by Andy Hoare
‘Who you?’ it grunted, its single, leering red eye looking Brielle up and down. ‘You Admiral wossname? Vonigut the turd?’
‘No,’ Brielle said dryly. ‘I am not Lord Admiral Alasandre Vonicurt the Third.’ The officer in question was a man of two centuries’ service, Brielle knew, and well known for his exceptional girth and prodigious facial hair. Orks weren’t the most observant of aliens, but still…
‘I am Brielle Gerrit,’ she said archly, suppressing her annoyance with an effort of will. ‘Of the Rogue Trader Clan Arcadius.’
The ork seemed to think hard on that, for it evidently recognised the name despite its inability to tell one human from another. Brielle’s fingers tapped against her arm and she flicked Ganna a glance that spoke volumes of her opinion of the greenskin’s mental skills. She became aware that much of the noise and general hubbub of the thoroughfare had quietened down and that scores of upturned faces were watching the confrontation eagerly. What happened here might affect her entire visit to Quag, she realised. At length, the beast rumbled deep in its barrel chest, and it squinted its eye at Brielle.
‘Hired Skarkill’s mob?’ the ork said. ‘Big fight on church planet?’
‘There we go,’ said Brielle, relieved that the ork was indeed of the clan she thought it was, and an underling of the warlord Skarkill. ‘The Arcadius had need of your clan’s services on Briganta Regis. Skarkill’s army took the city and hardly looted it at all. Everyone came away with a profit, and Skarkill said some nice words to my father. You remember those words?’
Now the entire thoroughfare went quiet as hundreds of the locals waited to see how things would play out. Brielle had no doubt that the greenskin mercenary would have terrorised many of these people, and that a fair few of them would be eager to see it put in its place. Others might have a vested interest in her being the one to come off the worse, though…
‘He said,’ the ork slurred, the effort to recall its lord’s words clearly taxing its tiny mind. ‘Ever you need something done, you just got to ask.’
‘That he did,’ said Brielle, moving towards the make or break point of the conversation. ‘Now, I need something done, understood?’
‘You want something killed?’ the alien mercenary said, suddenly animated as it believed itself back on more familiar territory.
‘No,’ said Brielle, eliciting visible disappointment from the ork. Lowering her voice so that only those on the walkway could hear her, she said, ‘I need you to step aside and let me pass.’
The crowds below had not heard Brielle’s demand, perceiving only a protracted silence during which the woman in the frock coat with the elaborate eye makeup and outlandishly plaited hair seemed to face down an alien warrior several times her bulk, and which had refused to give way to a single one of them all the time it had been in Quagtown. A ripple of excitement passed through the crowd and someone started issuing odds. Soon, bets were being placed and money was furtively changing hands, and then, the confrontation reached its conclusion.
The massive, green-skinned brute nodded at the woman and grunted at its companions. Now utterly silent, the crowd was clearly expecting an explosive and highly entertaining outburst of violence.
But then, the ork stepped aside so that the walkway was clear for Brielle and her party to proceed across. The crowd exclaimed in shock and outrage, while several ruined bookkeepers made a sudden dash for the nearest side alley.
‘Thank you,’ Brielle said to the ork quietly and not without relief as she walked past, fighting hard to keep her voice steady so wildly was her heart pounding. ‘Skarkill and my father will both be very pleased with your service, and I’m sure you’ll be paid well.’
A moment later Brielle and Ganna were across, the two servitors stomping along after them, and the orks had continued on their way. ‘Mistress,’ Ganna hissed once he was sure that no one would overhear. ‘If your father ever hears that I allowed you to do what you just did, he’d…’
‘I know,’ said Brielle, dismissing her pilot’s complaint with a wave of a hand. ‘He’d be furious at you. He’d be even more furious at me, though…’
Realising that his mistress was talking about more than he had knowledge of, Ganna slowed his pace and fixed Brielle with a dark stare. ‘Might I ask why, mistress?’
‘Because it wasn’t him that hired the Blood Axes at Briganta Regis,’ she said. ‘It was the rebels. We were on the other side.’
