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Thread: The Home Front - IC [M]

  1. #11
    The Replicant
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    Manufactorum Kappa Nine, Tephaine
    Nine days after raid on Stilat Cosmodrome


    “Sub-optimal.” the spidery, decrepit tech-priest commented at last, as Enki finished recounting the tale. The priest’s face was hidden beneath his cowl and his hands were withered, crooked with age and only supported by the steel wires of an exo-brace. The only thing about him that moved fluidly was the ripple of millipede legs carrying him along the gantry. Below and to either side of them, plasma vents hissed, hydraulics sang and piston heads slammed as the manufactorum toiled to keep up with the Adrantean Republic’s voracious demand for war materiel.

    “Not your performance.” the priest clarified as they stopped before a door and he slowly raised his arms in the complicated haptic spell that would unlock them. “Nor the information you obtained. It is being carried to Tranch as we speak, and the governor will reward us handsomely for the ambush he is about to inflict.”

    The door rumbled open, and slid closed behind them again to muffle the crashing industry of the factory floor. Enki and Zahir’s feet clanked along metal tiles, counterpointing the steady rattle of their companion’s myriapod legs.

    “But,” the priest went on as they strode through alternating pools of phosphor light and dim shadow. “Sova’s death is a setback.”

    The binary caster hanging like a talisman across his chest clicked out a brief prayer, that the secutor’s Knowledge might find its way back to the Machine God. The priest folded his clawlike hands.

    “And a Dragon agent on your trail is an unwelcome variable. Your blessings will require modification.”

    They ascended a chugging escalator, crossed another workshop of hissing lifter plants and spark-raining servo arms, and passed into a complex made up of a number of smaller, quieter assembly shrines. Glancing through the doors, Enki saw lone adepts working on machines that were far sleeker and more esoteric than the blocky STC constructs of the main workshop. The air hummed with electricity and the holy inspiration of the machine god. Magos Delzharian’s personal seal, a polychromatic mandala, sat alongside the mechanicus skull-and-cog above every door.

    “Artifex Freylis will be able to harden your implants against subversion.” the priest rasped as they walked. “She has also volunteered to accompany you in your next mission. We are sending you to Skorgulian, who as I’m sure you are aware have remained neutral in the war so far. All projections indicate that our cause on Perinetus is lost, and we require another industrial base if the Adrantean Republic is not to be simply ground down by superior production capacity.”

    They passed under an ultraviolet guardian-sensor. The wash of light woke Zahir’s electoos into a cold blue glow, flaring as if searching for an enemy before fading back into rest as they passed beyond the light pool.

    As they turned towards one of the solitary shrines, Enki’s audio receptors picked up the rhythmic cadence of an unaugmented voice, singing loudly and - though Enki was no expert - somewhat off-key. The words of the song were holy Tech, or something like it, though it was no pattern of benediction that Enki was familiar with.

    The discordance seemed to irritate their accompanying priest. He let out a disapproving click from his medallion binary-caster as he halted just inside the door. “You are reciting that prayer incorrectly, adept artifex.”

    Stepping inside and following the priest’s gaze down into the recessed work-floor, Enki spotted the figure from which the singing came: she was kneeling beside a bipedal construct, up to her elbows in exposed myomer bundles and with her back turned to the newcomers. Enki could see dark hair gathered into neat cornrows, but that was about all that was orderly about the adept - her overalls might at some point have been Martian red but were now faded and grimy, and her sacred cloak had been taken off entirely and tossed over a workbench next to an open case of tools, unguents and notebooks. Next to the workbench was a powered suit that reminded Enki very strongly of stripped-down Nebula armour. The machine that artifex Freylis’ arms were currently buried in was far larger, and Enki guessed that it had started its life as a penitent engine, although the construct’s gruesome aspect was currently lessened by the fact that its arms and restraining chair had been removed.

    The tech-priestess stopped singing when she heard them enter, although she continued to dig around behind the walker’s leg panel.

    “Whaa?” she shouted up without turning her head.

    “I said.” Enki’s companion repeated patiently. “You are reciting that prayer incorrectly.”

    Adept Freylis let out a long-suffering groan. “Urgh. I swear, one of these days I’m gonna go fu-cking men-tal, I am.”

    Her accent was a musical lilt, undercut by bursts of extremely baseline profanity.

    “This is the fu-cking Adrantis sub, isn’t it?” she demanded, wriggling her arms out from inside the cannibalised walker. “Bastion of new ideas and new thin-king and all that? Well if you’re so free-thinking, stop trying to oppress me with your fu-cking scripts and your fu-cking correct prayers and your fu-cking correct song lyrics.”

    She belatedly turned, wiping her hands on the front of her overalls. She had a broad, cheerful face, with skin the colour of freshly-turned earth, currently smudged grey by grease. She pushed a pair of bug-eyed magnifier goggles up onto her forehead, revealing clean rings around her eyes, and blinked up at the door, belatedly registering the two agents who had entered alongside the tech-priest.

    “Oh!” she exclaimed, and stood up on her tiptoes to flail an arm at them. “Hello!”

    She spread her arms to indicate the walker behind her, which loomed like a vast mechanical shadow.

    “Behold!” the priestess proclaimed. “My fu-cking battle beast! When it’s done it’ll have all the kick-ass of a Terminator assault squad combined with to-tal ergonomic perfection! What is it? Is it a combat rig? Is it a classy exo-suit? No-one knows! There are feats of the Omnissiah happening right under my fu-cking hands, there are!”

    “Delzharian’s research assistants tend to veer between genius and insanity.” the tech-priest beside Enki confided, without bothering to lower his voice.

    “Thank you.” Freylis aswered, unoffended. “The line between the two is where I play skip-rope.”

    She snatched up her priesthood cloak and shrugged it on over her grimy jumpsuit before climbing the short stairs out of the work area and standing to appraise Enki and Zahir with her hands on her hips.

    “Now who are these gentlemen, like?”

    “The new associates I contacted you about.” the tech-priest explained.

    Freylis beamed. “Lovely.”
    Spoiler: My RP links 

    PM me for novelised versions of any of my RPs, or ones that I have participated in. Set by the awesome Karma.


  2. #12
    The Last Remembrancer
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    En-Route to Stilat cosmodrome, Perinetus
    1.45 hours after Patriot raid


    Tap-Tap-Tap. Tap-Tap-Tap.

    Kally could feel her augmented body beginning to crash around her as it flushed a potent cocktail of stimulants, rad-drugs and poison from her system. She was sweating, twitchy and hot. She had pulled her bodyglove nearly all the way off, rolling it down to her waist, and she could feel greasy, chemical sweat streaking her undervest, making the fabric stick to her skin. And she had a twitch. Her booted right foot rapped on the deck, and her left hand was drumming out a matching beat on her knee.

    She wanted to throw up, but there was nothing in her system to throw up. She could feel a scream, or a laugh, building in her throat, as the artificial adrenalin drained away. She couldn't stop blinking.

    What made it worse was the stares. The Princeps had insisted on an honour guard to convey her to Stilat, though Kally had been suspicious it was at least partly to assess the state of the most important loyalist airbase in the region. A chimera had been called up from the forge guard reserves, and she had been 'gently' cajoled into it. Along with an honour guard of three of the freaky cybernetica warrior women that were following the titans around.

    Kally raised her head and settled her gaze on the woman staring at her. The mechanicus warrior met her gaze and Kally felt her anger rise.

    "What?" She ground out.

    The woman shrugged, an impressive motion in her heavy armour bedecked with furs and feathers, much of it charred, singed and scored from enemy fire.

    "You smell like we do."

    Kally paused. "What?"

    The woman lurched across the bay, and grabbed Kally's chin. She yelled in anger and went for a weapon, but found her arms pinned to her sides by the other two.

    "Let me go! Does a rosette mean nothing to you people?"

    "Only if you can enforce the authority behind it." The woman responded. She was staring into Kally's eyes. "Who did this to you? Even the design of your eyes is the same as ours."

    "I can't tell you." Kally snarled. "Now Let. Me. Go."

    The woman pursed her lips, thinking it over. She instead reached into a leather pouch, and withdrew a hyperdermic, which she jammed into Kally's thigh. She quickly withdrew the needle and sat back as the others let go of Kally's arms.

    "What the hell did you just jab me with?" Kally yelled, clutching her leg.

    "Cortizokal II, a key component of our own combat drug regime. Wait."

    Kally shuddered, her throat tightening. Then her temperature dropped, the tapping stopped, and she stopped blinking. Her chest lightened.

    "What the hell?" She breathed.

    "No glands exist that can support the making of Cortizokal II in the body. Eventually, your glands would have processed the overdose you were suffering through, but the Cortizokal reinforces the action of the bodies humours, speeding the purge through your sweat glands and urine, and forces the brain to produce several chemicals that reduce the impact of symptoms." The mechanicus warrior unclipped a leather waterskin, incongruous next to the advanced armour and weapons she carried, and tossed it to Kally. "Drink. You'll be burning fluids fast, you can terminally dehydrate if you aren't careful. Eat soon, something with lots of salt and protein. You'll need it."

    Kally did so. She emptied the water skin and tossed it back.

    "How can you know all this? How can I have the same augments as you? I've read the briefing on the Legio Sirena. You've come from the Eastern Fringe!"

    The warrior frowned. "You are the only person who can answer that mystery. My home has produced a few infamous hereteks in its time, and very few of those are still potentially at large. And only a vanishingly small number ever worked on the creation of the Amazoneum at a high enough level of mastery to replicate it alone, outside a forge world. At this time, only one I know of could be behind it.
    A black hearted killer, traitor and xenophile who has left a trail of corpses across Imperial and Mechanicus space. And they, apparently, are near enough that they did this to you in the last few months, I'd wager."

    Kally looked away. She knew Ghast had a dark history, but the Amazoneum was describing her with the same vehemence and disgust she felt when Kally thought of Arcolin. A true Arch-Heretek. What had she done to be so hunted?

    "Well." She eventually responded. "I hate to ruin your day, but she was issued an Inquisitorial pardon.
    She's safe on our side of the Iron Curtain."

    The other woman smiled.

    "Let her think that. After all, that only counts if she can enforce it."

    +++++

    Eventually, the Chimera ground to a halt on the perimeter of Stilat.

    As they stepped out, Kally filled her lungs with chemically tainted air. She felt better, more balanced.

    "Thanks. . ."

    "Harmathoe. Here."

    Kally took the offered leather bag. It had a few more syringes in it. She chuckled.

    "Thanks." She made the sign of the cog, which was returned by Harmathoe and her two sisters. "I don't suppose they do this stuff in pill form, do they?"

    +++++

    “So I take it that is where you are going next, hmm?”

    Kally nodded.

    "Well, without a schedule for that damn space hulk, its the next logical step. Marioch. There's a planet I could have done without visiting again." She sighed, and let her eyes rest on the grizzly remains of Delzharian.

    "I really hope that is him. I killed a lot of people to get to him today."

  3. #13
    The Replicant
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    Inquisition fortress, Scintilla,
    Twenty four hours until Baraspine invasion


    Why don’t you go get showered off and then we can have a little girl-talk?

    Kelly splashed water onto her face and scrubbed it off, her shallow breath misting the mirror as she hunched over the sink and stared at her own pale reflection. A swipe of her hand cuffed away the wet hair hanging in lank strands across her forehead. The scar there was invisible, or as good as. But Yannick’s interrogator had known.

    Okay. she thought. “Okay.” she said, this time aloud. Her voice was strained. She gulped away the painful lump in her throat. The albino had been happy to let her out of her sight - she knew that Kelly couldn’t and wouldn’t run. She was confident.

    Kelly cupped more water and threw it at her face, leaving it to drip from her nose and chin. Too confident, perhaps. Something didn’t add up.

    She groped for her towel and buried her face in the rough fabric. Calmer now, the more she thought about it, the clumsier the move seemed. Sapphira and Solvan would vouch for her, she was sure of it. And surely any inquisitor worth his salt would-

    “Feeling better?” a chipper voice cut across her thoughts. Kelly looked up, and saw the interrogator grinning over her shoulder in the mirror. The albino gave her a little wave, elbow tucked against her side.

    “Much.” Kelly said defiantly. “What do you want from me?”

    “I didn’t properly introduce myself earlier.” the albino said, evading the question and holding out her hand. “The name’s Elizabeth Borden. My friends call me Lizzie.”

    “I’m sure they do.” Kelly replied, refusing to take the hand. It wasn’t just hostility; the proffered hand might conceal anything - a microscopic tracker-tag, a synthskin spray to capture her handprint, an injector needle charged with veritas or something worse. Any number of things that would go unnoticed by herself and the other agents going to and fro about the locker room.

    “What do you want, Borden?” she asked again, calmly.

    The albino interrogator pouted. “I thought a former verispex would be able to put the pieces together on that one. I want you to keep me informed of Machairi and Lucullis’ plans, of course. Anything they tell you, you tell me.”

    Kelly chewed the inside of her cheek. “I don’t think you’ve thought this through very well.”

    Borden blinked innocently at her. “I haven’t?”

    “I think that Lucullis would be far more concerned with a leak in his retinue than with my history.”

    Borden smiled. “Would he?”

    “Yes.” Kelly replied, refusing to be intimidated into second-guessing herself.

    Borden tutted. “Oh, sweetie, you’re not in the hive enforcers any more. But, I know you’re an evidence-based type of woman…so don’t take my word for it. Take a peek at the Vaxanhive file and see for yourself how merciful your acting master isn’t.”

    Kelly held her gaze for a moment, before wadding up her towel and throwing it into her kit bag.

    + + + + + +

    So they scattered after Burakgazi shot down my interrogator’s lander.” Inquisitor Lucullis’ voice was low but hard, unsoftened by the gentle crackling of the vox-recorder. “Where did they go?”

    “Somewhere in Vaxanhive.” The other man was bound to his chair by hinged iron shackles, etched with geometric rune-forms. He was tall and wiry, with calm blue eyes and red hair that fell in an untended tangle down his back. “Beyond that I can’t tell you.

    “Vaxanhive is fifty thousand square kilometres and four billion people.” The standing inquisitor pressed his fists into the table between them as he leaned forward. “Would you care to narrow that down?”

    “I don’t know where they are.” The chained man raised his gaze to meet the inquisitor’s, calm but resolute. “I’m not lying to you, sir.”

    “I know.” Lucullis pushed away from the table and folded his arms. “I suppose you instructed your team-mates not to tell you, either.”

    To his credit, the man didn’t hesitate. “I did.”

    There was a long moment of silence. The vox-recorder picked up the sound of Lucullis sighing slowly.

    “You know I can’t let you live, any more than the others. By your own admission, your mind was targeted by a daemonic spell. That makes you a moral risk.”

    The prisoner smiled wanly. “Daemons laugh-”

    “When we give them the gift of mercy, yes.” Lucullis stood as if carved from stone. “Why did you come back?”

    “Duty.”


    The inquisitor bowed his head in the smallest of nods. There was another long silence.

    “Hadrak Elsa, you have harboured the Emperor’s enemies and put his innocent subjects at risk. By the authority of the Immortal Emperor of Mankind, I find you guilty of the crime of treason. Your rank as investigator is revoked, and your inquisitorial record is, as of this moment, expunged. I hereby sentence you to death by hanging. May the Emp-”

    A door click at the end of the office made Kelly’s stomach lurch. She mashed the shutdown rune, slid the dataslate back into its drawer next to a notebook and a golden locket, and exited her brother’s cubicle just in time to run into Marc himself coming the other way.

    “There you are.” she said. “I cannae find Erdene anywhere.”

    The lie came automatically, but she knew it was weak.

    “I was just wondering if you’d seen her?”

    Marc stopped, frowning. “Try the hanger, maybe?”

    There was a short but awkward silence. Looking at her brother, Kelly realised that it had been nearly two weeks since she had last seen him. He looked better, but his posture was stiff; militant. An enforcer’s stance. Old habits, Kelly thought. Marc’s face was guarded - his remaining eye green and hard. His left eyeball was a white and silver bionic, betraying even less.

    Looking back at his sister, Marc couldn’t say the same. She had clearly just come from the gym, but she looked drawn rather than flushed. He could see Kelly’s fingers trembling slightly - something other than his presence was bothering her.

    “What?” Kelly challenged, and Marc had done enough interviews to know it was a deflection.

    For a moment, he was shocked to find himself thinking of her in terms of an interrogation subject. This was Kelly, his sister - for whom he’d punched a man twice his size in a Makita nightclub; the sister who had insisted on coming with him to work for that snake Sidonis; the one who had chosen her friends and family over advancement through the inquisition’s soulless higher ranks.

    The sister who had looked him in the eye after Concordia and said I’m done with you.

    “Nothing.” he answered stiffly, instead of futilely pressing the point. “I’ll...see you around.”

    “Right.”

    Kelly turned and began to walk away just a little too quickly. Marc saw her put her thumb against her mouth and start worrying at the nail - a nervous compulsion he hadn’t seen her give in to since the aftermath of Saros Station. He remembered Solvan’s locket, sitting tangled in his desk drawer.

    If you never listen to another word I say, Marcus, then listen to this.

    He shifted his weight to step forward after Kelly, but then stopped. You really must be an overbearing shit to your actual sister. He didn’t know what made him recall Crenshaw’s words from five years ago at that moment, but it was enough to make him abort the chase. By that time the chance was gone, and Kelly had disappeared through the office door, back into the vaulted corridors of the inquisition fortress.

    Shaking his head, Marc thumped his fist half-heartedly against the wall of his office.

    “Frak.” he cursed feelingly, and slumped into his cubicle to continue his work.

    + + + + + +

    Hive spire, Tephaine
    Two weeks after the fall of hive Alda


    Ella rested her hand against the window that fronted the curved wall of the spire-top suite. The armourglass was cool under her hand, and she could feel it vibrating slightly as the stratospheric winds slipped and battered around the spire. She could see nothing of the sunset dipping over the cloud layer, but her warp sight was focused elsewhere. Reaching out, through the atmosphere, through the void beyond, through the warp, she searched for the distant beacon of the astronomican.

    It was a pinprick now - far away but still sun-bright, and as she stared into it she could hear the soothing harmony of ten thousand faithful martyrs, singing praise to the Emperor who channelled their power to carry his dreaming thoughts out across the galaxy. As she listened, her ears automatically flitted between the voices in the choir, each singing a slightly different note, but behind every one she could sense the silent, star-brilliant presence of the Emperor.

    She listened. For what, she wasn’t sure. Her new Tarot deck lay untouched on the table behind her, and without it she couldn’t hope to interpret the silent will thrumming out from Holy Terra. She had too many questions vying in her head to be answered in any one reading. But the root of all the clamour was a single fear: that she was going to fail in the task the Emperor had set for her. Fail to save Alicia, and the friends who called her traitor, and however many other lives hung in the balance of this insane war.

