Ciaphas Cain and the Tourist Trap (Part 3)

Unfortunately for my aspirations of early retirement, instigating a worldwide military mobilization disguised as a tourist event resulted in a lot more of the kind of paperwork I had come here to avoid doing, and I found myself craving a clerk or two, or even a full-time aide.

The idea was impossible, of course. Anybody who managed to work that closely and that intimately with all of my affiars had far too great a chance of catching on to the cowardly libertine I was going to such trouble to avoid being seen as. The closest thing I had was Father Peter, and he was so busy himself with his own affairs and with the load of work I had inadvertantly dropped on him by stashing him with the 15th.

"You need help." He said, uncharictaristically bluntly, as we played Regicide on the one corner of my desk I had managed to keep clear of the mountain of paper. "You're wearing yourself to a frazzle."

"No more than you. You're just as busy, and," I made a show of calling up precisely, from memory, the quotation from that one astonishingly forward baronette, "I'm 'a fine, fresh figure of a a fellow who can go for hours."

He snorted appreciatively, and moved his cavalier unwisely. "I'm only a humble regimental chaplain, with far fewer responsibilities," He said the lie so completely straight faced that I was in awe, as if he wasn't carrying the bulk of the capital's artisan classes on his gregarious shoulders, in addition to running who-knew-how-many underworld enterprises on the side. I certainly had no intention of inquiring. "You're the de-facto ruler of the entire Slawkenberg militarum."

I nodded, angling my General to trap his Sororitas in a move that would hand me the game in less than eight moves, then blinked as his assassin snapped shut the obvious trap I had failed to see . "You're right." I said, my tone far more serious. "I do need help."

"I've got the years of experience for the long haul." He eyed me again, eyes shadowed, and I wondered suddenly just what would happen if he dropped all of his convivial good humor and came at someone in deadly earnest. It put me in mind of Drill Abbot Nimrod, the most terrifying tutor I had ever encountered in the Schola, executing cadets that had failed to live up to Emperor's expectations and were paying with their lives. "You're doing well so far, but there's a limit. You're overextended, and it's showing."

I played back the moves in my brain, then looked at the mountain of paperwork, and realized he was right, and said so. "There's just so much to do." I said. "I scarecly know where to start."

"You can start by getting some exercise somewhere outside of a bed." he said, and with a start, I realized I hadn't picked up my chainsword or laspistol in weeks, a lapse which, now that I had been alerted to it, all of my survival instincts were shrieking at me to remedy. "As goes the body..."

"...so goes the mind." I completed the proverb, and wondered anew at his background. It wasn't a proverb exclusive to the Schola, being plain common sense, but it was an oft-repeated dictum there. Sump rats, had I really let myself be drowned in so much paperwork devoted to booting the PDF off their lazy arses that I forgot to get off my own?

"You also need a clerk." He admonished, holding out both hands. I tapped his right hand, and found I was playing red, which started with an initial tactical advantage that one could use to win a game before the longer, strategic advantages of blue kicked in. "Or better, a staff."

"It's not that simple." I said, considering and discarding several opening gambits before choosing the most uncharicaristically straightforward one. Sometimes a simple game was best, especially given how obviously disabled I was. "Much of this is classified, some of it with security clearances nobody else on the planet has." I nodded to another room off my office, one with a solid heavy metal door, a separate air supply, and positively festooned with techpriest blessings, wax seals, and ecclesiarchical wards, some of which had been freshly applied by Father Peter himself.

And every time I set foot in it, it felt like being sealed in my own tomb. The rest of the paper mountain was lurking in there, ready to avalanche down on me, and I wondered of Scriviner-Brother Malachi was snickering at how comprehensively I was forced to apply his teachings. Probably not: I'd never seen the sour old prune so much as crack a smile the entire time I'd been at the schola, and the galaxy would probably tear itself in two the moment he did.

"Then you need to find some, and train them." He eyed me. "You need support." He promptly demonstrated this my kicking my commissarial arse in less than five moves.

"Do you have anyone you can recommend?" I asked, humbly, unafraid to soak the local expert for all he was worth, and he shook his head.

"I'd have drawn them to your attention if I did." He said, "But I don't have anybody with the skills or-" he paused, then clearly decided that bluntness was the best course of action, "The power to be trustworthy in such a position."

