[M] Penitence - IC

[Azazeal849]

"Saph!" Glabrio shouted urgently, pointing to where Kally had fallen. Her armoured bodyglove was slashed along the side of her arm, and a more direct hit to her centre mass had burned away the outer armourweave and visibly cracked the ballistic plate underneath. Either another bullet or a shrapnel fragment had grazed her head, and the cut was sheeting blood down the side of her stunned face.

"Come on then, you ugly frakkers!" the investigator bellowed, giving the sister cover to move to Kally's side by standing up and strafing in the opposite direction, knives of burning gas flaring from his outstretched pistols.

+ + + + + +

The loud bang of the servitor's demise made Marc flinch, even from the other end of the office gallery. The defenders were yelling to each other in some sort of Low Gothic cant, possibly shouting for backup as they hammered solid slugs at Marc's teammates further up the gallery. Marc spun out low and fired a series of suppressing bursts up the length of the corridor. From somewhere among the demolished cubicles, an autogun rattled a fully automatic reply. Marc ducked back as a line of bullet holes sawed through the partition next to him, sending slivers of plaster cracking off his helmet visor.

He glanced down at the auspex on his forearm, gritted his teeth, and sprinted the breadth of the wrecked office. A shout and a new snarl of gunfire chased him, and as he pivoted right, two young men resting their autoguns against an overturned desk began to haul their weapons round towards him. Marc fired first, spattering both men's brains across the tangle of cables and cracked cogitator screens behind them.

"Two targets down!" He glanced at his auspex again, and ducked down behind a load-bearing column to eject the spent magazine from his Decker autogun. "You're clear left, push up!"

"Black, hold your position!" Machairi's voice voxed back.

The inquisitor had gone to one knee to cover Sapphira and Glabrio, and her melta pistol cut a sizzling line through the overturned furniture. The flash and scatter of burning cogitator pieces sent the cultists opposite flinching for cover. One rolled over himself and tried to retreat, stumbling away at a hunched run. Two more quickly followed. Machairi cupped her ear to drown out the vicious rattle of stub-guns, her eyes falling again on the burned sigil scarring the floor.

"All agents, Machairi - we have evidence of an invocatio daemonis, do not proceed upstairs without blank support!"

"I'll send the drone up." Marc voxed, but a moment later there was a static-distorted curse. "Frak it! I've lost the connection!"

"Sorry, that was me!" Kuscelian voxed a deadpan reply, as she scrambled up onto her hands and knees on the shattered tarmac outside. "I will give you it back as soon as I am not being pancaked!"

There was only so much multi-tasking even an Ocularis Dragon could do, especially while having to dodge hijacked lifting machinery. It was all she could do to deflect the increasingly urgent interrogatives from nearby forge security units, and her cohort of drones had reverted to their standard, inflexible attack protocols and were suffering accordingly.

The crane hook that had nearly crushed her pulled free of the stack of turbine blades with a shrieking crash, bringing several of the multi-tonne blade pieces smashing to the ground. The crane heeled back around, bulldozing a chunk of brickwork out of the warehouse where Vizkop was sheltering. Kuscelian threw herself flat a second time to avoid the crane hook as it whooshed over her.

Round the opposite side of the building, a ragged trio of menials come bailing out of the broken windows, coughing on the acrid chemical fog that Nikolai had unleashed across the concourse. They scrambled up from the rockrete and ran obliviously towards Gavin in their haste to escape Machairi's team. A fourth menial made the mistake of trying to bolt for the stairs past the ordinate's office, and she caught fire and evaporated mid-stride as Nikolai's pistol turned her into a puff of ash. The second Ocularis turned his attention towards the stairwell as he stepped away from the burning servitor. Inquisitor Machairi didn't want them to advance without a hard counter to whatever unholy entity DeRei had summoned, but the defenders massing up the stairway evidently had no such reservations. There was the heavy thunk of a grenade launcher, followed by a blast that demolished the rest of the ordinate's office.

[Azazeal849]

<Posting on behalf of Imperial1917, who is indisposed>

The Arthrashastra had never been heavily populated, even before, but now it was practically a ghost ship. With the bulk of the inquisitor's team dispatched to Perinetus, Merle incarcerated, and the others recovering in the med-lab or in their quarters, the only sound through deck B was the soft whir of captain Tarran's gilded servitors, mindlesssly going about their tasks.

Trist knew well enough after his diversion through the underdecks that Arthrashastra was a ship with many secrets: many that it was reluctant to give up, and many that he sensed would be unsafe to pry into. He paused for a moment, listening to the soft thrum of the ship's engines, as if they would reveal something he wasn't entirely sure he knew he was looking for. He desisted as another wheeled inspection servitor glided past him, its green probe-beam rolling silently back and forth across the walls.

The corridor became quiet again - good for thinking, bad for a man of action. He stopped before his destination and thumbed the cabin's door chime.

"Hello?" a voice from inside answered.

Trist pushed on the wood-panelled door, and found that it wasn't locked. The lights in the cabin beyond were off, leaving the hallway lumoglobes to cast a wedge of light into the room. It fell across the pale woman huddled on the bed, who hurriedly uncoiled her arms from around her knees and groped for the touch panel on the wall. As the lights flickered on Trist was able to take in the room, which was more austere than he had expected given the number of sumptuous cabins going spare on the ship. Holo-picts clung to the walls, but they had all been turned off. It was also disorganised: a cup of tanna was cooling untouched on the bedside cabinet, propped carelessly on top of an antique paper book with a title spelled out in Braille dots. The simple plastek kettle was still steaming on the dresser, next to a blocky vox speaker with a data wand still plugged into it. A little square table with two chairs rounded out the room's sparse decoration, and a regicide board with figures of brass and pewter was set up to play on top of it. A woollen jumper and a short grey dress were folded haphazardly over one of the chairs, and a pair of black tights had fallen onto the floor beside it.

Circulator grates hummed where the back wall met the carpeted floor, and Trist noted that the fragrance dispensers inside the ducts had been keyed to spray something that smelled like sweet apple. A spicier smell of meditative incense lingered behind it, and Trist spotted the jar and diffusers tucked into the carelessly half-closed drawer of the bedside cabinet, next to a sleeve of plasticrystal cards.

"Can I help you?" the woman asked, pushing her short blonde hair across her forehead as she peered at him. Her hazel eyes were unfocused and clearly blind, though she seemed to have no difficulty in following him as he stepped into the room even with the carpet muffling his footfalls. One of the woman's thin arms was wrapped protectively around her stomach, and Trist wondered if it was residual pain from her injuries on Baraspine, or just a comfort gesture because his presence made her nervous. He didn't fail to notice that the young woman was adhering more closely to the letter of Telepathica custom today, dressing in a plain green robe with the wireframe eye of the astropaths pinned over her heart, as if to give Machairi's team no further reason to fault her commitment. Trist had only heard snippets of what had happened between Ella Seren and the others on Baraspine, but he thought he understood enough.

"I hope so." he replied solemnly, then inwardly cursed himself. Whatever she needed, she certainly did not need solemness at this time. She had had quite enough of that of late, if the rumors were true. Taking the cue from the lights, he crossed the room carefully, his eyes never leaving hers. It seemed a long trip. Ironic, considering that there was virtually nothing in his way for once. He sat in the unburdened chair at the table, gathering his cloak about him.

Silence stretched for a moment that felt like an eternity. If she felt uncomfortable, then she might have laughed knowing his own discomfort. No one now could accuse him of being suspicious of psykers, but nobody could say that he welcomed them as readily as he might have once. Abruptly he remembered that some could read thoughts. Fighting the urge to curse for the lapse, he calmly began to dissemble his thoughts somewhat. He could not have been said to be particularly talented at it, but he was no slouch either. Acutely aware that the psyker probably detected this shift, he continued aloud, "My apologies that we were not able to meet earlier. I have heard of you."

"Oh." said Ella, as if she wasn't sure if that was supposed to be a compliment or a rebuke. She slid her feet down onto the floor to stand. Trist noted that she was barefoot, which led him to the conclusion that the astropath hadn't been planning on leaving her cabin any time soon. She drifted over to the dresser and hovered there uncertainly next to the kettle. "Um...can I get you a drink or anything?"

"Thank you, no." he replied politely. It was the safest course of action; fewer variables meant fewer risks. Besides, she likely had little to offer; she was clearly making an effort not to pamper herself, after all. Casting his eyes around the bare room, he eventually settled on the antique paper book. Gesturing to it, he said, "What have you been reading, if I may inquire?"

Ella's eyes followed his own towards the bedside table.

"Oh that? It's called Castaway. It's a story about a chartered trader who loses her ship in an accident, but she survives thanks to the Emperor's intervention and ends up crash-landing on this mythical planet."

She tiptoed over to the table with the regicide board on it and pulled up the remaining chair. She belatedly noticed the old clothes hanging off it, and fumbled to stuff them into a wicker basket behind the table.

"She goes around doing these crazy things like finding a flute that makes plants grow and getting caught up in a battle between two sea monsters. At one point she met this Eldar trickster and won a magical gemstone off him in a game of regicide."

She smiled nervously as she sat down and folded her hands under the table.

"It's just a bit of escapism really, but Alley found it in the ship's library and thought I might like it."

Trist's gaze lingered on the book while she spoke.

"Escapism, huh?" he said when she had finished. "I suppose that the means of escape never really change, do they? The more they change, the more they remain the same."

What are you running from? he heard an old woman cackle in the back of his mind, rising from his memory. You'll never get away; you'll just die tired. Like me!

"We don't get to...switch off very often." Ella admitted carefully. "Though I did wonder if Alley was projecting a little bit, when she gave me a book about a trader getting to leave their old life and go exploring."

"Maybe," Trist mused, "Or perhaps she simply finds herself in like company."

Ella looked at him sharply. He stopped and flushed. "Sorry, that was an ugly thought."

"My friends know their duty." Ella replied, very stiffly, "And even if they didn't they'd never just run away and leave each other in the lurch. They can't stop - they won't stop - not until DeRei's been caught and the...and the mission's over."

Trist looked back at her, meeting her gaze, caught slightly off guard by the vehemence in her voice. The astropath reached up and nudged her fringe across her forehead.

"After that though..." she admitted, "I don't think anyone could grudge them a rest." Somehow, he expected differently.

Her eyes flickered away from Trist to glance at the bedside cabinet, with the sleeve of cards pushed inside its half-closed drawer. He followed her to it, but paused before opening his mouth to mention it. As far as he had seen so far in the sparse room, it was the only thing that wasn't in perfect order. For someone who was trying to conform, or reconform, to the strictures of their station, it was out of place. And where psykers were concerned, things left out of place were best left alone.

The astropath coughed into her hand. "You said you hoped I could help. What do you need - a reading, a message...?"

"A connection, to the governor sub-sector, if you please. It is high time that I report in. I understand you know how to use an animus vox?"

Ella thumbed the material of her robe, toying with some sort of necklace that she wore under the garment. "Yes...but they work in pairs. Mine connects to one of Lady Machairi's contacts."

Trist produced a small, runic cube from his pocket, unspooling the chain that it hung from. "So it's just as well the governor gave me the twin to his one."

He held out the tarnished silver artefact, and dropped it into Ella's small palm.

Ella turned it over in her fingers for a moment, feeling the unique pattern of runic cyphers that covered its surface.

"I'm not sure how long this'll take." she cautioned Trist. "And try not to worry if it gets...cold."

The astropath exhaled quietly, and closed her hands around the artefact, touching it to her pale forehead, and then to her lips. Then she sat in silence for what felt like a very long time. Trist wasn't sure if the hum of the ventilators was getting quieter and the astropath's soft breathing louder, or if it was just a trick of his imagination. Then the light overhead strobed, with a fizzle of interrupted current.

He didn't remember seeing Ella move, but her hands were now cupped open around the animus vox, which was now shining pale light from the etches and grooves in its surface.

"Lord Maxillium."

The words seemed to come from behind him, breathing a whisper of cold air onto the back of his neck. They spoke in governor Tierce's distinctive bass-baritone, though Trist thought he heard Ella's voice speaking with him, despite the fact that the astropath's eyes and mouth were closed. There was another voice too, echoing half a second behind them. It sounded like an old woman, her voice cracked with age.

"Governor sub-sector. Greetings. As you directed, I am here to report in."

Trist sat a bit straighter as he spoke, just to be safe.

"You can speak freely?" the governor's voice spoke, echoing quietly despite the cabin's lack of acoustics.

Trist's sophisticated augmetic senses could detect no recording devices in the room, and Ella seemed to be deep in her trance, though he had no idea if she was conscious of his words or not.

"I can, sir." replied Trist.

"I sent the Nebulas to Baraspine as soon as I heard about adept Zhang's disappearance." the subsector governor continued. "Was it any kind of lead to DeRei? I have been under pressure to respond strongly to every possible threat since the inquisitor demanded we send out her subsector-wide warrant."

Trist paused and considered his words carefully, “Following the affair on Baraspine, the inquisitor directed that we should depart for the Forge World of Perinetus. I have gathered that she expects to confront him there, though under what circumstances I am unable to say."

"Perinetus?" The governor sounded uneasy. "Did the inquisitor find out how he got there, or what his objectives are?"

"His motives for going there are difficult to determine.”

Trist straightened, knowing that he was heading into guesswork, something that he knew people in power generally detested. “I can only speculate as to his intentions on the world, but I believe that he intends assassination. He cannot possibly have the forces necessary to take the world by storm, nor is he likely to have enough cultists to carry out sabotage without it being discovered nearly immediately, knowing the Mechanicus; this leaves him only assassination, killing someone important enough to cause a disruption in the working of the world itself."

"Does the inquisitor require support? I can petition the archmagos to allow her men access to the surface. It may take a little time, but even Krupp can't ignore a sub-sector governor."

"The inquisitor is planet-side as I speak. How she arranged for that, I cannot say," His voice paused almost imperceptibly as he quickly masked his hesitation in indulging in such far-reaching speculation with fabricated anger at being left out of the loop. Anger, he was sure, that the governor shared. "I saw no sign of fanfare though, if the Mechanicus indulge in such things, so I presume that they are unaware of her presence, if that is even possible; it certainly cannot last."

Something like a growl slid through the air around Trist. "I do not need a diplomatic incident with the mechanicus, no matter what the heretic's plans are. What is your assessment of the inquisitor's team on the surface?"

The young lord grimaced. “Competent but ruffled. Something has unsettled them: I can feel it in the ship. There is a nasty atmosphere here that would make the crew cringe if there were any. Half of them walk like they are already dead while the other half watches them like they are walking to their graves. And tight lips all around about why, though that does not surprise me: they do work with an inquisitor after all. I see no indication that they cannot do their jobs. They are just eccentric."

There was a sigh from Tierce, and it was as if it physically misted the air for a moment, because the air between Trist and Ella hazed.

"I don't find that wholly encouraging, my lord. Tell the inquisitor that a little advance warning would make it a lot easier for me to help her. And keep me appraised as best you can. Ad Imperator, et Adrantis."

Something receded from the muffled air, and the cabin began to feel warmer again as the sound of the air circulators reasserted itself. Ella let out a breath and slumped forward slightly, blinking hard as if she had just surfaced from a daydream. She cupped her hands protectively back round Trist's animus vox.

"He's gone." she rasped, and then coughed hard into her sleeve to clear her throat.

"He's gone." she tried again, and offered the silver cube of the animus vox back to Trist. As she opened her hand, the last traces of silver light frizzoned away from its grooved surface. "Did you hear what you needed?"

Rising to his feet, Trist shook his head and took the cube. "No, but it will have to suffice for now. Do not concern yourself with it. Good day."

With that, he turned and swept from the room, closing the door behind him.

[Azazeal849]

(OOC - copost part 1)

The constrictor drone battered through the swinging doors into the stairwell, swivelled its webber guns to point up the stairs, and immediately disintegrated into whirling shards of metal. Heavy autocannon shells thumped into the floor and made matchwood of the fire doors, forcing Tomas to shield his eyes from the whirling splinters. The cultists must have dragged their autocannon away from the windows and used it to cover the stairwell.

"Frag out." Alicia warned through gritted teeth, pulling a grenade from underneath her red overcoat and flattening herself against the chewed doorframe. As she yanked the pin and ducked out, an evil, sucking howl filled the stairwell.

Something crashed into Alicia from above, feet first. The feet were hooked steel talons that ripped through Alicia's coat and gouged into the mesh armour beneath. The thing was thin and hunched and corpse-grey, eyes and mouth pinned wide open by surgical braces. It screeched into Alicia's face as it bowled her over, clawed steel arms swiping furiously.

Still holding the grenade, Alicia shoved it towards the murder servitor's gaping mouth, and kicked out at its armoured torso in a vain attempt to get it off her. A flailing viscerator arm swatted the grenade aside, sending it and two of Alicia's fingers bouncing away across the floor.

Before Tomas could stop him, Solvan had lunged to the side and thrown himself on top of the skittering grenade. There was a dull thump, and the floorboards shook like a regimental drum that had been thumped with a hammer. Tomas stared in horror at his oldest friend, and then, something deep, and wound tight, and integral to Tomas character, snapped.

The murder servitor was first. Tomas slammed his shoulder into it, sending it staggering. He used the space to brutally hack it to chunks, roaring in incoherent anger as he smashed it apart with the edge of his blade. He then turned, overcoat flapping behind him, and Tomas charged the death trap stairs, screaming a Casterian oath of bloody murder. Alicia watched wide eyed, and would later swear that it was a minor miracle. Somehow, in that tight space, with anti-armour rounds and lasbolts dropping in a hail at him, Tomas took not a single wound as he bounded up the stairs.

He vaulted a desk pulled up as a barricade, and landed on top of the autocannon team as the loader was pulling the drum clear from the cannon. He swung the empty can like a bucket, and it crashed into Tomas ribs. The guardsman was too lost in rage and pain to notice, taking his sword to the menial and hacking him into bloody chunks, spraying arcs of smoking blood onto the floor and walls from massive overhand blows with his sword. The autocannon firer attempted to scramble away from the blood coated berserker, and Tomas opened his back like a kit bag, exposing white ribs and spine with a sweeping blow that left blood and bone chips embedded in the ceiling. Two cultists, wielding surplus lasguns like clubs, rushed him and bulldozed him to the floor, sending his sword skittering away. Tomas kicked one of with a savage, feral yell, leaving a lanky menial curled up and vomiting from the pain of his crushed crotch. The other tried to wrap grimy fingers around Tomas' neck and crush his windpipe. Tomas punched his fingers into the man's eyes, causing the heretic to squeal in piteous pain and release his grip. Tomas surged to his feet, rage and andrenalin thumping through him, and grabbed the blinded heretic and threw him head first down the stairs, his spine cracking under the impact of his fall, before he landed in a tangled pile of limbs at the bottom of the stairwell. The still weeping and puking menial he drove his boot into, crushing the man's windpipe with his first kick and finishing him with a savage stamp of his steel-toed guard issue boots that snapped his neck.

Breathing hard, Tomas bent and picked a weapon from the floor, reloading it with a precision and skill ingrained by decades of combat service that even this heightened killing frenzy couldn't ruin.

Two more menials, rushing to reinforce their friends, slid to a halt and gaped at the scene. Standing amidst four bodies was a blood-covered spectre of death, hefting the cult's main heavy weapon and braced to fire it from the hip. With a roar of anger, Tomas fired the back-breaking weapon and tore the two men in half, punching fist sized holes in the wall behind them before either could raise a weapon to fire.

Ignoring the comms, and Machairi's orders to hold until a Blank had caught up with him, Tomas advanced, firing short, bone-shaking bursts from the autocannon, destroying anything that got in his way in a murderous killing rage.

+ + + + + +

“Frak!” the Major vehemently swore as he processed the frantic series of events that culminated in Prinzel’s break with sanity.

He swore again as the Casterian shoved past his attempt to hold him back, and then swore once more for effect as Alia’s armsman charged into the stairwell and his certain death.

Crenshaw hauled up shortly as the largest remnant of the dismembered servitor twitched by his feet. The drone was barely more than its surgically mutilated head attached to a diagonally slashed fraction of torso and a partially sundered viscerator claw. It’s braced open mouth emitted a rasping binary screech, which was underlined by an all too human shriek of pained alarm as it was enveloped in his aura. The drone writhed spasmodically against the battered floorboards the scream became a drowning gurgle, as it sought to breathe with bisected lungs even as it wretched blood-oil lubricants.

The Major grunted as he caught the fleeting instance of maimed sentience in the bloodshot, perpetually pried open eyes, before they glazed over as the drone’s default programming took over for the expelled technopath. Dying motivators had the failing servitor attempt to reach over and disembowel him with the damaged viscerator claw. Crenshaw pinned the drone’s truncated arm beneath a boot, and finished the half completed draw of his maul and thumbed it to maximum power. He terminated the construct’s tortured existence with an overhead smash that bashed another hole in the abused floor.

Crenshaw’s mouth pressed into a tight-lipped frown as he wrenched his maul free and deactivated it. His gaze shifted from the decommissioned Mechanicus horror to Belannor’s sprawled corpse. He restrained himself from factoring how the old priest’s death would impact the team. It was a difficult feat when the screams, both from Tomas and his victims, were evidence of how poorly the revelation could be taken. He stowed the maul, and once again took up his carbine as he turned toward the stairs.

“Praise unto Him.” Wuziarch breathed, as he listened to Tomas’ violent rampage.

The Arbitrator’s voice was tinged by awed conviction that made the Major’s teeth click. He considered blind righteousness and willful ignorance to be a virtue for the masses - not an operative in the Imperium’s shadow conflicts. Crenshaw again chose to restrain his antipathy towards Wuziarch as the Arbitrator impertinently clapped a hand on his armored shoulder as he made to move around him.

“Come on, major Crenshaw!” Wuziarch exclaimed. “Into the breach!”

“Negative.” Crenshaw briskly countered. He reached out and arrested the Arbitrator’s advance with a forearm across his armored chest, and fixed him with a firm look. “I alone shall go after Prinzel.”

