[M] Shades of Grey - IC

[Atrum Daemon]

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

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

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

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

[Felwether]

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

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

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

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

This is important, Abner. He said to himself.

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

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

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

This is important.

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

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

[Cfavano]

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

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

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

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

[ElizabethStark]

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

[Azazeal849]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[dakkagor]

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

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

Pointwork is sloppy. This is why.

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

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

[Felwether]

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

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

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

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

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

[Imperial1917]

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

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

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

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

[Azazeal849]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+ + + + + +

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Now you lie.” it warned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

+ + + + + +

Inquisition void runner Furia, in orbit above Vaxanhive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes sir."

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

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

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

"Exitus acta probat." the inquisitor murmured.

+ + + + + +

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+ + + + + +

Sarna

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

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

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

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

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

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

+ + + + + +

Fire-team Aegia – Hadrak, Abner, Konstantin

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

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

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

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

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

[dakkagor]

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


"Gah! Frak! Frak Frak Frak Frak!"

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

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

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

Mine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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