Castor pulled his knife from the last of the dock workers. Wiping it clean before returning it to its place on his chest rig. A clean kill, the worker wouldn't have agreed of course, but Castor had been responsible for many, much more unpleasant deaths, and knew better than him.
He checked in with his infantry drones. He had lost three in the raid, which was unfortunate. The drones were a loan from his current master and each loss would come out of his compensation.
He hated doing merc work, it felt dirty, but as per usual he had ended up on the losing side of his last war, and the stars were unfortunately silent these days. No war, no underdog in desperate need of warlords with knights of a questionable past. No nothing.
His warlord pinged him, reinforcements were coming. He ordered his drones to load the cargo of archeotech that he had been contracted to steal. They moved it onto a boat he had brought for this very purpose with mechanical precision. He hopped aboard and guided the boat away.
It was always dangerous to work outside his warlord like this, but he dared not pilot it out in the open. While his warlord was priceless, he was very much replaceable, so he hid it, and worked through it remotely.
The return boat ride was uneventful, his warlord pinging him of any patrol locations. The knight assigned to this world was sloppy and a drunk. Had this been a war Castor would have taken this planet easily. He could probably still do it now, but keeping it would be another story, and it would draw the sort of attention that would be the end of him.
Once Castor made it back to the rendezvous he handed off the cargo and returned the drones. He received the payment he was owed minus the cost of the three infantry units that had gotten damaged in the fight. His interaction with his employer was curt but polite. Castor was a professional. Just unlucky when it came to picking a side.
The payment was a mix of local currency and valuable tradeable materials that he could take off world. It was chump change and far from what he really wanted, but desperate times.
He spent the next few days drinking and pining. He let his hair down, what little he had left, but never over indulged. Getting slaughtered and letting slip his background or the fact he had a warlord hidden away would be the death of him. The locals took a liking to him, one of his true skills was the ability to blend into any environment, he was inoffensive and easy to get along with.
During his revelries his warlord pinged him that he had received a message. He felt a tone in the ping. His warlord was unhappy to have been ignored the past few days, warlords could be tetchy sometimes. Castor bid farewell to all his new friends at the tavern and stumbled out the door towards the docks.
He made it to his little row boat and fell inside. He half considered sleeping where he fell but there was a non zero chance he would flip the little boat in his sleep, so pulled he himself together.
It was a good thirty minutes of paddling to make it away from the docks and to the cove. There sitting in his little boat in the middle of the cove, he called for his Warlord.
It rose from the shallows, water cascading from its angular hull. A massive six legged machine of death. Its body made three sections, a mechanical head with a number of oddly place sensors and scanner, next to the head two smaller arms pertruded. It had a middle section where the legs sprang from, like a thorax of an insect. And the back end, its abdomen where its massive grid-fire cannon was attached.
No Warlord looked like another, the church decreed that each one was hand crafted from the gods themselves. Castor had never took much of an interest in religious philosophy, but found the explanation as good as any. His Warlord specialized in long range assault, the grid-fire cannon was a sniper's wet dream; The projectiles only became tangible once inside the target range, allowing Castor to shoot through mountains if he desired.
The machine dwarfed Castor's little boat, he rowed up to one of the legs and climbed the human sized ladder, up towards the cockpit. It popped open for him with a hiss and he slid himself inside. The chair pre-moulded to his shape. He found comfort in the cockpit even though he was still wearing his tactical gear and not his pilot suit.
The cockpit closed and he returned the Warlord to the water. Diving deep enough that the water masked any possible signal.
He then read the message.
"Soldier without a war, find the girl, bring her to the black beast of the pit. Then you will be rewarded with what you most desire."
His Warlord displayed a map for him, of a planet named Apash, with coordinates to what Castor could only assume was the location of the girl.
"The first half of your payment can be found here." There was a second map to a location on a small barren moon.
"Do not dilly dally, the girl is in quite a pickle."
No matter how many times Castor re-read the message it didn't make any more sense. And there was no clue from who or where it came from, but he had his suppositions. He thought about ignoring it, but realistically what else was he going to do? Even merc work was drying up.
He checked the readings on his Warlords core. He had enough juice for another six jumps. It would be cutting it close but it was possible.
He plotted a jump course towards the moon, and the Warlord folded space-time around itself. Taking Castor to see if this payment really existed or if he was jumping straight into a trap.