990M41
Planet Gravemire
To Inquistor Lord Moredecai

Hiveworlds.

The putrid and rotten husk of a comatose planet, riddled with sharp, dilapidated growths the shape of inverted icicles that pierced the clouds as if trying to escape the very world they crushed under their weight. Two hundred million souls of the emperor's children lived, worked, fucked, and died in each and every city. The manufacture of steel and silica within each city's industrial sectors kept the economic blood flowing, but it produced the same, most precious resource of every hive world: it's people. Brave men and women sent to fight and die on the front lines at every corner of known space, and 73% of them came from worlds such as these.

Gravemire was much like others of its kind. From my vantage point on the deck, I could see the great mountains of rockcrete and steel spiraling into the sky. Their size nagged at me, as if something so large couldn't be real. Each was accented by turrets and parapets and eroded by wind and time. On the monitor, the Caledonia prompted the planet's readings. The planet was mostly comprised of endless wastes of swamps of sulphur and liquid ammonia surfaced after its crust had eroded away from the toxic chemicals vomited out of the hives. The inhospitable landscape and the large, mutant beasts that had adapted to its environment made ground travel virtually impossible on the planet surface. The world looked a sickly ball of blue marred by dark pox-marks that offended the eye. I didn't like hives. I found them hot, asphyxiating, and confining. The fact the last hive I had entered had led to Kronus's death did not help matters, either.

I would make sure something of that nature did not happen again.

"We're being hailed on the Vox Caster. Hive Orcus has granted permission to dock." The sub-light navigator told Urien. He looked to me for confirmation, and then got his man to work. It was good to be back on the Caledonia, as guilty as I always felt administering it for my missions. Urien and anyone else would tell me I only do so for the good of the imperium, and the fact that they are right does not make it any easier.

"Am I going with you this time?" Urien asked in his brutal accent. I regarded him, and dismissed the notion after a thought.

"No, we'll be fine."

"If you won't take me, grab a few of my boys. They'll do well in a pinch." He leaned in and whispered. "They get restless on the ship sometimes. It would be good to let a few out to breathe some fresh air."

I almost snorted at the notion of a hive being fresh air, but I nodded my acquiescence. I knew they would follow my orders as if they came from Urien's mouth, and they were well known for their close combat capabilities. I told Urien to give me his four best and meet us at the hanger. My team was already assembled and awaiting me near the newly modified shuttle, courtesy of Lazarus (as well as a bit of my own handiwork).

Emmaline, Clara, Selencia, and Laxarus awaited me at the shuttle bay, their gear and clothes already packed. Lucius was in the altar room, ordered to keep calm and practice breathing exercises prescribed by Selencia at Emmaline's insistence. I deemed him too conspicuous to follow us into the hive, but to be ready for any time we would need his assistance. I hoped not to employ Urien and Lucius at all, but in the event of a complication, it was good knowing they had our backs. Behind me, four burly men of Caledonia strode up in their fatigues, each armed with curious, archaic cudgels with the arcane oghma symbols of Catoc writ across their lengths.

It was time to move.

Gravemire. What a shithole. Perhaps that is a little unfair. All Hive Worlds actually have nice parts, the guilded spires of the aristocracy, the glittering pleasure palaces of the merchant barons, the vast basilica presincts of the Eclesiarchy, it is just that the toiling multitudes never get to see them. Most of my time, I am fortunate to say, has been spent in the more rarified precints. We came down on the modified shuttle, though exactly how it had been modified was a little unclear to me.

"Nice dress," Selenica called as I headed up the ramp, following a cargo servitor that was loading crates of specialized equipment. I was dressed in a black leather storm coat over a red and gold body glove with long glossy black boots. My hair had been elaborately but severely braided, pulled back to the back of my head and held in place by a series of ruby studded pins.

"Not a dress, but thank you," I replied. She was dressed in the robes of a senior articifer a series of stained glass pendants around her neck marking her as glazier arcana. Our research on the three week voyage had not given us much to go on. Lazarus' analysis had narrowed the equipment used in the dig to one of the merchant manufactura in Hive Orcus. Unfortunately that didn't necessarily mean there was a connection. The gear might have been purchased legitamitely, there was no crime in selling construction equipment of course, but it was our only lead. There had been a spirited debate between following this lead and pursing the las guns. Ultimately the problem had been resolved by transit times. All three of the forge worlds which produced the unquie pattern weapons were more than six months transit. Peronally I was just glad to move on to an actionable lead. I had spent much of the past several weeks going over the transcripts of the xenos tongue. The recovered fragment was part of a mythic cycle that told the story of an ancient hero who had been on a quest to recover ancient words of power. It was steeped in disturbing allegory and grew more obtuse and disturbing as it went on. Id started to suspect that the gaps in it were partial translations of alien concepts that humans lacked and begun working them phoenitically, assembling combinations from the crammed together characters. I had begun to suffer from strange dreams. On the third day I had been awoken by Hadrian having been screaming in my sleep. On the forth day I had given myself a nose bleed and stopped my studies.

"Emmaline," Hadrian prompted and I came back from the reveriee I had been slipping into. I smiled at him in reassurance.

"I'm fine, just getting my head in the game," I told him. We had chosen to pose as purchasing agents for an off planet commercia. It was a comprimise which gave us access without the exposure that would come from posing as nobility. There would be less parties, but hopefully we would be able to get more done.

We were allowed to land in one of the more high-security docking areas of Hive Orcus, about midway down the upper hive. Those representing mercantile interests of any real size were granted the same respect as dignitaries or adeptus-arbites agents. I had Lazarus purposefully cloaked so as not to arouse suspicion, though if one were to ascertain he was an member of the adeptus mechanicus, he was merely here to check our stock make sure the mechanicus' interests were being seen to by my own fake business.

We were greeted by a administratum agent by the name of Vrandiun Ogodai, who seemed accommodating enough, and he seemed to have a notable interest in the swivel guns we had implemented onto the shuttle. Evidently Vrandium had been the son of a wealthy merchant himself, distributing crafts of that nature across the imperium. It would place his family fairly close to Sol and the naval families of Jupiter, though I did not recognize the familial name of Ogodai. After speaking some time about the shuttle in the anteroom, we were guided to a tram that led us to the lifts near the heat sink at the center.

Once we arrived, it had taken us three hours to descend from the upper spire, riding a succession of increasingly decrepit and rusted elevators reserved for authorized personnel. I had fed Vrandium a well crafted story on needing to see the assemblies in the mid-hive where the factorums were held. We were granted passes and access to all but the underhive and the tallest spire where the upper echelons were located. We had been given three days leave and a location in the mid-hive to stay and recoup when need be.

When we arrived, we were greeted by a member of the adeptus arbites. I was surprised. Local arbites are common enough, but a member of the adeptus were only there on special occasions, such as riots that could destroy the integrity of a hive city or an invasion of underhive mutants threatening to spill up into the mid-hive levels. The doors on the lift had barely opened before we were greeted by the fellow, a thickly muscled man with a brutish visage clad in carapace armor and a helm that hid his visage save for his square chin.

"Welcome to Hive Orcus, sir Deckard. I am officer Ortega." He said, and though I could not see his eyes, I could discern he was looking at my retinue, including the four men Urien had granted me. "I see you have come well prepared. Smart, but no need. I will see you are adequately protected as you go about your business."

"I wasn't aware we were in need of protection. This isn't the underhive." I said, allowing the confusion to show on my face. The very real emotion serving me well in this instance.

"True, and normally you would be right. We have had some problems with the gangers in the lower hab zones, and I was recently wounded. They sent me up here to be a... guide, and to keep you safe, just in case. Everything is under control."

Had I announced myself as an inquisitor, I could have the man before me tell me right now exactly what he was hiding from me. I know talk meant for the public when I hear it, but as it was, I merely inclined my head, and allowed him to lead on.

During our planning phase we had discussed the possibility of using the Adeptus Arbities as a cover. That had, in fact, been where I got the idea for the leather great coat I was wearing, though it had been tailored to be significantly more form fitting than an Adept would wear once the role had been revised. We had rejected the idea on the basis that it would close as many doors as it might open and, given we had run into a real life Adept, that was just as well. I wondered what Ortega's real purpose was but I didn't try to read him. Arbites training included a certain amount of psychic conditioning, and it wouldn't do to get his hackles up by attempting to poke around in his brain.

We had intended to hire transport at the lift bay doors. Indeed, there were dozens of ground cars drawn up in lines. They ranged in quality from psuedo-limosines with gleaming polish and gold and ivory inlay, to battered buses which looked like they were held together with omn-tape and devotion to the Emperor. As it happened, it proved unnecessary as Ortega had arranged for two vehicles, both servicible if unremarkable ground cars, for our party. Hadrian handed me in to the lead car and joined me, followed by Lazarus and Clara. Selenica and Urien's men took the second car. It wasn't an ideal division, I would have put Clara in the second car to act as a leader if there was trouble, but it would have raised suspicion if Hardian had deliberately seperated himself from an obvious security professional.

