Reviews
RoyalTwinFangs
No I don't.
Isebas
I should get around to it.
Lord Edric
I'm not a Starcraft fan.
rockus4
The Imperial Fists have a lot of commitments and can't afford to spend men off with a Rogue Trader no matter what he is up to.
ZhaWarudo
There's lots of other stuff he can get from Stargate
Rogue Trader CYOA Story 2
"The universe is not like a puzzle-box that you can take apart and put back together again and so solve its secrets. It is a shifting uncertain thing which changes as you consider it, which is changed by the very act of observation. A powerful man is not a man who dissects the universe like a puzzle-box, examining it piece by piece and measuring each piece with scientific precision. A powerful man has only to look upon the universe to change it" - Technomagos Gaelos
Part 11
Tops Casino. New Vegas.
"I regret to inform you that Lord Inquisitor Gideon Sevomordnen is dead," reported Palatine Brigicia of the Adepta Sororitas as she entered my set of private rooms "He died in battle as befitting a servant of the God-Emperor".
While I was indifferent to the loss of my newest Inquisitorial babysitter I knew how important it was to play my role so I led everyone in the room, that being my two wives and the Sister of Battle, in an unplanned moment of silence as we prayed for his soul, or pretended to in my case.
"What happened?" I asked when it was time to speak again.
Hopefully I wouldn't get any blame for his passing as it would cause trouble for me if another Inquisitor decided that a scapegoat was needed.
"He was shot by a raider who used some sort of crude sniper weapon" Brigica told me "He'd taken off his helmet during a pause in the fighting".
Gideon Sevomordnen had been leading a cleansing of The Pitt which was a rather nasty part of this world that needed burning with fire and then paving over because it was a den of suffering, slavery and mutation. That last part at least the Imperium simply couldn't ignore so the Inquisitor had taken it upon himself to finish the job Elder Lyons had started all those years ago.
"I assume his killer was punished" I said.
That hadn't been a question but it was answered anyway.
"We left nothing alive," said the Palatine "And no building remains standing after everything was burned, the machines of the Ad-Mech will crush what remains into dust as planned"
That was good to hear. I wanted the Pitt to be nothing more than a memory.
"Aside from the Inquisitor I lost no one" the Palpatine let us know " Although there were many injuries, my sister will not be ready for combat for some time".
Not surprising since the Brotherhood of Steel had managed the same with less advanced weapons technology.
"Thank your warriors for me" I said to Brigica "Then get some rest. I trust you can take care of the funeral arrangements for the Inquisitor".
Again while not a question I did get a reply.
"Yes my lord" she said just before she left "Inquisitor Gideon Sevomordnen will be given a small ceremony. My Sisters and I will take custody of his possessions until they can be handed over to a member of the Inquisition".
The less I had to do with the Inquisition the better so I'd let the Sisters handle everything.
"Don't forget your appointment with Confessor Olybrius Ferrandino" reminded Dany.
Yes I needed to meet with the preacher about him sending off his followers into Canada when I headed up north on my way to Alaska following the old oil pipes as I figured that there might be some cool tech worth a look up here due to the fighting that had taken place during the Great War.
"There's a trader from Appalachia here to see you" one of my aides let me know as he entered the room after knocking"He came here as part of a large convoy and claims to have weapons technology you might be interested in".
Appalachia was the name given to an expanse within the pre-War state of West Virginia. I'd visited that area before to raid one of the Vaults but I didn't know much about it other than it was spared from most of the destruction and carnage of the Great War due to its relative isolation and lack of strategic targets
Much of the surviving human population nonetheless perished over the following years due to the Scorched Plague.
In the year 2102, Vault Dwellers emerged into Appalachia after only 25 years of isolation inside Vault 76, which is a very short period of time compared to how long the other vaults were sealed, and they began to reclaim the wilderness. In 2103, survivors from the surrounding regions arrived at Appalachia and began to resettle it.
Hearing that traders with weapons technology had come to see me quickly got the attention of one of the tech-priests who hung around the casino while working to keep all the computers here in order. No doubt he or she reported (gender wasn't always certain with the cyborgs if it applied at all) directly to Del Arx who was on Mars building his own forge-world, or Thea Maxid who I worked closely with and was no doubt hard at work somewhere serving the machine god.
"I'm going to go see what they are offering," I said.
By now news that I was buying advanced technology must have spread very far so I wasn't at all surprised to find out that traders who were willing to travel such a long distance were eager to meet with me. I could provide goods that no other could and I'd offer them transport back home as part of any deal since while it was safer to travel these days it never hurt to look generous.
