Warhammer: Start with a dog.

Chapter 329 The Polite Midnight Lord

All was silent from the bridge of the Cursed Echo, save for the mutterings of the unbridled and powerful vessel itself echoing across the Sea of ​​Souls, heard by its navigator.

But Octavia was now very skilled at soothing the ship. Although it was powerful, it was also easy to appease a navigator who could understand the mood and words of every ship he had guided. She sent some messages to the Cursed Echo through their link, telling it that it had done a very good job in maintaining its new name and code, which even professionals like the Imperial Navy could not see, so it could get more pure promethium when it returned - the kind from the oil depot of the Coronation of the Crown.

Cursed Echo responded to her happily. In the navigator's opinion, its metallic flesh and blood not only disguised the outer skin, making it look like it imitated the pot-bellied, round and bulky appearance of the Star Maiden merchant cargo ship that had visited here before, but these strange warp metal creations also spread and continued to "cover" their original keels, placing a row of "cartilage" loaded with camouflage codes further in front.

Oh. She thought, although the Star Maiden was indeed a peaceful and gentle ship, and revisiting the place where she was robbed was not a very pleasant thing, but living in this galaxy, humans must always look forward.

(Note: Star Maiden was the name of the ship Octavia was piloting in the Empire before she was kidnapped by Talos)
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"Oh, that's right, this is Captain Conrad Carosini of the Star of Bethlehem, we are from the Carosini Dynasty. Greetings, Imperial Navy."

(A cat jumped from the primarch's hand to the shoulder armor of all the First Claws nearby with great dissatisfaction, and paced back and forth with a nervous but agile step, its paw pads stepping on the surface of the ceramsite armor of the Night Lords.)

"This is a patrol unit of the Far Eastern Star Region Bakka Fleet of the Imperial Navy. I am Captain Sulu. I am from the Kalosini Dynasty. With all due respect, Your Excellency, I have not heard of it."

"Perhaps you could take a look at the registration information for that part of the Hazy Star Region?"

There was a pause on the other side. Then the captain's voice sounded again, his suspicion obviously subsided a lot, and his respect increased a lot.

"Oh, yes, the ancient Kalosini dynasty, a special business license issued by the sacred and noble throne! Please forgive me, as it has only been brought up recently. What a noble heritage! But forgive me for being frank, sir, the Misty Star Region is really far away from here. May I ask what is the purpose of your coming here?"

"We are just businessmen, so our purpose is simple. We mine and collect ore here. I must point out that I have the right to be the first to discover the mineral debris belt here, so I also have the claim to its natural ownership and all the profits generated thereby. As far as I know, we have not violated any border rules or laws. - As for the keel code, in fact, we overhauled the ship specially for this voyage, and this ship was newly departed from the port, so its keel code has not yet been added to the latest list of Imperial ship identification codes. It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"That's right. But you'd better update it quickly. Not everyone is as easy to talk to as me." The commander on the other side was obviously slightly stunned by the casual and charming tone, and then asked, "So what about your loyalty code?"

"Ah, maybe it was an operational error. There was indeed a problem with a servitor transmission node recently." The people on the bridge saw their Night King waving at his black and white summoned beast. Then, the man (?) and the cat (?) exchanged glances for a few moments. The cat jumped back to the eighth primarch's lap with a sour face. He put his hand on the cat's back, slightly distracted, and then continued, "Well... it's been debugged now. The loyalty code will be sent to you in 10 standard seconds."

A series of codes were typed out and sent to the communications lady. The technical officer waved her ten mechanized fingers with a little well-hidden surprise, and quickly wrote and sent them out.

After several rounds of pleasantries and mutual commercial flattery, and after some ulterior motives in bargaining, in which the captain's fleet and the world were promised the right of first refusal to purchase 3% of the refined gold ore, the shocked First Fiery Claws watched the Imperial Navy's patrol fleet sail away without firing a single shot, and the captain even sent them a string of codes to express his friendly farewell.

"Look, Talos, this is the world of adults. Words can also be claws." Half-jokingly, Ramizane turned his attention to the next group of high-purity adamantine fragments that were broken from the largest part of the core, and began to recover the mechanical capture nets working in space. "We should hurry up and work, adamantine ore is always a scarce hard currency here."

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indeed so.

So it is natural that the mining team collecting such high-purity refined gold ore would be targeted.

Obviously, the cunning looters have been lurking further away here for a long time. The abundant adamantine here is like an alluring fragrant flower, and these pirates are like poisonous snakes breeding beside the fragrant flowers.

When they thought that the patrolling Imperial Navy had gone far away and that the cargo hold of the Cursed Echo (a chubby-looking merchant ship) was heavily loaded with adamantite ore and therefore would be unable to move, they suddenly launched an attack on this ordinary and immobile "mining merchant ship".

At this time, Talos was on duty on the bridge, and the Lord of Night claimed that he wanted to "change into pajamas and have a good sleep." Although they still didn't quite understand the cause and effect relationship, the Night Lords kept it in mind and began to look for opportunities to imitate the Primarch's words and deeds. For example, they all secretly used various methods to get some daily clothes from their cousins ​​in the Origin Regiment for use during sleep time - although in fact they slept very little. Since the Primarch taught Malcharion and Talos, and threw Aeneas and Ptolemy to the surface to work, he seemed to be getting more and more lazy. Only his summoned black and white cat would still appear silently everywhere, and from time to time try to take a bite of their Eldar captives alive.

So Talos Valcoran now silently recited the teachings of the Primarch, and for the first time in hundreds of years, he calmly had a conversation with the ship opposite that arrogantly threatened to capture all of their people and their cargoes, in the most polite and human way possible for about five minutes.

It was not until the other party began to mock his politeness and fired the first weapon, and then found that all his weapon arrays could only cause slight ripples on the ancient void shield of this ship, that he realized that something might be a little wrong.

The last words Talos told them with a cold smile were, "My Lord told us to speak politely, so please cry, tremble and be afraid when you are crushed and burned by us. We will try our best to make sure that you will not leave any trace in this universe from your flesh to your soul. Tonight we have come for you."

The Cursed Echo's light spears overloaded the pirate ship's void shield in the first wave of shots amid the enemy's terrified pleas for mercy.

Having not hunted for a long time, it happily circled in the void, as swift and cruelly graceful as a carnivore.

Every shot was like a bite, accurately hitting vital points, the subspace engine room, the reactor array, the fuel depot, and so on.

Finally, while Ramizarn was sleeping soundly, under the satisfied gaze of the black and white cat on the bridge, they successfully set off a huge firework in the dark sky nearby.

(End of this chapter)