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

  1. #21
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    Spoiler: Enki Volkner, Omikron Zahir - Perinetus 
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  2. #22
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    +Einar! You’re not goin’ to believe this, but the DG just rocked up with a damn APC.+

    Sarna froze, midstep.

    “Say that again?” Her hand strayed to her sword, so far undrawn. Her fingers lightly rested on the power sword’s grip, almost stroking it.

    +Are you deaf Sarnie? A fuckin' tank. I think. . .wait, somethin' definitely happening there. The guard ain't opening fire, they look like. . .yeah, they're talking to someone. I think we've got a third player on the fuckin’ field.+

    Sarna cursed under her breath. She was assembling the picture from these scattered bits of detail, and did not like what she saw.

    “Einar? Tell me you are in position!”

    +The roadway Sarnie, or it’s nothin'.+

    She doubled back, checking her targets’ progress. They had crossed the garden defences, deactivating them with bio-idents, and had even rounded up a few more servants. It was a sorry sight: Imperial worthies cowed by the threat of death and invasion, just as fragile as those they lorded over. She hissed at them to hurry as she crouched behind a parked personal transport. If she was reading the bodyguards’ body language right, they were as stressed and frustrated as her.

    Well, that was something.

    +++++

    “Do not take another step!” Drass warned, and raised her rifle to her shoulder.

    Sapphira did not move. She did not speak. She stared unwaveringly at the other woman, and allowed the unanswered challenge to stand between them. The Sister sensed movement from behind, and in her peripheral vision saw her partner edge forward with cautionary hands raised between her and Drass.

    “Sergenat Drass, Chief Koskynen –” Glabrio interceded, calm and reasonable.

    Any of you!” The sergeant shouted, as her finger shifted down onto the trigger.

    The Sister knew the tension of the moment – and perhaps even the invasion of their world and the besiegement of their have city - had begun to affect the Divinatory Guard. Their expressions hidden behind impassive masks, she noticed the cracks in the squad’s professional composure widen. They nervously shifted their grips and stances, and glanced at their sergeant as her stoic reserve gave out.

    Sapphira inhaled deeply as the outline of Gavin’s projection in the air behind the Divinatory Guard. The psyker’s ethereal form flashed and flickered as he streaked down from the ceiling, and disappeared into the Repressor’s vox aerial. The Sister exhaled slowly, as she registered their moment was now.

    “Sergeant Drass.” Sapphira addressed the Baraspini, as she allowed a measure of her indignation at speaking with a traitor into her tone. “Do you stand in the name of the God-Emperor and the Republic?”

    “Of course, damn you!” The sergeant snarled. “That aside, I need more than mere words to – ”

    The traitor was interrupted when the battered hand-vox crackled back to life with not Baraspini.

    Sapphira frowned as she picked out three distinct voices amongst the deluge of noise, two adult males, and a younger female…yet in charge? The Sister’s frown only deepened as she registered the animated urgency and absence of laughter in their conversation. What could have them so…

    Gavin.


    She tensed and inhaled sharply as a shiver went down her spine, and not only because of the psyker’s unnaturally distant, frustrated sigh from the back of the elevator. She shot a wordless glance over at her partner, as Drass exhaled some coarse and choice Baraspini swears and the Divinatory Guard mulled uneasily. Glabrio’s eyes were hard set within his plain mask as he offered a stiff nod of agreement.

    We’re being watched.

    “I don’t suppose that’s some noble’s cant?” Glabrio asked, as he turned back to Drass.

    “No.” Drass confirmed vehemently, as she slowly lowered her rifle. “No it isn’t.”

    “I didn’t think so.” Glabrio concurred. “Onboard with us now, sergeant?”

    “We’re with you, executor.” Drass affirmed determinedly. “For the Emperor and Adrantis.”

    “We have movement in the storage warehouse.” Osada stated, with the calm assurance of a stated fact as he pointed. “I see two individuals within the corner office, overlooking the road.”

    “Shit…” The sergeant breathed, as she started to turn towards the building, “that has to be a –”

    SNIPER!” Glabrio roared, already in motion with Osada towards the Repressor.

    Sapphira charged forward and slid into a scrumball tackle that bowled the tech-priest into cover with a startled yelp as a succession of quick, loud bangs tore out from down the road. Las, hotshots. There was an outright explosion as something decidedly mechanical was destroyed. The Sister saw Drass finish her turn in time to have her helmeted head, and the ill-omened Eight of Discordia etched on her ballistic mask, explode in a catastrophic geyser of spontaneously over-pressurized blood, bone, and brain.

    No, not a sniper. She grimly realized, as the traitor’s headless corpse swayed, and tumbled over sideways. Snipers.


    +++++

    “Gierolf, take the front lifeguard.”

    Gierolf breathed a sigh of relief, rolled his shoulders, and settled his aim in. His scope centered briefly over one of the nobles, then he rolled it over to the bodyguard furthest from Sarna. He allowed himself a small smile.

    “Goodnight, prick.”

    “Look! The lift!”

    His spotter, Anja, touched his shoulder just as took the shot, causing him to hitch his shoulders. The round walloped into an auto and blew the engine out in a spray of burning promethium.

    “You stupid bitch!”

    He turned and looked at his spotter, but paused at the look on the young girl’s face. He turned, and saw what had freaked her out.

    “Oh fuck me.”

    Someone on the deck, a man near the lift, one of the new arrivals, was gesturing up at the top floors of buildings. He was dressed like a local, but he wasn't walking like one. And he was pointing right at his position. Only way they could have seen the shot was if he was looking for it, and the only way to look for it was. . . .

    He swung his rifle round, and slapping a fresh pack into place, steadied it in the crook of his elbow. With a grunt of satisfaction, he slammed a shot downrange that tore the head of the Divinatory Guard officer they had been talking to, resulting in a glorious high pressure spray of blood as their skull detonated. The PDF, already spooked by the gunshots on the street, scattered into cover, and started shooting at any window nearby. Hard rounds and lasbolts spackled the rockcrete around his window as he ducked back into the building.

    “Let’s go!” he roared to Anja, as he dropped his rifle onto its restrictor strap, drew a pistol and started to book for the stairs.

    “The newcomers!”

    “What about them?”

    “I think they've hacked our damn comms! I think they're some kinda fuckin’ kill-team!”

    +++++

    “I think they’re some kind of fraggin’ kill-team!” Glabrio bawled over the spatter of the PDF’s lasguns. “Hustle up, sniper suppression! Let’s waste those Imperial bastards!”

    “Aye, sir!” Sapphira called out, quick to reinforce Glabrio’s assertion of authority.

    The Sister wordlessly shoved the broken hand-vox into the venerable enginseer’s mismatched hands as she untangled from him. She leveraged herself off the deck with a faint grunt, and athletically bounded into a crouch. On her feet, she tore open her underhiver’s robes and unlimbered her preciously gifted shotgun. The traitorous Divinatory Guard was all around them, and in compliance with Glabrio’s commands as they cranked off a fusillade of lasfire and the stubber jackhammered from above.

    She bounded into a crouch as she tore loose her underhiver’s robes and unlimbered her shotgun.

    “How did you obtain a Persecutor?” The tech-priest wheezed, as he struggled to scramble into an upright position. The renegade enginseer’s gaze was locked firmly on Drass’ headless corpse, sprawled in a half turn on her back out in the road. She suspected he was in shock, to ask for irrelevant data.

