[M] War in the Shadows - Patriots IC

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: Konstantin Burakgazi, Vizkop, Enki Volkner and Omikron Zahir - Skorgulian 

Konstantin meaningfully met Erdene’s eyes as he rhetorically oscillated. I’m trying, Erdene. I’m trying. The static flicker of the interrogator’s mind remained dull and unmoved. Either she had dosed herself with kalma before the encounter, or the icewater in her veins that had permitted her to step out in front of forty-odd Patriot guns wasn’t going to thaw in the face of his gestures.

Still, he tried.

“I see no logical reason why the Republic and the Imperium should debase ourselves by slaughtering each other for Skorgulian analysis – and likely amusement – when regardless of whomever prevails, they will be dependent on the victor for the sustenance of trade, unless they prefer to starve unto an ignominious death.” Stan paused, and quirked his brows. “The tail does not wag the canid, after all.”

Silence buzzed at him from the rafters of the conveyor house, like the angry hissing of watchful ghosts. As his words hung in the air, Konstantin saw the unaugmented soldiers on both sides edging nervously toward cover, only the skitarii holding their ground.

Only the skitarii and Erdene.

He could tell from her greyscale expression that a part of her wanted to believe him - why didn’t her brain-patterns so much as flicker?

Erdene eyed her former teammate, the ten metres that separated them both too close and too far. “Does everyone here answer to you, Stan?”

There was a soft hiss of pneumatics some distance behind. “No, ac-tually.” Freylis spoke up. “They an-swer to me, they do.”

Erdene’s eyes flickered past Konstantin, a smile ghosting briefly across her lips. “That’s a nice try, but my Thrones are on the ones keeping quiet.” She stretched out a hand, hovering for a moment in thought, and then pointed. “You, I think.” she said, indicating Enki. “And you.” she decided, pointing at Delzharian.

Delzharian hummed, low in his throat. “Excellent deduction, Throne agent. I won’t insult your intellect by denying it.”

Erdene looked at the tall archmagos for a long moment.

“Delzharian?” she whispered. “It can’t be.”

This time Delzharian didn’t answer, but the tiny motors beneath his face whirred as he smiled.

Konstantin looked back at the interrogator, and the space between them seemed to stretch, receding away from him like a dolly zoom.

“I’m afraid that changes things, Stan.” she said quietly.

As she spoke, something began to crawl out of her face on thin, spidery legs.

Delzharian’s skitarii reacted first, a microburst from the magos jerking their weapon hands up. A radium bullet scorched across the chamber and struck Erdene in the forehead, snapping her skull back. Somehow she didn’t fall, held up as if by invisible strings.

Weapons that had been held on a hair trigger blasted, the whip-crack of lasbeams like a series of tight-wound bowstrings snapping one after the other. The panicked shots fed off each other, windows detonating like glass bombs, concrete bursting like sheet ice, throwing chips and slivers into the air. A dozen lasbeams struck Stan, his voltagheists waking into hissing anger as they soaked the energy.

Erdene was still standing, but she was stuttering in the air, flickering left to right like a paused vid-reel. She gave a shudder, and her skin began to melt off her in pixels, revealing a bony, corpse-pale form studded with implants and holo-projectors. The servitor hung in its locked exoskeleton, blood running from its cratered forehead, a last sigh of breath escaping its nose as the vox-caster that had replaced its mouth fell silent. Its chest was crawling, tiny metallic spiders wriggling their way free of the webbing rig slung around its chest and shoulders. They buzzed up into the air, targeter lights winking as they dove for the Patriots.

There was, Konstantin corrected himself, one logical reason for Imperials and Patriots to slaughter each other for Skorgulian analysis: to kill the sector’s most notorious heretek a second time.

The swarm of kill-drones parted, picking out specific figures in the crowd and pulling in their glass wings to dive for exposed faces. The Adrantean lieutenant crumpled, her head bursting into a red fog. A whole clutch of the drones swarmed upon Delzharian, and the last Enki saw of the archmagos he was raising his hands and swatting the constructs from the air with bolts of light from his metal fingertips. Then the magos reductor had to look away, as his own passive sensors rang with half a dozen target locks. Zahir stepped in front of him, voltagheists blazing with white arcs. The drones fell from the air, shrivelled and twitching.

