Chapter 84H
The space within the Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ solar system was, (to put it mildly), a place where space craft couldn't see shit. The system's spectacularly violent red dwarf star blasted out horrifically powerful solar flares like an absolute mother fucker, the eruptions so continuous that it was nauseating. The radio waves of the system were a nightmarish scream of crackling blaring radio static over a huge range of frequencies, and the space itself was dusted with a snowstorm of tiny floating jagged ice shards that reflected radar frequencies fucking everywhere like a house of mirrors, making a mockery of even the most advanced digital radar systems.
Imagine being in a house of mirrors with an eyeball damagingly bright magnesium flare glaring off every mirror so that you can't see shit, that is what the Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ solar system was like to fly a space ship through. Even if your radar did manage to find another ship, you would never know if the reading was clear or not until you just about got close enough to collide with the fucking thing, your radar system blaring false positives and ice shard reflections from every direction.
Finding a ship that didn't want to be found was like trying to find an individual needle in a huge pile of other needles, with a haystack thrown in for good measure, and in this hellish visibility whiteout the followers of Khorne thought to find a fleet that not only didn't want to be found, but also had Tzeentch counter measures that would make it difficult to find even in normal empty space without radar interference. It was little wonder that they couldn't find shit much less find the Sevenson Fleet.
Every now and then a Sevenson radio message would bounce off a trillion different ice shards to play a cheeky message of mockery from some random direction, enraging the followers of Khorne and generating a fruitless chase that found nothing at all, baiting them and provoking their rage, Khorne himself howling for their heads.
Currently in an otherwise empty cargo hold onboard the Nightmare Asylum, Fhimra Pyrestrength danced in a sexy hot pink clubbing dress (that Wendy had of course bought her), swaying her body with other newly psychic Tzeentch chosen Stōørølø women, powers blazing around all their heads as they danced to the beat of "Hollaback Girl" in a psyker-only Tzeentch worship rave.
Psychic focus stones on pedestals shone multicoloured light across the dancing psyker women, and out in deep space huge holograms of the dancing women were projected far from the Sevenson ships to further piss off the Khorne forces, leading them off in random directions to attack the dancing holograms.
"Uh-huh, this my shit, all the girls stomp your feet like this.", The music blared, the holograms also projecting this music through the vacuum of space with radio signals by psychic means to bait and enrage the enemy.
Fhimra snorted with amusement through her nose, her mouth sealed shut and silent by a magical ball gag so that she couldn't speak. Other girls and men at the rave also had magical gags in their mouths to keep them silent, the gags mandatory at this rave and with good reason.
High above the dance floor on a raised platform stood The Reporter in his old school suit and with his microphone in hand, desperately looking for a "quote" to print on the great fabric of fate (with lethal consequences). The tiny slender man looked so harmless but his appearance was a lie, hiding his monstrously large true form as an Exalted Greater Daemon of Tzeentch, the knowledge of his true nature giving Fhimra a thrill of fear.
Beside The Reporter sat TigerLily wearing a full body burqa, TigerLily completely silent and still, watching the rave in silence, blue energy glowing around her head to add to the sorcery in the huge room.
Fhimra continued to dance energetically, her mind filled with hope and worship, and she jumped around 180 degrees to face the seated Draykesk who was "parked" in the "non-psyker boyfriend/girlfriend section", a rope fenced off area where the psykers could "park" their lovers who lacked the psychic powers to attend the rave proper. Draykesk was far from being alone sitting in the "parking" area, and he and everyone else also wore magical gags to keep them safely silent in the presence of The Reporter.
Fhimra ran her hands through her long wavy/straight blonde/brown hair, swaying her body heavily, waving her bottom at the focus stones cheekily to annoy the enemy ships, having fun.
Up in the air shimmered a ghostly psychic screen showing the (known) naval situation in the entire star system, not showing the location of the Sevenson Fleet lest spies for the enemy be present, but showing the locations of the huge dancing holograms of the girls, also showing the location of every known enemy vessel, vessels identified mostly by getting so close to the dancing holograms that the magic could clearly see them. Data cables fed into the psychic focus stones to feed this important military information directly to the bridge, this worship rave serving a vital strategic purpose as well as just being fun.
