[M] War in the Shadows - Imperials IC

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: Gavin Jenkins, Sapphira Wilder, Kojiro Osada - Baraspine 

Concluded HERE

MISSION FAILED

[Azazeal849]

CAMPAIGN 2: STRIKE TEAM AEGIA

Spoiler: Glabrio Hybrida, Martin Crenshaw, Kojiro Osada 

Tranch
Patriot hive world

Until today, Marcus Black would have named his most stressful orbital landing as the time they had plunged onto the surface of Teleostei in a hijacked astartes drop pod. This descent most definitely equalled it, even if they actually had their inquisitor’s sanction this time round.

They had launched on the comet tails of a full frigate broadside, through a crossfire from the planet’s orbital grid, and trusting the rain of hot metal and plasma to mask their tiny shuttle pod until it scorched down through the atmosphere and - hopefully - crash-landed right inside Fornax Hive’s industrial dumping grounds, not far from a nondescript orbital vox station called Stelwardia Two Gamma.

Talk about jumping back in at the deep end.

He glanced around the tiny circle of grav-couches. To his left, Crenshaw - stoic, hands flat on the arm-rests. Next in line, Glabrio with his lips resting against clasped hands. Opposite him Kojiro, perfectly motionless, not so much sitting still as lying in wait. And to his right Raechel, who offered him a brief smile as he caught her eye. Weapon straps drifted in the zero-gee, snapping occasionally as the pod accelerated or fired a corrective burst from its thrusters.

A chime and a blinking light preceded the activation of the pod’s hololith projector, irising up into the centre of the pod to splash a grainy image from the bridge of the frigate they had just left. Commander Dyencourt’s scarred, one-eyed face looked scarcely human under the harsh resolution, and every few moments it flickered left and right as the ship’s vox struggled to maintain its lock.

“A slight complication, agents.” the grizzled commander’s voice scratched through the interference. “Patsie squadron just warped in; we may have to retreat towards the system edge until we can shake ’em. Other than that, plan stays the same.”

“We just loiter around the pick-up site and make small talk with the rad-lizards until you call us back?” Glabrio replied, a hint of acid in his tone.

“We’ll make another pass as soon as we can. Make sure you’re outside any theatre shields and keep your teleport homer active.” Dyencourt’s hands rose into the projection’s frame and formed the aquila. “Good luck interrogator. Progedere!”

The holo sputtered into an error rune as the frigate’s void shields went up and severed the connection. Almost immediately after that, the pod began to rattle.

“That’s us hitting the atmosphere.” Raechel supplied, her bionic fingers digging into the couch arm to stop her from being jolted around inside her restraints.

The pod shuddered violently, and the vacuum silence became a sizzle, and then a roar. Marc reached up, and snapped down the visor of his carapace helmet as the turbulence buffeted him against the cushioned sides and back of his grav-couch. For a moment he felt like he was thrown forward, hanging from his seat, then he was slammed back again. The superheated air howled, like a monster trying to claw its way in.

“Brace!” Raechel warned as the braking thrusters kicked them all back in their seats, the force juddering through the cabin. Five seconds later, there was a slamming impact.

“Up!” Glabrio snapped. “Get clear of the pod!”

Restraints snapped open automatically. The five agents disentangled themselves and reached for weapons.

“Less than a kilometre from the aim point.” Raechel commented, extracting the information from the pod’s tiny central cogitator with a pass of her bionic hand. A second pass sent the memory core into an autophagic spiral, wiping the machine clean before its inevitable finding by the Patriots.

Marc shouldered his way out behind Osada and looked up at an alien sky. The heavens above Tranch were smog shrouded, and coloured the grey of an untuned pict screen. Sleet fell from the sky like washes of static, and he could feel the cold even through his carapace armour. Mast-like street lamps provided a hooded glow over the scene, but as they had hoped, the dump site that spread beneath the spire tiers showed no signs of human habitation. Small creatures disturbed by the crash skittered through the piles of junk and twisted metal, and the auspex on Marc’s vambrace blinked a low-level radiation warning.

“That way.” Glabrio said, pointing. “If we pick up the inter-spire mag lines and follow them about two kilometres, we’ll hit the comms station another kilometre west of there.”

Marc hauled himself up by a rusted I-beam to observe the mag-lev trains cutting back and forth across the sodden landscape. As he did so, a thread of las scorched past him, bursting the water canteen attached to his belt and flashing its contents into steam as the bolt cratered the wreckage behind him.

