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Thread: [M] War in the Shadows - Imperials IC

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    Spoiler: Kally Sonder - Marioch 
    Last edited by Azazeal849; 11-04-2020 at 08:00 AM.
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  2. #32
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    Spoiler: Martin Crenshaw, Kojiro Osada - Tranch 
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  3. #33
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    Kenshiro seemed almost pensive as he gave thought to this question. Not because he did not know the answer, he was certain of it. It was rather, why someone would even ask that question! The answer was clear as the mask on his face in broad daylight!

    "Among my people, in my guild, we are taught that death, in service to the God-Emperor of Mankind, our eternal undying lord -" As he mentioned the name, he makes the sign of the Aquila. "-is the greatest glory one can achieve. Our path forward is clear. If we die in this mission, it is our fate. Only cowards contemplate death in the face of adversity. On my homeworld we have a saying; 'if you go into battle expecting to die, then you shall return alive. But if you go into battle hoping to survive, then surely you shall not'. We are reminded that, every mission, we are already dead, each and every one of us. It is through victory that we regain our lives. So let us move on, for there are targets still living that we must remove."

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    “Plans tend to go to shit upon first contact with the enemy, and the wise adapt.” Crenshaw began, as he evenly regarded the team. He did not smile this time, as he paraphrased his advice to the blowhard, blue-blooded Dunov on Baraspine. The Casterian aristocrat had the luxury of sacrificing hundreds of his men for the sake of ambition and pride. They did not, as five against a whole world.

    “We are agents of the Imperium, entrusted with independent agency to take the initiative to achieve our objectives, based off the facts and circumstances and our own experience. It is precisely for that reason we have been tasked with this mission, as we have all survived missions which have emphatically not gone according to plan. We are the best option for the task.” Crenshaw reminded them, with a cool side glance at Osada. “Otherwise, the Imperium would have deployed monotask servitors to achieve it.”

    The blacksoul paused for his implicit rebuke to be known before he continued. “Now, speaking as the resident cold-hearted bastard, I will have to insist on a moratorium on any further self-indulgent, masturbatory talk of death and failure until after we have successfully sabotaged the orbital defenses.”

    Not now. Crenshaw grasped his rifle tighter to suppress the slight tremor in his bionic ring finger. He cleared his throat to buy the moment necessary to gently set aside the memory of his tight, lingering farewell embrace with Kally as their long overdue honeymoon concluded. My wife…my love…

    “We know that a Republic Navy squadron warped in as we deployed, and that we were engaged within moments of clearing the drop pod by two well equipped snipers. This could be entirely coincidental,” Crenshaw stated. His tone was objectively neutral, unlike his eyebrow which raised skeptically when he said coincidental, “and we got unlucky to be served such a cold, unseasoned ration of shit.”

    Crenshaw somewhat irritably clicked his prosthetic teeth as he ruminated.

    “Alternatively, the traitors could have been anticipating another sortie by the Navy. It hardly takes a once in a generation military genius to realize the crusade will be coming for Tranch.” Crenshaw reasoned, and nodded towards Marc. “The Apogee made us aware the Patriots have sources informing on the Navy, so they may have been aware of Strike’s arrival regardless of our presence.” He paused, and tilted his head as if conceding a debate point. “Or their sources are our Imperial adversaries."

    The blacksoul exhaled heavily down his nose as he flexed his hand on the rifle’s foregrip.

    “I would suggest that we detour by the sharpshooter that Osada eliminated, Interrogator.” Crenshaw advised as he met Glabrio’s eyes. “We assess their equipment for further context and data, and if evident that we have been compromised, and this ambush was staged rather than an unfortunate encounter with mere security, we reassess our situation and attempt to find out the status of Dyencourt’s squadron – which we should not assume will be able to maintain the original schedule.”

  5. #35
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    Spoiler: Martin Crenshaw, Kojiro Osada - Tranch 
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  6. #36
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    "Noted." Osada said, and with swift, but steady movement, he pulled his hood up and pulled up his gaiter over his nose, and with that...he was gone. He was there one moment and not the next. Like a shadow, he slithered among the crowd. His hands, lithe and dexterous from years of training, were quick to pick the pockets of the uneducated workers.

    This reminded him of back when he was in training. Stealing from someone was a skill deemed necessary, and so the masters, in their infinite wisdom, developed a specialized training tool. An ingeniously designed mannequin with twelve bells hidden in pockets in the mannequin's clothes. The test? Take all the bells out as quickly as possible, but if one jingles, you fail, and were savagely beaten. It took Kojiro a while, but eventually he got them all. There was no congratulations, it was expected of him.