Fhimra turned again, shaking her arms and body about jubilantly to the music, at the screen above showed a huge hologram of Fhimra dancing in perfect synchrony with Fhimra, the hologram currently in deep space far from the planet.
A huge fleet of Khorne warlord ships of various vessel classes suddenly came into view of the deep space hologram and appeared on the screen, the ships firing their weapons at the dancing hologram of Fhimra. The hologram flickered as shells carved with magic-hating runes of Khorne hit it, and then the hologram of Fhimra disappeared, one of the psychic focus stones exploding into fragments that were caught in the air by TigerLily's psychic powers before they could hit anyone.
A new psychic focus stone was carried over to the empty pedestal by a silent gagged blue horror lesser daemon of Tzeentch, the rave having boxes full of replacement stones like this, and a hologram of the dancing Fhimra appeared in another random location in deep space to bait the enemy.
Other psykers danced, mostly women but some men, and giant holograms of them danced in deep space, drawing in angry enemy ships to reveal their location for military intelligence (and to piss them off). The number of ships attacking the holograms was greatly concerning.
Ever since TigerLily nuked Khorne in the nuts Khorne had been howling for her head, and the longer it took the more enraged Khorne became. Frustrated with constant failures to locate the Nightmare Asylum, Khorne appeared to be calling on his mortal worshippers in surrounding star systems, flooding the Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ star system with ever greater numbers of ships belonging to Khorne worshipping warlords.
According to what Fhimra knew, this area of space to the galactic west of Vem Omicron was dotted with the petty dictatorships of many normal human chaos warlords of many different gods, with Khorne being an especially popular god for these chaos warlords to worship. Chaos space marines were thankfully rare in this part of the Maelstrom, (not counting the Spitting Vipers 9th company, the allied Alpha Legion chapter led by Egg's husband Chaos Lord Paxton Tsao, and the Sevenson Night Lords themselves), but lesser chaos worshippers were extremely plentiful so close to the agri worlds of Vem Omicron.
Every semi-habitable floating rock that had anything of value to trade for food was viciously contested by ruthless warlords and their fleets, with phosphorus mining being hugely lucrative with Vem Omicron constantly coveting this critical fertiliser component to keep their farms operational. Any kind of hydrocarbon fuel found on any planet was also hugely profitable for warlords who controlled such planets, as were some other critical minerals that Vem Omicron had a shortage of.
Slaves traded by the millions from the overpopulated cities of the 109 moons of Vem Omicron were bought by warlords, and worked to death digging up any phosphorus or hydrocarbons they could scrape from the rocks to sell to the 109 moons for food and yet more slaves, enriching strong warlords and letting them build personal war fleets to wage wars with.
Those warlords who worshipped Khorne seemed to be sending their rabid war fleets HERE in vast numbers, trying to flush out the Nightmare Asylum by flooding local space with so many ships that they would find them by pure wait of numbers!
Fhimra looked up at TigerLily's veiled face fearfully, and saw TigerLily silently looking at Fhimra already, her veiled features inscrutable.
Fhimra kept dancing for a while, and the raw hope that permeated the rave dulled her anxieties about this seemingly unwinnable situation.
Fhimra was hopeful but not stupid, the Sevenson Empire had about as much chance of actually winning the Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ war as Benjamin Netanyahu had of winning in Gaza, none whatsoever. Even if the Sevenson fleet completely destroyed the entire civilian population of Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ, the daemonic legions of Khorne were never ending, it would be IMPOSSIBLE to hold this planet when new combatants spontaneously generated to replace losses.
Already the Sevenson fleet was performing steadily less orbital bombardments on the planet to help their treaty nations, the number of hostile ships was now growing so large that these strikes had a dangerously high chance of giving away their position long enough for enemy ships to swarm the fleet. The treaty nations were beleaguered and barely holding out, the Khorne daemons accepting no offers of surrender and demanding to kill them all to the last.
Fhimra couldn't see any way out of this unless Khorne somehow calmed down and stopped the war, and that was also comically unlikely knowing Khorne.
Fhimra sighed and stopped dancing, returning to Draykesk to go home, highly dispirited by the realisation that they would lose this war and see all their treaty nation allies exterminated.
