Have you ever seen the dead walk? Seen them come to life and stalk the earth looking for victims to drag back to Hell? No, neither has Tuco Ramírez and trust me my friends he has no intention of doing so anytime soon! However, on my last job I came as close as any man can do to such horrors and remain alive to tell the tale. ‘How did it all go down Tuco?’ I hear you ask. Well, let me tell you.
I was kicking my heels on Shard, overseeing the training of the newly formed Palace guard. We’d just liberated the Varrick system from the evil influence of the Whisperer and its tainted minions, so were rebuilding planetary defences. Tuco finds that those inevitable lulls between the intense excitement of a pitched battle can wear a man’s spirit down. Organising duty rosters, setting up drill schedules and developing training regimen can only keep you occupied for so long. Anyway, an old associate of mine, a tramp steamer captain known as the Warder, came to pay me a visit with a money making proposition that piqued my interest. Over a glass or two of the good stuff he told me that he’d been involved in what’s known as the ‘cold trade’ since I’d seen him last. What’s more, he was on the verge of uncovering a large cache of ancient artefacts that would bring a very pretty penny on the open market. All he needed was a little help from his old compañero Tuco to realise the potential profits. Easy work, rich pickings. Sound too good to be true? Surely, there’s no such thing as an easy buck? Tell it to Tuco my friends, tell it to Tuco!
The Warder had engaged the services of a spy, or a trusted advisor as he liked to called him. I’ve never been one for fancy language and half truths. A thief’s a thief, a whore’s a whore and a spy is certainly a spy. Simple, there’s no room for confusion. Still, the Warder’s paying the bills so I suppose he can call him what he wants. Anyways, this spy, Paldron’s his name, gets himself taken by a group of slavers working out of Footfall and not just any old slavers mind you, but the dreaded Tutors. They do things to men Tuco can’t even pronounce! Well, a man gets himself taken by that bunch of space scum, he ain’t got no one to blame but his self. It’s has own damn fault and he should learn to live with the consequences. The Warder says though that he knows where this stash is buried and if we want to see a red cent of it, we better spring him double quick time as those Tutors have a habit of mind wiping new stock they are going to pass on for sale.
Well, it’s a tough gig and no mistake! Turns out they’ve got him holed up in their fortress on Footfall, a place called the Red Schola. No one that’s ever gone in there uninvited has managed to get back out alive. Seems, in addition to the regular guns, guards and gates, they’ve got some kind of fancy mind traps that’ll paralyse any poor fool unlucky enough to clap eyes on them. Ha! As you know Tuco’s never been much of the cerebral type, so he reckons that gives him a real edge over these slick bastards! OK, so I takes the job on. Now, we know we can’t just go in there blasting, the place is too big and there’s just too many of em. We’ve got to use some smarts on this one, but not enough smarts to get us trapped! We heard tell that some of the Tutors took time out from selling slaves to spin the wheels at a couple of gambling dens on the station. We also heard that the brother of some guy crazy enough to try and rob the Schola might be able to give us some inside skinny. He’d played the lookout while his brother tried to turn the place over. No one had ever seen the brother again but this kid had been taken by the Tutors and was regularly paraded around town on a leash to put the frighteners on anyone else who might come up with a bright idea. It was a starting point.
Old Tuco’s not one for overly fancy plans, so when he finally came across one of the Tutors carousing in a gambling den, well, he thought it was time to teach that man a lesson so to speak. Of course he was travelling with a minder but there’s no minder ever been hired that can put the brakes on Tuco when he’s got a head of steam built up. Needless to say, one grisly set of shootings and severe beatings later, the survivors were willing to tell us what we needed to know. Now my friends, this is where it gets a bit sneaky. This is where old Tuco employs a little of the aforementioned smarts. Why not sneak into the place pretending to be the Tutor and his minder? Of course it was a bit more complicated than that, however, with the aid of a bit of visual trickery and without giving too many trade secrets away, we actually made a decent fist of it. Never underestimate the power of greed my friends. The lure of a decent haul will always make the impossible seem a great deal more possible when push comes to shove. My only nagging doubt is that we busted back out of the place without introducing the leader of their gang to a hail of High explosive bolt shells. Never leave an enemy behind to regroup and take revenge. Still if this ‘Master’ knows what’s best for him, he’ll keep a good distance between himself and Tuco Ramirez!
Having sprung Paldron, we found that he’d been so badly tortured that he couldn’t even try to say his own name without breaking into hysterical fits of screaming. As much as I’m a compassionate and caring man, we needed to know where all that loot was before those slaver bastards made a try for it. After all, Paldron could have talked. The Warder said he was too much of a professional for that but who knows how far a man’s professional standards might slip when he’s having his mind fried on a red hot skillet! Anyways, I suggested we bring in a Psyker to burrow out what we needed before whatever he had was worthless to us. Sure enough we got the right intel. The crafty bastard had had the coordinates to the star system we wanted grafted into a sub dermal tattoo on the top of his head. Of course, we had to scalp him to get to the map but the Doc said it was very unlikely that the tutors had already discovered it given his level of hair growth. A real lion’s main thank the Emperor! Who’d be a spy eh!? Still, he’ll get his share like the rest of us. You sign up for a job, you make damn sure you finish it. Whatever it takes, that’s Tuco’s motto!