The walls around Enki lit up with lurid flashes as Delzharian’s acolytes deployed their refractor fields. Freylis was trying to reach him, arms up against the lashing gunfire like a woman wading into a blizzard. Enki’s audio sensors were working overtime - cataloguing a dozen different weapons and their relative threat level. A barbed attack-code clawed at his data ports, a familiar dragon symbol flashing before his eyes, but his recent modifications held firm and the signal glanced off and scattered away. He heard a flesh-voice curse in Perinetine. A musical, mocking laugh answered it.

“Allow me, darling.”

Enki saw a tech-priestess drifting above the fray, a hovering angel in flowing crimson, arms spread like a conductor glorying in their own symphony of destruction. She swept a hand towards Enki, and one of the burnished gun-servitors ceased obliterating Tierce’s honour guard and swept its rotor cannon in his direction, mauling a burning line of tracer shells through the support beams in its path.

Konstantin’s aural implants were working too. Firstborn were screaming at him in his native tongue, cursing him, promising to kill him. Somewhere behind the Imperial line, the real interrogator Erdene was shouting to the Perinetine magos as she clawed her way out of a motion-register suit. More important to him were the repeated thuds of boots on steel as the Sentinel pilot kicked his way out of the emergency hatch and tumbled to the ground. Konstantin saw him coughing through gritted teeth, his face scored by the welts of lightning burn.

Leo.

His implants screeched with static as Red and Purple laughed.

[Atrum Daemon]

Enki was rather nonplussed as the action began, easily tuning out the noise of baseline voices to focus on weapon signals and sounds. The massive Magos seemed oddly…bored by everything that was going on. A benefit of having a fully mechanical form was how heavily armored he was particularly against heat and explosives. He tilted his head up at the sound of the voice directed at him and remained impassive as Zahir responded to the immediate threat to his master, sending a blast of electricity accompanied by two voltgeists that disrupted the attempted attack on Enki.

The Magos Reductor threw his arm out to the side, segments clicking and whirring as a heavy rotating canon of his own shifted out of his bulky arm. He swung around and brought it to bear against the floating woman.

In a shadowed corner of the chamber, Vizkop (or rather the poor soul wearing his face and memories) watched the unfolding scene before him. He was gauging when best to intervene himself, if at all, once his head stopped spinning. The headaches lately were getting worse but so far had not interfered with his actions. He scanned the battlefield and noticed the hulking tech-priest swinging his unfolded weapon arm around and firing a searing volley from the rotary gun normally hidden in his limb.

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: Alyss Ravensmore, Sarna Astros - Coseflame 

Patriot objectives: Destabilise Imperial war effort, escape offworld

Coseflame was not a cheerful world. The sky was grey; the rocks were grey; the air in the cavern cities was stale and wet from the steam-powered tech that the locals seemed to favour; and when, as now, one traversed the chasm networks that snaked between the cities, the looming cliffs to either side made it feel as if you were trapped in a rat run, under the scrutiny of some dispassionate scientist.

The way in which they were forced to cross the switchback canyons was not ideal either. The steam train was a squealing, clattering, smoke-belching thing; a kilometre long chain of carts designed to ferry ore and crystal from the strip mines to the starports, now pressed into service for military logistics. Two of those carts carried spare parts for the Eudaimonia, painstakingly negotiated with one of the higher tech settlements, and Alyss and Sarna rode in the next cart to watch over them, pressed in with their Jotunhel escort and some strangers from a trader vessel also looking to ferry supplies offworld. The smell of close-packed bodies competed with the damp earth smell of ore that had seeped into the planks of the hastily converted cart.

The train shrilled, steam squirting from its double funnel and the wheelside pistons as it began to slow. The wooden carriage jolted, almost pitching Alyss off her bench.

“The fuck are we stopping for?” one of the Jotunhel grumbled, lifting the latch bolt on the door and sliding it back to get a better look forward.

In the distance, the deceptively thin needle of the orbital elevator bisected the sky. The sprawl of terminals, customs offices and storage warehouses that clustered around its base were half-hidden by a pall of steam, snorted out by a log-jam of engines and other vehicles converging on it down the web of tracks and roads. The reason for their halt was soon clear - several other trains were backed up along the line, crammed nose to tail.

They had to wait twenty minutes for an explanation, by which point half the passengers had disembarked and were shouting angrily at any Cosian in uniform that they could see, so that the train guards were having to nudge the febrile crowd back with the stocks of their blackpowder rifles. A middle aged indigen wearing a tricorn hat and a harassed expression pushed his way through to the carriage door, and paused just long enough to lean against the frame with one hand. His eyes found Alyss, by far the most important-looking of the cart’s occupants.