Fhimra rested her head glumly on Draykesk's shoulder the whole way home on the tube train, and she was still glum when she got home to the dungeon palace.
Fhimra shrieked with laughter as she was tickled in the huge bed in a straight jacket alongside Octavia by Wendy and Lash, but the tickling and laughter did little to lift Fhimra's anxieties about the coming defeat. The Nightmare Asylum and the rest of the fleet could escape the Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ star system easily enough with their warp drives, they could regroup in orbit of one of their most strongly defended planets without too much fear of the hostile ships (successfully) pursuing them, but the knowledge of having been defeated would still be a bitter blow to their morale.
Fhimra forced herself to look past the temporary setback of certain defeat, hoping optimistically for all the opportunities that would come afterwards. The road to success often had these momentary little setbacks, they didn't need to win every battle to win the war, and sometimes a defeat like this was necessary to force you to change and adapt.
Fhimra sighed as she snuggled against the sleeping Octavia in her "sleeping straight jacket", focusing on the bright future over this minor hump of one lost battle. It might be a bitter pill to swallow, but the bitter medicine would ultimately do them good. Some (millions of innocent) people would be murdered to death by raging hateful daemons of Khorne but… But…
Fhimra felt a tear running down her cheek, and she stifled a sob by force of will.
More sobs came, Fhimra couldn't hold them all in and she bawled hoarsely at the knowledge that so many innocent people were going to die in terror and violence.
Fhimra's sobbing woke up the other 3 women in the bed.
"What's wrong Fhimra?", All three women asked her in concern.
"We are going to LOSE this war, those innocent people down on the planet will die. All of the available information points to the inevitability that the Khorne forces will win!", Fhimra sobbed, trying to explain herself, hotbtears soaking down her face.
"Yeah probably, no thanks to the fucking Alpha Legion giving money to all those hostile nations in the first place. We would have won this war EASILY if the Alpha Legion hadn't stabbed us in the back like this!", Wendy agreed in a way that somewhat missed the point.
"I don't even care whose FAULT it is, I'm just so upset because of all the innocent children who are going to get murdered and we can't help them!", Fhimra bawled emotionally.
Octavia got distressed by this news and she began to bawl with tears too, and Wendy looked irritated that she now had two crying tickle slaves to comfort instead of just one.
***…
TigerLily, The Reporter and even Tzeentch himself were playing their cards very close to their chest as they made the Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ war ever more hopeless with their actions.
Endless baiting and mocking of Khorne and his forces attracted ever more forces to arrive in the system, every two bit Khorne worshipping warlord with a warship rushing off to Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ to join in the hunt for TigerLily's head. The surface of the planet was thick with Khorne forces, not just daemons and local mortal soldiers but now joined by vast numbers of men from outside the system.
Khorne worshipping pirates, especially the Blood Sharks who hated the Sevenson Empire, were entering the star system by the millions of souls, putting aside their usual hostility to Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ to join forces against the enemies of Khorne. Millions of raging pirates in heated winter clothing and heated breathing masks rampaged over the surface of the planet, helping to storm treaty nation cities to slay men and rape women, (the Khorne daemons demanding that not a single woman be spared beheading until they found and slew TigerLily).
The war on the ground would be over soon, the treaty nation cities were being dug into through the ice and flooded with berserk forces of men and daemons, men women and babies all being beheaded on sight by these servants of the god of murder.
All eyes were on Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ, on the ground war, on the space holograms of dancing girls, on the insulting radio transmissions, on the baiting and on the angry hunt for the elusive Nightmare Asylum.
Just as planned…
***…
In the 109 Moons of Vem Omicron the central super-Jupiter gas giant loomed huge over every moon, its storm ravaged atmosphere making beautiful patterns on its multicoloured surface.
The moons, 109 moons in number, varied hugely in size and nature, some the size of planets in their own right, some smaller, all of them covered with impressive construction.
The capital Moon, Une, was the size of Terra and thickly covered with a breathable terraformed atmosphere, the moon extremely cold outside the habitable zones of the binary pair of stars in the centre of the Vem Omicron solar system. Ice prevailed on Une, with howling winds of subzero temperatures blowing freely across the ice studded surface, impeded in places by huge cities with forests of tall towers and huge factory complexes, French style nuclear fission reactors scattered everywhere to power these vast cities.
