Bertha Prunus Cerasus - A Sister of Battle

A milk bath. Warm silky milk, made sweet with the lotuses that floated upon its rippling surface. There was no better way to relax onboard The Righteous Garden, or the whole of the galaxy, I suspected.

I doubt my mother would have approved of it. It was a decadence. I’d never met the woman but was made well aware of what she would approve and disapprove of. In this way she haunted me, through the lips of my tutors.

Decadence, weakness, heresy, I could go on.

Alas, she would have to roll in her crypt on this one. I enjoyed my baths, and they were befitting of my station. Rogue Trader, master of the vortex.

That I would allow to haunt me.

That duty, her duty.

Her body had failed, done what so many heritics could not. It killed itself, killed her, robbed me of a mother, thus ship of a captain, our new born dynasty of a patriarch. I could go on.

I did in my mind.

All the losses suffered, fir the loss of one woman.

They’d stress you out if you let them, but not in here! Not in the bath, where my breasts poke above the white surface like two sandy islands in a sea. No stress could find me there.

“Lord captain, you’re needed on the bridge.” Brugmansia voxed. She was the voice of my ship. A nice enough girl, but I’d come to hate her. Her voice always meant work. I’m not allergic to a good toil. My mother’s genetics had not rotted that much, but Brugmansia work usually involved something catching on fire.

Which also meant I could not deny her.

“Coming.” I sighed, and raised myself from my warm pool, into the cold air of my ship, where my attendants waited to dry me clean.

——-

“Report!” I strode onto the bridge with feigned command. To my crew and officers I was still a child. Though I was in my 25th year, it mattered little to them, I could tell.

The bridge was a massive room one of the larger chambers on the ship. The air was thick with sweat and incense. The smell of the stress and care it took to keep the souls aboard The Garden alive. There were crewmen laboring diligently at their menial tasks. Servo skulls floated back and forth between stations, or vanishing into pipes to deliver messages to the decks below. Priests of the machine god could be found everywhere cloistered in secretive circles working their arcane magic upon the machines, which I devoutly feared.

There were also sycophants, lick spittles, and various nobles living on the largesse of the dynasty’s generosity. Worthless people generally but fun at parties!

Greatest and most terrible of all the presences was Sister Wisteria, my Sceneshal. She was a greying mountain of a woman, hewn from stone. She was one of the sisters, along with my mother, the arch-militant, our confessor and half the officers on the ship. The Garden was a floating convent. I’d never seen her in her power armor, but it was easy to imagine. She looked like she could take a bolter round, even in her uniform. She’d never admit it, but she was a fashionista. Her uniform was one of a kind, modeled after naval uniforms, but a style all her own. She hoped, I knew that one day it would become the uniform of all officers serving under the dynasty, lesser variations of course.

She approached me as I walked, coat as always hanging off her shoulders like a cape. A chain sword hung on her hip, and she had many a tale to tell, when it came to her exploits with the weapon. “Lord Captain.” She said, the picture of professionalism. “We’ve arrived.”

After three years in transit the wait was over.

“Have any of the other Rogue Traders beaten us?” I asked.

“Unclear.” She said. “There's a station at the mouth of the vortex, but scans show it’s hundreds of years old.”

“Inhabited?” We arrived at the holo-map where an old spotty station drifted just out of reach of that insane little sector I’d soon call my own.

“Indeed.” Wisteria allowed herself a smile. “We’ve been in communication, and have the station master ready for you.”

Well done, Wisteria.

“Brugmansia?” I called for the vox master.

A tall void born woman approached me, her robes reaching the ground. “Lord Captain.” She handed me a device from her kit of microphones, speakers, and sensors. Brugmansia was heavily augmented human being. Her whole mouth and jaw had been removed and replaced with an amazing bit of hear necessary for her station. Through it she could create any voice revived through her relays, as we would soon see.

“This Rogue Trader Bertha Prunus Cerasus, of The Righteous Garden. By order of the High Lords of Terra, I’ve been issued a Warrant of Trade, which demands I take possession of your station and the whole of The Roaring Vortex for the glory of The Imperium. What say you to that?”

On Queue several smaller craft leapt out of the station. Not to fight, the denizens this far out from the cortex still had their senses. These goons thought to run.

I nodded to Wisteria who gave the order to destroy the craft.

In just a few minutes they were dust and death.