“He has made us an opening!” Wuziarch protested, as he tried to push his way past. “We must take advantage of it!”

“We must not allow any cultists to break out and escape, Wuziarch.” The Major elaborated, almost growling through his gritted teeth as he kept his arm barred. “Hold the stairs and await further orders.”

The Arbitrator’s eyes narrowed as he knocked off the major’s hold. “I don’t take orders –”

Both agents whirled with weapons levelled as they heard an anguished, panicked scream as a cultist descended down the stairs - headfirst and airborne. The cry terminated with an echoing symphony of cracked vertebrae, splintered limbs, and a loud clack as his head violently bounced off rockrete at the bottom of the stairs. Crenshaw duly noted that Tomas had gouged the broken man’s eyes out - even as he fired a hushed burst from his carbine into the cultist’s fractured skull. Wuziarch’s shotcannon thundered a moment after and tore apart the mangled cultist’s torso in a shower of blood and viscera.

“I don’t think he’s completely dead.” Tarran quipped. “Why don’t you shoot him again, boys?

Crenshaw briefly glanced aside with Tarran’s toothless sarcasm. The Nebula turned rogue trader was propped against the wall, ignoring her maimed hand as she rummaged through her medipack. The Major followed her gaze to Belannor’s still body and made to speak until their voxes crackled.

"All agents, Machairi - we have evidence of an invocatio daemonis, do not proceed upstairs without blank support!"

“Stay!” Crenshaw barked, pointing at Wuziarch as if he were a disobedient hound.

The Major held the imperious glare before turned and advanced into the stairwell with his carbine raised. He stepped over the ruined heap of humanity and hustled upwards towards the barricaded doorframe, only slowing once the cannon began to thump again – from a distance with rounds being sent back into the building. He quickly surmised that Prinzel had taken the crew served weapon, and was making himself the most obviously dangerous and easily eliminated of the mission team as he murderously advanced into the cultist stronghold. Prinzel was going get killed, or worse, get killed quickly.

Personal makes this emotional, and emotional makes you make stupid decisions. Crenshaw reiterated as he reached the crest of the stairs and heard a cultist trying to flank the Casterian, with the clumsy eagerness of an amateur. The Major ignored the bloody mess of the cannon crew as gazed down his reflex sight in the slight gap between their erstwhile desk barricade and the floor. The cultist stopped and covered his goatee framed mouth as he tried not to wretch as he took in the sight of his friends’ butchered corpses tossed about the room.

Stupid decisions make you dead. Crenshaw concluded, as he fired with a series of muffled thwacks.

Bullets tore through hand, mouth and throat as the cult soldier staggered back against a wall now decorated with his own blood as well. The man exhaled a deep, gurgling breath as he dropped his battered stub rifle and feebly reached for his shredded throat. Crenshaw stood and navigated over the desk barricade as the man bucked, sunk down onto his knees, and shakily collapsed to feebly gasp and writhe amidst his dismembered comrades. He could see Prinzel firing away further down the hallway, and listened for more cultists as he dipped his carbine to validate his most recent kill.

Stupid decision. The Major chided Prinzel as he dispassionately ended a lifetime of the cultist’s troubles with a muted snap. Crenshaw knew from experience that should the Casterian make it through the day, he would physically regret the impulsive decision to carry and fire the crew served cannon. His had used Vincent’s auto – Gene – as an effective distraction and fire magnet on Baraspine. That, in addition to grappling with the cyber hounds, had caused substantial deep muscle aches in his arms, back and chest…which Kally had demandingly insisted on thoroughly working out since they had –

Not now. Crenshaw once again chided himself. His incongruous thoughts about Kally in the middle of an operation were unacceptable. The major shook his head to focus himself as he swapped his depleted casket magazine for a full one. He stalked ahead, carbine tracking along with his eyes as he as he moved after the relentlessly murderous Prinzel. The vox clicked again as he neared the side corridor.

"Tomas, Sonder's been injured, stable but non-mobile.”

Major Martin Crenshaw, born a blacksoul and bred a blackheart, abruptly halted. His body was wracked by a highly intense and highly involuntary bio-electric and chemical response to Alia’s words. His hands shook with unaccustomed unsteadiness as an adrenal surge that squeezed like a vice around his chest. His escalated heartbeat thundered deafeningly in his ears.

Kally is injured. The major’s shrewdly pragmatic self would have observed the visceral reaction as thoroughly emotional hindbrain impulse, and assessed it as a supremely dangerous operational liability – and chastised himself most severely for such unacceptable behavior - if his shrewdly pragmatic self was not also momentarily blinded to all other concerns Kally being injured, and the equally corrosive thought that thrashed through his consciousness a moment later that I am not with -

NOT NOW! Crenshaw viciously ordered. He exerted every available shred of willpower to suppress his startlingly emotional response to Kally being injured and furiously beat it back into the recesses of his mind. Kally is stable and the Sister is with her. She will live.He exhaled deeply, unintentionally echoing the cultist he had killed moments before, and forcibly unclenched his jaw.

There is a time and a place to be the concerned about Kally. This is emphatically not it. Focus.

“Acknowledged.” Crenshaw responded, with as much neutrality as he could enforce. His teeth clicked as he relayed even worse news to the other half of the team. “Belannor is dead. He smothered a grenade.”

The major proceeded when no reply immediately crackled back. “Be advised, Prinzel charged the first floor and I am in pursuit. Wuziarch and Tarran, who is lightly wounded, have the stairs covered.”

"We'll regroup with you and push up your side of the building.”

“Understood.”

+ + + + + +

"Saph!" Glabrio shouted urgently, pointing to where Kally had fallen.

The Sister’s breath momentarily seized as she glanced over to see her friend and fellow agent down, bloodied and motionless out in the open. Don’t be dead, Kally. Don’t be dead.

Sapphira swept the cultists hunkered across the gallery with another whippoorwill burst of auto-fire, until her compact machine-pistol was emptied. She ducked back into the questionable cover of the desk she’d thrown herself behind, and hissed in pain as the motion brought about another inflamed pulse that coursed along her spine. The Sister firmly pressed her lips together as retaliatory fire thudded against the desk while she reloaded. Cultist gunfire drove Glabrio into cover with her, and the Sister inhaled deeply as he bumped against her and uncomfortably jostled her already tweaked back.

“You okay?” Glabrio queried with a quick, sideways glance while he swapped out magazines.

Others have had it worse than you. The Sister sharply chided herself as she thought about her discomfort against the penitents’ torments...the suffering of the Silent Vigil’s Sisters on Marioch…Kelly and – You have no right or reason to complain. You are a Sororita Hospitaller. You will endure it.

Sapphira exhaled softly and nodded with grim determination as she readied her machine-pistol. She looked back at the former regulator and tilted her head towards where Kally was down. “Cover me?”

“Of course.” Glabrio readily affirmed with his own nod. The Sister reflexively returned his deliberate elbow nudge as they both readied themselves to break cover and re-engage the cultists. “On your go.”

“Go!” The Sister urged as she clapped a hand against his armored back.

"Come on then, you ugly frakkers!" the investigator bellowed, giving the sister cover to move to Kally's side by standing up and strafing in the opposite direction, knives of burning gas flaring from his outstretched pistols. She traced the Aquila points and prayed as he went.

Imperator, grant us your aegis as we enact your will.

Sapphira stifled a grunt as she leveraged herself onto her feet with the desk to rise into a crouch, machine-pistol leveled at the cultists across the way. She twinned her prayers with deeds as she opened fire on the traitorous menials who were trying for Glabrio. One young menial was spun out of cover as she was shot in the head, and chased another girl behind a desk near the ordinate’s office by the stairs.

She took advantage of the momentary lull to charge out towards Kally in a hunched over run. The movements practiced by the innumerable semi-live fire and maneuver exercises of her youth, honed by years of service alongside the Inquisition. She kept her teeth gritted as each footfall sparked a twinge, yet nevertheless kept her weapon shouldered and ready to kill or discourage any cultist who got in her way. The Sister glanced at her dear, wounded friend. Don’t be dead, Kally. Don’t be -

Sapphira audibly gasped and stumbled to a halt as her foot struck and caught on some debris. She staggered upright as a wracking spasm tore along her back, and tenuously tried to hobble forward. The Sister grimaced as she heard a shout in gutter Perinetine from across the gallery, and unsteadily lurched forward to reach Kally even as she turned and addressed the threat with the muffled cracks of gunfire. She saw an overturned desk and a fractional second later two figures illuminated by dual starbursts.

The Sister barked out a harsh cough as she was doubled over by a strike to her abdomen, and she reeled until another burst scythed across her thighs and violently hurled her onto the ground with a clatter of carapace armor. Sapphira clenched her eyes shut as further snarls of auto and stub fire chewed into the ground around her and pelted her with sprays of rubble. The Sister winced as two flicker-flashes seared overhead and the menials panicked. She tried and failed to keep track of the vox as her head whirled.

“Shit.” Sapphira growlingly seethed.

The Sister raised her machine-pistol and opened her eyes as she registered someone nearby. She lowered the weapon as Glabrio crouched down next to her. Sapphira made herself stare at the ceiling, and away from his sharply concerned expression, as the investigator checked her over for wounds. She gritted her teeth and focused on the discolored tiles as she suppressed any reaction to the physical pain.

Sapphira glanced at Glabrio as he concluded the blood sweep and showed his unstained gauntlets, and then exhaled with relief as he offered her a hand up. “The good news is that you’re not leaking, Saph.”

The Sister groaned as she was hauled upright by Glabrio. She held her machine-pistol tightly against her chest as she curled arm around her stomach, and her thankfully undamaged medicae satchel. Sapphira snaked her other arm to firmly clutch the neck seam of his armored back plate, as he wrapped an arm securely around her waist. She met his eyes as he gave her a questioning, are you ready look.

She nodded wearily, and murmured as she leaned against Glabrio. “Not a criticism of you, Ri.”

“Good to know.” Glabrio softly chuckled. Sapphira managed a brief, slight smile. She mentally braced herself and grasped on tighter to him, even as he patted her side with gentle encouragement.

“Get me over to Kally.”

“You got it.”

The Sister’s vision whited out in a nova flare of sciatic agony as Glabrio stood and hauled her onto her feet. There were further ragged stiches of pain across her stomach and thighs. You have endured worse. You have no right or reason to complain. Sapphira’s neck muscles were taut as she forced her lips together and choked down any exclamation. Just like being in Schola again. She held Glabrio tighter, and blinked to clear her vision as she adjusted to movement as they took steps towards Kally.

Sapphira saw Gavin framed in the gallery door, and even from a bleary-eyed distance she saw he was a disheveled wreck. He was hunched over with stooped shoulders, and his overcoat was soaked through by frost thaw and exertion. The psyker’s haggard, grime and sweat streaked face was knitted tightly with consternation as he was transfixed by the sight of Kally down. He belatedly registered her and Glabrio in motion, and they briefly made eye contact, his amber eyes bloodshot behind his Cog framed goggles.

The Sister noticed his weary, worried expression morph into a vicious scowl as his eyes narrowed and flicked past her shoulder. She followed Gavin’s hostile gaze as Glabrio turned them around, and revealed the male tech priest – Oppen. Sapphira could not help but glare herself at the damned Ocularii. She experienced the brush of an unnaturally cool breeze, and shivered as Gavin used his sanctioned abilities.

"So much for those innocent adepts." a phantom voice something like Gavin's ghosted through Sapphira's earpiece, though clearly not directed at her. Oppen winced, as if cuffed around the ear, and irritably returned the psyker’s venomous stare.

Sapphira immediately disregarded any concern for the Ocularii. She loathe as she was to admit it, Crenshaw was right. Gav would’ve killed the tech-priests, and would’ve doubtlessly already killed the Major, if he wasn’t in control of himself. Sapphira frowned as she watched the psyker moved deeper into the gallery. After speaking with Kelly after Baraspine, Gavin had been almost a new person…and now he was bristling with mute anger as he stomped towards a processing terminal away from Kally’s null aura.

“Proceed with caution, psyker.” Oppen pointedly advised.

“Shut your mouth before I shut it for you, again.” Gavin snarled. The psyker’s scratchy voice was thick with contempt and fatigue. He glanced differentially at Machairi. “I’m going after their technopath.”

Sapphira sighed. Gavin was in a bad way, but she couldn’t focus on anyone other than Kally.

She gave Kally a critical, clinical once over as Glabrio gently lowered her down beside the wounded blank. Her armoured bodyglove was slashed along the side of her arm, and a more direct hit to her centre mass had burned away the outer armourweave and visibly cracked the ballistic plate underneath. Either another bullet or a shrapnel fragment had grazed her head, and the cut was sheeting blood down the side of her stunned face. Sapphira breathed with relief as she observed Kally’s shallow respirations, and reached out to rouse and tend to her friend.

+ + + + + +

“Kally! Kally! Wake up!”

Kally drifted awake. Had she been dreaming? She remembered a factory, and steam, and. . .

Sapphira was leaning over her. Her arm hurt like a bastard, and there was a coppery taste in her mouth. Had she bit her tongue? She kept having to blink her left eye. Something was in it.

“Hey.” She managed, trying to focus on Sapphira.

The Sister’s grime streaked face was paler than usual, beaded with sweat and plastered with loose hairs from her ponytail. She stared down at her with a tight lipped frown, like the keen eyed clinician she was...with a deep intensity of care that Kally had always imagined maternal concern must have looked like, if she hadn’t… She shifted uncomfortably under the scrutiny, and groaned as she remembered her arm hurt like a bastard. Why was she even on the ground? She blinked again, and saw the cracked carapace beneath the Saph’s tattered robes and overcoat. That meant -

“You…you’ve been shot.” Kally murmured. She tried to push herself up, and her head swam like it wasn't properly connected to her neck. She sat back down hard. “Ow.”

“Yeah, and you’re one to talk.” Sapphira quipped, somewhat tersely. She put a slim hand on her chest to keep her from moving again. “Now, stay down. You'll make it worse if you move.”

“Was. . .was I shot?”

“Uh huh.” Sapphira grunted, as she moved to focus on her head. There was a jagged flash of pain as she applied counterseptic. “You smashed your head open on a desk, too. The desk got the worst of it.”

“Am I going to be alright?” Kally asked. She hated this feeling, like her head was wrapped in cotton wool and stuffed with fluff. She knew enough to know she had been pretty badly concussed.

“You'll live, praise be to Him.” The Sister answered, with all the conviction of a sermon. Kally saw her scarred face soften, and offer a slight, wry smile as she went from Hospitaller Sapphira to Saph, even as she rummaged in her medical kit. “I’m going to be a real bitch about this later, though.”

“Okay, Team Mom.” She breathed. She knew she sounded like a snarky juve, but Saph exhaled a soft laugh. Kally managed a weak smile as Glabrio chuckled, from surprisingly close by. The former bounty huntress’ smile evaporated as she focused on why they were here and who they were after.

“No.” Kally pushed Sapphira away. “Go. Get him. I'll keep.”

“Kally, I need. . .”

“You need to finish the job. I swore to Kelly I wouldn't let him get away again. Don't make me a liar. You and Marc get that frakker for me.”

Sapphira paused, and gave her a hard look. Kally saw the Sister’s pale grey eyes darken at the mention of Kelly. She’d always thought they were pretty from the moment she met Saph, in the True Bane’s interrogation block, when the Sister had been sent to keep her alive for another day of torture. She hated to see the shadows of grief and guilt that had lingered in her friend’s eyes since Baraspine – but she had promised Kelly. She knew that Saph could understand a vow like that.

The Sister pressed a tourniquet into her hands. “Apply this dressing to your arm wound.”

She nodded, and regretted it as nausea washed over her.

“No problem. I’ll follow when I can.”

"Stay where you are, Sonder, you've done enough." Machairi ejected a hissing fuel flask from her melta pistol and screwed a reserve into place as she joined Glabrio and Sapphira by the wounded blank. "Tomas, Sonder's been injured, stable but non-mobile."

The inquisitor spoke with brisk efficiency into her vox, pre-empting the concerned questions from Marc and Crenshaw.

“Acknowledged. Belannor is dead. He smothered a grenade.”

"Son of a frakking bitch!" Sapphira heard Marc curse bitterly over the vox.

Sapphira herself choked on a low, deep exhalation as she sagged back onto her heels. She scrunched her eyes shut as she processed the news and wordlessly touched the Aquila points. The Sister’s eyes bolted open as there was a metallic bang and crash as Gavin kicked over his terminal.

“Hey!” Nikolai objected.

“Frak off.” Gavin growlingly rebuked. “I’ve got work to do.”

Machairi didn't intervene, and as she glanced at the inquisitor Sapphira saw her still shocked into silence by Crenshaw's news. For a moment, the unflappable, indomitable Alia Machairi looked more stricken and more human than the sister could ever remember seeing her. It was terrifying.

“Be advised," Crenshaw's voice continued with a calm that felt somehow obscene. "Prinzel charged the first floor and I am in pursuit. Wuziarch and Tarran, who is lightly wounded, have the stairs covered.”

“Ballsy bastards.” Glabrio muttered, as he disbelievingly shook his head.

"We'll regroup with you and push up your side of the building." Machairi answered. The terrifying moment had passed, and although the inquisitor's eyes still looked moist, she was back in command. "Glabrio, hold here with Sonder and Oppen and keep the heretics on the stairs busy. Don't let them come down, make them think we're trying to come up."

Glabrio's lined face rallied into a wan smile behind his visor. "Put my ass on the line at ten-to-one odds? Can do, m'lady." He tilted his pistols to check the ammo counters glinting on the grips, and began to run towards the shattered stairwell, shouting loud enough for anyone upstairs to hear him over the gunfire. "Skitarii squads two and three, with me! Let's smoke these motherfrakkers out!"

Nikolai gave Glabrio an odd look, and then shrugged his shoulders. He opened his mouth and a string of harsh, warlike binary and code-blurts issued out.

"That's what a Skitarii Tribune sounds like." he hissed. "Let me do the talking."

“Frak talking, frak being clever, and frak you as well.” Gavin countered the tech-priest. His voice was a static crackle from the upended terminal’s speakers. The words echoed from terminals further down the work floor as the psyker passed through and flash frosted the office machinery.

Marc came crunching through the broken glass and wood splinters, divested of his mechanicus robe. His armour was filthy with dust and powder-smoke, but no blood. "Kally?" he asked urgently, his opaque visor snapping towards her where she lay on the floor.

"I'm alright." Kally looked up at Marc, frowning. "Finish this frak-up."

"Black, Sapphira, follow me." Machairi ordered, raising her arm towards the wall and bursting it into flaming shreds of plaster and rebar with a flicker-blast of her melta pistol. The Inquisitor looked down at Kally with a meaningful expression. “Sonder, keep an eye on Jenkins.”

The Sister supportively squeezed Kally’s shoulder before used the desk to leverage, and then steady herself on her feet. She allowed a muted grunt of irritation as she shouldered her weapon and slowly moved off towards the fire fight raging at the other end of the office.

Kally leaned her head back, and closed her eyes for a moment.

Don't frak this up Marc. We're all counting on you.

+ + + + + +

Technopath. Kuscelian's warning still resonated inside Gavin's skull, even as he hurtled his way across the gallery towards the staircase and the cultists above. It was obvious now that he knew what he was looking for. Now that he traced the psycho-electric spoor back through the storm drains below their feet, and sensed the scrambled machine spirits of the sluice gate, he understood how Arcolin had gotten so close to Complex Alpha One undetected. Now that he saw the code-marked, abandoned patrol routes through the underground warren and that their designated guardians were absent, he understood how Arcolin had co-opted the murder servitor and its suppressor counterpart.

Gavin felt oddly detached about the idea of having to face off with another technopath, just as he felt oddly detached from oculus Kuscelian as their nominal ally scrambled to escape a runaway lifter crane. Gavin felt no compulsion to help her, even if there had been time. He felt no compulsion to aid oculus Oppen either, although he indirectly aided the Martian from being blown to bits as he used a frag grenade in mid-flight to slingshot himself up the stairs, detonating the explosive while it was still half-wreathed in the exhaust flames of its launcher. The bursting shrapnel scattered the menials sheltering beyond the landing into bloody ruin, while Gavin arced from a punctured vox-unit to a lasgun falling from its owner's nerveless fingers, and on into the lighting circuit of the upper floor.

<What would a skitarii tribune say to that?> he jabbed hard into Oppen's vox receiver as he hunted for his quarry, shearing past the other psyker's servitor puppets to avoid forewarning them.

Their own servitor support was no longer performing with the same lethal efficiency. As the three cultists who had fled Machairi's melta fire blundered through the blinding smoke, looking for a way out, one of Kuscelian's spherical Cobalt drones tilted its fan-like suspensor wings and swooped in, spitting auspex tags from an underslung dart gun. Without a guiding hand, its instinctive line of attack took it straight through the tracer fire still stuttering from the first floor window, which caught it and killed it in a burst of metal confetti. Another servitor quested across the ground floor offices, green light beams flickering through the broken window as it hunted left and right, oblivious to the real battle unfolding on the floor above it.

The reason for the automata's lack of strategy was, of course, the distracted plight of their guiding Oculus.

"This is bloody stupid!" Kuscelian complained through gritted teeth as she flailed upright again and half stumbled, half crawled towards the control pod of the machine-cursed crane. Latching onto the steel cage with her augmetic hand, it gave a metal-on-metal screech as she hauled herself up to the level of the cockpit canopy. She watched in horrified fascination as the buttons and levers clunked back and forth of their own accord, under the gaze of its comatose servitor pilot. The crane swung round on its pedestal once again, almost throwing Kuscelian clear as it moved to finish off demolishing Vizkop's sniper nest.

Omnissiah forgive me. Kuscelian prayed, locking her augmetic fingers in place and fighting the centripetal force to bring the pistol in her organic hand to bear. But a soul can only be bestowed by the Machine God.

