[M] Shades of Grey - IC

[Azazeal849]

Rated M for violence and distressing themes.
Potential strong language and drug references


http://i.imgur.com/B0BtsO5.png
Banner credit: Karma (http://role-player.net/forum/showthread.php?t=73753&page=25&p=2720523&viewfull=1#post2720523)

LINK TO OOC (www.role-player.net/forum/showthread.php?t=80573)

The night-time hive was a billion points of light, arranged in rows and rings and spires. It almost mesmerised Kim as she plummeted towards it, the wind roaring in her ears and snatching at her clothes and pleated hair. Somehow, without daylight to reveal the ugly truth, even the corrupt, suffering city of Vaxanhive conspired to be beautiful.

The daemon wears an angel's face. The warning came back to her in her father's voice; the calm, confident tone that had originally convinced her of the rightness of the Imperial Creed and inspired her to join the missionarius galaxia. Back when life was simple, and right and wrong were more clearly defined.

The hive city twinkled, but above and around her everything was inky black. The agents of fire-team Aegia had disappeared into the night, and she was only vaguely aware of the rest of Kronis team tumbling through the darkness alongside her. The positioning tracker on Kim's wrist shrilled as it detected her reaching deployment height, and she dropped one arm from beside her head to yank on the activation toggle flapping around her chest webbing. A dull hum vibrated through her as the anti-grav plate strapped to her back thrummed into life. Grav chutes were faster, safer and more reliable than traditional parachutes - or so the electro-priest Burakgazi had assured her, in his usual condescending manner. Kim couldn't be sure if it was her alignment with a parallel, "lesser" faith that prompted the electro-priest's patronising response, or the fact that she was a woman. Burakgazi originally hailed from Vostroya, and that planet's near-religious veneration of their firstborn sons did not give many of its scions a favourable opinion of the female gender - unless they were at home breeding up said firstborn, or else staying far away from the men's world of front-line combat.

Whatever his personal views, Burakgazi's faith in the grav-chute packs seemed to be justified. Kim felt herself gradually slowing down, and then being pulled upright as the pack's gyroscope orientated itself. The Emperor protects, she thought gratefully, although Burakgazi would no doubt have ascribed it to the accuracy and timing of a machine that none of the rest of them understood.

Hanging from her harness, she wrapped one hand round the grip of her lasgun and turned her other wrist to look at her position tracker. The crosshairs on the screen were drifting away from the central dot, and she tapped a button on the control pad attached to her grav-chute harness. A small thruster behind her left shoulder flared, and the jet of compressed air pushed her right, away from one of the towering hive spires and towards the murky darkness of the city's eastern docklands.

"Chute deployed." she reported into the microphone stalk curving round her jaw, and checked her position tracker again. "Sixty seconds."

As fire-team Kronis activated their packs and began to drift silently downwards, fire-team Aegia were already approaching their objective. Following the wide arc of the river that cut through the centre of Vaxanhive, they descended towards an abandoned industrial estate. It was a wide concrete plaza, littered with stripped-out workshops and stacks of industrial scrap, and nestled between a run-down hab block and one of the shanty camps that grew up like weeds around the riverside water-treatment plants.

Abner Able thought he could feel his teeth itching as he picked up on a latent psychic presence below them, and he knew that they were running out of time. As the fire-team dropped, thrusters flaring to compensate for the buffeting wind, a blue light flashed near the shell of a gatehouse. It was swiftly followed by another, and then a third which cut across the blue lights with a thread of green. Abner realised that he was looking at the strobe of lasfire. He saw people moving in the gloom, sprinting between piles of old scaffolding and lifter rigs that had rusted to death years before. The darting figures were punching shots into a boarded-up warehouse, while men in dark clothes were returning fire through gaps in the flak-board. The defenders seemed organised, and well-equipped by the standards of a slum-level gang - Abner saw them snapping hand signals and barking into vox-radios strapped to their shoulders as they deployed to meet the assault. The psychic pulse he had sensed was stronger now, and it was coming from inside the warehouse.

Sarna was the first to touch the ground, landing lightly as a cat, and the attacker in front of her was the first to die. Crouched behind a pile of corrugated iron, his eyes fixed along the barrel of his battered lasgun, he didn't even see the Moritat as she dropped down behind him and ended his life with a single cut of her shimmering power sabre. Swiftly kicking the corpse over, Sarna saw a cross tattooed in white and blue on the palm of the man's limp hand. It was a cross she had seen before; scribbled on a scrap of parchment by astropath D'Lane, in the middle of one of his fevered visions. The poor astropath was pushing 70 and ailing fast, Sarna knew - small wonder then that Lucullis had recruited the precog Mai to replace him - but his vision on this matter had been clear enough. The tattoo was a heretical sign. It was the mark of the Slaaneshi cult that called itself the Refuge.

Hadrak and Burakgazi touched down together, behind the shelter offered by the rusting skeleton of an amenities block. As he crouched to lean round the corner of the wall, Hadrak saw X's and crude skulls spray-painted onto the rear wall of the warehouse. He felt a twinge in his stomach, feeling physically sick. Something within the building was lending unholy power to the otherwise mundane sigils.

As he watched, Hadrak saw a trio of the attackers break cover and rush the rear side of the building. One of them was fumbling with what looked like a pipe bomb. The warehouse door in front of the three burst open and a figure darted out, a figure clad in a black jumpsuit whose loose sleeves were secured by tightly-wound strips of dark leather. A long, single-edged blade in the figure's hand flashed in a horizontal arc, and the man carrying the pipe bomb reeled aside as his severed head went spinning away across the concrete. One of the bomber's companions, a gangly young man, dropped his lasgun with a yelp of terror and dived for cover amongst a stack of rusting pipes. The third tried to shoot back at the charging swordsman, but shot wide in his panic, the blue threads of his lasbolts punching a row of holes in the warehouse concrete. The swordsman made another cut and the man staggered back, dropping his lasgun to clutch at his throat as blood jetted between his fingers. There were more shouts of alarm from the attackers, and a flurry of las-fire. The shots punched the ground and sent geysers of burnt concrete erupting into the air, but they all missed the swordsman as he came weaving and leaping through the industrial detritus towards the shooters. Green lasers still blitzed from the front side of the warehouse, but as the attackers focused on the rampaging swordsman, Hadrak saw that the door to the warehouse was now unguarded.


+ + + + + +

Fire-team Kronis dropped, descending in close formation. Loading cranes reared up towards Kim like pointing fingers, and steel boat sheds were painted orange by the phosphor glow of lamp posts. Kim's vox-radio was full of whispering static as she dropped into the warren of narrow streets that surrounded the dock. The daemon was close, picking at the airwaves as it tried to tear through the fabric of their reality, and they were running out of time. For a moment, she thought she heard someone whisper her name through the static.

She tore the microphone hook away from her ear and flung it as far as she could. The communicator tumbled away and landed somewhere in the street below, taking the unholy whispering with it. Still ten metres above the ground, Kim suddenly spotted a pair of young men standing sentinel at the roadside. The yellow street-lights washed the colour from their clothes, and splashed their shadows against the flank of a cargo hauler that was parked behind them. The shadows showed the jagged outlines of the las-rifles in their hands.

One of the men suddenly looked up, straight at the descending agents. He shouted, pointing upwards to his companion as he raised his lasgun. A thread of light sizzled into the air, narrowly missing Kim's team-mate Anais.

"Shit, they're onto us!" Kim shouted, not even sure if her fellow agents could still hear her without her vox-radio. "Drop, drop, drop!"

She braced her Volpone lasgun awkwardly against her chest and fired a volley of red las-beams down at the two men. She missed them both but the shots had the desired effect, sending the men ducking aside as flashes of melted steel bloomed off the side of the cargo hauler. Kim mashed the control panel of her grav-chute, rapidly dialing down the anti-grav plate. She went into freefall and landed hard a second later, the impact forcing her to drop and roll to avoid breaking an ankle.

The two reeling guards began to recover as Anais dropped to the ground next to Kim. They snarled as they re-aimed their guns at the tall warrior woman.

Mai landed on one hand, feeling the potential of imminent futures shiver up through the tarmac into her fingertips. The daemon tearing at the thin veil of reality was scattering and stretching the images she saw, filling the usually chipper psyker with a sense of foreboding. Alexi Holt hit the ground beside her a half-second later. Casting his gaze past the smoking cargo hauler, he saw a purple light flickering in the distance. Of greater concern, however, were the five gun-toting underhivers running down the road towards him, responding to the shouts of their two comrades.

[dakkagor]

This was not her first drop by grav chute. She had infiltrated a desert city alongside Priestess Orla some three standard years ago, her first operation away from the temple. It had been a difficult mission. Not only was Orla one of her first teachers, and held her to an exacting standard, but it was her first time off world, and her first time working for a master other than the temple. And while she had learnt much, on that mission and since then, she was still not looking forward to jumping again.

"Aegia team, deploy."

She wordlessly got up, and flashed a smile at Kimmie and Mai. There was nothing to fear. Either she would land, and do her duty, or she would die, and the manner of her death mattered little. Only how many souls she sent ahead to the Emperors table, how much blood she could fill his chalice with, how much torn flesh she could pile on his table. The Corpse God, for whom blood is drunk and flesh is eaten.

She picked up her pace and hit the exit at a dead run, flinging herself into the void. Down in that city of sin and debauchery was enough flesh and blood to earn her a high seat at the table. A near limitless supply of heretics, recidivists, traitors, murderers, rapists, thieves, cowards and killers.

Emperor willing, her blade would bring justice to them all. And it was that thought that kept her smiling all the way to the ground.

+++++

Sloppy.

Sarna recovered from the blow, flicked her blade clean. The words of her first instructor rang through her head.

Flow from blow to blow. Kill to kill. Motion to Motion. Nothing is wasted. Every movement must be considered part of the next. Every step, and every strike, part of the wider dance.

"Yeah yeah. Easy for you to say, Reaper. You didn't just fall out of a perfectly good dropship." she muttered as she stepped over the spreading pool of gore.

She ducked low and crouched next to the fresh corpse, as bullets began to ping and rattle from her cover. Looking up and down the line of scrap, she saw that at most of the men around her had not even noticed their comrades death. She cast her gaze out towards the courtyard and saw that they were focusing their fire on the man with the sword. He moved with an admirable speed and vital strength, but his fighting style was predicated on one objective. As another head sailed clear of its owner, Sarna smiled.

"I've got the pretty boy with the butter knife gentlemen. Book for the door once we're dancing and I'll follow you when I'm done having my wicked way with him."

She darted from her position, moving left. Lasbolts and solid slugs whined and snapped over her head as she ran at a low crouch.

The next cultist turned and started to bring his lasgun around to fire. Sarna planted a foot on the wreckage barricade, and pushed herself upwards as she brought her sword over her head. She descended like a wrathful angel, powered blade shearing rifle raised in defence, crown, temple, face, jaw, collarbone and ribs in one glorious blow that exited just above his hip. As she completed the fall her left hand held the blade as she landed on her right, and vaulted over the corpse and a spray of bullets. Laughing, she landed on her feet in front of another cultist, and this time her blade travelled through his waist, severing his spine and the trunk of his body in a fountain of hot gore. She weaved around the toppling chunks of man as more bullets sought her out, now that the attackers were aware something was in their midst, killing them. As she ran her throwing knifes sang, sinking into a pair of throats that cut battle cries short, to replace them with gurgled screams. Her final victim threw down his rifle, and turned to run. She cut out his knees, and then spun her blade in a figure of eight, scissoring him apart.

Better.

She laughed again, and vaulted the barricade. The swordsman, his own blade wet with blood, stood before her.

"Hello pretty boy." She purred, flicking her sword clean as she approached. "Care to dance?"

[Felwether]

Abner had been looking forward to the drop. He had dipped into the mind of a Harakoni Warhawk deserter a number of years ago and he had to admit that the experience was quite exhilarating. The former drop trooper had the most vivid memories of participating in massed combat drops, diving through bursts of flak and white hot tracer fire, along with hundreds of her comrades, plummeting down from the heavens like it was the most natural and enjoyable thing in the world. Abner’s opinion of the experience could not have been more different.

Even after his pack had deployed the howling wind was deafening. It screamed in his ears and tossed him violently from side to side, causing his stomach to lurch. He felt helpless as he floated towards glittering lights of Vaxanhive, his legs dangled uselessly beneath him and he was resigned to the fact that he could be plucked from of the sky by an errant lasbolt at any moment. The mild discomfort he had first felt when the doors of the jet opened began to intensify as he continued his descent, and the distance between him and the summoning site decreased.

Through the light-enhancing lenses of his photovisor, he could just make out the Moritat, Sarna, going about her bloody work, carving through cultists with her deadly power sabre. Suddenly he had hit the ground, narrowly avoiding a jagged pile scrap. He staggered forward into cover behind a dilapidated lifting rig, shrugging off his pack as he did so like it was some kind of parasitic alien. Panting hard, with his back to the rig, he drew his revolver from the black leather holster that hung just beneath his left armpit as stray lasbolts whined past him.

“I can tell you one thing.” He called, to no one in particular. “I”m never bloody doing that again!”

Abner was about as far from his comfort zone as possible, preferring as he did, for his foes to be asleep or otherwise distracted. He had been in more than a few scraps in his time but this was a full-scale battle. He wasn’t here to fight though, at least not primarily, that was for the others. Abner had been included in the hopes that he could extract information from surviving cultists at the close of the operation - an eventuality that he dreaded.

Maybe we’ll kill them all. He thought, as he thumbed back the hammer of his pistol. He peered cautiously out of cover and resolved to make his way over to Hadrak and Burakgazi who had touched down just ahead of him, sheltered behind the ruins of some long abandoned building. As he prepared to make his move a young man, fumbling with a jammed autogun, his skin adorned with blasphemous symbols, emerged from behind a heap of detritus. A straggler, he reckoned, cut off from the attack. Abner panicked and fired three times. The revolver bucked in his hands and the cultist went down, his torso torn to pieces by poorly placed amputator rounds.

Abner bolted, not checking to see if the man was dead, and half running, half falling, made his way towards his team mates. The warehouse loomed up in front of him and the pain in his head threatened to become intolerable. He didn't have to be a diviner to know that something very bad was on its way, and soon. Abner skidded into cover next to Burakgazi and straightened his photovisor, the mirrored, circular lenses staring somewhat expectantly at the electro priest.

[Azazeal849]

Fire-team Aegia - Sarna, Abner, Hadrak, Konstantin

"Hello pretty boy." she purred, flicking her sword clean as she approached. "Care to dance?"

The black-clad figure turned on his heel, away from the headless body spasming at his feet. His face was striking; broad-browed and diamond-jawed, with fair, cleanshaven skin and black hair that fell in soft waves to his shoulders. His blue eyes were hooded, giving them a look of permanently narrowed amusement. He looked the young Moritat facing him up and down, and then his gaze shifted to the soft power-field shimmer haloing her blade.

"Hm." he grunted, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards.

Sarna heard rather than saw the snap-hiss of a matching power-field thrumming into life around the man's own blade. It twirled a blinding green circle around his head before swiping in from Sarna's left. She smiled; as she had expected, straight for the neck. She swung her own blade into a vertical parry, and there was a sparking flash as the two disruptor fields repelled each other. She pushed up and over, using the green blade's own momentum to send it sweeping harmlessly over her head, disengaged, and made her own downward cut. The swordsman twisted almost balletically to weave under it, and then drove forward, forcing Sarna to skip back a step to maintain her distance.

The green bar of the swordsman's weapon flicked out again as she retreated between the rusted corpses of two industrial skips. It engaged her own blade once, twice and again - crish, crish, crish - in a rapid trio of strikes and counters. Sarna's blade fanned a bright circle, designed to collect her opponent's sabre-point and sweep it aside, but the black-clad swordsman leapt backwards three paces, and her sword instead tore a glowing gash in the side of the skip.

"You're not from the Refuge." the swordsman said, smiling at Sarna as they both returned to guard. Neither of them were out of breath. "Go home, little sister."

He ran forward, pushed up off his left foot, and planted his right above the molten line Sarna had left on the skip, hacking down at her from above.


+ + + + + +

Abner bolted, not checking to see if the man was dead, and half running, half falling, made his way towards his team mates. The warehouse loomed up in front of him and the pain in his head threatened to become intolerable. He could hear a voice vibrating somewhere beyond hearing, thrumming through his bones like an electric shock.

Red King. it said, chanting in time to Abner's heartbeat, to the snap of criss-crossing lasbolts, to the invisible pulsing of the sigils daubed on the warehouse walls. Master of Mankind.

Rubber tyres and stacks of rotted construction wood had caught fire under the searing kiss of las-beams, and were vomiting thick smoke into the air. A Slaaneshi attacker flailed backwards, his chin snapping up as a lasbeam carved into his skull and blew the back of it off into the air. There were five or six of the attackers left; huddled behind cover, stunned by the ferocity of the Khornate counterattack and the sudden arrival of strike team Aegia. All of the ones on the other side of the warehouse had fallen silent after Sarna and the black-clad swordsman had disappeared into the smoke.

Crouched behind a stack of ceramic tiles that were cracking and sloughing away under the barrage from the warehouse, one of the Slaaneshis belatedly spied Abner and the others at the corner of the building. He slapped urgently at the shoulder of his nearest companion, before shuffling awkwardly round on his knees. Abner ducked back just in time, as a stuttering stream of blue las-fire seared past the corner of the building.

[ElizabethStark]

Time seemed to go by in small doses. This wasn't his first time falling into combat, and it certainly wouldn't be the last should he survive the onslaught. Hadrak thought of the Emperor in these last non-combative moments. He was doing this for him, and almost him alone. From his teenage years to this sound day, his determination sent him to please the Father, in order to find peace and forgiveness. To do some good. To rid himself of evil and sickness, from when he was a child. This was but another day for him to prove himself, prove his worth.

The moment of descending was upon them, and Hadrak felt his body move as he dived, plummeting to the hive's surface. The wild wind caused his reddish hair to whip in a myriad of different places behind him. When the time was right, he peeled his chute for deployment. He could see his team below him as they landed in separate locations, aside from Burakgazi, who found a spot directly near him. Violence was already ensuing around them, and moreover, there was an unholy feeling wafting in the air. Hadrak clenched his fist, but nevertheless pulled out his hellpistol.

Abruptly, a shadow of unknown origin cut its way through from the warehouse, leaving the building unguarded. This granted him an opportunity. However, that thought was struck short by powerful lasfire manifesting its way through to his and Burakgazi's location, and Hadrak had not taken into account of Abner's presence.

He took further covering from said lasfire. As soon as the fire had come to a holt, Hadrak readied his own firearm. The distance may have been too great, but steadying his pistol at just the right angle, he fired...

[Azazeal849]

Fire-team Aegia - Sarna Abner, Hadrak, Konstantin

As soon as the fire had come to a halt, Hadrak readied his own firearm. The distance may have been too great, but steadying his pistol at just the right angle, he fired.

The red thread of his hellpistol beam struck the stack of construction tiles, sending more white-hot shards of ceramic blooming into the air, and then hit the Slaaneshi as he was clawing for a fresh power pack for his lasgun. The man reeled back, clutching his arm. His nearest companion dragged him up, roughly, and suddenly all five attackers were retreating, scrambling away at a ducking run. A blitz of lasfire from the warehouse pursued them, and one man went skidding forward on his knees as a puff of vaporised blood exploded from his back.

The way was clear - until the defenders also noticed the team at least.

[Imperial1917]

The wind whipped past her as they descended from the dropship. Cold shards of ice struck her through the thin material of her clothes where they clung close to her skin, melting instantly against the warmth of her skin. Blood pounded in her ears as it coursed through her body, its thrum blocking out even the sound of the howling wind and the grav-chute when she activated it. She felt the wind diminish like the last echoes of the howl given voice by a wolf, the last of its pack. Deep within, she howled with it.

Below, the world passed in a whirl of strobing lights that stabbed out into the eternal darkness. She blinked away tears prompted by the piercing wind and saw Kimmie, dear Kimmie, fold her arm over an ear and rip it away, her slender figure silhouetted by the lights. An easy smile crept onto her face and she thought she could hear a voice not unlike the team leader whispering her name in a delicious murmur in her ear. For a moment the world seemed to float, suspended in time as she was suspended in the air, with neither heaven above nor earth below.

With an effort, she turned her face back to earth. Brilliant flashes of light flew from the ground and the moment shifted like the gear of a Leman Russ. The world seemed to crease around the beams flung skyward and she could abruptly feel the air folding as the ozone was seared. Her skin prickled and the hair on her arms rose as she felt the air vaporize, creating micro-voids that were insignificant individually, but together drew on the things around them as they collapsed and air rushed in to fill the void. She knew how they felt.

Then Kimmie was calling. She saw the team leader fold herself and return fire, the last vestiges of serenity shattered by the silent roar of raw red light that stabbed the retina, burning the image into the memory. Reaching around, she snapped at the grav-chute controls and went into freefall behind her leader as the enemy sought cover. The abrupt whip of the air as the field collapsed filled her being in the same moment it ended.

Mai landed on one hand, feeling the potential of imminent futures shiver up through the tarmac into her fingertips. The daemon tearing at the thin veil of reality was scattering and stretching the images she saw, filling the usually chipper psyker with a sense of foreboding. She stood, for a moment oblivious to the deadly fire blazing all around her. Her fire-red and neon-yellow headband fell around her eyes as she turned her head skyward and let out an unearthly howl that the turmoil around her did not mute, the images coursing through her body like an electric surge.

Reaching up a hand that shook like an obscura addict going through withdrawal, she grasped the cloth, her fingers digging into the skin below it. She flung the headband away, skin scraping away and hair being pulled from her scalp. Her gaze fell on the two closest cultists. She felt everything about them. Abruptly the first step to victory was apparent through the whirl of possibilities. Seizing the hilt of her force sword, she felt the pieces fall into place as the future unfurled before her like a banner in the wind. Drawing it, she howled as the power surged through her being, piercing air and warp as she leapt over their pitiful cover, bringing the blade down onto the closer of the two.

[Cfavano]

Anais hated falling. Too late she feared, it was to tell of her fear of heights.not that anyone would have cared, and it only would have made her look weak. The wind whipped against her, cold and bracing. The glimmering lights of the city were her only guide. Never before had she seen a place so big, not even in the Capitol. But now was not the time tor musing. Now was the time for action. When she approached the agreed zone, she activated her chute, slowing her descent.

It should have been fine, but luck was against her as they were spotted. Angling herself, instead of seeking cover, she changed her descent vector to head towards the two cultists. Las-fire crackled around her, many shots going wild or dissipating against her shield. When she was a few meters from the ground, she blew the emergency releace and the bolt straps disengaged, causing her to plummet toward's the one cultist, feet first. He stumbled out of the ways as she grafecully landed on her feet and drew her long knives. Though, they were knives in name only, being almost as large as the Fangs wielded by the Catachan Jungle Fighters.

As soon as she hit the ground, she was on him. He couldn't bring his lasgun to bear, and instead tried to use it as an awkward club. The cultist fought bravely, but eventually, Anais got in one his, to the calf, then another to the arm, the gut, the knee. Blood flowed freely, and as he finally dropped his guard, Anais came in with a wicked upward slash, coming up behind the jaw and cutting the front half of his skull off. As he fell to his knees, the rest of his brain fell out, followed by him. The one dead, she turned to the engaged one, and began pressuring his defense.

[dakkagor]

"You're not from the Refuge." the swordsman said, smiling at Sarna as they both returned to guard. Neither of them were out of breath. "Go home, little sister."

He ran forward, pushed up off his left foot, and planted his right above the molten line Sarna had left on the skip, hacking down at her from above.

Sarna pulled her sword up into a high block, and skidded backwards on the concrete controlling the blow. She broke the lock, stepping back before counter attacking with a series of high blows that rang from his sword.

"Little sister? I'm not your 'sister', cultist!"

The swordsman swept his blade in a flat, head taking arc, interrupting her sequence, and Sarna flipped away under the hissing edge, throwing a pair of knives as she went. He easily weaved through the deadly projectiles and attacked with a series of powerful, downwards hacks. Sarna met each one with a parry, but was losing ground until she felt her back slam into a rusted out cargo eight container.

The swordsman stepped back with a sardonic smile, and drew his blade up for a killing stroke, before charging with full force. Sarna stepped into the attack, relishing the surprise on his face as she finally caught his blade and guided its point into the metal of the shipping container with a molten hiss. With his momentum behind the blow, it sunk up to the hilt into the metal.

"Maybe. . ."

Sarna slammed her elbow into the back of his head, causing his face to smash into the container. He released his hold on the blade and staggered backwards, blood streaming from his nose as Sarna stood back, laughing.

"Not so pretty now, Heretic."

He was about to respond when a look of pain crossed his face, and he slumped to the ground, blood seeping from his side. Behind him, with an idiot smile, was one of the attacking cultists with a short combat knife covered in blood, and a spatter of crimson on her black coveralls.

"Good job distracting him Sister! Now we can. . ."

"YOU FRAKKING COCKTEASE!" Sarna yelled, resisting the urge to throw her sword to the ground in fury. "It was just getting to the good part and you STABBED HIM IN THE BACK LIKE A LITTLE BITCH!" The cultist recoiled, and realising her error, started to scramble for her autogun. Regrettably, Sarna was quicker and crossed the short distance between them in two ground eating strides, swinging her blade up and taking of the offenders right arm at the shoulder, before reversing the blow and severing the left. With a snarl she spun the blade in a flat wide arc, and the energised edge severed her head.

"Frakking killstealing cultist whore. . ." she muttered at the body as it slumped to the ground. Behind her, the swordsman stirred. Sarna stomped over and delivered a savage kick to his head, knocking him back to the ground.
"Might as well take you alive, frakking no good cultist shitbag. . . "
She quickly slapped a cuff on one of his arms, and dragged him to the corner of the container, running the cuffs through a loop before cuffing his other arm.
"You better not bleed to death while I'm gone." she muttered in a warning tone, before sliding into the shadows. She could hear that the fire-fight out here had changed character. Hadrak, Abner and Konstantin probably needed help.

[Azazeal849]

Fire-team Kronis - Kimmie, Anais, Alexi, Mai

The one dead, Anais turned to the other, and began pressuring his defence. As the cultist flailed backwards, trying desperately to scramble away from her flashing knives, Mai leapt over their pitiful cover, bringing her blade down. Mai's vision of the cultist looking up - open-mouthed, frozen in horror - converged with reality as her force spear drove him to the ground and pinned him there. The body convulsed once from the psychic shock washing through its limbs, and then went still.

Behind them, Kim regained her feet and shrugged off the dead weight of her grav-chute. Her strong, well-proportioned face, normally the sandy colour of summer wheat, was rendered colourless by the street lights, and her intense brown eyes had turned black. Bringing her lasgun up to her shoulder, she pivoted on one foot in response to Alexi's barked warning. A knot of five men were pounding up the road towards them, thumbing the safety catches of their autoguns. Kim's own hand went to the forward trigger of her lasgun's underslung launcher, and there was a sharp choom as an incendiary grenade corkscrewed away down the street. It hit the ground between two of the cultists with a flash and a firework scatter of white sparks.

All five men screamed out and reeled aside, dropping their weapons and clawing at their faces. Fire from the team dropped three, while the other two stumbled to the ground of their own accord a few moments later. They were still screaming as Kim and the others reformed and began to hurry up the narrow street between the warehouses. Kim felt a lump constrict in her throat as she glanced down at a red and black ruin that had been a face, its eyes reduced to a pale slime trailing across its charred jaw. No time. And no doubt - not in front of the agents who looked to her for their spiritual guidance.

"His will be done." she told herself, the words half a snarl as she left the mewling casualties to whatever mercy her teammates would provide, and covered her mouth with her sleeve against the fizzing phosphor residue. Pushing through the hot, white smoke, she was confronted by a glare of purple light as she stumbled out into the dockside loading area.

A set of skeletal wooden piers jutted out into the black water of the river, and empty pallets were stacked ready for the small-time traders who ferried their wares across from the north bank every sunrise. Heavy iron loops, sunk into the concrete, anchored chains which held the pallets in place, but two of the chains had been broken free and instead coiled around the arms of a lone man, from which the purple glow came. He was an old man but still strong - white-haired but with old muscle still showing beneath his thin, pale skin. Stripped to the waist, he was bleeding from a symbol that had been carved into the right side of his chest. The open wound was flickering purple, as if the man was burning from within with unholy fire.

Taking aim down the iron sights of her lasgun, Kim almost dropped the weapon as a sharp pain lanced through her head. The symbol remained burned into her scrunched-shut eyelids as she fought against a sudden, overwhelming urge to throw up. Ahead of her the chained man began to rise into the air, his feet hovering half a metre above the ground as actinic lightning began to spark around the chains that strained against his bound wrists. The man's head was thrown back, his mouth gaping open as if to let loose a mighty shout.

"Don't look straight at him!" Kim warned, trying to blink away her nausea as her team-mates came pounding up behind her. Alexi, gaunt and stoic, his hawkish features laced with tattooes; Anais, her blonde hair wild and an exultant look in her eyes, with blood spattering the leather bindings around her wrists; Mai, touched by the warp but still the emperor's child, her crackling force spear held at rest behind her back.

Kim motioned to Anais, who had a dragon-mouthed plasma pistol strapped to her leg. "Torch the heretic!"

No sooner had the words left her mouth, then a sickle-shaped knife came singing out of the darkness towards her. Kim's eyes widened in shock as she reflexively lurched her head backwards. The knife missed her throat by a hair's breadth, but the hooked blade snagged on her neck-chain, and she felt a brief, choking pull before the chain snapped and her Ministorum icon went pinwheeling away across the concrete. Her attacker was a young, chiselled man with acorn-brown skin and a manic look in his dark eyes. He wore a leather jacket that had been ripped open across the right side of his chest to reveal a smooth, muscular pectoral. A prescribed act for many Slaaneshi rituals, Kim knew. She staggered back, lashing the butt of her lasgun in frantic defence as the knife-fighter came at her again with blinding speed.

More of the Slaaneshi cultists appeared, seemingly out of nowhere; one leapt down from atop a gantry crane, and another came handspringing out between two uncoupled cargo trailers. A third came darting towards Alexi, seeming to simply dance around the scything burst of the agent's autogun. He grappled the still-smoking barrel with one hand and punched out at Alexi with the other, close enough for him to smell the odd sweetness of his breath and see the glimmer of something unnatural behind his eyes.

One of the cultists barrelled into Anais, the tatters of his ripped shirt dragging behind him like kill-pennants. He only carried one knife to the gladiatrix's two, but he was superhumanly fast, sparking a white flare from her refractor shield almost before she could counter. The amulet projector burned hot against her chest as it struggled not to overheat and cut out under the sustained attack.

Mai saw her opponent plain, an invisible halo of latent warp power dancing around his head as he came flailing towards her. She saw the incoming blow of his hooked knife a moment before it fell and it was still only just enough, the Slaaneshi coming at her with almost impossible speed.

[Atrum Daemon]

The fall during deployment was bracing. It removed any lingering, biting thoughts from Alexi's mind. His focus remained on the mission at hand. He prepared himself for the inevitable violence to come. His autogun was strapped securely and loaded with a long, banana-shaped magazine. It had become a favorite of his shortly after he acquired it for it's stopping power and sheer noise. Of the things he had brought with him from Volg Hive, reliance on being loud was one. You learn quick growing up in a hell hole like that that a gun being loud can be just as effective as the gun actually working. The Armageddon-pattern had the benefit of doing both and doing them well. In his shoulder rig, that curious hand-canon of his sat. And at his waist was secured a simple shortsword for more persona touches.

The grav-chute opened and the decent slowed. He landed securely and shrugged off the chute quickly, eyes drawn for a moment to a purple light in the distance. He unlimbered his autogun at the sight of a bundle of five men approaching, a warning leaving his scarred mouth. The stock pressed securely into his shoulder and he clicked the safety into the off position, watching Kim from the corner of his eye.

He took grim satisfaction in the sight of the phosphorus going off and the anguished screams of the men hit by it. The team moved up and the thought of finishing off the men occurred to Alexi, but it was quickly brushed aside. Let them suffer. They earned the end they got.

He had not seen the cultist by the time Kim shouted her warning. He kept his eyes averted until his attention was drawn by a quarry of his own. A squeeze of the trigger opened up blistering arcs of fire as the autogun barked in his hands. The cultist weaved through the shots like a dancer and Alexi just barely moved his head aside to avoid the incoming blow as the heretic pushed his gun aside. Alexi, finding the sweet scent on the man's breath revolting all the same, let the gun go to fall loose in the harness and pulled his blade. The mono-edged sword danced out and plunged into the cultist's guts, the agent hoping it was enough to give him breathing room to yank his sidearm out and plug the heretic a few good times.

[Felwether]

Abner hunkered down with his shoulder to the wall. His knees were pressed to his chest, as he attempted to make himself as small as possible. He was doing his best to reload his revolver but his hands were shaking. His head was pounding and his bones felt as though they were physically vibrating inside his body. Red King.

“Throne…” He muttered as he stuffed the sixth and final round into the chromed cylinder of his weapon, hurriedly sending it home with the heel of his palm, doing his very best not to panic outright.

Red King. The unvoice said again - it was louder now, more urgent. Abner pivoted so that his back was against the wall just as another burst of lasfire streaked past. He closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing, using the simple technique Mai had taught him. He had to admit he wasn’t a particularly attentive student and they hadn’t gotten much further than the most basic exercises before Mai had gotten tired of his restlessness and decided to discontinue their lessons. Red King.

Abner breathed deeply and tried to clear his mind. He focussed on the rise and fall of his chest and the sensation of his feet pressing against the ground. Sure enough his heart rate began to slow and the chanting became less intense.

This is important, Abner. He said to himself.

Abner had been taken on by Feyd Lucullis after the Inquisitor, incognito, recruited the Hanged Men, a mercenary outfit Abner had attached himself to, as expendable muscle for an operation on a backwater planet in the arsehole of nowhere. The Hanged Men were tasked with smashing a smuggling ring which had made its base there. While it was assumed that the smugglers were trafficking illegal weaponry, it soon became clear that they were dealing in a much darker kind of contraband altogether. They were moving strange artefacts, proscribed texts and even people.

Abner learned the truth when he dipped into the mind of a captured smuggler. While he didn’t fully understand what he was experiencing he witnessed the terrible things these ‘smugglers’ had done to the inhabitants of the world in the name of their Dark Gods. The planet had become home to a chaos cult. The Inquisitor had known the entire time, of course, he had simply employed the Hanged Men to place the cultists under pressure, to force them to show themselves. He hadn’t counted on Abner’s abilities, however, and the operation came to a conclusion much faster as a result. The cult was uncovered and destroyed. To the best of his knowledge, the Hanged Men were liquidated, and he tried not to think about what Lucullis had done to the locals after they left.

That incident had awakened an altruistic streak in Abner he hadn’t known existed. He had learned something of the terrible gods that lived beyond the veil of human perception and the atrocities their followers were capable of and he was determined to stop them at every turn - well, he would try at least.

This is important.

Abner snapped back to reality. There was a group of people, four of them perhaps, at the heart of the warehouse. Somehow he could feel them. He could feel a huge concentration psychic energy there, too. The walls between reality and the empyrean were growing weak. The summoning was nearing completion. Red King. Master of Mankind.

“We’ve got to get a bloody move on!” Abner shouted over the gunfire. “There’s not much time!”

[Cfavano]

Anais was impassive as she passed the burning heretics. Though, she kicked one in the groin for good measure, and it caused the burning form to curl up into the fetal position. But then she caught up to Kim. She heard the order, and, while she did not look at the...thing she was supposed to shoot as doing so made her head hurt, she put a knife away to grab for her pistol. But she never got the chance as the heretics pressed their counterattack.

As one closed with her, she found it faster than her, and its blade was wicked sharp. It made her field fail, but that was fine, she didn't need it her whole life, she could do without it for a minute or so. As it closed with her again, she acted. Conventional wisdom and training would say that when facing a foe with greater speed and a short weapon like this, it would be best to stay out of its range and wait for an opening. But Anais wasn't conventionally trained. In the arena, you didn't survive by winning the 'right way' you survived by winning 'now'. So, she charged. Obviously, the cultist did not expect this, and hesitated for a single fraction. That was what she needed.

Quickly, she grabbed on to the cultist's throat and pulled back her other arm that still held the knife. The cultist realized what was happening and slashed her with its knife. This caused her to wince. But in its panic, it managed to only cause a flesh wound. With a roar she brought her punch around, and struck the cultist in the mouth with the guard of her knife. With a crack and the sound of a few hard things bouncing on the cement she knocked out most of its teeth. Then, as she dropped her knife, she changed her grip and grabbed the cultist by the head. She then inserted her thumbs into its eyes as she slammed it to the ground. With a roar of triumph, she pierced its sockets, crushing its eyes as the cultist howled in pain, and with one final grunt, crushed its skull.

The cultists targeting her dead, she went back to her duty. She unholstered her pistol and she held the primer button as she aimed . She shielded her eyes from the coming flash with her hand, but was still able to look at the target. It hurt to look at it, but the pain and rush from combat allowed her to focus. The pistol shook as it charged, the dragon's eyes glowing and the nostrils venting excess plasma. The venting made for a longer, but safer priming. Then it beeped the ready signal. She pulled the trigger...and the dragon roared

[ElizabethStark]

Hadrak's body was pressed firmly against their cover. Albeit his chainsword made it awkward and uncomfortable, he listened intently over the gunfire to Abner's frustrations before peeling from the wall and firing his hellpistol directly into the skull of a moronic Slaaneshi. He returned and replied to Abner's haste,"Let's get a move on then!" Although he did take note of Sarna's disappearance with the swordsman, he figured she could take care of herself.

[Azazeal849]

Fire-team Aegia - Sarna, Abner, Hadrak, Konstantin

“We’ve got to get a bloody move on!” Abner shouted over the gunfire. “There’s not much time!”

Hadrak peeled from the wall and fired his hellpistol directly into the skull of a moronic Slaaneshi. He returned and replied to Abner's haste. "Let's get a move on then!"

Burakgazi broke off from the group to begin a literal shock and awe attack on the front side of the warehouse, while the warrior and the psyker hunched over and sprinted for the rear entrance. A single Khorne cultist was peering out of a back window by the door, squinting into the smoke as if to see where the swordsman had gotten to. He jerked back as a volley of shots from the two agents punched him hard in the chest, imploding his ribcage like an egg being crushed in a man's fist.

As Hadrak and Abner lowered their weapons, they saw Sarna come darting back out of the smoke with flecks of blood coating the front of her black bodyglove. The young Moritat offered them an obscenely cheerful grin before the three of them shouldered their way through the door. Pivoting left and right, they saw dead light fixtures and peeling walls, lit up by a row of portable lanterns placed on the floor. A shadow twitched against one wall as the cultist slumped below the window spasmed his last.

A red glow was flickering below a door ahead of them, casting a bloodstain fan of light across the rotted floorboards. Beyond it, the agents could hear chanting, rising to what sounded almost like a howling scream. Without hesitation, the agents kicked their way through, weapons raised.

The red light washed over them. As in the corridor, the cultists had placed battery-powered lanterns around the walls, but their light was overpowered by the red glow pulsing from a jagged sigil drawn on the floor. Four Red King cultists stood at the cardinal points of the sigil, arms outstretched and lasguns slung passively across their backs. White noise was roaring from the radio packs secured to the shoulders of their Guard-surplus webbing, almost drowning out their chanting voices.

One of the cultists whirled round as the door slammed back against the wall, his mouth falling open in furious surprise. At the same moment, a pall of smoke gusted up from the floor, bleeding out of the fiery lines etched into the floorboards. Backlit by the red glow, it swirled together as if being shaped by unseen hands.

With a silent thrum that punched all three agents in the gut, the smoke formed itself into thick tendrils that drove themselves into the heads of the four cultists. Hadrak saw the blue eyes of the cultist facing him widen in shock. And then they exploded, showering red across the floor.

The four summoners convulsed, coughed blood; straightened. Four eyeless faces snapped up towards the agents, baring clenched, bloody teeth.

"I see you." a voice echoed, Doppler-shift, through the four men's crackling shoulder radios.

Weeping blood across their rage-twisted faces, the cultists broke into a sprinting charge towards the three intruders. Behind them, a black shadow began to take shape within the red smoke cloud.

[dakkagor]

Sarna met the cultists with a charge, laughing as she did so in manic joy. The first one she met, she ducked under its wild swing and tripped him, sending him sprawling on the hard concrete floor. Effortlessly she flowed into the second one, and impaled his heart on the razor tip of her sword.

He kept pushing forward, causing her laugh to die in her throat. The cultist, beyond pain or any conventional death, rammed himself down the length of the blade and wrapped his hands around Sarnas neck. Roaring in anger, he kept charging, carrying the death cultist with him and slamming her into the warehouse wall.

Pointwork is sloppy. This is why.

She hit the heel of her boot on the wall behind her, and sunk the spring blade that appeared on the tip of her sole into his crotch. The cultist barely recognised the blow, tightening his hands as gibberish and whispered threats poured from the vox and his lips. She released her hold on her main weapon and grabbed a pair of long stilettos, jamming them up into his armpits. Reflexively the grip failed, and Sarna slumped to the floor to catch her breath as the cultist staggered away.

Then the other one she had tripped shoulder barged her, carrying her through the old wall of the warehouse. The one Sarna had repeatedly impaled staggered to his feet, and bleeding profusely, pulled the two stilettos clear and dropped them to the floor with a clatter. He then blindly clawed for Sarnas blade, and with a wet crunch, pulled the deactivated power sabre clear. Wielding it like a cleaver, he followed after his companion.

[Felwether]

"I see you." a voice echoed, Doppler-shift, through the four men's crackling shoulder radios.

Abner winced at the sound of it. The voice was loud by any standards but deafening to a psyker like him. He was oddly relieved by the summoning site, having expected piles of dismembered bodies and vats of boiling blood, they had instead been greeted by a blasphemous rune, crackling with unnatural power, carved into the mouldering floorboards of the warehouse. Relieved or not, his skin still crawled. Even through his photovisors which rendered darkened spaces in a kind of shadowless monochrome, the warehouse was bathed in a baleful crimson glow, white noise filling the air. The Inquisitor was mad if he thought he’d be peering into the minds of these people after all this. Still, with the likes of Hadrak and Sarna around there might not be any survivors to interrogate.

Abner let out an involuntary cry of fear and anger as one of the cultists began to sprint towards him. He emptied his revolver into the man as he closed on him. He had neglected to reload after firing blindly at the cultist guarding the entrance and only four rounds spat from the weapon which rose and fell wildly in his right hand. One round went wide, disappearing into the shapeless mass of smoke rising out of the crackling lines in the floor. The other three stitched a haphazard line across his assailant’s torso, tearing great chunks of flesh and bone from his chest and abdomen. The fusilade should have killed him many times over.

Before he knew it Abner was on his back, the cultist smashing him into the ground and landing on top of him. He managed to smash the butt of his pistol into the man’s face but the he batted it aside, sending it skittering away into the darkness. He roared wordlessly as he set about throttling Abner with his bare hands, bloody eye sockets staring right through the struggling agent. Abner’s own eyes bulged, he could feel blood vessels in his cheeks and nose bursting as the cultist tried to choke the life out of him. He was glad of the silken scarf wrapped snuggly around his neck, preventing the man’s skin from making contact with his own.

Abner fumbled desperately for his knife with one hand while trying to fend off his attacker with the other. He found it in a hip pocket and flicked the blade into place by pressing a small silver stud in the carved bone handle. He plunged the six inch blade into the side of the cultist’s neck, and was fountained with blood so hot he felt it might melt his skin. Gritting his teeth, he stabbed again and again, the knife tearing into the man’s neck, glancing messily off the bone of his jaw and cheek and then, just as Abner’s vision began to narrow and unconsciousness threatened to take him, the fleshy weak spot of his temple. The cultist spasmed and with all his remaining strength, Abner managed to push him off. He scrambled to his feet, his breathing ragged and cracked, blade held out in front of him should the cultist attack again.

[Imperial1917]

Mai pulled on the spear lodged in the dead heretic, shaking loose the charred flesh of the wound she had inflicted on him. She spun, the brightly colored cloth of her clothes illuminated by the lights all around. Yet even this display did not dim the swirl of images that danced behind her eyes, her peculiar gift of sight reaching beyond those of mortal eyes. The whirling of chaotic energies that surrounded her seemed to gather before her, the curse of her blood drawing them to her like files to a magnet in the midst of a typhoon, trying desperately to smother her. They almost had and she could hear the void beyond whispering her name. Still, the daemon did not have her yet and the death of the heretic was like the first step up the Eternity Gate. A smile curved her face as she turned to confront the charging heretic.

Yes, it was now all so clear. She could see it now as she had before. One step preceded another, all but endless in length. All but endless in length. Her smile deepened, the four well-trained muscles of her face taking on their customary place as they widened her grin. The howling heretic approached, a warp halo about his crown and a hooked knife in his hand, but still she smiled. It was all so clear.

The hooked blade fell like lightning before thunder, the immaculate blade flashing before her vision as she slid aside, letting it pass before her. More blows came after that. Some stitched across for her abdomen while others scythed for her neck. Again and again she flowed around the blows, her force spear held behind her, the point to the ground as she studied her opponent. He was a tall, rakish man with tall blond hair that ended in a crest, the peak a full hand above the roots. It was died a vibrant pink that contrasted with the flow of gold all around it. His nose was long and hooked, so much so that when the light was right it casted a long shadow over the almost shrunken mouth that was fixed in a perpetual snarl. He wore a dock worker’s long overalls that were crudely splashed with a dizzying mixture of neon paints. His blue eyes were unnaturally wide, as if there were things that he had not yet seen and wanted to miss nothing.

At a length that seemed like an eternity, but was surely only a few seconds, the man’s erratic swings gave Mai the opening she desired. He stepped forward with a downward slash, clearly hoping to fix the hooked blade in her skull, and overextended himself. It was as inevitable as the snow on Valhalla, each of her deferring retreats drawing him further and further out from his tight jabs. He slipped and began to fall. With one fluid motion, the psyker pivoted past him, the force spear twirling into a ready stance in her hands. He looked back with those wide, blue eyes and the last thing he saw was the point of her spear driving itself into the bridge of his nose.

[Azazeal849]

Fire-team Kronis – Kimmie, Anais, Alexi, Mai

Anais pulled the trigger…and the dragon roared. Plasma flashed, sun-bright - boiling along the electromagnetic tunnel the weapon had created between itself and the summoner, dead on target. There was another, brighter glare, as it engulfed the figure in its path. Not the summoner – someone who had thrown themselves into the bolt’s path even as Anais’ finger tightened on the trigger. He stood with arms outstretched, a grey shadow backlit by the light of his own immolation before he burst into a cloud of boiling ash.

Six. Anais belatedly realised. The favoured number of the Slaaneshi is six. Four knife-fighters, and the summoner made five. There had been a fifth knife-fighter that they had missed! To Anais’ left, Mai was hacking down her cultist opponent, while Alexi battered his own to the floor with a salvo of pistol shots. To her right, Kimmie grappled with the last Slaaneshi. Anais raised her hissing pistol again, willing the projector coils to recharge faster. As she did so, a purple light erupted from the levitating summoner’s eyes, and a high-pitched ringing filled the air.

Kim fell back against a corrugated iron wall with a reverberating crash, sent reeling by a strike from the heel of the Slaaneshi cultist’s hand. Her robe was slashed open, by a cut which should have gutted her but had instead scored across the flak vest beneath her outer clothing. The shrill ringing noise grew louder, forcing her to drop her rifle and clap her hands over her ears in an attempt to shut out the auditory assault. She could see her team-mates doing the same, stumbling and clawing at their ears. The cultist stood over her, his head snapping up as if listening in rapture to the cacophony.

“You’re too late!” he shouted at Kim, breaking into a shrill laugh.

Kim’s legs gave out underneath her and she collapsed onto the gritty tarmac. She knew all the Emperor’s prayers – ones for deliverance, ones to repel the daemonic, ones to plead His mercy when your death was staring you in the face. For some reason, none of them would come. Instead she thought of her father, of the sun sifting through the trees on a planet where she had once preached the Word, and of a young man smiling at her. She should have felt fear for herself and her team-mates, but instead all she felt was regret as the ringing rose to a scream and she dropped onto her knees and elbows, still clutching her ears.

Along the floodlit street ahead of her, she saw a man. He was dark-skinned and dark haired, dressed in black with leather bindings around his forearms, crossed through with ugly runes. He was kneeling in the middle of the narrow alleyway, with a long Scintilla-pattern hunting rifle braced against his shoulder. It was pointed right at Kim. No, not at her, Kim realised – past her; towards the summoner. The gun’s muzzle lit up with a dagger of burning gas as the man pulled the trigger.


+ + + + + +

Time flowed differently (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_MDCQ51OyY) in the shadow-realm of the Warp. In a dimension where emotions were bricks and thoughts were mortar, a moment could be an eternity and vice versa. From their followers’ perspective, the two daemons would not clash for the first time until four hundred years later, on a benighted world on the other side of the galaxy. Their enmity was ancient and yet unwritten, spanning countless lifetimes of the weak, fleshy creatures they used to further their schemes in the material realm. It would have been enough to break the minds of such creatures if they were to try and truly comprehend it.

And in that frozen heartbeat where the man’s bullet left its weapon and made its eternal, split-second journey towards the summoner’s heart, the daemon of Khorne laughed.

“This time it is your pawn who lies dead!” it thundered, its voice echoing across the Warp with a sound like an avalanche.

The Slaaneshi daemon’s reply was a serpentine hiss. The tides of emotion around its formless, sinuous body crackled in response to its anger. “You only laugh in relief at not having to face me in the mortal realm!”

“You creatures of Slaanesh.” the first daemon rumbled, watching through a hazy veil as the four summoners it was puppeting clawed and hacked at the intruders who were vain enough to think that they could foil its plans. It couldn’t help but focus on the youngest, the one who wielded her blades with balletic grace and deadly ferocity, even when grappled by two of the bleeding, dying summoners. Ah yes, now there was one who would have pleased Khorne - the Blood God, the true Master of Mankind. She had even bested the daemon's own primary pawn, albeit after one of its rival’s puppets had interfered. Reluctantly, the daemon turned its attention back to its hissing rival.

“You scheme,” the daemon of Khorne mocked. “You plot, and you lie – even to yourselves.”

As the last of its summoner puppets failed and flopped exsanguinated to the floor, the Khornate daemon narrowed its formless eyes at the agents who had killed them. They were now frantically pumping shots into the cloud where part of its essence now stood, poised to step through into the material world. The bullets and energy pulses were a gentle tickle across its diffused form. A dozen metres away, the daemon’s other pawns were spasming and dying under the lightning assault of a mechanicus electro-priest. Amusing opponents, the daemon reflected sadly, but unsatisfying compared to facing its true rival, which was now impossible thanks to one of its own wayward slaves. He will be punished.

“I can beat you,” the daemon rasped in its voice of colliding boulders, “At any contest - in this world or the mortals’. Even a contest of the influence that you daughters of Slaanesh so prize.”

The other daemon hissed again, pulling away in disgust from its doomed summoner and curling threateningly around its rival. Clouds of red warp fire pushed back against ones of pink and pale blue as the daemon of Slaanesh circled.

“Now you lie.” it warned.

The daemon of Khorne flickered its attention away from the young death cultist and onto the four agents at the riverside summoning site, who were clawing at their heads as they felt the Slaaneshi daemon's soon to be extinguished power. There were ones there with potential too, if they were given the right guidance. Perhaps it would not punish its wayward slave after all, at least not yet.

“Let us create some new pawns.” it rumbled softly. “And I will demonstrate.”

The Slaaneshi daemon hissed, coiling through the Warp as it appraised the potential prizes for itself. “Six hours?” it suggested.

The daemon of Khorne chuckled once more as its rival named its patron god’s favoured number, and countered with its own. “Eight. It is your vessel that has failed, not mine.”

The Slaaneshi daemon’s eyes narrowed into purple slits of warp light. “Done.”

The daemon of Khorne drew reluctantly away from the tantalising solidity of the real world, and the agents of fire-team Aegia were blown off their feet as an explosion of warp energy punched out the flakboard windows of the warehouse. By the riverside the sniper’s bullet struck, the chained summoner convulsed and fell lifeless to the ground, and the scream of rage from the one surviving cultist was lost in the roar of the psychic backlash.


+ + + + + +

Inquisition void runner Furia, in orbit above Vaxanhive

Inquisitor Feyd Lucullis stared at the sensorium readouts with an intensity that could have burned steel. He was a grim, grey man - grey-haired, flint-eyed, swathed in a starched grey longcoat that clung tightly to his spare frame. The flickering lights of the sensor readers cast sharp lines across his gaunt face and accentuated the shadow of grey stubble that shaded his jaw.

The inquisitor glanced sideways towards his withered, green-robed astropath, who was still clinging to the sensorium console and taking deep, shuddering breaths. Even from orbit, he had felt it. They had cut things far too close for Lucullis' taste.

The inquisitor clenched his jaw as he turned back to the console readouts, and watched the sharp peaks and troughs of the warp sensors settle back towards the normal range. His grey eyes roamed over to the sweeping bar of the short-wave scanner, and then to the vox station where the radio handset sat nestled in its cradle. He picked it up, unspooling the connector cord.

"Erdene." he barked into the handset. "Furia actual. What's your status?"

"Clearing hive airspace now, inquisitor." came the reply, frosted by the interrogator's cold Atillan accent and undercut by the whine of the stealth jet's engines. "Once I'm out of range of their augers I'll begin orbital ascent. There was some kind of explosion at both target sites just a few seconds ago."

Lucullis flexed his free hand open and closed, while beside him the shaken astropath finally let go of the console and managed to stand under his own power.

"Warp readings are stabilising." Lucullis told his lead agent. "Have the team reported in?"

"I lost contact after the explosion, sir." interrogator Erdene responded. "Some serious psychic backlash. If only we'd sent blanks."

The inquisitor's jaw clenched, hard. "You know how I feel about blanks, Erdene. Keep trying the vox."

"Yes sir."

Lucullis deactivated the radio vox-caster with a click, and thrust it sharply back into its cradle.

"Start scrying for them." he told his shivering astropath. "And tell Marrick to try hacking into some of the underhive surveillance systems."

The inquisitor didn't let out the breath he was holding until astropath D'Lane had shuffled out of the room. He already knew that the chances of his agents having survived the psychic overbleed were remote, but he was bound by duty to exhaust the possibilities. That, and to ensure that the daemon threat truly had been neutralised before moving onto his next target. He looked down at the flatlined warp readings once again, and then at the silent vox.

"Exitus acta probat." the inquisitor murmured.


+ + + + + +

Fire-team Kronis – Kimmie, Anais, Alexi, Mai

She heard an electric buzz, and the sound of water lapping gently.

She sucked in a breath (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=43eL9Fro238), and immediately choked on the dust and grit coating the concrete under her face. She pushed herself up onto her elbows, coughing and spluttering. The fawn-skinned hands under her were dusty, the knuckles skinned and bleeding. The small wounds looked unusually vivid under the pale light of the buzzing street-lamp that hung over her. Above that was an inky-black sky, the light of its stars stolen by the aggressive glare of an enclosed spire that loomed hundreds of metres above her. The spire was ringed by rows upon rows of white, pinprick lights, tapering away to a solid mass as the spire ascended into the heavens. Vaxanhive, something told her.

As she sat up, she saw something reflecting the more modest light of the lamp post; something small and silver that lay a few metres away from her. Crawling over to it, she saw that it was a flat piece of metal shaped like a letter I, with a skull in the middle of it, set inside a sunburst halo.

Kim. she thought as she looked at it. Your name is Kim. And this is Vaxanhive, and you're here to...to... A momentary panic seized her. She tried to take a deep breath, and found her chest constricted by something close fitting and solid. Feeling underneath her torn robe, she realised that she was wearing armour.

To stop someone? Something? Her head was swimming, and nothing around her seemed quite real. Shit!

She looked down at the skull and sunburst again, hanging from its snapped chain. Something made her put the broken necklace into a pocket of the webbing that was cinched around her chest and waist. Before she could pat her way through the other pockets to see what they contained, she heard a scuffle of movement. Snapping around, her stomach dropped in shock as she saw the half dozen bodies that were slumped across the dockyard behind her, lying among stacks of untouched wooden pallets. Three of the bodies were stirring - a man and two women. Three more men, their chests bared to the pale streetlights and disfigured by horrific wounds, did not.

Friends. Kim somehow knew, and she picked herself up to run towards the nearest survivor. She clasped the petite woman's hand to help pull her to her feet, but before they could exchange words the thunderclap of a gunshot echoed across the silent dock. As Kim and the other survivors spun towards it, they saw a man dressed in black stumble backwards across the front of a narrow alleyway, between two storage sheds. In the alley were more bodies, charred black. As Kim watched, a second man in a ripped leather jacket came darting after the first, swinging a hooked knife.

"You ruined it!" the second man shrieked, "Ruined it!"

There was something familiar about his shrill voice, and it caused Kim's stomach to twist with a mixture of revulsion and fear. The shrill-voiced man lashed out, inhumanly fast, knocking aside the rifle that the first man had been using to defend himself. It went spinning away to clatter on the tarmac, but the first man ducked under a viper-quick lunge and rolled clear, coming to a stop next to one of the horribly burned bodies. He retrieved a long-barrelled pistol from the corpse, and swung it up towards the knife-man, who froze.

The man in black pulled the trigger, but there was only a hollow click from the gun in his hand. Depleted, Kim knew, or perhaps damaged by the fire. Before she could work out just how she knew that, the man with the knife was grinning and starting forward, the blade glinting to match his smile. To Kim's consternation, the man in black just stood up, returned the smile grimly, and raised his chin to expose his neck.

Kim's hands went to her webbing, as if she had instinctively expected a rifle to be hanging there, but her hands closed on empty air.

"Help him!" she heard herself shouting to her companions, and began running towards the two combatants almost before she had finished pointing. She didn't know who the man in black was, only that the man with the knife was an enemy.


+ + + + + +

Sarna

She awoke with an eyeless corpse sprawled on top of her, the blood dribbling into her eyes and mouth. Heaving the body away from her, she saw that she was in the middle of a battle-scarred industrial estate, strewn with discarded weapons and sprawled bodies. A pile of burning construction lumber collapsed in on itself with a crash, and a stack of melting rubber tyres was belching smoke.

Standing up and looking around, something drew her towards a pair of las-scorched metal skips. There were spatters of blood around them that didn't seem to belong to any of the lying bodies. Approaching them, Sarna saw that the blood formed a trail, leading past a still red-hot slash in the side of one skip, and past the quartered body of a young woman. The blood trail terminated at a rusted shipping container, this also with a glowing red slash across it. Power sword, Sarna somehow knew.

This second cut was vertical - but deeper than the first, and the glow of molten metal had spread further, gradiating from white to red to pale orange. If the first cut was a searing graze from a powered blade, the second appeared to be the product of one being shoved deep into the metal. The blade seemed to have fallen gradually through the sagging, melting steel under its own weight, before finally being pulled out somewhere near ground level. That was odd - most power swords would short out and shut down before managing to burn through that much solid steel.

Turning and following the blood trail, Sarna did not have to go far before she found the door of a checkpoint complex standing ajar by the estate's front gate. Inside the guard house, all of the furniture and equipment had been stripped out, and the remaining cupboards and counter-tops were coated with dust. Swirls and sweeps had disturbed the collected dust on the floor, where someone had dragged themselves painfully into a corner. That someone was still there now - a man of 30 or perhaps 40 years, with shoulder-length hair and a chiselled face that was still handsome despite the blood around his nose and lips. A manacle circled each of his wrists, although the chain between them had been cut. His pale hands were clasped to a wound in his side, which was slowly oozing blood through his fingers.

The man raised his head to look at Sarna, and offered her a grim, knowing smile.

"Hm." he grunted, not quite a chuckle. "Are you here to give me a good death, little sister?"


+ + + + + +

Fire-team Aegia – Hadrak, Abner, Konstantin

Sarna was long gone by the time Hadrak and Abner came stumbling out of the warehouse and bumped straight into Konstantin. Friend, they somehow knew, despite the priest's nightmarish appearance - with his smouldering electoos, silver eye implants and burnt rags of clothing. A nagging feeling told them that there should be four of them, as they looked around the torn-up shell of the industrial estate.

Directly outside the door lay a decapitated corpse, and another that had bled out from a slashed throat. As they approached the bodies, there was a metallic clatter and a young man wriggled himself free of a section of industrial pipe that lay nearby. It seemed as if he had been hiding.

The boy cursed in shock when he caught sight of the two bodies - and then again, louder, when he belatedly saw the three menacing figures standing right over him. He crabbed back and blundered into the side of the pipe, thumping his head on the steel. The boy was tall and gangly, but he couldn't have been any older than his late teens by the Terran standard calendar. He was peachy skinned and long faced, with a dishevelled mop of brown hair.

The boy raised a skinny hand and pointed a wavering finger at the three agents.

"I...I'm warning you." he stammered, in gutter-accented Vaxanhive gothic. "You stay back. You frak with me and I'll frak you right back. Twice!"

[dakkagor]

She awoke with an eyeless corpse sprawled on top of her, the blood dribbling into her eyes and mouth.


"Gah! Frak! Frak Frak Frak Frak!"

She heaved the body off, and scrambled away, hyperventilating. She sat and stared at the corpse, and when the lumber collapsed, she jumped up and yelped in surprise.

"Oh holy frakking hell, where am I?" She turned in a slow circle, taking in the corpses, the damage, the obvious signs of fighting. She felt naked, alone, and terrified. She wrapped her arms around her chest and staggered away from the horrifying, mutilated corpse she had woken up under.

One of the corpses had a long, ornate sabre clasped in its hands.

Mine

The thought was so sudden, so fierce, so sure that it sent her reeling. She didn't even know her own name, how she had got here, who she was, and why she was covered in blood, but that sword, that sword belonged to her. She bent down, and pried it from the dead mans hands. She felt more sure, less naked. She swung it experimentally and then sheathed it on her back. It fit perfectly.

something drew her towards a pair of las-scorched metal skips. There were spatters of blood around them that didn't seem to belong to any of the lying bodies. Approaching them, Sarna saw that the blood formed a trail, leading past a still red-hot slash in the side of one skip, and past the quartered body of a young woman. The blood trail terminated at a rusted shipping container, this also with a glowing red slash across it. Power sword, Sarna somehow knew.

