Nelthas Clan Part 2: A classic fast low-profile deployment run

Druuna: a dead world. Zuzana Nelthas didn’t give it a second thought, safe aboard her uncle Petros’ private starship, The Nostramus. The ship was a Meritech-pattern light cruiser barely above escort class. Although tiny by capital ship standards, the Nostramus still seemed impossibly massive to Zuzana. At three kilometers in length and a crew of ten thousand, the ship was remarkably empty. The strange cogitator systems of the Meritech replaced many redundant systems and compensated for the lack of crew. A fully functioning Meritech cogitator was a rare and prescribed thing, and the miles of flex-cabling, squat glowing servitor-nodes, and strange whispering sounds that accompanied them filled Zuzana with unease. When she asked her uncle Petros about how he had acquired her, he replied cryptically: “For a favor.”

From orbit, the planet Druuna appeared as a dull red orb like countless other worthless, long-dead, worlds; a vacant rock. Zuzana had duteously scanned the relevant literature provided by her uncle: nothing but some Imperial survey records and one curious archived entry attributed to an unknown freelance prospector sometime during the Dark Age. Zuzana paid it little heed, intent as she was to get down to the planet and begin excavating.

Thanks to the augmented apparatus of her environmental suit, Zuzana was able to haul her own gear up the loading ramp of the ancient Valhalla-class drop ship named: Khan’s Revenge. Secure within her suit she had three times the strength of the strongest man. Stomping up the ramp; the intimidating vulture’s beak of the old battle wagon looming above her seemed inconsequential. Zuzana slammed the hard cases containing her personal effects into the cargo racks like she imagined hardened Imperial Guard veterans had done long ago. The gnarled deck hands nodded to her in appreciation. Hidden behind the black glass of the helmet of her environmental suit, Zuzana’s girlish, pixie face smiled from ear-to-ear.

Zuzana joined her uncle on the command deck of the drop ship. The old bird was designed to deploy an entire company of Imperial Guard troops; typically 100 men plus their associated vehicles. On this trip she would be travelling light, carrying a compliment of only 30, plus three vehicles. Zuzana felt exhilaration as they fell out of the launch bay of the Nostramus. The low-density atmosphere provided little in the way of a re-entry show, and their descent and landing was uneventful. None-the-less, their old combat-veteran pilot brought them in on a classic fast, low-profile deployment run (a fact that likely saved their lives later on…).

As they came in, Petros watched the auspex until the last moment, and then caught Zuzana’s arm and they dashed together quickly to their vehicle. The exhilaration of it filled Zuzana with joy – only later did she realize the life-and-death nature of such actions. As the Khan’s Revenge touched down they were aboard the heavily-modified alpha-pattern land raider, known affectionately as “Grumpy Bear”. It was the first to roll off the ramp. They hit the surface of Druuna in a rusty red cloud of dust. The ramshackle chimera and rhino known as “Koon” and “Varmint”, followed closely in the Bear’s tracks.

The Nelthas Clan: Part 1: Villa Obscura

Lying on her belly scraping away at the hard soil the color of dried blood with a simple steel trowel, Zuzana Nelthas considered it perfectly natural despite being highborn; not-to-mention a member of the royal family.  Her magnificent custom-built support suit was proof against the toxic Voystroyan environment as well as providing heavily armored protection and substantial physical enhancements to her tiny slight frame, yet it chaffed at her none-the-less.  All her garments chaffed at her.  Voystroyan culture demanded the warring of elaborate structured garments – clearly an adaptation to the inhospitable conditions – yet the highborn, the royal cast in particular, and especially females were expected to conform to the extreme attire traditions.  Zuzana hated it…

Nudity, the greatest sin of Vostroyan society, was the state that Zuzana felt the most comfortable in.  In private, she spent every moment possible devoid of raiment: like a nymph in the Emperor’s garden.  Ironically, due to certain genetic and environmental factors, she was trapped in a pre-pubescent body that was far from scandalous in the nude.  Indeed, she had to constantly apply various salves and unguents to the sores that appeared on her otherwise porcelain skin due to the chaffing of the garments she was forced to ware.  Perhaps inspired by this, Zuzana succeeded in convincing an ancient Adeptus Mechanicus techpriest in service to her family named, Id, in crafting a great work, a garment that incorporated an environmental suit, ceramic armor, refractor fields, augmented apparatus and psychic shielding that was also ascetically adaptable and culturally pleasing.  To fully manipulate the garment requited certain cybernetic enhancements which Zuzana was more than happy to oblige.  Outfitted in her new raiment, Zuzana could be almost anything she could imagine; most importantly she could appear as something other than her pathetically tiny form – she could appear powerful…