“Frak!” the investigator cursed as he involuntarily loosed his grip on the I-beam and went down hard on his back.

“Sniper!” Crenshaw barked in warning, unslinging his weapon, but as he crawled along a pile of rusted cogitator parts a second beam of light punched through them, narrowly missing his helmet. The blank cursed as he flattened himself against the ground.

“Two snipers.” he corrected. “Possible infra-scopes or psyocculum.”

“Can you see where?” Glabrio called as he yanked his signature pistols from their holsters. Something pale and many-legged bolted from a hole in the scrap pile near his boot, and he blasted it into red mist with a frustrated curse.

Kojiro had rolled away to the right as Glabrio and Raechel dived left, and the contours of the junk piles had conspired to give him a view of the second lasbolt as it seared across the dump. Blinking away the white line that the beam had scored into his vision, he could make a good guess that the enemy sharpshooter was on the ground perhaps a hundred metres to his right.

[Cfavano]

"I can." Kojiro said in heavily-accented low gothic. "One of them is but a hundred meters that way, more or less." He said, as he pointed to the right. "Avoiding one sniper in this kind of terrain is child's play, but the other one makes it much more difficult. If it were possible one or more of you could draw their fire, I could get them with my knife. and then with one left, we could handle that one. Is this plan acceptable?" Kojiro continued, his mask concealing his facial expression, and his voice a professional, calm, even temper.

[Azazeal849]

CAMPAIGN 2: LONE WOLF

Spoiler: Kally Sonder - Marioch 

+Agent Sonder.+ Evgeni Veiss’ code signature scrolled silently across Kally’s vision. In the basin below her, the ground was red clay, and every artillery impact made the earth bleed. +You have incoming.+

Above her, the vapour trails of brick-shaped landing craft were scoring across the sky, drawing a smatter of fire from the more quick-witted of the Imperial troops below. The streamers of mist behind one of the landers sputtered and became a tail of smoke and flame, and it went howling over Kally’s head to plunge into one of the rocky outcrops between the arms of the mountain, a mile or so behind her. The mechanicus huntsmen accompanying her - Dom and Kaz’ equal in prowess, if not in temperament - did not seem to react to the crash, their expressions as hidden as the Domina’s golden implants beneath their desert-pattern camo cloaks.

+There’s a ready-made distress call lure for you.+ Evgeni suggested. He was back at the prefab base that the Guard had dropped during their initial landing two days ago, watching through the huntsmen’s bionic eyes much as Raechel might have done. Thus far, his work as her intelligence support had been exemplary.

Kally chewed the inside of her cheek and went back to the green-tinted lenses of her magnocs. We need to make sure the bitch is actually here first. The Nebula hulk had most definitely arrived in orbit, if the sky-flashes of distant starship weaponry were anything to go by, but there were a lot of priority targets across Marioch that could require the Nebulas’ attention. That could require the heroine of Adrantis’ attention.

Kally eased down further amid the rocks that littered the mountain spur. Ahead of her the landers were touching down amid a blaze of down-pointed thrusters and sweeping streams of tracer fire. She saw Patriot infantry sliding like beads down rappel ropes, and Sentinel walkers released from their clamps to scatter around the ongoing Imperial charge. On the north flank, closest to her and the huntsmen, one of the landers began to shed arcs of pale smoke as jetpack troops leapt from side hatches and boosted towards the ground. They touched down in a firing line across the Guard’s north flank, reminding Kally of the graceful precision they had shown on Baraspine - back when they were hunting Arcolin’s cultists rather than loyalist soldiers.

As the counterattack began the field began to haze behind a veil of smoke, lit by the green corpse-flashes of lasguns returning fire. From what Kelly could see the Guard were not winning the exchange, as soldiers behind cover crumpled and soldiers in the open were punched off the ground, heads snapped back, arms flailing, like they had run throat-first into tripwires.

+Scanning now, agent Sonder.+ Evgeni reported, and Kally’s augmented vision fulgurated slightly as the tech-priest’s attention signal jumped between the silent huntsmen. +What’s your plan if she is out there?+

Imperial objective: Locate and eliminate Alicia Tarran

[dakkagor]

+I'm going to have to make a hell of a mess, whichever way it pans out. No matter what distance the kill occurs at, I'll need proof.+

She gestured, a few quick chops with her left hand as she stowed the magnoculars. The two huntsmen peeled away, left and right, and Kally began to pick her way back down the spur to a likely looking boulder.

