Chapter 20(OB)
Jen was still waiting for Seth to return in the afternoon when she heard a very strange sound outside the shed. It sounded like a jet engine, but surely that was impossible in this high gravity!
She moved to the crack in the shed door, and peered out.
Instantly she noticed a fleet of very strange aircraft, 6 of them, hovering effortlessly in the high gravity. Jen gazed in amazement!
The vehicles were shaped something like crescent moons, elegant and beautiful, clearly not human technology. They appeared to be hovering using some sort of xenos anti gravity technology, with strange shimmering energy in front of them, were yellow in colour, and bore a horribly familiar symbol.
That symbol was the emblem of the hated Sunblitz Brotherhood, a group of craft world eldar corsairs that continually plagued Wsuioo with cowardly hit and run raids! Those vehicles were wave serpent grav tanks!
Jen's blood went cold. She and Seth had no defence against an eldar grav tank! Their little revolvers wouldn't even scratch the paintwork!
Jen cowered in terror as the fleet of vehicles flew past, ignoring the Renwick's farm. The vehicles were flying north in the direction of the space port, flying low enough to keep below radar. The eldar obviously didn't care less about the local farms, knowing that all the wealth of the planet would be concentrated at the space port and it's surrounding towns.
It might have taken many days by sailboat to get from the space port to Seth's farm, but for high speed flying aircraft it would not even take an hour! The space port would be taken with ease by these sophisticated xenos corsairs!
Jen wanted to warn someone over the radio, to do SOMETHING, but could not disobey Seth's order to stay in the shed. Poor Z8C and G9Y, the poor unfortunate souls who lived around the space port! Even if Jen warned them, it wouldn't help.
The Sunblitz Brotherhood were fast and agile enough to dodge even the excessive air defences of Wsuioo, those flying vehicles were THAT fast when they wanted to be! The Sunblitz Brotherhood were absolutely OBSESSED with stealing experimental prototype domesticated Eldar slaves Wsuioo was trying to develop, apparently having some moral compunction against the development of domesticated eldar slaves!
Wsuioo had enough raw military might to drive these pests away through sheer attrition, always with high Wsuian casualties, but their well placed raids had caused catastrophic set backs in the eldar domestication efforts! Wsuian's hated these deadly pests with a passion, or at least, the Wsuian people were indoctrinated to hate them with a passion.
Given that even the hyper militarised Wsuioo struggled to drive off the raids by the Sunblitz Brotherhood, the crude military of 1D8V-44 didn't stand a chance!
Jen only hoped that no one got hurt as the corsairs just stole everything they wanted to steal. These corsairs were cowardly raiders, they simply stole stuff, not conquered. It was one small mercy.
***...
"The planetary defence forces have surrendered, so many of them are dead!" Z8C lamented to Jen and Seth over the radio that evening.
"Shit! Are you ok Z8C?" Seth asked in alarm.
"I am unharmed but they stole all the grain supplies! There's no food!" Z8C exclaimed.
"Can you hold out until the next grain boats arrive?" Seth asked.
"I don't know, I don't know anything. I still have some vegetables in the garden that the eldar didn't want to steal, but I will be sharing them with all my neighbours, it won't be enough. I already had so little food for myself!" Z8C lamented grimly.
"Tell me everything," Seth urged.
"I don't know if there was a warning call or something, but sirens blared through the town alarm speakers on those tall poles for 5 minutes before they came. There was panic as everyone fled inside," Z8C began.
"G9Y had been outside hanging out washing for the neighbours, she does little chores to earn her keep, and she ran inside screaming. I got her to hide behind empty air bottles in my house for cover, I stayed by a window."
"5 minutes after the alarm sounded this bunch of xenos vehicles screamed in over the town, so horribly fast, and started strafing the town! They were so fast! The planetary defence force fired missiles and lasers at them, but couldn't even hit them!"
"I couldn't see the fighting on the ground, it was blocked from view by buildings in the town, but the defensive fire was coming from the direction of the governor's office. The eldar concentrated their strafing fire in this direction for only a minute before the defensive fire went dead!"
"The vehicles kept flying around overhead for a while, but met no further resistance. The survivors of the planetary defence force got on the town announcement speakers and screamed that they wanted to surrender!"
"One of the vehicles stopped flying around, dropped down to land for a few seconds, then was up flying around moments later. I'm not sure what happened, but ten minutes later the planetary governor was on the announcement speaker, ordering everyone except mothers with babies to exit their buildings and lay face down on the ground with hands on our heads,"
"Took maybe 20 minutes for everyone to obey, but we all put on backpack air bottles and left our homes, everyone left their weapons behind, and just lay face down with hands on heads."
