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Hearth Star: Warrior of the God-King

By Psion

All Rights Reserved

The Hearth Star, a massive lumbering world ship and home of the nastiest marauding space pirates in the galaxy, the lupine Wuffs. From this mobile self-contained habit, the canine-like Wuffs plundered the galaxy; raiding space lanes and terrorizing civilizations both known and unknown to the galaxy at large. So great was their reign of terror that they had become arrogant even though their endless campaigning had started to take its toll on their ship. Large sections of the Star had become rundown and abandoned, the perfect place for escaped slaves to hide and thus the perfect place for Wuffs to hunt down their missing property.

The troop of Wuff brigands briskly walked through a large corridor just inside the outer hull, slender "bishie" bodies slipping past fallen conduits and other signs of disrepair on the massive starship. Gravity defying hairdos almost glowed in a variety of bright colors as the alien swordfighters walked along, the energy aura of their power blades casting their surroundings in a pale azure glow. Somewhere there were humans to subjugate again...

Suddenly, a boarding pod burst through the metal wall separating the interior of the Hearth Star from the cold vacuum of space. The temporary venting of atmosphere tore through the corridor like a hurricane, knocking over all of the Wuffs. As the four lean pirate warriors rose back to their feet, the pod opened and a single heavily armored figure waddled out.

"For the God-King!" The pear-shaped being bellowed in a deep, electronically augmented voice as his power armor greaves stomped the metal deck.

"Kill the fatass cockblocker!" One of the Wuffs shouted, the glow from their power blade reflecting off the burnt orange of the stranger's power armor.

Lukis Gabros remained nonpussed inside his armor as he raised his gravity trident and powered up the singularity field generator built into the weapon. As the first Wuff lunged, the armored badger parried with the trident head and quickly speared his opponent, trapping him between the twines of the knight's weapon. Retracting his visor, Lukis greedily shoveled his foe into his open maw. His throat bulged and his jaw stretched as the kicking space pirate slide down into his armor-clad stomach with one mighty gulp.

Finishing the first course off with a righteous belch, Gabros turned to the others. All three Wuffs charged and swung at him. Reversing the polarity of the singularity field with the flick of a switch, the bloated badger knocked them all back with a sweeping counter before spearing another and sending the second lupine to join the first with two quick gulps. The last two went down the same as the first, his bloated belly making his biometal armor become uncomfortably tight before the metallic substance grew and stretched to hold in his expanded middle. Lukis smiled and lowered his visor back down; giving his gut a celebratory thump with his gauntleted fist then waddled along for more worthy foes. Behind him, his bulbous backside wobbled beneath a set of biometal barding as he lumbered forward, two disproportionate orbs crowning a pair of thunder thighs that celebrated the badger's years of loyal service to the God-King of Medivos. In front of him, his engorged abdomen bulged out like a cargo freighter as his gurgling insides began the laborious task of converting all the consumed meat into noble rump roast. The armored badger did his best to tune out the jolts of pleasure running up from his squirming and kicking midsection as he tried to assess his location aboard the ship and what became of the rest of the crusade team he was supposed to arrive with.

Inside his helmet, his armor's computer system projected updates on his location and the status of the others. As his stomach continued to fight valiantly with his unruly meal, Lukis found things did not go as well as he had hoped. While he had landed on target, auguring in the lower decks several levels below the residential areas where the foul Wuffs kept most of their forces, the rest of the crusade had missed the Hearth Star entirely. Their breaching pods had been accidentally shot off into deep space and the transport barge had gone off to fetch them. Subsequently their arrival was delayed for a few hours and he was to scout the immediate landing area and relay his findings back to the rest of the mission group.

Belching again, enjoying the aftertaste of the devoured Wuffs that had finally stilled inside his stomach, Lukis licked his lips; first to feast, first to the glory, first to return home with the spoils of a successful campaign in both his bag and his belly. Scouting was normally beneath him but the lumbering space knight needed to give his body time to free up some room. A leisurely stroll was always good for digestion...

With data on the interior of the Hearth Star being limited, getting an understanding of his surroundings was crucial. The lower decks of the massive world ship was devoted to various sundry functions if he remembered the machine cleric's report correctly, so far it seemed to be the truth as his immediate vicinity seemed to be a massive secondary power supply as big as an artisan's workshop; the heavyweight badger could only imagine what the main reactor powering the Star's ungodly engines looked like. As Lukis waddled along past towering capacitors glowing with unspent energy and fusion reactors giving off waves of heat despite being heavily shielded, he picked up a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye.

There, scurrying off to the relative safety of a maintenance hatch that was far too small for a being of his noble girth, was the briefest glimpse of a creature roughly the size of an adult Wuff. As suddenly as it appeared, it was gone, with the armored glutton barely able to catch more detail other then it was as big as a Wuff, bipedal, and didn't appear to be armed. The audio pickups in his helmet began picking up the sound of someone whispering in a language he did not understand; only recognized that it was none he had heard spoken by the known galactic community. Holding his trident in a ready position, he adjusted the filters on his helm to sniff the air. Black button nose picked up the scent of Wuffs, specifically the Wuffs currently gurgling in his digestive tract, but it also picked up the scent of something else, something that he didn't recognize despite fighting against or alongside almost every species known to the sages of Medivos. Waddling through the rest of the sprawling substation, he saw no more signs of the mysterious figures but he certainly heard them hiding in spaces too narrow for him to squeeze his big, barded bottom through.

"Who the hell is this guy? Think he's with the Star Corps ?" A voice whispered in the shadows, apparently thinking the audio filters in Lukis's helmet wouldn't be able to separate the sound from the background hum of the fusion generators.