    And then, like now, not a single bell was rung. He returned to the group as silently as he left. "It is done."

    Spoiler: Things I like 

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    Crenshaw stared at the unwelcome sight of his own likeness, and those of Alia’s other allies and agents – present and elsewhere within the Nebula by abduction and assignment – displayed for all of Tranch to witness on a wanted poster. It was confirmation, bulk printed in actual black and white documentation on cheap pulp-ply for mass dissemination, of his worst-case hypothetical. We have been sold out.

    Kally’s bounty is higher. The blacksoul noted as he absorbed the poster’s content. He also noted the incongruous sense of spousal pride at that fact. He held onto the warmth of that thought as the bloated, bloviating bureaucrat extolled the hive proles into vigilance and the accompanying vigilantism.

    Crenshaw exhaled the coarsest Tranchite profanity he knew as he turned around and faced Raechel, his flesh and metal knuckles interlocked in the Deus’ cogwheel. “If you would lead us in prayer, Adept?”

    “Dyencourt is not coming.” Crenshaw stated once the team were clustered together in their for-show, at least for everyone except the priestess herself, prayer circle to the Omnissiah. “Between the satellites, monitors, and whatever fleet assets the Republic has in-system, there is a planetwide blockade – and that is the best-case scenario. The more likely alternative the traitors will attempt to either capture or destroy his squadron. The Navy’s posture was already conservative before their losses at Baraspine and Coseflame, and it stands to reason Dyencourt will not wager his vessels for a slim-odds recovery of us.”

    More fool him if he actually does make the attempt. Crenshaw thought as he irritably clicked his prosthetic teeth. Commander Dyencourt was an honorable man by reputation, and in his experience honorable men tended to make ill-advised decisions. The same can be said of devoted husbands…

    Crenshaw more irritably clicked his teeth again and regarded the others in turn.

    “I would advise we go to ground, make contact with the Vigil, and reassess our options to complete our mission at a time and place of our choosing. Once again, the Patriots made a mistake by not taking us out of action when they had the opportunity. We will teach them that was a profound error.”

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    Spoiler: Martin Crenshaw, Kojiro Osada - Tranch 
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  9. #39
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    Just once, I'd like it to be easy.

    Kally swallowed, and kept her hands low. One wrong move and she would be another anonymous body on the battlefield.

    Why ask? If this is a kill team, they should shoot, and then ask questions. A capture squad? No webbers or stunners though. What ever was going on here was giving her a case of the screaming frights.

    Inquisitorial gakkery. It had to be.

    She snapped back to the present as the last man crunched into position at the top of the crevasse. His rifle was slung, and he was carrying a long, black oblong object. She had an idea, and realized that her life would now depend on the next few absolutely massive lies.

    “That's mine.” She pointed to the Exitus rifle, covered in mud and somewhat singed, but by some miracle of the Emperor still intact. Good, lead with truth. “I'm an agent of the Temples, assigned to inhume a priority target in this war zone, Alicia De Rei.” Partly true, which was also good. “I have made a kill attempt. You can either help me in confirming the kill, or get out of my way.” Again, mostly true. “I don't know this Sonder you're talking about.”

    Yeah, that was a whopper.

    She started up the slope towards them, hands out to show she was disarmed, which for all intents and purposes, she was. She had a boot knife and a high power laspistol good for about six shots in a pancake holster in the small of her back. She could probably punch and tear through their armour undersleeves with her bare hands, but she'd be shot to death long before that was put to the test. She would need to grab a gun from them, hope it wasn't genelocked, and then improvise herself through a brawl and gunfight with six mindwiped, elite stormtroopers.

    She got to the top of the ridge. They hadn't moved, and she had a tingle from her implants that they were talking to someone. She might be able to kill two before they cut her down.

    “Turn around, and drop to your knees.” One of them barked. Their weapons raised to ready, and Kally felt the unpleasant tingle of targeting auspexes slide across her skin.

    “I'd rather stand.” She responded.

    “I've lost vox.” the one holding the Exitus rifle muttered.

    So have I, as it happens. Kally flicked a glance to the servo skull. In the baking heat, half buried in mud, it was suddenly covered in ice crystals. The slowed down, distorted jazz died, and was replaced with a song she recognized. A hypnotic piece of makitan dust core from her childhood.

