You hold your hands up, gently, and let your helmet clunk open, so that Q'urien could see your features. "Technically," you start, gently. "We're Rogue Traders."
"...you're whats?" Q'urien asked.
"We're, uh, how to explain it quickly," you mutter. "Uh, we're given a Warrant of Trade, which lets us travel beyond the Imperium, engage in diplomacy-"
"The Imperium does what?" Q'urien asks, her eyes bugging.
"Diplomacy?" you ask. "Yeah, of course we do, who doesn't do diplomacy?"
"People who have things called exterminators that explode entire planets for having a single heretic on them!" Q'urien says.
"Fucking what?" you exclaim. "That's absurd, how the fuck...why the...no, the Imperium doesn't blow up entire planets for having a single heretic on it! Shit, what do you even mean by heretic? Like, an actual Chaos Worshiper, obviously, they're going to be on trial for heresy, and if it gets proven, they're executed. But, like, that's becuase Chaos Worshipers are dangerous. You yourself mentioned how those Slaaneshi terrorists were such a problem. But, like, if you just think some kind of different thing from church doctrine, most of that's just heterodoxy. And that stuff is mostly argued out by the Ecclesiarchy and, like, unless it's actively dangerous, most heterodoxies are winked at. Like Vedism!"
Q'urien slowly peeks out over the edge of the chair. "Do you have a secret inquisition, though?" she asks. "That can do anything they want and kill anyone they want?"
You scratch your jaw. "There is an inquisition, and I don't know much about how it operates beyond the very broad basics - which is they're mostly on the watch for daemons and xenos and psychics. Which, like, daemons can come from anywhere, posses anyone, and want to do nothing more than kill everything they run into..." Q'urien nods, slightly and then steps out from behind the chair.
"S-So...you're not going to kill me?" she asks, nervously.
"No, no, honey, no," you say, laughing. "We're here to make an utter mess of Karad Vall's day. If said mess involves freeing the slaves here and glassing the staging grounds of what looks like a miniature Black Crusade while making a profit, so much the better as far as we're concerned. Seeing as how you were here to spy on the place, any recommendations for where and what to pilfer and reduce to dust before we start the orbital bombardment?"
Q'urien blinked at you, then slowly, she grinned. "I think we might be able to get something done to make the galaxy a measurably better place."
"That's what I like to hear!" you say as she steps out, then gestures you three together. She pulls out that little handheld auspex again and uses it to project a map of the local gas giant and her moons. A shimmering silver dot appeared on the far side.
"This is the Excalibur," she said, quietly. "She's a DX-901 explorer ship with a cloaking device and a 1.5 warp drive. She can get to and from Q'Sall in about three days if she drops into warp here and takes the deeper routes. What's more, she has a manifold hold - the deeper into the warp it gets, the bigger it is. We can carry at least half the slaves on this planet away if you can take down the teleport jammer! Then you can carry the other half, right?"
"We do have the logistics for carrying it, but we don't have the food," Em says, quietly. "We've got about three months of food for nine hundred thousand people."
"How the fuck big fleet is your fuck?" Q'urien asked.
"We captured some prizes on the way," you explain. "We could actually carry the slave population here away, if they didn't mind a very cramped run. It's the food we need to worry about - the food storage. We can fit in people, or we can fit in food, we can't fit food and people."
Q'urien groaned. "Ugh. What we really need is a big chunk of metal with life support that we can deploy stabilization fields around, which we can then just tow into the Emyprian."
"What about the docks?" Ryia asks.
We all turned to look at her.
She shrugs. "They're a huge chunk of metal with life support. We have enough tugs, lines, and engines to pull the fucking thing out of orbit and into the Warp. If we slap a Geller Field on it and we don't run into anything dangerous, we can pull it to Footfall. Fuck, we can pull it to Purgatorio! The outlying farms have been needing a population bump for years, they keep bitching about it." She smirks, slightly. "Besides...we were going to blow them up anyway."
You look at Em. "She's insane, right?"
"How do you think Port Wander got where it is?" Em says, dryly. "Most spaceports of that type are constructed in orbit around a Forge World and towed, usually by a Universe class. They use shallow running engines and just take decades to ensure safety."
"...does Port Wander have a Geller Field?" you ask, your eyes wide.
"Yeah," Em says, shrugging.
Q'urien is looking between the three of you. "How big is this Port Wander place?"
"Eh, it's not that big," Em says. "Only thirty kilometers."
"Thirty fucking what?" Q'urien's eyes bug. "I...that..." She sits down on one of the undamaged chairs, putting her head in her hands. "Macrostructure engineering on that scale is..." She lifts her head. "You guys are scary."
"Thanks," Ryia says.
"Okay." Q'urien says. "Those are some options for the people - but as for the Citadel, the only thing I know for sure is that the Vault of Secrets contains the best loot and treasure that Vall has collected in his reign of terror. Among that includes what Q'Sallian Intelligence believes to be the coordinates for some kind of weapon. The only name we have related to it is what that crazy snake bitch said: La'Nasad. We have no idea what it is, or its etymology."
It's Eldar, Aria says, quietly. One of those paranoic city-ships that they were building before I died. Of course people like them would have a weapon that even this pirate lord would want.
---
Fhew. That's a lot! What are your goals for...
You and the Kriegers
[ ] First step, disable the teleportation jammer and the void shields, then break for the Vault
[ ] First step, break for the Vault, secure the artifacts, then disable the jammer and void shields
[ ] Write In
And Q'urien and her ship?
[ ] Send Q'urien out to contact the ship and inform them that you need their help to build a stabilization field for the space docks to serve as transport
[ ] Send Q'urien out to contact the ship - they will take half the slaves, you'll take half and hope you get home before stores ware out
[ ] Keep Q'urien as an ally to hit the vault
[ ] Tie her up and leave her here, you still don't trust her
[ ] Write In