    “Suffice to say, it wasn’t a name-day present.” Sapphira blithely commented, as she mechanically exchanged magazines from shot to slugs. She exchanged a quick look and a wry, tension-silly, ‘I’d rather we were instead’ grin with Glabrio at the reference to a lovely and mostly sleepless night. She clapped the tech-priest on the shoulder. “I’ll spare you the unpleasantly biological details, reverend.”

    “Oh Deus…” The renegade enginseer murmured.

    “If you’re going to beseech the Omnissiah, reverend,” Sapphira prompted, as she unsubtly pushed the hand-vox further into the enginseer’s mismatched hands, “I’ll ask you to do it for Adrantis.”

    The Sister blinked as the renegade tech-priest blurted in binharic. However, she took that garbled noise as an affirmative when he stared fixedly at the hand-vox and deliberately traced a cogwheel on it. No sooner had one traitor made a declaration of faith when another traitor, one supposedly of her faith, howled out an oath and started to rapidly shoot…in the wrong direction from the snipers.

    “Emperor of Adrantis almighty! The fraggin’ Imp’s got a witch!”

    Sapphira instinctively whirled around at the mention of witchcraft, and scowled at the appropriation of the God-Emperor by a traitor. She reached out and ejected the rifle’s cell when she saw the man had shot at Gavin’s translucent psychic form. The technopath’s almost ghostly, damaged film-reel projection hovered above them, with his masked face craned in a distinctly impressed tilt down at the PDF soldier. The Sister’s scowl morphed into a frown as she recognized the inspiration behind Gavin’s disguise.

    She had seen the frescoes of the blank faced, inhumanly high cheekbone Necrons on Venatora, in the governor’s audience hall. The same governor they had murdered and replaced with...by…

    “What the frag!” The soldier wailed, with a crack in his voice which betrayed his youth. Sapphira welcomed the distraction as the traitor attempted to reload his rifle. She forced the boy down with a firmer than strictly necessary shove, and discouragingly shook her head as he struggled against her.

    “Stand down, son. That’s our sanctioned asset.” Glabrio explained, with a slight grimace himself. She knew that he recognized the true nature of the mask, from his confrontation with the Silver Prophet on Hercynia. He waived a hand sharply towards the warehouse. “Go on and get ‘em!”

    Gavin’s manifestation inclined his Xenos-masked head and disappeared in a flash of light.

    “What,” the young Divinatory Guardsman complained, “you expect that bolt magnet will kill ‘em?”

    Sapphira and Glabrio exchanged a meaningful look.

    “Yes.” The undercover couple answered in unison.


    +++++

    A few things happened at once. The rearmost bodyguard fell. Sarna drew her sword with an almost expectant sigh, and lunged for the father. And the front bodyguard’s pistol whipped her in the side of the head as she leapt past what should have been his falling corpse, while a nearby auto convulsed and turned into a small geyser of flame.

    Sarna dropped, rolled on reflex and came up with her sword on guard, despite the concussion loudly complaining in her brain and the blood trickling down her face. There was no time to figure out why things had gone wrong, only to adjust. She lunged for the bodyguard as he opened fire, a spray of fat buzzing bullets. One punched cleanly through the meat of her left thigh, missing bone by a finger width, the other clipped her right hip. It was a low spray to protect the cowering principals. Another shot rang out, and the butler’s head exploded. One of her snipers was still shooting.

    Sarna's blade met the bodyguard’s chest and punched clean through, her momentum nailing the man to an auto's bodywork. His head lashed forwards and Sarna reeled back, losing her grip on her sword, her nose broken. These guys where juiced, or perhaps lightly augmented. She popped her nose back into place with a wet snap and a thrown knife settled the matter, sinking into the eye-hole of the bodyguard’s plain mask and making him let go of the sword as he tried to pull it from his chest.

    She looked around, pulling her hood clear and hawking blood onto the pavement. The boy hadn't gone far. She found him simpering, hiding from the sniper, and finished him with a kick from her heels that opened his neck and his jewelled mask. She strode over the bodyguard and wrenched her sword from the auto’s door, triggering the powered edge to burn away the blood.

    “Einar!”

    +Running towards the lift. I can't raise Gierolf, his comms are dead.+

    “I'll wrap this up. Get to the exfiltration point, now.”

    There wasn't any argument. Sarna drew a stimm from her belt and slammed it into her neck, letting it drown out the yelling of her injuries. Then she started to run towards the level lift. That was where the last principals had fled to.

    The PDF who had gone to ground behind their Rhino panicked at the sight of the nobles rushing towards them. A wild, sawing burst of gunfire turned the street into a thrashing forest of impact puffs and flying debris, and a servant running alongside the nobles backflipped as a bullet tore off his mask. Sarna could hear the noble lady bellowing curses at their so-called protectors as she and her husband scrambled behind a bullet-savaged limousine.

    The portly lord let out a wordless scream as he saw Sarna darting between the PDF sight-lines towards them. The ornate sword scabbard was still in his hands, gripped tight but undrawn.

    “You murdered my son!” he shrieked at the onrushing assassin, his voice torn by furious grief. “You murdered my son!

    The noble lady didn’t scream. She closed a hand around the sword’s basket hilt and tore it free of the scabbard, leaving her stunned husband clutching the empty sheath. The blade flashed, a metre of razor-edged steel.

    Mors proditori.” the noble lady spat at Sarna in sibilant High Gothic.

    She flowed into a rapier-fighter’s stance - side on, her left fist drawn up near her mouth, her right arm straight. Despite the obvious weight of the sword, she held it at full extension without wavering. Her stocky build was evidently more muscle than fat, and her balanced stance showed some familiarity with bladework.

    Oh how adorable, the voice in Sarna’s ear chuckled.

    The damned creature was right too. I can take her, Sarna knew - even without the powered blade that had once belonged to a Vaxanide cult leader. The trouble was that Madame Vel-Corosa did not know it.


    "Luteus" she spat back in High Gothic. She flicked a pair of knives at the couple. To her credit, the noble woman knocked one out of the air, causing it to clatter onto the ground. The other found the fat nobles gut and sunk halfway in, causing him to clutch at his chest and wail in pain. She stepped close and attacked, and the noblewoman met her blade in a shower of sparks. Sarna activated the powerfield and the two blades keened as she ground it towards the noblewoman. She had a surprisingly vigorous strength, and Sarna was forced back two steps before breaking the lock. She attacked twice more, both heavy blows, each one aimed not at the woman, but her sword, until her third strike snapped the finely wrought blade. She reversed the blow with an easy grace, and put a diagonal cut across the womans chest that dropped her to the floor.

    Sarna took a second to breathe, and looked around for Lord Vel-Corosa. He had limped away, one hand clamped over his wound, the other waving to the Divinatory Guard. She cursed under her breath. She unslung her crossbow, quickly nocked a quarrel and aimed it, ignoring the fire that was beginning to hammer into the car she was using as cover. Someone was running to drag the noble to safety.

    She felt a gentle push of recoil as the crossbow fired. The bolt dropped her target face first onto the ferrocrete, but she couldn't confirm a kill, not from here. She had to hope bloodloss would do the rest and that they had no decent medics. Without a second look back, she started to sprint away, bobbing between cover.

  3. #23
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    Spoiler: Sarna Astros, Gavin Jenkins, Sapphira Wilder - Baraspine 
    Last edited by Azazeal849; 08-16-2019 at 11:32 PM.
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  4. #24
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    Spoiler: Enki and Omikron, Campaign 2 preview 
    Last edited by Azazeal849; 02-20-2020 at 09:28 PM.
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  5. #25
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    “Ah, ahem…okay then.”