Meaning he didn't have anyone that the Giorbas couldn't arm-twist. And with the Giorbas, the arm-twisting was all too literal, as they demonstrated on a monthly basis by twisting the arms out of the sockets in the slum market square on cable street of the dozen artisans who ranked the lowest in the production quotas. I wasn't sure what was more nauseating: the crunch of joint and bone, or the way the techpriests swarmed in to ensure the unlucky low-ranker's survival as a newly-minted servitor.

The point about exercising was far too cogent for me to ignore, so I gave up my new hobby of wenching for a couple of weeks to focus on the far, far older and more important task of doing whatever it took to keep my skin in one piece. In this, I discovered the invaluable camouflage of 'seeing someone' and 'falling in love,' as once one did, it was far easier to fob off the swarm of interested beautiful women and handsome young men eager for my attentions, especially when the chosen object of my affections was as socially adept as Emeli.

I picked out Emeli as the safest target for such a stratagem, (Which just goes to show how terrible my judgement is, but again, I'm getting ahead of myself) seeing as she seemed equally busy as the energetic headmistress of the St. Trynia academy. Not to mention her skills in the bedchamber outclassed everyone else's by a considerable margin, a fact I, in my arrogance, had put down to my own cleverness in choosing a lady of maturity and experience instead to the real, far more terrifying explanations. But in any case, we could only contrive to get together in a private manner about once every three weeks, which freed up time nicely for sword drill.

At which point I encountered another problem: finding someone on Slawkenberg who was remotely a challenge to physically fight.

The Slawkenberg Dream was a nightmare in this context, since the relentless focus on appearance over utility had created a cadre of exceedingly pretty duello dancers who I could dismember with a blunt combat knife while sipping a bowl of tea, all of whom had a variety of icily polite feuds going. I left vastly disappointed after being forced to pull my blows so hard I might as well have been wrestling a toddler.

Why pull my punches, you ask? The only reason I did was that I had no desire to manage the interminable fallout and the inevitable blood-feud to the umpteenth generation that would result in so thoroughly humiliating any one of the self-styled 'Slawkenberg's Best." Emperor's Bones, even an incompetent emperor-botherer like Thomas Beije, a cadet who considered himself my nemesis, but I was too bored by him to reciprocate with so grandiloquent a title, could have offed the whole lot in less than a minute, and they were just the sort of petty-minded poltroons who would elevate themselves to the position of permanent thorn in my side. The unarmed combat leagues were, if anything, even worse, obsessed as they were with the most fanciful costumes which only made sense after I found out that every last one of their bouts was staged.

I was beginning to understand some of the more ruthlessly systematic aspects of Schola Progenium training and the undeniable advantages it gave, as well as how the more by-the-book commissars managed to survive more than an hour after making mortal enemies of a whole, highly trained regiment all armed with guns. We, as a group, were just that good.

So I decided I had to resort to brawling, and even that came with it's own challenges. I didn't actually want to put my life in any danger, and while I could try out more 'incognitos,' I was so utterly untrained in that area that I could scarcely predict the consequences of being caught out at it. Being arrested by the local justicars after reducing an innocent bar to splinters would be, at best, flat out embarrassing.

"A free-for all?" Colonel Sanders steepled his fingers, "That...may be asking a bit much." He said delicately. I raised my eyes in question, it was obvious when he decided to risk being clear. I counted his degree of bluntness as a as a not-so-minor victory in my campaign to put him at his ease. "It's a bit inhibiting to throw a punch at you, commissar, when you have the authority to shoot anyone who does."

I nodded seriously. That was a major sticking point. In fact, it was *the* major sticking point. If everyone on Slawkenberg was obsessed with appearances, everyone also could judge relative power and position to a nicety and the risk of decking me could hardly be judged as worth it. Pretty much the only people who would were a) those who had a chance of surviving the experience and b) those who had been pushed to such a limit that they literally had nothing left to lose. Any such encounter with either a) or b) was far more likely to be a genuine fight to the death when all I wanted was a warp-be-damned practice bout.

As a consequence, I had been restricted to shadow-practice, which was fine enough for doing my drills, but if I didn't want my own fighting edge to resemble a blunt spoon I needed to find a challenge and, more importantly, a challenger. I wondered if I trusted the techpriests enough to design me some combat servitors, and decided that I really didn't.

Which left the PDF, all of whom I wildly outranked, and whom I had gone to a great deal of trouble to persuade to *like* me.

