Take as Prize Ch. 04

"Ah, yes, ears ringing from a battle, all too common," Vynn said, shaking her head. "Come. Let us show you. And Regencina, you may come with, if your little hellion is not causing too much of a- Good Emperor!" Vynn sprang back and away from Mary Belisarius, who had crept up behind her and was tugging on her coat-tails. Mary spoke in the most imperious tone she could manage.

"I wish to come with."

"Well, I first boarded a hostile ship when I was but thirteen years of age," Vynn started, course corrected at the sight of Reggie's glare -- a glare that held within the unlimbering of weaponry and the marshaling of forces the like had not been seen in the galaxy since the Great Crusade had left spiral arms burning in its wake -- and finished with: "But of course, it cannot be done, as you are no mere twelve year old, you're the most important person on this entire ship! More so than me, or her, or the good doctor, or this man!" She gestured to a voidsman who was recovering from an amputation and chose to not hear the 'I think I'm quite important enough, you daft tattooed bint' that only slipped from Voidman Masley's mouth because of the three and a half injections of painkilling ampules.

Mary remained stubbornly unconvinced and demonstrated that fact by winking out of existence with a soft pop -- a sound so similar to the sound of champagne being uncorked that a half dozen lucky men and women looked around to see who had come to congratulate them.

"Dear God," Vynn said. "Navigators can do that?"

"Children can do it as well without a warp's eye or spark of psyker's talent," Regencina said, sounding tired and put upon. She pulled out a piece of techno-obscura that seemed to be somewhere between an auspex and a vox. She adjusted a dial upon it and pursed her lips. "If this is correct, I believe that she has gone left."

Jon wiped his hands clean, then smiled. "Just like old times," he muttered -- but not as quietly as he had hoped, for Reggie looked at him and cocked an eyebrow.

"You remember our trysts very differently, Jonny." Spoken with the casual disregard for her old station that only a decade in the Adeptus Sororitas -- who, being wed to the Emperor, saw little shame in the act between men made in his image -- the single sentence brought forth a blush to match and even exceed the fireworks that had presaged the destruction of the Hegemony's shields but a few short hours before. With that flush, the lot of them set off for the corridor, with Reggie in the lead, followed by Vynn, then Jon, then a curious DuPont. Reggie held up her auspex and Vynn laughed to see it.

"Ah, you slipped a tracking device in the squeaker?" she asked, jovially. Reggie looked aghast.

"Of course not," she said. "This merely detects the disruption to the Materium caused by the innate abilities of someone with navis genus..." she paused, her lower lip dimpling beneath a pair of perfectly white teeth. "She has set for the port seal locks. Those are what affixed this ship to the enemy?"

"Aye," Vynn said.

Reggie sighed. "Impetuous girl."

"Should I worry?" Vynn asked -- already dreading a long, creeping trip home, a trip made by casting the ship into the warp, then emerging again a mere few light hours away from the entry point. That was how the first ships had left the Holy Terran system, and while she may have admired the explorers and heroic figures that stood tall and imposing through the mists of antiquity, she did not want to emulate that trick. At least she would have a Geller Field, unlike the luckless sods who had first cast their craft through the Warp, heedless of the terrors awaiting within. She shuddered at the thought -- experience in the warp was mercifully vauge as to the details of what happened to ships whose Geller Fields failed. Black rumors of eyeless orgies of violence, ripping and tearing monstrosities, mass possession...

The haunting image was scattered by Reggie snorting. "Of course not. But whilst that twelve year old could easily slaughter the entire crew of the enemy ship without blinking, that does not lead one to the conclusion that she should."

"It doesn't?" Vynn asked, rubbing her hair in perplexity.

"It's widely considered to be a failing of moral instruction when your ward murders several thousand surrendered men," Jon put in. Reggie shot him a smile, and Vynn looked on with more incomprehension.

"But they're pirates, they're going to dance a jig out an open lock, you know."

"It's the principle of the thing!" Reggie snapped.

