“Nisadora spire. That’s deep enough in the hive for us to lose ourselves in, and it has a telepathica eyrie - or at least it did before the war.”
There will not be an eyrie, if the attendants followed standard operating procedure and euthanized their assets by any available means. Crenshaw remained impassive as he considered the variables. Telepathica facilities had been amongst the highest priority targets in the first hours of the rebellion, and as the Patriots were known to have more astropaths than Ella Seren at their disposal, evidently eyries had been seized – or surrendered - before the asset liquidation protocols were completed.
If. Major Crenshaw disapprovingly clicked his prosthetic teeth, as he reflected on how the team’s present best option for regrouping and surviving was dependent on a Telepathica failure.
Crenshaw prudently kept his bleak conclusions to himself, as nobody on the team would be under any illusions about the gravity of their situation – and it would be the heights of stupidity to openly discuss when surrounded by the masses of commuters going about their daily lives. They seemed oblivious, both to the orbital skirmish going on above their hive and the barely disguised team of Imperial agents.
For now. The blacksoul clicked his teeth again, irritably, as even over the thunderous din of an active maglev station, he could hear the newsreader extolling the citizenry into vigilance for the vilest of Imperial snakes slithering in their midst. Crenshaw was unsurprised that as the soulless mutant, and scowling face of the Imperium’s oppression across Adrantis, he was singled out as the vilest.
Without a word to the others, Crenshaw casually trailed away from the team and meandered his way into the crowd. The blacksoul noted the covert glances and overt stares of suspicion as the plebians obligingly behaved as paranoidly as they had been primed to be by the newsreader’s diatribe. Crenshaw seemed to listen for a moment, before he inhaled deeply and thrust his gloved bionic fist into the air.
“For Adrantis and the Emperor!” Crenshaw bellowed, his voice colored with Patriotic fervor and deliberately pitched to carry forwards. He energetically pumped his fist and began to chant, as if he were a rowdy sports hooligan belting out his club’s song. “Noble is our cause! Just is our reward!”
Crenshaw trailed off as soon as the crowd took over, and in turn obliged the now vaguely bewildered newsreader to preside over a patriotic rally which was as emphatic as it was pointless. His work done, the blacksoul slid his hands into his jacket pockets and departed as nonchalantly as he had arrived. He emulated the brisk, not going to miss my maglev stride which so many of the commuters had, and continued towards the Nisadora terminal and the others. Glabrio and Marc in particular favored him with hard, what the frak were you thinking glares as he closed the distance with them.
“Baseline humanity is a herd species.” Crenshaw muttered with a cheerful smile as genuine as half his teeth since Hercynia. He clapped Glabrio and Marc on their shoulders while he passed between them, and headed towards the security and ticketing queue between them and their maglev to Nisadora.
+ + + + + +
“Some of them must have gotten on board.”
“Only one thing for us to do, then.” Crenshaw grunted in Tranchite, and rested his forearms on the table he shared with Osada. He evenly regarded the agents across the aisle and unclenched both of his hands, proposing Alia’s ungiven order from their confrontation with the Nebula Corps on Concordia.
Kill them.
The clandestine message was only lost on Osada, who made a soft questioning noise as he glanced over at the others. Kuscelian subtly made a throat slitting gesture with her bionic hand across her throat, as she innocuously adjusted her robe. Lucullis’ assassin made a comprehending noise, and all eyes were on Interrogator Hybrida to make the call. Glabrio lightly tapped a fist against his own table as he considered the proposal, and nodded with only a slight hesitation and the hint of a bitter grimace.
No sooner had the greenlight been given, and Marc was already writing again. You have a plan.
Crenshaw merely unfastened the collar of his stolen laborer’s jacket, and revealed his limiter collar – which immediately drew visceral reactions from Glabrio and Marc, as the two with repeated direct exposures to uninhibited a blank, courtesy to their years of fieldwork alongside himself and Kally. The blacksoul mentally quashed the reflexive twitch of his glove covered bionic fingers. Not now…
I draw attention, bring them in within my aura. I trigger it, we kill them all. Crenshaw spun his note so that Osada could see, before he spun it around again for the benefit of the rest of the team. Glabrio continued to grimace, but ceased knocking his fist against the table to trace a question mark at him its scuffed and graffiti etched surface while the blacksoul idly tore his own clandestine note into shreds.
