Just as we were about to leave with our chief grease monkey and one of the ship’s headshrinkers in tow, when who should make an entrance but an old business acquaintance of mine, the Right Reverend Rook. I haven’t seen that young rascal since we pulled off a gun running scam on Athonos! We were selling rifles to both sides in one of their almost unending civil wars. Nasty business as I remember, several hundred thousand dead, millions more turned into homeless refugees. Still, I’ve always said that a man should have the right to defend his most deeply held beliefs by shooting those that hold contradictory views, and I would certainly defend my right to turn a profit on providing him with the necessary firepower to do just that. As things went we made a very tidy sum out of that job I can tell you. Rook was a respected priest back in those days, which comes in useful when your true calling is as of a merchant of death. If you can’t trust a man of the cloth to sell you a decent las rifle, who can you trust? Also, he’s got the gift of the gab when it comes to rabble rousing, so he could always get the punters fired up and ready to spend by telling them what a bunch of godless heathens the other lot were. A veritable licence to print money! Unfortunately, both the locals and the Ecclesiarchy finally got wind of what we were up to and we had to make a pretty sharp exit off world. Sad to say though, our shuttle made orbit without him. I tell you my friends, you’ve got to be fleet of foot in our game and wearing a monk’s habit can slow you down a great deal. The last I’d heard of him, they’d caught up with old Rooky, had him publicly defrocked and then strung him up from the nearest lamp post. Must admit I’m surprised he’s still with us travelling along this mortal coil and even more surprised he’s still wearing the robes and peddling the Word of the Lord but there you go, he always was the smooth talker. He’s already approached me about picking up where we left off on the gun running gig, so some things never change. I said I was certainly in if the money was right.
Right, so as I was saying, we made our way to this council meeting to see what all the fuss was about and why they hadn’t invited Darius. I tell you my friends; old Tuco knows a nest of slippery vipers when he sees one and those slithering bastards would have put a Catachan jungle to shame! They were moaning and bellyaching about Varrick’s return and how much more power and money they should have on account of the recent turn of events and the defeat of the Whisperers! Well! I mean look at it like this. Before we came out of the Warp to save their raggedy asses, they didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. They were wallowing in their own filth and misery, starving and waiting to be enslaved by the taint of chaos! Did they have a single idea about how to overcome their plight? No! Were they weeping with joy and begging to be saved from certain damnation when we stepped off of the gun cutters? Yes! And now that we’ve defeated the Whisperer and liberated the system, they’ve dusted off their flea ridden fur coats, tired old powdered wigs and fake jewellery and are strutting around demanding their blue bloodied, noble born rights. I told them as much and quietly placed the frag grenade on the meeting table to remind them of the reality of the situation. I never been a great student of politics but I felt this was a persuasive argument. Darius did after all, ask me to represent his interests. To be honest, if I’d have had my way I’d have pulled the pin and left the whole lot of them in the room to reflect on their arrogance and treachery. Start again from scratch, that’s my view. Get some new blood to represent the people. Well, there was a lot of flapping about and wringing of hands before young Darius came down to try and sort the mess out himself. I wasn’t really listening to the details of what he said, that diplomacy stuff goes right over my head, but from what I did pick up he made some kind of compromise offer about having some meetings with them to discuss the situation further. When the bellyacher in chief said that wasn’t good enough and started banging his fake jewellery toy stick around on the ground to conclude the meeting, the boss asked me to step in restore some order to the proceedings. Speaker Tal was well into his seventies, so he probably didn’t think I’d hit him. Actually, I was quite prepared to give him a good kicking too but was asked to go easy on the old guy because of his heart condition. I gave young Varrick the toy stick and everything seemed to calm down. Politics? It’s child’s play if you are a people person like Tuco Ramirez!
After my first, very successful foray into the world of politics young Darius said I might concentrate on solving a series of murders that had been taking place on planet and had recently spread to The Vengeance. Apparently, people had been having their brains eaten and their bodily fluids sucked dry by some disgusting alien parasite that was then assuming their shape and character. Nathanius (one of the blind headshrinkers) had been studying it in some book or other and thought that it was something called a Simulacra. Honestly what do these people read?! And how if he’s meant to be blind?! That young chap should get out more. Well, we went up to the Vengeance and started a search. My first thoughts were to flood sections of the ship with deadly nerve gas, or perhaps to vac them instead as it might be more cost effective. As the beast was hiding in human form though it might have led to quite a few ‘incidences of collateral damage’ so we discounted that approach. Nathanius told us psykers could detect them though, so we put him and Lazarus on the case to track it down. It was remarkably easy in the end. The thing was playing cards down on the lower decks as bold as brass! Now there was some talk of us going down there with non lethal weaponry and trying to take it alive. Well, as my readers know, I’m a very reasonable man but I can’t see any earthly reason why you’d want to take a brain eating shape changer alive, so it can eat your brain and assume your shape. Therefore I did the eminently sensible thing and shot it dead on sight.
