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Out on the wind blasted expanse of the far steppe, Hauer walked out into the cold pale daylight.
The warm dark fug of the small yurt he had spent the night in whiped away in the pentrating cold of the breeze. Shivering a little and pulling on a ragged padded jacket, Hauer went to check on the horses, nodding to his companion Caliban, who squated by the remains of the campfire, sullenly poking at the feeble embers.

Calibans were aptly named. Bred and engineered to be as tough and durable as possible, they were all ugly bastards. Squat and densely muscled, thick boned blocks of gristle and hairy meat, topped with a neanderthal like skull.

Hauer suspected that there were a few chimp traits shoehorned into the Caliban's engineered chromosone, judging from the length of their thick hairy arms and near prehensile lips.

Givng the horses a quick once over, Hauer idly watched the Caliban scratch absently at the dense lines of scar tissue that crossed his skull, right down past the hair line. The thick white cords of raised and hairless skin were relics of the surgery that marked the completion of the Caliban's augmentation.

A full suite of high end wet-ware, constantly logging and archiving the sensory input of the Caliban, monitoring everything that it saw, felt, heard tasted and smelt.

Strands of microfibre ran adjacent to the Caliban's spinal cord to a titantium encased solid state memory core, hardened against exotic radiation and electromagnetic attack.

Caliban's were walking recorders, sent out on expeditions like this one to witness everything, so that in the case of everytrhing untoward, no data would be lost, providing the Caliban could be retrieved.
Their entire purpose was given over to the task of staying alive. They were all paranoid, treacherous, devious, lazy and surly.

"S' bad day for it." Said the Caliban, scratching his groin and spitting a wad of phlegm onto the dry scrub grass.

"I seen Omens." The Caliban added, by way of explanation.

Hauer nodded absently. The Caliban saw omens everywhere. It was a side effect of their conditioning. A great portion of their education was geared toward self preservation. Some of it was overt, defence drills, military standard escape and evasion training and the like. Survival courses, living off the wilderness and improvising shelter and food.

But the most important part was subliminal programming, memetic doctrines that cultivated an intrinsic reaction of defensiveness and survival to any dnagerous situation. Sophisticated protocols were installed into the minds of Caliban units, which caused powerful effects to surface via the Caliban's subconcious, resulting in the constant paranoia and suspicion.

Primitive superstition was also common.

"I saw a dead Rook this morning, and a blood red sun"
The Caliban seemed quite pleased with this. His face split in a nasty grimace.

"I thought Omens came in threes?" Hauer asked absently. Everyday had brought a fresh set of omens. Like the morning coffee and the furtive evening masturbation, the recital of each new sign of doom had become part of the ritual of the expedition.

"Aye" The Caliban nodded, teasing a morsel of food from between his thick yellow teeth with a strand of stringy grass. "Me stools was portentous."

"What?"

"Loose they was, Oily too. It speaks ill."

Putting aside all thoughts of the Caliban's shit augury, Hauer prepared for the day's trek.

Six weeks ago, Hauer had left the University, Caliban in tow, to meet with the Khan of the High Plains.

He was a rising light of the anthropological Department. One of the young turks eager to carve out their reputations. He had done solid work with indigenous pygmy populations on a squalid archipelago, establishing him as a young man able to turn out solid research under difficult conditions.

On his return, he had heard that an expedition was being plained out to the high plains, to study the nomadic people there. Little was known of them, other than their occassional raids on outlying cities of the Small States. Any work carried out among them would guarantee to make the career of the scholar who brought back documentation of the lives and habits of these unknown people.

Hauer had lobbied hard to win his place on this expedition. The competion had been fierce. It was judged too risky, given the warlike nature of the steppe nomads, to send a full research team. Instead, one scholar and a Caliban would be sent instead.

Hauer had prepared intensely. He had read all available accounts of the nomads, using second and even third hand accounts. He had compared the customs and traditions of other nomad cultures, finding similarities in behaviour and convention. He had taught himself to ride the rough and bad tempered horses favoured on the harsh enviroment of the steppes.

He had won out in the end, over Winklehoffer and Debreer, thanks to his work amongst the pygmies. Intensely suspicious of 'biggers', they had a history of poisoning envoys with blowdarts doped with tree frog venom. Hauer alone had been able to successfully integrate with the tribes, through dint of his skill in linguistics and exhaustive research of ettitquette in primitive societies.

With such a background, he was the natural choice.

And now, Hauer thought glumly, it'll all be ruined by a coprothargic Caliban unit.
The first week, Hauer had little to do with the Caliban unit, spending his time during the long train journey alone in his private cabin, revising his notes on the nomads.