    Guide me. she pleaded.

    The door behind her opened and closed with a quiet snap, and Ella heard footsteps sinking into the soft carpet. She did not have to look round to see the familiar jade-green aura lighting up the apartment. For a brief moment the clamour fell silent, and all the fear drained away.

    “Alley!” Ella blurted, half-turning. “You’re back!”

    “As if I wouldn’t be, kitten.” Alicia grinned, channeling a little of the old rogue-trader brashness that she had flaunted in their first meetings.

    If Ella were acting on impulse, she would have spun and ran forward to wrap her arms around Alicia’s back and rest her cheek on her chest. But her joyful relief died as her focus settled on the pulsing blue parasite nestled inside Alicia’s aura.

    It’s always with me, Ella remembered Alicia saying. Yes...like cancer.

    Resisting the urge to run forward and hug Alicia, she settled for a smile that was at least partially genuine. “What happened? At Baraspine?”

    “Most of the army and fleet made it out. We lost the battle but the war goes on.” Alicia halted in the middle of the room. “What were you doing?”

    Ella stepped half a pace away from the window, leaving her fingertips trailing against the armourglass. “Listening to the astronomican.”

    Alicia seemed to consider that for a moment. “Is Raeni out there with them?”

    Ella took her hand away from the glass, feeling her cheeks prickling as Alicia brought up the intensely personal story she had let slip back on the Arthrashastra, a lifetime ago. Alicia had a way of making her let her guard down - a mistake that she couldn’t afford to keep making.

    “I don’t know.” she answered truthfully.

    Alicia hovered, twisting her hands. It was a more honest gesture than the rogue-trader grin. Ella had never been able to reconcile the two Alicias - the one who acted without hesitation in combat, and the one who seemed cagey and hesitant about everything else.

    “Do you miss her?” Alicia asked at last.

    Ella squirmed a little, unsure of where the discomfort came from. Since her soul-binding, everything that had come before felt like someone else’s life.

    “It’s like I said, I can’t properly feel those memories any more.”

    Alicia shook her head, the caged flames of her psychic avatar flickering side to side. “It’s cruel, what they put you through. Taking away the proof that you had a family...that you were loved.”

    Ella squirmed again. She was used to Alicia ploughing straight into subjects that others might weave tactfully around, but she didn’t understand why she was choosing to press this one. “It doesn’t matter, not now.”

    “I’m sorry,” Alicia said quickly. “I shouldn’t tell you how to feel. I just...I know how it feels to be isolated from everyone.”

    Ella’s discomfort melted into a pang of empathy. One of the things she had come to wonder was how many strings had the Tâin pulled in her friend’s life, and for how long. The DeRei siblings claimed that it had always protected its chosen daemonhost. Had it also ensured that Alicia was always just that little bit better than her peers? Had it subtly exacerbated their discontent, so as to isolate her, and make her more susceptible to its own honeyed offers of belonging?

    Poor Alicia. Manipulated or not, was it any wonder that she clung to her last promise of family like a drowning woman? Ella desperately wanted Alicia to see that there was another way, another family waiting with open arms. But she was swimming against the tide - decades behind a malign intelligence that had the cunning and patience of an immortal.

    All of that. Ella thought despairingly. And I’m supposed to start undoing it now, alone.

    “I could undo it.” Alicia said.

    Ella nearly jumped. “What?” she blurted, convinced for a moment that the daemon infesting Alicia’s body had invaded her own thoughts while her guard was down.

    “Raeni.” Alicia explained.

    Ella’s spiking heartbeat slowed, but only slightly. “What are you talking about?”

    Alicia hugged her elbow. “I know you probably won’t see each other again. But it’s cruel...so cruel to have just cut you off from everything that came before, like it never happened and never mattered. If you wanted to...properly feel those memories again,” the tall woman shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, “I could ask the Tâin to do it for you. To unpick the locks that the soul-binding put on your memories.”

    Ella just blinked at her. “You must be joking.”

    “I know you don’t trust it, but hear me out.” Alicia’s avatar rippled as she massaged the back of her neck, trying to put together her argument. “Solvan and Sapphira must have mentioned how lucky it was that the Tâin didn’t fry Kelly’s brain on its way out, right?”

    Ella folded her arms and said nothing, disliking the flippant terminology. It didn’t matter that Kelly Black probably hated her now, just like the rest of them - Ella still had feelings for her and the others.

    I’m sorry we couldn’t all have met you under better circumstances. You’d have fitted right in. The memory of Kelly’s kind words was painful. They all wished for better circumstances, but the Emperor - and the dark forces He fought against - decreed differently.

    “That wasn’t an accident.” Alicia was saying. “The daemon didn’t mean her any harm.”

    It meant me harm. Ella had to clench her jaw to avoid spitting the words aloud. She remembered Kelly with grinning blue claws wrapped around her gun hand, forcing it up, and a white crack that had turned bloody red.

    “Sapphira had to carve a ward into her skull.” she said instead. “I wouldn’t call that no harm.”

    Alicia’s avatar crazed with flickering veins of red. “That was Machairi’s order. She wouldn’t listen when I told her that Kelly was perfectly safe. The Tâin never hurt her.”

    Ella was silent.

    “If anything,” Alicia went on, spreading her arms to leave green aura trails through the air. “By erasing her memories of the event, it actually saved her from a worse fate when Gavin made his psychic wake-up call…”

    “And I’m supposed to trust it because of that?” Ella responded flatly.

    “It’s not what you think.” A blue glow swelled up inside Alicia’s chest, and Ella knew it was no longer just Alicia who was speaking the words. “The Tâin...it is a warp creature, born of the Waychanger. But it’s been with the DeRei family for generations. It’s absorbed so many of our souls in that time, it’s more human than daemon now. It’s changed.”

    Changed…” This time, Ella wasn’t able to keep the anger out of her voice. “You’re not even being subtle are you?”

    Alicia winced, and the blue glow receded. “I’m sorry Ella. You’re right, it was a terrible idea…”

    “It’s okay.” Ella lied, waving her hand as if to bat the uncomfortable subject aside. She just wanted to get away. “Here, I was just going to make some tanna. Do you want anything from the kitchen?”

    “Umm…” Alicia hesitated, thrown. Her aura throbbed a lighter, more human blue, but Ella couldn’t tell if she was looking at empathy or just self-pity. “Umm…” Alicia eventually mumbled again, “No thanks.”

    Ella shut the door behind her, and slowly pushed her hand through her short blonde hair. She could feel moisture pricking and burning at the corners of her blind eyes, and she wasn’t sure if they were angry tears or anguished ones. Either way, she hoped that Alicia hadn’t seen them.

    Tanna. she remembered, dully.

    Letting her shoulders slump, she made her way along the counter and began to feel her way through the dully-psychoactive items atop it. All of them were tinged with Alicia’s aura, left like fingerprints by her touch. Ella eventually found the kettle and filled it from the tap before placing it down on one of the electric heating rings. She wasn’t even thirsty, but she needed the respite to clamp down on the emotions threatening to burst out of her.

    Change… Ella huffed in helpless frustration as she rested her forehead against the cold wall. Clearly, the daemon thought nothing of her - to taunt her so openly, to goad Alicia into making such transparent offers.

    But maybe that was fortunate. It meant the daemon didn’t consider her a threat to its hold over Alicia. And, Ella reminded herself, the warp-born were not omnipotent. Terrifying though the encounter had been, she remembered the thwarted rage of Merle’s shard-daemon on Concordia, railing against the outcome it had been unable to control.

    It was possible to beat daemons at their own game. She had to hold onto that.

    But, she knew, she couldn’t just force her way into Alicia’s mind, in the same way that the Tâin had offered to do to her. Even if she was strong enough to drive out the daemon, the process could kill Alicia - or at least leave her open to inviting the daemon back.

    There had to be another way. A human way. Ella dug the heels of her hands into her blind eyeballs.

    Behind her, the kettle began to scream.

    + + + + + +

    Inquisition fortress, Scintilla

    Astropath D’Lane might have been forty or he might have been eighty - it was often difficult to tell when the warp took its unnatural toll on a psyker. Such was the sacrifice made by the men and women who whispered to each other across the stars, without whom the imperium itself would slowly but surely collapse. D’lane looked up at Marc with unsettling, fawn-coloured eyes that stared through him rather than at him.

    “I can sense you there, agent Black.” the astropath said quietly. “How may I serve?”

    Marc pulled a Braille copy of a note from inside the folder he was carrying and held it out to the other man.

    “I need a message sent to the inquisitor, regarding the Vaxanide case. A Malfi Cartel ship broke orbit three months ago, bound for Solomon according to the administratum records, but the beacon logs have them translating from the Solar Rim jump point instead of Apogee Planar.”

    D’Lane took the paper with long, brittle fingers. “Is that significant? I’m not familiar with the warp routes out of the Malfian sub.”

    “Solomon is my home planet; I know the major lanes in and out of it. To get to the Markyn Marches you would use the Apogee Planar - at least if you wanted to get there in the shortest time, which all traders do.”

    D’Lane carefully folded the embossed note and slid it into the pocket of his green robe. “So where does the Solar Rim jump point lead to?”

    “The Adrantis sub.”

    The astropath folded his hands. “Ah.”

    Marc tapped his file folder. “It could be nothing, and I doubt it’s connected to the rogue agents Lucullis is looking for. But if the Malfian Cartel is running supplies to the rebels then I expect he would want to know about it.”

    “I will prepare for the rituals.” D’Lane nodded sombrely.

    Marc turned to leave. “Thank you.” he remembered to add at the last moment. He knew well enough that astropaths were humans - albeit humans cursed with the psychic affliction - and not just tools. But he was wary of ever getting close to one again.

    I can’t fail Him when he’s right there watching me. Ella had said.

    You’ve never failed yet. Marc had reassured her.

    How could he have misread the treacherous bitch so completely?

    + + + + + +

    “Lho?”

    Elizabeth Borden tapped two sticks out of the packet and glided one across the tops of her fingers before holding it out towards Kelly.

    Kelly kept her arms folded across the front of her coat. “I don’t smoke.” She refused to let Yannick’s interrogator know that her heart was trying to fight its way out of her ribcage.

    They stood under the artificial sunlight of the midhive lights, while vast air circulators pushed a warm, chemical-tinged breeze up the Street of Judgement. Uniformed agents passed in and out on business, under the silent gaze of stormcoated gate-guards with faceless helmets and autoguns held ready across their chests. Kelly and Borden avoided the human traffic by sheltering in the lee of a tall statue, dedicated to the memory of some long-dead inquisitor.

    Borden withdrew the offered lho stick with a shrug, and lit her own with an engraved silver lighter. The lighter disappeared back into her pocket with another flourish, and she tipped her pale head back to blow a stream of smoke into the air.

    “Why did you call me here?” Kelly asked impatiently.

    “To give you some good news!” Borden said, brightly. “I know you must hate being stuck here waiting…wondering and worrying about how your friends are holding up in the field. Well, the Patriots at hive Alda have surrendered.”

    She lifted her chin to squirt another breath of smoke towards the hive-level ceiling fifty metres above them.

    “It shouldn’t be too long before the rest of Baraspine follows suit. You can bet an inquisition headquarters will be one of the first things they set back up. No doubt Lucullis will want his agents a little bit closer to the action…”

    Borden let the smouldering lho-stick fall to her side and grinned broadly.

    “I expect you’ll be called to pack your things and move to a new office in the Adrantis sub any day now! Won’t that be great?”

    Kelly pursed her lips. “Oh, and I suppose you’re coming too?”

    Borden tapped the side of her nose, playfully. “Oh, don’t you worry about that! Inquisitor Yannick does have one request though.”

    Kelly tried not to tense.

    “I know you’re keen to apply back to field service, but he wants you to stay safely out of harm’s way for the moment. It would be so inconvenient if you were to get shot by some random Patriot.”

    Inconvenient for you when you want me to pass back information on Machairi and Lucullis, you mean. Kelly felt her hand twitch upward, and resisted the urge to rub the bridge of her nose. There had to be a way out of this. She just needed to get away from this frakking albino woman and think...

    Borden smiled as if she could read Kelly’s thoughts.

    “We’ll see…” she hummed, tossing her lho to the ground and grinding it beneath her slipper. “The Emperor’s light follows us always; we have only our shadows to fear.

    That last was spoken in a sibilant form of low gothic that, to Kelly’s surprise, she recognised.

    “That’s Obrantu.” Kelly stated, hoping to wrong-foot her tormentor. “You’re from Hercynia.”

    If Borden was indeed thrown, she hid it well. Instead she looked pleased, clapping her hands together. “Yes, I grew up in the Uru! Do you know it?”

    “I was there, a long time ago.” Kelly said stiffly. “How does it feel to be working for the oppressors now?”

    “Oppressors?” Borden laughed. “Careful, agent Black; that’s seditious talk that is.” She drew out the second lho that Kelly had rejected, holding it up between her thumb and forefinger. The lho tip flared into life of its own accord.

    “My fellow indigens were never very nice to filthy psykers like me.” She put the second lho into her mouth and puffed on it blithely. “At least the imperium sees value in them and kept me safe from the rabble while I rose up through the ranks. Look at me now!” She beamed. “Frak those Ghosts and their refusal to see the light. Anyway, I’ve got to run, Kelly sweetie! Enjoy Baraspine, and I’ll be in touch!”

    She took a few steps backwards before turning on her heel and skipping away back towards the great grey arch of the fortress gate. Kelly’s hand formed a fist and slapped against the statue plinth. She bowed her head, resting her brow against her trembling fist. She could feel the silver-wire pentacle grinding against her skull.

    I need to warn the others. But Lucullis…

    She looked up for a moment, into the unyielding eyes of the stone inquisitor.

    Demons laugh when we give them the gift of mercy.

    Was he right? A sawing rattle of heavy stubbers flashed through her mind, and for a moment she was back in the brickdust haze of ruined Rakosu, watching indigen children disappear in a red mist for the crime of throwing a stone.

    “Jus' what do you think you were achievin'?” another unwelcome memory mocked her. “Runnin' out in front'a those gun-servos an' nearly gettin' all your friends killed? Savin' a couple of scummer kids? How d'you think they'd turn out if you had saved 'em, eh? Here's a fuckin' hint, precious, it wouldn't be like my li'l ganger girl or the naughty nurse. They'd be turnin' out jus' like me.”

    In interrogator Borden, at least, Merle Carson’s theory seemed to have come true.

    Kelly’s pulse was throbbing, and her eyeballs felt hot beneath their scrunched-closed lids. She dug her forehead harder against her fist. Come on, Kelly. she scolded herself, slowing her breathing with an effort. Take a step back. Focus. Think.

    She had to talk to someone, but cooped up here on Scintilla her options were limited to relative strangers like Erdene and Marrick, or else Marc. Kelly felt her stomach sink painfully at the thought of her brother. Even if I could get him to listen, he’d just go on a rampage and get himself killed.

    She pushed herself upright. Baraspine; where Sapphira and Gavin were. If Borden was right and a transfer was imminent, then that was where she would go.
    Spoiler: My RP links 

    PM me for novelised versions of any of my RPs, or ones that I have participated in. Set by the awesome Karma.


  4. #14
    The Replicant
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    Hive spire, Tephaine
    One day until Baraspine invasion


    The passenger bridge from the shuttle berths to the governor’s spire was designed to intimidate. Tall and yet claustrophobically narrow, with narrow lancet windows that blinded visitors every few steps with shafts of unfiltered sunlight. Beyond a set of ceramite security doors, panelled to look like Tephainian oak, was a cylindrical reception room, and beyond that the Primary Descent where marble angels supported the corner struts of a golden elevator designed to carry the bedazzled visitors down to the hive spire proper.

    The smooth walls of the reception hall were ringed by hanging shields, each one denoting a noble family of the capital hive. Beneath every shield stood a warden servitor, disguised to look like decorative suits of armour, but at a word from the security detail downstairs they could all spring to life and use their grounded halberds to lethal effect.

    Surrounded by the motionless cyborgs, Ella Seren stood and fretted. Where is the chancellor? As much as Ella disliked the man with his oily aura and overly-friendly laugh - and she was thoroughly convinced that he didn’t like her either - she liked standing here by herself even less, dressed in a green and gold Tephainian sari that she kept tugging self-consciously up over her shoulder. She did not trust the elegant attire to flatter her scrawny frame, and her wireframe telepathica brooch, pinned to her chest over a Patriot rosette, felt unnaturally heavy.

    Tierce had kept her busy in Alicia’s absence. An astropath who had seen their revolution in the Emperor’s own Tarot was the ultimate propaganda coup. Even though the sub-governor was away on business in the next hive, treasurer Rosaegen and home secretary Pohl seemed happy to continue their leader’s tradition; trotting her out as the hero prophet, the defector of conscience, to every visiting dignitary.

    Ella could feel sweat sheening her palms, and she scrubbed them against her gown in case she had to shake anyone’s hand. You are many things, Ella, but a natural diplomat isn’t one of them. She was beginning to truly understand what Alicia had meant when she bemoaned being put up on a pedestal.

    Alicia was out there now, en route to Baraspine with Thark and Tarquinius’ extraction force. Tunnelling through the warp, with hungry daemons clawing at their ships’ Gellar fields. And one daemon already inside. Ella squeezed her hands together until they hurt.

    Her bubble of warp-sight was murky grey, studded with the dull candles of the warden servitors, but she could hear the delegation’s arrival. The rotors of the approaching airship were beating a soft thwok-thwok-thwok over the muffled sound of the wind, getting steadily louder as the craft ascended from the starport outside the city. The rotors were drowned by a hydraulic drone as the docking spar’s plasma turrets folded back into their housings. Auto-scaffolds hinged round, telescoping out with a series of clanks to pincer the airship cabin in place. Air-gates hissed.

    She heard a half dozen sets of footsteps, which resolved into six bright souls hazing out of the gloom of her psyker vision just before the doors opened. The three in front were surely the Malfian ambassadors - one shimmering gold, one glacial blue, one a calm grey. The ones trailing behind walked with the measured pace of bodyguards but did not seem to fit the aspect of one. The first was a radiant candle, fizzing with excitement. The second was even brighter, an eclipsing bulb who stood taller and shone with steady luminescence, so that he almost washed out the third - a small, cagey aura sticking close to his side.

    Ella swallowed. No-one had sent up the interpreters yet. She didn’t speak a word of the delegates’ native Vaxan, and her Tephainian gothic was still limited mostly to “thank you” and “sorry”, so she settled for the more formal High Gothic and hoped that she would not come across as stilted.

    “Hello.” she said, hitching up a smile. “On behalf of governor Tierce and the Adrantean Republic, welcome to Tephaine. My name is Ella Seren.”

