AK-4142

Adept Jonnes was beaming.  He had always known his hard work would pay off some day and now it had.  The Magos had entrusted him personally with the device.  He couldn't believe his luck; although he wasn't completely sure what the oddly shaped box strapped to the back of his Taruos was, he had been enstructed by the Magos himself that it would 'change the world as it had not been for 40 years.'  Jonnes was sure that the device must have been some kind of superweapon.  A weapon that he had been chosen to courier to the field. He still couldn't believe it. He had failed as a guardsman, and was beginning to worry that he would fail as a Tech-A

Magos may have been his title, but the half man, half machine had never formally earned it.  He was only the leader of the Machine Cult on the wrecked ship by virtue of being the oldest techpriest still alive.  He adjusted the device in front of him as his cognitor fumbled with this fact. True as this was he still felt comfortable with his abilities. After all, he had been trained on Mars and received instruction there. This ancient device should pose no problem for someone like him. ‘Should,’ he thought his mind said, turning the word over.  True, it wasn’t the most elegant thing he’d ever created.  Honestly, he coul

Eric Anderson opened the hatch above him and climbed onto the top of the battleship’s command tower.  His boss was there, as he knew he would be, and he had busied himself with an archaic game.  He was using a metal pole with a curved head to hit small white balls off the top of the ship and into the wasteland.  Up here there was no need for any kind of protective mask, and really the area around the ship was clear for some distance but as a precaution both men had radiation masks with them. Perhaps also as a precaution or out of habit both men were armed, Anderson with his laspistol and Marcus with his family’s power saber.  The

“Mister Anderson, status report.”  First Officer Eric Anderson no longer was the first officer on an Imperial Battleship, and status report had come to mean something far different for him the 20 years since the ship he was standing in had moved. Nonetheless, he still found the order familiar and the man who had spoken it was well aware of that.  It was why he had said it. As Anderson walked into the room his saw the speaker.   The rogue trader Marcus Walsh was standing in front of the great glass window looking out over the planet.  He was dressed in his normal attire, the blue dress uniform of an Imperial Navy captain though he