Take as Prize Ch. 04

Kar'Toba threw his head back and let loose with a laugh that boomed the hyperdiamond windows. His hands went to his tunic -- the best that they could find for him to wear -- and he laughed and laughed and laughed. Once he had finished laughing, he wiped a single tear from his red eye and said: "I like you, Vynn of the Hegemony. Now, here. Take your damned seat back, get me another steak, and I shall tell you my tale."

He stood and thrust the chair back. Vynn felt like she was nearly a heretic for taking it, but once she had settled, Kar'Toba sat and, with salt shaker to stand in for a battle barge and several lumps of mashed potatoes scooped out and slapped onto the tablecloth to represent planets of varying sizes, he leaped into his own tale. Every officer around the table leaned in with great interest, and Vynn was shocked to see a member of the Adeptus Astartes speak so forthrightly about a campaign. She had expected, for some obscure reason, a great deal more 'thees' and 'thous.'

"The simple truth is that we Space Marines cannot be everywhere at once. This is why the Salamanders -- that is my Chapter, my brotherhood with the Astartes, you've heard of us? From Armageddon, I'm sure? Hah, that was a bastard of a fight. If you ever meet a Marines Malevolent, be sure to spit in their rations for me. Now, where was I. Yes, right, the Salamander's third company was sent to this region of space called the Jericho Reach, where we were fighting the Tau. Oh, the Tau? They're bastards, don't worry about them too much, Vynn. Now, our ship, the Indomitable, had just arrived near a colony world where we had heard that they were. But rather than finding them, we found a cruiser that had been marked by Chaos. A battle barge can stand against a cruiser, though not likely against one manned by a fine crew of the Imperial Navy, I'm sure of that!"

At that, his story had been interrupted by every visiting officer save for Jon cheering -- for Jon was taking the momentary distraction from table etiquette to take a second serving of steak.

"Now, this cruiser and the Indomitable grappled for three weeks. Whatever plasma she was burning, she was a fair sight faster than old ironsides, but our guns were better and our hit and run with the teleportarium struck every time a gap came in their deflector screens. Oh, ah, that is, their shields. Terminologies change, never apologize for confusion. Oh, yes, the teleportarium..." he shook his head at the ensign who had -- with the increasing conviviality of the dinner and the extra glass of port -- asked him about the arcane device. "Never set foot on one of those things with a full stomach. I hate them. But, still, we could never spend more than ten minutes aboard that ship before their counter-boarding protocols would kick on. Oh, what were those?" He shook his head. "You'd durther not know, I assure you of that."

By this point, Kar'Toba had shifted from merely using a salt shaker and some potatoes to actively scribbling lines of battle on the silk tablecloth. It was at that moment that, decorum or no, Vynn's servant stepped in and slapped down a piece of parchment over, muttering under his breath about savage lack of table manners like no son of the Emperor he'd ever imagined, such rot. Kar'Toba cheerfully scrawled more notes, and the increasingly drunk officers asked increasingly slurred questions.

"Eventually, we managed to blow apart one of her thrusters, chased her to a gravity well, and struck her down! Crushed!" Kar'Toba slammed his fist onto the table and the huzzays and cheers that broke out covered entirely the shattering sound of the glasses knocked off the table, or the groan of the serving staff as they saw port and amnesac spilling across the carpet.

"Still, what happened next?" Midshipman Blightly asked, his face shining with excitement.

"Well, lad, this is where my part in the story becomes a tad embarrassing," Kar'Toba said, leaning back and lacing his midnight black fingers through one another as he set them on his belly. He frowned and tucked his broad chin against his chest, contemplating the past. "I am, officially, a Tactical Marine. Two centuries of service. But my specialization is Thunderhawk pilot. Now, some chapters, even some companies within my chapter, delegate such a thing to Chapter Serfs. Nothing dishonorable in that, nothing at all. But I prefer, and I know my battle brothers, prefer to trust our lives to another battle brother."

The naval officers nodded and drank more port. This was quite logical to them, of course. would be like letting a trained landsman fly a cutter. You could, aye, but why? Among the officers -- from Vynn downward -- it was already decided that the Salamanders were clearly the finest of the Adeptus Astartes, and they would gladly fight to prove it, see if they did not. The only one who did not share in their conviviality was Jon, but they expected the doctor to remain quiet. It was his way, after all, when his blood wasn't up and he wasn't being fascinated by some piece of xenofauna or another.

"So, I was in the Thunderhawk, transporting the last of our boarding party away, when a stray hit struck the engines. There were but enough thruster packs for the rest of the squad -- mine was damaged, you see. And so, I set them away, and swore to stay by the ship. Alas, the machine spirits weren't quite pleased about the rough treatment that we had shown them, and so the Thunderhawk detonated whilest I was floating nearby. My vox, damaged, my suit, leaking. I patched the leaks, but by the time I got the vox functioning, the Indomitable was sailing away." He sighed, his face growing grim. "And so...I entered into a battle trance, as we Space Marines can do. It slowed my breathing and my needs for nutrients and my suit would handle the rest."