    Sapphira turned as one with Glabrio towards the speaker, a corporal with chevrons so freshly stitched on that the thread had yet to become dirtied by Alda’s polluted air. The young woman recoiled slightly from the attention, and nervously pointed at the not-so-abandoned warehouse, obscured by the Repressor.

    “W-we’ll…uh, keep ‘em pinned for your psych.” The young corporal, Markova by the name stenciled on her flak coat, muttered. She paused and looked at Sapphira. “Err…you mind lettin’ Bulgarin up, ma’am?”

    The Sister leveraged herself off the young, traitorous soldier as she clambered onto her feet, and she offhandedly noted to youth’s barely subvocalized ’bitch’. Bulgarin rolled into a crouch, reclaimed his forcibly ejected las-cell and reloaded as he rushed away to engage.

    “We need to advance.” Glabrio promptly determined.

    “Agreed.” Sapphira immediately concurred.

    “With a fraggin’ sniper bangin’ off?!” The corporal incredulously shouted over the din.

    “Two snipers. Two more with las weapons, as their spotters and security.” Glabrio confirmed with the assurance of experience. Sapphira briskly nodded in agreement with her partner.

    “We need to work a solution.”

    “I’ve got a solution, ma’am. It’s called keep in cover, keep on shootin’ and keep on livin’.” Markova suggested, betraying her youth with biting sarcasm and inexperience with audible fear.

    Sapphira saw the younger woman nervously touch the Aquila stamped onto her rifle’s grip, as she glanced uneasily at her sergeant’s ruined corpse for a long moment. She was instinctively disgusted by the sight of the traitor’s ill-used devotional gesture, even as she suspected that Markova had been assigned to learn leadership by example from the older, experienced Drass.

    God-Emperor willing, she would soon follow that example. The Sister bitterly thought.

    The corporal took a shuddering breath, and turned away from the macabre sight and regarded the undercover couple. “All due respect…sir, and ma’am...but goin’ out there ain’t worth it.”

    “We won’t know what these bastards are after if they escape.” Glabrio sternly countermanded.

    Another hot-shot cracked out and detonated explosively somewhere against the reassuringly blocky Repressor’s roof. There was a vicious bark of profanity as the heavy stubber ceased fire, and the tirade of high volume expletives continued until the cupola hatches definitively clanged shut. The junior non-commissioned officer had a terse exchange of words with her vehicle crew.

    So what if they do?!” The younger woman rebuked, as she rounded on Glabrio. She emphatically shook her head in denial. “There’s a whole fraggin’ crusade of Imps to deal with -”

    “There’s Imps here to be dealt with, corporal.” Sapphira stonily interrupted.

    “Look here, lady.” The corporal snarled, as she turned and raised a finger to the disguised Hospitaller. “I ain’t sendin’ anyone out there to die for you!

    “I’m not asking anyone to go on our behalf.” Sapphira clarified, with a steely coolness, as she firmly brushed aside the accusatory finger from her masked face. “In fact, I’m going out first.”

    “You got an insane death wish or somethin’ like?” The younger woman exclaimed in near horror.

    “I have faith in the God-Emperor.” Sapphira promptly rebuked, with the absolute conviction of a Sororita as she stared down the traitor. The younger woman flinched uneasily at the scrutiny.

    “You know…” Markova started, awkwardly paused, and took a breath as she stubbornly met the Sister’s intense gaze to finish her thought. “You sound an awful fraggin’ lot like a Battle Sister...”

    There was a prolonged moment of silence amongst them in the middle of the firefight.

    Sapphira saw the corporal’s hands tighten on her rifle. She caught the subtle shake of Glabrio’s head, and the cautionary glance as he surreptitiously drew his silenced sidearm behind Markova’s back. The Sister pierced the tense lull with an unladylike snort and a hearty chuckle.

    “No rum, no sex, no way I could be a Sister.” Sapphira cheerfully lied, as she clasped a seemingly friendly hand on the traitorous young woman’s shoulder.

    What?!” Markova all but squeaked in surprise.

    “What’d life be without a stiff one every now and again?” Sapphira deftly answered with a conspiratorial grin at the younger woman, as she studiously avoided looking towards Glabrio. “I’d imagine frag awful, if that’d explain how worked up those uptight Sisterhood girls can get.”

    Matriarchs of the Sisterhood...blessed martyrs, forgive me these coarse, disparaging words so that I may best serve our God-Emperor and reclaim these wayward worlds into His holy light.

    The Sister tensed with surprise as Markova slumped and slid further underneath her arm with a miserable groan. She uneasily realized that she had instinctively curled her arm reassuringly across the young traitor’s shoulders, and pulled her closer in. Sapphira caught an amused Glabrio mouth Team Mom. She glowered at him, and sharply looked towards the squad. He mock saluted, and went to oversee the co-opted traitors while their young NCO was indisposed.

    “How are you so calm?” The young, rattled traitor quietly asked. She rested her helmeted head against the Sister’s shoulder, and turned her ballistic mask obscured face towards her.

    “I’ve been training for moments like this my whole life.” Sapphira answered truthfully. “And, as I said, I have faith in the God-Emperor.”

    “Yeah...same as me.” Markova responded, and Sapphira had to resist the temptation to deny that she shared anything in common with a traitor. The Sister nodded encouragingly, trying to force the young traitor to hurry through her meltdown so as to be useful. “They taught us at the orphanage to worship the Emperor, and always be ready to defend Baraspine and Adrantis.”

    “You...you’re an orphan.” Sapphira reiterated, slowly. She highly discomforted to know she actually did have a modicum of commonality with a traitor, and how the orphans of Baraspine had been groomed to obediently and unwittingly serve the treachery of the Patriot schemers.

    “I mean, I wasn’t always, but yeah...lots of us after the occupation.” Markova muttered. “Mum used to tell me all about how she and my Da fought with the faith militia against the heretics...”

    “War makes plenty of us.” Sapphira responded, and nodded slightly when the younger woman shifted to refocus her attention on the disguised Sister. “Uh huh, me too. I’ve always been one.”

    “I’m sorry.” Markova said softly, as she reached up and consolingly squeezed Sapphira’s hand on her shoulder. The Sister shuddered slightly at the traitor’s companionable touch, and how the contact pressed the wingtips of Ban Thurlow’s Aquila charm on her prayer beads into her palm.

    “You…don’t have to be.” Sapphira deflected, somewhat unsettled by this conversation, yet was willing to persist as the...similarities of their upbringings was making headway with her. “I was raised alongside the best companions, and I have never lacked for purpose in my life.”

    “Yeah, me too...and yet, here I am. I’m trained for this...and I’m losin’ my fraggin’ shit, and I ain’t downhive facin’ the Guard like my regiment, my friends...my guy...” Markova mumbled, and sighed feelingly. “It feels like I’m lettin’ everyone and everything I care about down, you know?”

    “I know. I’ve been there, too.” Sapphira admitted. Oh, how she had been there...

    “How’d you get through it?” Markova asked.

    I didn’t. Sapphira internally answered, as she consciously focused on the mechanical heart steadily thumping within her chest. The Sister took a steadying breath, as she remembered the excruciation of her own death. She exhaled slightly as she watched Glabrio direct the squad.