    “Consider me charmed.” the shipmaster smiled, stepping forward to make an elaborate flourish of a bow. His cologne wafted towards Ella as he approached, carrying a soft, spicy aroma. He scooped up Ella’s hand in his fingertips, which made her glad of having scrubbed away the cold sweat. She felt a well-oiled moustache and beard brushing against her knuckles as he stooped to kiss them. “I have the honour to be captain Rhys Dashing of the Negotiable Virtue, the ambassador’s humble conveyance.”

    A bit on the nose, Ella thought - both for the ship and for the man himself, who bore a name too ludicrous to have been given rather than chosen.

    The blue aura behind him hooted derisively. The shimmering ice sculpture gave Ella some impression of the woman that her own eyes couldn’t see - strong jawed and high cheekboned, with unflinching poise and fierce eyes. Her hair was elegantly pinned, and the soft glow of a fur shawl draped around her shoulders like snow cloaking an unassailable mountain.

    “Humble is not the word I would use for either of them.” the woman remarked.

    The shipmaster straightened from his bow, keeping a delicate hold of Ella’s hand. “What word would you use then, my dear ambassador?”

    “Scoundrel, if I were being generous.”

    The shipmaster chuckled amiably. “I will accept that.”

    Tall and lean with his black hair slicked back from its widow’s peak, he certainly looked the part; but Ella’s blind-sight only saw that his golden aura was pyrite. He was a man here to make a killing off the killing, nothing more. She could see something dark seething beneath the glittering veneer, and there was something unsettlingly possessive about the way his thumb brushed slow circles across the tops of her fingers.

    “I look forward to us getting better acquainted, lady Ella.”

    She saw shafts of lustful red shining through the cracks in his golden aura, and the spicy cologne scent suddenly became cloying, causing her stomach to churn. Ella extricated her hand as soon as was polite, and forced a smile.

    “I hope you enjoy your time here, shipmaster. And your companions?”

    Dashing stepped back and held out an arm. Ella noted that the creeping red tendrils pushing out of his aura didn’t dissipate, merely redirected as they slid off her and onto the slender, sparkling avatar at the edge of the group. It gave Ella the impression of a younger woman than the icy ambassador - perhaps not so different in years, but younger seeming - and certainly warmer. She wore her hair loose beneath a veiling headdress, emphasising the fall of her richly-pattered, broad-sleeved robe.

    “This beautiful creature is the lady Nara Tumasian, of Vaxanhive.” Dashing said.

    The pretty avatar pulsed with pink and white, but the words she spoke were in Vaxan and Ella could not decipher them. The glowing haze of Dashing’s arm swept over to the bigger, brighter aura, dragging the lascivious red tendrils of his attention along with it. The target of his scrutiny stood tall, with a broad face framed by undercut hair and an incongruously scruffy beard. The sculpted musculature beneath his Vaxan taraz was evident, and a prominent scar cut above and below his left eye.

    “Her bodyguards. This fine specimen is Konstantin Burakgazi, a luminen of the mechanicus.”

    The bright aura shimmered, as if Burakgazi were thinking of correcting something in the shipmaster’s words. Of the mechanicus...many tech-priests who threw in their lot with the Republic might reconsider the truth of their allegiances, Ella supposed. Luminen was a fitting name, though. Pale fire burned bright around his already large frame, fed by webs of duller, solid silver lines that she had learned to recognise as bionics. She would have called the fire confidence, self-assurance - but it was almost too bright. Not arrogance, no. More like a mask. Like he’s pushing away questions he’s not comfortable asking.

    “Your welcome is most gracious, Ella Seren.” the luminen cut across Ella’s thoughts in precise High Gothic. His voice was deep but measured, and Ella had the sudden feeling that the huge tech-priest had been scrutinising her in turn. She felt her cheeks prickling.

    Don’t do that. Marc’s voice told her sternly.

    What?

    You know what.

    A painful weight dragged down through her chest, settling in the hole where her former teammates had been.

    “And this one is Ani Vardanyan.” Dashing introduced, his lustful intentions stroking round to the most subdued of the six auras. Vardanyan was the only one of the six who made no concession to ornament - her clothing was all loose fatigues and canvas webbing. Her hair was asymmetrical, shaved back along one side of her head, swept over to tumble defiantly down the other.

    Vardanyan didn’t speak, or show any acknowledgement to the shipmaster - and when Ella felt her attention brush over her, she saw the other woman’s psychic avatar flicker with hostile black. The average human’s antipathy towards psykers was alive and well in this one. Her whole aura was drawn in; defensive, thorny, and roiling with nervous energy. She was far outside her comfort zone in the Tephainian spires, and she didn’t like it. In spite of Vardanyan’s half-hidden dislike, Ella couldn’t help but feel a pang of empathy. She knew what it was like to be uprooted and thrown into the maelstrom of a hostile unknown. She had experienced it several times since her childhood on Sancta Heroica - and the last time it had been of her own making.

    “Of my own party, allow me to introduce the seneschal Horacio Amador.” Dashing went on, indicating the calm grey aura that stood with arms clasped behind its back. He was an older man; softly waved hair beginning to recede at his temples, matched by a grey beard. His eyes were crinkled, as if permanently scrutinising.

    The rock that had settled in Ella’s stomach at the thought of Marc sunk deeper as the seneschal’s aura reminded her starkly of Tomas Prinzel. Here was a consummate professional - measured and cerebral, a man who understood the bloody ends of his mission and had made his peace with it.

    But not a leader like Prinzel. Not a protector. She pushed the thought down, past the queasy feeling in her stomach.

    “I hope very much that we can be of service to each other, madame astropath.” Amador said, the caged flames of his face dancing as he bowed his head and formed the holy aquila with his hands.

    There was no hostility in his tone, which Ella expected, but neither was there any in his aura, which she didn’t. She could feel his eyes on her, but it wasn’t the greasy, skin-crawling feeling of Dashing’s attention. It was focused but impersonal - professionally appraising; one player weighing the value of another.

    “And lastly, as Vaxan protocol dictates for the position of honour, may I present the Baroness, madame Bai of Vaxanide, our ambassador to the Patriot Republic.”

    “This is a snub.” said the woman with the icy aura, her voice a hard-edged alto.

    Ella grappled for a response, and felt her palms beginning to sweat once again. The ambassador’s cold aura had no chinks, only an indomitable will like a cliff of ice. Ella had the distinct feeling that anyone who tried to chip their way through would find themselves buried beneath a furious avalanche.

    “The governor’s attempts to intimidate us with his grand architecture do not impress me, Ella Seren.” ambassador Bai said, sounding almost bored. “And to be frank, sending an astropath to greet us does not impress me either.”

    Ella swallowed to try and moisten her dry throat. “I have...met with a number of delegates on governor Tierce’s behalf, my lady.” she managed after a moment.

    “Yes, the heroine prophet, I know.” Bai hmm’d. “If your Republic was really negotiating from a position of strength, it wouldn’t be wasting time with so much tedious posturing.”

    Ella was rescued when the doors to her back banged open, admitting the spicy smell of amasec and a small procession of men in sleek white achkans. They were attended by servitors carrying trays of drinks and the belated interpreter devices - black stalks with slatted vox pickups and silver earpieces. At the head of the column was a spare-framed man with a broad mouth, bulbous eyes and thinning hair, his buttoned white coat decorated with silver braid.

    “Ambassadors!” chancellor Souvage boomed in a hearty voice, spreading his arms wide. “My apologies for the lack of welcome, unforgivable, unforgivable…”

    Any gratitude for the chancellor’s timely entrance quickly evaporating, Ella shuffled aside before his shooing hand could touch her shoulder. The chancellor’s other hand scooped up ambassador Bai while his coterie flooded into the room.

    Seneschal Amador inclined his head at Souvage’s apology, seemingly sanguine about the delay, though ambassador Bai’s response was more barbed.

    “I have no feelings either way regarding your apologies, chancellor. I was sent here to negotiate on behalf of the Malfian sub, and negotiating is what I intend to do.”

    “I can assure you that we have made a clean break from the old politics of the Imperium, ambassador.” Souvage said. “You’ll see soon enough that this is a Republic of deeds, not empty words.”

    “Deeds are good, chancellor.” Dashing remarked cheerfully. “And words are better, spoken between the right friends.”

    “Then let us break a few.” the chancellor smiled, latching onto the more amiable shipmaster.

    Ella found herself sandwiched against one wall by one of the gilded waiter-servitors, together with the intimidating Burakgazi, the reserved bodyguard and the bright, sparkling aura who Dashing had introduced as Tumasian. Ella hooked one of the interpreter stalks around her ear gratefully, and took one of the pungent amasecs just to give her hands something to do.

    “So…” she said, smiling shyly at being cornered by the three. “Um, sorry.”

    “One moment if you’ll permit it, lady Seren.” Burakgazi said in his clean, well-spoken High Gothic. He raised his hand, and passed it methodically across the wall, gloved fingers stroking the stone, the lamps, and the head of one of the dormant guard servitors. Ella’s confusion must have shown on her face, for he clarified a moment later. “I am conserving the Motive Force of the nearest machine spirits.”

    Tumasian, who had hooked her interpreter into place in time to catch the translation of his words, snorted a very unladylike laugh. Her reply was full of palpable, affectionate mirth.

    “He means he’s shutting down any vox-thieves that might be listening to us while the bigwigs talk.” Ella heard the mechanical device in her ear recite.

    “I see.” Ella wondered what they were planning to say that they didn’t want the Tephainian nobles listening in to. She tried to pick an uncontroversial subject. “Anyway, what brings you to Tephaine with the baroness?”

    She had thought the question innocuous enough, but Vardanyan’s aura shattered and reformed in a pulse of trapped, angry red. Ella tried not to flinch, but she couldn’t apologise without drawing attention to the private reaction. To her surprise Burakgazi glanced down at the younger bodyguard at the same moment, as if he too had seen the flash behind Vardanyan’s rigid facade. His aura showed concern, though Ella saw something far more worrying.

    Tech-priests weren’t psykers - but that didn’t mean their own brand of magic could not bestow perceptions beyond the physical. What would he see in Alley? Ella remembered how Raechel and Nikolai had reacted to the news of a daemonhost in their midst on Perinetus, and felt suddenly ill.

    Burakgazi’s eyes turned to her, silver orbs in a glowing face, and Ella belatedly realised that whatever he had used to sense Vardanyan’s mood probably worked on herself too. He gave her a wordless look. Perhaps he had misread her worry for Alicia as being for Vardanyan, and was quietly warning her to respect the bodyguard’s private space. She supposed she should be thankful for his error.

    “How we got here is certainly a story.” Burakgazi allowed, responding to Ella’s question as if nothing had happened. “Though Nara is probably better equipped to tell it than me.”

    Tumasian, oblivious to the preceding extra-sensory exchange, hummed a chuckle, before launching into a stream of low gothic that was equal parts lyrical and gutter-edged.

    “Well,” Ella’s earpiece translated. “I’d like to say it was something exciting, like I helped run a human trafficking ring on some hellhole planet, until I got shown the light by a mechanically engineered Adonis…”

    The woman’s aura rippled with smiling yellow as she stroked a hand down Burakgazi’s enormous arm. There was something mischievously opportunistic about the touch, though the obvious spark between the two reminded Ella achingly of Sapphira and Glabrio.

    Tumasian’s aura traced Burakgazi’s with softer echoes of Dashing’s covetous red attention, and was met by a pulse of white as the luminen hitched the mask across his inner thoughts higher. What is he afraid of? Ella found herself wondering, even as the luminen warded Tumasian off with a long-suffering glance. The spire lady backed off with a friendly, apologetic shrug - and then dragged Ella into the exchange with a conspiratorial look that challenged her to disagree with her sentiment. The psychic swirl of her face rippled prettily as she flicked her eyebrows and dragged the corner of one lip between her teeth.

    Ella felt her cheeks prickling again - as well as something that traced down her spine and sat fizzing beneath her stomach. Oh no.

    “But really,” Tumasian continued, smiling broadly now. “It was just old-fashioned patriotism.”

    Ella blinked, unsure quite how to respond to Tumasian’s blasé recounting...or to the other feeling.

    “And you?” the sparkling woman prompted.

    Ella chewed the inside of her cheek. If Burakgazi had rendered their exchange truly private, then the truth was a bigger joke than any witticism she could have thought up. “I betrayed everyone and everything to try and save my friend’s soul, based on a Tarot reading I don’t fully understand.”

    Tumasian laughed again, the robotic translator voice doing small justice to her trilling, musical accent. “Ah! Patriotism too, then!”

    Ella realised she had said far too much when Burakgazi’s questioning aura flared even brighter, almost eclipsing Tumasian’s carefree response. In contrast, Vardanyan only gave a bleak laugh. It drew another small spark of empathy from Ella for the lost, angry bodyguard - after all, what can any of us really know about gods and daemons, in the end? - but she clamped her lips firmly shut rather than encourage any of the three to delve further into her admission.

    Tumasian swirled her drink, and offered the spare in her other hand to Vardanyan, who quietly shook her head. Tumasian shrugged and looked about for a servitor, deftly depositing the glass on the tray of one as it passed.

    “The chancellor keeps glancing at us.” she commented guilelessly. “Do you suppose it’s me or you he wants, Stan?”

    “He’s interested in both of us.” Burakgazi’s tone was displeased, his arms sternly folded. Ella didn’t have to turn to follow his silver gaze with her own warp-sight, but she could already see that Souvage had backed off a little from shipmaster Dashing, and the faint ripples of disgust that flickered off the chancellor’s aura as Dashing playfully stroked a finger down the cheek of a male aide.

    Tumasian didn’t seem to register that Burakgazi was talking about the grand opportunities for mechanicus allies that he represented, rather than his admittedly exquisite physical form.

    “At least that hideous reptile’s got impeccable taste.” she said, all confidence in both her own and the luminen’s appearances. Her psychic avatar flickered slightly as she let out a slightly irked hmm. “I’m usually better at quick-reading people than that, though. I didn’t take him for the type.”

    “Souvage is...not.” Ella informed her. The chancellor’s quiet frowns and subtle aura flickers any time she so much as touched Alicia stood out as the one truly gratuitous indignity she had had to suffer, in what had already been the single worst year of her life. “He’s really not.”

    “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.” Ella was caught off guard by Tumasian’s surge of pale blue sympathy, and even more so by the equally sincere squeeze of her arm.

    There I go, giving away too much again. Ella thought, mentally kicking herself. She had thought and hoped that Alicia was the only one capable of doing that to her.

    Tumasian’s hands were very soft, she couldn’t help but notice. That didn’t help.

    “Lady Seren is correct.” Burakgazi observed, his aura still curling with threads of hostility as he watched Souvage. “I believe the chancellor just caught our shipmaster fondly appraising one of his assistants.”

    “The young, trim one with gorgeous cheekbones, perfect hair, and the delicious looking arse?” Tumasian countered, and offered a chuckle in the face of the luminen’s silence. She playfully poked him in the side. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice him, too.”

    For a tech-priest - and one with bionic eyes besides - Burakgazi could execute an exceptionally withering eyeroll. Tumasian just laughed, reveling in a point scored in some secret competition that Ella was not privy to.

    “He’s pretty enough.” she allowed, and the psychic tendrils she was stroking over the luminen turned a mischievous pink. “Not breathtaking like the twins were, of course…”

    Burakgazi inhaled a sharp breath, and let it out as a soft blurt of static through the binary vox caster sutured between his collarbones. Ella’s translator merely beeped an error, though she could guess at the contents of the Martian code.

    What’s going on with these two? It was more than that she was no longer the only openly-known deviant in the stiflingly traditional Tephainian court, that was certain.

    “That’s enough, Tumasian.” The abrupt rescue came from Vardanyan, and Ella saw a brief flicker of appreciation pass between the luminen and the much smaller bodyguard.

    “Ah, fair enough.” Tumasian relented, with an airy shrug. “My apologies for so rudely interrupting, Stan.” Her aura began to sparkle with amusement once more. “Okay, so Souvage is an absurd bigot who’s afraid he might catch the gay by proximity.”

    “That’s an understatement.” Burakgazi snorted, still drawing on whatever extrasensory information he perceived through those glittering silver eyes.

    “Would you describe for me?” Tumasian smiled wickedly. “I’d rather not look round and give him the impression that I’m acknowledging his existence.”

    “The chancellor is so desperate to escape from Dashing that I believe he would gladly resume being mauled by the Baroness.”

    “Ah, so he’d rather Bai than the bi?” Tumasian quipped.

    Burakgazi chuckled and relaxed a little, his arms unfolding to drop to his sides once more, though Vardanyan merely groaned at the pun, making Ella feel that bit more self-conscious about the giggle that blurted past her own lips. No, no, this isn’t fair.

    “Thank you, I know.” Tumasian grinned, reveling in her moment. “Anything else about the little prick of a lizard that not even Rhen could love?”

    Ella didn’t know who Rhen was supposed to be, any more than the twins, but she saw Burakgazi’s aura rippling as he appraised his own secret sight.

    “Souvage physically desires you, Nara.” he said, while his thumb tapped agitatedly across the fingertips of his right hand.

    Tumasian gave a blasé shrug. “Of course he does.”

    Burakgazi’s psychic avatar had gone dangerously still. “He reminds me of the Duke.”

    Whatever that meant, it made Tumasian’s aura flash a distressed white. “Oh my.” she said quietly. She tipped the glass of amasec down her throat and looked around, clearly regretting having handed off her spare drink.

    “Sweet Prince, please, not this again.” Vardanyan groaned. Burakgazi’s aura flashed in alarm at the name, though neither Tumasian nor Vardanyan seemed bothered by it.

    Prince. Ella thought, and her forearm began to prickle with a phantom itch where Tumasian had touched it. No. Surely not…

    “Who’s this Duke?” she asked the three, directly. She had to know. “And what don’t you want to happen again?”

    Burakgazi clicked his silver-capped teeth together, reminding Ella uneasily of major Crenshaw.

    “We dealt with some nobility on Vaxanhive.” he revealed after a moment. The blood-red flames washing across his aura left no doubt in Ella’s mind what he meant by dealt with.

    “Don’t mince your words, Stan.” Tumasian chided him bluntly. “In an effort to recover as many of those our former organisation transported as we could…we hunted down the worst of our former noble clientele, and killed them.”

    “And that’s why we’re here.” Vardanyan finished, sullenly. There was a little pride in her aura, but mostly it was eclipsed by shame.

    “Oh.” Ella said quietly. “I see.”

    She had a sudden urge toss back her own amasec. It burned on the way down, and made her choke.
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  5. #15
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    Taktaktaktak!

