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Waving off the other inquisitors, Federov asked, “I too want to know just how exactly you managed to get your hands on the favourite choppa of a major ork Warboss.”
“It wasn’t exactly easy, it took several weeks worth of infiltration, but in the end, we managed to not only get into the system, get a team down to the planet, and then get close to Warboss Magarg, but successfully get away with it. I have an audio recording of the fight and the minutes leading up to it,” Mosegi explained.
“Why do you have an audio recording of such a thing?” Federov asked.
“I took the recording for the purposes of using it to taunt the orks later on,” Mosegi replied with a grin.
“My lord, I must protest. If Dame Lake were to find out about the modifications you’ve made to the plan…” Titus, one of the few inquisitorial storm troopers in Mosegi’s permanent employ, protested quietly.
“Listen, when we get back, Riva will be my problem to deal with,” Mosegi whispered back.
“And Francesca and Margaret and Helena and…” Harrison, a former hive worlder pointed out.
“Hence why there are no females on this mission,” Mosegi said with a roll of his eyes.
“Yeah, but they’re going to take it out on us for not stopping you,” Titus noted.
Shaking his head, Mosegi just replied, “Come now, where is that fearlessness storm troopers are noted for?”
“Do you remember when Francesca got that platoon of Skitarii to back down? You know the ones who had neurosurgery to remove their capacity for fear?” Titus reminded Mosegi.
Mosegi paused for a moment before shrugging and saying, “It was merely the logical choice at the time, I mean… okay, yeah, when Francesca gets mad enough she can be rather intimidating… err… was she the one the Bloodthirster ran away from?”
“Technically that was mostly the damn thing trying to get away from the Pariahs, but yeah, she was there at the time,” Harrison reminded them.
Memory flickering in Mosegi’s eyes, he nodded and said, “Oh yeah! Wait…”
“The Pariahs were the ones who were running from Francesca in the end. Hence why I’m terrified of her,” Titus detailed out.
“Right…” Mosegi said with a shake of his finger. “That battle was exceedingly confusing.”
“I think you had hijacked the Dark Eldar jet bike at that point… or maybe that was when you were running it into the Chaos Landraider… honestly, if you hadn’t engineered that four way fight I would say that it was highly contrived,” Harrison said.
Snapping his fingers, Mosegi said, “It was after I crashed the jet bike into the Landraider. The wreckage took out one of their icon bearers, forcing the Bloodthirster to retreat from Francesca and the remaining Pariahs to another icon. I was disoriented at the time as the collision sheared off my left arm so I was looking for my favourite gun.”
“Don’t forget the Immortals that you were drunkenly staggering through,” Titus pointed out. “Considering the fact that my squad had to assault them to try and get you out of there, I certainly won’t.”
“They phased out shortly after that,” Mosegi said somewhat dismissively.
“That’s because my team managed to successfully assault the Monolith and plant the melta charges,” Harrison pointed out.
Appearing out of the shadows, one of the assassins on the team, rather unimaginatively named Shadow, asked, “My lord, is this not supposed to be a stealth operation? Your incessant chattering has already attracted the attention of seven gretchin and two orks.”
“I assume they’ve been taken care of Bob?” Mosegi asked. He used Shadow’s actual name as was his habit to annoy the at times rather pretentious assassin.
Frowning, Shadow asked, “My lord, could you at least call me Robert?”
“No Bob, I will call you Bob until I respect you sufficiently to call you otherwise,” Mosegi said.
“But, but… you use Deadeye’s nickname and it’s far lamer than mine!” Shadow protests.
“First of all, Deadeye doesn’t whine like you do. Second of all, he got his nickname not because he’s a sniper extraordinaire but because he took a round to the face protecting me and lost his right eye, his sniping eye. Man does some ballsy shit like that and I’ll call him whatever the hell he wants me to,” Mosegi replied in annoyance.
“My lord, not to interrupt your conversations, but we’ve pretty much drawn the attention of every ork on this planet at this point,” Deadeye reported from his sniping perch nearby.
“Ah, excellent,” Mosegi replied while checking out his equipment.
“Excellent?” His retinue asked simultaneously.
“Yes. I knew someone would protest my alterations to the plan and an argument would ensue. The orks attracted to us by our bickering are almost certainly more interested in seeing how the argument pans out than shooting us, as we are a rather strange lot here, aren’t we? Of course, now that there is a large crowd of orks standing about our position trying to figure out what is going on, an authority figure will show up to put the boot to their asses. Since we are right outside Magarg’s headquarters, he should be showing up right about now,” Mosegi explained.
Deadeye was silent for a long time before he said, “You scare me sir.”
“I thought so. Incidentally, I’m changing the plan again,” Mosegi noted.
“We’re winging it, aren’t we sir?” Titus asked with a sinking feeling.
Drawing his power sword and his bolt pistol, Mosegi smiled and said, “When aren’t we winging it?”
He then kicked open the door to the ramshackle warehouse they had been hiding in, presenting himself to the assembled crowd of orks gathered about outside. A breeze kicked up and ruffled his long camouflage cloak dramatically. Mosegi just grinned and noted, “Well wasn’t that well timed?”
“Wotcha’ doin’ uumie?” The three and a half metre tall Warboss Magarg asked in a bemused sort of way. This was the heart of ork territory; the world had not seen armed humans on its surface in thousands of years, if ever.