She shot the servitor first, with a thread of light that spider-webbed the cockpit canopy and blew the lobotomite's head into superheated steam. Three more shots tore sparks and severed wiring from the control panel, and filled the cockpit with smoke. It billowed out as the fractured canopy collapsed. The crane groaned like a mortally wounded beast and juddered to a halt, its heavy lifter hook crashing to the ground and cratering the abused asphalt.

"Sorry." the priestess said with heartfelt remorse, placing her bionic hand on the smoking panel for as long a moment as she could spare. A second of remembrance was the least a servant of the Machine God could do, for a faithful workhorse spirit that had been taken against its will by a filthy chaos psyker. Raechel supposed she should be thankful that the technopath did not seem to be as skilled as Gavin, or she might have had to perform the same mercy kill on all her own servitors.

I may yet. I cannot risk handing the enemy extra assets.

Hurriedly, she stretched out her Omnissiah-gifted senses and reasserted control over her dwindling servitor retinue.

<Nik.> she pulsed across their secure noospheric comm-band. <Hostile crane neutralised.>

There goes a sentence I am unlikely to speak again. she reflected.

<And so much for those innocent machine spirits.> a voice intruded into her comm-band, on a bow wave of seething static. Kuscelian flinched without meaning to, and wondered just how long Gavin Jenkins had been watching her struggle with the machine-cursed crane. Probably hoping that it would smash her into an ugly organic paste, she conjectured. Mechanical logic of her strategic value dovetailed nicely with a very human sense of spite to keep on denying the psyker that pleasure.

She burst-fed a command to her constrictors that had bounded ahead into the office block, hauling them back to bring them out of range of any foci within the building that the enemy psyker could use as a bridge.

<Vizkop.> she signalled. <My drones will hold the perimeter - tell your friends to...>

In the same split second that it took her to form the signal, she realised that Vizkop's ident code was no longer keeping overwatch from the half-demolished warehouse. To her consternation, it was headed into the building.

+ + + + + +

Cursing under her breath with a rogue trader's fluency, Alicia finished winding the gauze from her belt medipack around the bleeding stumps of her fingers. Firing Pretentious Bitch one and a half-handed was going to be an interesting challenge. Her Nebula suit's satrophene injectors would have been very useful round about now.

Correction, Alley: if you had your Nebula suit, father Belannor wouldn't be dead, and Prinzel wouldn't be off on a murderous rampage.

She bit her cheek as she looked at the fallen confessor and thought about how Ella and Kally would react, after everything the old priest had done for them.

"On your feet, soldier." Josiah insisted, taking Alicia's unmaimed hand and helping her haul herself to her feet. "He's at the Emperor's table with the other noble martyrs now. Back here there's cultists that need the Emperor's judgement, and the boys upstairs need that that big frak-off carbine of yours."

He clapped her on the shoulder and began to move off in the opposite direction.

"Where the Horus are you going?" Alicia shouted after him.

"Downstairs!"

Alicia blinked. "Wuziarch, are you deaf as well as overzelous? Crenshaw just instructed us to cover the stairs."

"The inquisitor is on her way to reinforce. Meanwhile, the cog-girl says there's another technopath on the loose. And this building is an STC design, just like arbites HQ on Marioch."

"So?"

"So, the cogitator memory bank is in the basement. Back in '04 a technopath broke out of the cells and used the banks as a focus to cast his powers across the entire fortress. I'm willing to bet that this heretic is doing exactly the same thing."

"How will you stop him?" Alicia asked.

"The same way my colleagues stopped that heretic. Blow the cogitator core."

"Arbiter!" Kuscelian's voice suddenly broke in over the team vox, spluttering with horror. "That cogitator core is a hub for the local network. If you harm it, it could feed back a disruptive power spike that wipes every machine spirit in this manufactory zone!"

"That happened at HQ too." Josiah argued back into his earpiece. "We lost six months worth of data. It was a price worth paying to put the witch down."

"Listen!" Kuscelian implored. She had already euthanised one co-opted machine spirit, but this one was infinitely more valuable - valuable enough for her to know that they had to at least attempt to salvage and reconsecrate it. An Ocularis Dragon no longer had the luxury of being able to deal in absolutes. "You do not know what you are-"

"You tech priests always did have skewed priorities." Josiah shook his head, and pulled out his earpiece to silence any further argument. "For the Emperor, lady Tarran. Go stop the daemon - that's the bigger threat. Just promise me that when you're done with DeRei, I can hand over whatever pieces are left to the arbites!"

+ + + + + +

Not having a good day was an understatement for Vizkop. His vantage point had been suitable, that was not the problem. No the problem was the crane that had came swinging almost into his face, demolishing part of the warehouse but leaving his nest mostly intact. But that had to wait. There were better places for him to be than providing cover. There was a low chance any high-priority target would cross his sights, so he absconded from his nest with his rifle across his back.

“Don't you dare go down there, Josiah!” Vizkop all but shouted into the link. “If you do-!”

He cut himself off into a growl as Josiah removed his earpiece. He altered his course for the basement Josiah was going for. He was not about to let that fool destroy a valuable piece of technology just because it had worked once before. There were other options for taking out the technopath and Vizkop was ready to do whatever he needed to make sure Josiah did not lay a finger on that cogitator bank.

[Azazeal849]

(OOC - co-post part 2 and GM response)

Marc fell back on cold, relentless training protocol as he advanced. Check motion tracker. Check corners at each door. Check motion tracker again. One bullet into each fallen traitor, just to be certain. The job became harder as they reached the chewed-up gallery by the other stairway. Retrieve ident and ammunition from casualty.

Father Solvan had done everything for Marc's closest friends. He had saved Vince from himself; he had brought Kelly back from the brink when even Marc himself hadn't the tools to do it; now he had saved Alley and the others, in a final act that had left him face-down and bloody on top of a frag grenade. He lowered to one knee next to the body, dropping his supporting hand from his autogun to turn the old priest over as gently as he could manage. Solvan's robes had shredded to reveal the enameled carapace beneath, and his beard was stained with red around his bloody lips and nose. His eyes were closed almost peacefully, as if he had known he was offering his death in place of Tomas and the others, and considered it a fair exchange. His rosarius still hung about his neck, cracked in two down the centre of its invincible aquila. The protective amulet must have crushed right against the grenade as it detonated, blowing out the refractor field and splitting the blessed metal. Marc wasn't normally one for omens, but somehow the ruptured aquila lying across the faithful priest's body seemed like a particularly damning one.

And then the dead priest breathed. It wasn't a cough; it was barely even the thin rattle of air being sucked through a broken reed, but it was unmistakable.

"Saph!" Marc shouted, dropping his autogun entirely to cradle the miraculously alive priest's head in his hands. "Saph, I need you here right now!"

“Holy Throne…” Sapphira softly exclaimed, numbed by shock and wide-eyed with awe. Solvan is alive. The Sister slowly reconciled that the old priest - her old friend – was alive against his seemingly deathly visage. She had seen that same expression before on another old friend.

She acutely remembered the hectic and harrowing moments after Tomas had taken an assassin’s bullet for the Inquisitor. The Casterian had been dying, his beard matted around his mouth and nose as every breath and heartbeat shed more blood in unwitting complicity. Tomas had met Lady Machairi’s eyes, and only then gave himself permission to die with a weary nod after verifying his ward was safe. She had been by Tomas’ side almost immediately, and seen the hauntingly peaceful contentment on his bloodied face. She prayed meet her own eventual martyrdom with the peace and serenity of an oath fulfilled.

Sapphira knew with every fiber of her being that the God-Emperor had spared Solvan Belannor, and the Sister desperately wanted to stay and do everything within her abilities to ensure he remained so…yet she remained hesitant to move. She had been in this terrible, time sensitive situation before. She had abandoned wounded servants of the Imperium, who she alone could have saved with prompt medical attention, when the greater interests of the Imperium were on the line. She had never allowed herself to be burdened by guilt in the moment, and had always prayed for the souls of the dead afterwards…

But those individuals hadn’t been Solvan. She knew that was a horrendous double standard…but this was Solvan. Guilt about her own absence of guilt was a shame to be addressed at another time, and the Sister promised herself rigorous penance for this most recent of her many failings. Sapphira wanted nothing more than to save the life of a good man – but that decision was not hers.

The sister hospitaller looked from Marc to Machairi, and for the second time in a few short minutes the inquisitor appeared to have been struck dumb. For a moment she looked like she might stagger sideways against a demolished workstation, as her free hand silently marked the points of the aquila across her chest. Sapphira tensed in dread expectation of her answer.

"Help him, sister." the older woman ordered, half a whisper.

Sapphira did not need to be told twice. The Sister distantly registered the protestations from bruised muscles and traumatized nerves as she hurtled towards Solvan. Sapphira thumped down onto her knees beside him with barely a hitch in her breath as she mentally repurposed her own minor physical ails into single minded focus on the wounded priest and what his needs were. She tore off her tattered Mechanicus overcoat and passed it to Marc, who promptly rolled and delicately tucked the garment underneath Solvan’s head as she tore out and activated her diagnostic slate.

“Stop.” Solvan murmured. He weakly brushed away Marc’s hands. “Go…with Him…and finish this.”

“Aye, Father.” Marc affirmed. The former investigator stiffly nodded to Solvan and Sapphira as he scooped up his rifle, and scrupulously checked his motion tracker as he moved toward the stairs.

The old priest slowly opened his eyes, and they burnt with determination as he met Machairi’s gaze. “Imperator vult, Alia.”

“Imperator vult, Solvan.” The Inquisitor solemnly echoed. She seemed to be the resolute and indomitable Lady Machairi once again as she followed after Marc.

“The God-Emperor willed it that you live, Sol.” Sapphira declared with absolute conviction, as she gently touched his chest over the cleaved rosarius. “You don’t have His permission to die.” She shifted her eyes from the data-slate’s screen, and met the old priest’s with fierce, stubborn concern. “Or ours.”

+ + + + + +

Gavin found the technopath on the second floor - slumped against a computer terminal, psychic consciousness extending down like a taproot into the cogitator core in the bowels of the building, before spiderwebbing out through the rest of the electrical systems. The crude piggy-backing technique through the higher voltage network told Gavin that the other psyker was both less confident and less adept than himself. On the other hand, few technopaths could claim the poisoned honour of being honed under the merciless eye of major Martin Crenshaw.

The cult psyker was young, like many of the damned fools standing against Machairi's agents. Gangly and dark-haired, he was in his early twenties at most, although his scruffy stubble was already flecked with premature grey. His concentration was entirely on the servitors he had slaved to his will, with almost no awareness of his physical body - another amateur error, and one that was about to cost him dearly. Taking advantage of his quarry's tunnel-vision focus, Gavin speared straight into the boy's open, unshielded mind.

It was like diving into an ocean of someone else's memories - first the ice-cold shock of immersion and a confusing bubble-scatter of entrained memories, and then the pain of crashing into an unseen floor as the other technopath reacted with instinctive and violent self-defence. Gavin's physical fists clenched as he battered off the unfocused counterattack, trying to grab hold of his opponent's core consciousness behind the veil of random memories that were shredding away under his hands. There was none of the reservation, none of the self-disgust that he had felt when doing the same thing to Ella. Instead of seeking information, he grabbed the nearest memories and flung them at his opponent like missiles.

"How did you do that? Answer me, you little shit! How are you doing that!?"

A thin woman, straggle-haired and sunken-eyed, lunged to put herself between the furious man and his cowering target.

"Stop it, for Cog's sake! Stop shouting and leave him alone!"

"He's been conniving with daemon spirits! He's brought witchcraft into my house!"

The boy shrank back against the wall. With the naive logic of childhood, he had only stretched out his mind to scramble the settings on his father's hymn-vox as a prank...now he -

- was cowering under the duvet in his tiny box room, palms pressed against his ears to try and shut out the shouting and screaming he could hear from his parents' room next door. Menials needed sleep, the tech-priests said, if they were to serve the Omnissiah...and if you were still awake past midnight the data-daemons would slither out of the chronometer and eat you...but an entirely different sort of daemon seemed to have taken hold of his father in the next room. Or perhaps he was the daemon - only tech-priests were allowed to talk to the spirits of the machines - what he could do was the most terrible blasphemy. Perhaps he should -

"- go, Jakub, you need to go now! Your father, he's told the Tribune!"

Gavin felt the sting of terror spreading through his body and the ice-cold trail of tears running down his cheeks as the boy ran, clutching the address on the slip of paper his mother had pressed into his hands, turning back as a commotion of hydraulic footsteps hammered up to the hab-stack that had been his home. The splintering crash of the third-floor door disintegrating under the blow of a piston hammer...the distinctive searing crack of lasguns...

The boy gaped at the strobe-flashes glaring through the window, illuminating one shadow stalking forward, and another, thinner one reeling and falling. All he could think was that they had...she was d...she was -

- an incredibly tall and forbidding woman, with a rust-spotted bionic for a right arm. Jakub had been told that being bonded with the blessed purity of metal was the highest honour a menial could achieve, but on the tall woman he couldn't help thinking that this one seemed a meagre gift. Was this really the right place? Was this frowning woman supposed to keep him safe from the skitarii?

"Change from below?" he whispered fearfully, making the strange sign with his hand that his mother had shown him.

The woman's eyebrows rose in undisguised surprise. Her bionic arm wheezed as the skeletal fingers returned the sign.

"As the Táin commands." she nodded, and stood back to let him through the door.

Crusts of ice shattered as the technopath fell backwards from his focusing cogitator. He curled up, wheezing blood, as back on the ground floor Gavin's knuckles split and blackened with psycho-stigmatic bruising. He hit the young technopath again, this time with the hammer of his voice.

“Stay down.”

“You fr-”

“I insist, Jakub.”

“You might be able to force your way into my mind, oppressor.” The other technopath snarled, through tightly clenched teeth and curled back lips. Jakub’s eyes were scrunched shut, and his gaunt face betrayed his discomfort with hostile telepathy. Gavin distantly noted his own lack of sympathy.

“You may know my name, but don’t frakking talk to me like you know me.”

Gavin’s projection rippled in the emotional furnace blast of Jakub’s honest, raw and passionately emotional hatred for the Mechanicus. He smiled thinly, knowingly down at the other psyker, and felt his own flash frosted face creak sympathetically as the reaction transcended the astral and corporeal divide. He understood. The rival technopath’s rebuke was an almost mirrored image of his own thoughts about those glitchwits from the Lords Dragon and the ten years worth of records they had examined.

“I know you better than you’d think.”

“So we’re not so different, you and I?” Jakub questioned, with unbridled hostility as he grimaced and forced his eyes open. Gavin noticed how they narrowed almost immediately as the Change’s technopath witnessed his projection. He presented himself exactly as he was to the other psyker, his bionic legs prominently displayed as a feature of his Mechanicus disguise. “That’s scrap! We’re different!”

“And until now, you were fortunate for that.”

“Fortunate?” He softly echoed, almost disbelievingly. Another surge of heated aggression brushed past Gavin’s looming, film-reel flickering projection as Jakub shouted incredulously at him. “Fortunate?!”

“Fortunate.” Gavin reiterated.

“I should’ve been inducted into the Cult! I should’ve been sanctioned and been able to openly use my gifts to look after my siblings!” Jakub excoriated. He accusingly pointed at the Imperial psyker with a viperous glare. “I should’ve been you!

Gavin soaked in the other technopath’s emotions as their riptide current washed over him. He registered the sense of aggrieved injustice and jealous self-loathing that Jakub had as he saw the robed, augmented psyker that was presently invading his mind. The Imperial psyker slowly shook his head.

“You wouldn’t want my life.”

“Says you, you cog-wheel bastard!” The cultist psyker hoarsely raged. “You’re nothing more than another frakking lobotomized tool, remade by your masters in the template of your inhuman Deus!”

“I’m not from the Cult, Jakub.” Gavin countered. Objectively there was no reason to talk with, or defend against accusations from the cultist…but the other technopath was subdued, and he was curious. He had never encountered someone with the almost the exact same curse as himself before.

“You lie!”

“Psykers aren’t sanctioned and used by the Mechanicus, as we mutants are weak fleshed aberrations in the Deus’ schematics for humanity.” Gavin calmly explained. He shrugged, almost commiserating with the other psyker about their unnatural and unwanted genetic blight. “Or so they say.”

“You’re still trying to feed me a line of scrap, drone.” Jakub accusingly spat, the words accompanied by bloodied spittle. He grunted, and cuffed at his mouth and chin even as he glowered at the Imperial psyker. “You’ve got the bionics, and you’re wearing the bloody red robes of an oppressor.” The cult technopath scowled and threw a dismissively backhanded waive at him. “You can’t hide what you are!”

“I’m not hiding anything from you.” Gavin assured. He sighed, and reached down for the sprawled over Change cultist with his phantom hands. “And you can’t hide anything from me.”

“Wait!” The cultist cried out, correctly guessing what came next. Gavin didn’t.

He focused his exertion and went deeper into the other technopath’s mind, and delved back into his recent memories. Gavin’s left hand, pressed against the ridged scar across his temple, twitched slightly as he battered the cultist’s formative resistance and forced his way deeper into Jakub’s mind. His other hand lightly brushed sideways against the cogitator it was pressed against, as if he were idly swiping through a collection of images on a data-tablet rather than prying through another human’s mind.

The Imperial psyker’s focused on the ethereal, wavering panorama of Jakub’s emotional status and his sensory perception in-load over the last few hours. He could see the younger psyker through the gossamer thin extraction of his memory, as he writhed on the ground and clutched his head, a tormented rictus spread across his haggard face. Gavin muted out the anguished screams, and frowned in both existential dimensions as he realized they in the Change’s hideout, during their final briefing.

He immediately advanced the timeline, thoroughly uninterested in gathering intelligence on the anti-Mechanicus cult. The Dragons can do their own damned work. Gavin dismissively mused, as he advanced through the psyker’s mind. Jakub’s tormented screams terminated with –

- a ragged cheer as he withdrew his consciousness from the murder servitor. He didn’t raise his own voice in the exuberant cry of his fellow freedom fighters. He couldn’t, as he tried to shake off the reflexive nausea of coming into contact with the drone’s cognitive bionics, and the horrific bleed-through of its mangled human brain. Jakub struggled to breathe in the moist, sickeningly warm air of the underground warrens as he stared uneasily at the monstrous construct he’d subdued and co-opted for the Change. He grunted as he choked down bile, thoroughly unnerved by what he’d seen and felt…

Jakub numbly noted the revolutionaries’ advance scouts begin to squelch their way further into the tunnels. They warily avoided the blade armed abomination, which but not for his intervention, would have otherwise taken them to pieces for their trespass. Tadeusz, of course, was less reserved than the others as he walked up next to him and spat in the drone’s unblinking, mutilated face. It stood still.

“Lobo freak.” Tadeusz disparagingly sneered, as he cuffed stringy saliva off his bristly chin.

“Freak or not,” Jakub responded, self-consciously trying not to sound too testy about the freak comment, as he shot his comrade a look, “he was once a person.”

Jakub knew that Tadeusz, and every single one of the revolutionary menials, knew that they would be condemned to servitorized, should they be taken alive. Not that they would’ve avoided the risk if they’d been compliant little boys and girls and stayed servile to the Cult. The bastards harvested from their labour castes to make those monsters out of otherwise innocent men, women and children as needed. The oppressors always needed more constructs, and several of the Change had lost family and friends in a brutal way. The former menials all hated the drones almost as much as they feared them.

Jakub saw Tadeusz’s mouth quirk, not quite able to offer an apology. The other revolutionary merely offered a thoughtful grunt as he tilted his chin at the servitor. “Until they made him into a drone.”

“Yeah.” He muttered darkly.

“Yeah.” Tadeusz echoed. He stood, melancholically introspective for a moment, and then grunted again. “Still…it’ll be sweet justice and even sweeter revenge to turn the cog-head’s drones back on ‘em.”

“It will.”

“Freak or not,” Tadeusz continued, with a meaningful sidelong glance at the technopath, “he’s making Change happen.”

Jakub was stricken into silence by the almost compliment, and belatedly offered a nod.

“I think I’ll be keeping close to the lobos,” Tadeusz determined. The youth’s prematurely lined face cracked into a broad grin, and Jakub winced slightly as the other man clapped a hand on his back. “So make a good show out of decommissioning the bastards, eh, Kozica?”

“I guarantee it.” Jakub promptly answered. He nodded firmly with determination.

“Good.” Tadeusz affirmed, as he turned and raised his battered auto rifle overhead. He shouted to the rag-tag column of other self-liberated menials. “Change from below, and death to the oppressors!”

“Death to the oppressors!”

The technopath called back this time, raising his own thin yet heartfelt cry alongside his fellow revolutionaries. He hesitated, and stared once again at the idled combat servitor as the others tromped past them. He remembered the remnant memories that weren’t his, but rather those of another man’s broken mind. He shuddered as he felt the wet heat of blood splash over his hand and wrist, and the grind of a screwdriver as it pressed against the shift foreman’s spinal column. His chest ached as he saw the woman he loved, and the children their love had produced, scream for him as he screamed for them –

Jakub exhaled lowly, eyes stinging with emotion as he shook his head. He nodded slowly at the construct, and immediately registered how bizarre – and yet appropriate – such a human gesture that was to make to the Cult’s former tool of oppression. He murmured almost conspiratorially, as he reached out to coax their newest revolutionary comrade back into motion. “We can’t wait.”

“You relished the opportunity to turn those servitors on some red priests.” Gavin assessed, thoroughly ignoring the other technopath’s irrelevant emotions. He once again smiled knowingly at Jakub, who had hesitantly opened his eyes. The cultist flinchingly recoiled as he saw the expression. “I understand. I laughed, and laughed, and laughed when I tore apart those skitarii.”

“You…wh-what?” Jakub stumblingly queried. Gavin could sense the first tremors of doubt unsettle the other psyker’s consciousness, as he registered what he had heard and tried to process the implication.

“I destroyed several skitarii while on Saros.” Gavin repeated, almost dispassionately matter of fact about the admission. “Some I decommissioned quickly. Others I deconstructed slowly, piece by component piece.” He decided to smile again. “All the while I kept on laughing as I killed them.”