“Our apologies, ma’am.” he said, with the deadpan delivery of someone who had said those exact words a hundred times already. “Word is that an imperial relief fleet has just warped in, and everyone’s scrambling to get back to their ships before they engage the home fleet.”

“Well, fuck.” said one of Alyss’ Jotunhel attendants. “How long ‘til we get to the elevator then?”

“We don’t.” the train official replied curtly. “Signals is estimating at least a five hour wait before we even reach the checkpoint, and the Imps will be engaging the home fleet before then. As soon as we can corral everyone back aboard I’m taking this train back to Karnak. If the Imps break through their first target’ll be the elevators, and I don’t want to still be here when they start raining hell.”

“Bugger that.” the Jotunhel protested. “Karnak’s orbital defence lasers are shot to shit, I saw as much when we first arrived there. And as soon as the Imps figure that out, they’ll make Karnak their first drop zone.”

The official gave him an acidic look. “Well unless you want to trot across to Van Kessel and help our troops take the elevator there a few months sooner, your options are Karnak or staying here.” He tugged the brim of his hat. “Good day, sir.”

The Jotunhel made an obscene hand gesture in the direction of the official’s retreating back, before slumping back down on the bench.

“Well,” he said, catching Sarna’s eye, “As much as I’m sure you’d like to stab some of them personally…if we’re lucky, this home fleet will kick the imperials’ arses up round their ears and we can ferry back up to the Eudaimonia after. Maybe there’ll even be some battle scrap worth salvaging.”

As it transpired, they were not lucky in the slightest.

[dakkagor]

Sarna watched the man leave, and scratched her head.

"Well, now what? We've got three options. We can try to cut the queue, head to Van Kessel, or Karnak."

"Karnak is outta the picture." The Jotunhel, Lokir, said from over her shoulder. He was a stringy looking bastard, ratfaced with a too-long waxed moustache that only made him look more like a particularly ill kind of rodent. He wasn't particularly popular in the Jotunhel ranks, despite his skills, so that was why he had pulled the shit-job of escorting the witch and the scary girl with the sword. The two soldiers with him, a stolid, brickfaced woman called Frieda, and a teenager from the retinue called Lars to whom bathing seemed to be a mystery, or possibly a sin, were the bottom of the barrel when it came to the Jotunhels normal barrel-bottom scraping. Lazy, sullen, bitter like all the Jotunhel, but defeatist rather than blazing with righteous fury. "The defence lasers. . ."

"I heard you the first damn time." Sarna snapped, irritable. "But we don't have any good options right now! And in the chaos of an invasion we might be able to sneak out on something with an eagle on it and avoid detection!"

"Assuming they don't just drop orbital artillery down the gravity well, and flatten the whole site before they roll down!"

"They need the port facilities, and if Karnak is that soft they won't glass them!"

"Would you both, please, shut up?" Alyss hissed. She had turned on her seat and was using the bench Sarna had vacated to dish out a tarot hand. Sarna's skin prickled, and her hair stood on end as the temperature in the carriage dropped.

Sorcerer hissed some awful, rasping voice in the back of Sarna's head, a voice she knew was hers. She ignored it, and stood closer to Alyss, trying to block the view to her from the other curious passengers. Sarna watched as Alyss intently laid and re-laid the cards, frowning. She did five hands before finally sweeping up the cards and stuffing them back into the box.

"Well?" Alyss sighed, and dropped her mourning veil back over her face. She retrieved a little handkerchief, and dabbed at her face, and Sarna blanched when it came away wet with little spots of blood.

"Van Kessel."

"Van Kessel is an active fucking warzone!" Lokir barked. "You can't be serious?"

Sarna was inclined to agree with Lokir. She didn't like the idea of going into a shooting war.

"And yet. . ." Alyss stood, brushed down her dress, and started to walk out of the carriage, her little party following after her. "Every reading said the same thing."

"Alyss." Sarna grabbed her friends arm. "They never say the same thing. You told me that yourself."

"I know." Alyss smiled a curious smile. "Its a trap, must be. So I'm very interested in knowing who, exactly, wants me at Van Kessel."

+++++

They abandoned the yard, and trekked up, out of the canyons, navigating the steam funiculars which were now running a full capacity as a river of humanity abandoned the clogged railways. They hiked up stairs, following Alyss as she guided them. She was touching dozens of minds, lifting local knowledge from passing porters, guards, message runners, so they navigated through every crowd with the ease of someone born in the canyons.