My first glimpse of the Lower Hive came as we left the lift bay and moved out onto the ground level transit way that fromed the arteries of the city. Great towers that served as both habs and structural members stretched up into the sky where a network of catwalks, some official and some little more than stolen cables and wood slats criscorssed the immense distances. Servo skulls and prayer drones, their ancient pict screens so broken that only the fact the devotional verses had burned onto the displays kept them legible, flittered above on their own purposes. The street level buldings were covered in gang tags that varied by color and creativity with district. Tatooed heavies lounged infront of favorite bars, eyeing passers by with predatory eyes. On one corner we saw a man whose face had been all but obliterated by a stubber round standing on a tower of stim-cola crates, screaming out praise to the Emperor with arms extended. Passersby shouted abuse and, less frequently, tossed small credit tokens into a plastic tub defended by a skeletal looking boy with a withered arm and an ancient looking shock maul.

Periodically bursts of greasy rain fell from the dim recesses above, and rubbereized wipers cleared it from our windshield. I found it excceding strange that it was raining inside a hive and repressed the urge to ask Lazarus about it, not wanting to draw any more attention to the tech adept than was necessary. Fortunately Ortega seemed to notice my interest.

"The hive has a system for maintaining air pressure througout the structure Madmoiselle...." he paused waiting for me to provide my name. It was a transperent tactic to dig information but one I gained nothing by evading.

"Krieg," I supplied in a clipped Scholar Progeneum accent, "Emalda Krieg." Emmalda Krieg was one of several generic identites Hadrian had run up for me before the mission. Inquisitors, at least those who act covertly, tend to collect them as they go through life, adding to them where they can. Most of my identies begin with Em or Emm in order to cover the fact that people will occasionally blurt it under stress.

"Madmoiselle Krieg," Ortega agreed, doubtlessly filing the information away for later analysis. Much good it would do him, Krieg being the third most common surname in the sub-sector and Emalda being current on thousands of worlds within six months transit. I had several more generic pieces of information I could supply about myself but I could ration them out.

"As I say, they maintain air pressure by periodically venting polutted air, and equallizing it with injections of scrubbed air from the outside. The new air is much hotter and more humid than the interior so everytime they do it they get a shower. Normally it is just a burst like this, but if there are fires or unusual discharge from the manufatoria, they can get a proper down pour," Ortega explained. They way he used the word 'They' instead of 'we' confirmed to me that he was an offworlder as he had claimed.

"Good to know," I replied a trifle stiffly to discourage further attempts at conversation.

As we moved deeper into the hive we began to encounter manufactoria. Massive squat structures that rose ten or a dozen stories into the skywith vast stacks that pumped pollutants into the heavy, bitumen scented, air. These were frequently surrounded by curtain walls, topped with razor wire or broken glass. The gang tags were fewer here and armed guards and the occasional combat servitor could be seen patroling the area. Massive pict boards were errected everywhere decrying such slogans as: Marcello Collective - Leading the Imperium in Worshipful Glass, and The Grolax Affinity - The Name in Compression Coils. Most of the pict screens had more than a few missing tiles, giving them a somewhat scabbous apperance. As we passed close to one of the manufactoria a great whistle blast split the air, and the doors opened, a line of exhausted looking men and women in green and grey uniforms slouching out, as an equally exhausted line began to file in. The daily shift change was evidently in progress.

"Did you have an itinerary of manufactoria you wished to inspect Sir Deckard? The information I recieved was fairly generic," Ortega probed.

"That was on purpose, Arbitrator Ortega." I remarked, eyeing the pict screens for any sign of useful information beyond slogans. I was greeted with an advertisement for Adrastus Stimms, no doubt a must-have for the laborers of the district and the work that ruins their bodies by a mere 40 standard terran years. It flickered in an out for a moment, switching to a slogan for High Paradise, a pleasure hab. A girl gyrated against a broken crease in the pict screen before fading away to another Marcello Collective showcase. I spied the manufactora and the poor souls filtering in and out of it, as if that would tell me something. I expected to be here for some days, extending the three day lease through some excuse or passing of payments. "My masters are quite careful, and they expect the same manner of discretion from myself."

"Well I do need to know where we are to stop next." Ortega replied stiffly.

"Stop here," I ordered. For a moment I thought I had used my will, so quickly did the Arbites oblige my command. Horns from ground cars blared and swerved as we immediately turned into a small area cordoned off to park. Emmaline nearly bumped into the seat in front of her. The ground car behind us followed suit. The grey rain had transformed into a small drizzle.

"Out of curiosity, do you know where we are?" He asked me.

"Manufactora XLII-C. This hab block is utilized for the production of Chromium Steel." I had taken the liberty of memorizing the symbols of the hives of Gravemire. Above the yawning doors was the carven numeral figure. "The materials of which is of great interest to my employer." I opened the car door, taking off my gloves and placing them in my jacket, an innocuous gesture, but I was doing it so I might better grip my autogun.

What is it? Emmaline asked me within a short mindlink.

I saw one, I said. I sent her an image of what I implied rather than transferring the information in what one might call a dialogue. In her mind she would see a man amidst the crowd marching into the manufactora. His skin mottled and browned from the sun, his gait undulating, his eyes scanning back and forth. A small tattoo on his neck, a mark I had only seen once before, less than two months ago on Havenos. If I was not mistaken, I had just spotted a tribesman of the Son's of The Fen. The tattoo even looked made of the red ochre they had utilized on-world.

Emmaline eyed me, and then spun to the Arbitrator who was just getting out of the vehicle, shockmaul in easy reach at his side. She regarded him with a chill gaze. "Is there an alternate entrance to the facility? We would like to be discreet and see the product without much interference due to our presence." She inquired. Ortega hesitated, and both of us could sense a small inkling of suspicion behind the iron wall he called a mind, and acquiesced.

"This way," he bade.

I had to admit I was a little stunned. We had intended to make a survey of the manufactoria and narrow down our list of candidates. It seemed vanishingly improbable that we would have had success so soon. I suppose there was something to be said for sheer dumb luck. We followed Ortega down a cracked ferocrette alley. My feeling of unease increased as I realized that some of the newer gang tags included what might have been the sigil of the Son's of the Fen. As we approached a loading bay door it began to wind open with the flatulent stench of high pressure steam.

I stepped under the door and found myself facing a surprised looking man in a scribes robe and a team of worker shifting crates. I whammied him hard. I am normally a soft touch with my psychic powers but I didn't have time for dinner and a holo. The scribe stiffened and then smiled.

"Master Deckard, we weren't expecting you so early," he said, his words garnering arched eyebrows from his crew. It is an interesting experience editing someone's mind in real time. In the foreman's mind he was telling his men to hurry up, the words I was putting into his mouth unheard. Editing the two experiences together was the art, a combination of long practiced skill and the new Ordo techniques Hadrian had instructed me in. Even so the foreman would be paying for this with a splitting headache later today as he fought the cognitive dissonance. I was just pleased the ambient tempreature was too hot for me to start coating everything with hoarfrost right away.

"Please head right on through," He/I said, waving with his clipboard. We walked past and I gave him/me a nod, trying desperately to avoid swaying while I walked. Ortega didn't exactly relax, I think he might have been genetically incapable of doing so, but he seemed to radiate a bit less suspicion. We moved through the loading dock and into the manufactoria proper. It was an immense edifice. Massive vaulted arches stretched skyward, crisscrossed by gangways at various levels. Heat blasted out from great glowing furnaces that reduced steel ingots to glowing metallic lava and spurted it into massive troughs that carried it down towards great vats that smoked and sent up curtains of sparks. Workers in ancient leather heat suits moved among the arcane machinery, prodding at the streams of metal with long poles or scanning it with crude looking auspex units. No one was paying attention to us, their eyes fixed on their tasks. The whole placed smelled acrid of ash and chemicals. Great clouds of sparks rained down from above and gusted up from below.

"Horus' balls," I breathed at the vast inferno in front of us. I wondered what this must have been like for a Son of the Fen, coming to this place of fire after spending their whole life in a dank swamp. I felt a curious sense of of pity for the man we were hunting. I glanced back at Hadrian, a little overwhelmed at the space before us.

I reassured Emmaline with my mind. Not out of any sort of force of will. I likely couldn't have done that if I genuinely tried, but I assured her we wouldn't be here long. We ascended two levels, my estimation being that moving in the center of the manufactora would save us time. Untold amounts of liquid metal poured from rockcrete ladles into crucibles, water drawn through clever piping quenched the steel, sending superheated steam into the air and making the entire, vast facility feel like the ancient terran idea of hell. Faceless men and women in heat-resistant masks worked with a tirelessness borne out of need.

