Hey hey its me. Back again with more broken promises. With that in mind I will make no promises beyond, 'I'm going to continue writing this I swear." Some of you may doubt me, because I have so far kept like. One promise. But! To prove my veracity and my dedication to this project I have commissioned a cover to be made. The final product may be some time off yet, but I've decided to use the preliminary sketch as interim cover art.

Old Mast isn't going anywhere. His job is just real freakin harsh.


Cover Art: jack_lope, you can see his stuff on instagram and twitter


Jaune stared at his hands. Or, more accurately, he stared at the tough plastic material that covered his hands. The voidsuit was tight against his body. It was uncomfortable. He wasn't chafing yet, but he was pretty sure that was only because he wasn't moving. Once he started working up a sweat Jaune was quite certain that he would prefer the cold dark of the vacuum to whatever swamp which would no doubt bubble into being under his suit. The suit itself culminated in a helmet with a faceplate. Which he had decided to wear the moment he had realized that there was only about an inch of armorglass between him and certain death. Now, wherever he looked his faceplate would throw up a targeting array and catalogue whatever he was looking at. At the moment, he was looking at his hands. Which the faceplate helpfully identified as, 'OBJ-CLAS: H4-N-D5.' At least, Jaune imagined this was helpful. He figured that whoever was trained to wear this suit and fly this fighter would find the constant influx of information extremely useful. That, or they'd know how to turn it off. As things were, Jaune found the headset to mostly be annoying. If he looked out into the void his faceplate would identify things that he couldn't even see. Just little strings of green numbers and letters floating over nothing. This got very annoying whenever he looked in the direction of the assault. Which just showed him a massive cloud of letters and numbers, which were practically indistinguishable from each other.

So Jaune stared at his hands. He stared at them and contemplated the yoke they rested on. It gently shifted on its own, minutely correcting his course to keep him alongside the mysterious second fighter. Jaune had decided that he or the flight crew must have done something to the fighter's machine spirit to make it want to join with others of its kind. It was the only rational explanation that he could think of. The other two options were that the fighter had somehow become sapient and decided to throw its odds in with literally anyone other than Jaune, which he couldn't fault, or that the person in the other fighter was somehow flying both of their fighters at the same time, which was probably impossible. Unless the other pilot was a techpriest or something. They could probably pull that off.

He tapped a slow beat on his thighs. It was a marching song that he had learned on the Second Son. It was a steady, relaxing, rhythm. Even if it reminded him of his all too recent past. He tapped and tapped. The clock in the corner of his helmets display told him that he had been 'flying' for about four minutes. Jaune was growing bored of staring at his hands. It's not that he was easily bored or had a short attention span. It's just that the corner of his mind that was loudly ringing alarm bells and screaming about his imminent doom couldn't quite be masked by the drumming of his fingers.

He really wished his fighter had a vox. If he only had something to listen to, he was certain that he could calm down. A part of his mind pointed out that his fighter did in fact have a vox. And he even knew how to turn it on. Another, equally rational, part of his mind noted that this was not the kind of vox that had been requested by the brass. But was rather a vox that would probably force the brain into using the mouth. Which, his mind gestured to several recent memories, we as a collective have vowed never to do again.

This is true, his mind rebutted, but consider. With that statement the rational parts of his mind lapsed into silence and listened to the rest of his mind, which was busy screaming, banging on drums, and begging for them all to wake up and smell the firing squad.

A fair point, his mind conceded. Jaune took his brain's counsel into consideration. His options were either to be left alone with his thoughts, or to turn on the vox and potentially make the situation worse. In the end it wasn't much of a choice. Jaune directed OBJ CLAS: H4-N-D5 to reach out and flick the switch which he knew controlled the vox. He was greeted by a wash of static. Well, that was better than silence, but not quite what he was expecting. Though he really wasn't sure what he had been expecting. Jaune flicked the switch on and off a few times as he contemplated what he wanted. Did he want to talk to someone? Yes. Did he want to talk to anyone that this vox was likely to put him in contact with? No. What he really wanted was to curl up somewhere warm and complain to someone who cared. He knew he wasn't going to get that, so the next best thing would probably be information. There was no sense dying blind after all. Jaune looked up at the other fighter. It was above him and slightly ahead, weaving a gentle course through the Emerald Forest.

In the short moment it took his display the catalogue everything beyond the cockpit, Jaune was greeted by a beautiful sight. A stark silver fighter silhouetted against the distant sun. For a moment Jaune's mind was brought to standstill. Where he was and what he was doing overtook him. A human being, flying betwixt the stars. It had never occurred to him how vast the gulf separating him and his sole companion was. How impassable it should be. The only reasons the race of men could stride between the stars were the labors of their forebears. The sacrifice of the Emperor. The gifts of the Machine God. Without them humanity was nothing. And without them humanity would return to nothing.

