Killers for Hire:
The Tale of Laurs the Mercenary
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The Black Crusades: Chapter Three
"Laurs Holtiana, Captain of the class 3 combat cruiser XB-206 'North & South', leader of the Combat Mercenary group 'Browncoats', mercenary licence code Gamma eight-five-eight-one?" Lord Venton asked, reading off a small data slate in his hand. He gazed up from behind the Colonels desk, in front of the huge thick glass window overlooking the rich silver city behind him. He looked as if he was unaware that his henchmen were still aiming at Laurs. Laurs felt a warm dribble moving down his inner leg. He had managed to get his bladder under control now, but he was still a way off from recovering the ability to speak. His mouthed moved, but nothing came out. Venton grimaced down at the small puddle slowly forming at Laurs's feet, and then ordered his men to lower their weapons with a gesture of his hand.
"We are not here to hurt you Laurs, we simply need you to answer a few questions. I am Inquisitor Lord Venton, this is my second, Pysker Lina." He indicated to a small youngish woman at his side. She was attractive, but didn't smile. "I am sorry to have startled you, and it's ok, you don't have to say anything to answer my questions. Lina is going to read your mind. Do not fight her, and we can get through this as quickly as possible…" At this point, Lina touched her bald head with her left hand, and weakly pointed with her other hand at Laurs, closing her eyes. Laurs felt a cold blast entering his mind, slithering and sliding around, yanking at memories and thoughts.
"He was at the outpost…" Lina murmured. Venton nodded.
"History log… attack by cultists… he fought hard to get here…" She murmured again. Venton held up his hand.
"Yes, yes, that is all very well. Laurs, do you have the history log with you?"
"Yes." said Lina.
"Well then, I command you to hand it over Laurs." Laurs very slowly and hesitantly, as if some other force was willing him to do it, slid his hand under his armour. Lina was obviously still in his mind. He tried to struggle against her, but his feeble attempts were shrugged off. Laurs pulled out the data slate. Venton marched over to Laurs and took the slate off him, and scrolled down the last two weeks records. His sharp blue eyes, blonde short length hair, and tall broad figure towered over Laurs's shorter height, mid length brown hair and slender figure. It looked as if an educatorium master was reviewing his student's examination results. Finally, Venton looked up from the slate, and handed it to a nearby henchman.
"Good, that is exactly the information we needed…" He stated to Laurs.
"Can… can I… pay, get paid?" Laurs managed too stutter. Everything was happening to fast for him.
"Ah, well, you have done a good job, and your service for the God-Emperor is commendable. Unfortunately, you have viewed classified information, and in the interests of keeping my mission a secret, you must be terminated…" Laurs tried to move, but Lina was holding him still.
"But… I swear, I didn't look at the history log…" He lied.
"Whether or not that is true is irrelevant. You had the opportunity to look at it, and that is more than enough evidence in itself. The human mouth is not the most subtle creature. You will tell someone, and they will tell someone else, maybe an unsavoury character… You see where I am going? You will die with honour for the God-Emperor, and you will be rewarded for it…" Venton took a step back, drew his bolt pistol from its holster, and aimed at Laurs's forehead. Lina allowed Laurs to close his eyes, but nothing else. His arms straight at his sides, unmoving, he waited in blackness for the inevitable end, muttering a prayer in the vain hope he could be absolved before meeting the God-Emperor. He heard a shot. He shuddered, face screwed up, expecting to cease living any moment.
Nothing happened. Slowly and cautiously, he squeezed open one eye. Venton was aiming to Laurs's left, at the doorway he had come through. All the henchmen were aiming that way too. Laurs realised he could move again. He was tensed up and it was hurting him, so he relaxed a little. Lina was lying on the floor, a trickle of blood coming from the right side of her head. Laurs turned around. Gol was there, bolter raised and aimed at Lina, with his squad, all crouched or behind cover, aiming at the henchmen in the Colonels office.
"Your ten minutes are up, sir." Gol grinned. Laurs beamed back.
"I'm pretty sure that was five…" Laurs turned back to the now slightly unsettled Inquisitor.
"Well, Venton, what are you going to do now? My boys are good shots…" The Inquisitor Lord glanced back, straight faced, to Laurs, then back to his team in the large double doorway.
"I could kill them all with only my bare hands, heretic…"
"Oh, I am a heretic now? I thought I was going to join the God-Emperor on his Golden Throne just a few seconds ago. I think you need to be more accurate in your judgement, Inquisitor, otherwise things like this happen…" Gol dropped his bolter and tossed Laurs his plasma pistols, which he caught behind him with expert fluidity, and he trained them both at the Inquisitor's face. Venton didn't flinch. Some henchmen aimed at Laurs now.
