|
Post by Darko on Feb 21, 2014 22:54:53 GMT
"As I keep pointing out," Stubbs emphasised, not turning to look at Peter, "The Arbites will be on our case eventually anyway. As for the PDF, in a few months there'll be outright riots and martial law will see troopers on every street. I say why wait until then to strike, attacking now only speeds up the inevitable and lets us utilise our advantage while we still have one," he reiterated.
|
|
|
Post by Warork on Feb 21, 2014 23:59:26 GMT
There was a knock on the door...
Well, less of a knock and more of an irregular, rough thumping.
"I'm home sweetie!" A mocking voice on the other side called out endearingly "Swear on the throne, if you lock me out one more time, woman..."
Stubbs answered the door after a few moments, opening it to see Karus standing there, leaning against the wall next to the door, clad in black denim pants with attached chains, steel toed boots with plenty of scuffs, and a long weathered black duster that looked like it had been worn by someone else before him. He smiled as he looked up from his hands which were cupped around his mouth where he had been lighting a lho stick just a moment before. Karus looked at Stubbs with a feral grin, blowing smoke in his face as he shouldered past into the room.
"Didn't plan on coming to your little party, Stubbs, but I figured it would be more fun than getting wasted at the bar. Then I heard the words 'arbites' and 'convoy' in the same sentence." Karus glanced at the group within the basement uncaring before glancing back to Stubbs, a bored expression in his steely eyes. "Looks like you started without ol' Karus." He blew out another cloud before finding an alcove within the room to lean in.
"So you figured out how we're going to do this or what?"
|
|
|
Post by Darko on Feb 22, 2014 0:11:02 GMT
Stubbs ignored his friend for a moment. Well, 'friend' was a very loose term. But he had known of Karus for a few years, however the man's unstable tendancies made him difficult to like. Nonetheless, that's also what made him so useful. Locking the door behind Karus, he walked him over to the table, introducing the others before going over his plan one more time and also highlighting what the more vocal members of the assembled group had thought of it. He looked towards Karus when he was finished, interested in the psychopath's opinion.
|
|
|
Post by Warork on Feb 22, 2014 9:01:04 GMT
While Stubbs was busy going over his plan again, Karus busied himself whetting a rather large knife he had produced from some hidden place on his person. The blade was a foot long, broad and flat, and tapered slowly to a lethal point. Those looking close enough could see the word "toothpick" engraved upon the black hilt. The look on Karus' face as he did this was disturbingly affection filled, as if he was recalling pleasurable memories with the knife or looking on it lovingly as a parent might a child. He'd found a chair somewhere and was doing this while leaning it back against a wall, silently waiting for his malcontent associate to finish. When he did, Karus took that as his cue to rise.
"This plan has balls, I like that." He summarized simply as he finished his lho stick and put it out under his boot. He pulled part of his duster back to stow his knife, revealing a holstered autopistol at his side. "Looks straightforward enough, so when do we go?"
He looked around for a moment to see lots of eyes staring angrily or askance at him. Karus dismissed them with a wave of his hand.
"Oh don't tell me you pussies are still hung up about this arbite reprisal thing. Look, we can't dick around here, in a few weeks if everything goes like you want it, thousands'll die. Its gonna get a lot shittier before it gets better, so don't think you're doing us any favors by trying to weasel out of this."
He leaned over the table and poked his finger into it to emphasize his words as he looked at those around him, his expression was far from pleading though, more like disapproval.
"This aint about them out there or us in here...its about sending a message." His voice became low, he began to smile and unsettling smile. "We ain't the arbites bitches no more. Ain't no gang out there got the guts to do what we're thinking. We pull this off ain't nobody gonna think we're playing around either."
He paused and stood straight, looking at the table again and fishing in one of his duster pockets for his lho stick carton. He sniffed.
"So I'll ask again. When do we go? I've got ten years of payback to hand out to these pigs and I've been waiting for a special desperate group like you to do it with."
|
|
|
Post by Darko on Feb 22, 2014 9:09:39 GMT
Arms folded, Stubbs had regarded Karus quizzically. He'd expected the man to be easily attracted to the plan, yet he displayed a firm grasp of the wider situation. Perhaps he'd underestimated him as a mere bloodthirsty criminal, although bloodthirsty he certainly was. Looking at the others, he could tell this would be a long night as they debated the finer points of his plan and argued back and forth about whether or not it was even a good idea. At least Karus had the guts to do what needed to be done. He respected that.
"That's exactly it," he concurred, standing next to Karus. "This is an opportunity for us to hit them where they'd least expect it and come out on top," he said, reinforcing what he and Karus had already spoken. As he finished he slammed one fist into the open palm of the other. This motley group needed reassuring that they could pull this off, which would be no easy task. In any case he couldn't pull this off without them all.