    The sound of Commissar Valkyr’s heels impacting the floor as she ran rang out through the hall. The hefty cavalry boots, a gift from an aunt, had served her well in the cleansing of the mutant-infested lower hive of Odus Primary. She burst through the door at the end, ruined gasmask hanging from her neck and red hair escaping from under her peaked hat, raising her rifle and firing upon the abominations beyond the doorframe…


    The Commissar’s eyes snapped open from the memory, eyes staring at the ceiling above her bed a moment. Odus Primary had been the moment that defined her career and that kept it fresh in her mind. She had ordered the cleansing of the hive and the 112th had performed it with fire and fury expected from true servants of the Emperor. When they had come up from the lower hive after stopping the mutant insurrection it had been like walking over a bed of skulls and bones. But the cleansing had not stopped there. The righteous flames demanded the bodies of those who spurred the mutants to action. The Munitorum had been clear to Commissar Valkyr as the senior Adeptus Officer: cleanse Odus Primary no matter the cost. The supply lines must remain untainted.

    She got up, showered, and dressed in her newly cleaned uniform. She paused in front of her floor-length mirror, eyes focusing on the scars dotting her body. Curving marks from knives and claws, burns from las-weapons, and a collage on her left side from a pipe bomb. Bridgett Valkyr had developed a bit of a reputation since being attached to the 112th, one that was not the most flattering. “Lady of the Dead” some called her when they weren’t making passes at her tall, well-formed body. There were many other unsavory names she knew about. But let them talk for that was all they were good for. Her actions and accolades spoke for themselves.

    “The Adrantis Subsector,” she said softly while taming her fiery hair. “There’s little worse than treasonous filth that think themselves righteous in their actions. They are a poison, a cancer, and must be cut out and burned clean.”
    Not a button out of place as she looked at herself once she had dressed. Just the way she liked to present. Power sword on one hip and her bolt pistol on the other, she was ready to meet the day.

    “Good morning, Colonel,” she said brightly upon meeting the towering form of Colonel Reichenbach, “you seem well rested finally.”

    “The best use of transitory flights like this,” the Colonel answered with a nod of his masked head. “A clear head and sturdy soul. Have any notions about our next theatre, Commissar?”

    “It’ll be complicated,” Valkyr replied as the two started walking down the hall of the vessel. “Not necessarily for us since a traitor is a traitor no matter what hat he wears, but I suspect for some of our constituents. I’ll do my best to keep our mission clear as always.”

    After all, it was not wholly uncommon for a command unit to request the aid of a Death Korp regiment and not fully understand just what kind of fighting force he or she was inviting to the field. The 112th were the kind to ensure victory and the sanctified destruction of a vehicle by strapping one’s self with a multitude of high-yield explosives and inviting the enemy closer before detonating the explosives in a glorious display of self-sacrifice. The soldier who replaced Watchmaster Alpha had something of a legacy to live up to.

    But Commissar Valkyr was less worried than usual about the prospective battlefield they were going to. To her it seemed that the Crusade High Command had decent heads on their shoulders, for a change, and she was looking forward what awaited them.

    Her boys would continue to do the Emperor’s work and bring His righteous judgement upon the enemies of Mankind.
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  6. #16
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    Perinetus - Post Battle Policing Operations

    “You have to hope that whoever opens the hatch is friendly.”

    Durand finished splinting his steersmans arm as the words of his long dead mentor replayed in his head. He had, of course, been talking about the need for Titans to operate with supporting infantry. When you get knocked down, you want the person taking the arc cutter to the hatch to have your best interests at heart.

    Normally, on the wrong side of a losing battle, Durand would not be very confident of that. But then, these were Imperials cutting open the head of Lupus Vengea, so perhaps it was not so bleak.

    He listened with half an ear to the sounds outside as whoever was outside cut their way in. The pain of disconnect, and the machine stigmata of his titan, were still in evident, even though they had been left to sit for more than an hour. During that time he had spent half of it retching with a blinding migraine, his steersman knocked out with shock, and his poor weapons moderati dead from a freak terminal blowout. Her lacerated, bloody face seemed to stare at him as he finished patching up his steersman and then navigated, unsteadily, to stand under the top hatch.

    His right hand was resting on his sidearm, a handsomely finished autopistol, but he doubted he'd get the chance to use it. A bundle of frag grenades, and then a spray of automatic fire. Maybe something worse. Maybe the nerve jellying horror of a Ruststalker, then the white-noise death of a transonic sabre pulverising his every organ.

    He glanced back to Alita, and almost envied her. She was out of it, at least.

    The hatch was pulled clear, and the reek of chemical tainted air, blood and oil mingled with the burnt electronic smell of his cockpit. Two mechandrites, tipped with auspex and pict capture devices, snaked over the lip of the hatch.

    “Idents laser etched into the hull identify this machine as Lupus Vengea, and the Princeps of record as Artom Durand. Confirm.” The voice was augmitted from somewhere outside, and echoed strangely around the cockpit.

    He coughed, and straightened himself. “I am he.”

    The two mechandrites withdrew and Durand tensed for the final spray of bullets that would end his life. Instead, two Skitarii dropped into the titans head, covering him with their weapons.

    “You and your crew are prisoners of the Legio Sirena. Do not resist, and you will be treated with the respect due your station.”

    With exaggerated care, Durand un-holstered his pistol, and tossed it onto the deck.

    “Then, in accordance with the principles of the Bellicosa Titanicus, I surrender to your custody.”

    +++++

    Durand and his crew was handled with all due respect. Alita was removed from her seat and taken away under a white tarp, and his titans tech priest was brought to join him. The pair stood looking at the wreck of their titan under the starlight as the Skitarii stood sentinel around them.

    “Will she walk again?” Durand asked. Toxic, tainted water was pooling around his boots. There wasn't a dry spot in the whole damn quarry.
    “She will.” The techpriest was laconic, as normal, and lapsed into a silence that spoke volumes.

    But not with us.

    He nodded. Well, that was something at least. Better war spoil than broken up for scrap.

    The whole crew flinched as something lit up the distant sky. Durand trained his eyes skyward, and watched the flickering light show as the orbital defences targeted something sitting in low orbit. His steersman let out a low whistle that caused a few skitarii heads to turn, then resettle on their tasks.

    +++++

    Eventually, the Sirena titans and their knights returned to the drop ships. Durand and his crew had been kept in a holding area aboard a coffin ship for that hour, checked for injury, fed a hot ration drink and a cup of decent recaff. He had been offered the standard interface withdrawal drugs, and had declined, despite how the plugs up his arms and spine itched like fury. His tech priest had spent much of that time in hushed binharic conversation with their captors, and Durand wondered if he was selling out their patrons, or simply passing repair data to the Legio Sirena support crews. Durand realized it didn't matter either way. He was out of this war. He was led out to meet the returning Princeps, and marveled at the fire scorched, limping Reaver that gingerly backed into the coffin ship and was almost instantly swarming with repair crew.

    Finally, the real rites could begin. Princeps Hange Zoerrin, looking exhausted and in some pain herself, descended the small personnel elevator that traced the back of the coffin ship and stalked towards him. It was a true Princeps stalk, stiff legged, arms forced down by the side, fists balled. She was only just out of the link and the fury of her titan was still stamped into her mind.

    Durand, on the other hand, was simply exhausted, shattered, emotionally stunted. He felt small, weak, and cold. His senses seemed pitifully limited and his limbs ached and shivered in sequence. Regardless, he stood straight backed, clicked his heels and saluted crisply.

    “Artom Durand, Princeps formerly of the Lupus Vengea, Legio Fulminata. My commendation to your Knight banner, Princeps Senioris.”

    Hange came up short, and blinked several times, hands reflexively clenching and unclenching. She ground the words out, like she hadn't spoken in months.

    “Hange Zoerrin, Princeps of the Sicut Sanguis Rosa, Legio Sirena. I accept your commendation and will ensure it reaches my bannerman. I also thank you for your cooperation. I should let you know that this is being treated as an internal matter by the wider Mechanicus, a matter of divergent dogma. I give you chance to unburden yourself of any data that might change that view in the wider Mechanicus.”

    “A chance to make my case?” Durand raised an eyebrow.

    “Just so.” A crew-woman (moderati by her pins) passed Hange a plastek cup of recaf, which she swigged despite the steam rising from it. Durand paused, thinking through his position.

    “What will it change?”

    “Well, for one thing.” Hange gestured to the south, where the Vostroyans clustered around another fallen Titan. “It will determine if we let the Vostroyans lynch your fellows or not.”

    Durand nodded. “We are from a dead legio, from a dead world. Anatolia. I. . .we do not know what exactly befell our world, but we have heard rumours. We felt that siding with Delzharian was our best hope for long term survival, and perhaps rebuilding our legio in exile. That is all. Our crime was hoping, and choosing a side in this war.”

    “You chose badly.” Hange stated flatly. Durand squinted at her. “Perhaps. The Patriots haven't lost just yet.”

    Hange shrugged, and turned on her heel. Durand fell into step behind her without conscious choice. A beaten dog limping after its new master.

    “Tell me about Anatolia.”

  7. #17
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    Spoiler: Part 1 


    + + + + + +

    Spoiler: Part 2 


    + + + + + +

    Spoiler: Part 3 
    Last edited by Azazeal849; 03-28-2020 at 04:33 PM.
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  8. #18
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    Mechanicus cruiser Triumphant Rationality
    En route from Perinetus to Baraspine


    It was always hot on mechanicus vessels, Raechel had found. The usual problems of sinking and radiating heat from the ship systems were compounded by the enormous amounts of thermal energy dumped by cybernetics repair, manufactory processes and power-intensive lab equipment. Even with her bodyglove set to its maximum chill function beneath her robe, she could still feel sweat clinging to the small of her back and beading on the nape of her neck. She sighed out a breath into the hot, dry air, and turned back to the flashing light-show below her for a distraction.

    The cylindrical Faraday module was designed for the use of the ship’s Fulgurite brotherhood, and the insignia of The Second Sons was emblazoned accordingly on its lightning-scarred walls. Evgeni Veiss had challenged the Vostroyan electro-priests to a sparring match, and after she had overheard the news from a passing gaggle of excited menials, Raechel had decided to indulge her curiosity. Naturally, she had checked the Triumph’s door access trackers to make sure that Kally was safely on the other side of the ship before she set out.

    Uh huh. She could picture Kally’s cynical smirk precisely. Curiosity. Sure. It was, perhaps, the Machine God’s blessing that Kelly and Saph weren’t also here to derive amusement.

    Evgeni had been striking even at first sight after they were shuttled up to the Triumph; almost as striking as the domina who had built him, in truth. Quite apart from being a tall and imposing specimen in his own right, he had an easy confidence and courtesies to match it, paired with a warm smile that would have been the envy of any baseline diplomat. Raechel distinctly remembered noting how perfect his teeth were when the welcome party were making their introductions. His hair was nice too.

    “Oof.” Kally had commented, once Evgeni had shown the two of them to a converted double cabin with all the comforts one normally wouldn’t expect on a mechanicus ship, and taken his leave.

    Raechel had nodded agreement, while Kally flopped backwards onto a chaise lounge patterned with Scintillan symbol-script.

    “Full disclosure, Kally.” she said, gazing forlornly at the door that Evgeni had closed behind him. “I would do such unholy, baseline things to that man.”

    “I’m spoken for.” Kally had said, amused. “But I still thought you were stronger than me.”

    “Flesh is fallible.” Raechel shrugged, and considered the irony that she barely had fewer organic components than Kally now, since Ghast had so thoroughly rebuilt her.

    “But ritual honours the machine spirit.” Kally finished the 15th Universal Law for her. “So why don’t you go and honour him with some ritual? I recommend my patented method of shoving him against the nearest door and having your way with him.”

    “This is domina Veiss’ ship.” Raechel reminded her, tilting her head and cocking an eyebrow.

    “True. Show proper respect for the Deus and pin him up against a piece of vibrating machinery.” Kally held up her hands and shook them vigorously.

    Raechel laughed a very baseline laugh, and popped the cog clasp of her red cloak to shrug it off and hang it by the door. “Oh get frakked, Kally.”

    Kally had just looked at her slyly. “Why don’t you go and get frakked, you coward?”

    Alright, so her detour through the training deck had not been entirely functional. At least Kally couldn’t fault her taste. Genetor Veiss had excelled herself in her ground-up fleshcrafting of a son and heir. Mortals quested for perfection, but Evgeni Veiss came extremely close to embodying it, even in the midst of heated combat with the fulgurites. Stripped to the waist, his mop of blonde hair had plastered itself to his forehead almost artfully as he spun a capacitor stave to catch a bolt from one electro-priest and send it thundering into one of his other opponents.

    “Such a lovely boy, is he not?” domina Veiss purred wistfully as she appeared next to Raechel. With her silent mag-lev field bouying her along, there had been no footsteps for Raechel’s augmetic ear to pick out against the ship’s thrum and the clashing of electroleech staves.

    The explorator’s aesthetic was far more Veiss than domina, stubbornly loyal to her trader family roots rather than any mechanicus notions of functionality. Her spun-silver Baraspini mask was more contoured than most, the better to highlight the same high cheekbones and soft jawline that she had gene-spliced into her son, and she had accentuated her eyes with crisp outlines of kohl. Today she wore a ceremonial robe in the ancient white of the mechanicus, bisected with black, and she was keeping the stuffy heat at bay with a fan made from smoky-grey Lucian alloy, etched with holy cogs and looping prayer script picked out in vermeil.

    “I am impressed.” Raechel admitted, folding her hands; flesh over bionic.

    “Yes, yes.” Veiss smiled tolerantly. “Of course you are, darling.”

    She was still speaking aloud, though Raechel was used to that by now. Domina Veiss liked the sound of her flesh voice, or else she enjoyed offending the stuffier priests who maintained that spoken words were only for giving orders to the unblessed.

    “I have to wonder though,” Raechel said, letting it slide. “What did you make him for?”

    “Who said I made him?” Veiss countered, raising her eyebrows.

    “I cannot imagine a magos genator leaving chromosomes to assemble themselves randomly.”

    Veiss smiled at that. “I suppose.”

    “So what are you grooming him to be? A magos? A diplomat? A warrior?”

    “All of the above.” Veiss said grandly, fanning herself as she watched another fulgurite disarmed and thrown to the ground. “I have holdings in the Lathes, which require a delicate ambassador even on the occasions when I can’t travel there personally. And I have holdings on Vostroya, where certain local laws necessitate children before you can hold any office of note.”

    “Does Vostroya’s covenant not require them to surrender firstborn sons to the Imperial Guard?” Raechel queried, dredging the relevant historical data from her electrograft.

    “Oh, I am sure they would have loved to have gotten their hands on Evgeni. I fobbed them off with a lesser offering.” The magos shrugged as she hovered on her grav-suspensors. “Eventually I will need Evgeni to inherit my estate, though not for a couple of centuries yet, I think. Until then, an entirely reliable second is invaluable.”

    “Yes it is.” Raechel agreed. There were plenty of tech-priests willing to rationalise entirely selfish motives as logical, and to claim that cruelty was simply clear-minded detachment.

    Krupp and Ankari learned that well enough when Delzharian turned traitor...when did domina Veiss learn the same lesson?

    “You know,” Veiss mused, turning to gaze back through the armourglass windows of the sparring module. “At some point I will need to find a suitable other half for him.”

    Raechel said nothing, and smoothed her face of expression. I suppose I deserved that. I was not exactly subtle.

    “Come.” Veiss said brightly, passing over the subject almost immediately, “I have something to show you.”

    She led Raechel away from the Faraday module, down an inter-deck stairwell, and into a twisting maze of underdecks that would have quickly baffled anyone who was not marking the route with their own internal augments. As they passed beneath a thrumming generatorium, the noosphere around them began to sputter with interference, and by the time Veiss had led her to their destination the shipboard network had vanished entirely. The sounds of struggling fans and coolant pumps still surrounded them, but the relative silence from the buzzing data-feeds was jarring.

    “My trophy collection.” Veiss proclaimed, unlocking the door with a complex sequence of haptic spell-gestures, and then throwing the steel barrier open with a flourish.

    Raechel stepped through and found herself in a small armoury. Pedestals and glass boxes stood within the tell-tale flicker of stasis fields, their contents thrown into relief by banks of soft floodlights. Raechel’s eye was immediately drawn to a slender sabre that hung suspended above its case: the smoky metal seemed to drink in light instead of reflecting it, though a faint purple glow hazed around its blade.

    “Oh Omnissiah.” she breathed. “Is that an Eldar weapon?”

    Aspect warrior sword, tungsten carbide core, exquisite forging technique. Disruptor field projected by an array of focusing crystals in the hilt. Despite the breadth of her travels since her initiation into the priesthood, she had never seen an intact specimen up close.

    Veiss smiled accommodatingly. “I thought you might enjoy that - I understand that your last assignment before getting mixed up with inquisitor Hypatia was the cataloguing of xenotech.”

    If Raechel’s surprise showed at the intimate knowledge of her time before the Lords Dragon, the domina did not comment on it.

    “Where did you find it?” Raechel asked instead.

    “A depressing little rock named Mu Theta Two. The Eldar were fighting against Necron raiders, and the enemies of humanity killing each other is always a win.” Veiss wrinkled her delicate nose. “Have you ever had the misfortune to encounter Necrons?”

    Raechel bit her lip. With its psychic components, Eldar tech might eternally baffle the adepts who studied it - but Necron machines had always felt the more alien to her. They were...colder. As if they had no machine spirit at all. She felt a shiver trace down her spine as she remembered a metal scarab latched to the neck of a man called Engelbart, and a silvered skeleton with eyes of green fire.

    “Yes.” she admitted. “Once.”

    “Abhorrent creatures.” Veiss shook her head, with no hint of the grudging admiration some among their priesthood held for the cybernetic xenos.

    “And yet not the most dangerous enemy we faced on Anatolia.” Raechel replied. “The heretek Vale and his Grey Death skitarii unleashed a nano-plague on their own world, whether by accident or design I still do not know. An apostate inquisitor named Crixos was helping him. And another inquisitor named Yannick was nominally on our side, but was still looking for an excuse to have me arrested.”

    “Would this be the same Yannick who is currently vexing or mutual friends Feyd and Alia?”

    When Raechel nodded affirmation, Veiss tapped her fan against the front of her robe. “He is a known enemy of the mechanicus. You know, it’s actually fortunate that he is making moves against our mutual friends. It is an excellent justification for finally removing him.”

    “That may not be easy.” Raechel reflected.

    Veiss just arched her eyebrows.

    “Look here.” she said after a moment, gesturing Raechel over to a plinth where a gem-encrusted circlet lay on a velvet cushion. It looked like a belt, though one designed for a rather slender waist. “A Harlequin flip belt. I used my studies of it to refine my own suspensors.”

