The Chronicles of Tuco: Part Ten

How to bring about a regime change in straightforward, 

easy to follow steps; A simple guide by Tuco Ramirez (Volume 2)

People say that I’m not a man of great subtlety. People say that if I have the choice of getting a job done by either talking to someone, or by gunning them down where they stand, then I’d let my bolt pistols do the talking. However, they are wrong my friends and if they insist on disagreeing with me they better be able to back it up with a fast draw and a sure aim! Old Tuco Ramirez can use his natural cunning when he has to, particularly when there’s loot to be had. Take the time we were overthrowing the King of Pulonia Major. That wasn’t an occasion when you could just go in shooting and hacking without a care in the world. Oh no, that was a time for great cunning, or as one might say, the art of concealing your own defects, and discovering weaknesses of others.

We’d been working on the overthrow of King Agindar since our attempt at diplomacy and winning him over to our way of thinking had ended in us having to kill half of his retinue and car bomb his palace. Now, that definitely wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t even there when that whole mess kicked off. We’d left all the ‘talky stuff’ to our self proclaimed ambassador, Franz Schwarzenbach. The last thing I heard before all the shooting started was him saying how easy this would all be and how he’d have Agindar eating out of his hand before they’d tucked into the first course of the state dinner we’d been invited to. Now, I’m not one to dwell on the failings of others but what a bloody fiasco that turned out to be. As any of my crew mates will tell you, when I take a seat at the negotiating table I always take a fragmentation grenade with me to underline the strength of feeling that I hold about a particular position. Never failed yet. That’s where I believe old Franz went wrong. Nothing encourages compromise on the part of our opposite number like the threat of live ordinance.

Anyway, as I was saying, I’m not one to rake up the past mistakes of others so let’s move on. As part of our insurrection we’d decided to recruit disaffected soldiers from Agindar’s military to aid us in our struggle to usurp him. We’d succeeded in enlisting around 700 well trained men from Lotaro and had returned to Pulonia Major. We still faced a major problem though in that Agindar had a heavy cruiser in system, the Bellerophon, that would be more than able to repel any attack from the ships that we had at our disposal and that could also kill off any planetary assault we tried to pursue. Time for a cunning plan! Well, Bevan Gul, Malachai and I set to work on creating just such cunning plan to deliver the Bellerophon into our hands and completely turn the tables on Agindar and his cronies. After much discussion and the scrapping of many initial suggestions, we set upon the idea of smuggling a small team on board the cruiser disguised as the attendants of a group of courtesans provided by Lady Gamorrah. Once aboard we could take the cruiser’s captain, a nobleman called Fingol, hostage forcing him to allow a larger force of marines to land and secure key areas of the vessel, forcing their eventual surrender. Simple! The old cutting off the head of the snake trick. I’ve seen that old chestnut work a hundred times before and as they say, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

Gul decided to go disguised as the courtesans’ guard, I went in as a clown/acrobat and Malachai dressed himself up as a servitor. You know, I’ve always thought that if I hadn’t become a mercenary, thief, bandit and murderer, that I might have joined the circus. I’m good with kids and would never tire of the Big Top, the smell of greasepaint and the rapturous applause of an enthralled audience. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls please welcome Tuco, the Flying buffoon!’ Anyway, I digress. The disguises worked a treat; we sailed past the guards in the Bellerophon’s docking bay. Hell, even I couldn’t tell the difference between Malachai and one of those zombie freaks! Actually, that’s maybe not such a tribute to Gamorrah’s makeup artists but anyway I looked amazing! What a transformation! Once out of the sight of prying eyes we switched clothing again and donned ship’s uniforms to throw their crew off the scent if we got picked up inside visitor restricted zones.

The next part of our plan involved us getting to the captain’s cabin in order to take him hostage. Our intelligence sources had sketched out a map for us but we wouldn’t have been able to make it that deep into the ship without our covers being blown at one of the many checkpoints. The only alternative was to take a space walk across part of the hull and come in at an airlock closer to his inner sanctum. We got out on to the skin of the ship OK but this is when we started to run into some hitches. Firstly, about ten minutes into our excursion, we realised that the ship was beginning to prepare to enter into the warp. If that happened and we were still on the outside of the ship, we’d have to start brushing up on our guidebook phrases for visiting the realm of chaos as we’d be keeping demons company for the foreseeable future. The airlock we needed to enter was a good slog so there were some tense moments getting there let me tell you my friends. To make matters worse we were buzzed by a fighter patrol and also had to negotiate a section of the hull that had some strange xenos infestation clinging to it. Never quite seen anything like it. Like barnacles or limpets they were but if you got close they’d shoot tentacles out at you. Thank the Emperor they didn’t catch hold of any of us and that we managed to string a grapple line up so we could rappel over and above them. Note, as soon as we get the opportunity we need to introduce those alien monstrosities to the cleansing flames of a promethean weapon!