“S-Saros…y-you were on Saros?” Jakub stammered. Gavin frowned slightly as he detected the undercurrent of awe in the other technopath’s voice. He gave him a curt, confirmatory nod. The cultist’s mouth moved as he struggled to speak, his brow knitted with confusion. “Y-yo-you were with the Táin?”

“The bastard’s name is Arcolin Diarmad DeRei.” Gavin snarled down at Jakub, and the heat wash of his sudden ire caused the cultist to recoil. He composed himself, and curiously cocked his head down at the other psyker. Jakub seemed even more confused by the unexpected revelation about his master. “Did you know he was formerly an Arbitrator?”

“They are the most oppressive model of Imperial law enforcement officer. Gavin explained, after an awkward pause, when Jakub stared blankly back at him. Of course not. He sighed internally, and ignored the other technopath’s protests as he raised a hand and cycled back through his own memories. “Let me show you.”

The Imperial psyker mentally retrieved the relevant information and separated it from his consciousness. It was risky enough to be within the mind of an untrained and unsanctioned psyker – and as unreserved and unorthodox with his despised powers since Baraspine – he was not so detached as to form such a free-flowing connection between them. Gavin forced the compiled evidence and imagery directly into Jakub’s mind via strands of bio-electricity that speared from his fingertips into his opponent’s skull. He watched Jakub spasm and silent screams in the otherworldly strobe lighting, and idly noted how the cultist’s psyche tremored under the assault of knowledge as he was made to see -

– the contrast between Arcolin the Heretic and Arbitrator DeRei was stark in his personnel file. The document’s existence was an almost inconceivable artifact from a different life. He wouldn’t have believed Marcus Black’s assertion, if he wasn’t looking the proof; black inked into the triple-redundant Administratum forms with a glossy print of the now-heretic attached to the inside cover. He stared and -

- Arcolin Diarmad DeRei stared back at him. The heretic-to-be was clad in an Arbitrator’s somber black duty uniform, with the golden sigil of the Lex Imperialis prominent and proud on his chest badge. He was young, but there was nothing youthful about his impassively serious expression, and his almost unnervingly blue eyes were hard and intense. He was unmarred by the burns that would lend to his unhinged, mocking smile and become the basis of his chosen moniker with the cult in Makita hive –

“No…he wouldn’t have wanted you all to know that.” Gavin murmured as he relented. The other technopath’s mind was open to him, and it was obvious that he was unaware of his cult leader’s background. His raised his hand glowed again as Jakub pleadingly groaned. “I’m sure the hypocritical son of a bitch also failed to mention he helped execute his own family, in its entirety, for their – ”

- crimes against the Imperium, DeRei had killed subjects of the Imperium. He had no doubt the precise numbers were documented in the verbose Administratum file. He had no interest in searching through the compilation to know the precise number of guilty and innocent DeRei had killed as an Arbitrator in a hive he ultimately helped murder. He instead sought out the bastard’s last mission and -

- stared at DeRei’s memento that had been recovered from that damned hospital. It was faded, a little dog eared picture of an up-hive family wearing distinctly Makitan clothes. A young boy, in the middle of the photo, looked sternly directly at the camera. He had not been close with his family…or at least had not been once his curse had manifested and he saw them for who and what they were - and were not…but even in his deepest, darkest moments he was sure he –

- had led the Arbitrators’ raid on the estate of House DeRei. Such were the extent of their crimes against the Imperium and sins against the Emperor, the baroque mansion on the heights of Spire 4 had been torched. He absorbed the evidentiary photos of the blackened, hollowed skeleton of the once grand edifice. House DeRei had burnt alongside their home. He turned the page and his gaze lingered over the blackened, twisted skeletons of the grand family themselves. Men, women and children -

The Imperial psyker relented once again and waited as Jakub tried to recover. “He…h-h-he…he said-”

“Plenty of misleading scrap, I’m sure.” Gavin responded, almost soothingly to his cultist counterpart. “No doubt the bastard said exactly what he knew you all wanted to hear, but I can understand the appeal.” He once again nodded understandingly. “What young, angry menial or serf wouldn’t take the opportunity to bleed their overseers if given half a chance?”

“That’s…than…I…i-if…if…you’re not…” Jakub struggled to articulate, as he struggled to reconcile the Imperial psyker’s appearance with his words and the images that he’d been forced to witness. The cultist emitted a frustrated groan and shouted at the stranger. “Who the frak are you people?”

“That’s a deep, existential question.” Gavin frowned. He stared distantly for a moment, before he exhaled lightly and glanced down at Jakub. “The short answer is we’re the Imperial Inquisition.”

Gavin saw the comprehension ignite in Jakub’s eyes – as evidently even in an enclave of the Mechanicus the Inquisition was still known – and nodded with muted affirmation at the unspoken question. The cultist’s mouth quavered as he struggled to speak, unable to offer more than a tiny, dry whisper. “Oh…oh frak…”

“It gets worse for you, Jakub.” Gavin assured the cultist. He spoke without any sense of consolation or sympathy as the piteous wretch stared at him in silence with wide eyed anticipation and horror. “The red priests with us are operatives of the Lords Dragon.”

Jakub choked out startled cough as Gavin pursed his lips and glanced around as the room. It rattled and darkened with the other technopath’s dread and horror at the thought of the mythical Mechancius enforcers. The vague, predatory shapes of fearful childhood fantasy stirred within the shadows of Jakub’s subliminal consciousness at the mention of the Lords Dragon. “Th-th-hey…they’re real?

“Dragons do exist, Jakub.” Gavin coolly confirmed. Unfortunately. In the corporeal world his head tilted fractionally towards the male priest. The Imperial psyker’s expression shifted slightly towards the deep scowl of his projection, as his hand snapped open to scour the cultist once again with truth.

"We don't have time for this." Machairi stated coldly. "And we don't need to know who you are to complete our mission."

"So why question us?" The female priest blinked her wide-set eyes. They were red-brown, Machairi observed; the same red-brown as her hair. Not a common combination in the Adrantis sub.

"So I can decide whether to kill you right now, or not." the inquisitor retorted frankly.

The red-haired tech priestess stared her down. "We are agents of the Lords Dragon."

Jakub rocked on the ground and whimpered almost plaintively as he stammered, almost hyperventilating. “Oh, oh scrap…oh scrap, scrap!” He stared wide-eyed. “The Táin…h-he…didn’t…”

“No, he wouldn’t’ve.” Gavin agreed. He frowned as his projection thoughtfully strummed his fingertips on his thigh, as his fingers briefly twitched against the cogitator tower back in the corporeal. “That’s bad news for your siblings as well.”

Jakub tensed and inhaled, lowly and deeply. Interesting. Gavin thought as he noted the other technopath’s terror reach another level - yet that the prospect of an adverse result for his siblings seemed to compose him. His voice was marred by stifled emotion as he strained to speak levelly. “My brothers and sisters are innocents. Whatever happens, whatever comes next, you leave them alone.”

“Innocence proves nothing, Jakub.” Gavin countered with the Inquisitorial credo.

“Damn it, they’re only kids!” Jakub shouted. His tenuous composure had snapped, and the young cultist was flush faced with desperation, fear and outrage as he continued to shout at the Imperial psyker in his mind. “They don’t know anything about the Táin or the Change! I make sure they don’t!”

“Ignorance is no excuse.” The Imperial psyker dismissed. He was unmoved by Jakub’s emotional appeal, and the scrambled distortion of his mind as he descended deeper into agitation and despair.

“Think this through logically, Jakub. You’re a psyker, and worse yet, a technopath. The Cult hates us our kind almost as much as they fear us – and they fear us tremendously.” Gavin calmly explained, with absolute conviction after his encounter with the Dragons. “They won’t take chances that a brood of potential technopaths infests their precious, precious forge world, especially with your connection to an insurrectionist group that has attempted to assassinate their precious, precious archmagos.

“Not great for the little ones, Jakub.” Gavin concluded. He stared, unmerciful and unmoved, down at the young man whose mind he had invaded and wracked with bitter knowledge and harsh truths. “You only have yourself to blame.

“They’re only kids!” Jakub snarled, as he hunched back off the ground, eyes stinging with desperate and hateful tears as he sought to plead his case. “Kashia and Marek are ill…I-I-I’m all they’ve-”

“I don’t care.” Gavin interrupted.

“I DO!” Jakub mentally howled back at the Imperial psyker. Gavin recoiled away from the cultist as he lashed out with the feral, primitive fury of a cornered animal and surged towards his feet. “Get out of my mind, you monster!”

Gavin gritted his teeth in both realities as he recognized that he had overstepped with the cultist. Idiot! He excoriated himself. He should have known better than to fuel the other technopath’s ire by invoking family. He didn’t know that connection itself, but he knew of it from Kelly Black –

He growled lowly, threateningly in his frozen throat and within Jakub’s mind. His own composure faltered as he thought about Kelly Black and the memories of family he had been forced to see because of The Other. He remembered the vicious, murderous anguish and rage that had surrounded Marcus Black, and his hands flared ominously as the damaged Imperial psyker delved back into his own memories as Jakub struggled to reform his defenses and drive him out. Unacceptable.

“You wanted to be sanctioned? You wanted to be me?” Gavin questioned. His damaged voice was a raw, hoarse, and venomous as he stared at the cultist. “See what you missed, Jakub!”

He hurled his projection at cultist psyker’s formative defenses. His ethereal strike ploughed through the last mental blocks and bowled the other technopath over. His avatar’s psychically charged fists struck into Jakub’s head again, and again, and again. The young man screamed violently as moments of horror from the life of Gavin Jenkins were bludgeoned and burnt into his mind with each vicious swipe.

Gavin was so intent on killing the other psyker that he didn't notice that the spattering blood drops were hanging suspended in the air, or that the clouds of ectoplasmic ice he was smashing off the walls were falling towards the ceiling rather than the floor.

+ + + + + +

Alicia had to whistle as she struggled up the stairs through the carpet of hacked and bullet-riddled bodies that Tomas had left in his wake. Either the Emperor or a daemon was on the Casterian's side right now, that was for sure. A horrendous screech sounded from her right, mingled with the bubbling retch of someone trying to scream while simultaneously vomiting blood. A body in a menial's jumpsuit thumped violently into the corridor wall, and was followed out by a second steel-clawed murder servitor. It gave the falling body a few more vicious swipes, reducing it to an eviscerated red ruin, and then snapped round towards Alicia and came bounding straight up the corridor on its taloned feet. Alicia swung her carbine to bear and rattled tight patterns into the monster's face and centre mass, dropping it thrashing to the floorboards several metres short of her.

Alicia winced as the recoil jarred her bandaged finger-stumps. Yes, firing the Pretentious Bitch one-handed was definitely interesting. And something was going wrong with their enemy's hijacked servitors. This murder-drone hadn't waited in ambush like its predecessor; it had just charged at her down a narrow corridor. Not only that, it had attacked one of the cultists' own soldiers. It was just as well that something seemed to be distracting the enemy psyker. Maybe Josiah's hare-brained plan had worked, or perhaps Gavin had pitched into the fray. Alicia hauled herself round and followed Tomas' trail up the corridor. The path of destruction he had left wasn't exactly subtle.

"Prinzel, Crenshaw!" she shouted as she caught sight of her squadmates ahead. "Regroup!"

Tomas snarled, and tossed the empty autocannon to one side. He cast a filthy look at Crenshaw then looked back at Alicia, a rattling breath escaping through clenched teeth as he brought himself back under control.

The major wheeled to face her. "Where is Wuziarch?"

"He said he could hamstring Arcolin's technopath by blowing up the cogitator bank in the basement level."

"Moron." Crenshaw was grinding his prosthetic teeth, and looking far from amused. He barked into his vox. “Wuziarch!”

"He took his earpiece out." Alicia groaned as she remembered. "The Dragon girl was talking his ear off."

"That damn idiot!" Tomas yelled, punting the empty autocannon. "I'll flay him for this!"

“Join the queue.” Crenshaw muttered irritably.

"Tomas." Machairi's voice sputtered over the vox in all three agents' ears, "We're at the stairwell right below you. We've got Solvan. Twenty seconds."

"Say again?" Alicia queried. "You've got Solvan?"

"He's not in a good way, but he's alive. Sapphira is with him."

The flush of red drained from Tomas face, and he slumped against a wall. "I...it's a bloody miracle...Saph, you keep that goddamn cantankerous bastard alive, you hear me!"

“No worries, chief. It’s Saph.” Glabrio interjected, trying to sound cheery over the gunfire. “She’ll do what she does best, and you’ll be having your boring scotch and book club in no time.”

"The Emperor protects, Tom." a weak but welcomely familiar voice wheezed through the vox. "And I'm still faster than you."

Even if leaving Sapphira behind brought their storm squad for the upper floors down to less than half of the team's initial strength, Alicia couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief on Ella and Kally's behalf that the old priest might pull through after all. "I don't suppose you've got my missing fingers down there too?" she joked weakly.

“That’s enough chatter.” Sapphira tersely responded. Alley chewed on her bottom lip. The former Nebula turned rogue trader couldn’t help but notice that the Sister had only made a reprimand after she had made a comment. Why, yes, Alley. She still hates your frakking guts.

A tramp of footfalls on the stairs announced Marc and inquisitor Machairi, who appeared at the blood-soaked landing and spun to check their corners. Machairi lowered her glowing-red melta pistol as she turned towards Tomas and the others.

"Form up." she ordered simply, making no mention of Tomas' rampage. "We'll sweep the offices facing Alpha One first. Krupp is due to make his address in ten minutes."

She held up Tomas' deactivated power sabre, which she had pulled from the mess of bodies by the stairwell, and offered it hilt first back to its owner.

"Also, Tom, you dropped this."

He took the weapon wordlessly, and nodded his thanks.

+ + + + + +

A blast of appallingly powerful psychic force blasted Gavin and his prey apart, almost scattering Gavin's projected consciousness to the winds as it hit. The cult technopath slumped to the floor, limbs jerking sporadically as he sobbed and wept blood.

The blast had come from a spindly woman, who was stumbling jerkily into the room through the blown-open door. She was haloed in a cloud of ice crystals, draining them towards her from the dislodged mass that was falling upward towards the ceiling. Jakub's blood still hung in the air, ribboning out into misty waves.

The woman was not much older than Jakub, with gaunt features and shoulder-length blonde hair. Blood was dripping from her nose and floating out to join the fine rings of ice crystals that clung to her aura. As a high-pitched ring stroked at the edges of Gavin's hearing, he saw that there was something wrong with the woman's eyes.

It isn't nice to bully people weaker than you, you know. Her lips didn't move, but the voice travelled from Gavin's astral consciousness right to his bleeding physical ears, manifesting directly inside his skull. Telepath. he identified, though he couldn't hear anything of the woman's voice in the sonorous, almost paternal admonition. He could only hear another. An Other. The Other.

Vindictive little boys who pull the wings off butterflies seldom come to good ends.

Somewhere on the floor, Jakob the technopath was gasping, laughing with relief - not knowing or simply not caring for the true nature of his deliverer as he groped his way to the terminal to resume his hold on the servitors. The Other pulled its latest victim's face into a ghastly smile, lips stretching over bleeding teeth.

I warned you, Gavin Jenkins. it roared into his mind, with the primal fury of an oceanic tempest. And now I will break you!

+ + + + + +

The vox suddenly shrieked and twisted into a high-pitched whine of white noise. Something growled through the static, both within the vox and as a terrifyingly real voice somewhere ahead of them.

"I warned you, Gavin Jenkins." it said. "And now I will break you."

"Warp threat close!" Machairi warned, signalling for the team to cluster up around Crenshaw. A moment later the vox crackled with breathless, relieved laughter, but the laughter wasn't Gavin's.

"Gavin?" Machairi voxed sharply, "Gavin, rep-"

There was a juddering explosion somewhere above and behind them. The plaster along the bottom of the wall cracked as something scored through the power cables behind it. The temperature in the corridor palpably dropped by several degrees.

"Oh shit." said Marc.

The ceiling above them exploded, spraying down water from burst heater pipes and sparking wire-ends from severed cable runs. Whickering tracers stitched a line towards the agents as something raked a heavy stubber down through the floor of the room directly above them. The team scattered - Marc back-pedalling up the corridor and firing his gun blindly into the ceiling. Crenshaw broke left through the nearest door, thoroughly desecrating a small shrine to the Omnissiah as he knocked over the table in the prayer room beyond.

"Looks like the techno's got his mojo back!" Alicia cursed from across the hallway, following suit with Marc and bringing down a waterfall of plaster and rebar as she tried to take out the heavy servitor above. She missed a kill shot, but hit something load-bearing that brought the ceiling and the servitor spilling down into the corridor. As the thrashing automaton tried to rise, its gun arm spraying tracers into the walls, a single shot from Crenshaw tore its head off.

+ + + + + +

Tomas and Machairi had bailed forward, shouldering through a pair of fire doors. Machairi's door sprang back, accompanied by a yelp from someone behind it who had been struck. Machairi slammed the door into the cultist's face a second time and barged through after Tomas, straight into a melee of bodies. One man was on the floor already, holding his guts in with one hand while trying to drive a knife into Tomas' calf with the other. The man behind the door was reeling back, weapon dropped and both hands clapped to his bleeding nose.

"For the Change, oppressor!" screamed a menial, a tattoo of a flaming eye just visible beneath her ripped overalls as she swung a broken-off piece of rebar into the inquisitor's shoulder, knocking her melta pistol off target. Her reward was to lose the hand at the wrist, the stump pumping blood as Tomas hacked with the sword. He drove the pommel into another cultist, sending her staggering with broken teeth, and Alia cored her out with a point blank killshot from her pistol. Alia and Tomas fell into a familiar fighting pattern, Tomas leading and clearing space, Alia placing pinpoint accurate shots that dropped jumbles of seared limbs to the floor. In a frantic minute of ruthless combat, the two cut down half a dozen combatants.

"Just like old times." Machairi commented, panting hard as she scanned the row of windows facing the Alpha One curtain wall. "He's not on this floor. We need to move up."

Both of them knew that Gavin couldn't buy them any more time.

+ + + + + +

Nikolai's chemical fog had seeped into the building, mixing with the battle smoke and draining down into the basement level, where it blurred and diffuses the lights illuminating Josiah's path. The arbiter advanced, his own breathing loud and hot inside his rebreather. He methodically checked each corner, and smashed open each side door to check for heretics, but it seemed that they were all upstairs trying to fend off his teammates.

Well, not quite all. As he approached the grinning cog skull embossed on the big door ahead of him, the mechanicus icon began to swing out towards him. Evidently, DeRei had left a few heretics to guard his technopath's source of focus. Levelling his shotcannon, Josiah fired twice, tearing through the door and the man trying optimistically to use it as a shield. Josiah heard him scream and fall as the force of the buckshot impacts slammed what was left of the door back on itself. It swung out again on broken hinges, revealing the heretic's mangled body, and a second terrified menial crouching behind. Seeing Josiah emerge from the clawing fog, the menial threw away his laspistol and shakily raised his hands.

"The Emperor protects?" he stammered hopefully.

"The Emperor rejects." Josiah replied, and his shotcannon thundered a third time to turn the heretic's head into an explosion of pink mist.

The fog rolled in through the open door to envelop the bodies, condensing against the walls of the network stack-room. Josiah saw ice coating every wall, and ectoplasmic frost was rimed over the blinking, slab-like cogitator blocks that stood inside.

"For the Emperor, witch." he snapped, and emptied the rest of his shotgun magazine into the core. Metal plates spalled off, thick cables whipped back like wounded snakes, and bleeding fountains of sparks shot out across the floor and ceiling. The lumoglobes above Josiah's head exploded, plunging the basement into darkness, and he felt a thrum of feedback spiderweb past him, blowing out power outlets and wall heaters.

Outside the office block, half the buildings of the assembly yard flared nuclear white through every window, and then snuffed out in a snap of overloaded circuits. In amongst the electronic scream, Josiah thought he detected a howl of surprise and pain at the edge of hearing. He smirked behind his rebreather.

Burn, witch!

+ + + + + +

Something like a static shock ripped through the building, and someone above them screamed. All the lights flared blinding white, and then exploded. Disorientating blackness snapped closed around them like a claw; Marc groped for the wall but instead found Alicia, grime-streaked and sweating.

"That will have been Josiah blowing the data-stacks, then." the ex rogue trader commented, and without hesitating jumped up onto the collapsed beam that the gun-servitor had brought down with it, sprinting up the makeshift ramp into the dark gallery above.

Marc cuffed away the dust on his helmet visor, and slammed a palm into the frequency controller at his wrist until the static in his ear stopped roaring. Every comm-channel was corrupted. It was claustrophobic and hot inside his armour, and sweat was running into his eyes, but the ongoing gunfire and the knowledge that Arcolin might have a chemical surprise for them made him keep his helmet on. With contact lost with the others, he had little choice but to stick with the one team-mate he could still see, regardless of how they felt about each other after Baraspine. We're out of time! Muscles burning, he followed Alicia at the best speed he could manage, feeling the beginnings of a sharp pain in his healed ankle as well as the old wound in his thigh as he ran up the fallen roof-beam.

He stumbled over broken boards and piping at the top, and quickly swept the corridor with his autogun, but found only motes of dust spiralling in the gloom. He and Alicia lowered their guns fractionally.

"Galleries either side." he informed, looking down at the wavering, ghosting contact dots on his forearm auspex. "Two or three contacts in each, hard to tell."

Warp-threat close. he remembered forebodingly. Where was Crenshaw? Where were Prinzel and Machairi? The returns on his auspex were so distorted that he could no longer parse the contacts on their own floor from the ones below them.

"The windows that side face Alpha One." Alicia replied instantly. "You clear them first and link up with the inquisitor. I'll cover your back."

Marc nodded sharply. Windows. Sniping positions. Arcolin. He slung the Decker autogun round his back, and pulled Kadath's Tallarn pistol from its holster at his hip. His other hand yanked a stun grenade from his webbing as he ran for the door. He shouldered it open, and tossed the flash-bang through.