This second cut was vertical - but deeper than the first, and the glow of molten metal had spread further, gradiating from white to red to pale orange. If the first cut was a searing graze from a powered blade, the second appeared to be the product of one being shoved deep into the metal. The blade seemed to have fallen gradually through the sagging, melting steel under its own weight, before finally being pulled out somewhere near ground level. That was odd - most power swords would short out and shut down before managing to burn through that much solid steel.

Turning and following the blood trail, Sarna did not have to go far before she found the door of a checkpoint complex standing ajar by the estate's front gate. Inside the guard house, all of the furniture and equipment had been stripped out, and the remaining cupboards and counter-tops were coated with dust. Swirls and sweeps had disturbed the collected dust on the floor, where someone had dragged themselves painfully into a corner. That someone was still there now - a man of 30 or perhaps 40 years, with shoulder-length hair and a chiselled face that was still handsome despite the blood around his nose and lips. A manacle circled each of his wrists, although the chain between them had been cut. His pale hands were clasped to a wound in his side, which was slowly oozing blood through his fingers.

Sarna stepped towards him, reaching out with a hand, though she was not sure exactly what she would do once she touched him.

The man raised his head to look at Sarna, and offered her a grim, knowing smile.

"Hm." he grunted, not quite a chuckle. "Are you here to give me a good death, little sister?"

She stepped backwards as if stung, and watched the look of confusion on his face.

"Sister. . ." She shook her head. Would this frakking headache ever fade? She refocused on the injured man before her.

"Let me. . .let me help you."

She reached into a pouch on her waist, and pulled out a can of synth skin. She decided that knowing how it was there and what it did was a question that could wait for another time. She crouched down next to the Brother (the right word) and pried his hand clear, before stripping back blood soaked and tattered fabric.

"Its not deep, but I bet it stings like a bastard." She liberally applied the can and then a simple wrap of bandages. All the time the Brother watched him like a wounded predator, warily searching her face.

"That will hold. But we need to get somewhere safe." She stood, and then offered him a hand up. He looked at the offered hand, then back to her face, before taking the hand and being hauled to his feet. He wavered for a second and she leaned into him, holding him up. "You've lost a lot of blood, and this area is definitely not frakking safe. Some psycho out there has been hacking people up. Do you know about a safe house nearby?"

[Imperial1917]

Slowly she blinked and felt liquid trace down her face. The drop trailed from the corner of her eye, following the path forged by those that had come before it. She didn’t know whether it was tears or blood.

Her eyes were cast skyward, blank and uncomprehending. At times she closed them reluctantly, apprehensive of the things she saw in the darkness there beyond the light of the stars above.

Breathing deeply, she closed them once more.

As the last of the light faded beyond the screen of her eyelashes, she felt a jerk. It started in her limbs and moved to her chest. There it pulled on something that was neither flesh nor bone, but rather something deeper down in her being. Hooks that should not have been pulled at it, straining the tethers that kept her anchored to this realm. Whispers that no other could hear reached her ears, coaxing and threatening, sweet and bitter all at once. The breath left her in a single, quick burst, like a death rattle. Still she resisted the urge to open her eyes and end it all.

Images came in a torrent, assaulting senses that many others simply did not have. They showed her everything and nothing, the future, the past, the present. Their recollections, their understandings, their predictions, they were all numberless and they were all true and terrifying to know. All but one that she could feel was there but could not find. It eluded her like a hare of the hunt as it all weight down on her shoulders and her eyes and her heart and that thing deeper within that was being drawn loose. Somewhere deep within she knew that she had to endure.

Endure she did. Against the relentless torrent she reached out and grasped for something, anything to use against it. The world she inhabited whirled like a pool of conflicting tides and she strained for something more, somewhere to put all these things. Abruptly she found it. It was real and hungry and in the pursuit of perfection and perfect. A wall collapsed, cascading down like a shattered fortress, and the floor gave way to a limitless void. It was hungry. It wanted nothing more than to feed. It consumed everything. The torrent of images, the thing pulling at her, they all were consumed. Then it withdrew like it had never been, leaving her feeling peaceful. And alone, she was alone. Stillness prevailed and she opened her eyes, the starlight filling her vision once more.

Pain abruptly filled the void. The ground under her back, solid in a way that was never meant to be, hurt her. The lights, incandescent and bright, burned with an unnatural fervor that obscured the stars above, striking beneath flesh and bone. Even her own body betrayed her, refusing to yield to her demands. Pain filled her universe. Looking over to her side, she saw that one hand was clasped in a death grip around the shaft of a spear, its tip clean where she could feel that it ought not to have been. Cold air filled the night, lurking in the darkness and prevailing in the light. That was the extent of her world.

This was not meant to be. She knew that, the feeling rising from deep within her. There were things to know and people who needed to know them. The mysteries of the universe existed to be unraveled, not left to darkness. An urge to know more than the small world she inhabited arose from the recesses of her being to the fore, stronger than the fatigue that weighed down her limbs. She rolled feebly onto her side, sliding the spear out from under her. Striking the haft to the ground as a support, she attempted to climb to her feet.

Suddenly there was a hand clasping hers, pulling her to her feet. It was much larger with calluses that dominated much of its surface, a strength that could never be seen only felt under the surface. Yet it held her hand with a firm, kind touch that revealed parts as soft and smooth as silk and warmth that gave her strength merely by contact, bracing against the cold air. A feminine face filled her view as she turned her eyes, shapely and athletic with a look that was a mixture of exhaustion and concern. Strength to protect and purity of purpose radiated from this woman, a bright light giving her a halo that illuminated her face.

Looking upon this figure she licked her lips to speak, but no words would come. It was as if she was struck dumb, her only response a heat that infused her body, though she knew not for certain why. In that moment, she felt nothing but gratitude to this woman. A static at the back of her mind said that there was something she was supposed to say, but the words would not come.

Abruptly the woman turned away and the warmth of her hand was gone. Following the woman’s gaze two men came into view. One wielded a wicked blade and was closing on the other. The woman gave a shout, raising a hand to point at the two men, and started toward them. Grasping the haft of the spear with both hands, she made to follow, but her knees refused to comply and she fell to the ground with a thump.

Looking down, she cast a distainful look at her knees where they lay, scraped and bruised, for betraying her at this vital moment. She could feel the light fading; she could feel its approaching absence, and she knew that she had to follow that woman. In the light’s absence, she knew she had to follow her. Yet her knees betrayed her and she could not. Then she realized something. It came dimply at first, and then became abruptly clear.

All around her the world was drab and utilitarian. The ground was covered in lines of white and black and yellow, dim and worn in the weak lights of bleak whites and lusterless oranges, their rays falling onto containers of faded browns and greens lorded over by peeling rust red cranes. Even the woman was wearing blackened gear that blended in with the night such that she could vanish in shadows. This was not her way.

Gazing at her traitorous knees, it dawned on her that they were all but bare. Strips of torn material concealed parts of her legs, but not enough to cover the collections of scrapes and bruises that covered them. Rips like those of movement after an impact had shredded much of the protective leggings, even ripping parts of the protective sheet that should have stretched to her knees, and still did in some places. But what struck her were the colors.

Looking down at her clothes, bright colors filled her vision, assaulting her senses. Bright yellows and vivid pinks mixed with flowing purples and neon blues. Studying the sleeve of the odd dress-robe hybrid that covered much of her chest over an opaque blouse, she saw that there was a scrap of dark blue, almost black, fabric that did not belong against the background of bright green. Pulling at it she dragged into view a larger piece of heavy fabric. A glance at her legs revealed similar leavings, torn and all but obliterated and giving way to the riot of color and light fabric that lay beneath them. Seeing them, she breathed in, feeling the colors like a heavy perfume as the air prevailed her lungs. It clouded her mind but gave her strength.

The fatigue she felt bled away and she rose once more to her feet, the spear grasped in her hands. Looking at the darkness of the torn fabric, she flicked it away with distain and turned her gaze toward the woman. The woman was rushing toward the two men. As before, one was armed with a knife and one was not, though he apparently had a pistol. But now she saw more clearly. Neither the woman nor the second man was dressed as she was. The first man, by contrast, was a riot of color in his ripped leather jacket splashed with industrial neon paints. Just like her.

Something told her not to kill the woman, but surely the pistol-wielding man was expendable. And the knife-wielder... he had excellent taste. Hefting her spear, she made toward the confrontation, dismissing for later a question that occurred to her:

Who was she?

[Felwether]

Whoever he was the years had not been kind to him, he thought as he caught a glimpse of himself in a jagged piece of broken glass. He had dark circles beneath his grey eyes and his head was bald and marked with small dents a bumps, most were old but there were fresh marks, caused by whatever had happened here. His cheeks bore deep, ragged scars which extended from the corners of his mouth and back to the base of his jaw. Worryingly, he was covered in blood and he immediately used the sleeve of his jumpsuit to try to wipe it away, unsure whether it was his own or someone else’s. He glanced sidelong at the eyeless corpse next to him and knew that he was responsible.

There was someone else in the building with him, a man with long flowing hair and brutal looking chainsword strapped to his back. Abner nodded to him, instinctively knowing that he was an ally, and watched as he slowly made his way to the exit. He gathered up the things which he somehow knew to be his - a pair of silver photovisors which he put on, a short barrelled revolver and a switchblade with an exquisitely carved handle - and stumbled after the other man.

Sarna was long gone by the time Hadrak and Abner came stumbling out of the warehouse and bumped straight into Konstantin. Friend, they somehow knew, despite the priest's nightmarish appearance - with his smouldering electoos, silver eye implants and burnt rags of clothing. A nagging feeling told them that there should be four of them, as they looked around the torn-up shell of the industrial estate.

Abner nodded to this strange newcomer too and set about trying to clean himself up a bit. He stuffed the weapons he had gathered into his blood soaked pockets and removed his gloves before unzipping the front of his jumpsuit, revealing a garish red shirt decorated with blue and yellow flowers. He shoved the leather gloves into an inside pocket and looked around in confused disbelief. Just what had happened here?

Directly outside the door lay a decapitated corpse, and another that had bled out from a slashed throat. As they approached the bodies, there was a metallic clatter and a young man wriggled himself free of a section of industrial pipe that lay nearby. It seemed as if he had been hiding.

The boy cursed in shock when he caught sight of the two bodies - and then again, louder, when he belatedly saw the three menacing figures standing right over him. He crabbed back and blundered into the side of the pipe, thumping his head on the steel. The boy was tall and gangly, but he couldn't have been any older than his late teens by the Terran standard calendar. He was peachy skinned and long faced, with a dishevelled mop of brown hair.

The boy raised a skinny hand and pointed a wavering finger at the three agents.

"I...I'm warning you." he stammered, in gutter-accented Vaxanhive gothic. "You stay back. You frak with me and I'll frak you right back. Twice!"

Abner turned towards the boy and held up his hands, showing him they were empty.

“You don’t have anything to fear from us lad, we’re the good guys.” He said, trying to sound reassuring. “I’m Abner, I think.”

He reached a hand out slowly in an offer of greeting as he inched cautiously towards him.
.
“Do you know what happened here?”

[Azazeal849]

Sarna

"That will hold. But we need to get somewhere safe." She stood, and then offered him a hand up. He looked at the offered hand, then back to her face, before taking the hand and being hauled to his feet. He wavered for a second and she leaned into him, holding him up. "You've lost a lot of blood, and this area is definitely not frakking safe. Some psycho out there has been hacking people up. Do you know about a safe house nearby?"

"That was the safe house." the man growled in a low voice, nodding towards the bullet-riddled husk of the warehouse. "But the Refuge will be sending more men soon I don't doubt. That hab, there."

He raised the hand clasped over his wound to point at the third house in an unimpressive row of tumbledown buildings. At least half of the houses had the windows covered with flak-board, and climbing red-black plants had burst through the pavement to snake their way up the sides of the walls. Here and there slabs of the concrete over-layer had fallen off the walls to expose the brickwork beneath. The man shrugged a scabbarded sword higher on his shoulder and limped towards the chosen building. He pulled away from Sarna several times, as if pride urged him to walk unaided, but each time he had to lean back against her after a few steps.

Limping up a path that was overgrown with weeds, Sarna pushed on the peeling front door to find that it was open. Somehow she wasn't surprised - this seemed like the sort of area where if you did lock your doors, someone would kick them down to find out what you had that was worth hiding. She stepped into a dingy kitchen that smelled of must, and had spots of damp around the corners of the ceiling. There was a clatter from the next room and a russet-skinned woman of perhaps forty years appeared in the open doorway, clutching what looked like a claw hammer. She might have been beautiful, if life had given her a chance, but now there were dark, tired circles around her eyes and her tightly-curled hair looked like it hadn't seen a comb in some time. Her lips were scabbed with cold sores.

"Primus." the woman exhaled, visibly relaxing and letting the hammer fall to her side. Her dark eyes fell on Sarna's pale, elfin face for a moment, narrowing warily. "Does the Red King will it?"

"The Red King wills it, Milena." the man she had called Primus replied tiredly. That seemed to be enough for the woman, who chivvied them through into a dank living area and helped Sarna to lay Primus down on a very old and worn-looking sofa.

"I'll see if there's any counterseptic left." Milena said, before darting back out of the room to bustle about the mildewed kitchen.

"She's a good soul." Primus said, his eyes falling back to Sarna in the other woman's absence. "I hope you don't plan to hurt her."

He shifted slowly, one hand over his treated wound and the other pulling the scabbard from his shoulder to lay the sword down next to him.

"Now, little sister." he said, almost airily, "I don't suppose you're going to enlighten me on why the change of heart?"


+ + + + + +

Fire-team Aegia – Hadrak, Abner, Konstantin

Abner turned towards the boy and held up his hands, showing him they were empty.

“You don’t have anything to fear from us lad,” he said, trying to sound reassuring. “We’re the good guys.”

“Why am I thinking that’s what bad guys always say?” the youth replied, his eyes drifting over to the alarming figure of Konstantin. With his silver eyes and smoke curling from his bare chest, all topped off with a thick warrior’s knot and an impressive moustache, the third member of Abner’s group cut an imposing figure.

Abner reached a hand out slowly in an offer of greeting as he inched cautiously towards the youth. “I’m Abner, I think.”

“You think?” the boy scoffed. He cracked his knuckles nervously before pushing himself up off the ground. He dusted off his cargo trousers before extending a hand that bore a blue and white cross tattooed on the palm.

“I’m…” he began, and then faltered and drew the hand back, a look of blank confusion crossing his face. “Rhenat.” he said after a moment. “Shit, what the frakking frak did I hit my head on? Rhenat Nazarian. Yeah. I think."

He belatedly took Abner’s hand. The moment he did so Abner felt something tingle up his arm like an electric shock, and something triggered a jab of fear in the pit of his stomach.

Oh frak what am I doing here? he found himself thinking, although it was completely divorced from his previous train of thought. As soon as he dropped the handshake, the strange sense of fear receded.

“Do you know what happened here?” he asked, rallying and returning to the question he had been originally about to ask.

Rhenat put his hands in his pockets and looked around. “Er…gang war, maybe?” He frowned, and stared for a long moment at the cross on his palm.

[dakkagor]

"I don't want to hurt her." She responded. "As for the change of heart. . . ."

She moved away and leaned against the wall, before sliding down it onto the ratty carpet.

"I don't know. I don't know what I'm meant to be doing here, how I got here, anything. I. . .I woke up with a splitting head ache under a corpse and don't have clue what's going on." She shuddered. "None of this makes any sense." She pulled her sword, still from her scabbard, and placed it in front of her on the floor. "This is the only thing I'm certain of, that its mine. I'm not sure what that means about who I am."

She looked up at Primus and shrugged.

"Then I found you. And you seem to know me. So. Who am I, then, if I'm your little sister?"

[ElizabethStark]

The battle was cold and relentless, but small and insignificant. Hadrak would have put down the insane cultist who had attacked him head on, if it weren't for the explosion of which ensued. His chainsword was unslung and roared with power, strong and heavy. His muscular arms endured and ensured a single massacre... or so it could have. The knock back was great, sending Hadrak sprawling to the ground and his chainsword from his grip. His oiled skin plastered in blood as debris cut thin slices through his tough skin. He laid there for a moment before propping up to grab his weapon, which was only five feet from him. He wondered for a second, what the hell just happened? before stumbling from the building beside a man he felt to be a friend.

The two found what seemed to be another friend; Hadrak felt some hint of relief. Though he thought something was missing, he ignored that part of him. Next was a noise and then a humanoid figure. The one know as Abner spoke to the boy's frightened words, to have only retorted with a sense of dread.

"Er…gang war, maybe?"

Hadrak's body tensed up and his knuckles grew white instinctively. He hadn't noticed it himself. He glanced away from Rhenat, surveying the destruction around them. He stepped away from the group, a small bit of his memory returning - but not enough for him to gather any conclusive thoughts.

He looked back to the kid,"A gang war?" His voice was husky and soothing, no hint of intimidation or fear - just the voice of a man who knew how to keep calm in any given situation.

[Azazeal849]

Fire-team Aegia – Hadrak, Abner, Konstantin

Hadrak looked back at the kid. “A gang war?” His voice was husky and soothing, no hint of intimidation or fear - just the voice of a man who knew how to keep calm in any given situation.

"Yeah." Rhenat nodded, immediately focusing on the red-haired soldier and his natural aura of authority. "The Refuge and the Reds have been on each other's arses for months down here, everyone knows that right?"

The youth looked around at the group, and then seemed suddenly doubtful, as if he wasn't sure where the assertion had come from. He sniffed, cuffing at his nose with the knuckles of one fist.

"You are from around here, right?" he ventured, eyeing the revolver at Abner's hip and the hook-toothed chainsword that Hadrak still held in his hand. "Abner seems like a weird sort of name to me."

"Hey! You!" a voice suddenly called out. The four turned to see a man standing in the pool of light cast by one of the lamp posts. He was a handsome, vital man with a broad, short-bridged nose and black hair which curled close to his scalp. He wore a leather jacket unzipped to the breastbone, and the front of it was slashed with an X of neon paint which shone silver under the streetlight. His hand rested on the hilt of a long, curved knife that was sheathed at his belt.

"Oh frakking hell, no." Rhenat spat in surprise, and shuffled sideways to place himself closer to Hadrak, hiding slightly behind the soldier.

"Drop 'em." the man standing in the streetlight ordered sharply.

Around him there was a scrunch of boots on debris-strewn concrete as half a dozen men appeared from the alleyways behind the man and fanned out to surround the four survivors. They were carrying an eclectic mix of lasguns, stub pistols and automatic rifles, all of them pointing at the group. As one of the men hand-signalled to another, Hadrak and Abner caught a glimpse of a blue and white cross tattooed on the palm of his hand.

For a long moment there was silence, apart from the dull crackle of the burning pile of wood behind the group. It was broken by a clap of lighter footsteps as a woman stepped out from behind the row of gangers, wearing a long, belted coat of dark red leather. The hem danced around the tops of her tall boots as she stepped out into the empty space between the armed men and the four survivors. She hummed quietly to herself, her hands in her pockets as she turned her head to take in the scene. Her face was striking: golden-skinned, fine boned, and half hidden by a wave of glossy black hair. She cocked her head to look back over her shoulder.

"Easy Hayk." she said to the man with the knife. "That's Rhenat."

The glowering gun-muzzles pointed at the team lowered, just slightly.

"Don't tell me Narek and Tigran left you behind when they ran?" the woman asked. Her dialect was gutter Vaxanide, like Rhenat and the knife-man, though her tone was melodious and her accent softened by lightly trilled r's. She glanced behind her with a scowl, before focussing once again on Rhenat. "What happened?"

"Er..." Rhenat said, and cracked his knuckles. "It's all a bit of a blur, but I think they're all dead now."

"Narek told me that you got caught short by Red reinforcements." the woman frowned, leaning back on her back foot with her hands still in the pockets of her long coat.

Rhenat blinked. "Um, yeah, that's what happened." he said, standing up a little straighter. He gestured around him at the debris and the scattered bodies. "But like I said, all dead now. All taken care of. Frakking done."

"I heard an explosion." the knife-man, Hayk, interrupted loudly.

"Maybe they blew themselves up." the woman mused. "Those Reds always seemed indecently ready to die for their beliefs."

"So did Petrosyan." spoke up one of the armed gangers, lowering a brick-like vox radio from his ear. "We've got problems. Gor just called in and said he's found him dead at the dockside. Said it looked like an uphive kill-team or something."

The woman looked at him sharply. "Anything that might have led them back to us?"

The ganger with the radio shrugged. "Vamassian's got friends uphive, right?"

The woman pursed her lips, as if resisting the urge to huff in frustration.

"Petrosyan was a bloody fool to believe in all that nonsense." she said quietly, then turned her back on the survivors to address her colleagues, apparently unconcerned for the weapons that Hadrak and Abner were still holding. "Still, if the Reds are out of the picture then that's something positive in this mess of a night. We'd better tell Vamassian."

"Gor already did."

The woman sucked in her cheeks. "Then make sure he doesn't tell anyone else. Vamassian and I need to figure out how we're going to break the news."

The man with the vox nodded, and the woman turned on her heel to appraise the survivors once more. She tossed her head, flicking her long hair out of her eye.

"Now what about you three? You don't look like you're from the hive."

She looked down at Hadrak's chainsword and Abner's pistol, with a smile on her delicate lips.

"Looting the battlefield I take it?"

[dakkagor]

She looked up at Primus and shrugged. "Then I found you. And you seem to know me. So. Who am I, then, if I'm your little sister?"

Primus stared at her for a moment longer. Then the searching look fell away from his long face, to be replaced by a look of wry amusement. He chuckled quietly to himself, reclining slightly on the threadbare sofa.

"Hm. Very well, little sister. I'll play your game. You are a warrior. You're a dedicated one, if despite everything you can still recognise your blade. And you're an exceptionally good one, if you were able to do this to me." He gestured to his nose, and smiled through the drying blood that ran in parallel streaks down his lips and chin. "I could have told you that even before though. One warrior can always recognise another. There's no closer bond."

He studied Sarna's expression.

"You truly don't remember? Our fight? That interfering bitch from the Refuge?"

When she quietly responded 'no', he shook his head and laughed.

"The Master of Mankind decides to make fools of us all, it seems."

He picked his own sword up by the leather-wrapped scabbard and placed it on the carpet next to Sarna's slightly shorter blade, hilt to tip. The broken links that dangled from the steel cuff around his wrist chinked as he stretched out his arm.

"It's a pity you can't tell me the story of that blade." Primus said as he looked down at the paired swords, almost fondly. His tongue flicked out to run across his bloodied top lip. "There are very few like it in the underhive. I don't normally use my sword's disruptor field unless I have to - replacement cells aren't exactly easy to come by down here. I hope you feel honoured."

"I do." She stood, stretching out from reflex. As she did, she felt something in her equipment belt. She reached into the pouch and pulled something out: a long, copper-coloured power cell.

"Will that fit?" She tossed the cell to Primus. "I carry two cells as spares because...because..."

"Because attempting to change cells with a pissed-off enemy in your face isn't advised?" Primus suggested, smirking.

Sarna just jammed the heels of her hands into her eyes and groaned, slumping back to the dingy carpet. The headache was back, urgent and painful.

"Ow. Mother frakker." she finally managed once the spots had cleared from her eyes. She looked up at Primus, who had stopped smiling and was suddenly staring at her with what looked like rapt attention.

"Don't fight it." he advised, his voice quiet. "Perhaps there is a reason for what happened to you after all. Perhaps the Red King is trying to speak to you."

There was a soft padding of approaching footsteps, and the woman re-emerged from the kitchen, carrying a small and sorry bundle of first-aid items.

"There isn't any more counter-septic," she said apologetically. "But I could bind it up for you. And there's a couple of stimm packs."

"I'll take the stimms." Primus said, sitting up. "Thank you, Milena."

"How long can we stay here?" Sarna looked to the woman again as she placed the small store of bandages and stimm needles down next to Primus. "I don't want to sound ungrateful, but this place doesn't strike me as secure."

"Yeah, and the sky is blue." Milena said, folding her brown, skinny arms across her chest. "If you find somewhere secure down here in the underhive, then give me the address." She turned to Primus. "What happened out there? I heard a shit-tonne of shooting."

"The whole family's gone." Primus gritted his teeth. "Those Refuge bastards stormed in half way through the ritual. I didn't see any of mine come out."

Milena's lips parted in shock. "And the saviour...?"

Primus grinned bitterly. "Does he look like he's here, Milena?"

Milena's shadowed eyes were as wide as a startled rabbit's. She made two blades of her trembling hands and crossed them in an X in front of her chest, linking her thumbs at the bottom. Something about the gesture tugged at the back of Sarna's mind, as if it were familiar but somehow wrong, but the older woman dropped her hands again before she could study it further.

"I failed." Primus said thickly. "But I will make his dream a reality." He turned to look at Sarna. "And if I'm reading the signs right...maybe he sent you to help, little sister."

A sound of running feet carried through the thin glass of the window behind Sarna. Twisting round and looking up past the mould-spotted sill, she saw a knot of dark figures hurrying one after the other along the estate's crumbled and graffitied wall. They wore an eclectic mix of workmen's overalls and civilian clothes, some streaked with lines of neon paint, and almost all of them were openly armed. They ducked through the barriers at the derelict gatehouse and hurried towards the blown-out shell of the warehouse, which was just visible above the other intervening buildings.

"Refuge." Milena hissed in a panicked voice, seizing Sarna's arms in a surprisingly strong grip and hauling her away from the window. "Get down!"

Primus was still on the sofa, though his left hand had clenched hard around the power cell that Sarna had thrown him, turning his knuckles white. He was staring with narrowed eyes and gritted teeth through the window. His other hand hovered, trembling, above his sword on the floor. Even though he could barely stand he had coiled up, looking poised to leap forward like an animal.

"Kill them." he hissed through his teeth, so quietly that Sarna thought he must be talking to himself. "Skulls for the Red King. Blood for the Blood God, Master of Mankind."

His jaw clenched tighter, neck muscles standing out taut. Abruptly he twitched hard, his head wrenching to one side. The spasming in his outstretched hand subsided.

"Too many." he whispered, and then again louder, as if he had only just remembered that the two women were there. "Too many of them." He looked at Sarna, smirking wryly. "You were right, little sister - we need to move."

"What do we do?" Milena whispered fearfully, her eyes wide, "If your Kingsmen are all dead, what do we do? If they come here..."

"Quintus is still out hunting." Primus said, his voice and hands steadier now. "I'll find him. The fight back begins now."

He pulled the sterile cap off one of the stimm needles that Milena had dumped beside the sofa, and jabbed it hard into his thigh with a grunt.

Sarna had let herself be pulled down, but had returned to the window and risked a glance through.

Too many...

She marked their equipment, their formation, their movements. Yes. Too many. Especially with that many automatic rifles. But she also realised she might have to fight the refuge again, and knowing how they moved on the march would be valuable.

She quietly slipped away and crabbed across the room to Primus, picking up and sheathing her sword as she did so.

"We're going. Now."

She slipped her arm under his shoulders and hauled him to his feet, ignoring the hiss of pain. She turned to Milena.

"Backdoor?"

The older woman nodded. "This way. Quickly."

She pulled Primus along with her, into the crowded, mildew infested kitchen. Milena pushed open a screen door that led into a small, weed choked allotment that hadn't seen any love or care in a long time.

"You can climb over a stack of barrels at the back, against the wall."

"What's this 'you' groxshit?" Sarna hissed, listening to the stomp of feet outside. Had someone spotted them, or decided to check out the wan light seeping through the window? There were low voices on the other side of the house. She passed Primus to Milena, then pointed down the length of the allotment.

"Move your arse! I'll cover your escape, and catch up later."

Primus smiled, and managed a mock salute as the two crashed into the overgrowth. Sarna looked the kitchen over, biting her lip. The door at the front of the house swung open.


+ + + + + +

"There's no one here."

"I can see that, dumbass. Check the kitchen. You, check the rooms upstairs."

The cultist stepped into the kitchen with his rifle levelled, checking each corner. He slowly swept every nook and cranny, opening cupboards to reveal rusting tins and battered pots. Finally, he came to the door that led to the garden.

They never looked up. Never.

Sarna eased herself down from the top of the old cooler unit, where she had folded herself up like a cat in its den, behind a series of old, crumpled cardboard boxes. She padded across the kitchen's cracked tiles and clamped a hand over the man's mouth, before drawing a razor across his throat. She held him just long enough to make sure he was dead, before lowering him to the ground, with her below his bulk.

"What the frak is taking you so long?"

She drew and unfolded her crossbow.

Hers.

As the cultist stepped across the threshold, a bolt leapt from under his friend's corpse with a thin steel whisper of sound, and sunk into his left eye socket. He fell silently backwards, slamming to the ground in a way that made Sarna grind her teeth together. You couldn't trust people to die quietly, she mused.

The man upstairs must have heard the commotion. He came clattering down the stairs and skidded to a stop at the entrance to the kitchen, over the body of his colleague and staring in wide-eyed horror at the corpse slowly exsanguinating by the outside door. He turned to yell for help, and as he did, Sarna leapt over the tired couch and rammed her sword through his neck. The man wordlessly stared at her as he sunk to his knees, clutching at his throat. She met his gaze and kept a tight hold on her blade as he sunk to the ground, and finally fell limp.

"OK. Turns out I'm really good at this."

She planted her boot on the dead man's chest, and pulled her blade clear with a splash of crimson up her boot and leg. She had kept her sword deactivated to reduce her sound profile, and because as Primus said, power cells were rare down here.

She risked a glance towards the window. It wouldn't be long before more people came to find out what went wrong in here. She quickly moved to the kitchen.


+ + + + + +

As Milena and Primus moved away, Primus now under his own power, an explosion rocked the neighbourhood. Flames shot into the night sky, and black smoke poured from the row of slum tenements.

"Gas explosion." Primus muttered.

"My house!" Milena yelled, starting to run back then stopping herself.

"I'll find you a nicer one." They both looked up, and Sarna dropped from a window ledge, a cheshire cat's grin plastered over her face. "A much nicer one, with less leaky gas pipes and less exposed electrical cables."

[Atrum Daemon]

His head throbbed as the world swam back in from the darkness of unconsciousness. The pain was splitting and he brought a hand to his head as he slowly sat up. His vision was still blurry and a groan left his throat. His whole body was sore but his head hurt the worst. His vision cleared a bit more and he paused as he moved his hand in front of his face. The back of it was scrawled over with glyph-like tattoos. When had he gotten those? He could not remember. In fact, he could barely remember his name.

He caught sight of his face in a broken piece of glass. A face with a look of pained confusion and a grisly smile scarred into it. Alexi, he thought. That was his name, wasn't it? Yes, Alexi Holt.

His focus returned somewhat and he became fully aware of the weight of the items strapped to his person. The items were weapons and Alexi desperately tried to recall why he had them. I'm here...to...this is Vaxanhive? Yeah. I'm here to...stop someone? Something?

A throb of pain shot through his head as he looked around. He spotted some living figures and some instinct in his mind told him they were friends. Or at least on the same side. The sudden noise of the gunshot made his head snap around to the source. Two men, one in black and one in a ripped jacket, were fighting. More accurately, the one with the knife was gaining the upper hand.

One of the women shouted for them to help and Alexi's hands instinctively went to the rifle strapped at his shoulder. He moved closer toward the duo, the rifle raising with practiced ease he did not know he had. His sights were set on the man with the knife and a squeeze of the trigger let loose a loud rapport as the round exited the weapon. The kick was jarring yet somehow familiar. Alexi had not even had time to really think about what he was doing, his body simply acted. That served to terrify the man.

[Azazeal849]

Strike team Kronis - Kimmie, Anais, Alexi, Mai

One of the women shouted for them to help and Alexi's hands instinctively went to the rifle strapped at his shoulder. He moved closer toward the duo, the rifle raising with practiced ease he did not know he had. His sights were set on the man with the knife and a squeeze of the trigger let loose a loud rapport as the round exited the weapon. The kick was jarring yet somehow familiar.

The man with the knife twitched and stumbled, dropping his knife. Somehow he maintained his feet, and even managed to probe the bullet holes that had appeared in his leather jacket, looking down at his bloody fingers in surprise before collapsing.

Alexi had not even had time to really think about what he was doing, his body had simply acted. That served to terrify him.

The other man, who had been standing calmly awaiting his death, turned to look at Alexi with his mouth open in shock. For a moment he took in Alexi's gaunt, hawkish face with its smiling scars, while Alexi in turn saw a tall, solidly-built man with dark, earthy skin and a face that was dominated by a broad nubian nose and sober brown eyes. His jaw was long and cleanshaven, his hair black and cropped short. His loose black clothes were bound close around the forearms with strips of protective leather, the hide etched with jagged, ugly runes.

"Thank you." the man said a moment later, his voice a soft baritone. His eyes flickered to the dead man in front of him, and then to the rifle lying in the gutter across from him. "Do you mind if I pick my rifle back up?"

"Slowly." Kim warned him. She was still trying to work out who this man was - had her instincts been to protect him, or just to kill the man with the knife?

The man held up his hands, placatingly. His palms were pink in contrast to the rest of his earth-brown skin; roughened with calluses, but meticulously clean. "I'm not going to attack you. The Red King will need a substitute skull, but you have my word it won't be any of yours."

"A skull?" Kim repeated, warily. The name Red King had triggered something in her mind, but like an escaping dream it slipped through her fingers even as she tried to hold on to it.

The man stooped to lift his rifle from the gutter next to the storage shed flanking the alley. He moved slowly, and kept his hands where all of the four could see them as he looped the strap over his shoulder and slung the weapon across his back.

"I was dead." the man explained. "And my head wasn't yours to deny. The Red King will demand a replacement. By rights you should be the ones to name it, once you tell me who you are and what you were doing down here - armed to the teeth and messing with those bastards from the Refuge."

Refuge. Like Red King the word seemed somehow important to Kim, and it was accompanied by the same sick feeling that had jabbed her stomach when she saw the knife-man.

"My name's Kim." she told the man, "And these are..." My friends? Family? Team-mates? "Alexi, Anais and Mai." she said instead, the names suddenly coming to her as she looked at their faces. Anais was tall, blonde-haired, wild-looking. Mai was smaller and softer-seeming, although she was armed just like the rest of them.

Alexi looked scarred and grim in his scuffed overcoat. Cold was the word that came unbidden to Kim's mind, although it was contradicted by the shocked look that had ghosted across his face when he had pulled the trigger of his rifle. Could she really trust the feelings that were coming back to her in shredded scraps? Even the one that insisted she was somehow responsible for these other three?

She shook her head slightly, as if the physical action could dislodge the uncertainty from her mind.

"And..." she said, as the man with the rifle continued to look at her placidly, expectantly. "I'm not sure what we're doing here."

The man blinked once at her, and then gave an easy shrug of his shoulders. "Alright Kim, if you want to keep secrets then I won't pry. But I would advise you to take that armour off."

"What?" Kim asked, looking down at the scale-like plates that sat beneath her canvas webbing and the open front of her dark robe. This area wasn't safe - the bodies lying all around were testament to that - and she was reluctant to part from something so obviously and comfortingly protective.

"No-one questions someone carrying a gun around here, but only kill-teams from uphive wear armour, and you don't want the underhivers mistaking you for one of them." The man flicked his eyes around the group. "Trust me."

Something in his earnest tone convinced Kim, and she popped the clasps of her webbing before shrugging off the pouch-covered straps and the robe beneath, and began fumbling at the straps of her armour. Her fingers seemed to know what to do, even if her mind didn't.

"Can we have your name?" she asked the man as she worked.

"Of course." the man smiled. "It's Quintus."

"Quintus." Kim repeated, weighing up the name. Something was telling her that, like her own, it did not match the typical naming conventions of Vaxanhive. "Did your parents call you that?"

Quintus smiled again, thinly. "You don't want to know the names my parents called me. It's a devotional name."


+ + + + + +

Sarna

"You have a very dirty smile, little sister." Primus commented quietly as they made their way away from the industrial estate. "Has anyone ever told you that?"

Behind them, the smoke from Milena's house was dissipating; a grey smudge above the buildings, backlit by the glowing hive spire. Milena herself had peeled off down a side-street as they crossed into another dilapidated housing estate.

"My mum'll let me stay for a wee while at least." she had reassured the two of them. "She'll eff and blind about it, but she'll let me. And I'll hold you to that frakking promise, girl. The Red King wills it."

They were following the river now, keeping to the scummy concrete slabs beneath the raised boardwalks to stay out of sight of anyone above. Primus could walk silently even on hard paving stones, and Sarna had discovered that she could do the same almost without thinking. The river was a black oil-slick, wide enough that the lights of the manufactoria and treatment plants on the far bank were just orange pinpricks. The river lapped quietly past them, helping to mask their voices as it threaded its way between the main spires of Vaxanhive.

"The man who used to lead the Kingsmen smiled a lot too." Primus mused. "Though I feel like I'm insulting you by comparing you to him. He was just a thug who didn't really know the Red King's ways. He'd accept any street-urchin boy who'd agree to take a beating from the rest of the gang, and any street-urchin girl who'd agree to frak one of his lieutenants." He parted his lips slightly, hooking his tongue around his front teeth. "Needless to say, I put a stop to that."

He glanced down at Sarna, and chuckled.

"Hm. And needless to say, he had none of your talent. If he had, I certainly wouldn't have had such an easy time killing him."

[dakkagor]

She watched Milena as she led them into the estate, and chewed over what Quintus had to say.

"He sounds like he got what he deserved. The Red King willed it."

The dull throb that had retreated to the back of her skull vanished almost immediately. She blinked a few times and yes, the pain was completely gone. But none of her memories returned.

"I think I need a name. I'm not going to get very far being called 'Little sister'." She made a humming noise.

"Quintus. Prime. Milena." She rolled the names around, perfectly matching Primes own accent and deciding she liked how they sounded when he said them.

She thought hard, trying to scrape up a memory. Something drifted up to her. A compliment, she thought, from someone she cared about and respected. Or perhaps feared very much.

"Shift." She nodded. "That will do."

[Felwether]

Abner’s immediate instinct on seeing the group of armed gangers was to flee, to turn tail and run, slipping into the underhive to gather his thoughts and figure out what was going on. He was confident he could make it to cover before they could hit him and something told him that he was quite good at disappearing when he needed to. He didn’t. Abner wasn’t sure why but he didn’t want to leave Hadrak and the strange silver eyed figure whom he hadn’t even spoken to yet. It could have also been the nagging feeling that they were missing one of their number that kept him from running.

This is important, Abner. The thought was abrupt and uninvited.

His arm tingled and the palm of his hand itched from where he had touched Rhenat. The sudden feeling of fear he had experienced as they shook hands troubled him. He had the strangest sense that the feeling was not his own.

"Now what about you three? You don't look like you're from the hive."

She looked down at Hadrak's chainsword and Abner's pistol, with a smile on her delicate lips.

"Looting the battlefield I take it?"

Abner glanced at Hadrak before sauntering forward a few steps, trying to seem relaxed. From what he could gather these people were enemies of the group that controlled this particular area. Maybe if they could ingratiate themselves to these newcomers they could avoid getting shot to pieces.

“What’s left of it.” Called Abner lightly in response, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “Slim pickings, I’m afraid.”

He tucked his thumb and index finger into the breast pocket of his shirt and plucked out a lho stick.

“We heard those grox-frakker Reds were getting a kicking and thought we might check it out.” He placed the thin paper tube between his lips and gestured towards the warehouse. “It’s a bloody mess in there.”

[Imperial1917]

Mai gasped as the man wielding the knife was struck, as if the impact that felled him were meant for her. She stabbed out with the spear haft, driving it into the ground to steady herself. Her vision blurred and swam, but she could not say why. Her mind became rushed with the fog that had so recently dissipated for just a moment. She dropped to her knees, her mind under siege, her knuckles turning white around the haft of the spear as she held on desperately. The world seemed to drift from her, or perhaps she was drifting from it.

All around her the world seemed to boil with evaporating rage, like the stench of ruin after the fire had passed. Everywhere she looked it was as if the world was still alight, the red edges overwhelming the black of the night. The touch of a force more ancient than could be described, more malign than could be comprehended, more powerful than could be known threatened to consume her. Yet beyond the edge of the inferno was something else, something that could only be described as more frightening, though such a description meant nothing here. It was not a burning inferno or frozen waste. Instead it was a void, a great drain that stole the breath and stripped the body with its vastness, with its nothingness.

She was dimly aware of the exchange between the remaining man and the woman she knew, somehow, that she had to follow. Her breath came ragged and thin, sweat glistening on her skin, causing the bright cloth to adhere to her form. Her eyes were wide as her mind struggled to grasp the sliver of path before them between the abyss of failure to all other sides.

[Azazeal849]

Fire-team Aegia - Hadrak, Abner, Konstantin

"Looting the battlefield I take it?"

“What’s left of it.” called Abner lightly in response, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “Slim pickings, I’m afraid.”

He tucked his thumb and index finger into the breast pocket of his shirt and plucked out a lho stick.

“We heard those grox-frakker Reds were getting a kicking and thought we might check it out.”

"Well." the man called Hayk observed, resting his hand on his knife pommel. "At least not every bastard in this neighbourhood's on their side, then."

The woman in red cocked an elegant gull-wing eyebrow at him. "If they're all dead then what does it matter?" She looked back at Abner with a questioning expression.

Abner placed the thin paper tube of his lho stick between his lips and gestured towards the warehouse. “It’s a bloody mess in there.”

The woman followed his gaze, before withdrawing one hand from her coat pocket and waving forward two of the bystanding gangers. "Arman, Eric." she trilled. "Check it out."

As the two men slung their automatics and hurried forward past the group, the woman reached back into her pocket and produced a compact lighter.

"Do you want to come with us?" she asked, her gaze sliding over to Hadrak and Konstantin as she offered the lighter towards Abner.

"Er, with you?" Rhenat repeated, still hovering behind Hadrak.

"We're the Refuge, aren't we?" the woman countered. She flicked the flintwheel of the lighter with her thumb. As the lighter sparked and lit up with a small yellow flame, Abner caught a flash of the blue and white tattoo on her palm.

Abner cupped his hands around the flame to light up his lho stick, and as he did so, the edge of his hand brushed the woman's. The physical contact was brief, but it sent a shock prickling up his arm, almost identical to when he had shaken hands with Rhenat. He felt his chest swell with a confidence that had nothing to do with his current pretense, mixed with a vague desire for something, though he wasn't immediately sure what. It was disconcerting.

Not from around here, he thought as he watched the woman click off her lighter and return it to her pocket, But useful. He blinked. It didn't seem to match his previous impression of her.

"Besides," the woman went on, addressing Rhenat as she turned away from Abner. She did not seem to have felt the shock herself. "It isn't often that tech priests come down here."

"Er..." Rhenat said, glancing uncertainly at the silver-eyed Konstantin. He fidgeted, cracking his knuckles. "Yeah, I suppose so."

The woman in red stepped up to the motionless Konstantin, delicately brushing a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. She took in his stony face, with its silver eyes, impressive moustache and blood-streaked warrior's knot. His whole body was spattered with blood, but the grooves of red served to highlight the musculature of his bare chest.

"Wow." she said quietly, reaching out to lightly touch the silent tech-priest's abdomen. "Look at you."

Konstantin looked confused for a moment, then he calmly but firmly removed her hand with his larger, polymer-gloved one, giving her a hard look as he did so. The woman's fingers came away bloody. She bit down gently on one side of her bottom lip, and smiled as she withdrew.

"So let me guess - they find the scrap, you fix it up so they can sell it to someone else? I'd love to know how a Martian ended up running with two slum traders."

"So we're..." Rhenat spoke up, "I mean, they're coming with you? With us?"

"That's up to them." the woman said mildly. She turned back to Hadrak and Abner as she teased a handkerchief out of her coat pocket and began cleaning her bloody hand.

"Let me tell you what we do." she explained, "Petrosyan..." She pulled herself up short. "Well, I guess it's Vamassian's gang now...we take in the refugees from the Ork war who manage to make it here to Vaxanhive. The ones the government would send back or just execute if they ever found them."

She ground her heel back and forth into the gravel, looking around at the bodies that littered the area.

"I know you guys aren't refugees, but you look like you know your business, and it looks like we have a few openings." She tossed her hair out of her eye and looked from Hadrak to Abner to Konstantin, lingering for a moment on the tech priest. "What do you think? You wouldn't have to scrape around looting dead Reds any more, I can promise you that."

Hadrak gave the woman an appraising look. "What's your name?"

The woman blinked at him, and gave a musical laugh. "I'm sorry, how rude of me. It's Nara. Nara Tumasian."


+ + + + + +

Fire-team Kronis - Kimmie, Anais, Alexi, Mai

Mai's breath came ragged and thin, sweat glistening on her skin, causing the bright cloth to adhere to her form. Her eyes were wide as her mind struggled to grasp the sliver of path before them, between the abyss of failure to all other sides. Something grasping her hand brought her attention back to the physical. It was a hand, curling around her own on the shaft of her planted spear. Its twin was steadying her shoulder. The woman who had shouted for them to help had now run over to kneel beside Mai, her tawny face creased in apparent concern and her brown eyes fixed on Mai's own. Kimmie, the name swam up to her, a vague sense of recognition in amongst the turmoil.

"Focus on me." she told Mai, gently. "He destroys sorrows, He destroys demons, He is the messenger. You're His child, just as I am. Push back the dark and find His light."

She repeated the words until Mai's breathing began to slow. As Mai raised her head some spell was broken, and Kimmie suddenly frowned and blinked, as if she herself was surfacing from a reverie and couldn't recall the words she had just been speaking. She blinked again, looking down and then back up at Mai.

"Are you okay?" she asked, a little uncertainly.

Kimmie helped Mai to her feet, and flanked her as she walked back to the others.

"Do you mind if I pick my rifle back up?" the man was asking Alexi and Anais.

"Slowly." Kimmie warned him as she and Mai rejoined the group.

...

"Quintus." Kim repeated, weighing up the name. Something was telling her that, like her own, it did not match the typical naming conventions of Vaxanhive. "Did your parents call you that?"

Quintus smiled again, thinly. "You don't want to know the names my parents called me. It's a devotional name."

[dakkagor]

Sarna

She watched Milena as she led them into the estate, and chewed over what Primus had to say.

"He sounds like he got what he deserved. The Red King willed it."

The dull throb that had retreated to the back of her skull vanished almost immediately. She blinked a few times and yes, the pain was completely gone. But none of her memories returned.

Primus blinked at her, and then adopted a pleased smile. "Exactly. But be careful, little sister. Don't use his name until you truly trust in his power."

"I think I need a name. I'm not going to get very far being called 'little sister'." She made a humming noise. "Quintus...Primus...Milena..."

She rolled the names around, perfectly matching Primus' own accent, and deciding she liked how they sounded when he said them. She thought hard, trying to scrape up a memory. Something drifted up to her. A compliment, she thought, from someone she cared about and respected. Or perhaps feared very much.

"Shift." She nodded. "That will do."

"Shift." Primus repeated slowly, testing the sound of the name. "Does the word have meaning to you?"

”It was a compliment.” She turned and, with a mocking smile, continued. “I was a shapeshifter, able to copy people’s accents and mannerisms.” Her voice, her whole posture, mirrored Primus's own, before she laughed and the imitation fell away. “It’s a useful skill for an assassin.”

"Hm.” Primus grunted, seemingly amused by the act. “I suppose it's fitting. We often take new names when the gods call on us."

He smiled.

"As the Red King wills, then. Shift." He paused for a moment. "So you say you remember being an assassin, Shift?"

She blinked, checking that statement over. “I...I remember being trained to be an assassin. There was a temple...” She shook her head, expecting a lance of pain, but none came. “It was a cold place, made of grey stone. It smelled of dirt and grass. But that's all.”

"A temple..." Primus mused quietly. "Yes, if the Red King has noticed you, I can see why. There's temples to death all over the Imperium. It's the one constant - power, justice, simple survival...in the end, they all come down to blood."

He picked his way across a sewer tributary that flowed into the main river, navigating a series of broken stones that were slick with algae and chemical foam. He paused on the other side to watch his companion make her own way across.

"And in the end, all blood comes down to the Red King."

"Did you have a temple? Someone who trained you?"

She saw the swordsman's cheek twitch slightly as he rubbed his tongue across his back teeth, reminiscing. "I didn't take this name until a year ago, but I knew my path long before that. I dreamed it."

”Dream? What kind of dream?”

Primus paused, hooking his thumbs around his belt as he stared up at the light-studded pyramid of the hive spire. "I saw the Master of Mankind every night. He was a knight, like one of those astartes out of the legends - armoured all in red. He told me I was..." The swordsman took a slow breath. "Destined."

She nodded, and wondered if she had had a dream that had put her on this path. Something told her that wasn't the case, but she couldn't be sure.

"I told him I already knew that." Primus went on, his eyes glittering. "I was already bigger and stronger than all the other street kids. They could tell you. None of them could have beaten me in a fight. Until I met the man who dreamed as I did. Back then, his name was Primus."

Sarna nodded, understanding what that meant. Primus reached over his shoulder and unsheathed his sword, swinging the point down towards the ground with a simple flick of his wrist.

"He taught me how to use this." The swordsman examined the edge of the blade reverently, and then flipped it over in his hand to study his reflection in the flat. "But I could never beat him - not until I dreamed the answer. I still remember the look on his face when I made the cut that killed him. He smiled."

Sarna nodded. “A fated cut.” Something about that rang true.

Primus glanced at her. "Exactly. Before that he told me of others who followed the Red King, so when I took his name I sought them out. Like I said, I wasn't impressed when I saw them. I turned the weak ones out, and kept only the true believers. The ones who could do the Master of Mankind's work."

He exhaled slowly down his nose, cracking the trails of dried blood.

"Work that I'm going to have to rebuild from the ground up, it would seem."

“But not alone.” She smiled. “If I'm meant to be here, I should help.”

Primus chuckled. “Hm. I’m going to need it, I think. And you did knock off three of those Refuge vermin, even if you blew up Milena’s house in the process.”

He added a flicker of raised eyebrows to his teasing smirk, and threaded his unpowered sabre back into its sheath across his back.

“Unfortunately there’s only two of us. Three, if Quintus is still alive. And there’s rather a lot of them. Still, they don’t have many friends in this district - I wasn’t expecting them to storm down here in full force to stop our invocation.”

The swordsman clenched and unclenched his fist as he walked, jangling the broken cuff-chain around his wrist.

“Audacious," he admitted, his expression darkening. "I'll give them that at least. This has Sam the Slaver’s name all over it. Him or that sly bitch Tumasian.” His neck twitched.

"Sam and Tumasian." She didn't remember anything about them, which was good, she supposed. "If Sam is actually a Slaver, I would guess he provides the money for the Refuge, and Tumasian is the brains of the operation."

"Close." Primus replied, still staring broodingly ahead as they walked. His expression softened a little as he looked round. "Certainly not bad for a first guess."

She rolled her shoulders. "What do you know about them?"

Primus exhaled. "All of the Refuge are slavers, to tell the truth. But Samvel Vamassian is their link to uphive. The lords come down to make deals, he sends them back up with labourers and toys. Nara Tumasian is the one who is always out enforcing the Refuge's protection rackets, or recruiting the slum children. More recently she's been turning her attention to the out-hivers the smugglers have been bringing in."

Ahead of them a section of the boardwalk had rotted through and collapsed. Primus ducked under the black-spotted planks that had been left hanging by their outer spars.

"Vile people - but up until now, they were unimportant to the Red King. The Refuge's leader Petrosyan was the true believer, the true blasphemer. My dreams told me he was trying to summon his own patron, and only the Red King's chosen son could stand against him. Petrosyan is already marked, but it's no small thing to defy the Red King's wishes. If Tumasian or the Slaver attacked us, then their blood will feed the next invocation. And when the saviour walks among us..."

The swordsman swept his left arm across the riverfront, taking in the buildings crammed up to the concrete embankment and the winking lights on the distant bank.

"Tumasian, the Slaver, the hive lords who debauch themselves while everything else goes to wrack and ruin...all the sinners will be cleansed. Vaxanhive is an evil place, but the saviour will wash them all away in a tide of blood. We Kingsmen need to make the first cut."

He turned his head upward, past the winding curve of the river to the glittering cone of the nearest hive spire.

"One day?" He pointed at the spire. She noticed that his hand was trembling slightly. "There. But there are sinners enough here in the underhive. The Refuge first and foremost."

"Blood for his Chalice. Meat for his Table." Sarna whispered. She shook her head, looking away from the lights of the Hive Spire. "Come on. Lets find this Quintus friend of yours, and get to work."

[Felwether]

Not from around here, he thought as he watched the woman click off her lighter and return it to her pocket, But useful. He blinked. It didn't seem to match his previous impression of her.

That feeling again, the tingling in his arm. Abner didn’t like it but somehow it was becoming more familiar to him. He wondered if it was just intuition, perhaps he was just very good at reading people? Maybe he was mad? He was beginning to realise that whatever happened when he touched another person was more than simple insight, it was something much more, something unnatural. Regardless, the thoughts were clearer this time, though he couldn’t whether that was down to him or Nara - he’d have to investigate further.

Abner smiled warmly, but falsely, as he drew away, taking a deep drag of the lho stick. The acrid smoke it produced smelled and tasted awful but he enjoyed it immensely. He could practically feel the receptors in his brain clamouring greedily to absorb the chemicals it contained and he became slightly lightheaded. He exhaled slowly through his nose and sighed with satisfaction. He had known exactly where his lho sticks were, along with his lighter, which he was glad he had kept tucked away.

He watched as the two gangers made their way over to the warehouse and tried desperately to remember why he and the others had been sent there, why they had been sent to kill those people. The answer was just beyond the edge of his memory, if it was a word he would have said it was on the tip of his tongue. Out of the corner of his eye, sticking out from behind a pile of scrap, he spotted the distinctive, blocky shape of grav chute exhaust - he doubted anyone else could see it in the darkness but his heart still skipped a beat for some reason.

"What do you think? You wouldn't have to scrape around looting dead Reds any more, I can promise you that."

Abner blinked. He hadn’t really been listening but he had a general idea of what Nara was asking. In his opinion there was only one answer they could give that would get them out of there alive. He took another deep drag and glanced at Hadrak and Burakgazi, before turning to Nara.

“I think I speak everyone when I say that’d make a bloody nice change from scratching around in the dirt!” He said, trying his best to sound lighthearted. “Lead on.”

[PaintSerf]

Luminen Burakgazi contemplatively regarded the light ringed hive as he descended in the darkness. The night couldn’t hide the grand edifice from Konstantin’s blessed perception as he had long ago shed the Omnissiah’s Tears. He could see its life and potential in the shimmering energy that coursed through the hive’s unfathomable kilometers of conduit and cable in tune to the steady pulse of radiant fusion hearts. Its motive force surged through onwards to the industrial sites and habs encased within its mottled rockcrete and metallic skin, which was rendered down in his enhanced sight as shades of grey.

Vaxanhive. Konstantin scowled into the wind at the bitter taste left in his mouth by the hive’s name. This provincial hive was but a minor shrine compared to the glorious cathedrals of industry such as noble Vostroya or mighty Lucius. It was insignificant against holy Mars. Mars. Burakgazi felt an unwelcomely familiar ache as he stared fixedly at the mass of Vaxanhive. I do not want to be here.

Konstantin immediately ground his silver capped teeth together with disgust at his self-indulgent emotions, and promptly corrected his thoughts. Your wants are immaterial, Luminen. You will honor the mysteries of the machine and fulfil your role in the grand design. There is no doubt, as there is only duty, for you are a true warrior son of Vostroya. You will break their ritual and break their faith.

The Luminen took in the sight of Vaxanhive with a recalibrated perspective. It was a miracle technology, as were all Imperial hives, which was only made possible by the wondrous Knowledge of the Omnissiah as transmitted to the enlightened of the Mechanicus. Such a benevolent gift had been offered to the dimly illuminated masses of mankind, and for unfathomable reasons the hive become an ill-deserved fiefdom of the weak fleshed and thin blooded Vaxanide brood. Their indolent stewardship had hobbled and squandered the potential of the soaring monolith with their voracious corruption and willful ignorance.

They will all be illuminated to the errors of their ways. Konstantin solemnly vowed as he regarded the silent forges of Vaxanhive’s manufactoria. Their shuttered masses were revealed to him as dark abscesses within the hive’s body. The Lumien’s gaze did not linger on his future victims, and his nostrils flared with outrage as his attention shifted down to their target zone and the quarry beneath him. Tonight, I will begin with them.

The industrial estate was officially listed by the Mechanicus as abandoned, which Konstantin knew meant it had been stripped of salvageable technological and biological components while the worthless remnants were left to rot in the hive spire’s shadow. It was presently a warzone between the rival heretical cults. Their impure faiths that denied the sacred trinity of the machine were an affront enough to warrant merciless death by his measure. However the wasteful bursts of dueling las fire that tore across the square offended him as a disciple of the Motive Force, the divine energy of all life.

For that sin, I will reclaim their ill-used lives. This I swear to you, Lifegiver. Konstantin shivered slightly as he suppressed a sympathetic pulse of bio-electrical wrath from coursing through his electoos. It had been required of him to idle his re-forged nervous system during the insertion, on the chance that his exceptionally energetic signature would be detected by the hive’s scanners. Luminen Burakgazi had not contested the requirement as he endured at yet another slight against his faith and his person, as the decision had been logical. The worst slights have been the logical ones.

Konstantin bristled with shame and clutched his electroleech stave tighter as he resisted an unbidden twitch of melancholic rage from his electoos. That is enough of that, Luminen. Such thoughts are not for now, but soon. He soothingly promised the temperamental voltagheists contained within his extensive grafts, and himself. Soon it will be the time to ignite and unleash our hate. The Luminen curled the fingers of his free hand into the Mechanicus cog before he reached up and pulled down the grav-chute’s activator, all the while appeasing the machine’s spirit in his native Vostroyan binharic.

+ Worthy machine, while I remain ignorant to the divine mystery of your blessed workings, I humbly beseech you to activate and spare the existence of this mere spark of life. I make this plea not so that I may live for myself, but so that I might serve my designated purpose in the grand design for Mankind. +

No sooner had Konstantin finished his reverential abasement and the machine responded with a hum approval as it activated. The wind that tore at his arterial red demi-robes ceased as the anti-grav plate promptly asserted itself. Burakgazi pressed the fist which held his stave against the section of electoo formed into stylized ‘V’ on his breastbone and respectfully bowed his head to the machine. The gesture was inhibited by the high-collared molded shoulder harness and thick bolts in his neck, which combined secured the angled bronze and silver half-cog halo which arched behind his head.

Konstantin landed on the rockcrete with a heavy and hollow thump of his thick soled vulcanized rubber boots. The Luminen barely felt the impact due to the extensive synthetic muscle grafts and bone reinforcing lattices on his Cult Mechanicus re-forged body, but never the less he quickly dropped down to his knees in cover. There was a rattle from his inscribed chain-linked tabard centered beneath the devotional icon of his broad belt as Konstantin gently rested his stave on the ground, and carefully removed his grav-chute. The Luminen thanked its generous spirit as he reverently deactivated it.

"I've got the pretty boy with the butter knife gentlemen. Book for the door once we're dancing and I'll follow you when I'm done having my wicked way with him."

Of course the savage little girl would want to dance. He snorted with contempt at Sarna’s enthusiasm. The bronze tipped fingers of Konstantin’s gloves, crafted from the same black vulcanized rubber as his boots, clicked against the prayer strand of anointed hex bolts woven together by decommissioned and thrice-sanctified fiber optic cable. The Luminen thoughtfully worked the icon, secured next to the holster on his right hip, as he considered the most fundamental of his issues with the young assassin - Who but a dim-watt sends a blood cultist into a battle of faith with blood cultists?

This time the Luminen embraced the reflexive surge of ire as he thought of the particular dim-watt responsible for him being here. Feyd Lucullis. The mere thought of him made Burakgazi’s electoos thrummed from idle in sympathetic response. His steady breaths became deeper and harsher as he gladly cast off the self-imposed constraints on his bio-electrical wrath that had simmered in since they had departed the Sol system. Konstantin bitterly soaked in the wasteful blasphemy of the firefight, and shook out the thickly armored and insulated cables which linked his gloves and internal capacitors.

Abner skidded into cover next to Burakgazi and straightened his photovisor, the mirrored, circular lenses staring somewhat expectantly at the electro priest. Konstantin tilted his head downwards and spared the Abner a rare moment of regard. He could see through the man’s washed out grey husk of flesh and clearly note the thunderstorm of bio-electrical impulses that raged in the aberration’s unwholesome mind. The man – if such a wretch deserved to be called as such – was afraid, and the Luminen expressed his disdain for the psyker and his proximity with a sharp hiss of binharic.

Konstantin’s scrutiny was fleeting as his unblinking silver ocular prosthetics, articulated like those of a statue of antiquity, flicked back towards the Refuge’s position. One of the Slaaneshis belatedly spied Abner and the others at the corner of the building. He slapped urgently at the shoulder of his nearest companion, before shuffling awkwardly round on his knees. Abner ducked back just in time, as a stuttering stream of blue las-fire seared past the corner of the building, and found their mark as Burakgazi calmly stood and stepped into the line of fire.

The Luminen barely swayed as the shots smacked across the taut muscles of his abdomen. Konstantin inhaled slowly as the laser’s energy diffuse with a soft blue glow across the circuit-like electoos that traced beneath his flesh. He exhaled as he felt the pleasant warmth of his cog wheel shaped inductors in action as they flashed and absorbed the gunman’s las bolts. Those electoo inductors fed into the reserve capacitors nestled within his broad, muscular, and bare torso. He knew with certainty those small embers of divine energy were secure when the mild sensation dissipated.

Burakgazi’s dead silver eyes never wavered from the man who had shot him, and smiled. He had not done so since being sent away from Sol. Konstantin could only imagine what the cultist saw, and he spared an indulgent moment to mentally render it as the soft blue glow of his absorptive electoos faded.

Konstantin’s silvery smile widened into a predatory grin as he appreciated the abject terror he saw in the shooter before Hadrak’s shot tore into his arm. The new source of pinpoint gunfire broke the Refuge’s resolve and suddenly all five attackers were retreating, scrambling away at a ducking run. A blitz of lasfire from the warehouse pursued them, and one man went skidding forward on his knees as a puff of vaporised blood exploded from his back. The Luminen could clearly see the Kingsman on over watch at the back entrance and an indeterminate number of other cultists inside.

Now is the moment and we cannot be bogged down. I will handle those so-called Kingsmen who are surplus to summoning requirements. Burakgazi unilaterally determined as he effortlessly called his stave to hand with a magnetic lure as he purposefully strode away from his so-called comrades. He absently called back to Hadrak and Abner as he disappeared into the wash of black tire smoke.