The work never ended in the factories and administrative towers of Une, this seat of power taking in the wealth of the entire system and all its trading partners, raw materials taken and processed by the relentless industry to churn out manufactured goods and ammunition on a vast scale.
In the sky above Une was visible the massive gas giant Vem Omicron, as well as over twenty nearby moons, their surfaces shiny with the reflected sunlight off endless numbers of pressurised glass agri domes, the domes filled with crops and farms of all varieties, producing food for much of the Maelstrom. The fertiliser factories on Une worked endlessly to produce synthetic nitrates and mineral dusts to fertilise so many farms, the fertiliser factories screaming for more phosphorus at all times to meet their fertiliser quotas.
Even now in orbit the blockish rectangular shapes of cheap and ubiquitous Vagabond Class Merchant Traders greedily offloaded fresh cargoes of phosphorus, ripped from the barren rocks of a hundred different worlds by the picks and shovels of wretched slaves to feed the insatiable demand for fertiliser.
Gold, precious metals, food, slaves, manufactured products, money and hydrocarbon fuels were given in exchange for this phosphorus, huge fortunes changing hands to encourage these ships to go off and bring them yet more phosphorus, the demand insatiable.
Inside the agri domes of the other moons, farmers desperately tended their soils with every means at their disposal, the fertiliser never coming quickly enough to satisfy so much competition. Huge numbers of wretched slaves were force fed barely digestible fibrous fodder with agonising indigestion, and made to humiliatingly squat down in the soil to shit out distressingly large shits of almost pure fibre to help the soil. Not a drop of sewerage was wasted in the 109 moons, all of it collected and used to make fresh soil to keep the crops growing.
Vast chicken meat farms and battery hen egg farms filled some agri domes, the chicken manure desperately collected to fertilise crops, the desperation for more fertiliser eternal and insatiable. Cows, pigs, sheep, goats, grox, hajsnip, fish, shellfish, rabbits, and uncountable numbers of other food animals were reared and milked or butchered, vast quantities of animal fodder grown, every single gram of manure collected and taken for yet more fertiliser.
Cotton was grown in huge quantities, not just for fabric but also for chemical products and explosives, the nitrocellulose and other gun cotton components being vital ingredients in a wide range of artillery shells and explosives and propellants. Eucalyptus trees were grown in massive quantities for both oil and paper production among other uses. Huge amounts of biofuel crops were grown in vast quantities to meet fuel demands, endless amounts of wheat and corn and other grains, huge amounts of fruit and vegetables and salad greens, vast installations dedicated entirely to the growth of mushrooms, and every other conceivable sort of agriculture and food production.
The moons were cold outside the domes, but humid and sweltering inside, solar and nuclear powered electric heaters warming the air for optimum growth. Air processing machines constantly added and subtracted gases as needed for perfect conditions, electric lights compensated as needed to work with ambient sunlight to give the crops enough light.
Vast populations lived on the 109 moons, numbering in the billions across the entire system, with some of the largest cities absolutely enormous, while other settlements could be all the way down to small villages and everything in between. This vast population allowed for vast wealth, enormous numbers of workers to produce wealth and huge numbers of slaves to sell from the surplus people. This vast wealth was not necessarily shared equally however.
In orbit of Une was found not just merchant ships delivering phosphorus, but also fuel tanker ships belonging to the Wong Family Mafia, huge numbers of fuel ships in fact, delivering both the watered down LPG from Mianasajep and the heavier fuel oils from Stōørølø, making a fortune delivering this desperately needed fuel.
Watching over the Wong Family Mafia vessels was the imposing Sevenson Empire 3rd Reserve Coastguard Fleet, (with special authority over tariff and customs enforcement), a fleet that was permanently parked in the various moon orbits of Vem Omicron to police the, (somewhat questionable), law abidingness of the Wong Family Mafia ships, ensuring their cargoes and making sure they paid their export tariff taxes to the Sevenson Matriarch in exchange for their continued privilege to export fuel from "her" planets like this.
