Pyramid Scheme: A Leagues of Votann Story (Part Two)

This is a Warhammer 40K fan story written by Neal Litherland and Samuel Furlano. Additionally, check out Pyramid Scheme Part One if you haven't read it yet!

“You heard him,” Spector said, turning and firing off a barrage of bolter rounds. He ducked back behind cover, and like clockwork, Razor took over, spraying down enough cover to empty the alleyway once again. Tinker joined in, triggering several of the charges he’d left in the alley, the detonations roaring through the small space. Fixer stood guard over the crystal, his eyes in the air, snapping off occasional shots when something attempted to go high instead of taking a direct route. Despite the enemies’ eldar origins, their speed, grace, and durability, they were not fast enough to dodge everything the kin threw at them. And every time they started to get back up, another wave of fire smashed them down again.

“What’s taking him so long?” Fixer asked, raising his voice to be heard over the constant fire.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth, than a rumbling roar came to their ears. The kin turned to see what fresh hell was coming their way, and they saw a battered personnel carrier rushing their way. The treads were fully exposed on one side, and the topmost weapons turret had been blasted into scrap, but the engine was humming, and it was clocking an impressive speed. Fixer was already leveling his weapon when a voice came over their comms.

“Transportation is here, boys,” Greaser called over the comm link. “I’m not slowing this thing down, mostly because the brakes are gone. Fortunately, so is the rear door. So clamber on up, or jump in the back, and don’t miss because I don’t have the space to turn this scrap basket around!”

Fixer holstered his pistol, and sprinted for the lurching chimera. He leaped with both feet, coming down hard on the roof. He went down on one knee, but managed to catch hold of a grip. Moving carefully, he swung himself down and through the busted rear of the vehicle. Tinker went next, his arms wrapped around the decavane crystal, and his backpack’s prosthetics clambering onto the half-busted personnel carrier with more power than grace. Spector sent the rest of his bolter’s magazine down the alleyway, before he slung the weapon and followed the others. His leap was low, and he let out a grunt as he slammed into the front of the chimera, but he found a foothold, and hauled himself onto the roof.

“Razor, disengage!” Spector barked over the link as he activated the maglocks on his boots to steady his stance on the roof. When Guts and Glory’s barrels didn’t stop spinning, Spector shouted, “That’s an order!”

Razor held down the trigger, covering the kin’s escape and ensuring the steel-skinned monstrosities that had once been eldar didn’t get a chance to follow them. Then, at the last moment, Razor turned, and grabbed the heavy bar at the rear of the chimera. The vehicle sped past, snatching Razor off his feet and pulling him along with. The others grabbed him, and hauled him into the rear of the vehicle just as Greaser shifted gears and pushed the chimera even harder.

“Fixer, give me a status report!” Spector said as he loaded a fresh magazine into his weapon, scanning the underground chamber for the next threat.

“The mad bastard’s shoulder is dislocated,” Fixer said breathlessly. Spector heard a sharp intake of breath, and a harsh grunt, before Fixer came over the line again. “Correction. Was dislocated.”

“Right,” Spector said. “How are we looking on ammunition?”

“Looks like Razor blew through most of his load,” Tinker said, grunting as the personnel carrier jagged around a beam of green energy that slammed down from above. “Tinker’s been preoccupied with the crystal. I’ve got a spare charge pack or two for my rifle left, and the pistols are on a mostly full charge. Greaser’s still got his ax. How about you?”

“I’ve been better,” Spector said, aiming carefully before firing off a series of rounds at the rooftop where the beam had come from. Something with the crawling legs of a mechanical spider, and a cannon in the center of its torso fell back, explosions stitching across its torso and knocking it from its perch toward the ground. “I’ve got two more magazines, and whatever’s left in my pistol.”

“Vehicular combat is always an option,” Greaser chimed in as the chimera lurched into a sharp curve. As if to illustrate his point, the armored front slammed into a wide, metallic figure, quickly dragging it under the treads. The thing’s claws scrabbled at the underside of the chimera as it lurched away, the treads skidding slightly before they found purchase again. For a moment none of the kin spoke.

