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?

The Chronicles of Tuco, Part 4:

Tuco tries his hand at politics

You know, it never ceases to amaze me how true that old saying is about dogs wanting to bite the hands of those that feed them. Well, let me tell you my friends, any dog that tries to bite old Tuco’s hand will find itself chewing on the wrong end of a bolt pistol! We’ve been experiencing a few, temporary difficulties with some of the local populace on Shard since I last penned these journals. However, I think I can safely say that normal service has now been resumed. It all started when the ruling council tried to have a meeting without inviting young Varrick along. He’d got word of this through his spy master, Solar Gillam. As you know, I’ve never been one for subtleties. Personally, I find that you can obtain pretty much any information you want by beating the particular informant until they sing like a bird. Shooting them in the knee caps until they tell you what you want to know, that’s a good one too. However, I’m aware a good spy can sometimes be well worth his share of the loot. There are occasions when you’re just not sure who you need to beat the truth out of and that’s where they can come in real handy. Anyways, so Darius suggests Gillam and I go along to this meeting to see what they are up to and to represent his interests. Young Varrick says I shouldn’t go armed, so as not to upset any of them. That being the case, I just take the one fragmentation grenade. I’ve never counted a grenade as actually being ‘armament’ in the purely technical sense of the word. They are basically for self defence, after all, and I can’t believe anyone would want to deny you the right to self protection in these uncertain times.

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.

By the time we got back to the surface Darius had sorted out the political issues. Speaker Tal was back on speaking terms with us after his thrashing and had been given a payoff to support the regime which we’d financed by wiping out one of the other noble families and giving him their lands and wealth. Unfortunately, we had another minor outbreak of chaos in the process as the noble family that was unseated had been nurturing unlicensed psykers. If there’s one thing Tuco advises it’s to kill those unlicensed headshrinker bastards as soon as you find them! I’m right behind the Emperor on that score! You just have to take the agri world of Gheistos to see sense in that calm and reasonable approach. One minute everyone’s getting on minding their own businesses, the next minute because of some crazy, unlicensed headshrinker kid, the whole planet end’s up with a Papa Nurgle infestation and pretty much every member of the population is walking around with the black pox. We were lucky this time just 600 dead and several sections of the Hive spires destroyed. Still, that’s politics for you. Sometimes you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette.

The Chronicles of Tuco Part 3:

Tuco in the Land of the Dead

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!

As for Tuco? Well, he’s back on Shard with a glass of whisky in his hand, some pesos in his pocket and a story to tell next time he’s in the cantina. And what about the land of the dead I hear you say? Well, I certainly wouldn’t recommend it as a holiday destination any time soon!

Pandemonium-9

Press Release on the Pandemonium-9 from the houses of Orthlack:

“Give ‘em the whole clip with the Pandemonium-9 light assault pistol, from House Orthlack!

The Pandemonium-9 is a revolution in small arms technology. Light enough to carry comfortably in civilian garb, the Pandemonium is perfect for bodyguard assignments or when you need a backup weapon with a little extra kick at no extra cost.

The streamlined design makes it a dream to use and the ammunition has been specially selected to reduce recoil, weight and muzzle flare for efficient operations – so you needn’t brace yourself before popping a heretic or gunning down recidivist scum.

Plus, fully-automatic fire options make it a great choice for sticky situations when one bullet just isn’t enough. The quality of this weapon will blow you – and your enemies – away!”

Footnote from Van der Teirzalt’s Arms and Armour of the Expanse, 3^rd Edition:

“... The Pandemonium-9 is a particularly old-fashioned model, out of production for centuries that has recently seen a resurgence in popularity in no small part due to the marketing efforts of its manufacturers, House Orthlack. Originally known as the “Jump-Pattern Secondary Soft Target Interdiction Device,” the noble manufacturers decided that snappier renaming was in order to boost sales.

And boost sales it did – endlessly popular amongst young gangers and terrified civilians alive, the Pandemonium-9 (often referred to in street parlance as a “Pan” or “Pannine”) offered a cheap means of acquiring a fully-automatic weapon to all but the most destitute. A handful of variations were made, including a “professional” model with higher-calibre ammunition and recoil bracers (the “Pandemonium-9 Hellfire”) and a semi-automatic version for sale on planets with stricter civilian weapons laws (the “Pandemonium-9 Sureshot”).

Regardless of its popularity, the Pandemonium-9 has not seen widespread military application due to the small clip capacity, short range, and (some would argue) overly lightweight design.”

Overheard in a Colossus gunshop:

“Man, you get those away from me. You come round here trying to flog Pans, for Throne’s sake?

Course you didn’t know they’re useless. No-one uses ‘em anymore, so I guess some fresh meat like yourself hasn’t heard of ‘em yet. What, you’ve got a press release? Oh-ho! Must be an antique. Give it here. Let me put my glasses on.

Hah! Streamlined design, yeah, that’s one way of putting it. Orthlack skipped on parts, see, jammed cheap autofire mechanisms into frames too small to take them. Didn’t bother weighing ‘em down, so they spray everywhere – and when they say “specially selected ammunition” they mean “specially selected any nine bullets we could fit in it.” Nine bullets! You tell me how long that’s going to last on full auto, especially when you can’t hit anyone with ‘em. Not very long, let me tell you.

Nah, I’m not interested, sorry pal. Only an idiot would buy a Pan these days.”

Rook, Missionary, in a gunshop just down the road a week later:

“Pandemonium-9, eh? What a great name. I’ll take it.”