Five Parsecs from Home – Episode 11: Kill Code

 Starfire Scoundrels and the Kill Code

 Previous episode can be found here

 (before the shooting starts)

The kill-code did not belong in a jungle stall. Jax said it on the way off Elyria, still smelling like cheap incense and spent casings: the datastick was a key. It needed a lock that still remembered Vita Synth’s old language. Lumara Verge could hide a secret. It could not speak to one.

Nexus Prime could.

Not the neon towers. The Ashline Tech Belt — industrial park grown around dead Unity fab yards and never forgiven for it. Cargo rails. Coolant stacks. Black-glass clean rooms bolted onto rusted loading bays. A squat annex that called itself a materials contractor and fooled no one who had ever stolen a gene-vault. Marek’s manifests pointed here. Whoever bought the copy had rented the stack. And hired Blood Storm Mercs to keep the door shut.

The jump was nothing. Empty dark. The code sat in the locker like a held breath. Jax used the quiet. She put the broken sonic emitter back together until it sang that ugly, useful pitch again.

They came in dirty and legal enough. No fanfare. Elias was already working before the ramp kissed ferrocrete — false berth chatter, dummy pings, a ghost heading that would send Vesperon Arms sniffing an empty pad on the far side of the station. The bounty on the Scoundrels was still live. He intended to feed it shadows.

Aria and Hex hit the trade halls while the decoy ripened. Nexus still had a market that sold more than knives. Aria walked out with a starship repair kit and a sector permit folded into her jacket — paper for later doors, later docks, later arguments with men who loved stamps more than sense. Hex bought a laser sight, slotted it on the beam pistol, and said nothing.

Jax disappeared into the range and came back with her machine pistol riding her hip like it had never left.

Kai found a trainer in the under-levels — the kind of tired specialist who still remembered how to make a body listen. She came back sharper. She did not talk about Rax. She did not have to. The empty bunk still had a weight.

Korra found a gaming table. She came back without the broken military rifle that had been riding in the stash since the Veil. Visor slits dim. “The odds were acceptable. They were also wrong.” Elias looked at the empty rack and did not ask.

Night in Ashline was all sodium and steam. The annex squatted in the middle of the belt like a secret that had given up hiding. No weather. No alarms yet. Just gantries, containers, and a clean-room glow leaking under a shuttered bay.

Blood Storm was en route to the Ashline site. Hired muscle. Three shooters, two specialists, a captain who looked like he billed by the hour, and a cyborg mercenary just to make sure.

Aria stood in the Vanguard’s bay with the code-drive in her scarred hand. Hyperblaster slung. Voice low.

She looked at them — Kai still humming from the trainer’s bruises, Korra poorer and unbothered, Hex’s new sight already hungry, Elias watching feeds that pointed the wrong way on purpose.

“Load it. End it. Then we go home.”

The ramp went down into steam and ferrocrete.

The night was waiting.

The alley behind the annex smelled like coolant and old rain. Scouting had been clean. Blood Storm was already committed — a green hauler rolling the front approach like they owned the belt. Fine. Let them.

Aria split the crew with two fingers.
Voss, Elias, Jax — back door.
Hex, Kai, Korra — crates and containers, eyes on the street.

“Tech bought us quiet,” Aria said, low. “Don’t waste it. Jax takes the cradle. Nobody touches her.”

Korra’s visor slits dimmed. “Probability of organic compliance: low. Probability I will compensate: acceptable.”

Blood Storm Mercs and Cyborg

 

Table set up

---

Seize the initiative

Jax’s fingers kissed the lock. The back hatch sighed open like it had been waiting. Voss and her half slipped into the dark. Out front, Hex settled the hyperblaster on a crate lip. Kai found a lane. Korra stood in the open a half-second longer than a human would, rattlegun already tracking the hauler’s nose.

“They are walking into a prepared field,” Korra said. “This is statistically rude of them.”

 

---

Round 1

Inside, Voss’s team crept the corridors — ferrocrete, pipe runs, the clean-room glow leaking under a shutter. Outside, Hex’s fireteam sank into cover and waited.

Blood Storm came on careful. Full cover. No heroics. The green van rolled them forward like a moving wall. Boots. Breath. The click of safeties.