    “Not alone.” Sapphira answered after the momentary reflection. She turned towards Markova, and belatedly registered that she had been lightly squeezing the younger woman’s hand back. The Sister quickly extricated herself from the traitor, and squared to her. “Corporal Markova, you’re not alone here. You’ve got your squad, mechanized support, and our team as backup.”

    “Well, I know that…” Markova responded, like the frustrated and stressed out young woman that she was, as she stared at the ceiling and almost helplessly shrugged. She glanced back at the disguised Sister. “But…we’re being invaded by a fraggin’ Imperial crusade...”

    “That’s not your responsibility, soldier.” Sapphira decreed. She clasped the younger woman on her shoulders. “Keep your faith in the God-Emperor, focus on the threat that you’ve got infront of you and your squad, and work out how you intend to lead them through this situation. Okay?”

    “Okay...right you are, ma’am.” Markova hesitantly affirmed. The younger woman anxiously fidgeted again, and shyly looked down. “It’s just that...I’m also really worried about Daniil.”

    “I take it Daniil’s your boyfriend?” Sappira queried, as she released Markova’s shoulders.

    “I mean, I guess he’s that now?” The corporal answered with uncertainty. She made a quiet, embarrassed laugh at Sapphira’s questioningly tilted head. “Dani’s been a friend since the orphanage, and we’ve been havin’ fun since enlistin’...but with the liberation, and makin’ ready for the Imps? We ain’t talked seriously, but it’s kinda been feelin’...serious, like, with us.”

    “Life and death cuts through the grox shit.” Sapphira knowingly murmured in confirmation.

    The Sister remembered the tumultuous, wrenching aftermath of Concordia and the Patriot’s rebellion...and she remembered the few brighter moments in the darkness. She remembered Raechel’s intercession, and the forgiveness of Kally and Kelly. She remembered being sat side by side with Glabrio on her hospital bed, after Sister Mahin had returned her chaplet, and agreeing to officially become a couple. She remembered standing as Solvan’s attendant, as Kally and Crenshaw officially became a couple before the God-Emperor and the survivors.

    “Lady, you ain’t fraggin’ kiddin’.” Markova exhaled through her respirator. The corporal straightened her back, squared her shoulders, and purposefully tilted her head over at her squad. The Sister nodded, and the two took up their weapons again as they turned.

    “To quote a dear friend, who’d know better than most, relationship gak is hard.” Sapphira recounted. “In my own experience, such as it is, it’s worth making the effort.”

    “Well, I’ll bet havin’ your guy close by helps.” Markova commented, with a nod towards Glabrio.

    “How did…?” Sapphira queried, as she sharply looked towards the younger woman. The Sister’s brow reflexively knitted in consternation behind her mask to have been found out.

    “Your eyes.” Markova answered, once she stifled her inadvertent giggle at her presumed new comrade’s discomforted surprise. “They were in your feelin’s, when you were lookin’ at Androv.”

    “I see.” Sapphira murmured. She frowned, displeased to have been so careless to have been discovered...by a teenager, of all people. Kally, Kelly, and Raech would be amused...

    “No need to fret, ma’am. It’s as you said, life and death cuts through the grox shit. I get that.” The young corporal stated. She nudged Sapphira’s arm with a friendly elbow. “Besides, it was cute - and reassurin’, too, knowin’ you can be a tough-ass alpha female and have a heart.”

    Made in a manufactoria, from metal and plastek, and implanted into my dead body. She silently responded. The frown on her face immediately deepened as she imagined the disapproving looks Raech and Mahin would’ve given her, had she voiced that near them.

    She remembered her hands clasped with the then-newly acquainted tech-priestess, the woman she now considered a friend, as they made a solemn pact to respect one another’s faiths. She remembered how her fellow Sister had told her the bionic was from the Vigil’s own war reserves, in the days after the traitors burnt their Order’s convent and novices with orbital fire. Sapphira felt the familiar surge of guilt course through her as she registered the unworthy ingratitude of her thoughts. She wordlessly touched the Aquila points as an impromptu act of contrition.

    I was gifted a heart of the Machine God’s artifice, deemed worthy of a Sororita descended from Lucia the Valorous Heart. I will be worthy of the life that without it, I would not have.

    “You okay, ma’am?” Markova queried as the silence had lingered.

    “More than, corporal.” Sapphira answered, honestly, as she turned towards the younger woman. “So, where’s your Daniil?”

    “Adeptio’s holdin’ the line at Kephistron Altis so the governess and the other ordained by the Emperor can escape the Imps.” She responded, without any doubt in the task assigned to her boyfriend’s company. Sapphira could hear the worry about him, though. She understood.

    As well she should be, with the Guard attacking the Skaltine district - not doubt to take the starport... Sapphira thought as she remembered the earlier vox conversation. She smiled encouragingly and reassuringly touched Markova’s arm with her faith-bead wrapped hand.

    “Have faith in the God-Emperor that he’ll make it through.”

    “Always, ma’am. Dani’s goin’ to live.” Markova affirmed with conviction.

    Glabrio clapped the Divinatory Guard he’d been in conversation with on the shoulder, and stepped forward as he turned towards them. He cocked his head. “Everything squared away?”

    “Mission ready, sir.” Sapphira answered while Markova nodded firmly.

    “My intention is fire and maneuver by teams, with the Repressor as mobile cover and support.” The Baraspini corporal promptly offered, as she regarded the two disguised Imperials.

    Sapphira exchanged a look with her partner, and after a moment the two nodded in agreement. Glabrio gestured differentially towards the young woman. “You squad, corporal. On your order.”

    “Okay.” Markova exhaled softly. She reached for her earpiece. “Okay, team we -”

    “Emperor of Adrantis, they’re coming right at us!”

    “They’re charging! Fraggin’ light ‘em up!”

    “Oh...shit, shit, shit!“


    The PDF who had gone to ground behind their Rhino panicked at the sight of the figures rushing towards them. A wild, sawing burst of gunfire turned the street into a thrashing forest of impact puffs and flying debris, and what appeared to be a servant running alongside more decoratively attred nobles backflipped as a bullet tore off his mask.

    “Those look like civilians.” Sapphira commented, as she came upon the scene alongside Glabrio and Markova. The three of them hunkered down behind one of the synthetic, silkweave florals in the decorative wrought-iron planters which lined the boulevard as the PDF’s fire receded.

    That same realization, that civilians had been shot down in the street, belatedly came to one of the Divinatory Guard. Sapphira recognized it as the hot-headed Bulgarin, as he lowered his rifle, and managed to raise his faith mask in time to retch his lunch across the rockcrete.

    “Oh shit…” the young man groaned piteously. “I just shot someone in the fraggin’ face…”

    “Recognize them, corporal?” Glabrio asked, unfazed as he regarded the street ahead down the sights of his handgun. The interrogator’s eyes narrowed as tracked a lithe, darting figure who expertly wove her way through the Divinitory Guard’s sight-lines towards two nobles.

    “Uh...that’s -”

    “You murdered my son!” a man shrieked, his voice torn by furious grief. “You murdered my son!”

    “...Lord Vel-Corosa?”

    Sapphira tensed as she felt a cold rush down her spine. She only dared to turn her eyes towards Glabrio as they reached the same, immediate realization. Patriot assassins!

    “Word is they’re loyalists...why the shit are the Imp’s killin’ ‘em?”

    “We’ll find out after we’ve secured the Vel-Corosa household.” Glabrio curtly determined, as he turned towards the squad. “First section, make ready to advance! Second section, make ready to cover fire!”

