“Skai sha hai!”, Zholl screamed, as- KABOOM! A chain reaction. KABOOM! Began to occur. KABOOM! After all, Yahka wasn’t the only Rotheran artillery boi firing upon the warzone.

  “Agreed, son, agreed,” Zahul had to cover his own hypersensitive bat ears as tightly as he could – KABOOM! – with his fingerless gun mitts, but it was like a cacophonous – KABOOM! – avalanche of disastrous cymbal – KAPOP! POP! POP! POP! –and Lambeg drums – BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! – all crashing upon each other like a toppling of poorly placed instruments. KABOOM!

  It wasn’t a WAAAAAAGH though. It was a complicated and coordinated battle plan among very sober, very single minded orcans. Or orcs, depending on where you stood in the conflict. This wasn’t wagh, this was war. Simple war.

  But a chain reaction pyrotechnics display, this is not what Zahul had intended at all, when calling in for bombardment. Then again, why would the boss be hanging out in his own warehouse, or production facility? Zahul had to get to Aker’s abode nearby. That was the planned next stop, had he not been fired upon by these globs that Yahka just blew up. He had not expected calling in an artillery strike from Yahka would set off a cluster-skai chain reaction of precursor chemical blowouts!

  “ZHOLL!”, he roared over the noisy blasts, “WE GOTTA CHARGE! FOLLOW SHA DA!”

  “THA SKAI SHA GLOBBIN’, OLOG, SHA GONE MAD! IT’S DAR FER SURE OUT THERE!”

  “SHUT UP, BOI!”, he grabbed Zholl – big scabby wound still from the shank on his shoulder, lumbar vertebrae only barely just stitched back up together, some sections of small intestine still spewing disused plasmin to clear out all the dead blood, and of course, still with that big shiner, but it was less swollen now and just a very dark green – and shoved him out the door.

  “DAD, WHAT THE FAA-AAHK!” Zholl yelped as Zahul tackled-dragged him through the hellscape of San Martin become Apocalypse Now, and they dove through a flurry of flaming bricks sent from a faraway methanol and methylamine warelug to reach the patio of the nice grand new chalet that Aker-wungh had fixed up for himself.

  The very high vaulted thatch roof had caught fire, but it was vaulted so high that it created more of an upwards draft of air that kept a decent breeze of ventilation. So even though the chalet was in imminent collapse, Aker-wungh and Tcha-wungh were still there, because they were too worried about all their naz furniture and blinged out gats to worry about their own safety.

  “Sha fuck sha skais doin’ in my lug, sha glob orcs? Shanna ‘fraid to die, hais?”, Aker-wungh screeched in detestation at these intruders of his ruined home.

  “WAAA-AAAGH!”, Zahul had no time to waste, and after secretly scarfing down a stash of the Chief’s stored dried lice to power up over the passing of the rote, Zahul had plenty of calories to Darthrak Step right up to Aker and hold him up by the throat, dangling. Shanna ‘fraid? Sha should be.

  “Gakh-”

  “Enriching shaself with child trafficking, orc!” Zahul was accusatory.

  Aker struggled to gasp out, “I’d… I’d do no- hu-uh- no such thing… kh, orc…”

  It was true. If Aker was going to capture any orcan gurls, it was just to bribe them with his ethereal riches so he could finally get his incel son Tcha a gurlfriend. Then maybe Tcha wouldn’t feel the need to compensate with another gezzno kanon purchase every fortrote.

  This was a waste of time. What Zahul needed was simple. “Wallet Address! Now!”

  “Gakh- kh-”, Tcha-wungh had run away like a snaga instead of helping his Dad, “B-bee- Gakh”, of course these globs were out to rob him. But didn’t they understand that having his wallet address did no good? They needed his seed phrase, but there was no way Aker was going to give that up, not even if they killed him. That inheritance was for Tcha.

  Zahul loosened his grip just lightly enough but strode over to the flames and held Aker also just close enough that he wouldn’t barbeque. Perhaps only lightly. He swiped left on the pipboi to get to the external command terminal line that Zhak hacked into the artillery tool, ready to punch in the runes.

  “-Bee-cee”, Zahul shook him to indicate the bc1q was not necessary, “7… kahk… E…”

  It was awkward holding Aker aloft the whole time by his throat, but Zahul patiently, though angrily, punched it in.

  Finally it was done. He dropped Aker and let him scurry away to find his son, he didn’t need him anymore.

  The pipboi’s wandpad replied-

  error: artillerytool: ext-cmd: (zhaksu)

  ‘bc1q7e32389f2839ffsd9y10w387e344fsd9y19288765r’ command not found.