    Gavin?

    Two of the Quasars approached her. They had neutron emitters underslung beneath their hellguns; bulky, bulbous emitters designed to scramble and shut down delicate electronics. She had seen them shut down Delaz on Teleostei, and that guy had been a walking tank with all the electronic hardening and EMP protection imaginable. No doubt they would destroy her own bionics just as easily and leave her little more than a crippled vegetable on the floor if they hit.

    She stepped backwards, just a half step really, and focused, pulling her aura inward, stopping it from interfering, because she could really do with Gavin jumping in right now.

    The two Quasar troopers selected the neutron emitters on their bulky rifles, swung the weapons up, and opened fire.

    Or tried to, anyway. There was a moment of absurdity as they repeatedly pulled the triggers, only for nothing to happen, before glancing at each other, then back to Kally. She didn't need any more invitation than that, and leapt forwards as they struggled with their jammed guns. As she piled into one, elbow first into his unarmoured neck, his arm swung out, throwing the gun into Kally's psyk-blocking aura - where it fired perfectly, and set his friend on fire and fried his wetware. Kally felt a wave of nausea and heat from the halo effect of the gun going off so close to her, but she ignored it as she got her hands on the struggling Quasars rifle.

    “Shoot her! Shoot her!” Kazic roared, backing up as Kally wrestled with the choking Quasar trooper. The one on fire staggered a few steps, screaming, before tumbling down the crevasse with a distinct snapping sound that spoke of broken bones.

    “Excuse me, but I’m the one who fraks over bionics,” the shattered servo skull hissed. Its eyes glowed, and stepping into the air like a burning pict frame, came Gavin. “Allow me to demonstrate.”

    He distorted and vanished again, frost spearing across the ground as the temperature dropped. Kally finished off her opponent with a savage twist of his neck, and pried his hellgun from the mans spasming fingers. Her own bionics slammed into the little machine spirit of the weapon, overwhelming its safeguards with mechanicus hack codes. A half second later she had it in her hands and primed, its runic display lit up green, ready to fire.

    She raised it to her shoulder and lined up its holosight, to face the remaining three quasar troopers.

    “Who are you working for?” she yelled. “Who sent you to kill me?”

    One of them spasmed as Gavin took control of a bionic limb. His strangled scream came too late as he was puppeted round and opened fire on full auto. He was fighting the control, so the fire was wild, and everyone dived for cover, firing from the hip. Kally dropped behind a boulder, having narrowly missed several bolts.

    “Gavin, if you can hear me, lock down the emitters! Don't get fancy and just lock them down!”

    There was the distinct snap-roar-crack of a high velocity bolt round, and Kally felt the rush of air as the fat gyrojet sawed past her position. Turning, she realised the Quasar trooper who had taken the earlier neutron hit had climbed out of the crevasse. For his trouble, someone had planted a heavy ballistic round into his helmet, finishing him permanently in an explosion of bone, blood and helmet.

    “Gavin, who the hell is shooting into my charlie foxtrot?”

    There was no answer as she looked up from her cover in time to see the possessed Quasar trooper pull a powered blade from a sheath and hack his rebelling arm clear, leaving the bionic a sparking stump. The frost retreated on the ground. Kally reckoned that Sidonis' old elites might not be trained to resist psychic powers - the old bastard had wanted to keep the edge if they ever turned on him, no doubt - but whoever had them now might have given them equipment or augments to give them an edge.

    She shot the disarmed Quasar in the face with her hellgun, just to be sure, before dropping back into cover as the other two turned their fire on her position. She breathed for a moment, listened to the fire, then rolled out of cover and ran, firing from the hip. One of the soldiers breaking to flank her went down hard, and as he tried to rise, another bolt round from her mysterious overwatch took his head off.

    She slid into a gully with bone jarring force, and found herself sharing it with the bastard who had picked up her newest toy. He turned the Exitus towards her, then cursed and fell backwards, clawing at his helmet as frosty static sputtered behind the optics. Kally drew her knife and lunged forwards, slamming it up, under his chin, into his skull. She tossed her stolen hellgun to the floor and picked up the Exitus, which practically purred as it returned to her hands.

    “It's just you and me now Kazic!” she yelled as the battlefield fell quiet, stepping over the twitching, dead Quasar. “Surrender and live!”

    “How do you know my name?” Kazic yelled back. Poor bastard. The mind-scrubbers really had cleaned him out. Either that or he's trying to keep me talking to get a bead on me. She gave him the benefit of the doubt.

