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It was after the first week that Magnus began to have his doubts. Captain McKraken styled himself as a bloody-handed corsair, but it was only gradually that Magnus realised that none of it was an act. McKraken never hesistated to cut down whoever stood in his way in the most brutal way possible. He took delight in the butchery of those who could not profit him, and would take a course of action that created pain and misery over one that would not if both were equally valuable. He did not keep his word when given, and ruled his crew with an iron and blood-soaked fist until they loved him for it. He encouraged blood sacrifice amongst the ratings, even cannibalism, as long as work never suffered. The Imperial Creed was a curse from his lips.
Magnus and Severus soon suffered in the employ of McKraken. For six months they travelled with him and witnessed the cruellest of endeavours. The population of Enterminus III was raided, their skins sold to hungry xeno traders. The orbital settlement around Proust's World was sucked dry of atmosphere to replenish the
Restless Cove's stores, leaving thousands to suffocate. Hundreds of slaves of all ages were taken not for trade but to satisfy the sick whims of the officers and crew. McKraken took a perverse pleasure in having such Imperial stalwarts as Magnus and Severus aboard, and the regular meals at the Captain's Table were rife with lewd suggestion and nigh-heretical discourse. McKraken would often allude to his work with the pilgrims of the Expanse, but refused to elaborate despite Severus' concerned probes. Magnus might even have employed his own talents to delve more deeply into the matter, except for the constant presence at McKraken's side of his vizier and occultist Xanthus Eight-Faces, a mysterious figure in ragged robes who demonstrated some psychic ability but about whom nothing else could be discerned - until the night of rebellion.
McKraken owed House Kassandora a vast sum of money for a deal on which he had failed to deliver. Even this might not have been enough to ensure McKraken's loyalty, except that Kassandora had more leverage over the man, leverage which was to prove his undoing. Persuaded to join with the Kassandora fleet to help them suppress an old enemy, the
Restless Cove stood in high orbit around Psi-Kappa-12. Already insensate with rage at being forced to wait at the behest of another Rogue Trader, McKraken broke into frenzy as the duel between Marcus and Simon ended and the Kassandoran fleet signalled the retreat. In thunderous tones he demanded explanation and release from the agreement; the harried Kassandora captain replied over the vox with a revelation that stunned Magnus and Severus: that McKraken's proclivity for selling passage to pilgrims only to sell them to terrible and cruel Eldar reavers was known, and that he had better stay in line if he didn't want the Imperial officials to find out.
While this deflated McKraken, Magnus was reeling. All of McKraken's other sins fell within his remit as a Rogue Trader, however tenuously. This, however, was outright treason. As the fleet and the
Restless Cove jumped to warp, Magnus quickly conferred with the Pontifex. The two had become friends during their service together, sharing the quality of men of action and belief in the works of the Imperium of Man. They'd seen and heard a lot of McKraken's evil in their time aboard, but now it was clear that only one road lay ahead of them: that of revolution.
In their time on the
Restless Cove they had each been moving amongst the officers using their own skills, and playing on the crew's tendency to disloyalty, to secretly plant the seeds of dissent against McKraken's brutal rule. Those efforts paid off now, as Severus stood at the bridge, levelled his thunderhammer at McKraken and with Magnus at his back denounced the Captain hereticus and unworthy of the honour of the Imperial Warrant.
The rest of the bridge crew either supported the pair, were paralyzed by indecision, or were immediately swept up in a brawl as McKraken leapt to his feet and answered the challenge with a howl of bloodlust. The duel between Severus and McKraken was savage, but Magnus was forced to pay attention to a new threat.
Xanthus Eight-Faces stood arms akimbo on the bridge, his tattered robes fluttering in an ephemeral breeze and warp-lightning crackling from his fingertips. For the first time everyone in the room could see his face: tattooed and scarred by blasphemous rules, his eyes torn out and replaced by animal skulls, teeth filed to razor points. Many in the room quaked and hid in fear; Magnus stepped forward without hesitation.
Xanthus Eight-Faces sneered and flung his hand forward, lashing out with a blast of psychic energy that knocked Magnus three metres away onto the decking. Unbloodied, Magnus rose to his knees and sent a spike of telepathic force directly into the heretic's mind. Psychic wind whipped through the bridge as Xanthus howled and staggered, his tongue - split down the centre like a snake's - drooling a black ichor. Standing quickly, Magnus drew his sword and advanced, but Xanthus recovered too fast for him to strike a killing blow. The sorcerer brought his staff up to parry the downward hack, and the two men stood for a heartbeat, eyelesss face to eyeless face, until Xanthus made a flicking motion with his free hand and telekinetic force sent Magnus reeling across the deckplate to collide with the railingoverlooking the piloting stations. Xanthus hissed obscenely and came on.
Suddenly the sorcerer stopped, surprised. He looked down to see a crewman grasping at his leg. Contemptuously he crushed the man's skull with a jab of his metal-shod staff, but at that moment another man leapt onto his back, and then another ran forward and grasped at his arm, trying to pull him down. Lips twisted in rage he turned to Magnus to see him clasping his Aquila amulet, and knew that he was influencing the crew to crush him beneath them. Magnus, focused, watched as a third man, then a fourth, succumbed to his telepathic control and threw themselves into the scrum. True to his mind-commands, the men were kicking, punching, even biting at their target, and Magnus took the moment to look around the rest of the bridge enough to see the carnage wrought by the ongoing duel between Severus and McKraken.
That moment almost cost Magnus his life. A bolt of blue-black lightning leapt from the pile of men, ripping through their bodies like paper and sending sizzling charnel gobbets into the air. The bolt missed Magnus by a hand's breadth, struck the railing and flashed along it, turning the armoured metal to warped slag. Xanthus Eight-Faces rose, blood vapourising and streaming off his crackling robes, as phantasmal voices shrieked and screamed in the air.
Magnus drew his laspistol and fired, the blast striking Xanthus in the shoulder without slowing him down. With a triumphant cry, the sorcerer thrust his clawed hand out and Magnus felt iron bands of telekinetic force wrap around him. His ribs ground together as he was slowly lifted into the air, his thoughts scrabbling at Xanthus' wild mind without gaining a hold. He dropped his gun, and felt something in his spine pop.
For one second Magnus' mind stood apart from his tortured body. It could see the bridge of the
Restless Cove in tableau - the frenzied clash of the crew, the titanic confrontation between McKraken and Severus, and the greasy, steely grasp of Xanthus's warp-force constricting his mortal shell like black and smoky serpents. And in that second of separation, he realised what he could do.
Exercising power before untapped Magnus reached out with his consciousness, grasped the hilt of his sword and threw it straight at Xanthus' chest.
In a flash of pain Magnus' mind returned to his body. As his psychic vision cleared he could see Xanthus spitted through the heart on his Aquila-hilted sword, surprise and rage etched across his ritualistically ruined face. Magnus forced himself to his feet, his broken bones protesting in agony, stepped across the deck and using both hands twisted the sword in its grisly sheath with a
crack before pulling it free. He took up his pistol again and looked about.
The bridge was, superficially at least, in ruins. The rebellious elements of the crew had carried the fight, but the larger cause of destruction was evident in the centre of the room: Severus stood over the unconscious body of Glorimond McKraken, both men badly injured, Severus' wounds already bubbling an unhealthy green colour.
A ragged cheer arose from the throats of the victors, and Severus raised his thunderhammer to the crowd before levelling it at the prone form of McKraken. "Throw him in the brig!"
And so began
the Cataclysm of the Two Ships.
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