Once back inside the ship we almost immediately ran into a patrol. With some quick thinking on the part of Gul we managed to fool them into thinking that we were a maintenance crew working out on the skin that was caught out by the unscheduled decision to prep for warp and were simply seeking shelter by the quickest means possible. They bought it for just long enough for us to get the drop on them and take their weapons. We then used them as unwilling escorts to get us as far as the final checkpoint without alerting the remaining guards or setting off any alarms. We overpowered the last of the pickets and found ourselves at the entrance to the captain’s quarters. Yet again Gul did some fast talking over the intercom and got the captain to power down the maglocks and let us into his cabin thinking we were a security detail sent from the bridge. Bingo! We were in and caught him literally with his pants down with some young male companion. Embarrassing for him but that’s what you get when you take your mind off the job and get to fooling around with the hired help. 

Of course, I set to robbing him as quick as lightning! There were some really choice items in that cabin my friends let me tell you. Of particular note were a lovely 39th Millennium oil painting (a hunting scene on Jantine Prime) and a very valuable gold paperweight in the shape of a terminator space marine, a rare and unusual piece. While I was getting on with the basics Gul and Malachai were setting in motion the other part of the plan which was to force the captain to turn the ship over to us and allow our Lotarian insurgents to board. It took a little persuasion and I might have had to threaten to shoot him in the knee caps at some point but he eventually agreed and radioed his bridge crew to authorise the necessary shuttle docking clearances. And that my friends, is how you take a cruiser without firing a single shot! Someone once said that, ‘cunning is but the low mimic of wisdom’. Well, they never took a battle cruiser out with just three men and a couple of auto pistols!

Once we had control of the ship the rest of our impromptu revolution was a cake walk. Of course with the Bellerophon we very quickly established total control of the airspace over Pulonia Major and once you have that the outcome of a ground war is pretty much predetermined. It’s just a matter of time before your opponents get fed up of being bombarded from orbit and run up the white flags. Give them their due though they didn’t turn belly up at the first air raid and we actually lost quite a few good men before they realised the hopelessness of their situation. Now politics is politics and I’ve never claimed to be much of a strategist but to my great surprise Gamorrah and Co. didn’t string Agindar upside down from the nearest lamppost they could find. Admittedly, he is going to spend the rest of his life inside a pain amplifier but at least he’s still breathing, which is something I’d never leave one of my enemies doing if I got half the chance. Well, all’s well that ends well as they say. As I pen these lines we are taking some well earned rest in the pleasure palace of the former dictator and weighing up our next move as regards Gorian Debarii, which was the whole reason we came to this Emperor-forsaken hole in the first place. I hear young Darrius is returning with the Vengeance and the rest of the fleet in the near future. Perhaps he’ll have some idea of how to proceed? Me? I need to find someone who’s interested in taking a 39th Millennium Jantine hunting scene off my hands for the right price.

The Chronicles of Tuco: Part 9

How to bring about a regime change in straightforward,

easy to follow steps; A simple guide by Tuco Ramirez

Well my friends as I record the events of recent months in this weathered journal I can declare to you that I have, with selfless resignation, taken on the mantle of the noble revolutionary. ‘What?!’ I hear you cry, ‘Tuco Ramirez the mercenary, the bandit, the common cutthroat and grave robber! Tuco Ramirez helping the weak and oppressed to throw off their heavy shackles of tyranny! Surely this cannot be one and the same man?’ Yes, yes I know the very thought sounds preposterous. Nevertheless, as our ship makes its way back to Pulonia Major, we are training and preparing a group of exiles to undertake an insurgency that will unite the discontented people of that unhappy planet to rise up and overthrow their corrupt and cruel king Agindar. Our aim is that they replace him with someone just as cruel, certainly as corrupt but ultimately more amenable to us, which I think you’ll agree would be a great improvement in their miserable lives. As someone once said, ‘In revolutions authority remains with the greatest scoundrels’.

This great undertaking began several months ago aboard the Dire Wolf. Malachai and I had deftly avoided any major fallout concerning the demon we’d discovered aboard the ship earlier and were thanking our lucky stars (and the eternal wisdom of the Emperor) that there had been no sightings of it since we thought that we had dispatched it in the cargo hold. At around this time we were approached by Bevan Gul, security chief for the previous management of Lord Van Dire. Gul told us that he would be more than happy to work for the new management and that his services would be useful in bringing over the rest of the crew to our way of thinking. Malachai seemed somewhat suspicious that a man could change his loyalties so easily and was reluctant to accept his offer at first. You see, Malachai’s a grease monkey and not a man at arms, so he doesn’t really understand how these things work. In this game, business is business… it’s nothing personal. Gul told us that Vandire hadn’t paid the wages bill for several months and the men had had to go short on grog and women. A captain that isn’t able to pay his debts just can’t expect his crew to be that dependable, it’s a given. So, when he says he’s willing to work for us instead (for a fair share of any loot) I’m comfortable with that. Never trust a man who doesn’t put personal wealth above other considerations. Give me a good, old honest mercenary over an idealist or a fanatic any day of the week. Anyway, Gul tells us of two prisoners that were taken aboard the Dire Wolf recently who might be able to tell us more about Gorian Debarii, the Throne Agent, and his never ending attempts to tear down House Varrick.