+You want another trophy.+ She tutted as she settled onto the boulder, and set up her camo cloak.

+No. I need to be sure. People like Alicia, they keep living because people assume there is no way to survive something.+

+A born survivor. Something you have experience with.+

She allowed herself a small smile and hooked into the rifles systems. She stretched her joined senses out, taking in all the factors. She wasn't, actually, a very good sniper. But with a weapon like this, a mediocre long range shooter became deadly indeed, as nearly a hundred hours of range time had proven to her satisfaction.

+Monitor their ingoing and outgoing please. I need reporting codes and idents+

She released the breath she had been holding as she pulled gently on the trigger. She had been focusing on a leaping Nebula trooper, leading him to account for the rounds travel speed over this distance, the rifle correcting for wind speed, altitude and even Mariochs gravity and rotation. The round punch through his torso and sprayed shrapnel, blood and flame behind him in a fan. Suddenly dead, the leaping trooper lost all control and ploughed into the earth, a tangle of armored limbs, amongst a squad of Imperial Guardsmen.

She didn't bother shifting, not yet. Even for a unit as disciplined and networked as the nebulas, it would take valuable seconds for them to realize they had a sniper on their flank. She fired her second shot. This time, a gesturing Nebula, possibly an officer, folded in half and collapsed, his head gone. The round had penetrated a weak band of armor just above the hips, hit the rear armor and deflected upwards, and then tore its way through the officers body and his helmet in a detonation of force not unlike a frag grenade. She shifted her aim as the squad ducked for cover, no longer invincible. As they hunkered down, they became an easier target. She worked along a ridge of rock, picking off two more and crippling a third. Up here, this gun in hand, the sense of power was almost intoxicating. She reflected that probably explained a lot about Arcolin. Smoke grenades detonated along the line, an advanced version filled with chaff and sensorium blinding chemical smoke, so she switched target.

The Nebulas dropship had been hovering nearby in support of its charges, and had started to turn to sweep the mountainside with its sensors, and then its rocket pods. She planted a round clean through the canopy glass, the pilot, and the co-pilot behind him. The canopy was suddenly painted red from inside, and the craft pitched forwards with an alarming wail before slamming into the red mud and crumpling like a ration pack slammed into a wall.

+They are sending an alert. Decoding+

The huntsmen pinged her, but she could already make them out. Bounding through the smoke and fire, leaping over the dropship, came two Nebulas. She shipped her rifle and rolled off the boulder as heavy caliber fire began to stitch the hillside. She ordered the huntsmen to stay down and out of the way. They were her ace in the hole.

She crawled into a rocky ditch and drew her plasma pistol. She kissed the weapon as fire continued to kick up rocks and dirt. This was suppression fire, just meant to keep her head down. She flicked the fire selector to maximal.

The first nebula dropped into the ditch from her right. Most people would have been looking down the hill at the suppressor, so flanking should have been safe.

Kally was no longer 'most people'. Her plasma pistol spoke, the white-blue beam illuminating the length of the ditch. The bolt bored through armor, flesh and power pack. The solid fuel in the jump pack went up like a firework, shaking the mountainside with the force of an artillery shell, gouging a flaming crater in the earth. She dropped the overheating pistol, and smoothly drew a bolt pistol. This gun, a Cinder Crag arms Mauler, had been with her since the start of the inquisitorial career. As she came up to the lip of the trench she sighted in on the last Nebula sent to hunt her out. They were retreating down the mountain, back towards the fight. Without the Nebulas, and with one of the dropships a blazing wreck, the fighting had swung back in the Imperium's favor.

She dropped the iron sights over the retreating trooper, and snapped off a shot. It hit the weaker knee armour and dropped them onto the mountain, on their back. She set off at a sprint after them as they slid down a slope of scree.

+Kally?+

She reached the trooper just as they lurched to a knee. She kicked the rifle out of a hand and slammed the butt of the pistol into the troopers helmet, cracking the optics. Flailing, they crashed back over.