“I will provide a distraction.”


+ + +

Konstantin’s determined advance on the Kingsmen’s stronghold was hardly a silent or subtle affair.

The zealous Luminen stood tall, in contempt of cover as he charged forwards. His footfalls were a rapid staccato of thick rubber soles slapping against cracked rockere, and each long stride made his chainmail tabard shift and jangle. Konstantin growled and gnashed his silvered teeth as the cultists’ gunfire began to dwindle and fade with the Refuge’s retreat. Not acceptable. The Omnissiah will be heard and have His due. With the merest of though Konstantin activated his augmented sub-vocalizers add the mechanical voice of a binharic canticle into this night of ritual.

Those who had not realized their full faith and potential by worshiping the Omnissiah in his guise of Mankind’s Emperor, or damned themselves completely by spurning even that lesser identity, only heard the Litany of the Electromancer sounded like a keening screech of machine code. To the Luminen it was the triumphant declaration of his creed as he called on the vital spark of mechanical divinity that resided in all true believers, which unified them from the merest servitors to the most Knowledgeable of Magos.

In a quieter moment, Konstantin would’ve spared a modicum of contemplative pity for those misguided souls and their continued ignorance of the true religion’s superiority. But this wasn’t the moment and tonight wasn’t the night. Tonight was a battle of faith and he was a warrior for the faith – a Burakgazi.

Faint flickers of blue light began to surround Konstantin as the voltagheists housed within his rewired body awoke at the intonation of his devotional plainsong. Konstantin welcomed the familiar tingling sensation as the tiny voltaic ghosts emerged from within his skin. Living lightning danced and sparked as they began to envelop the Luminen in hazy, crackling nimbus. His silver teeth scraped together as he remembered adding his augmented prayers alongside his fellow crusaders in sacred battle, when the Litany raised a furious storm of light that righteously scoured those unbelievers that stood against them.

Instead I fight alongside those are weak of flesh and faith. They are psykers, women, and so-called warriors who are not of my brotherhood.Burakgazi grimaced as the razor wire coils of melancholy tightened around his heart with unbidden ferocity. Or blood.

<Konstantin…we have only felt love and pride towards you from the moment you were born.>

Konstantin’s belligerent plainsong was abruptly cut off as the unbidden memory tore through his mind in binharic. Grandpa… He could hear the wounded and raw emotional edge in the old man’s voice, and layered behind that were the thin sobs of an elderly woman as she murmured desperate, pleading prayers to all of the Omnissiah’s aspects.

<You are the blood of our blood…and now…I am ashamed to call you my grandson.>

The Luminen’s determined stride faltered as the peripherals of his greyscale vision began to distort. He saw the blurred outline of a wizened old man, tall and unbowed by time in his austere robes. One hand rested supportively on the hunched shoulders of his wife. Grandma… She was hardly more than an outline that clutched her namesake Aquila icon in shaking hands that were much worse than usual. His grandfather’s lined face scrunched with anguish as he watched and gently stroked her back.

He felt his own breath tighten as his grandfather took a breath – he knew, and would never be able to forget, what happened next. The old man touched his cogwheel necklace and faced Konstantin, his mouth a stern line beneath a neatly trimmed moustache. The Luminen’s augmented vision may have stolen the burning embers of his grandfather’s eyes…but the mournful determination on his weathered face was articulated with excruciatingly accurate clarity.

<No. Not anymore. You are no longer of this family. You are no longer entitled to our name. I can only thank the Omnissiah that Leonid is not here to witness how you broke this family…and our hearts.>

Konstantin howled his defiance in a burst of binharic rage that scrambled the audio and visual assault. Daemonic manipulation. He growled deeply, wordlessly, and mentally redirected his roiled thoughts into a safer subject - the unpalatable Inquisitorial outsiders he had been surrounded by and forced to tolerate. The Luminen’s nostrils flared with contempt as his fist curled into the blessed cogwheel. He smashed it against the stylized Vostroyan ‘V’ electoo on his chest with a burst of light as Konstantin delved deeply into his plentiful frustrations to build up the righteous rage that he needed.

++ “So how about it, hmm?” Anais queried again. The Luminen heard the feral woman sheathe her knifes, her solo blade practice made impossible by his sudden – yet now familiar - devotional gesture. “You refuse to fight, so we might as well fuck. You’re already setting the mood lighting…”

“Your presumptions are as amusing as they are offensive.” Konstantin dismissed, with no evidence of humor. He paid the woman a mere fraction of attention as he continued to offer binharic prayers, reverently deactivating the training chamber’s lights one after the other to conserve energy.

“Why?” Anais persisted, with a flirty lit in her voice. Her rough leathers whispered as she closed the distance between them, her hips swaying in what he presumed was an enticement to the indecent proposition she offered. “You’re a big man, metal priest. I want to know if you’ve got a big cock.”

“I am a vowed brother of the Mechanicus, you uncultured barbarian.” Burakgazi exhaled, with a witheringly contemptuous glance. His articulated silver eyes shifted back to the bank of switches he had been gently lowering with his powerful, metal lined hand. “Weaknesses of the flesh are beneath me.”

“So says the man with all of those delicious muscles.” The knife-fighter verbally riposted, throatily laughed. She hummed appreciatively as her eyes feasted. “Yummy. I’d love to lick pudding off your abs.”

“Desist in this line of conversation.” The Luminen levelly cautioned. His cold, dead stare never blinked or wavered as he slowly turned to face Anais. “Immediately.”

Konstantin watched the lithely muscular knife-fighter through his greyscale optics as she richly laughed once again. He saw the bioelectrical flashes of her indulgent amusement in his transcended sight, and realized that the woman’s provocations were not merely due to her uncontrolled base desires.

She considered him weak, an inferior. By the Lifegiver, that was not acceptable.

The Luminen’s silver capped teeth clicked as they ground together, and the noise was accented by the clinking of his bronze capped fingertips as they curled into fists.

“What’s the problem, Stan?” Anais murmured softly. The feral woman stepped in closely, with a predatory smile on her sharp featured face. It was upturned slightly so she could meet his artificial eyes and raise a challenging eyebrow. “Afraid of how weak you’d be when I have you beneath me?”

“Weakness is a life lived without a greater purpose, Anais Svelthopfler.” Konstantin countered. He tilted his head back questioningly, staring down his nose at her. “What of worth have you accomplished with your life’s potential, you ignorant barbarian,” His words were a low, judgmental hiss, “other than squandering copious amounts of that blessed gift on meaningless slaughter and fruitless fornication?”

“You want to know what I’ve done, you miserable bastard?” The knife-fighter snarled at him, no longer amused in the slightest. Her hands shifted on her trim waist, edging closer to her recently sheathed blades as she matched his glare. “I’m the only champion of the Carnivale Maximo in its two hundred years! Nobody else on Carthagia Primaris, man or woman, has earned their freedom from the pits!”

“The legacy of a name is worthless without lineage.” Konstantin reflexively commented. “Your freedom and title as queen of a decadent backwater’s bloodied sand is inconsequential. That accomplishment, dubious as it may be, means nothing to humanity. It will not be remembered as time progresses onwards.” The Luminen sighed and almost pityingly regarded the woman. “Not that I should expect a feral primitive to have more complex thoughts than how best to gratify her impulsive lusts.”

“Gutting you where you stand would satisfy me, metal priest.” Anais hissed dangerously. Her hands slowly brushed against her knives before she flicked her hands away. She stepped back from the Luminen and snorted with contempt. “But I’ll not dishonor my blades with your unworthy blood.”

“Your presumptions continue to be incorrect and illogical.” Konstantin flexed his hands as he threateningly bared his silver capped teeth. It was nothing close to a smile. He had not smiled in an age.

“I’ve killed bigger,” The knife-fighter scowled, “but nothing quite as ugly.”

“No doubt you are paying attention during Kimberly Raeden’s sermons.” Burakgazi snorted humorlessly, and effortlessly quoted from the baseline’s lesser scripture. “Blessed is the mind too small for doubt.”

“No skill and a small cock.” Anais growlingly determined. She stormed past the Luminen, and violently slammed the light switches back into full power on her way out of the chamber. ++

“Knowledge prevails over the blight of ignorance!” Konstantin shouted, contempt thickening his rough Vostroyan accent as he slammed his polymer clad fist against his chest again. The luminous aura around him had ceased wavering and steadied into a constant low glow.

<You lack the requisite capacity for Knowledge to advance within the Cult.>

<I am going to break your khekking ritual.> Burakgazi snarled back the genderless, unwanted binharic voice spoke in his head. The daemon. The Luminen thumped his chest and bellowed again as his grey reality shifted once more. Static coalesced into the vague outline of a Cult adept, complete with the hints of gently waving mechadendrites over its shoulders. Konstantin knew from those words alone that this was the same individual who had performed his assessment and set him on the Fulgurite path.

<Your emotional response is premature. The Cult can still make use of you, aspirant Konstantin Sadik. Weaknesses of the flesh have a useful purpose - if they are appropriately controlled.>

<I control my mind!> Konstantin defiantly countered. The Luminen was oblivious to the shout from the Kingsmen’s warehouse, and the first scattered las bolts in his direction that followed. <I define my wrath!>

++ <You define your wrath, Luminen. Not that abomination.> Konstantin excoriated himself. The muted crackle of binharic was rendered all but inaudible over his heavy, determined footfalls as he strode out of the lift and towards Furia's modest hangar bay. He needed to pray and he had nowhere else to go.

The Luminen’s self-correction had come only after he had soothingly placated the volatile spirits within his electoos. They had reflexively pulsed with the threat of activation when he crossed paths with one of his psyker minions, Maidas Scour. The irksome female had countered his usual disparaging scowl with her own indulgent, coyly knowing smile as they neared one another. Mai had breezed on past with the whisper of silken robes, and her eyes idly travelled across his exposed muscles. It was her faint, patiently wistful sigh that nearly had him escalate from merely clenched teeth irritation to a more direct rebuke. He considered her habitually sensual attitudes an egregious offense when directed at him.

<Conserve your energy and wrath, Luminen. You will need both to break the infidels and their faiths.>

As he approached the hanger door, Konstantin's augmented hearing filtered out a baseline voice among the subsonic thrum of power cables and the gentle chugging of fuel lines.

"Dream well, Zur Gadi. You'll be running with the clouds soon enough."

The clipped modulation of the words allowed him to identify the voice as Erdene's. It wasn't hard to pair the voice sample with a mental image of the wiry interrogator tapping her digital stylus through the pre-flight checks, perhaps pulsing out a slight uptick of infrared as she paused to place a hand on the fuselage of the team's heavily-modified Phasma-pattern transport. The Phasma was officially designated X2-71-Lambda, but to Erdene it was Zur Gadi. Konstantin understood that the name belonged to a horse of Atillan legend that bore the unlikely ability to sublimate itself into mist and fly. The interrogator seemingly named every aircraft in Furia's hanger thus. Rho-77-Sigma was Jelme Kan and 68-499-Alpha-5 was Subu Tai.

Erdene was caught by surprise when the doors rumbled back to admit Konstantin, but visibly relaxed as she recognised him. The Luminen had been a regular enough visitor over the past week or so, although Konstantin hadn’t told Erdene the exact reason why. He knew about her...heterodox way of honoring the machine spirits, but so far he had not negatively commented and been respectful during their - mostly brief - interactions.

“Luminen.”

“Interrogator.”

Konstantin did not mind Erdene, and he may have even liked the woman if she had not been his pupil. The Interrogator was the only one amongst this sordid assembly of humanity who showed proper respect to the Machine God’s magnificent gifts. The animistic nature of her prayers was unlike any form of worship that Konstantin had witnessed in his limited experience with cheveks. While vaguely perplexed by the conventions of Erdene’s way of worship, the Luminen did not doubt her sincerity.

“I was under the impression our return to reality was not expected for another two days,” Konstantin idly mused as he appreciatively studied the Phasma flyer. His articulated eyes shifted toward the woman, and spread both of his hands open as he gestured to her with his copper capped fingers. “And yet here you are, interrogator Erdene.”

The interrogator snorted, and her greyscale outline flashed with the bioelectric pulses of amusement.

“Either you’re taking it easy on me today or not even trying anymore.” Erdene mildly chided. “Expectations and the warp don’t mix, Stan, which you well know.”

The interrogator pointed a thumb over her shoulder, towards the two shrouded ready-racks positioned at the flyer’s lowered ramp. “Why else would you have been down here for the past week making daily prayers to the grav-chutes?”

Erdene may have been the most tolerable of these Inquisitorial cheveks, but Konstantin was not inclined to vocalize a correction and grace her with a full explanation of his rationale. His preferred refuge since departing Sol had been the tertiary diagnostic alcove of drive sub-sector thirteen’s auxiliary conduit. Such a remote location had offered the Luminen sanctuary, solitude, and comfort as he communed with the Furia. Isolation and the surging cascades of the vessel’s fusion heartbeat had been a source of calm.

One of the least palatable of their ilk, Sarna Astros, had ruined the meditative hideaway for him. She had rigged the access port with a stun grenade after their most recent snarl, over whatever trivial matter the relentlessly chipper assassin had attempted conversation with. The disorientation had been a fleeting, barely-registered irregularity to his augmented senses – but Konstantin knew he would find no serenity there now. The savage little blood cultist had wanted him to know that she knew where he went, when he was most vulnerable, and that she only needed that one moment. He still contemplated recovering the captive energy from her profane power blade’s spare cells as an act of justice for that violation.

“I have been attending to their noble spirits.” Konstantin confirmed, as her presumption was close enough to the truth. “The unequaled accuracy and timing of a blessed, well appeased machine will have us on target to break these infidels' -”

“Faiths and rituals, while being faster, safer and more reliable than using traditional parachutes and praying for an optimal outcome.” Erdene finished. She shrugged as he questioningly inclined his head by fraction at her accurate repetition of him. “I think everyone aboard Furia heard the,” The interrogator momentarily considered her words, “robust exchange of theological differences you had with Kimmie.”

Konstantin snorted, with the hollowest hint of amusement, at Erdene’s diplomatic reference to the conversation turned volatile argument that had occurred between himself and missionary Raeden. He saw the interrogator almost begin to comment further, but instead she sighed lightly and moved on.

“We’re still a couple of days out from Vaxanide, as least as best the navigator can determine.” Erdene allowed.

The interrogator reflexively thumbed her palm into a demi-Aquila at the mention of their warp pilot and her mutant insight. Konstantin wordlessly approved of the warding gesture, even if it was made to the Omnissiah’s lesser identity. Mutations were an aberration in the grand design of humanity.

“You’ve been through the briefings, so you know we’ll be deploying as soon as we’re in orbit over the hive.” Erdene continued, when the Luminen did not respond. He saw the mental burst of adamantium-clad determination as the interrogator’s brow scrunched with resolve. “I won’t have us miss our moment to thwart these heretics because I didn’t treat Zur Gadi with the respect he deserves.”

“Your commitment to thorough preparation is commendable, interrogator Erdene.” Konstantin said, with a gracious nod.

The interrogator stared at him in frank surprise at the unexpected complement and the thoroughly atypical politeness. Konstantin almost deigned to smile, and he might well have if he had met Erdene under better circumstances.

“It is gratifying to know that you are not amongst those of our…colleagues…who are confused as to the nature of their existence, and the roles that they have been assigned in the operation which is to come.”

He saw the interrogator’s digitized avatar narrow her almond shaped eyes as she silently regarded him. The Luminen’s dead eyes did not blink, as he never did blink, but they narrowed in turn at the woman’s abrupt change in attitude. The faintest embers of amicability between them were snuffed out Erdene quelled her first offended impulses of with a sharp thought. She slowly exhaled the sudden tension down her nose. Konstantin felt his mouth twitch into a thin and displeased line beneath his thick moustache, and resisted the shamefully baseline urge to emit his own sigh of frustration.

Yet another attempted conversation with one of these impossible people was about to become an argument.

“Don’t mince your words, Stan. It really isn’t your style.” Erdene opined. Her hard gaze never shifted from him, even as she idly twirled the stylus between her fingers. “That didn’t sound like you were finally questioning why I’m not a brood mare, since you must’ve asked that from every other woman on the team.”

Konstantin saw the pulse of irritation that did not reflect in her voice. The Luminen had to actively resist his brotherhood’s conditioned response to escalate their hostility well beyond that of their foes. No. Erdene was not an enemy. She was merely ignorant of many truths, as were all of the other cheveks.

“Would you care to clarify the point you were trying to make, Luminen?”

“It was not in regards to your suitability for maternity or the pursuit of your intended rank.” Konstantin levelly assured, with a fractional incline of his head. “The light of your life burns bright with potential, interrogator.”

“I’m gratified to hear that.” Erdene neutrally returned.

The Luminen once again fought back the urge to sigh at the interrogator’s latent doubt and simmering aggression. He was not even sure why he was bothering to try with these cheveks anymore. His efforts at trying to understand these Imperials had seemed like nothing more than exercises in futility.

“Omnissiah knows that humanity would only benefits when the most capable individuals continue their legacy.” Konstantin said. His copper digits clinked as he idly rubbed his thumb across the tips of his fingers, as he considered the theological argument. “Yet the sacrifice of lineage is necessary to ensure that their commitment is solely focused in achieving their purpose in the grand designs of humanity.”

Konstantin’s mouth curved into a thoughtful frown beneath his waxed and pointed moustache, as he silently contemplated that morbid paradox. While he was an avowed devotee of the Lifegiver, he had made his own personal decision about the commandment of procreation before he had become one the illuminated priesthood. He still questioned if it been the correct choice. The cost had been…significant.

“As fascinating as this topic may be,” Erdene drily commented, “would you care to clarify your salient point, Luminen?”

“My salient point, interrogator,” Konstantin replied, sharply emphasizing her rank with biting irritation as his reverie was broken, “is that this mission needed a pilot. I consider it admirable that you have been a realist enough to embrace that this is your operational role, as best suited to your skills. Your master would have already employed a dedicated pilot, or have otherwise begged, borrowed, or outright stolen one from another source, if you were anything less than the most exceptional option.”

The Luminen made no effort to disguise his antipathy for him as he gestured between himself and Erdene. His fingers no longer splayed open in welcome communion. Konstantin pointedly emphasized the stark physical discrepancy between them as he towered over the petite interrogator. His body had been reformed into a physically perfect weapon for the Cult. He knew that none of these cheveks was nearly his equal as a warrior, and the insipid posturing from the likes of the barbarian were tiresome.

“I would not be able to serve my function as a warrior in this battle of faith without your assistance. I am grateful for that, Erdene.” Konstantin’s expression was stony, but he sincerely meant what he said even as he internally struggled to check his own latent aggression. “The serene manner in which you have embraced the role for which you are best suited is impressive - unlike the others amongst this team who claim to be warriors, and have been tediously persistent in their misguided arguments to the contrary.”

There was a lull as Konstantin saw the neural lightning storm of potential hostility ignite within Erdene’s disciplined mind. The Luminen exhaled lowly and suppressed his own outrage at the woman’s reflexive and entirely unwarranted emotional reaction. His words were meant as a compliment to the interrogator. How could she not comprehend how singular an achievement it was for anyone to overcome their species’ biologically hardwired and innately flawed sense of self-importance? He had been a supplicant of the Cult Mechanicus for nearly a decade and had yet to reach that divine clarity.

Konstantin slowly clicked his metal tipped fingers together as Erdene squared to face him. The interrogator’s strong will had honed her mental inferno down into an ember of aggression. He calmly awaited the woman’s invariably offended response – which she would doubtlessly believe to be a cutting remark that would harm him, or hubristically presume would teach him some manner of lesson. Missionary Raeden, or ‘Kimmie’ as she preferred, had similarly attempted such an exercise and failed.

"Suggest I wouldn't make a good warrior again, Stan, and I'll rip out your bionic eyes and shove them up your arse.” Erdene countered. The interrogator pointedly held the Luminen’s silvered eyes, before she shook her head and returned to her pre-flight checklist. “Don't take your complex about not being able to join the Firstborn out on me."

<You define your wrath, Luminen! She is not an enemy!> Konstantin barked in a snap of binharic as he registered Erdene’s words, well aware of what was about to happen. <Discipline! Order! Restraint!>

His eyes widened at the sudden, sympathetic surge of bioelectrical wrath his symbiotic electoos fought against his willpower to burst into activation. He struggled against the creeping burn of murderous expectation that coursed through him as the voltagheists within his rebuilt body sought to scourge the interrogator with the purifying light of the Omnissiah’s radiance. The simple, tempestuous spirts were summoned by the impulses of his flawed and weak flesh. Erdene’s unexpected and incautiously hurled barb had pierced through the mental levies retaining the deepest and darkest pools of loss, remorse, and shame in which he would subsume himself to build his righteous wrath while in holy combat.

“Luminen?” Erdene cautiously queried at his prolonged silence.

Konstantin’s silver capped teeth clacked and scraped together as he saw the flicker of restrained wariness, and slight concern emanate from the interrogator’s avatar. The Luminen’s head spasmodically twitched away from Erdene - and her infuriatingly belated sense of worry that she was not entitled to after her antagonism - towards the Phasma as he exhaled deeply down his nose. Konstantin gently rested his left against the idle flyer’s hull and reached out to commune with its venerable spirt, as his right interlaced the prayer strand as his waist. It was as much an effort to re-center his thoughts as occupying his hands from following through on the impulse to tear the bright light of life from Erdene.

<Honored machine, I offer my most profound apologies for this grievous display of biological imperfection within your wondrous presence. I implore you to forgive this offense, X2-71-Lambda, as I am but a mere Luminen. I must endure the burden of my weakness in flesh so that I might better serve the Omnissiah and fulfil my role in the grand design for humanity.>

He slightly tilted his head in Erdene’s direction as he rasped in binharic.

<I would ask you to graciously bless us with your unreserved operation when we deploy for the battle of faith to come. I will break these heretic’s rituals and faiths before I recover their ill-spend lives for the Lifegiver. With you as my witness I would ask the Omnissiah to grant me the strength to persevere against these cheveks and their rampant ignorance - until the moment that I encounter those wretches who truly deserve to weep and scream as I extinguish their profane existence from the face of creation.>

Erdene stepped into the Luminen's eyeline and jerked her chin upwards in challenge. “If you’ve got something to say to me, or about me,” she iterated coldly, “I’d prefer you to speak Gothic, Stan. I know you know it.”

“Your assumption is both arrogant and erroneous, Erdene. I was in direct communion with X2-71-Lambda.” He responded, voice rich with conviction, even if the statement was less than truthful. “The worthy and long suffering machine spirit within deserved to be appeased with dignified worship.”

Stan resettled his hands on the broad lapels of his robe, which his Brotherhood had designed to emulate the uniform jackets worn by the Firstborn regiments, as he turned to face her. He saw Erdene’s tepid afterthought of consideration become engulfed by the flashover of anger that surged through her at his insult. Konstantin did not mind, and even preferred they have honest antipathy between them rather than continue to make feeble efforts understanding. This has to be done. The Luminen impassively regarded Erdene with his dead silver eyes as he mentally prepared himself for the imminent, inevitable emotional backlash.

“I would prefer that you honor these flyers by their correct designations, interrogator. It shows proper respect for the Omnissiah’s wondrous gifts, and that you have transcended your primitive origins.”

Konstantin saw the interrogator’s avatar burst with incandescent rage as she slammed down her data-slate on a nearby work cart. Erdene took a step forward, fists curling as unleashed a scornful tirade of Atillan invective at him. The Luminen stared her down as he allowed her potent anger to wash over him, without any reaction other than an internal sense of relief that his self-control had remained intact.

“Indulging in such superstitious, animalistic nonsense – if only when you presume you are alone - should be beneath an aspirant inquisitor, even if you are one of his pupils.” Konstantin opined, a disparaging sneer creasing his face at the fleeting mention of Lucullis. He turned away from the irate interrogator and determinedly stalked towards the hangar’s exit, unbothered by her harsh words. ++

“The light of illumination guides the worthy and scourges the unworthy!” The Luminen proclaimed, as he waded from his rewound memory fragment into a storm of las fire.

The Luminen levelled his stave at the warehouse, and bellowed challengingly as he smashed his fist against his chest. Stan smiled broadly and spread his arms wide to fully expose his center mass to the Red King’s gunmen. He was pleased to note that the infidels had adequate marksmanship, as he distantly registered the impacts against his augmented flesh. Those few near misses were intercepted by voltagheists in crackling bursts of light, and he felt the pleasantly burning tingle of his inductors as they worked to absorb the loose energy. The sensations of sacred combat were welcome and familiar to the Luminen, and there was no other place for a Fulgurite to violent extoll the virtues of the correct faith.

<You will not descend with us to Mars, Brother Burakgazi. You have been diverted to another task.>

Konstantin heard the sonorous declaration even as the hazy specter of Luminous Bogomolov appeared before him. The ruined industrial estate blended into the lighter bay aboard the Triumphant Rationality as Stan had archived it on that fateful day. He heard the idling electoos of the Luminous and his eight other Brothers as they encircled him as they laid hands on him. For a fleeting instant, the Luminen relived the moment of communion with his fellow crusaders - the most basic awareness of combat automatons and servitors, the assembled ranks of the skitarii cohort, and the hierarchy of the priesthood from the juniors acolytes all the way through to the Exploratrix herself.

<You are of the Brotherhood. You will always be of the Brotherhood. We are with you in spirit as you fulfil this appointed duty, Brother Burakgazi. Never doubt yourself. Never doubt your faith.>

The Luminen shivered and staggered to a halt as his electoos responded to the infernal recitation of those words, in that moment. The network of reactive grafts was tapped directly into the depths of his mental reservoir of wrath, and they radiantly flared anew- as if promethium had been tossed on an open flame. He roared viciously, electricity arcing between his silvery teeth and his cog-toothed halo, as he hunched in on himself at the center of his man-made storm of light. The surge of excess energy burned excruciatingly as his extensively modified body was unexpectedly pushed to its capacity.

Duty. Konstantin thought, as he mentally dived back into his memories to focus his rampant ire and preempt a full blown meltdown.

++ The Furia's gymnasium gallery was not somewhere that he would normally have chosen to be, especially during the crew's designated exercise hour. But it was the fastest route down to the generatorium level, and Konstantin was adamant that he was not going to let the inquisition cheveks dictate his routes through the blessed void-ship. Furia belonged to the Omnissiah, not to the overbearing humans clinging like parasites to its steel innards.

A mezzanine walkway crossed the length of the gymnasium three metres above its floor level - an odd design element that suggested that the gallery had served some other function before being repurposed. It offered Konstantin an elevated view of the crewmen as his vulcanised boots clanked purposefully along the gantry. The bar lights mounted overhead were brighter than they needed to be, he noted; wasteful. The Luminen briefly spared a moment to contemplate whether or not the insult was deliberate, or merely thoughtless. If nothing else, these cheveks are more than capable of both.

He cast his greyscale vision across the gallery, methodically tagging each of the inquisition agents in turn. The only obvious absences from the retinue were agent Marrick, who was attending to some errors that Erdene's pre-flight checks had flagged up, and astropath D'lane, who seldom mixed with the other agents by choice. Most of the retinue had completed their preferred routines and were gathered under an iron Aquila that had been crudely hammered to one wall, where Kimmie Raeden was leading the group in a short standing prayer. It seemed somewhat disrespectful, even to the Omnissiah's lesser avatar, for prayer to be offered while dressed in damp tank-tops and cycle shorts, running with biological sweat and bleeding the Omnissiah's precious energy spark out into the environment at an accelerated rate. Perhaps that was why Konstantin's attuned vision only registered dull flickers of engagement inside the agents' brains. Even Kimmie herself did not seem fully committed, though her words and tone did not bely the doubtful electrochemical storm he could see brewing in her mind.

Konstantin was not deluded enough to presume that their robust exchange of theological differences had anything to do with the missionary’s doubts. The Luminen had seen the unsettled nature of Kimmie’s thoughts before their acrimonious conversations, although he was unaware if her persistent troubles surfaced when she preached the lesser aspect of the Omnissiah’s word. He had made it a point not to be subjected to those imprecise sermons - and the threat of another pointless argument - with any of these increasingly tedious cheveks, but Kimmie’s doubts were another issue entirely.

Is the missionary not so certain in her faith?

The Luminen frowned. It was a disconcerting thought that the spiritual integrity of their other priest might be compromised; precisely when they would need the preacher at her most blindly devoted in breaking the rituals. Konstantin could only speculate at whether or not there was a malfunction with Kimmie’s faith, but he could reasonably hypothesize what else could be troubling the woman’s mind.

Adhara and Cian.

Konstantin had only become aware of Adhara and Cian when Kimmie’s last attempt at conversation – a misguided intercession about team unity, premised on the flawed assumption that as the constant variable in numerous arguments he was the instigator of them all – had failed spectacularly. The missionary did not elaborate beyond those names while in the midst of her apoplectic ire, and Konstantin had no compelling interest in acquiring further personnel details about these cheveks – but the Luminen could conjecture well enough as to the significance of those names for Kimmie, in light of the context of their preceding dialogue and numerous other verbal engagements over the past weeks.

You abandoned a world, and a lover with whom you could have had a family. The Luminen concluded as his dead eyes stared impassively down at the missionary. We are both more alike than either of us would care to admit, Kimberly Raeden. Not that we ever will.

Konstantin idly brushed his copper-capped thumbs across his fingertips, and mentally dismissed that thought strand. His attempt at broaching the subject in the mere seconds preceding had elicited Kimmie’s emotionally raw response. The Luminen would not waste precious energy by attempting that line of discourse again. Perhaps I should cease all future attempts at conversation with the Inquisitorial cheveks? The outcomes have been thoroughly disappointing in all regards so far. He flagged that ever more appealing idea for consideration as his sight shifted away from Kimmie.

Three of the team, he noted, had elected to avoid the ritual altogether. The psyker Mai was still making balletic turns and sweeps with her force weapon, seemingly lost inside her own head as seemed to be her default. Anais and Sarna were evidently settling another one of their juvenile feuds. They were twirling and grunting in the fenced-off cage at one end of the gymnasium, glowing with waves of infrared exertion and grey sparks of aggression. They were fighting blade to blade, Anais' lovingly but imprecisely forged knives against Sarna's factory-machined sabre. The theoretical superiority of the Regis-pattern blade did not stop Konstantin from hoping that Anais beat the death cultist - preferably with a few painful if not debilitating wounds. In spite of his distaste for Anais, the incident with the stun grenade still smarted – and Sarna’s powered weapon was an abomination against the principles of Motive Force.

Deus Ex Machina. the Luminen acknowledged, before he turned his petty and impulsive wishes into a purposeful prayer for summary judgment. May the most unworthy of these blasphemers be stricken down for their transgressions against the correct faith.

The Omnissiah answered when the feral worlder managed to grapple Sarna, at which point the bigger woman's strength told and the young death cultist was spun to the floor with Anais' knee on her sword arm and one of the crude carbon-steel daggers against her throat.

Konstantin softly hissed through his silvered teeth as Anais’ grayscale avatar flared with primal elation at her victory, and Sarna’s pulsed with youthful irritation in defeat. The Luminen found the women’s instinctive emotions to be distasteful, but he was not surprised in the slightest by their equally petulant reactions. He was also not surprised by the barbarian’s notional throat slashing finisher. No doubt the brutish directness would have titillated the herds of moronic spectators - the ones who until he had found her had packed into the Carnivale Maximo on Carthagia to watch her fight. The Luminen imagined them obligingly braying the feral mongrel’s name, as if in debased prayer.

Anais Svelthopfler would have reveled in the adulation to an indecent degree, he could predict. The barbarian may have freed herself from irons, but she is - and will always be - a slave to her untamed lusts. He judged both the preening knife fighter and her moody teenaged rival contemptuously as they separated. How thoroughly counter-productive it would be to exsanguinate a blood cultist – even one who has not whored their humanity and soul away to the apathetic King of Blood, who cares not from where it is sourced?

The Luminen felt a pleasant shiver in his electoos as he mentally projected his pre-determined course of action on Vaxanide. He already knew how he would illuminate the Kingsmen to the errors of their ways.

To break with Ritual is to break with Faith. It was the eighth Warning of the mechanicus creed - but the warning could cut both ways.

I will break this ritual, and even as these infidels die – screaming and weeping as I recover their misused gifts of Motive Force - I will break their unhallowed faiths by denying them the opportunity to offer their false Master of Mankind any of the wet iron that it so desperately craves from us all.

Konstantin didn't smile, but he did externalise a quiet grunt of satisfaction at the reaffirmation of his superior Knowledge over these ignorant cheveks. He resumed his stride, and realised that his path was blocked; by him. Inquisitor Lucullis had appeared from the other end of the gantry and had now stopped near the centre to watch his agents below. The ageing man's shoulders were hunched as he leaned gaunt hands on the railing, surveying the team with flint-grey organic eyes just as Konstantin had appraised them with his own augmetics. The inquisitor did not seem to have noticed Konstantin, and he made no move to get out of the Luminen's way.

Konstantin kept his expression studiously neutral as he regarded him with his dead eyes. He had first witnessed Feyd Lucullis on the deck of the Furia’s modest hangar bay, identifying the unassuming inquisitor from amongst the small assembly of his agents who had been summoned for his so-called welcome. The Luminen had stood girded in his formal vestments, with his back towards the shuttle that would soon return to the Triumphant Rationality. It was going back without him and it was never going to return. He was never going to return to his Brotherhood. He was never going to reach Mars.

With that cold realization, it had taken Konstantin but a moment to assess the inquisitor - this aged grey husk of a man who had so radically altered the trajectory of his role in the grand design of humanity - and find Feyd Lucullis wanting in all aspects. On his own lack of merits, the Luminen had assured himself, rather than any such flawed emotional premise as bitterness or resentment.

Then, as now, the physical disparity between the two was the most immediate difference. Konstantin exemplified the mechanicus’ proficiency in flesh-crafting and of the biological potential for Mankind, as granted by the grace of the Omnissiah’s guidance and wisdom. He stood tall and proud, even in this most shameful of moments, clad in the holy reds and greys of mighty Lucius – an homage paid by his Brotherhood, in honor of their martial origins as a sub-sect of their Fulgurite orders. He was adorned with devotional iconography in gold and ruby, exquisitely crafted by Vostroya’s peerless metallurgists and jewelers as an act of faith - an offering to a warrior son that has offered his life to repay their world’s ancient and unpaid debt of blood to the Imperium of Terra and Mars, as a minor avatar of the Omnissiah’s might.

Konstantin’s designated purpose as a warrior for the faith was exemplified by the prowess of his re-forged flesh, and the Luminen made no effort to obscure that role, as he reveled in his function. Feyd Lucullis, on the other hand, was a testament to the frailty of baseline humanity: thinly built and worn down by the inevitable progress of time, and evidently not a warrior. This was a man who had spent his life in shadowy reclusion, and reinforced that image with how he presented himself. Lucullis wore deliberately austere garb, with no hints as to his convictions in faith or purpose, and Konstantin was certain the inquisitor was unconcerned with how he was perceived – a grey man, even to his greyscale vision, devoid of humanity. Even the motley collection of agents arrayed with this man raised doubts about his leadership.

They are weak of flesh and faith, and I am to fight alongside them - these psykers, women, and warriors who were not of my Brotherhood. Or my blood. Konstantin had felt his nostrils flare slightly with contempt as he considered the unpalatable inquisition cheveks, even as the minions introduced themselves and he mentally captured their appearances and voice samples for combat identification.

"Inspecting your followers?" Konstantin inquired, dismissing his reminiscence as he drew level with the other man. He was seeking acknowledgement of his desire to pass rather than to engage the Inquisitor in genuine conversation.

Lucullis' grey eyes flicked briefly in Konstantin's direction, but otherwise he didn't move, still poised like a spider as he frowned down at his agents below. "I'm just passing through. But part of my duty is ensuring that they're all doing theirs."

Duty. Konstantin considered as he stared at him. He quickly surmised it was no coincidence that Feyd Lucullis would mention duty, within the loaded context of a sudden appearance and the deliberate obstruction of his motion. Konstantin knew he was about to have yet another unwanted conversation imposed on him, and so be it. He would speak his mind – and the truth - in turn, as he always had since boarding the Furia.

“Then you have failed.” Konstantin answered, the condemnation calmly and evenly spoken. The Inquisitor’s rosette and the notional authority that afforded him meant nothing to the Luminen. It was merely a small piece of jewellery on an even smaller man.

“Have I now.” Lucullis dryly stated, as he continued to impassively watch the team. “Go on. Illuminate me as to how.”

“It is but one of your many failures. If you had fulfilled your duty, and ensured that your followers were adequately prepared for this ordeal, I would not be here.” Konstantin released his lapels, and broadly gestured around with his closed and flattened hands. “And yet, here I am."

It was a deliberate insult on the Luminen’s behalf to deny Lucullis the open handed welcome, an acknowledgement of communion and cooperation. The gesture was a conversational enjoinder particular to Vostroya, where open hands were an emulation of cogs, which indicated they were receptive of another’s opinion, and offered through the combining of their Knowledge that all participants could achieve a higher purpose together than they might apart.

He did not expect him to be cognizant of the additional slight.

“I didn't realise it was an insult to approach the Fulgurites about the service for which they specifically market themselves." Lucullis countered brusquely. He glanced aside at the Luminen.

"My Brotherhood will challenge and defeat any enemy of Mankind." Konstantin replied, not willing to let the slight go unanswered from any man, least of all him. "But you failed to consider more logical and efficient options for when daemonic manifestation is the primary threat. Blanks for example."

He laid deliberate emphasis on the word, knowing full well Lucullis' antipathy towards the pariah subspecies. Though Konstantin himself held no love for the genetic aberration of soulless humanity, it seemed only right to scrutinise his logical process on a subject to which he was unabashedly partisan.

"I believe the mechanicus line is The soulless sentience is the enemy of all." Lucullis answered. "Unlike what some of my colleagues will tell you, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend."

Konstantin was not wholly convinced that Feyd Lucullis knew the meaning of the word colleague, much less the word friend. He had gathered early on that the man seemed to keep his distance from other inquisitors except where duty demanded it, and presented the same cold, enigmatic front even to his own agents. Perhaps if he had spent more time with these cheveks, he would have realised why they are all unfit for the purposes he has assigned to them.

The agents in turn had filled the blank canvas that Lucullis wrapped around himself with a number of outlandish stories, each more unlikely than the last. One that had stuck in the Luminen's mind was that he had plucked his own eyes out of his head and replaced them with the grey orbs of a deceased heretic - supposedly, seeing the world from a sinner's perspective gave him a greater insight into truth and lies. It seemed like a debased mirror of Konstantin's own ocular implants, only instead of weeping the Omnissiah's tears and receiving the blessed purity of metal, he had polluted his already weak body in the name of superstition, or else a juvenile attempt to inspire fear.

In spite of all this, Lucullis didn't seem to care how the stories proliferated. The most logical conclusion that Konstantin could draw was that he considered the truth to be worse. The whole thing stank of insecurity. He prefers a cloak of lies to his retinue of minions knowing what a small man he really is. Or perhaps it was not insecurity, but fear. One of the more consistent theories among his retinue was that he held a secret psychic gift, which explained his seemingly infallible ability to tell a lie from the truth. Perhaps that is the real reason he fears the company of blanks. Konstantin allowed himself a moment of ironic pleasure as he projected the inevitable outcome of such a scenario - the rogue psyker unmasked by his fellow inquisitors, and executed just like one of the heretics he so zealously hunted down.

"But the crux of the matter," Lucullis determined, breaking through Konstantin's accusative musing like a current surge through a resistor, "Is that you are here, and you don't want to be here. You would rather be on Mars.”

Konstantin merely stared at the Inquisitor. Such an obvious statement needed no verbal response.

"The fact that you wanted to see Mars is irrelevant right now. You have been given a duty and you will fulfill it, just like the rest of us." Lucullis decreed, as he resumed his observance of the others. “I’m disappointed. It shouldn’t have been necessary to remind you of your responsibilities.”

“I do not require a lecture on duty. Most especially not from you, amongst all of these individuals.” Konstantin countered. Distaste colored the Luminen’s voice as he glanced downwards at the distant and disordered inquisitorial team. “I am well aware of what my responsibilities are; thereby rendering this verbal exchange we have instigated both unnecessary and wasteful.”

“Convince me it isn’t necessary.” Lucullis challenged. The Inquisitor’s flat tone and still posture betrayed nothing even when faced with blatant disrespect. “Define your duty, Luminen Burakgazi.”

“My duty is to provide combat assistance to Inquisitor Feyd Lucullis and his retinue in their mission on Vaxanide.” Konstantin recited, in Gothic, the direct translation of his binharic orders. “It should not be necessary to remind you that we are not yet on Vaxanide.”

“I would’ve respected such commitment to the letter of your responsibilities,” The inquisitor's frown twitched deeper, “If you hadn’t used it as a pretext to antagonise my agents at every opportunity.”

“My directive is not to coddle your delicate minions. It is to slay the Omnissiah’s enemies.” the Luminen said, unmoved by any hypothetical approval from him. His bionic eyes narrowed disparagingly at the agents beneath them. “I will not accept the blame for your failure to recruit qualified operatives.”

“I wouldn’t have inducted them if they weren’t capable and qualified.”

“So you say.” Konstantin said dismissively. “Regardless, the weaknesses of their flesh and faith are not my concern.”

Lucullis' cheek twitched. “I would’ve expected you to appreciate how illogically counterproductive such behavior is to the mission. You should be in better control of your emotions.”

“I am a Luminen,” Konstantin replied, injecting a note of righteous conviction into his words. “And a Luminen controls their wrath.”

“Others may. You do not,” Lucullis shifted his flinty gaze back towards the Luminen, “Or at least not fully.”

“I control my wrath.”

“That's a lie.” Lucullis held Konstantin's bionic eyes for a moment before turning away and resting his forearms dismissively on the railing.

“I control my wrath.”

“Repeating a lie doesn't make it the truth.”

"Repeating a flawed assertion does not make it accurate." Konstantin countered. "Can you see into my mind to prove yours?"

He watched the bio-electric sparks within the smaller man's brain intently, as he made oblique reference to the inquisitor's conjected status as a rogue, unregistered psyker. Something was burning deep inside the man's mind, but a giveaway spike of anger, shame or fear failed to materialise.

"Would it matter if I could, Luminen?" Lucullis asked tonelessly, turning to square his frail baseline body towards Konstantin's for the first time.

"It would not. It would merely further lower my opinion of a man who is too incompetent to assemble a suitable team, and too arrogant to delegate to another inquisitor despite the delay of your Saros hearing. Both of these actions imperiled the mission, to a degree that would be unacceptable to anyone possessed of even basic Knowledge."

For the first time, Konstantin thought his augmented hearing picked out the sound of Lucullis hissing through his teeth.

"You make a lot of assumptions about this mission and the variables involved in it, Luminen. I will tell you again, and this time consider it a warning. Control the emotions that are clouding your judgement."

“If I were not in control of my wrath, Inquisitor,” Konstantin calmly replied, as his hands clasped tightly back on his lapels, “You would be the first to know.” ++

“I control my wrath!” Konstantin growled, as he terminated the archived recollection. The words were rough and harsh as he spat them through the silver caps of his clenched teeth. “My wrath is my faith!”

The Luminen exerted his force of will and purged the worst of his errant ire from his short-term memory buffers. With the threat of a disastrous meltdown of rage averted, Konstantin forced the extensive and impressive artificial muscles of his body to unclench as he stood upright and faced the warehouse. The firestorm from the Red King’s gunmen had not abated in the seconds he had been frozen in place.

“My faith is perfect in its purity!” Konstantin exclaimed, in contempt of him and the daemons that he had been sent to fight on his behalf. “My purity is the truth and the light of the Omnissiah’s might!”

The Luminen laughed in defiance of the malefic distractions as he took another step towards the ritual.

“Such petty theatrics cannot sway a Fulgurite of the Bro-”

“Brother?”

Konstantin’s latest defiant proclamation curdled in his throat with a choked grunt as he lurched to a halt. The Luminen immediately recognized the voice and assessed its owner’s presence here as an impossibility. He objectively knew that this was but the latest form of daemonic interference to throw him off his holy task. He knew that he should disregard the voice and continue his advance. He knew he had to break the ritual. Cult Mechanicus rational indoctrination faltered against basic human instinct.

The Luminen slowly turned towards the voice, and his teeth ground together with unnerved tension as he froze in place. Konstantin’s habitual unblinking stare was intensely fixated on the man who had supposedly spoken. He immediately recognized him, even after a decade of separation, and felt a cold shiver course through his body as his internal processors supposedly confirmed the impossible identity.

Sadik, Leonid Jamaal. Corporal. 3rd Sentinel Squadron – Armored. 1st Auxilia Company. 149th Vostroyan Firstborn.

Konstantin absently dismissed the flashing data update overlaid in his peripheral vision as he gazed at his brother. He would know his fraternal twin anywhere…whether or not his fraternal twin was the result of his consciousness being unduly influenced by the close proximity to an active malefic ritual.

He and Leo did not share much in the way of physical resemblance, and aside from the same dusky terracotta of their mixed heritage skin tone, the two brothers were an outwards study of contrasts. The brother’s facial construction featured prominent angles, with Leo’s softened with gentler curves as opposed to Stan’s broader and more severe edges. Konstantin’s hair was a straight and thick mane of golden, honeyed brown. He perpetually kept his hair restrained in a warrior’s knot, and favored the customary Vostroyan moustache over his thin mouth to be full and waxed into broad points. Leonid’s inky black hair was equally voluminous, yet coarser in texture and irrepressibly curly. His facial hair was well managed to razor thin perfection along the contours of his jaw, and around his generous mouth.

It had been agreed amongst the family that Leo favored their grandfather’s lineage while Stan had taken more prominently from his grandmother. Yet even that truth had not been complete, as Konstantin had Erhan’s height and Leonid had the stoutness of Akilina’s heritage, while the most obvious reversal of their common trends of inheritance had been their eyes. Leo’s were the clear blue of a sky foreign to Vostroya, keen and often gleaming with his boyish enthusiasm and good humor. Stan’s had once been -

“Depthless, delicious, rich molten brown.” Konstantin trembled as Sasha’s ethereal voice, as honest and warm as he remembered in the heat that amorous moment, throatily whispered in his ear. “How I could gladly lose myself in your eyes for eternity, my man. My lov-”

“Go back to the hell-scape from which you came!” The Luminen growled in dismissal, with the accompanying crackle-echo of binharic, even as he remained transfixed by the sight of his brother.

Leonid’s compactly built body was folded over into a hunched crouch, shoulder tight against the slumped stack of rusted girders that he’d taken cover behind. He looked every inch the Vostroyan soldier that he was, garbed in the khaki jumpsuit of a Sentinel pilot worn underneath the hunter green and red piped field jacket of the 149th. Konstantin saw the brass Aquilae at the bottom of Leo’s knee length coat and silver buttons gleam in the crackling light his electoo lined body was projecting.

“Is that any way to speak about noble Vostroya, oh brother of mine?” Leo chided. The thin veneer of seriousness in his words was undercut by the sardonic smile he wore. It morphed into a tight, eye clenched grimace as he lurched back his cover as a las bolt sheared through the bottom lip of a nearby beam. Leonid coughed and waved away aerosolized rust dust as he glanced back at his priest brother.

“Well it’s a delight to see you again, I must inquire, little brother,” Leo called out, his mouth quirking into a half grin at the old, tired, and greatly appreciated ironic jibe. The flash of humor promptly vanished. “But I must inquire, have you lost the good senses our dear grandparents raised us with?”

Konstantin was not certain that Leonid’s malefic apparition was wrong as he struggled to processes the unnatural sight, which was unnatural in more ways than one. The Luminen had not seen in any color since he had taken his activation ritual into the Fulgurites. The glaring reminders of another life, from what felt like another lifetime ago, unsettled Konstantin as he struggled to articulate a response. He simply stared at his soldier brother, who was determinedly gesturing for him to come towards him away from the warehouse, away from the gunfire, and away from his sacred and sworn objective.

“You are not my brother.”

“The priesthood can’t and won’t break our bond, Kostya. We’re of the same blood. We’re the Brotherhood that matters! Not those khekking Fulgurites and their knockoff fabrication of it!”

I was not yet a Luminen when Leo departed Vostroya. Konstantin rationalized, even as he felt the burning knife of unwholesome emotion skewer into his guts and twist around. He saw the fraternal intensity written on Leo’s face and the sincerity in his eyes, and took a step towards his brother.

“I still love you, brother, even with that horrid man bun.” Leonid affirmed, even as he laughed at his own snarky commentary. Konstantin snorted at the enjoyable familiarity of his brother’s disparagement.

The soldier brother’s chuckle turned into a vicious snarl of profanity as another errant bolt bored through the steel by his hip. Konstantin’s head tilted at the perplexing shift in Leo’s voice as his Vostroyan accent sounded different than he remembered. The Luminen’s disquiet mounted as Leonid barked out more familiar – yet not completely familiar - invective, and raised the curve handled las pistol in his fist and blindly snapped fire back towards the warehouse. Leo dropped back into cover, and insistently waived for Konstantin to hurry on towards him. He obliged another step towards his brother.

“Now come here, you great damned idiot! In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re being frakking shot at!

The words were prophetic. One bolt from the Kingsmen’s makeshift fortress sailed through the Luminen’s protective voltagheist aura and smashed into his bolted on cog-halo. Konstantin choked out an exclamation as his neck was torqued by the wrenching impact and he was thrown forward, his stave flying from his fist as the bottom end struck rockrete. He clattered noisily to the ground on all fours, as his chain-tabard rattled and the metal caps on his polymer gloves scraped against fractured aggregate.

“Khek off!” Konstantin barked at the Kingsmen as he recovered his breath.

The Luminen paired deed with word as he whirled back towards the warehouse, his Vostroyan pattern burst pistol already un-holstered and leveled at the building as he completed the turn. The archaic looking weapon emitted a high pitched shriek as it hurled hundreds of micro projectiles in a matter of seconds. Konstantin saw the whole front face of the warehouse blur with dust in his greyscale vision as it was gouged and scoured by the retaliatory hail of shot. The Kingsmen shooters were instantly silenced, as Stan could see by their glowing bodies as they cowered down away from the windows they had occupied. He nodded with self-approval as he saw none of them had been struck in the barrage.

“Brother…”

“You are not my brother!” Konstantin seethed through clenched teeth, as he holstered his spent sidearm and turned back to glower at what had been his brother. The last colorful wisps that had composed the Vostroyan soldier faded away back into greyscale, revealing a trembling and all-too human Vaxanide youth in a slashed canvas jacket worn over an artfully paint splattered boiler suit.

“You are not Leo!”

“Who the frakking piss is Leo?” The young cultist snapped, with a perilously confused expression. The Luminen could see the infidel’s terrified wariness as he kept his battered sidearm lowered and showed his tattooed palm. He slowly placed the open hand over the wiry muscles of his exposed right pectoral.

“Profligate!” Konstantin condemned, as he lunged towards the damned Slaaneshi cultist.

“Prince’s coc-” The young man yelped in alarm, as he stumbled backwards and tried to raise his pistol.

The refugee screamed as one of the Luminen’s voltagheists darted ahead of him grounded itself between his eyes, and hurled the cultist into the ground. Konstantin stood over the maimed infidel. He dispassionately watched the Slaaneshi spasm and wail in agony, soiling himself as he desperately clawing at the tears that had once been his eyes as they poured down the side of his split and scorched face. The Luminen magnetically summoned his stave back into its rightful place within his curled fists.

“You are not my brother!” Konstantin hissed, as he raised his arms and the weapon over his head.

The Luminen smashed the bludgeon’s lower half-cog head down into the torso of the Slaaneshi writhing at his feet. He felt the briefest moment of resistance before the young man’s sternum give way with a violent crack of bone. There was a fresh cry of pain that quickly became a retching gurgle the blinded cultist choked on the blood and bile that rushed into his throat. Konstantin deftly moved the semi-circle within the dying man’s chest cavity and nudged the stave into his heart. He ignored the tortured groan and futilely flailing hands which clutched at his demi-robes as he felt the electroleech stave work.

Konstantin sharply inhaled as he tuned out the spasmodic twitches and keening whimpers from the refugee as the stave extracted his Motive Force. The Luminen hissed as felt the rush of energy course from the weapon, through the network of electoos that were laced through his body, until it reached its proper destination in his internal capacitors. Stan grunted as the process finished, and tore the stave through the wracked and smoking corpses’ ruined chest cavity as he turned his dead eyed attention back the warehouse and their unholy ritual that he had sworn to break. He charged the stronghold.

“Kingsmen!” Konstantin bellowed challengingly, as he saw the Khornate minions unengaged with the summoning redirect towards him, “Your imminent deaths will be as insignificant as your lives!”

The Luminen whirled his stave around as he closed the distance, and grunted as he turned and smashed the blunt semi-circular cog head against the handles of the warehouse’s front door. Its shuddered as the center caved with a splintering crack of wood and metallic clatter of displaced chains. Konstantin kicked the doors inwards a mighty blow of his thick-soled boot, and barged his way into the cultists’ hideaway.

“Know this truth and weep, infidels, for a Red Priest has come to dethrone your Red King!”


+ + +

“Blasphemer!”

“Secundus, Sextus! The heretic priest has breached!”

Konstantin smiled at the inadvertent complements paid to him by the two Kingsmen who welcomed him into their warehouse. The duo’s intended insults were matched with volleys of las, which the Luminen quickly assessed as an overlapping fire pattern to facilitate a withdrawal, even as the concentrated torrent of bolts shredded the door and the framework he’d halfway broken it from. Stan’s smile only widened beneath the waxes points of his moustache as he felt the impacts energies’ absorb into him.

+Sextus, Secundus! Keep that big frakker from the ritual! Whatever it takes, brother!+

“Aye, brother, the Red King wills it!”

The Luminen’s smile evaporated as he heard the thunderous footfalls of half a dozen other cultists descending from the floors above. His combat protocols re-appraised the seemingly randomly scattered crates as a warren of obstructions and defensible fire-points, and that the two gunmen were not withdrawing. The Kingsmen were buying time so their brothers could reinforce them, and prevent him from breaking their ritual. Konstantin snarled as he determined that was not acceptable, and with a twitch of his enhanced muscles he vaulted onto the first barricade line of storage containers.

“Decius!”

Konstantin heard the more senior cultist warn as he tore off another burst of las bolts. The Luminen ignored the pin-pricks of energy as he leapt the distance between barricade lines. He glared at the two Kingsmen as he crashed into the second set of containers with a heavy thump. They wore their brotherhood’s uniform of black fatigues and leather armbands etched with unclean prayers, and both were well kitted out with surplus PDF webbing, vox, and bayonetted las-rifles. The Luminen saw the righteousness within the clean shaven youth’s rage-filled eyes as he reversed course and lunged at him.

“For the Master of Mankind!”

Konstantin answered the Kingsman’s shout with an exultant howl of binharic wrath as he hurled himself down from the barricade. The voltagheist nimbus reached the cultist ahead of the Luminen, and Decius’ defiant cry briefly morphed into screams as the vengeful energy sprits lashed out at him. The Kingsman stiffly reeled back and choked on his through clenched teeth as his body was torqued by electricity, a moment before the voltagheist’s heat ignited his uniform. Konstantin silenced the young man a moment later as his thick soled boot thudded into the Kingsman’s chest. The Luminen saw the young cultists’ wasted life abruptly extinguish as he flattened him into the ground with a cascade of cracking bone.

“Bastard!”

The Luminen whirled to face the other Kingsman as he charged forward to thrust his bladed rifle. Konstantin swept up his stave as he moved into the attack, ignoring the wet crunch and moist tread from the burning corpse as he moved off it, and smashed its haft into the elbow of Sextus’ off hand. The cultist barked as he was knocked sideways, and then bellowed as the Luminen crashed the other end of his bludgeon into his opposite knee with a dual crunch of obliterated joints. Konstantin pressed his advantage and bashed the cultist into the floor with a strike that shattered his other forearm. He managed to place his boot beneath Sextus’ las rifle and soften its fall as it tumbled from his fingers.

“Heretic!” Sextus screamed. Konstantin heard the defiance in his voice, even as he flailed against three suddenly broken limbs and his eyes were glazed with shock. “My skull for His throne!”

“I think not, infidel.”

Konstantin silenced any further blasphemy from Sextus as he speared down with the broad, cog-toothed fan of his bludgeon. The cultist eyes widened as the stave smashed into his mouth. It knocked out his teeth, sheared his tongue in half, and tore apart his cheeks. The Luminen toned out Sextus’ gurgles and spasmodic twitching as he concentrated on recovering the Kingsman’s spark of life before it was wasted. He could feel the thrumming crackle as Sextus’ motive force was safely stowed into his capacitors. The scent of scorched flesh was thick in the warehouse as another cultist was burnt by the Omnissiah’s light.

“Brass Throne!”

The exclamation drew Konstantin’s attention from his latest victim to those whose motive force he would recover next. There were four of the black garbed and prayer banded Kingsmen clustered around the internal entrance to this half of the warehouse floor. Konstantin noted that to a man, they were frozen by the sight of him standing over the burnt and mutilated bodies of their brothers, and that most had abandoned ranged weapons for an eclectic assortment of edged combat weapons. He might have been pleased by their reaction, except for the fact that their collective will had not yet broken.

Well-disciplined; exceptionally so by underhive gang standards. Konstantin determined. His dead eyes assessed the knot of Kingsmen and settled on the man in their center. I fault him for this.

The Luminen determined the Kingsman was originally from the Remsburg area by his facial structure and darker shaded composition, and older than the others due to the weathered rendering of his skin and the lighter greys in his braided hair and campaign beard. Konstantin noted the necklace of Ork teeth the man wore around his neck, on a chain made of small brass skulls, and a faded tattoo of an Orkoid skull impaled on a stiletto knife. The opposing forearm was marred by a deliberately inflicted burn that obliterated what the Luminen highly suspected had been an Aquila tattoo.

The combined data led him to determine this Kingsman was a PDF deserter, most likely from the Vaxanide Chasseurs. Konstantin was aware the unit was notionally responsible for ranging the Terrigan and conducting mitigation purges to prevent yet another feral Orkoid rising. He was also aware that Lord Rem Vaxanide had re-deployed hundreds of the Chasseurs’ best to his exceptionally imbecilic cousin’s specious treasure hunt in the jungle’s depths. He was still further aware that the corrupt and incompetent sovereign had not thought to recall the seconded Chasseurs from the fool’s errand.

Konstantin felt a roiling surge of disgust as he glared at the lead Kingsman. This former soldier had abandoned his brothers-in-arms, broken his oaths of service, and cast aside his lesser version of faith in the Omnissiah. No doubt the traitor had compounded his sins by dispensing his Knowledge to the Kingsmen – this false brotherhood of petty cultists – and turned them into a more credible force than an underhive gang had any right to be. He saw the deserter was a vile mockery of his soldier past, and felt nothing but contempt for this affront of a warrior who stood for everything he stood against.

The Luminen promptly resolved to break the Kingsman, his brotherhood, and their faith with a visceral expression of his contempt. He merely pressed on his stave with a twitch of his augmented muscles and cleaved Sextus’ scorched skull apart. Konstantin saw the cultists’ minds flare with fear and horror as the bone gave way with a splintering crack. The Luminen deftly flicked his wrist to launch Sextus’ broken, smoking skull at the Kingsmen. The dead brother’s burning moustache was extinguished as the portioned cranium skipped across the floor with a scatter of bone fragments and cooked brain matter.

Konstantin was pleased when the grisly remnant impacted off the one deserter’s battered and taped PDF boots. He saw the faintest wisps of smoke continue to rise from burnt out sockets of Sextus’ eyes, and considered it appropriate that they stared almost accusingly at his former superior. The Luminen felt a sense of validation as one of the Kingsmen, a sturdy middle aged man with a knee brace and subdermal idents that marked him as a Cult bonded laborer for this defunct warehouse, whispered nervously at the erstwhile soldier as his fingers flexed anxiously on a stolen gendarmerie riot gun.

“Secundus…”

They will break as they are weak of faith and flesh. Konstantin assured himself.

The Luminen drank in the Kingsmen’s bio-electrical terror and their appalled expressions with a smile. He whirled stave around and began to advance on the cultists, which made a couple of them reflexively flinch backwards. His smile faltered as he saw the flare of determination course through Secundus even as the former soldier pointed his serrated machete at him and shouted in defiance.

“For the Red King!”

He scowled as the other blood brothers rallied around their faith, and echoed their leader’s cry as they charged him. Their unexpected defiance was costing him time, and Konstantin determined that was emphatically not acceptable and needed to be dealt with in the most prompt and terminal manner. He identified the shotgunner as the most imminent threat, such as it was, and tracked the former Mechanicus vassal while he hoisted his stave to his shoulder. The Luminen exhaled with frustration as he cast the bludgeon like a javelin and gave it a magnetic shove of assistance.

Konstantin ignored the Kingsman shotgunner’s curtailed scream as he was hurled off his feet and speared into the back wall with a violent thud. He was irritated enough by the unfortunate necessity of shedding the man’s blood. His follow through from the impaling turned into a counter-charge that brought him face to face with Secundus. He saw the deserter’s non-reflective machete cross his sight in as it descended in an experienced, fluid swing - on a thoroughly predictable trajectory towards his neck.

The Luminen snarled, and forced the former soldier to respond in kind as his hand darted out to arrest the blade and the Kingsman’s wrist. The cultist momentarily struggled before he barked in pain as Konstantin sharply rotated his clamp-like hand and broke the deserter’s wrist with a violent snap. The Luminen distantly felt the man’s fist smash into the muscled groves of his stomach. Konstantin wordlessly retaliated with a stomp of his thick-soled boots on the Kingsman’s ankle, and a vicious crown to crown head-butt paired with a firm shove. He heard the man’s ankle separate beneath his screams.

Konstantin allowed the deserter to tumble away as he leapt and torqued back from the swipe of an axe that almost took off his head. The Kingsman wielding the nominal fire-warder’s tool with deadly intent and murder in the eyes was a well-muscled man with blunt features, who bellowed like a bull-grox as he attempted another double handed swing. The Luminen noted the nautical themed tattoos partially obscured by leather prayer bindings, and gathered the cultist was somehow involved in the river-boat trade in his former life, as he reached up caught the fire-warder’s axe by the haft as it descended.

“Bleed and die!”

Konstantin grunted irritably as the remaining Kingsman announced his attack and the other cultist made a determined effort to forcefully break his hold. The Luminen magnetically reinforced himself against the haft and the muscular Kingsman’s modest gains and used them both to brace as he lashed out. His side-kick smacked into the flanker’s hip and crashed him into a storage container with splintered wood and a muffled curse. The Luminen dually pushed off on his back foot and pulled against the axe he was locked onto, as he used the momentum to forcefully drive his beaked hand into the axe-cultist’s chest.