"The eldar infantry then all disembarked out of the vehicles, like 60 infantry I think. They moved so fast running about the town, they got one of their number with a strange musical instrument and a big blob of some strange plastic or something, a vehicle deposited the blob of stuff, he did something weird, and the blob turned into a xenos structure, like a bent flat pole or something. It was weird."
"Took maybe 5 minutes, and he stopped playing the weird music. The xenos structure then did some unholy sorcery, and a lot of new eldar appeared out of thin air!"
"Hundreds of xenos, they had guns! They went into every building, they stole such a lot of stuff! Took all the grain, all the farm produce, took all the food!"
"They then told us to go back inside, warned death if anyone fired on them. We all went back inside. They then sacked every town and settlement around the space port, used the flying vehicles to ferry plunder back to the xenos structure."
"They are still at it! Even now they are bringing plunder back to the structure. Xenos keep appearing from thin air, grabbing the plunder and disappearing again!"
"The local civilians are starting to wander around the town now, the xenos are ignoring them so long as they don't get in the way or get too close to the plunder around the xenos structure. People are checking up on each other, sharing news".
"The xenos have not touched our backyard vegetable gardens, the xenos don't seem interested in harvesting the vegetables, they are just stealing the stuff that's already been harvested. Thank the Emperor!"
"But we don't have enough vegetables in the town gardens to feed everyone, not without grain! What if they don't leave! How will we survive!" Z8C lamented.
Jen gestured to be given the microphone. Seth handed it to her without question.
"Z8C, they are the Sunblitz Brotherhood. They have been raiding Wsuioo nearly constantly for the last 30 years. I recognised the emblems on the vehicles. They won't stay, they will just steal everything and then leave," Jen reassured Z8C.
"They are?! I left Wsuioo before this, but I heard about all the trouble they've been causing," Z8C said crossly.
"They will leave once they get what they came for. They are pirates, not conquerors." Jen assured him.
The sound of a wave serpent sounded in the background of Z8C's end.
"They are back with more plunder, it never ends," Z8C lamented.
"Just hang in there. The Emperor won't forsake us in the face of xenos filth, just be patient," Seth reassured him.
There was very little that Jen and Seth could do. They stayed up all night huddled together for warmth in front of the radio, trying to encourage Z8C as the eldar pirates stole everything they wanted from every town and settlement they could find within swift flight range of the space port.
As the night wore on, Z8C was visited by neighbours who shared news from the governor's office. Reports had been coming into the governor from all over the planet. The xenos were building those strange structures all over the planet! They were stripping away food supplies from every population centre on the planet!
***...
Jen and Seth stood mutely outside to one side as eldar infantry freely ransacked their house for all the sacks of grain they owned. It was absolutely horrible!
The xenos were clearly having a bit of trouble in the high gravity, with very slender limbs, but they made up for it with raw speed, carrying only a little at a time but carrying it extremely quickly.
They were dressed in the uniforms of common eldar guardian squads, with the bright yellow colour of the Sunblitz Brotherhood, and the Sunblitz Brotherhood's official insignia symbols. They all wore the iconic eldar mesh armour body gloves, which would easily shrug off Jen and Seth's tiny revolvers, with airtight armoured helmets on their heads to let them breathe on 1D8V-44.
The eldar all carried horrifying shuriken catapults, weapons said to be so deadly that even mighty space marines could be killed by them! In the face of such deadly warriors as mighty eldar guardians, clad in armour and carrying such awesome firepower, the pair of helpless civilians could only hope that the eldar didn't choose to kill them!
No matter how lowly eldar guardians might be by the standards of eldar military forces, to the civilians Jen and Seth they were absolutely terrifying, a foe they could never triumph over. Being a CIVILIAN in this situation was absolutely terrifying!
Jen was crying as the xenos carried away all their bags of grain. They were taking EVERY sack of grain! It was so horribly cruel!
Seth held Jen tightly to comfort her as she wept, he was grimly silent, face stiff and strong in the face of this horrible situation. Jen was comforted by how strong he was being, she just couldn't stop crying!
The xenos thankfully seemed to have no interest in the heroin, the grace of the Emperor truly did lye in small mercies. They would be hungry until the next grain field was ready to harvest, but the Renwick's would at least still make a profit this year. Small mercies save lives.
The eldar didn't say a word to them, and simply emptied the house into the wave serpent, before then hovering over to the nearest shed. Jen and Seth flinched as they heard the terrible sound of the Eldar shooting through the locks on the shed door, without those locks intact, local human looters would steal everything that wasn't nailed down!
Jen and Seth didn't dare to follow the eldar as they moved from shed to shed stealing anything remotely edible. The eldar thankfully didn't touch the crop fields or garden, harvesting food was apparently too much like hard work for these lazy xenos, thank the Emperor for the xenos lack of human virtue, this lack of work ethic would save Seth and Jen from starvation!