    “Hold on!” Sapphira ordered. She leaned out from cover to shout at the cowering servants. “Come on, clear the road and come us!”

    “Wait, what about the Repressor?” Markova queried, startled by Glabrio’s ire.

    “Get it fraggin’ turned about then, corporal!” Glabrio barked as he made ready to break cover, while the straggling civilians tentatively emerged from behind their own with hands raised fearfully.

    “Come on, come on!” Sapphira urged as she waved her free hand towards the Vel-Corosa servants to urge them to move faster. “Move, move, move!”

    “And what about the other sniper?” Bulgarin began in a quiet, subdued rasp.

    “By the grace of the Deus, I have a solution!” the tech-priest exclaimed, as he lurched onto his feet in sudden animation from his ministrations. He held out the vox. “I can find the marksman!”

    The marksman found him first.

    Sapphira winced as the overcharged hotshot tore across her sight and through the wisened tech-priest’s torso. She flinched at the thunderbolt crack as the excess energy detonated against the side of the Repressor, nearly drowning out the corpse’s thud as the dead man bounced off the armored vehicle and collapsed forwards onto the roadway. The heavy fall knocked the masked helmet from his head, and Sapphira saw the wide-eyed incomprehension on the dead priest’s lined, bearded face. She reflexively tense, as she was immediately and uncomfortably reminded of the sight of Solvan’s near-martyrdom for the team on Perinetus.

    A grandfatherly tinkerer of a priest. Not a warrior, like our dear loyal Solvan. Sapphira corrected herself. By the time she had come back to her senses, and heard Glabrio bawling orders at the Divinatory Guard to impose order, the damage had already been done.

    The Sister turned and saw the roadway ahead of them fouled by the sprawled corpses of the Vel-Corosa’s servants, evidently caught in a murderous crossfire between the indiscriminate Patriot assassins and the anxious and fearful Baraspini soldiers. Sapphira caught the sight of Bulgarin, rifle abandoned as he was hunched over on hands and knees hurling into the gutter.

    He had not been fortunate in raising his mask the second time.

    “Run, Lord Vel-Corosa!” Glabrio bellowed above the chaotic din. “Run!”

    Sapphira whirled her attention away from the miserable, shaking soldier to catch sight of a portly man in noble’s finery limping away from the danger. She immediately noticed the blade imbedded in his chest, which he had a hand clamped over. He was desperately waving towards them for the help he so desperately needed. The Sister bounded onto her feet, shotgun raised to cover Glabrio as he rushed forward to try and save potentially the last of the Vel-Corosa - when he collapsed, face first, with what she could determine was a bolt through the throat.

    Well…shit Sapphira internalized as she externalized a deep, heavy sigh at what was without question a lethal shot to both the Baraspini nobleman and the team’s mission.

    “Secure the area!” Sapphira bruskely ordered the shellshocked Divinatory Guard, like the non-commissioned she was pretending to be, without even a side glance to the Baraspini.

    “Keep the second marksman pinned, and get the damned tank around! Now!” Markova shouted, voice cracking with youth and outrage by the unintentional massacre. “We’re taking these murderous, bastard Imperials down!

    In the moment, the Sister only had eyes for her partner. She saw the tension build in his broad shoulders as he watched Lord Vel-Corosa’s last, feeble movements before he expired. Mission failed. Sapphira grimly released. Unlike her partner, she did not even attempt to shoot at the fleeing figure who had assuredly made the kills. Sapphira retreated from the unsteadily moving Baraspini as Glabrio turned, after he had dumped half a magazine chasing the slender silhouette with his practiced gunfire, and gestured for him with a tilt of her head.

    + + + + + +

    Work smarter, not harder. he could almost hear the Lady chiding him. Except, technically, it wasn’t the Lady he needed to impress any more. And Lucullis is going to grind his teeth over this frak-up.

    At least he could still kill the heretics.

    He waved away the Divinatory Guard who were still pelting the upper floors with fire, and ducked back towards Sapphira.
    Glabrio’s keen eye for detail reflexively noticed the Sister’s pensive frown. Her fingers fretfully worked the inconspicuous prayer beads and faith charms she wore looped around her wrist, in lieu of her absent Sororita chaplet.

    “I’m going to kill these heretics.” Glabrio repeated aloud as he neared the Sister.

    “Not alone you’re not, Ri.” Saph responded, as she sidled in next to him. She used their proximity to discreetly take his hand in both of hers. “We’re going to kill these heretics.”

    He glanced down as the Sister eased open the fist that he hadn’t realized he’d clenched, and interlaced her fingers with his. She held a soft, comforting squeeze as she looked up at him.

    “What’s the script, sir?”

    Glabrio inhaled slightly as he regarded Sapphira. The damned Baraspini faith mask hid her beautiful face, but not her equally enthralling eyes. He could see the hard determination of a Sororita to exact the God-Emperor’s vengeance on the assassins, as well as a woman’s undiminished belief in her man. Sister Sapphira, his agent and his girl, had complete confidence in him. The interrogator exhaled slowly, and returned the squeeze as he calmed down a bit.

    “Gavin still hunting?”

    There was a woman’s scream, and a blast that sent dust and smoke spraying from an upper window. One or two of the Divinatory Guard glanced at Glabrio fearfully, but most had zeroed in on the marker and were now pelting the building with lasfire. A single weapon answered, its carrier yelling defiance in some gutter brand of low gothic.

    Sapphira was groping at her webbing, pulling out a silver-capped slug. The executioner runes stencilled into it caught the light as she slotted it into her shotgun. Her eyes flickered sideways, and Glabrio offered her a nod as he caught her gaze. It was a particularly clever and nasty trick that Saph and Gavin had cooked up between them since Concordia - instead of Saph having to keep the target painted with her gunsights, she could duck back and allow the technopath to steer it right into their skull.

    “Good as dead.” Saph assured him as she brought her weapon up to her shoulder. “Gavin, plan E!”

    + + + + + +

    Gierolf and Anja were running. There had been some kind of agonised banshee wail from their voxes that had caused them to wrench them clean from their ears. They kicked down a servant’s door and ran to a secondary sniping spot as fire tore in from the Imperials and the Baraspini. There was the throaty roar of the Divinatory Guard's transport, a Repressor, coming to life below.

    “Cover me!” Gierolf yelled as he swept a small number of devotional statues from the windowsill and smashed the window in two smooth motions. He planned to put a hot-shot round into the driver’s vision block, and immobilise the tank.

    When he didn't hear a confirmation from Anja, he turned in annoyance, determined to request a new spotter once this fool’s errand was over. Those thoughts died as he saw the young woman struggling to clamp her hands over the two frag grenades on her belt. Gierolf’s eyes went wide as he saw the reason.

    The two pins were at her feet.

    “I . . . I can't . . . they're fighting me.”

    Gierolf’s eyes went wider still as he saw the reason. Some scrawny, four-eyed frak in a suit with a cripple’s legs and a killer’s eyes, loomed over Anja. He was see through and flickering like those shit quality propaganda reels the hangmen had forced them to watch, over and over. Witch. Its hands were on the grenades. Gierolf held up a hand, pleading.

    "Look. . .please, don't, we ain't a threat to you! We're just here to do a job! Let her go and we'll clear out and you'll never know we were here!"

    With an almost casual shrug, the creature pulled on the grenades. Gierolf covered his eyes just in time, feeling the blast and the shrapnel slam into his flak. When he opened his eyes, a pair of bloody legs were standing proud of the floor, and most of Anja was sprayed across the room. He had been thrown into the wall next to the window, his legs knocked out from underneath him, his arse hitting the floor.