"This isn't helping you, Laurs. There's still time to put down your guns and receive the Emperor's judgement with a pure soul. Don't condemn yourself forever by shooting a servant of the Emperor…" Laurs's grin subsided a little.
"Ha… just between you and me, Venton, you wouldn't be the first servant of the Emperor I've shot. Play your cards right, you won't have to join my list of them." Laurs edged back. Venton did nothing to stop him. Laurs turned his head around to look at Gol, and mouthed the word 'grenade'. Venton fired at Laurs. Laurs instinctively dived to his right, behind a large potted plant. Everyone opened up. Las-fire and bolts sung through the air, kicking up wooden floor and green vegetation. Behind the plant, Laurs felt the pot in front of him shudder and crack as it absorbed bolts, no doubt from Venton's weapon. Looking to his left, he saw two of his men get thrown back and fall in the foyer, as slugs splattered through their torsos. Rich portraits of military figures on the wall split and partially disintegrated as stray shots jolted them from their moorings. The ground chipped and buckled from fire, and the wall spewed sawdust and flakes of wood. The room filled up with dust and smoke. The rest of Laurs's men were prone or behind cover, firing back at the Inquisitor's men. The room shuddered from the noise, and tracer rounds and red las fire started to pin the mercenaries behind their cover. The Inquisitor's henchmen were becoming focused by the cries of the Lord Venton, screaming battle oaths. Gol managed to reach into his belt pouch behind his cover of an overturned bench, priming a krak grenade. Laurs turned back to the office and fired blind out of his protection, into and beyond the plant. He was answered by wood splintering behind him and the pot shuddering more. Fragments of expensive pottery blasted all over him. Rounds whipped over Gol's position, leaving smoking trails hanging in the air.
Gol heaved the grenade over into the room. The shots fired by the henchmen subsided to a few mere blind shots as they all scrabbled for cover. Laurs used this moment of fear to scramble on all fours back into the foyer. The explosion threw him a little. The grenade had landed under the Colonel's desk, throwing it upwards. It spun vertically and flew forward. The large re-enforced window behind the Colonels desk shattered outwards, glass raining down onto the streets below. The flying desk crashed into the wall right of the doorway, exploding into thousands of pieces of varnished wood. The firing increased again, but nowhere near as intensely as when the battle first started. Gol pulled Laurs into his cover, and then leaned over the bench and blasted into the room with his bolter on full auto. Laurs sat on the floor, looking around at the foyer. It was a mess now, bolt holes everywhere, in the walls, the floor, the plants…
Just next to Laurs something skidded, metal on wood. He looked left and saw the history log, screen a little cracked, flickering blue light. The explosion had skimmed it along the floor to the open area just out of his cover. Braving the stream of gunfire, Laurs edged with his arm over to the slate. Something ricocheted into his hand. The adrenaline pumping through him numbed the pain enough so he could grab the slate. He pulled himself back into cover, and shouted to his men.
"Go back! Bound back to the elevator in pairs! Overlap fields of fire! Go!" In twos, his men sprinted back to the elevator, in what the survivors would later call the 'mile-long run'. Three men didn't make it to the lift. Laurs, Gol, and Terrin, a stocky man, shorter than Gol but almost as strong, were the last to make the run to the elevator. Gol was hit in the shin, and fell onto Terrin's side, who managed to support the man's colossal weight the rest of the way. Laurs pounded the ground floor holocon button in the elevator, while blasting down the corridor with his plasma pistol. The stench of burnt and melting plants was overpowering. Finally the doors slid shut with an almost sickening slowness, and the lift plummeted down to the ground floor. Gol sat down and began to nurse and bandage his shin, while Laurs wrapped some cloth around his bloodied hand. When he got out into the main entrance, Laurs saw the weapons collector unconscious on the floor, and the scripture-clerk bound up in the corner and muffling, trying to shout through his gag. The storage room behind the body of the weapons collector was empty.
"Yeah, free guns sir. Just couldn't pass them up!" said Gol, apparently reading Laurs's mind. "Got worried when I saw your pistols in there though…" He added. Laurs simply nodded. The team ran back into the hired skimmer and headed for the docks. There was no way they could stick around now that an infuriated Inquisitor would be hunting them down.