The eldar moved just so fast, completely looting the entire farm in less than an hour, making several flights to a nearby xenos structure they had clearly built somewhere in the impossible to reach nearby raised high lands. They just took it all, without offering any kind of payment in return, just heartless thieves!
Once Seth was sure the eldar were gone for good, he and Jen got on the quad bike and raced to inspect the damage to the locks. The xenos had shot right through the loops of the padlocks, but hadn't damaged the actual locking mechanisms. With a welder these cut loops could be welded back together, they would still function as locks! Thank the Emperor for small mercies!
Seth used a small arc welder to quick fix the padlocks inside each shed, and gratefully locked away what few possessions he still had. Racing from shed to shed before any human looters could find them, Seth fixed enough locks to protect their property. Some of the padlocks were destroyed, but Seth had used multiple padlocks on a lot of the sheds, and found enough salvageable locks to put at least one lock on each door.
The eldar had mercifully not destroyed anything for fun, merely stealing what they came for and leaving. The farm business was still viable, they would just have to wait until new harvests, they just had to survive on Jen's vegetables until then. Poor Seth really wasn't going to enjoy his new diet!
***...
The battery power was still a worry that had not gone away in the face of all the other problems. It was still the cold season, the local winter. The days were shorter and the sunlight less intense, and when it rained the solar panels struggled to even power some light bulbs!
Seth had been forced to bring a lot of air bottles to the house, especially big ones to use at night when the panels weren't generating electricity. They were forced to live from sunny day to sunny day, hardly daring to use a single watt of power when it wasn't sunny outside.
The batteries were probably fully charged by now, but the recent power problems had them spooked.
They did indeed now live solely on Jen's vegetables. The eldar had stolen all the cans of meat, all the powdered milk, and every other bit of stored food. The eldar had not stolen the half eaten loaves of bread in the kitchen, but these hadn't lasted more than a few days before they were all eaten.
They instead lived exclusively on Jen's economically cooked vegetables, much to Seth's dismay. There was simply nothing else to eat! It was either vegetables or starve!
The towns were doing it far tougher than the looted farms. They didn't have the same number of home vegetable gardens per person, it wasn't enough to go around!
The eldar were freely robbing ships at sea, hovering over in those damn grav tanks to steal the entire cargoes before they had a chance to even arrive! Food relief was heading to the towns, but the eldar didn't even give them a chance!
The locals in the towns had shown amazing community spirit, sharing what little they had so that everyone got an equitable share of the tiny food available. The farmers too had been generous to each other, and Seth gladly shared vegetables with the hungry neighbours who showed up to beg for something to eat.
***...
Jen and Seth were in the house some days later. It was a sunny day, and Jen was taking advantage of it to get a lot of vegetable cooking done to last the next few days if it got cloudy for the next few days.
The local weather reporting was in complete chaos with the current chaos of the eldar invasion, and it was hard to get weather predictions right now. The eldar were still in the process of looting the planet, as it was just so big that it was taking even them quite a lot of time to steal absolutely everything.
Seth no longer harvested bliss grass in this time of crisis. Harvesting bliss grass was extremely physically intensive, and they simply didn't have enough food to let Seth burn so many calories on something that couldn't be eaten. Heroin was completely worthless when you are starving!
Seth wasn't even having much sex with Jen anymore, they just couldn't afford the calories! He just sat brooding at home as he waited for the next wheat harvest.
Jen was cooking broccoli, pumpkin and yap-yap at the moment, baking it at a low power setting to spare the batteries. She just about jumped out of her skin when she heard a knock on the perspex kitchen window!
Jen looked up, and then screamed! It was the faces of the 4 men who had formerly tried to rape her!
Seth came running to the kitchen and then snarled when he saw them once again bothering his wife.
"Seth WAIT! We didn't come here to bother Jen!" one of the men said frantically as Seth pulled out his gun.
"Explain yourselves," Seth allowed them.
"We're starving Seth. Starving to death. Can we please have some food?" The men all pleaded.
Seth glared for a moment, but then relaxed indulgently.
"Very well, eat lunch with us," Seth said with a sigh.
Seth moved to the door and let them inside. Jen was terrified, but they didn't go near her, merely thanking Seth profusely and taking seats in the lounge room. Jen was astonished by Seth's kindness to these men after what they did, but she obediently did not question Seth's decision to show mercy.
The 4 men looked terribly skinny, clearly slowly starving to death. Jen guessed that the other locals were being less than generous to 4 known rapists, Seth would have been the LAST person they would go to to beg for food, absolutely the LAST! They were dying, looked like they hadn't eaten in over a week. If Seth had turned them away, they would be being sentenced to death by starvation.
Jen was already cooking a few days worth of food today, so had enough for 4 extra people. Jen sighed and added 4 extra plates as she got the food out of the oven. We were all in this together it seems...
***...