“Was that an ork?” Spector asked.

“Looks like it used to be,” Fixer said, sending a blast of energy from his pistol at the thing, the shot smashing into its leg as it tried to get up and give chase.

Before any of the kin could say anything, a rumbling noise came to their ears. It was distorted, electronic, and toneless, but it sent gooseflesh rippling up their spines all the same. Though it was a hollow sound, stripped of the life and spirit it usually possessed, the kin had heard the orks’ battle cry before… but they’d never imagined it could sound like this.

“Tinker, share the overhead feed,” Spector ordered, shifting his feet before re-locking his boots. “Greaser, get us to the lift. We didn’t come here to fight, and getting caught up in a protracted battle isn’t what we want. Razor, Fixer, check the remaining support weapons and see if any of this hardware still works. Move!”

The squad scrambled to follow their orders, and the sound of the chimera’s engine rose to a howl as Greaser pushed it even harder. It wasn’t loud enough to drown out the drone of the soulless waaagh, though, and the wheezing, screaming personnel carrier couldn’t outpace the clanking, stomping, rushing force that was converging on them from three directions like a stainless steel flood. Greaser swerved and curved, trying to keep as many structures between the kin and their pursuers as he could, but even as the twists and turns brought them closer to the elevator, they stole a little more of their speed. And even though the eyes of the things pursuing them shone bright green, the vehicles they piloted were a deep, blood red.

“Here they come,” Spector growled, bending his knees and raising his bolter. “Give them hell, boys.”

Razor wrenched around the autocannons that remained on one side of the chimera, squeezing the triggers in controlled bursts, letting the shells rip into the pursuing vehicles. Most of them bounced off the armor, but some of them hit home, tearing away treads, shredding wheels, and putting holes in the grilles of the deadlier looking wagons. Fixer sat, his feet braced, and his rifle socked against his good shoulder. The HYlas barked, and every time he squeezed the trigger he found a hole in the orks’ defenses. He targeted the shining heads of exposed gunners as they tried to bring their weapons to bear, and his shots sought the holes left by Razor’s barrage, trying to finish the job the other kin had started. Tinker tossed what charges he had left, watching them bounce, and then triggering them when they were in the most vulnerable places. From his perch atop the chimera, Spector let loose with his bolter, firing it dry, and then drawing his plasma pistol and trying to focus his fire on the most vulnerable places.

The kin sowed chaos in the enemy’s ranks. Bikes exploded, reduced to flying shrapnel as they were caught and crunched beneath the pursuing vehicles along with their riders. Crippled war wagons slewed to the side like dying groxes, crashing into each other and blocking entire lanes of pursuit. The metallic orks fell, crumpled in heaps, only to rise again, and again, bringing their weapons to bear as they bellowed their hollow, meaningless war cry, returning fire. Their blasts sheared through the chimera’s plates as if they were made of paper, carving away huge chunks of armor, destroying what functional support weapons it had left, and just as they began to draw close to the elevator, one of their pursuers caught the treads. The chimera lurched, spinning, limping, and all but flinging the kin free, pitching onto its side three dozen meters from their goal.

“That’s it, everybody out!” Greaser coughed, prying himself out of the driver’s seat and snatching up his power ax.

“I think I’m dying,” Fixer groaned, levering himself onto one knee with the butt of his HYlas.

“Die later,” Razor said, grabbing Fixer by his armor harness, and wrenching him to his feet. The thick-bodied Ironbeard shoved Fixer through the hole of the broken turret before giving Tinker the same treatment. The aging kin was puffing like a bellows, and there was a crack running down one side of his helmet, but all his limbs were in working order. Razor followed last, hauling his twin-linked bolter with him, stepping out just as Greaser was helping Spector disengage his mag boots.