Never-the-less, Zuzana was still shunned by her peers.  She lacked the appropriate appreciation for the minutia of the class-proscribe aesthetics…  The latest micro-trends in attire and manners were wasted on her.   Moreover, she failed to identify the best bio-matches that came her way.  Time and time again her family pointed out the prime catches of the day, yet she entirely missed them.  Most often, when such social opportunities presented themselves, she was off with her uncle deep in some remote dig-site uncovering a rare undeciphered text fragment or ancient alloy matrix.  As time went on, the opinion of her family was that Zuzana was a lineage dead-end, a waste of time, effort, and breading.  Eventually, she was forsaken by her family, cut-off from the social network, excluded from the family business.  She became a non-person, forgotten, abandoned, yet she cared little.  At last she was free to chart her own path, yet she was alone and devoid of support.  It was in the wastes of Drunna that everything changed…

Her father, Mikhail, was the second son of the dominant generation of the Nelthas clan.  As such, he inherited the most difficult yet prestigious job of managing the family’s interplanetary shipping empire.  He had five children, two strapping sons who were groomed for the leadership of the family, and two beautiful daughters whose charms would guarantee them excellent matches.  Then there was the youngest: Zuzana.  Her prospects were limited, just keeping her alive through her frail early years was a struggle that even her mother invested little effort in.  Fortunately, she had an advocate in her uncle Petros.

Petros was the black sheep of the family and Zuzana loved him all the more for that.  As the seventh of seven children, wifeless, childless, Petros stood to inherit very little, yet he was not bitter.  His parents sent him off-planet early to be educated, more to get him out of the way than concern for his future, yet he took every opportunity offered to him to learn, achieving multiple advanced degrees including linguistics, history, chemistry and xenology.  Ever a lover of the exotic and obscure, early on he became involved in the acquisition and sale of xenos antiquities and in fact made a tiddy fortune at it entirely unknown to the rest of his family.  Moreover, Petros was sometimes considered the family babysitter.  When a particular upstart child became out-of-favor, they were often sent to spend time with uncle Petros.  The Villa Obscura, located in the twilight zone of Vostroya, was his home and the ancient seat of the family’s power.  Sadly, over the centuries, the property had become a ramshackle warren of crumbling derelict manses, empty save for the occasional family of momraths or jub-jub-birds, or odd low-level functionaries squatting out their meager existence in the faded grandeur.

Zuzana thought the Villa O’ quite grand and magical from the very first day she entered it.  The soaring gothic arches and stained glass windows, the meandering flagstone paths that lead to unexpected places, the overgrown gardens filled with exotic things only barely domesticated.  How the exiled family members who came there hated it, abandoned, bereft of servants, each one impotently plotting their revenge until the day they could return to prominence.  Not Zuzana, at the age of twelve she took up residence in the crumbling Tower of the Illuminati and never left.

The Tower of the Illuminati was the most ancient section of the Villa, dating back to pre-heresy days, and was considered quite haunted.  Originally, the central tower itself was the focal point of the sector’s Astrotelepathica Choir for millennia and a spoke-shaped compound emerged around it to serve the various support staff and official functionaries who took up residence there.  The tower itself was shattered by the events of the Ascension of the Emperor to the Golden Thrown, the entire choir dying in the terrible psychic backlash.  The Nelthas clan was among the original administrators of the facility, and they remained to defend it after the collapse in the face of the chaos and barbarity that followed.

Zuzana remembered the old stories well.  She relished every moment as her uncle Petros would recall the ancient tales around the diner table.  The ridiculously long dining table that had served as the center of the hospitality hall since pre-heresy days was a running family joke.  Yet it was a masterpiece crafted from a single mighty slab of torkwood, the beautiful blond age-patterns contrasting with the deep blood-red of the dominant wood-grain.  It was a full thirty meters long and sitting at the head of each end Zuzana and Petros would often play the game of carrying on a long distance conversation – each imparting their comments to a servitor who would traverse the length of the table to relay the message. The goal was to relay a message that was long enough to allow the sender to complete a full course before a replying message returned.  The elaborate tales that ensued were epic in the telling.

It did not take long for Zuzana and Petros to realize that they were kindred spirits.  She soon joined him at every opportunity on his many excursions exploring ancient alien worlds.  Eventually, Petros divulged every carefully guarded secret he held to Zuzana.  Being the fifth of five, Zuzana was destined to inherit little form her own direct family, yet despite being heirless, save for a possible few illegitimate whelps, Petros knew Zuzana was his true heir.  Upon his death, Zuzana inherited a substantial hidden fortune.  The care and upkeep of the Villa Obscura was her primary focus.  Many renovation projects were implemented, as well as establishing the Guard Obscura, a dedicated cadre of Imperial Guard veterans whose disabilities prevented them from full service.  Eventually, the Villa Obscura became a training ground, a place were injured vetrans came to hone there strengths to become servants of the Imperium once more.