Jaune had but a moment to ponder this before the far more present reality of his situation reasserted itself as a wall of text imposed itself over the silver fighter. The screaming of his mind, briefly shocked into silence, returned full force as he once again remembered where he was and who he was. And most importantly, who he was not. Jaune did his best to ignore his own panic as he carefully read the words floating around the fighter. He had hoped that his suit would tell him something useful. Instead all it gave him was a set of ever-changing coordinates, and something in degrees. Probably a vector? Pilots used vectors, right? That was a thing that Jaune was pretty sure he had learned at some point.

What Jaune had really hoped to find was some sort of frequency, or perhaps something as simple as a vox number. Sadly, this was not to be had. Bereft of options and motivation Jaune sat back in his seat and flicked the vox on and off, enjoying the tactile sensation of flicking a switch with a satisfying click. As he listened to the bursts of static, he thought he could hear a voice. He remembered vague stories he had heard from spacers about ancient vox transmitters and siren calls that could be heard in deep space. Maybe it was a siren trying to call him off into the void where he would slowly mummify, adding his voice to an unearthly chorus. Calling to unwary sailors for millennia to come.

"Can you hear me Jaune?" said a familiar voice over the vox.

Or it could be Pyrrha, that also worked.

Jaune left the vox on and hesitantly spoke into aether. "Pyrrha?"

"There you are!" Her voice was filled with relief. Had she been worried about him? "I've been trying to contact you ever since I found you, but you wouldn't respond." She had found him? Was Pyrrha the other fighter that he'd been in formation with all this time? Jaune decided to ask her.

"Found me?" He asked instead. He mentally shrugged. Close enough.

"Found you." Pyrrha affirmed. There was something in her voice that Jaune couldn't quite identify. Figuring it out was made all the more difficult by the washes of static that threatened to overwhelm her every word. Jaune looked at the instrument panel in front of him for some sort of handy tuning knob. There were several. All maliciously unlabeled. What did a fighter need so many switches and knobs for anyway? It had an engine and guns. Surely it didn't take three unlabeled dials and an as-yet-uncounted number of unlabeled switches to control everything.

"Are you there Jaune?" Pyrrha asked. Jaune wasn't sure how long he had been looking at the switches and dials, but they were theoretically going into a combat scenario. Or were already in one. Jaune was unclear where the line was. He supposed that any down time would be cause for concern.

"I'm still here." He said. "How did you know where to find me?"

"All of our fighters have transponders." She said instantly. "That, and you were just sort of spinning in place off the Beacon's bow."

Way to remind him of his most recent blatantly stupid stunt.

"Yeah…" Jaune said. Immediately recognizing that if Pyrrha saw him and knew it was him then so did everybody else. Great. Maybe they would all be too polite to mention it. Or maybe they would laugh at him behind his back. Or may-

"Do you know how to fly, Jaune?" Pyrrha asked. Jaune looked out at the silvery fighter that was leading him through the asteroid field and considered his options.

"No." He said reluctantly.

"I didn't think so." Pyrrha's voice wasn't filled with malice or pity, but rather with relief. Relief? Why would she be relieved?

"Everything makes sense then." She went on. "You are a Guardsman; it would be madness to assume that you would be at all familiar with any aspect of void combat."

Frakking spot on there, Pyrrha. Jaune's mind added but decided not to say.

"This mission feels strange." Pyrrha's voice grew speculative beneath the wash of static. "This feels like everything is a test. Every action we take is being judged, and information is being purposely withheld from us."

So Jaune's state of perpetual confusion was shared. That was good. But it was also very very bad. If Pyrrha, his only friend and ally, had no idea what was going on, then it was very safe to say that nobody knew what was going on. If nobody knew what was going on, then how were they going to get out of this alive? Let alone succeed in the mission they were given.

"Have you looked underneath the pilot's seat?" Pyrrha asked.

He had not. Doing so would actually be quite difficult given the yoke between his legs and the general cramped nature of the cockpit. Jaune leaned forward and down, careful not to brush the yoke, and sent questing fingers into the tight space between his seat and the floor. His adventuring digits came across a monolith of black leather. He very slowly pulled the briefcase out from its lair and into the glow of his consoles.

"Judging by your breathing, I'd say that you've found it." Jaune jumped as Pyrrha's voice erupted from his helmet's speakers. In his surprise he brushed the yoke and knocked himself out of formation, only to find his fighter guiding itself back to Pyrrha's wing.