Konstantin’s copper capped fingertips were pressed over the cultist’s heart, and he tugged against the delicate bio-electrical rhythm for the barest fraction of a second. The Luminen smiled and inhaled deeply as the Kingsman was forced to sharply exhale his last unsullied breath before he died. The cultist’s murderously belligerent expression immediately shifted into alarmed confusion. Konstantin plucked the axe from the Kingsman’s unresisting hands as the man clutched his chest and began the gasping. He noted the disordered bio-electrical flashes in the cultist’s twitching heart as he collapsed.

Agonal respiration symptomatic of ventricular fibrillation. The Luminen assessed as he made a quarter turn, and swung down with the blunt side of the fire-warder’s axe. He ignored crunch and scream as Secundus’ hand was crushed against the rockrete as he reached for Sextus’ dropped las rifle. Konstantin allowed the axe to fall through his fingers as the Kingsman he’d kicked aside charged. Blood is no longer being pumped through his body. Cardiac arrest and subsequent death imminent.

The Luminen observed another of the younger brand of cultist, hardly out of his teens but already with the hardened eyes of an underhive killer. The youthful Kingsman was wielding a pair of curved billhooks, and had a ragged semi-circular scar on his lean face to prove he’d been in close enough to use them. Konstantin kept that in mind as the Kingsman made a slash towards the throat, which he elected to weave back from while he magnetically pushed back the partnered blade that had come in low. The second blade was forced down and scraped off the Mechanicus cog surmounting the Luminen’s belt.

Konstantin snarled as he retaliated with a broad haymaker of a swing that the Kingsman managed to narrowly dodge. The Luminen’s intended strike was a short, straight jab that slammed into the cultist’s abdomen with a meaty thump. The youth grunted and doubled over slightly, an arm clutched protectively around his stomach, but managed to drive the tech-priest backwards with a vicious downwards hack from a billhook. Konstantin reached out to brush the blade aside, but recoiled back with a grunt as the youth’s second blade swept upwards and slashed across his polymer gloved forearm.

The Luminen grunted with surprise as he felt a body slam into him from behind. Secundus. Konstantin easily determined as he noted the mangled hands attached to the arms locked around his torso and registered the cardiac case’s feeble, dying gurgles. He saw the young knife fighter prepare for another attack, and assessed what the Kingsmen’s strategy was before he heard Secundus’ shout.

“Septimus!”

Konstantin hurled himself at the young cultist before he could attack with a binharic howl. He shrugged off Secundus’ grapple and dragged the struggling cultist on his back with him. Septimus’ eyes widened fractionally, but he rallied and counter-charged him with both billhooks reared back as he made to stab. The Luminen twitched his arms to the side and magnetically dragged the blades from their terminal course. Konstantin’s sharp reverse brought his hands back around to clap against either side of Septimus’ head with a series of violent cracks and snaps as bone and teeth yielded. He felt a wet impact on his cheek as one of the dazed young cultist’s eyes was ejected from his suddenly fractured skull.

“Septimus!” Secundus shouted as he continued to fight against the tech-priest. “Brother!”

The Luminen tightened his vice hold on Septimus’ head as he powered ahead towards the ritual. Konstantin growled as Secundus managed to hook his undamaged leg around his ankle and drive him onto a knee, and then push against his back to keep him unbalanced. He cradled Septimus’ damaged skull even as he knocked it against the rockrete with another bio-electrical flash of critical trauma. Konstantin stabbed his copper jacketed thumbs down into the young cultist’s half vacated eye sockets, eliciting an incoherent moan that turned into a slurred wail through a mouthful of shattered teeth.

“Heretical freak!”

Konstantin tuned out Secundus’ tirade of imprecations as he pulled his arms back and pinned the lead cultist’s arms against his body. The Luminen embraced the familiar flare of energy course the length of his arms and down into his torso as he recovered Septimus’ dwindling spark of life. He could feel Secundus’ muscles contract as the cultist’s body reacted to the electrical currents surging beneath his skin as Septimus’ bio-electricity was inexorably torn out in a flare of light. Once he was finished, Konstantin forced his palms together and broke apart the burnt skull with a hollow and wrenching pop.

“Bloody frakkin’ hell…”

“By the Red King’s Throne on Ancient Terra…”

The Luminen ignored Secundus’ involuntary spasms and shifted his gaze from Sextus’ ruined skull, when the last Kingsmen announced their presence with stupefied astonishment. One was a stocky and slightly paunchy middle aged man with a shaved head, and the other was younger, tall and wiry with a curly mop of hair. The former had a river-boater’s ink and was armed with a rope beater’s cudgel augmented by a strand of barbed wire. His companion could’ve passed for a Guilder’s clerk with his spectacles, had he not been wearing the Kingsman uniform and carrying a hatchet and surplus PDF bayonet.

Konstantin could see the horrified disbelief as they surveyed the mangled wreckage of their brothers. The axe-cultist wheezed out his rattling, terminal breath and went slack. The duo started as he collapsed face planted into the rockrete with a hard clack and wet crunch as his nose was pulverized, and the stocky man recoil a second time as he noticed the body transfixed to the wall next to him. The dead Kingsman still clenched the stave that impaled him, several feet off the ground, as blood steadily dribbled onto the floor from the corpse’s mouth, nose, and the opposing semi-cog head.

They will break as they are weak of faith and flesh. The Luminen assured himself, again, as he reached over his shoulder and curled an arm around the back of Secundus’ head. Konstantin broke his neck with a violent sideways jerk that ended the lead cultist’s post-shock spasms. He shrugged off Secundus’ body off his back and stood to face the last two Kingsmen. They will break.

Konstantin’s voltagheist aura flared with irritation as he saw both Kingsmen exchange a look, and then defiantly cross their arms across their chests as they consigned themselves to death for their faith.

“The chosen son is near, heretic!” The former clerk assured, with a rapturous gleam as he expectantly twirled his weapons. “For the Red King, we shall gladly shed our martyr’s blood on this blessed day!”

“Aye, ya frakkin’ heathen, we’re willin’ to sacrifice our lives for Him.” The boatman growled, and snarled as he jutted a chin at the Kingsmen dead, “Our skulls will be restin’ together as a fam’s for always an’ ever by the Master's Throne!”

“Your notions of faith, family, and sacrifice are boyish delusions compared to the deeds of men, infidels.” Konstantin contemptuously excoriated. “For ten thousand years, my people have paid our blood debt to the Imperium and the Omnissiah with the lives of our Firstborn sons in holy warfare.”

The Luminen’s voltagheist aura was a radiant blaze as his wrath reached its zenith.

“Your supposed Master of Mankind is but an inconsequential fragment of its patron king, Khorne,” He spat the accursed name with visceral disgust, as both Kingsmen reflexively shuddered, “Whom you will soon well know, for when I break this ritual and consign the beast back into the inferno behind reality -"

“So you say.”

Konstantin took no satisfaction as he heard his own voice and previous words simultaneously echo through eight shoulder radios, and the Kingsmen belatedly noticed that he had not spoken. The Luminen took no satisfaction as the cultists exchanged terrified glances when they realized there was something infinitely worse than a Fulgurite of the Brotherhood of Petrified Lightning present in the warehouse. He took no satisfaction as the infidels instinctively realized the gravity of their catastrophically poor decision, and reflexively grasped back for the protection of the faith they had allowed to be usurped.

“God-Emperor of the Golden Throne…” The former clerk numbly murmured, as his boatman colleague dropped his cudgel. He abased himself, and formed the Aquila with shaking, tattooed hands.

What would Kimberly have made of this? The Luminen idly wondered, any sense of amusement from the macabre reversal of faith was lost as he stared behind the two Kingsmen. His attention was wholly occupied by the dark, infernal figure as it undeservedly began to manifest within the supposed realm of sanity. Konstantin’s teeth clicked as they clenched, and exhaled with depthless frustration as he crossed his arms below the stylized ‘V’ on his breastbone and made the Vostroyan demi-cog and half-Aquila. It was a tribute to the Imperium of Terra and Mars for which he was about to meet his death.

Deus, Lifegiver, and all the blessed spirts - may you damn him eternally for this failure.

Konstantin’s skin crawled with apprehension as he felt the daemon’s wet, thirsty laughter shake the air. The Luminen registered a coronal flare that blinded him for the second time in his life as it washed out his optics. His loose hair fluttered and robe snapped at the sudden, bow wave gale of pressure that tore through the warehouse. Konstantin distantly registered a couple of soul-wrenching screams and the projectile splatter of blood, chunks of meat, and shards of bone against his body, and then nothing more as his connection to consciousness was severed as he was cast into abyssal darkness.


+ + +

"So let me guess - they find the scrap, you fix it up so they can sell it to someone else? I'd love to know how a Martian ended up running with two slum traders."

Konstantin didn’t respond as he continued to regard this strange woman, his brow still slightly furrowed after her physical contact. It only creased deeper as she referred to him as a Martian. No. I am not a Martian. He did not know how he knew that, but he knew with absolute certainty it was correct. No sooner had that been mentally confirmed, Konstantin frowned as he felt the tight vice of pain in his chest at the thought of Mars.

Mars...

"So we're..." Rhenat spoke up, "I mean, they're coming with you? With us?"

"That's up to them." the woman said mildly. She turned back to Hadrak and Abner as she teased a handkerchief out of her coat pocket and began cleaning her bloody hand.

Konstantin’s eyes were fixed on the strange woman as she cleaned her fingers of the blood that’d been transferred from when she touched him. She touched me. The touch had been presumptive and completely unexpected. I am not one to touch or be touched so casually. He knew that such intimate contact, and more, was forbidden. But I have done so before. He knew that he had experienced such intimate contact, and more, before. Something is wrong here…badly wrong…with me?

"Let me tell you what we do." she explained, "Petrosyan..." She pulled herself up short. "Well, I guess it's Vamassian's gang now...we take in the refugees from the Ork war who manage to make it here to Vaxanhive. The ones the government would send back or just execute if they ever found them."

Konstantin nodded slightly with approval as the woman described the Refuge, even as the name Refuge made him slightly uneasy for some inexplicable reason. His expression quickly darkened as she detailed the refugee’s plight. Wasteful. Burakgazi’s silver eyes shifted back towards the glowing spire that he knew as Vaxanhive, and he felt his lips curl back with disgust as if he had a sour taste in his mouth as he took in the sight.

"I know you guys aren't refugees, but you look like you know your business, and it looks like we have a few openings." She tossed her hair out of her eye and looked from Hadrak to Abner to Konstantin, lingering for a moment on the tech priest. "What do you think? You wouldn't have to scrape around looting dead Reds any more, I can promise you that."

Reds. Kingsmen. Konstantin felt his moustache twitch as his mouth quirked with apprehension at such nicknames, and the woman’s repeated suggestion – emboldened by the small grey man - that he was but a mere looter. It felt like an insult to him. I recover.

Hadrak gave the woman an appraising look. "What's your name?"

The woman blinked at him, and gave a musical laugh. "I'm sorry, how rude of me. It's Nara. Nara Tumasian."

“I think I speak everyone when I say that’d make a bloody nice change from scratching around in the dirt!” He said, trying his best to sound lighthearted. “Lead on.”

“Let us not be so hasty.” Konstantin said, breaking his stony silence. His eyes flicked briefly over to the individual he knew as Abner. Friend… The thought somewhat hesitantly repeated in Burakgazi’s mind, before he shifted his attention over to this woman - Nara.

“These men are differing to your command, Nara Tumasian,” Konstantin’s articulated silver eyes glanced over the living Refuge gunmen, and pointedly regarded their dead, before fixing back on her. There was a slightly disapproving tone in his voice as he spoke. “Who are you amongst this gang, if you can be making such promises and yet are not the deciding voice?”

[Azazeal849]

Fire-team Aegia - Hadrak, Abner, Konstantin

“These men are deferring to your command, Nara Tumasian,” Konstantin’s articulated silver eyes glanced over the living Refuge gunmen, and pointedly regarded their dead, before fixing back on her. There was a slightly disapproving tone in his voice as he spoke. “Who are you amongst this gang, if you can be making such promises and yet are not the deciding voice?”

Konstantin frowned slightly as Nara giggled at his question.

He could…not remember…much about himself at the moment, and that was an odd and unwelcome sensation. This woman had called him a tech-priest and that had felt correct…so he had accepted the title, even if he was reasonably sure that someone – especially a female someone - giggling after he spoke was atypical. He could not remember with complete certainty whether that was always the case…or why there was a mental emphasis on female. That felt…oddly specific.

"You Martians,” Nara teased him, “Always trying to sort things into neat little boxes."

Mars…

Konstantin’s brow knitted as his frown bowed deeper. The painful surge in his chest flared again at the repetition of that name. Mars... Konstantin knew it felt familiar…important…but he could not remember the context. It troubled him that he could so readily forget why one name meant so much to him, and why it caused him such acute pain when it was mentioned or he thought about it. The tech-priest wondered whether or not it was, or had always been, the most important name to him.

“I'm Petrosyan's sergeant at arms.” Nara explained, with confident pride. “I advise and enforce."

The tect-priest felt his eyebrows shift skeptically upwards before her words were cut short as a thunderclap explosion shook the air, sending most of the gangers flinching in shock and clawing for their weapons. Rhenat yelped. Konstantin, who had a view past Nara towards the site gate, saw the greyscale geometry of his vision flare white and then repolarise as a boiling spurt of flame blew out the lower windows of a terraced house beyond.

Konstantin recoiled backwards slightly as he watched the explosion fragment and reform. The immediate thought that coursed through the tech-priest’s mind was - Why am I only able to see in shades of grey? His frown reached its most severe limits. Shouldn’t I be able to see colors?

The explosion ripped roof tiles and loose plasterwork from the front of the building, and dislodged more slates from the houses to either side. The tiles sloughed off into the street with a loud clatter.

"Prince's teeth!" one of the gangers shouted. "What the hell was that?"

The leather-clad ganger called Hayk let out a growl as he drew his knife in a glinting curve of silver. "Houses don't just explode. Check that hab! If there's any locals still around I want 'em!"

Nara, who had flinched just as sharply as the others, whirled towards the now-smoking house and then back to the group, her red coat snapping around her knees.

"We aren't popular on this side of the underhive." she explained to Hadrak and Abner. "And I think we've outstayed our welcome. We have vehicles parked nearby - come quickly."

Konstantin wordlessly nodded at this strange woman – Nara – and the logical argument within her words. He nodded again, more firmly, as he realized how important logic was to him as well...even as he was struck by the realization that there was not always a logical answer or solution for everything. Konstantin hissed through his teeth in frustration at the mental contradiction – it made his head ache fiercely. The tech-priest briefly massaged his temples, and grunted in surprise as he felt the cool touch of metal from his fingers. He sharply glanced down at his hands and the metal capped gloves he wore.

Strange…I must be wearing these for a purpose…but for what purpose? Why can’t I remember?

“Hey, big guy!”

Konstantin presumed that the speaker had meant to address him, as he had quickly assessed that he was both a male and the physically largest individual present. His turned towards the voice, and he saw one of the Refuge gunmen that Nara had dispatched to check the warehouse ruins. The young man was struggling to hold a peculiar stave that was almost as tall as he was and seemed to be crafted purely from metal. Weapon. Konstantin automatically determined. He ignored the youth as his intense gaze shifted between the bludgeon’s dual heads, each of which was formed into a semi-circular cogwheel.

“So I’m guessin’ this’d be your holy beatin’ stick?”

His. The tech-priest thought, and then shivered as felt an immediate surge of visceral ire shoot through his body. He tasted metal in his mouth as his lips reflexively curled back into a vicious snarl. No. It was not His. It would never be His.

“Uh...”

The Refugee gunman gulped and hesitantly wavered. Konstantin could see that the youth was clearly trying to figure out whether it was in his best interests to hold onto the priest’s stave or not. The tech-priest’s brow furrowed as saw an inexplicable series of lights flash behind the young man’s greyscale rendered face. He wasn’t even slightly certain of what that was, its meaning, and why he was seeing it.

“I…”

“Mine.” Konstantin stated. His expression relaxed as the inexplicable hostility promptly fled from away from him once he chose a different, more acceptable word to claim his ownership.

“Yes, that’d be mine.”

He paused, as he belatedly caught on that he was being impolite to the young man. This stranger had been done him a favor by finding the stave and recovering it when he did not have to. Konstantin frowned at his own lack of manners. He was positive that he had been raised better than that.

“Thank you.”

He graciously nodded to the Refuge gunman, and reached out as he took a step towards the youth to relieve him of the burden he was struggling with. The tech-priest looked down at his reaching arm as he felt an odd tugging sensation course down it. Before he could even process what was happening, Konstantin heard the youth yelp with surprise as the stave was torn from his grasp. He deftly caught the weighty bludgeon as it flew into his outstretched hand without the slightest bit of difficulty.

“Woah, shit!” The young man exclaimed as he startled back in surprise. He coughed out a high, tension and relief laden laugh as he shot the tech-priest an anxious grin. “That’s some frakkin’ party trick!”

“It’s something, alright.” Konstantin murmured to himself, as he stared at the peculiar weapons clutched in his strangely garbed fist. Not now. He dismissively shook his head and double timed after the insistently gesturing Refuge youth as he led the way towards their waiting transportation.


+ + + + + +

Fire-team Kronis - Kimmie, Anais, Alexi, Mai

As Mai rejoined the group, there was little to glean from the phosphor-burned bodies lying contorted in the alleyway. The man who had attacked Quintus was still mostly intact, save for the flash-burned hole through his painted jacket. Even frozen in surprise the man's nut-brown face was handsome, though something about the corpse smelled wrong - like perfume being used to mask a smell of decay. His bloody fingers were clawing a few inches short of his dropped knife. It was an elegant but wicked-looking blade; hooked and lethal.

"What's that?" a voice behind her murmured, in an accent that was hard on the consonants but soft on the vowels. She turned to see the blonde woman called Anais looking up at the hive spire with an almost mesmerised expression.

"What's what, the spire?" Quintus asked, picking up on the question and shifting round to follow Anais' gaze.

The Vaxanhive native frowned in apparent confusion, and turned from the glaring ranks of lights back to Anais. Of the four of them, Mai realised, Anais was probably the most visually distinct: clad in roughspun brown compared to the robes and long coats of her companions. Were it not for her weapons belt and the intricate gold amulet that hung around her neck, she might have been a...a what? Feral worlder was the word that drifted up from Mai's subconscious.

"Where is it you're from?" Quintus pressed. He sounded merely interested, rather than suspicious, but Mai could guess that he was asking himself the same questions as her.

Anais responded to the question by looking down, and her hands found the gun holster at her back and the two daggers sheathed at her hips. She drew the daggers and stared at them for a long moment - the one was a long cutting blade sharpened along both edges, and the other was grooved and loosely spiralled, as if designed specifically to inflict horrific stab wounds. The straight blade had been wiped clean, but Mai caught glimpses of fresh blood still nestled in the deeper grooves of the spiral dagger.

"I'm a fighter." Anais said simply.

Quintus nodded calmly. "So I can see. The underhive needs more of them."

"Why's that?" Kim put in cautiously. She had finished stripping off her armour and shrugged the frayed webbing back over her simple black tank top. The orange street lights leeched the colour out of her figure, turned her eyes black and her fawn skin a shade of pale grey.

Quintus took in the bodies around them with a sweep of his arm. "We might have stopped them here, but there's more of these Refuge bastards crawling about the underhive." The rifleman's previously calm demeanour slipped a little, his eyes clouding over with bitter anger. "The only way our sons and daughters will be safe is if every one of those lying frakkers is put down."

"Kill them all..." Mai heard Anais murmur, so softly that she must have been talking to herself. "His orders..."

Kim didn't pick up on the words - she was frowning at Quintus searchingly, trying to unpick the reason for his sudden vehemence. When she couldn't divine the answer she felt her hand go automatically to her neck, thumbing for something that wasn't there. She blinked, and then fished the broken pendant out of the webbing pouch she had stuffed it into. She turned the I-shaped symbol with its haloed skull over in her hand, looking at the convex front and then the flat rearside. Her dusty hands left fingerprint swirls on the metal.

You are his child, just as I am, she thought, the words she had reflexively spoken to Mai coming back to her once more. Where are those words from?

"Is that yours?" Quintus asked, his sober brown eyes widening in surprise as he caught sight of the icon in Kim's hand. "You're a priest?"

"No, I..." Kim rebuffed automatically. Am I? "I'm just a..."

"...wanderer."

The man in front of her laughed, pushing his sandy hair away from his face. His forehead was beaded with sweat, even though the sun beating down on the farmstead still hadn't reached its peak.

"Well, Kim the Wanderer," he said, "You look thirsty. Stay a while. I'm Cian, by the way."

He placed his left hand over his heart, and Kim mirrored the gesture even though her natural instinct was to link her thumbs in imitation of a spread-winged, two-headed eagle. That could come later, she knew - first she had to learn their ways. Land and child-rearing are communal, the Galaxia deacon had briefed her and her fellow missionaries; the forests are sacred, the ancient ruins are forbidden, and women hold the political power in any given village. That will give you all a natural advantage.

Cian bagan to walk back towards the farmstead with easy, loping strides, and Kim followed a few steps behind. Cian looked back over his shoulder and smiled, beckoning her forward.

"Don't be shy. We don't mind travellers here."

Kim inhaled sharply, shocked by the vividness of the recollection. For a moment she thought she could still feel the hot sunlight against her skin; but it was dark, and the only light was the cold phosphor glow of the lamp posts. What was I saying? she thought frantically. Priest. He asked if I was a priest...

"I won't hold it against you." Quintus said, soothingly. He seemed to have taken her hesitation for worry. "I have my faith, you have yours. Just please don't start preaching at me. The Emperor never came to stop the Refuge."

He destroys sorrows, he destroys demons. He sits the Throne on Terra but he acts through us. The words seemed right, and for some reason Quintus' denial of them kindled a spark of anger in Kim's stomach. "So who did?" she challenged him.

"We did." the black-clad rifleman replied, his jaw tightening. "The Red King willed it. I've seen too many hivers' children taken away and turned into killers or worse, all by the Refuge."

He glared at Kim, with the accusing look of a raw nerve touched.

"If you don't believe me," he said, quietly, "Then let me show you."


+ + + + + +

Fire-team Aegia - Hadrak, Abner, Konstantin

The rumbling, unmarked ground-cars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xk41dfZfDg) that Nara had bundled them into filed through the gates, one after the other. They pulled up outside a free-standing, three story building that squatted in the shadow of the hive spire. The rockrete curtain wall of the spire provided a frowning, cheerless backdrop. The three-story itself, though weathered, still had the remains of carvings and frescoes visible on its fronting pillars and on the arched portico that overhung the doors. The ornate construction led Hadrak to guess that the building had been a bank or administration complex, or possibly a hotel, before it had been stripped out and converted.

Konstantin’s unusually stature…which the tech-priest had the sinking suspicion wasn’t entirely natural…had required him to be hunched over as much as he could. The task was made more difficult by the – and Konstantin would be the first to agree to this, not that anyone had mentioned it – frankly bizarre cog-halo decoration that had been bolted into the odd contraption lashed around his shoulders and throat. He was rather determined to remove the damned collar as soon as possible.

He had silently endured the torqued position, as for some reason the tech-priest had the compulsion that to complain about something relatively trivial would’ve been singularly undignified . His stave had been too large to fit within the cabin, so Konstantin had improvised and rested it on the vehicle’s roof before climbing inside and held the weapon in place by reaching for it like he’d done earlier. The tech-priest idly tapped his metal capped fingers of his free hand on a knee in time to the music coming from the speakers. Konstantin had too many questions…so he appreciated the simple distraction.

I can’t remember the last time I listened to music. The tech-priest’s mouth quirked beneath his thick moustache at that unbidden realization. He frowned as it raised yet another question, and one was so deeply existential that it was impossible to answer in his presently compromised state of confusion.

What’ve I been doing with my life?

The time-blurred carvings fell back into shadow as the drivers shut down their engines and killed their headlights. Konstantin found himself wordlessly staring at the decorations as he mentally hauled himself from the dangerous precipice of his latest self-critical question. He could see the decorations still, even without the vehicle’s illumination, and rather easily occupied his mind by trying to imagine what those carvings and frescoes might’ve looked like when they were in their prime.

"Cog-boy got blood on the back seats!" their chauffeur complained as he popped the driver's side door and planted one foot on the paving slabs.

The tech-priest’s teeth – which Konstantin had been perplexed to discover had been capped over with metal – reflexively ground together at the term cog-boy. It smacked of disrespect and that was unacceptable. Konstantin tasted a bitter sensation in his mouth as he realized with perfect, thunderbolt clarity the young man would needed to be illuminated to the error of his ways.

Konstantin’s hands darted forward to vice the Refugee’s biceps against his torso. The tech-priest noted the inexplicable lights flare through the driver’s mind as well, and he suddenly recognized the pattern as fear...and it felt correct, that he was a man who should be feared by people like this. The tech-priest frowned, curious as to the context of that last thought. Not now. He dismissed the thought, as he leaned forward slightly further while hauling the man back and pinning him back into his seat.

“My proper title is Luminen,” Konstantin softly corrected the driver, his mouth level to the struggling man’s ear. “I suggest you use it.”

The term Luminen had surged to the forefront of the tech-priest’s mind, and he spoke it. The title had seemed correct to use. Konstantin was mildly annoyed that the Refugee thought it was acceptable to try and escape. He ceased the young man’s attempts to break free by flexing his metal capped fingers into the young man’s muscles to impress upon him the disparity between them.

“Or else,” Konstantin lowly whispered, as he leaned in close enough so that his pointed moustache brushed against the man’s cheek, “This cog-boy will get blood all over the front seats as well.”

"Frak sake, Arman." Nara trilled airily. "Just get one of the kids to clean it."

Konstantin glanced over at Nara as he felt her light touch against his forearm. The woman smiled with reassurance, and something else the tech-priest couldn’t quite determine, as she brushed her fingertips against his skin. He reflexively pulled his arms away from her contact and released the driver. Nara smiled her strange smile at him one last time as she pushed open the passenger-side door and motioned for the team to follow. Konstantin obliged as behind them, the gates of the fenced-off compound pistoned back and closed with a metallic clatter.

The tech-priest wordlessly stretched out his arms, back, and neck after he had extricated himself from the vehicle. Once he had restored some measure of motion to his body, Konstantin removed his bludgeon from the sedan’s roof with a delicateness that belied his unusual strength. He ignored the shaking, silent driver as he walked around the front of the ground car…but was oddly compelled to pause and gently rest a gloved hand on its warm hood before following after Nara and his…friends.

“Frakking prick…”

Konstantin grunted with surprise as he heard Arman’s tense and quiet murmur…from halfway up the concourse leading towards the Refuge…even as the chauffeur had a lho pinched tightly in his mouth and was noisily struggling to strike his lighter’s flint. He knew that it wasn’t entirely natural to hear an under the breath insult from such a distance and with the amount of mitigating interference.

“Yes, Arman, I’m a frakking prick.” Konstantin called out…while a creeping sense of doubt entered his mind that he was much worse than that mere triviality…as he heard the man choke with surprise and lose hold of his lighter with a metallic clatter on rockrete. “I also have impeccable hearing.”

Konstantin glanced over his shoulder at the chauffeur. He noted the flurry of lights behind the man’s greyscale face confirmed the blatant terror that was etched onto Arman’s gawping face. The Luminen gently tutted and smiled as he shook a cautionary finger at the mutely petrified Refugee.

“I suggest you don’t forget that, or your manners.” The Luminen chidingly counseled as he resumed his long-legged stride after the others. “Manners make the man, after all.”

"So who's Vamassian?" Hadrak asked Nara, who was humming to herself as they paced up the cracked paving stones that led to the door. The stones were slabs of dark marble that had been edged with gold, although the rich ornamentation had faded noticeably. Konstantin kept an ear open to their conversation…even as he craned his neck back as much as the damned collar would allow to examine the faded craftsmanship of the Refuge more closely. He was interested by it, and idly traced his fingers above the worn down carvings around the entrance door framing.

"You'll know him when you see him." Nara replied evenly, fixing the much taller Hadrak with a serious look. "Just don't let him touch you."

While Hadrak was left to ponder what that meant, she removed one hand from her coat pocket and punched a code into the keypad that was nestled into the wall, to one side of the slab-like front door.

“Is this Vamassian as predisposed to unwarranted physical contact as you are, Nara Tumasian?” Konstantin queried, as he shifted his attention from the antique artistry to their overly-familiar hostess.

“Ouch.” Nara gasped with mock injury, as she held her tattooed palm to her heart. The playful teasing was fleeting, as her intensely honest expression returned as she conspiratorially whispered to them. “I’m serious about Sam, though. You really won’t enjoy it he touches you.”

Konstantin felt his mouth reflexively formed a skeptical frown as he followed Nara into the Refuge. He was silent and distantly withdrawn from the others as he turned his attentions inwards. The Luminen mentally scoured himself to try and find answers to why he didn’t have answers…but wasn’t able to make any substantial progress as he hurled his consciousness against the cloying fog of amnesia…and had the realization that he lacked the requisite Knowledge to advance.

The Luminen’s fists and teeth clenched slightly as he heard a voice in his head that sounded like the static from Vamassian’s discarded headphones. <You lack the requisite capacity for Knowledge to advance within the Cult.> Konstantin blinked…and hissed slightly at how uncomfortably correct the thought was…and how uncomfortable the sensation was as it brought him back into the present.

What the khek is wrong with my eyes?

"Bit of a frakking fortress, isn't it?" Rhenat murmured to Abner as he looked up at the front of the building. The building had rows of tall, rectangular windows, but most of them had the curtains drawn, and all of them were gridded with heavy iron bars.

The smooth metal door rumbled open like a sliding cliff. Inside was an entrance hall lit by the soft light of ceiling glow panels, and furnished with plastered walls and hardwood floors. Patterned plaster carvings around the tops of the walls again spoke of a grand history to the building. The atrium's only occupants were a pair of leather-jacketed men with hooked knives at their belts, standing silent guard. Nara paid them no mind as she strode past, shrugging off her red coat and dusting down the figure-hugging black dress that she wore beneath. The guards' eyes tracked the group as they shuffled past in Nara's wake. Their pupils were dilated, wide black pools that reflected Hadrak's wary face and Rhenat's nervous one.

Nara led them left, past several closed doors and a refectory where a knot of people in soiled clothes were eating mechanically, and then through a wider gallery with a bar nestled in one corner. A handful of young men and women, some with buzzcut hair and others with silver rings studding their ears and noses, looked up from their drinks and squinted at the newcomers suspiciously as they passed through. Turning down another corridor they reached a lounge, whose wood-panelled doors stood open on a series of overstuffed couches. Another knife-armed guard stood at the threshold, this one a woman with long blonde hair that she had piled down the left side of her head, the right side shaved down to blonde stubble. Her right hand was curled tight around her knife hilt. Like the other guards, she looked tense - with dilated eyes and hair-trigger muscles.

"Tumassian." she greeted Nara with a nod.

"Ani." Nara smiled back as the woman stood aside.

Inside the lounge, a short but well-proportioned man was reclining in one of the couches, his head tilted back against the headrest as if he was exhausted. He was ivory-skinned with long, angular features, accentuated by a clean shave and close-cropped brown hair. He wore a shirt of loose red silk, the deep V of the collar revealing a muscular, hairless chest. A petite, doe-eyed woman with creamy skin and a turned-up nose was perched on the arm of the chair, her hand laced into the man's own. She was watching him intently but the man himself was ignoring her, his eyes closed and his ears covered by a pair of thick black headphones. Despite the coverings he must have heard them enter, because he opened his eyes and sat up.

"Nara." he smiled, reaching up with his free hand to unhook the headset. Konstantin's augmented hearing picked up sounds still drifting from the speakers, but as far as he could tell the headset was only emitting some kind of droning static.

"You'll have to excuse me." the man said as he discarded the headphones onto the cushion next to him. "It helps stress."

Like Nara his dialect was gutter Vaxanide. Unlike Nara he made no attempt to soften it, though his tone was light and jovial. The good humour evaporated as he slumped back in the chair.

"The boss just went out and got himself killed. Told him it was stupid to hold the ritual out in the sump instead of somewhere safe, but no, the foci had to be right..."

"I heard." Nara said soberly.

"Gah, frak him. I wouldn't care except he's left me and you to pick up the pieces."

Nara's expression turned sympathetic. "Don't worry, you've got this. The whole gang respects you."

The man gave an easy laugh. "Flatterer." He groaned and leaned his head back once more, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Even if this wasn't just another one of Petrosyan's grox-shit visions, the purple prince is going to have to wait his turn - we've got enough to clean up already. Gor said it might have been an uphive kill team that iced Petrosyan. I'll have to call in a few favours to keep the frakkers off our backs if it was. And you just know the kids'll all be clamouring for a revenge hit, uphivers or not."

"If it makes you feel any better," Nara said, "The Reds are all dead."

The man sat up. "All of them?"

Nara nodded. "Or near as makes no odds. We lost a few guys, but we smashed them. They won't be a thorn in our side any more."

The man laughed again. "You know what, that does make me feel a bit better. Petrosyan was an idiot for letting them run around for as long as he did..." He looked past Nara to the four men still hovering behind them, lingering on Konstantin with his bloody chest and cog-toothed collar. "And who are these? Refugees or recruits?"

"Recruits." Nara smiled, stepping aside and folding her hands.

"Wonderful." said the man, offering the group a beaming smile. "Say hello, Ellen."

He nudged the woman holding his hand. She smiled too, dimpling her cheeks, and waved shyly. There was something odd that Hadrak couldn't put his finger on, until Rhenat pointed it out to him.

"I don't like his smile, mate." the skinny ganger murmured, huddling close to the taller, armed man. "Reminds me of that I'll-beat-you-later look my mum gave me after I went chasing through the underhive tunnels looking for my pet lizard. It weren't my fault - I frakking loved that little prick."

He frowned, as if once again wondering where the assertion had come from, but Hadrak was too busy mulling over the young man's first statement. Rhenat was correct - the petite woman's smile reached her eyes; the man's didn't.

The man was still smiling at them, his attention focused mostly on the three new faces rather than Rhenat. He extracted his hand from Ellen's grip and beckoned with both arms for the newcomers to step into the lounge. "Come in, have a seat." he urged, "This is the Refuge, you can relax here. The building's perfectly secure."

Footsteps behind the group made the woman guarding the door snap up tensely, but she relaxed as she looked past the four men. Abner turned, in time to see the knifeman Hayk with his dark skin and cross-slashed jacket stalking up behind them. He moved like an assassin, every step laden with threat, and a scowl was deepening the lines of his middle-aged face. Even though his anger was clearly not directed at them, he pushed Abner roughly aside to get to Nara.

Three more dead, Abner found himself thinking, with a surge of anger, though it quickly subsided.

Konstantin noticed Nara glance aside at him - before her gaze moved past him as her lieutenant, Hayk, came into the room. The Luminen felt no compelling interest to rebuke the Refuge knife-man as he nudged his way past his…friend that called himself Abner. The aberration deserves far worse. He was caught off guard by that sudden and visceral thought about someone who was a…friend

Hayk motioned Nara aside, and spoke to her in a hushed voice. Konstantin missed the content of their brief conversation as he tried to parse out why it was that he seemed to have reason to want harm done to Abner…but abandoned the endeavor as it proved irritatingly futile.

The man in the lounge was still beckoning Abner in, ignoring Hayk's arrival as he made introductions with Hadrak.

"...burned, but his throat had been opened." Abner caught over the murmur of background conversation, and he saw Nara frown.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

Hayk gave her a withering look. "I know knife work."

The Luminen’s steady gaze was drawn over to Nara’s lieutenant as he considered the knife-man’s bold assertion of skill. He was in almost immediate mental agreement with Hayk’s aggressive and assertive declaration of blade proficiency. Assassin. Konstantin distractedly agreed with the hypothetical of Hayk’s profession, and commenced a thorough examination to obtain corroborating evidence. His noted the Refugee’s deadly confidence, which was combined with a muscular physicality and an athletic grace. He determined Hayk was an efficiently…and almost perfectly…suited to his role in the grand design.

Nara, for once oblivious to the Luminen's scrutiny, chewed the inside of her cheek. "Alright," she told Hayk. "I'll look into it. Go and make sure the guys are calm. We've already lost ten." She turned, and interrupted the man's conversation with Hadrak. "Sam, can I borrow the tech priest for a moment?"

The man waved a hand. "Sure."

Konstantin twitched slightly as his attention was drawn from his keen scrutiny of Hayk by Vamassian’s wave. The Luminen’s eyes narrowed fractionally as he considered how unacceptable such a dismissive gesture was. He decided he did not care for this Samvel Vamassian…something about the man brought on that aggressive, battery acid tang taste in his mouth. Konstantin frowned slightly as once again the particular term aberration flashed across his consciousness as it had with Abner.

Nara gently took Konstantin's elbow, steering the blood-spattered tech priest back out into the corridor. "You Martians are good at noticing and remembering things, right? Did you see any of the Reds bombing it out of there when you arrived?"

Mars…

Konstantin noncommittally grunted as his stomach was once again torqued by the reference to Mars. The Luminen gritted his silvery teeth as the migraine ache behind his eyes which khekking hurt as he massaged his forehead with his free hand metal capped fingers be damned and tried to remember what happened before that warehouse exploded so as to answer Nara’s question.

"I've got the pretty boy with the butter knife, gentlemen. Book for the door once we're dancing and I'll follow you when I'm done having my wicked way with him."

Of course the savage little girl would want to dance.

“Two blood cultists,” Konstantin answered, with a disgusted tone that struck him as correct as he processed the memory fragment as quickly as it fled, “The pretty boy and the savage little girl.”

“The pretty boy and the savage little girl.” Nara echoed, gullwing brows rising alongside her delightfully bemused smile. “What an unexpectedly colorful way to hear a tech-priest describe someone." Her hand reassuringly squeezed on his elbow. “No offense intended, but your kind…”

“Don’t mince our words?” Konstantin volunteered. Nara smiled, and indulgently hmm’d in agreement as she mouthed understatement at him. He snorted. “No. It really isn’t our style.”

The Luminen’s moustache twitched at the familiarity of the answer, as if he had heard someone else speak almost those exact same words under much less amicable circumstances. It struck him that the argument had been a conversation…at first…with a female…and it had devolved from there…as had most of his interactions with the other females. Konstantin hissed as that thought strand blanked out on him. He could only determine that the subject was not relevant in this moment with Nara.

“The male cultist is between his thirties and forties, in excellent physical condition, with shoulder length wavy dark hair, light eyes, and strikingly handsome features.” Konstantin recounted.

His recollection was aided by an uncanny mental projection of the Kingsman’s sculpted visage…and concluded his description was correct. The Luminen’s teeth clicked with a curious sense of disappointment as the inexplicable image vanished as quickly as it appeared within his vision.

“I have no idea who he is.”

“That would be Primus. He’s the leader of the late and unlamented Kingsmen.” Nara clarified, through a contemplative frown as she considered his revelation. She exhaled softly her own disappointment. “It’s unfortunate that such a delicious man is both a Red and still breathing.”

Nara brushed aside her long, silky black hair and glanced curiously at the tech-priest on her arm.

“What can you tell me about the Red’s new girl?”

“She’s young, late adolescence or early twenties, also in excellent physical condition. Short dark hair, light eyes, with delicate and impish features and several piercings in her ears as well as lip.”

Konstantin was once again graced with a vivid rendering, this time of the girl. His teeth clenched.

“We’ve been taking in the street-urchin girls since the Reds got serious about their faith, and became a members only club.”

Konstantin thought he detected an element of satisfaction in Nara’s tone about the girls…and then disparagement in when spoke about faith...but he was distracted by her…anatomically referential implication…of the Kingsmen as a male only organization…a Brotherhood. It provoked another anomalous ache of loss in his mind and chest almost as painful as thinking about...

Mars…

“I wonder what interest Primus has in her.” Nara idly speculated to herself. “Could blood brother number one have himself a teen daughter? Or a young lover? Or a little sister that we didn’t know about?”

“I have no idea, other than she was intent to follow him.” Konstantin answered, and then shrugged. “Whoever the girl is, she’s a competent combatant and also has an abominable powered blade.”

Nara’s eyebrows bucked upwards in surprise as she stared at the tech-priest. Konstantin wasn’t sure whether or not that was due to the unwelcome news of another, thus far unknown, skilled blade with a powerful relic weapon amongst her not-completely-destroyed rival underhive faction…or from the oddly familiar vehement contempt that had colored his voice as he spoke about said weapon.

“I remember that she killed several of your number in the battle.”

“I don’t suppose you caught the bloody little bitch’s name?” Nara calmly inquired.

Konstantin noted that Nara’s sudden, steely coldness that was entirely at odds with what he had thus far seen from the woman’s demeanor. The Luminen began to understand, and appreciate, why she was the Refuge’s chief enforcer…even if the well-groomed and manicured appearance, conversational playfulness, and figure-hugging dress did much to defy the stereotypical image of an enforcer. He suspected that was rather the whole point of Nara’s choice to present as she did to the underhive.

“Sarnie…” The Luminen ventured as he tried to source down a name.

Nara exhaled an amused guffaw and smiled doubtfully at him. “What? As in sandwich?”

No…evidently not Sarnie…Sarna? He nodded. “Sarna.”

“Sarna.” Nara murmured, and pressed her lips thoughtfully together as she processed this newest detail. “Interesting…” She leaned in closer to Konstantin and whispered conspiratorially as they heard movement ahead of them. “Let’s keep these interesting little developments between us, hmm?”

The Luminen shrugged once again as a young man in a canvas jacket, stitched across the back with a blue and white cross, rounded the corner with a teenage girl and an even younger boy in tow. The latter two were outhivers, judging by the different gradients of color on their upper arms that suggested the darker grey of their complexions were the product of sun exposure instead of natural genetics. The two children stopped and openly gawped at Konstantin, who himself was frozen in turn as his strange colorless gaze remained warily fixed on the refugee youths.

The boy is no more than nine standard years old. Konstantin determined. His mind whirled through a number of biological and environmental variables that he couldn’t keep track of as they blurred by across his consciousness…until he reached one incontrovertible conclusion that sent a tingling, uneasy tremor through his body as it seared his psyche like an iron brand fresh from a forge fire into flesh.

He’s young enough…and I’m old enough…that I could be the father of a boy this age.

The wordless impasse between the towering Luminen and the young children held until their Refuge escort gave them a gentle shove to keep them moving along the corridor. Nara twisted her mouth as she watched the highly unlikely spectacle unfold, but allowed the tech-priest to watch them disappear down the corridor before she lightly tugged on his arm. Konstantin exhaled deeply with tension as his reverie was broken. He nodded stiffly at Nara to lead on.

"Come on." she said, starting off down the corridor and beckoning for Konstantin to follow her. "You'll scare the residents slightly less once we get all that blood off you."

She passed a set of double doors beyond which were the sounds of conversation and clinking glasses, and pushed instead through one that yielded heat, hissing steam and clattering pans. A young man with a grubby apron tied round his front stepped away from the gas-fired hob as they entered. He had a round, smooth face and a broad nose, dusted with freckles that were darker than his hickory skin.

"Ma'am?" he asked nervously, looking at Nara, then at Konstantin, and then at the floor.

"We just need to use the back room." Nara trilled easily. "Could you fetch us a basin and a sponge?"

The man raised his gaze to stare once again at Konstantin. "Er...a sponge?"

"Well, do you expect me to hose him down?" Nara snapped impatiently. The man opened his mouth, closed it, and hurried away through the narrow alcove between the cooker and a counter that was festooned with chopped vegetables. Konstantin noted that whole ones were piled nearby, with traces of earth still on them. The idle thought crossed his mind that given the lack of available space in and around the hive spires, non-hydroponic plants must have been very expensive to import.

Especially in wartime. The Luminen’s metal capped fingers brushed together as his hands curled into fists at the thought of the xenos defilers known as Orks. Konstantin’s teeth grazed slightly as he wondered how the Refuge paid for such a precious commodity as food in a survival situation. He was sure he had known that information…at one time…despite the fact that he had only recently met Nara and the others from the Refuge. What sense does that make?

"Thank you." Nara said curtly as the man in the apron returned with a plastek basin half full of steaming water, with a slightly ragged sponge floating waterlogged in the middle of it. She pointed through into a back room full of sinks, spray taps and autoclave washers, and followed after the man as he bumped the basin down on a draining board. "Now get a move on, will you please? The duke's still coming regardless of whatever else we have to deal with down here."

Duke…nobility…Vaxanhive... Konstantin scowled momentarily with correct distaste for the name of the great, glowing edifice that cast its shadow over the underhive and the Refuge within it. The Lumien forced himself to relax his suddenly tensed muscles he rested his stave against the door frame and followed after Nara. One thought nagged him…and it networked back to his prior data absence…

What does the Refuge have that a nobleman would come down into the underhive for?

Nara stood for a moment, looking after him with her hands on her hips, but when she turned on her heel to face Konstantin her easy smile returned. It became almost mischievous as she rolled up her sleeves and fished the sponge out of the basin. The Luminen’s gaze shifted from Nara’s smiling face, to the sponge in her hands, and back. He raised a questioningly skeptical brow.

"Okay." she confided playfully as she wrung out the sponge. "I'll admit I'm being a bit selfish here, keeping you for myself. But I've never seen a Martian so well built before."


+ + + + + +

"Abner!" the man Nara had addressed as Sam called out, as Hadrak finished his introduction. "It is Abner, isn't it?"

Abner thought it best to thread his way around the silent woman guarding the door and join the others. The lounge was well lit by standing lamps, and an enlarged pict-capture hung on the wall beside the door, showing Vaxanhive with its jagged spires silhouetted against a sunset sky. The woman called Ellen folded her legs up on the couch and watched him placidly.

"Rhen." the man in the silk shirt prompted Rhenat, "Go through to the bar and fetch some drinks for these two, would you?"

Rhenat cuffed his nose. "Er...yeah, sure." He shuffled round Abner, casting nervous glances at the guard by the door.

"Samvel Vamassian." the man in the silk shirt introduced himself to Abner, offering his hand as Rhenat sidled out. "As of now, leader of the Refuge. So, what skills can you bring to the table?"


+ + + + + +

Fire-team Kronis - Kimmie, Anais, Alexi, Mai

The small, rickety boat jerked to a stop as one of the burly crewmen lassoed a rope over the mooring post. A few of the passengers, not used to travelling on water, staggered in their seats or snatched after boxes and bundles that went tumbling between the crammed benches. The five men piloting the boat stood up and scanned the empty jetty nervously, fingers laid against the triggers of battered lasguns.

"Alright, this is our stop." growled the balding, shaven-headed man at the boat's prow. He hooked a muscular arm round a jetty post and hauled himself up onto the wooden pier. "Grab your shit!"

The passengers shuffled around in the cramped space, clutching their belongings to their chests over their old, ripped life vests. Unwashed hair hung limply over their foreheads, and many of them had the wide-eyed, haunted look of people who had been on guard for days. A boy of seven or eight years clung closely to his father's leg, and a slightly older girl who didn't seem to be accompanied at all glanced around nervously.

"You." the balding man snapped at one of the passengers in the first row of benches. He let his lasgun hang by its strap as he made a sharp gesture with his hand. "Up."

The man stood up on unsteady legs and groped his way to the gunwhale. The balding man took his thin arm in a meaty hand and hauled him up. "You got the thousand?"

The passenger blinked at him. "Thousand? That wasn't part of the deal."

"Yes it was." the balding man growled. "Azarian made it clear at the pick up. One thousand up front, the other on arrival."

The passenger fidgeted. "Look, sir, I don't..."

"You don't have it?" the balding man interrupted, seizing the front of the man's stained, tattered life jacket. "Let me make this very clear to you, sunshine. You cough up now or I cut your throat and dump you in the river."

"W-wait!" the man protested, "You can't do this, I'll..."

"You'll what?" The balding man's eyes narrowed. "Listen up, asshole. No-one in this hive gives a shit about you. The lords up in their ivory spires? To them you're just a nuisance that they're paying Remsburg Hive to deal with so they can keep on pretending you don't exist. The kill-teams? If they clap eyes on you they'll throw you in a cargo-8 and dump you back in that shit-hole you came from, and you can make your excuses to the Orks. Even Joe Hiver doesn't want you here. He's struggling to feed his own family and pay his own rent, and you come along begging for food and housing that the administratum ain't got. No-one gives a shit. Now do you have the money or-"

"You're late." an alto voice drawled. The balding man released the shivering passenger and snorted down his nose as he wheeled to face the dockside. Two young women had stepped up onto the pier, and were now standing with their hands in the pockets of their canvas jackets.

"Sorry, missy." the balding man growled. "Can't plan ahead for the river patrols." He glowered at the two women but remained grudgingly deferential - even if they both had to be in their late teens, or early twenties maximum.

One of the girls, brown haired and pointy-featured, took in the balding man in his salt-stained, sweat-streaked tank top, and wrinkled her nose. "How many this time?"

"Seventeen men, twelve women, four kids." the balding man reeled off, before casting a baleful glance at the first passenger. "This one says he ain't got the fare."

The woman exchanged a glance with her companion, and then waved a hand dismissively. "Don't worry about that. He can work the debt off later."

The passenger beside the balding man began to stammer a thank you, The woman waved it off. "Come on then, get them up. We've got a truck waiting."

"That kid there." the other woman put in, pointing at the tawny-skinned little girl who had curled in on herself between two indifferent elder passengers. "Is she on her own?"

"I trust that you can see what's going on here." Quintus murmured to the others as they crouched between two unloading shelters. The shadows hid them from the group standing on the jetty, even if they had looked round.

"Traffickers." Kim surmised, uncomfortably.

Quintus' long face dipped into a nod. "The Refuge took in half the kids round here - gave them guns and blue cross badges, promised them a bit of respect. Some of them they even promised a better life uphive...usually the young girls. Lords come down, our kids go back up with them, we never see them again." The rifleman's teeth were gritted in hate.

"That's..." Kim blanched as she looked at him. "That's..."

She couldn't find the right word, but the idea of innocents being punished triggered a spike of undirected rage that almost matched the Kingsman's.

Quintus shook his head, as if shrugging off her sympathy. "As soon as the Ork war kicked off and the refugees started pouring into Vaxan, they started targeting them too."

Kim looked at the pistol holstered in her webbing, then up at the knot of people still standing on the pier. The girls with the blue and white crosses on their jackets were still smiling, still giving the exhausted passengers encouragement and soothing words as they helped them out of the boats.

The demon wears an angel's face. The words came back to her on a bow-wave of visceral rage, accompanied by an image of a crowd pressing in around her, buffeting her from side to side as they chanted a name. Deliverer! Deliverer! He was the one who lied, but it was the villagers that paid the price. Kim shook her head and the image was gone, although the anger remained.

"We're going to help them." she decided, pulling the pistol from her webbing and priming it with an automatic motion. It seemed to sit comfortably in her hand.

"Justice is the Red King's will." Quintus nodded savagely. He made a quick appraisal of the surrounding structures, and zeroed in on a pedestal crane with a rust-streaked ladder leading up to its cab platform.

"I'll be in position in sixty seconds. Wait for my shot."

Kim nodded, and motioned for Mai, Anais and Alexi to follow. Leading the others felt more natural now they were doing something right.


+ + + + + +

Sarna

They were climbing up onto the concrete walkway above the dock, vaulting silently over the safety railing, when Primus tensed.

"Wait." he hissed suddenly. He crabbed to the right and dropped low, sinking into the shadow of one of the unloading shelters that surrounded the pier.

He pointed towards the pier, where a battered wooden boat with peeling paintwork was moored up. A ragged group of people were huddled inside, crammed uncomfortably close to each other, but it was to the three figures standing on the pier that the swordsman was pointing. One was a balding man in a faded tank top, and his muscular arms were streaked with sweat. The other two were women with blue and white crosses stitched into the backs of their canvas jackets.

"Refuge." Primus said in a low voice, "And their slaver friends."

His lips curved into a wicked smile.

"The Red King is generous. Only a few of them. Perhaps the fight back begins earlier than expected."

Appraising the situation, Shift noted the lasgun hanging on a strap from the sweating man's shoulder. She picked out another four armed men among the people crushed into the boat, sitting at the gunwhales.

Beside her, Primus' right hand spasmed into a fist. "Skulls for the Red King."

A passenger in the boat stood up, and one of the two Refuge women made a quarter turn to point back up the pier. In almost the same instant, there was the sharp bang of a rifle report. The woman spun round and fell as her legs crumpled underneath her.

As the gunshot echoed around the dock, people in the boat flinched and cried out, and the second Refuge woman let out a shriek. The armed man standing on the pier swore violently and shoved her out of the way, fumbling with his rust-streaked lasgun even as he dived for cover behind the nearest unloading shelter.

[Felwether]

Abner’s head was throbbing, not from whatever had happened in the warehouse but from stress. He had grown increasingly tense as they made their way across the underhive and could not help but feel that with every passing moment they were surrendering more and more control to this Refuge crowd and with it any chance of escape - they still didn’t know who these people were. His heart sank as they came to a halt and disembarked.

"Bit of a frakking fortress, isn't it?" Rhenat murmured to Abner as he looked up at the front of the building. The building had rows of tall, rectangular windows, but most of them had the curtains drawn, and all of them were gridded with heavy iron bars.

Abner didn’t respond but he agreed. Were the bars to keep people out or to trap them inside?

He was surprised by the condition of the building; it had certainly seen better days but seemed to be in a remarkably good state of repair for a structure so deep in the underhive. His eyes darted from side to side as he and the others followed Nara.

Lots of locked doors and armed guards.

They passed another guard and entered into a room with a number of couches. On one wall Abner noticed a large pict-capture of the hive had the sudden feeling that he was falling, and wind rushing past him as though he were in the path of a hurricane. He remembered the discarded grav chute he had spied at the warehouse.

He stared at the ceiling, hands stuffed into his pockets, doing his best to look unassuming, but paid close attention to the conversation between Nara and a man he assumed to be Vamassian. They were discussing what had happened at the warehouse and, from what he could tell, a failed operation elsewhere in the hive. There was mention of a ritual. Abner felt a slight stab of pain behind his eyes as a memory tried to surface.

Abner felt anger as Hayk pushed past him. The Refuge had suffered more casualties. He didn’t care - the longer he spent in this place, the more he wanted to leave, yet he found himself summoned further into the lounge.

"Samvel Vamassian." the man in the silk shirt introduced himself to Abner, offering his hand as Rhenat sidled out. "As of now, leader of the Refuge. So, what skills can you bring to the table?"

Abner’s stomach lurched. What if they didn’t find him useful? The heavily armed Hadrak and outlandish Konstantin could obviously fight but his skills were much less apparent. He cleared his throat and smiled.

“I suppose I’m a facilitator.” he said cheerfully. “I handle the negotiations; you could say I have a knack for reading people.”

As he reached out to take Vamassian’s hand he remembered something Nara had said:

Just don’t let him touch you.

[dakkagor]

As the gunshot echoed around the dock, people in the boat flinched and cried out, and the second Refuge woman let out a shriek. The armed man standing on the pier swore violently and shoved her out of the way, fumbling with his rust-streaked lasgun even as he dived for cover behind the nearest unloading shelter.

“I've got him.” Shift muttered, drawing her sabre. “I've got them all.”

Primus squeezed her shoulder. “No. Hook towards the boat and deal with the guards there. I'll get the smuggler and the Refuge bitch on the dock.”

Shift nodded, and then slipped out of Primus' grip. She ran, low and fast, from scrap of cover to scrap of cover. She slid to a halt in the shadow of some rusting barrels. Breathing hard, she reckoned she had just over a hundred metres to cover of open ground. She could hear lasguns, solid slugs and another, exotic weapon firing nearer the dock. She tightened her grip on her sabre, and let out the breath she had been holding.

She rose silently, not yelling a battle cry. She ate up the ground in a dead run, legs and arms pounding as she closed the distance. Someone on the boat pointed to her, and yelled in surprise and fear. She could see one of the refugee minders shouldering his way through the ratty crowd on the bobbing boat.

She reached the edge of the pier. She planted her forward foot on the bollard the boat was tied to, and jumped. A bullet snapped past her, and she landed with her knees on the smuggler thug's chest, ramming her unpowered sword through his sternum. The blade punched through the boats bottom as she drove him to the floor, blood and filthy water starting to lap around screaming people's boots.

She rolled aside as a ripper clip snarled, punching holes into her victim and one of the refugees behind her, as well as gouging chunks out of the rotten wood. Refugees were screaming, scrambling over each other to reach the dock. More than one bailed out into the river instead. Shift rose to her feet as the user of the ripper clip barged his way through, and lashed out at her with a metal chain. She raised her sword and activated its field, shearing through the iron links. He didn't have long to be surprised before Shift lopped his head of, sending it sailing into the stinking water. Another man, reeking of cheap alcohol, came at her with a heavy machete. She flicked her blade in a quick arc, taking his arm off, before kicking him into the river to flounder and drown.

She settled her gaze on the last guard, now that the boat was almost completely abandoned. He had grabbed one of the smaller children, and wrapped a meaty arm around the boy's neck, using him as a shield while pointing a hand cannon at his hostage's head.

“Enough, you frakking bitch! Drop the sword! Drop it now!”

Shift was breathing hard. She blinked as she realised that she was bleeding from somewhere, a burning ache spreading from her lower body alongside a feeling of warm moisture inside the bodyglove. Training kicked in automatically, and she simply shut down the pain even as a voice from her forgotten past chided her for being so sloppy.

“No.” She managed between gritted teeth.

The boy was sobbing in fear, and a dark stain down the front of his salt-streaked trousers showed that he had wet himself.

“I'll blow his frakking head off!” The smuggler jammed the pistol harder into the boy's head to make his point, eliciting a fresh round of cries. “Drop the frakking sword.”

She could feel herself tearing in two directions. Part of her wanted to lunge forward; strike, kill the boy and the heretic in one stroke, and finish her mission. Another part screamed that that was wrong. It was her job to protect innocent lives.

She could feel the boat slowly sinking, fetid water bubbling up around her boots. The smuggler shifted. The world seemed to shrink around her until it constricted on this one decision.

A shot rang out and the hostage taker's head snapped aside in a spray of blood. Shift saw a splash where the bullet carried on to whicker into the river. She stepped forwards and grabbed the wailing boy by his collar, hauling him clear of the boat and onto the dock.

"Cease fire!" a voice she didn't recognise was shouting. "Kingsman!"

“You're hurt.” someone else said nearby. She turned and saw Primus standing over the headless bodies of the balding smuggler and the second young Refuge woman. He was pointing to Shift's stomach. Her fingers drifted to her bodyglove and came away sticky. She looked back up at him and nodded, before slumping down, the pain finally washing over her.

“It was a lot of ground to cover.” she muttered.

Some of the refugees had scattered and fled, though others had dropped to their knees on the pier and tried to curl up and avoid the flying bullets. A couple were crying for help as they tried to climb out of the river using the scum-slippery pier struts, and the old man who had been hit by the ripper clip was still dying noisily in the bottom of the sinking boat. The boy whom Sarna had saved was still bawling. One of the older women tried to wrap him in her shawl, but she was clearly not his mother because her soothing words had no apparent affect on the child's tears. A little girl was standing in the middle of the cowering crowd, looking lost and weeping silently, and no-one seemed to be paying attention to her at all.

Ignoring the survivors, Primus stepped up and hauled Shift to her feet.

“It could be worse," he opined, appraising her wound. "From my own experience, that does not look immediately fatal. I think it missed everything valuable.” He looked up, and made an X with his hands just as Shift had seen Milena do. "Quintus! Well met!"

"The Red King wills it." answered a calm voice, emanating from a walnut-skinned man who wore the same black combat fatigues as Primus. He carried a scoped, bolt-action rifle in his hands.

"The Red King doesn't prize broken skulls, Quintus." Primus admonished, jerking his handsome head towards the young boy who had been saved by the rifleman's headshot.

"It was that or watch the bullet go through the boy as well." the man called Quintus countered. "That smuggler's skull was no worthy gift anyway."

"Hm." Primus grunted. "True enough. Who are these people with you? My new friend's hurt."

Shift looked up and then followed his gaze, to a group emerging from cover nearby. Something seemed familiar about them. She pointed at one, a pretty woman with brown hair.

“That one. She's a medic.”

The brown-haired woman lowered the pistol she was holding, returned it to the webbing she wore over her black tank top, and stared at Shift in sudden recognition.

"Sarna?" she asked, in an accent that was distinctly different from the Vaxanide brogue Shift had heard from Primus and Quintus.

Shift blinked, then shook her head. “Don't think so.” She paused, searching for some recognition, some name, but apart from her first thought about the group, nothing else came to her mind. She forced a smile. “Sorry I don't remember you. Everything before waking up a few hours ago is...it’s a bit of a mess.”

The other woman’s brow furrowed. “You too?”

Quintus looked from the woman to Primus, who smiled with one side of his mouth. “The Master of Mankind sets a new plan in motion I think, Quintus. There will be skulls for the King on his brass throne.”

“Brass…?” someone murmured behind Quintus, and Shift’s attention was drawn to an unusually tall woman with a mane of dirty-blonde hair. She had a predator’s face and an athlete’s body, amply displayed beneath simple leather armour. An ornate pistol with a dragon’s head for a muzzle hung at her hip.

“Hmm?” Primus answered, as he too turned to look at the woman.

The blonde predator looked uncertain. “For some reason I pictured gold.”

“Gold, brass, bone.” Primus shrugged, creaking the leather straps that secured his sword to his back. “I’ve heard many variations. Some say the Red King holds court on Ancient Terra and accepts the blood of a thousand men and women every day.”

“The people who say that tend to get hauled away by the hive enforcers.” Quintus added, dryly.

The tall woman didn’t say anything to that, but something flickered behind her eyes.

“You.” Primus changed the subject, gesturing towards the first woman with the brown hair and tawny skin. “What’s your name?”

The woman looked up from a small piece of metal in her hand, which she had been thumbing as if troubled by the preceding conversation. She tucked it back into her webbing and straightened. “Kim, sir.”

Primus hmm’d. “Kim, my new friend took a hit in the fight. She says you’re a medic.”

Kim opened her mouth, and Shift had the sudden thought that she was about to claim to be something else. But she aborted the words and simply nodded instead, beckoning Shift towards her as she pulled a small zip-pack from her webbing belt.