Now Ganna halted entirely and rounded on Brielle as the colour drained from his face. ‘What if he’d…’
‘Remembered that little detail?’ Brielle interjected. ‘I was counting on him not being able to tell one human from another, as he proved when he mistook me for that pig Admiral Vonicurt. He had a choice between risking his warlord’s wrath or losing face in front of a few humans. Luckily, he decided he cared more what his boss thought of him than us.’
Brielle’s audacity was too blatant for Ganna to reply, so she fished the data-slate from her pocket and looked around for the building that was their destination. ‘There it is,’ she said, setting off again. ‘Are you coming?’
‘I think I’d better, mistress,’ Ganna mumbled towards Brielle’s retreating back. ‘I think I’d better…’
‘Hold it right there, miss,’ demanded the stubjack guarding the door to the nondescript building. ‘What’s in the crate?’
Brielle looked the man up and down, determining in less than two seconds that he was wearing armour concealed beneath his scruffy overalls and padded jacket, and armed with at least one hidden pistol weapon. She could take him if she needed, she judged, but there were three others of his type loitering nearby, thinking they were acting casual but clearly in on the action.
‘Nothing that should worry you,’ she said, not feeling a tenth of the cockiness she put into her voice. ‘Let me pass and we’ll all have a far nicer day, is that clear?’
The stubjack cast what he obviously thought was a furtive glance at the nearby group, and Brielle knew for sure that they were guarding the place as well. ‘I said, what’s in the crate?’ the man repeated as his fellows ambled over, his voice lower and more threatening than the first time.
‘And I said, nothing that should worry you,’ Brielle replied. ‘Looks like we’re stuck, doesn’t it?’
‘Not really,’ the stubjack said as his three fellow, equally heavily armed and armoured guards appeared at Brielle and Ganna’s back. The pair were surrounded by men much bigger than them, but still she refused to be cowed.
‘Listen,’ said Brielle, lowering her voice so that the guards were forced to lean in and concentrate to hear her clearly. It was a trick she’d learned from a particularly sadistic tutor growing up on Chogoris, and it forced the listener to concentrate on the speaker. ‘I’ve already faced down a bunch of orks today, and they were far bigger than you. Let. Me. Pass,’ she growled.
The man blinked as he held Brielle’s gaze. Word had clearly spread quickly throughout the small town; hardly surprising, she thought, given the nature of its inhabitants. He glanced towards the crate held securely between the two servitors, evidently weighing up his desire to know what was inside it against his sense of self-preservation. Though he might try to hide behind the need to ensure that nothing dangerous was permitted inside the building he was employed to protect, Brielle knew that in reality, he was hoping it contained something he could take a cut of. Well, it most certainly didn’t.
Swallowing hard, the man reached a decision. He nodded to his fellows and, with far more reluctance than the ork on the walkway, stepped aside to allow Brielle and her companions to pass. Grinning with theatrical sweetness, Brielle moved past him; allowing Ganna to push open the battered door, which appeared to be made from the rear hatch of a Chimera armoured carrier, for her to enter the darkness waiting inside.
Beyond the hatch, Brielle was plunged into shadow, which became pitch blackness th
e moment the guard slammed the portal shut after the servitors had passed through. Her heart pounding, she took a deep breath and straightened her back, before stepping forwards into the unknown with one hand held lightly out before her. She soon found the floor to be littered with small fragments of debris, though she couldn’t tell, and didn’t really want to know, exactly what she was treading on.
A moment later, she became aware of a muted, but rowdy noise from somewhere up ahead, and stepped forwards until her hand brushed against what felt like a metallic surface. The sound was definitely coming from the other side of what she guessed to be a second hatchway, and even as she listened she became aware of voices and wild strains of half-heard melody.
‘Ready?’ she said, as much to herself as to her loyal retainer. Without waiting for an answer, she pushed on the hatchway, and saw for the first time the interior of the place where she had come to earn herself a small fortune.