+ + + + + +

Alicia ran the opposite way, putting a burst of automatic fire through the door before kicking the splintered wood back on its hinges. A wave of freezing air hit her, and she saw that the room was sheathed in a film of ice. Snowflakes and droplets of blood danced and twirled in the air. A flicker of aurora light scattered them as it darted in and out, avoiding the hooked fingernails of a shrieking young woman. The woman had frost in her hair and veins standing out livid on her temples. A young man was writhing on the floor next to a burned-out cogitator desk, but the woman seemed oblivious. There was blood on her lips. And her eyes...

As they locked with Alicia's, the former Nebula thought she saw a flicker of something like fear. The woman convulsed, her head lurching back and her mouth snapping open. A twisting tentacle of blue-black smoke poured out of her mouth and flashed past Alicia before she could stop it, leaving the woman to collapse like a marionette in its wake.

+ + + + + +

Marc lunged through the doorway in the wake of the flash-bang's shrieking detonation. The room beyond was a blur of shadows, filling with jets of white mist from the metal-oxide payload. A lasgun blind-fired through the smoke, a sweeping beam that stripped through the haze and left it twisting and coiling like a wounded animal. It came nowhere near Marc as he pivoted right, guided by his motion tracker, and dropped to one knee. There were two shapes by the window, the one with the lasgun obscuring the other; he was hunched, reeling, firing blind with his eyes scrunched closed and his teeth bared in pain. Behind the two men, propped on a tripod facing the window, was the long ugly focusing barrel of a Guard-issue lascannon. Marc's Tallarn auto punched its own trail through the fog, cutting into the torso of the man with the lasgun. The shots over-penetrated, winging the man behind and spinning him half round. Blood droplets spun and cartwheeled through the air. Marc saw half of a scar-ravaged face revealed behind the first man as both reeled and began to fall clear. His vision polarised to a single, murderous focal point as he shifted his aim down, and fired again.

The bullet hung, spinning in the air.

Something slammed into Marc from behind, sending him sprawling forward. Kadath's pistol spun away out of his grip as his visor smacked into the corner of an overturned desk. As he hit the floor, his tumbling vision registered the far door bursting open, framing Tomas and Machairi with weapons raised, and a column of blue-black smoke streaming over Marc's own head to envelop Arcolin. For a moment it seemed to form a figure, a smoky spectre cradling the heretic in its arms as he fell, and then both it and Arcolin were gone in a thunderclap that tore up the floorboards and shivered the bay windows into pieces. Marc's wordless scream was lost in the cacophony.

+ + + + + +

Alicia felt some kind of invisible, oppressive weight lift from her shoulders, as both her ears and the vox feed cleared simultaneously. At almost the same time, a fanfare and an ululating cackle of binary roared in the distance, to be answered by the static-like roar of thousands of augmetic voices raised as one. Glancing at the blood-spattered wrist-chron on her maimed hand, she realised that the clock had just ticked over to midnight. Archmagos Krupp had stepped out onto the floodlit balcony of complex Alpha One to lead the Founder's Day ceremony.

Over the ecstatic chant of machine code, Alicia heard someone sobbing. The scruffy youth was still clenched into a fetal ball amongst a puddle of melting ice, his hands clutched to his face as acrid smoke curled out through his fingers. Alicia aimed Pretentious Bitch at his head, just in case the young rogue psyker decided he had any fight left in him.

The other psyker, the daemonhost, was already dead. She lay crumpled like a doll whose strings had been cut, crying tear-streaks of blood from her glassy eyes. Alicia frowned, briefly wondering what differentiated this wretched host's fate from what had happened to Kelly. No doubt Marc would tell me to stop trying to understand the minds of daemons. Would Kally have said the same? Would Ella?

"Team," she reported wearily, "Winchester One. Technopath and daemonhost down."

"We neutralised the sniper's nest." Machairi's voice came back, monotone. "It looks like DeRei was planning to overcome the balcony refractor fields by sniping with a lascannon. Negative on a confirmed kill. The daemon spirited him away."

Alicia heard a thump, like someone slamming their fist against a wall in futile anger. She couldn't picture Machairi succumbing to such a display. Tomas or Marc, then. Her money was on the latter.

+ + + + + +

Marc stalked his way back down the stairs, fists clenched so tight that his nails cut into his palms, taking no notice of his team-mates except to shoulder past them. His vision was closing in, tinged with red. The evidence gathering, the extraction, any kind of deal or damage control with Vizkop's contact Ankari, none of it mattered. The motherfrakking son of a bitch had slipped the net - again. The trail was cold, and the daemon had denied his one chance to end it. His nose was flooded with the reek of copper and cordite as he ripped the carapace helmet off his head and flung it against the wall, barely even hearing the stream of voices that continued to chatter from the now-clear vox.

"First floor secure." Glabrio was reporting. "All hostiles down and out."

"Perimeter secure." That was the Dragon priestess, Kuscelian. Through a shattered window, Marc could see the battered ocularis falling to her knees in the loading forecourt, her cowl pulled up over her dishevelled hair, and one hand splayed against the ground while the other traced Cog-circles over her chest. Perhaps she was praying in relief as in the distance archmagos Krupp began to lead his sermon before a roaring crowd, oblivious to the failed attempt on his life. Perhaps she was mourning all the machine spirits that Josiah's hammer-blow solution had just shorted out. In that moment, Marc could not have cared less either way.

"Please confirm," the priestess added in her accented gothic, "You had visual on DeRei, and a daemon teleported him out?"

Marc aimed a violent kick at his discarded helmet and sent it bouncing several metres down the corridor.

+ + + + + +

Tomas and Crenshaw exchanged glances as the adrenaline of the battle gradually ebbed.

"We will debrief you shortly, in the meantime stand down your drones." Machairi told Kuscelian - authoritative, but Tomas could tell that she was biting down a little on every word. "Vizkop, we'll need your contact Ankari to deflect the skitarii long enough to process the site."

"After that mass-murder your arbiter caused?" Oppen put in sourly. "I'll see what my Dragon codes can do, if only to stop them from seeing this mess."

"Silence." Gavin's voice hissed.

"Vizkop." Machairi voxed again, cupping one hand around her ear-bead. "Secutor, respond?"

+ + + + + +

Vizkop let out a howl amidst the sounds of the power surge and his vision focused on Josiah with one thought in mind: Remove.

Josiah turned, the thin beam of his stab-light swinging round to illuminate Vizkop. His other hand was halfway through reloading, nimbly slotting a sequence of shells into his shotgun magazine with practiced fingers. "Vizkop." he greeted the tech-assassin jovially. "The Emperor's law prevails."

Vizkop's blades sprang from his arms and he moved up to Josiah, spearing him through the chest with both blades without the power fields active. His augmetic strength punched the blades right through the arbiter's armour, stopping only when they jarred hard against his backplate. Josiah's shotgun fell from his hands; shells scattering, torch beam spinning crazily as it bounced off the floor. Vizkop saw the man's dark, almond eyes bulge wide as he struggled to form words through his rebreather.

"Tr..." he rasped, "Trai..."

“Josiah Wuziarch,” Vizkop said, “you have committed unforgivable crimes against the Omnissiah and the Mechanicus. With the authority vested in me I have judged your life forfeit. Ave Omnissiah.”

"Crimes?" Josiah rattled. His eyes narrowed to slits as one hand groped forward, scrabbling at the neck of Vizkop's bodysuit before latching tight to the top of his chestplate. "I," the arbitrator hissed as he dragged himself closer. "AM...THE...L-"

The blades pulled back from Josiah's torso as the fields flickered to life, burning away the blood coating the blades, and allowing Vizkop to seamlessly remove the man's head from his shoulders.

In his heated state, Vizkop had not realised he had just broadcast his execution across the team's open communication line.

+ + + + + +

Machairi looked from Tomas to Crenshaw, as if to ask their confirmation that what she had heard was real, and not some parting mind-trick of Arcolin's daemon. Tomas could see the evident shock in her face, undisguised by the customary mask that so often presented only what the inquisitor wanted her interlocutors to see. It didn't make sense. None of it made sense. Even if Josiah had desecrated the forge world to stop the rogue technopath, Vizkop would never...would he?

"Beware the daemon at your back..." Machairi's voice was completely devoid of emotion, and so quiet that it barely carried across the vox pickup. There was a long pause, and when the inquisitor's voice returned, it was thick with cold anger. "Gavin. Disable and detain secutor Vizkop."

[Azazeal849]

Fire. The heat of the curtains and the tapestries catching light around her, and the heat of the blood beginning to pool stickily underneath her flak vest. The satrophene she had manually dosed herself with blocked the pain and kept her senses sharp, but even with it there was only so much that torn muscles and a lung full of blood could do. She could smell the warm, muggy Marioch air, now tainted with ash and gunsmoke. The fresco of St Drusus on the ceiling was bright and vivid, as she looked up in the wake of the bullet that had floored her. The saint's defiant face was turning from mahogany brown to sooty black as the smoke gradually suffused it, and the heads of the snarling hydra he was fighting were peeling and bubbling. Outside she could hear shouts and grenade blasts as Nibenay's heretics moved to breach the ground floor of the mansion. She still wasn't sure if they had come because Nibenay thought a retired Nebula was a threat best dealt with, or if the hilltop villa was just a strategic point along the insurrectionists' line of advance. They had already killed her foster parents - now they had killed her.

Fire; crackling, burning - stinging her eyes and shortening her breath as it ate up the room's oxygen and spat out smoke and ash in its place. For a moment, as her rational mind still tried to will her broken body back into action, and as her irrational mind still floundered at the realisation that she had been mortally shot, she thought she remembered another burning house. One made from glass and fibrebrick instead of granite, and lit by a slowly-scrolling series of glow panels instead of a real sun. There were shouts and grenade blasts that time too - but those shouts were arbites battle-cant, spoken in the rolling Solomon gothic of Makita hive. She was sure there had been another voice too. Not a hostile one; a protector, her mother. Her real mother, not her adopted parents who had raised her in this Mariochi villa. She had been calling her name.

The cacophony in Alicia's ears softened and faded into a high-pitched ringing noise, and the flames leaping up the walls seemed to slow, twirling lazily over themselves. She suddenly realised that her mother was there with her now, walking slowly towards her through the ash and debris that now hung suspended in the air. She hadn't seen her mother since she was five, and yet she knew without a doubt that it was her - her face, her voice, even if the eyes were slightly wrong.

"It's alright. It'll be alright." her mother soothed, reaching out a hand. "It's not over yet. It's only beginning."

+ + + + + +

Ella felt the passing of warp energy like a static arc between her fingers and the card, and watched the glowing red of the monasteria suit spread out over the psy-resonant crystal wafer. Two golden haloes materialised in the centre, shimmering brightly.

The two of monasteria. A beginning; a new path taken;

The near future;

Now.

It had kept turning up, no matter what question she asked. Where is Arcolin DeRei now? What is he planning? How can we stop it?

Ella closed her fist and drew back, feeling the burning sensation recede from her fingertips as she released her link to the astronomican. She scrunched her blind eyes shut and rubbed at them as the glowing images on the cards faded, feeling the pinpricks of an oncoming headache behind her closed eyelids. She dropped her head into her hands.

There was a rattling hum as the panel lights above the Tiercel's canteen hall sputtered into life. Ella turned her head and saw a familiar faded green avatar, radiating dull thrums of fatigue.

"Midnight snack, kitten?" Alicia asked, looking at the tanna cup that had gone cold at Ella's elbow, next to a half-eaten ration bar.

"Working late." Ella admitted. And going round in circles. Having Alicia's company lifted her spirits a little, and she found herself smiling despite suddenly being very aware of how waxy and bloodshot she must look.

"Don't get like Marc." Alicia warned. No doubt it was meant as a joke, but Ella couldn't bring herself to laugh. She hadn't seen Marc since Perinetus - in fact, most of the team hadn't. How must his aura look now, after DeRei's second escape? And after Solvan and Kally, and after Vizkop had murdered Josiah? Marc Black. she thought sadly. Black, black, black. Emperor help him, because he won't let me.

Alicia sat down opposite Ella. "Is it cold in here or is that just me?"

"Sorry." Ella apologised, sweeping the cards from her reading back into a pile and carefully slotting them back into the pack before returning the whole to its fabric sleeve. "I've been channelling for a while."

She looked down at Alicia's hands, feeling an urge to reach across the table and warm them between her own. Her eyes were instinctively drawn to the two finger stumps that were still glowing a dull red through the thick translucent bandages.

"How's your hand?" she asked, stretching out to make the lightest brush of her fingertips over Alicia's knuckles. She felt soft gauze under one hand, and rough, warm skin under the other.

"Getting better." Alicia replied. Ella thought there was a slight edge in her voice, and she felt the former soldier's knuckles twitch slightly, as if Alicia had almost flinched away from her. Ella saw a sheen of steely grey ripple across Alicia's hands, turning them for a moment into hard, slender blades. She remembered their talk on the journey to Baraspine, and felt her heart sink. Killing - all she thinks they're good for. Ella knew fine well that even with only eight fingers, Alicia could crush her smaller hands in her own without much effort. Is she afraid of hurting me? The thought only compelled her to squeeze Alley's unmaimed hand harder.

"It's going to be alright." she told the older woman, earnestly. "I don't know how yet but...we're still here, aren't we?"

Alicia's jade face formed a humourless smile that brought no warmth to her aura. "So I should take my own advice from before Baraspine and soldier on?"

"We have to."

Alicia shook her head, still smiling emptily. "Why is it never about what we would like to do, only what we have to do? Even after Marc goes off the deep end and Viz completely loses the plot, they say we still have to stop Arcolin. We're practically combat ineffective now, and we haven't achieved much bar pissing off the locals. I keep seeing you all get hurt or consumed by it while your lady Machairi refuses to call in more qualified backup, and I don't know if I can take it any more. I already lost my foster-parents in the Marioch rebellion, and most of my Nebula brothers and sisters on Siculi. And now Kally, and Solvan...and you. That daemon nearly killed you on Baraspine."

"I'm okay." Ella replied, reddening a little. "Sapphira even said the bandages can come off in a week or two. I want to be helping again."

"But for how long?" Alicia challenged. "Half the team's dead or wounded already, but that's not going to stop Machairi sending you out. So far, the thing that's been keeping me going is that there's no-one who could do the job better. We had to do the job; I had to do the job. Like on Siculi - with all the other officers dead, who else was there to get even those eighteen people out? But I'm so tired of getting out alive when everyone else dies. Can someone else save the sector for a change?"

Ella opened her mouth, closed it again pensively, and considered. No doubt Machairi, Prinzel and Crenshaw were working on new assets and favours they could call in and cast a wider net for their quarry, but if they were making progress they were keeping quiet about it. Machairi wanted them to focus on recuperating, Sapphira had told Ella. The young astropath withdrew her hands from Alicia's and instead began to toy self-consciously with the wireframe eye pinned to her green robe.

"The Emperor calls and we can but answer." she said at last.

Alicia's avatar fractured and reformed as she shook her head. "Don't give me platitudes, Ella. Did you never want to just walk away? Let someone else do what had to be done this time, so you could treasure the people you had left?"

Ella dropped her blind gaze to the table, hearing the Astronomican choir at the edges of her mind and imagining the Emperor behind it - watching, judging. She tried not to think of Raeni's voice growing hoarse and guttering out amidst the other psykers.

"I suppose it's easier for me..." she admitted. "I've always had the Light to guide me, tell me what I should do...but you don't just have to be loyal to principles, you can be loyal to people. Like Marc is - and he's right; These are good people. Friends."

"Oh to hell with Marc." Alicia countered brusquely. "You know he doesn't consider me a friend, if he ever did. He just used me to get to Arcolin. I don't think he cares about anything anymore except killing him."

Ella flinched.

"What about Kally then?" she changed tack, trying hard to ignore the cutting and at least partially accurate jibe. She bit her lip and added, "Or me? I'm just trying to say...you're not doing this alone."

Alicia sighed and sat back in her chair. "That's the trouble - I'm not even sure what this is. I don't really have a duty I can get behind when I know you're the ones who might suffer for it. I don't think I'm strong enough, Ella. Is it wrong to make a decision for me? To be selfish for once?"

Ella frowned in consternation. "What do you mean?"

"What would you do, Ella? What's your advice to me?"

Ella bit her lip again and was silent for a long moment, trying to find an answer that was both true and helpful. Alicia's avatar hovered in front of her; strong, vulnerable, hurting.

"Find yourself a duty you can get behind." she said at last.

For the first time, something that might have been a flicker of humour rippled through Alicia's psychic image. The former soldier shook her head. "I really envy you, Ella. That purity of purpose you have, that conviction. I wish I could have that again."

Ella reached over to squeeze Alicia's hand again. "You will. I know it."

Alicia smiled crookedly. "Did you see it in your cards?"

"No," Ella said earnestly. "I see you."

+ + + + + +

"Adrantis has a proud history of defending itself. We beat the xenos on Soryth, and the heretics on Marioch, and the terrorists who kidnapped our own dear governor on Siculi. We have bowed to the inquisition's will for this crisis, but it's time to ask the question: what have we got to show for it? Nearly starting a fight with our heroic PDF on Marioch, then with our governor's own life guards on Baraspine, and now they're antagonising our Martian brothers-in-arms on Perinetus as well? I think it's time we ask if they aren't doing more harm than good."

"Whatever happened to it being best to give the inquisition what they want, chancellor Souvage?" Machairi observed dryly, as she studied the pict-screen and the stern, frog-like face that was staring out of it. Grey haired and plainly dressed in an adeptus-black suit jacket, the governor's chancellor wore what was no doubt calculated to be an expression of forthright honesty. Machairi had pinned subsec governor Tierce as an incurably frank man during their brief meeting. She had not gotten the same feeling about Souvage.

The young, sandy-skinned interviewer occupying the other half of the pict seemed less sure of himself in the face of such inflammatory words. He frowned down at his dataslate for a moment, and adjusted his coiled headdress. "Forgive me chancellor, but surely you're not suggesting anyone interfere with the work of the holy ordos?"

The chancellor's wide mouth cracked into a smile as he laughed, and he paused to take a sip from the amber liquid at his elbow.

"Don't go putting words in my mouth, Mr Kol, of course I'm not suggesting that. But there are, you know, good servants and bad servants in every branch of the Emperor's service, and I don't think we should sit back and reward incompetence with blind faith that the inquisition will magically fix everything for us. I have a message for every citizen of Tephaine and of our great subsector: you have dealt with scum like DeRei before. You don't need to be afraid of him. If you see a threat to your fellow Adranteans, annihilate it yourselves."

"Thank you chancellor. We shall expect the honourable sub-governor's statement shortly."

"Is it even his role to speak before and for the governor on such things?" Crenshaw wondered aloud.

"Tierce defers to his council on most non-military matters, for better or worse." Machairi said, stretching out an arm and thumbing her control wand to switch off the pict-screen. "The Vigil courier said this tape was broadcast on Tephaine a week ago. Hopefully it will take slightly longer to reach Yannick and DeShilo."

The inquisitor rubbed her thumb against her fingernails, contemplatively. The Silent Vigil had clearly sent the message to inform and warn her, but there was an implicit threat there as well.

"I assume there is not some better news that you are holding back for dramatic effect?" Crenshaw prompted.

"The courier said they've infiltrated a sister onto adept Zhang's medicae staff, but the man himself is still in a coma, and without his keycodes it'll be tough to access his mission logs. We'll have to wait a little longer to find out just how DeRei got on board his survey mission."

"At least we may now have an explanation for how he got off Baraspine so quickly and onto Perinetus. Though a teleporting daemon does not simplify our attempts to pin him down."

"And I can't ask Ankari for help without her finding out that I've got Viz sedated in a cell..." The inquisitor shook her head, still not fully come to terms with the tech-assassin's betrayal. Has this mission gotten to even him? Or did his loyalty to the temple come further above his loyalty to me than I hoped?

Even the Tiercel's enigmatic little tech priest hadn't been able to hide his discomfort as Vizkop was wheeled off the shuttle, rimed in Gavin's psychic ice as Sapphira disconnected him from his weapon limbs and manacled his shrunken torso to a gurney on a constant sedative drip.

"As providence would have it," Crenshaw reminded her. "We now have two other Dragon agents to source contacts from. If they are inclined to work with us."

Machairi considered. "They'll work with us as long as we've got a common enemy in DeRei. But this business of theirs with the governor's Nebula corps is incompatible. I can't afford to defend Tarran from the mechanicus as well. And we just arrested one of their brothers. They'll still be looking for evidence against us, especially after that. I suspect it's only a matter of time before the two of them home in on you."

Crenshaw clicked his prosthetic teeth. "The soulless sentience is the enemy of all, I believe the mantra goes. But I could not help but notice that Kally was not being glared at half as much. The mechanicus never did buy the story that I had simply mislaid the Ampoliros' data core..."

Machairi appraised the major, and her face twitched with the flicker of a wry smile. "The sisterhood and now the mechanicus. If Arcolin didn't have a daemon under his control that needed a blank countermeasure, some might say the only sensible option for me would be to have you killed, major."

Crenshaw shrugged. "Appease your allies while also silencing anything I might tell them? It would certainly be the safest of your potential options. We have always been each other's biggest threat."

This time Machairi did smile, almost sadly. "Perhaps our only option left is the same degree of honesty with our antagonists."

Crenshaw cocked an eyebrow. "And with the rest of your agents, Alia."

"I agree." Machairi said, suppressing a sigh. I still haven't talked properly with Tomas.

To remedy the latter, she fished her PDA out of a pocket and tapped out a single-word message to Prinzel.

Dinner?

She sent it on its way to the Tiercel's vox mast with a gentle brush of her thumb over the send rune.

+ + + + + +

Kuscelian pursed her lips slightly as she inspected the grazed mess that skidding across tarmac had left her arm in, and took a moment to marvel at the unscarred metal beyond the cap-sleeve where her arm met her bionic hand. It was important, she felt, to always maintain an appreciation for the Omnissiah's blessings: from the MIUs and data uplinks threaded through her brain, to the tiny implant that had been ticking away in her chest since birth to regulate a defective heart. Even when someone like Gavin Jenkins can turn them into a weakness.