Nobody fired. The belt held its breath.

---

Round 2

Voss took the stairs. Elias at her shoulder. Jax already tasting the air for the vault’s handshake. The data room opened like a throat — consoles, cold light, the cradle waiting in the stack.

Load it now!

 

Outside, Korra and Kai went to snap-fire.

A shooter broke cover at the van’s front bumper.

Korra’s rattlegun spoke first. Two bursts. The merc folded like someone had cut his strings, slammed back into the hauler’s grill, stunned stupid.
“Recoil pattern logged,” Korra said. “You may stand up. I will put you down again.”

Second shooter pushed. Kai’s shot kissed air. His auto-fire walked across her chest. Armor held. She did not flinch. She never did anymore. Not since the sewers.

Captain and the cyborg peeled the far side of the green van and dumped everything they had on the crate line. Korra took two hits — stun stacking through plating, systems stuttering. Kai’s armor ate the rest and still left her with a white flash behind the eyes.

The rest of the squad hugged cover and kept coming. No shots. Just pressure.

Hex leaned the corner.

The hyperblaster barked once.

The captain hit the ferrocrete in a dark pool and did not get up.

Blood Storm found a second wind. Renewed efforts. One of them moved when he should have been done. The night was not finished with anyone.

 

---

Round 3

Korra’s displacer belt coughed. She vanished off the crate line and reappeared in a new pocket of teal steel, rattlegun already up.

“I do not have a gambling problem,” she said, almost conversational. “I have a targeting solution.”

The rattlegun chewed a specialist into the deck. He went down bleeding and did not get polite about it.

 

 

New coordinates accepted. Gambling remains a statistical error. This is not.

Kai stepped out and let the shell gun speak. The blast took two mercs off their feet and left them on the grid like discarded tools.

Hex did not wait. She came around the corner like a problem with a name, hyperblaster roaring, two stuns walking the cyborg back. Then the chrome bastard accepted the invitation. Powerclaw down. Hex’s ripper sword up. They met in the space between the van and the crates and the belt pretended it was a quiet industrial park.

The claw missed the line that mattered. The sword did not.

Arm gone. Cyborg down. Sparking. Bleeding out in a way metal is not supposed to.

Powerclaw and ripper clash

 

A shooter and a specialist rushed Korra’s new cover and unloaded.

Korra went down.

“Systems… reallocating,” she said, visor flickering, already horizontal. “This is inefficient. Do not let them touch the cradle.”

Jax was already at the terminal. Hands in the stack. The kill-code sliding into a language Vita Synth still remembered.

A leftover merc tried Kai and missed. The shot sang off hab-steel and died.

 

Major malfunction!

---

Round 4

Kai’s blaster found the shooter. Stun. He staggered.

Hex took the facility doorway like it belonged to her. Two shots. Shooter stunned. Specialist stunned. The specialist’s return fire kissed her and she ate it standing.

The shooter tried Kai again. Missed again. Ghosts are hard to hit when they have decided not to die today.

Upstairs, Voss and Elias hit the stair rail and looked down into the fire. They could see Hex in the door. They could hear Korra’s systems cycling on the grid. Aria’s jaw went tight.

“Hold the floor,” she said.

Jax finished the injection.

Hold the floor!

 

The cradle took the code. The stack answered. Somewhere in a rented vault under Ashline, a copied nightmare lost its name.

The specialist renewed his efforts, one more shot that glanced off hab-steel next to Hex’s head.

Battle-luck, mean and sudden: Hex’s beam pistol was in her hand before the thought finished. New laser sight casting a cold red beam. Auto-hit. The specialist at the van corner folded.

Round 5

Kai and Hex put the last shooter down together. He was toast. The street went quiet except for steam and the tick of cooling barrels.

Aria came down the stairs already barking.

“Team up. Get Korra. We are leaving. Now.”

---

Aftermath

They carried the bot out the way they came. Korra’s visor slitted once on the ramp.

“Dents,” she said. “I am fine. The rifle I lost at the table was more expensive than this. Statistically.”

Blood Storm would not forget the captain in the pool or the chrome arm in the gutter. That contract just grew teeth. New rival. Earned.