    “We used to work together, under Sidonis.” she shouted back, working along the gully. “I need to know who you're working for now!”

    There was a strangled scream off to her left. She spun round, raising the rifle, in time to see a Quasar with a long las sniper in his hands jerkily rise against his will. There was that distinctive snap-roar-crack again, and the trooper dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

    Kazic must have tracked the shot - he rolled to one side and began to hose the rocks above with hellgun fire. Kally took the opening. She sprinted after him, and carried him to the floor. For a few seconds there was a grim, hand to hand struggle, but Kally was stronger, faster, and seriously pissed off. Two heavy blows slammed Kazic's head into the ground, enough to daze him and send his helmet rolling away across the baked earth, and Kally hauled him to his feet.

    “If you want to keep eating and breathing with that hole, make it work and start talking! Who are you working for?”

    “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Imperium.” he quoted back at her, defiantly.

    “I am Imperial!” she yelled. “You tell me right now who's trying to set us against each other or I will pull you to pieces!”

    She knew fine well that imperial unity was the galaxy's biggest lie, especially where the ordos were concerned, but if Kazic was as much of a starched little servitor as she remembered then a familiar lie might just give him pause.

    She watched the wheels turning behind his blood-streaked eyes, a tiny flicker of something, but a moment later the something calcified back into dogmatic defiance.

    "The lies of witches and heretics wilt under the Emperor's light." he ground out.

    Her blank aura wasn't helping his hostility, although it was perhaps saving him from having Gavin immediately make good on her threat.

    Kally tossed him to the floor, hard, harder than she needed too, and a quick stomp with her boot knocked him out in the mud. For extra security, Kally quickly secured him with microcuffs, before sinking onto her haunches and shuddering with a hard andrenaline come down.

    Too close.

    "Gavin?" she tried.

    “I’m here.” He responded, his voice tinny and distant through the damaged servo-skull’s speakers.

    “I’m glad you were.”

    “You’re exactly like your husband, Kally Sonder.” Gavin stated as he materialized, flickering like a stuck propaganda reel above the smoldering Quasar. “By which I mean you’re a colossal shit magnet.”

    She chuckled wearily, agreeingly. “I don’t suppose my guardian angel with a bolt rifle is Crenshaw?”

    “No.” The technopath’s response was quick, and instinctively hard. It quashed the equally instinctive hope that she’d had to see her Major. It must’ve shown as Gav’s features softened alongside his voice. “He’s with the team on another deployment. Sabotage work on Tranch’s orbital defenses.”

    Kally felt her heart hit the bottom of her chest. If Crenshaw was being pulled out of the political wilderness, then things had gone very sideways. “That bad?” She asked, hoping it wasn't the case.

    “That’s a face-to-face conversation.” Gavin answered. “Stay down, and I’ll go have a word with our shooter.”

    That's interesting. She mused. Someone was sent, and someone arrived on their own. I may be a colossal shit magnet, but my luck is holding for a certain value of 'luck'.

    “You didn’t do the grenade thing, so I take it they’re friendly?” She asked, as Gavin once again materialized in strobing light within the acrid smoke of cooked meat and fried bionics.

    “Friendlier than we had any right to expect in the Nebula.” Gavin affirmed; his surprise evident even as his projection began to fade. “I’ve given him my coordinates, so I’ll see you both soon enough.”

    “Gav, wait, frak damn it!” She exhaled, and cursed when the vox lines were well and truly crapped out. She inhaled and shouted towards the ridge. “Interrogator Kally Sonder of the Holy Ordos, and you are?”

    “Julianus Remus, reporting for duty. Interrogator Sonder.”

    “Holy shit…” She breathed, as she recognized the voice was accurate. She leaned out to see an armed man rise out of cover, and exchanged a friendly wave wholly incongruous with the hellscape of scorched earth and terminated Quasars. “Not that I don’t appreciate the assist, but you being here is torching my dreams of a happy retirement.”

    “Unretired, at least until when the Emperor enjoys His own again in Adrantis.” Remus declared, quite adamantly. He jerked a thumb back down his side of the ridge. “Anyhow, we’ll have time enough to chat and catch up. I need to whistle up our rides.”

    Shaking her head at this ridiculous turn of luck, she hauled herself to her feet. With a practiced eye, she turned her attention to the wrecked battlefield. She had a kill to confirm.