She traced a cog-circle over her overalls, and sprayed an aerosol counterseptic onto her superficial wounds before reaching for a roll of gauze. The counterseptic was a polypeptide nano-polymer, without the astringent smell of a chemical disinfectant - and, incidentally, without the latter's tendency to fall victim to microbial resistance.

Kuscelian and Oppen sat back to back, tending to their separate tasks, and lapsing between exchanges of ideas and contemplative silence. They had a good deal to discuss. Alicia Tarran - her armour might be a dead end, but the question of Nebula tech-heresy still stood unanswered, and she might yet have data they could use. Martin Crenshaw - the blacksoul linked to a significant mechanicus disaster, now coincidentally serving under the same mistress as their first target. It was him whom they were discussing now.

<Rumination: Is it really worth it to target him?> Nikolai's code burst pulsed through the air between them with the merest prickle of electromagnetic static.

Kuscelian clicked on her own transmitter with a mental nudge, and paused for just a second to consider. There were certainly magi within the mechanicus who needed to save face against the Telepathica after a whole blackship had been lost, found, and lost again to marauding Chaos marines.

But, while Crenshaw was certainly a valuable asset given his Telepathica and inquisition connections, he was also ultimately an expendable and deniable one. Not to mention, Kuscelian herself was more relieved than outraged that the Ampoliros data core had been lost or destroyed, when the alternative had been for it to fall into the hands of the archenemy - be that the marauding Word Bearers or the Night Lord agents who had murdered inquisitor Khadir and shown up posing as two of his henchmen. Kuscelian expected that Machairi's colleagues in the imperial inquisition were still in active damage control and scapegoat mode after that one.

<I am inclined to think no.> Kuscelian pulsed back after taking another quarter second to process her thoughts, <And stop that.>

Nikolai looked up from his disassembled melta pistol, strewn across his work bench like pieces of some lethal and very expensive puzzle. <Query: what?>

<Those marker prefixes. I am not so augmented that I have forgotten how to tell a statement from a question.>

<Ironic apology: sorry.>

The two tech-priests glanced back over their shoulders, caught each other's eyes and grinned.

<I think we should prioritise action against one primary target. And for now, DeRei would appear to be highest on the threat matrix. Any action against our hosts would only help him.>

<Settled then. But we are ocularii. Even if we don't act, we must still watch everything.>

<Just like you taught me, Nik.> Kuscelian finished winding the gauze around her arm, and turned to the question that petty human emotions had been trying to keep her from asking. <And on that subject...what about secutor Vizkop?>

+ + + + + +

"Sorry to bother you, sir. But I thought you and the inquisitor should see this sooner rather than later."

Tomas towelled the sweat away from his face, leaving spots of red on the cotton from where he had skinned his knuckles against one of the weighty punching bags. Sparring without Solvan felt strange; unsatisfying; and hadn't even succeeded in distracting his thoughts. He tossed the towel aside and took a slug from his water canteen, tasting the slight coppery edge of the Arthrashastra's reclamation filters.

As he swallowed, he stood up and regarded Marc. The Makitan investigator looked like he was holding together through sheer force of will - ramrod straight and jaw set despite the dark circles under his eyes and the unironed collar of his dress shirt. He smelled of fatigue, recaff and grain liquor, and even now he seemed vaguely angry, as if the wrong word would prompt a violent outburst despite his rigid ex-enforcer demeanour.

"What have you found?" Tomas asked, his eyes dropping to the dataslate Marc was holding. "Something on DeRei's possible location?"

"No sir." Marc admitted, and his frustration was palpable. "But I've also been going through all the Adrantean documents on the Nebulas that Trist and the sisters pulled, and cross-referencing them with ordo records. Have you ever heard of an inquisitor Nalaran? Ordo Calixis, hereticus branch?"

"I might have." the Casterian captain admitted, and wondered how many hours had been required to pore through those records in addition to full shifts spent combing planetary comms traffic for signs of Arcolin.

"An inquisitor Nalaran working on Siculi disappeared under Spec Circ several years ago," Marc illuminated. "Just days before governor Tierce was kidnapped...on Siculi."

Tomas put down his water bottle. "Did Nalaran get word of the plot and get killed trying to intervene?"

"He was the plot." Marc said. "The mercenary army that was waiting for the Nebulas when they landed are a possible match for ordo records of Nalaran's assets. There's auspex captures of them making planetfall just days before the Nebulas mobilised to rescue Tierce. And the way they prepared their defences, they were quite probably expecting the Nebulas to counterattack."

"So you're saying that he took Tierce to draw the Nebulas out?" Tomas concluded. "Was he interested in the Nebulas as well?"

"My question exactly, sir. I'm trying to find evidence to get Alley off the hook...but everything I dig up just makes it worse."

Tomas massaged his shoulder to give himself a moment to think, even as he wondered at the truth of Marc's motive. The other man had not exactly been cordial with Tarran after she had advised him to euthanise his sister, in the middle of her possession on Baraspine.

The mechanicus and a rogue inquisitor, lined up against the Adrantean government. Tomas considered. Suddenly a few of DeRei's cults adding sparks to the powder keg looked a lot more consequential.

"What else did you find?" he queried. "And what do you mean when you say it makes things worse?"

"I've re-examined the list of people killed by that daemonhost during Nibenay's rebellion on Marioch. Aside from a few that break the pattern, almost all of them lent skills in some way to the Nebula project."

Tomas mentally reviewed what he knew of the Marioch rebellion. The overreaching rogue trader Nibenay turning to the powers of the warp, after the Nebulas he had lobbied for creating proved more loyal to the subsec-governor than to him...only to be betrayed by those same warp powers as well. Now the question of who Nibenay's contact with the dark powers had been was solved - Arcolin - but what the Tzeentchian traitor had hoped to get out of it remained unclear. So did whether the daemonhost massacring its own summoners had been part of the plan or not.

"This is too circumstantial to base a prosecution around." Tomas noted. For us...and fortunately also for the Lords Dragon and anyone else who has issue with governor Tierce. But that's assuming they want to do things the official way.

"I think we need to ask Alicia if there's anything else we should know about her old outfit." he decided. As he reached over to gather his kit bag, the PDA sitting on top of his deck shoes buzzed and lit up with a note from Machairi. It was short and to the point, and yet still loaded with much more than the single word implied: Dinner?

+ + + + + +

"Don't be afraid, my lady. They are only bandages."

The Arthrashastra's chapel was full of light: crystal-kissed and candle-bright, but something about it felt oppressive instead of the calm that the painted saints and golden idol should have instilled. Subject to his own quirks and customary stubbornness, Solvan had gotten his medicae bed wheeled through into the chapel, with a trio of the Arthrashastra's gilded medicae servitors on hand to attend him. They clattered quietly back and forth, their only company in the vaulted hall.

"I'm not afraid." Machairi told the prematurely aged priest, more gently than she would have answered the same question from almost anyone else. The inquisitor was gowned in flowing black, with a silver shawl pulled around her shoulders and over her hair to show suitable humility in a temple of the Emperor.

"But you do wish to unburden your soul." Solvan surmised, in a low rasp that turned into a cough. He waved away the medical servitor that came whirring forward, and wiped the flecks of red from his lips with the handkerchief gripped in one pale hand.

Machairi looked at her confessor for a long moment but said nothing. He had already waved off the team's thanks for his selfless actions, and she knew from experience that he did not like to be pitied. The Emperor, she could picture him saying, has seen fit to keep me around for a while yet.

"You reminded me once." she recalled to the wounded priest. "Blessed is the mind too small for doubt, and hallowed is the mind that can doubt and endure."

"On Hercynia." Solvan whispered, nodding his head. "I remember."

Machairi stepped over to the gurney and rested her hands on the edge of the mattress. "I can't say I feel very hallowed right now, old friend. Arcolin has slipped the net again. The Adrantean authorities and noble houses are hostile. The Sol ordos are watching my every move and I think some of them are actively working against me. My allies are no longer my allies. The Vigil suspect Crenshaw, and now the mechanicus...Vizkop..." The inquisitor let out a slow, uneasy breath. "I must confess, father, I feel alone. More alone than I thought even an inquisitor was supposed to endure. No path I can take seems like a good one."

"Then there is only one path to take." Solvan whispered, drawing a wheezing breath. "If you can't do the right thing, Alia; if all of your options seem to lead to bad outcomes no matter what you do; then make the moral choice."

Machairi paused, her expression smoothed flat out of discomfort at showing less than perfect understanding of what her old friend had meant.

"What do you mean?" she admitted at last.

"I would ask you," Solvan rasped, coughing intermittently, "To allow me to bring the Penitents here...and Alicia, and the tech priests. I want you..." The wounded priest coughed again. "To give me permission to absolve them. They have done as much as anyone else could, and suffered more. It is not just this judgement that is driving them to hunt Arcolin down. Let them know that whatever happens, they will meet the Emperor with their souls pure. And perhaps...once that is done, they can also begin to absolve each other."

"My pardon won't protect them." Machairi warned. "If the other inquisitors come after me, they'll come after my people too."

Solvan closed his eyes and nodded, slowly. With an effort, he raised himself slightly against his pillows, so that he could reach out and place his hand over the inquisitor's.

"Like I said...if you cannot do the right thing...then do the right thing, Alia."

[Atrum Daemon]

Everything was black, both inside and outside his mind. It was difficult to form thoughts, but simply drifting was comfortable.

Drifting within the void of his thoughts was always an interesting experience. The current coma he was in was not dissimilar to those he had been in when getting augmented. The usual parade of faces came to his mind. A mixed bag of good and bad experiences as well. At least in such a state there would be no nightmares. No phantoms to haunt his thoughts with things that could have been. He had acted in error, in part, in executing Josiah. But it was a decision he would have to weather. His priorities had always been set in stone. There was no wavering from it...

Hypothetical: What if you were unable to do anything but think about what could’ve been for hours…days…weeks…months…? a dry, scratchy whisper in his mind. Existential query: Would you be so certain about your decisions, your priorities, or even who and what you are anymore?

Before the secutor could process a response there was a sudden, almost shockingly loud pop as aural implants that had been remotely shut down were unceremoniously reactivated.

"Can he hear us, Gavin?" a contralto voice asked. It was familiar, but his drifting brain was having trouble putting a name to it.

"Yes, lady Machairi." said the same damaged voice from his mind. Machairi! Alia Machairi, that was it. And the damaged one was Gavin.

"Alright Sister, wake him up." Machairi's voice said.

Vizkop felt something cold snaking up through the remains of his left arm. It spread through his chest and up his face, and as it reached the level of his still-blind eyes he felt the fog recede from his brain. He could think again, and he could feel his bionic implants - or rather their absence. His MIUs and sensory implants were all in shutdown mode, apart from his ears, and his limbs appeared to have been removed entirely. It was not a pleasant feeling.

It’s not. The psyker agreed. And yet you always had a choice.

"You always had my trust, Vizkop." Machairi's voice said. There didn't seem to be any anger in it - if anything she sounded disappointed. "And I thought I had yours. So tell me, why?"

“The answer is rather simple,” Vizkop said, voice calm despite the less than fine state he was in. The lack of the familiar weight of his arms was the most jarring thing. “My loyalty always lies with the Mechanicus first. I thought I made that clear, Inquisitor. But humor me, if you will, with this thought: what would have happened had Josiah lived? Such rampant destruction of such a valuable and irreplaceable machine is tech-heresy of the highest degree. The details will reach invested parties eventually. And we are operating largely through the grace of one of the Forge's chief Magi. At best, the man's head would have been demanded as recompense for the destruction and we continue on our way. At worst, the entire operation becomes much muddier to wade through without official assistance. But ultimately...I executed Josiah because I am a protector of the Mechanicus and an upholder of the laws therein. And his brazen disregard for both of those could not be suffered.”

All throughout, his voice never rose above a nominal tone. He was simply speaking the truth as he observed it. He was a man of faith and conviction and until that point those things had not come into conflict with his assistance to Machairi. But now it had, as it inevitably must have. Vizkop had made his peace long ago with his life. Whatever the decision that was made... He would consider it just only because it came from her.

"Murdering an archmagos with all his knowledge is tech-heresy of the highest degree." Vizkop heard a quiet sigh, which probably wasn't supposed to be picked up by non-augmented hearing. "People like us can't afford to treat anything as black and white, Vizkop - not ever. I thought I made that clear to you. I also thought you would trust me to use those two Ocularii to keep the forge off our back...and to make DeRei and his rogue technopath our scapegoat if necessary."

"And you trust two agents of the Dragons to be that useful to you? I thought you had more sense than that."

"And." Ah, there it was - the anger. The tightening of the vocal cords; the slight drop in pitch. "I thought you would trust me to revenge one of my people when they die in my service."

“Then do so and be done,” now his tone was changing. A hint of dry exasperation entered his voice. The remains of the drugs in his system were making him fair shade more irritable than usual. “If you intend to execute me or let Gavin rip out my neural implants, or whatever else you have in mind, then get on with it."

He registered a discrepancy in the soft metallic clicks as Sapphira meticulously worked her chaplet’s adamantium prayer beads at an accelerated rate…which he was unable to quantify.

"It would be justified." Machairi replied - calmly, but with a hint of warning. "Wuziarch acted impulsively, and I wouldn't have ordered him to do what he did, but he bought us time to reach DeRei and his psyker. Whereas you acted impulsively, bypassed my judgement and everyone else's, and killed him."

"I acted in poor judgment, this I understand. I have not been made entirely a fool by my convictions yet. And I am prepared for whatever punishment or penance you have in mind. But allow me to provide you a piece of advice from my experience dealing with my own: it is better for your fortunes not to lie to them. Especially to those you would count as even prospective allies.”

Now it was his turn to sigh and it was a rather defeated sound. The exhalation of a man aware of the gravity of his misstep. “I trust you a great deal, Alia. Far more than I trust most and more than any of my peers would find it sensible to trust an Inquisitor. That same trust is the reason I gave myself over without a struggle."

"I know." Machairi replied quietly. "But this is my investigation, Vizkop. My agents' lives are mine, not yours. For the sake of everything else you've done, I'm not going to have you executed. But you'll have no more part in this investigation. You'll be staying here until DeRei's been run to ground - and then I'll decide what to do with you."

“Assuming that decision is still yours to make by the end of all this.” It was not a threat, simply a statement. The anomalous powers he served had reaches that often far extended that of others. “I wish you luck and, for what it's worth, will pray for your success.”

"I wish I could believe you, secutor."

“I will continue to keep you in my prayers, Vizkop.” Sapphira quietly assured him, sad and solemn as she gently rested a hand over his heart. She hesitated and then kissed his brow. “Be at rest, and may your Omnissiah grant you the serenity that you deserve."

Some unspoken signal was given, and Vizkop felt liquid diffusing through the tube in his arm once again, this time bringing the comfortable numbness back into his torso and truncated limbs.

[dakkagor]

It was a quiet trip from the docking umbilical to the Tiercel’s airlock and on to the spinal corridor. The rest of the team were still berthed on the Arthrashastra, and Machairi’s solitary tech-priest had sequestered himself in the enginarium, as was his wont. No doubt the old Navigator was locked away too - probably sleeping, which was where he seemed to spend every hour not actively involved in piloting, as far as Tomas could recall.

Machairi hadn’t told Tomas where to go, but the captain could make an educated guess - the inquisitor’s cabin would have been improper, and the crew galley too spacious and impersonal, which left the conference cabin at the ship’s prow. A servitor shuffling the opposite way to Tomas, on its way back down to the crew deck, told him that his guess had been correct. The wheel-lock door to the conference room was closed when he reached it, so he announced himself with a knock.

“Come in, Tom.” Machairi’s voice answered, muffled by the metal.

Letting himself in, Tomas found the cabin lights dipped to ambient, leaving a row of vanilla-scented candles to illuminate the length of the conference table. They flickered in the draught caused by the quietly-rumbling air circulators, painting yellow streaks across a pair of silver dish covers that had been set either side of the table’s centre point. The camera screens set around the curved wall showed the cliff-like flank of the Arthrashastra, fixed in place and stretching away along the topside of the view. Its running lights swamped out the star field, turning the horizon an empty black.

Machairi was busy pouring amasec from a crystal decanter. The inquisitor was more plainly dressed than usual, with her only concession to finery being a jewelled clasp that held her pleated hair in place. She glided round to the other side of the table to place the amasec glass down, and lifted the dish cover to reveal a plate of pulped tubers and steamed vegetables, arrayed around a shortcrust pie of the kind that was sold everywhere on Casteria; from the market street-vendors and dive pubs up to the castles of the noble families.

“I had the servitor programmed specially.” the inquisitor explained, with an almost impish smile. “But if you want to run your detector wand over it for old time’s sake I won’t be offended.”

Tomas stepped across the threshold with a sheepish smile of his own. He was quietly glad he had decided to dress down for evening: a tailored shirt with epaulettes and formal trousers, and a pair of his old dress uniform shoes.

"If its authentic, it’s probably undetectably lethal anyway."

He stepped around the table, and out of old habit, pulled Machairi's chair back for her, before seating himself. The smell coming up from the table was delightful, but also somewhat melancholic. The regiment’s cooks would always make an effort to prepare something like this every Founding Day. His smile became wistful as he poured himself a drink and then raised the glass, which Machairi mirrored.

"Our agents."

"And absent friends."

They drank, and refilled the glasses before starting to eat. It always took a little time for the barriers the two put up around each other to fall away, and Tomas was the first to cross the no-mans land of the dinner table.

"How are you holding up Mach?"

The inquisitor smiled quietly and rested her fork on the edge of her plate. “Do you remember the back-streets in Hyrix? When we were running from the cultists, the xenos and that vigiles captain who was convinced we were working for the genestealers? I don’t feel quite as out of control of the situation as I was then, but it comes close.”

She steepled her fingers and contemplated them for a moment, before looking back up at Tomas.

"You deserve the truth, Tom. Things are only likely to get worse. If we catch up to DeRei in time, then our allies lose their motive for playing nice with us. Even if I sacrificed Crenshaw to appease the Sisters and the Telepathica."

Her face was unreadable as she made the suggestion.

"And if, on the other hand, we don't manage to stop DeRei?" She parted her steepled hands and spread them, letting the significant silence hang for a heartbeat. "Assuming that we survived, there are at least two inquisitors ready to pounce on us. I might be able to make a deal with De Shilo, now that I can prove how Emerald smuggled Pembroke off Solomon on his watch...but I have nothing on Yannick. It'll be tough. It might come down to just us against them. So..."

The inquisitor folded her hands in her lap.

"I need to ask how you are holding up, Tom. Of all my team, you probably have the least to prove. If you can't, or won't deal with what's coming, then I can arrange for you to be transferred back to Casteria. They won't be able to touch you there. You have my word."

Tomas leaned back in the chair, his hand over his mouth. He had expected anything other than this. He thought for a second, gathering his wits.

"Mach...you know what I swore to you, that I would follow you to hell and back, no matter what. How could I live out my years and face the Emperor at the moment of judgement and say I had done my duty if I abandon you now?" He smiled wryly. "No, Inquisitor I'm afraid you are stuck with me now."

Tomas knew that the inquisitor was no mean actress when she wanted to be, but he was also fairly certain that her touched, slightly pensive smile was genuine.

"I thought you would say that." she nodded. "And I'm grateful. But I need you to be honest with yourself, not just with me. Are you sure you can do your duty?"

She unlaced her fingers and laid her hands on the table.

"I understand what you were thinking and feeling when Solvan jumped on that grenade. But at that moment our agents didn't need another loose cannon hell-bent on revenge. They needed a leader. Can you give them that?"

Tomas sighed. "I can. That silly bastard, jumping on that damn grenade..."

"You're going to call him a silly bastard?" Machairi countered, the corners of her mouth twitching upward.

"Pot, kettle, I know. I've seen others from my unit pull similar stunts to what I did, and they normally end up on the regiment's honour rolls by sundown. Its a bloody miracle I survived, so I promise on the Holy Throne, I won't be pushing my luck again. And, sorry, for what its worth."

"Accepted." Machairi said, with dignity. "Because you're no good to me on an honour roll, Tom; if you can still handle it then I need you here."

She breathed out.

"Case in point, the agents tell you things that they might not tell me. Solvan wants to absolve the penitents, but I want to know if it'll be enough. Is there anything about them you've seen that I haven't?"

Tomas shook his head. "I've talked to Solvan about his plan, and as much I wish we could take that burden from the Penitents, it's not our absolution to give. I'm worried its coming from his own fears about this fate after...after his injury. I love the codgery old bastard like a brother, but I don't think Marc or Kally would accept it unless the job was done."

Machairi considered for a moment, then nodded thanks at the news. "Hopefully they'll get their wish soon. Nyl might be able to talk Sonder round. I'll have to see about Black."

The inquisitor toyed with her fork, thoughtfully.

"And the rest of our people? I know Sapphira for one is less calm than she lets on. She's been shutting herself away with that cyber-mastiff as a distraction."

"She has?"

"Not right now. I sent her and Glabrio to get Carson ready to meet the Nebulas, since we unfortunately need him there in person to repeat his evidence. Sapphira's determined not to have another breakdown, and you know how it never hurts Glabrio's ego to be entrusted with something important."

"Well, do bear in mind he's our only link back into the Arbites now. Keeping him sweet is a good plan, and you can do that by keeping Sapphira sweet."

Machairi chuckled. "Am I the only one that thinks that they make quite the odd couple?"

"Hmm." Tomas toyed with a chunk of gravy covered meat. "Odd, maybe, but happy and less. . . dramatic than our other pair of lovebirds."

"Crenshaw and Kally." Machairi shook her head. "Atleast its a good outlet for stress. This is a difficult job at the best of times."

"Especially this job. Kelly, Solvan, Vizkop and that blowhard Josiah. This has been our most difficult mission yet, but considering the prey...Arcolin was never a simple peddler of warp harm from some low-hive sink or a high-spire dilettante."