    As she knelt to examine the channelling crystals, Raechel couldn’t help but wonder if she was being tested. She knows we need her transport...is she pushing to see how far we value her help? Or is she trying to figure out where I myself stand on the spectrum of our dogma?

    “If you have learned all you can from it,” she asked, tracing a Cog circle with her flesh hand as she rose, “Then why not destroy it and allow the spirit within to be reborn in a less painful body?”

    Veiss smiled enigmatically. “Oh that’s just one of my foibles, I’m afraid. Sometimes I like to let my enemies...stew for a while.”

    Raechel contemplated the Eldar flip belt for another second. “I remember the last words that a good friend left me with. Remember to trust, but be prepared for betrayal.”

    “A friend who understood more of the Machine God’s truths than most, then.” Veiss agreed. “Still, I hope you don’t think I don’t trust you. I was actually planning on offering you a job, if you ever wanted to focus on your own Knowledge again instead of policing everyone else’s.”

    Oh. Raechel thought. That is interesting. A Dragon agent, even a former one, was an ally that many a magos would kill to have. An eye on distant affairs, and a blind one turned to their own.

    “Not now, of course.” Veiss added. “But perhaps when this silly war is resolved.”

    Raechel weighed her answer. “I find that an Oculus learns a lot simply by observing.” And like an elementary particle, to observe the universe is to change it. “But yes, I certainly was not expecting such a generous offer. Thank you.”

    Veiss spread her hands and bobbed slightly on her suspensors. “Something to think about before we reach Baraspine.”

    “Speaking of which.” Raechel said, pulling away from the stasis-fielded artefacts almost reluctantly. “I had better go and pick Delzharian’s brain some more.”

    “Of course.” Magos Viess signed the Cog. “You have memorised the return route?”

    “Yes, thank you.”

    Raechel replayed, dissected and recombined their conversation as she picked her way back through the decks. Finally she gave up and streamed a Vostian sample-song into her aural implant instead, to reset her overheating brain. The menial-crafted arrangement of clanks and stutter-hisses always reminded her of home, and simpler times.

    When she reached the laboratory module that the domina had assigned for her use, a knot of Veiss’ retainers were already there waiting for her.

    And standing by the work bench was Evgeni Veiss in a loose robe of cog-edged white, his hair still wet from a post-sparring cleanse.

    “Oh.” Raechel squeaked, about an octave higher than her usual register. She coughed to clear the malfunction from her treacherous organic throat. “What are you doing here?”

    “The domina contacted me about a quarter hour ago.” Evgeni explained, linking his thumbs in a Cog and offering her a short bow. “She said that I was to be assigned as your research partner.”

    A servo in Raechel’s bionic hand twitched. Oh. Very funny, madame Veiss.

    Evgeni unlaced his hands to indicate one of the adepts behind him, who wheeled forward a stand that was holding a suit of armour. The armour was scorched, discoloured and badly damaged, but it was still unmistakable as Nebula armour.

    “She also requested that I present you with the gift of the turncoat Alicia Tarran’s armour suit.”

    “How did the domina acquire that?” Raechel asked, her eyebrows shooting upward. It was no secret that she had been seeking exactly this artefact for a long time, but it was also Raechel’s understanding that the Grey Knights had been first to investigate the waystation where Tarran had first fought DeRei.

    The adept bearing the armour only shrugged, flippantly. “Oh, we don’t ask such questions, lady oculus.”

    Another show of power, no doubt. Raechel concluded, before she was distracted by Evgeni’s entourage flooding forward to introduce themselves. At the forefront were a pair of retainers with martial scale armour over their mechanicus cloaks.

    “Deus be good.” said one of them, a woman of perhaps forty years with woven blonde pleats and a sharp but kindly face. “You’re even skinnier than he is, this won’t do at all.”

    Evgeni was trying unsuccessfully to suppress a grin. “May I present my dear bodyguards, Dominika and Kazamir.”

    Something about his words seemed to grieve the two retainers, but the wistful flicker in their eyes was gone by the time they had finished shaking Raechel’s hand.

    “Is your robe Sofiya’s work?” asked the shaggy haired, bearded man that Evgeni had introduced as Kazamir.

    Raechel looked down at herself, automatically. The scarlet gown she was wearing was more fitted than her usual belted robe, and a scrollwork of binary hymns wove in a spiral around the torso.

    “It was a gift from domina Veiss.” she explained. “I did not want to look ungrateful by not wearing it.”

    Kazamir nodded appreciatively. “Definitely Sofiya’s work, then. Evgeni’s m-” He stopped himself, pulling up short. “Our daughter makes all of the domina’s dresses.”

    Ah. Raechel realised. That was why they were upset at being called bodyguards. They would much rather be called grandparents. The thought made her a little sad.

    “Never mind that, Kaz.” Dominika scolded, interrupting Raechel’s thoughts. “You, young lady, need to eat some real food. None of this reclaimed nutrient-garbage that barely keeps a body running. I’ll be sending some up in an hour.” She turned and wagged a finger at Evgeni. “And Omnissiah help you both if the servitors send back even a crumb!”

    Raechel had to smile.

    “Don’t worry.” Evgeni rejoined. “The mechanicus taught me not to waste good material.”

    “Come on, my love.” Kazamir was saying, as he plucked at his partner’s elbow. “Let the young lady breathe.”

    Seemingly mollified, the formidable Dominika withdrew a few steps before turning back to Raechel and appraising her for another moment. She brightened. “It’s so good to see Evgeni meeting new people. Not many have the courage to come and talk to him.”

    Goodbye.” Evgeni said, pointedly.

    Raechel waited until the gaggle of retainers had cleared the lab space before letting out the snort of laughter she had been holding in.

    +Apologies for that.+ Evgeni said, also grinning as he shifted their conversation into the noosphere. +While we work, would you prefer me to address you as Oculus, lady Kuscelian, or Errant 404?+

    She was tempted to ask him to just call her Raechel. +Kuscelian will be fine. But where did you hear 404?+

    Evgeni paused to shrug as he began to unpack their equipment, bestowing the requisite blessings upon each one with deft hands. +The domina mentioned that your comms were tagged with the moniker down on Perinetus. She thought it was rather cute, and I agree.+

    Raechel stopped in the middle of waking her dataslate.

    +The machine spirits are prepared.+ Evgeni pulsed, moving on with seeming obliviousness to the next topic. +I think I have some ideas, but I would gladly welcome your insight.+

    Yes, Raechel reflected as she gave her dataslate a jab that the placid machine spirit had done nothing to earn - Veiss had definitely done this as a joke.

    Frakking scrap-shunt.

    + + + + + +

    HDMS Impiger, Baraspine orbit
    Two weeks after hive Alda’s surrender


    “Saph?”

    Music was drifting from the well-appointed cabin, but no answer greeted Kelly Black as she eased the door open and stepped inside. Sapphira was nowhere to be seen, though incense drifted lazily from a lit taper beside the devotional shrine, and by the desk an antique gramophone was lazily spinning its record. The song was trumpets winding around piano and soft bass; too slow for Kelly’s taste, but definitely classic Saph. Kelly crossed her ankles and stood with arms folded, listening for a moment.

    “She and Glabrio are having dinner with the Impiger’s XO again, I believe.” Gavin said.

    Kelly jumped, her heart thumping. Sudden shocks had started doing that to her again recently, and she hated her body for it. Friends don’t deserve that.

    She wheeled round, and the spike of guilty anger calmed somewhat at the sight of Gavin’s pale, angular face. It was her first sight of him since the others had left Scintilla. The stilted posture was the same, and the pointed features, though if anything he had gotten even paler, and new streaks of grey in his hair made him look old before his time. He had let it grow out, she noted, though the sides were buzzed short - almost as if to draw attention to the horrific surgical scars at his temples.

    His eyes were the same though: amber-brown, and active behind his horn-rimmed glasses. It was good to see him.

    “Gavin,” she said, trying pre-emptively to apologise. “I…”

    I didn’t hear you coming, she realised. The wheeze and thump of his bionic legs had been entirely absent.

    She glanced down, and saw that Gavin was wearing actual shoes to match his slimline suit, instead of the two blocks of shapeless metal that had used to protrude from the cuffs of his trousers.

    “...didn’t hear me?” Gavin guessed, with a rueful smile. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. I see you have already noted domina Veiss’ gift to me.”

    “Who’s domina Veiss?” Kelly asked, dropping her arms from their defensive cross with an effort. The only Veiss she knew was a rogue trader who had caused them some amount of grief on Hercynia, where she and Gavin had first met.

    “Presumably a relation.” Gavin said, taking her point. “But a distant enough one that she does not seem to wish us any specific harm.”

    “And when did she arrive on the scene?” Kelly asked, unconvinced.

    “As a new friend of Raechel and Kally’s. Apparently they asked on my behalf, and the domina was in a generous mood after the favours they did her on Perinetus.”

    Kally’s still alive. That made Kelly’s spirits rise a little.

    “Are they still here?” she asked, hopefully.

    “Raechel came aboard not that long ago, but Kally left for Marioch with the Triumphant Rationality.”

    Kelly pursed her lips and huffed, reluctantly understanding. “If Saph and me saw her, we’d never let her leave again.”

    Gavin cricked his neck. “I assume that I have the three of you to thank for my new legs. I certainly did not solicit our new friend.”

    Kelly choked back a shaky laugh. “I asked Raech if she knew anyone...but I didn’t think…”

    She could have hugged him, but she didn’t want him to feel the tension in her own body.

    If I let him know about interrogator Borden…

    It would be Marc all over again, and probably worse. As much as she liked Gavin, she hated the pedestal that he had put her on.

    Do you remember Hercynia? Crenshaw had asked her pointedly, during their emotionally draining conversation after Baraspine. When you dragged Jenkins into cover during the indigen attack?

    Truthfully Kelly had not; it had been a simple instinct, and one she didn’t think twice about after the fact.

    That was perhaps the first time that anyone had done something benevolent for him. Crenshaw had explained, seemingly at peace with his own part in that statement. Now perhaps you understand why he let the daemon maul him half to death rather than risk hurting you.

    And why he wouldn’t hurt you either. Kelly thought. Gavin could have easily waited until Crenshaw was in that lift before dropping it, and in the chaos of the Baraspini attack no-one would have found him out. But he knew how your death would affect Kally, and how Kally’s grief would affect me. It was that more than anything else that had tipped her off that something was going on between Kally and Crenshaw.

    That daemon had truly been an agent of change, it seemed. Arcolin was no doubt laughing, if he still lived.

    And now Borden is coming to make me pay for my part in it.

    Her heart sank a little as she was reminded of why she had come to confide in Sapphira in the first place. So much for a happy reunion.

    “Come in.” she urged Gavin in a strained voice, beckoning him through the door. “I’m sure Saph won’t mind us waiting for her. How have you been?”

    “We all survived the extraction mission.” Gavin said as he crossed the threshold with his hands in his pockets. “Though unfortunately I cannot say the same for the nobles we were sent to extract. The Patriot kill team had a…” His cheek twitched. “Highly skilled psyker assisting them. After we returned to orbit I also had an altercation with an agent who wished to question me about lord Maxillium.”

    Kelly’s heart began to beat faster again, a wet swallowing sound against her ears. “A Throne agent?” she asked fearfully. Borden?

    “A tech-adept.” Gavin said dismissively. “I told him that coming after me for blowing up the augments of some puffed-up lord who inadvertently released a data-daemon - by murdering the Dragon agent who had it contained, no less - was a little bit silly when we had hereteks like Delzharian to deal with. It was not me, after all, who managed to assassinate the upper echelons of half a forge world. I can only hope that the adept crawled back to his masters and suggested to them that they un-fuck their priorities.”

    He spoke with indifference, but Kelly was not wholly relieved. She had not failed to notice how overtly hostile Gavin had become towards the ad mech since Perinetus. Since he duelled that other technopath. She remembered Kally saying something about the risk of personality bleed when a psyker touched the mind of another, and how it had gradually turned Sidonis’ explicator Strelilov into a sadist.

    She thought of how Gavin had sounded channelling through Maxillium’s ruined vocabulator, and felt cold. She didn’t want the same thing happening to him, and she didn’t want Borden drawing any lines between that and the fact that he had battled her possessing daemon, and was quite possibly preparing himself to battle it again. Not something that I want Lucullis to know either, for that matter.

    To give herself something to do, she crossed over to the gramophone and made to lift the needle.

    “Would you leave it on please, Kelly?” Gavin asked.

    Kelly stopped, her brows knitting together.

    “Sure.” she said automatically, and turned to see the psykers looking suddenly awkward, his shoulders hunched.

    He hesitated for a moment, shifting from foot to foot on his new legs, then asked in perfect Solomon gothic: “Are ye dancing?”

    Kelly choked on another laugh. “Are ye asking?” she replied, switching back to her home spire-cant. She had never considered that Gavin, with his clunky augmetic legs, had ever harboured a wish to do something as simple as dance. It made her feel guilty again for not knowing him better.

    “I am.” Gavin affirmed. “Partly because even I can tell you’ve got something on your mind, but mostly because having you back is a gift on par with the new bionics.”

    Kelly managed a brittle smile. “Fair warning, I’ve got two left feet.”

    Gavin extended a hand. “And I’ve got none, as it happens.”

    Now they were both laughing; the kind of breathless laugh that was in danger of tipping over into tears.

    “It’s really good to see you again, Gav.” Kelly said as they found the rhythm of Sapphira’s music and began to sway gently back and forth. “Really, you’ve got no idea.”

    Gavin looked at her, and then away. “Neither have you.”

    Kelly’s own eyes darted for neutral ground as she bit down on her tongue. Is this what it was like for Saph? People holding you in such high regard that you worry if you misstep even once you might break them?

    She didn’t want to break Gavin. She really, really didn’t. And then she wondered if it was the faint scar on her forehead that had made him look away.

    The music slowed and faded to a blank-disc crackle, and their stilted swaying died along with it. Kelly squeezed Gavin’s hand, and hugged it to her chest for a moment before letting go.
    Last edited by Azazeal849; 01-17-2020 at 05:33 PM.
    Spoiler: My RP links 

    PM me for novelised versions of any of my RPs, or ones that I have participated in. Set by the awesome Karma.


  9. #19
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    Concordia orbital, Lehyde Ten system
    Thirty-one days before Baraspine invasion


    The doors swung open, and the parties of rogue traders began to swagger into the central hub of the orbital. Traders in flowing, brightly-coloured robes; traders in sharp black jackets and pressed shirts; smiling attendants dressed in flattering silks; bodyguards with no weapons but watchful eyes; and one albino.

    Elizabeth Borden gasped and clapped her hands in delight as she saw the room. In contrast to the dull grey entrance corridors with their metal detectors and weapon scanners, the meeting room was an oval ballroom gallery, with marble angels flanking the doors. Three great chandeliers combined with fluted lamps around the walls to provide ample light, and under the central chandelier was a single table. Fashioned from rosewood with a glossy varnished finish, it had been set with elaborately carved chairs - one for every guest.

    “Don’t get too excited, darling.” trader Vaegar sniffed imperiously as he took her elbow and guided her into the room. “This is nothing compared to my hotel suite on Scintilla.”

    Elizabeth dipped her chin, giggling. “Yes, master.”

    Elizabeth had always loved acting; the simple thrill of presenting a mask to the world and seeing people fall for it, watching others dance to her tune. Ostensibly, she was here as the trader’s arm candy. Secretly, of course, she was a hired bodyguard. And truly, beneath the mask, she was an inquisition plant.

    As the colourful traders took their seats, Elizabeth let her eyes roam across the floor. Just as the metal walls were panelled over with rosy wood, so too was the floor tiled with marble, each slab different due to the tiny fossils trapped inside them. Servitors had scrubbed the floor to a mirror sheen. Elizabeth wondered how much blood was still there, seeped down between the tiles. Inquisitor Machairi’s perhaps, or maybe her servant Vincent Nyl’s. She imagined it running into the grooves between the slabs, criss-crossing into pleasing patterns.

    Ten servitors stood on ceremony, painted all in white so that they resembled the ballroom’s marble angels. With them was a single human, a bizarre contrast to the elegant furnishings and the uniform servitors. No-one could ever have called him attractive - he was already on the weather-beaten side of forty, and his face was mangled by burns and scars and an eye that had been seared white. Even his skull was slightly misshapen. Completing the ugly, asymmetric picture was a crude bionic left hand: matte black, with glints of silver across the knuckles from wear, tear and neglectful maintenance.

    “What are you?” one of the other traders sniffed at the man, unimpressed. “The caretaker?”

    “That’d be me, alright.” the man replied, in High Gothic that was mangled by the accent of some backwater planet. He smiled, revealing a ghastly array of false teeth crafted from a mixture of gaudy gold and grey ceramite. “It’s a quiet life but I ain’t never minded it none. I’m here to make all’a y’all as comfortable as possible durin’ the proceedin’s. So, if there’s anythin’ I can do for any an’ all’a y’all, just stick up yer hand an’ ask.”

    Vaegar looked down his nose, doubtfully. “You can fetch us all drinks.”

    “Certainly sir.” the caretaker said with a flourishing bow that showcased the unsightly dent in the back of his head. Some of the courtiers stifled gasps at the sight of it, while bodyguards exchanged subtle glances. The man stood, and twitched the misshapen ridge of flesh where an eyebrow should have been with an attentive look. “What will y’all be havin’? Amasec? Casterian brandy? Solomon gin?”

    “Amasec.” Vaegar answered, stiffly. “Axinite, if you have it.”

    “Indeed we do, milord.” the man sagely replied. He frowned, and thoughtfully ran his gnarled, tattooed fingers through his incongruously neat goatee. “Thurlow Estates, 570 vintage, if I’m rememberin’ correctly. Good military family, the Thurlows. An’ their 570 is incomparable, so I’ve been assured.”

    “That will be fine.” the trader quickly answered with an urgent, dismissive wave. “On you go.”

    The man nodded deferentially at Elizabeth’s notional master, and twisted his partially fused mouth into another horribly chimeric half-smile as he turned and gestured to the next merchant with his growling prosthetic hand.

    “An’ what’ll be to milady’s pleasure this evenin’?”

    As the drinks order went round the table, Vaegar gave Elizabeth a small nudge. “Why don’t you see where they’re hiding the good stuff, darling?”

    Elizabeth nodded her understanding. The real question was why don’t you have a look around? Her patron evidently felt safe enough at the table with all the traders’ eyes on each other.

    A look around was exactly what Elizabeth wanted to take anyway. If she could get somewhere secluded enough to take a few psychic readings of the station, then she might turn up some more evidence for her real master. Rumours had leaked out about a daemon being involved in the ruckus here three months ago, just before the war broke out. Perhaps the same daemon that Alia Machairi had carelessly allowed to possess her verispex agent? Now there would be a damning indictment.

