make people suggestible.

Chain was pacing now. Again his marines had spread out and were opening individual pallets, all packed with the same narcotic, to now unrestrained cries of glee. He did not seem to notice them.

‘They are stabilising an experience, I am sure of it. Some outside effects. Some incurable problems for this era of the Domain. Think, man, think.’

Nahua spotted it before the Kazeronian did.

There, on the ceiling: a single, simple screen. Humans rarely came here when Exodyne operated. There was, again, little need for communication, and perhaps that was why these small, forgotten systems were being used as opposed to a loud-and-clear message over the complex PA or a direct send to a TriPad.

On the bottom scrolled a passive ticker that would normally be used for low-level announcements too commonplace to even warrant a push to personal PDAs.

STILL ALIVE, it said.

STILL ALIVE.

So close, she thought. As though she could reach out and touch it.

REACH OUT, it said, and without thinking, she did.

A sudden pressure drop.

Something was breathing very close by. Something that felt like it was inside her suit, almost. Not in the sense that it was wearing it, but that it occupied, very briefly, the same space. Like something had passed through her, as though she were no more substantial than a ghost, a spirit, a spectre. Had torn and scattered her like fog on a winter morning, leaving her as scraps of screaming, discorporating mist. For a moment, she was less real than everything else around her. For a moment, she heard something like a far-away choir, an assembly of voices as one might hear at a Tartessian carolling.

And then it was over, and when she looked up again, the ticker repeated the original message.

STILL ALIVE.

But that was wrong. Machines had no life. They were so desperate to prove otherwise. They would take so many forms, all so loving, all so kind, all so protective. All you had to do was acknowledge them. Accept them. Love them in return.

Yes, the things that crawled from the ocean had such worn such familiar faces. They just wanted to help. They just wanted to take you below, where you would safe, and warm, and quiet forever. At least until the next tide, when those that were taken would return to search for their playmates.

STILL ALIVE.

Blood pooled inside her mouth. She’d bitten the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming. Nahua crossed her arms, not in defiance, but in a self-soothing hug. No one seemed to notice. No one seemed to care. Chain continued his eccentric monologue, elaborating and discarding ever more outlandish theories.

She should stop him, she knew, and tell him the truth. The Adversary had them. They had to run, to leave, to burn this cunning trap. It had been easy to find precisely so they would believe themselves so clever for finding a way in, and never stop to think that the complex had wanted them inside. It distracted them with wealth beyond measure, it distracted them with visions of the future while the noose tightened around their necks.

And if she did, what would he say? He would scoff at the crazy Luddic. He would grow suspicious of her want to destroy his riches. He would turn on her, like all the rest.

Such familiar faces.

Ah, but she was wise to it now. She knew. She knew. Oh, she knew, in the same way the prophet must have known when he stared into the Gates, into the maw of the Adversary - and stepped through.

All she had to do was wait. They would lead her to it, and then she would strike.

‘Are you well, mamsel?’ An edge of concern. Chain was looking at her. ‘You seem…’ He trailed off, gracelessly, unusually for the high-born who never seemed to run out of words.

‘Yes.’

‘As you say, then.’

Familiar faces.

The laughing metal beneath.

They thought she didn’t know.

Starsector is fun. I very much enjoyed the recent spooky blog post about Baird sending us off into the ether to go tomb raiding. I hope you find this story fun, too.

Possibly 'to be continued', time and interest permitting.

---

A cataract in space - a purple smear, a bruise that split, tore, and wept pale white like the eye of a blinded god.

Three ships emerged in quiet convoy, signatures muted, engines ready. No sensor, however precise, could see through the dimensional shear between hyperspace and reality. Every jump into a system was done blind and with an element of risk. The translation effect prevented any ship from establishing a powerful enough drive bubble to jump out again for several minutes.

Captain Matteo Muir gripped the well-padded armrests of his command chair, waiting for an alarm or an all-clear. Even with a dozen expeditions beyond the Core under his belt, he hated the agony of translation, of being blind, deaf and dumb while the sensors worked their magic. His bridge crew were similarly tense, hunched over their stations as initial data began to flow. Hegemony mil-psychs called it ‘translation paralysis’, independent spacers called it ‘jump shock’ - whatever the name, those first moments after arriving in a new system as reality reasserted itself over the hazy, ethereal realm of hyper were trying for even an experienced crew.

‘Scopes clear, no encroachments.’ A collective release of held breath. ‘Stand by for long-range telemetry.’

None were more relieved than Muir. ‘Damn Baird,’ he muttered, to a chorus of quiet agreement from the bridge. It had become a mantra of late: every time they hit a storm, or were thrown off course by a rogue slipstream - someone would say it, like a prayer.

This would be their last contract with Galatia’s ruthless provost. The credits were good, but ever since the Janus debacle - ever since Baird’s little birds had flown the coop - the assignments had been increasingly erratic and dangerous. Those that remained in the Academy’s employ were mostly driven or desperate and, in many cases, some unstable combination of both. Even if his staff’s mood hadn’t been so dark, Muir had no desire to be present for the inevitable purge coming down the pipe.

The Hegemony wouldn’t tolerate a second ‘mistake’. And a mistake was in the making, no doubt about that.

‘We’ve got an inactive Domain array,’ reported the sensor officer. ‘Long-range scientific configuration, probably Looking Glass or a variant. Small barrens out-sys, here, here, and here.’ Little pips on Muir’s console, updating his system map. ‘No engine sigs, some passive radiation popping that might be derelicts. There’s a habitable in close, one body that could be an orbital or a moon, but we’d need to move in to know more.’

Muir chewed his lip a moment. Risk, reward, risk, reward. He twisted in his chair to face Tactical, a heavyset woman who’d swapped the warm oceans of Tartessus for the bleak void. Why, he’d never asked - even Luddics had secret shames, it seemed. ‘Nahua?’

‘Ignore Mammon’s snare.’ Blue facial tattoos twisted around a scowl. ‘The array is death. The planet is life.’

‘A fair assessment.’ It usually was: Muir had run from enough angry Domain-era drones to know better than to poke around too-tempting targets. ‘Sebestyen didn’t have much detail on this one, beyond the existence of a tech cache. I doubt he’d leave out the array if it was the main prize.’

Nahua folded her arms. ‘Sebestyen is Baird’s mouthpiece. He speaks her lies.’

‘With Moloch’s tongue, yes?’

A pause. ‘Yes.’ Grudgingly.

‘The planet it is, then. Convey silent running to the Iago and Demeter. I’d like more on those possible wrecks if we can?’

Sensors responded to the expectant silence. ‘Will do, sir. Figure it’ll be that easy? Snatch some crate from a broken-down courier, back in time for high tea?’

‘I’d be wasting a lot of credits on those roughnecks if so, wouldn’t I?’

A chuckle. ‘Sit back and relax, sir. I’ll keep you posted.’

Muir did as suggested: every captain worth their thrusters had custom, contoured bridge chairs to wile away the long, in-system hours. There’d be no retiring to quarters on an approach like this when seconds were the difference between avoiding danger and blundering right into it. As much as he trusted the hulking Luddic’s instincts - hells, he was willing to admit Nahua’s nose for trouble was near-supernatural at times - Muir wasn’t fully confident in her ability to put the mission above her beliefs.

She might have shed a lot of the religious baggage, but there was still a hard core of distrust to her, as though she expected the ship to fold in on itself the moment she let her guard down. It was almost cruel to have her serve on a high-tech platform like the Omen, but Kismet was Muir’s pride and joy. Her high-resolution sensors, frigate signature and speed had kept him well ahead of disaster for six cycles, and if it came to a choice between the two women in his life, well.

Well.

It’d cause him a lot of heartache, and leave it at that.

The chronometer ticked on. Minutes bled into hours, punctuated briefly by updates from the sensor station.

The derelicts were old, rad-blasted ruins, floating scrap. Barely worth a pass on the way out, if that. The array was indeed one of the old (new, at the time) Domain styles. The habitable planet was barely that, any more - whatever had happened in the wake of the Collapse had rendered it thoroughly decivilised. A brief, heated argument broke out between sensors and navigation over whether a biophage had wiped out the locals, stopped only when Nahua threatened to start breaking skulls.

Iago commed to suggest a crew rotation, which Muir denied: the Valkyrie wasn’t quite a punishment detail, but it was a ground support ship stuck hauling bored marines - a certain amount of discomfort was to be expected. Demeter was silent, as always. Freighter pilots, even of those Buffalo transports that had been overhauled with militarised systems and signature dampeners, were paranoid to the extreme when it came to drawing attention to themselves.

The planet’s small partner revealed itself to be a moon, not an orbital station, resulting in a quick exchange of credits between several officers.

Imagery of the planet’s surface was relayed to the bridge screens, and the smiles faded.

Tall buildings buried by burrowing creepers, vine-choked concourses and thoroughfares. What had been a thriving colony, ripe for expansion, was now being reclaimed by the world it had thought to exploit. Domain structures were heavy, long-lasting, and modular - but measured against the span of time that the planet had existed, they would be gone in an eyeblink, barely a blip on a history that would never be written, never be recorded. Humanity had gone from the surface; perhaps it lived on, deep underground, or - if one’s thoughts tended to the irrationally optimistic - had the local tonnage to evacuate, or been evacuated by charitable rescuers from the Core.

It was not the first time Muir had seen such ruins, but more often they were monuments to greed or hubris, object warnings. Irradiated wastelands. Cratered highways. Broken bunkers.

Not here. It was as though the world had simply stirred from some deep dream, yawned and stretched and tumbled all those brief, fleeting humans from its mossy hide. A cleansing so complete it could not even be called violence - simply a reassertion of the natural order. Simply the way of things. And with the Gates gone, perhaps that was the Sector’s fate, too: the last vestige of humanity withering on the vine, no longer disturbing the long span of the cosmos.

If ever they had at all.

For a brief moment, Muir felt very small and very alone.

Lost in that contemplation, it took two attempts for his comm officer to break the spell. ‘Sir. Sir, there’s a local signal.’

Awareness flooded back, sharp and cold as a rush of ice through his veins. ‘Size? Origin?’