"I'll save you some time and tell you that the case's lock doesn't have a correct combination, you'll have to force it open. While you're doing that, would you mind listening to me?"

"Sure?" He said as they banked around a large asteroid and entered a field of open space. Jaune rasped his bayonet out of its sheathe and rammed it into the side of the briefcase. No sense in fighting with a lock when he could just cut through the material.

"This mission feels wrong. I know for a fact that most of the students here have only a rudimentary knowledge of flight at best. And there is information that has been redacted from the documents in the briefcase." Pyrrha's voice fought against the static as she speculated. "Not to mention that the dossier itself was inside a locked case with no combination. Why would they send us out into a battlefield full of orks and soon to be full of Grimm with only half-truths and vital information hidden from us?"

"Maybe it's a test?" Jaune said as he carefully extracted a sheaf of papers from the side of his briefcase.

"A test with our lives on the line? A test where failure means our own deaths and the deaths of the people around us?" Jaune knew that Pyrrha wasn't asking him these questions but felt obliged to answer anyway.

"The Inquisition is not known for giving a frak about people." He muttered as he flicked through the pages. He could see diagrams of a station, a pict of a dissected ork, a page full of numbers and frequencies, and several pages filled with densely packed paragraphs, presumably holding the details of their mission.

"We're supposed to read all of this?" Jaune muttered under his breath. Precious little time had passed since they had been launched into space. Jaune supposed that the students were meant to find the briefcase while they were still on board the Beacon. But why would they? Who would look under their seat prior to a combat launch?

"I think we're meant to skim it and spot the important information." Pyrrha said.

"But you just said that a lot of the important information is missing." Jaune stared at the pict of the dissected ork. It was massive. Nearly three meters tall. And judging from the tools splayed around the corpse it was not an easy thing to cut open. That boded poorly.

"Exactly. And have you noticed anything else strange?"

Jaune hadn't really had time to do much noticing, but he was pretty sure this question was rhetorical, so he held his silence and waited for Pyrrha to tell him what was wrong.

"The Emerald Forest is supposed to be overrun with orks. But we haven't seen a single one since the assault began."

/-/

Ruby drifted quietly through the halls of the station. Everywhere she could see signs of ork habitation. Toothy faces grinned at her from the walls. Daubed in substances she'd rather not think about. Doors had been ripped from their frames and replaced with flaps of leather. Ruby tried not to think about where the orks managed to find leather in space. Even the handholds along the edges of the hallway had been replaced with rusty pipes and bits of bone.

It was like the presence of the greenskins caused the station to decay at an accelerated rate. She hoped the cogitator core was still intact. The dossier said it was, but how would they know unless the scouts had made it all the way to the core? And if they had made it all the way to the core, then why didn't they just turn on the stations sleeping defenses themselves? Perhaps it was all part of the test. The students needed something to fight against after all. The station still had power, and according to her suit sensors the station still had atmosphere, but after taking a single breath of air that could best be described as 'fetid' she had made the executive decision to rely on her suit's recyclers until the last possible moment. If the lights were on and the scrubbers were cycling, the cogitator core was probably functional. Ruby doubted the orks could make a system intricate enough to keep the station running in its place.

She wrapped her fingers around something that was very definitely not a human femur and propelled herself forward. She was in the stations living quarters. Though there wasn't much living going on at the moment. She hadn't seen a single live greenskin since she had entered the station. This in itself was concerning. In fact, other than those two fighters she hadn't seen a single greenskin since the assault had begun. She had seen corpses in various states of disrepair. Apparently the bigger orks ate the smaller orks and left the bits that they didn't want to hang in the air to slowly decay or be eaten by other, weaker, greenskins.

Ruby had seen plenty of those, and some of them were recent. She knew the orks were on the station somewhere, but she had no idea where they might be. A feeling in her gut told her that everything was about to go very wrong in a very explosive fashion if she didn't find out where all the orks had gone to. Ruby looked down at the schematics in her left hand and pondered where the orks would be. If they weren't in the living quarters, and some of their meals had clearly been interrupted, then they must have been gathered somewhere. Likely by their Warboss. If they had been gathered by their Warboss then they would be in a place with a lot of space. Most likely the mysterious hangars.

Ruby drifted further down the hallway toward where she knew the elevator shafts should be. The first thing she needed to do was to find a complete map of the station. After that all she needed to do was guess correctly and then go kill an ork Warboss who was most likely at the center of a thousand or more orks. Easy-peasy. What could go wrong.