    Elizabeth smiled to herself as she skipped away to one of the doors and detoured down into the storage decks beneath the main meeting area. The servitors might have scrubbed the blood away - daemon spoor was much harder to erase cleanly.

    + + + + + +

    Oh fuck me…

    …if this ain’t a motherfuckin’ asshole convention, I don’t know what motherfuckin’ is.


    “Margantine wine.” Merle Ray Carson, condemned and presumed dead man by the Imperial authorities, repeated back to the elegantly attired rogue trader. He kept his unnaturally ugly smile winched tightly on his face, and his seething commentary to himself, and nodded. “An excellent selection, milady.”

    “Of course it is.” the lady trader drawled with an effortlessly aristocratic superiority, a haughty guffaw and the languorously dismissive wave of her bejeweled hand. She scowled with studiously practiced disdain as she stared down her surgically perfect patrician nose. “That’s why I made it, caretaker.”

    “Thankfully that’s not always the case, my dear Lady Kembi.” one of the other traders chortled. “Your dawdling on Hercynia was, and continues to be, most greatly appreciated by my bottom line.”

    “I figured you desperately needed a sporting assist to make your profits, my dear Lord Harazan.” Kembi’s tone was saccharinely sweet as she aimed the riposte at her rival merchant.

    Merle maintained his placid, subservient smile and bowed before the sneering trader. The aforementioned asshole convention chortled in patently false bonhomie. Kembi and Harazan proceeded to exchange broadsides of politely spoken insults, and those merchants not enjoying the spectacle began to loosely gossip and shop talk in the lull. The convict softly clapped his mismatched hands, and glanced over his shoulder at the equally overlooked servitors. He offered them a commiserating shrug.

    “Genofonia has gone all in on the Patriots,” one of the traders was saying. “With about all the subtlety of a bolt round to the head.”

    “How brazen.” remarked another. “However, would you have expect anything else from the cadaverous old bastard?”

    “Discretion is no virtue to him…unlike our absent colleague, Mamzel Florentin. One wonders where her precious, precious Melpomene and all that bacteria medium it was loaded with could have gone?”

    “One wonders, indeed…and one also wonders how House Kol will handle their predicament. As I’ve heard, there have been questions about their Siculi investment. Tragically bad luck for them, I suppose.”

    “No, tragically bad luck is House Veiss’ stock and trade. Natalia’s shameful end, all that scrutiny from the Inquisition and Administratum audits, and no sooner do they commit to Endrite…the Patriots, and a crusade which will surely hammer through Baraspine and thrust into Tephaine by way of Endrite.”

    “Aye, my friend, that’s more than likely.” Lady Kembi nodded sagely. “If Caiser has any sense, at least. I think I’ll light a candle and raise a toast for our beleaguered comrades from Kol and Veiss, long may their plights be to our benefits!”

    The convict stood idly by while the rogue traders and chartist captains momentarily ignored him. He vividly imagined each and every little way he’d have meticulously broken the uppity bitch - and any of these soft shits - in another, better and freer life. It was a life ruined beyond reclamation by that sisterfuckin’ savage Arcolin DeRei, his sad sack rivals in the Inquisition, and the…the…


    “Finish your thought.”

    He tensed. The feminine whisper in his head was alluring, mischievous, provocative…

    …and inhuman.


    I insist.”

    The whisper became a low growl, thick with threat. Merle shuddered and complied.

    Daemons.

    The musical, breaking glass chuckle echoed thunderously. Merle’s forced smile became a tortured grimace as he tasted bile in the back of his mouth. It was foul, alongside the constant gritty and metallic taste from his false teeth, the originals having been bashed out by his former captors…on multiple occasions.

    Merle’s metallic fingers twitched as he remembered how that useless, limp-dicked prick Vincent Nyl had torn out the teeth that his li’l ganger-girl slut Kally hadn’t bashed out, with these same fingers, while that holier-than-thou whore Sapphira had motherfuckin’ helped ‘em do me like that. He inhaled deeply, and grimly pressed his tongue against the front of his clenched, coarse and cold teeth.

    At least I got to beat that sonofabitch to death with his own arm at that micro-dick measurin’ contest…and holy shit, were those bitches’ screams beautiful to hear as I did him in…

    The convict’s vengeful thoughts were interrupted by the firm grasp of a hand on his shoulder, as another grasped tightly at his waist. His own hands. He stood frozen at the unwelcome sensory memories of a raw, remorseless force that shoved down and demandingly grasped and pawed. There was the rancid warmth of a grunted, belched breath on his neck. It was followed by the bristly scrape of his unshaven chin against his ear, followed by the sickly moist rasp of his tongue.

    Merle released his breath with a shudder as the phantom touches dissipated; the legacy of depredations and torments inflicted on victims that now only existed in his memory and as screaming fragments of souls. The convict shakily cuffed away the cold sweat on his brow, and avoided looking at his new hand.


    “Do you remember which one of your conquests that was?” the whisper queried, evidently bored with the traders’ conversation and in need of diversion. Its voice was the lazy rustle of a tree’s leaves in the gust of a light summer’s wind, accompanied by the soft creak of the ancient oak’s fruitful bounty: nine freshly hung corpses, swaying gently on their coarse rope vines.

    Merle slowly and fearfully shook his head, and desperately tried not to remember any of what had been an innumerable number of abuses, debasements, and outrages inflicted in his long and disreputable life. The convict now knew the exact number of his victims, and the exact nature of the violence wrought.

    The…daemon…had shown him, and made him live through every one of those harrowing ordeals in his extended medical solitary confinement after the Baraspine mission…and again, on this very orbital.

    Too many. The fleeting sensations had reminded him of too many

    The whisper in his mind rumbled with the contented purr of an apex feline, idly watching its next meal squirm in helpless, hopeless terror as it was batted back and forth in its massive paws.


    “It’s almost a shame there’s no time for us to relive them…all over again.” the whisper sighed regretfully. The exhalation was as faint as the wind through an abandoned mausoleum’s cracked, devotional stained glass, on a world forever in darkness.

    No, not again, please! The condemned man struggled to gulp as his mouth went dry.

    “I say, Caretaker!

    Merle started with a choked, surprised grunt and fixed his eyes on the shouter. It was Harazan. The trader was a jowly, thickset man, tightly cocooned in luxurious and elaborately patterned silks. He leaned forward across the table on a forearm; poised so as not to endanger the toweringly high wig of powdered curls that sat precariously on his head. His porcine face was flushed a furious red.


    “Pay attention, would you?” the whisper mockingly chided as it revelled in the moment. The chuckled words intertwined with the cracking glass of storefronts, shattered by a riotous humanity in their mindless obedience to a vitriolic demagogue.

    “What are you, man, hourly?” Harazan roared with a contemptuous sneer.


    “Changer of Ways…you can’t find adequate help these days.” the whisper wryly sympathized. It clicked its non-existent tongue in disappointment, the abrupt snap-crack of a windowpane fractured by an unforeseen downburst of wind - the first taste of destruction in a devastatingly ruinous storm, in which the deluge would drown thousands.

    “Emperor of Terra…you can’t find adequate help these days.” the corpulent Harazan wryly muttered, with a derisive click of his tongue. He gave a rather fiendish smirk to his faux-friendly competitors.

    Merle felt a cold chill run down his spine as the trader echoed the…daemon. Did it…?


    “Oh, don’t you worry about that.” the whisper casually admonished him. Its tone was that of a breeze across a field of lush flowers which sprouted through a legion of sun-bleached bones, half buried by the inexorable progression of time rather than the effort of mortal hands. The flowers, as red as the blood which nourished their growth, waved sedately in imitation of the faded, tattered scraps of once-proud martial pennants, fluttering on their rusted standards.

    The convict had every reason to worry…but he did nothing. He could do nothing.


    “I’m delighted that you’ve reconciled yourself to reality.” the whisper cooed with sincere patronization. The shrill scream of a kettle, which would not be boiled and neglected for another six weeks, pierced the air as Ella Seren brushed aside the angry, anguished tears from eyes blinded by more than the mere doubts and miseries of fragile mortals.

    Merle bristled as the merchants chortled and scoffed at him, disparaged the notion of by-the-hour labor, and commiserated with one another on the failings of their domestics.

    Y’all should be an expert at this by now. Merle thought, as he winched another smile on his face and ate another implicit show of his perceived inferiority. Smile now, an’ shank ’em in the neck later.

    “My sincerest apologies, m’lord.” he said, with another obsequious bow. “Cooped up here on my lonesome, my mind tends to wander sometimes. What was it y’all wanted?”

    “Sancta Heroican Riesling.” the red-faced trader spat out at last. “Did you get it that time, you troglodytic ape?”

    Smile now, shank ’em later. “Yessir.” he said, bowing again.

    There are two bottles left in the stores. the whisper informed him, the lazy ooze of royal blood seeping down across leather seats, an assassination that would spark a war.

    “I believe we have two bottles in the store.”

    Two of the last in existence, in fact.

    “They’re very rare now, after all’a that unfortunate business couple’a years back.”

    “Yes, yes.” Harazan blustered, waving his hand. “I asked for wine, not a history lesson.”

    “One moment, my lord.” a trader on the opposite side of the table interrupted. He was a severe man with a snowy beard and thinning hair, and a starched high collar that facilitated his desire to look down his nose at anyone he was speaking to. He was narrowing his eyes down the table at Merle. “I have a question for the caretaker.”

    Merle could hear the daemon tittering, but he turned towards the stately rogue trader regardless. “Can I be of assistance, my lord...?”

    “Vaegar.” the rogue trader answered icily. “You know that the Thurlows are a military family, and you know about the exterminatus on Sancta Heroica.” Vaegar narrowed his eyes. “In short, you know far too much for a mere caretaker.”

    Merle blinked. Oh, you motherfucker.

    Don’t complain to me. the whisper chided him. I didn’t tell you to tell them about Be’wesh and Lessus’ little spat over that poor, doomed world.

    “Who are you really?” Vaegar asked. Several other traders were squinting down the table at Merle now as well, not to mention their truculent-looking bodyguards.

    Tell him he’s a very keen observer. You actually work for an information broker.

    Merle was drawing a blank, and so he took the lifeline offered to him, even if it came from the...daemon.

    “Y’all got a sharp eye, mister Vaegar, I’ll give you that.” he said, forcing a chuckle. “As it happens, I do some work for an information broker on the side.”

    Tell him your name is Faustus.

    Merle almost frowned at that, but he knew better than to hesitate.

    “Mister Faustus, that’s my name.” he said, bowing.

    Vaegar frowned down his long nose. “Should I know it?”

    No. “Perhaps not, sir.” I am rather particular about my contracts. “The boss is very particular about contracts for his services.”

    Now go.

    “But if all’a y’all will excuse me, I’ll see about your drinks.”

    Merle could almost feel the eyes of the traders boring a hole through the back of his already-battered skull, but he didn’t dare look anywhere other than forward as he walked to the door with the marble-white servitors shuffling after him. He could feel a painful ticking behind his one remaining eye, and by the time he had made his way down the service stairway his vision was blurring and red at the edges.

    The daemon was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.

    It was leaning against the wall, warpglass-eyed, mockingly casual, but it had taken a form that Merle had never seen before. Now it was a woman from some underhive sump; pale but not unattractive, with a mane of hair dyed warlike blue and ganger’s piercings in her nose and lip.

    Not one’a mine. Merle knew. I’d have...it’d have made me…

    Perhaps it was taunting him by wearing a skin that reminded him of his little scummer slut Kally. True enough, in another life Merle would have bent such a vision over the kitchen table all day long, but right now all he felt was wilting terror. He knew what was hiding behind that blandly-smiling face, and what those red razor eyes could do to him on a whim.

    “What the fuck was that?” he asked the daemon. “Mister Faustus an’ all’a that grox-shit?”

    The way the flect-eyed woman’s smile widened told him that he had just made an imminently painful mistake, but instead she just folded her arms, pale skin showing through the ripped bodyglove.

    “Don’t worry.” she said. “I didn’t expect you to get that one.”

    Her voice was unfamiliar as well - a low but breezy contralto; though the accent reminded Merle somehow of the sad-sacks’ first mission in Adrantis, where they had found their missing Sister hacked up in Arcolin’s freezer and then nearly gotten shot to death by the PDF.

    “That joke’s probably lost to time.” the daemon went on, still smiling as she tapped a blue-painted nail against her arm. “But the gods remember it, the ones who control everything you do and everything you’ve ever done. Can you hear them laughing?”

    Merle couldn’t, and he didn’t want to. He clamped his plasma-scarred lips shut.

    “No, that isn’t how this works.” the daemon chided, pouting at him. “You have to ask three questions.”

    The jolt of pain in Merle’s left arm sent the servos of his bionic hand into a whining spasm, and warned him that he had best obey.

    “Why the Mariochi accent?” he blurted, the first thing that came to his fear-riddled mind.

    The daemon looked pleased, but Merle couldn’t tell because her face was melting, turning into red fire while everything else around him faded into black and translucent grey.

    STOP! Ella screamed with her mind, throwing up her hands. She didn’t even know which of her former friends she was hurling the instinctive thunderbolt at. She expected to see the furious aura shatter and stumble to the ground, but instead it simply drank in the psychic scream and threw it back at her, ten times amplified. Ella’s psychic vision exploded into fizzing sparks and she fell back against the wall, helplessly blind. A single afterimage was seared into her vision: a murder-red aura, reflecting splintered stars from its mirror-like body. It grinned like Chaos.

    It had changed its form since Baraspine, but the balefire glow of a daemon was unmistakable.

    “No…” she whispered, pleading. “No, you can’t be here…”

    Ella’s already racing heart spiked with fear, and she clawed her way along the wall in a futile attempt to get away. The warp-thing was coming to kill her, and there was nothing she could do about it. With her psychic focus scattered to the winds, she was an ordinary, frail, blind human, trapped against the wall by a merciless interdimensional killer.

    She was going to die.

    No. a sepulchral voice chuckled inside her head. I am not the one you call the Other. But you are right about one thing – you are going to die.

    A thick hand closed around her throat, the fingernails digging into the sides of her neck. She kicked out blindly, and she heard a grunt as her small foot collided with hard muscle. An answering fist jackhammered into her stomach, driving all the breath from her in a strangled whimper. The other hand crushed harder against her windpipe, preventing her from drawing another. Blood thumped in her temples, even as she instinctively curled around the awful pain radiating through her abdomen. Her clawing hand slapped against a face, nails dragging down across stubble-short hair and a melted mass of scar tissue.

    Carson. The convict was possessed. She could feel herself weeping in fear, hot tears spilling from her blind eyes and running down her cheeks. Merle slapped away her scrabbling hand and slammed her cheek into the floor, pawing at her left ear until he found the microbead and yanked it out.

    Please. She couldn’t draw breath to speak the word, but her lips formed it.

    Now, now. the tomb-dark voice rumbled softly in her ear. The gods help those who help themselves. Remember your mantras.

    She felt herself being rolled onto her front, pressed hard into the cold ceramic with Carson's knee digging into her back. But the pressure on her throat lessened, and it was just enough to allow her to draw a scraping, reedy breath.

    I am soul-bound to the Emperor, and through His grace I speak across the void. The voice had changed. It was soft now; smooth like running water, liquid with an accent she hadn’t heard since the City of Sight on holy Terra.

    “That. Won’t. Work.” Ella rasped at the thing that was talking in Raeni’s voice. She wasn’t even sure where the defiance came from. She could barely breathe past the pain in her stomach, and her skin was crawling with terror-adrenaline.

    My soul bears the imprint of the Emperor. the daemon went on, relentless. Now its voice was Alicia’s. I fear no evil, for He shelters and guides me.

    Almost against her own will, she could see it. A formless thing of pulsing red and flashing, reflective silver, hovering above Carson like a puppetmaster pulling the strings. Carson’s own foetid green aura was shot through with bleeding scarlet, misshapen and compressed around the head. But it wasn’t his head that drew her inner eye - it was his hand.

    Something had taken root there, a hard black diamond that traced inky tendrils out through the veins of his fingers, pulsing and corrupted. These veins fed on life instead of sustaining it, draining hourglass trickles of infected starlight up into the mirror-bright mass above.

    That’s better. the daemon cooed.

    Ella felt Merle’s weight shift, and then the convict’s hand was pressing against her cheek. It was his black hand, she could feel it - slick and fever hot. In horror she tried to wriggle away, but instead the hand twisted in her short hair, yanking her head painfully up and back. She let out a choked whimper, expecting a knife to open her exposed throat, but instead he only held her there, facing back into the meeting room. The sounds of visceral combat washed over her once again, bringing with them waves of unfiltered pain. They rushed into her like salt water, stinging her blind eyes, pouring down her throat, choking her.

    “I gotta hand it to y’all, Blondie.” the possessed convict cackled. He was close to her ear, his breath hot on her neck. “I had me a lotta fun fuckin’ with these friends’a yours, but y’all done gone taken the fuckin’ cake by kickin’ off this glorious shitshow. I’ve seen folks do some crazy shit for pussy, but damn.”

    Oh, don’t listen to him. the daemon soothed, a cold creeping touch at her other ear. It’s no secret how you feel about the lost soul...but for what it’s worth, I believe you meant what you said about saving lives.

    It chuckled, the carefree laugh that Alicia had used so freely when she was still wearing Theodosia’s mask.

    Although your efforts so far leave something to be desired.

    Ella wanted to fight it, she really did. But her limbs were weighed down, and her mind was waterlogged. She felt like she was drowning.

    Have you considered, the daemon whispered, That your hard decision might not be whether to betray your friends?

    Every other sound seemed to fade away, until all she could hear was the knifepoint scratch of its voice across the inside of her skull

    Have you considered, that the only way to destroy the one you call the Other...is to kill Alley?


    Merle blinked and found himself looking up at the glaringly bright lights of the space-station underdeck. He had fallen against the wall, and the wood-panelled steel was hard against his back. The daemon was standing over him, her hands in the hip-pockets of her bodyglove.

    “So there you see.” she said. “Call the voice my tribute to Alicia. And what is your third question?”

    Merle could hear his heartbeat in his ears; a wet, swallowing sound. His mind was blank.

    The daemon slowly lowered herself until she was squatting over Merle, her folded arms resting atop her knees. The red glass eyes bored through him, and the gentle smile promised pain.

    “I will have to hurt you, if you don’t hurry.”

    “Whaa…” Merle stammered. “Wha’ if…”

    The daemon blinked and slowly tilted her head, blue hair cascading down her shoulder. “What if what?”

    “What if I’d never left the Mooncalf?” Merle nearly screamed. “What if I’d never gone down to that shit-hole water planet, an’ never cut my hand on Arcolin’s motherfuckin’ flect-cloak!?”