“What about them?” she asked, looking at Quintus as she held out a meaningful hand towards the refugees still huddled fearfully on the pier. Shift noticed that there were fewer, some having already bolted into the night, but the ones that remained were making an unwelcome amount of noise - whispering, wailing, and shouting questions in broken Vaxanide Gothic. It was certainly enough to draw attention, even if the mortally wounded old man in the bottom of the boat had abruptly fallen silent.

“Never mind them.” put in another one of Quintus’ companions, speaking for the first time. He was a grim, gaunt man; almost crow-like in the black leather overcoat that he wore. His face was marked by smiling scars and intricate tattoos. “What are you going to do about that one?”

He prodded one of the dead bodies with the toe of his boot. It let out a pained sob, and half rolled over to reveal one of the two girls who had come to collect the refugees. Her small hand was clamped around the shattered ruin of her left shoulder.

“Interrogate her.” Shift hissed as Kim went to work, peeling back her bodyglove and filling the wound with sterilising foam that filled the hole drilled in her. “You want to kill the Refuge? She reports to someone, another slaver. He reports up the chain, and so on. We keep killing and interrogating them until we run out Refuge to find and kill.” She felt the wound be cinched closed and braced, as Kim stapled her shut. The bullet was still in there, rattling around, but it was unlikely to cause her immediate problems. Something to deal with later.

Pain is a weakness of the flesh. Fear, a weakness of the mind. Master both and the only fear becomes dying with your work undone.

“I want to know were these poor bastards were meant to go. I remember what the Red King wants. The blood of the unjust for his chalice and the meat of the unholy for his table. These Refuge frakkers will do just fine.”

"Sounds good to me." said the crow, and put his booted foot down on the girl's broken shoulder, causing her to shriek.

"Alright you." he intoned once the scream had subsided. "Where were you taking this lot?"

"We're helping them!" the girl spluttered in protest. Strands of her curly hair were sticking to her forehead, and her eyes were open so wide that the bloodshot whites were visible all around the dilated irises. Her gaze darted from the crow's cold eyes to his intimidating, cultish tattoos and back again. "We're taking them somewhere safe!"

"I'll be the judge of that." grunted the crow, delivering a warning jab to the girl's ribs with the toe of his boot. "Where's safe, exactly?"

"Wh...why do you care?" the girl coughed, curling her knees up to her chest to try and protect her shoulder and ribs from the man's attention.

"No, I'm asking the questions." the crow admonished her. A kick to the face jerked the girl out of her protective ball, and a stamp on the blood-sticky material of her jacket pinned her to the rockrete by her broken shoulder. "And I'll ask it again. Where were you taking them?"

"I don't - stop stop stop STOP!" The last word was a shriek as the crow leaned down on her shoulder, hard enough to produce a grinding sound.

"Where?"

"I don't -"

Grind. Crunch. Howl. "Where?"

"STOP! Please mister, they'll kill me if I tell you! They'll kill me!"

"Go easy." Kim said in a warning voice. Her jaw was set as she put a hand on the crow's shoulder and pulled him back. "Look at her, she's seventeen at the outside. How much are they going to have told her?"

"Enough." Shift snarled. She got to her feet. "Girl, if you tell us what we need to know, my friend here will patch you up, and you get to walk away. If you don't, by the time we are done with you, you'll wish you were dead. Now talk! Where were you taking these people!?"

"You don't understand!" the girl wailed, her eyes darting fearfully between the crow and Shift as she weighed in on the ordeal. "Do you think anything you do'll compare to what Vamassian'll do if he finds out I helped you?"

"Vamassian?" the crow cocked an eyebrow.

Quintus folded his arms. "Samvel Vamassian."

Shift's memory clicked. Sam the Slaver.

"You're looking at this wrong." Shift crouched down next to the woman, and smiled the same smile she had when she cut people to ribbons. "You tell us where to find a creep like Samvel, and you won't have to worry about him ever again, because the frakker will be too dead to care."

She drew one of her knives, and started to use its razor point to pick something from under her nails, keeping her eyes locked on the quivering girl.

"Its a win-win for you. You get to walk away today, alive, and once me and my friends are done, you don't have to worry about looking over your shoulder ever again. On my honour, I'm not going to stop until Sam the Slaver and the rest of the Refuge are dead in the ground. So help me, and I'll help you."

"You're going to try and...?" the girl panted, her expression drawn into a look of disbelief. When Shift didn't blink, she swallowed painfully. "The old hotel on Mertasari. You know it?"

"We know it." Quintus nodded, neutrally.

"That's where the gang holds them all before moving them on. We sometimes move them around other safe houses first, depending on where the enforcers have their eyes on. But they all end up there."

"Bingo." the crow grunted, and lifted his foot off the injured girl, just slightly.

"Wait..." the girl gasped, "My big brother, he's in the gang too...please don't hurt him."

"Oh, don't you worry about that." the crow said. Suddenly a huge revolver was in his hand, aimed down at the girl's face. He offered her a grin that was as cold and hard as a dagger cut. "Thanks for the intel, sweetheart."

The girl opened her mouth as the hammer clicked back, but didn't have time to scream.

"No." Kim snapped, in a commanding voice. Moving faster than Shift would have given her credit for, she seized the crow's wrist and pushed his gun muzzle away from the girl's head. The crow narrowly avoided discharging the weapon into the ground by his feet. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Who put you in charge?" the crow countered, trying to wrestle back his weapon. For a moment, he and Kim stared dead into each other's eyes; a mutual target lock. "The girl has the right of it. If we're taking this slaver gang down, we're taking it down root and branch, and that includes this wretch and whoever her brother is. All the gangers, all the associates. That's the way this works."

"No," Quintus broke in, with a soft but authoritative tone. "That's the way the Imperium works." He made the X with his hands as if to ward away evil. "We offered a deal."

Shift bit the inside of her cheek. Imperium. She remembered the beating of wings blurring into the howl of an engine. Her right hand, her hand of promise, the one she used to kill, tingled in memory of something she swore. Then the feeling passed.

Kim glanced at Quintus, then back at the crow. "Just because a bad shepherd leads them astray." she said sternly, "It doesn't mean the whole flock is beyond saving."

"You don't think the first thing this little bitch is going to do is run back and tell her friends?" the crow growled. He shrugged his arm out of Kim's grip and rounded on Quintus, with a sneer that curled his lip and twisted the scars on his cheeks into an ugly rictus. "Kill her now, remove the risk."

"He's right." the tall blonde woman spoke up. She cocked her head and squinted coldly down at the girl, who had begun to cry silently as she watched the muzzle of the crow's gun. "She fought poorly; she doesn't deserve missio."

Quintus turned round to look at Primus, perhaps hoping for support. "Your friend offered a deal. The Red King does not lie."

Primus hmm'd. "The Red King may not honour deals where followers of the Prince are concerned. And the skulls of the Refuge..." He hesitated fractionally. When Shift looked at him, she noticed that the fingers of his right hand were trembling. "Are pledged."

"He does not prize the skulls of the weak." Quintus said, reiterating his earlier argument. His voice was even but Shift saw uncertainty in his eyes. He was not comfortable arguing with the senior Kingsman. "If she runs back to the Refuge, then we can offer her head later when she's grown into a more worthy prize."

The spasming in Primus' hand stopped as he clenched his fist. He inhaled deeply.

"Let the Red King speak to us through blood." He turned his head to fix Shift with a deep, appraising look. "Shift. Would you pledge first blood to your promise of mercy?"

“Its my promise to keep, so its my blood on the line.” She nodded sharply.

Primus dipped his own head in approval. He turned to the crow and the blonde predator, still standing over the Refuge girl while Kim stood warily by. "And which of you will pledge first blood to her death?"

"I will." the blonde woman replied immediately, before the crow could speak. A telltale whisper of iron against soft leather, and two long daggers were in the predator's hands as if she had conjured them. Shift saw something light up behind her eyes as she locked gazes with the older woman - the light of recognition perhaps, or of sparked memory.

Primus and Quintus stepped back from the two women, and the others instinctively followed suit. The crow seized the Refuge girl by the collar of her leather jacket, eliciting a ragged cry of pain as he hauled her to her feet.

"Shh..." he soothed her, resting his revolver barrel against her lips as softly as an admonishing finger. He prodded her uninjured shoulder with the gun to spin her away from him, keeping the back of her collar tight in his fist as he placed the muzzle of his oversize pistol against the back of her head. The girl's eyes shot straight to Shift, red-rimmed and saucer wide. Her jaw was quivering with terror. Shift realised that the refugees on the pier had fallen silent, watching in fearful fascination. Shift smiled, winked at the girl, and rolled her shoulders.

Primus' voice was a whip-crack against the silence. "Proceed (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8Txx4SkGPM)."

Anais grinned at Sarna with a kind of ecstatic, feral intensity, daring the younger woman to make a move.

Shift drew her blade, but did not thumb on the power field. She tried to stay calm, but some part of her wanted to really badly hurt this woman. Her small smile expanded into a truly disturbing grin as she padded slowly around Anais, swinging her sword in lazy arcs.

“This should be fair. I'm wounded, and you're old.” Shift chuckled. Anais tightened her grip on her knives, but did not fall for the bait. Shift didn't wait any more, aware that time was pressing on. She stepped and swung, high and fast and lethally. Anais weaved under the blow, Shift's sword grinding down the length of a knife as the other woman closed. Shift danced away two steps and slashed twice, this time causing Anais to fall back away from her blade. Sarna resumed swinging her sword in lazy circles, prowling around Anais slowly as the other fighter slowly twirled her knives.

This has happened before.

Shift turned side on, letting her left arm dangle as she carefully surveyed the battlefield, sword point held towards Anais. She spotted something she could use almost immediately. She charged in again, attacking with a one-handed uppercut followed by a quick, jabbing fencers strike. Anais stepped around the second blow with the grace of a dancer, locking her two knives around Shift's blade and twisting hard. Shift let the blade go and rolled away, right hand closing on something on the floor and then flicking toward, even as Anais tossed the relic weapon aside.

Shift came up from the roll, and bowed. “One all, Anais.”

The older woman's hand travelled up to her cheek, and the thin red line that had been cut below her left eye. Her fingertips came back bloody. Her expression turned to surprise, and then outrage. Shift laughed and held up her right hand like a conjurer, showing a set of glass shards in her gloved hand.

“Just be glad I decided not to take out your eye.”

Primus stepped up beside Shift, resting one hand on her shoulder and giving it an approving squeeze. "The Red King wills it. Let the girl go."

The crow ran his tongue slowly across his teeth as he regarded Primus and Quintus, looking from one silent Kingsman to the other. After a long pause, he sighed in disappointment, de-cocked his revolver, and gave the injured Refuge girl a shove towards Kim.

"Thank you..." the girl whispered as she stumbled past Shift, "Thank you..."

Sarna smiled and nodded, letting the euphoria of the win wash over her. It felt different from a kill, but Primus praise meant the world to her.


"Your brother." Kim asked softly as she unwound more gauze pads from her medikit. "What was his name?"

"Rhenat." the girl replied, wincing as Kim snipped open her jacket sleeve and peeled the bloody leather off her shoulder. "Rhenat Nazarian. I'm Maria."

"Hi Maria." Kim smiled gently. "I'm Kim."

"I had your sword." the blonde predator grumbled, drawing Shift's attention back to her. "Two more seconds and I would have cut your throat, one-eyed or no."

"But this wasn't to the death." Primus said, with finality. He stepped forward between the two fighters and clapped a reassuring hand to her shoulder. "You weren't defeated. The Red King spoke through you."

The woman Shift now knew as Anais scowled, but allowed Primus' words to salve her pride a little. She cuffed again at her cheek, which had already stopped bleeding.

"I remember..." she said softly, looking down at her hands. The hard muscles of her arms and legs were vibrating with tension. "I remember! An arena...I fought in an arena..."

"Hmm." Primus grunted. "This whole hive is your arena now." He padded catlike over to Shift's fallen sword, stooped to retrieve it, and offered it hilt first back to its owner with a tight smile.

"Well done, Shift. The Red King's plan for us begins to reveal itself. We'll take these refugees somewhere safe, and then we head for Mertasari."

---

[Azazeal849]

Abner

“I suppose I’m a facilitator.” he said cheerfully. “I handle the negotiations; you could say I have a knack for reading people.”

As he reached out to take Vamassian’s hand he remembered something Nara had said:

Just don’t let him touch you.

His hesitation didn't go unnoticed, but Vamassian seemed to laugh it off.

"I'm going to guess that Nara told you not to shake my hand. She'd have you believe everyone I touch loses their minds."

The girl called Ellen giggled, as if the idea was ridiculous.

"If I were you," Vamassian advised, withdrawing his hand and instead cocking a pointed finger towards Abner, "I'd be more worried about her. Never trust someone who wants to be everybody's friend."

He shrugged and chuckled, as if the matter was of no consequence.

"Now." he said, sitting back down. He propped one elbow against the arm of the sofa, running the ball of his thumb back and forth across his fingernails. "You can read people, eh?"

Vamassian glanced at Ellen, as if sharing some private joke.

"You don't have to be shy, Abner. I know what you are. You're a rogue psyker."

Abner was taken aback. He had known all along - he must have - but hearing someone say it out loud was still shocking. For some reason his immediate instinct was to tell Vamassian to keep his voice down, but he realised how ridiculous that was. Of course he was a psyker, how else could he do what he could do?

But how could Vamassian know? Unless he was one too? Abner didn't know what to say.

Hadrak was looking confused, which might have blown their cover if Vamassian or Ellen had been looking at him. Both sets of eyes, however - Vamassian's pale blue and Ellen's doe brown - were still fixed on Abner. Vamassian watched him searchingly for a moment, then began to tap his fingers thoughtfully on the arm of the sofa, one at a time. Index, middle, ring, pinky, and then back again.

"Walk with me, Abner. I have a mind to chase up that drinks order."

He pushed his fist into the sofa arm and rose once again to his feet. He paused, cocking an eyebrow.

"Unless you would prefer for your friend to remain with you?"

"I can look after him, Sam." Ellen volunteered, gesturing towards Hadrak. Vamassian ignored her, focussing on Abner. Hadrak was frowning warily at all three of them, no doubt conscious of how Konstantin had been separated from their group already.

"Your call, Abner." Vamassian said, levelly. His eyes held a poignant look, of something shared but unspoken. Abner became more confident of his hunch that Vamassian shared his psychic gift.

Abner hesitated for a moment. He didn't like the idea of being alone with Vamassian but he was sure that being uncooperative would end badly for both him and the others. He gave Hadrak a quick look to show him he shared his concern. He nodded to Vamassian and they began to walk away from the others. Abner noticed that the knife-armed guard, Ani, stepped away from the door and glided silently after them as they headed out into the lobby.

"People aren't usually as understanding of my abilities." he said quietly, wanting to make it clear that his apprehension stemmed solely from concerns over his psychic secret being revealed. How did he know that? He was sure it was true, at any rate.

Vamassian shrugged in a rustle of silk. His pace was lazy, his fingertips making a soft rasping sound as he dragged them idly across the pastel wallpaper.

"Only psykers understand what psykers go through, just like only refugees understand what refugees go through. I've been both. Most hivers have never seen a real sunset, can you imagine?"

The man's chiselled jaw tightened as he inhaled and looked away into the middle distance, perhaps reminiscing.

"We claw our way here to Vaxanhive because to stay out there with the Orks would be to die. But they still hate us here. So you need to ask yourself, are you the butcher or the meat?"

"I'm guessing you have some abilities of your own?"

Vamassian grinned toothily. "I sensed what you were as soon as you walked in, but I didn't want to alarm you by pointing it out straight away."

Ahead of them, a bored-looking youth in a cross emblazoned jacket was guarding a locked door. He visibly straightened when he saw Vamassian and Abner approaching, but Vamassian ignored him as they followed the corridor towards a hubbub of voices and clinking glasses.

"The Refuge don't take in many psykers." Vamassian admitted. "The kids especially don't like us - I bet that one's glaring at my back right now, isn't he?"

The Refuge boss smirked without looking round.

Abner found himself sympathising with Vamassian. Although he couldn't remember any incidents in particular, he knew he had been at the mercy of people who had hated him on account of his abilities. He felt a cold anger.

"I'm sure I don't have to tell you not to go shouting about your status, even round here. Our old boss Petrosyan started losing authority as soon as he got openly mixed up in that warp stuff. It was mostly Nara and me holding the business together, but he didn't care - he was convinced he was going to bring about some great event."

Vamassian licked his teeth.

"I supported him because I knew he wasn't a liar. After all, he helped me hone my gift. And he helped Nara when she got sick. But lately all he seemed to care about was this great summoning of his. And at the end of it all?" He shrugged as he brought his meandering stream of consciousness to a close. "The purple prince is fickle, I guess."

That last sentence rang a bell for some reason. Abner almost winced as he struggled to recall where he had heard that title before, but it was no use.

"The purple prince?" He asked, genuinely curious.

Vamassian squinted at him, almost suspiciously. "How long have you been in the underhive? You must have at least heard the name."

"We tend to keep ourselves to ourselves to be honest. A lot of people aren't particularly fond of scavengers - unless we have something they want, of course." He said, trying to cover his mistake. "But yeah, now that you mention it, it does ring a bell."

Vamassian laughed abruptly; an odd barking sound.

"The Prince, newbie," he said, with a grandiose wave of his arm, "Is a power that answers when the Emperor won't. A few years ago I could sense people's moods but not much else. A poor return for all the stigma, wouldn't you think? Now..."

He trailed off. The silence lasted only a moment before he offered Abner a carefree smile.

"I never asked you - what can you do with your abilities? I can think of plenty of jobs for a telepath, but I need to know how confidently and quietly you can work." He dragged his fingertips lightly across the wall. "What are you really worth, Abner?"

Abner scoffed. The swagger that had been absent since they were brought to this place suddenly returned to him.

"I can learn anything about anyone, given enough time." He said, feeling strangely proud. He cocked an eyebrow. "Would you like me to demonstrate?"

"Oh, very much so." Vamassian grinned broadly, and stopped short of the closed double-doors at the end of the corridor, from behind which the sounds of social drinking seemed to emanate. "Ani?"

"Sir." the woman with the sideswept mass of hair answered quickly.

Vamassian stepped back and rested his muscular shoulders on the wall in a crinkle of silk, folding his arms across the deep V of his shirt. He jerked his head slightly towards the bodyguard.

"Go on then, Abner - impress me."

Ani's dilated pupils snapped from Vamassian to Abner. Abner thought he saw the bodyguard's fingers twitching against the curved knife on her hip, but he was almost certain that she wasn't afraid.

"I'll need your hand." Abner told her.


Ani hesitated, suspiciously. When she eventually extended her hand, Abner didn't fail to notice that it wasn't the one that stayed curled around her knife hilt.

"Relax." he reassured her confidently, and reached out to shake her hand as if in greeting. "It won't hurt."

The young bodyguard's hand was rough-palmed and long-fingered, with nails that had been clipped into triangular points. As he clasped it, Abner felt a familiar tingle - one that this time was full of nervous energy and hostile, highly-focused vigilance.

Just try something, psyker. he found himself thinking venomously, a moment before a wash of images cascaded through his mind's eye.

"You joined the Refuge through Petrosyan's self-defence classes." he told the bodyguard as he squinted into her dilated eyes. "It gave you a sense of power and belonging that you didn't have."

Ani snatched her hand back as if he had burned her. Abner tried not to flinch at the violent speed of her action, and looked towards Vamassian, but the handsome psyker was still leaning back against the wall with his eyebrows expectantly raised. Abner flexed his fingers, mentally sorting back through the visions that had continued to pour in even as he had been describing the first. His will hardened when he saw that Ani was glowering accusingly at him. Yes, girl, I'm a psyker. Hate me if you want, but you'll frakking well fear me as well.

"You didn't do well in scholem." he went on after a moment, with a touch of spite. "You weren't good at making friends, and you weren't pretty enough for the boys to take notice of you. You lost your virginity to some ganger kid who you knew full well didn't give a shit about you; he was just looking for some loser girl with no self-esteem who'd put out easy. You started hanging around with his gang mates, getting frakked up on street corners and getting into fights with the other gangs, because it was better than going home to the string of scumbags your mum kept bringing round after your dad left, none of whom wanted anything to do with you. Not that you were any smarter - you stayed with that ganger prick even after he started slapping you around, because you were too weak to think you'd survive on your own. You hated every man you met because you were afraid they'd try to rape you or kill you, and you hated every woman you met because you were afraid they'd steal your abusive shit of a boyfriend. You thank the Purple Prince every day that Petrosyan came over to talk to you at the Centre one day, because otherwise you'd still be a gutter-filth waste of space, worth nothing to any-"

He felt a sudden, sharp pain as something dug hard into his throat, and a smell of leather and something floral filled his nose. He hadn't even seen the bodyguard move, but now she was nose to nose with him, the sickle knife unsheathed and drawing blood from the waxy skin over his Adam's apple.

"Say one more word, freak." Ani snarled at him, hissing the words through gritted teeth. Her breath smelled of cinnamon. Her pupils were still dilated like black saucers, but now Abner could see tears brimming in her eyes. "Go on. I frakkin' dare you."

"Down, Ani." Vamassian ordered, as if he were talking to a dog. "There's two freaks here, remember."

The bodyguard hesitated for a second more before shoving herself away from Abner and returning the knife to its scabbard in a whisper of leather. As she moved away, the tears in her eyes spilled over to run down her cheeks. She cuffed at them furiously, still scowling.

Abner rubbed the smudge of blood away from his throat, watching the display with a kind of vindictive satisfaction. He could have told Vamassian a different story - of Ani's newfound confidence at Petrosyan's dojo, how his inspiration in the form of the Purple Prince had become her own; how she and the other dojo veterans had become his enforcers and bodyguards after he founded the Refuge, how much she enjoyed being able to go out and buy things for herself and her mother without having to think about it - a world away from the paycheck-to-paycheck existence that most people in the underhive knew. He might have told Vamassian that for the last few months she had been living almost exclusively in the villa, watching the refugees and uphive lords come and go, and only thinking about her family rarely. He might even have revealed how much she believed in Petrosyan when he started talking about finishing the Prince's great work summoning his avatar to show them all the Way. How upset she was to not have been chosen to help Petrosyan with his grand final ritual and how cut up she was at the news that he was dead. After the disparaging words Vamassian had spoken about Petrosyan's plan, Abner was sure that he would have been interested to know how Ani couldn't accept that her mentor had failed, and how very hard she was trying to conceal her feelings from both Vamassian and Abner.

But no, that would have made Ani afraid of Vamassian, and Abner wanted her to be afraid of him. He wanted to make her hurt in turn for pouring hostility and suspicion on the powers that had been his blessing and his curse for his entire life - just like...

Just like...

"That'll do Abner." Vamassian nodded, breaking the chain of Abner's thought before he could hunt down the memory that had spurred it. The Refuge's new leader was offering Abner a thin smile as he drummed his fingertips against the wall. "I'm sure now that there's a place for you here."

[Azazeal849]

Kimmie, Shift, Mai

"Sorry about what happened to your friend." Kim said as she unsheathed a sterile stitching needle, unsure how to broach the subject but feeling that it couldn't go unaddressed.

Maria shook her head. "Don't be. Emma was a bitch. She was always bullying the other juvies."

The teenager breathed out slowly, wincing as she watched Kim thread the needle in and out of her shoulder. Kim had numbed the wound with morphia gel, but the sight alone was clearly unsettling her.

"I thought I was a goner there." the young fixer added. "Shit, the way those two were lookin' at me..."

Alexi and Anais were no longer with them, having gone with Primus to drop the refugees at whatever safehouse the Kingsman had in mind. The others were now sheltering in an underpass, beneath the silent 8-lane arterial that ran straight from Vaxanhive to distant Remsburg. It was nearly midnight now, and the overcast sky had settled into cold, crisp clouds reflecting the orange glow of the hive. A portable lumo-lamp placed on the floor gave the group light, though little warmth. Quintus was prowling around the rockrete bridge struts, looking for a loose paving slab that apparently hid one of the Kingsmen's weapon caches.

"Done." Kim said, sitting back to inspect her work before reaching for a triangular bandage. "Just hold still now and I'll sling it up. How much does it hurt?"

"Like a motherfrakker." the young fixer answered, pushing her curly hair out of her eyes with her working hand. "I don't suppose you guys have any kalma on you? My heart's still going like a frakkin' mag-lev."

Shift shook her head, frowning. "That stuff's poison. Dulls the reflexes. Don't use it." She looked up, still frowning. "Pain is an illusion of the senses. Despair, an illusion of the mind."

"Thanks, I'll be sure to tell my pain that." Maria snarked.

Kim saw Maria grimace at the words. Something like indignation twisted in her stomach, making her feel compelled to justify them.

"People can take strength from different things, Maria." she admonished gently. "That could be a person, or a weapon, or it could be words."

Maria looked up at Shift. "Alright, sorry. But words ain't gonna do it for me right now."

Shift sighed. "I can remember silly phrases and useless advice, but not anything useful. Typical."

"I'd say that taking out those traffickers was pretty useful." Kim countered.

"And saving my ass." Maria chimed in gratefully, then hissed as Kim lifted her arm a little to thread the sling under it. "Ow! Watch it, will you?"

"There." Kim said a minute later, as she finished tying the sling behind Maria's neck. "That's the best I can do with my kit here, but you'll need a flash scan and a proper doctor to look at it. Is there a hospital nearby?"

"Down Pilgrim's Quarter." Maria indicated the direction with a jerk of her head. "It's full of roaches like, but it's the best we've got down here."

Kim grimaced. It would have to do.

"Soon as you feel up to it, we'd better take you there." She scowled. "Emperor knows what internal damage Alexi did when he was stamping all over you."

Maria made a face. "Emperor knows? What are you, some kind of Creed-thumper?"

"Kimmie's a priest." Quintus said quite calmly, as he reappeared with a dusty holdall. His teeth glinted in the lamp light as he offered the group an apologetic smile. "Sorry for eavesdropping - marksman's habit. I hear everything."

He dropped the holdall with a thump and sat down on top of it, unslinging his rifle and laying it over his knees. His eyes lingered in Kim's direction as he pulled out a small tin cleaning kit from a breast pocket, and snapped it open.

"Not a regular hive preacher though." he continued. "A field medic, and you know your way around a gun...I'm going to guess missionary." He grinned again. "Feral clans out in the Terrigan jungle, maybe?"

Kim looked at him uncertainly, shocked that he had been able to work out something that was still half a mystery to herself. She racked her brain to try and recall the so-vivid image that had hit her the last time Quintus had mentioned it. The farmstead; the sun beating down. Had it been here on Vaxanide? No, somewhere else. Adhara.

Stay a while. I'm Cian by the way.

She remembered staggering as she was pushed through a rickety wooden door, and the wood-on-wood clap as it was pulled shut behind her. She remembered tottering around, unsteady from the native grain liquor which she had drunk far too much of. She remembered banging on the flimsy wood of the door, half laughing and half raging at the people who were stubbornly holding it shut from the other side.

"You're not coming out until you two talk!" someone had shouted, over the music and drunken singing that was still carrying on raucously outside.

Emperor damn you, you devious frakking little shits. she remembered thinking, and only just avoided saying it out loud. Normally she was a very good actress, but she had been letting her guard slip of late - and copious amounts of alcohol had very nearly done the rest. She couldn't mention the Emperor's name - not yet. The worry disappeared almost as fast as it had come, as if it were a passing fancy and not a holy duty.

Now, she remembered thinking, if only she had been able to keep her mouth similarly shut around the campfire, instead of blathering on to the others about Cian this and Cian that, like some sort of starstruck juvie. She stumbled around and nearly fell, and had to steady herself against the cracked plaster wall. Cian, who was almost as drunk as she was, had managed to grope his way to the worn sofa and collapse into it. He blinked hard at her a couple of times, as if trying to clear his vision. Something about it struck Kim as incredibly funny, and she doubled over, laughing helplessly.

"Well," Cian shrugged, clumsily slapping the empty seat next to him. "You might as well stay a while."

She had stayed - and she had done rather a lot more besides.

They were on a sun-drenched hill, overlooking the sacred groves. The fishbone skeleton of the Forbidden City loomed in the distance - the city which they would have to eventually reclaim. The time was close now; after a year Kim and her fellow missionaries had learned all they were going to of the natives' ways and beliefs. The deacon was anxious to begin shaping those beliefs towards righteous worship of the holy God-Emperor. Once the indigens were rid of their superstitious fears, the cities could be resettled, and Adhara would once again be a productive world of the Imperium.

To be the key to such an important work, the returning of an entire planet to the Emperor's fold, should have fired every dutiful and patriotic nerve in Kim's body. But somehow, the pride felt forced.

"What would you think if I had to go away for a while?" she asked Cian, her fingers laced through his and her head resting on his shoulder.

She shouldn't have been here with him, and she definitely shouldn't have been asking questions that hinted at the deacon's plan. And yet she felt compelled. Perhaps she was hoping for an answer that would ease her conscience, but if so she didn't receive it.

"What?" Cian shifted around to face her, and Kim leaned back from his shoulder. The man's expression was the exact look of puzzled hurt that she had feared to see. It cut her even deeper than she had been prepared for. "Go where? Why?"

Kim forced a laugh, and adopted a soothing tone. "I was thinking of maybe tagging along with one of the market caravans next month, that's all." She lied to cover herself. "I've never seen Hill Town."

Cian visibly relaxed. "Spirits be good, Kimmie. I thought you were talking about going back to Wandering."

"No, of course not!" Kim laughed, and rested her cheek back on his shoulder. "I want to stay." That wasn't a lie.

And the worrying thing was that it was possible. Missionaries disappeared out in the wilds all the time - it was a known and embraced risk of their calling. No-one would come after her. She blinked. Was it blasphemy to entertain such thoughts?

What is the point of faith if it's not tested? She was familiar with the words, but right now they sounded more like a platitude.

She was on a rickety bridge over the river Vaeser, summoning the courage to take the last step. The last step she needed to make before she went back for the travelling supplies she had already hidden in the woods.

Even now she hesitated. The deacon called phase 2 to begin on the next full moon. You're out of time! She needed to return to the waiting shuttle. She and the other missionaries were to reappear in the sacred groves across Adhara, in a blaze of radiant light. Kim was to be dropped near a village hundreds of miles from here, where the natives would not recognise her face. That was what she needed to do. It was always about what she needed to do, not what she wanted to do.

She let out a shuddering gasp; cuffed at her eyes, and gripped the guard-rail hard as she looked down at the churning water. She took another deep breath.

The daemon wears an angel's face. she remembered telling herself, rigidly. Cian was no daemon, but the temptation to abandon her duty to the Emperor was. You stupid little girl! Everything he thinks he knows about you is a lie! With savage purpose, she kicked her foot through the rotted planks at the side of the bridge. There was a crack as they tumbled into the river and disappeared amongst the white foam. Kneeling by the jagged hole, Kim hooked her sleeve around an exposed nail, and tugged until her tunic ripped, leaving a shred of material snagged on the metal. She looked down at it for a long moment.

It's not too late to change your mind.

Yes it was. And so, steeling herself, she hurried back across the bridge and into the trees. Kim the Wanderer was dead. It was time for Raeden, the Prophet of the Emperor's Word, to be born.

Stay.

Why hadn't she? The Emperor's name was an insistent tug at the back of her mind, but the pain of the memory was raw, immediate, visceral. If she had felt then as she felt now, then how had she been able to bear her decision?

Kim blinked, and realised that there were tears in her eyes. She rubbed them away under the pretext of scratching her nose, and hoped that the others didn't notice. She felt responsible for the others, and now she knew why. She was their missionary. That meant she had to set an example.

But an example for what? For the Emperor? Like on regressed Adhara, it was clear that he held no power down here. Not in the abandoned slums that clumped below the hive proper, at any rate. And like on Adhara, he did not hold a monopoly on compassion. All the mercy and justice she had seen since waking up on the riverside concrete had come from the Kingsmen. All she had of the Emperor was a silver sunburst, and a warning about daemons and angel's faces that went against the strongest feeling she had had since her amnesiac rebirth.

Shift looked away from Kim. She thought she had seen. . . it was probably nothing. And whatever was there, wasn't for her.

Quintus didn't seem to have caught Kim's momentary discomfort. He was looking at Shift.

"You were definitely some sort of professional." he mused, wagging a finger at her thoughtfully. "But you..." He looked at Mai, and paused. "I have to admit I have no idea who you might have been."

She looked back at him blankly, outwardly seeming not to hear him. Yet in her mind’s eye the world imploded and another took its place. Images blurred as they rushed past her. Here a forest, no, a tundra. There, the towering ruins of a crumbled empire. And here, tunnels that swallowed light like the darkness of space.

She blinked and lifted her arm, the rough-spun brown cloth little more than a rag on her arm. It was not a bandage; something told her that it was all they could manage. They. She looked around and realized that she was not alone. A jungle, she was in a jungle somewhere. Others surrounded her, their skins tanned by the relentless sun where it broke through the leaves overhead, beating down on their exposed skin. Men and women, young and old. She knew them, but could put no names to them. Their faces, their entire forms, were present, but blurred like a smeared pic-capture whenever she tried to focus on them.

Pict-capture. She knew it was something she didn’t know, didn’t understand. Yet somehow she knew it and understood it. A figment of her imagination? A memory? Not from before, certainly. Then after? Was there an after? Looking along the path as the group moved around her, she somehow knew that there was little after for many of them. They murmured quietly or said nothing at all, as if they knew what was about to happen. There would be no after for them, any of them.

She heard something, something familiar, but she could not place it. A sound? It was someone speaking. A name? She turned and saw one of the figures moving toward her, a blur like the others. It was repeating the same sound again and again and she knew somehow it was calling her name. Reaching her, it stopped. Then it reached out a hand to grasp her arm...

And the world snapped back into place. Well, the world of cold metal and sickly lights and the man asking her something. Something about herself. Something even she did not know. She lifted her arm and looked at the fine, brightly colored cloth that hung from it. Looking up at him from where she sat, she said, “Mmm.”

"I still don't get it." Maria winced as she leaned back against the rockrete bridge pillar. She tilted her head to look up at Shift. "Not to sound ungrateful or nothin', but why would folk like you stick your necks out for me, right after you iced all those smugglers?"

Good question Shift thought to herself.

“Because I gave my word.” She finally said. “I made you a promise, and if we don’t keep our word we are no better than the Refuge who lies to refugees and makes them slaves.”

"We don't..." Maria protested, looking alarmed. "Here. Vamassian's a bastard but he's not a slaver. We help them get into the hive so they can have a better life!"

Quintus was looking at Maria calmly, but there was something venomous behind his eyes.

Maria's jaw worked silently for a minute, but then she rallied. "They send our people up there too!" she said, raising her good arm to jab an accusing finger towards Quintus. "My brother said that Liza K went uphive just a few weeks back, to work in some noble's villa."

"Liza K." Quintus seemed to nod to himself, before fixing Maria with an extremely cold stare. "I assume you're talking about Eliza Krikorian, daughter of Tavit and Emma? Yeah, I recall they came to us a few months ago - a man in a cross jacket kept meeting Eliza after scholem, giving her little bits of jewellery and stuff. They couldn't get him to leave her alone. And then before we could find him, she runs away from home..."

Quintus finished cleaning his rifle and racked the bolt with a savage snap-click.

"As I recall, Eliza was fourteen standard - a bit young to be making these decisions for herself, no? Anais' blood is protecting you, Maria Nazarian, but if I see you back with the Refuge when we hit them, I swear I'll give the Red King your skull. I refuse to believe you knew nothing about any of this."

Maria seemed to wilt, and her face crumpled. She rubbed at the cross tattoo on her palm, as if it were a stain that she could remove.

"You can't get out." she whispered after a long moment, avoiding everyone's eyes. "No matter what you hear. The...rumours. If you try to run they find you - and your family. Half the reason I joined is I was already a target 'cause of Rhen..."

"What about the enforcers?" Kim asked. Every hive was supposed to have enforcers - pious lawkeepers who were supposed to protect citizens from the kind of monstrous exploitation the Refuge were inflicting. It was one of the scattergun of facts that were slowly coming back to her. "Could you go to them?"

Both Maria and Quintus twisted their mouths, and Maria looked at her as if she had made a particularly obvious mistake as she cuffed at her eyes.

"We're underhivers, Kimmie." Quintus said. Knowing of her amnesia his voice was level, although there was still a touch of accusation behind it. "We're chaff. The only time the Hive Gendarmes take notice of us is when we put a foot out of line. No offence to you, Kimmie, but no Imperial I ever met treated us like the human brothers your Emperor insists we are."

He levered himself up off the duffel bag and unzipped it.

"That's why I joined the Kingsmen. The Red King isn't a forgiving god, but he doesn't lie to you. And he offers justice."

The marksman folded down the sides of the bag, and unveiled an arsenal of old but eminently serviceable weaponry. There was an array of switchblades and PDF-surplus bayonets, mass-produced pistols and stubby, long-handled automatics, and extra magazines for each.

"Frakkin' hell." Maria muttered as she looked at it all.

"Don't you worry." Quintus murmured coolly as he scooped up a pistol and screwed a chunky silencer onto the end of the barrel. "None of this is for you or your brother. I'll stand by Primus and Shift's word."

“But, bearing all that in mind, I still wouldn’t recommend getting in our way from now on." Shift put in. "This is only going to end one way.” She smiled, relishing what was to come. She was eager to get moving again, get the blood pumping, start hunting and killing again. She felt like time was slipping away from her.

"The hotel on Mertesari's right up against the walls of the spire, if I remember right." Quintus said thoughtfully as he knelt down next to the arsenal. "Has its own walled grounds. I'll take us somewhere where we can get a good look."

He looked at Shift, appraisingly.

"Primus said you hacked your way out of Melina's place - how would you go about storming a bigger building?"

As he spoke, a loud roar assaulted Mai's ears. It was sudden and fierce enough to make her start, but no-one else seemed to notice until a moment later, when a screaming prometheum engine crescendoed above their heads, changed pitch as it ripped past them, and then dopplered away into the distance.

"Frakkin' boy racers." Maria growled, looking up at the underside of the arterial bridge.

"Some rich uphiver's kid must have bribed them to open the gates." Quintus theorised, paying the disturbance no more mind as he turned back to Shift. "So what are your thoughts, professional?"

“Flatterer.” Shift smiled. “I'd be willing to bet the sub levels and the walls will be too tight to squeeze through, and they will have enough bodies to shoot us down in a frontal assault.” She stood up and picked up an automatic autopistol, looking it over appraisingly, before frowning and putting it back.

“I have no idea how to use that. Anyway, if it's up against the spire wall, we could scale down that into the compound, come in through the roof. It would be risky, but we don't have the manpower to bust our way in. We might get lucky with trying an entrance from below, but from above. . .I'd bet they would never see it coming."

"From above..." Quintus mused. He broke into a grin, his pearly teeth glinting in the lamplight. "I like it. Let's get to that vantage point and scope it out."


* * * * * *

Abner, Rhenat

Rhenat still couldn't get Vamassian's smile out of his head. He had a vivid memory of a matching one being worn by a stern, matronly woman, at the same time as he proudly emerged from the storm drains clutching a wriggling lizard with a missing toe and a blue ident tag around its neck. It was a smile that said I'm glad you're alive while all these people are around, but the minute we're alone you're getting such a hiding.

He cracked his knuckles, nervously. His brain was already scrambled and he didn't need anything making it worse. Just how hard had he hit his head out there anyway? He couldn't even remember the names of the two lanky, tattooed young men who had accosted him as soon as he had stepped into the bar.

Alright, he told himself, Don't frak it up, let everyone else do the talking...

The bar was an uneasy mix of the strange and the somehow familiar; a disorientating deja vu of faces, voices, and worn but good quality furniture. The air was hazy, and the smoke smelled of acrid lho and the sweeter, more pungent aroma of grinweed. One of the smirking youths in front of him had a floppy mop of dark hair; the other had buzzed his right back to the skull to give no distraction from a pugnacious face with cold blue eyes.

"Hear you gave those Red bastards a kicking, eh?" Floppy-Hair said, thumping Rhenat on the back hard enough to make him blink. "Takin' out the whole gang, even that frakker with the sword? That shit is bananas, mate!"

"Can't have been that great if Vamassian's still got the hero serving drinks." the other laughed.

Something about that pissed Rhenat off, and he scowled before he could stop himself. "Here, what does a guy have to do to get respect from you folk?"

"You could get us a drink?" suggested Buzz-Cut, putting an arm around Rhenat's shoulders and steering him towards the bar.

It was only then that Rhenat remembered that he was supposed to be collecting drinks for Vamassian and the newbies. He realised that Vamassian hadn't given him an order, and he experienced a moment of silent panic before the lady behind the bar bailed him out.

"Sam and Ellen want their usual, yeah Rhen?" she asked, pausing to toss her rusty hair out of her eyes and cock her head at him.

"Yeah," Rhenat answered, and nodded a bit too enthusiastically. "And for these two." He jerked his thumb to either side to indicate Floppy-Hair and Buzz-Cut.

"Just a pint for me, ta." said Floppy-Hair. Buzz-Cut merely twitched his chin upward to indicate the same.

Rhenat coughed into his hand. "Oh, yeah, and two for the new guys as well."

"Not three?" the barmaid repeated, and then shrugged. "I suppose the gear-heads don't do something as normal as drink."

As she busied herself with the bottles stacked on the back wall, Floppy-Hair and Buzz-Cut leaned their arms against the bar to watch her work.

Frak off, is that all I am around here? Rhenat thought as he looked around the bar to avoid his companions' eyes, A bloody waiter? Waking up amongst the blood and bodies at the warehouse had not been something he ever wanted to repeat, but somehow he had pictured himself being a bigger cog in this - the frak did they call it? - Refuge for out-hivers.

"Cheer up Rhen." said Floppy-Hair, and Rhenat turned to see that the other young man was already looking at him. "Everyone has to work their way up, just like 'Ria was working the corners for six months before Vamassian let her go meet the connect with Emma."

Rhenat didn't know who 'Ria and Emma were, so he just shrugged. Buzz-Cut growled as he picked his drink up off the bar, slopping a streak of foam down the side of the glass.

"That Emma needs a good railing." he growled. "She's so frakkin' full of herself." He paused to raise the straw-coloured beer to his lips and reduce its contents by a third. "I'd love to see what she looks like when she's full of me instead."

"Mate," Floppy-Hair grinned. "Half full, at best."

"Frak you." Buzz-Cut drawled, and used his free hand to punch his colleague in the arm. He took another drink, and paused to belch. "Are they even back yet? The frak are they doing out there?"

"Maybe they're meetin' up with Petrosyan after he's done his voodoo shit?" Floppy-Hair suggested, "Let him inspect the merchandise, you know?"

He turned to Rhenat and gave him a comforting slap on the back that he didn't fully understand.

"Don't worry, 'Ria'll be alright. The Reds are down and out, so who else could give them real trouble?"

Again, Rhenat didn't know who 'Ria was supposed to be to him, so he settled for pursing his lips in a determined frown and nodding. "Yeah. Right."

"You're movin' up in the world, mate." Floppy-Hair said, and bobbed his glass upwards in a toast in Rhenat's direction. "You didn' even bottle it like Narek and Tigran did. If the boss'll let you go fight the Reds and you come back alive from that shit, you'll be movin' up from Big Sam's tanna-boy in no time."

"Assuming he's not pissed off you didn' die like the meat shield you were supposed to be." Buzz-Cut grinned nastily, and both young men laughed.

Rhenat would have scowled again, but the name Big Sam sent a twinge through his stomach, and he found himself thinking again of Vamassian's shark-like smile. He sniffed, and cuffed at his nose.

"Tell you the truth mate," he confided in Floppy-Hair, "I can't wait to be away from him. He creeps me the frak out."

Floppy-Hair laughed, but Buzz-Cut frowned and slapped his colleague on the arm.

"Hey, Rhen." he said warningly. "Don't bad-mouth the new boss in front of everyone, eh? He might be a warper but someone'll tell him just to look good and you'll get a bullet in the head."

Rhenat's stomach dropped. "You what?"

Floppy-Hair's confused grimace told him that he had just made a bad error, but once again he was saved by the distraction of the door to the bar room swinging open, shooting a loud creak through the smoke-hazed air. The smoke almost seemed to part like a theatrical curtain as the angular, silk-clad figure of Vamassian ambled into the room, flanked by Abner and the blonde knife-woman whose name Rhenat had forgotten. He had trouble taking his eyes off her - she had a gymnast's body under her leather jacket, paired with a cat's eyes and a conjurer's hands. She seemed angry about something, and was toying with the hilt of her sickle knife.

Frakkin' hell, Rhenat found himself thinking. I'd nail that - if she didn't look like she'd nail me to a wall first...

"Drinks, Rhen." Floppy-Hair hissed out the side of his mouth, and Rhenat got a hold of himself just in time, reaching for the glasses that the barmaid had earmarked for Vamassian and Ellen.

"Thanks, Rhen." the Refuge's new leader nodded, before casting an eye up and down Rhenat's blood-spattered cargoes. "Go get yourself changed before the duke gets here. Burn the old stuff; you know the drill."

Rhenat did not, but he nodded to buy time.

"I'll go with you." Buzz-Cut grunted. "I need to drop a line to Aram's mother."

Vamassian clicked his tongue, and sipped thoughtfully at his glass. "Nara can give you the full list. Reassure the families that we're going to take care of them." He exhaled. "And get the girls ready, will you? The duke will be here in an hour and his entourage expect distractions."

"Distractions?" Abner asked, creasing his pasty, pock-marked face.

Vamassian smiled easily and passed the new recruit his drink. "That's the beauty Abner. Gems, drugs, proscribed items - you can only sell them once. People you can sell over and over again."

Abner cocked his head. "I thought you were protecting people?"

Vamassian frowned, as if he saw no contradiction. "We are. But people have to earn their keep, right? And some of them will even get to move on to a better life uphive."

The leader's fingertips were tapping up and down the glass - index, middle, ring, pinkie, back again - just like on the sofa arm. Abruptly, he wheeled back towards the door, gesturing animatedly for Abner to pick up the spare glasses.

"Come with me, Abner. We owe our friends drinks." He smiled easily. "Your timing couldn't be better, you know. The duke knows what I am, but he won't suspect you."

Rhenat gulped and exhaled quietly as he watched Vamassian's back retreat out of the room. He felt a tight craving in his chest, but didn't realise what it was for until his hand automatically found a crumpled packet of lho sticks in his pocket.

"You guys got a lighter?" he asked Floppy-Hair and Buzz-Cut.

Buzz-Cut thumped him on the back. "In a minute. We've got shit to do."

He downed the rest of his drink and sloped off towards the door. Figuring that the other youth knew where he was going, Rhenat followed. Buzz-Cut didn't seem inclined to talk further as they exited the bar and stomped up two flights of stairs, with faded carpets and chipped enamel handrails. Through a set of double doors at the top was what Rhenat assumed to be an accommodation wing of the old hotel, with rows of identical hardwood doors ranked up on either side of the corridor. There was a long, jagged crack in the ceiling plaster, and the lumoglobe closest to the door was fizzing and flickering. The thing that immediately drew Rhenat's eye however were the two men idling at the end of the corridor, hands in the pockets of their cross-emblazoned jackets and stubber pistols openly carried on their belts.

"Need some eye-candy for the visitors?" the older of the two men asked, evidently expecting them.

Buzz-Cut jerked his head. "Yeah."

"Boys or birds?"

"Just birds."

The man dug around in his jacket pocket and retrieved a fistful of keys. He jangled over to one of the hardwood doors and fumbled for a moment with a padlock below the handle. It was only then that Rhenat realised that all the doors in the corridor had been drilled and refitted with padlocks. The guard hooked the padlock off with a rattle and pushed the door open carelessly, leaving it to swing back on its hinges. As he ambled away, Rhenat peered past him and saw that the room beyond had been converted into some sort of changing room, with several dressing tables shoved up against the far wall. There was a full length mirror to complement the oval glasses that sat above each dresser, although Rhenat noticed that one of its bottom corners sported a crack. To one side stood a metal clothes rack, hung with a variety of short and long dresses.

While Rhenat was preoccupied, the man with the keys had slouched over to the other side of the corridor and clicked open one of the other padlocks. "Take your pick." he invited Rhenat in a bored voice, stepping back and resting his wrist on his holstered stubber. The second, younger guard grinned at him.

Rhenat poked his head through the door, and was greeted by a smell of must. He saw that the walls of the individual rooms had been knocked through to form one long dormitory, leaving the bathrooms as small cubicles, and some of the tables and chairs had been sandwiched together. Dirty plates and cups were stacked on two of them, as if waiting to be taken away. Six or seven beds stood in various states of rumpled disorder. The windows were locked closed, which Rhenat supposed explained the musty smell, and they had all been repainted black, leaving the dusty lumoglobes hanging from the ceiling as the only illumination. The dingy dormitory was occupied by about a dozen young women and half as many young boys, all dressed in grubby loungewear. They sat in ones and twos at the tables and on the beds, but none of them were talking to each other. In fact they looked oddly frozen, as if they had stopped whatever they were doing when they heard the padlock click. They looked back at Rhenat with studiously neutral expressions.

Rhenat was no good at guessing ages, but if pressed he would have placed the kids as ranging between their early teens and perhaps a year older than himself. There were three tanned outhiver girls, several more with the earthy-brown skin and curly hair that was common in hive Remsburg, and a few dark-eyed, olive boys and girls who must have been from even further afield. There were even two with faces pale and fine-boned enough to have passed for Vaxan uphivers. Most of them looked underfed, but despite their thin frames and ratty clothing, one thing that all of them had in common was that they were all stunningly attractive.

Rhenat cuffed his nose. He could appreciate a pretty figure as well as anyone else, if not more, but the surreal situation stole any eroticism from the moment. He must have hesitated for slightly too long, because Buzz-Cut huffed down his nose and shoved him impatiently out of the way.

"You, you and you." he stated, pointing at three of the young women seemingly at random. He considered for a second, then indicated a fourth. "Actually, you an' all. There's always one greedy bastard. Come on, get movin' and get your kit on."

He thumped the doorframe with his fist for emphasis.

The four young women stood up silently and filed out of the dormitory into the dressing room. Rhenat jumped back hurriedly to get out of their way. The first one through winked at Rhenat as she caught his eye, but the two following her looked almost bored. The girl bringing up the rear, who was by far the youngest of the four, actively avoided his gaze. Rhenat cracked his knuckles and looked away uneasily, though the younger of the two guards leaning against the wall next to him seemed to have no such reservations. He craned his head to one side to get a better view of the last girl as she passed him, and whistled appreciatively as he aimed a hard swipe of his hand across the back of her flannel shorts. The girl flinched, but otherwise didn't respond as she shuffled into the dressing room and pulled the door closed behind her.

"Lucky bastards, eh?" the young guard grinned, pressing his tongue up against his front teeth. He turned to Rhenat when his older companion seemed indifferent. Rhenat got the feeling that he was supposed to laugh and agree, but all he could manage was a grimace. The fact that he was the only one who seemed to find anything wrong about all this made him even more intensely uncomfortable. I wish this frakkin' head-frak would clear up, man. Logically, he knew that he must have spent some amount of time around the safehouse before. And Vamassian had said the refugees were just paying their way, right? The gang leader's shark-like smile floated once again to the front of his mind. Then why'd they need to lock the frakkin' door?

"Hey Rhen," the younger guard frowned, "What happened to you? You finally get in a fight?"

Rhenat looked down at the blood spots on his cargo trousers, and seized eagerly on the distraction. "Yeah, gave the Reds a kickin'." he boasted, "Where can I get rid of 'em?"

Buzz-Cut snorted, and punched him in the back - lightly, but it still made Rhenat flinch. "Use the fire-barrels out back, dumbass. Haven't you seen Nara's boys go out and come back enough times?"

"I know that." Rhenat scowled, backtracking hurriedly. "I mean what am I gonna wear instead, huh?"

The young guard laughed, and fished a set of keys out of his own jacket pocket. This one had a circular plastek token on the ring, stamped with the number 216 in faded gold leaf. "Tell you what, mate, you can borrow a pair of mine. My stuff's in the corner cupboard." He tossed the key to Rhenat, who fumbled the catch but managed to secure the keys before they fell to the floor. "Go on, I'll bring the girls down when they're ready. But I want my shit back, d'you hear?" he added as Rhenat bailed out of the accommodation wing as fast as he dared.

[PaintSerf]

"Okay." she confided playfully as she wrung out the sponge. "I'll admit I'm being a bit selfish here, keeping you for myself. But I've never seen a tech-priest so well built before."

“Built…” He slowly repeated.

“Vaxan slang.” Nara explained, as she appreciatively glanced at him with a subtle smile. “It means you have some impressive muscles.”

Konstantin barely registered as the word resonantly echoed in his mind.

Built…built…built…

The Luminen’s brow knit with confusion as he felt the sudden impulse to perform a self-assessment. Konstantin glanced down and saw the broad and trim expanse of his torso, contoured and grooved with firm muscles so well defined that he suspected they were also not entirely natural. His suspicions only mounted as he extended his arms out before him. He noted the conspicuous absence of biological imperfections such as blemishes, scars, and stretch marks that he flexed and rotated them, as would have normally shown on flesh over the progression of years because the flesh is weak.

Konstantin frowned slightly at the strange and unbidden assertion that flesh was weak, and that he felt that he should accept that was correct...but correct according to whom…and why?

The creases of Konstantin’s frown and scrunched brow deepened as his not entirely natural eyesight shifted. He experienced a tremor of unease as the strange grey-sight revealed in greater detail what was beneath his skin. Rendered as darker lines beneath his greyed skin was a series of metal bands that traced along his arms and down his legs. They connected into a network that sprawled across his torso in a networked series of circuitry which terminated into cogwheels. His eyes fixated on the lone stylized ‘V’ on his breastbone…which he knew was significantly important…somehow…

His disquiet was soothed by a comforting sense of familiarity when he took in the symbols. He realized these…augmentations… were perfectly suited to his role in the grand design…of humanity…even though he was not certain as to what his role even was. Konstantin determined this was evidently another irksome not now moment, and that he was well past done with them. He could only anticipate the sense of relief would was over him when his Knowledge returned, and he would once again have certainty about who he was and what he was meant to do with his life.

The Luminen relaxed his tensed posture and turned towards Nara, who was still committed to her own thorough ocular examination of his body. Konstantin noticed her gaze had once again settled on his sculpted abdominals, and that she seemed particularly captivated by the faint hint of his chiseled oblique muscles. Nara sighed, almost regretfully, as he completely obstructed the compelling view by strategically placing both of his polymer clad hands on either side the almost comically large cogwheel belt buckle. He sighed, with a notable edge of asperity, and pointedly cleared his throat.

“Nara Tumasian,” Konstantin firmly prompted, with a measure of strained evenness, “My eyes are up here.”

Nara blinked as she belatedly registered that the tech-priest spoke, and then sharply met his eyes with as she registered what he actually said. Konstantin allowed Nara to momentarily waver with uncertainty, before his moustache sympathetically twitched sideways alongside a mischievous half-grin.

“You…” Nara started, with a completely baffled expression as she tried to process her words. “You’re…”

“Yes, Nara,” The Luminen confirmed, with a playful flick of his eyebrows, “I’m teasing you.”

Nara blinked and emitted an amused snort, which was so natural and thoroughly unlike her cultivated image. Konstantin huffed out an equally humored breath as his smile broadened. His hostess snorted again at his reaction, which made the Luminen begin a chuckle that only persisted as Nara giggled. She inadvertently squeezed the sponge, and noisily splattered water on the tile floor with a sodden thump.

“Oh!” She exclaimed in surprise, with the faintest little quiver of another giggle as he bit back a laugh.

Nara self-consciously reverted to her poised demeanor, and delicately hid her mouth with the dry back of her hand. Konstantin’s eyes briefly locked onto the cross tattooed across her palm, before they shifted upwards to meet Nara’s. The two stared at one another as they mutually registered the absurdity of the moment. Their eyes narrowed as they sensed the implicit challenge hanging in the air, and by wordless agreement they began their duel to see who would break the silence first.

The chief enforcer and Mechanicus tech-priest were soon physically shaking under the strain of their fiercely waged competition. Konstantin clenched his silvered teeth on his bottom lip, almost hyperventilating as he struggled not to crack. Nara’s eyes were narrowed almost into slits as she firmly pressed her mouth against the back of her hand. It proved to be the undoing of the competition, as the breath she sought to prevent escaping unexpectedly broke out with a high noted flatulent resonance.

The tiny washroom echoed with their combined laughter.

Konstantin was hunched over with his hands braced against his thighs, chest heaving as he struggled to both recover his breath and stymie the last tremors of amusement. He had no idea precisely how long they had laughed for…and experienced a nagging sensation about his improper data acquisition. His brow knitted again as he considered the notion, and he wondered why the duration of his laughter would have mattered when he could not remember the last time he truly laughed.

The Luminen inhaled deeply, and held the breath as he pondered the quandary…and ultimately decided to dismiss both notions and appreciate the moment as it was. It had been the first time he had laughed in his conscious memory, such as it was…but it was a spontaneous and thoroughly enjoyable moment...and he was determined to amend that oversight going forward. Konstantin exhaled deeply as he stood upright, and contentedly embraced the unfamiliar ache in his chest from the hearty laughter.

“Now back to our serious business and conversation,” Nara firmly prompted, with a measure of strained evenness that she could not quite maintain, “Which was so rudely interrupted.”

The Luminen smiled at his hostess’ teasing emulation as he turned towards her. Nara had propped herself against the draining board, with an arm was still wrapped across her own aching sides. The faux serious expression she had worn gave way to a playfully admonishing smile.

“My apologies, Nara,” Konstantin replied, as he affected a courtly unctuousness. He made a graceful half bow, and broadly gestured towards her with a copper capped glove. “Please, do continue.”

Nara trilled out one last delighted giggle, and took a steadying breath as she gracefully pushed off the draining board. She softly hummed as she recovered the sponge and bowl and prowled towards him. Konstantin noted the assured confidence in Nara’s stride…and a slight discrepancy in her gait compared to his earlier observation. One booted foot crossed in front of the other with a soft scuff, and rough leathers whispered as she closed the distance between them, her hips swaying in what he presumed was an enticement to the indecent proposition she offered.

The Luminen blinked as he processed the…memory fragment. He was positive it had nothing to do with Nara…but he did notice that her motions were strikingly similar…and as deliberate. Konstantin experienced a tremor of unease as his hostess closed the distance between them, and it only magnified as his gaze shifted from the subtle gyration of Nara’s hips. The Luminen’s inexplicable sense of anxiety escalated as he detected the feline which has acquired the avian for consumption undercurrent of predatory success in Nara’s coy little smile…and fleetingly wondered about the oddly phrased memory.

“Na…” Konstantin began, and reflexively gulped as he struggled to manage a cautionary tone with a suddenly dry mouth. He uncomfortably cleared his throat. “Nara.”

“Aww…” She softly cooed, as her smile only widened. “Am I making you nervous?”

The Luminen could not manage to reconcile the gentle vocalization or the incandescent gleam of determination and something else in her eyes. Konstantin tensed as Nara pursed her lips together, and glanced down as she pressed a fingertip beneath his sternum. She resumed her casual humming, noticeably slower and in a lower register than before, as she traced down the channels and groves of his blood splattered abs in an idly meandering course…as her gaze went lower still ahead of her touch.

“Nara…I -”

Konstantin hissed through his silvered teeth, his stammering cut off as Nara opened her hand and slowly scraped her fingernails down his defined muscles. He started down at his hostess…and sensed Nara was not one to take no for an answer when determined to have her own waywhen she met his eyes. She smiled wickedly at his stupefaction as she continued her hands-on exploration unimpeded.

“Are you always this forward with new acquaintances?”

“You callin’ me a slut?”

Konstantin blinked and winced for his efforts because there was something khekking wrong with my eyes as he started at unexpected question. Nara’s mouth was twisted into an aggrieved frown; her artfully plucked brows had drawn in dangerously together as she cast an affronted glare at him.

He was momentarily stunned as he processed the abrupt change in Nara’s demeanor and posture. She wasn’t the languid, playful woman with the affected mannerisms and soft voiced delicacy of a Spire lady. She was an angry, hard edged and territorial down-hive girl snarling at him in rapid fire gutter Vaxanide.

“I…uh…” The Luminen fumbled, as he reeled from the bristling hostility in her accusation. “What?”

“You frakkin’ heard me, you prick,” Nara hissed, as she stepped in closer to him, loudly striking the tiles with her heel as she closed the distance. “I said you callin’ me a slut?!”

The irksome female had countered his usual disparaging scowl with her own indulgent, coyly knowing smile as they neared one another. She had breezed on past with the whisper of silken robes, and her eyes idly travelled across his exposed muscles. It was her faint, patiently wistful sigh that nearly had him escalate from merely clenched teeth irritation to a more direct rebuke.

Konstantin recoiled, as the inexplicable thought was paired with inexplicable mental image. The woman was thin, her compact and lithely muscled body was emphasized by the silken robes, dainty and fragile by comparison to his re-built mass. She smiled cheerfully, dimples and almost too perfect teeth prominently displayed on her softly curved face. Her scrutiny was undiminished by his ire, and the aberration had a knowing gleam in her dark eyes, as if she could see into the future.

“I…” The Luminen started, unsettled as he attempted to the remember the moment in full and counter the woman’s implication, “I didn’t say -”

“No, of course you didn’t say it.” Nara cooed, interrupting him with an acidic mockery of her earlier gentleness and lofty grace, “You only implied it.”

“What’s the problem, Stan?” She murmured softly. The feral woman stepped in closely, with a predatory smile on her sharp featured face. It was upturned slightly so she could raise a challenging eyebrow. “Afraid of how weak you’d be when I have you beneath me?”

“What of worth have you accomplished with your life’s potential, you ignorant barbarian,” His words were a low, judgmental hiss, “other than squandering copious amounts of that blessed gift on meaningless slaughter and fruitless fornication?”

Konstantin’s tension mounted as he was confronted by another woman’s greyscale projection. She had the sinuously musculature of a feline apex predator and uninhibitedly displayed it in a rough leather outfit. The woman’s unruly mane was disheveled by exertion, and hands twitched by the twinned blades sheathed on her hips, unintimidated by his presence as she stood almost equal in height. She was as imperious as a queen of the bloodied sand as she stared him down with narrowed eyes.

“What,” Nara continued, as harshly as she jabbed the points of her nails into his abdomen. She momentarily seemed surprised as Konstantin numbly reeled back, but nevertheless pressed her advantage, “You think I’m throwin’ myself at every guy I meet, like some cock starved nympho whore?”

“No…I was…” The Luminen attempted to speak, and frowned deeply as he struggled with his memory. “That’s not what I think about you.”