It was only when they were too far out to turn back that Hauer had realised what an absolute clod the Caliban was.

Hauer was going to meet a king, an Emperor. The Khan of the High Plains was a ruler in command of a whole people who when mobilised for war, represented one of the most effective military forces the world had ever seen. He was a man who expected total respect and obedience from his soldiers. To show any disrespect would be fatal.

And Hauer was riding out to meet him with a Caliban unit who took a simple pleasure in eating his own ear wax.
In those early days, Hauer had tried desperately to school the Caliban in the correct way to address the Khan, his retinue and generals.
Hauer had tried to impress upon the lumpen shape that delicacy and tact would be called for. Sensitivity of feeling.

The language would not be a problem, the Caliban had been prepped with a language cluster of all the steppe languages and dialects. The problem would be making sure he didn't scratch his balls whilst in the presences of the Khan.

In the distance, Hauer spotted the collection of Yurts that he had been aiming toward these last six weeks. His heart sank. There was no turning back now.

An hour from the Yurts, The Khan and his retinue rode out to meet Hauer. Each man wore deep Y shaped scars in his cheeks, a scarification ritual associated with manhood, the scars were tattooed black by the ashes rubbed into the fresh wounds they recieved when they became men.

Their armour was scratched and nicked with the marks of hundreds of battles. They rode straight backed and proud with the bearing of born soldiers. They were armed with bows, maces, lances and short curved swords. Each of them had a face burnt brown and leathery by the sun and relentless steppe winds.

They formed up in a shaloow semi circle around Hauer and the Caliban. At the center of them, rode the Khan of the steppes. He was old, lean and drawn by the years of hard campaigning. A white scar split the right side of his face, a jagged ccurve that erupt from below his eye and curved wicked along his jawline.
His eyes had the piercing arrogance of a falcon.

His tattoo-scars where almost invisible amongst the wrinkles that crowded the taut skin of his face. He stared levelly at Hauer, awaiting a response.

Hauer knew that the next few minutes had to be judged exactly. The slightest slip could spell disaster. he felt the sudden grip of the old excitement from back on the archipegalo.

Expertly, he swung down from the horse, knowing that horsemanship was prized amongst these people.
Abasing himself before the Khan, he held up a ceremonial dagger, inlaid with gold and mother of pearl, that would signify the respect and esteem with which Hauer held the Khan.

Keeping his face towards the ground, careful not to make eye contact in case such an act was inpertinent, Hauer addressed the Khan fluently in the local courtly dialect.

"Great Khan - I am a humble scholar, who has travelled far in order to learn from your people, so that I may carry back stories of your greatness to my people far to the west. Worthless as I am, I beseech your mercy and protection on this day."

A murmur passed through the assembled horsemen. Face down to the ground, Hauer allowed himself a smile. He would win renown for this. He knew it. A Fellowship at least was certain.

The Caliban farted.

The Plains, usually forever hissing with the passage of wind through grass seemed struck silent.
Hauer flinched, sweating instantly as he tried to think of ways to counter the egreious breech of ettiquete that had occured.

Unconcerned and seemingly oblivious the Caliban picked his nose.

The Khan and his men broke into laughter. In the harsh vowels of the low dialect, The Khan shouted across to the Caliban unit.

"I like you, little man! You are ugly and will frighten my wives and grandchildren! Join my household, and I will give you twenty of my oxen and your pick of my concubines as your wife!"

Inside the Caliban unit's armoured skull, something warm and greedy overrode the subliminaly programmed paranoia.

"I thinks you've got's a deal boss."

The Khan's general whispered into his ear, pointing at Hauer, still prostrated on the ground before the Khan.
The Khan and his general looked at Hauer for a few more moments, whispering to each other, before they arrived at some agreement.

"You, on the ground." Hauer looked up slowly. The Khan regarded him.
"You are a weakling and a fool. You come to my lands offering trinkets like the harem boy of a broken ruler. I have no use for one such as you."

The Khan turned to one of his soldiers. "Castrate him, break his legs, slice open his belly and stake him out for the crows."
The Khan gave Hauer a last contemptous glance.
"Put out one of his eyes as well, it's been a while since we've done that." The Khan's general smiled broadly, nodding his approval.

Pegged out amongst the whispering grass of the steppe, his guts spilling from his torn stomach, the last sound Hauer heard before the crows descended was the Caliban teaching the Khan of the High Plains an obscene limerick, it's words carried to him on the breeze.