Down in the brig we were shown Franz and Chiron, the two unfortunates that had taken a holiday on that paradise planet Gulag. I’d busted in there and busted back out again when rescuing Lukas and I knew that it wasn’t the type of hotel that you’d like to take an extended vacation at. They were a sorry looking pair who’d clearly had it rough in recent times and had both seen better days. Chiron’s an ex-Navy flier and Franz well, he claims to be a wandering scholar, cultural expert and diplomat. As you well know my friends, I’m not one for books and learning, so I have a natural distrust of men who earn their living this way. Take this book the Maleficas Maleficarum, for example. From what we can gather Debarii and his associates are determined to get their hands on it. It’s used for summoning demons so I’m told. Now, on the whole, that’s obviously not a good thing. I’ve seen enough demons to last me more than a life time aboard the chaos infested pirate vessels of the Saynay. If there’s one lesson that I learned from those crazy, cruel bastards, it’s to leave demons well alone tucked up in whatever Hellish part of the Warp they inhabit. Having them here in real space is a recipe for having yourself skinned alive, or worse. I mean if we could sell this book that might be something. You know, make some serious money from it. However, the rest of the crew are determined to destroy it. OK, OK I can see the logic in that but it irks me that we can’t make a pile of cash out of something so many people are willing to go to such lengths to get hold of.

Anyways, while we’re discussing the book and deciding whether any of us can really trust any of the others, Chora, the Eldar that I met on Gulag, mysteriously appears on the ship. She helped save our skins when we were busting off of Gulag so I’ve certainly got some time for her. She says that Debarii and his friends pose a huge threat to mankind and that we need to work together to stop him. Although we all have differing motives for going after Debarii (mine are very much about loot… Not sure yet how I’ll get hold of it but I know that there’s loot to be had) we decide we are going to team up to bring him down. Our first port of call is Pulonia Major in the Aescapulon Protectorate. We know he’s been sighted there. Through intelligence we find out that the ruler there is a man called Agindar. Franz tells us that he’s great at negotiation and diplomacy, so we decide to travel there in one of our trading ships, the Penance of Iocanthos, adopting a low key approach. The basic plan is that we make contact with Agindar representing House Varrick for purposes of commerce and trade and then find out what we can about Debarii and his cronies. The best laid plans of mice and men!

The first part of our plan seemed to be going quite well. We arrived in system and made contact with King Agindar, who seemed happy to invite us to his palace for talks. Franz claimed he was Varrick himself, which I thought might be a bit embarrassing when the real Darius inevitably turned up but apparently its acceptable in diplomatic circles to claim that you actually are somebody if you are representing them. You see, this is why I’m suspicious of people who can read. When we made planet fall we were escorted to the palace directly from the spaceport. Something didn’t seem quite right, the streets were too clean, the trains ran on time and there were no ugly people (a sure sign of something untoward). At the palace we were met by a bald headed priest in white flowing robes with a tattoo of a beard on his chin. If that isn’t sending out a gold leaf printed invitation to be gunned down with a bolt pistol I don’t know what is. Well, he says the King will have to keep us waiting before an audience and that we can have a tour of the palace grounds to idle away the hours. Gul and I decide to have a look around the city while Franz, Chiron and Malachai take the tour. This is where the plan came apart a little. First off, Gul and I get into a scrap with the local militia, killing three or four of them. It turns out Agindar is a half mad, brutal dictator who terrorises his citizens in a police state. To be honest, what he does in his own time doesn’t really bother me. He could be the milk of human kindness when it comes to running his city, or organise mass hangings every morning. Unfortunately now that I’ve gunned down a group of his flunkies, it’s going to make it difficult to negotiate with him, so he’ll have to go. To make matters worse our ‘diplomatic expert’ makes some amazing faux pas at a dinner they’ve been invited to and Agindar decides that one of them will have to fight a duel to the death with his gladiatorial champion. Luckily, in my absence, Malachai steps up to the plate and through a combination of his weird octopus hair, weird magnet ability and bloody big axe, manages to win the fight. Gul and I then roll up to the arena where this combat is taking place and drive a truck bomb into the stadium. Lots of explosions, shooting, screaming and dying later we bust out of there aboard a guncutter back to the ship. I gunned down the baldy, beard tattoo priest, so mission accomplished as far as I’m concerned.