"I have to agree with the Sister," Damion DuPont said, leaning forward into the conversation. By that point, they had arrived at the seal-locks. Two rather bemused looking armsmen stood to either side of the opened lock, holding their naval shotcannons to their chests, their armor looking quite brilliantly red against the dull gunmetal gray of the walls. Even the yellow emergency lights couldn't diminish the ineffable glow that suffused the armor of men and women who had just won a smashing battle. They saluted as Vynn strode up to them, then the woman on the right -- a half Vedic by coloration, full Vedic by the red caste mark on her forehead and golden nose ring hooked to ear ring -- said: "Captain, this child ran right by us, and when we told her to bar off, she...she vanished!"

"Never fear," Vynn said, nodding to them. "That was the honorable Navigator, out for a stroll."

The two armsmen looked rather less sanguine about this than Vynn had hoped -- the woman made the sign of the Aquilla with thumb and palm, resting her shotcannon on her shoulder to do it. The man simply looked down the seal-lock, as if expecting to see the Navigator coming back to...well...to do what, Vynn wasn't sure. Different members of the Imperial Creed had different nightmares about what mutants might or mightn't do. And to be brutally honest, she did not care one pfenning for their fears. Instead, she strode past and gestured them to come with her. Now the party numbered six -- and a good half of it was growing visibly more concerned. Despite her lofty words, Reggie looked down at her auspex again and again.

The interior of the pirate's ship -- the rather impiously and ironically named Duty's Reward -- was much to Vynn's liking. It wasn't that she approved to see squalor and filth, anything the like, she just liked to see her own biases confirmed. She expected pirates to run a slovenly ship and to see the signs of want and neglect cheered her. It had also, surely, made it easier to take them. Despite being based off a transport, the Duty's Reward had some internal changes that had made her a faster, better sailor, and her regulation systems for plasma transference required considerably less manpower than the Hegemony did. But where the pirates had had more free men, they had put them not to gunnery or to keeping things tidy, but to running what had replaced the cargo holds. Well, half of them.

This was where they found young Mary. She had come to the door that the boarding crews had sliced open and was gaping with undisguised shock at the lower levels of the cargo holds. Had she come to the upper levels, she would have seen something more fit for her eyes -- the haphazard piles of gold and gems and trade goods that Duty's Reward had captured from honest shipping, in a collection that even the most brash of dragons would appreciate. But instead, she came here. To the slave pens. The stink was intense, even through former bulkheads, and with the door down, the fetid smells came forth in a cloud so bilious that it was nearly visible. Beyond the door was a walkway that allowed the crew to stride above the roughly rectangular pens -- which were sunk into the floor and built with cruel intention above massive cargo doors that could, with a flick of a switch, seal off a cell and dump the occupants into the harsh embrace of the Lady Void. There were roughly three dozen of those cells, and each had been crammed full with unwilling passengers.

Now, those passengers were being helped by the crew of the Hegemony, as best as they could be. An ensign who looked green to her cheeks was overseeing the passing out of ration kits and corpse starch, while grim faced voidsmen and pressed men alike tossed down bundled ropes and tied them off onto the catwalk. A vast prison break was coming -- and Vynn walked up to stand beside Mary Belisarius. She had served with midshipmen, but knew that rebuking the young Navigator for tears would not do. Instead, she clasped her hand to the back of her head and let Mary wrap her arms around her midsection.

"There there, it is okay, lassie," Vynn murmured. "We rescued them, see?"

Mary shoved off, so violently that an off balanced Vynn nearly pitched over the side of one of the railings and fell straight into one of the slave pits.

"Open our stores to them!" she said, with a tone that brooked no argument. Reggie nodded.

"As you wish, m'lady."

And so it was that, within two hours, the noble stores of House Belisarius was laid before the dumbfounded slaves, who ate as they had never eaten before -- and likely would never eat again. Stores that had been put aside to have Mary finish the cruise without ever once even smelling corpse starch or soylent viridans were parceled out and each rescuee ate their fill, carefully watched by a stern Doctor Balthazar, who was not above smacking a starving woman's palms and telling her that if she wished to die now that she had at long last been rescued, she could go right ahead and eat more. But the fusion of this generous spirit and the sudden, heady realization that some of her orders might actually be obeyed, had awoken something far more dire within the young Navigator.

"Lemmi at them!" she said, forgetting twelve years of diction training in a moment. "Lemmi at the...the...the worst of the most blaggardy scoundrels ever!" She lacked Vynn's long proficiency with curse words. But there was something alarmingly exact in the way that High Gothic could be when laying down invectives, and Vynn knew that any member of the prisoners who was left in the same room, corridor, chapel, bunker or cell with Mary would soon learn what made Navigators so frightful on the battlefield. For a very short time, at least.