Rather than invite their leader or leaders into my rooms I left Dany here to deal with the confessor as she wanted to help more with the diplomatic stuff, and I headed out of the casino. Along the way I voxed Sarah, the commander of the Sisterhood of Steel, who soon joined me at a warehouse which had been built here in Freeside while I'd been away.
During my absence the entirety of Freeside had been transformed from what could have generously been called slums into something far more Imperial. The streets were clean and orderly, the people lived in what I would call apartment blocks. On the outside it looked sterile and a little depressing, but on the plus side it was trying to kill each other and it all smelled a lot better.
When I'd inspected the apartments they turned out to be rather basic, with little more than four walls, a roof, a bathroom and running water provided that could be drunk without any need to purify it, along with some simple beds. Compared to my lifestyle on Earth this was poverty but it was luxury compared to how they'd lived before my people had come in and sorted this place out.
Once inside the warehouse I saw that Sarah had already arrived, which made sense as she and the Sisterhood of Steel were stationed around here, and Vernonia, the former Brotherhood scribe was with her, they'd gotten close while I was away and she provided the Sisterhood with tech support, which I felt sure annoyed the cogboys, however the Sisterhood of Steel was not an Imperial organisation so they could get away with having other people offer tech support.
"Ladies" I greeted.
I saw that the trade convoy was made up of rusty vehicles that had been pushed here by pack animals and should be simply enough to transport back once they were done here.
"So what are you offering?" I asked.
They did have some tech that I'd not seen before including a working example of the German-designed PPK12 Gauss pistol which was a handheld alternative to the Gauss rifle I was already familar with.
It was explained to me by Veronica that when fully charged, 2mm EC rounds are accelerated along the electromagnetic rail with enough force to create some staggering stopping power against even long distance targets.
Of course the Imperium has this technology but the problem is how fractured the imperium's tech level is. In theory an archmagos should easily be able to whip up a coilgun that was superior to this, but they could not mass-produce them because of the rules of the Ad-Mech and because they have STCs for laser weapons making it much easier to produce them.
Since I wanted the option to produce a variety of gauss weapons in the future, in case I found someone who would pay for this technology, I decided to purchase this model and its design which the traders had.
The Ad-Mech were willing to recreate Fallout tech for me with little fuss because it was considered less than STC tech. I didn't understand all the theological matters involved and the cyborgs hadn't bothered to fully explain so I just accepted their help when it was offered.
Next up was what they called a Gauss shotgun although that name was a misnomer because it was actually closer to a volley gun than a shotgun, but it looked really cool and the traders weren't asking much for it.
I had plenty of manufactured goods that they needed back home and I discussed with the traders about how my people could transport the goods directly to them as long as they had a safe landing site. I could afford to be generous in this matter.
The traders had brought along some modified plasma weapons that were a bit more powerful than our existing models and Sarah would be happy for the upgrade should they prove simple enough to produce in enough numbers for her Sisterhood of Steel.
"These laser weapons are powered by a substance called Ultracite'' a cogboy let me know.
I looked over at Sarah and Veronica who both simply shrugged.
"Never heard of it," my second wife told me.
I'd never heard of it either and I was soon informed by one of the traders that it was a radioactive glass-like ore discovered by Atomic Mining Services a long time ago beneath the soil of Appalachia.
By using atomic detonations to mine deeper than ever before, the AMS company was able to turn previously abandoned coal mines into new sources of prosperity. Although its origins mystified AMS scientists, its properties did not: Ultracite was an incredibly potent source of energy.
Depleted Ultracite played havoc with the regular material, resulting in a corrosive reaction melting both materials, necessitating extreme care in separating and containing the two materials. Something the traders took the time to explain to us and the tech-priest with us asked some questions that I had trouble following.
"The Archmagos has received reports on ultracite, however we were uncertain if it actually existed" said the cyborg to everyone in the warehouse "We must discuss mining rights"
Given the reaction between Depleted Ultracite and the regular stuff it seemed too dangerous to bring aboard my ship, but the Ad-Mech wanted to play around with such an unstable substance that was up to them.
I doubted they'd ever share the stuff even if they figured it out so I'd stick to selling laser weapons to anyone I was willing to sell them to that made use of mircofusion power cells that my cruiser could produce in vast amounts. That way I could always cut people off from the power cells if it suited me and they were unable to make their own.
"We even have a Cyrolator" a trader told us.
When fired the weapon creates a cryogenic spray at the target so that the enemy may freeze solid and this would render it unable to move or attack for a period of time as they would defrost in time and recover from the experience. The cryolator utilizes large amounts of ammunition quickly and given its limited range it wasn't very practical, but I brought it anyway as I could trade the tech with the Ad-Mech for something more useful later on.