The 3rd Reserve Coastguard Fleet had started out pretty small and unassuming, made up mostly of crippled and wrecked ships towed to Stōørølø for repairs after the space battle of Štękżå'räšh, mostly heavily damaged formerly Khorne ships that had been dry docked back to space worthiness but would never be front line quality again, their backs broken in ways that couldn't be fully repaired.
This ensemble of third rate crippled salvaged war ships had been fine at first in the low intensity job of customs and tariff enforcement of harmless fuel tanker ships, but the Wong Family Mafia had gotten steadily sneakier in tariff evasion, getting better and better at evading the crippled coastguard ships to trade fuel without paying the tariffs.
The Sevenson Matriarch had been so annoyed by this loss of tariff revenue that she had massively improved and increased the size of the 3rd Reserve Coastguard Fleet, giving them 6 brand new very fast Dauntless Class Light Cruisers and 30 very VERY fast Cobra Class Destroyers to chase down the Wong ships, these 36 vessels all completely brand new from the shipyards of Stōørølø.
As well as these new dedicated coastguard ships, the 3rd Reserve Coastguard Fleet had further been joined by an entire armada of new warships from Stōørølø undergoing sea trials, (or more accurately void trials). Generally when a new ship is built it undergoes a lengthy process of void trials and testing to make sure that all the systems work properly before it is formally commissioned for duty. In the past the Sevenson Family had been more than happy to skip this lengthy process in the interest of saving time, but this had led to all sorts of problems with ships breaking down or having systems failures.
The Nightmare Asylum itself had never had proper void trials and shakedown testing before it was commissioned, and the result was constant minor technical problems at random times.
The Sevenson Cartel had finally learned their lesson about not rushing the commissioning of new ships, and it currently had a huge armada of new ships undergoing void trials and shakedown tests to troubleshoot problems and test systems. As part of this long and thorough shakedown process these ships had been attached to the 3rd Reserve Coastguard Fleet to test their capabilities in the relatively harmless task of pursuing tariff evading Wongs, this task being found to be very effective in troubleshooting problems.
The 3rd Reserve Coastguard Fleet was very big and impressive with so many ships undergoing void trials, but they had been here for a while now and nobody even blinked at the sight of them anymore. Huge numbers of big complicated cruisers were present, and even some new battle cruisers, big ships that typically took years of void trials and shakedown tests before they were ready for commissioning. A lot of smaller ships were also present, these ships closer to commissioning but still a ways off yet. It would be a while before this armada was scheduled for commissioning to active service in the primary war fleet.
Not only were these ships themselves being tested but so were their new crews, with a huge batch of new recruits from the naval academies of Stōørølø currently manning these new ships, alongside more experienced Slaanesh worshipping crew members seconded from other ships to train the new crews in every type of task. Vast numbers of new soldiers from Stōørølø also drilled onboard these ships awaiting combat deployment, endlessly running laps of the ships and doing exercises and combat training drills.
The shore leaves of these stripy faced crew and soldiers down to the 109 moons of Vem Omicron involved quite a bit of drinking French wine and fucking French women, but nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary. None of these crew or soldiers expected deployment for months or even years, the void test schedules clearly outlined at least additional months of rigorous testing to get the ships running completely perfectly for commissioning.
Currently the 3rd Reserve Coastguard Fleet was taking on fresh live ammunition and food and other supplies to simulate a military operation in yet another shakedown test, just another boring day in the long and tedious troubleshooting process. Shore leave was ending for all personnel and the stragglers were all being returned back to their ships.
The crews were all assembled in assembly halls throughout the various ships of the 3rd Reserve Coastguard Fleet and informed that they were undertaking a warp drive test followed by a live firing exercise, leaving behind only the crippled ships to police the Wong ships. The crews yawned sleepily at this news, not expecting anything but boring tedious exercises and drills.
The 109 Moons of Vem Omicron watched as the huge fleet departed a safe distance from the planet and then engaged their warp drives, magenta circles opening up in front of each ship briefly, then closing as the ships entered through them.
The locals hoped that the latest void test went smoothly for them.
***…
On the Khorne dedicated daemon world of Montagne De Sang, heavily pregnant French slave women sobbed in French as they worked their fingers bloody scraping up phosphate salts with hand chisels, angry men of Khorne whipping and beating their slaves to dig faster. The great mortal Khorne Warlord Gaston Décapiteur wanted more phosphorus before the vagabond class merchant traders returned so that they could load the next payload faster, the weeping slaves would work faster or they would die.
