Chapter 89: So Your Name's Kaka, Huh? (4K6 Complete)
Done killing.
Andy lifted his leg and stepped over the head of Butler Kaka.
The skull had caved in, its red and white contents spread across the carpet like a thin coat of paint.
Just a few dozen minutes ago, this butler had been sitting in that expensive human-skin-upholstered office chair, swirling a glass of red wine, attempting to discuss "cooperation agreements," "technology sharing," and "talent retention" with Andy — in that particular brand of riddle-speak favoured by those who consider themselves untouchable.
Now he didn't have to talk about anything anymore.
Bauer and Roger were huddled in the corner of the office. No visible injuries — just thoroughly terrified.
They'd only been following Andy's instructions: take the shopping list, head to the black market, and make some purchases. Simple enough.
Then the moment they stepped into the so-called "Free Trade Zone," a mob in exoskeletons brandishing bolt pistols had surrounded them, put down their armoured escorts in seconds, thrown bags over their heads, and dragged them here.
But the men hadn't laid a finger on them. Instead, they'd fed them well, kept them comfortable, and shown them schematics for xenos technology they'd never seen before — clearly attempting to poach two key technical personnel right out from under Andy.
Clever approach, really. Far more effective than torture.
Pity they'd miscalculated one thing.
They had underestimated Andy's tolerance for having his engineers kidnapped. They simply did not comprehend what "technology" and "productive capacity" meant in the logical framework of a man who had made industry his entire reason for being. Those two concepts were sacred. Inviolable.
In this universe, there are certain powers you don't provoke.
The Inquisition, for instance. The Astartes Chapters.
And in Footfall, there is one name many treat as taboo: Kasphari Kassindiga — "Kaka."
Kaka wasn't some bottom-feeding gang shaking down shopkeepers for protection money. In the Imperium's official records, they existed as a registered, legitimate commercial organisation — holders of Imperial Letters of Marque, with exclusive rights to conduct trade, armed escort operations, and even colonial development throughout the Koronus Expanse.
Behind them stood certain high-ranking nobles of the Calixis Sector.
In other words, they were the black glove that did the dirty work for the powerful — the semi-official administrators of this chaotic frontier.
Under normal circumstances, even seasoned Rogue Traders paid their respects when they docked at Footfall. You paid your taxes before you unloaded your cargo. Because touching Kaka meant touching the wallet of the entire sector's bureaucratic establishment.
Andy didn't care.
It didn't matter who was standing behind you. The moment you touched his people — the moment you put your hands on his productive capacity — you were obstructing his great industrial project. You were murdering his future.
For that, Andy's response was simple.
No negotiation. No discussion.
Andy had brought Stormwatch Squad and fifty fully armed heavy escorts, walked straight up to Kaka's headquarters, and kicked the door in.
The crack of high-explosive bolts and the hiss of inferno weapons lasted about thirty minutes.
The commercial fortress — reputed to be the most secure and heavily defended stronghold in all of Footfall — was cleared floor by floor, from the ground level to the roof.
Kaka's armed forces were configured for security work and gang warfare. Their equipment was genuinely excellent — more than sufficient for riot suppression, pirate deterrence, or going up against rival gangs of equivalent weight.
But as the results clearly demonstrated, they had not been prepared for a high-intensity, conventional military engagement at all.
So your name's Kaka, is it? Think you can play riddle-games with me?
Can't stand riddle-speakers.
"Alright, all sorted."
Andy walked up to Bauer and Roger and hauled them to their feet.
"Arms and legs intact — that's what matters. Come on, back to work. Help me get that vault door open."
"We came all this way. Can't very well leave empty-handed."
Bauer sniffled, looked at the bodies carpeting the floor, and immediately rediscovered his sense of purpose.
"On it!"
Kaka's vault door was constructed from adamantine composite capable of withstanding macro-cannon fire — an impressive piece of engineering by any measure.
It held for less than three minutes against Andy's melta bombs.
CLANG.
The heavy door toppled, revealing the space behind it: a vast, climate-controlled underground warehouse.
Though "warehouse" wasn't quite the right word. It was more like a gallery of xenos technology.
The shelves were lined with objects of bizarre shapes, all radiating an unsettling luminescence — the crown jewels of the "Coldtrade."
Under Imperial law, any contact with, trade in, or even possession of xenos artefacts constituted an absolute capital offence — the crime known as "Xenos Taint." But in the face of profit, law had a tendency to develop a certain flexibility. Especially here, in the grey zone at the edge of the Imperium, where the trade in alien artefacts not only existed but thrived on an enormous scale.