"Absolutely not," Reggie said, sparing Vynn from having her primary means of conveyance strike her full in the face. "They will be judged by the laws of the Imperium and sentenced accordingly. Besides, you have done far more now in this single afternoon than most of your family has done in their entire lives, and you should be proud of it."

As Mary stewed on that, Vynn nodded, proud of her navigator as well. Then she started. "Oh!" Vynn slapped her head. "I almost forgot, Jon! Jon!" She turned to him. "Before I got distracted, I did come to you for a reason -- I wanted you to help me with the murder servitor!"

###

Jon seemed utterly fearless as he knelt beside the serivtor. As it did not leap from its restraints to slash him to pieces or tear him limb from limb, Vynn was comfortable in turning from him to Nestor Janus. Her first lieutenant was looking considerably less sallow and unapproachable with the rosy glow of victory about him. She beamed and said: "So, I know she's not like a ship you want to have as your first step, but-"

"Oh, no, I beg off," Janus said, shaking his head. "I cannot, that is, I must, that, I, that is, I thank you-"

Vynn threw her head back and laughed. "Nestor, you cad, I was jesting. As if I'd saddle the man who routed a Tyrannid fleet splinter with a cutter and a single long lance in a plodding transport, tosh." She shook her head. "No, I mean that I think you should pick a likely ensign we can promote to Lieutenant and then from there to acting commander. The slave crew would serve as prize crew without leaving the Hegemony understaffed. Maybe sprinkle a few of our able hands around to stiffen them, and send them home."

"A navigator, though," Janus said.

"They have one," Vynn said, nodding and turning to face the servitor and the surgeon. The murder servitor was being kept in the foremost of the slave cells. The cell might have been among the smallest that were available, but it made up for it by being the most heavily secured. It had not merely had the restraining chair that held the servitor, but also the immense force screen that they had needed the deft hand and mechadendrite of Enginseer Turantawix to coax down. There were also, he said, several las-turrets built into the walls to hose down the unfortunate prisoners who managed to circumvent the chair and the shield alike.

"A navigator, here?"

"Some ugly beastly thing, kept in a tank, barely human," Vynn said, frowning. "Didn't get an answer proper out of Sister Regencia as to if that's the future of our pipsqueak or if some Navigators are born unlucky. Still, he should be sane enough to see the ship to my prize agent, er, that is, to the naval shipyards at Tempestus."

Janus looked unamused. "Already cutting your share through it."

"Welllllll..." Vynn chewed on her lower lip. She may have immediately dashed off some calculations on a piece of parchment, then set the difference engine in the rear of the bridge to numerating through her specifications. In the end, it came out to nearly a half a million thrones for her just from her share, and a few extra hundred thousand thrones for the secondary rewards in ransom and head money for pirate prisoners and rescued nobles -- there had been a few in the slave pens -- alike. She grinned at Janus and saw that her excitement in the field of profit left him as dour and unsmiling as their first meeting. She sighed and tried a tack she thought he'd respond to: "Listen, Janus, we need to buy more ammo, do we not? And maybe uniforms for the pressed men?"

Janus did not curtly at that. "A man's duty is to the Emperor, not to material things."

"In this case the two are one in the same ha ha!" Vynn slapped him on the back. Then, frowning, she looked down at Jon. "Jon, what the devil are you doing down there, talking to it? it's a servitor, I can see the restraint bolts, and that's got to be vat-grown flesh!"

Further, no man was ever two meters tall sitting down, nor did any man naturally born have skin the color of the void itself. The thing, though, that had made her most sure it was a servitor was not the impossible strength and fitness of the hulking beast, but rather, the dumb vacancy in those blood red eyes and the heavy restraining harness affixed to its head. The only thing it lacked was the ornate and baroque augmetic plating that would complete the transformation from vat-grown killer to mostly mechanical slaughterer.

Jon stepped back from the servitor then said in clear High Gothic: "Wiggle the big toe, if you'd be so kind."

Vynn looked at Janus, irritation crackling on her face. Janus, though, was looking just as irritated at her.