“We of course welcome the Emperor’s Embrace.” The Station master said after a long silence. His voice came from Brugmansia, as if I were in conversation with her. I’m sure that got very stressful when my interlocutor displeased me. “We are but a humble station of traders, but may we offer tribute, to the great captain?”

I smiled at Wisteria. “This is off to a good start.”

——-

Three days later I was in the receiving room.

The station had proved delightfully unproblematic. Wisteria suspected they were used to swearing their allegiance to any craft big enough to blow them up. A few thousand, no doubt colorful souls lived aboard the craft. A nice palette of humanity from the nearby sectors. A good first step.

My enforcers had boarded the station, and taken the families of its leaders hostage. The station master was apparently some kind of tyrant amongst his people, and if he played his cards right would make a fine governor. Besides my enforcers, I’d also loosed the sisters onto the station. After years of rusting many were eager to breath the smoke of a bonfire once more, and the station had no shortage of mutants and aberrant religions to hunt down.

This cleansing was all happening in the background of things as the station master brought his dusty entourage before me. They were a bleak sight. Voidborn mutants, beneficiaries of generations of inbreeding, but still within acceptable parameters. Their clothes were dull and thin. Being a trade port at the entrance of this region had not made them rich, or healthy. Perhaps I could change that.

We’d be here for a while, months at least. Hunting pirates, purging mutants and heritics, and establishing order on the station. I’d need it loyal, and in good shape. This was afterall, my first conquest.

Wisteria was at my side along with Dionaea, my Arch Militant. She, I’d never seen out of armor, and had her bolter ready to turn these voidborn into memories if they threatened me. She was young like me. Like Wisteria she too saw me as a child, but it was with none of the love. She hated me in fact. Not that it mattered. Her duty was to protect me, what are feelings when compared to that? Many on this ship hated me. So what?

“That’s far enough.” Dionaea growled. I quite liked thinking of her as a dog.

The station master and his lackeys stopped short. They were trembling, their servants were an even more pathetic sight than them, but carried a blue stone chest inlaid with gold on their four shoulders.

Imagine the pens I could keep in that.

“Welcome station master. Your obedience thus far has been pleasing to me. Your people take subjugation well. That is virtue.”

“We are well practiced in it, holy sister.” He creaked. He was a middle aged man, portly as was suitable for his position. You must beware lean tyrants.

“So I’ve heard.” I crossed my legs, and leaned back into my throne. I was at ease with Dionaea at my side. And with the shield thrumming underneath my bottom. “Good tidings in that department. I plan on doing a little hunting in this region when I’m satisfied your station meets my standards. I have a few colony ships in tow, and I want to make sure they’re greeted by friendly faces.” I paused, and waited for them to produce smiles. Which they did, but were sorely out of practice with the art. “My scribes are already finding me targets while going through your records. But you’ll offer up the names and locations of your associates as well, won’t you?”

“Of course!”

“You don’t want them hanging around anymore to plunder and make you poor, right?”

“Of course not.”

“You don’t want your clan to be exterminated because you allowed greed or fear to make you blind to the blessings the emperor has brought you, right?”

He bowed. “My lady, i submit myself wholly to your protection and mercy. I will tell you all I know about the marauders who plague our stars.”

I smiled. “A very good start.” Then I gestured to the box. “Now you are permitted to pay tribute. What is this enticing box of blue?”

He smiled proudly and stepped aside. The servants moved forward. “A treasure of our station. Modest I’m sure to your people, but it is the greatest gift I have. It belonged to a sorcerer who used this port to comport war against the imperium. My ancestors snuck the box away from this sorcerer before he left to his doom. It contains a demon bound, who may answer any question.”

“ a demon?” I gasped righteously.

Dionaea Did more than gasp. The servant reached for the lid of the box to reveal their vile prize. Before he could Dionaea’s gun thundered, and reduced him to giblets.

The idiot did not know, that the lid was safe. It was her blasted trigger finger that doomed me. Without a fourth to hold up the chest it dropped to the ground, and cracked.

As the sisters say, a crack is all the enemy needs to invade the heart of the righteous.

Something flew at me, an evil wind only I could see. It bypassed the shield of my throne, and entered my heart.

All went black, and I did not awake for hours.

When I did…

I was hearing voices.

——-

The game begins! Drop your comments below, so we may test the resolve of the faithful! GLORY TO THE EMPEROR!