The term "Coldtrade" carried two meanings.
First: most of these objects had been stripped from cold derelicts drifting in the void, silent xenos tombs, or still-warm alien corpses — each item carrying the chill of the deep black.
Second: it was a business that could not tolerate light. The merchandise had to be kept "cold" — hidden from official eyes. Exposure meant immediate execution for every person involved. Thoroughly "chilled," in every sense.
The margins were obscene. A small piece of Aeldari jewellery, once delivered to a Hive World noble, could be exchanged for a consignment of adamantium.
Andy walked into the warehouse. His optical sensors went into overdrive.
The first thing he noticed was the row of display cases near the entrance.
Each case held dozens of small objects — rings, necklaces, brooches to the untrained eye, their surfaces engraved with intricate micro-circuit patterns.
[Item Scan: Jokaero Digital Weapons.][Assessment: Masterworks of miniaturised engineering.]
Don't be fooled by appearances. These were not jewellery.
They were miniature weapons crafted by a xenos species called Jokaero — a race of great apes who happened to be natural engineering savants. They could pack high-powered laser emitters, melta charges, even conversion shield generators into a ring the size of a finger band.
In Imperial noble circles, these were the ultimate personal defence artefacts — symbols of status and power. Imagine shaking someone's hand at a dinner party, only for them to twitch a finger and your skull to be vapourised by a melta jet. Exciting.
Andy picked up one of the rings and turned it in his hand.
The lethality didn't interest him particularly. That kind of output worked fine against unarmoured targets — against regular military personnel, it was barely an inconvenience.
What he wanted was the power cell technology inside.
To fit enough charge into that volume to discharge a melta jet — that level of miniaturised high-density energy storage was exactly what Andy currently lacked. If he could reverse-engineer it and apply it to his engineering drones, their operational endurance would multiply tenfold at minimum.
"Package everything. Take it all."
He dropped the ring into the crate behind him and moved deeper in.
The further in he went, the larger the objects became.
He stopped before a machine the size of a two-storey building, its form like a twisted black hourglass. The air around it seemed subtly distorted; as he approached, Andy detected a faint error accumulating in his internal chronometer.
[Item Scan: Hrud Entropic Time Accelerator (Damaged).][Assessment: Hazardous device involving the temporal dimension.]
When most people in the 41st Millennium think of dangerous xenos technology, their minds go to the Necrons. But in practice, the most valuable finds are often what the Coldtrade calls "cold facilities" — large-scale machinery for production, maintenance, or environmental modification.
Such as the device before him now. A creation of the Hrud.
The Hrud are a xenos species that exist within the crevices of time, possessed of a phenomenon called an "entropy field" — a spatial distortion in which the local flow of time accelerates dramatically. This machine was an artificial generator of that effect. Once activated, it would cause everything within its coverage area to rapidly age and decay. Even hardened steel would rust to dust within minutes of exposure.
The Hrud used these as weapons — or to accelerate biological processes that would otherwise take centuries.
Andy stared at it. His logic-cores ran at full capacity.
Use it as a weapon? That would be a criminal waste.
As an industrial catalyst, this was perfect. Certain advanced alloy materials required decades of natural ageing to eliminate internal stress. Certain high-energy fuels took months of fermentation to mature.
With this device, Andy could complete those processes in minutes.
A farming god-tool. An absolute farming god-tool.
"Handle this one carefully. Don't bump it."
He turned to the heavy escorts behind him.
"Strip out the core components and bring them back for testing."
He continued forward.
In the far corner of the warehouse, a pile of white objects lay stacked against the wall — warm to the touch as jade, but with the weight and sheen of metal, already cut into neat sheets and tubes.
[Item Scan: Aeldari Wraithbone.][Assessment: Psychic conduction material. Sub-Warp resonance matrix.]
An old acquaintance. The Aeldari had sunk their entire technology tree into psychic energy.
Wraithbone was not naturally grown bone. It was material that Aeldari Bonesingers had "sung" into physical existence using the power of the Warp — simultaneously bone, plastic, and metal in one. Possessing extraordinary self-repair capabilities, and a perfect conductor for psychic energy.
To the Adeptus Mechanicus, this was absolute heresy — manufactured using Warp-sorcery, stained with the touch of souls. Any orthodox Magos who laid eyes on it would scream for immediate incineration.
But in Andy's STC database, there existed a complete methodology for inert processing of psychic materials. With the right physical treatment — stripping out the active psychic resonance — the material became an ideal substrate for advanced neural interfaces and anti-psychic-interference shielding.