    “You son of a witch!” He roared as he pulled his rifle up and loosed a hotshot. The monster seemed to split and reform around the neon bolt of light, which punched down the plaster wall behind it. "Frak you! She didn't have to die! She was just a frakkin' kid!"

    The gun got horribly hot in his hands and he tossed it aside as the spectre advanced. It decisively shook its head, even as the film-reel form shuddered and twitched as a delayed after images continued to catch the tainted beast as it moved. His vox snarled and stuttered as a broken, raspy voice mocked him.

    "I've seen children killed. She wasn't a child. You made her a soldier. And soldiers die."

    "Only because your Imperium, your damn priests and your damn magos, insist on killin' em!" Gierolf roared. He snatched up his laspistol from his webbing and unloading it into the advancing phantom. The rounds phased through the daemonic projection, blowing chunks from the wall behind. There was a warning whine as the power cell suddenly ran down.

    “One round.” Gierolf breathed, his eyes flicking to the powercell reader then to the lightning ghost standing in the room. “Why? Why damn you?”

    The ghost-shape flickered, stroking tentacles of glowing plasma filament across the walls. “It’ll work for you, unlike mine did for me.”

    “What are you talking about?” Gierolf spat back at it.

    The phantom hissed with static, and pale frost began to creep over Gierolf’s vox, choking the perforated holes in the speaker. “As a cultist son of a bitch I intend to kill once said...there’s always a choice.”

    With a cold shiver, Gierolf understood. “Kill myself or be killed?” He snapped the lasgun barrel up towards the phantom again, in defiance. “Never.”

    "Why are you still bothering?" Gierolf’s radio rasped as the traitor pushed himself to his feet. "You know you can't hurt me."

    "I'll never stop, not until I've made the Imperium pay for what it took from me.” Gierolf snarled back, jabbing a finger at the shade. “My home, my wife, my children, everything but my life, which I'll use to make you monsters pay!"

    The executioner round punched through the outer wall and exploded on impact with Gierolf’s back. Microshrapnel tore his back open, lacerating his spine and puncturing his lungs. He slumped forwards bonelessly and collapsed on the floor, his lungs wetly rattling.

    "Even your life." His radio crackled. For a moment, the phantom watched the soldier bleed out, then it leapt away, following the wires to its next target.

    + + + + + +

    Downhive the artillery fire was intensifying, rolling like thunder between the spires. Einar dropped down into the interlevel, his boots clanging on the pipes, and reached back up to help Dagfinn. Gierolf and Anja still weren’t responding, and Einar had already given the two up for dead. Colonel Hassek would be pissed that two of his soldiers had gone absent without leave over to the Emperor’s table, but not as pissed as Einar would be if he died in this forsaken shithole.

    “Come the fuck on, Sarnie…” he urged the assassin under his breath.

    As if summoned, the moritat girl dropped down through the hatch and landed catlike on the grate beside him. He hadn’t even heard her footsteps across the slabs above. Einar visibly exhaled.

    “Tell me you’ve still got the teleport homer.” Dagfinn challenged.

    “And pray the Witch ain’t left us out to freeze.” Einar added as he heaved the hatch back into place. The handles were unusually cold, making him grit his teeth and curse the vagaries of hive climate control. He didn’t notice the frost creeping over the cable runs above.


    "I've got it." Sarna muttered, pulling the device from a webbing pouch. It looked like a little bronze wand, and she carefully extended it and activated it. "I just hope it didn't take a knock while I was busy."

    "Guys. . .is it meant to snow in an uphive?"

    Dagfinn was holding his hands out in near childlike amazement, watching the flakes fall on his gloved hands and melt. Einar was watching the flakes wide eyed.

    "What the fuck?" He muttered.

    Sarna looked up from the homer, and her hand went immediately to her sword.

    "Psyker!" She winced in pain and looked back to her palm. The thin rod of the teleport homer was now an icicle, frozen to her hand. She peeled it out of her grip, taking a chunk of skin with it.

    "I don't think it's Alyss, guys."

    “No.” a voice fuzzed from her comrades’ vox casters. The lumoglobes studding the tunnel began to flicker ominously. “Not Alyss.”

    + + + + + +

    He regarded them under the cold light of the tunnel, watching them scrabble like ants as he manifested. The lasbolts streaking from the two men’s pistols were less than nothing, mere threads of light that buzzed as they met the ionised air he was occupying. The woman was different - as she reached over her shoulder to draw the power sword from its sheath, he saw another hand resting there, like the touch of a watchful parent.

    The hand was smoke and starlight, flickering between pale skin, withered bone and hooked, daemonic claws. As soon as Gavin became aware of it, he sensed the warp-spawn’s eyes on him too. They were pale blue eyes in a ruddy, aristocratic face, sandy hair carefully side-combed and falling into loose curls at the back of his neck. Dark whiskers framed a mouth whose lips were pressed hard together, as the daemon’s chosen form regarded him with contempt. Its hand, sleeved in the blood-red velvet of an antique smoking jacket, tightened on the blademaiden’s shoulder.

    The ants were still buzzing their threads of light up at him, which made Gavin angry.

    “I need you to frak off now.” he projected through one soldier’s vox unit, and surged all the latent power from the machinery around him into the guns in their hands.

    One of the ants shrieked as his weapon exploded, taking most of his fingers with it. He reeled back into a rust-rotted guard rail, which gave way with a sharp clunk and sent him screaming into the interlevel depths. The second man was faster, but no luckier - his gun spanged off the grated walkway as he dropped it, only to burst in a release of imparted energy that sent pieces of metal barrel and crystal focusing lenses tearing through his legs, his chest and his throat. Two shards of the power cell found his eyes, bursting them like grapes.

    Something about that seemed to amuse the daemon hovering behind the woman. It laughed, and raised a glass of dark red liquid in salute as the soldier coughed blood over the woman, collapsed to the ground, and died.

    The young woman was retreating, in the only direction she could, subject as she was to the fleshy tyranny of gravity. As she backed up along the grated walkway, Gavin followed, blowing out the fuses of the lumo-circuits as he flickered from one to another. He saw the wary fear on her blood-spattered face. She knew what he could see hovering over her.

    “And you,” he told the swordswoman, “Need to die right now.”

    + + + + + +

    Sarna stepped back, sword in front of her. She felt heat surge in her veins, and the blood dripping on the floor steamed as it fell.

    Power. You need my power or you will die here! Take the pact and serve!

    The jumping, damaged film of a ghost drifted towards her. She was one person with a sword. What could she do to something like this? She did need help. The images of this monsters death flashed through her mind. She'd hack its avatar apart, then find its comatose body and separate its treacherous mutant brain from its body.

    She tipped her head back and yelled with all her will.

    "ALYSS!"

    + + + + + +

    Her friend’s soul was a single bright red spark in a sea of white lights. She arrowed in on the scent of blood like a shark in water, and as she got closer, she could smell ozone and the unmistakable tang of bitterness. The bitterness was coming off the Jotunhel sniper team, what was left of them, everyone from that dead world seemed infused with it, but it was more overpowering from another nearby source. A bright soul flame, a psyker.

    She pulled together her avatar from dust and loose motes of light. She snapped into position between Sarna and Gavin with a bang like a concussion grenade.