Ruby tried not to think about all the things that would inevitably go wrong. What she focused on instead was finding a map. She drifted through the clouds of gently spinning corpses and filth until she reached the elevator shaft. Which, sadly, was in an even worse state. It was practically packed with the leavings of the stations orkish inhabitants. So packed in fact, that she could see the passage taken by the greenskins as they made their way to their mysterious gathering. Hm. Maybe she didn't need to find a map after all. If she just followed this trail downwards, she could probably pick up more signs of where they had gone as she went.

Crime-Buster Ruby was on the case.

She gently made her way down the elevator shaft. The time and care she had to take to avoid disrupting the trail really gave her time to think about what she was planning to do. She knew the orks were up to something, it was the only reason for all of this strange behavior. And she also knew that she was probably the only one who had gotten to Castrum Primary so far. Which meant that whatever she was doing she was going to have to do alone. And what she was planning to do was something that most people would use an army for.

She was going to assassinate the Warboss.

It would have to be quick. She would have to get in and kill it before it even knew she was there. She would not be able to survive an extended fight with a Warboss. She knew that much. Orks were known for their brute strength and endurance. Ruby knew that her strengths were in speed and agility. Which meant that the moment the ork landed a hit, she was done for. All she had to do was not get hit. Not get hit by the either the Warboss or the horde of orks that no doubt surrounded him.

Simple.

As Ruby made her way deeper into the station gravity reasserted itself. She also began to hear a distant rumble. Voices, Engines, sometimes gunfire. Orks, it seemed, were not known for stealth. Which made her circumstances all the more pressing. As she got closer and closer the rumble of voices became more distinct until she could hear a single voice above all the others. It was shouting in a crude form of Low Gothic.

"Quiet you lot!" The voice shouted. This command was greeted by a chorus of groans and complaints. Another voice stood above the general grumbling.

"Why ain't we goin' to fight!" It accused. Many voices rumbled in agreement as Ruby made her way through the corridors towards the source of the noise.

"We ain't fightin' cuz I'z da Warboss an' I says we ain't fightin!" The voice roared back. "An' if you think you'z a bettah Warboss den me den why don't you jus' come up 'ere and try it!" This threat cowed the accuser into silence. Ruby rounded the final corner and was greeted by a sight that would have any sane, or less determined, person running in terror.

Before her was a sea of green. All focused on a single point. An ork with jet black skin stood on a wing of one of their crude fighters. This black ork must be the Warboss. Though Ruby had only heard of one black ork before. And that ork had been destroyed years before she was born. What was she looking at now then? Another black ork? What did that mean for the sector? Ruby was stunned by the implications as the ork continued its speech.

"We'z not fightin' cuz I gots a plan." The ork said to its now quiescent audience. "Da 'umie told me dis was comin. An' she told me exactly 'ow to use dis here skin 'o mine." The ork chuckled darkly as it looked out of the hangar toward the slowly advancing assault. "Da 'umies fink dat we'z gonna be fightin' dem an' da beasties. But what dey don't know is dat da beasties are gonna fight for da orks!" The crowd of xenos let out a howl of triumph as the black ork slammed its fist into the fighter behind it.

"Quiet!" The black ork shouted again. "Lemme tell ya da plan ya gits!" The clamor died down, but the orks could not be brought back to complete silence with the prospect of bloodshed so near at hand. "We'z gonna let da 'umies fink it's safe to move up dat stonkin' great krooza. When dey do dat, us an' da beasties are gonna take it!" The ork raised its fists in the air. "Den We'z gonna WAAGH!" The excitement of the orks could no longer be contained. They began to leap, to hit one another, and to fire off their crude weapons completely at random. Heedless of their compatriots or the fragility of the station's artificial atmosphere.

The entire time the black ork had been, for lack of a better term, 'speaking', Ruby had been making her way around the edges of the hangar. She just had to get close enough to make a single jump. Jump in, kill the ork, jump out. It was a simple plan. She barely even had to sneak with all the excitement the crowd was causing. She was almost there now. She readied Crescent Rose and quietly thumbed its power switch. One strike. That's all it would take. Like the reaper from her childhood stories Ruby leapt forward, already swinging her scythe toward the ork's exposed neck.

One moment she was hidden in the shadows that dominated the edge of the hangar. The next she was in full view of the orkish horde, bringing her blade down on their leader's neck. All she had to do was connect. Crescent Rose could cut through anything. This would work. This would work. This would work-

Her blade stopped a hair's breadth from its intended target. Ruby looked down to see a fist as black as midnight wrapped around the haft of Crescent Rose.

"You thought I didn't see you?" The Black Ork's voice had changed. No longer was it the moronic grunting of a beast pretending to be a man. It was instead the voice of a man charged with hatred. The voice of a man who saw the world around him and could find nothing redeemable. It was a voice of barely constrained rage tinged with disgust.