I rifled through my memory for any example of a Schola Progenium tutor who, after giving me the thrashing of my life, I would give so much as a rotten ploin for, much less take the risk of putting my own body between them and incoming fire.

The answer was a solid...one. I wouldn't die for Myamoto de Bergerac, but I would certainly consider inviting him to dinner and definitely stash him behind his own regiment of meatshields if I had the chance- and if he was here, it would solve all of my problems with finding a sparring partner.

Of course, I'd be covered in bruises for eight solid weeks as he worked out his anger over all of the little administratium stunts I'd pulled, but in the end I'd be in the finest fighting trim of my life, you can be sure.

But barring the man himself, I'd have to make do with his example- what he'd done to earn respect and toleration from the cadets he beat senseless. And as I thought it through, I realized I had to take my own advice- the advice I'd given so carefully to Colonel Sanders in the first place.

Make it a game. Make it fair, make the rules clear, and make sure everyone had their shot. Most importantly, make sure every bruise, every drubbing, and every loss had a purpose, that purpose being to increase their own odds of winning through in the weird, the bad, and the absolutely insane maelstrom of combat. Make the pain have a *point.*

And that, I realized, was why my respect for my old weaponsmaster was so ungrudging. He, more than anyone else at the Schola, had gone out of his way to weight the odds in my favor.

And I had to repay that favor to the 15th.

"It's more on the order of weapons practice, not so much a free-for-all." I rephrased. "The 15th is going to be putting forth its own combat patrol for the games next year, and the best time to practice for combat a year from now is now." I smiled ruefully. "I picked up a few tricks at the schola progenium that might come in handy for that."

"That might create the illusion of favoritism." Colonel Sanders demurred, and I realized I hadn't been the only one tutoring him in social skills. He, quite clearly, had been dipping into the generous wellspring of knowledge that was Father Peter. "It would hardly do for the Games you sponsor to show such blatant favoritism."

I arranged my expression into something far more serious.

"Other units are welcome to take advantage of my training." I said. I let my voice go quieter, more distant, and far, far more bleak. I had no need to feign a thousand yard stare. I'd had one before I was ripped from the familiarity of my underhive existence, and the schola had done nothing but refine it. Instead, the challenge was to keep the stare moderated to a level commensurate with a gritty, determined warrior and not someone about to start shrieking in abject terror. "The universe is full of horrors, Colonel." I said. "Slawkenberg is lucky to have slipped past their attentions for the past millennia, and I hope- I *pray*- that it will do so indefinitely. But if the time comes," I dropped my voice even further. "Slawkenberg will be *ready.*"

And so the Colonel fell for a set of cheap theatrical tricks like the straightforward man he was, and I had all the command support I needed to start teaching my very own motley collection of troopers which end of a chainsword went *buzz.*

Fortunately, the last months under the Colonol's exacting standards, my more benevolent touch, and Father Peter's ministry had given me quite a solid base to work with- they were all healthy, in good, if not outstanding physical form- and when I showed up to morning regimental physical training day, wearing the same shorts and t-shirt as everyone else, I could see the double-takes as literally every eye tried to stare before snapping forward as the sergeant barked, "Eyes front!"

I fell in behind the formation (always my preferred position in any group of fighting men, when I couldn't position myself in the protected center with bodies between me and any threat) and I could practically see the curiosity sweating out of every pore.

Father Peter had been entirely correct, I noted, as the regimental sergeant major, a fireplug of a man by the name of Hoover, called out stretches, presses, lunges, and more elaborate exercises. My muscles unknotted, my joints cracked, and after about an hour of this easy employment I felt my thoughts moving more rapidly and in better order.

I didn't really start to feel properly warmed up until the sergeant major called for a ten kilometer run, in formation at the double. Forty five minutes later, we were back at the regimental compound, formed up.

"Fall out!" called the sergeant, "Take 10!" and everyone else slouched with studious nonchalance. I fell out, and raised my hand in a casual salute. "A most invigorating run." I complemented them, then turned to get my own drink from one of the spigots arranged around the field.

As soon as my back was turned, I heard a rustle of clothing, as if troopers who had apparently been doing quite a creditable attempt at playing it cool suddenly and unceremoniously bent over. One of them wheezed, as if betrayed, "He isn't even *winded.*" before the thunk of a kick to the back of a calf silenced the comment. I stared at the spigot in interest. One of the ongoing consequences of Colonel Sanders' martinet ways still apparent. Some punishment detail had polished the metal to a mirror finish, and I could see every one of their mouths gaping wide as they tried to fill their aching muscles with oxygen while simultaneously trying to silence their gasping in an attempt to not advertise to the commissar just how hard they thought they'd been driven.