The kin fled, half-dragging one another onto the huge elevator that had brought them down to this level. Bolts of green energy trailed them, but largely went wide. Then they stopped entirely. The pursuing vehicles halted, and the things that had once been orks massed. A colossus of shining metal stood above the others, his eyes burning green, his hands little more than huge power claws. He raised those claws, and roared their cry again. His minions charged, howling in sequence, raising their melee weapons. Whether they didn’t want to damage the elevator, or they were worried they’d hit the decavane crystal was impossible to say... but they clearly meant to finish this in close quarters.

“Get us going, Tinker,” Spector said, carefully aiming as he took one shot after another.

“I can’t,” Tinker said, hammering on the panel. “The damn thing’s dead. We need a power source, or we’re stuck here. It looks like the crystal was…”

Tinker trailed off, his eyes widening as thoughts raced through his mind. As the ground started to vibrate from the orks’ charge, Tinker put the decavane crystal down on the deck, and scanned it quickly with one of his servo arms. The other lowered to the side of the crystal, and the arc of a powerful plasma cutter sparked into life.

“Tinker, what do you think you’re doing?” Fixer demanded, gritting his teeth against the recoil as he squeezed the trigger on his rifle.

“Saving all our lives,” Tinker said. “Now shut up and let me work!”

Tinker lowered the torch, following a projected laser grid from his scanner, showing the precise contours of the crystal, as well as its cleavage patterns and natural formations. His servo arms moved carefully, holding the crystal tight while the cutter slowly touched the surface. The orks’s rush drew closer, and they swarmed over the downed chimera, many of them tearing through it as they sought a faster way to reach their enemies. For a moment nothing seemed to happen, and then a wave of energy ripped through them all, moving outward in a tide. It hit the necro-orks, smashing them off their feet and leaving them in piles of juddering, jittering scrap. It was like they were gargantuan puppets, and someone had cut all of their strings at once. Their vehicles went silent, and Tinker’s aerial recon machine fell to the ground, splintering against the unforgiving steel floor. A small sliver of crystal fell to the ground, rolling over on its side before coming to rest between Tinker’s boots.

“I can’t move,” Fixer said, panic bleeding into his voice. “I can’t move!”

“The shock wave just blacked out your systems,” Tinker said, his wheezing voice calm. “Grease, if you would be so kind, boot up my secondary system.”

Greaser raised one foot off the deck, stomping forward as he forced the joints in his armor to move with nothing more than muscle and determination. Sweat was running down his face before he’d covered half a dozen steps, and he was gritting his teeth with the effort. His breath was coming hard by the time he reached Tinker, and managed to wrench open the side panel on his pack. Greaser forced a single finger on his gauntlet straight, and pressed a series of buttons. Tinker’s armor beeped in acknowledgment, and the secondary power systems came online, freeing him from his state as a statue.

As Tinker’s feet shuffled toward the wall, and he snatched up the sliver of the crystal, he wrenched open the elevator’s access panel. As he began to work, there was movement from beyond the lift. The bodies of the gleaming orks had collapsed, but their green eyes flared to life once more, and they began to move. Those movements came in fits and starts, but they dragged themselves to their knees, and then to their feet. Some even managed to stand straight, their heads twisted at impossible angles, and their jaws open to expose rows of sharp, metallic fangs. They began to advance once more, like a line of deadly wind-up toys.

“Tinker,” Spector yelled, trying to be heard over the clangor of the creatures as they tried to close the distance to their prey. “They’re coming!”

Tinker didn’t waste his breath replying. He ran his fingers over the interior of the lift, searching for something that would allow him to reroute the power. The horde ground closer, every step a little surer, and a little stronger. Those who had made it to the front of the slogging charge roared again, and that roar seemed to galvanize the others. They shoved themselves to their feet, energy crackling over their limbs as they shook off the torpor and focused on their goal. Just as the first of the steel-skinned monstrosities drew within a few steps of the lift, the crystal flared, and power hummed through the entire elevator. Tinker thumbed the proper glyph, and the lift began to rise.