+That trooper just fell out of their network. And its not Alicia Tarran, what are you doing?+

She straddled the Nebula, and wrapped both hands around its helmet. She felt her augmented muscles bunch and strain as she twisted, until finally the seal gave and the helmet came away. She flung it away, and came face to face with the trooper. A woman, with fair skin and short cropped auburn hair. The Nebula stared at her, eyes wide in shock and pain.

"Fugging hell. . ." she breathed. Kally leaned in.

"Call her." She said. She didn't feel any need to clarify who she was talking about at this point.

"So you can kill her? Fugg you, Imp witch. I know who you are."

"Call her." Kally drew the short, powered blade she had liberated from Delzharians bodyguards, and pressed its point under the womans chin. "Or I'll pull you out of your armor in pieces, and call her myself."

"We're a family." She spat. "We don't sell each other out."

"You know." Kally leaned a little closer, and let her aura wash over the woman. "I thought that myself. I forgave her for her lying, like you are meant to for a family. I watched her back, stood up for her. But in the end, she sold us out. For some scumbag heretic she barely knew, but considered a brother. She's not your family. You're an asset to her. Just like I was."

The soldier struggled, but Kally knew the satrophene keeping her conscious and out of pain was wearing off. She pressed the blades edge against her neck.

"I'm going to go, to that crashed lander. I'm going to introduce myself to your patriot family, until Alicia De Rei comes and stops me. Pass that on for me."

She punched hard, cracking the womans skull against the back of her suit, and knocking her cold. She stood, and jogged away, slipping into the rock field. The two skitarii hunters met up with her, and passed her her plasma pistol.

+Do you think she'll take the bait? Evgeni Veiss's cold green text scrolled across her vision as she jogged back into the hills.

+She can't afford not to. Her status in the Patriot forces is at stake, and I'm willing to bet good money she's convinced herself that not only are the Patriots right, but she needs to protect them. She'll come.
And if not, I can spend a few months hunting the Nebula's and make sure that when I do find her, they'll be no one left to protect her.+

[PaintSerf]

“Can you see where?” Glabrio called as he yanked his signature pistols from their holsters.

“Brace for aura.” Crenshaw cautioned through gritted teeth as he shimmied sideways in the muck to relocate from a follow-up shot, reached for his null collar. If they are using psyocculum, that should cause them difficulties. He irritably clicked his teeth at the natural counterpoint. Of course if they are using psyocculum…that would mean shitting enormous, Republic sized difficulties for us.

The blacksoul allowed a moment’s grace before he deactivated his limiter, and set his oppressive blankness free to engulf himself and those nearest to him. He wordlessly decided to give Hybrida the benefit of the doubt that his outburst, and ventilation of a different mutant, was attributable to direct exposure to his soullessness – rather than the litany of serious yet presently irrelevant, on account of the marksmen engaging them within their deployment zone, concerns which burdened the team.

"I can." Kojiro said in heavily-accented low gothic. "One of them is but a hundred meters that way, more or less." He said, as he pointed to the right.

“First shot came from there.” Crenshaw recollected, with a chop of his hand across the jumbled, desolate dunes of the hive’s industrial wasteland. “Range unknown, elevation is a possibility, and the safe presumption would be they are repositioning and coordinating with their partner to flank us.”

“Aye, I’m on the bastard.” Black tersely added as he readied his drone for launch.

"Avoiding one sniper in this kind of terrain is child's play, but the other one makes it much more difficult. If it were possible one or more of you could draw their fire, I could get them with my knife. and then with one left, we could handle that one. Is this plan acceptable?"

“Only if you are quick about it.” Crenshaw dryly commented, and implicitly volunteered, as he slithered forward on his stomach. He came up into a crouch behind a partially stripped and submerged Taurox engine block, and thoughtfully hmm’d as he craned around the corner to route his course. He turned back, and saw Hybrida crouched on the balls of his feet with his matched pistols ready.

The Interrogator nodded stiffly. “On your go.”

“Go!” Crenshaw barked as he pivoted his hips, and surged out from around the opposite side of the engine block he had reconnoitered. He could feel the rusted chunk of metal shudder as another bolt, hastily adjusted, thundered into it as he cleared the cover in a hunched over sprint across. One…

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: Glabrio Hybrida, Martin Crenshaw, Kojiro Osada - Tranch 

“Go!” Crenshaw barked as he pivoted his hips, and surged out from around the opposite side of the engine block he had reconnoitered. He could feel the rusted chunk of metal shudder as another bolt, hastily adjusted, thundered into it as he cleared the cover in a hunched over sprint across. One…

Kojiro was up and running as soon as he heard the harsh crack of the lasgun, and the bang of vaporising metal that told him Glabrio and Crenshaw had escaped injury. He kept to the lee of spoil heaps and to the shadows of rusting crate-stacks, shutting down sight-lines with the instinctive ease of his assassin training. Rain hammered the ground, bouncing around his running feet.

