Tuco tries his hand at politics once again; interstellar diplomacy.
Someone once said, “The men who make history have not the time to write it” but do you know my friends, I think that I’m getting so good at this politics game, I believe I should devote a few lines of my memoirs to pass on my burgeoning astuteness in the art of statecraft for the benefit of future generations. Oh yes, Tuco is certainly becoming a wily old fox as time goes by, as capable of subtle dialogue and debate, as of cracking skulls when the circumstances require it.
My second venture into the complex world of politics sprang from our meeting with the Rogue Trader Helmut Vandire. Now, as you well know my friends you can call Tuco many things, a liar a thief, a murderer, and a bigamist amongst them. However, if there’s one thing that you can’t call him, it’s an ingrate. I certainly have to admit that if he and his men hadn’t turned up when they did, the crew of the Red Ruin and I would have had our raggedy asses kicked from here to Port Wander by the Rak’gol mother ship that had turned up in the Wyrding system looking for fun and plunder. Our ship had taken one hell of a beating and we were a final broadside away from swimming back to the Varrick system when the cavalry turned up in the form of Vandire’s cruiser (the Dire Wolf) with its fully functioning Nova cannon. After a very one sided engagement with the Rak’gol, which resulted in them becoming an extinct species in this part of the galaxy, Vandire hailed us and announced he was sending over a boarding party. The next thing we see is a group of heavily armed arch-militants teleporting right on to our bridge. Wow, this guy certainly knows how to make an entrance! A Nova cannon and a teleportarium, that ship must be worth a god damned fortune!
OK, so I’m all ears, this guy has just saved our lives and has the kind of ordinance that would put the Navy to shame. Perhaps, he’s on the trail of the Anno Dignitas loot? Hell, maybe we could share the intel we’d gleaned so far (pretty much none to be honest but we could pretend to have some ideas) and he might cut us in on a share of the horde. Yeah, not the most likely of scenarios I have to admit but I’m an eternal optimist where treasure is concerned. Anyway, no such luck. He says he’s the rightful owner of the Varrick system and he’d very much like us to take him there so he can take stock of his holdings. Well, that’s not going to happen thinks I. We take him there with this beast and we don’t have a single card left in the pack with which to play. He sees how under strength we are and he just rolls through the system taking whatever he wants and killing whomever he sees fit, which might include the people who brought him there. In the end, nobody likes a stool pigeon. I looks round his bridge with my ‘how easy would it be to gun down all these bastards right here and right now?’ military hat on and decide we’ve not quite got the right tools for the job. So, we have to play
with the hand we’ve been given and use some smarts.
First off, we make it sound like young Darius can punch above his weight. You know the sort of thing, the Vengance is a vicious war bird (actually that’s true) and that the Varrick system is a veritable fortress, orbital gun platforms, well trained ground forces armed to the teeth etc, etc. We tell Vandire that we’ll return to the system to parley with Darius and organise a meeting to bring him to the negotiating table. However, it would be in no one’s interest to go steaming in there with the Dire Wolf unannounced as it would undoubtedly lead to an armed conflict that wouldn’t benefit anyone even if he came out on top. By this point we can see that Vandire, while in a strong position, didn’t have the stomach to embark on an all out fight. There was something a little fishy about his turning up in the Koronus Expanse from the Segmentum Solar in the first place. If he was the big shot as he was claiming to be, why was he out here in the ass end of nowhere fighting over table scraps like the Varrick system? Anyway, he was confident enough though to let us take one of his navigators, a man called Mordenachai, aboard the Red Ruin back to Shard. The plan was that the navigator would somehow communicate the coordinates to the Dire Wolf and the cruiser would roll up in system when we’d done the diplomatic spadework. Now I’m no expert on navigators but I’m still at a loss as to how this Mordenachai was going to get back in touch with his boss. Those damn mutant freaks are just one up from astropaths in terms of their psychic trickery but I’ve got it on good authority that they can’t speak across the void like their eyeless cousins. I’m with the inquisitors on this one, ‘They hide a darkness in their souls far more repulsive than any warping of the flesh or disfigurement of the limb. Would that they weren’t quite so useful then we could burn the lot of them’.
Well anyway my friends, let me tell you that we had no intention of taking Mordenachai anywhere near the Varrick system to begin with. My idea was that we torture the bastard three ways from Sunday first off to find out exactly how he was going to keep in touch with the Dire Wolf. Solar Gillam counselled for a softer approach though saying he might turn out to be a useful ally and that torturing him might tarnish a mutually beneficial relationship. OK, so I bowed to the wisdom of the Spy Master on that one. I wouldn’t take it too personally myself if it’s just business but he’s the human resource expert. We decided that the best way to handle things would be to go to the Aquilar Space station and signal Darius to meet us there. That way Vandire was still a step away from the Varrick system if the navigator was somehow feeding him intel. When the Vengeance showed up we decided to contact Vandire to see if he would meet us on neutral ground, say Argarok, in order to see if there was any possibility a peaceful solution. To be honest, I didn’t hold out much hope of that as Darius has spent far too long finding his father’s legacy to give it up without a fight but maybe Vandire had something to sweeten the pill enough.
Back on Argarok events unfolded very quickly. Someone once said that, “War is merely the continuation of politics by other means”. Well, Darius decided within about 5 minutes of meeting Vandire that ‘a continuation’ would be necessary to resolve matters. I suggested that we make hay while the sun shone and jumped those bastards right then and there. If we were quick enough off the starting blocks we might just catch them off guard and gun down the big man before he could teleport back to his command carrier. We nearly pulled it off as well. Both Solar and I hit the target but he was wearing a damned fine suit of armour and soaked up the punishment before beaming out. At this point Mordenachai decided to show his true colours and switched sides to us, a brave decision in light of Vandire escaping the assassination attempt. However, his help was most welcome as he took out their chief headshrinker who could have caused us a lot of problems. Having botched our attempt to cut off the head of the serpent, we were now in a race against time to take on the Dire Wolf before she could engage us with her vastly superior firepower. We kept the Vengeance in close to her and took a pummelling as a result but it gave us the opportunity to put boarding parties on her.
Well, old Tuco likes to get up close and personal in a scrap, so he wades in on the first gun cutter. Mordenachai reserved a seat on the same bus as he knew where the teleportarium was and could also negotiate the ship’s Tenebro maze. We were lucky. We made good time on finding the teleportarium and although it was defended by a heavy bolter crew, we breached the inner sanctum by bypassing the choke point using under floor maintenance crawl ways. Unfortunately, I got lost a bit at this point and thinking we were underneath the sanctum, decided to use a demolition charge to blast our way out and on to victory. Not only were we still forward of the heavy bolter choke point but I mistimed the detonator and managed to get caught in the blast radius. Hands up, a bad day at the office for Señor Ramierez! Hell, who hasn’t had one of those from time to time. Nevertheless, despite that short break in transmission, we secured the area and got the tech geeks working the teleporter to transport Vandire to our brig. They weren’t so keen at first but Mordenachai melted one of their heads with some of his freakishly mutant third eye shenanigans. I didn’t know they could do that either. We’ll have to keep a very close eye on this guy.
With Vandire taken out the rest of his crew very quickly lost their stomach for a fight and we took the Dire Wolf. It was a shame she took such a beating in the battle (the Vengeance too for that matter) but she’ll make a very fine addition to the fleet. As for now, we are on our way back to Shard with our prize looking to see how bad the damage is and if we can refit her. I’m still hoping we can get back on the trail of the Anno Dignitas fortune though. I can smell the riches out there! All we need is one lucky break to take up the scent again!
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