“Taking… your sweet… time…” Greaser panted as he tried to straighten.

“When you only get one chance, you don’t rush it,” Tinker said. He ran his hands over Greaser’s armor, putting the suit through its restarting sequence. A clawed, steel hand reach over the edge of the lift, and one of Tinker’s servo arms snapped toward it, the head reconfiguring and firing a blast of concentrated plasma. It severed the arm at the wrist, and sent the rest of the creature tumbling toward the receding ground. As Greaser’s suit finished its final cycle, and power returned to his limbs, Tinker slapped him on the side of the helmet. “Now pick up that door buster you’re so proud of, and sweep the deck!”

Greaser didn’t need to be told twice. He hefted his power ax, and ran toward the edge of the lift, bringing his ax down as more creatures tried to reach over the side. There was only one of him, though, and hundreds of grasping, steel claws hauling themselves up over the edge one after another. As Tinker reactivated the rest of the kin, they poured their firepower into pushing back the tide, emptying their weapons into the creatures. Some of them went over the edge, crashing back to the ground below. Others needed a push, which Greaser was only too happy to provide. As the lift rose back into the throat of steel stone, it blocked the kin off from fire from below and brushed off the last of the clinging creatures trying to scramble over the lip. Alone in the dimness, the kin took their first deep breath in what felt like hours.

“Stack up,” Spector said, checking his plasma pistol. “Greaser, you take front. Then me, Tinker, Fixer, and Razor. We follow the map we made on the way in, and we get back to our ride. We manage that, and we’re home free.”

The lift dragged higher and higher, passing the hieroglyphs in reverse order. Alarms began blaring from somewhere down below, and heavy, metallic thuds came from the floor beneath the kins’ feet. As the top of the shaft came into sight, and the lift began to slow. The steel bulged at their feet as something hammered on it from below. As the lift locked itself into place, and Greaser was about to rush forward through the door, Tinker cleared his throat.

“A moment,” he said. Tinker pressed a button on his gauntlet, and a detonation rumbled from beyond the door. “We can go now.”

The kin rushed out through a cloud of smoke, trampling over the remains of the necron that had been standing guard just outside the lift. They retraced their steps through the living quarters, the dining hall, and the grand entrance halls, even as the floors shivered and shook, and the suspended spheres and cubes smashed to the ground, the fields that had supported them gone with the theft of the crystal. Hidden gateways swung open, disgorging fresh regiments of steel-skinned warriors. The Ironbeards didn’t slow their mad rush forward, their legs pumping and weapons blasting, doing everything they could to clear their path. No matter how many of the necrons fell, though, they rose again… and every time, they were joined by more.

“Rat Trap, come in,” Spector panted over the comm link as he sent a bolt of plasma shooting into the shoulder joint of a necron trying to bring a shoulder-mounted weapon to bear. “Can you hear me?!”

“Hear you? I’ve been trying to raise you for the past hour,” Rat Trap said. Over the comm they could hear Howler making repeated sounds of distress. “The ziggurat looks like a kicked anthill. What the hell did you do?”

“We have the package,” Spector replied, taking another shot before holstering his smoking plasma pistol. “Get us the hell out of here!”

“On my way,” Rat Trap replied, raising his voice over the swell of the dropship’s engine. “ETA, five minutes. Be ready!”

The Ironbeards doubled their pace, foregoing returning fire against their foes. They ducked and dodged, weaved and leaped, barely managing to stay out of the path of the ranked fire trying to draw a bead on them. They ran for the sliver of daylight that beckoned them toward the entrance they’d made when they first entered, but it was growing thinner and thinner as the outer walls attempted to seal them in. They didn’t waste their breath stating the obvious, pouring power into their armor to eke out every ounce of speed they could. Every one of the Ironbeards knew they wouldn’t have time to open that gate again if the lord of this foul place trapped them within its uncaring, steel walls, leaving them sitting ducks for a firing squad.

