Tae as Prize

It is the 41

st

millennium.

Space has become a battlefield: the proud Imperial Navy stands as the shield and sword of humanity.

But even their might is stretched thin by the immensity of space and the number of the Enemy.

Within the recently established Calixus Sector, those Enemies range from the perfidious Dark Eldar to the rapacious Space Orks to the treasonous forces of sedition and Chaos.

In the hands of the Battlefleet Calixus rest the fates of billions.

***

The sonorous sound of the four tech-priests singing filled the gilded auditorium. Despite the finest acoustics and the elegant architecture designed to make one forget that one was sitting in the Lagrange station in orbit around the second largest forge world in the entire sector, the low drone of the station's vitae sustainers added an unwelcome counterpoint to the arithmantic beauty filling the room. Dr. Jonathan Balthazar leaned back and tried to enjoy the way each singer found their own, creeping way towards the geometric definition of a roughly rectangular shape transversing realspace at a set rate. One would sing - A, B, B-Flat, B - and the combination of tone, beat and measure formed the basis of the arithmantic formula.

It was alien to the more baroque quartets that he was used to among the rarefied heights of Scintillian nobility. But there was a curious

drone

that seemed to neither add to the arithmancy nor keep the music from devolving into complete chaos. He first thought it was part of the unavoidable hum of station-life. Then, slowly, he became aware that it came from the seat next to his.

The figure there was a woman who looked as if she had crawled from the depths of hive scum in the most ill fitting disguise that Jon had ever seen. She was easily two meters tall, with a shock of brilliantly blond hair that she had piled into an almost ganger-style Mohawk. The back was pleated into a que, which dipped behind her, terminating at the middle of her back. Her arms - which were exposed and quite muscular - were covered in winding, tribal tattoos. Her face, though shockingly delicate for a woman clearly of low birth, was marked by more than a few scars, all clearly battle wounds. She bore no augmetics, but had many marks that showed she had been but a hairs breadth from requiring one. The three slashes from left eyebrow to lower jaw, skipping the eye by only the thinnest margins. That furrow between knuckles, easily could have led to a pulped forearm and the hasty removal chirgeons of the service tended towards.

But while she cut a figure that a hive ganger would have envied, she was also draped in a naval greatcoat. Blue and finely anointed, with a medal pinned to the front -- the starry cluster for the Angevin Crusade. Rank foolishness, considering the Angevin Crusade had terminated with Imperial victory in the year 989 of the 40th millennium, and it was currently the year 618, millennium 41 of his holy Imperial Majesty of Earth, long may he reign, ect, ect.

But the offense that drew Jon's eye most intently, the offense he could not forgive - for Jon was of a lackadaisical attitude towards most things properly referred to as treason punishable by death - was far clearer and of an utterly auditory nature.

She...

Was snoring.

Jon, careless in that moment, leaned forward, grabbed her by the ear, twisted, and hissed. "Madame. If you are to engage in a farce of civility, at the very least do not

sleep

through a performance."

The woman, startled awake, let out an oath in the most vile of Low Gothic: "

Ballsfuckshitcunt!"

which drew glares from every petty nobleman and tech-priest in attendance. The priests, who took up the entire front row, had joined hands and mechandendrites in solemn contemplation of their Machine God's eternal beneficence. They were now whispering among one another in the queer dialect of theirs -

Binary

, a flittering form of communication that used chirps, whistles, beeps, boops, clatters, clanks, whirring digits, and in at least one occasion, a scrap of an ancient Terran language that Jon tentatively identified as Leek.

The woman, careless of the scene, sprang to her feet. "Good Emperor, what is the meaning of this?" She rubbed her ear.

Jon stood as well, frowning. "If you wish to make a scene,

madame

-"

"Lieutenant," she snarled.

"Vynn, Vynn, sit yourself," a rotund woman wearing captain's epulats spoke from three rows back. "That is an order."

Grumbling under her breath, the massive woman - it was one thing to measure her at two meters and another entire to realize that one's head was perfectly on the level to admire not only her significant bust but also the way that her abdominal muscles could be seen through her somewhat sheer shirt - sat down. Jon sat as well, but the mood he had had before was utterly spoiled. He and the woman glared daggers at one another for the rest of the concert, and when it broke, Jon stood and said, stiffly. "If you wish to continue this discussion elsewhere, I am glad to meet you."

The woman - Vynn was her name - bristled. "Place and time."