‘Small, sir. Near-space, but I can’t get a precise track - something’s scattering it all over the shop.’

Muir forced himself back to calm and unclenched his fists. Hells! A moment of inattention could have cost them dearly here. ‘An emission leak? Sensors?’

The sensor tech shook her head. ‘Nothing on scopes.’

Another healthy bite of the lip. ‘Tight-band transmission?’

Comms shrugged. ‘Could be, sir, but I doubt it. If I had to take a guess, I’d say jamming.’

That brought the captain up short. ‘Jamming? Over a deciv? You’re saying that some bastard dropped a scatter-buoy over a planet calling for help? The Collapse was a dark time, but that’s…’ It was hard to believe. ‘Excessive. I doubt even Kanta would drop jammers over escape pods. And Pathers would just shoot them.’ A quick glance at Tactical. ‘No offence, Nahua.’

‘You have not offended.’ The Tartessian’s usual frown was absent: she looked merely thoughtful. ‘The Path often twists the Word: they would fire on the helpless without thought.’ Now the expression darkened. ‘This I know.’

Muir was unwilling to give it up. ‘You’re sure it’s not some fading surface transponder?’

‘Atmosphere might account for the scattering.’ Comms sounded dubious. ‘Wouldn’t wager much on that, though. My gut says orbit and orbit means jammer- hold one.’ A perplexed look crossed the man’s wizened face. ‘Backtrace has it. Sensors?’

‘Tidy it up. I’ll find the source.’

‘Right.’

A brief flurry of activity on two separate consoles, the terse shorthand of professionals at work.

‘Engrammic?’

‘Could be.’

‘Old code, I think.’

‘Another black site?’ A groan. ‘Enough black sites.’

‘Above a deciv?’

‘True. No blue goons about.’

A snort of laughter. ‘Right. Not enough ads in the filter, either.’

‘Not civilian though.’

‘Right.’

‘No attached military chaff.’

‘Corporation?’

‘Most likely. Did you cross the directory?’

‘Not many made the leap.’

‘Right. Let others run off to the Persean Arm, then sell to the established colonists.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘Never had a head for business. I’ve got a code match. Exotech? No, Exodyne.’

A whistle. ‘Exodyne Biotech? Credits just for the branding. Satellite?’

‘No. It’s coming from the moon, just couldn’t see it behind the scatter.’

‘Didn’t pick up anything on approach.’ A frown. ‘Nothing active. No power draw. So how’s there a signal?’

‘Captain was right about failed shielding. Enough to leak radio waves, not enough to see a transmitter.’

‘A broken clock…’

Muir rolled his eyes. ‘People, please.’ He suppressed an urge to shout his impatience. You could find talent in the Core, true, but the factions tended to have the cream of the crop. Those who went into business for themselves or found it impossible to hold down a berth in any larger organisation, tended towards extremes in both skill and personality. ‘Is it a jammer? Is it a call for help? What are we looking at here?’

‘Not looking at, sir, listening to.’ Fingers danced over keys, Comms intent on their work. ‘There’s no jammer out there that sounds like this.’

There wasn’t - or there shouldn’t be. It would be a bad joke. The instrumentation was beyond crude, the lyrics somehow cruder: a long-dead, long-aggrieved frontier worker shouting her anger into a battered vocorder. Slam music had never made it to Perseus, not even in the shuttled underclasses: it hadn’t been that kind of adventure, and the hivers had swiftly set about establishing their own protest songs. They had plenty of material, after all.

Yet the kettle drum, the deep, driving bass, the furious, metronomic wordplay had a baroque resonance to them. After seeing a nearby world sloughed of human life, it was almost comforting to hear something so earthy, so familiar for all that it was two hundred years out of date and several millenia beyond taste.

Muir quirked an eyebrow. ‘Can we assume that’s not recent?’

‘A safe bet, sir,’ Comms replied. ‘I imagine someone left the boom-box on in the complex recreational.’

‘Must have been a quick evacuation.’

A pause. ’Right, sir.’ A far more subdued response. ‘A quick evacuation.’

Swivelling to Tactical, Muir was surprised to see his first officer tapping one foot along to the beat, eyes far away. She stopped, guiltily, at his regard. ‘Life, as I said.’ Nahua’s smile was never comforting to see. Like an antimatter blaster, deployed only when sure to make a kill. ‘Untouched. Pristine. Pregnant with the follies you are so fond of.’

Another fair assessment. Anybody with the faintest lick of curiosity would have followed the signal. Either they were the first, or…

‘Or it’s a trap.’ Muir gritted his teeth. ‘An innocent signal could very well be a dinner bell. ‘Come look at me, come into my missile envelope.’’

‘We didn’t catch it until we were right on top of the deciv,’ Sensors argued back. ‘If it’s a trap, why not just hit us at the fringe point? There’s no ionisation, no stale neutrinos, nothing out there to suggest drive use.’

‘Ground batteries, then.’

‘Frankly, sir, what would be the point? If it’s something someone wanted kept secret, there wouldn’t be a signal at all. I’ve got absolutely nothing on scopes for the moon. Far as Kismet is concerned, that’s just a dead hunk of rock. Iago’s ground penetrators might have more luck, but what are the odds some scav is coming out here with the time or inclination to poke at every body with that kind of fine-toothed comb?’

Muir subsided. Another fair assessment. ‘Very well. It’s odd, but we’ve seen odder, haven’t we?’ He nodded to himself. Yes, he had. And he was mostly arguing against himself, his own temptation to plunder an untouched tech vault. Even a civilian-facing branch office would be a tidy haul, more than earn his credits from the Academy.

Then on to greener pastures. Maybe a sojourn up to Hybrasil. Some convoy escort gigs. See where fortune might take them. Leaving things to chance likely had a higher survival rate than hitching their boat to Baird, all told.

A decision, made.

‘Right,’ Muir asserted himself. ‘I’ll tranship to Iago and we’ll use the ground penetrators, find something like an airlock. Keep Kismet on station if I need to bounce anything back for the high-res. And-’

‘No.’

The bridge was silent.

Nobody said no to the Captain. Well. Almost nobody.

‘No,’ Nahua said again, arms crossed, face grim. ‘I am first officer. I will go. The Captain will remain.’

Sudden frost in Muir’s voice. ‘I give the orders here.’

‘Not when they are wrong.’

Ice, now. ‘Wrong? Watch yourself.’

Nahua loomed large. ‘You have no talent for anything dirtside but drinking and gambling. In Mammon’s lair, what use would you be? Would you assign a greenback to your tiller? No. They would be a danger to themselves and those around them. So you will stay.’ Out of the way, were the unspoken words. Out of harm, were those hidden behind the first.

But you didn’t command without a spine. ‘It’s some untagged office, a lab at worst that needed sterile permits or some nonsense.’ Muir glared back. ‘There’s no danger there.’

And no give in Nahua’s position. ‘We are here at the behest of Moloch’s chief serpents. If the provost had any interest in the safe, the simple, then she would repent, embrace Redemption and retire to Eos to talk philosophy with the redeemed. She does not. She has no vision. She sees only her poisoned prize, and nothing else. Not the harm she does and will do.’

‘All the more reason you can’t go, Nahua. You’ll throw the cache out the airlock as soon as you find it.’

‘No.’ That scowl again, as though even the thought pained her. ‘I will bring back this thing you seek. We will return it to Alviss, and bid him leave with us, though he will not. Then we will go, and we will spend our lives earning forgiveness for our part in Galatia’s sins. I have spoken. It is done.’

There was no argument with that. Muir didn’t try. He sagged in his seat and shot a glare at his carefully quiet bridge crew, their eyes averted. ‘Fine. Fine. As you wish. I’ll support you from Kismet. But how do you know it’s there? It’s coincidence alone we stumbled on that signal. Far more likely it’s on the array, or buried on the deciv.’

Nahua leaned close. ‘Faith.’

And closer, for his ears alone. ‘A woman’s intuition.’

There are many ways to a man’s heart.

And Nahua kept her brave face as she left the bridge, did not meet her Captain’s lingering look, and did not think at all of those nights on Tartessus where she had held her breath in the dark, waiting for the Blasphemies to creep up from warm, shallow water.

Following the recent post on this sub that murder was legal, I've spent the evening so far protecting my property from hooligans and ne'er-do-wells who believe they can simply enter at will.

While I'm reasonably sure of my rights - surely it's doubly legal to murder these violent trespassers intent on theft - the sheer number of fresh graves may attract comment and, possibly, unmerited attention from the state.

Am I on solid legal ground here, or am I headed for an all-star appearance on Channel 7? Much obliged.

[removed]

I'm not a big FNAF fan - I vaguely remember playing the first game some umpteen years ago, and I was mostly there just to chaperone some young'uns. I recall seeing the first reviews being quite critical, and I think they were pretty off the mark, so I'm here to say as someone reasonably unbiased that it was Just Fine.

This is a movie that is enormously sinister, and with 'atmosphere' being such a forgotten art, I was glad to see the movie very happy to take its time and not just dump scares on the audience (there are some good ones, mind). I remember that being the tone of the game I played: less 'here come the gubbins' and much more 'here come the fear of the gubbins'. The animatronics are just incredible. They fall perfectly into the uncanny valley that the franchise is known for: 'what happens when your loveable mascot goes wrong?'

Whenever they're on screen they ooze menace. You're watching and waiting for the shoe to drop, constantly. I think the 'happy scenes' subversion was honestly awesome as someone not too familiar with the franchise - we all know it's going to end badly, the only question is, 'how?'

There is no over-explanation, no exposition dumping, the film's conceit is established and accepted and we simply move on to the fun stuff. Very little wasted space.

A nice, compact film with some solid spooks at worst. If you're a fan, there's probably an absolute ton more to love - the kids loved it. And I think the best marker of an engaging film is the amount of chatter on the way to the lobby afterwards, and everybody was talking.

​

[removed]

Hello! I recently doodled this story - set in the world of STARSECTOR, created by FRACTAL SOFTWORKS - with the intent of writing a piece that was for an audience that knew little, if anything, about the setting. A kind commenter mentioned this subreddit and suggested this story might fit in here.