    She knew his name because he wore it like a curse, stamped into his soul as thoroughly as branded meat. He was wreathed in tempered anger and coiling bitterness, all locked under a cold layer of studied contempt. At the centre of him, burned a bright coal of. . . love, but it was as much a weapon now to him as his spite and anger.

    Gavin didn't wait or make an introduction. He slammed into her like a hurricane wind. She smashed him back, biolightning blasting out and popping the remaining lights in the interlevel as the electricity ran away down the lines.

    Cultist! The accusation was a hot spike of spite. Pawn of daemons!

    It drove her back, but it was misaimed. She saw flickers of memory in the strike as it screeched past her, wells of hate and pain that gave the power focus. She saw glimpses of a legless youth, twitching helplessly under the heel of a man who wore a Blank’s null-collar and the eye of the Adeptus Telepathica on his jacket. A pawn of a different daemon, and one just as brutal.

    I am no-one’s pawn! She pushed back. I spit on the Inquisition The words fell as a red hot hammer of anger I spit on the so-called gods! Again, the hammer fell. No gods, no masters, only men!

    Each word was punctuated by a psychic blow, but the blows glanced clear of the armour of Gavin’s psyche as he formed his layered soul into a series of barricades. This time the memories that fuelled them were made of determination - two women; one dark-haired and lying wounded in a medicae bed, surrounded by a bright, tender corona; and another, obscured by the dark smoke that was pouring down her throat, haloed with contempt.

    On that, we can agree. Gavin’s counterattack was strong, but focused. It pushed the two avatars apart. The Inquisition can go hang.


    There was a pause, as both of them assessed the other. Alyss could feel her hold slipping. She was projecting through two void shields from low orbit, and was exhausting herself. She could see the thin silver wire leading away from Gavin’s soul, and realised his own body was close. This was not a battle she could win easily. If at all.

    I am not your enemy. She offered cautiously. She opened up the layers of her soul, showing him the desires that drove her towards freedom at any cost, laying bare the mercenary work she was doing to fund that dream. Gavin drifted back from her.

    She further showed him the work she was doing to try and drive out the Khornate daemon with talons in Sarna's soul. A memory, strong and recent, of Sarna crying from exhaustion, pain and fear as Alyss tried to drive the daemon from her in a ritual exorcism. There was darkness coiled around light, hope mixed with anger and pain. At the centre, was a little girl crying as her home and family burned. This close there was bleed from Sarna, who was standing, sword clutched in a death grip, breathing hard. In between the black and white threads, made of memories Sarna had struggled to reclaim and Alyss had examined, was a familiar shade of grey.

    As Gavin examined Alyss, it was impossible to not be examined in turn. Alyss had a brief flash, a heart shaped face framed in steel and fire, smelling of incense and trust, close by, maybe even touching Gavin. And at the centre of his maze of a soul, nestled from all harm, was the dark-haired woman again, the face of someone who had pulled Gavin back from the brink more than once. But what Alyss learned most of all was that she had been right to run. Like running her hand along a scarred wall, she saw every indignation, every cruelty heaped on Gavin by the Imperium, and especially, the black soul that had hurt him to turn him into a weapon.

    The two pulled themselves apart, untangling emotions and memories. For a moment there was nothing to be said, psychically or otherwise.

    Gavin’s impassive gaze shifted to Sarna and back to her. The sanctioned psyker’s flicking, film-reel projection thoughtfully narrowed his eyes, and inhaled superfluously before he spoke.

    “Lucullis sends his regards.”

    Alyss had to compose herself not to discorporate at that name. She searched the Imperial’s prematurely lined face, and saw no hint of amusement or deception. Gavin merely looked over his ethereal glasses and gave her a fractional nod. Fair warning. She nodded back, slowly.

    “I’m sorry for what they did to you, Gavin.” Alyss offered. “If I get the chance, I’ll smear that blacksoul bastard for you.”

    The sanctioned psyker merely shrugged at the unsanctioned psyker’s sympathetic offer. “If I wanted him dead, I’d have done it myself the last time we were on Baraspine.”

    “Suit yourself.” Alyss shrugged. “If I see him, I think I’ll kill him out of principle.

    “If only for your sake, and that of your friend, I’d highly advise you not kill Martin Crenshaw.”

    “Why...not...?”

    “You’d incur the wrath of his wife.”

    ...wife?

    The sanctioned psyker frowned slightly, as he pointedly checked the non-existent wristwatch on his translucent arm. “If you’re going, then you had better go. Before the rest find you here.

    Alyss touched the teleport homer in Sarna's hand, shattering the ice. For a few seconds, Gavin heard the young assassin question her friend, before the boom of the teleporter stole them away. Alyss's avatar dissolved back into motes of dust and light, leaving nothing but a suggestion in the air and taste of ozone and frost.

    + + + + + +

    Glabrio slumped against the wall, as the wind blowing down from the spires abruptly became colder. The chill air hit him in the teeth like a fist. Behind him, Sapphira was helping Gavin.

    “One of the Imperials got away.” the psyker growled as he reasserted himself in his physical body. “A teleporter, most likely from one of the ships above.”

    Glabrio pursed his lips. He had imagined himself escorting their oblivious Divinatory Guard helpers downhive as prisoners of war, shepherded by Gavin in the form of the Vel-Corosas’ now ownerless cyber mastiffs. But now he looked into Gavin’s eyes, like hard slivers of glass ready to draw blood, Glabrio did not trust him not to simply rip the rebel soldiers to pieces. Something had rattled the technopath, and as usual, Glabrio doubted that it was the enemies at hand.

    He’s losing it...and let’s face it, he didn’t have a lot of “it” to begin with.

    Ahead, Imperial flyers were resuming their airstrikes as the ground forces methodically overran airfields and missile batteries. The darting fighters rained fire on the midhive: las-guided bunker busters and indiscriminate cluster-frags, block-levelling thermobarics and firebombs that filled the grid-iron streets with rivers of flame. Old walls and roofs burst apart, stonework sloughing away, entire tenement rows collapsing like dominoes. A multi-story collapsed into itself in a bloom of white dust, as if the ground had swallowed it. A storm front of las and artillery fire rolled in after the bombs, as the crusaders ground steadily uphive.

    Hive Alda was going to fall...but the family Vel-Corosa would no longer be there to take up the reins of leadership in the Imperium’s name.

    Glabrio was too canny to curse aloud, but he did grind his teeth. The Lady, Emperor bless her and keep her, was not who she once was - both physically and in the eyes of her peers. Most in the Ordos were distancing themselves from the brewing feud between herself and Yannick.

    Machairi had given him a rosette, but if Glabrio Hybrida could not use it to prove his worth to all those other frowning inquisitors, what was that rosette but a visible taint of association?


    MISSION FAILED

    + + + + + +

    Eudaimonia

    “Deus above.” the enginseer working the teleportarium controls blurted as the white light imploded and Sarna’s swimming vision resolved into the familiar steel and brass of her home ship.

    She assumed that the tech priest’s exclamation was not a positive assessment of her current appearance. She groped for the support of a warp vane column, and ground the heel of her other hand into her forehead. The familiar thrum of the Eudaimonia’s engines were failing to drown out the hissing voices that had fumbled and clutched for her as she flickered through the immaterial realm.

    “Where are the others?” the enginseer asked, beckoning forward a medicae servitor that proceeded to shine its intrusively bright lux-probe into Sarna’s eyes.

    A hard look from Sarna answered the enginseer’s question for him. “Tell me we’re clear of this shark pool and on our way to the Tephaine jump point.”