The others nodded. Vynn knew of several officers -- none on her ship, as they all skewed too young to have accrued that kind of adventuring -- who had survived similar dire straights, though none had been quite so desperate. Those trapped aboard a hulked ship, for instance, would have slightly more resources than a solitary figure drifting in the big emptiness. She wondered what if must have been like for Kar'Toba and shuddered.

"When I woke, I was in restraints, and have been sold from one crew to another for the past three years," Kar'Toba said. "I've escaped several times -- only to be recaptured. Without my armor, without my bolter, I am still more man than not and it does not matter if I can withstand a single electro-prod when a dozen are used." He shook his head. "It seemed each captain saw me as a white elephantine, ironic considering my coloration." He chuckled, but it was without humor. "Quite a pretty penny for selling me, but little use for me whilst I sat in their holds."

Vynn slapped her palm to her table. "Then this I swear, Sir Kar, I will take you to civilization and set you to Nocturne if that is the last thing I live to do."

The others nodded and Kar'Toba smiled a wan little smile.

It was only after the dinner, while Kar'Toba walked towards his passengers quarters, that a voice cut him off short.

"A pretty tale you spun. A pretty lie."

"I know that voice," Kar'Toba said. He spun and from the darkness came Pyros. The psyker was clad in her skintight clothing and held a sleek las-pistol in her hand. Her other was resting on her hip, which she cocked to the side. Her eyes roved up and down the Space Marine's body and she chuckled quietly and tossed her head to get some white bangs from before her vicious, predatory eyes. She sneered as she stepped closer to him.

"That you do, Julkos," she said, quietly. "And I know why your armor was painted not green but black. I know, too, why you have not told them where it was stashed aboard that ship. I know a great many things." Her eyes focused and the faint chill of psyker powers suffused the corridors. She was risking much, drawing on the fabric of the Warp here. But those powers writhed through her body, augmenting and strengthening tissue and bone alike. For just a few short moments, she would match the Astartes if he chose to leap upon her. Kar'Toba -- or Julkos as was his true name -- tensed and she could see centuries of training and practice guiding him.

The sharp, harsh crack of a lasgun going off caused both to stiffen.

Then, with the slow slumping bonelessness of sudden death, Pyros tottered forward and slapped into the floor, a neat hole burned into the back of her skull. Toughened or not by psyker powers, bone could not replicate a flak vest. Stepping from the shadows came Jon -- his hand did not shake, but his face and his skin gleamed with sweat, as if he had just performed surgery on himself. He choked back a quiet gasp, turned his face aside, then holstered his pistol.

"I apologize for that, Kar'Toba," he said, his voice ragged.

Julkos did not relax from his combat posture -- for he did not know how much the doctor had heard. But the next words that Jon said made Julkos relax. "I don't know what that witch was doing, but I had to stop it. Stop her. I can't let my shame...my failure harm one such as you. I refuse to allow it." Jon's jaw was clenched tightly and he holstered his pistol with a quick, jerky motion. The smoke rising from the back of Pyros' head trickled through the grating in the ceiling.

Kar'Toba -- for he was fully in that guise once more, assuming the jovial smile of a cheerful and charming Salamander marine -- laughed and shook his head. "Never fear -- and never apologize for slaying a witch. Suffer not a witch to live and all that." Kneeling down beside the woman, Kar'Toba hefted her up. "Show me to the seal-lock and we'll dispose of this. Was she anyone important?"

"A passenger. I can explain it," Jon said, nodding.

Together, the two stole through the ship. Supernatural dread and the late hour kept any from asking too many questions, and soon, the psyker's body was tumbling away into the ship's wake, where it was later vaporized by the plume of the plasma engines. Jon slept soundly and happily for the first time in many weeks, a broad smile stretched across his face. He need not feel the writhing guilt of Pyros coming to his room. No longer did he have to worry about why she had come here, to this ship, to this specific cruise.

Maybe he should have worried. For even an unanswered question might still trouble a man's soul and a man's future. Such a question often left an exclamation point -- and a golden one rested in the broad, dark palm of Kar'Toba as he knelt within the room offered him. There, his pigmentation became more and more pale as he relaxed the careful control he had taught himself of the implanted Melachromic Organ that controlled his skin's tone to protect against radiation and harsh sunlight and other such perils. Most of the Astartes had no such instinctive control...but there were ways to learn them. Ways learned under alien suns and in nightmarish skies.

He chuckled as he looked down at the capital I with a centerpiece of a skull -- inactive and inert, for the tell-tail signature of a force shield would have been detected and noticed. The double layer of irony amused Kar'Toba, amused Julkos. The Inquisitor had fitted so neatly into her disguise that even one of her old associates had not realized it and done his job for him. And so, tucking the rosette away in a quiet part of his quarters that he was sure would not be found without a thorough search, Julkos went to his bed, laid down, and slept the sleep of the damned.

He dreamed not a wink and felt no guilt.

TO BE CONTINUED