"The center of the areoponic gardens, say, after the Hour of Scampering?" Jon asked.

Vynn chewed her lip. "That's between third and fourth bell of the Afternoon Watch?"

"I am positive I do not know," Jon said, ice in his voice.

"Fifteen thirty, Terran standard," Vynn said, sneering.

Jon inclined his head. He supposed that maybe he had been trapped in the orbit of this benighted place too long. His chronology had shifted, slowly, bit by bit, day by day, from using the Terran Standard clock that most Adeptus Terra adhered to in casual contempt for both temporal sheer caused by warp travel and the fact that planets orbited at their own paces and rotated at their own temperaments and did not see fit to give humanity, who had claimed each by dint of divine heritage, a twenty four hour day and three hundred and sixty five day year for humanity's convenience. Now he used the hideous forty one hour clock used by Tempestus without even thinking of it.

Still, he had a time and place. He had a sword to scrape and polish. Though he supposed he should ensure a new focusing lens on his pistol. After all, Vynn had technically been the one to be challenged, and thus, had the right to choose which tool for the enterprise.

###

It is a curious thing, the temperament of a Death Worlder. Their homes were invariably the most hostile to life that could be found. Catachan was but the most famous, but there were others. Aquios was one, a small world famous for its breed of island-whales. Massive beasts which could digest heavy metals vomited into the upper oceans of that formerly ice-locked world by aquatic volcanoes. Deep within their bellies and their miles of blubber, the island-whales transmuted heavy metals into several forms of petrochemicals and rare earths that were much prized by the Imperium as a whole. Lithium, crystals that could be turned into promethium, some rarefied elements beyond Vynn's ken, the like. When the first colony had failed to the skysharks and the nibbler clouds and the lightning traps and the hurrigales and the other assorted perils of the world, the survivors had descended to tribalism. Now, six centuries later, they were recruited into the Imperial Guard as the perfect tool for any oceanic campaign, and the island-whale blubber was purchased only by the most deranged of Rogue Traders who came calling.

When ones early youth was spent in a constant state of awareness and fear, anger that might kindle bright and hot could fade in the course of a standard hour.

Vynn had three to pace about and mutter to herself in her staterooms in the Naval precinct on Lagrange Station Aquila-4. In the first hour, the hot anger at the offense had cooled to a mere jovial reflection that she was not suited for music. Then, after two, she had started to laugh to herself: "A fine thing, Vynn," she said, in her islander tongue. "Get yourself killed after that nightmare of a trip, ha, oh how Skalweng would jeer at you. Survived who knows what the warp throws, then get shot by a civilian. Oh, ha, ha!"

By the end of the third hour, Vynn was assured that her change in temperament had been shared by the civilian. After all, he was no warrior or fighter. And she

had

been the one snoring, not him. She could offer an apology, maybe. Buy him a drink or two or five?

The door to her stateroom chimed.

"Come in!" Vynn said, picking up her cutlass and strapping it to her hip.

Standing in the door was the sallow, perpetually nervous face of Lieutenant Pullings. His actual name was Zakoroff, but he was endlessly tugging at his nose, his mustaches, his lip, his chin, his ear. Right now, it was his sleeve. He was dressed in his sharpest uniform and burst out immediately with: "Dear Emperor, Vynn, what the devil have you gotten yourself into now?"

"A duel, it seems," Vynn said, wryly. "Say, is it proper to send some synthahol to someone before the fight? As a way of an apology."

Pullings tugged at his nose. "Vynn, Vynn! Do you know who you

offended

?"

"Some civilian," Vynn said, shaking her head. "It was a damn muddle. I had only got myself in that concert because Captain Rynoldes was asking, and I so dearly want one of those new ships they've almost clapped the spines on. That likely looking Sword, for instance. And I figured, I would make myself seem likely to Rynoldes. Ha, what a foolish notion. Me in a concerto, as if I was fit for lace..." She trailed off, turning away from the mirror to see Pullings staring at her as if she were already laying sewn in her hammock, ready to be shunted into space for burial at void.

"You challenged Doctor Jonathan Balthazar," Pullings said. "He's killed thirty eight men and twenty five women in duels, or so the stories say."