"You thought I didn't see you." It repeated, its red eyes staring deeply into Ruby's own. "You thought that speech was for them didn't you." The Black Ork spat the word. "You thought I was laying out a plan for their benefit? You couldn't tell that my eyes were on you from the moment you entered this room?" Disgust took the fore as the Black Ork drew Ruby closer. "You're going to watch your warships burn little human. But first, I think some sport is in order." He threw Ruby to the ground and pinned both her and Crescent Rose beneath his boot.

"Lookit dis ladz!" It cried, turning to face its horde. "Da 'umies 'ave sent an assassin! A cutthroat wigglin' in da dark!" The orks roared their displeasure. They called out potential punishments for her. Torture in various forms, mostly. Though one particularly creative ork wanted to mount her on the front of the Warboss's fighter like some crude hunting trophy.

Ruby wasn't really listening. Not that she could have heard them over the sound of her own heartbeat anyway. She was more focused on getting her scythe and herself free from under the Black Ork's boot.

"I fink we should see 'ow the 'umie fights!" The Black Ork shouted over the commotion. "I fink we should 'ave a good warm up 'fore dat krooza gets 'ere!" The Black Ork picked up its own wicked axe as it said this. "Clear some space ladz! I'z gonna test dis 'umie meself."

The orks quickly formed a rough circle in the center of the hangar. The Ork lazily tossed Ruby into the center and leapt down behind her.

"Here I come little human." It growled as it charged forward and Ruby rapidly backpedaled. She could try to leap out, but she couldn't see anything behind the wall of green that encircled her. She would have to fight it. And she would have to fight it perfectly. She had felt the strength of its hands and seen the malice behind its eyes. It was going to try to toy with her before it finished her off. That was probably her only saving grace. It wouldn't want to kill her immediately. It would want to punish her for insulting its intelligence.

She leapt back as its double headed axe bit deeply into the station's steel floors.

Or it was going to kill her as quickly as possible. Great.

She dodged to the left, forcing the Black Ork to turn with her. If she went left, then it wouldn't be able to swing easily. And she was fast enough to run into the arc of it's falling axe and get away with it. The Black Ork closed quickly, forcing her towards the wall of greenskins. She could keep giving ground and she didn't have any time to play for. She had to kill this ork now and disrupt its plans, or the entire sector would be at risk.

The Black Ork knew this, but rather than playing with her or enjoying its helpless kill, it came at her with full killing intent. The Ork may have called it sport, but that apparently didn't mean it was going to hold back. She was going to have to pull out all the stops to win this, and she had to win it quickly.

She spotted a clear spot on the other side of the arena and teleported. She was behind it now. All she had to do was jump again and this would be over. She turned to leap back and strike it's defenseless back only to meet its red eyes.

"Interesting." It said. "So, what the human said was true. The ones aboard that ship are indeed beyond the scope of the average human." It grinned at her as it began to circle to the left. "Very good. I have grown so bored of snapping the spines of the mundane."

Its reaction times were at least as fast as hers. It was stronger than her. And if its voice was any indication, it was probably smarter than her. Ruby knew she was hopelessly outclassed. Which meant that all she had on her side was desperation and agility. Not a very potent mix considering she was facing down the Orkish equivalent of an Astartes.

The Black Ork charged again, attempting to pin her against its lesser cousins. She ducked out of the way and swung her scythe. If she couldn't end this fight in a single blow, then she'd have to end it in a thousand. The Ork looked mildly surprised at the small wound on its arm. Nothing more than a nick really. It quickly stopped bleeding.

"A war of attrition, human?" It asked as it once again began to circle. She matched it step for step and waited for another opening. "I do hope you realize that this is a fight you can never win." It grinned again. "Your audacity is admirable. And your stupidity is deplorable. To think my race has been held back by the likes of you." It charged again, axe cleaving through the air as it closed the distance. Ruby saw her opening. She feinted left, forcing the Black Ork to shift its charge to catch her. With its attention well and truly caught she blinked above it and brought her scythe down viciously.

The sound of the Black Orks hand falling to the deck was completely drowned out by its screams of rage. She blinked back to the ground and spun to face him. But what she saw was not at all what she expected to see. She had expected to see a furious ork missing a hand and a bloody trophy leaking onto the deck of Castrum Primary. The bloody hand was exactly where she had expected it to be. But everything else about the scene was wrong. What she saw instead was a furious ork with both of its hands. But one of them seemed to be composed from the void itself.

The Black Ork roared and charged her nearly faster than she could see.

Oh.

It had been holding back.


*Teleprots behind u*