    The daemon gave him a wounded look.

    It was at times like this that Merle Carson knew that he had been born lucky. It was a shame that Lili and Tomo and Mister E’s endlessly entertaining menagerie of xenos had bought it down on Teleostei, but that couldn’t be helped. He was especially going to miss Mal, that crazy Eldar motherfucker. But Merle was a survivor before all else, and he had proved that when he had managed to gather up Emerald’s remaining muscle and convince Van Der Mir that he needed all the help he could get. It hadn’t been hard of course - lord Sidonis was a possessed psyker with all the power of the inquisition at his fingertips, and they were one shitty little sprint trader, racing to get to Sol before he could pull the heist of the millenium on the Emperor’s own golden ass.

    Merle looked around at the balloons and paper-chains that had been scraped together to decorate the gallery, and wondered why he seemed to be the only one here having fun.

    “Hey, Fancy Feet!” he called out, intercepting Gavin before he could slink out of the room on his less than stealthy bionic legs, “Where y’all think you’re goin’? Party’s just gettin’ started!”

    He pressed his empty beer bottle into the haggard psyker’s hand, and guided him towards the table where Kelly Black was currently standing talking to Ella. Merle had to admit, he’d never expected to see Blondie the Psyker in a party dress. She was still a bit too skinny for his liking, though Kelly Verispex on the other hand had legs for days.

    What was it now? Merle wondered, trying to recall the overstuffed folders that Emerald had made them all read, on the agents that Sidonis had wanted to make disappear. Tattoo of a Solomon sand-shark in ultraviolet ink, left thigh? He’d have been happy to shine a blacklight on her to check.

    “Lookin’ good, missy.” he complimented the verispex with a wink, as he reached towards the table for another bottle.

    Kelly just rolled her eyes at him, while Ella looked nervous, her blind eyes darting in every direction except his.

    Merle just laughed. Gavin was still trying to escape, so Merle gave him a shove towards the two women.

    “Woah!” Kelly exclaimed, starting forward to steady Gavin as he nearly stumbled into them. “Carson, you prick!” She paused when she looked into Gavin’s dead-eyed face.

    “My apologies, agent Kelly Black.” the technopath mumbled as he looked at the floor, and tried to pull away.

    “Hey...” Kelly interrupted him, moving slightly to one side to block his exit. She looked at him again, and gently gestured him aside. “Are you okay?”

    Before Ella could follow them, Jansen came tottering through the crowd and clapped a silver-laced hand on her shoulder with slightly too much force, so that Merle saw the scrawny psyker wince.

    “How about that, eh?” the Glavian hiccupped. “We managed to organise a surprise party for a psyker. That’s some fething achievement!”

    Shit. Merle thought, smirking to himself. Our designated driver’s peaked too early.

    To her credit, Blondie managed to hitch up a smile and pretend that she wasn’t confused or worried by Kelly’s sudden departure, or Merle’s continued presence.

    “I suppose I should have cottoned on when Marc suggested I wear a dress to dinner this evening.” she said, and glanced back over her shoulder, presumably using whatever senses had replaced her busted eyes to try and locate her inquisitorial chaperone.

    Jansen smiled hazily, and enveloped the much smaller woman in a crushing bear hug. “You know what? I fething love you, Tressa.”

    Merle inhaled through grimacing teeth as Ella went rigid, clearly not knowing how to react to the embrace. Definitely peaked too early, poor bastard.

    “Alright, flyboy.” he said, not unkindly, as he took firm hold of the Glavian’s arms and pried them apart. “Lets go an’ sit down for a bit, huh? Just you an’ uncle Merle.”

    Ella didn’t seem to know how to react to that either.

    “It’s...alright.” she said. “I know he just…”

    “Misses his sister.” Merle finished for her, nodding sagely. He hooked Jansen’s arm around his shoulder and guided him over to a bench, where he shrugged him into a seat and gave the tall Glavian a commiserating pat on the shoulder. “Hey, if it’s any consolation, pal, I know what it’s like havin’ a sister as well.”

    He didn’t think any more of it until he grew tired of the rogue trader booze and was on his way back to the medicae ward to look for something stronger, when Marc Black cut him off with an arm across the bulkhead door.

    “Stay away from them, Carson.” the investigator warned. His right fist was clenched, and Merle could see a small injector needle protruding from the signet ring on his finger. The inquisition types always were devilishly ingenious when it came to stashing weapons.

    The excessive threat just made Merle laugh. “Stay away from who exactly, boy?”

    “Kelly and Ella.” Marc growled back at him without humour. “For a start.”

    Merle laughed harder. “Oh, I see. Stand down, big brother - y’all can’t blame a guy for trying.”

    They stared at each other for a moment, unblinking.

    “Or maybe y’all can.” Merle allowed, and withdrew a step to lean casually up against the wall of the interdeck corridor. “Anyway, rest easy mister tall, dark an’ handsome - I ain’t gonna lay a finger on your sister. Kally-girl’s more my speed anyway, or ’least she would be if she weren’t full’a the plague.”

    He chuckled at Marc’s darkening expression.

    “Take it from me, boyo - ain’t no chance I’ll be foolin’ around with that one when she’s infectious an’ terminal. No pussy’s worth dyin’ over.”

    Marc clearly wasn’t happy to be reminded of his friend’s condition. Merle watched his fist flex open and closed, the injector needle glinting in the harsh shipboard light.

    “Just so you know.” he told Merle, coldly. “I think of Kally as a sister too.”

    Merle thought about that for a moment. “Well shit, I’ll hand it to ya kid. Y’all are serious about protecting your family. I reckon y’all’d make a natural uncle too.”

    That seemed to catch the investigator off guard, which amused Merle no end.

    “I know, right? Wouldn’t’a thought that yer ol’ pal Merle had a sister as well. An’ a niece, ain’t that some shit.” He flicked his eyebrows, pointedly. “I still think about seein’ ’em again someday, after this high falootin’ nonsense with Malfallax is done an’ dusted.”

    Marc laughed, but his humour was bitter. “If any of us are getting out of this alive, I doubt it’ll be you.”

    “Ah, miss me with that doubtful shit.” Merle said, waving a hand. “Livin’s always the number fuckin’ one objective. An’ since Van Der Mir’s been kind enough to stand me an official pardon, I’m thinkin’ I’ll be usin’ that sweet, sweet freedom to go an’ find my niece.”

    “Emperor help her, then.” Marc replied sceptically.

    “Hey, I’ll have y’all know.” Merle lectured, pointing a serious finger at him. “I went to the fuckin’ wall for that tyke. I even took out that waste’a space Casterian who called himself her dad.”

    Marc’s expression twisted in disgust. “Aren’t Casterians supposed to be honourable?”

    “Oh, I doubt that, kid.” Merle worked his jaw, looking down for a moment as he lost himself in memory. Evey fuckin’ asshole who’s under’a knife will plead an’ swear to any fuckin’ thing to make the cuttin’ stop. Clay an’ the rest of ‘em was wrong, doubtin’ me. Casterian’s ain’t nothin’ special. Surfacing from the reverie, he brightened. “Anyhoo… do me a solid an’ let me know when y’all are plannin’ on killin’ Arcoli, yeah?. I want me a piece’a that cultist cocksucker.”

    He ducked under Marc’s arm and continued down the corridor. The investigator’s eyes were wary, but he didn’t stop him.

    “Oh,” Merle said, turning and waving his ring finger back at Marc. “Put away your l’il prick kid, before y’all hurt yourself.”

    The encounter kept him chuckling all the way to the med-lab, and he was still in a good mood as he rifled in vain through the doctor’s stores for combat narcs.

    “Throne fuckin’ damn it. No more easy access since the one-armed bitch took over the operation.”

    “And it turns out that was a wise precaution.” a voice interrupted him stonily.

    Merle rose and turned, with a winning smile. “Ah, doc! Jus’ the lady I was wantin’ to see.”

    “I wish I could say the same.” Julia Taymor was a stately woman, seldom flustered. The same could not be said of her hatchet-faced daughter, who had one hand on her holstered sidearm as she watched Merle’s fruitless search.

    Scram, Carson.” she warned him pointedly. “Wait until Lawrence pays you off and sends you on your merry way. Then you can buy all the illegal drugs you like, and hopefully collapse and die in an alleyway somewhere.”

    “Well shit, I can think a’ worse ways to die.” Merle grinned. “But paid off? Nah. I ain’t doin’ this for Thrones, lovely - an’ I sure as shit ain’t doin’ it for the Throne.”

    “Oh my God-Emperor – “ Ryobi began, half turning as if she couldn’t bear to look at him anymore.

    “Eileen...” Doctor Taymor admonished her, gently. It seemed the righteous old broad still didn’t hold with taking the Emperor’s name in vain.

    You can take the Sister outta the convent…and ain’t that a cryin’ shame.

    “Sorry, mom.” Ryobi said, stiffly, and turned back towards Merle. “As I was saying, asshole, I really don’t really give a shit…”

    “Out of curiosity, Mister Carson,” Taymor interrupted, in her clipped Ophelian accent. “What is your motivation?”

    Merle felt his grin widening. “Well, shit…ain’t it obvious, doctor-lady?” He spread his arms. “Pussy. I’m doin’ this for pussy.”

    “Oh fuck off already…” Ryobi groaned.

    “Seriously, babe,” Merle chided her. “Think…savin’ the Emperor an’ the Imperium? That there’s a lifetime, golden-goddamn-ticket to an all y’all can fuckin’ eat buffet o’ fresh, sweet, gene-pure Sororita snatch.”

    Taymor and Ryobi stared at him, silently.

    Well shit, looks like I can rattle the ol’ bird after all. That’s a fuckin’ achievement on par with Jansen’s surprise psyker party.

    “What?” he challenged them. “What? Seriously…the fuckin’ silent treatment?” He shook his head. “Ugh, fuck it. I’m findin’ Vince and gettin’ another beer.”

    This time, when the vision melted away, Merle had real tears in his remaining eye. He could feel the daemon’s hand on his shoulder, soft and warm as it gave a commiserating squeeze.

    “I’m sorry.” the blue-haired monster cooed. “But you did ask. I suppose it’s in the nature of humans to torture themselves.”

    The sound of footsteps below made both of them look up - the daemon with interest, Merle with the cold needles of fear prickling across his skin. The daemon rose first, flat-soles boots striking no sound against the metal deck as she leaned round the door to the orbital’s store rooms.

    “Oh wow.” she giggled, “Come and look at this.”

    Miserably, Merle Carson dragged himself up and crawled to the door, his heart beating jaggedly. Down among the crates and barrels where he had hacked off his own hand, a young woman was picking her way slowly around the room. He recognised her as one of the traders’ attendants - an albino with wispy, snow-white hair and eyes that were as pale as chips of ice. She wore a sleeveless, low-cut bodysuit that flattered all of her slim curves - and, Merle didn’t fail to note, gave her maximum freedom of movement, should she happen to be a bodyguard merely posing as a decorative pair of tits.

    He licked his scarred lips, feeling his anxiety rising. And, to his surprise and consternation, he noticed that something else had risen too.

    “Hmm.” the daemon hummed in amusement as her reflective eyes roamed down to Merle’s belt. She dropped to one knee, so as to whisper conspiratorially in his ear. “I guess those chem-gelds the Sister gave you finally wore off…or maybe they were permanent, and I’m just fucking with you.”

    Merle didn’t dare look round, but he could feel the daemon’s smile as a prickle against his burn-ravaged ear. He almost dared to feel relief - but at the same time it brought back memories; painful memories that the daemon had forced onto him, of all the suffering that particular part of him had forced onto too many! others.

    A soft, cold exhalation caressed his neck as the daemon laughed quietly.

    “Either way, it’s a shame to waste it. Why don’t you go and talk her out of that bodysuit?”

    Merle’s stomach twisted. Like I have any fuckin’ choice…

    The daemon chuckled again as it patted his mangled cheek. “You’ve never had a choice.”

    Merle pursed his lips to stifle a whimper as its form’s manicured nails idly trailed across his flesh.

    “There’s never a choice. There’s only fate.” The daemon decreed, as it seized him by the back of his neck. He felt its talons sink lightly into the cold, sweaty skin of his throat. “Now...get off your sorry ass, and go get yourself off with the nice albino lady!”

    Merle rose to his feet with a groan, due as much to hopeless despair as it was to a lifetime of hard abuse to his body, and stepped into the light. The albino woman, who had been running her fingertips along one of the panelled walls, stopped and blinked at him.

    “Oh!” she exclaimed, and let out a nervous giggle. “Hello!”

    Merle licked his fingertips and used them to smooth down his eyebrows as he crossed the floor. It was only when his fingers scraped across raw, lumpy flesh that he remembered he didn’t have a left eyebrow anymore. He heard an exasperated huff behind him. He didn’t care. If the daemon was sighing at his stupidity, at least it wasn’t hurting him. He remembered crawling across this floor, dragging Vincent’s arm after him, while flect-eyed versions of Ryobi and Taymor and all the others stared accusingly down at him…

    “You’re the caretaker, right?” the albino woman said, with a guileless smile. Either she was very vapid, or she was putting on an act.

    “That’s me.” Merle agreed, halting just short of the albino. He forced a smile. “So what’s the deal, y’all come down here for some private time?

    The woman tossed her hair and laughed again, airily. “Oh no, nothing like that. I’m just having a look around.”

    Merle’s heart was racing, and he could feel cold sweat on the back of his neck. His mouth was dry but he could feel the daemon’s claws scraping a warning along the nerves of his left arm. He clenched his mechanical fist to hide the spasms jolting through its fingers.

    “I wouldn’t mind havin’ a good look around you.” he said, leaning his other hand against the wall. “That’s a real nice bodysuit y’all got goin’ on there.”

    He saw realisation click behind the woman’s pale eyes. They darted around his ravaged features, from his plasma-burned ear to the misshapen dome of his skull. “Er...thanks, but I’m not interested.”

    Please… he implored the daemon, almost forming the word with his lips. His only answer was a braking-glass crackle of laughter, and a tightening of the red-hot claws around his arm. He cleared his throat with a ragged laugh, and raised Vincent’s bionic hand to stroke the fingers down the woman’s side.

    “Ah, come on now, be nice…”

    The woman slapped away his hand before he could touch her. “No seriously, leave me alone.”

    Merle’s bowels were water, and his stomach was twitching with the need to vomit. He stepped forward, desperately. “Just let me-”

    “Step back you low-life or I’ll break you!” the woman thundered. She raised her hand and a halo of light blossomed around it, forming the flickering shape of a letter I with three crossbars. “Do you know what this is?”

    Merle knew perfectly well what it was. And as the daemon’s game was revealed and he heard the peals of laughter splintering around him, something inside his fear-contorted body snapped.

    “Inquisition.” he murmured, and after that it all came out of him in a rush. “Motherfuckin’ inquisition!? FUCK!

    He swung his bionic fist into the wall, and expensive wood panels splintered to reveal the raw metal beneath.

    “Yeah, I know the inquisition!” he shouted in the woman’s face. All the fear had gone out of him, metastasising into blind rage. “I was hired to kill some pricks from the inquisition! Then I was forced to work for some other inquisition pricks, whose boss by the way was a motherfuckin’ daemonhost, an’ then I got arrested an’ taken to Terra where I got interrogated by even more inquisition pricks! Oh, an’ that ain’t all!”

    He swung hard into a rusted crate, and the ancient chain parted and whipped across the floor like a wounded snake. His backswing took out a rack of dusty wine bottles, sending them rolling and smashing across the floor.

    Then the daemonhost’s cock-suckin’ apprentice clamps a bomb to my neck an’ takes me on a merry sightseein’ tour round this whole fucked-up nebula, which culminates in her pet ape straight up tryna murder me on this here fuckin’ orbital. My life ain’t been nothin’ but a procession of inquisition pricks linin’ up to take a turn at my ass, so of course you’re fuckin’ inquisition an’ all! Of course! FUCK!

    He punched the wall again, and then again, until the wood shredded and fell away and the steel hull plates were as dented and scored as his bionic hand. Merle doubled up, heaving.

    When he looked up, the woman was actually smiling at him.

    “Throne damn.” she said, grinning from ear to ear. “You’re Merle Carson.”

    Merle was in too much pain to deny it, and too sick to care how she knew.

    “You know what?” she said, lowering her glowing hand and snuffing the illusory emblem. “I think I might take you home after all. The inquisitor will be so happy to meet you.”

    Merle doubted that very much, but before he could say anything there was the unmistakable sound of footsteps.

    “I knew there was something off about you.” said a burly gene-jack in a long leather coat. Beside him were a man with stimm-injectors jutting prominently from his chest, a pair of bare-knuckle duellists, and a buzz-cut woman in padded feral-world armour. “But inquisition? Frak me. You’re dead meat.”

    The stimm-head raised a hand to activate the vox hanging at his shoulder. “Boss…”

    He got no further as the albino woman threw out her hand and then snatched it back. The vox tore away from the man’s webbing with a static squeal, and around him the other bodyguards yelped as their own communicators were ripped off and scattered across the floor. Realising what was happening, the feral-world woman spun to run a warning back up the stairs, but the albino flicked her hand and the door smashed closed in front of her. The feral-worlder herself was spun and pinned against the door like a crucifix, psychic ice creeping up around her arms and legs as she struggled.

    “Think you can manage the rest, hon?” the albino asked Merle, smiling horrifically through gritted teeth.

    The adrenaline still coursing through Merle’s body was screaming now, screaming for another outlet as it bunched his muscles and set his heartbeat throbbing in his neck. If he couldn’t kill the daemon or this inquisition bitch, then by all things holy and unholy he was still going to kill someone.

    “Bitch,” he rasped as he began to shrug off his leather coat. “How the fuck do y’all think I got my metal pud-puller? Now hold my fuckin’ jacket.”

    “I beg your pardon?” the albino asked.

    “It’s a nice fuckin’ jacket.”

    The four remaining trader bodyguards were already stalking acros the cluttered store room towards them. Merle dragged one of the few intact bottles from the smashed rack, yanked the cork with his teeth, and took a long swig before smashing the end of the bottle against the rusted crate.


    + + + + + +

    Elizabeth Borden watched the feral worlder choke on the blood splattering down from her throat, and relaxed her focus to let the body slump to the ground. She couldn’t fault Carson’s target prioritisation - he had saved the immobilised woman for last, and the look of terror in her eyes as he came stalking towards her with the broken bottle in hand had been delicious.

    Sancta Heroican Reisling, no less. She wondered if Carson was aware that he had just killed five people with one of the rarest wines in the segmentum.

    The rogue convict himself was a gasping, panting wreck; spattered with blood that was both his own and the enemies’. His bionic fist was especially coated.