The space was far larger than seemed possible from the outside, for what seemed like a random jumble of shipping containers and tumbledown shanties was in fact a cunningly wrought building, housing an establishment known, amongst certain circles at least, across the entire region. It had no official name, though those in the know often called it ‘Quagtown Palace’ and a variety of similar titles, all of them deliberately and sarcastically investing the place with an entirely undeserved grandiloquence.
The crowded interior was in essence a huge, shabby theatre, dominated by a stage at the far end that was framed by great swirls of crudely but ambitiously made baroque detailing. The stage blazed with light made hazy by the banks of acrid smoke drifting through the air, and as she stepped through Brielle found she could make out very little of whatever spectacle was being enacted on that stage, though it was clear that the crowd seated before it most certainly could. Row upon row of tattered, mismatched velvet and leather seating, much of it scavenged from a wide variety of vehicles, accommodated an audience of several hundred. Every one of them was shrieking, whooping and clapping at whatever was happening on the distant, smoke-obscured stage.
The sounds Brielle had dimly heard through the hatch were suddenly so loud they made her wince. An anarchic cacophony of raucous crowd noise and skirling, wild cadences produced by some unseen band competed with the hubbub of conversation, merriment and clinking drinking vessels.
Moving forwards to afford Ganna space to pass through the inner hatch, Brielle took in more of her surroundings. The walls were lined with shadowed nooks and counters that sold all manner of wares, most of them alcoholic and probably decidedly unhealthy to imbibe without a large dose of counter-tox taken beforehand.
Seated around the bar area, Brielle saw a variety of underworld scum. She recognised the types from a hundred frontier star ports and way stations: out of work crew, surly press gangers, harried looking lay-techs and in amongst them all, the dark-eyed, tight-lipped ship’s masters and other higher-ranked crew. Serving staff shimmied through the smoky scene carrying trays of refreshments and soliciting the richer-looking patrons for whatever further services they might desire. The sight made Brielle’s lip curl in disgust, but a part of her found the whole sordid spectacle somehow alluring, despite her upbringing in the tenets of the Imperial Creed.
‘Is this the right place?’ said Ganna as he appeared at Brielle’s side, the two servitors still waiting in the passageway. ‘It looks kind of…’
‘Fun,’ Brielle interrupted. ‘And yes, it is the right place. Shall we find a table?’
‘Drink, ma’am?’ said the waitress, who appeared at the table several minutes after Brielle and Ganna had found themselves somewhere to sit. It was far from ideal, Brielle knew, but if things played out right she’d be moving on pretty soon anyway. The servitors were stood immediately behind her, eliciting numerous furtive glances from those nearby. The glances told Brielle who was who and what they were here for. Many really wanted to know what was in the crate, while plenty more were keen to look anywhere else, deliberate in their efforts to blend into the crowd and not to draw attention to themselves. They were the dangerous ones, Brielle thought with a small, wry smile.
‘Hmm?’ Brielle replied, leaning back against the scruffy, padded seat and propping her elbows on its back as she looked around at the crowd one last time before addressing the waitress’s question. ‘I don’t suppose you stock Erisian Hors d’age?’ she said, knowing full well they didn’t.
The waitress looked blankly back at Brielle, and just for a moment she suspected the girl might have undergone some form of pre-frontal neurosurgery, though her forehead bore no obvious scars.
‘Ganymedian Marc?’ she pressed mischievously, her curiosity piqued by the waitress’s continued silence. Maybe she was under some form of xenos dominance, Brielle thought, like those priests on Briganta Regis…
‘Asuave?’ she said finally, realising she wasn’t going to get an entertaining reaction.
‘Certainly, ma’am,’ the waitress replied. ‘Terran vintage is it? Void-sealed to give that complex flavour…?’
Brielle’s eyes narrowed and Ganna coughed uncomfortably. ‘Two shots of whatever you’ve got,’ she said finally, slightly put out by the sudden feeling that it was she who had been made sport of. Before she could say anything more, the waitress had disappeared into the crowd, leaving Brielle and Ganna with a view of the large stage dominating the establishment.