As we return towards the Penance we are followed by Agindar’s ships and we also find out that he’s actually got a very large cruiser at his disposal. Must admit didn’t see that one coming so we decided to make ourselves scarce. When we’d withdrawn to a safe distance and regrouped we were approached by emissaries of an alternative power base on Pulonia Major, a group led by a Madame Gomorrah. Her ambassadors said she’d support Agindar’s overthrow and that there were other factions that could be united under the cause of his downfall. Old Tuco didn’t like the sound of her much to be honest. Apparently, she worships ‘The Old Gods’ which sounds a bit like chaos to me. Still, my enemy’s enemy is my friend (until she becomes my enemy when she has to be riddled with bolt rounds). Her ambassador, Lady Ylanna, told us that we’d be able to recruit a fighting force for our revolution on the planet Lotaro. King Agindar had exiled some of his troops there years before and Ylanna thought that they could easily be persuaded to join us to gain revenge on their former master. However, when we arrived at Lotaro we found that their generals, three brothers, had been driven quite mad and were engaged in a pointless, unwinnable and never ending war over the battle-ravaged landscape. Another vacation spot for old Tuco! We decided to enter the fray to see if we could persuade them to give up fighting each other and take on the man who’d stranded them here. It was to no avail. The war had clearly taken too much strain on the leaders and they were incapable of thinking about anything other than the destruction of their siblings. Eventually all three brothers were killed and their armies decimated. However, we did persuade 700 men from one of the three warring factions to join. We’re told that they’re expert snipers and scouts, so they should come in very handy when we return to Pulonia Major. Also while we were on the planet I managed to pilfer some decent loot. A golden necklace that I stole from a church and a helmet that some of the crew thinks is an artefact. Money! Money! Money! Viva la revolución!

The Chronicles of Tuco, Part 7:

Hell has three gates: Lust, Anger and Greed

Let me tell you a strange and cautionary tale my friends. As you will know from my previous scribblings in this weathered journal, Tuco Ramirez has always been a man preoccupied by the search for material wealth. That hunger for the ‘great haul’, which has driven me relentlessly since my earliest childhood memories. Perhaps it was growing up on Luther McIntyre that made me this way? Grinding poverty and the ever present fear of a sudden, violent death are strong motivators to forge a better life. The promise of eternal ease, comfort and pleasure offered by owning a vast fortune must truly wield a powerful influence over a man. Just imagine, a dirt poor peasant like old Tuco living like a king in some big mansion someplace with servants and flunkies and the like!!!  I’ve come close to that big score once or twice. Hell, it’s been tantalisingly close but just as my fingers close in on the coins, my dreams have been snatched away again only to leave me as broke and in trouble as before. I’m not deterred though. I know I’ll be sauntering along Easy Street one of these days. No more seedy flop houses, noisy barrack rooms and stinking jail cells for Tuco. I’ll be a high roller then, you’ll see!!! 

Errr...anyway, where was I? Oh yes, my strange and cautionary tale. Well OK, we’d just captured the Dire Wolf and were preparing to take her back to the Varrick system for refitting. She was a fine prize I’ll grant you that but had taken a real battering when we boarded her. It might take years to bring her back to her former glory but she’d be the pride of any Rogue Trader’s fleet if we could pull it off. Even a marine outfit would covet a ship of that size that boasted both a Nova canon and a teleportarium. One of the problems we had though was that the Wolf’s crew weren’t exactly happy about the change in management. Having said that, they weren’t over the moon with their previous employer but they’d just taken a beating, were seriously under strength and weren’t sure where they next pay check, Hell, even their next meal was coming from. So naturally, they were a little on the tense side. After the smoke had settled from the battle, we could properly assess the situation and we reckoned the ship was maybe as many as 30,000 crewmen light. They’d not only been overworked trying to keep the old girl flying but also hadn’t been paid for months. Vandire was desperate and running on empty, which was why he was willing to take such a big risk to gain possession of the Varrick system. We needed to make sure the Wolf was as secure as possible for the flight by minimising the risk of mutiny, so I spent quite some time assessing troop requirements in order to hold key parts of the ship in case things did take a turn for the worse.