The map led us to Capula, a desert planet in the Egarian Dominion. They’ve not come across my radar before but the Warder told me that the Egarians were a long dead species. They’d left vast structures on a score of worlds but nothing of any value in a single one of them! Not a promising start I must admit. I was beginning to think we’d expended a lot of damn effort for no return when the ship’s augury detected a crashed shuttle on the surface. Perhaps a treasure ship? Perhaps the Tutors had got here before us but screwed the job up and left us a clear run? Hope springs eternal when there’s a haul involved. We went in to take a peek and old Tuco got the surprise of his life! No money to be found but an old comrade in arms from my days on Luther Mcintyre. I remember young Lukas when he was knee high to a sand spider, caught out in the open when the White Scar Marines came hunting for young recruits. Well, stone me if he isn’t eight feet tall now, pumped so full of chems and implants you’d hardly recognise him! His parents would’ve been so proud if they hadn’t been cut down with bolter fire when they tried to stop them taking him. I’ll tell you something though, he can’t half catch you unawares for a man of that size! No wonder those White Scars have a reputation for silent incursions!
Once we’d recognised each other and exchanged pleasantries, we all sat down around a camp fire, cracked open a flask and he brought us up to speed with the latest developments. Turns out he’d parted company with the Chapter a while back and started working on and off with a Throne Agent called Gorian Debarii. More off than on at that point, as the bastard had double crossed him and left him for dead here while he caught a ride to the next location on this treasure hunt. Little did Debarii know though that Lukas had some information that he wasn’t party to and he’d have a real tough time breaking into the vaults where the artefacts were without it. So, I offered him a decent share if he threw his lot in with us. After all, we death worlders should stick together shouldn’t we? If we don’t look after each other who will? He agreed and we returned to the Warder’s ship in the hope of catching up with Debarii before he struck the mother lode. Hell, that’s when things really started hotting up!
I know these Throne Agents have some juice but we soon found out that the ride he’d hitched was on a full blown cruiser. The Warder’s ship is little more than a rusty old tramp steamer, so that made a stand up fight out of the question. Time for more smarts. Tuco’s never been a great thinker but when there’s gold on the line he’s got animal cunning! We deliberately dropped out of warp outside of their sensor range to assess the situation as best we could from a healthy distance. We found out that the cruiser had already jumped again leaving a task force working at a dig site on the planet. As we snuck in closer, we were able to intercept their comms transmissions, so we knew they thought they were on to something. I tell you Tuco Ramirez can smell loot through the cold void of space my friends and I knew the moment of truth was at hand! We came in by shuttle on the dark side of the planet to avoid detection. As we approached the dig site overland we became aware of a massed flock of flying terrors many thousands strong… migrating to who knows where? Thank the Emperor they didn’t catch sight of us, as we were lightly armed and few in number. When we got to within striking distance of the excavation site we knew that a frontal assault wouldn’t be possible. The terrain was in their favour and they had strength of numbers. Stealth was the name of the game here. I don’t mind crawling through the dirt as long as I come up smelling of roses and nothing smells quite as sweet as a saddle bag full of money.
Lukas and I made the final trek to the dig site, well camouflaged and ever so silent. We had a slight scare with a tarantula gun pod but nothing a seasoned old hack like me can’t handle. We sneaked past the defenders to get into the complex that the excavation team had been working on. As Lukas had predicted, Debarii had jumped the gun ditching his partner too early, so he hadn’t been able to figure out how to open the complex’s vault doors and was having to cut his way in. They say patience is a virtue but not when you have a key and an alternative entrance, so we took the back door in leaving Debarii on the surface twiddling his thumbs. What a site when we got down there! I’ve heard of the Necrons from mercs that managed to get off Damnos before they took it. Never seen them up close until now though. Legions upon legions of them frozen in time, weapons still clutched to their chests! It was a tomb robber’s paradise my friends, but we knew that we had precious little time before our Throne Agent friend and his storm troopers joined us. Worse still, we both had a really bad feeling that our undead companions in those cavernous tombs weren’t going to remain dead for very much longer! We were careful not to stir them too quickly but we managed to get a nice cache of choice items before making a diplomatic exit. I’m afraid the last thing I heard was a cacophony of bolter and las fire, so I’m very much afraid that our poor friend Debarii has woken up a city full of sleeping, extremely grumpy Necrons, all armed to the teeth with xenostech weaponry. I do hope he made it out of there safely!
