Thoss World
Standard Orbit
Thrynn Frigate Jussru

Colonel Venn’Bk watched as the amphibious lander shot up from low orbit, carrying a reinforced Royal Marine squad. Venn’Bk had begun in the Royals, but had been assigned to the Directorate when it was clear his talents lay in more subtle areas. Regardless, this squad was well trained and would serve its purpose.

Venn’Bk had come across an interesting piece of intelligence from the most unlikely of sources. An outcast beggar scraping for grubs in the ghettos of the Old Vss’Kssh Citadel had reported seeing a crimson case “in transit,” as the Directorate summary had put it. The traffic of forbidden whispers, such an artifact had been faintly rumored for centuries—but that it truly existed was almost beyond belief. There was a muffled metallic noise as the lander docked with Jussru.

Deep Space
Leghk Sector
G’Nunk Warship Regepple

Dozelord Gannuzo watched the violent duels on the baptism deck as rival crewmembers fought each other with limbs, teeth and whatever implants and mutations they had managed to come across. The dim, smoky haze was pierced by the glow of two eye-shaped lights opposite the spectators’ booth. In the arena, a particularly wiry Gob slashed a huge bloody chunk of torso off of a hulking Yoosey-kpv. The goliath slumped to the deck, savagely wounded, and the mangy Gob did his pelvic victory dance before a band of admiring females. Two guards dumped the Yoosey-kpv on a stretcher.

Gannuzo followed them to the medical brig and watched as they dumped the defeated gladiator on a steel slab for his operation. “Hovk’l, what is the status of our project?” The chief engineer was arm-deep in a slew of defeated contestants laid out on operating tables.

“Dozelord, it goes well, bless She/It who watches,” grunted Hovk’l. “The transplants are routine enough and if the bodies start to reject them, we just subdue the immunity function with a dose of SB-15 and clamp on a shocker node.” The dozelord motioned to a pile of sedated blasters. The furry little brutes had been difficult to capture.

“Are the psychic functions catching with the brain synapses?” asked Gannuzo.

“Well, we’re transplanting the actual blaster snouts onto different G’Nunk species, so it’s hard to generalize, but it looks promising on most of them,” the engineer explained. “We should have several dozen assembled by the time we arrive.”

Thoss World, 3527
Confederal Senate

Kgnrfss and Bellus: In all their practiced dignity, the two regal senators stood in a shaft of sunlight that shone down onto the lush atrium gardens from the open dome above. Amid the hushed pockets of conferring politicians and favor seekers, the two statesmen could be seen to exchange words and gestures, pacing in measured steps as their dialogue unfolded. To all save the keenest eyes, it was simply the ritual of pleasantries, grease to keep the cogs of government from seizing amid the heat of contention. But the most astute observers, the oldest players, they saw the dance for what it was: the killing blow of a merciless gambit for control. Like water finding its level, power was bleeding from one senator into the war chest of another. And in the swirling genesis of an emerging order, the stakes were no longer merely the reins of civic determination, but the mortal flesh and deathless soul of a people.

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Next: “Flip Sides”

Tradewind Wisdom
L "Calamity" Jane Reynolds Dissed by Bob Drake! Plus, ISS Rodeo Days was impounded by the Stellies near VBN City for contraband hauling.
K General Hoss'Vnn Okay, so he's dead—but he's poolside at the big hell swamp in the sky, and from the look of things, Junior Venn'Bk's on the case.
J Cobalt Old TW: Radioactive waste of cargo space. New TW: Fun with shield nullifiers!

Hilsfar & Company: Don’t Call Us “Junior”
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