There were raspberries being thrown everywhere in Markspace when the Glorious Bastard finally blew open a Hellgate near a certain spatial anomaly juxtaposed near a couple handy Beacons showing nearby. The cyborg converter/assembly line/slave carrier politely named Promises was vomited out into reality only seconds later nearby, having kept very close in the Warp.

Riding the choruses of Welcome Back, Mom!, I got info-dumped on everything that had been going on, dumped my opinion of riding through the Warp into general storage, and congratulated Brus and Jen on making Eleven belatedly while having the opportunity to do some real terra-shaping, noting that nobody better tell the Empire about the planet or they’d try to crack it open. Work, work, work! You got defenses to set up, people...

The Fleet probably wouldn’t be landing too much, considering the planet was festooned with crashed bioships and some real nasty weather and phrenic phenomena on a planetary scale. What should properly terrify any self-respecting captain was that sensors and psi would show absolutely nothing was out there... they could see it, but their instruments wouldn’t register much beyond the fact it had gravity and a magnetosphere. If they decided to start shooting, well, a planetary magnetic field pressing down on a small area could easily compress a two-kilometer Imperial Cruiser to a round ball of non-threatening mass ripe for processing, so hopefully the incoming Fleet would find better things to do with their time.

They’d probably look around reeeeeeally carefully for whoever trashcanned a massive Xenos Swarm Fleet, I imagined..

I was promptly dumped on for pouring water on the fun parade, and everybody got back to work. There was only so much salivating thinking about the computing power inherent in a forest of crystal-cored trees and whatnot...

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This system was a lost colony world that de Krov had stumbled across about eighty years ago. They’d had a fairly average, idyllic world, untroubled by most of the shit going on in the galaxy, and had regressed down to the pre-Industrial age after whatever event landed them here and trashed their rides.

Then de Krov had arrived, and started demanding his tithes. He had turned the most powerful kingdom’s capital into a crater to show he meant business. He got his tithes of bodies, who he lied to and said he was taking to settle a new world, and in reality sold off to the drow for slaves and sacrifices.

The petty kingdoms and suchlike below had basically ceased to exist under the threat of his tithes, and the bodies that once used to cheerfully slaughter one another on the fields of battle were now marched into ship holds and sold off into slavery. Wasn’t he considerate, stopping all those petty wars and just treating the people as ready cattle for making him money?

This was also the main base of operations for his fleet, the place his slave laborers and conscript crews came from, where he trained his raiders and mercenaries, and where his trusties returned to have fun. He didn’t despoil the place with industry, other than some extractive mining and tract farms for raising food, and had actually improved the standard of living for most of the people with his technology and iron fist.

All it cost them was a million healthy people every tithe, never to be seen again.

De Krov had six ships in his fleet. His beloved heavy cruiser Glorious Bastard was his flagship, and lived up to its name in all respects. He captained it, and rode it to commit all his great and glorious deeds.

Promises was a body carrier and place to convert people into cyber-pslaved borg units bereft of independent thought. There was a circuit of ten solar systems it cycled through on a regular basis, three of which the Empire had no idea existed. The other seven regularly emptied their jails of their worst criminals, added in some very unlucky souls going into exile or getting kicked off-planet by their rivals, and such individuals vanished, never to be seen again. What the Marquis did with them, nobody really knew, but considering he dealt in mercenaries, sending them off to die in some hellhole for the Emperor wasn’t too good for them.

If the destination was instead under the knives and bloody screams of the drow, well, he wasn’t supposed to deal with aliens like that, but at least they were all dead and someone else’s problem, right?

The Marquis got paid twice, so he was definitely cheerful about it all.

The light cruisers Bastard Child and Witch Killer were crewed by his son and daughter respectively, their mothers he had long tired of and gone missing. His son Honest and daughter Sincerity were every bit as ruthless as their father, and had survived where six other siblings had eventually either grossly disappointed their father, failed in a lethal manner on some mission, or rebelled and been summarily killed.

Bastard Child was the escort for A Black Pit, captained by Jilgers. It was the main cargo vessel of his fleet, captained by a totally immoral yet remarkably loyal and extremely anal pencil-pusher whose life was all about ledgers, balance sheets, and how to make the numbers on them bigger, with very little care for the ethics of how. Jilgers provided absolute crunch numbers for profits and losses, and if the numbers were right, would go anywhere and do anything without batting an eye. Honest de Krov kept him safe and had a ruthless reputation that dissuaded all but the most committed raiders... and a penchant for revenge that had seen more than one group of raiders dead in the end years after coming after him.

Sincerity and Witch Killer led the frigate Wicked Pursuits on raids, quick profit trips, and did the pirating, kidnapping, mercenary work, and violent criminal work off to the side of her father. She was quite good at it, had a very elite team of professionals working for her, and was actually the best captain of the lot when it came to naval confrontations.