During my assessments Malachai, our chief grease monkey, sidled up to me to say that we weren’t going to be going anywhere because someone had taken the car keys. He kept calling them the control rod, which made no sense to me whatsoever, but when I asked him to explain what he was blathering on about in plain Low Gothic he managed to put across to me that what he was actually talking about were car keys. ‘No keys, ship engine no start!’ Ah, OK well we better talk to the man that no doubt had them last; Vandire. He was languishing in our brig, probably contemplating what a poor decision it had been to try throwing his weight around when he was as skinny as a bean stalk, when we arrived to interrogate him. He was pretty quick to tell us that he’d destroyed the keys he had in his possession but that there were a back up set somewhere in his quarters. All we had to do were follow his instructions and we’d be able to find them and fire up the engines. Well, let me tell you my friends, old Tuco hasn’t got this far in life without smelling a rat when it’s trying to crawl up his trouser leg! This had trap written all over it so I decided that it would be best if Malachai went over to the Wolf while I stayed on the Vengeance and threatened to shoot Vandire in the face with a bolt pistol if he’d left any booby traps. Malachai in turn thought it would be best if we picked another member of the crew to actually search Vandire’s quarters while he supervised the operation from a safe distance. After a brief perusal of the Vengeance’s HR files we managed to find a shipmate by the name of Lothar, who seemed to have ‘expendable’ as the most salient point on his CV. After searching the former captain’s cabin Lothar came across a key to a vault in the cargo hold. Vandire told us that was what we should be looking for and it was now a matter of going down to the hold and grabbing the control rod. Again both Malachai and I felt that this was a task best performed by our trusty shipmate Lothar, who was fully insured against an agonising death by being of very little us in any other way. He went into the hold and seemed to be gone for a very long while. This put Malachai on edge and I must admit I came very close to keeping my promise to ventilate Vandire’s head with a bolter round. However, Lothar did eventually reappear with said car keys so all was well. While he was in the hold he told Malachai, he saw what he thought was a tomb, or mausoleum of some sort. Stop press!!! I told everyone to stay exactly where they were until I got over there on the next cutter!

There is nothing, and I do mean nothing, in this world that Tuco Ramirez loves more than tomb robbing! I’ve robbed pyramids, barrow mounds, mausoleums, big tombs, little tombs, shallow graves, unburied coffins and even the still warm dead! You can’t take it with you, that’s what I say and it’s just plain stupid to try while I’m around! Some of my best hauls have come out of tombs. It really is quite amazing what people will bury with their loved ones. Why, I once turned over some big shot’s last resting place and found out that they buried him in a fine silk dressing gown with gold thread. Lovely fit it was too. I wore it for years to play poker in until I had to leave all my belongings in a boarding house on Repton IV rather hurriedly and unexpectedly after a misunderstanding with the local law enforcement agencies. I still wonder who ended up with that? Anyways, tombs are always a rich source of loot and I certainly wasn’t going to miss out on this opportunity. Malachai had sent his floating skull in to the hold to take some shots of the thing while we radioed back to the Vengeance to see if Vandire had any information about the history of the mausoleum. He told us that one of his ancestors had brought the thing on board over a hundred years ago with strict instructions that it should never be opened. It’s cursed or something. Bless the Emperor’s Eyes this just keeps getting better and better! It’s not been opened! The God damned thing could be a bank vault for all they knew! Perfect cover if these fools were too frightened to open it. Well, old Tuco’s not scared off by some crazy superstition. The dead can’t hurt anyone. They’re dead you see. It’s as simple as that. Well, unless they’re Necrons of course, in which case you are in serious trouble. Hell, I’ve even handled them in my time though. No grave robbing job is too big for Tuco to pull off!!

So Malachai and I crept forward into the cargo bay with pistols drawn. I’d cast my bandit’s eye over the ground and worked out where we might take cover if someone tried to jump us. Quiet as a mouse. We entered the mausoleum to find the strangest sight you ever did see. Instead of a casket or a coffin we saw a man chained down to a stone slab and by the Emperor’s holy light, if he wasn’t alive and well and looking straight at us! That was a big surprise I can tell you! Straight away I realises something’s wrong because he’s wearing rags for a start. Who would bury a pauper in an upmarket place like this? He’s a weird, baldy looking fellow with tattoos all over him. Staring straight at us he was. All of a sudden Malachai comes over all funny and pipes up that it’s a beautiful tech priestess who’s chained to the slab and he set off to free her from her bondage. While he’s busy trying to loosen the chains of his grease monkey princess, I gets to thinking that he’s probably being manipulated by baldy and it might not be such a good idea if he’s let free after all these years. So, I steps up behind old Malachai and gives him a sharp tap across the back of the head with the butt of my bolt pistol. Out he goes like a light and I cuff him to make sure he doesn’t come round and get up to any more mischief. Turning my attention to the raggedy man, I drew my sword and prepared to stake him right through the heart. Don’t know why, just seemed appropriate in the circumstances. Just as I’m about to thrust down the guy blurts out that he knows where a mountain of loot is hidden. Someone once said, ‘Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness, except greed’. Well, let me tell you my friends that certainly put the brakes on my staking efforts for the moment. While keeping the blade firmly pressed over his heart and asked him to tell me a little more about the money. The next thing he’s talking about a whole treasure world he knows of, wondrous stories of rubies, diamonds emeralds and gold, sacks of gold. All I have to do is free him and he take me there himself. 