Varying gangways led to platforms for workers to occupy, some guiding the ladles, others cutting and spooning the steel to make pipes, others bundled steel, and it seemed the workers both hot rolled and cold rolled their product here. Efficient. I made a show of approaching one of the platforms to watch more closely, my eyes flicking between the four workmen's exposed necks, but finding no sign of any tattoo.

One saw me and regarded me through his visor, and I could tell he was going to tell me to piss off until he eyed the Arbites standing behind me, as well as the retinue. I supposed Ortega's presence was good for something. I walked back, a thoughtful expression on my face. "Nice work. I'll need to examine most of the sections on this floor to maintain accuracy, however."

Arbitrator Ortega grunted, falling back into the usual mood of remaining silent from the dull routine and likely griping later to his fellows. I waved Emmaline over, and she approached, trying not to flinch from a sudden uproar of steam a few meters from our position.

"Do you remember the exact tattoos from Havenos?" I asked her quietly. "The tribal tattoos?"

"Yes," She said after a moment.

"Good. We cannot afford to make a mistake here. Take the four bully boys and go below." I ordered, glancing down through the small rivulets in the walkway. "Even if Ortega insists we stay together, do not stop. We need to find these men. Try not to draw more attention to yourself than you have to, and be careful."

"Alright," she agreed. Had Ortega not been watching, I would have kissed her. I merely stood as she made a show of sashaying away, gesturing for the four men of the Caledonia to follow. She had reached the stairs when the Adeptus Arbites stepped forward.

"Where is she going?" He asked, a harshness to his tone.

"She is just as fully capable of checking the stock as I am. I merely wish for her to examine the lower levels where they twist the iron. It will not be a problem." I assured him, and turned to stride down the gangway before the Arbitrator could formulate a rebuttal or response.

Predictably Ortega chose to stay with Hadrian as I split off and headed down to the lower levels. Urien’s Clansmen followed me, looking unimpressed with the massive foundry works before us which I suppose is to be expected if your daily working environment is monolithic cathedral halls of a starship. I moved along between vast machines which hissed with steam as they shaped hot steel into whatever it was they were making, passing teams of workers pulling levers and monitoring arcane gauges. Now and again we passed lay members of the Mechanicus with their cog wheel symbols around their necks. They moved between machines, murmuring prayers and applying unguents and prayer scrolls to junction boxes and cable splices. I could taste the metal in the air, somehow greasy in spite of the heat, it was intermingled with the stink of steam produced from unclean water. I stopped at various stages to inspect workers, though always under the guise of watching a particular process. All seemed to be the standard dull eyed manufactorium worker, either completely focused on their task or scared enough of disruption to their routine to appear so.

/Anything?/ Hadrian’s voice sounded in my mind.

I turned away from the latest group of workers in disgust, about to reply in the negative, when my eyes snapped back to one of the workers who stood over a tray of tools. For a moment I couldn’t tell what had drawn my attention to him. Then I realized that the ties on the back of his leather hood were not fastened, a hastily donned disguise. The ersatz worker, looked over his shoulder, caught my gaze, and then picked up an industrial staple gun from the table. I was knocked from my feet as one of Urien’s men crashtackled me a moment before a series of pneumatic cracks fired thumb thick staples through the air I had just vacated. The improvised projectiles plinked musically off the wall and clattered to the ground. The spacer who had tackled me grunted and rolled off as I came to my feet. I saw he was grasping a long cut across his forearm, ragged and leaking blood. His brethren rushed forward, short clubs appearing in their hands. The other workers were scattering in screaming panic as the would be assassin gave up trying to reload the staple gun and hurled it into the face of the on rushing spacers, then he turned and bolted. I pulled my weapon, a slender Hecuter Executive, from my coat pocket and pointed it, then cursed. Shooting the man wasn’t going to get us any answers. I shoved the gun back into my coat and darted after him, following the spacers as best I could.

In a conventional race I have no doubt that the spacers, used to rushing along walkways and access ladders, would have run the man down in moments. Unfortunately our concern for taking him alive was not reciprocated. As soon as he was free of his pose, the worker ripped off his hood and hurled it at one of the spacers, then produced a las pistol and sent several bolts snapping back in our direction, causing us to dive for cover. I pulled my gun and fired in his general direction, more to keep him from placing aimed shots than in hopes of hitting him, and again he retreated, hoping up onto a conveyor belt shifting raw ingots and then leaping over onto an adjacent gangway.

“Keanon, Chlain,” I called to two of the spacers, “try to head him off!”

/Hadrian/ I thought/spoke.

/I see him/ came the reply.

Reluctantly, I followed the fleeing tribesman, jumping up onto the conveyor and nearly losing my footing, then sprinting ten feet down it, feeling the odd sensation one gets on a powered walkway, before leaping onto the gangway and following the fleeing quarry. I wished I trusted my marksmanship enough to shoot him in the leg or something, but with my luck I’d either kill him or somehow manage to blow off my foot. My quarry paused long enough to send a trio of lasbots my way, forcing me to duck behind a massive ceramic anvil that reflected the shots off at a series of crazy angles. Something above me lit off with the whuff of a low order chemical explosion and alarms began to ring. The deep full throated roar of riot guns and screams of panic and pain joined the tumult, though barely more than an accent to the mechanical booms of the foundry. Sparks blizzarded down around me like fireflies and I pulled my hood up to protect my hair. I risked a peak from my shelter long enough to see my assailant vanishing through a doorway. My boots rang on the metal walkway as I ran after him, ducking occasionally as he took hasty potshots to discourage my pursuit.

The room beyond the cavernous door was filled with vast brass boilers emblazoned with the Mechanicus cogwheel. Forests of ductwork rose into the firelight distance above, twisting and intermingling without seeming purpose. Dozens of servitors lined a long narrow hall between the boilers. They were scribe units, their legs removed in favor spinally welded cogitator thrones. Neural plugs sprouted from their skulls and vertebrae like the spines of deep sea predators. Spools of parchment vomited from their open mouths, tiny autoquills attached to their optic nerves scratching constant notations of pressure and temperature. Excess ink ran from the corners of their frozen screams, dripping to the floor below in an irregular, black, rain. The fleeing tribesman was about halfway along the corridor flanked on both sides by the macabre honorguard of chittering man-machines. At the end of the hallway were several stairs that led to a vast warehouse which contained a twisting labyrinth of shelves, storage bays, and wire cages. If he made it in there, we would never dig him out before the manufactorum’s security, whose riot guns I had heard earlier, intervened. I did the only thing I could think of. I reached out with my mind and placed a simple suggestion into the foggy minds of the servitors.

/This man is an error/

If you have never had the pleasure of dealing with the Emperors most blessed Administratum, firstly, congratulations, secondly, you should know that there is nothing in all the universe they despise more than an error. I did not, at this moment, fully appreciate that. The moment the thought formed in their minds the servitors went berserk. They emitted a terrifying roar of binaric gibberish as every single one of them attempted to rip their way off their cogitator thrones. Several succeeded, pulling themselves free in a noisome spray of stinking biofluid and organic lubricants. They hauled themselves towards the cultist with atrophied limbs, accustomed to nothing more than clearing the occasional paper jam. Those that were close enough struck out with their autoquills, or tried to bite with toothless calloused jaws. The cultist screamed and thrashed as the things came for him, opening scores of black inky wounds on his body as they gouged him with the instruments of their, until now, simple trade. Paper spewed from their mouths at an astonishing rate, carpeting the floor in an effect eerily similar to a sluice filling with water. A normal man might have gone down, but the tribesman roared with the mad ferocity of a feral worlder, firing his las pistol on full automatic. Servitors burst like ripe fruit as he scythed a path in front of him, accepting cuts and blows to his back in order to press on. Stray las fire ignited the great mass of parchment into sooty black flames that spread along the trails of lubricants. Incredibly the tribesman made the stairs, his back slicked with ink and blood as he staggered up the stairs, the mobile servitors desperately trying to follow, undeterred by the flames beginning to lap around them. The stink of ink and fire and burned flesh was unimaginable. He turned when he reached the top of the stairs, glaring back at me with wild defiance and a grin splitting his bloody face and so he missed it when Ortega stepped from the room beyond and slammed the shock maul into his chest. The actinic crackle of the weapon arched the man over as he flew into the air like a kedgeball being struck home. I heard ribs crack as he was flung into the air on the momentum of the power assisted blow and his own convulsing body. His arms windmilled spasmodically as he plunged down into the mass of writhing burning servitors and burning pieces of parchment tape.