“Oh?” Nara gasped, her voice thick with sarcasm she leaned in closer to scrutinize his reaction. “So you don’t think I’ve been earnin’ my way up in a man’s world on my back and on my knees?”

“The serene manner in which you have embraced the role for which you are best suited is impressive - unlike the others amongst this team who claim to be warriors, and have been tediously persistent in their misguided arguments to the contrary.”

"Suggest I wouldn't make a good warrior again, Stan, and I'll rip out your eyes and shove them up your arse.”

Nara's face disappeared behind another conjured up by the memory - this one broad and sharp, with wide cheekbones and a square, fierce jaw. Her almond shaped eyes were narrowed at him in affronted hostility. Konstantin wordlessly stared at the image until it faded away to reveal Nara again.

“I…” The Luminen hesitated, and then spoke with certainty, “I don’t think that -”

“Yeah, okay.” Nara doubtfully retorted. She disparagingly rolled her eyes as she stepped back, and stared accusingly at him as if he were a repugnant beast of a mutant. “If you ain’t thinkin’ that misogynistic bull-grox shit, than why you disrespectin’ me as some trashy corner skank?”

For a second time Nara's face flickered and became another - this time one with long, pleated hair and thin, flat eyebrows above deepset eyes. Something told him that they were eyes that normally projected an earnest, approachable confidence, though the image his photographic memory conjured was one of them blurred by tears of rage.

"And now you're going to try and play the reasonable one? You frakking prick. Tell you what, Stan. Maybe you can keep control of your frakking emotions. But you watch several thousand of the people you were supposed to save get thrown to the fire and tell me if you're still a warrior of true faith after that, you secondborn piece of shit."

“I didn’t…that’s not…” Konstantin spluttered. “I don’t –”

“I don’t wanna hear it!” Nara sneered, as she snapped her manicured fingers and flicked her tattooed palm towards him.

“I…I’m…” Stan rasped as an uncomfortably familiar yet unfamiliar tingling sensation prickled through his body across the network of subdermal metal bands.

“Whatever, bitch!” She hissed dismissively. The chief enforcer tossed her luxurious, glossy mane over her shoulder as she imperiously glanced away from him. “I’m done with you.”

“No!”

The tech-priest’s denial was a choked, despairing rasp that struggled out against the dry constriction of his throat, as he staggered backwards against the wall with a solid thump. He was almost oblivious to the click of heels and another slop of water off the floor as Nara warily retreated. Konstantin’s torso bounced as he separated from the cool tiles he had momentarily been stuck against, and sagged down into a bent over hunch. Konstantin fought through the invisible and ever tightening vice of anxiety around his chest for each breath, and the methodical hammer blows of pressure behind his aching eyes.

“Khek! Khek! Khek!” The Luminen hissed, teeth clenched as he clutched into his thick and harshly bound hair. He struck his temples with the heels of his palms in time with his curses. “What the khek’s wrong with me? Why the khek does this keep happening?! What the khek am I doing wrong?!”

“Hey…” Nara quietly spoke. He almost lost the words beneath the click of her tentative footsteps, and the brief scrape as she discarded the wash bucket on a nearby auto-clave.

“Nara,” Konstantin acknowledged, almost despondently as he raised his hands to forestall the next barrage of outraged Vaxan and the strange, deeply unsettling memories of arguments past, “please, listen, I swear…I swear I didn’t mean you any insult!”

“I know.” Nara calmly affirmed. Her own hands were raised to placate the agitated tech-priest as she slowly and cautiously stepped back into his physical proximity while trying not to startle him further.

“What?” He numbly asked. The Luminen’s broad features were scrunched with almost agonized confusion as his gaze locked tightly onto the woman’s Refuge cross tattooed palm as she came closer.

“I know.” Nara reiterated, with palpable assurance. She tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear, and maneuvered so he would see her open and honest expression. “I was only teasing you back for earlier.”

“Why?” Konstantin queried, his mouth stretched into a wounded frown as he struggled with her answer.

“I thought it’d be all in good fun to go off on you like a pissed off Vaxan down-hive girl, but then…”

Nara paused as she registered the tech-priest’s aggrieved expression and sighed. Instead of speaking, she reached out to lightly touch his biceps. When the Luminen made no objection she softly stroked her fingers up and down the defined musculature of his arms in a rhythmically soothing motion.

Konstantin shuddered as he exhaled deeply with tension, and for a time they did not speak as he fought to reign in his accelerated heartbeat and constrain his rapid breaths. The Luminen glanced at Nara, and distantly registered they were an unlikely duo in an improbable situation, the slight gangland enforcer in a slinky dress almost cradling the mountainous tech-priest in her arms as she sought to gently calm him.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” Nara quietly apologized, even as her mouth twisted into a confused frown. She hesitantly bit her lip, and then curiously tilted her head as she sought his eyes. "I was told that tech priests didn't hold with normal human feelings?"

“Weaknesses of the flesh have a useful purpose - if they are appropriately controlled.”

The Luminen’s paused as his moustache twitched once again at the familiarity of the answer, which he had spoken without consciously thinking, and knew that had heard someone else speak almost those exact same words. Konstantin was unsettled by the reflexive, almost programmed way in which he had responded to Nara’s question…and the notion that such doubts were supposed to be unacceptable…even though they came to him as naturally as the words he had just spoken.

“Hey…don’t shut down on me now.” Nara whispered, and gave his arms a mild squeeze of encouragement before she returned to her soothing and coaxing caress. “What’s going on with you?”

“I haven’t been myself…in a long time.” Konstantin acknowledged, somewhat hesitantly as he could not more accurately quantify the time. “Some of what I was came back when you went off on me -”

“I’m sorry.” Nara interjected, as her hands deftly slid down the muscled contours of his arms to lightly grip onto his thick forearms. She lightly and reassuringly brushed her thumbs underneath the bend of his elbows as she met his eyes with a meaningful expression of regret. “I didn’t know…”

“You couldn’t have, Nara. Please don’t fault yourself for that.” The Luminen replied. He smiled down at the Refuge’s enforcer boss with an open, honest smile. “Thank you, by the way.”

“Thanks for what?” Nara asked, with a softly confused smile. Her thumbs continued to almost subconsciously stroke against his forearms.

“I can’t remember the last time I laughed.” Konstantin admitted, and his mouth subtly tightened with the shame of that admission. His smile returned fractionally as she gently squeezed his arms once again.

“What?” Nara started. Her expression scrunched as she glanced suspiciously at him. “You mean you don’t joke about with your friends?”

“Abner Able and Hadrak Elsa are not my…friends.” Konstantin answered, and slowly nodded with certainty after he spoke the words and gauged that they were correct. “We only work together, and I’ve made it a point not to interact with them on a personal basis since we were introduced.”

The Luminen hesitated as he mulled over why he had made it a point not to interact with others. There was nothing impressive about the Abner Able’s almost unhealthy scrawniness…but it was hardly fair to compare the man against himself when direct action was not his role in the grand design. He wondered if that was because Abner was an aberration…and he felt that was correct.

Konstantin nodded slightly at the conclusion as he shifted his thoughts to Hadrak Elsa. He quickly determined the statuesque man’s calm and collected composure marked him as capable warrior and a leader of men. The Luminen recognized that, as with Nara’s lieutenant Hayk, Hadrak was efficiently…and almost perfectly…suited to his role in the grand design. He couldn’t fathom why he would’ve avoided personal interaction with a fellow warrior.

“I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a normal conversation.” The Luminen continued, and shrugged as he tried to brush aside any lingering thoughts about his…friends…but frowned as another prior thought came to the forefront of his mind. “I always was getting into arguments with the women -”

“What women?” Nara queried. The humor and playfulness of her suspicion faded away as her eminently more serious enforcer boss aspect came to the fore. “Are you three part of a larger crew?”

“We were, but we went our separate ways...some time ago,” Konstantin replied, as his frown edged further down by the moment. He did not like the vagueness of some time ago as an answer…yet it was best that he could manage on the sport for Nara with the irreconcilable impairment of his memory.

“What happened to them?” Nara calmly pressed, her hands stilled on his forearms as she scrutinized his troubled expression with a quiet intensity.

“I don’t know whether they’re dead or alive.” The Luminen said, and meant with complete sincerity. His thoughtful frown remained fixed in place as he distractedly brushed his coppered thumb over coppered fingertips with soft clinks. “I didn’t think they were capable or qualified to fulfil our…work.”

Nara pursed her lips together and hmm’d as she absorbed his answer and the subtle muscle movements of his subconsciously anxious fidgeting. She smiled slightly and shot Konstantin a wry look.

“Did you ever think that’s why you were getting into arguments with them?”

“In all honesty…I haven’t been thinking much about anyone but me lately.” Konstantin admitted, with a measure of discomfort with that self-realization of his selfishness. He remained thoroughly oblivious to the earlier minimal shifts of Nara’s temperament. “Most of the women were not thinking about me -”

“Speaking on behalf of all red blooded women with two eyes and a pulse…”

The Luminen registered the airy grandiosity of Nara’s declaration a moment before she lightly dragged his fingers from his arms, and playfully clapped her hands against his muscular trunk with a duo of solid thumps. Konstantin glanced down and saw the amusement in Nara’s eyes, once they made it upwards to meet his, and saw her mischievous smile as suggestively quirked brow as she stroked his toned chest.

“I somehow doubt that’s an accurate statement, mister Mars.”

Mars…

“Okay…you’re not wrong, Nara.” He allowed, and pushed past another anomalous ache of with a somewhat forced chuckle as he shifted uneasily. “There were a few that seemed…interested.”

“What?!” Nara gasped, mockingly aghast as she covered her mouth and stared at him in wide-eyed surprise. “Women can have active libidos, and are capable of expressing their sexual interests?”

“So it would seem.” Konstantin levelly answered, with a slight smile as he decided to play along.

“No!” Nara denied in faux outrage. She arched her back as she pivoted away from him and rocked back on her heels in a pantomime swoon. The enforcer chief dramatically whipped her hair around as she averted her eyes from the Luminen, and dramatically threw back her tattooed hand against her forehead. His gaze once again focused in on the elegantly shaded cross on her palm. “Say it isn’t so!”

“It’s so.” Konstantin affirmed, with the same grave solemnity of a clinician giving a terminal diagnosis that he remembered...he remembered. The Luminen’s mind raced as he remembered that somber expression…but he couldn’t remember from when…even though he had the sense he would never forget that moment…even though he had…for some khekking reason…forgotten.

“What’s the Imperium coming to these days?” Nara distantly bemoaned with patently false despair.

“Nothing good…” He said distractedly…and immediately knew that his answer was unequivocally correct. The Luminen shivered as a sense of dread and doubt began to creep into his mind. Perhaps…perhaps I don’t want to know what I used to know…who I was, or how I got to be here… Konstantin winced as he blinked, and was drawn back into the present as he belatedly registered a mild increase in pressure on his side as Nara leveraged her hold on him to whirl herself back in close to him.

The enforcer chief emitted another airy giggle as she wobbled on her heels, and steadied herself by grasping onto his waist with both hands. Nara’s gull-wing brows soared dubiously as she glanced at him from behind an unruly wave of inky black hair. “Honestly, was that the biggest problem?”

“That’s not even remotely a problem.” Konstantin denied, somewhat perplexed by Nara’s question. “The Imperium -”

Nara interrupted him with a hearty chuckle, and clutched the Luminen’s muscular trunk even tighter as she doubled over in mirth. She uninhibitedly snorted as she slumped forwards, and took a deep breath as she composed herself and straightened up. Her eyes glinted mischievously as she removed her hands to lightly touch his cheek, and comb her exquisitely manicured nails through her wildly disordered locks.

“Oh, wow.” Nara breathed, as she smiled almost affectionately at him. “You’re adorable.”

Konstantin craned his head backwards; eyes narrowed fractionally as he stared even down at her. “Would you kindly elaborate?”

“Honey, I care about the Imperium less than it cares about me.” She opined, and shrugged apathetically and dismissively as she casually rested her hands on his chest. “I was asking about you,” Nara gently poked a finger into his chest, and smirked coyly at him as she continued, “and whether your biggest problem with these women was being the subject of their wickedly depraved feminine lusts.”

“No…it was irksome, more than anything.” Konstantin admitted, as he once again gently, yet determinedly, removed Nara’s hands from his blood stained torso. She merely giggled airily, and tilted her head as she allowed him space. The Luminen’s silver capped teeth scraped together as he mulled over his words. The correct answer promptly came to him. “My biggest problem was that they – and everyone else, really - would only think the worst about me, no matter what I said and what I did.”

“I know how that goes.” She commiserated. Konstantin noticed a fleetingly displeased twist of her mouth, but on whole thought her expression was honest. Nara casually dismissed any worries with an unbothered shrug as she finished grooming her disheveled hair. “So what’d you argue about?”

“Anything and everything, it seems.” The Luminen acknowledged, and sighed as he recognized that the words were correct even as he spoke. “I was incompatible with these individuals in almost every sense of the word.” He frowned as he was correct…again. “I was a chevek amongst these cheveks.”

“Chevek?” Nara questioned. Her sculpted brows flicked upwards in surprise and then pulled together as she curiously tilted her head towards the tech-priest and his strange terminology. “What’s that mean?”

“It means outsider,” Konstantin translated, as his own eyebrows mirrored Nara’s surprise. He was caught off-guard by the knowledge of another language…and not exactly pleased as he accounted for the connotations associated with the word…and how familiar it was. “It’s…uncomplimentary.”

“I see.” Nara murmured. She considered his words for a moment, and then met his eyes with a sly side-on glance and a devilishly coy smile. “So I’m guessing khek means what I think it means?”

“Ah…” Konstantin hissed, as he made a painful reflexive blink. “Yes…yes it does.”

“Khek…” Nara recited. She tried to emulate his earlier hard-edged pronunciation with her melodious voice, and her nose scrunched at the disappointing result. She shrugged and met his gaze as her smile became thoroughly wicked. “I think I’m more partial to frak, and how it rolls right off the tongue.”

Konstantin shifted uncomfortably under the chief enforcer’s almost solicitous attention. Nara had deliberately dropped her voice an octave and over-emphasized the normally lightly trilled r's of her softly spoken gutter Vaxanide, and he belatedly registered the not-so-subtle innuendo of her words. The Luminen experienced an odd tingling heat on his face that had nothing to do with the earlier sensation that had travelled along the peculiar metalwork beneath his skin. He wasn’t quite sure what…

“Aww…you’re blushing.” Nara cooed. Her smile softened as she absorbed Konstantin’s perplexed reaction to such a mundanely human reaction. “You’re really not from around here, are you?”

“No, I’m not from around here…” Konstantin quietly agreed, as he sensed the familiar ache of migraine pressure behind his strangely achy eyes at the latest conversational turn into difficult territory.

“We’re talking like not from Vaxanide, not from around here, right?” Nara inquired, and wonderingly gazed at the tech-priest as he confirmed it with a nod. “Are you legitimately a from Mars sort of Martian?

Mars…

“I’m not from Mars…I’ve never been…” Konstantin clarified. His teeth metallically clicked, and he trailed off from that thought as once again that anomalous tremor coursed through him. “I’m Vostroyan.”

“Vostroyan…which means you’re from…” Nara started, and then paused with narrow eyed consideration. She hummed in deliberation and then looked speculatively at him. “Vostroya?”

The Luminen stiffly nodded in confirmation. It was factually correct…but he couldn’t help but feel that it also wasn’t correct…yet without a clear basis for why that was…troubling to him.

“I’ve never met an off-worlder before.” Nara commented as she gently bit down on her bottom lip, and appraisingly regarded the tech-priest with new and curious eyes. “Where’s Vostroya, anyhow?”

“It’s…far away.” Konstantin answered, with an apologetic expression as he wasn’t able to articulate a more accurate response. It’s not home…not anymore. The Luminen grimaced, and reflexively stared down at his thick boots at another uncomfortable realization… “I left home a long time ago…”

“Hey…” Nara breathed, as she took that finals step and closed the distance between them. She cradled Konstantin’s chin and gently tilted his head back upwards so he would meet her eyes. The chief enforcer smiled encouragingly, and gently brushed her thumbs across his cheeks. “You’re not an outsider and you’ve got a home. You’re with the Refuge now.”

“I appreciate that, Nara.” Konstantin replied, relieved. He simply stared at her as she continued to stroke her thumbs along his broad cheekbones. “You’re not like the other women I’ve met.”

“I’m not like most women.” Nara decisively agreed, with a supremely confident smile.

“So I’ve noticed.” Konstantin agreed, with a dryness that made Nara chuckle appreciatively. “The other women…they always assumed the worst the worst from me. They assumed I had a problem with women…and that I was always trying to insult them.”

“What was it you said to Arman…manners make the man?” Nara quoted. She released her hold on Konstantin’s face and leaned back on a boot heel, arms crossed challengingly as she raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Bold words from the man whose been so rude since we met.”

“I apologize.” Konstantin quickly responded, and then frowned at how reflexive his words had been. He cautiously glanced at Nara. “Exactly how have I caused you an offense?”

“You’ve never thought to introduce yourself.” She playfully grinned, and almost theatrically thrust out the back of her hand at him as she stared daringly into his eyes. “Nara Tumasian.”

[Azazeal849]

Konstantin

By the time Stan and Nara returned to the main floor of the mansion, it was in a state of noisy, controlled chaos. Men and women in cross-emblazoned jackets milled about in frantic activity; some with arms full of towels and bottles, some chivvying a knot of scruffy refugees towards the stairs, some simply taking up station and nervously fingering knife hilts and pistol grips. Hayk appeared out of the crowd and offered Nara a silent nod as he manoeuvred past. Abner and Ani stood close at hand, though Konstantin saw that the knife fighter was glaring daggers at the back of his...friend's head. The pale sparks of light inside her skull were simmering. Hadrak stood head and shoulders above the chaos, a contemplative frown on his face as if he were trying to assess the situation. Vamassian's companion, Ellen, had her arm linked through his. She was smiling, and bobbing up and down with apparent excitement. It was not an excitement that was shared by her gang boss. Vamassian stood at the centre of everything, agitatedly tapping his fingertips. When he caught sight of Stan and Nara, he raised his eyebrows at them.

"If you've finished harassing the Martian," he admonished. "Our client is here!"

Nara smiled, making no apologies, while as if on cue a young ganger sideslipped through the atrium door and pushed it to behind him.

"They're outside, boss." he called over to Vamassian as the last guards took their places, and the last refugees were shepherded upstairs out of sight, some of them still trying to bolt down handfuls of flatbread.

Vamassian clawed his hand at the young ganger. "Well don't keep them waiting!"

The youth leaned half back round the door, and a few moments later pulled it open and held it for a quartet of pale men who came marching into the room.

The duke, as it turned out, was a small but sturdily built man, with broad features and small, watchful eyes the colour of dirty chips of ice. His barrel chest strained against a high-collared field jacket, that was woven from flakweave and seemed to have been modelled on those worn by the Vaxan PDF. While clearly aping a military bearing, the man was seemingly not a complete stranger to violence - a shallow duelling scar raked across his left cheekbone, and a second bisected his eyebrow. He was flanked to his left by a doughy, expressionless youth who carried a gilded box, and by a hairless man in brocaded robes who smirked to the room at large through pointed cheekbones and an even more prominent chin.

To the duke's right was a man in a less ornamented version of the duke's own flak coat, though anyone could tell at a glance that it wasn't for show. He stood straighter than the others and had a quiet but intense air of vigilance. His hands were clasped in front of him, seemingly at ease, though within easy reach of the curved, polished wood stocks of two pistols that hung on his white leather cross belt. He glanced often at the knife-armed guards, who watched him in turn with their dilated pupils reflecting the soft lamplight.

"My dear duke." Vamassian smiled, spreading his arms in welcome as he stepped forward to meet the group, with Abner and Ellen trailing in his wake. Nara pulled away from Konstantin and shouldered her way past a pair of gangers to join him.

The duke merely wrinkled his nose at Vamassian's welcome, and craned his neck to whisper something to the armed bodyguard. It wasn't normal Vaxan, and something in Konstantin's head clicked that he was speaking high gothic.

"His grace wishes to know which one of you is Samvel Vamassian." the bodyguard drawled, in a gutter dialect to match the gangers' own.

"Me." Vamassian replied calmly, still speaking to the duke rather than the translator. "These are my associates mister Able and miss Tumasian."

Nara crossed her ankles and bobbed a curtsey, offering a winning smile to which the duke remained coldly indifferent. He deigned to shake Abner's hand, but when Vamassian proffered his own the bodyguard held out an arm to stop him.

"Not you." he warned. Behind Konstantin one of the younger gang members sniggered, and one of the guards standing by the door tightened her grip on her knife hilt, but Konstantin noticed neither because his grayscale vision had lit up with a brilliant flash of white, originating from inside Abner's skull.

"If you'll follow me?" Vamassian rallied, his cheek twitching slightly before he hid it behind a smile.

Konstantin saw Abner grimace subtly, though nobody reacted. Could they really not see it? The man's entire arm was flickering with sparks of pale...motive force. Abner folded his arms to hide the fact that he was wiping his hand on his loose shirt, as if something foul had transferred from the duke's palm onto his own. He was still flexing his hand as he filed after the others in the direction indicated by Vamassian's sweeping palm.

"Friendly, isn't he?" Nara murmured dourly, twisting her mouth as she slipped back to join Konstantin. The hairless man accompanying the duke tipped back his head, to squint down his nose at the strange sight of the tech priest, before he lengthened his stride to catch up with his companions.

Vamassian hung back for a moment, falling into step beside Abner. Tapping his fingertips agitatedly, he raised a querying eyebrow at Konstantin's friend. Konstantin's enhanced hearing tuned Abner's response out of the background noise.

"She has to be pale." the scarred, sallow man murmured. He hesitated. "And you're wasting your time with anyone over 15 standard."

Vamassian just nodded and slapped Abner gratefully on the back. He manoeuvred back to the front of the group in time to push open the next door. Through it was a softly-lit drawing room, decorated with old but expensive-looking furniture. Sofas surrounded a glass-inlaid table on three sides, with satin cushions covering the worst of the scratches in the cream leather. A gilded mirror covered most the rear wall, giving an illusion of greater space.

Rhenat was hovering in the corner, next to another, pugnacious-looking youth. Alongside them were four girls, whose eyes kept switching around the room. As Vamassian entered, however, the girls immediately produced smiles. They picked up glasses from a wheeled table and carried them forward, stiletto heels clacking softly against the floor. One reached the hairless seneschal, who smirked at the girl as she ran a finger down the velvet sleeve of his robe. Konstantin noted a marked contrast between the flaring electric activity inside the man's brain and the subdued sparks from the teenage girl.

"Can I interest you in-" Vamassian began, but the duke's bodyguard cut him off with a barked retort.

"We're not here for your hospitality, psyker." he snapped, waving away the closest girl so sharply that she nearly slopped the wine she was offering him onto the floor. The other three girls hovered uncertainly for a moment, then stepped back. The duke's fat young attendant gazed regretfully after them, his eyes dropping from the girls' faces to the hems of their short dresses, but the duke himself flickered a smile in apparent approval of his bodyguard's put down against Vamassian. The smile made the thin scar on his cheek twist.

Next to Konstantin, Nara also seemed quietly amused. Always civil to Vamassian's face, she was humming softly to herself as the Refuge boss tried to hide the fact that the meeting was not going as he had intended.

"To business then." Vamassian said, with an obviously strained smile. "One moment please."

He slipped through an oak-panelled servant's door and closed it behind him. Konstantin's augmented ears tracked the Refuge boss down what was presumably a short adjoining passage to a kitchen or waiting room, where he heard young, female voices whispering excitedly to each other.

"Alright girls, showtime." Vamassian's low voice spoke, warmly. "I'm afraid we're only going to need you, you and you this time."

A few cries of protest from those who hadn't been picked were swiftly cut off.

"You'll get your chance, I promise." Vamassian soothed. "Now stand up straight, and don't speak unless he speaks to you first. Uphive they like their help professional."

The footsteps retraced, this time accompanied by three more sets. The side door to the drawing room opened and three girls filed into the room. They were even younger than the ones serving drinks, and were holding each others' hands for mutual courage. Leading them was a bright-eyed girl with centre-parted hair, followed by a taller girl with a moon face and dark, upturned eyes, and finally a girl with blonde ringlets and the delicate features of a porcelain doll. All three had liberal makeup applied to their pallid skin, smoothing away their freckles and the red bumps of acne. They were dressed in the simple but elegant black gowns that an uphiver's maidservant might wear, given shape by a white sash. They shuffled over to the back wall and folded their hands, biting their lips to hide nervous smiles. Vamassian reappeared, closing the door after them and opened his mouth as if to introduce the three girls.

"You can go, psyker." the bodyguard cut him off with a snap. "His grace will send for you once he's made his decision."

Vamassian's smile froze solid on his face.

"Of course." he said at length, and retreated through the main door, pulling it closed on the perplexed faces of the girls, and the smirking one of the duke's seneschal.

"Wow." Nara said with a sympathetic frown as Vamassian stalked back towards them. "I know the uphivers are usually arrogant but-"

"Shut up, Nara." Vamassian growled. The smile had sloughed off his face and been replaced by a venomous scowl. He balled his fist and thumped it into the plaster wall.

Beside Stan, Ellen chewed at a fingernail in consternation. Without saying anything she tiptoed forward and squeezed Vamassian's arm, giving it a gentle but insistent tug. For a moment Vamassian tensed, and Stan could see the electrical pulses in his mind flaring, but then his shoulders slumped and he allowed the petite woman to pull him away down the corridor.

Nara exhaled a slow breath, and glanced at Stan.


+ + + + + +

Rhen glanced around at all the other gangers in the room, trying to decide how he was supposed to react. None of them seemed to know either, as they watched the bodyguard's suspicious gaze and the bald bastard's seemingly hard-wired smirk follow Vamassian out of the door.

The uphive noble ignored them all, frowning down his bulbous nose as he stepped away from his retainers. He began to patrol back and forth in front of the three girls, not saying anything. The bright eyed girl's mouth twitched upward nervously, and the moon faced girl shuffled her feet. As the silence stretched, Rhenat had to fight an overwhelming urge to break it with something - anything. Yeah right, what do you say to a duke and his armed guard? He bit down on his tongue. His fingers were tense with a nervous desire to crack his knuckles.

Rhenat didn't know how many minutes it was before the duke rocked back a step, and halted in front of the blonde girl. He folded his arms, and spoke something in the grand but harsh-sounding uphiver language.

"His grace asked your name." the bodyguard translated curtly.

The girl glanced at the bodyguard - and then to Rhenat's consternation at him - before looking back at the duke.

"Karine, sir." she said, clearly but with a noticeable strain in her voice.

The duke didn't react, except with what might have been the flicker of a smile. He stared levelly at Karine for another handful of heartbeats, before unfolding his arms and putting a finger under her chin, tipping her head back. Karine didn't resist, but from the way her eyes widened she clearly didn't know how to react. The duke stroked his finger along her powdered cheek before pulling away. It was only a brief contact, but to Rhenat there seemed to be something almost possessive in it, something that made his stomach twist uncomfortably. It clearly unsettled Karine too, because she glanced at him again, this time with a look that was almost fearful, as if she were seeking reassurance - or even for him to step forward and pull her away.

Rhenat fidgeted. What was he supposed to do? Step up to the bodyguard and his big frak-off hand cannons? Buzz-Cut didn't seem worried, he tried to rationalise. Yeah, but Buzz-Cut didn't seem worried about the kids locked up upstairs, either.

The duke turned on his heel, barking a short string of Uphive to his bodyguard.

"We'll take her." the bodyguard duly translated, looking at Rhenat and the others who were standing back against the wall. "Go tell the psyker."

Buzz-Cut grunted by way of response, before Rhenat could even begin to think of one of his own.

"Alright, get moving." Buzz-Cut snapped to the seven girls, ushering them back towards the side door. "No, leave the drinks." he rolled his eyes at the serving girls as they made to gather up the glasses that the duke's men had refused.

The small corridor led to an empty dining room, the chairs and tables stacked away against the walls. Rhenat trailed along behind the others, cuffing at his nose. Ahead of them, one of the guards from the top-floor dormitory waited with his hand resting quietly on his pistol butt. The serving girls were stony faced, and the prospective maidservants were no longer full of nervous excitement. They were whispering to each other, eyes wide. Karine glanced in Rhenat's direction again, and he hurriedly pretended to be studying the faded painting of a riverboat on the far wall. What does she expect me to do?

"Shut it." Buzz-Cut growled at the whispering girls, clearly agitated, "Hey Aren, take the birds back upstairs would ya? You two, make yourselves useful and go get Karine's stuff."

The other girls retreated, chivvied along by the guard, but Karine stayed in place, biting her nails.

"Guys..." she asked plaintively, in a thick underhive accent, "I've changed ma mind, I don' wanna go."

"Don't be daft." Buzz-Cut grunted, "You'll have it better uphive than any of us down here."

"I'm no' goin' with that duke." Karine insisted, her eyes brimming over. "Please guys, I wanna stay here, I promise I'll pull ma weight lookin' after the kids..."

"Ah shit." Buzz-Cut cursed, as the girl openly began to cry. "Rhen, fetch Vamassian."

Rhenat, even though he just wanted to get away from the whole horrible situation, found himself thinking of Vamassian's shark smile. "What about Nara?" he suggested instead.

"Nara?" Buzz-Cut repeated, sounding irritated. "Why would she give a shit? Stop frakking around and go get Big Sam, before the duke sees!"


+ + + + + +

Shift

"You'll be alright from here, yeah?" Kim asked Maria, as they looked up at the dilapidated red-brick building that apparently served as a hospital. It was a big ugly slab marked with rows of recessed windows, and half of them weren't even illuminated. A clapped-out old generator house wheezed away on the building's left flank, puffing backlit smoke into the nighttime air.

"Yeah, I'll be alright." Maria nodded, "Pilgrim's Quarter is the one neighbourhood where people won't give you trouble, even if you've got a cross on your hand."

The young ganger rocked back and forth on her heel, clearly unsure what else to say. Having Alexi and Anais around, who had so recently argued to kill her, clearly wasn't helping. She looked at Shift.

"Um...thanks again. I hope you're right about gettin' Vamassian. You'll frakkin' have to be..." She picked at the sling Kim had wrapped round her arm. "You promise you won't hurt my brother, yeah?"

"We'll be back." Kim reassured, her hands resting on her strap-slung autogun. "And we'll have your brother with us."

Maria nodded. Even if it wasn't a certainty, it was a promise she wanted to believe.

"You shouldn't have told her that." the crow said as they made their way back to the arterial overpass, which ran straight as a compass arrow towards the looming curtain wall of the spire. "Don't fool her with promises you can't keep. How will we tell which one of the slavers is Rhenat Nazarian? I don't plan on asking them all before I shoot."

"You plan on us just blitzing our way in, Alexi?" Kim challenged, "For one we're going to need to be more subtle than that for this to work. There's more of them than there are of us. And for another, this is about justice, not butchery."

The crow's tattooed face creased in a frown, unconvinced. "This is about what you have decided we need to do. Whether you call the killing justice or butchery is semantics."

"All of true faith believe in justice." Quintus put in calmly. "Whether they follow Kimmie's emperor or our red king."

Walking beside Shift, Primus cocked an eyebrow in Kim's direction. "Hm. But she's no true believer, is she little brother?"

A defensive look crossed Kim's sandy face. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"That is why your hold over your companions is unconvincing. I see it in your eyes. Your faith has faltered, even if you don't remember why."

Kim opened her mouth, as if to deny it, and then closed it again. "I remember." she stated guardedly.

"We all must sacrifice for our faith." Primus probed, his handsome face neutral. "Was yours too great?"

Kim chewed her tongue for a moment, debating with herself on what was evidently a very raw and immediate wound.

"His name was Cian." she said at last, defiantly. "I remember him now, and I remember that I could have...I could have built a life with him. But the Faith needed me to move on. That was my first real test."

"Passion to do your god's work should outweigh passions of the flesh to any true believer." Primus stated. His nose wrinkled in a scowl. "Unless of course you're one of the Prince's degenerates."

The hand closest to Shift spasmed, as if clutching for a blade that wasn't there.

"My past self agreed with you." Kim rejoined, undeterred. "And I thought it would be worth it. A missionary's job is to bring the word, and it would have been selfish to put what I wanted above thousands of others, right? Only it wasn't worth it. They remember me as a..."

Her argument trailed off in mid-sentence, her defiance replaced by an inward, uncertain look. Shift thought she knew what it meant. Remembering.

"A what?" Quintus stepped in, prompting gently.

"Heretic." Kim said, in the barest whisper.

The word speared through the former missionary like a frozen knife, twisting below her stomach. In her mind's eye, Kim was somewhere dark and candle-lit - an austere little shrine with the soft, omnipresent thrum of starship engines rumbling through the floor beneath her knees. The tiny silver aquila was turning over and over in her fingertips, only now it was attached to a delicate silver chain around her neck. How had she lost that?

Her eyes were turned upward, towards a much larger aquila. Its golden wings spread wall to wall and both sets of onyx eyes were frowning down at her, as if rebuking the questions that she knew she shouldn't be asking of her God-Emperor.

The Emperor defines your moral code, not you His. the glowering aquila heads seemed to say.

She knew she had a duty that went higher than her personal desires and morals, but she couldn't quiet the resentful voice at the back of her mind. Was this her reward? She gave up the best friend she had ever had for the*Faith, and now he and everyone else on Adhara remembered her as a traitor? The worst crime one of the Faith could commit?

The Emperor's watchful guardian remained unmoved. This is your punishment, she imagined the twin heads saying. For the sin of pride.

What pride? She remembered now - her doubts at the bridge, where she had been tempted to stay with Cian instead of kicking out the bridge plank that would make him think she had fallen and drowned. She was tempted, but she didn't fall!

I could have been happy on Adhara. Missionaries die all the time, no-one would have known. But I did my duty, to the Faith. And...

and...

The parched, brittle grass swayed in the warm wind. She was standing on a small hill overlooking a deserted town, watching the awed, fearful indigens as they crept furtively into the ruins to search the empty streets. The copse of twisted trees that grew up around the hill kept her hidden, even though their leaves were gone after dehydrating to death over the long summer.

Yesterday this town had been the rallying point of the Redeemer's faithful. Redeemer - the man who had preached that the drought was the Spirits' punishment for abandoning them for the Imperial faith. The man who had swayed thousands to his cause with a promise that the rains could be summoned only with the blood of all those who wouldn't renounce the New Word. The daemon wears an angel's face.

Yesterday thousands had come to hear him speak. Today there was no-one, only sun-bleached ruins glazed with blood.

"Now they see the Emperor's judgement." murmured a voice next to Kim.

"His will be done." Kim remembered saying, as she turned to the man standing next to her. She pictured a thin face, with a shadow of grey stubble, sweat beading on his furrowed brow. He wore loose grey fatigues, and a dark armourweave jerkin. The grey man was important, she thought, but he was not of the Faith - the Imperial I pinned to his shoulder bore a skull, but not the matching sunburst halo. No, not of the Faith, but she knew that he was righteous.

The daemon wears an angel's face. The man was clearly no angel, and she wasn't sure what brought that thought to her mind as she recalled his image, standing there on that dead hill above a dead town.

"Speak your mind, missionary Raeden." the grey man had said to her, glancing briefly in her direction before turning his creased, careworn eyes back towards the town below.

"Sir?" Kim had replied, feigning confusion. She was normally a good actress, she was sure of that.

"The natives down there are cursing your name, and in a year or two they'll be writing you into stories as a warning to their children. You must imagine me a fool if you don't think I expect some reaction from you."

The man's rebuke was toneless, coloured with neither anger nor humour.

"I'm fine sir." Perhaps Kim had too much faith in her mask, or perhaps the truth was just too painful to speak, because she had persisted.

The grey man shook his head very slightly. "That's a lie."

"It's...difficult to process." she had finally relented.

"Still not the whole truth."

Kim felt a pang - an echo of phantom shame and discomfort as she remembered saying, "I wanted it to be worth it."

She didn't add to me, but she suspected that the grey man knew regardless. For a moment she was afraid he would force that out of her too. But instead he just folded his arms.

"Faith is worthless if it's not tested. It's our duty to bear these burdens where others can't."

He was wrong, Kim remembered thinking, and anger boiled up from the pit of her stomach to twist round her throat and needle her temples. The grey man might have been righteous, but he was wrong. He thought what they had done here was a worthwhile sacrifice, but it was not - because she had...

Her fingertips were trembling, even though she knew she had to set an example for the others.

What had she done? And why did it make her so murderously angry?

Shift saw the warning signs in Kimmie's balled fists and tense posture. Primus must have seen them too, but he seemed undeterred.

"A leader needs to have unbreakable faith." the chiselled Kingsman said calmly, resting his thumbs on the belt of his torn black fatigues. "How did you plan to shepherd your companions without it, missionary? How will you protect your flock?"

"Protect my flock?" Kimmie repeated, in a hoarse, whispered rasp.

Shift had seen how fast the fawn-skinned woman could move. She saw it again as Kim's finger shifted to the trigger guard, and the muzzle of the autogun twitched in the beginning of an arc that would bring it swinging up towards Primus' chest. The Kingsman, despite his relaxed posture a moment before, was just as lightning quick. In the same split-second, his hand darted up to his shoulder to drag the power sword from its scabbard.

[dakkagor]

"No!"

She lunged between the pair, her arms outstretched.

"Have you both gone frakking insane?!" she yelled, a hint of panic tingeing her voice. She could feel Primus behind her like a rising hot wind. The blade was half way out of the scabbard and her back was exposed. All he would need to do was complete the draw and make a single strike, and she would be dead. Kim had her autogun up and levelled at her face, her eyes suddenly clearer and more focused than Shift had ever seen them.

"Sarna." the missionary warned her through gritted teeth.

Sarna. The name twisted in her head like a line of barbed wire. She didn't dare blink, not for a second, and kept her eyes focused on Kim even as they watered from the pain.

"We need to take down Vamassian. That's it. We cut our way through to him, kill him, then cut our way back out. Anything that gets in our way dies quickly."

"Anything?" Kim challenged. The barrel of her autogun had edged to one side, so that it was no longer pointed at Shift, but the missionary's finger was still curled around the trigger.

"Bleed and die." The sub-vocal hiss was coming from behind her.

"Anyone with a blue cross on their hand." Quintus clarified. He had raised his hands away from his sides, but didn't dare to step forward and intervene in the hair-trigger standoff.

"Martyr or unbeliever. His will." Primus was whispering the words nearly too low to hear, but with an almost inhuman venom.

"Maria's brother will have a cross on his hand." Kim pointed out to Quintus. The autogun was still hard against her shoulder, and beneath her sandy skin her arm muscles were standing out tense.

"And if her brother is smarter than her, he won't be anywhere near Vamassian or his inner circle when the shooting starts," Shift argued back. "Because the only thing worth killing is Vamassian."

"And if we're smart, we won't just batter our way in." Kim wasn't for yielding. "We need a plan that won't get you killed, won't get kids like Maria killed, and won't kill any more refugees the slavers might have penned up in there."

Her focused gaze twitched past Shift, seeking the motionless and now silent Kingsman standing behind her.

"That's how I'll protect my flock, Primus."

"You do me a dishonour." Anais interjected, her warrior's mouth hardening. "You underestimate our skills."

"And you over-estimate the virtue of Vamassian's people." Alexi added, and the ghoulish tattoos that lined his face contorted as he frowned. "At best they're weak and stupid like Maria. At worst, they're no better than those shits we took out at the dockside."

"I stand by god's judgement." Quintus interrupted stiffly. "Whatever you or I think of her, Maria and her brother won't be harmed. The Red King wills it."

"It's more than that." Kim insisted. "You didn't see how she reacted, Alexi. She's not loyal to the Refuge, she's loyal to her brother. The cross is a gang tattoo, not a brand of damnation. How many of the others are only with the Refuge because of fear? Kill the slavers. Spare the victims."

Alexi folded his arms. "And how do we tell which is which, Kimmie?"

"Too much talk." Anais grumbled. "Not enough action."

"So we need a plan, right? I think that's something we can all agree on." Shift butted back in. "How about me and Kim head out and do a check on the bad guys perimeter, see how many guards and shooters they have, get a feel for their defenses."

Kim turned to face her again and narrowed her eyes. She knew the unspoken question: Whose side are you on?

"If we can, we can map out a route for my idea to drop on them for above. Then we get in, stab who needs stabbing, and get out."

Kim's autogun muzzle wavered a fraction, and then slowly lowered towards the pavement. "Alright Shift. I'll go with you."

"Why her?" Anais demanded. She looked past Shift, towards Primus. "I am more capable. I would be your Secunda."

"Patience, sister." Primus soothed. It was the first time he had spoken loud enough for the others to hear since Shift had intervened, and the menacing hiss was abruptly gone from his voice. "Only those of true faith may carry the name."

Only those of true faith may carry the name.

Kim blinked. Someone else had said that to her, and it caused the anger she had been feeling to simmer back to the surface, though this time it was spiked with a sense of hurt.

That was low, Stan. Really frakking low.

Who the frak was Stan? She had to drop one hand from her autogun to dig the heel of it into her temple.

"And when will I be of true faith?" Anais demanded, caught between her pride and her evident respect for Primus.

"When you take Vamassian's skull for the Red King." Primus replied silkily. The answer seemed to placate Anais - or at least, she stood back and folded her wiry arms.

Shift heard Primus whisper forward behind her, then felt his sword hand land on her shoulder and gently squeeze. "Go ahead, little sister." Something told her that he was smiling. "You've already proved that you can move and kill like a ghost."


+ + + + + +

Kim looked back over her shoulder and squinted at the horizon beyond the underhive, trying to work out if the streak of lighter grey in the sky was simply a trick of light pollution, or if it heralded an approaching dawn. By her own rough reckoning, they must have been down here in the underhive for six or seven hours. Where had they been before that? She had snippets, but nothing to join her vague flashes of Cian and the grey man to Vaxanhive and the people she was with now. How had she become their missionary?

"Sarna?" she asked in a low voice as they crept along the underpass, and caught herself. "Sorry, Shift. Do you remember anything from before? Anything about a man in grey?"

Shift tensed, and for a moment remained silent.

"I remember grass."

Shift turned and looked back at Kim.

"I remember grass, and sea salt. Horses. Training." She looked around at the overpass and shrugged. "Somewhere different from this place. I remember it being home. But no man in grey."

She turned away and continued on for a few steps before stopping and looking back.

"Whatever happened, however we ended up here, we need to focus on what we are doing right now. We get through this, make ourselves safe, and then we can focus on the whys."

"The whys are more important than you think, Shift." Kim replied cautiously. "We stopped a man with a knife from killing Quintus - no why other than keeping someone with a weapon from hurting someone without one, no other why needed. At the dock, the same, or so we thought - but then one of them turned out to be Maria. And that was my mistake as well, I'm not denying it. We err once, the Emperor is merciful. We err twice?"

They both froze and dropped to one knee as another late-night joyrider zoomed across the overpass above them. The engine roar dopplered away into the distance, and they waited another heartbeat before rising and resuming their advance.

"I know we don't remember much about each other." Kim continued, "But I do know that you're relentless, and you're goal-focused. That's why you were on the team."

The grey man's team? she wondered. My team? No; but definitely her flock...

"But sometimes you're also impulsive." It felt strange to assert it, but the way the words just fell into place made her wonder if she hadn't spoken them before - somewhere, sometime.

Shift blinked at that. . .accusation? It hadn't been said with malice.

"Primus is..." Kim bit down, and swallowed her anger. "Primus is the same, I think. He trusts his red god to guide him, and in that me and him are the same - but we can't..."

"You can't just leave an EMP on Stan's door because you had an argument!"

"I clearly can leave an EMP on the buckethead's door. What you mean is I shouldn't."

She blinked. There was that name again, Stan. Who was he? Not the grey man, she was sure of that. Ugh - it was hard for her to form a reasonable argument when-

And now you're going to try and play the reasonable one? You frakking prick. Tell you what, Stan. Maybe you can keep control of your frakking emotions. But you watch several thousand of the people you were supposed to save get thrown to the fire and tell me if you're still a warrior of true faith after that, you secondborn piece of shit.

It came on her in a rush - a more intense wave of anger and hurt and failure than she'd felt since Primus had challenged her.

"-make the same mistake twice." she finished, the words finding their way automatically through her gritted teeth. She took a shuddering breath and looked at Shift, focusing on the elfin-featured killer instead of the turmoil in her own head.

A confessor can't be seen to doubt. Primus was right about that, at least.

"Someone is working through you, Shift." Kim said, suddenly earnest. "Whether that's my Emperor or Primus' Red King I don't know. But they made you beat Anais and save Maria's life, and stopped our mistake being one we couldn't take back. I'm absolutely certain they're still working through you now, and I'm glad it's you scouting ahead to make our plan. Just please listen to me when I say, don't do anything...impulsive."

"Anything impulsive." Shift made a dismissive noise. "From the person who nearly shot our only allies in this scumhole." She stalked up to Kim. "The way I see it, you are right about me. I am task focused and driven and...and impulsive, yes, impulsive, and right now, right now, that's about finishing the job and getting out alive with all my bits still stuck on. I stuck up for that silly bitch because we needed what she knew, and wiping that smirk of Anais face was a nice bonus. It was the right thing to do, because I had offered my word, and that matters to me. But if things had been different, Maria would have put a bullet in each one of us and not given it a second thought, and I would have taken her head off if it had been a fight."

"I don't believe she would have." Kim said, more calmly. "But neither of us can know for sure."

Sarna shook her head and stepped away. "We can't save everyone, Kim. We just can't."

"I'm not trying to. There's some people down here who deserve to burn."

Kim hesitated, but couldn't find anything holding back her next words except her pride. She pursed her lips and let out a breath.

"You're right, I've got no right to call you impulsive after what I just did. It wasn't Primus I was pointing the gun at. It was-" The daemon who wears an angel's face. "-someone I can't quite remember. Someone who lied to thousands of people. Someone who condemned them all to bleed and die."

She stopped for a moment. Was she talking about the same person now, or two separate people? Either way...

"And I think I had something to do with it."

She shivered. The memory was still maddeningly out of reach, dancing back and forth behind a veil of black. She wondered if it was a veil she truly wanted to lift.

"I remember something from the Creed, about a wise man learning from the mistakes of others. I'd rather you learned from mine." She looked down at the auto-rifle she had nearly pointed at Primus' head, and smiled wanly. Impulsive. "Both of them."

"So stop being a martyr and help me save the people we can. Because there is no way I am actually smart enough to figure out a plan for us that isn't 'die in a hail of bullets during one last glorious charge'."

Kim shrugged her bare shoulders to redistribute the webbing that lay over her black tank top. She was appealing to the cerebral, she realised, when everything about Shift was relentlessly practical. It was something she should have known already - something she perhaps had known, once. She looked up at the overpass, stretching away to meet the towering curtain wall of the hive spire.

"Lets see how close the hotel is to the overpass. We might be able to use that or the curtain wall to drop down like you suggested. If we can scope out where Sam Vamassian is, then even better."

She fell into step behind the younger woman.

[Azazeal849]

Rhen

Rhenat was unusually aware (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QycUthPlVSQ) of his steps as he walked through the crumbling splendour of the Refuge. Just one foot in front of the other, he told himself - that's your job, one foot then the other, then find Vamassian and then it's his problem, not yours. What else was he supposed to do? Even so, Karine's pleading look kept hovering up at the back of his mind, always melting away into Vamassian's shark smile.

The stairwells and hallways were strangely empty, leaving Rhenat with nothing but row after row of hotel room doors with dulled brass number plaques, and the sound of his own heartbeat fluttering sickly in his chest. The gang must be all downstairs, he guessed. And the refugees must be...under lock and key upstairs. He shuddered and huffed a breath. Just find Vamassian!

Rhenat's feet had carried him up to the first floor without his conscious intervention, and he had just stopped to wonder why when he noticed that one of the doors ahead of him was ajar. As he stopped and his heartbeat quietened a little, he realised that he could hear sounds from inside. It sounded like ragged breathing.

More conscious now of the sound of his scuffed leather shoes against the carpet, Rhenat shuffled closer to the door. He almost leapt back a step when the breathing beyond the door the door terminated in a sharp sigh of frustration.

"Never mind." soothed a voice. Rhenat recognised it immediately as Ellen, the doe-eyed woman who had been hanging off Vamassian's arm all night.

There was another sharp sigh.

"Here," Ellen's voice said, full of concern, "Just let me..."

"No." Vamassian's voice punctured the air like a bullet. Rhenat heard the quiet metallic rattle of a belt buckle being fastened.

"What's wrong, Sam?" he heard Ellen coaxing insistently. "Tell me."

"This isn't real." Vamassian growled. "You're not real."

Rhenat crept close enough to peer through the door slit, but he couldn't see either of the speakers; just a sliver of the wall and its dog-eared wallpaper, stained a gloomy amber by the electric lumoglobes.

"What are you talking about?" Ellen's voice asked. She sounded hurt. "You know I love you."

Hidden within the room Vamassian gave a grunt, a grunt which turned into a bitter cackle of laughter. A blue light that seared Rhenat's eyes flashed across the wall, temporarily eclipsing the lamplight.

"Say it again." Vamassian challenged. A few moments later there was the thud of someone being pushed, and Rhenat nearly jumped back from the door as Ellen reeled suddenly into his field of view, her back thumping into the wall. Her breathing was frantic, and her eyes were saucer-wide.

"Go on, say it again!" Vamassian's voice thundered.

Rhenat flinched, and so did Ellen. Her hands were splayed against the wall as if she were trying to flatten herself further into it. Her lips stammered, trying to form words.

Vamassian snorted as he came stalking into Rhenat's thin field of view. He reached out with a clawed hand and grabbed Ellen by the hair at the top of her head. Again the blue light flashed, but now Rhenat could see that it was boiling up like fire from between Vamassian's fingers, and spraying in nightmarish shafts from Ellen's gaping eyes and mouth. Rhenat tried to move - he wasn't sure in which direction. An insane impulse to burst forward into the room was cancelled out by an overwhelming urge to flee the scene, and in the end he just stood rooted to the spot, frozen solid.

The glare faded, and as Vamassian dropped his hand Ellen blinked, shaking her head as if surfacing from a reverie.

"Sorry, I zoned out for a second there." she said, smiling nervously. "Did you say something?"

Vamassian's jaw twitched as he ground his teeth together. "Nothing."

Ellen clasped his forearms, her thumbs rubbing small, soothing circles into the silk material of his shirt. "Talk to me, Sam. What do you want me to do?"

Vamassian exhaled deeply. "I want you to frak off, Ellen. Frak off out of my sight, and then frak off some more."

Ellen looked crestfallen as she dropped her hands to her sides. "Oh...okay. Come find me if you need me."

A jolt of ice spiked through Rhenat's stomach as he realised that Ellen was walking towards the door, while he still stood pressed up against the crack. He leapt back just in time.

"Oh." Ellen said in surprise, stopping in the doorframe as she registered him. "Hiya, Rhen. You looking for Sam?"

She was actually smiling, Rhenat thought in utter consternation. For a moment, his mind's eye painted hellish rays of blue light over the woman's doe eyes and smiling mouth, and Ellen's smile became Vamassian's dead shark grin.

"Uh..." he croaked, and had to cough to clear his constricted throat. "Uh, yeah, Sam. I mean, Mr Vamassian."

Vamassian appeared behind Ellen, tightening his belt and pushing the tails of his silk shirt back into his trousers. He did not look like he was in a patient mood.

"What do you want, Rhen?" he said, in a dangerously calm voice.

"Um..." Rhenat floundered, suddenly struggling to remember what Buzz-Cut had sent him up here for in the first place. "The girl...the one who's due to go up with the duke."

Karine. a voice in his head castigated him. She has a name and it's Karine, you useless prick!

"Karine." he said, standing a little straighter. "She, um...she says she doesn't want to..."

Vamassian scowled impatiently. "What are you talking about?"

Rhenat shrank back down. "She changed her mind." he explained, cuffing at his nose. "She...doesn't wanna go."

Vamassian stalked forward, pushing roughly past Rhenat. "For frak's sake."


+ + + + + +

Alexi, Anais

"At least now we won't have to listen to Kimmie ranting on about justice." Alexi commented wryly as the remainder of the group threaded their way through the underhive backstreets. The crumbling walls around them were sweating, damp with pre-dawn dew.

Quintus, who was panning his long rifle from left to right across the road ahead, paused to look back and cock a curious eyebrow. "You think justice doesn't matter down here, just because we have to make it ourselves?"

"What justice have you succeeded in making down here?" Alexi asked pointedly.

Quintus frowned. "The Kingsmen have opposed the Refuge's trafficking operation since they started it. Those were our children."

"I didn't mean the Kingsmen." Alexi said evenly. "I meant you personally. What justice have you seen or made to have such faith in it?"

Quintus lowered his rifle, satisfied that the way ahead was clear, and considered the question.

"My father never looked at my mother the same way after he found out she was sleeping with Hayk. A few weeks later, he took a kitchen knife and stabbed her to death. And he got away with it. No-one cared, not in the underhive. I ran away and joined the Kingsmen, and they took me in after I turned out to be really good at sniping the plague rats that used to invade the hideouts. I ran away, but I didn't forget my father, because my mother's blood demanded justice. It wasn't until ten years later that I went back and put a bullet in his skull."

The Kingsman chewed his tongue.

"I know the Red King frowns on that, but I didn't think my father's skull was worthy of sitting beneath the brass throne."

Alexi was silent for a moment as he mulled Quintus' words. "You could call that justice, or you could call it vengeance. You could do it in the Red King's name, or Kim's Emperor's, or your own. Whichever way, you're just dressing up the fact that someone needed to die, and you carried it out. No different from now."

"You have no faith in anything?" Primus observed. He had ghosted to the tattooed man's side without Alexi's notice. The man's brief twitch of surprise caused Anais to laugh from behind them.

"Hm." Primus grunted, a mirthless smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "That's even more dangerous than a faith that's misguided."

Quintus' brow furrowed. "For someone who claims to be such a nihilist, Alexi, you preach a lot. You're not from around here. What would you know?"

"Little enough." Alexi rallied with a grin, and his smile did something disconcerting to the tattoos looping across his cheeks. "Just that the Refuge need to die, and that we're carrying it out."


+ + + + + +

Rhen

The grinning blue light faded.

"Now listen to me." Vamassian soothed. He dropped his hands from around Karine's head and down onto her shoulders, stopping slightly so that he could look her in the eye. "You're going to go with the duke, you're going to do anything he asks you to do, and you're going to love it. Like a good little serving girl, understand?"

Karine's blonde hair bobbed around her cheeks as she nodded. She cleared her throat, and brushed the tears away from her eyes.

"You'd better go upstairs and fix your makeup before you go." Vamassian observed.

"Yeah." Karine agreed with another nod, and hurried past Rhenat towards the door. This time, she didn't look towards him for help.

Rhenat still wasn't sure why he had followed Vamassian all the way back to the empty dining room, only to stand back dumbly as another flash of blue light filled the chamber. For a second, he had wanted to seize one of the stacked chairs and smash it across the back of Vamassian's head. But then he imagined what might happen to him if he tried.

"What?" Vamassian shattered his thoughts, flexing the fingers of his right hand as he appraised Rhenat's clenched jaw and balled, trembling fists. "Would you prefer she went up there sobbing? Be glad the duke isn't one of the ones who likes it when they cry. Now will you do something useful and find Gor? Tell him to vox Emma and Maria again and find out what the frak is taking them so long with the next shipment."

"Uh," Rhenat heard himself say. "Yeah, right."

He blundered through the door and past a knot of chattering Refuge gangers. The young guard's unfamiliar clothes felt suddenly tight against his skin, almost making him want to tear them off. He looked down at the blue and white cross that had been inked into his right palm, and scrubbed at it with his other hand as if it could somehow erase the brand.

How in frak did I end up here? I just stood around and let Big Sam hand kids over to monsters from uphive? Why didn't I care? Why didn't I care?

"Hey, Rhen!" one of the gangers leaning up against the wall hailed him. It was Floppy-Hair; Rhenat hadn't even been paying enough attention to recognise him. "What's up with you, mate?"

The young ganger flashed his easy grin as he pushed off the wall to clap an arm around Rhen's shoulders. "I know you gotta soft spot for the 'fugee kids but they all gotta go uphive sometime, right?"

Rhenat felt his hands balling into fists a second time.

"Listen, mate," he snapped, shrugging off the young man's arm. "If you've got nothing constructive to add, then please shut the frak up."

Leaving Floppy-Hair and the other gangers baffled in his wake, he fled up the corridor towards the stairwell. He strained his ears, trying vainly to pick up the sound of Karine's footsteps trotting away up the stairs ahead of him. It wasn't too late, he told himself desperately - whatever the hell that frakker Vamassian had done to her head. He could still find her, maybe talk his way past the armed guard upstairs...and then...

And then he had no frakking clue.

Clawing at the bannister as he ran to haul himself up the stairs, he ran straight into Hadrak coming the other way. The red-haired underhiver cursed in surprise.

"Watch it, Rhen." he cautioned, though without aggression. Just his voice had a steadying effect on Rhen's thoughts.

Hadrak, he realised suddenly. He's new to all this shit as well. What's he gonna be thinking? Right now he felt like one of the few people around here Rhenat might be able to trust - and something told Rhenat that if he had a plan, it'd be a far better one than anything he himself would come up with.

"Um..." he asked Hadrak, "Do you have a minute to talk?" He slid his eyes to the side and followed it with a jerk of his head. "Like, outside? Away from all this shit?"

The tall man frowned. "Are you alright?"

Rhenat cuffed his nose. "Nah, man. I'm pretty frakkin' far from alright.


+ + + + + +

Kimmie, Shift

"Good new house for Melina, hmm?" Kim joked quietly as they crouched by one of the last support pillars for the overpass before it tunnelled away into the wall of the hive spire.

The Mertesari hotel loomed ahead of them, half in the shadow of the overpass, with the scowling curtain wall at its back. The hotel itself had a wall too, ringing the dark marble plaza that sat directly in front of it. Behind the iron gates, a strange silver vehicle that resembled a motorcade without wheels was parked up beside a row of more traditional black sedans. No guards were in evidence, though the hotel still had the look of a locked-down fortress about it - above the faded carvings and columned portico, all of the windows were barred and blacked out. A solid head-high wall ringed the flat roof, though Kim and Shift could see the tops of threadbare trees climbing above it.

"If we can get up onto the overpass then we could drop down onto the roof garden." Kim suggested. "There must be a door we can cut through."

The missionary shook her head.

"They must be confident that they're safe up here by the spire. Not a single guard." She narrowed her eyes at the out of place silver motorcade. "Who...?"

She instinctively broke off and drew back into the shadow of the overpass as the double doors beneath the portico creaked open. Two men emerged - a tall armoured man with flowing copper hair, and a shorter, skinnier youth in scruffy clothes that looked like they'd been made to fit someone else. The tall man was measured in his strides, though he glanced several times at the younger man, who kept looking nervously back over his shoulder. As they crossed the courtyard paving stones the youth looked ahead again and waved at someone out of sight behind the gate.

One guard at least, then. Shift mentally corrected Kim's initial assessment, as something electronic buzzed and the iron gates swung open with a squeal of hinges. The two men continued walking out into the road, some distance past the wall. As they got closer, the two women got a better look at the armoured man and the broad chainsword that was slung across his back in a metal scabbard. A knife and a pistol sat at his hips, and his blue-eyed face was calm but observant.

"I recognise him." Kim hissed in the barest whisper from beside Shift. "Hadrak?"

"Alright Rhen, I think we're safe out here." the tall man frowned, crossing his arms. "Now what's this about?"

"Don't take this the wrong way or anythin'," the youth said sarcastically, his accent gutter Vaxan, "But were you kicked in the head when you were a child? What d'you think this is about? Have you no' seen what's utterly frakked about this place?"

The tall man's frown deepened. "I tried to have a look around while you were all meeting the duke, but they turned me back...several times. I have suspicions, but nothing substantiated."

"They're slaving them, you dense motherfrakker!" the youth snapped. "They're locking them up and that warper Vamassian's doing something to them so's they actually want it. He weren't even shy about it, he did it right in fronta me!"

"Keep your voice down." the tall man warned, gesturing down with his left hand. His right had drifted to the butt of his laspistol.

The tall man's steady command quietened the youth, but instead of shouting he pressed the heels of his hands against his temples and shook his head in obvious distress. "I can't remember what happened before tonight. I know I wasn't alright with it, because I'm not alright with it now. So why didn't I say nothin'?"

"Fear?" the tall man suggested. "Peer pressure? I know you want to look tough in front of the other gangers."

"Hey." the youth accused, dropping one fist from his bloodshot eyes to jab a finger at the tall man. "Frak the frak off."

"You put up a front, Rhen," the tall man said levelly. "And if you want my honest opinion it's not a very good one. But that doesn't matter right now. You say you don't remember what came before?"

The youth nodded shakily. "Yeah. It's frakked up, man - it's like I woke up in someone else's life outside that burnin' frakkin' warehouse...I remember my mum kickin' the shit outta me, an' I remember that frakkin' lizard I went chasing down the frakkin' sewers, but everything else?"

He put his fists to his ears and then flung his hands outward, as if to mime his head exploding.

[Azazeal849]

(OOC - white text is Dakkagor's)

Kimmie, Shift

"Good new house for Melina, hmm?" Kim joked quietly.

“Keeping a place that big clean would be a nightmare, I'd bet.” Shift returned.

They were crouched by one of the last support pillars for the overpass, before it tunnelled away into the wall of the hive spire. The Mertesari hotel loomed ahead of them, half in the shadow of the overpass, with the scowling curtain wall at its back. The hotel itself had a wall too, ringing the dark marble plaza that sat directly in front of it. Behind the iron gates, a strange silver vehicle that resembled a motorcade without wheels was parked up beside a row of more traditional black sedans. No guards were in evidence, though the hotel still had the look of a locked-down fortress about it - above the faded carvings and columned portico, all of the windows were barred and blacked out. A solid head-high wall ringed the flat roof, though Kim and Shift could see the tops of threadbare trees climbing above it.

"If we can get up onto the overpass then we could drop down onto the roof garden." Kim suggested. "There must be a door we can cut through."

The missionary shook her head.

"They must be confident that they're safe up here by the spire. Not a single guard." She narrowed her eyes at the out of place silver motorcade. "Who...?"