At this point Malachai comes round. He’s still cuffed but seemed to have thrown off the illusion that this raggedy freak is a beautiful lady grease monkey. Talking of freaks I’d forgotten that these tech priests have metal tentacles growing out of their backs which can perform all sorts of functions such as cutting through handcuffs (note to self, next time you subdue a teach priest cut off, or otherwise incapacitate his tentacle things). The next moment he up and about in a right huff. To make matters worse, our friend on the slab just ups and admits he’s a bound demon by the name of Prosephone. Well, Malachai goes in to a fit of panic and tries to chop the demon’s head off with an axe. Well my friends, I’ve seen chaos up close and personal when I was captured aboard a Saynay slaughterhouse ship. Nobody knows better than me how evil those sick chaos worshipping bastards are. And if those are simply the monkeys, I can only imagine how bad one of the actual the organ grinders must be! Having said all that, one he might genuinely know where a shit load of cash is, and two how do we know that killing the body he’s in won’t simply free him from the shackles of the slab. I parried away a couple of Malachai’s axe blows and tried to reason with him but to no avail. The next moment he pulls out a grenade (apparently one he stole from me he told me later) and tried throwing that at the demon. I know he’s a tech priest, so isn’t used to such complicated weaponry but I thought that even his like would realise that lobbing grenades within a very confined space can be a dangerous pastime. So, I grapple with him and mange to throw it out of the tomb into the cargo bay. That would have looked real bad on my own tombstone, ‘killed wrestling a grease monkey for one of his own grenades’. We can hear Hell Boy laughing his raggedy ass off behind us. We must have looked a right pair. Humanity’s last, best hope of stopping the demon horde. Anyway, at this point I decide to try and salvage some of my dignity and let Malachai get on with beheading the demon. The corpse spewed out black smoke which seemed to dissipate soon after, so no immediate danger. 

On leaving the cargo bay we noticed that the crewman we’d left looking after the ship’s car keys, Peter the big armed mutant (long story, don’t ask) had wondered off leaving the control rod on it’s own. Somewhat suspicious. We organised a search party and checked to see whether he left the Wolf on one of the cutters. No luck there. While we were both concerned with his disappearance, we knew that we’d have to get underway soon. We couldn’t wait around the Wyrding system forever and supplies were low. On the way back to the Varrick system Malachai and I had a debate as to whether we needed to inform young Darius of the unfortunate occurrences that had taken place. Although we both felt that the event had amounted to no more than a minor internal security issue, we thought that he might want to know what had in fact happened and to be reassured that we had thoroughly and satisfactorily dealt with the matter. We did decide to have an escape plan on standby though, as we know how temperamental the captain can be sometimes. In the event, while being a bit pissed off with us, he was satisfied we’d dealt with the problem effectively.

Just as we solve one problem though, another rears it ugly head! Back on Shard we were told that my old comrade Lukas had stolen a holy relic given to us by a space marine chapter for services rendered. It was a part of a power claw, no doubt used by some saint or other to fend off the forces of darkness. Mordenachai our newly joined navigator told us he’d seen Lukas on board the Wolf some months before they’d encountered us. He was on the ship with his Throne Agent master Gorian Debarii. They were seeking the claw as far back as then because they thought that it could lead them to a book they wanted. A disgraced inquisitor named Icor Harn had run off with it when the powers that be accused him of heresy. Apparently, he was thought to be hiding out somewhere in the Expanse. Did that mean that the whole elaborate meeting with Lukas was purely set up for my benefit, so he could get closer to the claw? Wow that’s sneaky even by Tuco’s standards! My hat is off to him if that’s was the case. It will be a real shame to have to kill him, which is what I’ll have to do when we catch up with him. We’ve some leads to the Aescapulon system which we are pursuing as I finish this journal entry.

The Chronicles of Tuco: Part 6

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!     

The Chronicles of Tuco, Part 5:

Tuco and the Legend of Anno Dignitas

I’m sure you’ve all heard tell of the legend of Anno Dignitas. Yes, you know the one, that ancient realm of untold riches hidden away amongst the stars. That mythical kingdom so wealthy that their priest-rulers were able to construct great temples made from solid gold from which to worship the God Emperor. A fantastically prosperous colony lost to the Imperium of Man for many centuries. It warms the cockles of your heart to think of those tales of fabulous treasure hordes, millions of glittering gold coins, just waiting to be plucked from the cold void by a man with the wits and the nerve to discover them. Well my friends, old Tuco has a cautionary tale for you; ‘all that glitters is not gold’.