He saw the blur of a camo cloak and a slung long-las as the Patriot broke away from his position, sprinting between two crushed ground-cars. The Patriot saw him too, and a fan of bullets raked from the stubgun clutched in his fist. One of the hastily aimed spread smacked the assassin in the chestplate, cracking the banded armaplas and making him stumble a step before he caught himself.

+ + + + + +

“Black?” Glabrio snapped as he and Crenshaw skidded into another junk pile, scoring dark arcs through the dirt. Dust sprang up and met the descending rain, turning it into gobbets of black tar. “Tell me you got a bead from that shot.”

Marc cradled his autogun, his back hard up against a slab of demolished concrete as he cycled his vambrace auspex. “Somewhere to your ten o’clock, can’t tell how far.”

“Agent Black.” Raechel whispered. She was crouched next to him, but her augmented eyes were tilted up towards the sky. “There are two drones up there.”

Marc instinctively followed her gaze, but all he could see was the lines of snow and rain lashing down. “Where?”

“Right over us, that is how they must be...move!”

She shoved him hard, and Marc lurched to the side as a fist-sized hole punched through the slab at his back, a shard of rebar spinning away.

“Does it look like mine?” Marc asked as he wriggled deeper into cover, the sodden mud painting streaks across his armour.

Raechel was blinking rapidly, no doubt sliding a sequence of jammer codes into place. “Very similar.”

“Great. Vizkop told me that these kind of drones don’t crash when they lose their control signal. They’re designed to return to the operator so the enemy can’t get their hands on one.”

A smile crossed Raechel’s rain-plastered face as she caught onto the plan. “Interrogator, please stand by.”

“What else would I be doing?” Glabrio answered with brittle humour as he flexed his hands on the grips of his pistols. Somewhere over to their right, there was a harsh detonation of gunfire as Osada closed in on the second sniper.

“Got him. Can you see the mag-lev pillar with the transformer shrine at the base?”

Glabrio hunted for a peephole through the tumbled grid of scrap, and cycled the filters on his visor. “Yes.”

“Next pillar left, he has climbed the maintenance ladder and wedged himself in the pipe runs underneath the train line.”

“I see it.” The interrogator eased back, his reinforced gloves cracking through broken glass and rusted metal. He turned to look at Crenshaw, and tapped his pistols. “It’s three hundred metres and these puppies don’t shoot that far. Looks like it’s my turn to draw fire.”

“Make it quick.” Marc warned, “He’s moving.”

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: Kally Sonder - Marioch 

The crashed dropship went up first, a fireball of scorched metal that mushroomed skyward as the remaining ordnance cooked off. Kally had expected that - she might even have done it herself, on the off-chance that the person who had called her out was foolish enough to be exactly where they said they would be. Military machines like the Guard and the Nebulas didn’t have much time to spare for gangers’ honour.

Next came the barrage of chemical smoke, bursting among the rocks and then rolling down the hill, covering the heat haze in bands of murky grey. It dissolved on her skin, burning her face down the lines that sweat had left from the relentless, battering heat, but Zerlinda’s implants kept the toxic components out of her lungs.

+One wing-pair breaking off and hunkering down near the outcrop.+ Evgeni ticker-taped across her smoke shrouded vision. +Theorise the medic and the designated marksman. They’re setting up some kind of acoustic auspex. Advise against using the exitus again.+

Smoke and gunfire sensors. She had obviously impressed them with her last barrage. That was alright. Smoke closed down her pursuers’ vision just as surely as it shut down her own. It would be just like stalking through the steam-warrens back in Makita hive.

She could hear the whine of jets, followed by a heavy crunch of armoured suits hitting earth. One two. Three four. she counted, tagging the direction. Two wing-pairs. Had it been Alicia’s decision to bring backup, she wondered, or had her fellow Nebulas insisted on it?

We’re a family. the stubborn Nebula had snarled at her, brittle teeth bared. We don’t sell each other out.