“Me’m ‘ere ter annoy ya an nick ya favourite choppa so dat ya will follow meeb ter da ends o’ da galaxy,” Mosegi admitted.
Laughing, Warboss Magarg lifted up his massive axe and asked, “Dis choppa?”
Deadeye’s sniper round caught the Warboss in his hand, the heavy round loaded up with high explosives, causing the ork to drop the weapon in surprise. The enormous choppa dropped to the ground and crushed a gretchin on impact.
Grinning, Mosegi launched himself forward, power sword humming. His skill in melee combat had improved considerably over the past century since his elevation to the rank of Inquisitor, although he still preferred to just shoot his enemies. Unfortunately, as much as he wanted the ork dead, he needed the xeno to lead its armies in chase so that they could be used against Chaos, and he needed the ork to remember his face, hence the close combat.
One of the ork nobs attached to Magarg’s retinue moved to intercept Mosegi, but a well timed sniper round from Deadeye took its head off. The great bulk tumbled forward, Mosegi using it as a stepping stone to take to the air, leaping over a rather confused looking ork to land in front of Magarg.
Having recovered his choppa with his somewhat mangled but still mostly intact hand, the now enraged ork tried to bisect Mosegi, but the deceptively nimble inquisitor just dove between the huge legs, avoiding the massive swing and getting behind the Warboss. With a flick of his sword, Mosegi scored a line in the ork’s massive suit of armour along the small of the back.
Another ork tried to gut Mosegi, but he elbowed the thing in its apish mouth before shooting it under the chin, blowing off the top of its head. Mosegi said in annoyance, “Excuse me but we’re trying to have a fight here!”
Magarg himself discouraged further interruptions when he sprayed fire from his sidearm, what most Imperial citizens would consider a heavy stubber but was handled like an autopistol by the brutish alien. Theoretically it was an attempt to hit Mosegi, but really he just shot up more of his own men, punctuating it by saying, “Stay outa this! This uumie iz mine!”
“Very sporting of you,” Mosegi noted before shooting the Warboss in the knee. The bolt impacted on the joint and exploded but did very little real damage aside from letting Mosegi dance around the huge but surprisingly agile ork once more to score another slash across his backside.
“You see, what I’m going to do here is to cut open your armour about your buttocks and then spank you with the flat of my sword before disarming you once again, a simple thing to do as your gauntlet is shattered and the hand holding your choppa is still injured. Once I have your choppa in my possession I will activate my homing beacon so that my ship, which is hidden in orbit, will teleport me and my retinue away. I will then run for it, cackling like a mad man at my own brilliance while taunting you all the way,” Mosegi explained while adroitly dodging Magarg’s increasingly furious attacks.
Slipping away from another swipe, Mosegi danced about the ork once more and completed his triangular cut pattern, causing a section of Magarg’s armour to fall away, exposing the ork’s dark green butt for all to see. Of course orks had no sense of shame like humans, but it was still rather embarrassing for Mosegi to do it like that, especially since he could have just as easily run Magarg through three times instead.
Now that Magarg was well and truly pissed and every other syllable out of his mouth was some variation on “WAAAGH!!!” Mosegi was forced back, on the defensive. He quickly holstered his bolter and took hold of his sword with both hands, whipping the blade about in a blurring array of parries against the deadly choppa. Eventually Mosegi just smiled and said, “You know all that stuff I told you? I lied.”
With a blurring motion, Mosegi cut off Magarg’s hand holding the choppa, and as the massive axe hit the ground he wrapped a free hand around the handle before striking the activation rune for his teleport beacon with the butt of his sword. There was a brief moment for the power to hit maximum before there was a discontinuity that resulted in Mosegi and the rest of the team he had taken down to the planet collapsing to the floor of the teleport chamber.
“Well that was fun,” Mosegi noted before looking over at his team. Noting the state some of them were in, he asked, “Do you think the orks figured out that we were screwing with them?”
Phobos and Deimos, twin psykers exceptionally skilled at battlefield control looked at Mosegi with strained expressions before Phobos answered, “I don’t think they noticed us slowing Magarg down so that you could fight him.”
“You fought Warboss Magarg?” Riva screeched out as she entered the chamber.
The rest of Mosegi’s retinue just looked at him and he just shook his head.
Handing his forehead in his hands, Lord Federov just sighed and said, “So once again you act the fool. Is there no limit to your shamelessness?”
“If it means serving the Emperor, not particularly,” Mosegi said with a shrug while Riva tried to look embarrassed for him.
“This recording does bring up one of our particular problems with you Inquisitor Corbath, namely the mention of one Francesca… who I believe was slated for execution before you intervened on her behalf,” one of the other inquisitor’s said while leafing through his notes.
“Francesca had much more to offer the Imperium than as ash scattered between the stars, and I not only personally ensure her continued loyalty to the Emperor, but I have independent check-ups of her done ever two or three years,” Mosegi protested. “Besides, who wouldn’t want a woman capable of scaring off a squad of Necron Pariahs at their side?”
“From the sounds of it that is another story we will have to explore in greater detail in this trial,” Federov noted dryly.
“I made a full report on the incident when it happened, and it was far from the first time I used one enemy of the Imperium against another, although I do admit that up until Horbedan few could rival the messiness of that situation. I had actually intended to get the xenos to deal with each other so that I could focus all of my attention on the Traitor Legions attacking that world, but all three forces arrived simultaneously and things sort of spun out of control from there,” Mosegi explained.
Federov sighed.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen.
You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
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