Montagne De Sang was a highly toxic dry salt planet, with huge mountain ranges of impure mixed salts above lowlands salt lakes of incredibly toxic brines containing not just common table salt but also extremely dangerous Sodium Fluoroacetate salts. The local winds caused waves in the brine lakes that released toxic mists of Sodium Fluoroacetate among other extremely toxic chemicals found in the brine, choking the lowlands in a toxic haze of pure death.
The planet was a former abyssal pelagic depth ocean planet with no surface land of any kind, the water so deep that even the ocean floor was buried under exotic high pressure ice IV, but it was also a small planet that lacked the gravity to retain its liquid water oceans over geological time scales. Little by little the planet had lost its atmosphere to space, and ocean water had steadily evaporated in the low pressure to replace the thinning atmosphere with water vapour and dissolved gases. Ultraviolet light from the local yellow dwarf star had then photo-disassociated the hydrogen atoms from the oxygen atoms in the water vapour molecules, the hydrogen disappearing into space far faster than the oxygen, leaving an incredibly high oxygen atmosphere that steadily reduced in pressure to evaporate yet more of the oceans.
Now the planet Montagne De Sang was nearing the end of this process, the once impenetrably deep oceans had dropped so much that the ice IV had turned back into water which was then also evaporated, dropping so much that it reached all the way to the bottom, leaving behind mountains of all the salts the oceans had once contained. All that now remained of the water itself was shallow lakes of incredibly toxic brine that poisoned the air with their surf spray.
Only up in the mountains above the toxic mists was it safe to breathe, the air very thin but so oxygen rich that it remained breathable. The air still contained a high amount of humidity from the evaporated oceans, and dew fall at night helped to wash out the most toxic chemicals like Sodium Fluoroacetate down the mountain slopes to make the salt up here safer. It was an easy matter to use electricity powered moisture condensers to get drinking water from the humid air, and metal pots left outside at night would contain a small puddle of fresh (semi) drinkable dew water come morning, (though it was generally a good idea to further purify it before drinking the stuff on this toxic planet).
Despite its apparent hellish nature, Montagne De Sang was incredibly rich in highly sought after phosphorus rich salt deposits, which were worth a fortune to the farmers of the 109 Moons of Vem Omicron. Slaves with basic tools were easily capable of digging up these precious salts at a substantial profit, and millions of wretched slaves were worked to death digging up this salty bounty under the whips of huge brutal Khorne worshipping warriors.
The planet's name, Montagne De Sang, was French for "Blood Mountain", and the name was fitting for all the bloodshed that happened on these salty peaks as rival warlords and their armies battled for control over these high value locations. For over a hundred years rival warlords of Khorne had battled each other to dominate these precious phosphorus mines, making unimaginable riches when they were victorious.
Historically the planet was not always fully ruled by any one warlord, with individual warlords usually controlling varying numbers of mountains, always viciously fighting each other for territory, but that had changed when the giant and vicious Gaston Décapiteur had been born to an imported Vem Omicron slave woman and grew up to fight his way to dominance. This huge French man towered over other men, his body swollen with the mutating gifts of Khorne, he was a mighty Chaos Champion of Khorne with huge swollen daemonic arms that could pull off lesser men's heads clean from their necks in a shower of blood, he had never been defeated in single combat and had challenged every other Chaos Champion of Khorne on the planet until all of them were dead.
Gaston Décapiteur had risen first to warlord over a few mountains, then he had started challenging other warlords in control of other mountains, one by one killing these warlords in single combat and taking their mountains, until the entire planet was his.
With the entire planet under his control Warlord Gaston Décapiteur had had unimaginable wealth, and he had used this wealth to acquire a vast fleet of chaos warships to wage glorious wars in other planets for Khorne, his fleets ever growing in size and power with passing years of unimaginable riches.
The armies and warriors of Warlord Gaston Décapiteur were very well equipped and battle hardened, almost the entire wealth of Montagne De Sang being used on military spending. Even the fuel shortages had no bearing here, the phosphorus wealth so extreme that it could be exchanged for all the biofuel his military forces needed.