The code fired. The copy’s handshake burned. Quest done. Specimen Zero’s ghost finally put in the ground where the original was supposed to stay.

Loot off the field: a grav dampener, a body wire, a plasma rifle. Useful. Ugly. Paid for in spent casings.

And someone else, out in the dark of the belt, was pissed they had used the kill-code at all. Another name on the board. Vesperon held the lease. But Red Helix wrote the check.

New Rival. Red Helix Combine - Fringe pharma that lost the patent war to Biomorphix years ago. They bought the duplicate to reverse-engineer a competitor’s buried nightmare and sell a “cleaner” strain. Kill-code in their cradle is an insult and a delay.

Jax sat on the Vanguard’s ramp with the sector night on her face and that look she gets when the universe blinks first. Charmed life. She did not say it. She just flexed her fingers like the luck was still warm.

Aria looked back once at Ashline’s sodium and steam.

“Load it. End it. Go home.”

They did.

The copy is dead. And the new rivals remember.

 

5 Leagues - Blightburners Turns 7 and 8 - Blackthorn Returns, the Forest Road and the Haunts in the Forgotten Ruins

If you missed them, the previous turns  are linked here -The Blightburner's Story  

 

Turn 7 – Blackthorn Returns

The inn at Blackthorn Manor still smelled of woodsmoke and old stone when the Blightburners woke. Rain had washed the ridge clean overnight. Outside the windows the blackthorn hedges stood dark against a gray dawn.

Locals came before the bread was broken. Farmers, a stable hand, the old woman who kept the keys to the cellar. They set a heavy sack of rations on the table—dried meat, hard cheese, a few strings of onions—and said little. Just nodded at Rose and left.

Sigrid counted out two gold marks across the boards. Wages. No speeches. The coin disappeared into pouches and the meal went on.

They spent the morning among the people. Garric talked with the men who still remembered the old levy lists. Finn and Dust listened in the stables. Grimwald sat with the manor’s half-blind clerk and traded quiet words over a cracked ledger. By midday the word had settled: the Blackthorns were back, and the warband rode with them. One more Adventure Point locked into the tally. The locals were on their side.

Rose found the swordmaster in the practice yard behind the old stables. A lean man with a scarred jaw and a wooden practice blade. He looked her up and down once, then nodded at the rack.

They worked in silence. Footwork. Cuts. The weight of steel against wood. When the session ended Rose’s shoulders burned and her breath came hard. Something had settled deeper in her bones. She was tougher for it.

That afternoon the warband spent what they had earned. The maps shifted. Blackthorn Manor was no longer a shabby hamlet clinging to the ridge. People were returning. Roofs were being mended. Smoke rose from hearths that had been cold for years. A true village now, because a Blackthorn stood on the stones again.

And the land gave up another secret: the Curse of War’s hidden camp sat south in the wilderness between the manor and the Ashen Cloister. Marked. Waiting.

They rode patrol at dusk.

The messenger found them on the southern track, a tired man on a tired horse. He carried no banner, only a sealed note and a careful look.

“An ally who wishes to see your Quest find success,” he said, “offers you a respite, sheltered from the troubles of the world.”

They followed him to a low stone lodge half-hidden in the trees—the old Blackthorn hunting lodge, still standing. Fire already lit. Food waiting. Beds that did not move. Every injury lightened by two turns of recovery. Every Hero walked out the next morning carrying one more point of hard-won experience. Five gold marks changed hands without ceremony.

They returned to the manor under a clearer sky.

Word of the support had already traveled. The soft-handed lords who still held the keys had taken notice. Same offer as the patrol. Same quiet weight. This time they handed over the keys to the old Blackthorn Manor residence wing itself. More rest. More experience. More gold.

The weight of it settled into Garric and Grimwald that night. Garric’s strikes with the bastard sword grew cleaner, harder. One more notch of combat skill. Grimwald’s eyes sharpened over the maps and the half-remembered texts. Scholar. The old knowledge had finally taken root.

Blightburners at the Lodge

Turn 8 - The Forest Road

They left Blackthorn Manor at first light. Rose looked once at the blackthorn hedges and did not look back. The road south into the dark forest waited.

Camp went up in a stand of twisted oaks. Dust and Finn slipped out before the fire was fully lit and walked the lay of the land. Trails. Ridges. The places a man could die without anyone hearing. Two more Adventure Points for the work.