In truth, I was more than a bit astonished myself. I was a lot farther out of condition than I had thought. I took my drink, straightened up, and turned slowly- not with any menace, but just because I was interested in the consequences- and, to be sure, every last one of them was pretending that they hadn't just been gasping like a lot of landed fish.

"The view looking down from above is all smiles." Myamoto da Bergerac had told me, and it was entirely true: the expressions were a mix of between would-be ingratiating smiles and the trained eyes-front expressionlessness of a proper parade-ground trooper.

Sergent Major Hoover, though obviously not pleased to be the official, appointed spokesman for this group, did his duty, marching forthrigthly up to me, and said, "Thank you for joining us, sir."

I nodded, all appreciation. "Thank you for the opportunity to a bit of exercise." I riposted. "Just the thing to blow out some cobwebs."

I stretched, did an experimental lunge or two, then said, before the Sergeant Major could step his way far enough through protocol to decide whether he was obligated to invite me to join them all in the mess hall- "Enjoy your breakfasts- I'll think I'll have another go around." Then I turned on my heel and ran.

Running away, you see, is a vital survival skill. It's one I had in the underhive, it's one I had in the schola, and one I needed to get back on top of here.

Without the necessity of staying in step and in formation, I was really able to open up, and I had the field to myself. Twenty-five minutes and 10 kilometers later, I was back, delightfully sweatsoaked and breathing a bit harder than I would have liked. Frak it, I was out of shape. In peak form I could do it in twenty.

I did a far slower lap around the drill field, noting with approval the subtle lookouts that had been posted by troopers aware that a Senior Officer was On The Base and Doing Something Weird- and strode unhurriedly toward the soldier's mess hall that I'd be willing to bet five thrones had gone silent from approximately the moment it was obvious to the lookout that I was headed for the mess door. There was a "Room, Attten-SHUN!" and everyone predictably jumped to their feet.

"At ease, gentlemen." I said, "And carry on." I went to the buffet and served myself five salt groxes and three baps, and sat at the end of one of the long trestle tables with my plunder.

A low murmur of voices rose around me. I was in complete violation of a hundred unwritten traditions clearly delineating 'officer territory' from 'enlisted', but one of the rules of power is that you get to make the rules, and I wasn't exactly doing it just for giggles or to flex an ability to do practically whatever I pleased.

As Myamoto da Bergerac had done for me- or rather, to me- I was signaling to the troopers that something was going to be different about today.

When I had judged everyone had had a reasonable chance to finish eating, I cleared my throat, and began shifting as if to stand. The sergeant- small, whipcord man by the name of Shafter, was quick on the mark. He bolted out of his own seat while calling "Room, atten-Hut!"

I left them at attention, regarding them calmly.

"As you may or may not have realized, today is going to be different." I stated.

"In precisely one year, Slawkenberg will play host of the first annual Slawkenberg Combat Patrol Tournament. Every regiment will be fielding a Patrol. Today, the 15th begins training."

"Colonel Sanders as requested my assistance in finding the 15th's best. The training will be difficult. The training will be grueling. The training will come as close to combat as we can simulate without decimating the regiment. When the Games come, I expect that the best of you will fight, and that you will win. And as for the rest-" I did the commissarial trick of tracking my eyes and face across the audience like an auspex, giving each trooper the impression that, just for a spit second, I had nailed them in the eye, "You will be fully qualified to fight as a Combat patrol. If war ever come to Slawkenberg, even the worst of you will run rings around the enemy. Should that day come, I expect that you will fight, and I expect that all of you will *win.*"

I had them all in the palm of my hand, and knew it. I'd given them a prize worth fighting for- the chance for the glory of first place, and the certain knowledge that even being the worst meant something- it meant that you were the worst of the best.

"We start unarmed combat drills in an hour." I said. Then inflated my lungs and bellowed. "At ease." Then, with a parade ground snap, I did an about face and marched out the door.

Within twenty paces, I was off, running another 10 kilometers. I paced myself slightly slower- I stretched it out to forty minutes again, since I was weighted by so much food and didn't need to take the hit of stopping my digestion as would happen in a do-or-die burst of speed. But as De Bergerac had said, the enemy was never courteous enough to wait till you were finished eating, so why should I? I had trained in all conditions, because I never knew in which conditions I would end up in a fight.