She instinctively broke off and drew back into the shadow of the overpass as the double doors beneath the portico creaked open. Two men emerged - a tall armoured man with flowing copper hair, and a shorter, skinnier youth in scruffy clothes that looked like they'd been made to fit someone else. The tall man was measured in his strides, though he glanced several times at the younger man, who kept looking nervously back over his shoulder. As they crossed the courtyard paving stones the youth looked ahead again and waved at someone out of sight behind the gate.

One guard at least, then. Shift mentally corrected Kim's initial assessment, as something electronic buzzed and the iron gates swung open with a squeal of hinges. The two men continued walking out into the road, some distance past the wall. As they got closer, the two women got a better look at the armoured man and the broad chainsword that was slung across his back in a metal scabbard. A knife and a pistol sat at his hips, and his blue-eyed face was calm but observant.

"I recognise him." Kim hissed in the barest whisper from beside Shift. "Hadrak?"

Shift blinked, remembering some particularly immoral thoughts that made her blush. “Yeah, I remember him too.” She whispered back. “So he's got to be one of ours.”

She snapped the telescope closed.

“If he's walking in and out, he's got to have free access. He might be our way in.”


+ + + + + +

Shift crawled, darted through the shadows towards the pair. A pretty thorough killzone had been cut back around the outer wall, but there were still enough dips and obstacles for her to work with.

She circled round, behind the one that wasn't Hadrak, the kid in the clothes that didn't fit. The two were talking about something, but they were being quiet. She drew and unfolded her crossbow, and covered the last of the distance on her belly, silently crawling through the ash and dust of the hive bottom.

The kid was being loud and angry. Hadrak was frowning, and then the kid made a gesture, miming his head exploding.

Sarna rose up behind him, crossbow levelled at his currently unexploded head.

“Hadrak.”

The big guy had gone for his pistol. The kid had wheeled and went pale as a sheet, but wisely kept his hands away from his sides and his mouth shut.

“Is this guy good?”

“Sarna.” Hadrak breathed out, letting his pistol drop. “Where the Horus have you been? And yes, he's good, for now.”

“Busy.” Shift responded. Her name barely caused a ripple of pain now. She remembered Hadrak well, but only because she had been nursing a massive crush on the statuesque ex-guardsman. “I've got a team pulled together to finish the job, wipe out the Refuge."

"To finish the job?" Hadrak frowned. Then his eyes widened, as something behind them suddenly clicked into place.

"Are we safe to talk?" She directed this last question at the kid. He was standing very, very still, which endeared him immensely to Shift. She neglected to mention anything about the team, because beggars couldn't be choosers, and they were definitely beggars currently.

“Yeah, I reckon we've got a couple of minutes before the guy at the gate gets twitchy. Who the frak are you?”

“She's a friend, Rhen.” Hadrak put a big hand on the kid, gently pulling him away from the lithe assassin. He turned back to Shift. “You look like shit.”

“It's been a long night.” She responded with a shrug. “Can you get me and my team in? Six bodies plus weapons.”

“Maybe.” Hadrak looked over to Rhen. “Any ideas?”

“Are you frakking insane! The only people who go in or out are Refuge or slaves...” Rhen trailed off. “Varmassian's missing a shipment. Did you have anything to do with that?”

“Might of.” She shrugged again. “So what?”

The kid swallowed, and cracked his knuckles. “Uh...well, if the shipment arrives...”

“Then we can just walk right in.” Sarna nodded. “I like it. What about weapons?”

“They don't seem to frisk people coming in," Hadrak offered. "I assume that's meant to have been done further down the chain. If you get to the hotel I think you're meant to be clean already, but you'll need a disguise.”

“I didn't think many people showed up in armoured bodygloves and loaded down with weapons. Can you help?”

Hadrak considered. “That place is stuffed with clothes. We get you dressed up, walk you in and claim you are the survivors of the shipment. Easy.”

“I hope so.”


+ + + + + +

“I don't like it.” Quintus pursed his lips and shook his head. “It leaves too much to chance.”

“If we try to vault the walls or drop onto the roof, there is every chance we'll be spotted before we enter the building.” Sarna responded.

“It is risky.” Primus chimed in. “But four women have more chance getting through that gate than all of us. If you make your way to the roof and eliminate any guards, the rest of us can move in from the overpass.”

“Wait, we're meant to get everyone in through the front!” Kimmie interjected, looking to Sarna. “Right?”

“The house only handles the women and girls.” Primus frowned. “And boys.”

Sarna suppressed a shudder, and was about to argue, when Anais piped up. “Here they come.”

The dipped headlights of a black ground car came swinging into the alley, rolling to a stop between the overflowing rubbish skips. The headlights died with the engine, and Hadrak and the kid from earlier clambered out. The kid had a heavy kit bag slung round his shoulder, and kept glancing behind him.

"I talked to Nara." Hadrak explained, pushing a strand of copper hair out of his eyes. "She thinks we're out looking for Em and 'Ria. She seemed alright with Rhen asking to come along."

"Yeah, and why wouldn't she?" the kid challenged, and then stopped in his tracks when he saw Primus and Quintus standing at ease with the others. "Oh, frak no. You guys work for...for..." His fear was evident, even if he couldn't seem to connect it to a word.

"The frakking Reds?" Quintus suggested, with a very white smile. His scoped rifle sat easily in his hands. "I'm afraid you missed a couple."

"What did you bring the kid for?" Alexi growled, frowning ominously at the youth. "Who is he?"

In spite of everything, the kid rounded on Alexi. "Rhen Nazarian." he scowled. "Who the frak are you?"

Primus broke into sudden laughter. The rangy Kingsman pushed away from the wall he was leaning against to squeeze Shift's shoulder, and then to give Kim a less affectionate thump on the back. "See, missionary? Just have faith, and the Red King rewards us. Here's the boy you were so keen to save. Hm. I hope you're impressed."

Rhen looked from Kim to Primus, and fidgeted with the strap of his kit bag. "Can one of you tell me what the frak he's on about?

[dakkagor]

"What it means, Rhen, is you are currently the luckiest member of the Refuge in the Hive" She poked him in the chest. "Because your sister made us promise to keep your sorry arse alive when we went for Vamassian."

"My. . ." he blinked. "Um. . .right. Okay. What happened to her? Is she alright?"

"She is, thanks to Sarna." Kim nodded her head towards the assassin. "We dropped her off at a clinic, and she should be safe there."

"More important than that." Shift interjected. "Is did you deliver?"

"We did." Hadrak motioned to Rhen, who hurriedly unlimbered his tatty kit bag and tossed it to Shift, who opened it up with some excitement. She quickly pulled out three sets of low-hive menial bodysuits, some shawls and some blankets, stained and musty but otherwise intact.

"These are good." Shift muttered. "But we only have three here."

"It turns out a lot of this stuff gets destroyed, burned, once the girls fates are decided." Hadrak responded. "We had to improvise."

Shift found the 'improvisation'. A short skirt, tottering heels and a black top that was more suggestion than clothing, paired with heavily laddered fishnets and a small compact of cheap makeup. the kind of clothing that one might find on a low rent call girl. She held them up against her profile and looked over the other three women, reaching the same conclusion that Kim did a second later.

"Are you," the missionary blinked, slipping into full stern preacher mode, "Taking the piss?"

Rhen hurriedly pointed at Hadrak. "It were his idea, not mine!"

"Sarna can't wear that into the compound!" Kim hissed, horrified. "It's the barest suggestion of clothes! Where on Terra is she meant to conceal any weapons?"

"There's a knife sheath I can take from my webbing and strap to my thigh, under the skirt." Shift responded evenly. She gripped hold of her bodygloves zip, on the back of her neck, and started to pull it down, peeling the synskin suit off without any preamble. "We had better hurry. I doubt these two will stay missed for long."

+++++

Silus hated these graveyard shifts. The hive wastes were as dark as sin and miserable to look at, and he always imagined that there were a dozen reds waiting out there to scalp him and drink his blood. He just wanted to get back into the compound, take a hit on the pipe and crawl back into bed. He wasn't stupid enough to use Obscura on shift, but the boss had made it clear that as long as it didn't interfere with his job, he could do as he pleased off shift.

His partner tonight was useless, an old hand named Karde. He was snoring in the little hut they had, making a sound like a maglev rumbling along tracks. Silus left the hut and stepped away out into the gate, coughing into his hands, mainly to get away from the noise, and the smell. Karde's teeth were full of cavities from a lifetime of using things harder than Obscura, and when he snored a hot reek like a corpse in a ditch wafted out of the old man's mouth. He claimed to be clean now, but Silus thought he was full of shit.

Stepping out into the gate, PDF-surplus lasrifle hanging from a strap on his shoulder, bumping against his PDF-surplus flak jacket that stank of other men's sweat. He nearly jumped out his skin when six figures came out of the murk beyond the chem-lights. The mouthy kid Rhen, the new hardcase Harrak. . .Haddok, something like that. Behind them trailed three . . . no, four women.

"Who are these then?" He called out as Hannak waved at him. He heard the irregular rumble of Karde's snoring interrupt. At least the man slept on a hair trigger.

"From the last shipment. They tell me they got hit by a few Reds."

Silus cursed, roundly and fluently. "I thought Tumassian said we had dealt with the last of those frak-wits."

"Yeah, well, doesn't seem that frakking way." Rhen snapped. "You gonna call us in or what?"

Karde joined them, fumbling with a heavy lamp pack, which once he got working he shined in each of the women's faces. They were a sorry, dirty, dishevelled looking lot, but one trailing at the back seemed the worse. Clearly some street walker, clutching a bag of her last possessions.

"What you doing here missy?" Karde cackled. "You don't look like a refugee." His hand snapped out with alarming speed, grabbing the woman. . well the girl's chin. With the light shining on her face, Silus could make out the elfin features and smudged makeup tracked with tears and mixed with dirt. "Pretty one though, but not one of ours."

Silus got a sudden sensation that the rest of the group tensed, as if expecting something to happen. It amplified his nerves. He unshipped his lasrifle.

"Hands off the merchandise!" The young girl stepped back and slapped Karde's grasping hand away as it began to move down towards her chest. "You want any of this you have to pay for it! Some jackass blew up a house on my row, set the lot of them on fire, and I was told if I was willing to work I could crash here."

"Alright, you prissy little bitch, just having some fun!" Karde backed up, showing his moonscape smile and raising his hands defensively. "You head on up to the big house, and they'll set you up."

The group relaxed, and Silus did as well. He gestured up the path to the main door.

"Head on in, and I'll call ahead for the main door."

As they walked away, Karde called out something lewd and inappropriate, even for their business. The street walker turned back and gave an elegant middle finger, and then stalked off behind the others.

"Godsdamnit Karde, you are such an ass." With a sigh, Silus picked up the phone and called the group in.

+++++

"That was pretty amazing." Kim whispered in Sarna's ear. She was affecting a slumped posture, hands wrapped round a grubby cloak to conceal the autogun she was hugging tight to her chest. "You got the accent spot on."

"It's not over yet." Shift was shaking slightly, and willed her hands to stop trembling. "We still need to get to the roof and let the rest in."

[Azazeal849]

In what had once been the hotel's first floor function suite, the atmosphere was tense. Vamassian and the duke glared at each other warily, while the duke's hairless adjutant tapped a digital stylus over a brushed-metal dataslate, and one of Vamassian's own men worked a more crude desktop cogitator.

"Funds have transferred, boss." the ganger confirmed, patting the top of the display screen in a benediction that any tech-priest would have found insulting.

Vamassian hitched up a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Thank you for your custom, gentlemen. Your new handmaid will be down shortly."

Neither the duke nor his bodyguard answered, though the duke waved stiffly at the portly youth, who hurried forward and held out the decorated box he had been carrying.

Vamassian squinted at it. "What's this?"

"An extra token of our appreciation." the bodyguard explained, without inflection.

Vamassian took the box from the young man, and placed it down next to the cogitator before flipping up the silver catches. Inside was a flute-barrelled handgun made of oil-sheen metal. The grip was sleek, and imprinted as if to fit the fingers of a hand, though it seemed like the fingers it was designed for were slightly too long, and slightly too thin. The end of the grip hooked and narrowed into a raking, forward-swept blade, and a second wicked knife-point jutted forward from underneath the barrel. The gun had no magazine, only a translucent purple orb nestled behind the iron sights. Four more orbs, roughly the size of Vamassian's clenched fist, were nestled on the velvet cushion beneath the gun.

"Alien?" Vamassian asked, unable to hide his surprise.

"An Eldar splinter pistol." the bodyguard confirmed, watching Vamassian's hands carefully. "Use it sparingly. The ammunition isn't exactly commonplace."

Vamassian picked up the bladed pistol, fitting his hand awkwardly around the alien contours. The gun had no trigger; instead he felt a rough metal stud under his curled fingertip, shaped like a jagged rune. He aimed the pistol experimentally at a painting of some long-dead hive worthy that was hanging on the nearest wall.

"I wonder if this would go through armourweave?"

"Are you threatening his grace, Mr Vamassian?" the bodyguard drawled dangerously.

Vamassian lowered the gun, turning his frozen smile on the duke instead of his translating bodyguard. "My dear duke, if I was going to hurt you, the last thing I'd do would be warn you in advance."

The duke cocked a scarred eyebrow at his bodyguard, who translated with an obvious scowl. To the surprise of both Vamassian and the bodyguard, the duke simply laughed - a sharp, harsh bark that rebounded from the vaulted ceiling. The sound was answered by the squeal of a battered vox set. A ganger in a silver-streaked leather jacket hurried forward and held the worn-out device towards Vamassian. "Gatehouse, boss."

Vamassian took it. "Sy? Tell me that Em and 'Ria have finally pulled their fingers out and gotten back with the group from the boat."

The vox fizzed blankly as the ganger at the security post hesitated. "Well...yeah and no, boss. Harrak and Rhen found them, but there was only three of them left. They say Em and 'Ria got whacked by Reds."

Vamassian was silent for a long moment, an icy statue in the middle of the ebbing and flowing banquet hall. "What do you mean they got hit by Reds? Where are they?"

The ganger on the other end of the vox floundered helplessly. "They went inside, boss...guess they took the 'fugees to the kitchen for a bite to eat before they processed them?"

Vamassian squeezed the alien pistol so hard that the misshapen grip dug into his hand as he turned on his heel and began to push through the gangers standing between him and the door.


+ + + + + +

Following Rhen's lead (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q82r7uP27BI), they broke right into the east wing fire escape. They met nobody on the staircase - most of the Refuge seemed to be milling about the ground floor, or attending Vamassian and the duke.

"Where can we find the Slaver?" Anais growled, looking intensely at Rhen.

"Um..." the young underhiver answered, intimidated by her feral glare even when she was swathed in a ratty shawl and patchwork bodyglove. "Vamassian's lounge and bedroom are on the second floor, west wing. But I dunno if he'll still be there like - last I heard he was talkin' payment with the duke..."

The boy cuffed at his nose, evidently upset by something he was reluctant to elaborate on.

"We need to let the others in first." Kim reminded him. "Where's the roof exit?"

"On the other fire escape that runs up between the two wings." Rhen answered.

"I'll hold here," Hadrak said calmly, and unlimbered his chainsword from his back. "To stop anyone coming up from this side and shooting you in the back. Rhen, you stick close to the others and then stay on the roof, alright?"

"No worries, mate." Rhen mumbled, and cracked his knuckles nervously.

They crossed a long corridor of closed guest rooms without incident, and found the central staircase, which narrowed and changed from faded wood to concrete as it carried on up to the roof. Shift volunteered to scout the topside, leaving the others waiting tensely below. She met her first obstacle when she found that the steel door had a keypad lock, with most of the numbers completely faded away.

"Rhen?"

Rhen shuffled forward and peered past her, seemingly intimidated by getting close to Shift in her scant clothing. "Uh..." He squinted at the keypad for a moment. "Oh wait, yeah, I remember this. 7-9-2-4."

He punched in a code, and heard the door click. It opened onto a converted roof garden, with a flat wooden rig that had been laid over the roof's original roof arch. Holes had been cut for the slanted skylights, which were pretected by waist-high wooden railings that looked decidedly flimsy. Trees with black, red-veined leaves grew from recessed squares around the patio, and there were wooden benches that were in sore need of repainting. At some point, an incongruous concrete wall had been installed around the perimeter, blocking off the view of everything but the glaring spire-lights and the overpass where it joined the access tunnel in the spire's curtain wall.

Two young men in cross-marked jackets were passing a bottle back and forth beneath one of the trees, and yawning as the long night started to catch up with them. They turned and called to Rhen by name when they saw him. Then they clocked Shift hovering behind him.

"Seriously?" one of them asked.

"There's plenty of free rooms on 2, Rhen." the other put in, looking confused. "You didn't have to take her up to the frakkin' roof."

"He's a romantic, ain't he?" the first youth punched his friend on the arm. He ran a half-interested eye down Shift's laddered fishnets. "Not sure if she is, like. Come on, let's not frak with a bro when he finally gets lucky."

"Call me up when you're done, eh?" the other nudged Rhen as he passed. "Big Sam'll get mardy if no-one's watching the roof, even if the Reds are all dead now."

Rhen snuck Shift an embarrassed glance as the two of them stepped out onto the now-deserted rooftop.

"Hey, wait a second. Rhen!"

The young ganger froze in place, unable to answer, or even to turn around. There was a moment of hair-trigger silence.

"I'm a bit disappointed in you, man. I thought you had better standards!"

Rhen sighed out a breath he hadn't even realised he was holding as the youths' laughter retreated down the stairs.

Flattened against the wall behind the chipped fire door, Kim grabbed Anais' arm to hold her back as the two youths passed the stairs outside, still laughing.

"They're not armed." she told the feral worlder. Just because a bad shepherd leads them astray, it doesn't mean the flock can't be saved.

Anais hissed quietly through her teeth.


+ + + + + +

Inquisition void-runner Furia, Vaxanide low orbit

The strip-lights above the Furia's sensorium had been at full burn for over eight hours now, and the gallery was becoming stuffy from the heat dumped by the overworked cogitators. The circulators rattled as they fought to keep air flowing through the deck, and beneath it Erdene's mechanically-tuned ear could pick up the almost imperceptible hum of the arti-grav plates, buzzing as if Furia herself was agitated. The interrogator rested her square jaw on her hands for a moment, and scrubbed the grit out of her almond-shaped eyes.

Marrick and herself had been working rolling shifts all through the night since Marrick had cracked his way into the hive surveillance systems, although there was precious little coverage of the crumbling underhive, and sending down skull-probes would have stuck out like an albino ovigor on the Atillan steppe. The two of them were working hard to comb through the data, but Erdene was certain that the inquisitor himself hadn't slept at all. He had remained by the logic engine all night, hunched like a vulture inside his grey longcoat, teeth clenched and fists pressed into the steel lectern as his grey eyes darted between the warp augers and the surface vid feeds.

Knowing that inquisitor Lucullis was no doubt far more tired than she was prompted Erdene to sit straight again and hook the vox headset back round her ear. She cycled through hive Gendarme channels, border checkpoints and even underhive vox-cast stations, listening for any hint of disturbance as she tapped through their small pool of surveillance cameras with the digital stylus in her other hand.

And as she returned to the security feed covering the arterial road into the lowhive, there he was, right in front of her.

"Emperor's teeth." she breathed. "Inquisitor!"

Lucullis looked up, frowning slightly - at her having taken the Emperor's name in vain, Erdene supposed. She would make her contrition to the ancestor spirits later.

"Sir!" she elaborated, knowing that Lucullis was rarely impressed by ambiguous reports, "Alexi's survived, he's on the arterial near the entrance tunnel."

Inquisitor Lucullis crossed the sensorium with stiff strides and peered over Erdene's shoulder to scrutinise the two men dodging through the hooded glow of the roadside lamps.

"Who is that with him?"

"No idea." Erdene admitted as Marrick darted across the gallery to join them.

"Let's get him out of there." Lucullis stated flatly. "So he can tell us just what happened."

Erdene pushed up out of her chair, feeling her tiredness fall away from her in a surge of adrenaline. "I'll prep Khu Laan."


+ + + + + +

Primus and Alexi dropped from the bridge as Shift waved them down. Primus tossed Shift her power-sword with a sly grin, and Alexi made his way to the nearest skylight.

"This looks as good as any." the tattooed man observed, looking to Primus and Shift. "I assume you two want to take point?"

The dusty glass of the skylight was old, and the sealing plastek that held it to its warped and peeling frame was black, rotted through. Primus vaulting the guard rail and landing on it with both feet was enough to knock the whole pane clear so that it fell and shattered on the floor below. The Kingsman landed with a crunch among the shards, Shift twisting down to land beside him. Her feet thumped against old wood covered by threadbare carpet. They were in a long dormitory, made up of what looked to have once been several guest rooms with the internal walls since knocked through. Now it held a haphazard collection of camp beds, sofas and tattered mattresses, all of them crammed with children ranging in age from perhaps five to ten.

All of them were gazing in terror at the two intruders, and more than one of them let out a shriek of alarm.

"Eva?" a gruff voice questioned from behind a door in the inner wall. Shift heard keys rattling, and then a click as the door began to swing open.

Primus was closest. His ignited power-sword was a glowing green bar against the gloom as he rammed it point first through the door, fissuring the wood. There was a strangled cough of shock, and the bang of a pistol discharging as a finger tightened around its trigger in death reflex. Primus jerked his hissing blade back, leaving the door to fall open and a skewered body to tumble to the floor, smoking from the exit wound in the middle of its back.

Directly in front of Shift, a girl roughly her age sporting blue-dyed hair and a leather jacket was kneeling next to one of the beds. What looked like a children's story book had fallen onto the floor beside her. The young boy in the bed was staring at Shift, and trying to hide behind his stained and threadbare blanket. The teenage girl wore a matching look of baffled dismay as she took in Shift's ragged clothes, her thrumming power-sword and her murderer's smile. She got slowly to her feet and shakily raised her hands, revealing a blue and white cross on her palm.


+ + + + + +

The sharp crack was muffled against the hubbub of conversation, but everyone in the dining hall recognised it. The duke's broad face snapped up towards the cracked ceiling, ice-shard eyes narrowing.

The doughy youth gaped. "Was that...?"

The bodyguard was already moving, cursing aloud as he yanked a wood-grip pistol from its chest holster with one hand and pulled the duke down with the other.

"Code blue!" he barked into the button vox attached to his flak-coat collar. "We need extraction now!"


+ + + + + +

Quintus had taken the ladder up to the maintenance rat-run that hung beneath the arterial, giving him cover from eyes both below and above. Even before he had joined the Kingsmen, he had liked to sit in such high spots and watch ebb and flow of the underhive. It was from one such spot that he had avenged his mother by taking his murdering father's head. Now he lay flat with his rifle resting on the gantry rail, ready to halt any Refuge slavers who tried to escape the justice of Primus and their new allies.

The Red King wills it.

He heard the whickering thrum of the grav-car before he saw it - a chrome motorcade, matching the one already parked in the courtyard, diving down out of the lights of the hive spire.

Somebody from uphive had picked precisely the wrong moment to interfere.

Someone in the security hut by the gate shouted in protest at the unexpected arrival, and Quintus saw a young man begin to run across the courtyard, stumbling awkwardly in his PDF-surplus flak. A rifle hung loose from his shoulder strap as he waved both arms, trying to flag down the hovering vehicle. An autogun muzzle flared from the back window of the grav-car, and the youth flipped backwards mid-stride, as if he had been cut over by the swing of a poleaxe. The silver grav-car pivoted, and hammered a second burst of armour-piercing rounds into the security hut by the gate.

"King's blood!" Quintus swore as the car heeled round in the air, its doors bursting open to drop three men in heavy flak armour onto the tarmac. They hit the ground running and charged the door of the hotel, autoguns raised and blazing away. The shadowed portico flickered yellow from the muzzle flashes, and coin-sized circles of light appeared in the thick wooden doors just before the three men barged through them and vanished.

Recovering from his initial shock, Quintus jammed his eye against his rifle scope and tracked the grav car as it spun on its axis and settled in the middle of the courtyard. Through the backlit glass of the windshield, he could see a fourth man ripping off his seatbelt and reaching for a firearm stored beside his seat.

Quintus let his breath out and held it. Whoever the newcomers were, they were a threat - and a big one. He centred his crosshairs on the driver's head as it reappeared above the dashboard, then abruptly shifted his aim downwards. He still owed the Red King a skull, in payment for Kim and the others sparing his own.

The uphiver kicked open the driver-side door and began to duck out.

"Blood for the Blood God." Quintus whispered, and fired.

The door window shattered and the uphiver was spun round by the force of the impact, colliding with the side of the car before collapsing.


+ + + + + +

"They're coming." Mai warned, her eyes staring into the middle distance. A moment later, the rest of them heard footfalls pounding up the stairwell at the end of the corridor.

Kim lowered herself nimbly through the skylight, and hung there one-handed for a heartbeat before dropping into a crouch on the carpet below. The autogun hanging from her other hand was soon tight against her shoulder, but it dropped towards the ground as she registered the dormitory's occupants.

"Stay still." the missionary warned the kids in clear Vaxan gothic, dropping her off hand from her gun for a moment so she could swipe it for emphasis. She looked to Shift and the others as Alexi dropped through the skylight last, crunching the broken glass under his boots.

"We have to meet them in the corridor or they'll hit the kids." Kim snapped, "Follow me and we'll keep pushing down."

She side-skipped past Primus and through the broken door.

His will be done. The thought came to her as she dropped to one knee against the opposite wall, listening to the hostile footfalls ahead reach the landing.

"No." she murmured aloud, as she sighted down the barrel of her autogun. My will be done.

[dakkagor]

Directly in front of Shift, a girl roughly her age sporting blue-dyed hair and a leather jacket was kneeling next to one of the beds. What looked like a children's story book had fallen onto the floor beside her. The young boy in the bed was staring at Shift, and trying to hide behind his stained and threadbare blanket. The teenage girl wore a matching look of baffled dismay as she took in Shift's ragged clothes, her thrumming power-sword and her murderer's smile. She got slowly to her feet and shakily raised her hands, revealing a blue and white cross on her palm.

“Heretic!” Sarna snarled, flicking her blade up and ready.

"Someone is working through you, Shift." Kim said, suddenly earnest. "Whether that's my Emperor or Primus' Red King I don't know. But they made you beat Anais and save Maria's life, and stopped our mistake being one we couldn't take back. I'm absolutely certain they're still working through you now, and I'm glad it's you scouting ahead to make our plan. Just please listen to me when I say, don't do anything...impulsive."

Sarna stopped, locked out. She felt something, something angry, something white hot, boring away at her brain. It was screaming for her to do it, to punish the heretic-whore, to lay righteous justice on her for the Red King. Sarna's eyes locked with the girls, her gaze empty of anything at all. This place had emptied her out.

"You didn't see how she reacted, Alexi. She's not loyal to the Refuge, she's loyal to her brother. The cross is a gang tattoo, not a brand of damnation. How many of the others are only with the Refuge because of fear? Kill the slavers. Spare the victims."

Sarna's hands tightened around the hilt of her blade until she thought she would crush it. She felt like she was being torn in two, in two different directions.

“For. . .” She ground out. “The Emperor.”

She stepped back and away from the cowering girl, the moment passing, the pain dropping to a lingering ache, the voice becoming a frustrated hiss in her mind.

“Get that frakking thing removed.” She snapped, and turned away, marching over to the door.

“Situation?” she snarled, stacking up next to Kim. The priest turned to her, and frowned, before risking another look down the corridor. She ducked back in immediately as hard rounds gouged out chunks of plaster from the wall.

“Two thugs, both have heavy rifles.”

“Take me hostage.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Kim relented, slung her rifle and pulled out a pistol from her battered webbing. They stepped out into the corridor together, Sarna's arm locked painfully behind her back. That's a surprisingly professional hold. Kim had her pistol jammed into her head.

“Put down your weapons, or the merchandise gets it!”

Sarna wriggled, and screamed, even managing to rustle up some convincing tears. Kim had sounded very convincing, with just the right hint of desperation.

“Let the girl go!” one of the men shouted back.

“Get me Varmassian, and I'll talk! I want out of this hell-pit!” Kim man-handled her down the corridor, towards the gunmen, still perfectly playing the part.

That's it, a bit closer.

The two men settled their rifles, clearly weighing up the chances of a through-shot to Kim. Sarna willed Kim to move them closer. One step. Two. Three.

She tapped Kim's shin with her heel, and she released the hold, pushing her towards the gunmen. Sarna turned that extra forward momentum into a lunge. It was messy, but it worked. She hit both of them, a tangle of limbs, and the knife concealed in her hand lashed out. A hail of wild shots punched holes in the ceiling before she could wrench the rifle away, but Kim was there, a step behind her, pistol locked out. Two shots, one heart and one head, finished of one while Sarna's knife settled matters with the other.

“Quick thinking.”

“It won't work twice.” Sarna turned and nodded to Primus, who tossed her her sword. “Lets get moving.”

"First the Refuge, then the hive." Primus' teeth were bared in a manic rictus grin. "Follow me, Shift. We are the first cut."

He turned into the stairwell and started down. Some sound from below made him skip back a step, half a second before bullets sawed up from below and chewed through the stairs where his feet had been a moment before. The Kingsman grunted in vexed concentration, before vaulting over the bannister with his blade slashing a green contrail through the air. The downturned blade went straight through the shooter, whose wildly swinging arm convulsed on the trigger and sent bullets stippling across the stairs and the wall. The man beside him - a man whose leather jacket was streaked with chevrons of silver paint - dodged to the side as fast as lightning and pulled out a hooked knife, turning the draw into an aggressive slash at Primus' throat. It would have been a perfect, killing stroke, if Primus' powered blade hadn't been able to glide clear of the first man's imprisoning flesh, shear through the knifeman's blade, and section him with two quick, close-quarter strokes. The third took the knifeman's head off before his quartered torso had even finished peeling apart and tumbling to the ground.

Sarna could hear gunfire coming from the ground floor below them but Primus was already forging ahead of her into the first floor accommodation wing, kicking randomly at the bedroom doors until one produced a yelp of surprise.

"The Slaver!" Sarna heard him shout. A man's confused, drunken laugh answered him.

"Vamassian!" Primus barked again, stalking into the room and out of Sarna's line of sight. "Where is he?"

A slurred, babbling answer that she couldn't make out, and then a hiss of air, superheated by the passing of a disruptor field. Sarna heard a female shriek, that was quickly cut off. A severed hand bounced out through the open door, as if the victim had been trying unsuccessfully to shield herself.

Sarna heard a scuffle behind the closed door on her left, sounding like someone crabbing back against the carpet. She nudged the door open, which produced both a creak and a desperately stifled whimper. The door opened onto a modest bedroom suite. It had been given a few touches of feminine decoration, although the aesthetic was partially undone by the way the clothes, hair irons and tubes of kohl had been scattered haphazardly across the dresser and the rumpled bedsheets. A petite woman with creamy skin and a turned-up nose had wedged herself between the bed and the dresser, and curled up there in a hasty attempt to hide. Her eyes were slightly hooded, giving them a placid, doe-like look. Or at least it would have, if she wasn't so obviously terrified.

"Good work, Shift." Primus said as he emerged from the other bedroom, blood spattered in a diagonal line across his face. He was still grinning with the joy of doing the Red King's work as he looked past Sarna at the cowering woman. "Hm. The Slaver's bitch, if I'm not mistaken."

The woman wrapped her arms tighter around her knees and ankles in an attempt to make herself even smaller.

"Where." Primus growled at her, in the same voice that Sarna had heard him use when whispering the Red God's incitement to kill. "Is Vamassian?"

"I don't know." the woman whispered. In contrast with Primus, she had almost no voice at all. "Please...please don't hurt me..."

"That's enough, Primus." Sarna whispered. Primus stalked across the mouldering carpet, raising his blade.

"I SAID THAT'S ENOUGH." She shouted. Primus wheeled on her, blade and teeth bared. Feral.

"She doesn't know. She's an innocent, unworthy of your attentions. Get out and hold the corridor." Sarna said, keeping her tone level. The voice, the pain, was back, growling in her ears, in the back of her skull, pressing behind her eyes. "He won't stay hidden for long. Now Go."

For the briefest second, Primus looked like he would argue, maybe even fight. Instead, he flicked his blade clean and shoved past Sarna.

"Weak." She thought she heard him hiss through clenched teeth.

Not me.

She got closer to the woman, who was trying desperately to press herself into the corner. Sarna dropped into a crouch, a little way away.

"Hey. Hey. Look at me."

For a second their eyes locked, and Sarna felt a terrible sadness and horror well up in her heart.

"Tell me where he is, and I swear, he will never hurt you again."

Sarna inched closer. The girl stopped inching back, instead she was shaking her head, muttering something about how Sam was a 'good guy', 'would never hurt her'.

"Please." Sarna reached out, and gently placed a hand on the womans knee. "Let me help you."

The girls vision cleared, just a fraction. She looked up and met Sarna's eyes again. There was a hint of defiance, of anger.

"They entertain guests in the old smoking room. . . if you take the stairs down a level, then left, its near the front."

Sarna nodded. She wanted to say more, do more. But there was simply no time.

She started to head downstairs, Primus falling in behind her. She was worried. The voice, the pressure to kill, was still there, still insistent, still buzzing behind her eyes. But it had stopped sounding like Primus after that last confrontation. It sounded like Shift instead.

[Azazeal849]

Kimmie

"It won't work twice.” Sarna turned and nodded to Primus, who tossed her her sword. “Lets get moving.”

"We'll sweep the rest of this floor, pair off and work down the other stairways." Kim said, almost surprised at how clearly the plan had formed in her mind and how authoritatively her voice carried it. "We'll bracket anyone in your way on the next floor down. Alexi, you're with me."

She was keeping an eye on the crow.


+ + + + + +

Kim heard Anais' feral warcry ahead of her, followed by a brief burst of gunfire. By the time she and Alexi pushed into the next corridor it was deserted except for three corpses and a line of bullet holes that had raked the ceiling. One man lay broken-doll in the middle of the floor with his machine pistol at his feet and an ugly red hole underneath his jaw, his face masked by the blood he had coughed over himself. Another man had left a streak of red along the carpet, as if he had crawled before dying with his hands still clutched around his ripped throat. Slumped against one of the padlocked doors was a youth with a buzz-cut boulder for a head, his blue eyes still staring in glassy surprise as his dead hand fumbled for a holstered pistol. Kim stooped to search Anais and Mai's victims for keys. Alexi nudged the dead youth aside with his boot and pounded the door with a pistol butt.

"Rescue party!"

A fan of yellow light-threads burned through the door, punching out sprays of hardwood. One caught Alexi in the middle of his forehead, blasting half of his head against the far wall and slamming him back into his own superheated brain matter. Kim was on her feet again in an instant, cursing in shock.
What was left of the door peeled away and collapsed, its padlock hanging brokenly from the wall. Kim heard screams from inside. Children's screams.

She ducked low and hooked round the doorway. She saw a dozen or more girls and a few boys, surely none fully grown yet, clad in grubby shorts and t-shirts and cowering against walls and behind beds. Near the back of the room was a wiry teenager in Refuge leathers, his blocky face pinched and sweating, and his eyes wild. Held against him, scrabbling at the forearm that was wrapped hard around her throat, was a girl in a black serving-maid's dress. Her blonde ringlets were spilled across her face, which was reddening as she fought to breathe. Kim only had a split second to look at them before the young ganger's other arm hooked round, holding a laspistol. Kim threw herself back into the corridor as a thread of yellow light sizzled past her and blew a chunk out of the far wall with a snap.

"You stay where you frakkin' are!" Kim heard a young man's voice squeal, in gutter Vaxan. Somehow, it didn't seem like the hostage taker was talking to her.

Kim risked another glance round the doorframe, and saw that an older girl had been edging round as if to get behind the ganger and jump him, but the youth's pistol pointed at her head sent her cowering back. The youth dragged his hostage backwards until his back was against the corner of the wall, his wavering pistol muzzle darting between the silent hostages. Then he saw Kim, but instead of levelling his pistol at her he hooked it round and ground the muzzle against the blonde girl's cheekbone. A red LED glowed on the stock above his clenched fingers, casting a tiny pool of bloody light. Kim slung her rifle across her back and stepped through the doorframe, her hands raised.

"Back off!" the youth shrieked. "I dunno who you are but back off or I'll blow her frakkin' head off!"

"I'm staying right here. You don't have to hurt her." Kim's heart was thudding in her chest but her mind was oddly calm. "I can see you're upset. Just tell me what you want."

"I wanna get out of here! I'll let her go as soon as I'm past the wall but 'til then you needta vox whoever the frak you're workin' for and back off!"

"Okay. I can get you out of here."

"You can?" The youth's eyes were narrowed suspiciously, but Kim could tell from his voice that he wanted desperately to trust her. Like Maria - not a certainty, but a promise they wanted to believe. Still a willingness to acknowledge some sliver of hope, before the world finally ground out of them.

"Yes, but you can't take her with you. What's your name?"

"What's it to you?" the youth snarled.

"Okay, I'm sorry." Kim changed tack. "Are you a guard here?"

"No! I push grinweed on street corners! Big Sam sent us up here to fetch the duke's bird, then all this shootin' kicked off!"

Kim let her eyes dart left, to the boys and girls cringing against the walls. Most were covering their mouths or hugging companions. None of them spoke - that might have just been because they didn't want the poor blonde girl's head blown off, but none of them were shooting the kind of venomous looks that might indicate that the ganger youth was lying.

"I don't wanna hurt her, don't make me hurt her!" the boy ranted desperately. "I just wanna get out of here!"

"I believe you." Kim soothed, hands open. "And I know you're not going to hurt her. Your las is empty."

In spite of himself, the youth's eyes stopped guarding Kim and dropped to the gun in his hand. "Wha-?"

"That red light, it means the power cell's empty. I'd never have put my gun away otherwise. But I wanted to give you a chance." Kim held his gaze. "Please, let her go."

There was a pregnant silence. The youth must have loosened his grip, because the blonde girl wriggled away from him, doubling him up with an elbow in the stomach for good measure. A few more of the teenage prisoners looked like they wanted to dive on the youth and tear him limb from limb, but Kim's presence kept them in check.

"You need to put that gun down." Kim told the young ganger, who was still huddled in his corner.

The youth looked panicked. "Wha-?" he said again.

"It's out of ammo, and if one of my people sees you armed they'll shoot you."

"Kimmie!" a voice shouted. It was Mai, who appeared at the door. She seemed almost excited, as if she hadn't even noticed Alexi lying dead in the corridor. "There's adult prisoners in the next section. Come on, Shift and Anais will be waiting!"

"Go on ahead and tell them I'm coming." Kim responded. "I'll see the kids up to the roof and then link up with you!"

"Oh frak..." the young ganger whined, stopping in the doorframe. He completely ignored Mai, his eyes fixed instead on Alexi's exploded corpse. "Oh shit, I frakkin' killed him, man!"

Yes you did. Kim wanted to say. And he'd have killed you, too.

"Later." she said instead, firmly enough to get the youth's attention. She looked around at the refugees, most of them still in their nightclothes.

"Grab some clothes but be quick. We're getting out of here."


+ + + + + +

Stan

The uphive kill-team cleared the stairs in a blitzing crossfire, then hosed the creaking landing from below to bring down a man who was stupid enough to run towards the gunshots instead of away. They pushed up the stairs, sweeping professional arcs with their gun muzzles.

A ganger with dark, floppy hair was still coughing against the bullet-stippled wall, clutching at his stomach. He held up a red hand towards the nearest soldier in a plea for mercy, trying to form words as blood trickled from his lips.

"Hi, friend." the soldier said brightly, and shot the stammering ganger through the head. "Bye, friend."

Someone barked a code-word in High Gothic from behind a door, and the lead soldier answered in kind. The woodworm-scarred door opened to reveal the duke's grim bodyguard with a pistol in each hand, the duke himself and his two bewildered tagalongs following in his wake.

"Took you long enough." the bodyguard growled caustically.

At the other end of the corridor, Nara peeked out, having back-pedalled furiously after arriving just in time to see the soldiers execute the young Refugee.

"Shit!" she whispered to Stan and Ani, "It's the goon squad."


+ + + + + +

Kimmie

The rag-tag group spilled out onto the roof garden, the more assertive among them dragging their fear-frozen colleagues, the adults breaking forward to sweep up the young children whom Rhenat had been trying to corral by the benches. Kim brought up the rear, covering the narrow stairwell behind them with her autogun. Satisfied, she kicked the door closed and ran to marshal the group, only to find the blonde hostage girl fighting to get past her and back into the building.

"Hey, wait!" Kim exclaimed, arresting the teenager's movement as gently as she could. "You need to stay here, d'you hear me? It's too dangerous down there."

"It's the duke." the girl protested desperately, in her thick underhive accent, "I needta ge' back t'the duke..."

Two other girls, both wearing the same simple black dresses, came running out of the crowd to grab the first girl's arms.

"Please help her." one of them pleaded, fixing her dark, upturned eyes on Kim. "Vamassian did something to her, he's a witch..."

A thunderclap roar drowned the rest of her words. It pressed Kim and the others down against the overcladded roof, loud enough to blind as well as deafen.


+ + + + + +

Interrogator Erdene pushed her foot down into the control yoke, angling the atmospheric engines down to bring the lander to a graceful hover. If Zur Gaadi was built for stealth, then Khu Laan was built for agility, like the mountain-leaping steed she was named for. As the lander tilted its hinged wings, the downwash hammered out concentric rings of dust and promethium smoke, battering one of the parked-up ground cars onto its side and setting the alarm lights flashing on several others. Erdene peered through the cockpit canopy at the crowd cowering on the hotel roof, trying to pick out the people who mattered among the ants. She flicked the switch that controlled the vox stalk looping round her jaw.

"Strike team Aegia this is Edene, can you hear me Hadrak?"

The interrogator hovered her hand over the bay and winch controls, flexing her fingers open and closed. A slow, stealthy approach had not been an option this time, and the PDF Aeronautica were probably scrambling from Spire 9 airbase at that very moment.

"Strike team Kronis." she tried again. "This is Erdene. Are you there, Raeden?"

A sharp crack in her right ear made her flinch, almost causing her to drag the control stick to the side and send her airborne steed ploughing into the flank of the hotel. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the spark of the ricochet as a low-velocity slug cannoned off her armourglass cockpit. Throne! Someone had just tried to snipe her right out of the cockpit.

The close-quarter assault cannon unfolded from the lander's chin and tracked right, linked to the motion of Erdene's visor. The barrels whined as they began to rotate.

Hunched over his rifle in the scaffolding beneath the overpass, Quintus looked into the spinning silver barrels, and saw his Red King grinning back at him. Kimmie and the others had thwarted him once by killing the Prince's knifeman, but the master of mankind would not be denied. The Red King wills it.

Quintus laughed under his breath. "Skulls for His throne."

The assault cannon sparked, whirring like a runaway jackhammer, and Quintus' world exploded into tracers and shrapnel and red.


+ + + + + +

Sarna

Sarna (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfeLiat3tNc) sensed movement and swept a killing arc to her left as she burst into the smoking room. She missed Mai by a hair's breadth, but only because the other woman had dodged so fast that she must have been moving almost before the door opened.

"I...lost Anais." the petite woman admitted. "But everywhere above us is clear. Kimmie's just shepherding the refugees up to the roof, then she'll meet us here."

"Where's Vamassian?" Primus hissed through his teeth. The room around them was large enough to be more of a gallery - all panelled wood; tall, dusty bookcases; and faded leather armchairs. But it was empty.

Mai looked around carefully. "Not here."

Primus' eyebrows drew down and his lips peeled back in a murderer's grimace. "The Slaver's bitch lied to us."

Mai opened her mouth to respond, but the words died in her throat as something like alarm dawned in her eyes. She spun round to face the door - just in time for her dimpled face to be erased in a humming series of micro-explosions.

Flechettes, something from Sarna's fractured memory told her - Eldar flechettes, made from poison-laced crystal; shattered and spat from their serrated barrel at ten or twenty rounds per second. At the same time her body was diving to the side to flatten herself behind the protective edge of a bookcase, and Primus was doing the same even as Mai's body crumpled to the floor, her automag spraying bullets into the walls and ceiling. There were dull thumps as misfiring nerves set the dead woman's limbs flailing and kicking against the carpet, before falling still.

"No, Ellen didn't lie." said a voice, its accent gutter Vaxanhive. "She did however vox ahead to warn me that you were coming here, Kingsmen."

Primus' eyes, temporarily cleared by the shock of the ambush, met Sarna's across the breadth of the gallery. Mai's death-reflex gunfire had ripped into the cables feeding the chandelier lights, and now they were strobing fitfully, rendering Primus into flashes of stop-motion as he silently raised three fingers with his free hand. Sarna chanced a look around the solid bookcase, and saw a short, muscular man dressed in red, a weapon that was half pistol and half dagger gripped in his right fist. Flanking him were two men in leather jackets slashed with silver chevrons, with long hooked knives in their hands.

"Bring me their heads." the man in red ordered, his long, angular features twisting into a smirk. The two knifemen hesitated, wary of the glowing razors of Primus and Sarna's power-swords. They knew exactly what they were and what they could do. The man in red thrust the alien pistol into his belt, furiously.

"I said bring me their frakking heads!" he raged, seizing his two subordinates by the hair. There was a blue glare, out of sync with the strobing of the lights, but before Sarna could process it fully the two men had moved - black flash, crossing the gallery in an eyeblink, and the next pulse of the lights revealed one of the hooked knives slashing for her throat. An instinctive circular parry forced her opponent to dart back, unable to turn her blade aside without shearing his own in two. On the back foot, he couldn't shift his weight enough to avoid the smooth follow-up strike that carved down through his face and out through his sternum. It was over in half a second.

The next half second was an angry hornet's buzz of gunfire, and a sharp sting across the bare skin of her sword arm. She pushed off her right foot and rolled behind an overstuffed armchair, the back of which was torn ragged as an invisible scythe swung across the room, tearing out chunks of the wall plaster and spraying up clouds of ripped paper and couch-stuffing. Primus was half-turned away from her, completing the follow-through of a stroke that had taken the second knifeman's head. He lunged back, as if to grab the falling body and shield himself, but the line of zipping explosions caught him first and opened two red flowers in his back. Sarna expected the sympathetic horror that dropped through her stomach, but she wasn't expecting her fingers to spasm in turn and drop her sword, leaving the disruption field to spark and cut out as it burned into the floor.

Primus was arching back and falling, with a hiss that turned into an almost animal howl. Sarna was looking down at the red, hairline slash where the alien gun had winged her. She felt a tension in her upper arm, a tension that quickly swelled into an almost unbearable pain as her arm muscles locked up, jerking her whole arm up towards her shoulder as they cramped. The seizure drew an involuntary gasp from Sarna's lips and her legs collapsed under her, her cheek hitting the floor. She saw a foot shod in fine black leather stamp into her field of view, kicking her sword away towards the bookcase before sweeping back to strike her in the mouth. The blow rolled her onto her side and filled her mouth with the coppery taste of blood. The man in red was stalking away from her, halting in front of Primus and his decapitated victim.

"You're either the butcher or you're the meat, Red. Well look at me now, and look at you!"

The Kingsman was torqued backward, chest pushed up and shoulders pulled back against the ground, his jaw locked in helpless agony. The strobing light turned his struggles into something horrific.

"Wait...Primus?" the man in red breathed, in sudden recognition. And then he laughed. "I suppose if any of you Red bastards would survive it was going to be you. But who's your new friend?" He turned on his heel to regard Sarna once more. "Actually never mind, I'll ask her myself."

He began to stride back towards her, kicking aside debris and stepping round the coffee table where Primus' blade had fallen. The Eldar pistol was in his right hand; his left was flexing open and closed, and beginning to smoulder with a halo of blue light.

"Your bitch is mine!"

He reached down to grab her head.

[dakkagor]

"You're either the butcher or you're the meat, Red. Well look at me now, and look at you!"

The Kingsman was torqued backward, chest pushed up and shoulders pulled back against the ground, his jaw locked in helpless agony. The strobing light turned his struggles into something horrific.

“Pain is an illusion of the Senses. Despair an illusion of the mind.”

Sarna shivered in the snow, the cramps so bad from the cold it felt like her skin would tear off, her teeth aching from their chattering. Someone shoved a practice blade into her tiny hands.

“Perform the basic parries, as we have practiced, and I will allow you to be clothed again.”

"Wait...Primus?" the man in red breathed, in sudden recognition. And then he laughed. "I suppose if any of you Red bastards would survive it was going to be you. But who's your new friend?" He turned on his heel to regard Sarna once more. "Actually never mind, I'll ask her myself."

She stood before a furnace, blazing in heat.

“Pain is an illusion of the senses. Despair is an illusion of the mind. Place your hand in the forge. If your faith is true, the Emperor will protect you.”

She knew not to disobey. She rolled back her bodyglove from her arm, and in one motion, pushed her fist into the flames. She screamed as the heat ate at her hand. Evaporating the tears from her face as she smelled her flesh cooking from the bone. She grabbed her arm with her other hand and held it in, because she had not been instructed to remove the hand.

He began to stride back towards her, kicking aside debris and stepping round the coffee table where Primus' blade had fallen. The Eldar pistol was in his right hand; his left was flexing open and closed, and beginning to smoulder with a halo of blue light.

“Pain is an illusion of the senses. Despair is an illusion of the mind.” Darl handed her a practice sword hilt first. As she took it, she felt a needle prick the palm of her hand. As she moved to the enguard position, she felt liquid pain course through her arm, the muscles spasming.

“Dark Eldar poison, recovered from their raids.” Darl offered as calmly as if she was discussing the weather. Sarna hissed, dropping to her knees as she clutched at her wrist, trying to stop her spasming fingers breaking on the hilt. Darl raised her practice blade. “Defend yourself.”

"Your bitch is mine!"

He reached down to grab her head. Sarna's head snapped up, her eyes wide as her memories unfolded like a a lotus flower in her mind. For a second, Vamassian's mind brushed against Sarna's before it recoiled.

Sarna was already moving. Her left hand had taken the knife from under her dress, reversed the grip. She slammed it into the palm of Vamassian's outstretched hand, punching the mono-blades edge clean through bone and flesh, out the other side. Vamassian howled in pain, staggering back, clutching at his ruined hand with his other, the pistol forgotten. Sarna staggered to her feet.

“I am Sarna Astros of the Moritat Sisterhood of Regis.” She ground out through gritted teeth. Her left hand was wrapped around the eldar pistol. “As an appointed Agent of His Imperial Majesties Imperial Inquisition, I sentence you to the Emperors mercy, for only he can grant a heretic the absolution he craves.”

She fired the pistol, point blank into Vamassian's stomach. The recoil of the alien weapon surprised her, pulling her arm up as she fired, punching the flechettes into Vamassian's gut, chest and face, spattering his head across the wall. The ruined corpse dropped to its knees and folded backwards, dumping blood across the floor.

“And I am nobodies bitch.”

She watched Vamassian's body twitch for a few moments, shutting out the blazing agony in her right arm and shoulder. From the other side of the room she heard wet, ruined laughter. She pushed the pistol into her belt, and staggered over to the last remaining Kingsman. She picked his sword up from the coffee table, before sagging down next to him.

“I can't stay here.” She finally said. She could hear heavy weapon fire from outside. What time she had left was running out.

“I guessed as much.” Primus coughed. He tried to force himself to sitting upright, but was violently seized by another round of painful spasms. It seemed the berserker fever that had seized him earlier had passed, leaving only the miserable pain of his slow death.

“I can't let you live either.”

Primus met her eyes and nodded, smiling.

“We'd have made some terrifying children, you know.” Primus chuckled and Sarna smiled at her own weak joke. “Maybe in another life.”

“One last thing, Shift.. . .Sarna, please, I don't want to go like this.”

Sarna nodded. She pushed a knife into the Kingsmans hand and stepped up and back.

“In the Red Kings name, Primus, I gift your skull to the skull throne.”

The Kingsmans blade purred once.

[Azazeal849]

Kimmie

The dragon roar of lander engines, and the jackhammer rattle of assault cannons. Kim had frozen in place, remembering another descending apocalypse, the carnage set in motion by her own hands.

No, back further. She remembered entering the heretic's lair wearing a false expression of meekness, just as they had entered Vamassian's hideout. She remembered kneeling before a daemon who wore an angel's face, and pledging to help spread his word. Hundreds of her own flock had seen the light - why shouldn't she? Raeden the prophet was now Raeden the heretic. She remembered the vox caster under her bedroll, that would call the apocalypse right down on the deceiver's head, and on hers.

No, back further. She remembered speaking into that same vox caster several weeks earlier.

"Missionary Raeden." The grey man had a grey voice; flinty, hard, unyielding. "This is inquisitor Feyd Lucullis."

Lucullis - the grey man. The righteous man. Until now, Kim had only spoken to his intermediaries. But now, four months after she had begged help from the Ecclesiarchy, the inquisitor who had arrived in their stead was ready to give her her orders in person.

"You will need to present yourself as a believer." Lucullis said. "You will need to enter the heretic's lair."

Kim remembered her hands, slippery with cold sweat as she cupped the vox caster. "But the villagers..." she protested, despite all the Creed's teachings that it was heresy to cross an inquisitor. "They'll think me an apostate."

"They will." Lucullis agreed simply.

Kim remembered envisioning a horrible scene. The Redeemer - the liar, the blasphemer - shouting from his pulpit, promising that blood could wash away their sins and end the drought. The remains of her flock, chanting his name alongside the others, because she had led them to him, after so long resisting. She pictured Cian shouting alongside them, drawn in like the rest, ecstatically unaware of the fate of those who bowed to any god but the Emperor. Kim had not seen him since her feigned death and resurrection on another part of Adhara as Raeden the prophet. But in their desperation people travelled far to hear the Redeemer - further than they had ever travelled for Kim and her fellow missionaries.

"But what if they follow my lead?" she protested further, compounding her sin of questioning out of fear for her followers, and for Cian. "I've preached against the Redeemer; his men know my face. I can't change identities again."

"That will have to be your people's test of faith." Lucullis' voice was implacable. "Their fate will match their choice."

"Just because a bad shepherd leads them astray, it doesn't mean the whole flock is beyond saving!" Kim had argued back. The same words she had spoken to Quintus and Alexi earlier; in defence of Maria, and of the two kids on the roof. She hadn't realised where they had come from until now. "We don't have to kill them all!"

You are his child, just as I am. Those were the words of the Creed.

All of true faith believe in justice. And those were Quintus' words; the words of his red god.

"Don't mistake me for a bloodthirsty fanatic, missionary Raeden. I do not believe in prosecuting the innocent. The moment you execute an innocent, the rest lose all faith in the ability of justice to protect them - and then what incentive do they have to follow the Emperor's laws? But Chaos is different. It digs claws deep into the hearts of its followers, and it never truly lets go. I've seen it happen. Simple follower heretics spared, only for entire cities to be lost to madness years later. All because daemons laugh when we give them the gift of mercy."

Kim's mouth had gone dry. "And what about me?"

"You're a missionary. You change your face and your words to match the indigens, but your faith stays pure. That's why only you can do this. But any who fall, we must eradicate them. All of them."

"Attention citizens." a woman's voice boomed across the rooftop garden, her words made monstrous by the lander's echoing vox-casters. "Throw down your weapons and submit to judgement, by authority of the Emperor's holy inquisition."

Kim clenched her fists. Not this time.

Despite the fear still gnawing at the pit of her stomach, she was calm, because she knew that this time she was right - truth was truth, whether the Emperor's or the Kingsmen's.

You can have faith through worship. she remembered telling her team-mates, Or you can have faith in a person, a weapon, even a set of words.

Kim knew what her words were going to be.

No more innocent blood.

The clarity and conviction that had gripped her at the dockside returned. Kim looked at the people around her - staring around in panic; cowering; hugging the wooden deck.

"Listen!" Kim shouted at them, holding up her arms and drawing their attention onto her with beckoning sweeps of her hands. "Listen! If we stay here, we all die. Fire escapes, right now."

"Then where?" one of the older refugees hollered.

"The old rail tunnels." blurted Rhen.

Kim turned, as surprised as everyone else, to look at Rhen. Even Rhen himself looked slightly alarmed, as if he hadn't quite realised that he had spoken, and was now wondering why everyone was staring at him.

"Uh..." the gangly Refugee said. "I used to go climbin' about in 'em. Like when that ungrateful prick of a lizard went walkabout. There's a main line runnin' right under the highway. Bricked off but easy enough to get in."

"You sure?" Kim asked him.

Rhen puffed up a little, defensive. "Yeah."

His Will be done. "Let's move. Rhen, you and me lead."

A confessor can't be seen to doubt. And she didn't.


+ + + + + +

Abner

Abner still wasn't sure how he had dodged, sprinted and crawled his way to the first floor function suite. Panting, he flattened himself against the wall and reached out to press the ajar door with one hand. Nosing the door open failed to provoke any shouting or gunshots, and so he reeled his way in.

He had been hoping to find Vamassian and the duke. Instead he saw only an empty lounge with overturned furniture and a blood-spattered cogitator, its cooling fans still wheezing away indifferently as short bursts of gunfire snarled from the floor above. One of Vamassian's men was slumped beneath the desk, his blood fouling the carpet.

Submit to judgement, the voice from the lander thundering above the safehouse had demanded. Bugger that!

"You bastards!" Abner barked at the empty room. "I could have belonged here!"

On the floor, the man he had taken for dead groaned. Abner kicked him irritably out of the way and mashed the cogitator rune-board to wake it from its dormant state. The blood-flecked screen lit up from its saved memory state, but the guardian program promptly stepped in and barred his access, demanding a keyword in a blinking white text box.

"Come here." Abner growled at the bleeding operator.

Despite having both hands curled around the hole in his abdomen, the ganger still tried to wriggle away from him. "Don't you touch me, warper!"

That made Abner angry enough to grab the ganger by his greasy hair and slam the side of his face into the wall, leaving a spiderweb dent in the plaster. Once the images flickering across his mind told him what he was looking for, he slammed the ganger into the wall again for good measure.

"People like you are always praying for my death." he growled, as the operator sank back onto the blood-sticky carpet with a groan. "Be thankful I don't have time to make you pray for yours."

He tapped the keyword into the cogitator to pacify its guardian, then rooted around in the desk drawers until he found a data wand. He plugged it into the machine, and stabbed a few more command runes. By the time he had finished, the gut-shot operator had lapsed into unconsciousness.

"I'll be taking this." he told the unresponsive body as he yanked out the data wand and slipped it into a pocket. "I think I can make better use of Vamassian's money than you can."


+ + + + + +

Rhen, Kimmie, Hadrak

They were halfway down the stairs when the blonde girl stumbled and fell against the wall, clutching at the bannister with one hand and at her head with the other.

"Karine?" one of the other girls rushed forward to steady her. "You okay?"

"Oh Throne..." Karine coughed, still twisting her fingers into her hair, "I was gonna...oh throne."

Rhen turned around, just in time to see the girl look up and meet his eyes. Her expression mutated into one of rage.

"Rhen you did nothin'!" Karine launched herself off the wall and went for Rhenat, tiny fists swinging. "You was right there an' you did nothin', you frakkin' asshole!"

"I'm sorry!" Rhen pleaded as he fended off the blows. "I didn't...I..."

I was a coward. he told himself savagely, and concluded that he deserved the blows even as he kept on trying to defend himself from them.

"Save it!" Kim's voice cracked, snapping through the miniature brawl like a gunshot. The missionary was doubling back up the stairs towards them. "There's people out there who are going to kill you. Everything else can wait!"

Karine fell back, panting. Rhen stammered more apologies, this time directed at both Karine and Kim.

"Kimmie!"

The missionary halted in turn, and spun round to see Hadrak on the landing below them, blood running down the side of his face. The chainsword in his hands was similarly red-stained.

"Hadrak." she sighed in relief. "Where are the others?"

"I don't know. Vamassian and Primus are dead in the smoking room, but I can't find any of the others."

"We need to find them. We need to get out of here."

"Out of here?" the tall man looked baffled. "Our mission's complete; we need to report back to the inquisitor. Erdene's hovering right outside with our ride home."

Kim looked at him, her expression one of earnest fear. "Lucullis will kill all these people, you know he will. When it comes to Primus' Red King or Petrosyan's Purple Prince, he won't take the risk."

Daemons laugh when we give them the gift of mercy.

The grey, stony face floating in her mind softened into the smiling visage she'd made the mistake of leaving behind.

It's not too late to change your mind. Cian's ghost said. Stay.

"I need to help them. I need to take them somewhere where he won't find them."

"You're going to stay?"

Stay.

"That's exactly what I'm going to do."

She saw Hadrak frown, choosing his words as he looked from Kim to her bedraggled tail of refugee parents, teenagers and children. "Kimmie...you know you won't be able to save them all. Some'll run away, or overdose, or shoot each other dead. Take it from someone who grew up in a place like this - it doesn't make people kind. It just makes them hard and suspicious and resentful. And you don't just get over something like what Vamassian did to these kids - not quickly, and sometimes not ever."

"I know that." Kim admitted without emotion. "Sarna told me the same."

"So why?"

"Because they all deserve the chance. And I can give one to them. The hive gendarmes won't bother a priest."

She pulled the broken chain from the pocket of her webbing and let it hang from her hand, the Aquila slowly spinning to reveal a side of bright silver, and then a reverse of duller grey.

"Our souls aren't weighed by how much we numbly pray, or how many of our faith's enemies we kill. They're weighed by the value we place on life. Especially a life they tell you doesn't matter. We destroy sorrows. We destroy daemons. We are the messengers."

Hadrak held her gaze for a moment, then bowed his head, exhaling. "Then you'd better take this." He pulled a thick signet ring from his right forefinger, and pushed down on the stag sigil to flip up a small data-communion port. He pressed it into Kim's hand. "If I remember right, you can plug it into a cash dispenser and pull out any sum you like. You'd better drain it all before Lucullis freezes all our assets."

"You're no comin' with us?" Rhen blurted, looking distraught.

The copper-haired man smiled. "I remember now that I joined the Guard to get away from somewhere like this. And it was Lucullis that let me find an honourable way to get away from the Guard. I owe it to him to return, just like I owe it to you to have a chance to escape."

Gunfire hammered on the other side of the building, and from outside there was a crashing explosion that shook the walls.

Hadrak clapped a hand onto Rhenat's shoulder, squeezing briefly, then hefted his gore-spattered chainsword. "You'd better run."

Kim grabbed Hadrak as he turned to leave. "Don't lie to Lucullis. He'll know."

Hadrak smiled again, grimly. "I know. That's why I won't ask you where you're going."

As the tall soldier darted away, Kim clasped Rhen's arm to get his attention. "Rhen, the tunnel entrance is beneath the overpass, you said?"

Rhen cuffed his nose. "Uh, yeah."

