The Antony Cartel.
*book 7 of the women of the Night Lords series*
Chapter 1F
The night outside was pitch black, not so much as a single star shining through the perpetual black dust storms on the dark planes of the planet Tazakeo Prime. Dark, so completely and utterly dark. It was a darkness beyond the mere absence of light, a darkness that actively swallowed up light. Tazakeo Prime was a highly volcanic planet with a distinctive black volcanic ash dust and howling winds that kicked the dust up so thickly that visibility was reduced to mere meters even with a flashlight.
The dark planes were a world of everlasting night, a place where light simply could not reach. And yet despite this, the dry winds that tore at the dusty ashy surface were hot winds, almost uncomfortably hot. A thick volcanic atmosphere of greenhouse gases kept the dark place toasty warm.
In this ash choked hell a heavily armed gang of drug dealers hid fearfully in a huge modular shelter carefully hidden under the ash. This planet was the perfect place to hide if you didn't want to be found, and the Fianco mafia had good reason to want to hide after a promised drug shipment was lost to Ork pirates.
Fianco mafia boss Big Sylvester Tribbiani comforted his crying little daughter as best as he could, trying to reassure her that the cartel would never find them here. The entire Fianco mafia and their women and children were all desperately hiding in this place until the heat died down. They had run up a debt that they simply couldn't pay to one of the most dangerous criminal cartels in the eastern edge of the Segmentum Solar and to put it mildly they were absolutely fucked if they couldn't hide.
By all normal standards mafia boss Big Sylvester was a fearsome burly man, a man that other men feared to face, but these were not normal circumstances. The Fianco mafia members were all clad in ballistic fibre armoured vests and packing serious firepower with autoguns and lasguns aplenty, yet these hardened criminals were trembling with terror, scared out of their minds.
"Papa, I'm scared! What if they find us here?" his tiny daughter Lisa asked shaking with terror.
"Hush little Lisa, no one can find us here. We are hiding in a buried hideout in the middle of an endless plane of black ash. Even space ship sensors cannot detect us through the ash storms, we are invisible, we have no radio emissions and even if we did the dust clouds would block them. All our tracks and footprints on the surface have long since been covered up by the billowing ash clouds and all sounds we make are lost in the screaming wind. A man could pass within 5 meters of us out there and he still wouldn't see us. We are safe little one," Big Sylvester told his little girl.
He only finished saying this when the sound of wet thumping noises came from the outside entrance and the assembled mafia turned their heads to see a dozen severed heads bouncing into the room. Big Sylvester looked at the heads in horror, recognising them as belonging to every one of the hidden sentries the Fianco mafia had stationed outside!
Big Sylvester looked at the doorway in dread, but nothing came through into the underground shelter. The heads had simply been thrown in through the door, the thrower having no desire to enter the door themselves.
The Fianco mafia literally shat themselves with terror but still nothing came in through the door. For minutes no one dared to look away from the door, weapons held at the ready. The minutes stretched on, first into tens of minutes and then into hours, but still nothing came in through that door.
Two days later Big Sylvester was at the very edge of madness, too afraid to sleep and freaked out by the complete lack of attack since the heads being thrown in through the door. No one dared to go anywhere near that door, so hideously afraid, but absolutely nothing happened.
By the 3rd day Big Sylvester was a gibbering shell of a man, broken by these horrible terror tactics. The enemy was clearly right outside, ready to kill them all, but was simply toying with them before killing them.
On the 4th day one of the men snapped and went out the door. 10 seconds later his severed head was thrown back inside through the door!
For days more it went on, driving several people insane with terror and they had finally had enough.
"Just come inside already!" Big Sylvester finally shouted at the door.
"We have been inside all week," said a blood chilling voice behind him.
Big Sylvester shot around to see a 9 foot tall Night Lord chaos space marine holding his trembling daughter Lisa by the neck, a blood stained knife at her throat.
"P-please Augusta, please don't hurt my daughter," Big Sylvester pleaded, close to hysterical with terror now.
"You owe my father a lot of money "Big" Sylvester, a LOT of money," the giant Night Lord said in a dangerous tone.
"I will pay! I will pay it all!" Big Sylvester pleaded.
"Where is our money? We want it right now," the Night Lord demanded.
"I don't have it with me, but I can get it to your father soon! Please just don't hurt my little girl!" Big Sylvester pleaded.