“No!” I screamed at the top of my lungs and drew my pistol, firing into the ruck indiscriminately as I tried to reverse my previous mental goad. It was no good, servitors were not susceptible to subtlety, the concept of uncorrecting a mistake simple didn’t exist in their abraided cerebral architecture . Three of Urien’s men ran past me, one of them wisely plucking the pistol from my hand as they tore in with their clubs, driving a wedge into the chaos. A moment later they retreated, carrying the wreck of the cultist between them, his body an undifferentiated mass of wounds. He was clearly dead, either from the shock maul blow which had set fire to the front of his garments and cracked his ribs, or from the mindless attack of the servitors. Well not mindless, they had made a credible attempt to draw a line through him, just following their subroutine for collecting an error.

“Frak.”

"Care to explain, Deckard? Well, I suppose that's not your real name, is it." Ortega grumbled. It was hard to tell if it was an accusation.

The broad shouldered arbites stood with my retinue and I just outside of the emergency door of the manufactora. The air still smelt of ozone and wet from the artificial rain that had graced the lower hive an hour previously. Out front, emergency vehicles were parked and lights flashing as crews began to escort workers out as other maintenance crews began to clean up the chemical spills with the appropriate kit of absorbent material to sponge away the acids and bases that cluttered the floor. I had insisted on bringing the body with us to be examined, and to Ortega's credit, he did not protest. Three of the bully boys had to carry different parts of the bleeding mass of flesh out with us, but they somehow managed.

I opened my jacket and showed him the Aquila that marked my office. His face was unreadable behind his visor, but I could feel his apprehension rise with his realization. Emmaline stood beside me, and she shifted, fidgeting with her hair like always when she was nearly blown up. Wordlessly I slid out of my jacket and draped it around her shoulders, a small moment of intimacy I could afford her now that I had deigned to reveal myself to the arbites. Lazarus's binary bleated into the air as he knelt down before the corpse to analyze it, having already inspected Emmaline for chemical burns of gunshot wounds.

"I should have known," Ortega said, and he cursed. "You would only be here if it was something important. Who was this man?"

My eyes narrowed, and I could tell he realized he addressed me with a lack of proper respect. He added a small 'lord inquisitor' to save face. I did not hold myself to any high standard, but I would be referred to as my station demanded or else one might get ideas on halting my investigations or withholding resources or information from me because I allowed smaller, more petty matters to slide. I reached into the jacket currently adorning Emmaline and pulled out a diagnostor I had sequestered on my person, kneeling down with Lazarus to inspect the corpse.

"This man was a cultist, in all due likelyhood. A cultist from a world half the segmentum away, connected with a plot that involves the murder of various subjects of the emperor, including one on my team." I informed the arbites, not wishing to give specifics yet.

"The tattoo is a match, and is the pigment and lipids of his skin, matching the locals of Havenos with little variation." Lazarus informed me. My diagonostor whirred and arose with a red signal atop its head, signifying an unknown disease ran rampant through his body, kept together through some unknown means. Immediately I knew it was whatever warped plague had ravaged the tribes on the feral world. I stepped back and Lazarus joined me.

"Have this body burned, and bring physicians and a biologis if you can acquire one and check the other workers for pathogens, known and unknown. I cannot say for certain but there might be a plague loose on the planet. Even if that is a worry unfounded, it is best to check before something else untoward occurs. Meanwhile, my team and I will retrace our steps in the manufactora." I informed Ortega. He regarded me for many moments, wondering if he could refuse me or not. But inevitably he complied, voxxing in my orders to the overseers of the lower hive.

"Do you think the hive might be infected?" Emmaline asked softly.

"I don't know. Even if it isn't, this wouldn't be the only culprit in the city."

I shivered, suddenly grateful for the warmth of Hadrian's coat despite the waste heat from the smelters. In enthusiasm I had forgotten all about the plague. Ortega turned away, voxing terse instructions. The Adeptus Arbites might be the mailed fist of the Lex Imperialis, but the Inquisition was the author of that Lex. It would not be possible maintain these covers for long, the manufactorum workers would talk, nothing short of a bullet would prevent it, and massacring several hundred workers would raise even more questions. It seemed likely that the dead mans associates would close down operations when they learned of his death, styming our investigation in its infancy.

We returned to the manufactoria, now eerily devoid of the workers who had toiled there for uncounted generations. Machinery still clanked and stamped, though many lines had been shut down by emergency pulls and switches. The servitors appeared to have returned to their endless notation, though several were now attempting to do so with broken quills or shattered limbs that swelled grotesquely.

"I'm sorry Hadrian," I whispered miserably, "It is my fault he is dead and cant be questioned."

The rattle and clang of machinery echoed in the din of the now mostly vacant halls of the manufactora. After we had ascended the stairs, I saw little in the way of clues. The floor where the cultist had run looked nearly identical to the other rotors and steel grinders, save for a sticky black substance I could reasonably guess was some form of tobacco splotted along the handle of the machine. I rubbed it between two gloved fingers and sniffed it gently, my suspicions confirmed. It was good it wasn't a chaos substance, and yet it still meant we had nothing of else of substance, either. As I examined further, Emmaline's question reached my ears.

I rose from my crouch and looked at her. The others had swept across the rest of the manufactora, leaving us alone. Despite her intelligence and her savvy, as well as her incredible luck, she was still relatively green to this kind of life. I often tried to appear unbiased when it came to speaking with her in front of the others to keep a show of favoritism to be the furthest thing from their minds, but I believe I sometimes over-corrected myself and became cold in front of her, and that was the last thing I wanted her to think. I removed my glove as I spoke.

"You've done remarkably well in the short time I've known you, Emma. You did your best, and at the crux of it, I would rather a cultist of the great enemy to be dead rather than escape. I know you feel as if you're here partly because of our..." I did not know what to call us, really. I cared for her, but was it love? I was too busy and preoccupied to have really wrestled with the question. "our relationship, but if I felt you weren't a good aide, you would have stayed on Pacitus. You're here because you get results, and I would not have any other psyker by my side in the Imperium, even if Malcador the Sigilite walked up and offered his services."

Looking back, I realized I had a small undertone of feeling in my voice that could only come from a man speaking a woman, but I still meant it and I have never felt like it was poor wording. I saw a smile blossom on her face, and I allowed myself to smile back. The smell of rust and various gasses could not ruin the moment.

Unfortunately, the bullet that blew a hole through my kidney pulled it off. The gunshot echoed a fraction of a moment after the projectile had entered the small of my back and I fell to my knees before I even knew what had caused me to stumble. Blood began leaking from my abdomen, and vaguely I remembered trying to staunch the flow as crimson dribbled down my shirt and fell through the grating to the lower levels. It didn't hurt at first. It was only a pressure and a feeling of cold, and behind me the shadowy figure lined up another shot.

"Die, Inquisitor Drakos."

At first I assumed some kind of industrial lubricant had splashed on me and I felt a flash of irritation that the moment had been sullied. Then Hadrian collapsed to the ground and my eyes flicked upwards to the smoking muzzle of an autogun. The shooter was dressed in matte black body armor and was suspended from a catwalk like an ugly spider by tactical cord. Cold terror knifed through my body, making my skin tingle and my guts clench.

“No!” I shouted, instinctively jamming all my fear for Hadrian into the word. My psychic grasp slid of the assassin's mind as though I was gripping at oiled glass. Some kind of mental shielding had been grafted onto his mind. I could feel the edges of it, like a steel plate which has been bolted down over a hull breach. The shooter lifted his rifle intent on finishing the job.

“NO!” I screamed and abandoned the mental manipulation. Oil droplets and soot smears flew into the air, gathering before my outstretched fingers like a prismatic tornado which all but obscured vision. Gears and mechanisms screamed as long ribbons of lubricant were stripped away by my desperate psychic need. Surfaces that had been tread with grease for generations were stripped to a shining metallic cleanliness that would have impressed a medicae. All of the dirt and grime of the manufactorum gathered infront of me in a vast accretion disc that whirled around my palm The gun crashed again but this time the bullet pinged off the walkway two feet to Hadrian’s side, the gunman was shielded but he couldn’t fire blind through the shimmering mirror of oil and filth.

I could hear shouts and the crackle of comms, but they were drowned out by the pounding in my ears and the scream of mechanisms seizing. Sparks fountained out a gearbox the size of a groundcar to my left filling the air with the stink of burned metal and shorting electronics. Somewhere a steam whistle was screaming as a boiler vented over pressure into an emergency conduit with a concussive crash of high pressure steam. I couldn't see him in a conventional sense, but I could sense the glossy mind presence of the assassin attempting to flee, scrambling up his cable. My mind pulsed with white hot rage and fear and I hurled my improvised shield at him. The spinning disc struck him like a waterspout reaching up from the surface of a primordial ocean. The torrent of oil and grease ripped him from his attempt to climb onto the overhead gangway buffeting him this way and that like bait being torn up in a rough sea. I could feel it forcing its way into his nostrils, down his throat, clogging the areola of his lungs.