Finn kept going. He returned near dark with mud on his boots and a hard light in his eyes.

“I found the path,” he said. “Ancient ruins. Deep in the forest. The ones the map marked.”

Garric stayed by the fire and trained until his arms shook. One more experience point carved into the muscle.

A friend reached them that same evening—quiet word, a small pouch, no names. Another Adventure Point. The land was starting to notice who stood on its side.

The ruins waited lost in the dark forest south of Blackthorn Manor. The next mark on the map. Decipher the ancient writings. Whatever the Whispers had hidden there still needed reading.

The Blightburners checked their gear, banked the fire, and faced the trees.

The forest did not care that a Blackthorn had come home. It only cared who walked into it next.

 

Turn 8 – Haunts in the Forgotten Ruins

The ruins waited in the dark forest south of Blackthorn Manor like something that had never learned how to die.

Stone arches leaned against each other. Stairs climbed into empty air. A heavy portcullis hung half-open at the far end, teeth black with old rust. The air smelled of wet leaves and something older.

 Table setup

Round 1

Finn and Dust took the high ground without a word. The rocky outcrop gave them clean sight lines across the broken courtyards.

Below, Sigrid, Rose, and Garric moved toward the nearest stair. Grimwald drifted left, eyes already hunting.

The grave haunts did not notice them yet.

Grimwald’s fingers brushed a scatter of stones near a toppled pillar. Five glittering gems winked up at him. He pocketed them without breaking stride.

Dust drew Swift Eagle. The arrow flew true—and passed straight through the grave haunt standing on the fire tower as if the thing were made of smoke. The haunt never even flinched.

Finn’s shot missed clean.

Blightburners move, Grimwald finds gems

Round 2

Dust did not hesitate. Swift Eagle howled again. This time the arrow bit deep. The haunt on the tower staggered, then fled screaming into the trees beyond the ruins.

Finn missed a second time.

Grimwald moved up and searched the base of a weathered statue. Nothing. No writing. Just cold stone.

Sigrid, Rose, and Garric climbed the stairs onto the upper level. Rose’s eyes narrowed. Across the ramparts, three skeletal warriors stood guard over a glint of metal and leather. A stash.

Forgotten Ruins in the Dark forest

 

Round 3

Sigrid and Rose hit the rampart at a run.

Battering Storm rose and fell. The first skeleton came apart in a wet crash of molding bone. Rose’s Fey Rapier flickered once, twice. The second skeleton collapsed in pieces.

The haunt that had been with them lunged for Rose. Steel rang. Neither gave ground.

 Across the Rampart

Garric never saw the ones that hit him from the side.

Two skeletons charged across a lower rampart and swarmed him. He crushed the first with a brutal overhand, the old bastard sword biting deep. The bones crumbled around the blade and locked it. The second skeleton slammed a rusty sword across the side of his head. Garric dropped like a cut rope.

Rose turned, voice raw. “You fucking bastards—”

Finn’s arrow took another haunt clean off the wall and drove it into the woods. Dust’s shot went wide.

Grimwald reached the staircase and checked for more writing. Nothing.

 

Garric goes down hard 

 

Grave haunt on the far tower

Round 4

Dust’s next arrow sent the last haunt on the far tower deep into the gloomy forest. It did not come back.

The skeleton that had dropped Garric charged Sigrid. She took the blow on her shield, then answered with everything she had. Battering Storm smashed it into a pile of yellowed fragments.

“For Garric,” she snarled.

Rose looked down at the bones at her feet and smirked. “Should’ve stayed dead, you ugly fuck.”

Grimwald dropped to one knee beside Garric and began to work.

Finn fired at another skeleton prowling the lower ruins and missed.

For Garric!

Grimwald tends Garric

Round 5

The three skeletons that had been guarding the stash finally came. They crossed the rampart in a clatter of dry joints, drawn by the blood.

Sigrid and Rose met them head-on.

Rose’s rapier took one apart joint by joint. Sigrid’s sword boomed and the second simply ceased to exist. The third hesitated. Sigrid poured pure devotion into her voice and screamed. The thing staggered backward, lost its footing, and fell from the edge. It hit the ground below in a final, wet collapse of bone.