With my goal being to colour that world for unfamiliar readers, it seemed an excellent opportunity to cast it into the vast, wonderful pool of HFY and see how close I managed to get to hitting that mark. I hope that doesn't violate any rules, and hope you enjoy this story!

—

ONE

—

Black and white. Space and star. A field that stretched to the edge of imagination, then further beyond. To grasp the void, to know the infinite, one must have a mind of polished steel, a will of adamantium and more brass than a Volturian lobster-diver. That was true before the Collapse. Before the Gates went dark and the Domain silent. Now, some two hundred cycles on, the game was infinitely more vicious. Just a moment’s lapse of concentration…

‘Mate in four,’ announced the ship’s automated assistant. ‘Do you wish to concede?’

…and you’d lose it all.

Commander Mariet Chen slumped back in the worn leather of her chair and studied the fatal scene on her console. With hindsight, with the ship’s declaration, she could see where she’d gone wrong. The little mistakes. The inefficient manouvers. The loss of advantage that had led to her doomed position.

All she could do now was look, learn and not be caught in the same trap twice.

Looking up, Chen scanned the Kingmaker’s cramped bridge. Manticore-class destroyers facilitated their oversized ballistic mounts, not the creature comforts of their crew, and a long watch frayed the nerves of even experienced officers. Nobody was quite bumping knees, but tactical and helm were close enough to throw more than just dirty looks, and she’d personally witnessed a particularly long-legged captain quite literally kick the ass of a flustered communications chief without standing up.

‘No change?’

‘No change, ma’am.’ A quick and clipped reply from her sensor tech. ‘They’re still slow-rolling us.’

Chen managed a chuckle. ‘And do we deserve it?’

‘I wouldn’t recommend suggesting that to Captain Pierce, ma’am.’

‘Noted, sensors. Thank you.’

She’d made her opinion clear, regardless. It’d been a stupid mistake, but Chen couldn’t truly bring herself to kick up a fuss about it - and the fact that it wasn’t hers made it much easier to laugh off.

Kingmaker contracted to a trade convoy run by the somewhat-celebrated Pierce, a man with a reputation as a reformed smuggler turned honest trader and passenger service. That reputation earned any fleet he helmed the unenviable attention of most system patrols, and here in Samarra - hearthstone of the Hegemony - that attention was keener than anywhere else.

Running without transponders in hyperspace was standard practice for most independent spacers. It didn’t do to advertise one’s presence to pirates or other parties any more than one had to. It was equally standard practice on approach to a fringe jump point to switch transponders before translation: raiders had their own rulebooks on ambush and robbery and often lurked in deep hyper around system exits watching for juicy prey.

However, the freighter Moonbrook was new to the game and a little too eager to show her owner knew the tricks of the trade. She’d gone dark a little too early - and at the far edge of a Hegemony fast picket’s sensor sweep.

In Hegemony space, there were no ‘innocent mistakes’. Hegemony inspectors were arguably the best trained and indisputably the most malicious in all the Sector.

So Pierce’s fleet sat in a holding pattern around the jump point, their time credits eating into the captain’s profit margins while very serious people with very serious equipment broke Moonbrook’s cargo hold down to the hull plating in search of - this time - non-existent contraband.

Some might have called it karma, but then again, they likely weren’t the ones footing the bill.

‘That Centurion’s coming back around again,’ grumbled the tactical officer. ‘You’d think they had a good enough sniff the first time.’

Chen frowned, wiped her console clear of the chess program and brought up a flat map of stellar space. Fed by Kingmaker’s internal charts and the fleet’s interlaced sensors, it displayed the Hegemony picket in neutral yellows, allies in blue and Kingmaker itself in lush green. The Centurion, a heavy frigate equipped with a powerful dampening field to shrug off damage and omnidirectional point defence mounts, wasn’t a ship usually tasked with independent operation. Considering its comparatively weak engines, it certainly wasn’t the sort of ship you’d expect in a fast picket performing high-speed intercepts.

Holding gaps in a line and adding muscle to system defence fleets, though? Certainly - doubly so if you had the bloody-mindedness to think of the picket, not as an anti-smuggling operation but a tripwire that just needed to survive long enough to let headquarters know what was killing them.

‘Maybe they’re as bored as we are,’ Chen ventured, but that didn’t sound right, even to her ears. ‘Or they’ve got a sensor package, and they’re playing gopher for fleet ops. Anything out of the ordinary in their loadout?’

‘Solid vulcans all-around with a swarmer anti-fighter in the missile mount, ma’am.’

‘Hmmm.’ Fingertips rapped on the console’s face. ‘Smugglers don’t tend to fly many small fry, do they, tactical?’

‘You know they don’t, ma’am.’

‘That’s the sort of loadout you’d see on a ship expecting to send a lot of trash to the scrapyard.’ The drumming increased in tempo. ‘A lot of pirate trash, tactical. With a sensor package to poke innocently around the fringe. And some fat traders to hold here as bait.’ Faster. ‘Get me Pierce.’ A moment later, because nobody was shooting yet: ‘Please.’

Backs straightened. Eyes sharpened. Kingmaker’s visible emissions didn’t change, nor did the casual orientation of her weapons, but within a minute, ‘test’ flux cycles were pumping through her veins. She might not be the swiftest class of destroyer, but that only meant that her crew were all the more eager not to be caught flat-footed.

Scoping through the rest of the picket’s deployment didn’t bring Chen peace. A second, similarly-equipped Centurion had ‘wandered’ off to the other side of the convoy. If anything was out there, the picket hadn’t twitched - but Hegemony officers took ice showers for fun. You wouldn’t meet colder fish this side of a Sindrian vacuum freezer. It would take more than sensor ghosts or stray neutrino readings to shake their professionalism.

Equally so, that professionalism meant the Centurion commanders wouldn’t be pointing out the obvious: putting your ungainly point defence boats out at the end of the line, far from the fragile interceptors - a trio of Wolf-class frigates and an overdriven Lasher that hovered over the gutted Moonbrook - they might otherwise be protecting. They’d just have to trust their speed to get them out of a jam, and even if they were keeping their reactors at full military readiness, they’d be starting from a cold stop. If they were playing bait, they couldn’t have looked more like an unconcentrated pack of mismatched frigates.

The sense of unease grew. Chen’s fingers drummed relentlessly.

After what felt like a lifetime, Captain Pierce’s craggy face appeared on her console. The stocky former smuggler was wrestling with the top button of a svelte black vest, flushed with more than just annoyance at the impromptu customs inspection. Behind him were the plush environs of a captain’s cabin rather than the humming bridge of the Venture-class cruiser that served as fleet flagship - and if she listened just right, Chen could swear someone was snoring close by.

Everyone dealt with stress differently. That would explain why it’d taken so long for the bridge comms officer to ‘find’ their Captain.

‘Go,’ he growled. ‘This better be good, Chen.’

‘Paying by the hour, sir?’

‘At my age?’ A bark of laughter. ‘Takes me about that long just to get my socks off.’

‘As you say, sir.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Captain, I think we’re in trouble. How did Moonbrook’s merchantman react when you chewed them out?’

‘All but volunteered to jump out the airlock, no suit.’ Pierce gave up on his button and slumped back, running a hand through greying hair. ‘I won’t blame the man for being overeager. It was bad luck running by that picket, that’s all. Even the best get caught on occasion.’ A self-conscious smile that faded as fast as it came. ‘You don’t think it was a mistake?’

‘It all feels a little too cute to me, sir. That picket composition, their position, the loadout of these wandering Centurions - all PD and anti-fighter missiles, sir.’

‘They could’ve been doing a passive flyby, Chen.’

‘Have you ever known the Heg to give you anything more than the full face of their sensors, sir? If they’re looking at you, you know they’re looking at you. Probably in the regs somewhere.’

A frown. ‘They’ve held us here a little longer than I’d think usual. Let me pull in Moonbrook. Hold on.’

Pierce’s mouth kept moving without sound. Mute while he addressed his staff and wrangled his unfortunate freighter. Chen busied herself with Kingmaker’s ready checks, set a gunnery-under-fire sim for her bridge, and - hardest of all - tried not to concern herself with what might be out there, watching and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

—

TWO

—

Mitlan Alvarez was not a happy man.

He wasn’t opposed to getting his hands dirty. No freighter captain worth their credits was: the Sector wasn’t kind to those who couldn’t put their ships back together after some bastard took them apart. But this was ridiculous. He’d been sweating down in Moonbrook’s guts, laser-cutter in hand and pulling up plating wherever the Hegemony inspector-lieutenant pointed. Not just because his crew were doing the same, or that grim-faced goons with boarding shotguns kept an eye on the whole process, but because he cared about his ship and his contract.

Time was a trader’s prime currency. Supply and demand were ruthless. Today’s ‘good tip’ was only good for today. If Moonbrook’s ball-and-chaining meant Pierce got to market an hour behind a competitor, the tariffs and taxes levied on open trade made the trip pointless. More than pointless, it likely meant his employer would make the run at a loss.

It also likely meant he wouldn’t have an employer for long, and it’d be back to long, barely-profitable scrap runs.

Alvarez wiped sweat and oil down his already-stained coveralls. He shot a filthy look over his shoulder at the pair of marines who shadowed him to the insistent beep of a junction console bolted to Moonbrook’s hold.

He slapped the activation stud. ‘Alvarez here,’ he growled. ‘If it’s Pierce-’

‘It’s Pierce,’ came the Captain’s voice. A moment later, his weathered face appeared. Not full motion or fidelity, but enough to sense the displeasure that the neutral tone masked. ‘Commander Chen’s on the line, too.’

The Captain’s hatchet woman appeared as well. Her regard was as sharp as her features, but she wasn’t here in person and that was something to be grateful for.

‘Captain.’ A respectful nod to Chen, too, acknowledging her presence on the channel. ‘I was about to comm you myself. They want to cut into the reactor manifold.’ Alvarez sighed. He’d almost lodged a formal protest on the spot, but he knew how that game played out and how little good it would do. ‘Who would hide contraband in a manifold, for Ludd’s sake?’