I wondered if I should try and pull off De Bergerac's trick of turning up when and where you least expected. I decided not. I was less than confident that I had the gravitas to pull it off- de Bergerac had been well past his first century, with uncountable campaigns and hundreds of students behind him. I? I was well aware that my commissarial greatcoat and sash, not to mention my schola training, were doing an excellent job at covering for the fact that nearly everyone in the regiment was older than I- in fact, my only near-age-mates were newly enlisted and had just handled a lasgun for the first time barely a few months before.

*Don't get cocky.* I could hear De Bergerac's memory breathing into my ear. It had invariably been followed up by an unexpected blow to somewhere on me both squishy and memorably excruciating.

So I showed up exactly, precisely on the hour, still in an exercise shirt and trousers like everyone else.

We started with the basics. How to throw a punch. How to resist a shove. I joined in, not leading, but certainly demonstrating the pinnacle of proper form. And we practiced together for hours, slowly, then with increasing speed. The Seargent called breaks every forty minutes or so, during which I entertained myself by running around the drill field- which, not at all coincidentally, involved running rings around them.

I judged it to a nicity, I think. Two hours past noon, everyone was tired, and cranky, but not yet exhausted- and, though I loomed a head taller than most of them, without my uniform I looked like the youngest and freshest of FUNGs (Imperial Guard slang for Frakking new Guy) and I had been offering irritatingly gentle corrections the entire day. Commissar or not, half the regiment had started harboring fantasies of seeing me trip and fall on my arse, and some of them were even daring to imagine sticking out a leg as I ran past.

It was time to set out the bait.

"Drills are all very well." I said, "But combat is a free-for-all. Your team vs. the enemy." I nodded at a pile of sticks, lightly padded with a spongelike foam. "For the next hour, these are the rules: pick up your stick. Hit someone with it. If you get hit, you sit. If you refuse to take a hit-" I favored everyone with a frown, "Those you cheated will beat you senseless. Is that clear?"

"Clear, Sir!" They all shouted in unison.

I sat down, clearly on the sidelines, and waited until everyone collected a stick. "Ready. Set. FIGHT!" I roared.

Several troopers looked around in confusion, before taking hits from those quicker on the uptake. In less than three minutes, only one was left standing, a trooper who grinned at me in exhilaration after backstabbing his way through the the last four-way melee. I mentally marked him for later, as I couldn't help but admire his guile. Then I stood up and whacked him with my own sword. It was colored commissarial red.

A regiment's worth of betrayed expressions goggled back at me. I pitched my voice to carry. "This is what happens when you fight amongst yourselves! While the rest of you lay dead, the enemy came and took out the 'winner,' and every. last. one of you *lost.* Divided, you are vulnerable. Divided, you are not soldiers. A divided house cannot stand and if you are divided you. Will. Fall!"

"Do soldiers of the Imperium fight divided?" I shouted.

A small murmurer of shame faced voiced muttered, "No."

"I can't hear you!" I barked. "DO SOLDIERS OF THE IMPERIUM FIGHT DIVIDED?"

"NO!" they all roared back.

"ATTENTION!" I roared, and everyone bolted to their feet.

"PRESENT ARMS!" I bellowed. And everyone who had thought to grab their swords while scrambling to their feet presented, while the few who hadn't fell out, snatched up their weapons, and presented.

"Are. You. Soldiers?!" I roared.

"Yes!" They roared back.

"Soldiers Fight Together." I chanted. "Sodliers Live Together."

They took up the chant, the same from half a hundred pt drills. "Soldiers Run In Together. Soldiers Win together. Soldiers are the rising tide. We sweep the xeno out to sea. Soldiers are the Empire's Pride! Soldiers are the Victory!"

I noticed out of the corner of my eye the contingent I had been waiting for: Colonel Sanders, his second, Major Payne, the company commanders and their subordinate lieutenants, all wearing PT shirts of commissarial red.

"Today, you are faced with a small opposing force." I said. "You are a mighty host. You fight together, with your comrades at your side, with numbers on your side. You fight the enemy." I let a grin slid across my face. "You fight us."

The officers slid up, guarding my flanks. I'd stacked the odds a little in my favor with a week's worth of rapid squad level tutorials for each of them, but I was the lynchpin of this little group and they all knew it. "Your objective is me." I stated.