Does that include anyone who might have still been in the lander? Kally had had the time to poke through the wreckage and satisfy herself that no-one had survived the crash. If the Nebulas had done the same, it would have had to have been a cursory sweep through their gun scopes, at long range.

+I’m losing the other four in the smoke.+ Evgeni reported. +I’ll link you to the skull-probe direct.+

The servo skull was currently powered down, wedged like a claymore mine among the scree that flanked the crash site. It sported a passive auspex keyed to Alicia’s armour ident, and a small nick below the jaw from Crenshaw’s splintered arm bones, the throat-puncturing blow that had killed its former owner.

If Kally had reserved any doubt that domina Veiss’ sense of irony was pitch black, being presented with the flensed and servitorised skull of Gwennifer Callisto had most definitely banished it.

She blink-clicked the new communion rune at the edge of her vision, and cuffed the sweat from her forehead as the probe’s ghost-sight overlaid her own. Even beneath the shelter of the overhanging rocks the heat was a physical weight, pressing the air close against her almost as effectively as the stinging smoke.

The probe’s vision boxed in, wrapping a glowing blue net around a half-seen shape. The wireframe flashed briefly, then turned red. The sensor slid sideways to train on the Nebula’s partner, advancing at their side with their weapon sweeping steady arcs. The blue net snared the second Nebula, flashed, turned green.

+++ALICIA TARRAN, POSITIVE ARMOUR MATCH+++

+Oh scrap.+ Evgeni suddenly cursed.

“Contact left, skitarii!” a vox-roughened voice called out, punctuated by a rattle of hard rounds slicing through the smoke. Its concealment blown, the huntsman tried to return fire, but the shots went wide as the body keeping them steady was shredded apart by armour-piercing rounds.

The other huntsmen responded on programmed instinct, and boosted lasbeams began to flare across the murk. Backlit shapes darted and twisted as the Nebulas began to fight back, automatic cannons sawing. The servo skull kicked into action, spiking the Nebulas’ vox net with a cacophonous blare of what sounded like domina Veiss’ favoured jazz music.

Humour black as pitch.

Despite the vox-wave assault, the Nebulas were still firing. Another huntsman was hit, jolting like it had been shocked with cardiac paddles before crashing back into the dust, but Kally was already moving.

[dakkagor]

+I need a hook into their vox now, or I'm dead+

+You took down seven of them with barely a breath of effort, and now you want to do this properly?+

+Elevation, terrain and the element of surprise. I don't have any of those right now+

She put her head down and ran, full sprint down the slope, bouncing between the rocks on instinct, one foot flowing without conscious thought in front of the other, for as long as she didn't think about it. Adrenaline singing, she focused on her in-feed, ignoring the tingle of combat drugs surging through her muscles.

+ . . .Suppress and advance on the flanks. I'm rolling up the centre.+

There you are, you bitch.

Positional data overlayed in greens and reds, silhouettes showing the curved, dome faced nebula suits advancing in pairs, covering the ground with methodical, murderous intent.

She swung out the rifle in her right hand, and fired it, unbraced and barely aimed. But she was a lot closer now. A lot more in her element.

The heavy round missed its intended target anyway. But it still punched through the meat of one of the advancing Nebula's shoulders, throwing him over with the sledgehammer impact. A mission kill was as good as a kill.

+Contact left! Firing!+

She fell, sliding behind a small line of scree and boulders as her world exploded. Nebula weapons used explosive ammunition, cheaper and easier to produce than true bolter rounds, but just as deadly to a lightly armoured opponent. The ground was chewed to pieces, chips of rock and clods of earth thrown everywhere, but it absorbed the attack.

+Mkinnley is down! Covering for extraction!+
+Leave him! Sonder is a priority target, we are going to take some losses but we will bring her down!+

"Is that what you said about those poor bastards on the dropship?" She transmitted on an open frequency. She was rewarded with the vox chatter dropping dead. And every Nebula in the field arrowing in on her position.

You wasted your information advantage on a psychological cheap shot. Crenshaw tutted in her head. She could already hear the hiss and distinctive crunch of them switching channels.

+Re-establishing link. Give me a minute+

She left the rifle behind as she slithered clear of the rocks. She left it propped up, a spool of mono-thread wrapped around its trigger, the dispenser clutched in her right hand.