It all started back on Shard. We’d quelled the civil unrest that had recently been fermenting there through a mixture of extreme violence and straight forward bribery. Recipients of the former were nursing their wounds and mourning their dead and the latter counting their blessings. Things were quiet enough and young Varrick had decided to lead up a delegation to re-establish some of our old trading routes. Of course I suggested that I accompany him but after my recent foray into the world of diplomacy Darius thought it would be better if I, ‘remained behind, ever vigilant towards the threat of further dissent!’ Anyway, soon after he left our spymaster, Solar Gillam, came to me with the disturbing news that someone had spent the last several nights trying to gain unauthorised access to some of our most important water reservoirs including the palace’s own supply. Personally, I don’t have that much use for water. You’d certainly never catch me drinking the stuff and I very rarely take the opportunity to bathe in it. However, I know the others would kick up a fuss if the palace taps ran dry, so we set a trap for our would be saboteur.

Sure enough he tried again and we put the cuffs on him. I thought he was probably some bitter nut job that we’d missed when we were conducting mopping up operations against the rebel faction that we’d just stamped out. You know the kind of guy, some sad ‘you’ve killed my entire family, so I’ll have to poison you all’ type. Easy to spot, easy to shoot, a lesson to others, job done. However, he turned out to be nothing of the sort, which is where things started to get interesting. Gillam instantly recognised him as being one of the scouts that Varrick had sent out to survey neighbouring systems for potential resources, trading opportunities and the like. His name was Nestor and as far as we knew, this guy, his ship (the Baleful Eye) and the rest of his crew were still off-world digging around for loot. We also found out that he’d been changed somehow. Physically, his skin was tainted with a strange green pigment, invisible to the naked eye but which our tech boys had picked up when they began their side of his interrogation. They weren’t sure exactly what it was, or what it meant, but he’d certainly not had it done in a local tattoo parlour. Our resident head shrinkers then went to work with their box of telepathic tricks. All their usual mind flaying techniques had almost no effect. The only information they could glean was the word Argarok and the image of a strange, hideous mask floating in the sky. This was on the few occasions they came even close to penetrating his mind. To cap it all off, he’d been carrying some unusual melon like fruits with him when we’d arrested him. He let on to us that he’d intended to ‘infest’ the reservoirs with them. As I said to Gillam, ‘how does that old poem go?’

‘We must not look at goblin men, we must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil they fed their hungry thirsty roots?’ 

Well, to my mind my friends this spells only one of two things: chaos or the evil xenos taint. Either way we needed to stamp it out quickly before anymore of these green-skinned freaks could attempt an attack that might be more successful. The system that this scout had been sent to investigate was known as ‘the Wyrding’. It had a bad reputation amongst freighter crews for unexplained events and disappearances. Then again, where in the Koronus expanse doesn’t have a reputation like that? A security patrol sent word that they’d uncovered a drop pod from the Baleful Eye that we needed to see. When we got out there we saw more evidence of the strange flora that Nestor had been attempting to poison the water supply with. There was an entire tree growing inside the pod complete with vines and creepers spreading throughout the vessel. It was like a god damned jungle in there! I’ve heard of spacers taking pot plants aboard ship to make things seem a little more homely but even a Catachan wouldn’t go this far! We decided we’d need to go to the Wyrding ourselves to find out what was going on. My old business acquaintance the Warder was in system so we hired out his ship, the Red Ruin, to take us there. On the way to the Wyrding we decided to call in at a space station belonging to the holy Ordo Sepulturum, called Adventis Sepultura; inquisitors interested in bio weapons research and the spread of diseases. As we were dealing with some plant-based life form with infectious spores we thought they might have some useful information they could share.

The Warp treated us well on leaving Shard and were soon docking with Adventis Sepultura’s Aquilar station. The leader of the order, a man called Infinius Shae, received us and while he wasn’t immediately aware of anything that might be useful to us, he did grant us access to the station’s extensive archives. As I’ve said many times before my old friends, I’m not the Empire’s greatest reader, however Gillam and the Warder had some ideas of what to get the station’s scribes digging out. Sure enough they came up with some useful information. This is when we made the first link to the legendary colony of Anno Dignitas. Some ancient text or other alluded to the mighty Drusian adherent who founded the colony in his own name encountering a form of plant life like the ones we had seen. In illustrations of him he can be seen sitting at the base of a tree very much like the one we saw in the pod. I must admit my exact recollection of what was said next does get a little hazy here, as I was totally overwhelmed for some time by the tidal wave of pure greed that broke over me. Anno Dignitas! If the stories of its wealth were even half true we’d have more money than we could spend in a dozen lifetimes! We’d live like kings! Before we left the station we decided to visit Shae again. He’d shown us a Kroot slave he’d captured who seemed to react when we mentioned the word Argarok. We realised that there might be a connection between Anno Dignitas and a sister planet to the Kroot home world, Pech, which had been lost to them for centuries. Perhaps this Argarok and Anno Dignitas were one and the same place? We thought it useful to take him along with us and with some negotiation gained Shae’s consent.