The giant Night Lord paused, considering this offer. After a moment he said, "you will pay us back 3 times what you owe. I will keep your little "Lisa" with me until you pay back every single credit owed. Don't take too long or I will start chopping off fingers."
Big Sylvester looked into the eyes of his terrified little girl and desperately agreed. The room then suddenly went pitch dark for about 30 seconds before the lights came back on, and when they returned the Night Lord and Lisa were gone.
***...
Up in the Night Lord's ship in orbit of Tazakeo Prime, the Antony Cartel Matriarch, Chaos Champion of Slaanesh Octavia Antony swung energetically from a strip tease pole as she danced for the pleasure of her husband, Antony Cartel Patriarch Luke Antony.
Luke Antony had formerly been Luke Sevenson, but out of love for his wife he had taken her last name. The pair had originally been part of a different Night Lords crime cartel called the Sevenson Cartel, but when their son Augusta almost murdered the girlfriend of the boss of the Sevenson Cartel, they had had to flee for the sake of their son's safety. Luke was a mighty Night Lords Chaos Terminator and ruled the Antony Cartel as chaos lord.
Luke clapped his hands as his Slaaneshi champion wife erotically entwined her highly sensual naked body all over the stripper pole. His wife was sexy and provocative in the extreme, with long curly brown hair, flawless pale white skin, a perfect body and truly gigantic breasts. In her right armpit was a bright pink mark of Slaanesh sealing her as a chaos champion of Slaanesh and her heavily made over face was so beautiful that it was almost shocking. The woman constantly projected a passive psychic aura of extreme lust, an aura that stirred the loins and roused the sexual passions of everyone around her.
The pair had been married for many decades now and were close to their 50 year anniversary, but Octavia had not aged a day past her early twenties thanks to ruthless use of highly expensive rejuvenation drugs. She had formerly had a series of slave brands running along the front of her right shoulder but had had cosmetic surgery to remove this imperfection.
Luke sat in the dark of the viewing area, watching mesmerised as Octavia gyrated and twisted for his viewing pleasure. The pole was illuminated by a pale pink light, and the light danced off the glitter which covered her contorted body as it flexed and bent with astonishing flexibility. Her vagina glistened with wetness and she beckoned for her husband to come closer.
Luke was just about to get up when his son Augusta kicked the door open and swaggered into the dark striptease lounge. Augusta ignored the sight of his naked mother and instead got himself a drink from the bar and joined his father to watch the show.
As well as Octavia, a number of other women were dancing naked on the poles, for the viewing pleasure of an audience. Like many criminal cartels, the Antony Cartel was heavily invested in the sex industry and the Antony Cartel Night Lords generally hung out in strip clubs and brothels.
"You took your sweet time, do you have his head for my wall?" Luke asked his son.
"He says he will pay us 3 times what he owes, I took his kid as collateral," Augusta explained.
Luke grunted in response and returned his attention to his wife, the first woman he had ever loved. The last 50 years had been hard, but they had been able to survive the retribution from the Sevenson Cartel and establish a viable company of Night Lords chaos space marines from gene seeds stolen from the Sevenson Cartel.
All around the strip club stood Night Lords of the Antony Cartel, all of them the children of either Luke, Augusta or of one of the few other people who had been loyal enough to accompany them in the early days such as the ridiculously named Khorne Berserker "Lord BicepFist".
The warband was a motley bunch of battle scarred veterans of many wars, all of them Night Lords of one sort or another, with a good balance of tactical chaos marines, hard hitting elites and fast moving chaos raptors. They relied heavily on stealth and terror tactics, especially utilising psykers on the field of battle to let them walk unseen right inside the enemy bases undetected.
The Sevenson Cartel had been pursuing them for 50 years now, annoyed deeply about the near murder of Mandy Sevenson by Augusta. Mandy was a sadist who had almost killed Augusta's wife Liling Antony, flogging Liling almost to death just for fun. Augusta had retaliated by exploding both of Mandy's legs with his bolt pistol, blasting them down to ragged stumps and outraging Mandy's lover the Chaos Sorceress Lord "Egg" Sevenson.
Egg's wrath had been terrible and they had been lucky to escape without Augusta being killed.
They were now all cut off from the fabulous wealth of the Sevenson Cartel and were forced to survive by organised crime, nomadically travelling from sector to sector eking out a living by shocking acts of crime and violence. Sex, drugs, loan sharking, money laundering, gun running, smuggling, human trafficking. If it made money then the Antony Cartel was interested.