Then I bellowed: "FIGHT!"

"Gentlemen, charge." I said to the officers, and we bolted forward before too many Seargent pulled their heads out of their fundaments and started organizing fire teams. With my flanks and back guarded, I carved my way through the mob like a chef through a Sanguinia grox, making sure to aim first and any incipient knots of order before they had time to coalesce.

We officers lost, of course, and that, too was part of the lesson. But well over nine-tenths of the regiment were 'casualties' before it was over. Well over half of those 'casualties' were personally inflicted by me, and some of them were actually cases for the medica when they decided to ignore my first, relatively gentle tap, and I made sure of them with five bruising, lightning-fast blows in succession.

Sergeant Major Hoover managed to pry colonel Sanders loose from my side and, without my flanker, a couple of the faster soldiers combined to slop a blow under my whirling foam blade and tap the outside of my abdomen. Close enough, I decided, and let them have the 'Kill', oblogingly and theatrically flopping to the ground.

Losing, of course, was part of today's lesson. The regiment would get a victory, every last sprawled spectator watching from their 'deaths' would get a front-row seat to exactly how much it had cost. Well over nine-tenths of the regiment were 'casualties' before it was over, and, more importantly, I was actually winded.

"And that," I sang out through gasping puffs of air, "is today's final lesson. United" (wheeze) "You can conquer" (Wheeze) "Any foe. But only." (wheeze) "If you do it *together.*"

Several of the 'casualties' actually chuckled at that, though it hadn't been anything resembling a joke.

All in all, I thought, that had gone rather well.

The rest of the day went like clockwork- after that opener, and after sending the cheaters off to get patched up at the medicae, the officers took back command of their units and commenced a few small group melees, working out how to stay in cohesion, proper ways of piling in, and a few other assorted maneuvers. I noted which lieutenants had done a better job of keeping their units cohesive, and challenged the best of them to a one on one.

"With respect, sir," Said Lieutenant Caspar, a friendly fellow who was doing his best to not look intimidated, "I think you're a bit beyond my league."

"Not one of me vs. one of you, lieutenant." I clarified. "One of me vs. your one company."

He stared at me, his recent experiences with me warring with the idea that I might be taking the frack. Which...I actually wasn't, for once. If he kept his head, I calculated that he had about an even shot.

Unfortunately, he didn't, and I won the first round handily, picking off anyone silly enough to step out of formation before worming my way through a gap and eviscerating his platoon from the inside. It was a bit like pasting Beije on the scrumball pitch. "Best two out of three?" I inquired, and he muffled something unbecoming of an officer before surging to his feat for another go. I had to work a lot harder for the second round, and after the third he had clocked up a solid win.

Riding high on enthusiasm and exercise endorphins, I considered challenging each company in turn- but the stich in my side was telling me not to push it, as well as common sense. I didn't need to go through with personally using each and every one of them as my living practice dummy, since by the time I had worked my way through more than an eighth of them they'd stop feeling competitive and start feeling helpless and humiliated.

I had made it obvious I could wipe the floor with nearly any group the regiment could field against me, and that was enough to both stoke the fires of competition and solidly establish that I was the sort of monster you wanted firmly on your side and at your back instead of across the field. (if I was at their back, then I was firmly behind a bunch of trained soldiers standing between me and the enemy, the way I liked it.)

More to the point, the best among them were even now desperately wracking their brains for ways to win the game, preferably while giving me a suitable drubbing in the first place, and more power to them if they could, since I had carefully engineered things so that none of them had the least reason to want to actually *kill* me. That's important in a potential sparring partner.

Instead, I nodded, made my goodbyes and rounded out my day with another brisk twenty kilometer run.

Captain Malone, of the 47th Slawkenberg Regiment, could scarcely believe his eyes. The pict was blurry, as befit a device installed to secretly scope out the pathetic competition for the upcoming contest of honor and blood. But it wasn't hard to see the spearhead of redshirts ravaging their way through a hoard grey soldiery, and he felt his blood begin to sing the bloodsoaked song of Khorn in vicarious echo of the fight.. And then hungry eyes locked on the tall warrior at the forefront of the fight, devouring the spectacle and his heart thumping with anticipation. The voice of his chosen Power whispered into his ear, low, gruff, yet pitched to carry through the fire and fury of battle.

Commissar Cain. It whispered. A prize worth fighting for: an actual foe worthy of the fight.