"No." Machairi agreed grudgingly. "When I'm feeling optimistic I feel like we might have rattled him. Compared to his moves on Marioch and Baraspine, that last one was sloppy. But if we don't run him to ground quickly, we'll have three or four powerful organisations bearing down on us."

She stabbed her fork into a cube of pie meat and twisted it.

"It seems like a good time to call in everything while I still can. One last throw. I'll send everything we've gathered so far to the conclaves at Tephaine and Calix Sector HQ. And I'll call up Avani Kol to see what she can do about the PR front on Tephaine. And since Canoness Kiana has mobilised every Vigil sister who isn't already out undercover, I plan to enlist their help - all of it. If the Nebulas co-operate then perhaps we can still salvage this, but if they're as dangerous as our mechanicus friends think they are, then they won't show up to talks without a show of force."

"And how do we transport several thousand battle sisters when they normally just smuggle around on ore haulers?"

"I think there's one more favour I can call in, if lord Maxillium is still willing to backup my mandate. His divine majesty's imperial navy."

"Some naval firepower would be damn useful." Tomas agreed, dabbing at his lips with a napkin. "Lord Maxillium might also provide us a link into the Navy's intelligence apparatus, which would be useful right now. I'll call in the favours I have left with the Commissariat's office on Scintillia; at the very least that should give us some idea about the Nebulas' deployment in recent history."

Machairi nodded agreement. "I'd appreciate that."

"I have this awful suspicion that there is some pattern here we can't see, but Arcolin can, some piece of information that ties all his attacks and victims together. And I would be willing to put Tarran and the Nebulas right at the heart of the matter."

Machairi frowned. "How so? That heretic Nibenay might have had a hand in the Nebulas' creation, but that was long before DeRei joined him for his uprising on Marioch. DeRei's already tried to goad us into fighting people who should be on our side."

"Well, there's something Marc has dug up." Tomas pulled a slimline dataslate from his coat. "Inquisitor Nalaran, Ordo Hereticus, Calixis Conclave. Remember him from that kerfuffle with the Shattered Hand a few years back?"

"Jeri Nalaran?" Machairi raised her eyebrows, looking genuinely surprised. "What's he got to do with any of this?"

"Well, Marc has been comparing data captures with his known operatives, mercenary assets and cadre, and they match up near perfectly with records of the fighting on Siculi, specifically the rebel forces. I double checked, and it fits. He just had unit badges removed, but the force composition is near identical."

"He applied for a Special Circumstances warrant and dropped off the auspex a while ago, if I remember right." Machairi recalled.

"Right, but I have nothing registered with the Tricorn about him sanctioning that op, and capturing a sub-sector Governer is a damn radical way of going about it."

"The Siculi incident." Machairi said flatly. "You're telling me Black thinks that was Nalaran?"

"I am. The evidence is solid. There's more, though."

Tomas paused and then changed the page on the dataslate, bringing up the other 'interesting' tidbit.

Machairi reached across the table to pull the dataslate towards her. She stared down at it for a long moment. "Very funny, Tom. That's my interim report on the Nibenay case, after Sidonis left me to pick up the pieces." She tapped the screen. "And that's the list of casualties from Nibenay's daemonhost that I drew up."

"Yeah. We know who summoned it for him now, our favourite warp cultist of the hour. However, compare and contrast with the list of people our new Mechanicus friends suspected or outright knew were involved in the creation of the Nebulas."

Machairi did so, and her skeptically raised eyebrow immediately pulled down into a frown. "There's a lot of matches. Who compiled this?"

"Marc again. Though I did note a few military officers he missed, associated with training and logistics. All of the victims, barring some collateral, bodyguards and the like, were involved in the Nebula project. That is sniper accuracy for a rampaging daemonhost."

Machairi began tapping her fingernails on the table. "My working theory was that the daemon cored out Nibenay's organisation to take revenge on its summoners. Now you're saying that either the daemon or the ones controlling it...and this must now include Arcolin...you're saying they wanted to completely obscure the creation of the Nebulas?"

"Right. And if that doesn't give you a case of the screaming frights, I don't know what will. I get the awful feeling we have stumbled onto someone's long term game, and most of the moves have been made."

Machairi pushed back her chair. "Under the circumstances, I think we should skip dessert. As soon as Solvan's finished, let Tarran know that we're moving. I'll wake up our Navigator and have him prepare for a side-along warp jump."

[Azazeal849]

The Arthrashastra,
En-route to Perinetus apogee jump point

Vincent rested his shoulders against the panelled oak of the crewman’s passage, turning the rosary beads over in his organic hand. He closed his fist around them and let out a long breath, running the hand over the faded knife tattoo that was beginning to show through his thinning hair. He pushed himself off the wall as the isolation doors in front of him parted on their oiled runners. Marc stepped through, furiously massaging his eyebrows with one hand. He snapped the hand down violently as soon as he registered Vincent.

“Carson?” the old soldier guessed, as the gilded doors slid closed and the blinking motion auspex above them reset.

“Frak Carson.” Marc snarled, in a tone that brooked no further inquiries. His fists were curling and uncurling as he crossed the corridor, as if he had just been in a fight and was spoiling for another, but Vincent noted that his knuckles were unbloodied.

“What are you doing here?” the former investigator shot at Vince.

“Waiting for you.” the ex-Guardsman rumbled. “Are the other kids coming or what?”

“Kelly’s probably already on her way up with Glabrio.” Marc said curtly, folding his arms. “Don’t know about Kally.”

“Word on the grapevine is you’d made some breakthrough. Must have been a good one to have Machairi and Prinzel retiring to the Tiercel to chat it over in secret.”

Marc’s jaw worked as he chewed his tongue, but his spring-taut posture seemed to unwind slightly as Vince turned to the subject of work. “I managed to link up Nibenay, the Nebulas and a missing inquisitor called Nalaran. Nibenay lost control of the Nebulas when they turned out to be more loyal to sub-sec governor Tierce than to him. So he got Arcolin to summon him a daemonhost for his Marioch rebellion, but he lost control of that too.”

“With you so far.” Vincent nodded.

“It cored out his organisation, but focused on people who helped create the Nebulas. So despite the fact that the Nebulas did most of the purging of Nibenay’s Marioch cults, this daemon protected them by hiding their ties to a heretic creator - even though it had an explicit vendetta against Nibenay. This guy Nalaran must have thought it was weird as well - that incident on Siculi where some rebels ambushed and the sub-sec governor and took him hostage? That was him. No better way to draw the Nebulas out than to kidnap the guy they’re sworn to protect.”

"The rebels set an ambush and wiped half the Nebulas, ja?” Vincent recalled. “It didn’t do this guy Nalaran any good though ‘cos they wiped his guys in return. What’s this got to do with Arcolin though?”

“I can’t prove it’s got anything to do with him, yet.” Marc growled, grinding his teeth. “But either way, the daemon he summoned protected a fighting force that was put together by a Chaos-tainted maniac, and now works as a bodyguard to the sub-sec governor. And everyone who’s tried to dig into their origins from the ordos or the ad mech has ended up dead.”

Vince chuckled darkly. "Well fok, damn, and set fire to it! No wonder the boss said something about callin‘ up the whole Silent Vigil."

“The Nebulas aren’t traitors!” a vehement voice interjected. Alicia Tarran had rounded the intersection with the crew berths and was looking mortified as she strode towards them. The former soldier was wearing one of the functional jumpsuits that were her standard since abandoning her rogue-trader finery, and had her bulky Nebula pistol holstered at her hip.

“You got invited to Solvan’s meeting as well?” Marc asked, rather coldly.

“We all did.” Alicia replied. “Even those two tech-priests. You’re wrong about the Nebulas, Marc. I’ve fought with pretty much all of them from colonel Tarquinius downward. They’d never betray governor Tierce. Throne, they even psych-screen the recruits to weed out the glory boys. And none of them are arrogant - not after Siculi.”

“Sorry if I don’t take your advice at face value after what happened last time.” Marc deadpanned.

Alicia looked as if he had slapped her. “Marc…I dunno how many more times I can say this. I’m sorry I steered you wrong on Kelly. We were able to work past that down on Perinetus, weren't we?”

“Having your back against frakking cultists doesn’t mean I forgive you.”

“Well perhaps it’s time you did. I already told you where I went wrong: from what you told me over the vox, I thought…we had to protect everyone else.” The tall woman sighed, tiredly. “I just meant -”

“Aye.” Marc snarled. “I’m sure you meant well. But I don’t deal with what people mean when they do something. Ella might have endless forgiveness for you Alley, but I don‘t.”

“You’re one to preach!” Alicia snapped. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to blatantly manipulate me on Saros either, when you told me the one thing that you knew would send me after Arcolin.”

Vincent stepped between the two, his organic arm raised to hold Marc back; his bionic one raised to ward off Alicia.

“Solvan’s waiting for us.” the old soldier rumbled softly. “Save this for after, ja?”

“I know what he wants.” Marc said stonily. “He wants to make sure we can still function as a team. Unless he plans to vaporise Carson, and strike off the two Dragon agents before they try and avenge Vizkop, for a start…” He glared past Vince at Alicia. “I think he’s being optimistic.”

Vincent’s good eye narrowed as he ground his teeth.

“Look now, kid.” he growled, his voice suddenly low and dangerous. “Solvan saved both of us after Terra. And he saved Kel. He took a fokkin’ grenade for you all down on the forge world, and somehow he fokkin’ lived. I know you’re pissed off ’cos of Arcolin and whatever that shitbird Carson’s been saying in his latest, but don’t you ever doubt Solvan in front of me, you clear?”

Marc pulled his eyes away from Alicia to meet Vincent’s mismatched glare, and then dropped to the old soldier's accusingly pointed finger. He opened his mouth, but closed it again without being able to find a response.

“An’ while you’re listening,” Vincent rumbled. “The problem ain’t just with the others, kid. If Kally-girl can be civil with Alley, so the fok can you. Ella’s said she’s worried about how you are when you’re not working, an’ I’m hardly the first fokkin’ person she comes to with her problems. Even Kel’s runnin’ out of patience with how much of a shit brother you’re being lately.”

At his last words, Marc’s face hardened into stone.

“You sound like Carson, Vince.” he spat. “And there’s something I never thought I’d frakking say.”

He turned on his heel and stalked away from them.

+ + + + + +

"I have called you all hear to tell you a truth.”

Solvan‘s voice echoed across the chapel‘s vaulted ceiling, lending it a strength that his bed-bound body could not. Propped up on his gurney before the golden idol of the Emperor, the old priest made the sign of the Aquila across his bandaged chest. He unclasped his hands, and then laced them again in the mechanicus sign of the holy cog.

“It’s a truth which I think even you children of the Omnissiah will accept."

Standing incongruously in this sanctuary of the imperial faith, their white-edged cowls pulled up over their heads to show respect, were the two ocularii. Kuscelian stood beside Sapphira - of all people - with her bionic hand hidden inside the clasped sleeves of her robe. Nikolai stood on her other side. The two accepted Solvan’s attention with a quite nod.

"The truth is this.” Solvan rasped as he regarded the men and women assembled in the Arthrashastra chapel. “Whatever we do, in the grand scheme of the universe, will never matter. The universe is too big, and the universe does not care. But it still matters that we do it.”

He let the words hang for a brief moment.

“It matters to our comrades, to our families, and to the immortal Emperor who judges our souls. I cannot speak for Him on Terra, but I will willingly submit my soul to his judgement for what I do now, in the hope that he will find my actions worthy. And in His name, by the authority that His church has seen fit to give me…”

With an effort, the wounded priest raised his right hand.

“I welcome you all back into his grace. I absolve you for your sins on Saros, and declare the penance upon your souls fulfilled. Imperator vult.”

He traced an Aquila in the air, the sweep of its wings enveloping not only the six penitents, but all of Machairi’s agents who stood beside them, and Alley, and the two tech priests.

“And now, I command you to absolve each other. You will not be able to work everything out here and now, but in His name, I charge you to take your first steps.”

His gaze lingered for a moment on Sapphira before sliding across to Alicia, but when he turned towards Marc the former investigator shook his head.

"With the greatest respect, father,” he said levelly, “We're just trying to paper over the cracks. This can only be fixed after we kill DeRei. And Carson."

Vincent snarled under his breath, profaning the sanctuary with a violent oath.

"Marc...!" Kelly called after him, but her brother had already strode out of the chapel. There was a heavy silence.

“I do not know if it is my place to speak…” said a voice, breaking the razor-edged quiet. Kuscelian reached up and took down her hood, so that Machairi’s agents could see the apparently earnest expression on her round face. “But I think we owe you an apology. I am fully aware of how badly we nearly broke things by attacking your team, and how it may have contributed to the heretic‘s escape. If agent Black thinks we need to kill DeRei to mend this, then we will assist you. We will look into where his cultists have been sourcing the melta and plasma weaponry that you recovered. We could also delve into weapon production quotas and shipment destination records to see if they match with the expected PDF re-armament after Nibenay’s heresy. Mars stands with you against the enemy.”

Ella shuffled closer to Kelly, who was tugging at her fingernails with her teeth. "Marc was right about attacking the wrong end of the problem,” she whispered, “But...how far would the Emperor want us to go?"

"What do you mean?" Kelly snapped, a little more sharply than she had intended. Her eyes were still fixed on the chapel door.

Ella brushed her fringe, pensively. "...What's the perfect crime?"

The reference to her and Marc‘s former line of work belatedly grabbed Kelly‘s attention, and she turned to give the young astropath her full concentration.

"One without a suspect." she replied after a moment.

"No,” Ella disagreed. “One without a victim."

Kelly blinked. "That's what we're trying to achieve. Machairi won‘t set us on the Nebulas unless she has to, not when we still don‘t have any idea they‘re even connected to Arcolin."

"I just…” Ella hugged her arms, shuffling uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I’ve been reading the Tarot, and I don't like what my cards are telling me. The two of monasteria means something new beginning; something important. It's always there, whatever other cards I draw. Like something's coming and we can't stop it."

+ + + + + +

Coseflame, feudal world
Two weeks later

The orbital elevators were the one, incongruous piece of high technology rising above the feudal world of Coseflame, tied to bloated stockpiler orbitals that hung above the globe like tethered balloons.

The mining world was used to ore haulers and refinery ships trawling in and out of its orbital docks, but it was not used to seeing warships. The HDMS Impiger was a doubly unusual sight; first because it served with battlefleet Ixaniad and not the home fleet of Adrantis, and second because it came alone. Generally, a heavy cruiser peeling off from its squadron towards a feudal world had one guessable purpose - recrewing. Or, to give it the less diplomatic name that most space traders used, impressment.

Unbeknownst to the merchant traders, recrewing the Impiger was only a convenient coincidence. It was certainly clever, to pick a time when many smaller ships would be milling around the cruiser. And the smaller ships that weren't, would be actively avoiding it rather than trying to ask any questions.

Of course, Emperor only knew who had told this inquisitor Machairi that the Impiger was actually due to arrive at Coseflame.

Oblivious to the unfolding subterfuge, the usual chaos triggered by an approaching warship continued unabated. Merchantmen - who doubtless paid well for advance notice of Navy vessels - were uncoupling from their berths and scarpering before the Impiger made orbit, or else were busy revising their crew rosters and hiding half their men down on Coseflame. Elspeth von Scharn did not enjoy grieving the very people who paid their tithes for the Navy's protection; nor was she oblivious to how counterproductive it could be. But the Holy Fleet was at war everywhere, casualties were taken, and there were never enough experienced spacers who could be recruited through volunteering alone.

Of late, Elspeth had began to empathise on a more personal level with people who were pulled off one ship and onto another through no fault of their own. Her last action, the crusade to retake Coreltis from the archenemy, had been a disaster - and one that could be laid firmly on the shoulders of an inquisitor like the one she was about to meet. Elspeth could still picture him, swaggering onto the bridge of the Vehemens with that arco-flagellant murder drone at his side. It had been almost as if he had wanted to remind them all of holy judgement, while simultaneously proclaiming that everyone within reach of the monster lived or died by his forbearance.

But he rushed down to the planet, and took the archenemy's prize right to them. He gave them the power to drag that whole planet screaming into the empyrean. There had been no question that heads would have to roll after such a debacle. But the inquisitor was dead; the Blood Angels captain who had accompanied the crusade was dead; even the Guard commander was missing in action, along with all the troops that had been unfortunate enough to be planetside when the Warp closed its jaws around Coreltis. Only Elspeth had been left, powerless to intervene despite the city-levelling firepower of her cruiser squadron. And so it was that commodore Nasim Tehrani now commanded the 5th cruiser squadron, while a demoted and disgraced Elspeth watched another take her place on the Vehemens from the deck of its sister ship, Impiger.

Both ships were of the Lunar class, but they couldn't have been more different. Different architecture, different men with different traditions - even the brass plaques that bore the ship's coat of arms were strange. The embossed banners beneath them proclaimed Nulla fugae. The sacred words of the Vehemens had been Qui tangit frangitur.

It could be worse, the former commodore reminded herself sternly. The Holy Fleet didn't just press-gang merchantmen into service. As the Navy's ships grew older and more battle-worn, they also had to conscript increasing numbers of unskilled labourers; poor men and women who were rounded up to accomplish with brute force what the ship's machinery no longer could, on the seemingly increasing number of systems that the tech-priests could build, but would not admit that they no longer had the skill to repair. Officers rarely ventured down into the chattel decks, but Elspeth was under no illusions about how wretched life was down there. If it were not, the Navy would not routinely lace the conscripts' food with opiates designed to keep them dazed, biddable and impotent enough to stave off an epidemic of rapes, murders and suicides.

Yes, it could be much worse. The press-ganged merchantmen could be with the chattel; just as she could be in a much worse position than demotion. At least she was still the captain of a ship. Not her ship, but this ship was hers now.

Of course, just as a captain might resist a new ship, a ship would often resist a new captain. Elspeth could sense it from all of her bridge officers - even, she fancied, from the midshipmen and ratings who stood to attention as she passed by. They were uncertain, wary; trying to figure out their new commander. A couple, she suspected, would openly challenge her. Foremost on that list of suspicions was her new executive officer, Banastre Thurlow. He seemed to smile too often, and laugh too easily.

Thurlow was a lean, coffee-skinned man in his youthful prime, with chiselled features and a rogueish shadow of stubble around his mouth and jawline. As Elspeth understood it, he had grown up on the pleasure world of Axinite and purchased his officer's commission primarily because of too much family wealth and not enough to do. And yet, by all accounts he had proved both talented and enthusiastic in a command role, and had turned the Impiger's marine complement in particular into a ruthless, well-drilled force. A self-made man, then, and such men seldom let their ambition rest on its laurels for long. In conversation with Elspeth he was nothing but friendly, with the kind of carefree attitude and flamboyant mannerisms that might endear or irritate, depending on one's personal attitude towards pleasure worlders. Perhaps the lively young officer was genuinely just trying to establish a rapport. But naïveté had consequences in the imperial navy.

"So how do you want to play this, Eppie?"

There it was, the casual pushing of boundaries. He never showed such blatant unprofessionalism in front of the other officers and crew, which was a mercy, but it also made it harder for her to rebuke him without appearing pedantic.

"The plan, Mr Thurlow." Elspeth answered, hoping the slight emphasis would make her point for her. "Is to see to this inquisitor Machairi's request and then send her on her way, as soon as is polite and practical." After hosting one inquisitor had led to the debacle at Coreltis, Elspeth found it difficult not to feel a sense of foreboding at the idea of crossing paths with another.

"Perhaps we should be generous, rather than simply accommodating?"

"Accommodating your enemies just tends to make them greedy."

"But if you manage to make an enemy into a friend, you're still one enemy down are you not? And besides, even an inquisitor doesn't stand alone. No commander does."

Was that a veiled attack? Elspeth wondered. "What do you mean, Mr Thurlow." she replied, her tone neutral.

"I mean she has a crew, just like a Navy ship - and ratings tell different stories from officers. You host the inquisitor, and let me talk to her team over drinks. I'll see if I can work something out."

Elspeth considered for a moment, and decided that it was not worth being contrary about a good idea, just to score a cheap point against her new XO.

"Very well, Mr Thurlow." she nodded. Thurlow returned the nod, with a smile.

They passed beneath another gleaming coat of arms as the gold doors of the praetorium pistoned open before them. Nulla fugae, the ship's gilded motto proclaimed. No escape. Elspeth tried not to think of it as an omen.

+ + + + + +

The shuttle transfer gave the Impiger's bridge officers ample time to study their new associates' ships, as they matched course and speed a few hundred kilometres off the cruiser's left flank. The inquisitor's vessel was a sleek, aquiline void runner, with the high-sided blade of the sprint trader keeping station behind. They're not here because they lack for transport, then. Elspeth deduced. They're here because they need firepower.

It was true enough that few things quite matched the intimidation factor of a Lunar-class cruiser, but an inquisitor who felt entitled to commandeer such an asset did not sit well with Elspeth. Just a single ship and its captain this time, at least, she thought with wry humour. Not a squadron flagship.

Streaming the hull camera feeds to the globular hololith above her table, Elspeth watched the shuttle's progress until it was safely berthed, and then waited as her honoured guests were led up to the captain's praetorium. When the doors swung open, Elspeth was glad to see that the escort they had been given was suitable: two junior officers, a squad of armsmen, even the ship's chief confessor with his clockwork cherub dragging its perfumed censer in his wake. Thurlow was already standing - and no doubt enjoying the slyly embellished ensign's disguise he was wearing - but as custom dictated, Elspeth waited for the inquisitor and her retinue to enter the reception gallery before she herself rose to her feet.

Von Scharn didn't look at the inquisitor, garbed in flowing silver cloth. Everyone else was looking at the inquisitor, and she wouldn't see anything they didn't. She looked at the retinue. They were a mixed bunch - a bearded man with an officer's bearing who stood close to the inquisitor's side; a tall, sour-looking man in a double-breasted suit; a robed official with aristocratic features; a roguish, square-jawed man who was irreverently chewing candies; and two close-visored stormtroopers.