The individual mountain peak currently being observed was swarming with naked pregnant French slave women, either imported as fresh slaves from the 109 Moons of Vem Omicron or being the daughters of French slave women already living on the mountain, with new women being endlessly imported as slaves to be raped and worked in the phosphorus mines.
On the planet Montagne De Sang all women were slaves the moment they set foot on the planet, for women were physically weak and the weak deserved to be enslaved by the strong. All daughters born on the planet became slaves from birth no matter who their father was, damned from birth to a brutal life of subjugation for the crime of being born female.
The men on the other hand were all considered warriors who were expected to fight for the Blood God, most men were the sons of the enslaved French women but some were Khorne worshipping outsiders who came to the planet from elsewhere, with many great Khorne mercenaries attracted by the extreme phosphorus wealth to fight for the great Warlord Gaston Décapiteur in exchange for generous wages.
Years of importing French women slaves to breed with had diluted all the non-French blood in the population to the point that the population was predominantly ethnically French, and most local born men learned to speak the French language from their French speaking slave mothers, with common Low Gothic being a second language to most if it was even spoken at all.
The mountain peak of note was bristled with fortified military camps and highly militarised walled settlements on the flatter parts, with cowering naked slave women filling the entire area in vast oppressed crowds. In every camp and settlement slave women cared for distressingly large numbers of very small children, in between being raped on a whim by any man who wished. Other heavily pregnant slave women gave birth in the streets like farm animals, and dead women and babies lay dried out in the salt in the streets and open spaces after dying in childbirth or dying from disease or violence.
The female despair and pain hung heavy in the air as they were angrily beaten by huge angry men who held weapons and whips, every naked female body covered with the marks of male violence such as bruises and cuts.
Vast open spaces on the mountain peak had huge pits dug into the mountain surfaces, filled with weeping slave women with hand tools who dug into phosphorus rich salt deposits as men brutally whipped and beat them. As the adult women dug into the salt so much that their salty fingers bled, the younger girls gathered all of the dug up chunks of phosphorus rich salt into buckets and dumped it into huge train carts to be carried away when full.
The dig sites were on the sides of the mountain and often located on treacherous slopes where conventional digging machines dare not go. Women clung desperately to the salt faces as they dug, not even given shoes for grip, and some lost their grips and slid tumbling down the slope, their broken bodies crashing down upon the salt piles on flat ledges further down where the younger girls gathered the salt in their buckets. Men with climbing boots easily kept their grip on these same slopes as they brutally beat these wretched slave women.
The sun was hot overhead, making the naked women sweat and beg for more water rations. Some women were so depressed that they purposefully jumped off the edges of cliffs, their bodies bouncing and scraping and tumbling all the way down the slope for miles until their barely visible bodies came to rest in the toxic brine lakes with faint echoing thuds.
Blood and dead bodies littered the entire mountain from years of this abuse, the salt drying out every body so they never rotted, the mountain literally carpeted with dead bodies in places. The Blood God Khorne was pleased by all this violence and slaughter, all that mattered was that the blood kept flowing.
The mountain peak had just as many slaves as usual but far less men, with only a small reserve force of men remaining in place to guard and oppress the slaves for their Warlord. The entire planet was similarly low on men right now, for the great Khorne had called on Warlord Gaston Décapiteur to go to war against a hated foe in the nearby Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ system.
The great armies and the huge war fleets had wrathfully departed to Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ to fight for the Blood God, the great Warlord Gaston Décapiteur proving his loyalty to Khorne by taking every military asset he could possibly spare from Montagne De Sang. The men that remained were just enough to keep the slaves working and the money flowing, nothing more, and they were working the women harder than ever to make more money to buy yet more military forces to send even more to Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ.
The Warlord was determined to be the one to personally kill this "TigerLily" for Khorne, and he was sparing no expense in invading Gåëḻįxčûßṟæ with everything he possibly could so that he would beat the other Khorne lords from other planets to the prize of killing TigerLily.
The sun was setting now and the bleeding abused slave women fearfully climbed along the salt cliffs, clinging desperately with their bleeding fingers lest they slip. Trembling with exhaustion and fatigue they found their way to flatter ground and trudged in lines towards their meagre accommodations, greeting their waiting children and babies with sobs of relief.