He addressed Karus. "We leave tomorrow and set up an hour before the convoy passes through the comm dead-zone, then we spring the ambush. Tonight, we all stay here."
|
|
|
Post by The Glass Ninja on Feb 22, 2014 11:34:51 GMT
The big man who walked in immediately set off alarm bells in Peter's head. He looked like one of the hive gangers who he'd so often had to stare down or fight with; that wasn't at all good. Still standing, the young warrior let his armoured hands rest at his belt - just beside his holstered auto-pistol. "Guts get men killed". It was an idea that his father once instilled in him. Cadia may have been the home of the bravest men in the galaxy, but it was also a fortress. Planning and tactics were the best of defenses. "You want to blow the shit out of a compound under arbites compound? Good for you, I prefer to live." He frowned, shifting the lasgun across his shoulders "I wish you luck and His blessing"
With that, Peter made his way to a corner of the room, sitting and leaning his head back against the wall. Sleep deprivation training since he was five had taught him the old soldier's trick of sleeping whenever he could; though in this case he simply sat with eyes closed and fingers twined with the chain of his Aquilia pendant. He couldn't feel through the thick weave of his combat gloves, but the many scars and light burns across the pendant told a story.
His dad, charging through smoke and flame, nothing more than a whiteshield on Cadia. A chaos invasion had been raging, plasma and shell falling from orbit day after day after day. After the third bombardment, Six chaos marine squads had managed to breach the Kasrs' outer wall, and flooded into the city with swarm of cultists. Peter's father, in the valiant defense of his home world, was now even more desperate to protect his home. Captains of the Guard stood in the streets, often on the blown-out hulks of Chimera transports, firing laspistols and yelling orders to the well drilled and courageous imperial warriors under their command. The Aqulia pendant had gained most of its damage that day; a mad charge towards a towering servant of the dark gods saw Peter's father take a bolter round to the kneecap, taking the limb clean off. Laying there, in a puddle of his own blood, his squad blown apart around him by many more deadly shots, the young whiteshield had raised his rifle -flicked to full auto- and opened fire on the servant of the arch-enemy. A lucky bolt struck the creature in its eye, and sent it falling dead. He had clutched his aqulia so hard that the wings had bent, and shards of shrapnel tore through his hands and damaged the iron of the pendant.
The leg had been replaced, his father commended for fighting in the name of the Emperor even when injured, and then sent off with the Cadian shock to fight the enemies of the Imperium across the galaxy. Dropped to a hive world and left there, he had raised his son with that story, with the same faith too.
It had taken a few minutes of considering the old story before Peter looked up at Stubbs and sighed. "If you can promise me that we're doing the Emperor's work, then I'm with you."
|
|
|
Post by Darko on Feb 22, 2014 11:41:31 GMT
Glancing at where Peter had leant against the wall, Stubbs strode over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Do the old stories not talk of the Emperor himself leading humankind from its birthplace to the stars by first uniting and fighting for what is right?"
"Is it not the Emperor's will for us to rise up against oppression and fight for what is right? Not to cower in the dark as slaves to the will of others. My comrades, our cause is righteous. You think me a madman, suicidal. I am neither. The Emperor is with us, I am certain of that," Stubbs finished, turning to look at the rest of the group as he spoke.
|
|
|
Post by The Glass Ninja on Feb 22, 2014 11:58:12 GMT
"The holy books speak of His great crusade...and I suppose that this is ours" Peter nodded to stubbs, before standing and walking back to the meeting table. Glancing at the rest of the team, hostility gone from his eyes, he unholstered his auto-pistol and placed it before him. Then he slung his rifle down to rest beside it, finally drawing the trench knife from his boot and letting it rest on the grip of his pistol. "We need a weapons check, and ammo count. Do we have access to any explosives?" He directed the last question to Stubbs "Or any schematics for say, gas lines in the comm-silence zone?"
|
|
|
Post by Darko on Feb 22, 2014 12:10:40 GMT
"That's the spirit," Stubbs grinned. The expression was gone a second later as he looked down at the blueprint splayed across the table.
"I've got the gas grenades I showed you earlier. These schematics are old but reliable. Stopping the convoy without damaging the vehicles is a priority and we need to figure out just how exactly we're going to do that."
|
|
|
Post by The Glass Ninja on Feb 22, 2014 12:37:29 GMT
"Do we have a composition of their vehicles? They'll most likely have a vanguard and rearguard that are a little tougher to crack than supply trucks." Studying the blueprints, Peter found a gas pipeline that led to a hab-block. "If we can blow something like this up in their path, then they'll stop and investigate. It'd be even better if we could collapse the road behind them at the ambush point as well. Its imperative that we trap the whole convoy...usually, we'd take out their front and rear vehicles, but we need those..."
|
|