The kin scraped past the closing vault, bursting out into a whole new kind of nightmare. The ground all around the ziggurat heaved like the waves of a sea, with steel spires erupting from the ground. The spires jostled aside broken tanks, ripped apart rusted scout bikes, and ignited fuel rods, peppering the clearing with explosions. Then the spires opened, spewing forth lines of necron warriors who marched out into the broken wasteland.

“How many of these blasted things are there?” Fixer panted.

“Too many,” Spector said, running for the kins’ trike. “Greaser, Razor, on your weapons! Fixer, help Tinker secure the package. We need to get to a clear patch!”

It was a race among the kin to see who could complete their tasks first. Spector threw himself into the cockpit, flicking the startup switches and firing up the engine. No sooner had the whine reached the fever pitch that said there was available power than the corpse lamp eyes of the marching metal warriors turned toward the kin. They raised their weapons to fire, but the kin already had their fingers on their triggers, sending bursts of HYlas fire and autocannon rounds into the necrons’ ranks. Spector shoved the engine into overdrive, and the trike’s treads bit into the soil, the vehicle practically leaping forward.

The trike was an ungainly thing, built for power and aggression. Spector used the advantages it had, slamming through the wreckage of the battle field, shoving it aside with the huge front blade, and carving a path toward the treeline. Armor plates, smashed doors, armaglass, and more rocketed through the air, and more than once the corpse of a transport clung onto the trike, as if trying to slow them down. The engine barely noticed the extra weight, and the wreckage even managed to absorb some of the blasts from the necrons’ weapons.

Some, but not all.

A glancing shot from one of the xenos atomized a trench along one of the top armor plates. The metal gave way to ash, than to less than ash, lost in the breeze of the trike’s passing. Another clipped the rear door, tearing half of it away. The front blade of the trike caught several blasts, disintegrating as the trike shouldered aside part of what looked like a destroyed rhino armored transport. Razor snarled, jerking his head back on instinct as his shield dissipated right in front of him. Greaser was swiveling the turret las to return fire, when another beam ripped through it, unmaking it right in the big kin’s hands, the beam miraculously missing him. Without missing a beat, Greaser grabbed a plasma grenade out of a small rack next to his seat, and let fly. The detonation flashed like blue lightning, and set off a chain reaction that raced across the battlefield, turning what had been lifeless junk into fireballs of snarling slag.

“Well, the damn thing was out of ammo anyway,” Greaser said. Laughter spread through the kin the same way that explosion ripped through the junk heaps all around them. It was a roaring, defiant laughter as loud as any battle cry as the Ironbeards careened across a field of destruction, with every beat of their hearts lasting a small eternity as they raced ahead of certain death. With every lance of green light that carved away a little more of their protections, each shot getting closer to something vital, they realized they were never going to make the tree line. It was just a question of how close could they get before the necron forces focused fire, and brought them down.

“Got any bright ideas?” Greaser asked, just before a blast from the enemy sheared away the top rear of his helmet. He swore, jerking his head down as his thick, red mane billowed out into the wind through the hole.

Before anyone could answer, the night was lit up by a barrage of bright, red light. Batteries of HYlas weapons slammed into the nearest enemy units, kicking up huge columns of dirt and blasting apart any of the xenos unfortunate enough to be caught in the path of fire. The sound of heavy wings filled the sky, and the kin looked up to see the thick, boxy shape of Graceful Anvil. The dropship was letting loose with everything it had, the very laws of physics groaning as it tried to slow a breakneck advance with nothing more than counter thrusters and an iron will.

“Punch it, Spec!” Rat Trap snarled over the comm link as he brought the Anvil around in a tight turn, dodging fire from the necron forces while keeping the pressure on with his own weapons. “I ain’t putting feet down in this mud hole!”