Crenshaw held out a finger as he reached down and extracted a large, opened glass bottle wrapped in crinkled brown bag. It had been wedged between his bench and the carriage wall, and bringing it closer only raised his suspicion that its contents were more piss than pisswater. He glanced over Glabrio with an expectantly raised brow. The grimacing Interrogator swore again and nodded for him to proceed.
Crenshaw immediately raised the cowl of his jacket and slouched back into his chair and splayed his legs out into the aisle. He firmly sealed his thumb over the mouth of the bottle as he feigned a prolonged chug, and concluded with an echoing belch and a satisfied exhale. The blacksoul could hear some faint murmurs and noises of disapproval and discomfort with his antisocial behavior, as was intended.
He wanted to drive out the bystanders to draw in the Krypteia, and remove civilians from the range of his aura so panicked and terrified commuters did not run into their gunfire and soak rounds intended for the Tranchite secret police. Crenshaw duly envisioned Kelly Black’s scowl at his unhumanitarian rationale for trying to avoid civilian casualties as he took another fake swig while the message repeated.
“Attention. This train is now to be subject to Krypteia inspection. All passengers please return to your seats and remain calm.”
“Frak the Krypteia.” Crenshaw exclaimed in slurred growl, projecting his voice in low-hive Tranchite so that everyone in the carriage would hear him. There were audible gasps and nervous rustlings. He watched as a mid-hive professional stood and outright fled from the carriage, dumping his briefcase onto the floor and scattering the documents he had been worrying over since the left the station.
“You should not say such a thing, citizen.” The voice belonged to one of the male civilians, educated and officious. Crenshaw recalled the passengers within the carriage, and suspected it was the archetypal middle-aged, middle management civil servant. He remembered the man conspicuously wore the Patriot rosette on the lapel of his suit jacket, alongside the sigil of the Oligarchy. Perfect.
“Shut up.” Crenshaw rumbled back, vaguely pointing back towards the opinioned bystander with the bottle. He deliberately flailed his arm so that some of the foul liquid sloshed out, and made an appropriate amount inarticulate whining and grumbling punctuated by clear profanity at the loss.
“That is really uncalled for…”
“Frak yourself!”
“Bloody drunkard!”
“Yeah, I’m bloody drunk!” Crenshaw roared as he lurched to his feet, and ‘clumsily’ kicked the loose briefcase from the walkway and into the side of the carriage with a loud thump as he turned. He could see that several other bystanders had either moved away from him or had also fled. “I’m expressin’ my Adrantean freedom over here, so you can just shut the frak up!”
“How dare you!” The outraged Adrantean civic servant exclaimed as he made to stand. Crenshaw swayed as he pivoted and hurled the bottle towards the man. The man flinched, so he ‘missed’, and the projectile shattered on handrail above the traitorous bureaucrat in a shower of glass shards and fluid. He feigned a high, well lubricated cackle as the other man slowly stood, retching and shuddering.
“…You!” The other man gasped. His fists were clenched tightly and shaking, and clearly the traitor had the impulse to take a swing at him. Crenshaw trailed his cackle into a low chuckle, and invitingly spread out his arms to emphasize his physicality in contrast to the older and not nearly as fit bureaucrat.
“Impress me.”
The civil servant flushed with choked down rage, and promptly turned on his heel and thunderously marched towards the rear carriages. Crenshaw could hear him shouting for the Krypteia’s assistance.
“FRAK the Krypteia!” Crenshaw bellowed after him, channeling his parade ground voice in an effort to ensure the Tranchite secret police were liable to hear him – and in an effort to drive out all but the most foolhardy or terrified of the remaining civilian bystanders made their exit now. Crenshaw made a point to mutter and meander around the carriage occasionally snarling at those who remained to herd them away from where the others had relocated, and have himself positioned for the Krypteia’s arrival.
“What?” He challenged a quartet of impetuous juvies who had not had the sense to be elsewhere.