  Curses! Tarnation! Nine hells! What is this? What is this arcane gibberish? But Zahul knew his way around these wandpads well enough to realize he could resummon the line he just tapped out very quickly by tapping the up rune.

  artillerytool: ext-cmd: [zhaksu] bc1q7e32389f2839ffsd9y10w387e344fsd9y19288765r?

  Ai-sha, he was no good at magick. Not this arcane kind anyway. He scratched his chin. Well, the command had to be in the front. So, he quickly tapped left twice on the interface rune pad to jump the blinking cursor rectangle right on the [username], where the command started.

  artillerytool: ext-cmd: [zhaksu] ?bc1q7e32389f2839ffsd9y10w387e344fsd9y19288765r

  Okay what was it again? Something really simple. He wished he remembered this one. Wait, wait, so easy. Standard. Of course, duh, Zahul!

  artillerytool: ext-cmd: [zhaksu] text?bc1q7e32389f2839ffsd9y10w387e344fsd9y19288765r

  Okay space to indicate we want to enter in which user we want to text, ok, but… hang on. Is this it?

  artillerytool: ext-cmd: [zhaksu] text zhak ?bc1q7e32389f2839ffsd9y10w387e344fsd9y19288765r

  He hit the return rune.

  artillerytool: ext-cmd: text-app: (zhaksu) logged in as ‘zhaksu’, login as ‘zhak’? (Y/N) ?

  What was this? He had no time for this! Yes!

  artillerytool: ext-cmd: text-app: (zhaksu) logged in as ‘zhaksu’, login as ‘zhak’? (Y/N) y?

  Return!

  artillerytool: ext-cmd: text-app: (zhaksu) Please enter password.?

  Curses! A password? Secretive Zhakkathan would never tell his old orcan what his password is. Zahul had no idea why he was so private when the rest of his children were so boisterous and open. He really didn’t have time for this. He had to get Githarie within twenty-four hours, or the hopes of getting her back would fall disastrously slim.

  Wait! Wait. Wait. Wait. Zahul, glob! Sha glob! Zhak talked about this, you’re logged in as the super user, ‘zhaksu’, you have what… admin? Administrator privileges. You can do anything. You should be able to. You just needed that special magic word, that special command, oh but why-

  A big chunk of burning thatch ember collapsed and nearly hit Zahul if Zholl didn’t push him out of the way, but Zahul barely noticed.

  Why couldn’t he remember! Something so simple! Such stupidity! Such… su… super. Super. Super! Super User! Super User Do! Super User Do!

  “DAD! WE SERIOUSLY HAFTA GET DA FAHK OUTTA HERE!”

  Zahul tapped the eighteen little taps, then up, left, left, then ‘sudo text zhak’. He needed to tap as furiously as he could as his son led him out by the shoulder, their kanons still dangling at their sides, slapping hard as they ran from the collapsing chalet.

  artillerytool: ext-cmd: [zhaksu] sudo text zhak bc1q7e32389f2839ffsd9y10w387e344fsd9y19288765r?

  Return! Return! Return!

  Return my Dolphin to me!

  Crackle, “Got it, Daddy.” Geshzugas! Ai-sha but why does Zhak still call him Daddy, it’s so… so gay.

  “Hai! Hello thar young Zhakkathan! Been gettin’ up to no good hmm? Over.”

  “Aye! Yahka! Get off the line! Get off I say!”, Zholl had run he and his father back to the warehouse they had cleared, and since there were less ejected projectiles from the blasts, and just more crumbling, smoldering general collapse conflagration, it was a lot safer to run across the field between the precursors warelug and the merchandise warelug, though Zholl had to still guide his father around the stray fires, so lost was he in the wandpad. He kicked open the door, behind where Melloh and Zhon were waiting, and Zahul and Zholl tumbled in to be caught by the rest of their squad.

  On the floor, still squabbling into his pipboi, which he held close to his mouth, the device could be heard crackling, “Aye, sha forgot to say over! Over!”

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  “AA-AAH!”, Zahul roared in frustration and pounded his fist on the floor.

  Crackle, “Relax, Dad! Relax, I got it. I got the wallet. Over.”

  “Geshzugas, boi! Geshzugas! Sha Da is so proud of sha, boi!”

  Silence. Uh oh. Crackle, “Uh, there’s- there are no transactions. Over.”

  No.

  No. It’s impossible. He had come all this way… for nothing?

  Crackle, “Hai? What does this mean then, nakaz Zhakkathan, ov-”

  Crackle, “SHUT UP, UNCLE YAHKA! Over!” Good boi. Good boi.