As they climbed up a long rusty ladder between levels, Sarna reached the inevitable conclusion that she would have to kill Lokir before this was all over.

"So, you used to work for the Inquisition?" Lokir asked, from below her. His voice was dripping with contempt, and Sarna knew the creepy bastard had been staring at her bodysuit-clad behind the entire climb.

"Yes." Sarna snarled. "Everyone knows that. So shut up, if you know what is good for you."

"Well, I'm just wondering why you are so eager to run right back to the Imps, considering. You ever seen what they do to people they take?"

"No." She answered flatly, and focused on Alyss above her. Her rustling dress was like a little black cloud of lace above her, and the slim psyker was making easy work of the ladder. Probably cheating, she thought.

Definitely cheating

"Me neither. Me, Frieda and Lars here?" He panted, sucked in a breath. "We're just traitors, grunts. They'll put us down nice and quick, assuming we get that far. Commissar special to the back of the head. Blammo!" He chuckled, and resumed climbing. "But you, you, I bet they'll take their time with you. Want to pump you for information. How long do you reckon you'll last on the rack when they get the branding irons out? Five minutes?"

"Longer than you, Lokir."

"I don't think so. That pretty little ass of yours will squeal like a tundra rat with its leg caught in a trap. Probably better for everyone if I shoot you now, stop you talking."

Sarna sighed, but kept climbing, refusing to rise to the bait.

"What, you think you're tough? I bet you've never been really hurt. I got scars that would make you puke, girly!"

"Yeah, and every woman you every rolled with." Frieda snarked from further down, making Lars snigger.

"Fuck you, you wall faced, no-tit-having shrew. Anyway, I'm having a conversation with our leader here." Sarna could spy the top of the ladder. She sped up, hand over hand.

"You ever been tortured?"

She stopped dead. She let go of the rungs, wrapping her legs around the ladder, flopping down to be face to face with Lokir.

"Yes." She grabbed his face, squeezed, hard, right in the pressure points. He spasmed, but didn't let go of the ladder. "Do you know what direct nerve induction is, Lokir? Its archeotech, or maybe xeno-tech taken from eldar pirates. No one knows, but the Inquisition use it. And so did the sisterhood that raised me." She drew one of her long, thin knives, and placed it against the bottom of his left eyelid, making him twitch and pant in fear. "Shush, don't move. This will be enlightening. And if you let go now, you'll fall, so I wouldn't draw a weapon either. Wouldn't want an unfortunate accident."

His eyes flicked left and right, unable to move his head, unable to even nod without being blinded in one eye. Sarna thoughtfully tapped her knife against his quivering eye, watching the tears form there.

"Its very clever. All a brain is, really, is electrical impulses being fed in from the nerves of the body and sending signals back out to the muscles. Like the signals, right now, flashing through your brain telling you to hold on for dear life, not move, the signal telling you about the sharp dirk pressed against your eye. Blink if you understand."

He blinked.

"Good. So, DNI works by interfacing directly with those signals, hijacking them. They strap you to a table, wire you up, and they dial in the machine. Its a bulky bit of kit, expensive, difficult to produce. It would almost be easier to install an MIU port into a prisoner and directly interface with their brain. But it isn't invasive, it isn't visible. No scaring, you see? On the outside, you look completely normal. But inside. . ."

She stretched down, languid, so she could whisper right into his disgusting face.

"They can program your nerves like a gearhead with a cogitator. They can make you feel so much pleasure you'll want to die to make it stop. They'll make you feel so much pain that it becomes transcendent, that you leave your body and float away. And they can apply it, for hours, flipping between the two until you crack. And everyone cracks."

She smiled.

"Now, Lokir, I know the question you're asking: did they ever use this on Sarna? Well, not like that. The sisterhood want to train you to resist pain, fight through it. So they use a limited variant. Throw in a little legerdemain, and you have a way to push someone past the limits they thought they had, and do no permanent damage."

She let go of Lokirs skull, and peeled the glove of that hand, holding it in front of Lokirs face, before two fingers from the bare hand hooked into his nose, catching him like a fish on the line, tugging him into the knife and making him inhale sharply.

"They teach you, very quickly, not to disobey orders in the sisterhood. So when they told me to stick this hand in a blazing forge, I didn't hesitate. I didn't hesitate as I felt it cook, burn, the flesh flake off. I used the hand currently holding a knife to your eye to hold my arm in the fire, until the bones charred to ash. Until I was sure all that left was the slowly cooking stump. Then they let me take it out. Only when they were sure that I could follow orders. Only when they were sure I could resist pain. That was my gift for my thirteenth birthday. More pain than you have, or will ever, feel."