Someone was shouting in my face. A tendril of oil whipped away from the main tempest to confront the new threat. I heard a woman scream as the torrent of psycically charged oil battered her away from Hadrian, driving her choking to her knees.

“Emma! Emma for thrones sake!” someone was shouting but it was all very far away. Something hit me hard in the pit of my stomach and I drew two fresh tendrils to obliterate the new threat, then felt an odd tap on the nose. The same insulting tap Clara always delivered when she got the upper hand in sparing practice. I felt a surge of uncertainty and my psykana fell away. Oil droplets fell like tropical rain, coating everything in a fifty yard radius in a film of lubricant. My eyes blinked into focus and I took things in. The assassin hung from his spider line, dripping oil like an over basted turkey. Clara had me by the shoulders and was saying something I couldn’t hear for the buzz in my ears. Selenica was on her hands and knees beside Hadrian, her face and upper body covered with oil, one hand swabbing filth from her eyes as her other worked on the bloody wound in Hadrian’s chest. Neither the inquisitor or I had been touched by the oil, protected instinctively by my psykana. All around us machinery smoked and stuttered, great mechanisms seized beyond repair as unlubricated bearings and driveshafts cooked and fused in their housings. Lazarus was picking his way along the gangway, the expression on his face an odd mixture of emotions. Doubtless the destruction of so many machine spirits was waring with his concern for Hadrian.

“Is he going to… going to…” I stumbled, my brain unable to quite form the words.

“He is going to need surgery immediately,” Selenica said grimly, her gloved hand soaked to the wrist with gore.

“Dirtside, I don’t think we can risk lifting him to the Caledonia,” she said as she shot an injector full of something into one of Hadrian’s veins.

“We have an aircar enroute,” Clara interjected, dropping her hand from where it had been pressing her vox unit into her ear. Lazarus was in the process of cutting the assassin down.

“Have the body taken to the Hotel Imperial,” I ordered, the daze beginning to lift from my mind.

“I can have a verispex team…” Ortega began as he came up the walkway towards us. My eyes swiveled to fix the Arbite with a hard gaze.

“Take him,” I ordered. Selenica gasped in panic but one of the Caledonia’s grabbed the Arbite by the arm, perhaps too primitive to understand that he was laying hands upon one of the Emperor’s judges. Ortega shrugged the arm away and opened his mouth to snarl. Clara jammed a shock rod under his armpit and discharged it with an actinic snap. The big man arched backwards in a tectonic convulsion and then crashed to the ground.

“I hope you know what you are doing Emma,” Clara said as she knelt down and began to secure Ortega with some heavy duty binders from her pouch.

My recollection of the events is more lucid than I would have liked. Perhaps it was the emperor granting Emmaline a constant reminder that I still lived, and though the pain was almost unbearable on my end, I would not have had it any other way.

My world was a flickering light. Sometimes I would be awake for many moments, and others I was lost in a swirl of blackness I could feel bearing down on me, but like a man in deep water I was unable to break free to the surface. I recall the aircar, where Selencia tended my wound and Emmaline watched me with wide eyes, fraught with worry. There was another man in there I did not recognize, whom later I was told was one of the physicians in the emergency vehicles out front. I recall my hand brushing paving as I was carried, and I remember the surgery room just before I was put under by Selencia's doing. When next I woke, my throat felt drier than Tallarn and my eyes were as heavy as an astartes ceramite. And yet I forced them open, and though I was tied down to a bed, curved to allow my upper body to rest above a flat surface, I managed to shrug my shoulders and tug the restraints.

"Ma'am!" A medical assistant cried, my sudden awareness shocking her from her bored stupor and sending her scrambling out of her seat. I was in a beige room with no windows, a door to the left with a 'vacant' sign indicating a restroom and two doors on the right, one likely leading into the hall and the other for some unknown purpose. Perhaps a closet. An IV was in my arm and various equipment reading my vitals were arrayed to my left and right. Food was placed along a small standing desk next to my bed, the room cluttered with chairs and potted plants and a tele-screen hanging at the corner.

"What..." I started, but it came out as a croak. I summoned my breath. "What day is it? How many days have I been out?"

"Ma'am! He's awake!" The assistant cried into the hallway.

I should not have done this, but I did not get shot in this god-forsaken hive to be ignored by the staff, and my worry for my team and Emmaline burned a fire in my chest. "How long have I been out?" I asked, using my will. The woman almost leaped from the mental shock, stricken by the sudden assault.

"It's the same day," She answered simply. "The early hours of the morning."

"Where is my team?"

"Doctor Selencia and the mechanicus thing are approaching down the hall. Two large men accompany them. I don't know where the blonde and the brunette are, or the other two large brutes." She responded obediently, and her slack jawed expression drew me out of my single-minded determination to squeeze information and I felt a small modicum of shame for overpowering her like this. I let her go as gently as I could, but she stumbled onto the floor all the same. Selencia stood in the doorway, shock intermingled with worry and anger.

"Hadrian Drakos you absolute idiot!" She exclaimed, wiping her untidied dark hair out of her face and kneeling down to help the woman. She had evidently fainted, and that made two of us nearly. My energy was almost spent already. "Throne, what did you do to her?"

"Kronus always said he had a way with women," Lazarus pipped in, his voice monotone and yet I could sense an unwavering sense of humor in him.

"Where is Emmaline?" I asked hoarsely. "What's happened?"

Selencia ignored my question to let me stew as she tended to her newest patient. I supposed if Emmaline was in dire trouble, she would not be playing games with me. Lazarus stepped passed them and bore down on me with a look I had not seen on him for quite some time.

"Rest boy," He said, and at the moment I did not question the 'boy,' though it had been at least a decade since he referred to me as such. All it did was made me tired.

"Just answer the question." I said to him.

"Emmaline and Clara are interrogating Arbites Ortega in a room three halls away. Two of Urien's men are outside standing watch." He informed me.

"Ortega?" I asked, swallowing to parch my throat. "Where are we?"

"In the administratum embassy just above the lower hive. Better medical equipment here, and many holding rooms for those less cooperate. Now rest. I'll wake you as soon as I know something. It's not often you get a second chance."

"What?" I asked as my world grew dim.

Lazarus's words were the last I heard before I was gone from the waking world: "Oh, yes. For a few moments there, you were dead."

“He is innocent,” I declared, blinking away the taste of blood from a Drill Abbots blow to the stomach in the courtyard of a world I had never seen. The Arbite was chained to an interrogation chair, a bolus of psychoactive nicosapine feeding into his jugular via an intravenous catheter. He had been stripped naked for the interogation and his scared body was a mass of coiled muscles. He let out an explosive breath that hazed the air with spittle before stumbling forward with a metallic clatter of restraints. Sweat dripped from the point of his nose, falling to splatter onto the dusty cobble stones. His lips moved in a Litany of Abjuration, banishing the Xenos, the Mutant, and the Psyker with a special emphasis on the last.

“Frak you…” Ortega muttered his tongue and mouth swollen from where he had bitten them. That had been careless, next time I’d have to remember to use a bit. I stood up, my skin chilled to ice from the prolonged mental intrusion into Ortega’s mind. He was hardened and trained, but it hadn’t taken Selenica long to remove the implanted blockers from beneath his scapula. Blood oozed from the dressings she had applied, inadequate to the trashing struggle he had pointlessly put up.

Clara leaned against the wall, hand casually on the butt of her heavy Hecutor 40. She was projecting an aura of dangerous calm but in my current psykically active state I could sense the unease that came with holding a member of the Adeptus Arbites. In theory our Inquisitorial status gave us every right to do as we pleased, but she was painfully aware that if Hadrian died our conditional status might be revoked and we could be in a world of trouble.

“You could.. have… just asked me,” Ortega mumbled. I turned to regard him, aware that in my leather storm coat, high boots, and severe hair I looked more the Inquistor than Hadrian did most of the time. My stomach churned at the thought of him. We hadn’t heard anything since he had gone into surgery.

“Yes but we couldn’t have trusted you,” I told him. The fact that an assassin had been on site so quickly and had known that Hadrian was an Inquisitor was troubling and Ortega had been the only one outside the team working his vox unit.

“Shall I release him?” Clara asked, her tone wary having seen me mental violate a member of the Lex Imperialis elite. Realistically she or Lazarus should be in charge, I was the newest member of the warband. I doubted it was the fact that I was Hadrian’s bedmate that had led them to defer to me. Rather I was in charge because I had acted as though I was and I appeared to have a plan. As so often in life, acting as though something were true made it so.

“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “Get a medicae, someone other than Selenica to see to his wounds and get him a sedative. He is going to crash pretty hard in a few minutes.” The mental intrusion I had conducted was extremely taxing and the load of drugs I had used to make it possible were going to be an unpleasant companion for Ortega for the next few days. I blinked my eyes, trying to separate his memories from my own. It wasn’t going to do me any favors either.