Spector shoved the accelerator as high as it would go, coaxing as much speed out of the trike as he could get. The rear door of the dropship was lowering, and Rat Trap brought the Anvil down until it was practically dragging that gate across the dirt. The trike turned hard, the treads slipping and spewing fountains of chewed-up earth as Spector lined it up with the cargo bay. They were gaining on the Anvil, but there was only so much open ground, and the treeline was coming up fast.

“Spector,” Razor said, something almost like worry in his voice.

“I know,” Spector growled, his hands white-knuckled on the controls. “If the ancestors owe any of you a favor, now would be the time!”

The words had barely left Spector’s mouth when something came rocketing out of the open rear of the dropship, slamming into the front of the trike. The huge magnetic grapnel took hold, and as soon as it had, Rat Trap hauled back on the stick, and pulled the Anvil into a nearly vertical lift.

“Buckle up!” Spector shouted, snapping his harness into place as the winch started hauling the Ironbeards, and their vehicle into the bay. Razor followed suit, and Fixer and Tinker grabbed hold of the mounting bars along the sides of the cargo bay. Greaser snapped his harness in place, but then wrapped his gauntlets around the roof bars, as well as the vehicle frame, gritting his teeth as he locked his grip in place.

The trike whipped up and down, back and forth, buffeted by winds and g-force. The enemy tried to shoot them down, but their shots missed both the Ironbeards and the dropship as they made their escape. The trike’s metal groaned and protested, but the kin had built their old warhorse with time and care, and every part of it held as the Anvil’s path evened out, and the dropship’s speed steadied. The cable cranked them in one, slow meter at a time until they all heard the hiss of the hydraulics locking in place around the treads, and felt their movement finally stop. Howler was strapped in the fisher’s seat, the cyber monkey looking at them with it’s glowing red eye, and wide, feral smile as it let go of the winch controls. He seemed very pleased with himself.

“You locked in, boys?” Rat Trap asked over the comm link.

“We are,” Spector said, letting out a long, slow breath as he reached for his harness’s release. “Close her up, Trap, and get us back in the black.”

“Will do,” Rat Trap said.

As the Anvil’s rear hatch began closing, the Ironbeards slowly stumbled out of their trike. They were scorched and scarred, battered, bruised, and busted, but they were more or less in one piece. Razor collapsed into one of the jump seats along the wall, removing his helmet with a hiss and putting his head down between his knees. Spector held onto the side of the trike, not quite trusting his legs to hold him up. Fixer stumbled around the side as if he was drunk, grinning up at Greaser who was still in his seat.

“You can let go now, big guy,” Fixer said.

“No I can’t,” Greaser said, chortling. “Something hit my hydraulics. I had enough power to lock in, but not enough to let go.”

That was too much for Fixer. He collapsed against the side of the trike, his legs letting go as he slid down the side of the vehicle. Breathless wheezes escaped him, but it was all the air he could manage to pull in as he tried to give voice to laughs that he just didn’t have the strength to get out. Spector shook his head slowly, and coughed to cover his own amusement.

“Tinker,” he called. “Get out here and peel Greaser out of his suit. He can’t celebrate stuck up there like that.”

“We… we have a problem, Spector,” Tinker said.

The old kin came shuffling out of the rear of the trike. He held the decavane crystal in his servo arms, balancing it with the machine’s internal gyroscopes. The crystal was pulsing erratically, a storm of energy coursing through it, casting flashes of light that filled the entire cargo bay. The others were motionless, frozen by what they were seeing. For a moment that seemed to stretch out for an eternity, no one spoke. Even Howler stared, slack-jawed at something he couldn’t comprehend. There was only the atomic heart of the crystal, and the dread coursing through the kins’ veins as they stared at it.

“What’s going on back there?” Rat Trap demanded. “We’re 30 seconds from breaking atmo, and my instruments are all over the damn place!”

“What happened?” Spector asked, his eyes on Tinker’s.

“It cracked,” Tinker said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I thought the cut was smooth, but something must have gone wrong. Or it was destabilized by the proximity of the gauss rounds, or it’s keyed to the planet’s gravitational field for all I know-”

“How long?” Greaser demanded, cutting Tinker off.