Some looked tired, others guarded - almost angry. On edge. Whatever mission they were involved in, it clearly wasn't going well. Von Scharn exhaled, though she suppressed the urge to smile. Advantage, mine.

"Lady Machairi." Elspeth said, making a carefully measured bow. "Please, make yourself comfortable. Mr Thurlow here will look after your men in the reception gallery."

The inquisitor inclined her head graciously. "Thank you captain. Lord Maxillium will be joining us, if you don't mind."

Elspeth reassessed slightly at the challenge, appraising the robed man whom the inquisitor had indicated. A lord, is he? Working out the hierarchy between the three of us is going to be amusing. "Of course."

[Imperial1917]

The captain was not a tall woman, Trist noted, and both he and the statuesque Machairi towered over her until they took their seats on opposite sides of the table. Nevertheless she had a strong but relaxed bearing - wider at the shoulders than the hips; lean; comfortable in her own skin. Her dark red hair was pinned up at the back of her head, contrasting with her pale, lightly freckled skin. Her blue eyes hovered over Trist, but not long enough to appear impolite instead of simply interested. A moment later, a civilian butler without Navy rank stripes on his cuffs emerged from a side door, with three glasses and a carafe of wine.

"This one's from Axinite I believe." the captain said, as the butler poured deep red swirls of wine into Trist and Machairi's goblets. "Outside the Adrantis sub. Outside the Calixis sector, even. One of the things about Navy life is that the rotating supply ports always keep the fare interesting."

The captain had a lyrical accent - one designed to take a language of hard consonants and polysyllabic words and somehow make them flow softly together. It reminded Trist a little of Kriegan gothic, or perhaps Sancta Heroican.

"I had heard that your personal favourites were from the Tandem province of your homeworld, captain." Machairi said, delicately folding her hands.

The captain cocked an eyebrow. "You've done your research."

"I consider it polite to learn something of the people I will be meeting with."

"Really." The captain stroked the stem of her glass. "And what did you learn, inquisitor?"

Machairi took a measured sip from her own glass, and nodded approvingly. "You're right, it does taste interesting. I learned that Elspeth von Scharn was born on Ichabarr, trained at the Navy officer's academy, and gained her first posting on the HDMS Susceptor. I learned that she rose through the ranks with a mixture of the right training, the right contacts, and above all the right enthusiasm and perception for void warfare."

"And fell just as rapidly," the captain smiled self-deprecatingly, flatly refusing to be flattered.

"As a scapegoat for the Coreltis debacle." Machairi defended. "Which was a grotesquely unfair appropriation of the blame; everyone who actually knew you stated during the investigation that you did not believe in leaving things to chance, and yet everything about Coreltis had been a reckless gamble."

"Thank you for your support." the captain nodded. "And I appreciate that I probably look rather ungrateful to be rebuffing it. So I'll be candid with you, inquisitor. Last time I worked with the inquisition, an over-zealous fool screwed up, handed vital information to the enemy and got the planet destroyed. I only lost my commodore's stripes, so I got off lightly - but a lot of other people didn't. I hope you can see why I'm not particularly happy at the prospect of working with you people again."

A light silence fell, the kind that comes with an uncomfortable truth that everyone was presently aware of but was still unprepared for someone to actually say. It was, Trist reflected as he swirled the contents of his glass contemplatively, something that happened at every level of society, the high and the low.

Sipping from the glass, he deliberately avoided eye contact with either of the women, instead seeming to look in the distance and savor the vintage. In truth, he found it unpalatably bitter, but he made the best of it. When he set the glass back down on the table, the remaining amount was the delicate amount that, at least among nobility, screamed for more to be added even though plenty remained; in fact, little had been drunk at all. The butler took the cue, moving to refill the delicate balloon. As he did, Trist leaned back in his chair and rested his arms on the chair’s rests.

“Your position is appreciated, captain.” he replied carefully, glancing to the Navy officer, to the inquisitor, and back again. “Nevertheless, your assistance is appreciated.”

At that moment the butler finished his task, the final addition of vintage merging virtually without sound with the body already in the glass. As he backed away, however, the young lord caught the servant’s attention with a subtle motion with one hand. Another flick and the man set down the bottle on the table next to the freshly filled glass with only the slightest of surprised pauses. Seeing nothing more to be done, he bowed and slipped out the side door.

"That's nice to know, sir." the captain said to Trist, smiling blandly. "But in the interest of...ah...not leaving things to chance, would you be so kind as to tell me a little more of what this is all about? If nothing else, pulling the Impiger off-station muddles up a lot of people's timetables, and I'm going to have to write and tell them all why."

"Of course." Machairi said, conciliatory rather than imperious as she put down her glass. "We have a subsector warrant out for a daemon consorter named DeRei."

"I've heard." von Scharn nodded. "And I understand you've crossed wires with the local forces a couple of times while hunting him down."

"Yes." Machairi agreed simply. "We also crossed wires with a parallel investigation, which is what brings us here."

"I see." The captain paused to take a measured sip. "If you don't mind me asking, who are your friends investigating that they need a whole Navy cruiser to back them up?"

"The Nebula corps."

Von Scharn's thin eyebrows raised for a moment, then settled. "Goodness me, the subsec-governor's own Rapid Reaction Force." She cocked her head towards Trist, singling out the Adrantean noble. "What do you make of that, my lord?"

Trist played at mulling over the question for a moment. In truth, it had occurred to him before he had bumped into the inquisitor, long before.

"Only as much as I have cause to, captain. Please indulge me in such a vague answer; I have had not inconsiderable dealings on such matters before. Sometimes they come to something and sometimes they do not. Our learned colleagues will undoubtedly inform us of the difference between if it is necessary."

His tone was carefully neutral, but carried an intentional subtle undercurrent of caution in that conclusion.

"Blessed is the mind too small for doubt, I believe the Creed goes." von Scharn quoted, "But..."

"Hallowed is the mind strong enough to doubt and yet to endure?" Machairi finished, smiling metallically.

The captain returned the smile. "Precisely." She sipped her wine. "I'm afraid I don't always have the luxury of being able to wait for my learned colleagues to decide for me. The captain's chair doesn't have many corners to hide and stall in. Well, that and the courier boats are less frequent than I'd like."

"But I suppose what you really want to know is if this chase I'm bringing you on will come to something or not." Machairi interjected.

The captain executed a slightly theatrical shrug. "You wouldn't be horribly off the mark. Especially since I imagine the Adranteans are slightly delicate at the moment?"

"Yes." Machairi agreed, once again not elaborating on their recent tribulations, or the messages that had been coming from some of subsec-governor Tierce's cabinet. "The shortest possible version, captain, is this. Either archenemy agents are deliberately stoking tensions between Imperial factions, or there is a powerful element at the heart of the subsector's defence which is unsanctioned and unsupervised. Either way, I need to speak to the Nebula commanders."

"You plan to just whistle them up?"

"I already have. Their colonel has agreed to meet us at Concordia Orbital."

"Concordia Orbital?" von Scharn frowned, sitting back in her chair. "I beg your pardon, inquisitor - I'm not familiar with it."

Seeing that the inquisitor's glass was dipping below the aforementioned level, Trist rose to his feet and took hold of the bottle seemingly in a single smooth motion. Pouring, he replied, "Are you familiar with Lehyde Ten? It is a space station nearby." Still standing, he motioned to the captain, who placed her glass down as well, a slightly perplexed air about her. Adding the exacting measure, he continued,

"Deserted for the most part, it has a noteworthy database and scanner suite that is equally adverse to weapons and tech-priests alike. Rogue traders get to work their differences out and the Mechanicus gets to gnash its mendrites about not being let in."

Setting down the bottle once more with the same grace, he took the captain's glass and offered it to her.

"Thank you." von Scharn inclined her head, smiling as she regarded the young lord as if surprised that he was taking the serving upon himself instead of simply recalling the butler. "If you and the inquisitor will permit me a brief diversion, sir, I'm trying to place your accent. It's not quite the cut-glass Tephainian I expect from most of the subsector governor's staff."

Seating himself once again, Trist replied, “Forgive me, captain, but I would hardly have expected you to place my speech. I am not from this Segmentum, you see, and so even in your greater experience, you are unlikely to have come across it.”

“Oh?” inquired the captain, again with that eyebrow motion, as if ready for a game of hard-to-get, “If that is so, where are you from?”

“Sabilist.”

“I confess I have never heard of it,” she admitted grudgingly.

“Nor, again with my apologies, would I have expected you to. If it could be called important in Imperial histories, it would only be in the recent memory. That and the Rift…”

The captain swirled her drink. “The Rift?”

“A breed of Warpsurges that plague the sector of my birth.”

“I have heard of such. This Sabilist, it is in the Caligari Sector of Segmentum Tempestus? Even out here it is well-kno-”

“Again, forgive me, captain,” interrupted Trist, waving a hand theatrically, a note of measured annoyance in his voice, “That is a common mistake. Sabilist suffers from similar misfortunes, yes, and is in the same Segmentum, but is not in the Caligari Sector. We are not so lawless.” The last came out with an edge, as if he had bitten it off when he added it by mistake and purposefully chose to leave it raw when he realized the error.

"The lord means no offence." Machairi interjected quickly, and a little firmly.

Von Scharn shrugged it off. "None was taken, inquisitor." Silence fell again, the captain seeming to consider her options in the lapse as she met the lord’s eyes. Finally, she said, “So your world does well for itself?”

Trist met her eyes before replying a trifle stiffly, “By the grace of the Emperor, yes.”

More silence, during which Trist reached and plucked his glass from the table and brought it to his lips, his eyes meeting hers the entire while. The captain's own eyes dropped to his glass. Indicating his hand with the glance, she said, “Am I correct in saying that you have had considerable augmentation work?”

His expression unreadable, he replied, “Just so, captain.”

“Your augments seem to be of fine work. I did not know that the Mechanicus could reproduce flesh with such authenticity.”

“Nor did many that I knew until it was done.” He seemed to smile for a moment, a sad smile, “But do not mistake them for lesser designs. They are as capable as any other; more than most.”

“I’ll take your word for it. So your world is known for its augmetic works?”

A moment of hesitation, then, “Certainly it is no longer unknown. The work there has not gone unnoticed.”

“Now?” she asked, possibly wondering why he did not mention the magos who oversaw his augmentation, “But not before? What changed?”

“I… the work was done to repair damage sustained during the war.”

“You went abroad into a war? A laudable feat.”

His jaw clenched, “The Sabilian Wars,” he rejoined flatly.

Trist sighed and set down his glass.

“My apologies, captain, for being such a discourteous guest. Sabilist has seen difficulties in my time. A long history of managing on our own, all but smothered by the effects of the Rift, was ended with the coming of the Imperium. While many embraced this, there were a few malcontents who sought to stir up trouble. The result was years of war during which I… I lost much. Friends, family, more. In a real way, the replacement of my flesh with steel was the least of what was lost. The cost is still being counted. Along with the gains. We are better now, but the memories of what happened are still… fresh.”

"You have my condolences, whatever they might be worth." the captain nodded sombrely. "I have to ask: after all of that, how did you come to be in another segmentum, working for governor Tierce, as an inquisition attaché?"

Trist glanced at Machairi. "A long story, captain, better suited for another time. Suffice to say that I provided assistance to the governor as an adviser on some delicate theological questions and he was most gratified. Come to that, the Mechanicus were not ungrateful either, in their own way. In any case, the governor offered to return the favor with respect to the sub-sector. Thus I found myself in this part of space when he needed a trusted individual to address the inquisitor's concerns. Knowing that I have worked with the Inquisition before, he proposed that I step in."

The captain nodded twice, before turning back to Machairi. "Without meaning to offend, inquisitor, it does reassure me that you and the subsec-governor are openly cooperating. Although I have my doubts that he knows you plan to take a cruiser to Concordia orbital."

"It's for his own protection." Machairi replied. "I have yet to see an Imperial court that wasn't absolutely stiff with informers."

The captain hmm'd a chuckle. "So. I assume that you will want the Impiger to stand off, and keep a beady eye on any backup that the Nebulas themselves bring?"

"Yes." Machairi nodded. "That, and to provide transport for several hundred Sisters of the Silent Vigil and their equipment."

"And their equipment." von Scharn repeated shrewdly. "Battle Sisters, then."

"Correct."

"How fortunate that we are already parked in orbit." von Scharn smiled, evidently understanding now why her ship had been singled out for requisition. No doubt, Trist thought, she also saw the cunning of transferring the Sisters up during a recrewing stop - when the press-gang shuttles would already be coming and going, and therefore provide a perfect cover for the manoeuvre. Any archenemy spies on Coseflame would be hard-pressed to discover that the better part of the Order's fighting strength had just mobilised and shipped out.

"You must think trouble is more likely than not, to be pulling so many Sisters from their convent." von Scharn observed.

"Unfortunately, I must." Machairi said. "The worst case scenario is that a full boarding action will be needed to detain the colonel's ship and any Nebulas aboard. Canoness Kiana and I are in agreement on this."

The captain ran a finger delicately around the rim of her glass, as if to give herself time to consider.

"Well," she said after a moment, "The Navy will usually move mountains to get the church's blessing, so I don't see a reason to change that habit now. We have an accord, inquisitor - on one condition. If it comes to a void engagement, although I pray it doesn't, you will trust my crew and I to do what we do best without interference. Is that acceptable?"

"It is." Machairi nodded, and folded her hands in her lap. "The Holy Fleet will get all due credit."

"And all due blame?" von Scharn queried, giving Machairi a significant look. Machairi returned it.

"If this goes wrong, captain," she said earnestly, "Who takes the blame will be the least of our worries. I hope I've made that clear."

Von Scharn held the inquisitor's gaze, her expression mild. "Oh, transparently so."

[dakkagor]

Kally was in command of the fireteam, which didn't fit right even as it made sense.

The reasoning, according to Tomas, was as follows: Marc was too invested and losing his emotional distance, Alley Tarran was too close and now considered compromised. Saph was planetside, working with the Vigil on getting things rolling. She would have preferred Glabrio to be in charge, but all she had to do in command was shoot anything that looked dangerous until it stopped looking dangerous, and then get the Inquisitor, Lord SnootyMcnotsayalot, and Tomas off the Imperial Navy cruiser and back to their ships before the portside lances atomised their transport, all their stuff, and all their friends. Glabrio was a solid shot and a great guy to have at your back in a firefight, but when it came to hard-nosed, close range murdering, Kally was the best of what was left.

So she had dressed to impress. Her stormtrooper carapace, helmet locked, with the void-treated underlayer in case they had to go EVA and all die messily. Boltgun clamped across her chest and fed with infernus fragmentation ammo, ideal for shipboard fighting. And of course, her trophy sword.

She had seen the portside lances out the port of the shuttle. The huge, turreted weapons seemed bigger than any ground unit she had ever seen, let alone any of the weapons she usually handled. The sheer scale of them impressed on her that if this all went sideways, they wouldn't be flying away.

She hoped and prayed this time, it would all go right.

++++++

She worked through the firefight as they walked under escort. Ensign "Furlough" had said this was an honour guard, but it felt to Kally more like a execution watch. She flexed her gloved hands and tried to force herself to loosen up and relax. It was just paranoia, jitters.

The Lord, the Inquisitor and Tomas peeled off with the Captain to a seperate room, leaving her, Glabrio, Crenshaw and Marc standing on the deck. The ensign turned to them and hitched up a smile that Kally was surprised to realise was probably genuine as the honour guard dispersed.

“If you'd like to come with me, I can get you some refreshments. Not officer grade, but still. . .”

She shrugged. “Sounds good.” They fell in behind the ensign. Marc shot her 'the look' and she shrugged again. They hadn't planned on being separated from Machairi this early on, but Kally realised that if the inquisitor hadn't kicked up a fuss, she must have felt confident that this wasn't about to blow up.

The ragtag group stepped into an officer's mess. The ensign got behind the bar, and with some relish, started pouring drinks.

“I didn't catch your names?”

Kally unbuckled her helmet and dropped it onto a real wooden table worth more than most of her internal organs. “Agent Kally Sonder.” She tapped her armoured chest. “That's Marc Black, previously of the Hive Makita enforcer cadre, the guy digging into your liquor cabinet is Glabrio Hybridia, arbitrator.” Glabrio sketched a little bow, and went back to rattling the wide-based rum decanters. “That's Major Crenshaw, AAT. She took a proffered glass. “Suffice to say, they are all also agents of the Inquisition.”

“Charmed, I'm sure.” Furlough replied, tapping his glass against Kally's. "Wow. This isn't something we see every day in the Navy."

He knocked back a measure of something pale red and sweet-smelling, and cheerfully poured himself another.

"One for me, one for the Emperor. It's also not every day we get an excuse to break open the senior officers' stash. Anything for you, boss?"

The question was directed at Crenshaw, who pulled off his own visored helmet and shook his head. He was deliberately standing far back near the door, to minimise the impact of his aura. All the same, Kally still caught the slight tightening around Furlough's eyes that she had long learned to recognise, and she fancied that the ensign was shooting her a couple of sidelong looks as well.

"How about you gents? M'lady?" Furlough continued breezily, pointing around the group with his newly-empty glass, "I'd ask you Mr Hybrida but you're already into lef-tenant Sheldrake's special reserve."

"I take it you're not on duty?" Marc observed, as Furlough poured himself a third shot and topped up Kally's.

Furlough grinned with one side of his mouth. "Don't worry about me; I just finished my watch. Someone else can finish swearing in the new ratings. Or swearing at them as the case may be."

He rested his forearms on the bar, head and shoulders reflected blurrily in the polished brass-and-teak surface.

"Well, we might as well get the obvious question out the way first. What do cloak and dagger merchants like yourselves need with a cruiser?"

"The lady," Glabrio explained as he swirled a large glass of dark Navy rum without actually putting it to his lips. "Wants to have a frank and open discussion with the senior officers of the Nebula corps."

His chair creaked as he raised his booted feet and thumped them down irreverently on the expensive table. The ensign just laughed and carried his own glass over to a spare seat, mirroring the investigator's slouch.

"Well, down the barrel of a macro battery is one way to have a frank exchange of views. But what's Adrantis' best Rapid Reaction Force got to do with the Ordos?"

"That is classified." Crenshaw stated.

"Of course." the ensign tapped the side of his nose, before turning serious. "I'm sorry about this. It's probably not doing your nerves any good to be shut in here while the bigwigs have their serious talk." The young officer's purse-lipped expression seemed genuine. "I'm afraid the new captain's a bit antsy after the last time she had to entertain an inquisitor and he sent everything tits up."

He splashed another measure into his glass and tipped his head back to swallow it.

Kally shot a look back to Marc, who shrugged. So, not something they had intelligence on.

"The captain has dealt with the inquisition before? Who was it, if you don't mind my asking?" Kally ventured, pouring herself a third shot.

And what went wrong was the unasked question. Kally didn't like the idea that they might have drawn someone for this sensitive mission who had a history of spectacular, deeply classified screw-ups. That was their shtick.

"A rather firebrand ordo hereticus type named Drake." the ensign said, leaning back in his chair. "Or so one of the ensigns from the Vehemens told it, anyway."

Near the door, Crenshaw exhaled through his teeth. "Drake you say? Well, it is a small galaxy."

Furlough drained his glass and rested his elbow on the table. "Aha. You've had the misfortune to meet him too?"

"I worked under him for a while. He no longer needed my specific abilities after he trained up banisher Ramirez. I respected Drake's bravery, and his opinion of psykers, but he always had more balls than brains."

"Yes. I hear at their first meeting, he brought an arco-flagellant onto the captain's bridge." The navy man shrugged. "I hear that she wasn't impressed."

"Ah. Unfortunate." Crenshaw clacked his prosthetic teeth, but did not elaborate. "I do not suppose you can tell me where Drake is now? I expect him to be dead in a few years, hopefully having done something useful."

"He's already dead, and in a far from useful manner. I hear that on Coreltis he ran on ahead to try and nab a rogue inquisitor, got captured himself and gave up information that scuppered our whole counterattack. The captain took the blame for it, and that's why she's with us now instead of commanding the squadron from Vehemens."

"Disgusting." Glabrio tutted. "Give me an inquisitor like the Lady over rosette-waving impetuousness any day."

"I'm actually very glad to hear you say that." Furlough leaned forward, putting down his glass so he could tap the table for emphasis. "I don't know about you but none of us around here want another frak-up. So I want to be straight with you, and vice versa. No...surprises, if you get me?"

"If that's a fish for information it's not a particularly good one." Marc commented dryly.

"That's not what I'm after." Furlough said quickly, frowning and waving his hand. "Look, I'm stationed with the ship’s armsmen. I'm thinking if we're backing you up we're moderately likely to get mixed up in any mess that goes down. What I want to know is if there's any way we can help better, and make it less likely that we'll get another cluster-frak like Coreltis."

Kally mused on that, sliding her empty glass back and forth on the counter.

"Sure. The main, most important thing is to understand that we'll have a plan." Kally refilled the glass. "And that when things go wrong, or not according to the plan we told you, which in all frakking likelihood is going to be the case, we will have another plan ready to go. Orders will change, and we all may have to improvise a bit. If that happens, the best any of us can do is listen to and follow orders, and if we tell you explicitly not to do something or do something, even if it doesn't make sense, you should not do or do that thing, as the case may be."

The Navy man nodded slowly, and then faster as Kally finished talking. “Sure. If there’s one thing the bootnecks can do it’s follow an order without mucking around questioning it.”

Kally slugged back the drink and flipped the glass over on the counter, sliding it back to Furlough as a quiet indicator she was done drinking.

"So, no surprises here, Mr Furlough. But you should be expecting surprises when we get to talk to the Nebulas, because we sure as shit are."

“We also do improv pretty well.” he said, “And begging your pardon agent Sonder, but it’s Thur-low.”

He drained his shot glass and saluted her with it to show no resentment.

“I’ll make sure my armsmen know the score. Shall we report back and get this show on the road?”

"Sure Thurlow." Kally smirked. "Lead on."