 

Finn and Dust took turns clearing the ruins of the remaining skeleton prowling on the high ramparts, Swift Eagle thrumming as Finn matched every shot.

Silence settled over the ruins.

Grimwald left Garric long enough to reach the broken pedestal the last haunt had been guarding. Weathered script ran across the cracked stone. He read it once, then again. The Scholar skill settled into place like a key in a lock.

The words were old. Pre-Blight. They spoke of a sealed vault deeper in the southern wilds, hidden beneath a drowned chapel the maps no longer named. Inside waited an artifact the old warlords had buried when the Womb first opened—something that could bind or break the hunger in the land. The next step was clear: locate the artifact.

Rose crossed to the stash she had spotted from across the ruins and swept everything into a sack without looking. Tools. A repair kit. A fine long bow. Partial armor and a solid shield. Six more gold marks.

Sigrid hauled Garric over one shoulder like a sack of grain. She looked up at the high rock where Dust and Finn still waited.

“We’re done here. Move before the rest of those bastards decide to come back.”

They left the ruins the way they had come—quiet, loaded, and one man short of upright.

 

---

A dose of silvertree leaf brought Garric around on the trail. He was only knocked out. The warband counted the cost and the gain in the fading light.

Dust and Finn both walked away harder to kill than they had been that morning. Sigrid felt the weight of pure devotion settle into her bones like a new scar.

They reached Blackthorn Manor after dark and went straight to the residence wing the soft-handed lords had finally handed over. A letter waited on the table, sealed with a simple blackthorn mark. Elara’s hand. She needed them. A contract. Sigrid tucked it inside her armor without opening it.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

They were about to bank the fire when the knock came—three soft raps, no more.

Sigrid opened the door.

A hooded figure stood in the threshold. She pulled the hood back. Pale hair. Cold blue eyes that had never known warmth. Fey-blood, armed and carrying herself like someone who had already decided how the next fight would end.

“I am Vaelith,” she said. Her voice was quiet and precise. “I was told the Blackthorns had returned, and that their warband walks the same path I do. The writings you found lead to something that should not stay buried. I can help you find it. Or I can watch you die trying. Your choice.”

She stepped inside without waiting for an answer.

Outside, the blackthorn hedges whispered in the dark. The forest beyond them kept its secrets a little longer.

The Blightburners had their next mark.

 

Frostgrave Cultists Knights

 

 

I played Frostgrave for a while and even posted some games here, but have since moved on to 5 Leagues from the Borderlands (see the Blightburner's Story).  When I started Frostgrave I picked up a set of Frostgrave Soldiers, Barbarians II (I think I got a sprue of each on ebay) and a few of the Frostgrave metal miniatures that caught me eye.  I wasnt a massive fan of the plastic sets but liked the metal mini's.  

As my 5 Leagues campaign has progressed I felt I was lacking in appropriate mini's for the threats I rolled but was making due with Warhammer Slaves to darkness types and Wargame Atlantic Fantasy Guards (which I bought specifically for 5 Leagues). And it actually gave me a good excuse to paint up a bunch of mini's that that been languishing in my pile of opportunity.  But after running into cultist types and the theme of my campaign being a grim dark and a little weird I felt I needed some variation and more armored "weird" soldier types.  Yeah, I did a pretty good job convincing my self that I needed this set and after watching a couple of videos that claimed they were some of the best mini's North Star had put out I made the purchase.

I am glad I did because not only were they fun to paint but each miniature is his own little character and pretty unique.  I built them one evening and painted them over a weekend in a sort of speed paint method. And I liked them so much just wanted to share.  Below are pics of all 10 painted as well as a few pics of them with the Frostgrave Soldiers, Barbarians and metal mini's I have.

 

 

These are primed with Hyrax Brown with a zenithal of Dead Animal Bits then a dry brush of ivory

 

 I snuck the head of a Wargames Atlantic Fantasy Guards onto one...

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Two Frostgrave metal miniatures with cultist knight

 

 

Soldiers with knight (the soldiers are slightly smaller)

 

Barbarian with cultists knights (about same size)

 

Barbarian archer with cultist archer

 

 

Thanks for looking!