    “Now I think we need to go and have a word with the traders.” Elizabeth decreed with a flourish as she stepped carefully around the bodies that Carson had left in his wake. “Don’t you worry, I’ll do the heavy lifting on this one.”

    Merle just grunted, and stooped to clean his hands on the leather stormcoat of the dead gene-jack. He spent a fastidiously long time scrubbing the blood out of the joints of his augmetic fingers, before he went back to Elizabeth and snatched up his coat. Elizabeth shrugged, and skipped her way to the door, until she reached the spreading pool of blood left by the dead feral-worlder.

    She cleared her throat pointedly, and gestured to the pool, and then to the jacket that Carson had just begun to shrug off his arm and slip his hand into. The ravaged convict gaped at her.

    “Didn’t y’all fuckin’ hear me when I said this was a really nice jacket?”

    “Well these are really nice shoes.” Elizabeth countered cheerfully.

    She could hear the convict grumbling and cursing under his breath, but eventually he stooped and laid his coat down across the pool of blood blocking the doorframe.

    “Lovely.” Elizabeth opined, clapping her hands together. She trod imperiously across the jacket and onto the clean decking on the opposite side, leaving Carson to curse as he gathered up his ruined garment.

    “So which one’a those inquisitorial cock-suckers do you work for, then?” Merle grumbled as they traipsed back up the stairs to Concordia orbital’s central chamber.

    Elizabeth giggled. “Oh don’t worry, all will be revealed.”

    The voices of the traders, blissfully unaware of their bodyguards’ messy fates, faded back in as they drew closer, and Elizabeth paused by the door to listen. Adrantis’ premier businessmen seemed to have moved on to discussions of how they should best navigate the Adrantean schism, and what several of their absent colleagues might be doing to betray them to one side or the other.

    “What happened to that new-money dilettante?” lady Kembi was asking. “What was her name, Dozy Prince?”

    “I haven’t the foggiest.” Harazan replied, with a shrug that threatened to dislodge his towering wig. “Bursts onto the scene and starts throwing her weight around, then vanishes a few months later.”

    “The answer’s right under your nose, my dear trader Harazan.” Vaegar’s glacial voice cut in. Elizabeth’s patron was, as usual, all insufferable arrogance. “Did you think to auger the fresh wreckage drifting around the station?”

    No, Elizabeth mentally chided him. And neither would you have, if I hadn’t suggested it to you.

    “It’s from Prince’s Arthashastra.” Vaegar revealed, a slight smile twitching beneath his immaculate beard.

    “Oh. What a shame.” said lady Kembi, in a tone that suggested she didn’t care at all. “Still, the trader life is a perilous one, not suited to most.”

    You have no idea. Elizabeth thought to herself.

    “Her passing isn’t entirely in vain though.” Vaegar went on. “I recovered a rather beautiful relic that might otherwise have spun away into the void.”

    Harazan flapped a hand, irritably. “The Emperor’s providence, I’m sure.”

    None other. Elizabeth thought, grinning quietly to herself. It could only have been by the Emperor’s grace that there had actually been something to salvage. A dead inquisitor’s force weapon, no less - unwisely gifted to an astropath with treachery in her heart, and now, by His will, reclaimed by his true servants. It had been scorched by fire and void exposure, but still she remembered the finely crafted gladius glowing like a beacon to her eldritch sense.

    “Look, Vaegar.” Kembi said, and Elizabeth realised that the lady trader was pointing towards the door, right at her and Carson. “Your decoration is back, and she’s brought the help.”

    Elizabeth saw four of the traders beginning to rise to their feet - evidently the ones who had sent their heavies after Carson. Vaegar, who had no such warning, seemed at ease with the caretaker’s presence now that he stood beside his own faithful bodyguard.

    “Has he still not fetched the Emperor-damn drinks?” was all her oh-so-wise master had to say.

    It was all too much, and Elizabeth let out a cackle of laughter as the game reached its end. “Sorry sir, but I’m afraid the bar is closed.”

    Kembi and Harazan were lurching to their feet. The four forewarned traders were already up and running for the doors. Elizabeth let her mask fall, and unleashed her powers.

    Walls of fire sprang up across the exit doorframes like the judgement of the Emperor himself. The traders reeled back, screaming and yelping. One courtier was beating frantically at her silken gown where sparks had caught the material.

    “In the name of Alexis Yannick,” Elizabeth stated in loud, clear High Gothic, “And of the Emperor’s most holy ordo hereticus, I order you all to sit the frak down.”

    She called another pillar of fire into being, and with a mental twist compressed it into the great cross-barred I of the holy ordos. It hung there in the air, leaping and spitting, driving the traders back with its fearsome heat. They cowered, returning meekly to their seats at the table. Bodyguards watched helpless, while aides and handmaids broke down and wept with fear.

    Holding the warp-spawned fire in place was a strain that set a painful throbbing behind Elizabeth’s eyes, but she loved the theatricality of it all. Most of all, she loved the terror in the traders’ eyes.

    Lord Harazan and lady Kembi, two of the architects of the Hercynian ethnic cleansings - now cowering before a psychic Ghost girl from the Uru. It pleased her immensely.

    “You are marked men, my lords and ladies.” she addressed them, raising her voice above the crack and boom of the flames. “And so I give you this command. If you do not intend to conspicuously support the Imperial crusade in Adrantis, then you had best not be seen anywhere near the nebula for its duration. Attendance of this meeting could be interpreted by my masters as a confession of Patriot sympathies.”

    She let the threat hang for a handful of heartbeats, and then released her focus. All at once, the fires flickered and died. Elizabeth smiled sweetly.

    “Now frak off.”

    All of the rogue traders and their attendants scurried to obey her. As Vaegar stumbled out of his seat and began to rake together his papers, Elizabeth singled him out with a pointing finger.

    “Not you, sir. I still need a ride off this station, after all.”

    She giggled for the benefit of the other traders as the room rapidly emptied. Once they were alone however she stalked across the hall, her sequined felt slippers soft against the marble tiles, and lowered herself delicately into the chair where Vaegar had been sitting. As she reclined, she spied the trader’s humidor sitting among the abandoned papers, and helped herself to one of the cigars within. The smell told her that it was finest quality lho from the Malfian sub.

    She inhaled deeply, snipped the end with Vaegar’s cutter, and lit the cigar with a psychic nudge.

    “That bit about needing a ride was a lie, by the way.” she explained to the utterly speechless Vaegar. “For your friends’ benefit, you know? Master Yannick will be here imminently, and he’d like to have a word with you. No need to fear...if you're compliant, that is.”

    “Fuck me.” she heard Carson curse quietly from the edge of the room. Trader Vaegar didn’t say anything at all.

    Elizabeth smiled, and crossed her ankles atop the edge of the table. They were really very nice shoes that Vaegar had gifted her. She would have to keep them. She took a long drag from the cigar, tipped back her head, and blew smoke into the silent, ash-smelling air.

    Truly, service was its own reward.

  10. #20
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    Perinetus
    Day 156 of Perinetus civil war
    Aftermath of the Battle of Arterial Two-Seven


    Corporal Leonid Jamaal Sadik distantly heard the all-clear from the freshly captured siege crawlers, and acknowledged on behalf of 3rd Sentinel Squadron because he was the only one left with a mere affirmative vox pulse as he numbly cantered his walker across the blasted, cratered wastelands around Arterial Two-Seven. The combined loyalist forces had taken the field. Praise to the Deus and Emperor.

    Victory.

    Leo spun his Sentinel’s cabin around, as he took in the grim spectacle of the battlefield. He tuned out the horrid rattle of the megabolter as it cranked to life and sent Oleg and Ivor to the Emperor vox shrilling in his ear. He could hear his name being shouted at him…but all Leo could see were the proud men of the 117th, resplendent in Martian red and gleaming brass, sprawled in the mud besides the burning hulks of their IFVs and walkers scattered across the banks of the oily, shit clogged Javelis.

    Victory…

    + “-dik! I say again, Corporal Sadik!” +

    + “Jammers, you khekker!” +

    Leo eased to a halt with the thoughtless, mechanical detachment of a veteran Sentinel-jock as his comrades continued to scream at him. The auspex pinged with friendly IFF contacts inbound...and an ominously anonymous anomalous mass. He knew where he was…where it happened, and where it was…but he couldn’t look at it yet, as that would make it and what happened real.

    Leo shakily removed his gloved hands from the control yoke, and almost primly unbuckled his leather skullcap. He rested it across his instrument panel as he saw his comrade Sentinels thud forward, their footfalls synchronistic with his racing heart. Chimera engines revved as the IFVs trundled after the trudging walkers, sprays of mud arcing as they slid and slewed. He exhaled a deep, ragged breath and screwed his eyes closed as he sagged back into the worn synthetic cushioning of his control throne.

    The Warhound’s predatory snout speared through the smokescreen as the god-machine loomed over the Sentinels. It canted its lupine cockpit down at them, as if the lesser machines who would dare to stand against it were a fleeting curiosity. The megabolter staccato flashed in the murk, and his desperate scream was drowned out by the cacophony of death as its fire destroyed the world around him.

    KHEK!!!” Leo roared, his shoulders tensing as he screamed at the top of his lungs. He took a shuddering breath, and smashed his clenched fists against the sides of his Sentinel’s armored cupola as he raged and shouted, unable to process what he’d barely survived. “Khek! Khek! KHEK!!!

    Leo slumped, elbows on his knees as he cupped his leather gloved hands around his mouth and nose. The cold, beaded sweat in his coarse beard was pressed against his flushed, overheating skin as Leo took hoarse, labored breaths. His world shook as he anxiously tapped his feet against the floor of his Sentinel, and the scrum of Firstborn outside slapped palms and smacked rifle stocks against the hull.

    “Oh big brother of mine…you’re alive, and you’re being a khekking shithead about it.” Leo snorted as he heard Kostya’s voice drown out the exultant shouts in Vostroyan outside. He visualized the mischievous glint his little brother would have in his rich brown eyes, and smiled ruefully. “I must inquire, but have you lost the manners our dear grandparents raised us with?”

    “How could I ever forget?” Leo chuckled hoarsely, smiling at the most welcome phantom voice.

    “So how about you be thankful?”

    “Yes, yes, Konstantin. Manners make the man.” Leo exhaled, and kissed the fingertips of his gloves. He touched them to the faith icons of Deus’ Cog and Emperor’s Aquila he kept on his dashboard, parting gifts from the beloved grandparents who had raised him and his younger brother, and then to the array of picts tacked in-between them as the riotous noise outside his armored cabin only increased.

    “Sadik, you magnificent Titan killing bastard! Open this khekking hatch! Now!”

    “I have fears for my safety if I do, Captain Volkov!” Leo shouted back in kind to his commanding officer, smiling yet completely serious. The lads were riled up...

    “As well you should! You’re surrounded by the 117th Firstborn - the biggest, hardest swinging dicks in the whole bloody crusade!” Volkov sallied back with a barked laugh, which was shared by what sounded by an awful many of the lads. “We’ll knock your rig over and drag you out if we must, Sadik!”

    “Captain, if I may have permission to file a complaint about disrespect to a machine spirit by a superior officer?” Leo called out, as he peeled off his gauntlets and tossed them onto his helmet.

    “Permission not granted, Corporal ! Now quit khekking stalling and dismount, you shit!” Volkov shouted and the horde of Firstborn outside roared their agreement, as a veritable drum tattoo beat against the hull of his Sentinel. “Out, and be honored by your comrades, Hero of the 117th!”

    Hero… Leo reflexively grimaced at the notion as he unclasped his restraint harness. No, I’m not a hero. I’m a lucky khekker. He smiled, and kissed the golden band on his left ring finger as he looked at the old, faded pict of Susanna and their beautiful, baby boy Maksim in arms. As I always have been.

    “Stand clear!” Leo cautioned as he leaned over to throw the door lever and cracked open the cabin.

    Corporal Sadik cried out in alarm as the hatch was violently wrenched open, and he was seized and dragged from his Sentinel. Leo landed backwards on the shoulders and raised hands of his comrades, who raucously shouted as they cheerfully tossed him in the air. He laughed like a certified madman as he was repeatedly launched and caught, and was obliged to protectively curl his arms around his head as the Firstborn further behind reached up to grasp and exuberantly strike him. He struggled to breathe.

    “That’s enough, you damned savages!” Volkov bawled above the jubilant scrum. “Set him down, and for the Deus-Emperor’s sake stop khekking beating the man to death in his hour of glory!”

    Leo was caught and carried down on the shoulders of his brothers in arms. The disoriented Sentinel pilot swayed, and was steadied by Firstborn hands as he took a breath and stood upright. No sooner had Leo found his feet, and he was roughly shoved through the gauntlet of adulation. Leo covered his head again as he sprinted through the congratulatory palm slaps and punches to come face to face with Volkov, his arms spread as broadly as his smile. Leo reeled as he attempted to come to attention and make a salute.

    “Cap-” Leo started as Volkov grasped him by the sides of his head and kissed him hard on the mouth.

    The Firstborn laughed heartily and several wolf whistled as Leo was eventually released from the firm hold. Leo grimaced and dragged the back of his hand across his beard framed mouth, and raised a skeptical brow at his grinning captain. “Is that how we’re saluting now, sir?”

    “Is that a complaint, hero?” Volkov queried. He frowned with mock aggrieved as he played to the mobbing Firstborn; hand clutched over his heart. “Why, I had even taken a mint in your honor!”

    “My brother Kostya might’ve appreciated that, sir.” Leo dryly counted, as the lads hollered and whooped. He chuckled with a dubious shake of his head. “I suspect his husband wouldn’t.”

    “Ah, you never know.” Volkov countered, with a rakish smile and dismissive shrug. The nobleman made a poised half turn, and quirked a suggestive brow at the Firstborn as clasped a hand on his sword belt and idly toyed with the hilt of his sheathed saber as they laughed. “Jealous husbands are my specialty.”

    “Your vaunted reputation precedes you, sir.” Leo confirmed. The captain was notorious within the regiment for his affairs, of honor and otherwise, when the opportunities presented themselves. He met Volkov’s eyes with a serious expression. “I’ll thank you to not envision my family in such a manner, sir.”

    The senior officer blinked at the rebuke, and his smile faded in as he straightened. Volkov took a step back, and acknowledged his subordinate with a serious nod. “You are quite correct, Corporal Sadik. My apologies.”

    Leo raised his hands to signal he took no offense. “You- ”

    DEGENERATES!” The Firstborn around Leo turned towards the bloodcurdling, howl of outrage as it tore through the air. “YOU COCKSUCKING, WHORESON CUCK BASTARDS!

    Leo barely registered the massed Firstborn’s own shout of fury as his senses target locked on the raging, traitor Princeps. The man’s features were curled back into a bestial, snarling rictus as he charged with hands outstretched like curled talons. His bloodshot eyes seared with hate as he frothed at the mouth.

    I WILL END YOU!

    Leo could barely hear the feral threats over the thunder of his heartbeat in his ears, and time seemed to slow down as he distantly registered that he was running towards the renegade. He saw the lesser Titan crew be bludgeoned into the muck by their Grenadier minder’s rifle stocks as they tried to follow their leader, who was seized by two more regimental veterans. The traitor was grappled by the arms, and brought to his knees with merciless blows to the kidneys from gauntleted fists and stomps on his ankles.

    He barely felt his ankle tweak as he slid to a halt before the subdued Princeps. He barely felt his knuckle spilt open from the other man’s teeth as he punched him in his open, screaming mouth. He barely felt the shockwave in his arms as his fists smashed into the traitor’s face with the thump of meat and crack of bone again, and again, and again. He barely felt the blood on his hands as he continued to swing, and with each blow he envisioned the shattered wreckage of Firstborn men and machinery. He hit harder, until he was caught in a vice grip around his arms and spun away from the battered renegade.

    Woah, woah, woah!” Volkov shouted in his ear as he held him tightly, despite his efforts to struggle free and finish what he had started with the Princeps. “You’re done, Sadik! You’re done!”

    Leo fought his way back around to see the Grenadiers holding the traitor upright allowed him to tumble sideways into the mud. The Princeps emulated his downed Warhound as he lay with his face ploughed into the mud, humbled and shamed. Firstborn shouted abuse at the traitors from behind the cordon of veterans who held them back, and spat and kicked clods of fouled earth at them as they could. The Princeps coughed blood over himself through his broken teeth as he rolled onto his back, shaking as he clenched his fists and screamed hatefully at the bleak sky he could not see through swollen eyes. His moderati shared a resigned, long suffering glance as they lay sprawled in the mud behind their chief.

    “I’m not done.” Leo growled hoarsely, and belatedly figured he must’ve been shouting as he beat the traitor. He hadn’t noticed that, or that his hands were stinging like a khekking bastard. “He’s alive.”

    “And so he and his crew shall remain!”

    “These traitor bastards have spilled Firstborn blood!”

    “That’s what we’re born to do, damn it!”

    “Too much blood!”

    This is not a discussion, Corporal!” Volkov bawled into his ear, and Leo felt his ribs creak as the hold around him tightened. “I get it, for the Deus-Emperor’s sake, I get it.”

    Then why not kill them?!” Leo snarled through clenched teeth.

    “These khekkers live by order of the Legio - and you really want to piss off those women?” Volkov challenged, as he kept his grappling hold locked in. “Huh, do you, Sadik? Khekking answer me!”

    Leo tensed and finally ceased his struggling with a frustrated exhalation. “Not particularly, no.”

    “That’s a smart decision, hero.” The Captain affirmed as he finally released his restraint, and clapped his subordinate firmly on his shoulders as they stared down at the incapacitated Princeps. He chuckled. “That said, they didn’t say anything about keeping the boy pretty – only alive."

    "Huh." Leo articulately responded as he considered that news. "Well, in that case, why let him off easy?"

    Volkov chuckled again, darkly. "I'll wager they hotwire his brain, tear his sad little cock off and call him their newest sister once they can have this beast walking again.”

    Leo merely grunted in acknowledgment as Volkov laughed again, humored by his own coarse speculation, and shouted for the Firstborn to un-khek themselves. He grunted again as he glanced at his shaking hands, and winced as he saw a shard of enamel embedded in his skin. His fists were damn well caked with blood, and try as he might Leo couldn’t tell the difference between his and the traitor’s - and that was, in it's own way, more disconcerting than the chunk of tooth in his hand.

    “Ah, let’s get you cleaned up before the Old Man gets here.” Volkov interrupted his train of thought. Leo nodded, and opened his mouth to speak, however the Captain anticipated the question and offered him a sincere smile. “Your old man’s on the way as well, Sadik.”

    Leo sagged with relief at the word of his father's survival, and allowed himself to be led away from the Warhound.

    Victory.

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