Gohonas, the captain of the Wicked Pursuits, played support in all his roles, and was the most discreet of them. While the Witch Killer specialized in raids and ambushes, he was the one who delivered troops to areas stealthily, picked them up (or abandoned them), and got away with the goods.

Needless to say, de Krov gloried in his reputation, built it up, and took full advantage of it wherever and whenever he could. He stayed out of trouble because he was perfectly willing to sell mercs and borgs to the Empire for whatever reasons they wanted to use them for, and the Empire didn’t really much care where the original humans came from.

---

Having completed some very profitable business with the drow and acquired some things which could be sold off for yet more profit, he naturally convened a meeting of his captains in the cupola, where there would be wine and good food, and the deaths of millions for profit batted around without blinking an eye.

Unfortunately for them, they and their first officers had a Small Problem with the initials SR.

No, that wasn’t Spell Resistance. Nobody used magic anymore.

They arrived on their own flitters, naturally enough, and at different times, showing off their station by how close to the appointed hour they dared to come. Them, and their first officers.

I had four stinger-tails set up just nicely for them.

------

Captain Honest stepped into the elevator, giving the maid waiting there the most casual of glances. He had to admire her figure; he would have to inquire of the bodyshopper his father had used on her, but her eyes were flat and soulless, mind and soul wiped out by biochip slavery, just walking eye candy worth little else. He gave her little thought as he stepped inside.

“Captain Honest, Commander Yigorov, today’s course will be roast anglosaur flank from Caribda Major, marinated in Cimpellian brandy, with a side of echivies from Esoffa II. The wine will be complementary to the main dish. For after-dinner drinks, have your preferences of Kness brandy and Shivata rum changed?”

There was no flicker in her eyes, and her voice was so artificially warm he could have lifted it from a computer voxer.

“I’m fine with the brandy. Kumu cigars?”

“Of course, Captain.”

“I’d like to try some of that Kongler Bay rum this time,” Honest’s swarthy and sharp-eyed second spoke up, probably rebelling against the choice being made for him as much as anything.

“Certainly, Captain. Pipe or cigar?”

“Pipe. Hggroo weed,” he replied easily, but her eyes didn’t even flicker. Probably couldn’t.

“Very good, sir.”

Then the stingers snapped out from behind her back and stabbed them both right through the dermal plating and the reinforced bone of their skulls, plunging into their cranial cavities and dispersing a load of something directly to their brains that had their anti-poison nanites all screaming in alarm before they shorted out.

Both men wavered, grinning lazily as a wonderful feeling of euphoria came over them, and all their alarm and surprise and boosted reflexes just relaxed smoothly...

A long and sinuous Tail plunged down Honest’s back, hissing softly as the crimson light on the tip teased down his spine. The young woman took the arms of both men, and led them calmly out of the elevator and to their seats. As Honest sat down, the extended Tail flipped over to Yigorov’s back for attention and there were more glowing lights and popping.

Captain Gohanas and his first mate Jugio greeted the pair as if nothing was happening. Captain-Surgeon Sanguinoiv and his aide de camp Natsi, 90% and 75% machine and well into cyberization, lifted their injectors of alternate ichor supplements in cheerful greeting, and both men greeted them happily.

The wounds on their heads were already gone. The woman who had brought them in mentally directed them to act normally, and they were very, very happy to do so, because she said so, and how could they even think of defying such a marvelous creature as she?

She glided across the floor, two steps all it took to cross twenty meters and slide gracefully back to her place in the elevator.

The other servants in attendance and looking on didn’t say anything as the doors closed, and she went down to receive the Marquis’ daughter.

Jilgers was five minutes behind her.

--------

I stood by the side and watched them having a good time, eating delicacies worth a month’s pay each, guzzling drinks or shooting up the cyber-equivalents, celebrating their good fortune and another profitable year.

I hadn’t #9’d the serving crew, but they were Branded, and no more capable of defying me than they could ignore gravity. One of the cooks was a master poisoner, and three were experienced murderers hiding out here from their enemies, but the rest were simply normal people who’d been pressed into service, and were basically sticking around until they pissed off one of the favored crew and were butchered for some casual whim.

Until then, they would serve with distinction and bio-chip loyalty. Happily, their chips weren’t anywhere near as restrictive as those of the maids; when I’d shorted them out, they managed to retain their minds. The flexibility required for preparing meals for the varied crew didn’t allow for the expensive level of rigidity of the maids’ chips, and it meant they could truly appreciate what had just become of these total bastards.

They had helped me cook up some special things just for these fellows and the ships they crewed, and the captains were going to happily bring them back to their ships for me.

From there, it was just biding time. Of course, I’d have to make a trip to each and every ship in order to get a proper teleportation fix to each of them so I could re-administer #9 to them, but it was a small price.

As for their future plans? There were some slight adjustments...