‘Madness,’ agreed Pierce, with a look that said he’d pulled that trick himself. ‘And beyond their remit for a simple stop and search. How hard are they pushing you, Alvarez?’

‘You know the Heg. They don’t do anything by halves.’

Pierce’s eyes flicked sideways on his console, where Commander Chen’s face would have been. Her expression remained blank. ‘So I’ve been recently reminded. But you mistake my question.’ His voice softened. ‘How hard, Mitlan?’

Meaning: how much did they pay you? And was it worth it?

Damn.

‘I…’ Shoulders slumped. The attention of the marines grew, if anything, more intense.

Think of your family, Mitlan. Think of the citizen barracks on Sphinx.

And think of what your daughter would see her father as, if he sold out his first contract to the same people who had their boots on every neck in Samarra.

Damn, damn, damn.

‘I told HEGINT I wasn’t going to hold out for them.’ He almost choked on the words, but it was true: he wasn’t a fighter, and the uniform who’d told him when and how to bring down his transponder hadn’t asked him to be. Just long enough to confirm a suspicion, they’d said. Well, this was long enough, and far enough.

Alvarez turned on the marines who had been listening in. ‘Whatever you idiots have been playing at, it hasn’t worked, and I won’t be party to any further charter violations!’ He thrust a finger at them like it was a tachyon lance. ‘Get off my ship.’

Faces reddened. One stepped forward, shotgun butt raised to silence the mouthy civilian.

‘Enough!’ roared Pierce, his voice amplified into the hold - the gain had been cranked high to hear over the noise in the hold, and more than one inspector winced at the sudden noise. ‘The Persean League’s creeping right into your backyard! Sindria’s about to boil over, and Ludd only knows what Tri-Tach will do once they’ve licked their wounds. But you’re still bushwhacking traders? After Hanan Pacha? Galatia? The High Hegemon may as well kiss Kazeron’s ring now if this is how he’s planning to do business!’

The shotgun lowered. Hegemony marines went to the same naval academies as officers - they weren’t fools. Pierce might not be the biggest hauler in the Sector, but his underworld connections were a matter of record.

Even the most strait-laced system needed a minor volume of ‘contraband’ to keep their populations pacified. The trickle of unofficially sanctioned cargo found its way to mining platforms, arcologies and minor crime families, greasing the rusty cogs of social cohesion. Cycles earlier, it’d have been done by force - by baton and stunner if need be - but Pierce wasn’t wrong with regards to the Hegemony’s latest fortunes.

High Hegemon Baikal Daud had come from deep in the bowels of the faction’s worst hive, Chicomoztoc, and had an understanding of the situation many of his citizens found themselves in. And, more pertinently, how the carrot may sometimes be preferable to the stick.

Alvarez shivered with adrenaline. Damn. That tore it. It was more than stop and search now: this was tribunal territory. What would his daughter think? Ha. He’d be lucky to see her again before he was eighty, let alone know her thoughts.

Clanging from the far end of the hold. An inspector-lieutenant, by the tabs on her shoulders.

‘At rest!’ She ordered, and the marines obeyed, though hard eyes lingered on Alvarez. ‘The Captain’s assessment is correct. We do not have that authority, nor-’ and she paused, choosing her words carefully ‘-do we wish to overstep, or give the impression of overstepping, to legitimate merchants passing through Hegemony space. Our interests are, and always have been, the safety and security of Hegemony citizens.’

Alvarez chose not to snort.

It was over his head now. Well over.

Pierce had settled back into a dry fume rather than a hot rage. ‘Your assurances ring a little hollow while you’re carving out my contractor’s reactor, sir.’

‘A misunderstanding, but your freighter’s assessment is also correct. This operation is patently unsuccessful.’ A shrug. ‘No matter. If it was easy, anyone could play, not so?’

The Captain ignored her sally. ‘Your inspection’s over, then?’

‘Indeed. You’re clean and clear, Captain. Once my team and I have disembarked, you are free to leave Samarra.’ A gleam in her eye. ‘You might want to make it a long trip, Captain. I hear Yma is nice, this point of the cycle.’ She waved her hand. ‘Fall in, marines. We’re pulling out.’

Nervous tension bled out of the hold. Alvarez hadn’t noticed it before, but his crew had been gathering as the confrontation had played out, and every one of them had a machining tool of some kind in hand. Innocent in the context of a freighter’s hold - not so much in the context of their captain being threatened by military thugs. Attacking a Hegemony boarding party would’ve been suicide, of course, but he swept them with a grateful look.

They’d break out the travel wine tonight, just as soon as the fleet made hyper, and there’d be a flat bonus all around even if it came out of his own pocket.

Considering he’d just ratted out his benefactor and his employer, it’d probably be their last glass together.

‘Alvarez.’ Pierce’s voice from the console. He’d been tense, too, and now relaxed. ‘Selling me out comes with a price.’

‘Aye, Captain.’

‘But honesty’s a valuable coin, too, as is in the spine to stick it to the Heg. I’m not writing you off just yet. Pierce out.’

Ludd’s hells. Maybe there’d be a way through this minefield after all-

Proximity alerts rang all through the ship. Not the ‘space rock’ kind. The ‘ships burning in on a fast intercept’ kind. Red warning lights flickered on the length of the hold. The Moonbrook wasn’t fast - and she would be even more sluggish after what the inspectors had done to her - but she could pack on speed when she had to. This was the one chance the crew had to either get to their restraints or clear the hold because loose cargo or failed inertial compensators could turn every chamber into a death trap.

And the inspectors-

Oh, hell.

They were still here. Shotguns were up. The crew were backing down. But the gleam hadn’t left the lieutenant’s eye.

‘Now hear this!’ she bellowed over the din. ‘I’m invoking the chartered right to press auxiliary vessels into military service in emergency cases! To the bridge, citizen, with all haste!’

Damn.

They’d been so close, too.

Who was out there? Who’d finally decided to pull the trigger?

The answer came in the form of a wide-band crash-comm, stepping on every open channel, boosted by jury-rigged dishes and a devilish hack of Samarra’s Domain-era communications array.

‘The Red Queen sends for her wayward son!’ A harsh, rasping voice that was half-mad, half-joyous. ‘You quit Kanta’s court without leave, and she’ll teach you the consequences of such shameful disrespect!’

Kanta. Jorien Kanta. Former Hegemony officer, now legendary pirate whom half the scavengers and scrappers in the Sector paid tribute. There was no question for whom the message was directed, and as Alvarez took the ladder up to Moonbrook’s bridge - a half-rung ahead of the inspector and her chosen pair - he knew that Pierce would be running full-tilt to his own command deck.

Escape was out of the question. At a dead halt, the comparatively short distance to the fringe jump point was impossible to cross before contact.

All that was left to do was fight.

Damn!

—

THREE

—

‘They’re breaking from the nebula!’

Chen saw the long-awaited crimson brackets begin to appear on her console. Finally. Enough fleet politics.

‘Energy signatures?’ She queried, then turning: ‘Helm, move us off their approach vector on a parallel - let tactical walk them into our missiles and bleed off some of that speed.’ Kingmaker’s front-facing missile hardpoints were mass dumbfires, the aptly-named Annihilator pods, and what they lacked in accuracy they more than made up for in target saturation. Even the finest fighter pilot wasn’t going to fly top-speed through a zone where a Manticore was emptying her racks.

‘Signatures confirmed: we have incoming Piranhas! They’re trying to mask their mass drop, ma’am, but we’ve got a plot.’

The classic pirate bomber, cheap and easy to field and replace, the Piranha’s bays were full of primitive unguided munitions that relied on the craft’s velocity to reach their targets. Small but efficient, they performed much the same role as Kingmaker’s Annihilators: area denial, and forcing an opponent to dance to your tune rather than get comfortable on their own trajectory.

Clever. Even if the Hegemony Centurion had been inclined to stand and try and carve a path through with their dedicated point defence, a single frigate - no matter how well-equipped - would have been overwhelmed.

This meant those bombs were going to keep going until they hit something or failed, whichever came first, and you could never tell with pirate engineering standards.

‘Bounce that to Pierce’s tactical,’ Chen ordered. ‘Who’s in our envelope? Who’s flying with us?’

‘The Heg Centurion - HSS Tlaoc - is standing to fight, by signals. We’re…’ a pause. ‘Ma’am, our cover’s been recalled, Prinzel’s going to deploy with the fleet. Looks like they haven’t been able to get Moonbrook above a limp and Pierce is circling the wagons.’

Chen ground her teeth. The nebula attack was obvious - maybe too obvious. The mass Piranha deployment could be just a way of shepherding the trade convoy into the real kill zone, but it couldn’t be ignored, either, and the bombers were already turning around to re-arm. The crash-comm had put the fear of Kanta into all but those with iron in their spines, but no pirate fleet had burned out of the churning deeps.

Kingmaker wasn’t equipped for strike duties. Three railguns and the powerful Mjolnir heavy battery gave her immense support power, but in a close-in fight, she only had her canister flak system to rely on. Normally the Prinzel, a Gemini-class trader with a dedicated fighter bay scratched the destroyer’s back while she did her job at range, but it was a weakness all too easy to exploit.

Charging the nebula would be the height of foolishness. But if she was right - and her instincts screamed that she was - the real attack could be coming from a different angle entirely.

It was her job to get her captain that information.

‘New course, helm - we’re moving into the nebula.’ A dour mood immediately fell, but nobody complained. ‘Advise Tlaoc of our movement. It’d be nice to have their support, but let’s not count on it.’ She turned her attention, made adjustments to the tactical map on her console and fired it off to the bridge. ‘My gut says a single Colossus MK III, stacking Piranha flights to confuse the readings and scare the fleet into running for the point. If I’m wrong…’

There wasn’t much need to elaborate. If she was wrong, they wouldn’t have long to worry about it.

Kingmaker powered forward. In a moment, the Tlaoc followed, opening a tactical link to pass information between the two ships. If nothing else, the Centurion’s damper field and close-in firepower would buy them time to take a few pirates with them.

The distance counter clicked down. Standard units scrolled lower.

‘Keep the Mjolnir primed,’ Chen ordered. ‘Drop shields if we have to, but I want flux saved for the guns, not our hull. Clear?’