"I need you to get everybody to the rail tunnel and wait for me there. I'm going to try and find the last of my team. But if any of those inquisition people get too close then don't wait, just run. Understand?"

Rhen cracked his knuckles - terrified at the prospect, but wanting the chance of redemption. "Uh, okay. Sure thing Kimmie."

As Kim followed Hadrak in tearing off, this time back up the stairwell, Rhen realised that for the second time in a few short minutes everybody was looking at him.


+ + + + + +

Kimmie, Stan

Nara stumbled into the top floor dormitory, her glossy hair dishevelled and her figure-hugging dress greyed with dust and gunsmoke. She hunched over and splayed one hand against the wall, willing the scene before her to be an illusion. There was nobody left up here - only bullet holes, broken doors, and the bodies of the Refuge guards. She slammed her tattooed palm into the wall and let out a scream of frustrated rage.

"Shift?" a woman's voice echoed from somewhere up the corridor. It was speaking Vaxan, but didn't sound native. "Sarna, is that you?"

The voice's owner came bursting through the fire doors ahead of Nara. She was hard-limbed and olive-skinned, clad in simple black fatigues with frayed combat webbing cinched over her sweaty black tank-top. Strands of her dark hair had stuck to her face, but her eyes were coolly determined, and she carried a battered las-rifle in her hands.

For a moment the two women simply stared at each other. Then Nara, unarmed though she was, succumbed to the red closing in at the edges of her vision and snapped.

"Where are they?" she shrieked at the other woman. "What the frak have you done with them, you bloody little bitch!?"

The other woman brought her las-rifle up to her shoulder in a threatening gesture. The focusing barrel wasn't exactly pointed towards Nara, but it definitely wasn't pointed away from her either.

"Walk away." the other woman advised, her tone a warning one.

Self-preservation returning to the fore at the sight of the raised weapon, Nara took a hesitant step backward.

"You don't get to walk away from this, Nara."

The dishevelled ganger turned, towards a hulking figure that had appeared behind her. Streaked with blood and electric burn, the flickering ceiling lights washing white and black across his reflective eyes, was Konstantin Burakgazi.

"Stan." the armed woman blurted, her gun muzzle dropping a few centimetres.

[PaintSerf]

OOC - First half third of Nara and Stan's conversation moved to #42 (https://role-player.net/forum/showthread.php?t=80860&page=5&p=2837686&viewfull=1#post2837686). New content as follows:

“Forgive me for such a grievous oversight.” The Luminen rallied, determined at least not to be thrown off by this woman’s quirky behavior. Konstantin almost delicately plucked Nara’s hand from the air, and grinned before placing a kiss on her knuckles. His smile broadened as Nara’s nose scrunched with the contact from his moustache. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Ms. Tumasian. I’m Konstantin.”

“I’m very pleased to make yours as well,” Nara acknowledged, with another toothy smile as she slyly winked at her new tech-priest acquaintance. “I’ll see if I can find a way to forgive you, Stan.”

Nara gasped, and quickly reached out to touch his arm as her other hand covered her mouth.

“Oops. I wasn’t trying to be rude.” The chief enforcer stressed, and lightly squeezed her fingers on his arm to reassure him. “Do you mind if I called you Stan? We’re always contracting names around here, like Rhenat’s Rhen and Maria became ‘Ria, so that sort of slipped out without me thinking about it.”

“I don’t mind…and I appreciate that you asked. No one else did.” Konstantin’s moustache twitched as he frowned thoughtfully, and raised a curious brow as he glanced down at her. “What’s Nara short for?”

“Ah. I’m actually an exception to the rule.” She smiled, languidly shrugged, and almost coquettishly fluttered her eyelashes at him as she touched her cross tattooed hand over her heart. “I’m simply Nara.”

“I suspect that there’s nothing simple about you, Nara Tumasian.” The Luminen hypothesized. No sooner had the words come out, and he sensed his conversational theory was…correct.

“I’ll never tell.” Nara evaded, with a conspiratorial grin and a flicker of her gullwing eyebrows so devious that it made him chuckle. She gently bit her lip as she mulled a thought while regarding the tech-priest. “I’m curious, Stan. We’re getting along, so what was the issue with those other women you knew?”

“What do you mean?”

“Were they simply a bunch of miserable bitches who didn’t know a good thing when they saw him?” Nara casually asked. She quickly raked her eyes over his blood splattered abs, and then glanced at him with a speculatively arched brow. “Or do you secretly have a problem with us women-folk, Stan?”

“No.” He declared, firmly and decisively. “I had family, friends, and I served the Domina…”

Konstantin trailed away into silence as he remembered…a moment from his past…as he sat across from a wizened, elderly woman with age whitened blonde hair and thick lensed glasses. The woman was…was…unknown, and the Luminen was made lightheaded as he strained to remember who she was. He registered her gnarled, trembling hands, one of which rested on a metallic icon as he cradled the other. When she opened her eyes, they were the clear blue of a sky foreign to Vostroya, clouded by cataracts and further obscured by weary remorse as she squeezed his hand and reached –

The Luminen consciously took a breath as he remembered the cold, scratchy touch of dry fingertips against his cheek. He recognized the vision as another memory fragment, and wondered on whether an imprecise term such as haunted was correct...and after a further moment of consideration he knew it was...even if such an admission seemed to be incorrect...for some reason. Konstantin’s minute shiver went unnoticed as Nara had completely different priorities from him.

“Domina…” Nara murmured. She guffawed as she made the translation, and shot Konstantin an almost incredulous look as her mouth twisted into a pleasantly stupefied smile. “You had a mistress?”

“You know that language?” The Luminen asked, and started as he was drawn from his reverie. That language…some derivative of Gothic seemed…familiar, somehow, as if he should have known...

“Of course I don’t.” Nara corrected the tech-priest with a patient smile. “Lord Remmy paid to make one of his bastards some kind of preacher man, and his idea of spreading the good word is overriding the public address speakers and ranting at us in his oh-so-fancy spire gibberish.”

“Delightful.” Konstantin muttered. He once again tasted acidic bitterness as he thought of Vaxanhive and Vaxanide, and clenched his fists with a clink of copper capped fingertips.

“You have no idea.” Nara emphatically groaned. “The bastard’s bastard usually goes off at like three in the morning, babbling away with the blessed word.” She disparagingly rolled her eyes and shot the Luminen a wry look and knowing half-grin. “No points for guessing who the Dominus is.”

Konstantin slowly nodded as if he knew who Nara was talking about, even if he wasn’t completely sure, as he sensed that he should know the reference. It uncomfortably gnawed at him that he didn’t know. Nara softly clicked her tongue and shrugged as she speculatively glanced at Stan’s collar.

“So…” Nara breathed, as she fearlessly reached out and traced a slow fingertip along its boundary with the tech-priest’s bared chest. She grinned slyly as he flinched at her touch, and raised an intrigued brow. “Did your mistress make you wear this harness?”

“No. I wear this as it’s expected from my Brotherhood.” Konstantin clarified, somewhat irritably, as he was reminded of the collar’s presence by Nara’s question. He had no idea why they would, as the collar was highly uncomfortable. Regardless, this thing was coming off as soon as he could manage.

“Wait…Brotherhood?” Nara blinked, and her eyes widened as she searchingly gazed at him. “You’re saying there are more tech-priests out there like you?”

“Yes.” Konstantin affirmed. He squinted fractionally as he remembered a circle of bodies around him, and an almost electrical aura around him as a series of hands pressed against his body…he counted them...nine. “There were nine more senior brothers left in our congregation when I…departed…”

“Nine? Wow.” Nara whistled. She stared off for a moment and hummed as she absently shook her head. “Whoever’s responsible for all this.” The chief enforcer’s nails lightly scraped across Konstantin’s muscled pectoral as her hand dropped down from his collar. Her fingers circled in the air as she gestured at his abs, as he once again shied away from contact. “They have some real talent.”

“The Domina is a commendably Knowledgeable priestess of the Divisio Biologis.” The Luminen agreed, with an ingrained certainty that didn’t feel deserved with his current...issues…with his memory.

“Mmh-hmm.” Nara distractedly hummed in agreement. “I’m not surprised a woman’s touch made you the way you are, Stan.” She idly trailed her fingers through her lustrous hair. “You’re a really, really well-built man.”

“The standard definition is correct as well.” Konstantin murmured, somewhat preoccupied as he glanced with pondering wariness at the dark bands of metalwork buried beneath an almost impossibly...built…re-built…correct…muscled body. He ground his teeth slightly. “I…I wasn’t always like…this, Nara.”

“You’re a tech-priest, Stan. Of course you’ve had some work done.” Nara chided, and playfully smacked his arm. She gently bit down on the corner of her bottom lip as her hand lingered. “Your mistress has impeccable taste when making her men.” She smiled. “I’d like to think we’d get along fabulously.”

“She does…but you wouldn’t.” The Luminen agreed, and then countered, with that same undeserved certainty as before. He sensed the words were...correct, which made him wonder if he had a problem with his…no, nothis…with this Domina individual. It made him wonder -

“Why?” Nara mildly questioned, and Stan’s brows raised in surprise as inadvertently echoed his own thought. She curiously tilted her head up at him as she leaned in closer. “Is that because we’re women?”

“Ah…” Konstantin breathed, as a fresh sense of unease came on with Nara’s almost completely flat tone.

“What?” The chief enforcer giggled and offered him a conspiratorially girlish grin, even as she pressed her fingernails into the dense muscles of his arm, “Everyone knows women hate other women, Stan.”

“I…” Konstantin hesitated in the face of Nara’s contradictory signals. The Luminen sensed he was in a field of conversational landmines, and from his earlier…memories…and his reaction to Nara’s earlier confrontation, he knew that he wasn’t skilled at navigating his way out from it. “I don’t…”

“You don’t think we’re hardwired to treat other women as competition for a man?” Nara voiced the observation on his behalf with a cheerful lit and dangerously narrowed eyes.

“Nara.” Konstantin firmly interjected, and once again raised his palms to forestall Nara, as he sought a direct and honest means to escape from this latest conversational trap. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” Nara assured him with an almost dismissive shrug. She giggled and shoved his arm, to no discernable effect, which made her smile appreciatively. “Relax. I’m only teasing you again.”

“Why?” The Luminen questioned through his gritted teeth as he regarded the enforcer chief.

“I like to have fun.” Nara admitted, with a languid what can I say shrug. She thoughtfully pursed her lips together as she gently, almost distractedly, brushed her thumb across his arm. There was the slightest trace of uncharacteristic tension in in her brow as Konstantin could vaguely see flickers behind her eyes – similar to the lights he had observed from the youthful ganger who had recovered the stave.

“Is there something on your mind?” Konstantin hazarded to query. Correct. Interesting. He encouragingly invited Nara to proceed with both hands opened and fingers splayed. She emitted a soft, airy breath, ambiguously between a giggle and a sigh, as she raked her fingers through her hair.

“Oh, I’ve always got something going on.” Nara demurred as she smiled slightly, enigmatically. She lightly danced her fingers against her temple as her mouth quirked sideways. “It goes with the gig.”

The Luminen could not help but notice the slightly rueful undercurrent in Nara’s evasiveness. She stared off in distant, thoughtful wordlessness as she chewed her bottom lip and continued to idly stroke her thumb against his arm. Konstantin rested a hand on Nara’s to still the chief enforcer’s fidget, and draw her back into the moment as he prompted her. “Is there something in particular on your mind, Nara?”

“Actually…yeah, there is.” Nara murmured. She blinked and exhaled a soft laugh as she stared at the polymer sheathed hand that dwarfed hers. The chief enforcer shifted her hand, and interlaced her thin fingers with his. “I don’t get to have many normal conversations, too.” She offered the tech-priest a somewhat shy little smile. “I guess we’re both more alike than either of us would’ve expected, Stan.”

That…that sounds familiar… The Luminen’s brows reflexively knitted together as he processed Nara’s words, and could swear he had...thought that before. He shivered as he remembered that we are both more alike than either of us would care to admit…not that we ever will. His fingers squeezed Nara’s as he desperately tried to chase down who he had made the comparison with…and why the khek hadn’t he made an effort to forge a bond with this person?

Konstantin grunted as he blinked, and his expression furrowed even deeper as he heard the scrape of varnished nails against rubber. Nara squeezed his hand back in turn with modest, encouraging pressure as she smiled wryly at him. “Is there something in particular on your mind, Stan?”

“Actually…yeah, there is.” The tech-priest responded, and the two shared a muted laugh. Konstantin stared down at his and Nara’s conjoined hand, and then withdrew it as he demonstratively gestured at their close proximity in the confines of the small utilitarian was room. He frowned, and raised a dubious brow. “We both must have some extremely khekked up lives if this seems like a normal conversation.”

Correct.

“Honey, normal is vastly overrated.” Nara deftly and assuredly countered.

“Perhaps.” Konstantin conceded, somewhat cautiously.

He was unable to do more than admit that Nara may be correct without his own…memories…to compare her assertion back against. This…status is…vexing, and unacceptable.The tech-priest’s thought process was derailed as he felt Nara’s small hands trace their way across his chest as they once again secured themselves around his waist. She seemed somewhat pensive as she spoke.

“Although…talking with you like we’re the basic, normal sort has been…surprisingly fun, Stan.”

“I’ve enjoyed this conversation as well, Nara.”

The admission was reflexively spoken…yet he realized he genuinely meant it. The Luminen observed a slight distortion in the greyscale gradient of Nara’s face as she blushed at his words. Konstantin honestly and openly returned the chief enforcer’s megawatt smile as his hands gently encircled hers on his waist.

“Although,” He whispering almost conspiratorially, drawing Nara in closer as he once again removed her hands from his body. “I haven’t enjoyed the excessive teasing quite so much much.”

“I don’t only tease, Stan.” Nara murmured, with a coy wink that made the tech-priest flush mildly as she twirled out of his slack grasp. Her deep laughter faded into her signature airy trill as she composed herself, and dismissively waved her tattooed hand. “Okay, okay - enough fun and games.”

“Thank you.” The Luminen graciously inclined his head, more than a little relieved to move on.

“So.” Nara softly exclaimed, as she clapped her hands together. She pressed her fingertips against her lips as she calculatingly regarded the tech-priest for a moment. “I’d like to know something, Stan.”

Konstantin was silent for a moment as he mulled over Nara’s request. He had his doubts about how much he knew…especially about himself…but weighed it against his own desire to discover more. Perhaps her questions will help me remember? He gestured towards her with both hands open.

“Do I have any competition?” Nara inquired.

“What…precisely do you mean?” Konstantin questioned, his voice edged with a wary suspicion as she stared at him with keen eyed interest. Why am I so worried we haven’t moved on…

“I wasn’t completely joking around about other women.” Nara clarified, with the faintest hint of a smile. She poked the tech-priest’s densely muscled chest and confidently met his cautious, wary expression. “I want to know about my competition for you, Stan.”

“Oh.” Konstantin managed. He almost instantaneously recoiled back when Nara’s finger determinately traced down his grooved abdomen. The Luminen grunted in surprise, and gritted his metal capped teeth as he realized he’d flinched away and backed himself into the corner. Such a bad move.

“Oh, indeed.” Nara purred. The enforcer chief deviously grinned as she stepped forward and closed what slight distance remained between them in the cramped washroom with a click of her heels.

“You said you were going to stop teasing.” The Luminen tersely reminded Nara, somewhat flustered by the resumed invasion campaign of his personal space. He steeply frowned at the chief enforcer, and once again firmly pushed her hand away from where it lingered near his muscular stomach.

“I’m being very serious right now, Stan.” Nara stressed, as she stared at the Luminen with an intensity which rendered him speechless. The undercurrent of her smile was certainly not girlish playfulness. “So…is there a miss or missus Martian in your life?”

Mars…

“No.” Konstantin answered, with a decisive firmness that surprised him - given his impaired memory and only the vaguest recollections of his past life. “No. There’s not a female in my life.”

“What a shame.” Nara murmured, and sounded anything but disappointed as her smile widened. “So…you’re saying that your mistress never had her way with you?”

“Never.” Konstantin immediately and unequivocally declared. He frowned as another self-truth came back to him. He blinked and hissed with muted pain from within his chest as well as his frakking eyes, as he was struck by yet another revelation. “I’ve never…”

“That’s her loss if she didn’t -” Nara abruptly paused; open mouthed as she belatedly heard and processed the Luminen’s admission. She blinked, closed her mouth, and searchingly met his eyes. “Stan.”

“Nara.” Konstantin muttered, profoundly uncomfortable as he glanced away from her scrutiny.

“Stan…would you look at me? Please?” Nara softly asked, as she reached out and curled her hands underneath his chin. Konstantin reluctantly yielded to the delicate, prompting pressure and looked at Nara, and into her wide, inquisitive eyes. “You…you’ve never been with a woman, have you?”

“No…” The Luminen’s muted admission was clouded by a dark pall of shame. “I have not…”

“So…you’re a virgin.” Nara kept a serious expression as she cradled his chin. “So what? It’s okay.”

“No.” Konstantin objected, the words a hiss of constrained tension through his clenched teeth. He didn’t know why…but he knew, he knew it…it…it… “It’s not okay.”

“Stan, really…it’s okay.” Nara soothed, as she reassuringly stroked her thumbs on his cheeks. The critical scrutiny remained in her eyes, even as she smiled unabashedly at the tech-priest. “It’s only sex.”

“It’s not.” The Luminen seethed in denial. He stiffly shook his head, and brushed off Nara’s hands. He didn’t know why…but he knew it was important…there had been an…expectation… Konstantin dully noted the inexplicable, inescapable sense of creeping grief that coursed within him. “I…I was…I was expected…”

“I mean…sure…” Nara hesitated, and paused as she chose her next words with great deliberation. “Maybe it’s a little…unexpected, but that’s really nothing to be so ashamed about.”

“I was expected…” Konstantin insisted, as he struggled to process what the expectation was and why... “I was expected -”

“So you haven’t frakked a girl…again, so what?” Nara snapped at him. The chief enforcer’s exasperation was almost palpable as she sighed and pressed her fingertips to her lips. She assessed the tech-priest as she took a moment to collect herself, and sighed again as she gestured towards him.

“Look…if it helps, I’m sorry about coming onto you so hard…I mean, I didn’t know you –”

“I didn’t know myself...” Konstantin interrupted. I don’t know myself. He winced at the admission, and ground his teeth together with a metallic scrape as his lack of knowledge gnawed at him. “I…I only just remembered that I was expected…and I didn’t…” He grimaced as he glanced down at Nara. “I don’t remember why...only that it mattered and I didn’t.”

The chief enforcer frowned pensively at him, eyes wide with soulful concern as she observed the outward signs of his internal struggle. “You’ve really had a number done on you, haven’t you?”

Correct. The Luminen absently whispered his internal confirmation. “Correct.”

Konstantin dejectedly sagged back against the cool tile, hunched over to brace his palms on his thighs and head hung in shame. He started in surprise as Nara came forward and threaded her arms inside his to encircle his broad back and shoulders. The sudden, extensive physical contact and tightness with which the chief enforcer…hugged him…was an unexpected impropriety, and he reflexively raised his hands to once again extricate himself…until he recognized the gestures humanity.

Humanity. The tech-priest’s face tightened as he stared down at the young woman latched firmly around his torso. Konstantin anxiously brushed his fingertips together with muted, metallic clicks as he attempted to mentally grapple with the concept of humanity…and promptly abandoned that exercise in futility. He bit back an exasperated sigh as he tried to respond to Nara’s spontaneity.

“Uh…Nara –” Konstantin grunted at the vibration in his chest at Nara’s languidly hummed ‘mm-hmm’, and the slight pressure of her smile at his reaction. He belatedly turned a second exasperated sigh into an effort to clear his curiously dry throat as he stared down at the enforcer chief. “You shouldn’t…”

Nara exhaled softly, disappointedly, as if she had been unexpectedly awoken from a pleasant dream. She flicked her hair aside as she lifted her head from his chest, with her now-familiar curious expression. “…and why’s that, Stan?”

Because you’re making me very uncomfortable, Nara. The Luminen thought, much to his chagrin. It struck him to even think of such a honest response – and let alone vocalize it - as…improper, shameful and unbecoming…and wrong, as he knew it was only because he was a man. He struggled with that realization, and the ability to articulate a response as he dealt with the immediate sensory overload that Nara’s slight movements against him had inflicted.

Konstantin had inhaled sharply at the warmth of her slowly exhaled breath, and his whole body had tense at the gentle caress of her subtly perfumed hair across his chest. The tech-priest continued his futile attempts to swallow as he stared down at Nara, who smiled deviously as she clutched him tighter. He stifled a grunt as her nails scraped against his back, and shuddered as the silken fabric of her dress glided along his torso - and ‘inadvertently’ lowered the slinky garment’s suggestively modest neckline.

“Konstantin. My eyes are up here.” Nara softly scolded, with palpably playful mockery – and a wickedly sinister, uninhibitedly knowing smile - as she subtly arched her back to further emphasize her bust line.

As if I could’ve failed to notice… Konstantin sighed exasperatedly with the warmth of embarrassment on his cheeks. He winced as he painfully rolled his eyes – which only made Nara richly guffaw as he did it – and pointedly moved his gaze from her décolletage, to her twinkling eyes.

“Ah…” The tech-priest almost gasped, as he consciously took a breath and attempted to slog through the mental fog as Nara expectantly fluttered her lashes at him with a coy smile, “Ah…um…your dress -”

“My dress, huh?” Nara slowly responded. She quickly peered down, and met the tech-priest’s eyes with a devilishly triumphant grin and a doubtful quirk of her brows. “So what about my dress?”

“You…you’re getting –” Konstantin winced even as he fumbled over his words. This…is going well.

“I’m getting some Red on it?” Nara quipped, as she theatrically waggled her gullwing brows.

Konstantin’s hearty groan made the chief enforcer sort with amusement. She continued to snigger, as much at his disapproving frown as the moment itself. He sighed and shook his head. “You’re terrible.”

“I have my moments.” Nara confessed with a lopsided grin. It was as rapidly subsumed as she re-composed herself and became deathly serious. “It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last.”

“Nara, still – ”

“Stan.” Nara’s expression did not change as she calmly and firmly interrupted him. “My dress is a dress. I’ve got more.” The chief enforcer mask slipped back off as Nara trilled airily and smiled brilliantly, as she nestled her head back against his chest with a contented sigh. “Now shut up and hug me, damn it.”

“Yes ma’am.” Konstantin grumbled with - even he had to admit - was an unseemly edge of petulance.

“Good boy.” Nara murmured with overdramatic saccharine warmth, and an indulgent chuckle as Konstantin’s teeth and fingertips ground together with a cascade of clicks. Ok, I deserved that…

The tech-priest muted another sigh as he acquiesced, and somewhat awkwardly hunched down return her unreserved embrace. He delicately wrapped his arms around Nara, and lightly rested his hands on her back. Nara hummed amusedly at his reluctance, and gently guided his head onto her shoulder.

“Relax...” The chief enforcer breathily whispered in his ear, as she soothingly ran her other hand across his back and shoulder blades. “Just relax and go with it, Stan…a little hug won’t break me…”

Konstantin hesitated for a moment longer before he relented, and obligingly tightened his hold on Nara. It…was undeniably strange, to have someone else in his arms like this, and despite the ganger’s insistence that he wouldn’t break her…the Luminen couldn’t help but notice how comparatively fragile Nara was compared to his muscular - optimized for his role in the grand design - bulk…this is…

This…isn’t…unpleasant… Konstantin admitted, somewhat numbly as he settled deeper into their embrace, his face nestled in the lustrous strands of Nara’s inky black hair. She’s soft and warm…curious…instinctively sharp…vivacious…ruthless, certainly…and dangerous…yet elegant…a stiletto, swathed in velvet and awaiting its moment…The tech-priest subconsciously assessed, distracted as he was by the underlying floral scent of her perfume…which brought to mind unbidden images of a fresh aired mountaintop or tropical inlets…as if she did not belong on Vaxanide.

Correct. The tech-priest tensed at the latest of these equally unbidden…affirmations, as well as the fact he had even been able to so vividly visualize landscapes of unspoiled, beautiful nature – the likes of which he also knew was correct that he had never seen first-hand before in his life. He shifted discontentedly, even as Nara continued to idly stroke her nails across the length of his back.

“Nara –”

The chief enforcer softly shushed him. She gently restrained him with a hand on the shoulder, and her other curled around the back of his neck as her cheek lightly brushed against his. Konstantin shivered at the warmth of Nara’s breath as she whispered in his ear.

“I’ll be your first.”

[Azazeal849]

Kimmie, Stan

"You don't get to walk away from this one, Nara."

He won't get to walk away from this one.

Kim blinked.

No doubt the warp-scanner screens of the Furia's auger room would have meant more to someone trained to use them. No doubt to a tech-priest the revolving auger bars and the low chattering of the room's cogitators would have meant something else again. Kim wondered what Konstantin saw with his silver eyes as he entered, laced his hands into the Cog, and bowed to the congregation of machines. She allowed him the delay, out of respect for his parallel faith. After all, Kim remembered thinking, she wasn't going to let him walk away from this one.

"Thanks for coming, Stan." she began, hoping that the familiarity of a first name would put the luminen at ease - or at least signal to him that she wasn't looking to open their conversation with hostility.

Konstantin looked around at the glass screens and hololithic projectors. "The sensorium?" he queried simply, seemingly brushing off her opening statement, and putting a dent in Kim's hopes of an early rapport.

"I thought you might appreciate some neutral ground."

Konstantin folded his hands over his wide belt, either side of the grinning Cog skull that formed the clasp. "All of this ship is the Omnissiah's ground, confessor Raeden."

"It's the Emperor's too, Stan. And you don't have to call me confessor Raeden. Kimmie is fine."

Konstantin gave no particular reaction to her second attempt at familiarity. Kim bit the inside of her cheek. Martians don't think the same way, she reminded herself.

"The Omnissiah's will built this ship and keeps it running, Kimmie." the luminen said. Despite his monotonal Martian inflection, he was somehow able to put a disapproving stress on the name.

"And the Emperor protects our souls when it dives into the Warp." Kim answered, "I don't see any reason why it can't be both."

She was pleased to see that her counter gave the luminen pause - or at least, he felt no need to take the argument further. Kim padded back to the globular hololith in the middle of the room, the navigational carta astrum that dominated the chamber from its raised dais. The stars it displayed were shimmering pinpricks, webbed together by the constellation lines of warp channels and astropathic ducts.

"You know," Kim mused to Konstantin, half-turning to look back at him as she rested a hand on the hololith projector. "I always liked looking up at the stars when I was little, wondering what was out there."

The confession didn't seem to move the luminen, so she pointed into the hololith, the projected lights playing across her hand.

"Look at these nav-charts, Stan. There's 11 Imperial worlds in this subsector alone, each with hundreds of different cultures. And none of them would give you the same answer on exactly who the Emperor is or how he works. Every ecclesiarch with a grain of sense knows that we can't hope to force the exact same doctrine on every citizen of the Imperium. Our missionaries have done their work on worlds with customs and beliefs stranger than you or me could even imagine - and they succeed because they adapt and find a middle ground with the indigens. They focus on what's universal instead of what's different."

She turned her eyes from the glowing projection to look back at Konstantin. The luminen was impassive, although he probably knew by now where she was going with this.

"It's one of the first litanies they teach us when we apply to the Missionarius Galaxia, when half of us are still full of ideas about changing the galaxy and bending it to His will." Kim had been expecting herself to smile wistfully, at the memories of her own youthful inexperience, and of the ironclad certainty that had once come with it. She shook her head instead. "They tell us, You are His child, just as I am."

She withdrew her hand from the hololith, and the patch of stars she had shadowed sprang back into being.

"I wouldn't claim to know what the Ad Mech teaches, but from what I've seen there's more similarity than difference." She hitched up a self-deprecating grin. "Unfortunately I've got no idea how anything on this ship works, so I'll use a simpler example. The lasgun I'm taking to Vaxanide is a Volpone pattern. The metal parts of it will have come from one refinery, and the plastek parts will have come from another. The focusing lenses might have been machined in a whole different manufactorum. The grenade launcher on it didn't even come from the same planet, but the tech priests made it so it all fits, and it keeps me alive. How could they build that and not acknowledge that the parts work together to make the whole?"

"I see." said Konstantin. "You brought me here to lecture me on unity."

"Not to lecture, Stan. To talk."

"You would do better to talk to your own disciples first. Every altercation between us has been down to their ignorance. I am a common variable but I am not a cause."

Here we go, Kim remembered thinking to herself. "I have talked to them, Stan. But there's two sides to every story and I wanted to hear yours."

The luminen's moustache twitched. "To devote any more time to those counterproductive exchanges would only be a further waste of energy."

"I'm asking." Kim said seriously. "Because I don't want any more stunts like that EMP grenade Sarna rigged to your alcove."

Despite his hulking, augmented physique, Konstantin looked almost cagey for a moment.

"But I've already assigned Sarna penance for that." Kim said, brushing off the event to try and lessen the luminen's discomfort as she pressed on. "Erdene, Sarna and Anais all said you questioned them about motherhood. It'll help if you understand, Stan - questions like that can be...sensitive when you're not from Vostroya."

Konstantin's stance hardened again. "I would be cautious in your assumptions of what I do and do not understand."

"Well let me tell you what I understand, Stan. I made the effort to learn some Vostroyan history when I was told you were joining the team. I know the phenomenal value that Vostroya places on its firstborn sons. And I know the pressure it puts on the rest of you to make sons of your own."

"You have the Intellect to know these things, confessor Raeden, but you do not truly Comprehend them."

Kim had known the answer to that one. "Comprehension is the key to all things. That’s what the Ad Mech teaches, right?” She hooked her thumbs around the belt of her robe. “Alright then, help me to understand."

Konstantin paused to consider. "Very well. Has your duty as a missionary ever commanded that you become a mother?"

Kim thought of Cian. "No." she answered, with a slightly strained laugh. "Almost the exact opposite, in fact."

"Is there someone you would have wanted to have children with, if it had been possible?"

Kim hadn't expected Konstantin to touch on such a raw nerve so blatantly. He couldn't have known, she reasoned.

But perhaps the insular tech-priest was better at reading ordinary people's emotions than she had given him credit for.

She decided to be honest. "Well, I didn't think quite that far ahead but...yes. There was one man I might have built a life with."

The skin around Konstantin's silver eyes creased a little, as if he too were fighting an unwelcome recollection. The similarity surprised Kim.

"What was his name, if I may ask?" the luminen said after a moment.

"Cian. It was while I was working among the indigens on Adhara." The words brought a dull ache into Kim's throat as the muscles around her voicebox threatened to close off. She looked back at the hololith for a moment, so Konstantin wouldn't see her swallowing away the lump. "But I had a duty to do, and...in the end I had to choose."

"Would it have been impossible for you to be both a preacher and a mother?"

Kim didn't trust her voice not to crack, so she answered with a smile and a shrug. She coughed into her hand. "Would it be so simple for you to be both a priest and a father, Stan?" she reversed the question, trying to change the subject.

"Such weaknesses are forbidden in the brotherhood." Konstantin was impassive - but it was a guarded, concealing kind of impassive.

It was worth her own pain, Kim remembered thinking, if she could bridge the gap between Terran and Martian with their common humanity. "And yet," she pressed, "A Vostroyan of your age would have been expected to have children by now. I can understand that conflict, Stan."

"There is no conflict. I control my emotions."

"The rest of us should be so lucky."

"That is their concern." He was closing off again, sensing an attack.

"All I'm saying," Kim tried to explain, "Is that's why the others react badly when you ask them about having kids and their place in the world. Wherever we come from, we're going to have strong feelings about things like that."

"I have such feelings, and I control them."

"So you're actually saying..." Kim shook her head. She wondered if she would ever understand the mechanicus. It didn't take Martian conditioning to be able to give cool, rational advice - but almost everyone cracked. And when they did, they needed someone who was still cool and calm to guide them back out of their own feelings. For the others, that person was usually Kim.

And now, in a bizarre reversal, she was trying to forge a bridge of understanding with Konstantin through those exact same emotions. He was Martian, but he was still human - despite himself, he had shown that to her several times in the last minute.

"Alright," she sallied. "How about this. If you were ordered to do your Vostroyan duty, to father a child - with someone you didn't know." She spread her hands. "Just for argument's sake, let's say with me - you would be able to go through with it? No questions asked?"

Stan went cold - so cold that Kim suddenly worried she had touched on something that was almost as close to home for the luminen as Cian and Adhara were for her. "I would fulfil my duty." the augmented giant said. "Reluctantly." he added.

Despite his deadpan delivery, Kim couldn't suppress a laugh. "Ouch!" she said, pressing her palm against her heart and temporarily covering her Aquila necklace. "And that's because...?" she asked, still smiling a little.

"Because." the luminen said. "Our hypothetical child would be a Raeden."

In that moment, Kim had felt as if he had taken up his fulgurite staff and smashed the steel end into her face.

"Stan." Kim said again, her hands re-tensing slightly on the cold metal of her lasgun. "Who is this? How do you know her?"

Konstantin paid as much notice to the lasgun as a baseline human would of the threat display of a tiny avian. He turned his silver eyes instead to regard Nara.

“Have you not been able to extrapolate yet, Kimmie? This is Nara Tumassian, the Refuge’s sergeant at arms.”

“Who…?” Nara’s gaze whiplashed between Stan and Kim, her eyes wide. “Who are you?”

“I used to work with Stan.” Kim replied frostily.

“You’re...you were a scavenger?”

Kim gnawed her lip. “Here perhaps. I’ve been whatever they needed me to be. I’ve also been a confessor, a missionary...a wanderer.”

Tears suddenly glistened in her eyes.

“And I’ve been a heretic.” Kim said reluctantly.

Konstantin felt his skin prickle uncomfortably. ”Reluctantly.” he had added - and Kim had laughed (“Ouch!”) as if the answer were supposed to be a criticism of her own shortcomings, rather than his. Faced with the too-clear image, there was a certain poignant, disconcerting similarity with the way Nara had teased him with the same gesture.

"And that's because...?" the confessor had asked, the afterimage of a smile still clinging to her face, even through the greyscale filter of Konstantin's augmented vision.

Because last time I joined the priesthood to avoid it, the luminen thought, but it would be unacceptable to voice those words aloud. "Because." he said. "Our hypothetical child would be a Raeden."

Kim blinked, violent sparks of life-force suddenly fulgurating behind her eyes. "Just what's that supposed to mean, Stan?"

"Burakgazi is a devotional name." Konstantin attempted to clarify, feeling the acid-burn across his skin that threatened to ignite his voltagheist tattoos. He, as he had never been allowed to forget, would never carry the name. "Only warriors of true faith may carry it."

He had thought that the confession would forestall the confessor's affront. But instead, Kim shook her head in exasperation. "Goodbye, Stan."

Konstantin's brow furrowed in consternation, causing the silver orbs of his eyes to scratch painfully against their sockets. What had he said? "Your emotional response is premature. I-"

"That was low, Stan." the confessor accused him venomously. Her arms were crossed across the front of her crewman's jumpsuit; defensive, angry, hurt. "Really frakking low. Is pushing emotional people's buttons just to prove your point a frakking game to you?" She exhaled, somewhere between a bitter laugh and a teeth-baring snarl. "Golden Throne, I really thought you were just being clueless with the others..."

Konstantin took the unusual, borderline unacceptable step of moving himself to bar the door and stop her leaving. Perhaps he was not as in control of his wrath as he professed, but it would not have been correct to allow the confessor’s erroneous conclusion to go unchallenged.

Kim was definitely not in control of her wrath.

"Get out of my way Stan, or I swear to the God-Emperor..."

Konstantin fought the baseline urge to grit his teeth. "I need you to calm down and listen, Kimmie."

"And now you're going to try and play the reasonable one.” Kim looked up into his silver eyes and slowly shook his head. “You frakking prick. Tell you what, Stan. Maybe you can keep control of your frakking emotions. But you watch several thousand of the people you were supposed to save get thrown to the fire and tell me if you're still a warrior of true faith after that, you secondborn piece of shit."

That final, hypocritical barb, thrown out of pure animal instinct to wound, had cut far deeper than it had any logical right to.

“You are no heretic, Kimmie.” Konstantin rumbled softly. “And it would be no shame for a child to bear the name Raeden.”

Kim felt an incongruous, ugly laugh rising in her throat and threatening to spill out. “That’s not what you said back on the Furia. And you’d be right. What do you think the name Raeden means on Adhara, after they told me to join up with the dissenters so they could target them better? Do you think I could go back there, even if I had the choice?”

Konstantin hesitated, pausing to process his turbulent thoughts. “I didn’t give...adequate context to my statement. I meant that a child should not have to bear my name, not that it should not have to bear yours. I was…” The luminen paused, and briefly marvelled that he did not feel the sense of shame that might have accompanied the baseline hesitation. “I was disowned too. I was not a Firstborn, not a warrior. But I was still expected to father warriors. And I...I joined the fulgurite brotherhood to avoid that responsibility.”

Kim faltered a little. “You were...what? I didn’t...”

"You didn't know what was expected of him." Nara broke in acidly. "Because you didn't ask."

"Because." Stan had said. "Our hypothetical child would be a Raeden."

Kim blinked, utterly thrown by the unexpected insult. "Just what's that supposed to mean, Stan?"

"Burakgazi is a devotional name. Only warriors of true faith may carry it."

Kim shook her head in stunned disbelief. Who was he to accuse her of losing faith, when he knew absolutely nothing of the circumstances behind it?

Because he didn’t even bother to ask! Because you didn’t ask, said another voice, cutting across the memory in Nara’s bitter Vaxan hive-cant. But the Kim in the memory couldn’t hear her.

Standing in the cold light of the sensorium, Kim felt painful black fingers constrict around her chest, and knew that the conversation was over. "Goodbye, Stan."

The luminen frowned. "Your emotional response is premature. I-"

Kim remembered the luminen's rigid stance. She remembered feeling attacked by the unyielding arrogance of it. But what if it hadn't been certainty in his stance at all, but un-certainty?

"That was low, Stan." She remembered the words spilling out of her, driven by bitter, instinctive backlash. "Really frakking low. Is pushing emotional people's buttons just to prove your point a frakking game to you? Golden Throne, I really thought you were just being clueless with the others..."

She shoved herself away from the carta astra hololith and stalked towards the door. The luminen took a step sideways, barring her exit with his augmented bulk.

"Get out of my way Stan, or I swear to the God-Emperor..."

"I need you to calm down and listen, Kimmie."

"And now you're going to try and play the reasonable one. You frakking prick. Tell you what, Stan. Maybe you can keep control of your frakking emotions."

It welled up before she could stop it, the one thing she knew would strike the Vostroyan priest in the emotional heart he professed so arrogantly not to have.

"But you watch several thousand of the people you were supposed to save get thrown to the fire and tell me if you're still a warrior of true faith after that, you secondborn piece of shit."

Kim saw, with the clarity of raw etched emotion, how badly she had let her own demons twist that exchange.

Stan saw, with the clarity of artificial engrams that had never been intended to carry such emotion, a new perspective on the confessor’s anguish. It was the same pain that he carried, and that so vexed his sense of self-control. But she has no voltagheists to absorb her wrath for her.

"Alright.” Kim said, in a voice that was almost a whisper. Her expression bore the heavy weight of sudden, upsetting clarity. “I understand now. That's why you were so interested in asking us about children, wasn't it Stan?"

Stan clenched and unclenched his gloved hands. "And my phrasing was...unacceptable. What I should have said, when we talked of names...was that I would want my sons to be free of the burden of mine.”

Kim looked at the floor, and then back up at the luminen. "How did it take us forgetting and re-learning everything?” She shook her head in self-reproach. “Is that what it takes to have enough perspective to see clearly?"

Stan flexed his hands again, the metal-capped fingertips clacking together. "How did it take us forgetting and re-learning everything to have the courage to admit that we're more alike than not?"

He clenched his fist with a soft squeak of rubber and knew that the observation was correct. He was not like Him, no. Never. But perhaps, he was a little like her.

[Azazeal849]

Kimmie, Stan

“I don’t think we can go back.” Kim said, monotone.

“I will not go back.” Konstantin amended forcefully. “Not to him. Not to the inquisition.”

“The inqui…?” Nara’s eyes widened. “But you’re...scavengers…”

She looked almost panicked, backing up against the wall and shaking her head..

“No. They’re just a conspiracy theory. Just a story to frighten kids. You can’t be…”

“They’re real, Nara.” Kim assured her grimly. “And so’s your Purple Prince - though you won’t have liked to meet him if your boss Petrosyan had actually finished his ritual.”

“There is a lot that you do not know, Nara.” Stan stated levelly. “But I will give you the chance to learn. And I will be judging if you are worthy of that knowledge.”

A cold sweat had broken out on Nara’s forehead, shining through the dust and sticking strands of hair to her skin. She clenched and unclenched her fists. “I…”

“You told me that you were drawn to the Refuge to better yourself. Prove to me now that you are still on that mission.” Konstantin huffed through his moustache, his augmented ears twitching slightly. “You can start with them.”

Both of the women looked momentarily confused. Nara began, “Who-?” before their baseline hearing also picked up the sound of stumbling footsteps on the stairs. Four sweating, shell-shocked figures blundered into the hallway. Stan recognised Erik, the young ganger, who had loaded himself up with a battered shotgun and - to Konstantin’s disapproval - his cog-toothed mechanicus staff. He dropped both as soon as he caught sight of the luminen blocking his path. Konstantin could see the fear darting like caged lightning inside his head.

He has no fight left in him. He is no threat. If anything, I should be protecting him.

Behind Erik was the barmaid from the lounge, and the young cook who had brought Nara the sponge down in the kitchen quarters. Between them they were supporting an almost comatose Ellen. The doe-eyed young woman was rag-dolled in their arms, her bare feet closer to trailing than to supporting her own weight. Her head was sunk down against her chest, and her shoulders were heaving.

“I didn’t want…” she was whispering, over and over again, oblivious to Stan and the others. “I didn’t want…”

“What happened to her?” Kim shot at the four survivors, and Stan recognised the steely protective edge in her voice.

“I don’t know.” the cook replied, seemingly on the edge of tears himself. “We found her in her room…”

“Witchcraft.” Nara murmured, almost too low for the baseline humans to hear.

Kim snapped round. “What?”

Nara visibly swallowed. “She was under Vamassian’s spell. He liked touching the girls, especially the ones that were due to go uphive.”

“Karine was like that too…when Vamassian died it must have...” Kim trailed off, and then he eyes widened as something flashed inside her mind. “Oh Golden Throne. How many other children are uphive right now…?”

Konstantin was suddenly aware of the weight of the seneschal’s dataslate in his pocket. With that, and with-

“Nara.” the luminen deadpanned. Nara turned reluctantly towards him, looking uncertain. “I think I will need your knowledge yet again. Where might I find a record of the slaves that Vamassian sold, and to who?”

Nara opened her mouth; closed it again. “We...Vamassian didn’t exactly keep records…”

“Because they’re just frakking cattle to you?” Kim challenged. Stan saw her finger shift on the trigger guard of her shotgun. He flexed his hand, ready to snatch the gun muzzle aside with a magnetic lure if necessary.

“How many can you remember?” Stan asked stonily.

“A few…” Nara shifted uncomfortably. “But listen...Stan...you might be better off not finding them. Even if Vamassian didn’t bewitch them he...broke them in...you know, when they first arrived…”

She trailed off in the face of a furious, damning silence.

“And you just let it happen?” Kim hissed, dangerously.

“It was…” Nara stopped whatever she was about to say, and turned her nervous, lapine eyes towards Konstantin. She visibly gathered herself, straightening her shoulders and dropping her voice to a neutral, reasonable tone. “Look, Stan...the only way to make a real difference down here is to have a way in with the people who pull the strings. And to get their ear you need to do them a few favours...but once you’re up there rubbing shoulders with them…”

The luminen didn’t speak, but he did move faster than his hulking frame indicated. Nara let out a little shriek of alarm as she was pinned up against the wall. Hayk’s knife was in Konstantin’s hand, called by a magnetic lure, and now it was resting a centimetre from her throat.


“You’re usually a good liar, Nara Tumassian.” the luminen rumbled. A dull glow was pulsing under his skin as he fought to keep his voltagheist electoos from spitting their indiscriminate fury at everyone in the hallway. “But I can see your life force.”

"What?" Nara stammered. The alarm in her eyes to genuine fear. A tear trembled on her right eyelid before spilling down her cheek. "Stan...please..."

The knife stayed in place, but did not press forward.

“I’m sorry…” Nara whispered. “Half an hour ago we were laughing. What’s happened? Let me help…”

The knife withdrew, an infinitesimal fraction - too small to be noticed by any but Konstantin.

Even knowing her crimes, and suspecting a number of others, she had been the one to remind him of what he was. Not just a weapon, as he would have had me. Perhaps no longer a member of the Fulgurite brotherhood. But still Konstantin. Still a luminen. Still a man. Still, against all that Mars considers to be correct, a human.

A flawed human - rendered not in the clearly delineated binary of divine logic, but in the shades of perception and experience, circumstance and opportunity.

“Yes.” he growled quietly. “You will help. Prove that you're a better person than you have been thus far, Nara.”

He released the Refuge enforcer, who shuffled back against the wall with her lips clamped firmly shut.

“She can’t come with us.” Kim said. “The kids’ll want her head.” Her stony expression suggested that she did not plan on stopping them.

“She will not be going with you.” Konstantin corrected her. “She will be coming with me. But first, I need to clear your way out of here.”

Kim looked at him incredulously. “Past a gunship? Stan, that’s suicide. You need to run, there’s a tunnel out by the-”

“Which you won’t get far along if the overwatch sees you on its augers. Trust my logic this time, Kimmie.”
Stan realised that his lips had quirked into a wry smile. It was unexpected, but not unpleasant. He felt it fall from his face once more as a graver consideration entered his thoughts.

“Look after Karine especially.” The young girl’s face glitched over his silver vision with painful clarity. “And reassure her that the Duke will never be returning to haunt her.”

He turned to Erik, his silver eyes roving downward to the metal staff that had fallen from the ganger’s shaking hands.

“Erik, my stave if you would.”


+ + + + + +

(Placeholder for PaintSerf’s Stan vs Erdene scene)

[Azazeal849]

It had been a restless night, and the sea of souls was turbulent. Vaxanide was a whirling orb, casting off streamers of golden dust as creatures on the planet breathed their last and dissolved into the waiting maw of the Warp.

Formless shadows, the more mindless of their kind, clustered like hagfish around the bursts of disintegrating energy. They jostled for space around the richest feeding grounds - the disease-struck refugee camps around Remsburg; the killing fields where PDF units fought tooth and nail to drive the Orks back into the Terrigan jungle; the rough seas where makeshift rafts overturned and hundreds at a time drowned trying to reach the safety of Vaxanhive.

The two daemons were easily powerful enough to drive off the bottom feeders that tried to encroach on their personal hunting ground. The blood being spilled in the dockland slums below the spire wall was for them alone.

The Khornate growled with displeasure, drawing its spectral claws back into the shadows of the warp as the first ray of dawnlight spread its own fingers across the hive. The Slaaneshi drifted to its side a moment later, dragging trails of pale blue warp fire that tasted of spice and dead flesh. It hissed through its teeth, laughing sibilantly.

“Eight hours.” it goaded in a sing-song whisper. “What do you have to show for it?”

The first daemon gestured with a claw, dispersing a stream of soul-fragments as they bled out of the underhive. “The feral worlder.” It grinned. “And the assassin.”

“The assassin? You lie.” The Slaaneshi corkscrewed down, wrapping its tail of crackling mist around the small, elfin figure that was climbing its way up the inside of the spire wall. The magenta flames of its eyes narrowed, studying the caged, glowing soul through the veil of realspace that held it at bay.

“She rejects you!” the daemon cackled, scattering into the immaterium and reforming in front of its rival. “Like the unworthy master you are!”

“And yet she gifts me a prize.” the daemon of Khorne rumbled tolerantly. The taste of Primus and Quintus’ blood was still on its tongue, coppery and sweet. “She will be rewarded for that.”

The other daemon emitted a series of staccato clicks, and the clouds of warp fire surrounding it pulsed in warning. “This game was about pawns, not prizes.”

The first daemon growled. “She just needs to be...convinced.” It dissolved itself into the screaming whirlpool above Vaxanide and willed itself down towards the ruins of the Refuge. “And what of you, oh subtle one?”

The Slaaneshi darted in front of it, as if to bar its path from the soul-lights dancing below. “The psyker shall do my work yet. And the luminen.”

“Ha!” the first daemon thundered, sending ripples dancing through the clouds of emotion around it. “The luminen? The luminen is as much mine as yours. You have nothing but empty plans and promises, like your patron.”

The Slaaneshi screeched, and for a moment their warp fire auras collided, sparking with violent red lightning. In the spires of Vaxanhive several children awoke, sobbing from terrible nightmares. The brief clash subsided as the two daemons drew back, eyeing each other warily.

“You fail to consider the future.” the Slaaneshi hissed, gloatingly. “How many of my faithful stand now? The girl, with the luminen. More potential believers, with that naive priest. This planet will be my playground long before your new pet reaps a skull worthy of your patron’s notice.”

The red daemon’s laugh drawled like a mudslide, scattering the knots of shadow-creatures that were still feeding around the spires of Vaxanhive. “You creatures of the prince, always focused on the grains of sand, missing the greater whole.”

Turning away from the pulsing orb of Vaxanide, it dived into the currents of the Warp and allowed the riptide of emotion to carry it to a new vantage point. Dragging itself into an island of calm, it looked down upon a roiling nebula, covering the subsector known to the Imperium as Adrantis.

“You have no idea how much blood is about to flow for the Master of Mankind.”


+ + + + + +

EPILOGUE

ElizabethStark - Hadrak

“Hang in there, Erdene. Help’s coming.”

The sun was rising, but brought little warmth, only a chilling wind off the riverfront that scattered the smoke climbing from the smashed lander. Every now and then it would shift and blow greasy, grey smog into Hadrak’s face, filling his nose with a reek of burned wires and prometheum. Erdene’s beloved Khu Laan would not be leaping any mountains any time soon.

With every resident fled and the local PDF warded away under threat of excommunication, there was little for them to do but wait. Hadrak had splinted Erdene’s leg as best he could, and covered the interrogator with his blood-spattered jacket to keep her warm. They spoke little, though every now and then the fingers twined through his own would squeeze tight, and the Atillan interrogator would hiss through her teeth as her thin eyes threatened to spill tears. Hadrak wasn’t sure if it was the pain from her broken leg, or the pain of seeing her precious steed reduced to twisted scrap.

The thrum of anti-grav plates suddenly whined through the silence, and Hadrak knew then that their wait was over. He breathed out - not so much in relief as to calm himself for the coming storm. Shadows splashed across the battered hotel as several grav cars glided out of the tunnel in the spire wall and hovered down from the overpass. Their black chassis were dagged with the red chevrons of the Vaxanhive gendarmerie. Landing skids unfurled from the bottom of each car as it touched down, and a squad of confused-looking lawmen piled out to cordon the area. At their head was a man dressed in a surcoat of black and white and grey - all the shades of truth - and he stalked straight towards the two survivors.

Inquisitor Feyd Lucullis looked down at Erdene, his flint-chip grey eyes creasing at the corners. “Can you stand?”

Erdene grimaced. “I’m afraid not, sir.”

The inquisitor cupped two fingers over his shoulder and beckoned curtly. Two of the gendarmes hurried forward, carrying a medikit and an unfolding stretcher.

“We’ll hunt down the heretics.” Lucullis promised, clasping his hands tightly behind his back as he looked up at the derelict Refuge. Hadrak saw him grind his teeth as his gaze slid downward towards the wrecked lander. “Every one of them.”

“It might be hard to find them, sir.” Hadrak replied.

The inquisitor’s steely gaze target-locked onto him. “Where did they go?”

Hadrak couldn’t stop the corners of his mouths tugging upwards in a wan smile. “By the Emperor’s grace, inquisitor.” he said, knowing that he wasn’t lying. “I truly don’t know.”


+ + + + + +

Kim the Guardian

Stumbling from the confines (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45PEQfJogGQ) of the abandoned rail tunnel, Kim felt the sun’s rays on her skin and felt like a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The clear objective, the simple responsibility of the people around her, was more of a relief than a burden - no matter how complicated the practicalities of the future would get. They were her flock now. She had to have faith that Stan would help the others who had already been shipped uphive. It was easier to do so than she had thought; certainly easier than she would have countenanced before tonight, back when she had been reading the luminen’s values so tragically wrong.

He’ll help them.

She wondered how many people Vamassian had sent to the hive spires, tricked by false promises or by his own abominable warpcraft. Liza K, Kim recalled one name from her conversation with Maria; there were no doubt dozens more whose names she didn’t know.

The first thing she would have to do with her own new flock was learn all of their names, and how many of them didn’t have anywhere safe to go.

She paused to look at them. A dozen men and women, blinking in the sunlight, some holding children close. The young cook, looking almost like he was about to start laughing in relief. Karine and her two friends, still in their formal dresses, quiet and guarded. The ganger kid who had shot Alexi dead out of terror, hugging Kim’s shadow in fear of the former prisoners. Ellen, leaning heavily on one of the refugees, silent.

Sarna and Hadrak were right of course; she might not be able to help all of them. But that was no reason not to try. After sacrificing her identity so many times for the Emperor, all she had left were her principles. She intended to stick to them.

Rhenat looked around the graffiti-sprayed, rubbish-strewn docklands, and cuffed his nose. "So...um...where first?"

Kim turned Hadrak’s signet ring over in her hands. "We need somewhere I can withdraw this money and then hide it. We need shelter and food, and we need to pick up the people from the boats. We'll find all those things at the Red safehouse.”

“What if the gendarmes come calling?”

Kim patted the webbing pocket where her aquila pendant was still safely nestled. “You think they’ll bother a priest in her own soup kitchen?”

She looked at Rhenat and raised a smile, picturing a brown-haired, pointy-featured girl who bore a striking resemblance to him. With any luck, Maria would still be at the hospital down Pilgrim’s Quarter.

“First though? Let's go fetch your sister."


+ + + + + +

Felwether - Abner

The water was black under the phosphor twilight of the hive lights, and the surface was foamed with some kind of effluent from the chemical works squatting by the riverfront. Despite the enveloping darkness, the low rumble of the boat’s outboard engine made Abner nervous. He had waited until the following night to risk crossing to the north bank, holding his nerve as hive enforcers swarmed around the Mertesari hotel and the surrounding slums. Once or twice, he had been sure that one of their sweeping stab-lights would shine into the construction pipe he was hiding inside, and he would be dragged out to face the pitiless gaze of the inquisitor.

But Abner Able was a survivor, and his instincts were good. He had been surviving all his life, policing his own mind almost as closely as the Imperials who hated him purely for what he was, for a curse that he had never asked to receive.

But, as recent events had proven, it was not solely a curse. And Abner was not solely a survivor. He clutched at the pocket of his frayed cargo trousers, feeling the hard edges of the data wand still safely hidden there. The access codes for Vamassian’s accounts would open up more than funds - they would open up opportunities.

He would not lurk in the shadows as Vamassian had, squirreling his gains away for a retirement he would never enjoy, trapped by a life that had now killed him. They were both psykers, but they were not alike. Abner was more subtle, better trained to blend in. He knew the workings of the Imperial institutions, even those of the Emperor’s most holy inquisition. He intended to use that knowledge. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y-J7sBT_no)

While the Refuge and the Kingsmen and his former team-mates burned, Abner Able would thrive. And no-one would ever cross him, disrespect him, look down on him, ever again. He would look down on them.

The sallow psyker grinned to himself as he watched the gendarmerie grav-cars buzzing back and forth over the docklands, converging on the spire like fireflies.

“You’ll be hearing from me again.” he whispered. “You will all know my name.”


+ + + + + +

PaintSerf - Konstantin

It was daylight and it was not daylight. Perhaps a hundred metres above them, the great dome of the hive spire was tessellated with glow-panels, which dominoed on in a slow sequence to fill the uphive with daylight radiance. Following the path of the sun outside the dome was an aesthetic choice more than a functional one, but Konstantin could appreciate both the mechanical complexity and the final effect. After all, one did not invalidate the other.

His two companions, who had never seen anything like it in their life, simply gaped - their eyes roaming from the shining sky dome to the onion-bulb towers that stretched towards it, and the orderly streams of grav-car traffic that flowed between them.

Ani was the first to speak (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnVjxg8Jl5Q), squinting to protect her expanded pupils as she turned to the others.

“Well Tumassian.” she murmured, scratching at the short hair on the right side of her head, “Is it what you pictured?”

Nara hummed quietly to herself in lieu of a spoken reply. She turned to Konstantin.

“I still can’t quite believe you managed to get us up here.”

Konstantin was not about to admit it, but he could hardly believe it either. Spire modules might be uniform from Vostroya to Vaxanide, and most adepts might be disinclined to obstruct a highly-augmented fulgurite, but still it had taken more than a little luck. Perhaps the Omnissiah, or the Purple Prince, or whatever patron was now following the black comedy of his existence, had conspired to make it so.

Nevertheless, he could not shake the feeling that it had taken too long. Every hour that they had spent struggling uphive was another hour that some young girl or boy was forced to spend trapped with someone like Vamassian’s vile Duke.

“We aren’t here to admire the view.” he said quietly, and looked up at one of the nearby mansion-towers, matching the image on his greyscale vision to the one Nara had showed him on the Duke’s dataslate. “We have work to do.”


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Cfavano - Prima

Quietly, reverently, Anais lifted away the paving slab, and dropped to her knees in front of the hole concealed beneath it. She had taken some time and care choosing the location. The sixty fourth pillar of the Vaxanhive-Remsburg overpass would have been insignificant to most, but it was the place where Quintus had retrieved the weapons that let them wreak glorious carnage on the Prince’s followers. It was the place where Primus had singled her out to help him escort the refugees to the safehouse, where he had talked more about the Red King. About how she had been an arena fighter, but could now be so much more.

The whole hive is your arena now. Primus had said.

She raised her head towards the twinkling lights of the hive spire, and imagined herself at the very pinnacle, with ecstatic crowds of hive patrons cheering and screaming her name. One day she would stand there, with the Red King’s blessing and Primus’ weapon. The Kingsman’s power sword was a comforting weight, slung across her back on its leather strap. She had carried it safely away from the hotel at Mertesari, along with one other prize.

Carefully, Anais lowered the severed head of Samvel Vamassian into the empty hole. Holding it in place with one hand, she took out her spiral knife and methodically carved the King’s symbol into the forehead. A letter X, crossed through at the base and across the centre, to form a simple impression of the snarling skull of the Red King. Already dead and drained, the waxy skin did not bleed. To make a more fitting dedication, Anais drove the point of her dagger into the ball of her thumb, and streaked the bleeding digit across the symbol to anoint it.

Better.

Anais replaced the paving stone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S99RuToWQzs), rose to her feet, and took a deep breath to calm her racing heartbeat. She had fulfilled Primus’ promise; she had given Vamassian’s skull to the Red King. If only the smug little bitch Shift hadn’t killed him first. Her mood soured slightly as she thought of the young swordswoman. She gave the King no genuine tribute. Not even when they had fought to determine the fate of the mewling Refuge girl.

You weren’t defeated. Primus had reassured her. The Red King spoke through you.

She exhaled. No matter. She had gifted the skull. She now carried Primus’ sword. She was now Prima, and she fancied she could already feel the King’s approval surging through her in a wave of adrenaline as she pictured the future. The whole hive is your arena now. She would carve her way to the top of it, searching for worthy opponents whose blood she could tribute to her patron.

Somewhere along the way, she would need to seek out Sarna Astros.

Sheathing her dagger, Prima turned towards the hive and began to walk.


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dakkagor - Sarna Astros

Another miserable day in the underhive. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKRZGlI_UnA) Rain blattered against the single glaze windows, and was beginning to seep through the usual spot in the kitchen roof. The paint was already warped and sagging, and it was probably only a matter of time before the whole damn ceiling caved in. The best Milena had been able to do was put a saucepan on the floor to catch the drips. Hopefully her mother would see it as she shuffled to the door for her morning lho-stick, and not simply trip over it and spend the next hour cussing her out. Looking through the window, Milena saw palls of brown smoke drifting across the river from the factory districts. The rain met the smoke and turned it into gobbets of liquid tar, which ran down the window in dirty slug-trails.

Milena ran a hand through her brittle hair and roundly cursed everything, from the rain to her grouchy mother to the smirking waif who had blown up her house. Only the Red King knew where she and Primus were now, but a totally atypical number of gendarmes and uphive kill-teams had been crawling all over the slums recently. At least she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the bloody Refuge.

She shrugged deeper into her jumper - it was easier to layer up since her mother could rarely afford to switch on the radiators, even when the local district heating network was working properly - and wrapped her hands around her cup to try and extract some warmth from the sludgy recaff inside. She had just taken a sip, and was trying to summon the willpower for her upcoming shift at the chemical works, when there was a loud thumping at the door.

Milena’s heart jumped into her mouth, and she nearly dropped her cup. Only gendarmes knock. As she sat there trembling, the knock came again, an insistent thump thump thump. Milena managed to put her cup down beside the greasy sink and make her way to the door. She placed her thumbs over each other and made the skull-sign X of the King with the blades of her hands, but the ritual did little to steady her nerves. Eventually though she had to open the door.

Standing there was a single figure - not a gendarme, but a stocky man in an oiled raincloak, the hood pulled up against the downpour.

Milena’s fear immediately sublimated into anger. “What the frak do you want? I’ve got work in an hour and if you wake my mum up I’ll have to spend it listening to her moan about it.”

The man unbuttoned his raincoat, revealing the official grey tunic of an administratum adept. Oh.

“Are you Milena Sarkissian?” the adept asked, looking oddly serious and ignoring Milena’s outburst.

“Who’s asking?” Milena replied guardedly.

The adept produced a folder from an inside pocket - shit, he really is administratum, it’s got the letter I stamp with the funny squiggle in it and everything - and offered it to Milena.

“I’m very sorry to tell you this, but your aunt and uncle in spire 4 both died last week in an unfortunate industrial accident. Their last will and testament instructed us to give you this…”

Milena didn’t have an aunt and uncle in spire 4, but - perhaps fortunately - she was too baffled to say more than, “Huh?”

She took the rain-spotted envelope and peeled open the seal, which was already coming unstuck from the damp. Inside was the title deed to a two-bedroom flat, somewhere up in the midhive.

She had to read it several times to fully process it. As a consequence, she didn’t see the cat-like figure crouching atop the next roof, who looked on, smiled to herself, and then turned away.


https://i.imgur.com/B0BtsO5.png