“We’re stayin’ for your arse-beatin’, that’s what!” One of the little bastards smugly responded, to the hoots and hollers of his equally pubescent and moronic cohort in their schola uniforms.
Your funerals. Crenshaw retorted, as he heard the familiar sounds of heavily armed and armored enforcers double timing towards a threat to be suppressed. It momentarily struck him, the oddity of being on the other side of that situation. The blacksoul grunted as he made an ordeal of staggering around, so that his back was turned to the Krypteia – who, as the secret police who had been tipped off that an Inquisitorial team was on the ground, would undoubtedly be able to identify him at a glance.
“Identify yourself!”
I suppose the Krypteia had already announced themselves. Crenshaw mused to himself as he swayed on his feet, and listened closely in an effort to determine how many of the secret police had made it onboard – or at least been rushed ahead to address the disturbance he had created.
“Only a loyal, tithe payin’, gene pure citizen of Tranch and the Republic.” Crenshaw drawled thickly as he slowly raised his arms out and away from his body to show his empty hands. “Don’t go shootin’ me in the back, now. Frakkin’ smudge genes they’re tryin’ to replace us with ain’t gonna fund your pensions.”
“Turn around, slowly, and identify yourself!”
“Okay…I’ll confess…you know me.” Crenshaw exhaled heavily. He shakily brought his hands upwards, fingers forked and curled around his face to obscure everything but his eyes and mouth with a crude emulation of a Baraspini faith mask as he unsteadily turned towards the Krypteia. “I’m Thomas Tierce.”
Except for a few stifled gasps and a nervous, high-pitched titter from one of the juvies, the carriage was almost devoid of human noise. There was an almost absurd extended silence, as everyone within the compartment processed that such brazen sedition said directly to the Oligarchy’s secret police – least of all the Krypteia enforcers, who subtly exchanged a wordless glance behind their articulated fear masks as one of them stepped into a booth to keep him covered with her short barreled automatic carbines.
“Come on, bootlickers.” Crenshaw prodded with an impatient sigh, punctuated with a hiccup. He made it a point to bobble as he shakily slid one of his recently acquired work boots forward. It was scuffed, and crusted around the sole with a dark, indeterminate muck. “Kneel before your new Emperor.”
The enforcer ahead of him immediately lowered his automatic, and made a half stride as he reached for his ritual executioner’s blade - until he halted. Crenshaw recognized the muffled clicks of a vox conversation as the pair undoubtedly discussed how to resolve their drunken conundrum. He could see Glabrio, Marc and Osada in their seats behind the Krypteia - the former once again favoring him with what the frak glares – and concealed a subtle shake his head within his intoxicated swaying.
Crenshaw kept his eyes steady on the two ominously armored enforcers, and noticed the conspicuous flashes of Krypteia red down the corridor in the aft carriages. He saw at least two more of the Oligarch’s heavies were headed this direction, while others were clearly interrogating the civilians in their hunt for their Imperial agents. The bystander factor was likely influencing the Krypteia’s decisions, as their need to keep the civilians compliant and docile until they found the team outweighed their instinct to deal with an obvious seditionist, however seemingly intoxicated, with a flash of their signature shortswords.
“Liberation? It’s a frakkin’ joke.” Crenshaw declared with a chuckle like a faulty starter motor as he sought to provoke the enforcers before their reinforcements arrived. His gaze flicked to the sigils of the Oligarchy proudly marked on their armored suits, and seemingly staggered back to settle his weight on his backfoot to hurl himself toward the Krypteia. “We need liberation from our real oppressors.”
There was one last series of vox clicks, and the two Krypteia enforcers went into motion. The female enforcer on overwatch turned to cover the remaining civilians, and unknowingly the Imperial agents, while her male counterpart lowered his automatic and strode forward as he made to haul back with a punch. Crenshaw lowered his hands and revealed himself, which caused the Krypteia enforcer to baulk in surprise as he recognized exactly who and what his quarry was. He deactivated his limiter collar.