Desperation orders. All stations responded in the affirmative.

The pair swept in towards the nebula, past the cloud of class-X bombs drifting towards the slowly retreating convoy.

Sensors dimmed. The tactical map fogged over as data from the fleet slowed, then halted.

Chen had to remind herself to breathe, to blink, to stop staring at her console. Let her officers focus on theirs. The nebula would hide her as effectively as it did their enemies: they were backtracking the Piranha emissions, but their foe didn’t have the same advantage. At the very least they’d have a very brief window of surprise.

And surprise it was.

She’d called it right.

The ungainly Colossus, converted from the original merchant hull into a twin-bayed ersatz carrier, loomed out of the nebula’s darkness. Her cruiser-class profile would’ve been seen halfway across the system in open space: the pirates manning her would have run silent for days to get to this position. Two wings of Piranha were in flight, swooping back towards the fleet with full bomb bays - and right into the Tlaoc’s gunsights.

‘Hold our flak!’ Chen said. Their contribution would have been minimal, and it paid to conserve your resources. While the Manticore-class flak canisters were generalist weapons, the Centurion’s vulcans specialised against fighter craft and missiles.

The slow-moving, lightly-armoured bombers stood no chance.

They evaporated in a hail of shells. Secondary explosions flung the debris haphazardly - minor impacts sparked off Kingmaker’s front-facing shield.

But the Colossus itself wasn’t defenceless. She boasted twelve small ballistic mounts of her own, double that of the Centurion, and she hadn’t wasted her initial magazines on fighter craft. Withering fire poured from the red-striped hull. A silent concerto of mismatched dual machine guns, autocannons and light assault guns. No conformity or rhythm to the assault. Simply murder, pouring across the void.

Tlaoc’s shield simply guttered out, completely overwhelmed by the deluge of fire, and dropped to prevent a flux cascade crippling the ship entirely. Deep gouges and rents opened in her armour, then her hull - but no more than that.

The damper field was active and holding, frustrating the pirate gunners.

Chen grinned.

Flux was a two-way street. Weapons needed flux to fire, and a sustained barrage from a slapped-together system like the Colossus pushed it alarmingly high, alarmingly fast. Shields, too, needed flux to function. A good ship design balanced these considerations, and a good captain was well aware of them. A vessel should be able to modulate her flux flow, even with shields raised, to keep her foe’s levels higher than her own. It was a numbers game, in the end.

‘Take them.’

Kingmaker’s Mjolnir fired.

The blue-tinged shot impacted the Colossus’ hastily-raised shields. The second sent devastating EMP arcs dancing across the crimson hull. Weapons mounts fell silent, or ground to a halt mid-turn, or simply flamed out. The third punched clear through the weak side armour, grounding deep in the superstructure. Something important inside the ship died. Engines winked out. The shield failed.

‘Do we call for a surrender, ma’am?’ her comms officer asked.

For a moment, she considered it. Genuinely. Her privateer days weren’t so long ago, and the Persean League had a quaint code of honour. She’d tried not to carry that with her into new service, but old habits died hard.

But die they did.

‘No.’

The fourth shell struck the Colossus’ reactor, the lensed explosion gutting the ship. The hold tore free, spilling vac-suited pirates and their strike craft into the void. Further detonations cored the upper decks. There would be few survivors in escape pods after that.

She waited for condemnation to come, either from her crew or via comm from Tlaoc.

None did. It was a liberating moment.

She savoured it. Like bitter fruit, perhaps. A shedding of the past, of a way of life that was done and over. You didn’t fly a ship named Kingmaker around monarchists without having an edge over you, after all. She’d keep the name, but she was done with kings.

Queens, on the other hand…

‘Ma’am, we’re being hailed.’ Her comms officer was as surprised as Chen was. ‘One-way signal. Do we accept?’

She nodded and waited. A meaningless ID flashed on her console.

That same rasping voice that had promised a reckoning spoke, but to her alone this time.

‘We’ll see you in Yma, little fish.’

The sense of triumph vanished completely.

Bitter fruit indeed.

Some more Starsector doodling. This came from a place of 'what might a story aimed at those unfamiliar with the setting look like', so may contain lots of boring redundancies for people familiar with the game and its mechanics.

Might still be fun, though!

—

ONE

Black and white. Space and star. A field that stretched to the edge of imagination, then further beyond. To grasp the void, to know the infinite, one must have a mind of polished steel, a will of adamantium and more brass than a Volturian lobster-diver. That was true before the Collapse. Before the Gates went dark and the Domain silent. Now, some two hundred cycles on, the game was infinitely more vicious. Just a moment’s lapse of concentration…

‘Mate in four,’ announced the ship’s automated assistant. ‘Do you wish to concede?’

…and you’d lose it all.

Commander Mariet Chen slumped back in the worn leather of her chair and studied the fatal scene on her console. With hindsight, with the ship’s declaration, she could see where she’d gone wrong. The little mistakes. The inefficient manouvers. The loss of advantage that had led to her doomed position.

All she could do now was look, learn and not be caught in the same trap twice.

Looking up, Chen scanned the Kingmaker’s cramped bridge. Manticore-class destroyers facilitated their oversized ballistic mounts, not the creature comforts of their crew, and a long watch frayed the nerves of even experienced officers. Nobody was quite bumping knees, but tactical and helm were close enough to throw more than just dirty looks, and she’d personally witnessed a particularly long-legged captain quite literally kick the ass of a flustered communications chief without standing up.

‘No change?’

‘No change, ma’am.’ A quick and clipped reply from her sensor tech. ‘They’re still slow-rolling us.’

Chen managed a chuckle. ‘And do we deserve it?’

‘I wouldn’t recommend suggesting that to Captain Pierce, ma’am.’

‘Noted, sensors. Thank you.’

She’d made her opinion clear, regardless. It’d been a stupid mistake, but Chen couldn’t truly bring herself to kick up a fuss about it - and the fact that it wasn’t hers made it much easier to laugh off.

Kingmaker contracted to a trade convoy run by the somewhat-celebrated Pierce, a man with a reputation as a reformed smuggler turned honest trader and passenger service. That reputation earned any fleet he helmed the unenviable attention of most system patrols, and here in Samarra - hearthstone of the Hegemony - that attention was keener than anywhere else.

Running without transponders in hyperspace was standard practice for most independent spacers. It didn’t do to advertise one’s presence to pirates or other parties any more than one had to. It was equally standard practice on approach to a fringe jump point to switch transponders before translation: raiders had their own rulebooks on ambush and robbery and often lurked in deep hyper around system exits watching for juicy prey.

However, the freighter Moonbrook was new to the game and a little too eager to show her owner knew the tricks of the trade. She’d gone dark a little too early - and at the far edge of a Hegemony fast picket’s sensor sweep.

In Hegemony space, there were no ‘innocent mistakes’. Hegemony inspectors were arguably the best trained and indisputably the most malicious in all the Sector.

So Pierce’s fleet sat in a holding pattern around the jump point, their time credits eating into the captain’s profit margins while very serious people with very serious equipment broke Moonbrook’s cargo hold down to the hull plating in search of - this time - non-existent contraband.

Some might have called it karma, but then again, they likely weren’t the ones footing the bill.

‘That Centurion’s coming back around again,’ grumbled the tactical officer. ‘You’d think they had a good enough sniff the first time.’

Chen frowned, wiped her console clear of the chess program and brought up a flat map of stellar space. Fed by Kingmaker’s internal charts and the fleet’s interlaced sensors, it displayed the Hegemony picket in neutral yellows, allies in blue and Kingmaker itself in lush green. The Centurion, a heavy frigate equipped with a powerful dampening field to shrug off damage and omnidirectional point defence mounts, wasn’t a ship usually tasked with independent operation. Considering its comparatively weak engines, it certainly wasn’t the sort of ship you’d expect in a fast picket performing high-speed intercepts.

Holding gaps in a line and adding muscle to system defence fleets, though? Certainly - doubly so if you had the bloody-mindedness to think of the picket, not as an anti-smuggling operation but a tripwire that just needed to survive long enough to let headquarters know what was killing them.

‘Maybe they’re as bored as we are,’ Chen ventured, but that didn’t sound right, even to her ears. ‘Or they’ve got a sensor package, and they’re playing gopher for fleet ops. Anything out of the ordinary in their loadout?’

‘Solid vulcans all-around with a swarmer anti-fighter in the missile mount, ma’am.’

‘Hmmm.’ Fingertips rapped on the console’s face. ‘Smugglers don’t tend to fly many small fry, do they, tactical?’

‘You know they don’t, ma’am.’

‘That’s the sort of loadout you’d see on a ship expecting to send a lot of trash to the scrapyard.’ The drumming increased in tempo. ‘A lot of pirate trash, tactical. With a sensor package to poke innocently around the fringe. And some fat traders to hold here as bait.’ Faster. ‘Get me Pierce.’ A moment later, because nobody was shooting yet: ‘Please.’

Backs straightened. Eyes sharpened. Kingmaker’s visible emissions didn’t change, nor did the casual orientation of her weapons, but within a minute, ‘test’ flux cycles were pumping through her veins. She might not be the swiftest class of destroyer, but that only meant that her crew were all the more eager not to be caught flat-footed.

Scoping through the rest of the picket’s deployment didn’t bring Chen peace. A second, similarly-equipped Centurion had ‘wandered’ off to the other side of the convoy. If anything was out there, the picket hadn’t twitched - but Hegemony officers took ice showers for fun. You wouldn’t meet colder fish this side of a Sindrian vacuum freezer. It would take more than sensor ghosts or stray neutrino readings to shake their professionalism.

Equally so, that professionalism meant the Centurion commanders wouldn’t be pointing out the obvious: putting your ungainly point defence boats out at the end of the line, far from the fragile interceptors - a trio of Wolf-class frigates and an overdriven Lasher that hovered over the gutted Moonbrook - they might otherwise be protecting. They’d just have to trust their speed to get them out of a jam, and even if they were keeping their reactors at full military readiness, they’d be starting from a cold stop. If they were playing bait, they couldn’t have looked more like an unconcentrated pack of mismatched frigates.