  Back in the Defiant, in Zhak’s room, he had every single arcane screen up connected to his beowulf cluster, a big plexiglas box showing all the fancy scavenged components with liquid cooling tanks and sparkly lights, that he named Grendel, because he liked to be all rebel like that. The monster is always cooler, and probably had more processing power anyway, and Grendel’s Mother, the Dragon- well, a word overused, by Zhak’s estimation. Plus, the word dragon had bad connotations for orcans. It gave them the heebie jeebies. Mass destruction is not what arcane computation machines are for.

  Grendel roared rainbow diode hot and the components and fans whined from the pressure because Zhak was multithreading so many different inquiries at once, as many as he could type on the mechanical runepad he pieced together. This one was beige and demure, and he named it Shawty because he was by far the comfiest to type runes on. He blinked away the tears and tried to focus, but wiping his eyes slowed down his runes per minute by a lot.

  Oh Rie Rie! Rie, wherever you are right now I hope sha okay, big sis. Now is what mattered most though, now finally the responsibility had been shoved upon Zhakkathan Thraxes to be the big damn hero. He had to prove himself worthy to be brainy smart Zhak, and- well, you know the rest.

  But-

  His elegant multipurpose rune visualization tool, plus the enormous amount of resolution he could render with all his orcan made and scavenged screens put together – the Godlikes liked their high definition – could show the lines connecting the wallet nodes clear as ghostly threads of spider’s silk, the web of capital and trade. And with a few quick rune taps he could parse out each of the wallets now, of each suspected Hyena.

  He could zero in on each bc1q with quick blurbs and feedback on his gathered intel with just another few quick taps through another terminal nearby where he had opened his wiki app, of course connected to yet another mechanical runepad. This one was bleach white except with some grease smudges, which he called Shooty, because while the keys felt a bit ephemeral in tactile feedback, and unsatisfying to clickety-clack, well it hardly clickety-clacked at all and was quiet as a ghost, at least it typed damn fast. So, he used it to troubleshoot, when dealing with things on a secondary terminal that he couldn’t afford time to key out from his main program on Shawty for.

  He was jumping between Shawty and Shooty with his rolly chair, his hoodie pulled low over his eyes like blinkers so he could just focus on the glowing naz in the projected burzum of the screen background, but it was just plain as all three lunas of the Long Day.

  bc1q7e32389f2839ffsd9y10w387e344fsd9y19288765r, Aker’s wallet, had no transactions at all from 221/232, all the way to this very rote, 236/232.

  Wait, wait, wait, what did Aker have to do with this? He had to trace… he had to find a rogue trader’s wallet!

  He punched a special button built into Shooty, and barked into his headset, “Dad! Hang on! Gonna trace. I’ll gimb it. As Githie would say, gesh it.”

  In high definition audio, but of course turned down to a very low volume, “So proud of ya, Zhakkathan!” Faint digitized explosions could be heard in the background white noise.

  He looked at all the possible suspects. No. There weren’t very many. He could identify every one of the other nodes, Tcha’s was easy to spot from the regularity of his allowance txns for his new gats every fortrote, all the others from the three luna regularity the txns would be made, which is when they made their deals, and when they made their txns with…

  Just two.

  bc1q433w54518740t0gh988395849rf2rt2e2f22245yyu.

  bc1q2390ew0e49y9401867eyy90u3yt7g9vn0m0883fc39.

  It was the latter address that really seemed to handle everything, but the first one sometimes stepped in on the odd occasion, and there were a lot of trades between them, usually the boss mama node handing out the boy toy node some sugar, as far as Zhak could tell. But all the recent transactions were outgoing to really, bizarrely random addresses, surely other rogue traders since those had a lot of transactions too but- none of that mattered because it was in the wrong direction. They were all outgoing.

  They were spending.

  They had spent 0.0003829140299 bits.

  Then they spent a whopping 0.0287384893 bits.

  Then… 0.001930043 bits?

  Then not very much, just 0.0000000030221 bits.

  Then they dropped a solid 0.000023234993938 bits.

  Then just 0.0000000002321 bits.

  Then a very dear 0.0120493999 bits, but they did a txn like this quite regularly, one a luna.

  But there were no payments.

  Nothing.

  No spider web connection to hopefully pick his way, all eensy-weensy like, to find where Githarie’s true captor lay.

  All he had right now…

  Was bc1q433w54518740t0gh988395849rf2rt2e2f22245yyu and bc1q2390ew0e49y9401867eyy90u3yt7g9vn0m0883fc39. They would have to start from there.