We arrived in the Wyrding and saw for the first time a strange celestial phenomenon known as the Mask of Iscariot. This was clearly the hideous mask in the sky that Nestor had been talking about. We knew now that we were on the right track. Searching the system we found two points of interest. The first was a pair of ancient warp gates. Kluck, our Kroot mercenary, was very animated about these claiming that their homeworld Argarok had both been revealed to them and taken away from them by warpgate phenomenon. Secondly, we found a jungle moon that might host the life form we’d encountered on Shard. I’m telling you that sweet smell of money seemed to be getting stronger with each intake of breath! We were just about to make planet fall when the Warder relayed to us that a distress call had been received from the Aquilar station. I’ve always said that the Emperor helps those that help themselves and we should carry on with our own work of finding Anno Dignitas, nevertheless Gillam and the Warder felt we had to return, so our progress on grabbing the loot was thwarted for the moment. On returning to the station we could see that we were too late and the order had been overrun. We returned aboard to see if there was anything worth taking but alas all we found were some books from the library. Shae and a couple of others had also managed to save their own skins by hiding in priest holes, leaving their colleagues to be butchered. As I say, the Emperor looks after those that help themselves. We found out that the raiders who turned the place over were a bunch of Rak’gol, a race of very bad tempered, very large reptile/insect creatures. I’ve fought a raiding party once before on a burnt out freighter near Port Wander. Not much to say about them save they have 8 limbs that can function as either arms or legs and that they greatly prize the taste of human flesh. Try not to get into hand to hand to hand combat with them or you’ll end up being an entree.

Having taken the survivors on board the Red Ruin we returned to the Wyrding only to find the Rak’gol had beat us to it and were busily firing drop pods into the orbit of the jungle moon. Well, that made Tuco’s heart miss a beat, let me tell you! The very thought that those eight legged freaks could snatch the money from right out under our noses is a chilling thought. I mean do those things even have a need for money? What could they spend it on? We had no chance of taking on their mother ship with the Red Ruin so we went in quietly with the gun cutter. We followed their raiding parties which were converging on the ancient hulk of a crashed star ship. Perhaps a treasure ship from the days of the Anno Dignitas?! Well old Tuco wasn’t about to let those bastards walk away with the dollar no matter how well armed they were (pardon the pun). Luckily for us though, they started bickering amongst themselves and a firefight broke out from which only the biggest and meanest one emerged. It climbed on to the hulk to be met by the rest of the human crew of the Baleful Eye. What was obviously strange was that it pretty much ignored them and disappeared in to a pool on the top of the hulk. We followed it up and ran into the crew also. They were clearly in the thrall of the plant organism and tried to infect us. We were having none of this and pretty much started shooting from the outset. No goblin fruits for us! This set off a defensive reaction on the plant’s part by it growing warriors from pods to attack us. Soon we were facing both human and Rak’gol opponents attacking like a pack of zombies. At this point Gillam and I had a difference of opinion on tactics. He thought it best to gun it out with the zombies on the skin of the hulk. Personally Tuco has always fought smarter rather than harder. Hell, we could be up here all day wasting ammo on the things! You want to kill a snake you cut off its head! My old grandmother taught me that back on Luther McIntyre. And she’d killed more snakes than a mongoose! Anyway I followed the route of the Rak’gol and entered the hull. I found some weird alien plant, blob head honcho that I proceeded to try and kill. I’d brought some anti plant grenades for that specific purpose. What did I say about fighting smarter not harder! Unfortunately, I didn’t bring enough, so I had to make a tactical withdrawal until Gillam turned up with enough anti plant bombs to finish the job.

Well, my friends, now I hear you saying another cliff-hanger Tuco but you must have made a fortune. What was that hulk carrying, rubies as big as a man’s fist? Emeralds like pigeon eggs? Archeotech weapons worth a king’s ransom on the open market? Not a penny my friends. Just an empty burnt out hulk. So, basically all we made on this job was whatever we can make on those lousy books we grabbed off the station. My confidence in a big payout is low I have to tell you. Where in the Emporer’s name is the Dignitas loot?!?!  To make matters worse when we got out of the hulk again we found that the Red Ruin was engaged in a stand up fight with the Rak’gol mother ship and we were in very severe danger of losing our ride out of there. However, the cavalry arrived in the form of a gigantic human battleship armed with a nova cannon that built the Rak’gol a whole new life in Hell. To begin with, we thought it was an Imperial navy ship drawn by the distress call from the Aquilar station. Surely a vessel of that size and capability couldn’t belong to anyone else? However, our saviour introduced himself as a Rogue Trader known as Helmut Vandire. He said that he not only owned this system but Varrick’s also. That’ll no doubt please young Darius when he hears about it. Me? I’m hoping to move into the fruit and veg business. Surely something on this godforsaken rock must be worth something?