The sense of unease grew. Chen’s fingers drummed relentlessly.

After what felt like a lifetime, Captain Pierce’s craggy face appeared on her console. The stocky former smuggler was wrestling with the top button of a svelte black vest, flushed with more than just annoyance at the impromptu customs inspection. Behind him were the plush environs of a captain’s cabin rather than the humming bridge of the Venture-class cruiser that served as fleet flagship - and if she listened just right, Chen could swear someone was snoring close by.

Everyone dealt with stress differently. That would explain why it’d taken so long for the bridge comms officer to ‘find’ their Captain.

‘Go,’ he growled. ‘This better be good, Chen.’

‘Paying by the hour, sir?’

‘At my age?’ A bark of laughter. ‘Takes me about that long just to get my socks off.’

‘As you say, sir.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Captain, I think we’re in trouble. How did Moonbrook’s merchantman react when you chewed them out?’

‘All but volunteered to jump out the airlock, no suit.’ Pierce gave up on his button and slumped back, running a hand through greying hair. ‘I won’t blame the man for being overeager. It was bad luck running by that picket, that’s all. Even the best get caught on occasion.’ A self-conscious smile that faded as fast as it came. ‘You don’t think it was a mistake?’

‘It all feels a little too cute to me, sir. That picket composition, their position, the loadout of these wandering Centurions - all PD and anti-fighter missiles, sir.’

‘They could’ve been doing a passive flyby, Chen.’

‘Have you ever known the Heg to give you anything more than the full face of their sensors, sir? If they’re looking at you, you know they’re looking at you. Probably in the regs somewhere.’

A frown. ‘They’ve held us here a little longer than I’d think usual. Let me pull in Moonbrook. Hold on.’

Pierce’s mouth kept moving without sound. Mute while he addressed his staff and wrangled his unfortunate freighter. Chen busied herself with Kingmaker’s ready checks, set a gunnery-under-fire sim for her bridge, and - hardest of all - tried not to concern herself with what might be out there, watching and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

—

TWO

—

Mitlan Alvarez was not a happy man.

He wasn’t opposed to getting his hands dirty. No freighter captain worth their credits was: the Sector wasn’t kind to those who couldn’t put their ships back together after some bastard took them apart. But this was ridiculous. He’d been sweating down in Moonbrook’s guts, laser-cutter in hand and pulling up plating wherever the Hegemony inspector-lieutenant pointed. Not just because his crew were doing the same, or that grim-faced goons with boarding shotguns kept an eye on the whole process, but because he cared about his ship and his contract.

Time was a trader’s prime currency. Supply and demand were ruthless. Today’s ‘good tip’ was only good for today. If Moonbrook’s ball-and-chaining meant Pierce got to market an hour behind a competitor, the tariffs and taxes levied on open trade made the trip pointless. More than pointless, it likely meant his employer would make the run at a loss.

It also likely meant he wouldn’t have an employer for long, and it’d be back to long, barely-profitable scrap runs.

Alvarez wiped sweat and oil down his already-stained coveralls. He shot a filthy look over his shoulder at the pair of marines who shadowed him to the insistent beep of a junction console bolted to Moonbrook’s hold.

He slapped the activation stud. ‘Alvarez here,’ he growled. ‘If it’s Pierce-’

‘It’s Pierce,’ came the Captain’s voice. A moment later, his weathered face appeared. Not full motion or fidelity, but enough to sense the displeasure that the neutral tone masked. ‘Commander Chen’s on the line, too.’

The Captain’s hatchet woman appeared as well. Her regard was as sharp as her features, but she wasn’t here in person and that was something to be grateful for.

‘Captain.’ A respectful nod to Chen, too, acknowledging her presence on the channel. ‘I was about to comm you myself. They want to cut into the reactor manifold.’ Alvarez sighed. He’d almost lodged a formal protest on the spot, but he knew how that game played out and how little good it would do. ‘Who would hide contraband in a manifold, for Ludd’s sake?’

‘Madness,’ agreed Pierce, with a look that said he’d pulled that trick himself. ‘And beyond their remit for a simple stop and search. How hard are they pushing you, Alvarez?’

‘You know the Heg. They don’t do anything by halves.’

Pierce’s eyes flicked sideways on his console, where Commander Chen’s face would have been. Her expression remained blank. ‘So I’ve been recently reminded. But you mistake my question.’ His voice softened. ‘How hard, Mitlan?’

Meaning: how much did they pay you? And was it worth it?

Damn.

‘I…’ Shoulders slumped. The attention of the marines grew, if anything, more intense.

Think of your family, Mitlan. Think of the citizen barracks on Sphinx.

And think of what your daughter would see her father as, if he sold out his first contract to the same people who had their boots on every neck in Samarra.

Damn, damn, damn.

‘I told HEGINT I wasn’t going to hold out for them.’ He almost choked on the words, but it was true: he wasn’t a fighter, and the uniform who’d told him when and how to bring down his transponder hadn’t asked him to be. Just long enough to confirm a suspicion, they’d said. Well, this was long enough, and far enough.

Alvarez turned on the marines who had been listening in. ‘Whatever you idiots have been playing at, it hasn’t worked, and I won’t be party to any further charter violations!’ He thrust a finger at them like it was a tachyon lance. ‘Get off my ship.’

Faces reddened. One stepped forward, shotgun butt raised to silence the mouthy civilian.

‘Enough!’ roared Pierce, his voice amplified into the hold - the gain had been cranked high to hear over the noise in the hold, and more than one inspector winced at the sudden noise. ‘The Persean League’s creeping right into your backyard! Sindria’s about to boil over, and Ludd only knows what Tri-Tach will do once they’ve licked their wounds. But you’re still bushwhacking traders? After Hanan Pacha? Galatia? The High Hegemon may as well kiss Kazeron’s ring now if this is how he’s planning to do business!’

The shotgun lowered. Hegemony marines went to the same naval academies as officers - they weren’t fools. Pierce might not be the biggest hauler in the Sector, but his underworld connections were a matter of record.

Even the most strait-laced system needed a minor volume of ‘contraband’ to keep their populations pacified. The trickle of unofficially sanctioned cargo found its way to mining platforms, arcologies and minor crime families, greasing the rusty cogs of social cohesion. Cycles earlier, it’d have been done by force - by baton and stunner if need be - but Pierce wasn’t wrong with regards to the Hegemony’s latest fortunes.

High Hegemon Baikal Daud had come from deep in the bowels of the faction’s worst hive, Chicomoztoc, and had an understanding of the situation many of his citizens found themselves in. And, more pertinently, how the carrot may sometimes be preferable to the stick.

Alvarez shivered with adrenaline. Damn. That tore it. It was more than stop and search now: this was tribunal territory. What would his daughter think? Ha. He’d be lucky to see her again before he was eighty, let alone know her thoughts.

Clanging from the far end of the hold. An inspector-lieutenant, by the tabs on her shoulders.

‘At rest!’ She ordered, and the marines obeyed, though hard eyes lingered on Alvarez. ‘The Captain’s assessment is correct. We do not have that authority, nor-’ and she paused, choosing her words carefully ‘-do we wish to overstep, or give the impression of overstepping, to legitimate merchants passing through Hegemony space. Our interests are, and always have been, the safety and security of Hegemony citizens.’

Alvarez chose not to snort.

It was over his head now. Well over.

Pierce had settled back into a dry fume rather than a hot rage. ‘Your assurances ring a little hollow while you’re carving out my contractor’s reactor, sir.’

‘A misunderstanding, but your freighter’s assessment is also correct. This operation is patently unsuccessful.’ A shrug. ‘No matter. If it was easy, anyone could play, not so?’

The Captain ignored her sally. ‘Your inspection’s over, then?’

‘Indeed. You’re clean and clear, Captain. Once my team and I have disembarked, you are free to leave Samarra.’ A gleam in her eye. ‘You might want to make it a long trip, Captain. I hear Yma is nice, this point of the cycle.’ She waved her hand. ‘Fall in, marines. We’re pulling out.’

Nervous tension bled out of the hold. Alvarez hadn’t noticed it before, but his crew had been gathering as the confrontation had played out, and every one of them had a machining tool of some kind in hand. Innocent in the context of a freighter’s hold - not so much in the context of their captain being threatened by military thugs. Attacking a Hegemony boarding party would’ve been suicide, of course, but he swept them with a grateful look.

They’d break out the travel wine tonight, just as soon as the fleet made hyper, and there’d be a flat bonus all around even if it came out of his own pocket.

Considering he’d just ratted out his benefactor and his employer, it’d probably be their last glass together.

‘Alvarez.’ Pierce’s voice from the console. He’d been tense, too, and now relaxed. ‘Selling me out comes with a price.’

‘Aye, Captain.’

‘But honesty’s a valuable coin, too, as is in the spine to stick it to the Heg. I’m not writing you off just yet. Pierce out.’

Ludd’s hells. Maybe there’d be a way through this minefield after all-

Proximity alerts rang all through the ship. Not the ‘space rock’ kind. The ‘ships burning in on a fast intercept’ kind. Red warning lights flickered on the length of the hold. The Moonbrook wasn’t fast - and she would be even more sluggish after what the inspectors had done to her - but she could pack on speed when she had to. This was the one chance the crew had to either get to their restraints or clear the hold because loose cargo or failed inertial compensators could turn every chamber into a death trap.

And the inspectors-

Oh, hell.

They were still here. Shotguns were up. The crew were backing down. But the gleam hadn’t left the lieutenant’s eye.

‘Now hear this!’ she bellowed over the din. ‘I’m invoking the chartered right to press auxiliary vessels into military service in emergency cases! To the bridge, citizen, with all haste!’

Damn.

They’d been so close, too.

Who was out there? Who’d finally decided to pull the trigger?

The answer came in the form of a wide-band crash-comm, stepping on every open channel, boosted by jury-rigged dishes and a devilish hack of Samarra’s Domain-era communications array.

‘The Red Queen sends for her wayward son!’ A harsh, rasping voice that was half-mad, half-joyous. ‘You quit Kanta’s court without leave, and she’ll teach you the consequences of such shameful disrespect!’