  He punched the comm button. He bit his lip hard so his Dad wouldn’t hear him cry, because he had to be brave for Githarie now, but he was so, so scared for her

  “Daddy- Dad, come back. I’ve got a lead, but…”

  Well, he was pretty sure, according to what Daddy told him, that at least one of these addresses pulled a nitrogen scimitar to his face, blinding Dad, and freezing his mug off into pieces.

  The other one took off on a Drake to… who knows where?

  No. No they can’t give up! Anyone can win when the odds are easy, it’s only when it’s tough-

  -when there seems to be no chance-

  That’s when it counts.

  “...over.” He let go of the button.

  Then he pulled his hood lower over his eyes to hide the crinkling, sorrowful burzum that was swallowing his soul.

  Rie Rie’s nakaz bru had failed her.

  A big stack of dried ephedra that had been left around for too long and no longer had high concentrations of the active compounds sought was ignited, soaked too in spilled methylamine, so it would create a burning stack of flaring embers that blanketed the nearby area with a column of thick, dark smoke.

  ‘And war, war never changes.’

  ‘And war has changed. It’s no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicities.’ Well, that was certainly true for this one.

  ‘Love the smell of napalm in the morning.’

  Orcans were often more worried about damage to their possessions, than their bodies.

  It was true. Something as detestable as the secret of elvan immaculate conception was way out of Aker’s moral boundaries, but the secret itself was far beyond his ken. He’d happily take his vig on meth trades between the Hyenas, who were too dumb to arrange txns with the rogue trader sib-couple. The Hyenes relied on Aker to flow them, which he gladly did at extortionary fees. Vyerna and Drizzit- he liked those two. Good business.

  Empyreal bit addresses that started with ‘bc1q’ indicated a native segregated witness address, which almost all were, at this point.

  Really, Zahul? This whole time San Martin was still exploding all around him. But we’ll spare you the KABOOMs, scryer.

  Phubbing. How rude.

  He’d started calling himself this more, so much did he miss his dear Githarie so- Zhon and Zholl called Zahul ‘Dad’, and Zhak called Zahul ‘Daddy’.

  ‘The only winning move was not to play.’

  You think a big nurd like Zhak wouldn’t have read Amazing Spider-Man #33?

  Though limited to terminal interfaces, Zhak used an old school agentic large language model, the predecessor of the spirit, that could recreate imagery with machine learning algorithms into its best ASCII approximation. From there, all he had to do was just use ancient salvaged arcane screens, an abundant relic, that almost by default had massive resolutions.

  And Zhak could type damn fast, easily clearing 95 runes per minute on any device, but happily reaching 125 on Shawty with the Dvorak layout, and making it to 100 with Shooty even though Shooty was still Qwerty, simply because rune taps on Shooty were so light, easy and precise, and it really felt like a spirit was just sucking up his thoughts through his fingers and dumping it in text on the screen.

  Zahul wished Zhak hadn’t said that. It gave him a horrible pang of sadness, missing his dear Dolphin.

  Drizzit.

  Vyerna.

  It was a delight for dominating Vyerna to negotiate fees for submissive Drizzit into performing depraved sexual favors, with her larger share of the cut. Her having the larger share of the cut was non-negotiable. This may have seemed redundant since Drizzit would have probably done it for free, and after all was done, they pretty much took an even split anyway. But that wasn’t the point, for Vyerna. The point was the humiliation that Drizzit was reduced to a gigolo. And while this arrangement seems toxic, well, it is toxic, the thing is- Drizzit loved it too.

  Gryphantene zipties.

  Ketamine. A lot of ketamine. They had planned to flip some but failed.

  Hollow shells in the shape of .338 Lapua rounds, custom made to be very thin to not cause too much damage, and to be pumped full of ketamine.

  Nitrogen to reload Drizzit’s canisters. They didn’t want too much of the stuff. In pressurized liquid form, it was dangerous. Just enough to fill the canisters. Nitrogen was easy to acquire; it was abundant.

  A big carbide-plastic stretcher.

  Some thick pleather straps to bind an orcan gurl to a carbide-plastic stretcher. Not tough enough to withstand berserking strength, but they assumed that they didn’t need it if the payload was rendered comatose by the moon sugar, that is, ketamine. The orcan gurl in question was too spent by then to rage, anyway.

  Liquified plutonium fuel for Jarlaxle to slurp.

  Was dead. Power Word: Killed. Pokgai’ed. P.K’ed.

  For now, at least. He had a lead. He had a lead!