+. . .got an IR scatter point. Its transmitting on encrypted mechanicus lengths+

She dropped her senses into the skull, and was rewarded with the image of Alicia looming out of the smoke and opening fire. The skull died a half second later, killing its feed and disconnecting her from Evgeni Veiss. All the huntsmen were long dead. She was alone.

Fine.

She yanked on the spool of thread. The exitus rifle fired.

+Got you you psycho bitch!+

Gunfire sliced into her rifles position as she surged from the smoke into her second target. The Nebula spun, and Kally barreled into them, slamming them over. The Nebula dropped her rifle and clamped hands around Kallys wrists as she brought her knife down two handed, and the two rolled over, punching the wind out of Kally's chest.

"Fuggin', no good mutant whore. . ." the nebula snarled through her helmet vox.

"Traitor." She hissed back through clenched teeth. She arched her back and kicked up with her full, augmented chem driven strength. The knife slammed into the bowl helmet, carving a shrieking line into the armourglass as it slide off without enough force to penetrate, even as the two rolled over again.

+ . . .She's on Aronright! . . .+

Kally gasped as the Nebula rammed forwards, the helmet smashing into her skull, breaking her nose, and dazing her for a pivotal second. The nebula got an armoured hand around her neck, and pushed her away, the ceramite clad fingers digging into her throat until Kally could hear her reinforced spine clicking.

"Got. . .you. . .bitch."

Not yet.

Kally dug the knife into the Nebulas armpit before stamping her heels into the Nebulas chest, pushing her clear and knocking the soldier backwards into a stagger. Kally rolled up first, ignoring the burning in her lungs, and snap drew her plasma pistol. She hammered the trigger for three rapid shots, punching into the troopers chest. An awful wail of horror and pain cut across the vox as the plasma cored Aronright out. She sank to her knees, her good arm scrabbling fitfully at her plasma burnt chest as she burned, blue flames bursting from the helmet seal.

+Clear this fragging smoke!+

Kally drew her sword, Schaffers sword, and forced burning air back into her throat before spitting on the floor. The gunship swung low, turbofans blasting, and the smoke cleared.

Pounding towards her came Alicia Tarran and another Nebula. She snapped the pistol up, thumbed it into overcharge, and fired. The other Nebula pushed Alicia out of the way at the last second, and paid with his life as the beam blasted his left side to flakes of ash.

She tossed the overheating pistol aside as Alicia rose from the ground, not twenty feet away from her.

For a second there was relative silence, the gunship lifting back and away to the sniper and their spotter, before beginning to circle to the left. Kally moved right, putting the hero of the rebellion between her, and her overwatch.

"I should have killed you when I had the chance." Alicia spat as her helmet rolled back. Her face was a mask of fury, and Kally couldn't help but smile that she had managed to hurt her. That made this worth it.

"Yes." Kally rolled her shoulders. "I did warn you."

Alicia circled and Kally stepped back, keeping the lines of sight blocked.

+Get down and let me take the shot! Striker!+

Kally snapped her nose back into place and spat another gobbet of blood on the floor. She felt good. Alive. The hunt, the thing she was actually good at, was about to come to its bloody end.

"Do they know? What kind of monster you are?"

Alicia paused, and for a moment there was a flicker of doubt.

"No worse than you turned yourself into. A living weapon is no life at all."

It was Kally's turn to pause. "I'm what I need to be. Pity about those kids in the dropship."

"They were already dead. Don't try and goad me."

"The only way you can be sure. . .is if it told you." Kally leered. "Do the kids following you around know its a daemon? You sure as shit didn't get that useless, lying witch Ella to tell you. She can't predict a damn thing since you got into her knickers."

Alicia blurred forwards with a feral scream. Kally leapt forwards to meet her, Schafers sword flashing.

The two slammed into each other, and Alicia drove Kally backwards through the smoking mud. She had a long, curved powerblade in her right hand that had folded from her armours forearm.

"You're not the only one with a lathe blade!" Alicia drove forwards again. "I'm going to haul you back to Tephaine in a body bag, and put your head on a gakking spike!"

Kally broke the blade lock and stepped backwards. Alicia drove forwards again. Kally let her aura wash over Alicia, let it fuel her hatred.

"You won't be the last to frakking try!" She spat back. "Like your limp dicked, dead brother!"

Hatred could drive you forward. Make you survive anything. But it also could make you stupid.

Alicia hacked at her, three huge overhead blows driven by fury.