‘Mistress,’ said Ganna. It was obvious he was about to chastise her as only a retainer as valued as he would ever dare. ‘Do we really want to draw so much attention to ourselves?’
Brielle grinned widely as she settled in for the wait for the drinks. ‘Yes, Ganna. That’s exactly what we want. Now will you relax?’
With that, Brielle set her feet upon the low table, crossing her heavy boots as she tried to work out what was happening on the gilded stage. Entertainment varied so wildly across the Imperium it was often damn near impossible to decipher what was going on, each style depending on so many different cultural idioms they made little or no sense to outsiders. Even amongst those cultures that weren’t rooted in a single location, the galaxy was such a huge place that what entertained one audience was utterly impenetrable to another. Nevertheless, Brielle had been raised in the uniquely free, wide-roaming culture of a rogue trader clan, and certainly considered herself open minded when it came to such things. What she saw unfolding on the stage before her however was quite some way from anything she had seen before.
The stage was obscured by banks of drifting smoke illuminated red, violet and purple by the array of lumen-bulbs mounted at its head, but as Brielle watched, the smoke drifted past, turning what was a hazy, half-seen blur into something shockingly solid. At the centre of the stage stood an impossibly tall, almost skeletally thin man wearing a bizarre costume that seemed to be made from a hundred different items of clothing thrown randomly together. On his head he wore a tall stovepipe hat and his eyes were made bug-like and bulging by a pair of heavy duty goggles inset with magnifying glass. He held in one hand an ancient brass vox-horn, while the other gesticulated towards the other dozen or so figures sharing the stage with him.
The stage show was clearly some form of exhibition, and the spectacle on display was a group of mutants whose bodies were so malformed by genetic deviation they would have been shot on sight on any civilised world, and most frontier or badland ones too. Brielle’s first reaction was to reach for the laspistol holstered in her belt, but she caught herself before her hand could close around the grip. Clearly, if the mutants were dangerous they wouldn’t be on show in such a way, she told herself, though in truth she was far from convinced that was the case.
The largest of the mutants was a hulking brute, and Brielle was only slightly relieved to see its ankles were clapped in irons, a long, heavy chain snaking off behind the striped curtain behind. It was at least as massive as an ogryn, one of the stable, largely tolerated mutant strains recognised by mos
t of the Imperium as a sanctioned branch of the human family tree. But its size was the only thing the beast had in common with the ogryns. Its skin looked like pockmarked bark and its hands, which were clad in heavy metal straps, were long, serrated claws. Its face was barely visible off-centre in its chest, and consisted of a huge lower jaw, a massive brow and a pair of beady black eyes nestled in the folds between.
As if this hulking brute wasn’t unusual enough, the rest of the mutants clustered on the stage were just as extreme, though thankfully none were anywhere near so large. One had multiple-jointed arms three times the normal length, while another had three heads, none of which had any visible mouth. One mutant was little more than a head mounted in a bizarre mechanical ambulatory contraption, while another had no head at all, its facial features set instead in the centre of a grossly distended belly.
With a flourish that brought forth another wave of applause from the audience, the scarecrow-like impresario introduced the next act. The lights dimmed to be replaced by a single, harsh sodium beam, and as the applause died away a stir of movement from overhead drew Brielle’s attention.
To a flurry of wheezing, atonal music emanating from a pit out of sight in front of the stage, a garishly painted hoop descended from the rafters over the stage, and seated daintily upon it was a female figure that sent the crowd truly wild. Its legs were fused together into a shape resembling the body of a fish, but that was far from its strangest feature. Upon its shoulders sat two heads, each of which was dominated by hugely pouting, bright red lips. Neither face had any other features, yet the crowd clearly viewed the creature as the very pinnacle of female beauty. Even as Brielle watched, the figure stirred into motion, her hips writhing suggestively until the hoop in which she was perched began to swing back and forth, each pass taking her further out over the whooping crowd, who reached upwards with groping hands to get just a touch of the object of their devotion.