Crenshaw heard the muffled shout of alarm turn into audibly horrified screams as he sprung forward and enveloped the Oligarchy’s enforcers with his soulless aura. The Krypteia were about as disciplined and inured to violence as one would expect of an authoritarian regime’s praetorians, however as mere baselines with no prior exposure to a blacksoul, they were wholly unprepared for his unnatural horror. The two enforcers spectacularly lost their composure and instinctually recoiled as they tried to flee.
They were not afforded the opportunity.
Crenshaw briefly saw Osada rise from his seat behind the enforcer who had ostensibly been on overwatch, until she had thrown her carbine in her scramble to escape. The assassin’s blade glinted in the carriage’s fluorescent lights as he struck. He could hear the rapid bangs of Glabrio’s sidearms contrast against the thunderous booms of Marc’s hand cannon as they fired down the corridor towards the red armored enforcers in the next carriage. The screaming was now not only limited to the Krypteia.
The blacksoul curled in his metallic knuckles and punched the reeling enforcer’s exposed neck seal with crack and crunch which was as satisfactory as it was catastrophic. The man’s scream terminated with a wet choking noise, and he feebly reached towards his demolished throat as he staggered and started to fall onto his knees. Crenshaw heard high pitched, oddly modulated shrieking, and glanced over his shoulder to see the mouthy juvie spasming and soiling himself on the floor.
Stun rounds. Crenshaw determined he was exposed and clamped his bionic around the man’s brutalized throat. He ignored the agonized gasps and desperate whimpers, and hauled the dying secret policeman onto his feet as a human shield. He grasped the man tighter and by his equipment belt as he bucked a flurry of stun round impacts and the primal instinct to avoid physical contact with a blank. The blacksoul was close enough that he could see the man’s wide, mortally terrified eyes behind his visor.
Crenshaw glanced past his impromptu ballistic shield to see Glabrio, Marc and Osada had hunkered down to avoid the incoming fire. The other enforcer was slumped over a table, exsanguinating from several slashed open armor seals. In the carriage ahead, Crenshaw saw at least one of the Krypteia sprawled out in the corridor in crumpled heap. Two more were laying down a suppression fire pattern as the other enforcers bludgeoned down and shoved aside the panicked civilians caught in the crossfire.
“Moving forward!” Crenshaw cautioned his baseline colleagues ahead.
Glabrio and Marc’s habituated, muffled curses and a sharper exclamation from Osada almost drowned out the squelch as Crenshaw marched them through the blood pooled on the floor. Crenshaw slammed the enforcer against the door frame and grunted as the braced the rapidly dying weight on his bionic. The blacksoul plucked and lobbed a couple of the enforcer’s tear gas canisters into the next carriage.
“Krypteia have sealed armor!” Osada shouted. “Fairly resistant seals, too!”
“The civilians are not so well equipped!” Crenshaw responded as he irritably knocked aside a grasping, strengthless hand as he resecured his grasp of the shuddering and nearly deceased Krypteia enforcer.
“You’re a bastard, Crenshaw!” Marc snarled, undoubtedly with the patented Black scowl.
“Not by definition, unfortunately!” The blacksoul responded as he absently tightened and twisted his bionic grasp. The dying enforcer’s final struggles ended with a pop and snap. Crenshaw grunted again as he leveraged the red armored corpse out to block most of the doorway, and cursed as he struggled to hold the obstructing cadaver securely against the thunderous onslaught of gunfire.
“Raech, do your thing!” Glabrio ordered.
“Already on it!” The tech-priestess called out, unsurprisingly.
“Osada, any help she needs!”
“Frak off that way!” Marc bellowed at the remaining civilians. “Take your friend too, damn it!”
Crenshaw weathered the storm for a moment longer before Glabrio slewed to a halt behind him, and poked his acquired carbine around the Krypteia enforcer’s corpse to unload on his erstwhile comrades. Marc slammed into the doorframe opposite, indeed with the patented Black scowl as he glanced at him, and took over providing the Imperial return fire once the Interrogator had emptied his magazine. The blacksoul noted that neither were using downed Krypteia’s lethal loads. We will need it later.
“I’m Thomas Tierce.” Glabrio groused as he reloaded his carbine. “Seriously?”
“You do the improvisation next time.” Crenshaw rejoined through his tightly clenched teeth.
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