“Hadrian is going to make it,” Lazarus said from the interrogation room door. “He will need an augmetic kidney. I have already arranged for an appropriate unit.” I felt the icy hand in my guts unclench at his words and uttered a silent prayer of thanks to the God Emperor that I didn’t technically believe in. There was a touching hint of human emotion in Lazarus’s words, his care for Hadrian as evident from that slight slip as it was from his careful selection of augmetic kidney.

“Is he awake?” I asked urgently, Ortega and the interrogation momentarily forgotten.

“Unconscious, Selenica is looking after him now, she say it will be several hours before he wakes,” Lazarus said. I nodded saddened that he wasn’t awake for me to speak too but also obscurely glad. This whole mess was my fault and I needed to take steps to repair the damage.

“I need to go to the Hotel Imperial,” I declared, “Clara stay here with Lazarus and…”

“Whoa, whoa,” Clara interjected holding up her palms before her.

“You might have big Rosette energy right now Emm, but no one is going anywhere alone while we have snipers shooting at people,” she declared. The set of her jaw told me that arguing wasn’t going to do me much good.

“Fine,” I replied, holding up my palms in surrender, “Come with me. Lazarus and Selenica will stay with Hadrian.”

“I think we should consider bringing Lucius down from the Caledonia,” Clara said, “we have too many moving parts already and we don’t know what we are dealing with.”

“No, his mind is still too unstable, if we put him in the middle of all these people there is a good chance his rage is going to overpower him,” I told her.

“Hotel Imperial has plenty of security, as does this building,” I explained.

“What are you going to do at the Hotel?” Lazarus asked.

“I need you to look into Ortega’s vox equipment,” I told Lazarus, deftly avoiding the question. “He noticed a slight staticy hiss that he put down to interference, but I’m not so sure.” Ortega himself might be just what he appeared to be, but I still wasn’t willing to give up on the idea that he had a role in what had transpired, even if it was unwitting.

“My Lady,” a diffident Administratum Drone said from the doorway. I looked up at him, noting that he was doing his very best to look at nothing and no one in the room. He was at least imaginative enough to be scared when Ordo operatives started working over an Arbite in his holding cell.

“Your air car has arrived.”

___

“I don’t like this Emmaline,” Clara said as I touched an ivory on the biblioquary. Inside the shimmering void shield, the articulated finger bones of a priest turned a page of the ancient manuscript. The Biblioquary resembled a lectern save that the book inside was completely enclosed in void shielding and the wood was inlaid with devotional verses in tarnished silver. Such devices were used for the handling of questionable books, those suspected of having a malign influence, but which for one reason or another, the Inquisition deemed worthy of study. This volume was from Hadrian’s library aboard the Caledonia and I had made some study of it during the months following the Baphometus affair. Hadrian had introduced such works to me slowly and usually under his supervision. The Journal of Saint Theresa of Availa wasn’t the most precious work he had shown me, but it was one that had captured my attention. According to the legend Theresa had been the head librarian of the Tyrarch of Vestebos, and he been ordered by that Tyrant to compile all the arcane lore in the famous Libracate Obscurus of that world ahead of the advancing Imperial crusade under Warmaster Siscus. According to the story, Theresa had pretended to comply, only to burn herself along with the books to prevent the Tyrarch from taking his blasphemous knowledge with him when he fled. The truth was somewhat more complicated. Ninety nine volumes were said to exist, scattered in secret libraries and private collections. The Inquisition had to date acquired six, usually when someone began reproducing and distributing them. This volume was one such reproduction, something Hadrian’s old master had acquired after participating in a purge. The books themselves had no numbers, though Inqusitor Kronos tersely identified it as ‘the seventh astral volume’ without further context.

“I know that you don’t Clara,” I said, fighting down the urge to raise my voice.

“But Hadrian is counting on us, the cult here already knows that it has been exposed. It is either going to shut down, or it is going to blow up. Both of those things are bad for us and for the Imperium. The only chance we have is to move quickly, and if you have a better option Id love to hear it.” Despite my best efforts my tone became somewhat hectoring. My worry about Hadrian, my own sense of failure, and the effort of reading the book were all wearing on me. As was my trepidation about what I was about to attempt.

“I don’t…. I just feel like maybe we are going a little too far,” she admitted. The fear in her voice nearly made me give the whole thing away. Clara wasn’t afraid to die, but she was afraid that what I proposed to do was worse than being cut down in a gunfight.

“You don’t have to stay if you…” I began, but she cut me off, laying a calloused hand over mine.

“If you are going to do it lets just get it over with,” she said.

_____

The Hotel Imperial catered to aristocrats. That meant that it had seen its share of strange revels. The decadence of the Imperial aristocracy was such that nearly any excess could be imagined and excused. I suspect that if the Gravemire staff had seen what was going on in the ballroom of the floor we had booked even that tolerance might not have been enough. In the center of the great marble dancefloor lay the assassin, his body covered in a thick viscous cocoon of oil which spread slowly across the white marble like the stain of corruption. Around him in an intricate and expanding spiral pattern hundreds of kilos of rocksalt had been poured out, weaving its way through a series of complicated interconnections to the very edges of the dance floor where they terminated at the bases of thick votive candles, each of which had been used at a funeral. The doorways and windows were laced with intricate latices of prayer ribbon, tied together with sprigs of sage and strands of my hair. Tribesmen from the Caledonia stood flanking each doorway, their eyes bound with blindfolds of sable velvet, each holding a silvered mace in one hand and a bronze saltzer in the other. Each man had been washed in salt water and had his heart and lips marked with sacred oils. Incense burned in a dozen places, filling the air with cloying perfume.

I entered from the southern door. It was actually slightly to the south east but such specifics matter less than the intention in such proceedings. I was naked save for a long golden chain which had been wound seven times around my body. I had been bathed as the men and anointed with oils. I had the crematorium ashes of a man I had killed on my eyelids, in this case provided by the unfortunate cultist who had been ripped apart by the servitors. I paused as I entered, allowing the blindfolded tribesman time to close the entrance with the prayer ribbon and herbs. Clara walked beside me. She was dressed in an armored body glove and held a pistol in one hand and sword in the other. She looked more than a little uncomfortable but did not complain, the time for such objections come and gone. I knelt down and lifted a small silver gong and striker from the ground. I struck the gong and then began to chant, walking forward at a measured pace. Each time a verse ended I struck another peel from the gong, my feet traveling the path of the spiral marked out in salt. The candle flames guttered and lowered as I moved forward, though they never quite extinguished. Clara followed in my wake, silent and uneasy. All around us the shadows darkened, seeming almost to move and coil as the struggled against the feeble light of of the candles.

It took perhaps ten minutes to reach the center of the spiral. By then I was glowing with a faint witchlight that seemed to cling to me like steam on a cold day. The oily corpse lay on the marble, a black void against the white stone. The autorifle lay beside him, surrounded by its own ring of salt. I stopped in place and raised my hands, the sudden cessation in my low chant ringing like a bell around the vast ballroom. I closed my eyes and focused my will, reaching out with both hands as I struggled with the currents of the Immaterium.

“Awake!” I commanded in a thundering voice. Every candle flame in the room suddenly flared to the size of a grapefruit. Wax spattered in all directions, splashing several of the tribesman. They remained stoically silent as instructed, their feral world origin serving me far better than would a similar group from less superstitious beginnings. The candle flames flared in weird asynchrony for a few seconds and then the salt touching them caught fire, beginning to slowly burn inwards, tracing the spiral in fire like a trail of slow burning gun powder.

The oily corpse sat up, eyelids flying open to reveal wide and horrified blue eyes. The corpse thing screamed and threw itself at me. I was ready for it and managed to avoid flinching by a massive effort of will. The body struck an invisible barrier and recoiled collapsing to the floor and beginning to sob. The droplets of oil continued, spattering my naked body with loathesome slick splotches of filth.

“What is your name?” I asked the weeping corpse. The corpse sobbed and hacked, bringing up lungfuls of the oil which had drowned it in great sprays.

“You have murdered me!” It raged, “you have damned me!”

“You have damned yourself. What is your name?” I demanded mercilessly. It scrambled to its feet and lunged, crashing once more into the invisible barrier.

“You will join me in the flames for this blasphemy witch! She Who Thirsts will suck the marrow from your living bones for eternity, She will…

“What is your name?! Thrice I ask and done!” I thundered.

“Jogar Carden!” the corpse screamed, the words ripped unwillingly from its throat.

“Emmaline,” Clara said in a low urgent voice, “the flames.” The fire was almost halfway around the spiral now, burning inward like a Saint Catherine’s wheel on Ascension day. I didn’t respond to Clara, I didn’t dare take my attention from the dead man. Sweat was running down my brow from the effort I was expending, mixing with the oil droplets to run down my clammy body.