###

The areoponics garden of the station was that curious mixture of both inaccurately named and utterly misleading. Areoponics refers to the oft derided method of growing plants in mixtures of specialized gasses. Foolish, for any plants not evolved to such a state. Or at the very least, beyond the abilities of modern humanity. And yet, the areoponic garden of this particular station had not a single hint of gaseous growths, tanks, or other apparatus that might fulfill the name. Rather, it was a broad mass of greenery contained within a diamondplast dome, with the furious blaze of a thousand forges spreading across the half-circle of Tempetus' surface making up the sky.

Garden, too, implied a constrained space.

But the areoponic garden spanned such a surface across the station that Jon found himself pacing back and forth before the place he had named - the center of the areoponics garden - for a good half hour before, puffing and red in the face, Vynn arrived with her second, man she introduced as Pullings Er-Zakoroff, a name combining several common traits in the Gothic language, traits that Jon's quicksilver mind started to trace back to their origin point before his will drew him back to the present and away from pondering on the fusions of Russ and Angletongue and how they came to the here and now, so far removed from their near mythological homes.

"And your second?"

"I rarely need more than two - to aim and to fire," Jon said, shortly.

Vynn coughed. "Ah."

"What is your choice in weapons?" Jon asked.

"Well, see here," Vynn said. "I was in the wrong here - I should not have roared at you so, but you did startle me and-"

Jon looked on in mute incomprehension. Was she refusing a challenge? A challenge she had accepted? He had heard the Imperial Navy was as just an honorable as any in the service of the divine God-Emperor of Mankind. But to see such a craven example in their officers left him feeling disgusted. That disgust showed clear on his face and soon, Vynn's attempt at evasion sputtered off. Then, to Jon's increasing disgust, she became angry at

him

.

"Don't glower at me so!" she said, furiously. "I figured a civilian whose never seen a battlefield let alone been on the gundecks at a full heat would clap for a chance to get out without needing to face the firing squad so to speak."

Jon pursed his lips. "Your weapon, Lieutenant. Or shall your second step too now?"

Vynn clenched her jaw. "Ah, I see it. You think me a coward?" She scoffed. "Fine. Las pistols."

Jon inclined his head fractionally. He had expected her to gravitate towards swords. He was fairly sure that she would fight as slowly and as strongly as an ogryn. Not entirely risk free, considering she topped him by half a meter and outweighed him by a dozen kilos. But pistols put the advantage entirely on whoever was the better shot. And Jon was deadly certain of his ability to put a laser through her heart.

Jon pulled his pistol, then offered it to Vynn. She took it, as was custom, and eyed it expertly. "A Voss?" she asked. "Or Martian?"

"Voss," Jon said. "They're not known for their lasers, but I find the reliability of the energy cell is quite handy."

"I can see it's expanded." She eyed it, then chuckled. "No scorch marks."

Jon smirked ever so slightly. It was a known truth that Imperial Guardsmen, when desperate for energetic power packs, would dump spent ones in the firepit, so that they might charge via thermal conduction. Jon had heard several swore it made the machine spirits of their guns more feisty and eager to smite their enemies. The fact those soldiers had been in his company entirely because their weapons had jammed at inopportune moments had been entirely glossed over by their rosy tales. Vynn held his pistol out and he took it. Then he took hers.

It was an utterly serviceable Lucias pattern. More famous for their hellguns than their laspistols, there was still a sense of hard use to the weapon. The edges were worn and the trigger and firing lens were well maintained. He handed it back, his respect for the woman notching upwards despite his cold attitude.

Vynn took the pistol, a look of decision on her face. She and he turned paces and her second called out the time and announced them. Across the trio, the whole breadth of human solemnity could be seen. Vynn, duty and diligence. Jon, serious contemplation of death. Ur-Zakovo, looking like he merely wished to urinate. Five paces were taken, the call to turn came. Jon snapped up his pistol and, for the first time across nearly a hundred duels, he hesitated.

For Vynn, rather than lifting her pistol had instead tossed it under handed to her second, who had fumbled the catch and was trying to get the weapon off the grass. He stood and knocked some clumps of wet dirt from the machine, looking mortified and beginning to tug on his ear fiercely enough he was bid to tear it off.

"If you won't accept my apology, you bloody stiff laced civilian git," Vynn said, angrily. "I shant take a fine chirchical mind from the Imperium, Emperor knows we don't have enough of them. So fire, damn you, and be a good chap and patch me up afterward!"

Jon found him anger evaporate. In its place was a great joy. He laughed, holstered his pistol, walked quickly forward, and kissed Vynn on both cheeks. "Why...that is...the most remarkable display of courage I've ever seen!"