    First she found her plasma pistol, caked with mud, and holstered it. Then she found the snapped off blade from Schafer’s sword. For the first time during this whole damn fiasco, she felt a prick of tears as she carefully retrieved the broken blade, a shattered part of an irreplacable relic she had carried for years. Her and Schafer had never been close, but she had respected him. And he had deserved to be remembered better than he was.

    She circled round the spot she had found the shattered blade, scanning the ground. The churned red mud left clear, easy to read tracks, and she soon found two running Nebula troopers, their distinctive heavy tread leading her to where Alicia had fallen. And gotten up again, under her own power. She had risen to her knees, tossed the blade aside that had been buried in her chest, then had stood and lead the other two survivors away. Kally sank to her knees and stared blankly at the bloody dirt, willing it not to be so. Part of her understood, better than almost anyone, how Alicia walked away. The thing coiling around her soul had kept her alive for its own purposes, healing the damage she had worked so hard and sacrificed so much to inflict. But another part of her refused to believe, that after all that, after so many near misses and so much pain, that it had all been for nothing. Alicia De Rei had slipped, irrevocably, through her fingers. At least in part because an asset that could have finished the job was sent to hunt Kally down instead.

    She put her head back and let out a long, pained scream of anger. She allowed herself that luxury, before she found the strength to push herself to her feet again.

    "Someones had a tough day."

    Kally looked round, to see a soldier in the distinctive field kit of an Adrantean Dragoon, holding a heavy bolt rifle, leading two large, furred four-legged creatures. The soldier reached up and pulled his a ballistic mask clear, revealing someone she hadn't seen in years.

    "Julianus Remus." She ran a hand through her hair, and let out a chuckle. A sudden rush of words and questions tripped over each other to get out of her mouth first, until finally she blurted one out.

    "What the frak are those?"

    Julianus looked over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow to look at the two creatures Kally was pointing at, then back to the underhiver.

    "Horses."

    "Ah. Right. Ofcourse. Horses." Kallys brain stumbled again. "Are they tasty? Because I am starving."

    "Uh, no, no these are for riding, not eating. Jenkins is set up in a valley near here. Those are how we get there."

    "Good, good." she rubbed the back of her neck. "I'll just. ..go get Kazic, and then we can . . . ?"

    "Yeah."

    "Right."

    "Sonder?"

    Kally turned back to Julianus.

    "Its good to see you too."

    ++++++

    The horses, two white mares raised on Remus’ own ranch, carried him, Kally, and a bound and gagged Kazic out of the valley and into Marioch’s hinterland. Here the war was a distant lightshow chased by thunder, with only the occasional aircraft or lander scudding through the upper atmosphere. Kally wolfed down a few packs of guard issued rations and a canteen of body temprature water after the fight, along with her needed post battle meds as she rode, though in truth she just let the animal do its thing, which was follow Julianus horse.

    Halfway through the ride, Kally received a coded message from Evgeni. It was nothing more than a short burst, bounced from an orbiting Imperial troop ship, a pre-arranged signal that confirmed he was safe and alive, but not able to assist any further. Kally frowned at that, one more strange twist in a day of them. Something about that, about everything that had happened after the hit, didn't sit right. The Domina had had a very close hand in all this, from the rifle on her back, to the servo skull built from one of Alicia's comrades, to her oh-so-sexy and clueless son in support. How had an Inquisitorial kill team tracked her so quickly and efficently to the battle? Why had the servo skull started to play a sad song. . . almost like it, or the Domina, was saying goodbye. And the Quasars, like ghosts from her past. The Saros incident felt like two lifetimes ago, but in truth it was very fresh. Like someone was making a point.

    You'll never get away from what you did. Penitent.

    Kally didn't reconnect to the noosphere. She locked her implants out, reducing her ability to transmit and receive. She didn't not trust Evgeni, but at the same time she didn't trust his mother, the Domina with her own political motives. And it seemed more than in character for her to run something without his knowledge, over his head, for his own good.

    I need to let Raech know that the Domina is compromised. She finally decided. Because if she figures out I didn't die down here, we are all in danger.

    Finally, they crossed a lip of the earth, and came to an old PDF watchpost. Clearly long abandoned, the sturdy, drum shaped ferrocrete structure had grown a small civilian outpost around it. Hinterland scavengers watched them warily from the porchs of huts bolted together from sheet metal, and there was an oppressive smell of grox waste from pens part dug into the earth. There was something hauntingly familiar to it all for Kally, which made her turn her eyes away and put up her bodygloves hood.