"Your boyfriend failed, bitch! He's still alive and he is going to break your Inquisition!"

Kally rocked on her heels. "Wha . . ."

The uppercut sent her flying backwards. She landed on her back and recovered herself fast enough to avoid the hammering downwards blow that split rock. Kally rolled aside, rose and then immediately broke into a run.

+Striker Actual, I've got a shot!+

"She's frakking mine!" Alicia roared, pounding after the blank.

The two women ran, downhill, Kally lithely moving between and through formations of rock, Alicia powered forwards by short bursts of her jump jets. At the bottom of the slope, she could make out fresh patriot regulars pushing towards the engagement. A companies worth, easily.

+. . .are you still alive? Kally, respond!+

+You took your gakking time! Kill the valley! Kill the whole valley!+

+Just to be clear, the valley you are currently in.+

+Now, throne damnit! I need her overwatch dead right now!+

Kally veered towards a deep crevasse she had scouted earlier, as part of her prep. Cut by a thin, toxic stream over aeons, it was narrow, deep and steep sided, lined with clinging red mud and broken spars of rock. An ominous green timer appeared in the bottom corner of her vision. One minute. At 50 seconds, she dropped into crevasse as gunfire barked behind her, sliding down the red mud banks and splashing into the sulfurous, thigh deep water.

At 40 seconds, Alicia De Rei thundered into the crevasse on wings of fire, blasting up a cloud of steam as she landed like a furious angel. She had drawn a serviceable heavy autopistol as a side arm, and advanced on Kally as the blank drew her bolt pistol.

"I'm going to enjoy killing you." Alicia snarled as she advanced. 30 seconds.

"You sure you wouldn't rather take me alive? I'm apparently very fun to torture." Kally leveled her pistol at Alicias helmet as it snapped close again.

"No." There was a pause. "Not even you deserve that."

Their guns fired together. Kally's bolt rounds sparked from heavy Nebula armour as heavy autopistol rounds slammed into Kally's reinforced bodyglove. One punched through and cut through her hip, but she didn't break stride as a bolt round blasted Alicias gun to scrap and tore fingers from her hand.

With a feral yell the two women met again, blades sparking. 20 seconds. Cross, parry, strike. Kally stepped back and spared a glance at the water around her feet. Was it red from the mud, or her blood?

10 seconds.

Alicia charged again. Kally lunged into it, stepping past the strike and barging Alicia back with her shoulder. Schafers blade screamed as it glanced from curved armour, its runes flaring with blue witch-fire as it sensed the corruption coiling around Alicia's soul.

0 seconds.

"What. . .the frak?" Alicia looked up. Looked up in time to see the manticore missiles, launched from a nearby Imperial firebase, airburst to spread their payload of armour piercing incendiaries.

"You. . .fucking bitch. You've killed everyone here." she whispered. She snapped her attention back to Kally.

Just in time for Interrogator Schafers sword, Kally's sword for many years, to ram through her sternum.

[Cfavano]

It hurt, for sure. For all the myths of the Shinobi that exist in sub-sector Yamato, that they were invulnerable to pain was one of the ones that were not true. They did feel pain, only they were conditioned not to show it. But boy, it hurt. He stumbled a second time, as if the shot truly got to him, and tumbled behind a pile of scrap, out of sight of the sniper. Only a second...but enough time for his hololithic projector to activate. All at once the sniper saw not one pursuer, but three. As one leapt over the pule, and one to the left, and to the right. Working in perfect concert, and talking to each other in Tenguian, the words, unintelligible to the fleeing sniper, sounding harsh and menacing.

It was their eyes, however, that were the most unnerving. A side effect of the generator was that it caused the user and the clones to have glowing red eyes. Normally, for someone in stealth, that would be a detriment. Would be, but for the average imperial citizen, with their indoctrinated superstitions. Glowing eyes, you see, coupled with the daemonic visage of their armored masks and the unflinching tenacity of the pursuit, struck fear into their very hearts.

Bent almost in half, monoblades drawn, the three assassins, one real, two hololiths, pursued the sniper. The two to the sides split off and, with haste that would cause harm to someone (if they were real) quickly got in front of the sniper, dividing his attention. Too far away to target more than one, and moving too fast to get an accurate bead on, all three would converge on the poor man and, with one swift movement, would plunge the poisoned knife into his spine.