“Minutes,” he said, shaking his head. “If we don’t stabilize it… and we don’t have anything on this ship that can do that.”

Spector nodded once. Fixer looked from him, to Tinker, then back again. He tried to push himself to his feet, but winced as he put his weight on his bad arm, and collapsed onto his backside. Tinker licked his lips, and returned the nod.

“Razor, lower the gate,” Spector said. “When it comes down, lock your mags. Tinker, as soon as you have clearance, toss it.”

“No,” Fixer said, though it was unclear if it was directed at Spector, the crystal, or the universe and its cruel machinations. Regardless, no one answered his plea. Razor slammed his hand on the switch to open the hatch, shoving his helmet back in place as he did so. As soon as the seal broke, they all triggered their mag boots, locking themselves to the deck. Tinker turned, his lips silently moving as he counted down the seconds. As soon as the crack of burning space had grown big enough to fit their tainted prize through, he twisted his body, and hurled. The force of the servos in his armor, and the strength of the mechanical arms, combined with the raw gravity of the moon trying to suck them all back down to its surface was just enough, and the decavane crystal sailed out the rear of the Anvil, hurtling back toward the ziggurat it had come from.

As the hatch sealed shut, and the dropship poured on the power it needed to speed away from the moon’s clutches, Fixer put his helmeted head in his hands.

“That close,” he said, sighing. “That… damn… close…”

***

The Ironbeards wasted no time in warp jumping out of the sector as soon as the air locks were closed and the Geller fields were up. It had been a relatively uneventful warp jump, and they’d come out far enough away from where they’d been that their auspex arrays couldn’t see LV-486 or any of the planets that had surrounded it. It was possible the crystal had dropped back into the jungle, stabilized, and nothing had happened. It was possible it had gone up in a solar-system destroying fireball, snuffing out anything within reach of so much energy. They didn’t know, and in that particular moment, they didn’t much care.

The first order of business was the feast. Whether it was to celebrate a victory, to salve their wounds after a failure, or to mourn the passing of comrades, after a mission the kin ate, they drank, and they renewed their bonds with one another. And, as was their custom, they focused on telling tales of their own, small glories. Spector spoke of the look of horror on Greaser’s face when the necron lord had snatched him, and then they all bellowed with laughter at Greaser’s recounting of how he’d smashed the lord to pieces. Tinker clapped Spector on the back, reminding him that if he hadn’t kept a cool head they wouldn’t have made it out of there. Spector, in turn, refilled Tinker’s cup, and said with only a bit of jest that the records of what they’d seen in that place might be the most valuable treasure they’d escaped with. They’d all gone quiet a bit at that, and Fixer picked up the tale, talking about how Razor had held off an army of those things that had once been eldar, watching over Fixer’s wounded form like the fiercest of hounds. Razor didn’t say anything, but it looked like he might have been smiling behind his beard. Just a little.

Once they’d eaten, drunk, and they’d had a chance to rest, they swept up the pieces of their mission. Greaser went to work on repairing the trike, trying to find enough replacement parts to make her field-ready once more. Tinker did the same for the Ironbeards’ power armor, his attention to detail a necessity for ensuring the more intricate systems were fully operational. Razor went through the armory, silently scrubbing, spinning, and oiling everything. Spector sat behind his desk in what they laughingly called the captain’s quarters, a data slate in one hand and a cup of recaff in the other as he tried to get a sense of what this operation had cost them. He was in the middle of doing that when Fixer knocked on his door frame.

“I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news,” Fixer said. “Which do you want first?”

“Give me the bitter first, and chase it with the sweet,” Spector said, taking a sip of his brew.