Before our deal making was done I also brought working examples of Gatling plasma and a gauss miniguns which Sarah almost begged for, and to be fair her Sisterhood could do with its own heavy weapons.
They seemed to be too dangerous to sell to anyone, at least in my opinion, but the traders weren't asking for much in return and the Ad-Mech looked willing to go to the source to get what they wanted so I purchased the weapons for my own uses without paying too much.
"For now you'll stay at my casino as my guests" I informed the traders who received the news well "Your rooms and meals will be free of charge and I'll even throw in some chips if you fancy trying out some of the games. Tomorrow we can discuss getting you all home and delivery of the goods we're offering in trade".
In the meantime all these weapons needed to be shuttled up to my cruiser and safely secured. Then I would spoil the traders with hot meals and entertainment while learning what else they had to offer in their neck of the woods. It might be worth visiting them some time soon.
(Line Break)
Anchorage. Alaska.
In the winter of 2066, Chinese forces invaded Anchorage, occupying the surrounding area and serving as a front line for the next decade. On January 10, 2077, the United States won the Battle of Anchorage, pushing the Chinese forces back.
What remained of the nearby town was of little interest to me right now and anyone else who was part of the Imperial expedition as we'd stopped off at a number of old army bases on the way here which had been used to guard the oil pipe. By doing so we'd found a few pieces of technology which were worth recovering. Not near enough to cover the expense of what the Ad-Mech was building here, but I'd paid for it in advance.
What they were building here was a Defence Laser which was a very large Imperial made laser weapon commonly used as a static, planet-based, anti-starship defence by Imperial Planetary Defence Forces. Due to its power consumption, the fact that the average length of a Defence Laser's main chamber is over 15 metres, and its overall weight of many tons it wasn't at all mobile.
Also a Defence Laser is of little use against ground-based targets, as its practical minimum range was nearly a Terran mile at ground level. As such it was wise to build a proper fortress to not only house the massive weapon but also to protect it along with a small garrison so no raiders or mutants could seize the weapon.
The largest Defence Lasers use vast reservoirs of plasma-based energy, blacking out local power grids for kilometres around their emplacements each time they fire. The blinding red blasts unleashed by a Defence Laser are so powerful that they can breach the atmosphere of a planet and engage targets in low orbit, making the weapon invaluable for repelling alien invasions.
Since my fleet would not always be here in years to come and the hostile aliens that we'd encountered might return one day I'd invested in a number of these massive weapons which would be placed on different parts of the planet so should those aliens ever make orbit again they'd be blasted apart as they had done when facing my cruiser.
This wasn't done simply out of the kindness of my heart because there was no profit in it. Rather I didn't want to be blamed should anything happen to this lesser version of Holy Terra. Imperials would approve of my efforts to defend this world. Besides, I'd invested a lot of time and effort into restoring some sort of civilization here. It would be a shame if the aliens came back and undid all my good work.
"It is good that you are here my lord" said Thea Maxind as I entered some old military base "By the will of the machine god we have recovered something of great value".
If nothing else it might help to offset the cost of setting up such expensive planetary defences so I was eager to discover what the cogboys had hidden under some big sheets. When the servitors moved away one of the sheets I saw something I'd actually seen before in the Broken Steel Add-On to the Fallout 3 game. It was some sort of tank.
"This is what the natives call a Chimera if our records are correct,'' Magos Maxind informed me "It is a co-opted mining rig that was back during the Great War, weaponized and armoured by the Chinese to serve here on the Alaskan front. While weak by the standards of our armoured fighting machines it is nevertheless an interesting discovery and Omnissiah be Praised!, we found three. One will be sent to Mars, one will be delivered up to our ship for transport back to the Imperium, the last one will be transported to your cruiser so that the technology can be replicated. Once the correct rituals are done and the technology is correctly sanctified".
It made sense that the Ad-Mech would want to keep most of what they'd found here for themselves as holy relics. Likely they'd be sealed up somewhere and left to gather dust. As for the last tank I didn't need much help thinking about what I could do with this model of tank. Compared to Imperial hardware these Chimeras would be flimsy, but still useful for my allies on this world once the Ad-Mech could start producing more of them, and perhaps I could sell them elsewhere.
"We are attempting to recover more relics from the battles that took place here" I was informed "And I will keep you informed of our progress".
I took that as my que to leave and I decided to head into the nearby town anyway, which looked somewhat civilized, to find out if the locals had anything worthwhile to trade. I didn't have high hopes but you never knew what sort of treasures could be found. After all these tanks had just been lying around in an old warehouse that somehow survived the war.