“Who sent you to kill Hadrian Drakos?” I demanded. The corpse screamed though more in desperation than anger.

“You can’t let me go back, you can’t let me go back to the torment,” he pleaded.

“Who sent you to kill Hadrian Drakos?” I repeated.

“Please, you cant let them have me, for the Emperor Sake…”

“Who sent…”

“The Under Council!” the corpse shrieked, unwilling to be compelled a second time.

“Where can I find them?” I demanded.

“Emmaline,” Clara repeated her voice trembling as the fire seemed to accelerate towards us, a trick of the spiral more than a real effect but no less frightening for that.

“Save me and I will tell you, save me and I will…”

Time was very short now, the binding would only last as long as the salt burned. There was nothing I could do for this heretic, nothing I could offer him, not even oblivion.

“Where can I find them, I need to know before the flames…” The crack of the autogun was deafening in the acoustic space of the ballroom. The corpse flew backwards, spraying a great gout of oil from an exit wound in the back of its now ruined head. I sagged to my knees as Clara lowered the oily autogun, its barrel still smoking. The light had returned to normal, less than a foot of unburned salt between the center of the spiral and the smoking ruin of the binding spell.

“Is it over?” Clara asked, though from the tone she already knew the answer. I sagged to the floor, toppling over to lay on the oily floor. I felt stained, but not from anything as common as machine lubricant.

“It is over.”

True to his word, Lazarus awoke me in what seemed an all-too short amount of time later. I was informed it was early in the morning by the standards of Gravemire, and as expected, my oldest friend also provided me with a wheelchair. He knew I would demand to be out of the bed at the earliest opportunity, though I demanded to be changed out of this hospital shift before I was brought anywhere. I was granted my previous attire, freshly cleaned and even still a bit warm. It was true I felt about as weak and frail as I ever have, but I was not to be dissuaded.

"Now inform me of the situation," I said to Lazarus, even as Selencia walked up. Her hair was tied up but messy as, true to form, she had insisted on helping the staff with other patients even as she checked on me periodically. I did not have to tell her not to follow. She was my physician and no order I could give would have kept her there, regardless.

"It seems Arbites Ortega is innocent, at least as far as Emmaline deems. However, she and Clara have gone to an unknown location and I know not where it is."

"What?" I asked, and my mind raced as I tried to surpress my urge to burst out of my chair and go running off to find her. I sighed. "No matter, take me to Ortega. And find Emmaline and Clara on the vox. If they can be found, bring them back here. I want a full report immediately."

Selencia did just that, reaching into her smart jacket and placing a commlink up to her ear, phoning in to Emmaline's ear piece. As soon as the frequency was dialed, she yelped when a loud, blaring bit of static tore through her device. Even I could hear it from my sitting position, and I knew only an intense flare of warp energy could destroy a frequency in such a manner. I swore just as we turned the corner, Lazarus pulling me to a stop outside of the interrogation room. Two of the bully boys stood up, putting away a small stone they were using as a board piece, a curious game the men of the Caledonia were obsessed with when they finished their shifts.

"At ease, I need to see the man inside."

"Good to see you well, sir." The one on the left said in a thick accent. "You can go in of course, but he's out cold. The blonde did something strange to him, and he's not responding to anything right now. She said he will be well after some rest at least..."

"I can explain," a familiar voice said, trepidation transparent in her tone. I turned my head and saw Emmaline in her severe garb, Clara standing with her, looking every bit as uncomfortable as Emmaline sounded. "I can explain everything. But can Clara and I talk to you? In private?"

I raised an eyebrow, my senses still feeling somewhat disconnected to the world around me. My body felt like lead and my head was stuffed, but I nodded, even if it was strange to ask for a private word when I would not hide anything from Lazarus or Selencia, or any of the Caledonia's crew for that matter. "I was going to ask for a report on all that's happened anyway, I guess we can do it in the closest vacant office. Selencia, see to Ortega. You two-" I motioned for the Caledonia brutes. "Go in there with her and make sure she's safe. Lazarus, we'll be out in a moment."

Stubbornly, I began to weakly wheel myself toward one of the open doors. Whatever Emmaline had to tell me in private, I could not have guessed what lengths she had gone to for information...

I closed the door to the office with a click and threw my arms around Hadrian so happy to see him alive and functional. He yelped in pain and I flinched back, blushing scarlet at having forgotten that he had been shot only hours earlier. The office was one of a senior scribe, empty save for a large desk with neatly organized paper baskets and a large passage written on the wall: A moment wasted is a moment stolen from the Emperor. Cheery as always. I cleared my throat and toyed with a stray strand of hair, reluctant to admit what I had done, then I squared my shoulders and summarized.

"I believed Arbiter Ortega might have been involved in signaling the assassin who shot you," I began, tackling the easier of the two matters first, if kidnapping an Arbites officer could truly be described as 'easier'.

"I uhh... conducted a psychic interrogation," I admitted.

"He screamed a lot," Clara added unhelpfully and I shot her a sideways glance.

"There won't be any permanent damage," I said, a touch defensively. Ortega had certainly been trained on how to resist interrogation, I had sampled some of those memories and he was no more damaged than any other servant of the Emperor by my mental rummaging.

"He didn't call the assassin, but I think someone may have had access to the vox net he was using to contact the authorities, I asked Lazarus to run it down," I explained. Hadrian looked somewhat troubled but he didn't interject.

"Then I interrogated the other witness to the shooting," I rushed on, hoping against hope that I wasn't going to have to make a full accounting.

"Other witness?" Hadrian asked, arching an eyebrow at the closed expression which stole over Clara's face. "What other witness?"

"The shooter," I explained, "I...uh disabled him after he shot you." Hadrian's face was confused and skeptical.

"Lazarus said he was dead," Hadrian prodded. I licked my dry lips, trying to find an artful way to evade this line of inquiry. Clara apparently felt no such compunction.

"Oh he was dead all right, but that didn't stop her from asking questions. Just ordered his corpse to sit up and spill the ploin juice," she said, plowing remorselessly forward.

"I would hardly say I 'just ordered' him to do it," I added crossly, reflecting on the colossal effort it had taken. Clara rolled her eyes.

"Really not sure lingering on the creepy-ass sigils, nude bathing, and applying a dead guy as makeup are going to improve the take away here sister," Clara retorted.

"You... raised someone from the dead?!" Hadrian demanded. I crossed my arms beneath my breasts hugging my storm coat tight.

"Well technically I only called his spirit back to answer some questions," I admitted.

"Technically is doing A LOT of work in that sentence," Clara opined.

My joy of being reunited with Emmaline could not be sundered by just physical pain. If I'm wounded, I know from experience that I'll end up getting hurt by her overeager nature, and despite myself I would not have it any other way. But to hear of this latest news caused a great anger to swell in me. I did not shout or balk after the first exclamation, but I closed my lips tightly and breathed through my nostrils as I attempted to keep a semblance of calm. Unfortunately, the two women could tell a mood shift had taken place.

"Hadrian..." Emmaline started, but I did not rise to answer her.

"Told you he wouldn't like it," Clara remarked to Emmaline.

"Clara?" I said.

"Yes sir?"

"Get out."

She started to open her mouth, but I looked at her. The guard captain moved so quickly, for a moment I thought I had inadvertently used my will. She was out of the office and closing the door behind us in the span of a second. It left the two of us in a silence that was more tension filled than awkward. I grabbed the small cane Lazarus had set upon my lap and tried to rise.

"Hadrian, don't. Let m-" Emmaline started, stepping forward to decide whether to help me up or to keep me in my seat. I'll never forget that moment. Not because it had any lasting effects, but it was the first time we had been at odds.

"Don't touch me." I ordered. She drew back, biting her full lip as the words fell into the air like a box of knives. She watched as I unsteadily got to my feet. It was only by my stubbornness and the mental discipline I had beaten into me by Kronus that I was able to stand at all. One hand on my cane and my legs frozen for a moment, I wondered for the briefest if this was how the old bookkeeper Pavern felt back on Pacitus. Frail and unsteady. I loathed it. But at the moment I was too consumed by another scenario.

"What book did you use to raise him?" I asked plainly, affording no distractions. "There had to be some work you used. What was it?"

"Libracate Obscurus," she said after a moment's hesitation, her voice almost a whisper. I could see guilt warring with a myriad of other emotions on her. Shame, worry, frustration, perhaps even anger. But guilt most of all. I decided I couldn't look, else I would forgive her then and there. I would forgive her regardless, really. But I could not forget. So I stepped my cane forward, making my way over to the desk of the office, facing the wall as if I looked out over a window when one was simply not present.

