The wreckage of the Valkyrie tumbled from the antennae in what looked like slow motion. It turned a half rotation in the air and then struck the edge of the turret emitting a dull whump of combusting petrochems as it tumbled off the edge and into the abyss. I didn't want to think of where it would land.

"Damn," Ortega commented laconically, "you people are hell on equipment." 

Perhaps it was the stress, perhaps it was a kind of mania, but at that moment despite my history with Ortega I couldn't help but snort a laugh. I tried to choke it back, failed, and redoubled my laughter, the sound echoing weirdly off the forest of antennae and the oozlite walls of the turret. Hadrian was smiling through gritted teeth and even Lazarus managed a short binaric burst that I had learned to interpret as amusement.  

"You should see the other guy," Clara deadpanned clearly thinking of the destruction we had wrought on the heretic operation back on Havernos which brought another round of laughter. I think that Ortega even managed a slight smile at that, though he assures me that it never happened.

"Alright, lets move," Hadrian declared leading us to one of the ornate stained glass windows which he casually shattered with a round from his sidearm. I suppose once you crash a gunship into the side of a building, you have kind of given up on stealth anyway.

The interior of the broadcast station was a study in contradictions. Soaring Imperial architecture had been combined with the techno-sorcery of the Mechanicus in a way that was inherently jarring to my sensibilities. Great ropes of snaking cabling had been draped over statues of Imperial Saints. Votive candles had been plastered over the top of Mechanicus prayer slips in a way that seemed designed to start fire. Cogitator banks had been jammed into confessional alcoves and generators and power splicers lay atop what must once have been devotional altars. The whole place reeked of the techno-sorcerous smell of hot plastec with an overlay of tallow candles and old incense. 

"It is remarkable that these machine spirits continue to cooperate," Lazarus remarked acidly, plucking one of the prayer slips and scowling at the date inscribed.

"Any chance you can give us some insight on to how to make them less cooperative with our enemies?" I asked sweeping the area with my force staff as though it were a firearm.

"The main control chapel is two levels down, if we reach it we should be able to..."

"For the Emperor!" screamed a half dozen voices in unison followed by the unmistakable roar of chainswords. Six figures burst from an alcove, all of them were naked save for simple leather armor and prayer scrolls attached to an impressive number of body piercings. The flesh beneath was heavily tattooed with Imperial cult iconography and verses from the scriptures. Each carried a chainsword nearly as tall as a man with incense burners hanging from their pommels and wore a thin strip of cloth over their eyes. Judging from the way they moved the blindfolds didn't do much to impair their vision.

Ortega swung his shotgun around but the zealots were already on top of him, he batted away a slice that would have disembowled a grox and sprang sideways, driving an armored fist into the side of the first attacker. A muscular male leaped at me, intent on cleaving me in half but I pointed my force staff at him and screamed, focusing my terror through the weapon. Without contact with the ground the psychic blast punched him back through a cogitator bank in a shower of blue sparks. Clara tried to duplicate Ortega's move but was a heartbeat slow, the las carbine she was carrying sheared in two by the whirling teeth of the chain blade.

"Inquisition, cease and desist!" Lazarus boomed, a holographic representation of the Inquisitorial Electoo blossoming in front of him.

"The Heretic will approach in pleasing guise, with signs and portents of authority! Be not deceived as Saint Kayban we will cast out the unclean!" one of the zealots roared.

"Cast out the unclean!" the rest howled in unison. One of them charged through the hololithic projection only to discover that Lazarus was a soldier as well as a priest. He had used the distracton of the light to slip to the side and as the zealot charged passed he smashed the butt of his trans-uranic arquebus into the side of the chainswordsman's head with a crunch of splintering bone. The berserker dropped to the grounds convulsing and spraying a mixture of blood and brains from his nostrils. Hadrian, with his duelist reflexes parried a whirring chain blade in a shower of sparks and side stepped, neatly running another attacker through beneath the armpit. Normal attackers might have broken at this point but these men and women were beyond reason, literally frothing at the mouth to kill for the Emperor. I thought of the Inquisitor we had encountered on Havernos, doubtless the cult had prepped them by plying them with lies about us. 

"Emmaline!" Hadrian shouted as one of the two surviving attackers, an incredibly muscular woman, leaped at me, swining her blade overhead in a two handed cleave that showered through electrial cabling like an axe through butter. I dove out of the way but she was ready, landing gracefully and pivoting to give me the coup de grace. I lifted my force staff and focused my will.

"No!" I yelled. I could not have broken her mind in time to prevent the swing, but I didn't need to. Severed cables sprang forward like living things, wrapping around the woman's wrists, ankles and midriff, catching her in the air as surely as though she had ran through a web of spiders silk. The cables wrapped around her hands and discharged sparking electricity into her until the chain blade fell from her hands, its blades whirring down to as stop once the activation stud was freed. Ortega's shotgun boomed and I looked up to see that the remaining attackers were down.

"Die Heretic filth!" my suspended zealot raved, jerking this way and that hard enough to rip cabling from the walls but without enough strength to free herself entirely.

"We are no Heretics!" I shouted, driving the point home with my will, pouring in images of our battles on Havenos, with Baphomet until I felt the edges of her mind strain. I caught glimpses of her life, begging for food outside a templum. Sneaking in to steal from the offetery with a hunger in her belly so hot it nearly made me cry out. Golden light pouring through a stained glass window, so beautiful it made her fall to her knees in awe at the divinity of the Emperor. Preaching on a street corner while she stood atop a stylus that had once held a statue while people threw her coins. A confessor touching her on the shoulder and speaking words of service. She let out a despairing wail and slumped.

"Inquisitor!" she wailed as the weight of what I had shone her crashed home.

"Forgive us!" she whimpered. Ortega looked on skeptically above the sights of his smoking shotgun. Hadrian was grimacing in pain. Clara was bleeding, a deep gash on her arm she was binding with tape.

"Elektra," I said, her name on my tongue from the psychic contact. 

"You will take us to the control chapel, do you understand me?" I demanded. She quivered, her lips moving rapidly in what must have been a prayer but too low for me to hear. Sparks and smoke rose all around us from the wreckage of conduits and cogitators cut to scrap or shot through in the brief firefight. Her eyes cut sideways to Hadrian.

"Yes Inquisitor, I will obey," she gasped, tears cutting runnels through the grime on her face.