    "They won't be any trouble." Julianus muttered. "These people were only ever nominally Imperial, and Adrantean citizens."

    "There are a lot of eyes here." Kally muttered back. "Considering what just happened."

    "I guess Gavin needed this place for that thing.” Julianus pointed at the rusted comm mast that rose from the top of the outpost. "For that. Without it, Gavin would have had to get a lot closer to the battlefield, and I doubt he’d ride a horse well."

    "Yeah, about that. Why a horse? Why not a speeder or even a landcar?"

    "These beauties have practically zero energy emission that can be tracked from orbit." Julianus smiled, patting his mount. "Considering what just happened."

    "Good point."

    ++++++

    The interior of the PDF outpost was about as far removed from its old life as its externals were. It had been repurposed into something between a communal tool shed and a hostel, the walls covered in racks of repair equipment, its bunk room for a squad left largely intact, barring the addition of a crib. Sitting next to the banks of dilapidated sensor gear and the controls for the vox mast was Gavin, who looked exhausted as he slowly rubbed his closed eyelids and tapped his folded glasses against a metallic knee. He seemed to disappear into the shadowy folds of a techpriests robes that were too big for him.

    "Good to see you Gavin." Kally hitched up a smile, because she meant it. It was good to see him. She dragged Kazic across the threshold as Julianus closed and bolted the watchposts door behind them. "Got anywhere to stash a brainwashed ex-Quasar soldier?"

    "Through that hatch, there’s a small basement which’d be ideal." Gavin gestured wearily. He opened his bloodshot eyes, and managed a hitch up a smile of his own. "It’s good to see you as well, Sonder."

    Kally hauled Kazic down the ladder and cuffed him to a pipe. She frisked him again, stripping his gear down to his bodysuit, while her augments interrogated his own bionics to see if there was anything that could serve as a weapon or communicator. She wasn't sure which woke him up, but he swum up from unconsciousness just in time for her to finish checking him over.

    "Get comfortable Kazic." She walked a quick circuit of the room with a practiced eye, making sure there wasn't anything in reach he could improvise to help him escape, before starting back up the ladder.

    "You can't keep me down here forever." Kazic glared at her. "When a loyal servant of the Throne falls, a thousand more stand to avenge him."

    "I'm counting on that." Kally turned to him. "But right now, I'd recommend getting some rest."

    When she got back into the outposts main room, she dragged a heavy tool chest onto the hatch, just as an extra precaution. Julianus pushed a hot cup of tea into her hands as she slumped into a chair.

    "Explain Gavin. I'm a lone wolf remember. Though I'm still glad to see you, and Julianus."

    Gavin sighed deeply as Kally leaned forwards, cupping the drink, letting it warm her fingers.

    "It’s bad, then."

    Gavin unfolded and reaffixed his glasses to meet her eyes before talking. Ohshitohshitohshit…

    "Solvan’s been killed."

    Kally nodded, gripping her drink. The little tin mug creaked slightly, barely audible over Remus’ exhaled expletive as he heavily sunk into a chair of his own.

    "I see." There was a long pause. "You said killed. So not old age, or disease. Someone killed him. So who."

    "Kally. . ." Julianus began, causing her to stare at him. He flinched slightly.

    "We don't have conclusive evidence yet." Gavin began. "Of who is behind it. But we have strong suspicions and circumstantial evidence. And we know who the murderer is."

    "Who." It was a whisper. Barely heard.

    "Merle." Gavin answered, his raspy voice an enforced monotone. “Kelly confirmed it with a DNA match.”

    “How.”

    “Asphyxiation.” The technopath had understood her ask. It didn’t matter how he had survived, because Merle Ray Carson was a dead man. His eyes were as hard as the information he relayed. “With a bionic left hand.”

    Vince’s hand. The tin mug folded in Kally's fingers. Hot tea flowed over her hands.

    “It gets worse.” The technopath quietly confided. Murderous nirvana, as Schafer had called it.

    “Frak…” Remus exhaled wearily, his chair creaking as he rested his elbows on his knees.

    “Go on.”

    “Sapphira was abducted by them.”

    The mug compacted with a metallic whimper as she balled her fist tightly.

    "Tell me what you have." Kally whispered. "Then, we'll get to work on Kazic, and find out what he knows."

  10. #40
    The Replicant
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    Spoiler: Kally Sonder, Gavin Jenkins, Julianus Remus - Marioch 
    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.


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