"You want the head money for a murder servitor, don't you?"

"Well, they run near the price of a full battery of ought fours!" Vynn exclaimed, wounded to the core by Janus' complete accuracy. Then Jon stepped forward, pulled a few diodes from the restraining harness, then drew his pistol. Vynn cried out but did not stop him or sway his accuracy as he fired two shots into the chains around the servitor's wrists. The chains bust apart with a flurry of sparks and a flare of white hot metal and the immense creature stood. Vynn gaped, unable to look away from the hideous strength of the thing as it tore itself free from the few remaining restraints that wrapped about belly and thighs. It stepped away and stood, impossibly tall above Doctor Balthazar. Clad in naught but a totally unnecessary loincloth -- for servitors, save for a very select few, were never gestated with...ah...functioning parts -- the creature was a sight to see. She could count each abdominal muscle, and had to admit, the face was rather handsome, in a severe sort of way. Utterly bald, and without the restraining harness, she could see that whoever had engineered it had actually had quite the eye for the male form. In fact, the more she looked, the more she was uncertain.

This may not have been a murder servitor. More likely, it was...

Jon bowed as if to a fellow nobleman and said: "Welcome back to the land of the living, M'lord."

And the servitor laughed -- for it was no servitor at all -- and boomed: "By Vulkan's balls, I could use a goddamn drink!"

Vynn almost fainted dead away, and would have, had Janus not chosen to do so first and require her to catch him before he fell into the inactive field emitters and vaporized himself.

###

"The name is Kar'Toba."

Vynn and the rest of her officers, in their finest dress uniforms, sat ramrod stiff at the table. Vynn had done the only thing imaginable under the astounding conditions that she found herself in and ceded her place at the head of the table for the immense Adeptus Astartes. Kar'Toba had taken it with a jaunty smile, an inclined head, and then immediately tucked into the feast laid out for him. Whilst Mary Belisarius had been finally tucked into her much diminished spire, there were still enough stores to lay out a feast fit for a planetary king for the solitary demigod that had seen fit to be rescued by the Hegemony. Already, rumors had flown about the ship about the Space Marine. For most citizens of the Imperium, Space Marines never became more than religious iconography on murals and in those little Ascension Day cards that were purchased in bulk by grannies who did not know what to purchase their offspring. The fact one was aboard the ship had immediately decided on everyone that their captain was, indeed, more than merely a captain.

She had already heard her nickname and she would have appreciated being called the Voidhound more had she not been utterly in awe of the Space Marine himself.

Kar'Toba belched as he finished off his third cup.

"A mite quiet for a celebration," he rumbled, looking about himself at the officers. Vynn coughed and, as he had spoken directly to her (after a fashion) responded by leaning forward and saying.

"It's an, er, that is, a pleasure to, ah, that is, an honor for the, uh, meat. That is, meeting you. Uh, that is. Thou. M'lord. Sir!" She spluttered and Kar'Toba watched with increasing levels of bemusement. Vynn sprang to her feet, knocking her bicorn hat off her head on the chandelier that hung dangerously close to her table, and bowed low enough to nearly brain herself on the hard wood of the table. When she stood, she continued in her nearly lethal attempts to be gracious and a good hostess. "We are blessed. Quite blessed. Like meeting the Emperor himself! Not that, is, to be impious, I mean, the Emperor is quite busy! But, I mean..."

Kar'Toba leaned back in his seat and continued to watch Vynn flounder. His face, nearly unreadable, shone faintly under the bright, flickering lights of the candles in the chandelier, shadows cast across his face by the swaying motion imparted by Vynn's hat. Vynn trailed off with a quiet: "Oh bugger."

Kar'Toba pursed his lips.

Vynn had heard that a glare from a Space Marine could strike a man dead. She had heard that they had two hearts and never needed to sleep. She had heard that they ate the brains of those who displeased them, and could spit acid from their mouths. She had heard a great many things, and was deadly certain that every single one of them was absolutely true. But most of all, she had been told that Space Marines were utterly serious. Every inch of humor and self was pruned away by brutal training and the process that transformed them from normal humans to walking avatars of the Emperor's will, leaving naught but duty and valor and honor. And at that moment, she had trodden on that honor like a poorly trained canid.