The reason Andy's current exoskeleton lacked a neural interface and relied on hydraulic sensing alone was precisely because he lacked a high-sensitivity conduction material like this.
With this stack of Wraithbone, Andy could build a true neural fibre bundle for powered armour.
Many would ask: why would a human STC be compatible with alien materials?
Because humanity in the Golden Age thought nothing like the Imperium that followed.
That was mankind's most brilliant and most arrogant era. In that age, everything in the universe was a resource. There was no sanctity to defer to, no defilement to fear. If it worked, you used it. Full stop.
The STC's foundational design philosophy was to allow colonists to survive in any environment using any available materials.
At its core, the black box had no concept of "heresy." Only "useful" and "not useful."
Ideological baggage? Doesn't exist.
"Pack it up. All of it." Andy waved his hand.
Beyond these prizes, the warehouse held more.
Several wrecked Tau drones — blown half to pieces, but their anti-gravity lenses and deflector shield generator cores were still intact. The Tau were latecomers to the stars, but their work on plasma miniaturisation and personal shielding was genuinely impressive. Andy planned to reverse-engineer the tech and upgrade his own drone fleet.
His current Raptors hit hard, but they were fragile — one bolt round and they came apart. Install a Tau-style deflector shield, and their survivability would jump by several tiers.
Finally, at the very back of the warehouse, sealed inside a stasis field cabinet, Andy found a black fragment.
Its surface was mirror-smooth, yet absorbed all light — as though it were drinking in the luminescence around it.
[Item Scan: Blackstone Fragment (suspected Necron relic).][Assessment: Extremely dangerous. Anti-Warp properties.]
Andy's hand stopped in mid-air.
Blackstone.
A genuine weapon of the highest order. Capable of sealing the Warp — or amplifying it. The monoliths on Cadia were made of this stuff.
Its presence here suggested Kaka's reach had extended further than anyone realised — possibly into ruins that should never have been touched.
He didn't try to pick it up. He had the guards move the entire stasis cabinet.
He couldn't use it yet. Couldn't process it. But kept as a trump card, deployed against psychic threats when the time came — this would be invaluable.
One hour later.
The underground vault that had once held priceless artefacts was now cleaner than Andy's conscience.
He'd even had the shelving units stripped out — high-strength alloy, perfectly good for melting down into ammunition.
Andy stood in the empty centre of the vault and nodded with quiet satisfaction.
This single "harvest" had pushed his technology tree forward by a considerable margin in one stroke — solving four major problems simultaneously: miniaturised energy storage, industrial catalysis, neural interface materials, and personal shielding.
The combat power of the New Founding was about to undergo a qualitative leap.
Andy walked back up to the executive suite on the top floor.
Six had already arrived. Seeing Andy emerge, she rushed over with barely contained excitement.
"Andy, this is unbelievable!"
"Kaka is gone — their entire armed force has collapsed!"
"The whole port is in chaos right now — the other major factions are all sitting back watching. Nobody dares move."
"Should we — should we take the territory while we can?"
Ambition flickered in Six's eyes.
To replace Kaka, to become the new king of Footfall — that was the ultimate dream of any merchant in this sector.
But Andy shook his head.
"No," he said. "We're not taking territory. Too much trouble."
"Take territory and you have to run things — maintain order, haggle with Imperial officials, watch your back against every other faction trying to stick a knife in you."
"We don't have the time or the energy for that. The power vacuum here is actually ideal."
In this dark universe, order usually meant chains.
If Andy sat down in the seat of "Grand Duke," he'd become a target. Rogue Traders would come for him. The Inquisition would come for him. The Imperial Navy would come for him.
But chaos?
In chaos, nobody noticed what one ship was doing, or who had just purchased certain restricted materials.
Andy wanted a chaotic, free market — not a neatly administered fiefdom.
"Six, listen carefully."
Andy delivered his final strategic directive.
"You don't need to be the Grand Duke. You just need to keep being a merchant."
"Tell everyone out there: those who want to do business are welcome. Those who want to carve out territory — not our problem."
"But there is one rule."
He raised a finger.
"From now on, every piece of xenos technology, every cold facility that passes through Footfall — I have right of first purchase."
"Anyone who sells something I want to someone else, or hides it from me—"
He pointed at the senior butler's corpse on the floor.
"That's what happens."
Six paused — then understood perfectly.
No responsibility. All the privilege.
Control the highest-end supply chain, and it didn't matter who held the nominal throne.
"Understood." She nodded respectfully. "I'll spread the word."
Andy gave a single nod and strode toward the door.
"Let's go. Back to the ship."
"Oh — one thing. Have you managed to get hold of any deep-space star charts?"