The angry men rationed out food and water to the cowering women and children, and vast numbers of little single mother families huddled together for warmth in their shelters, as those children whose mothers had died today waited in vain for their mothers to return, the children weeping with fear and despair as it grew later and later with no sign of their mothers.
The men had much more comfortable sleeping accommodations, and grabbed random attractive women out of the slave accommodations to take to their beds tonight, binding these women down to their beds lest they try to kill the men in their sleep.
Bright magenta light lit up the night sky without warning and men and women and children alike went outside to look up at the sky curiously, expecting to see the Vagabond Class Merchant Traders exiting the warp to buy yet more phosphorus salts.
High in the sky were indeed the telltale magenta circles of ships exiting the warp, but the ships themselves were difficult to make out, only just visible from the sunlight glinting off their hulls but covered in so many shadows from jutting superstructure that they were impossible to clearly identify.
Men got on the ground based vox casters and messaged the newly arrived ships, asking if they were here for trade.
"Yes, ahem, yes that's right, we are here for… Trade…", A male voice replied over the vox.
"Well then get the fuck down here in your salt hauler shuttles and get started loading up, the Warlord wants all this phosphorus salt loaded and sold as soon as possible!", The men on the ground angrily replied.
The slaves were all assembled and most were whipped in the direction of the shuttle landing pad carved into one side of the mountain peak, put to work moving phosphorus salts out of silos and warehouses in readiness to load it into a shuttle.
They waited a long time, and then a very weird looking shuttle came into land on the landing pad, looking quite unlike any salt shuttle anyone had seen before, looking more like some kind of troop transport.
The huge shuttle doors opened and ramps lowered, and stripy faced men in camouflaged military uniforms marched out, all holding rifles and other weapons.
The Khorne worshipping men found this odd but still didn't care so long as they got this phosphorous salt sold as soon as possible.
"You took your sweet time!, SLAVES!, Get that salt loaded in that shuttle!", The leader of the Khorne men barked aggressively.
The stripy faced soldier men nodded silently and let the slaves load the insanely valuable phosphorous salts into their shuttle, and the Khorne leader angrily demanded payment.
"Of course, right here.", The leader of the stripy faced men said and fumbled with his pocket.
The Khorne leader looked at the other man's pocket curiously and the stripy faced man suddenly pulled out a pistol and shot the Khorne leader in the head!
The other stripy faced soldiers fired their own weapons at exactly the same moment to take advantage of the surprise, gunning down Khorne men before they could pull out their weapons!
The surviving Khorne men viciously returned fire and a huge battle broke out, some stripy faced men killed as the majority found cover and returned fire. The Khorne men were vicious hardened fighters but the stripy faced men were obviously very highly trained and very good shots, and with the advantage of surprise catching the Khorne men unprepared the stripy faced men picked off even more Khorne men with combined squad tactics and use of suppression fire.
Grenades were hurled back and forth but the stripy face men had more grenades as well as more ammunition than the surprised surviving Khorne men, one by one the Khorne men were slain until only those stragglers who hadn't yet arrived at the landing pad remained alive, these men taking defensive positions and getting on the vox to report this treachery, only to find that the vox frequencies were already reporting simultaneous surprise attacks on every mountain on the entire planet!
The stripy faced men didn't attack the Khorne men in their defensive positions, they instead had disappeared and the Khorne men didn't know where they were right now.
The shuttle suddenly took off and left with the priceless phosphorus, and more new shuttles arrived, landing on the landing pad to disgorge even more stripy faced soldier men.
The Khorne men survivors were now desperately outnumbered and the vox messages were growing fewer as more and more mountains fell to the enemy across the planet.
Tear gas grenades were suddenly tossed into every defensive position the Khorne men held, blinding their eyes with tears and driving them out of cover to find fresh air. Bullets swiftly scythed through them and they dropped down dead or too wounded to fight.
The enemy now held this formerly strongly held Khorne planet while taking very few casualties in the process, completely cutting off the money supply of Warlord Gaston Décapiteur and gaining all that wealth for themselves.
Khorne had been played for an absolute fool and faintly in the warp could be heard the sound of TigerLily's uncontrollable mocking laughter.
***…