He gagged, snorted.

"Now, you can clearly see, at least for the moment, that this hand is fine. The DNI, a little holo-flame, and a heater unit at full blast. Clever, right? Especially as we had all seen that forge being used to make knives. This knife, in fact. The one that has just drawn a little blood from your eyelid."

She leaned in a little closer, and licked the bead of blood from his face, smiling.

"So, the question you need to ask yourself, Lokir, and Frieda, and Lars, is exactly what would someone trained to that standard be willing to do to avoid capture? How quickly would she kill someone she decided was a liability, when she would willing burn her own arm off? How much restraint must she be showing, right now, to not plunge this dagger into your stupid brain, and stop all those little. signals. dead."

"Does that answer your question, Lokir? Blink if you understand."

There was a watery eyed blink.

"Good man. Now, shut the fuck up, and do as I say." She released Lokir, and looked past him.

"Any problems down there?"

Two pale, terrified faces stared back at her, shaking their heads.

"Excellent. Now lets get to the top of the ladder, shall we?"

+++++

Alyss was looking at her curiously as she made the ladder top. A depot sat nearby, with some over-land trucks for taking the few road routes between the chasm cities. They were crude things, but better than walking all the way to Van Kessel.

"Was that really necessary?" Alyss asked, eyebrow cocked.

"It made me feel better." Sarna responded, stretching lithely. "It helps to remind the Jotunhel from time to time who exactly is in charge."

"I'd rather not have our security detail trying to kill my best friend right now."

"I would never kill Lokir!" Sarna pouted, hands up in protest. "Though I didn't realise you liked him that much. Its the moustache isn't it? I should try growing one." Alyss chuckled as Sarna put a few strands of hair between her stuck out lip and nose.

"Come on. We need to get moving, before our window of opportunity closes."

"You heard the lady!" Sarna yelled as the Jotunhel climbed up onto the platform. "We've got a truck to steal!"

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: Alyss Ravensmore, Sarna Astros - Coseflame 

The depot was full of smoke and fumes, stinking of the badly-refined promethium that the Cosians used. The trucks themselves were caked to the wheel arches with desert muck and coal dust. Many of the uniformed Patriots going to and fro wore scarfs around their faces and Sarna pulled up her own, old habits making her glad of the excuse for anonymity, even though no-one down here could possibly know who she was. She glanced at Alyss, who seemed untroubled by the fumes even with just her gossamer face veil - definitely cheating again - and then back at the vehicle park. The stacked barrels and tarp-covered crates put her in mind of the twisting rock maze beneath the Moritat temple, where mistress Orla had dropped her and challenged her to make her way home through the fully armed guards who stood alert on every outcrop. This was nothing in comparison.

A thunderclap boomed overhead, causing many of the men to look up in alarm at the clear sky. Sarna used the distraction to dart round the back of a cargo 4, beckoning the others to follow her as the dart shapes of several orbital interceptors swept overhead, clawing towards the imminent void battle. The driver was still watching them, a lho stick hanging slack from his fingers, when Alyss stepped around the side of the dirty truck. He had just turned and begun to frown at the willowy psyker in her incongruous long gown when a tap of Alyss’ finger to his forehead flooded his brain with melatonin and caused him to slump into the dust by the front wheel, snoring softly. Sarna patted down the driver’s pockets and found a key fob, and stole the driver’s peaked cap for good measure before clicking the key into the truck’s cab door and swinging herself up into the driver’s seat. Alyss climbed up beside her, while Lokir did something complicated to the lock of the vehicle parked next to theirs, and the three Jotunhel squeezed up into the two-man cabin. Sarna caught Lokir glancing in her direction, and saw him quickly look away with a fearful, muttered curse.

Sarna waited for another one of the trucks to rumble past before turning the key and letting the weary old machine spirit cough itself back to life. The controls were, thankfully, standard imperial, and so despite the weird Cosian numbers on the dashboard dials she was able to ease the cargo 4 into gear and coast it into line behind the other truck as it struck out onto the dirt road. She glanced into the dusty side mirror, hoping to see the trio of Jotunhel following behind. She saw the headlamps flash as Lokir ducked down to root around with the truck’s starter wires, but that drew the attention of a guard who pulled down his scarf to hail the three infiltrators. He didn’t sling the laslock down from his shoulder, but he did start to walk towards the hijacked truck, with the unconscious driver still slumped on the opposite site.