Lots of fun ones, but I noticed no one had done the bounty hunter one and so...
Ciaphas Cain the Bounty Hunter kicked his heels up in the bar and patted Jurgen on the back. The psi-hound had been with him since his first job, indeed, freeing him from the governor's control had been crucial to his survival. Otherwise Jurgen surely would have killed his target and himself. Sure, freeing the psi-hound had meant that the planetary governor was his enemy, but the bastard was the enemy of all underhivers and Jurgen's psychic firepower more than paid for his keep. Admittedly, he hadn't expected the psi-hound to follow him home, but he'd take it.
From under the table, a whining sound came and Cain rolled an eye pulling off a strip of meat and feeding it to the cyber-mastiff huddled under there. Happy chewing sound came and a soft tongue licked the juices from his fingers, carefully not cutting him despite its metal teeth. "Yes, yes, no one's forgetting you Jenit," he muttered as he considered the bounty board from across the room. His augmetic eye let him read it easily enough at this distance and meant he didn't need to deal with the scrum of bounty hunters standing by it.
Every time he went over there, he got mobbed, either by people wanting to work with him, or by people wanting to ambush him. Which didn't make any fucking sense, he didn't carry anything special. His las-pistol and chainsword made him wildly less equipped than his fellows. Sure, he had carapace armor, but so did most elite bounty hunters, a group he, alas, found himself included in. And almost no one knew about it, as he hid it under his dark clothing, unlike most of his fellows who broadcast their capabilities and defenses for the entire hive to see.
His real advantages were Jenit and Jurgen and neither could be looted from his corpse, but that didn't stop the idiots from trying. Nor did the sea of brain-blasted corpses Jurgen had left in their wake. But taking him would be a matter of reputation, and whoever could put him down, would make theirs.
There were plenty of jobs on the board, but none worth enough. Another nineteen thousand credits and he'd have enough to get off this shithole to a pleasure world, with enough money to buy a bar and spend the rest of his life selling overpriced drinks to noblemen, bedding noblewomen and telling fabulously exaggerated (and suitably sanitized) versions of his life story to both.
Unfortunately, people had noticed that he hadn't been spending, which meant that people were even more interested in taking him than usual. It wasn't just a matter of reputation anymore. Some had noticed and wanted to grab him, torture him, get him to tell them where his stash was, and then kill him. He could deal with that, had, for years, but this close to the end, he didn't want to take unnecessary risks.
In fact, despite famously destroying an entire gang in a single battle (they'd very foolishly put their camp underneath a water storage tank and hadn't even placed guards to prevent him attaching a melta charge to it), he'd never been a fan of necessary risks either.
As he considered, he idly noticed the woman making her way towards him. Beautiful, not local. Uphiver, no doubt, but with none of the heavy-duty muscle he'd have expected trailing her. At least none he could see. He glanced at Jurgen, but the psi-hound just put his forelegs on the table and watched her approach. Give her this much, she didn't flinch at the hideous amalgam of psyker and augmetic that was the psi-hound, at least visibly. Cain himself had managed to hide his reaction, but only with great difficulty and he doubted the woman was anything like as skilled a liar as he was, though they claimed nobles were great liars from never doing anything else.
As he opened his mouth to give her the line an elite bounty hunter of his reputation should, she dropped an open purse on the table, and it spilled out hard currency. Long experience let him say that the bag held twenty thousand credits.
"You've got my attention," he said, kicking his feet off the table and nudging Jenit over, so there was room for the woman to sit down, which she did, apparently as comfortable in this bar as she would have been in some noble's party.
"I need to get to a certain place down here, and back, alive. Can you do that?"
"How far?"
"Four hours."
"Resistance expected?"
"None expected."
"Well, maybe not before you flashed a fortune round this place," Cain said, pushing the credits back into the bag and giving a flat stare to the nearest man looking at the table.
A server started heading towards them, her eyes on the purse and greed in her eyes. Despite having happily spent more than one pleasant evening with the barmaid, Cain gave Jenit a gentle nudge and the cyber-mastiff moved out and gave a growl. The barmaid stopped and turned around.
"I'm sure you can handle it."
"We can," Cain raked the bar with his best glare. Only two men were dumb enough to meet it, but Jenit had already planted charges on their bikes while he was waiting for a good job, as they weren't subtle about their intentions, so they wouldn't be a problem.
How bad could this be? The woman frankly reeked of money, she could have hired an army if that was what she needed. No, she needed a guide and a bodyguard, he could do that. And then get the hell out of this place and away from Cain the Pyre, Shadow, Houndmaster, Liberator, Bloody Handed, Cartographer and a thousand other epithets. A quick glance at Jurgen showed him the psi-hound's augmetic tail was waving. Jurgen liked her, that was rare, but besides himself and that one blank they'd run into, the psi-hound was a good judge of character. He smiled, "Well, just call me Cain the Guide. And you?"
"Amberley Vail."
She seemed nice and just one more job and he was finally done. Well, maybe one more job, and one more roll in the sheets with someone grateful for having their life saved? Maybe his luck was finally changing.