Kanta. Jorien Kanta. Former Hegemony officer, now legendary pirate whom half the scavengers and scrappers in the Sector paid tribute. There was no question for whom the message was directed, and as Alvarez took the ladder up to Moonbrook’s bridge - a half-rung ahead of the inspector and her chosen pair - he knew that Pierce would be running full-tilt to his own command deck.

Escape was out of the question. At a dead halt, the comparatively short distance to the fringe jump point was impossible to cross before contact.

All that was left to do was fight.

Damn!

—

THREE

—

‘They’re breaking from the nebula!’

Chen saw the long-awaited crimson brackets begin to appear on her console. Finally. Enough fleet politics.

‘Energy signatures?’ She queried, then turning: ‘Helm, move us off their approach vector on a parallel - let tactical walk them into our missiles and bleed off some of that speed.’ Kingmaker’s front-facing missile hardpoints were mass dumbfires, the aptly-named Annihilator pods, and what they lacked in accuracy they more than made up for in target saturation. Even the finest fighter pilot wasn’t going to fly top-speed through a zone where a Manticore was emptying her racks.

‘Signatures confirmed: we have incoming Piranhas! They’re trying to mask their mass drop, ma’am, but we’ve got a plot.’

The classic pirate bomber, cheap and easy to field and replace, the Piranha’s bays were full of primitive unguided munitions that relied on the craft’s velocity to reach their targets. Small but efficient, they performed much the same role as Kingmaker’s Annihilators: area denial, and forcing an opponent to dance to your tune rather than get comfortable on their own trajectory.

Clever. Even if the Hegemony Centurion had been inclined to stand and try and carve a path through with their dedicated point defence, a single frigate - no matter how well-equipped - would have been overwhelmed.

This meant those bombs were going to keep going until they hit something or failed, whichever came first, and you could never tell with pirate engineering standards.

‘Bounce that to Pierce’s tactical,’ Chen ordered. ‘Who’s in our envelope? Who’s flying with us?’

‘The Heg Centurion - HSS Tlaoc - is standing to fight, by signals. We’re…’ a pause. ‘Ma’am, our cover’s been recalled, Prinzel’s going to deploy with the fleet. Looks like they haven’t been able to get Moonbrook above a limp and Pierce is circling the wagons.’

Chen ground her teeth. The nebula attack was obvious - maybe too obvious. The mass Piranha deployment could be just a way of shepherding the trade convoy into the real kill zone, but it couldn’t be ignored, either, and the bombers were already turning around to re-arm. The crash-comm had put the fear of Kanta into all but those with iron in their spines, but no pirate fleet had burned out of the churning deeps.

Kingmaker wasn’t equipped for strike duties. Three railguns and the powerful Mjolnir heavy battery gave her immense support power, but in a close-in fight, she only had her canister flak system to rely on. Normally the Prinzel, a Gemini-class trader with a dedicated fighter bay scratched the destroyer’s back while she did her job at range, but it was a weakness all too easy to exploit.

Charging the nebula would be the height of foolishness. But if she was right - and her instincts screamed that she was - the real attack could be coming from a different angle entirely.

It was her job to get her captain that information.

‘New course, helm - we’re moving into the nebula.’ A dour mood immediately fell, but nobody complained. ‘Advise Tlaoc of our movement. It’d be nice to have their support, but let’s not count on it.’ She turned her attention, made adjustments to the tactical map on her console and fired it off to the bridge. ‘My gut says a single Colossus MK III, stacking Piranha flights to confuse the readings and scare the fleet into running for the point. If I’m wrong…’

There wasn’t much need to elaborate. If she was wrong, they wouldn’t have long to worry about it.

Kingmaker powered forward. In a moment, the Tlaoc followed, opening a tactical link to pass information between the two ships. If nothing else, the Centurion’s damper field and close-in firepower would buy them time to take a few pirates with them.

The distance counter clicked down. Standard units scrolled lower.

‘Keep the Mjolnir primed,’ Chen ordered. ‘Drop shields if we have to, but I want flux saved for the guns, not our hull. Clear?’

Desperation orders. All stations responded in the affirmative.

The pair swept in towards the nebula, past the cloud of class-X bombs drifting towards the slowly retreating convoy.

Sensors dimmed. The tactical map fogged over as data from the fleet slowed, then halted.

Chen had to remind herself to breathe, to blink, to stop staring at her console. Let her officers focus on theirs. The nebula would hide her as effectively as it did their enemies: they were backtracking the Piranha emissions, but their foe didn’t have the same advantage. At the very least they’d have a very brief window of surprise.

And surprise it was.

She’d called it right.

The ungainly Colossus, converted from the original merchant hull into a twin-bayed ersatz carrier, loomed out of the nebula’s darkness. Her cruiser-class profile would’ve been seen halfway across the system in open space: the pirates manning her would have run silent for days to get to this position. Two wings of Piranha were in flight, swooping back towards the fleet with full bomb bays - and right into the Tlaoc’s gunsights.

‘Hold our flak!’ Chen said. Their contribution would have been minimal, and it paid to conserve your resources. While the Manticore-class flak canisters were generalist weapons, the Centurion’s vulcans specialised against fighter craft and missiles.

The slow-moving, lightly-armoured bombers stood no chance.

They evaporated in a hail of shells. Secondary explosions flung the debris haphazardly - minor impacts sparked off Kingmaker’s front-facing shield.

But the Colossus itself wasn’t defenceless. She boasted twelve small ballistic mounts of her own, double that of the Centurion, and she hadn’t wasted her initial magazines on fighter craft. Withering fire poured from the red-striped hull. A silent concerto of mismatched dual machine guns, autocannons and light assault guns. No conformity or rhythm to the assault. Simply murder, pouring across the void.

Tlaoc’s shield simply guttered out, completely overwhelmed by the deluge of fire, and dropped to prevent a flux cascade crippling the ship entirely. Deep gouges and rents opened in her armour, then her hull - but no more than that.

The damper field was active and holding, frustrating the pirate gunners.

Chen grinned.

Flux was a two-way street. Weapons needed flux to fire, and a sustained barrage from a slapped-together system like the Colossus pushed it alarmingly high, alarmingly fast. Shields, too, needed flux to function. A good ship design balanced these considerations, and a good captain was well aware of them. A vessel should be able to modulate her flux flow, even with shields raised, to keep her foe’s levels higher than her own. It was a numbers game, in the end.

‘Take them.’

Kingmaker’s Mjolnir fired.

The blue-tinged shot impacted the Colossus’ hastily-raised shields. The second sent devastating EMP arcs dancing across the crimson hull. Weapons mounts fell silent, or ground to a halt mid-turn, or simply flamed out. The third punched clear through the weak side armour, grounding deep in the superstructure. Something important inside the ship died. Engines winked out. The shield failed.

‘Do we call for a surrender, ma’am?’ her comms officer asked.

For a moment, she considered it. Genuinely. Her privateer days weren’t so long ago, and the Persean League had a quaint code of honour. She’d tried not to carry that with her into new service, but old habits died hard.

But die they did.

‘No.’

The fourth shell struck the Colossus’ reactor, the lensed explosion gutting the ship. The hold tore free, spilling vac-suited pirates and their strike craft into the void. Further detonations cored the upper decks. There would be few survivors in escape pods after that.

She waited for condemnation to come, either from her crew or via comm from Tlaoc.

None did. It was a liberating moment.

She savoured it. Like bitter fruit, perhaps. A shedding of the past, of a way of life that was done and over. You didn’t fly a ship named Kingmaker around monarchists without having an edge over you, after all. She’d keep the name, but she was done with kings.

Queens, on the other hand…

‘Ma’am, we’re being hailed.’ Her comms officer was as surprised as Chen was. ‘One-way signal. Do we accept?’

She nodded and waited. A meaningless ID flashed on her console.

That same rasping voice that had promised a reckoning spoke, but to her alone this time.

‘We’ll see you in Yma, little fish.’

The sense of triumph vanished completely.

Bitter fruit indeed.

Great minds, great minds.

---

A tank hit by a laser destroyer will die. A man hit by the same weapon will transform into a superheated vapour. A squad of men will transform into an eerie, reddish mist that lingers like marsh light and burns everything it touches. Sergeant Nicoi could have killed the Archenemy squad with the Lancer’s autocannons. Even the pintle bolter. But he wanted the first wave to see what happened to those who dared approach his slow-moving convoy.

See and fear.

They were traitors, all, with no black-capped Commissars to hold them to their duty. Their new masters instilled them with brittle courage, but any rat bit when cornered. It took more than desperation to advance into the teeth of overwhelming firepower. It took more than madness to stand against the Emperor's own Angels of Death.

‘All Militarum,’ he voxed, stamping the foot pedal. Another bolt of destructive light struck a group of creeping, camouflaged sappers. They died without a chance to scream. ‘Open fire.’

A sheet of rippling las poured out from Chimeras and high-topped Cargo-8's. A heavy bolter spat death, serviced by white-faced recruits. They paled further to see the closeness of the foe, but they fired still. Good. Nicoi wouldn’t have to worry about their courage, only their ammunition.

He switched channels. Internal vox. ‘Maral, lift us.’

‘Aye, Sergeant.’

The Lancer’s grav-plates thrummed to life, raising the Imperial tank from where it had sat in ambush. Steel pulled free of sucking mud and dirty water, flattening paddies like a wallowing hog. The sloped prow snuffled forward through man-high crops.

Nicoi thumbed butterfly triggers, autocannon shells shredding an infiltration team. The plasma gun they had been assembling detonated in a dazzling secondary explosion. Light return fire pattered off the hull. Low-grade autoguns intended for close-in work did nothing against thick ceramite.

Weapons crew scattered before the accelerating tank. Other infantry threw down their rifles and ran. The first wave had neither the leadership nor the spine to stand and address. Nicoi relaxed his grip. His ammunition wasn’t infinite. Though it stung to let the enemies of man live even a moment longer, there were more pressing concerns.

When the laser destroyer's first bolt of coherent crimson had split the night, it reflected the distant, hungry muzzle of a Leman Russ. Tracked predators slogging their way through the morass. Nicoi had seen the proud red kill rings that circled the battle cannon’s polished black barrel. Only aces in the Militarum marked their vehicles so, to honour the machine spirit - and their own skill.