"Tosh," Vynn said. "I stole your charge pack."

###

Several orbits and five bottles a fine 39th millennium vino later, Jon and Vynn were both watching the vast orbital shipyards of Tempestus drift by. The massive, ungainly bulk of the

Hippodrome

dominated the many scaffolds, and the spark-flare of arc welders the size of small buildings cut brilliant white arcs through the blackness of space. Jon, feeling maudlin and introspective, lifted his half filled glass and caught some of that white light shining through the vino.

"I will be centuries dead before that is done. That great big wallowing transport. What does that say about man, hmm?" Jon lolled his head to the side and looked at Vynn.

"That...you...need to set sail more often," Vynn said, her voice serious - in fact, she had slipped into the

too

serious, definite enunciation that came on someone who was trying not to seem as drunk as they were.

"Sail?" Jon asked. "I'm afraid I only sail with the family."

"Family?"

"The Gudiweir, oh, oh four five five," he said, waving his free hand with a casual sloppiness, a looseness brought on by the giddiness of stepping away from death. Even if it was not his own that he had been contemplating.

"What do those numbers mean? Tracking digits, like for cattle?" Vynn asked, chuckling at her own jab. Nobility, in her mind, was easily divided into the useless, the fucking useless, and Rogue Traders.

"Of a sort," Jon said, drawing a snort from her. "The family has so many sub-family units that they number them, rather than use familial names. But no, no. They're all dead. Came to Tempestus to induct the youngest into the Tech-Priests. But they delved in the lower levels of the Forges and a gang of techcrows got them. Nasty beasts. Apparently, abominable intelligences. Self replicating, barely contained in the lower levels thanks to the electromagnetic warding and the Skitarri. No idea what took the family so low - like as not a trade jab, delivered third hand via a seneschal dropping some junk-code into a transcar."

Vynn nodded in mute incomprehension. "Yes, quite awful. I am sure."

"Still, with their demise, I am stuck until a ship arrives to take me back to Scintilla Prime."

"And how long, pray tell, has that been?"

"They died two years back," Jon muttered.

"Dear God-Emperor!" Vynn exclaimed. "That cannot do, it cannot do at all. A fine mind like yourself, rotting here? And such a good shot."

"But you did not get shoot...shot..." Jon corrected, then sipped. "You

stole

my charge pack. You. Cheating. Blackguard."

"All the exigencies of the service, I'm sure," Vynn mumbled into her chest, her chin tucked low. Jon extinguished any irritation he might have felt, pouring another glass for himself. That seemed quite appropriate. "But you see," Vynn continued, her head still lolled forward. "I saw the stance, the way you aimed. If you had pulled the trigger, I would have my soul flying out the mouth and to the Golden Throne in a heart beat."

"My thanks," Jon said. He did not dare speak of the reasons for his skill. The nightmare nights. The walls dripping with blood. The paintings who laughed. That hideously pink room, the child without eyes, who named him and named his death. He shook himself. Those thoughts were supposed to be gone -- scrubbed away by psykers and drugs alike. Jon dared not say to any who had the right to know that the wipe had not even worked an inch, lest they go the extra mile and remove more than merely memories. Life, for instance. He shook his head again, opening his mouth to ask Vynn questions that came to his jumbled mind: Questions such as 'does a ship need a chirgeon' and 'did you know your hair is quite lovely when lit by the fire of a thousand forges' and so on.

But instead, he was answered by snores and a tilting cup, spilling wine older than both put together and multiplied thrice over onto a carpet deserving far bluer blood striding across it.

"Ah, yes," Jon muttered. "Of course."

For a reason that remained utterly misty and vague to his own befuddled mind, the word

course

struck him as deeply funny. And chuckling under his breath, Jon settled into a deep sleep.

###

It is a simple fact that a servo skull is an endlessly endearing servant. Simple in mind, obliging in attitude, ghouls in aspect and to the average follower of the Creedo Imperitor Divinus, utterly ordinary. That is why no one remarked on the servo skull that had brushed against the door to Lieutenant Vynn's quarters and, upon finding her missing, had gone on a quiet expedition throughout the station. Making up for lack of imagination and intelligence with a dogged persistence, the skull found Vynn by the time she was taking advantage of Dr. Balthezar's obliging offer to use his ablution cell while he went for a short walk.