    “Negative.” the enginseer replied, signing the Cog. “All of the other evac ships are already heading for it. The captain was of the opinion that some Imperial squadron was bound to take notice and fence it off before we could get there.”

    Sarna cuffed sweat from her brow. “So where are we going?”

    “To the best of my Knowledge, the Coseflame jump point.”

    “Coseflame?” Sarna repeated. “The shrine world?”

    The enginseer shrugged. "The Deus might frown on it, but I can see some logic within the illogic. It’s the last place they'll expect us, isn't it?"


    MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

  6. #26
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    Spoiler: Konstantin Burakgazi, Vizkop, Enki Volkner and Omikron Zahir - Skorgulian 
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  7. #27
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    If the proceedings did not call for a neutral location, Enki would agree that their surroundings were an insult to HIS station alone. The Magos Reductor only trusted, of those around him, Zahir and Freylis and simply wished for the rest not to interfere. His massive form’s footfalls echoed through the tighter spaces in a familiar cant to him. One that had caused many of his enemies to attempt to surrender or beg for mercy. All of them had been reduced to fleshy slag.

    The silence around them was haunting and he could feel the unease from the baseline Adranteans that were with them. Such emotions were useless and would be the first to be purged were they soldiers worth anything to the Omnissiah. As they followed the pulses of his auspex, Enki was reminded of the blasted wasteland of a world he had been born into so long ago. The tall and oppressive nature of the towers and furnaces around them brought back visions of hollow-eyed and ashen faced menials toiling ceaselessly in the light of a black sun, a perpetual eclipse created by some marvel of the Dark Age of Technology meant to siphon energy from the star itself for purposes the masters of that world likely would never know. Enki had watched many a worker break under the strange light of that sun either from their minds giving in to stress or their flesh giving out and expiring. But there were always more to come.

    He wondered how many died working the blessed machines around them. It was little wonder even Freylis was more subdued than usual in such surroundings. But step by measured step they neared the meeting point. As a sign of good faith, Enki had left his weapon attachments behind. After all they were there on a diplomatic mission, not to demolish the blessed structure. The entourage flanking the two emissaries were armed enough should anything ambush them and even without the two weapon arms, Enki was formidable on his own.
    But by the Omnissiah’s grace it would hopefully not come to violence.

    “We are almost there,” Enki informed them. His flesh voice was entirely unsettling coming out of the vocal modulator of his cybernetic form and he almost felt how a couple of the Adranteans shivered at the sound of it. It was one of the little things he derived some twisted amusement from.
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    Spoiler: Konstantin Burakgazi, Vizkop, Enki Volkner and Omikron Zahir - Skorgulian 
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    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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    “So I suppose that’s a no on diplomacy then?” Enki noted a few threats to his heavily armored body among the Imperials but the capacity to be worried about them was sequestered away in his mind. He needed to focus and in that moment he had no patience for any posturing or preening. The Imperials clearly came to fight and he was not about to let them get the first move.

    It was less than a second of communication over the private link with Zahir that had the Electro-Priest spring out of the meditative state he had been in for the whole walk. Muscles bulged and flexed as he moved, voltgeists screeching to life as power coursed through his arms. Omikron took a wide step forward, thrusting his arms out, and blasted forth in a crackling corkscrew straight at the walker.

    The blast washed over and enveloped the Sentinel, burling into the finer systems and locking the controls as it reduced the electronics to so much smoking slag. It was a carefully constructed attack that Zahir, against his own wishes, did not allow to arc to any of the organics standing nearby. ‘Remove the walker’ was the only order Enki had given him and so he would do nothing else.

    “Or,” spoke the Magos Reductor again, “would you like to reconsider your postured position?”
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    LEO!

    <HOLD!> Stan urgently canted in Adrantean, Calixian and Obscuras tech-codes as he registered Zahir’s devastating, yet restrained disabling of the Sentinel. In another instance, anywhere but in this place - with these specific Imperials - he would have been highly impressed with his fellow Luminen’s artisanal control of his voltgeists. Instead, he was horrified. <HOLD, IN THE NAME OF THE DEUS!>

    “Hold your fire!” Konstantin shouted for the benefit of the baselines, drawn in amidst and hopelessly out of their depth among the Deus’ ascended, first in Vostroyan and repeated himself in Tephainian. He slowly stepped ahead of the Adrantean delegation with arms outstretched and hands raised at both factions for near-combatants. “Please, no provocative moves! Nobody has died, and nobody need die!”

    The Luminen knew with complete clarity that the Sentinel’s pilot was alive – dazed, stunned by the sudden death of their mount’s machine spirit – but unquestionably alive. Don’t be Leo, please, don’t let that be Leo in there… Stan could hear the thundering of his heart, and the malicious laughter of his unwanted companions within his psyche, as the irrevocably Martian piece of him coldly and logically told him that the odds of it not being Leonid Sadik, Titan Slayer, were statistically improbable.

    Please, please, please…not Leo

    “That’s far enough, Burakgazi.” Erdene stated, and he complied. She lowered her rifle slightly, but Stan did not need his extrasensory abilities to register that was a matter of her Knowledge that a single las weapon was vanishingly unlikely to fatally harm him, rather than any notion of mercy or restraint.

    “Interrogator Erdene.” Stan acknowledged, with a genuinely respectful nod at his former colleague. “I had sincerely hoped, and prayed, that we would never meet again after Vaxanhive.”

    “Hope and prayer won’t save you.” She responded, as a matter of fact.

    Konstantin conceded Erdene’s honest assessment of his dismal odds with a tilt of his head and small, melancholic smile. He had run the calculations, many more times than once, and in every instance the daemons had been content to merely observe and radiate malefic glee at his prospects for salvation. In that moment, noticed the brief flicker in her otherwise tightly composed aura as she regarded the perfect scar across his brow and cheek, and his repaired silver bionic eye bisected with Ghast’s gold.

    He nodded again, slowly. Erdene had inflicted that wound, carving out his eye with a maestro’s thrust of her blade in their duel – which he had, admittedly, ended with a rather inelegant breaking of her leg. Stan had promised he would keep the scar as a mark of honor for her prowess as a warrior, which she had bid also serve as a reminder that she and him would never yield in their hunt for him. He considered that acceptable, and had agreed. He could only hope and pray she’d believe his words…

    “As I said.” Stan segued away from their prior, misbegotten history, with a pointed glance between the tensed Imperial and Republican forces. He resettled his silver eyes on Erdene. “Nobody needs to die.”

    “You deserve to die, you traitorous second born piece of shit!” One of the Firstborn shouted at him in Vostroyan, and Konstantin could see the unanimous flare of agreement from the remainder. He inhaled deeply, as he quelled the instinctive, hostile response from his voltgeists and Red’s urgent urging.

    Erdene silenced any further commentary with a harsh side glance. She nodded slowly at him. “Go on.”

    “Our most gracious hosts have manufactured this unfortunate situation, precisely so that we would attempt to kill one another, while they assuredly watch us.” Konstantin made no effort to hide his scorn for the Skorgulian magi, as divided his focus between the Imperial and Adrantean delegations. “I would humbly propose that we resist the temptation and inclination to resolve this with violence – and not give them the satisfaction, as make no mistake Skorgulian cannot afford to remain isolated any longer.”

    Konstantin meaningfully met Erdene’s eyes as he rhetorically oscillated. I’m trying, Erdene. I’m trying.

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

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