Anyone who had ever visited Vaxanide described it as a wretched world. Though they had given their name to the planet, its largest continent and even its primary hive city, the noble family Vaxanide and their fits of narcissism couldn't disguise the planet's distance from the prosperous core worlds, its struggling economy or the lawlessness that prevailed outside the capital. Lord Rem Vaxanide seemed more interested in indulging his younger cousin's treasure hunt for a legendary city deep in the Terrigan jungle beyond Vaxanhive than developing the planet's infrastructure, or - Emperor forbid - improving the lot of the three billion citizens who toiled day and night to provide the planet's quota of food and mineral exports. In return for regular donations to house Vaxanide's coffers, government officials and offworld contractors cheerfully skimmed planetary taxes allocated to the building of the new hive Remsburg, and most administratum estimates judged Vaxanide's black market to be as big, if not bigger, than the real economy.
The corruption of Lord Vaxanide and his cronies was not the inquisition's concern - at least not yet.
Twice in the last two centuries, Vaxanide had reeled under invasion by the ruthless alien Orks. Both times the green tide had been beaten back, but it was a truism that once a planet had been touched by the Ork menace it was rarely again free of it. The clouds of spores that the greenskins released upon death found fertile ground in the dark, dank jungles of Terrigan, and once those spores festered and began to grow more Orkoids, it was only a matter of time before they reached critical mass. That time had come a year ago, with feral Orks streaming out of the jungles and sending the residents of the outlying farms and fishing colonies fleeing in panic. As close to a million refugees poured south across Vaxan continent, desperate for the safety of Vaxanhive, Lord Vaxanide had locked down his gates and paid extortionate sums to outlying cities like Remsburg to deal with the problem for him. Vaxanhive's black marketeers were thriving, smuggling the stricken outlanders into Vaxanhive and then mercilessly exploiting the free labour, knowing full well that anyone who tried to escape would be summarily deported or executed by Lord Vaxanide's enforcers.
The Ork crisis and its fallout were not the inquisition's concern either - at least not yet.
Wherever there was war, corruption and grinding poverty, there was desperation. And wherever there was desperation, cults of the dark gods took root among the disenfranchised, the bitter and the angry. Offering hope and simple, false promises, the cults of Vaxanhive had co-opted young and impressionable Imperials to serve their own ends. Those ends were about to be realised: two cults, in service to rival daemons whose enmity went back for longer than human minds could fathom, were about to summon their masters onto the tortured soil of Vaxanide. Bringing such creatures into being would tear apart the fabric of reality, bringing blood and madness in its wake. Vaxanhive would die screaming, and the rest of the planet would soon follow. Inquisitor Lucullis knew this, because his astropath psyker had seen it in the garbled future of his Tarot readings.
That was what brought the inquisition to Vaxanide.
Agent Kimberley Raeden shifted tensely, the tight straps of her grav-chute pressing the armour beneath her robes uncomfortably into her skin. Her robes were plain, the armour unmarked - this was a deniable mission. If for any reason one of them fell and couldn't be recovered, they didn't want Lord Vaxanide knowing that the inquisition was on his planet. He was next on inquisitor Lucullis' hit list for allowing the cults to spread, and they didn't want his guard to be up. As far as anyone on Vaxanide could be allowed to know, they were some hive noble's murder squad, or mercenaries settling some private Trader feud.
Of course, if we fail then none of that will matter.
Kim had kept her skull-and-sunburst necklace. As a religious symbol among a highly religious populace, it was innocuous enough. More importantly, she had been a priestess of the Missionarius Galaxia before she had been an inquisition operative, and she was not about to deny that heritage. The pressure of the silver pendant against her chest was warmer and more comforting than the armour, as she checked her Volpone-pattern lasgun with its underslung grenade launcher one last time and secured it tight to her webbing.
The Emperor protects. We do this in his name.
And in the name of inquisitor Feyd Lucullis, but Kim couldn't say his name with the same conviction. Lucullis was an easy man to respect, though not an easy one to like, or to even understand. He was a stern, enigmatic figure, and all manner of macabre stories seemed to have grown up around him. Some said that he had ripped the eyes out of a convicted heretic's head to replace his own, so that he could see the world from a sinner's point of view, the better to find and kill them. Others said that he had taken not the heretic's eyes, but his right hand, to ensure that it did some good in death as it never had in life. Others still insisted that Lucullis' right hand was indeed false, but that it was only a clone graft, to replace the one he cut off and burned after handling a heretical book. All of the stories spoke of a man who was cold, ruthless and cared nothing for what others thought of him.
He was certainly cold when he recruited me on Adhara.
Kim wasn't sure if she believed any of the rumours, but she did know that Lucullis was a grim and relentless inquisitor who could almost always detect a lie. A secret psyker talent was just one more rumour that had grown up around him as a result.
Kim felt a momentary chill shiver down her spine. For a psyker to keep their affliction hidden was a dangerous deception - not just for themselves, but for everyone around them. Daemons like the ones they were trying to stop now could claw their way into being through the minds of untrained psychics, with the same planet-shattering consequences.
But in spite of everything, Kim herself could hardly decry a deceiver. Her missionary work on Adhara, before she met Lucullis, had been nothing but deception. She had pretended to be one of the Adharans for over a year while she learned their ways. And then she had faked her own death, and left all the friends she had made behind.
Abandoning Cian was the worst.
No, the worst was pretending to be loyal to that bastard Redeemer when he started poisoning their minds.
And how did they thank me for it?
She blinked and shook her head. The thought kept coming back, even if she felt disgust at herself every time it did. Moreover, she knew that she couldn't afford to let such thoughts distract her, not now.
Daemons feed on doubt. I'm an agent now. And I'm this team's confessor. A confessor can't be seen to doubt.
"Stand by." interrogator Erdene's voice crackled from the cockpit vox. Kim rose from her seat alongside the rest of the strike team, holding the overhead rail for balance. With a whir of hydraulics, the rear doors of the aircraft began to piston apart, opening onto darkness and howling wind.
"Aegia team, deploy."
Half the agents ran forward past Kim, grav-chutes tight to their backs as they hurled themselves out into empty air. Sarna first, the lithe little assassin. Then Hadrak, eyes and jaw set, his red hair streaming behind him. Abner, the sallow underhive psyker who was 36 and looked ten years older. Finally the electro priest Burakgazi, his idling electoos making Kim's skin prickle with static as he passed her. Kim whispered a prayer for their success and safe return, even the tech-priest with his strange parallel faith, as they vanished into the night.
Half a minute later, her own call came. "Kronis team, deploy."
The Carthagian gladiator Anais was out first, shrieking a challenge at the empty air. Alexi the scar-faced psyker hunter was next, moving past Kim like a ghost. Mai followed, the petite psyker smiling slightly as she jumped as if she could already see the outcome - which, Kim reminded herself, she probably could. Kim ran forward with them. The doors of the stealth jet could only be open for a short time, or they risked being spotted by auger sweeps from the hive below.
"For the Emperor." she told herself. She threw herself forward, and then there was only air and the winking lights of Vaxanhive below her.
[M] Shades of Grey - Recruitment and OOC
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