"My words before I was shot. I meant them. I still mean them." I breathed in deeply, wanting to choose my words carefully. Throne, the woman meant more to me than anything, but I could not hide my disapproval. It was too reckless, and it would be disrespectful of her skills to coddle her. "If what Lazarus told me were true, you showed initiative and leadership, and you should be proud of that." Shaking my head, I sighed. "But if you ever utilize such arcane practices again... I can't promise I can protect you."

"I don't need protection," she said, perhaps a bit tartly. She was twisting the meaning of my words into their most basic function, and she damn well knew it.

"When we decided to pursue our relationship, we promised we would do what we could to remain in the fold whilst doing so. If you had been shot, I don't know what I would have done. But it would be your job to tell me exactly what I am telling you now, if that had happened. If I had gone too far." I said, turning to her. I nearly fell, but stubbornly I kept myself upright, only a slight wobble of the cane showing the wave of vertigo threatening to totter me. "I cannot have any member of my team doing such things, no matter what happens. Kronus fought and survived traitor astartes in his time, and yet he was killed by a single bullet, almost as I was. We do not know what will happen tomorrow-" I started, but before I could finalize my point, my body finally gave way. I let go of the cane and hit the desk, elbow and arm pressed against it desperately as my legs threatened to collapse. This time Emmaline did help me, and this time I did not try and stop her. Her embrace and worry was warm, but I would not relent.

"Promise me you won't do it again, no matter the cost." I said, pushing myself back up with her help. She was stronger than she looked, but I was still half again her weight and it took the both of us to get started on escorting my broken form back to my chair. There were those that already whispered I was far too lenient as a monodominate, that I disgraced Inquisitor Kronus' legacy. That thought, along with my feelings for Emmaline twisted a knot of emotions in me that were almost too much to bear. "Please, Emma..."

I've had a great deal of practice at concealing my emotions but even so I only marginally managed to keep the cocktail of anger, hurt, and shame. I was tired and worn out, I'd felt the terror of seeing Hadrian laying in his own blood, I'd worked psykannanic forces stronger and darker than anything I had ever touched, it was fair to say I didn't have a whole lot left in me.

"Fine," I aquieased unable to keep the fires of anger kindled.

"I need more than that," Hadrian pressed. I threw my hands up in defeat. It seemed bitterly unfair but there was no way out so I did the only thing I could. I straightened my back and stepped back from Hadrian.

"My Lord Inquisitor," I said formally, "I accept your censure, and I will not repeat my actions." Despite my best efforts, each word had a slight bite to the back end of it. I knew this made me seem petulant but I couldn't help myself.

"I was able to extract some information from the witness," I continued my voice clinicaly detached. Hadrian hadn't asked for it, being more concerned with how it was obtained but I had paid the price to obtain it and I couldn't let it go unused because of its source.

"Can it even be trusted?" Hadrian asked, sounding weary. I nodded my head. The ritual I had used compelled the shade to speak truly, though they could force an querant burn up time asking the question three times. A practitioner could only hold the shade while the salt burned. If the flames reached the center of the circle before the ritual was terminated, the practitioner would be 'opened to the beyond', a vauge section of the text which filled me with dread. I wondered if Jogar Carden had been hoping for that result with his talk of salvation.

"The assassin's name was Jogar Carden," I told him. "I don't know how helpful that will be, he may not have used his true name while he was working."

"He was working for something he called the Under Council."

Selencia and Lazarus would fret this was far too much excitement for me, I thought sardonically, trying to find the humor in a situation where there was very little of it. Emmaline was frustrated, but she conceded and it helped me to breathe easily at least. I sat back in my wheel chair and nodded at her explanation. As much as I did not trust the methods, I did trust Emmaline, and it stands to reason if she truly put the man's spirit back into his body for a short time, it would be impossible for him to lie. Of course I had never performed such acts, but I knew of them. One could not be in the Ordo Malleus without knowledge of ritual, both sanctioned and heretical.

Jogar Carden, I catalogued the name in my head for later.

"It seems a bit obvious that an organization with such a name as Under Council would be dually located in an Under Hive. But it could be worth granting it a once over. Any heretical sects located below the lower hives would be hard pressed to get reported to any real authority. The fact the manufacturing facilities is on this level was likely the only reason we even found evidence of their presence in the first place." I was merely thinking aloud at this point, but it seemed to ease Emmaline, perhaps because I still deigned to share my thought process with her. Emperor help me, I was glad I still could as well.

"What about your recovery?" She asked, remaining detached in speech, though her eyes spoke she was still worried on my physical health.

"I will take a day to rest, no matter what Selencia cautions of me. This will grant Lazarus time to locate any information on this Jogar Carden if he is able. I want you to help with that, if there is anything you are capable of aiding him with. Perhaps not, but I need your...personable mind if it goes beyond a data-slate. After that, all of us will go below if we have no other leads." I raised my hand to halt any protests. "I can requisition certain stems that will allow me full mobility, and I can fit my carapace armor and bandages to keep myself from any further damage."

She gently placed a hand on my arm, and after a second's hesitation, I placed my opposite hand on hers and squeezed it. This whole situation was complicated, but it seemed that we could persevere through it. Perhaps we were right to pursue this...relationship. If we could handle near death, wrongful tortue, and necromantic rituals, maybe we could handle whatever else the galaxy threw at us.

I just hoped the Ordo saw it in such a light.

"You'll need to do one more thing, though you won't like it." I said, and she bit her lip awaiting the remark. "You did the most prudent thing at the time, and it seems there is no permanent damage, but if you haven't already, you should apologize to Arbites Ortega. Not because I believe you were not in your rights, but the Arbites are a prideful group, much like my own. We might require his help again."

"You are appologising to me?" Ortega asked. We were sitting across from each other in the Administratum annex. Ortega had been returned his weapons and equipment though he hadn't yet been permitted to leave. Two Caledonians stood by the door, leaning on heavy power glaives. I wondered, if it came down to it, if they would be able to defeat an armed and armored Ortega. Not that it would matter, a mental intrustion was like a chink in a suit of armor. As strong as the Arbites mental training was, now I had gotten in once, I could do it again. I sensed that Ortega knew it too and it wasn't disposing him well towards me.

"I have been directed to do so," I admitted. Ortega snorted.

"You will forgive me for feeling that is less than sincere," the Arbite responded.

"I will," I agreed. Our eyes locked over the table for long moments, then Ortega nodded, his posture softening ever so slightly. I suspect that Arbites were rendered constituionally unable to relax as mere mortals understood it.

"We are taught to trust not to trust, I suppose I shouldn't complain too much when you don't trust me," he admitted.

"I followed up on your suspcions," he said after a moment. "One of our tech priests has gone missing."

"How did you know about those suspicions?" I asked. He shrugged his shoulders, the slightest tick at the corner of his mouth betraying the fact that he was pleased to have gotten ahead of me.

"I had the advantage of knowing that I wasn't a traitor, that assassin had to come from somewhere," Ortega responded with a touch of acid. I nodded and touched my vox bead but before I could speak the door opened. Lazarus and Hadrian entered, the Skitarii pushing the wheel chair. I turned and offered a slight bow and Ortega stiffened to something approaching a millitary brace.

"My Lord," I said formally. Hadrian nodded to me.

"Be seated," Hadrian directed and Ortega and I took seats at oppisite sides of the long table. Clara entered from another entrance dressed in an armored body glove. She glanced between Hadrian and I, looking uncomfortable. It was a shame that she had to watch what I had done, I wondered if I had irreperabley damaged our relationship. I had needed a chevalier to carry a weapon.

"The time has come to to put our cards on the table. Emmaline?" Hadrian directed. I stood up.

"We came here in pursuit of a heretical cult operating on the feral world of Havenos," I explained, ommiting to mention the Inquisitorial connection. If Hadrian wanted to drop that bomb, I would leave it to him.

"We determined they were sourcing materials from here and... well you saw what happened when we followed up that lead. They sent an assassin to close the loop so we know they are aware of us. We have since learned that his name was Jogar Carden, working for a group called the Under Council."

Ortega sat forward, his investigative insticts banishing his discomfort with the situation.

"How did you learn this," Ortega asked, frowning at the sudden tense silence which fell over the assembled group.

"We have means," I said after a moment, causing Ortega to blink in confusion. He glanced around the room of closed faces then shrugged, a tectonic motion in his armor.

"I have heard of Carden, he is... was, a pro with dozens of confirmed kills," Ortega admitted, "I suspect that if he wasn't working on the fly you wouldn't have taken him down, pskyer tricks or no."

"And the Under Council?" Hadrian pressed.

"I've heard rumors," Ortega admitted, "they operate deep in the underhive, far beyond the reach of local enforcers. Control of the lower areas of the hive is almost entirely in hands of gangers and worse. You would need an Astartes squad to shoot your way in."