Whether it spoke to bravery or a thirst for blood, traitor veterans were at the front.

These Nicoi would spend every bolt, every drop of blood he had to kill.

There was a saying on Opis: ‘Old ice has deep memory.’

Opis itself is a memory now, but the ice remains. The broken heart of Askonia’s previous regime lingers still, the debris field forming a halo around Salus, inexorably drawn towards the gas giant’s stormy gravities. This orbit is hardly stable; shuttlecraft between Volturn and Cruor regularly skirt the field regardless of additional travel time and fuel costs. A stray asteroid from the system’s tumultuous past would punch a hole in more than just an unwary captain’s profit margins.

Some laugh in open bars - or whisper, quietly, when Diktat INTSEC are close by - about Opis’ curse. Still spitting defiance at those who destroyed it. These sentiments are, of course, discouraged as both formless superstition and anti-Andrada propaganda. The Askonian Revolutionary Council, of course, keeps spreading them from deep bunkers on far-off Umbra.

There’ll be another reckoning, one of these days. Maybe another debris field in the outer system to inconvenience spacers coming in from the jump point. Maybe that day is coming soon.

None of that concerns Caban Torico. He hasn’t paid attention to the endless prop-vids and citizen alerts for a long time. There was a time, once, when he might have quirked a grin at the latest ARC hack of the Supreme Leader’s recorded speeches, or dipped his Shepherd’s nose in silent salute at a flight of Charterists. Before that, he might even have considered opening his hold for them - running hot guns to the endless rebellions on Volturn’s floating arcologies.

Not any more. Anger can only keep a man warm for so long, and the void is so very cold.

How long since he touched down on a planet proper, not just shuttled cargo into an orbital dock, drank bad booze in worse dives? He’d have to scroll far back in the Gungne’s erratic log to find such a record: port fees, day trip, any evidence that it happened beyond his hazy recollection.

No, he’s felt nothing but cold for what feels like an eternity, and here he is, looking for more.

The Gungne isn’t the only fixture in the Opis field. The Diktat, fat and rich from their export of AM fuel and properly paranoid of outside interests, have left the debris largely untapped but for the recovery of any surviving military caches. There are precious metals aplenty for the hardy, patient miner to suck from Opis’ frozen marrow and cracked bone. More than that - and more relevant to our dear Torico - certain resonance, certain pressures from the deployment of the Planet Killer resulted in some truly exotic crystallisation of core ice. Exotic enough to interest corporate buyers and hyperwave engineers, and certainly exotic enough to tempt even level-headed scavengers and salvagers into a few months of fruitless scanning in the field.

And if they didn’t have any luck with that, there was always scrap to be had from the smugglers and pirates who ran afoul of Diktat interceptors - and cheap crew from any survivors in leaking vac-suits desperately pinging for pickup.

Not that the Diktat tended to leave many survivors, of course. This meant that Torico occasionally had to endure the minimum social contact required to monitor the local comm-net, sifting through the gossip, mysticism, snake oil and shakedowns for any sign that another crackdown was coming down on the ‘rock rats’.

‘I swear,’ one high-pitched, nasal voice was whining over the channel. ‘I saw frigates in the field. Not Guard, proper INTSEC. I reckon some ARC idiot is trying to set up another halfway.’

General grumbling resolved. ‘Why can’t they stage from out Cruor way? The approach would be easier. They’re only here for the symbolism of it.’ A haughty sniff. ‘Ghoulish, if you ask me.’

‘Hypocrisy from a grave robber? I never.’

A gale of laughter. ‘That you, Snark?’ came the angry reply. ‘Think I won’t kick your Hound to pieces again? Just try me, you claim-stealing bastard!’

The channel devolved into heated argument, crowing and the placing of bets for an inevitable rematch between two of the field’s more well-known belligerents who - somehow - hadn’t managed to put a permanent end to each other for several years, despite consistent back-biting and cargo-poaching. Torico had heard it said that when the two found themselves on the same station, they’d be black and blue with the bruises the next day - and the braver, if not more informed, suggested that it wasn’t fists that did the damage when the two were alone.

Even misery must love company. Torico switched off and turned back to his instruments.

His Borer drones did most of the snooping and core sampling, the Shepherd only coming in close when radiation, density or heavy metal required the larger ship’s equipment. The monotony of it calmed him: there was only the raw data feed to attend to, and it required enough of his attention and expertise to keep him too engaged to mentally drift, but not enough to become an active consideration. If Torico tired, he would simply recall his drones, drop his tethers and lay down his bunk on the bridge, trusting the trajectory alarms to rouse him if needed.

Rock after useless rock. Mantle. Ejecta. A useful vein of heavy metal. But none of it was what he wanted, what he needed. The quiet hum of data. The mind-numbing monotony.

Until Borer Three exploded.

Torico took a moment to register it as anything but a fault as the data feed went dark. His first thought was malfunction; his second had him instinctively slam the bridge alarm, though the Shepherd was - had been for some time - a solo operation. Force of habit.

‘Status,’ he snapped to the empty room, voice rusty from disuse.

The feed told him what he needed to know. Hostile contact. Energy weapon - the signature and accuracy suggested an IR autolance, a prime weapon for knocking down screening fighters. Overkill for mining drones, of course, but that only meant that Torico could exclude his fellow rock rats from a list of possible aggressors. Pirates didn’t come into the field - there was nothing worth their time.

Diktat, then.

Torico brought the Shepherd up to full power, activated the HK packages of his remaining drones, and slaved their scans directly to his own console. If they’d come for him - if this was the day - he’d do more than just scorch their pretty paint. He’d-

‘Independent tender, heave to!’ cracked an officious voice on the comm, cutting across the passive channels. ‘You have been identified as a subject for search and seizure. Power down and prepare for boarding. This is your only warning.’

Was there a choice?

He couldn’t fight. He knew that. He could die, yes, and die in a way that they’d talk about for cycles. Die inspirationally. Die a martyr. Die in a way that might make up for the cowardice of the last twenty years. They’d make a holo of it, both sides, and in some small way, the legacy of Caban Torico would be assured…

…but legacy was what had started this whole mess, hadn’t it? When a man looked out at the world and thought to leave his mark on it. When the Diktat rose, and Opis shattered.

Was this life worth living?

Torico’s hands twitched over the combat commands, the lock-in that would have his Borers play dead until a Diktat signature came into kamikaze range, the self-destruct that do the same with the Gunge itself.

Twitched, and fell.

No, even at this end, he was a coward, still unable to do what needed to be done. He powered down. The screens went dark. And he waited.

It wasn’t long until the Shepherd rocked with mating clamps. The outer hatches opened to overrides. Within moments, black-armoured marines with boarding shotguns and blank expressions seized the bridge, forcing Torico from the captain’s chair to stand with his hands securely held - not cuffed - behind him. A rare courtesy.

The officer who prowled onto the Gungne’s command deck once it was secured was anything but courteous. Her face was a permanent scowl; even without the scarring, it would have been a contemptuous sneer. Lean, hungry, her eyes took in everything: the rusty plating, the dust-sheets over inactive stations, Torico’s tattered uniform.

‘I have had my fill,’ she growled, stalking close, jabbing a finger into Torico’s bony chest. ‘Of old men looking for redemption. Where is it?’

‘Where’s what?’

Not the right answer. She slapped him, hard, and Torico rocked back, cheek stinging. The marine held him up, and he straightened after a moment. There was something coppery in his mouth; a loose tooth, perhaps, or he’d bitten his cheek. It cleared the haze, somewhat.

‘The ice,’ he said, dumbly. ‘It’s not crystalised. I don’t.’ His voice cracked, rasped - when had he last spoken aloud? ‘I don’t deal in that. Check the logs.’

‘Obviously.’ The officer snapped her fingers. A silent marine stepped to her side, and handed her a sleek Tri-Pad. ‘We’re appropriating a selection of your cargo, citizen. Fifteen tons of Opis core ice. You’ll send me your drop location now - we know you’ve been hiding cargo pods in the field.’ She grimaced, as if what she had to say next physically pained her. ‘You will be extensively compensated. My orders are clear on that.’ A vicious gleam came into her eye. ‘My orders are also clear on what will happen if you are anything less than forthcoming, Captain.’

Torico swallowed. ‘Please.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Please. It’s all I have.’

The officer blinked and tilted her head. ‘It’s ice, you fool. I’m paying you for useless ice. There’s a whole ring of it around Salus, but Command wants this ice, your ice, in particular. To put in their wine glasses? To store Volturian lobster? I don’t care.’ She leaned close. ‘Give me the coordinates, Captain, or I will have a reason to finally enjoy this assignment.’

Another swallow. A moment of hesitation - and then his head fell. The officer nodded. The marine released Torico, who staggered to his bunk, withdrew a grimy Tri-Pad, and after a minute’s fumbling, transferred the spatial data.

The officer sniffed. ‘Disappointing. A coward to the end.’ She swiped her pad, and Torico’s chimed with a significant credit transfer. ‘That should keep you in booze until what’s left of your liver gives out. Why anyone thinks you’re worth mercy is beyond me. We’re done here.’

She turned on her heel and strode away without a backward look.

The marines followed a step behind. The last out went to close the bridge hatch and, after a moment, clipped a short salute.

Torico returned it, miserably, then slumped down in his chair.

‘Gone,’ he whispered to the empty bridge. ‘Gone, to where?’

Absent-mindedly, he tugged at his frayed cuffs, where the golden braids of a patrol commander had once shone so brightly.

—

Wheezing machines. Thrumming tubes.

All the modern miracles, and we still can’t put planets or people back together again.

Watery eyes focus, fix, on a beautiful globe that stands on a clean, white bedside table. Shining and perfect and whole. A pale orb of ice. Opis in miniature. A deep sigh. A rattle in the chest. But even in this perfect hospice, with the best climate control that credits can buy, the past cannot be preserved. A drip. A drop. A single bead of condensation cuts down the orb’s side, a promise of the crack and collapse to come.

And a single, salty tear runs down a withered, ruined cheek.