(Line Break)
Ruins. New York City.
While my efforts had been for the most part focused further west and more recently up north, leaving others to focus on restoring some semblance of sanity here on the east coast of what had been the United States of America, that didn't mean that I was going to ignore chances for profit that could be gained by simply travelling to other parts of this world.
New York was in a bad state, much like the capital had been before the ruins had been knocked down and the materials reused to make Imperial style buildings. I'd seen the Statue of Liberty looking much like it did in that old Planet of the Apes movie as well as what remained of the Empire State Building and the twin towers, which had been destroyed by terrorists in this universe.
Over the years since the bombs fell New York had become toxic, so much so that few raiders ever came here and the only things I saw roaming its streets were bands of ghouls as well as some other mutants. All of whom dared to get close were soon gunned down by plasma weapons.
If not for the suits of power armour that we all wore and the drugs we'd been given the Sisterhood of Steel members along with myself would already be getting sick and dying, if we'd been lucky we'd have not have joined the ranks of the ghouls.
Not so long ago it had been reported to me by some Brotherhood of Steel scouts, men who knew how much they owed me, that there was a location here in New York City, or what was left of it, that contained a lot of gold that was just lying around unclaimed. Unlike other metals gold did not rust or tarnish so the stuff here should still be suitable for my uses.
I wasn't just here out of greed I actually needed the gold to help fund the restoration of civilization on this world which was all part of my plan to reshape this world.
Not only I had spent quite a lot on funding the defences this would need should those aliens return, something that wasn't cheap, both the East Coast Union (which was what the allied organisations and settlements under the protection of the Brotherhood of Steel were called) and the Free Economic Zone of New Vegas both wanted a proper currency and I'd decided to create a gold backed currency using my own wealth.
This meant the creation of banks and mints that would be jointly owned by House Thrax, the Union and New Vegas depending on their locations. The natives would run the banks and mints while only a few Imperials were involved with me giving them the funds they would require at least to start.
I also wanted to store some of my own wealth in them so that I didn't have all my eggs in one basket in the sense of keeping so much of my riches onboard my cruiser.
Add to this the need to pay my crew, purchase all the energy weapons and power armour that I could get my hands on, and any other bits of cool tech that someone was willing to sell me, and it had started to put a dent in my savings. Nothing to worry about right now, but I wanted to ensure that it wouldn't be an issue later on when I took command of my Lunar-class cruiser and had to fund the next expedition.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York was mostly intact and back before the Great War it had provided gold custody as one of several financial services to the central banks, governments and official international organizations of the world on behalf of the Federal Reserve System. And as far as anyone knew the gold was still in there.
As we entered the bank I couldn't help wondering if the gold here had been moved to some vault like what had happened over at Fort Knox, and if it had it wouldn't be a huge loss as there were others such as the The Bank of England gold vault which was one of the world's largest repositories of gold in my world. I should try to find that place if I had the time.
Since I knew that the New York Fed's gold vault was on the basement floor of its main office building here in Manhattan we headed down and I was glad that this place had been built so sturdy as even my bodyguards were walking around inside the building while wearing very heavy sets of power armour.
During the briefing for this mission I'd learned that the vault we were currently heading for was built during the construction of the building back in the early 1920s and that its security had been upgraded to keep up with the times. Not that this mattered as that security was gone due to the upper levels having been wrecked or it lacked any power.
Despite the name, none of the gold stored in the vault belongs to the New York Fed or the Federal Reserve System. The New York Fed acted as the guardians of the gold stored here on behalf of account holders, which include the U.S. government, foreign governments, other central banks, and official international organizations. No individuals or private sector entities were permitted to store gold in the vault.
Much of the gold in the vault arrived during and after World War II as many countries wanted to store their gold reserves in a safe location. Holdings in the gold vault continued to increase and peaked in 1973, shortly after the United States suspended convertibility of dollars into gold for foreign governments.
At its peak, the vault contained over 12,000 tons of monetary gold. Too much for even me to store on my cruiser because Imperial ships tend to be rather packed and because shuttling up that much metal would use up a lot of fuel and keep the support ships busy for a long time.
Hence the need to open up backs both in New Vegas and the Union as they could keep a lot of my wealth secure for me while using it to create money that would actually be made from gold. The mints could also buy gold found by people who dug around in ruins and have it melted into coins. Loans could be given out as well with low interest rates to help me make a profit.
Looking around here I could see that back in the day all of the gold bars brought into the vault for deposit would have been carefully weighed, and tested to ensure that they are of high purity. Following the verification process, the gold is moved to one of the vault's many compartments, where each compartment contains gold held by a single account holder.