** "I'm more worried about where the** Wuffs went. Weren't there four of them chasing after us?" Came another voice speaking in the same tongue, Lukis's ear starting to recognize a few words. Whoever these people were, they were familiar with the Galactic Republic, the democratic meddlers that the God-King had signed a treaty with. Meaning that the rumors were true and the Republic were indeed beating Medivos to the glory of crushing the Wuffs.

"Come out! Come out and face my righteous fury sniveling sneaks!" Gabros boomed in Universal; his head turned in the direction the voices were coming from. Whatever they were, they were still hidden too deeply in the shadows for the crude light amplification equipment in his helmet visor to make out too many details about them.

Well there was no doubt that the strangers understood Universal after that, immediately both whisperers fell ominously silent. The sound of metal clanging on metal behind him caused the space knight to slowly wobble around in fear that he was being flanked only to discover nothing but a stray piece of pipe rolling on the floor. He had been tricked so the mysterious beings could slip away while his ample back was turned.

Despite being angry at how easily he was tricked, Gabros chose to let the mysterious watchers disappear. He had cleared out the landing area and reported as such back to his ship... and was rewarded with the notification that his transmission had been received but the rest of the crusade will not arrive. He was on his own, a fact that both enthralled and secretly terrified him. The bounty of the Hearth Star appeared to be his and his alone but at the same time, what to do? Without the others, particularly the machine clerics and tech-knights, he did not have a place to take refuge between attacks on the despicable Wuffs above. No clerics meant no template printers. No template printers meant none of the lavished luxuries a chapter stronghold would provide; masseur servitors, robotic nail filers, or invigorator spas, none of the things a knight needed to properly digest his victories. On the other hand, it also meant that the glory of striking the first major blow against the Wuffs on their own territory was his alone. Surely that would be worth a little indigestion in primitive conditions?

Waddling back to the breaching pod and recovering the rest of his equipment, Gabros shouldered his weapons and left the landing area. Biometal greaves thudded against the deck floor as the armored badger's bloated belly started to slosh and loosen up. Soon he would have room for another course, the barding over his prodigious, jutting rump groaning from metal fatigue as the ballooning orbs greedily accepting the defeated Wuffs into their expansive real estate. Coal-button nose sniffed the air through the respirator filters on his helmet, trying to pick up the scent of more prey for him to subjugate through his stomach...

After lumbering through the desolated trash-strewn corridors for a time, he finally found the fight he was searching for. Even then he heard the Wuffs before he smelled them. Their vulgar whoops and war cheers were unmistakable as were their curses directed towards something called "umies."

Turning a corner and ending up in a large, empty room that appeared to have been used for storage at some point, the knight of Medivos found himself arriving behind another Wuff warband as they attempted to intimidate a group of creatures that could only be the "umies" the lupine idiots were cursing. Lukis was intrigued by the furless appearance and multiple skin hues of these strange primate aliens, his nose identifying several of them as the shadowy creatures that tricked him long enough to slip away, but his heart skipped a beat once his eyes fell on the group's apparent guardian.

Standing stalwart in a way that the God-King's warriors could only envy was a slender "umie" female positioning herself between the Wuffs and the others of her species. Long brown hair was tied back, toned body breathing slowly as she tightened her grip on a ballistic pistol that looked like it was built out of scrap and a Wuff cutlass likely claimed as a trophy. Already Lukis was liking what he saw of this one... and then she started moving.

The instant the Wuffs started rushing her position, the singular warrior-maiden threw herself into motion. The lead brigand was decapitated before he could even register her counter-attack, his head flying off with a confused expression on his face. While Lukis wasn't fond of the Wuffs' undying love of agile melee combat, he suddenly could see why they liked it now that a proper actress was performing it. In the span of a few seconds, a dozen Wuffs were reduced to half their number. It was still too many for the solitary warrior to take on by her lonesome; Lukis found that he suddenly drew his grav-trident into his hand without realizing it.

"FOR MEDIVOS!" He bellowed and powered up the singularity field generator in his trident, starting to waddle towards the fray.

To all their credit, all seven combatants stopped midmotion and turned at him. The warrior-maiden's face was fixed in a state of pure confusion while the Wuffs regarded him with a mix of dread and disgust. Fat and known to indulge in behaviors that his foes considered unmanly, Gabros was an affront to the lupine raiders. One they were also terrified of as the normally dim marauders had a pretty accurate idea of how he got as big as he did.

Seeing their opportunity, the fleeing "humies" took off down a vacant tunnel. Their guardian took off a few seconds later, using the confusion to give the enormous badger a thankful nod then escape after them. Meanwhile the armored space knight busied himself with his opponents. The first Wuff, full of arrogance and misplaced confidence, attempted to leap up and kick Gabros in the face just as the badger anthro raised his visor and opened his mouth wide. Powered cutlass clattered harmlessly onto the floor as the Wuff landed feet-first into his greedy maw. His prey flailed and feebly reached for his cohorts to pull him out as Lukis swallowed up to the Wuff's waist. Unaware of the strength of the glutton's throat muscles, another Wuff climbed up atop his armored gut and attempted to pull the other out of his mouth. Gabros slurped them both up like a bowl of Padonk noodles as he swatted away the remaining four swarming around him like pesky insects. Once he had room in his mouth again, he began spearing the other brigands and shoveling them into his maw. Pushed on by pure greed, Lukis then devoured the still-fresh kills left by the escaped warrior woman as his stomach bulged like a freighter loaded with provisions for Feasting Day.

As his defeated foes squirmed and jostled inside of him, the badger tilted his head back and declared victory with a triumphant belch that seemed to echo throughout the desolate halls of the labyrinth world ship. The warriors of the God-King of Medivos had joined the battle for the Hearth Star and had an appetite for victory...