“Well, the bad news is that we’re probably still underwater on this,” Fixer said as he folded his arms and leaned his good shoulder against the door frame. “I managed to raise a few contacts and massage their expectations. The raw materials of what we got out of that tomb were valuable in and of themselves, but there’s a few folks who like to keep antiquities about to show how rich they are, and looted antiquities tend to have that extra spice that makes them really open their accounts. Bigger transfers take more time, more vetting, and so on, you know how it goes. The treasure, combined with copies of the pict reels that Tinker took, could even give us a bit of cushion that might let us break even if I can get hold of Longinus.”

“Tinker doesn’t like sharing, and he hates inquisitors,” Spector said. Fixer’s smile was as innocent as it was fake.

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I was hoping you could persuade him. For the good of the crew, and all?”

“So what’s the good news?” Spector asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

Fixer’s smile grew wicked, and he flashed his strong, white teeth. Spector had seen that look a thousand times before, and it made the skin between his shoulder blades pucker with gooseflesh.

“So while I was opening up back channels, I managed to get hold of a rogue trader I swapped stories and drinks with a few years back,” Fixer said. “Carolina even said she’d be willing to give us a generous cut of the proceeds, and take the bounty off my head, if we helped her out with her current endeavor.”

“Why does a rogue trader have a bounty on your head, Fixer?” Spector asked. Fixer just waved a hand, as if he were brushing smoke away from his face.

“Nothing serious. A minor misunderstanding,” he said, shrugging, and then wincing as the movement tugged on his new scar tissue. “Anyway, do you want to hear about the job?”

Spector sighed, and topped off his mug before turning his full attention to Fixer. “All right. Put your cards on the table."

More Stories From Neal Litherland

If you enjoyed this tale, then please consider leaving a comment or a like, and sharing it with other readers! This is the latest installment of my Table Talk series, and if you wish to help me keep putting out new stories then consider becoming a Patreon patron, or just buying me a Ko-Fi as a way to put a tip in my jar for a job well done!

But if you're in the mood for more of my stories, check out some of the following examples!

- Old Soldiers: The Hyperion Conflict devastated the planet, but humanity survived. So, too, did the Myrmidon; genetically-engineered shock troopers who stood on the front lines of the war. Pollux has been trying to escape the horrors of that war for a decade, now, and he may be able to do so... until a shadowy conspiracy makes a move on him. Reassembling the remains of his old squad, he prepares to do what he was made to do, but there is a question in the back of his mind. Is this really happening, or is it all in his head?

- Where The Red Flowers Bloom: When Japanese forces sent a small garrison to an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, none of them expected to so much as see the enemy before the end of the war. But there is something on the island... something more dangerous than an entire fleet of American warships. Something that bullets simply will not kill.

- Broken Heroes: Rann was sent out to retrieve a lost weapon, but now he and the squad who came with him are surrounded by the colossal, insectoid creatures that claimed the forest. When a brave act crashes him through the ground and into an ancient bunker, he finds something far more potent than he could ever have hoped for... something that wants to finish the fight it started so long ago.

- Field Test: When Inquisitor Hargrave came to the world of New Canaan a few days ahead of an ork rok, she promised them a weapon that would destroy the greenskins. When that weapon was unleashed, though, none could have predicted just how powerful, or how dangerous, he truly was.

- Beyond The Black: The Emperor's Hand: Gav Smythe has fought daemons and traitors in the Emperor's name all his life... but this may be the greatest challenge the ogryn has yet faced!

- Gav and Bob Part V: Faith and Martyrs: The Imperium's bravest ogryn sits down to talk with a canoness confessor of the Adeptus Sororitas. She will weigh his sanity, and his soul, and Gav may just find some of the peace he didn't know he was seeking.

- Waking Dogs- A World Eaters Tale: For my fans of Warhammer 40K, this is a story I felt compelled to tell about one of the infamous World Eaters remembering who he once was.

- Broken Chains- A World Eaters Tale: The sequel to Waking Dogs, we see that Crixus is taking his personal crusade seriously. Word is beginning to spread of his deeds, and his old sergeant Atillus realizes that the time may have come for him to pay for the decisions he made so very long ago.