This and more we discovered once we actually broke into the vault and encountered a couple of robots who were still active and working to defend the treasure they were meant to guard. They would have been more than a match for raiders, but they proved to be manageable by the Sisterhood of Steel.
Once inside I saw that small deposits had been placed on separately numbered spaces on shelves in compartments that might be shared by several account holders. Each compartment is secured by a padlock, two combination locks and other means of security that would barely slow us down since we had access to the right tools for the job, including plasma torches.
"How are we going to get this stuff out of here?" asked Sarah.
All I had to do was get on the vox and order the rest of the shuttles as well as the vertibirds. At least we had more than enough Sisterhood of Battle members to secure the area. The hard part would be loading up our backpacks with gold and climbing up the stairs to the shuttles.
The shuttles and the other vehicles could only carry so much weight and I'd considered calling in the mobile base that the Enclave used to use, only the streets would be too narrow for it. And due to a lack of ground transport we had no choice other than to use aircraft and make many trips.
"We'll be at this for days" I mentioned "Make sure you have enough anti-radiation meds".
No one liked hearing that and it was good that I already had planned a way to cheer all of the Sisterhood up once we were done.
(Line Break)
Tops Casino. New Vegas.
Veronica sat up in bed and yawned. She was in the habit of getting up early despite having no one around waking her up at such early hours, but old habits die hard. Besides when you travelled in the wasteland it paid to be able to wake up quickly as there were plenty of things out there that would take a bite out of a sleeping human.
It was oddly like home, in the sense that there wasn't any natural light in the suite. Only electric lights that could be switched off and were too bright for sleeping while on so she woke up in total darkness. Windows couldn't be allowed as the suites here at the casino needed to be secure.
She felt the bed beside her and to her surprise she wasn't alone. She then remembered that Sarah Lyons had crawled into bed with her. Veronica was sure that nothing had happened as they'd both been very tired after the party last night.
It had been to celebrate the end of a very dull and very long operation involving moving a lot of gold from one vault to several other locations. Locations including the new mints and banks, as well as this casino so that some of the gold could be stored in the basement, something only decided upon at the last moment, and lots had been sent up the ship commanded by Sarah's husband.
Veronica had her room elsewhere, but she'd started staying here while the Rogue Trader had been away since Sarah had gotten a bit lonely. Not that Sarah had ever cheated on her husband, despite him having another wife and mistresses, she took her oaths very seriously.
At least there was good food here in the casino. Thrax made sure that he and his wives had the best stuff, Veronica who considered the Rogue Trader to be her friend even if they'd not seen much of each other in some time. She'd thought they'd gotten close back when they were trying to get the Brotherhood to leave the Mojave, but Veronica had found a place with the Sisterhood of Steel so things had worked out.
Once the fridge was open she began looking around for anything that looked good. She was rather spoilt for choice despite the party last night which had been held to honour the sisterhood. The ground floor had been cleared of gaming tables just so the sisters could dance, eat and get drunk on the wide arrange of booze that had been on offer. Which explained the hangover.
Veronica yelped as a firm hand suddenly smacked her butt, just hard enough to sting. She straightened fast, and turned to see that Thrax had somehow snuck up behind her and struck her ass without her even noticing. She had a bit of a headache, to be expected given how much she'd drank, however that was no excuse for not noticing that someone was sneaking up on her. She couldn't afford to be so careless.
"What did you do that for?" she asked.
Thrax then grabbed Veronica's hips, turning her towards the table and pushing her forward. Veronica called out in surprise but otherwise did nothing to protest. Before long her upper body was pushed flat against the table; an act that resulted in squishing her boobs against the table as the stronger than expected Imperial kept her pressed down on the table.
Before she could snarkily object to what was going on Thrax slipped his free hand into the back of her pajama bottoms, and with one good yank they ended up around her ankles. Veronica was scared for a moment thinking that something sexual was going to happen that she didn't wish to consent to. Only the captain simply spanked her some more.
"What are you spanking me for?" Veronica wished to know.
She wasn't objecting so much as she was curious.
"You slept with my wife," he said.
The former Brotherhood scribe found that she didn't have any reason to complain since in the literal sense she had slept with Thrax's wife even though it looked as if they had only been sleeping. Perhaps she should have been offended by this, but she felt okay in submitting to the Imperial.
"You can cover up now," he said.
That had been strange, but the Rogue Trader seemed to have enjoyed it, and as Veronica covered up her lower half she found the whole thing to have been a little silly.
"I'm planning on taking a look around Appalachia today" Thrax mentioned as he left the room "You can come with us".
Hopefully this would be after breakfast as she was really hungry.