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Lord Venton wandered around the ravaged office-turned-warzone, kicking any of his men that were lying on the floor. The ones that were dead he kicked again, and the ones just tired from battle he kicked harder. Gore was everywhere, body parts left from the grenade, and blood splatters smeared the walls. The smashed window howled from the wind rushing out at this height. He strolled over to Lina, brushing off some dust on his gold armour. She had a small hole in the right side of her head, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Lord Venton knelt over her, stared at her closed eyes, and touched her cheek softly with his armoured hand.
"Rest now, young one. You will have vengeance. By the power of the holy Emperor, you will have vengeance…" He got up, turned around to one of his men checking the ammo in his gun, and hit him square in the jaw. The punched man fell to the floor. Everyone stopped what they doing, mainly checking the dead and recovering from battle, and stared at Venton.
"We must move out. Team one, get to the docks, try and stop them leaving the planet. Team two, follow me to my ship. We'll trace them if they leave the system." Venton ordered. Everyone gave him an affirmative. The man on the floor groaned. Venton looked down ay him.
"Get up, idiot…"
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"Gol Nuymn, that was the stupidest thing you've ever done…" Laurs laughed as the skimmer weaved in and out of the lanes on the velocity tube.
"Awww come on now sir, most of us got out fine! And besides, you got the data slate. I'm sure we can sell that to another uptight Colonel of the 211th Mordian!" Gol said, as he checked everyone else for injuries.
"Yeah sir, and we got a hefty supply of guns too! No need to resupply now…" Piped up Inwi, the squad's only plasma rifle wielder. Terrin and some of the other men agreed.
"Yes, that is fortunate, but by pissing off an Inquisitor you've all condemned yourself to 'judgement' if he catches you. And as for that slate, it's more trouble than it's worth. What the hell would an Inquisitor want with that history log? It just contains details of a random Chaos raid on that outpost, nothing of particular interest to a Daemonhunter or Witchhunter or whatever he was. Although, that outpost did have equipment removed for some reason, equipment useless to Chaos. And why were there Cultists still hanging around a place they raided a few days ago? It doesn't make sense…" Laurs mused. He looked around at his crew, who were looking like they were pondering it too. "Still, I guess Chaos doesn't ever make any sense! And I thought I said to not rescue me if it put any of you in danger…" Laurs counter-argued.
"Well, with all respect sir, I don't think that you could have escaped from that. Besides, we would have killed them anyway just to get paid…" Gol said, but trailed off as he looked outside the window at the back of the skimmer. A smaller military skimmer was speeding up on their six.
"Sir, the Inquisitor's men are behind us!" Gol shouted back to Laurs.
"Yes, I see them Gol. Aker, speed us up Emperor damn you!" Laurs shouted to the skimmer pilot Aker, the youngest member on his team at only 17, but a skilled driver. He strafed in front of a long, large trans-skimmer on the middle lane, and shifted up the power to the thrusters. The military skimmer behind them sped up, easily matching their speed. Both skimmers bobbed through the traffic, dodging civilians, and reaching speeds in excess of six hundred kph. The two bolters on the front of the military skimmer blasted into life, yellow tracers bouncing off the road and other vehicles. Laurs's skimmer wove through the steady lines of civilian drivers, avoiding most of the bullets. A few penetrated the rear window, hitting Jyre, rifleman and chronic gambler, straight in the cheek. Half his head disappeared in a red mist. Everyone dived onto the floor for cover. Gol knelt by the window and fired back with his bolter, and then with a multi-melta he had 'liberated' from the Mordian HQ. The multi-melta did the trick. Blasts splashed off the military skimmer, but even more went through its hull, hitting the stabilisers and the power converters. The skimmer spluttered. It slowed down with a few jerks, then plummeted nose down into the floor of the velocity tube. The crash was spectacular, metal debris flying up and forward, carried by the craft's momentum. The secondary explosions of the fuel torched two unlucky drivers behind it. Gol smiled at his new gun.
"Throne, I never got to play with one of these in the Blood Angels!" Everyone slowly looked up from the floor, staring at him. He then realised what he just said, and looked coldly at everyone, then back out the window. No-one knew what to say, except Laurs…
"Holy Emperor, you're Adeptus Astartes?" Gol said nothing. Laurs, who had been grinning, stopped now. He looked around at his crew, most of them open-mouthed and staring at the Space Marine deserter. Even Aker was staring at Gol in the rear-view camera. Laurs looked back at Gol, and his tattoos.
All he could say was "Huh."
