[i]I killed a man, the day I met her. Running down a hab block on a hive world called Castobel. Another mark on the God Emperor's ledger of potential judgements. I thought the act had sent a beacon to the stars. Even here, hiding on a world of two hundred billion souls, my guilt and my past had come for me. I suppose I should be flattered. In my experience, misdeeds are often rewarded, or at least granted clemency in the cogs of self righteous logic. The end justifies the means, and all that. I was not above the notion. If you worked in the dark long enough, you became the dark, a wise man once said. Strange then, that no matter where I went, I was chased by the ghosts of my previous life. Or so I often thought. Later I learned it was not my past that haunted me, or not merely that. It was the future calling to me, grinding me down to better serve a purpose, and a woman, I would come to know. After three years at the academy, and seven years in the adeptus arbites, I had felt I had enough. I went and crawled into the darkest, most crowded hole I could find. When she found me, she had pulled the curtains and revealed the sun. Painful, uncomfortable, but later I realized, I could finally see.[/i]  

Greasy rain slithered down stone and plasteel habs, thin rivulets rushing through the streets of the deserted blocks. It made the ground look alive, gave life to a place that did its damned best to kill whoever was stupid enough to make a living here. Clarions sounded in the distance, but past the sirens and the rain, all Alcander could hear was his own breathing. He was pressed against the wall of a hab, jacket soaked to its core, weapon up and the safety off, waiting for his moment. Not for the first time did he curse the bloody rain. To maintain air pressure, the glorious leaders of Hive Isobel vented the polluted air that coalesced at the top of the middle hive, equalizing it with injections of scrubbed air, and the more hot, humid air causing the bastardized rain. It tastes like the hab-block was sweating. 

His knee still stung from when he fell, and he still tasted the bitterness of gunsmoke and rockcrete that had flown during the mad pursuit not minutes before. Rain drummed on his wide brimmed hat, and his retinal implant gave off a pale shine, the only indicator he was a probator of the local bastion. Well, that and his badge, but every probator knew it was a grox-shit way to identify one another, considering how good the gangers had become at fraudulent badges. Alcander had heard most bastions did not even use them anymore, and they had insisted they wear other means of communication and identification when necessary, and so the probus had given them arms slates, usually hidden from sight by long sleeves. They had kept the badges mostly as tradition, but the arm slates were meant to be copy-proof, unable to be given to anyone who had not earned it.

But it seemed even that wasn't enough. Ranborne had taught him that. 

Pallid light glinted off the watery rockcrete street, loudly contrasting the long shadows cast by the various habs, massive pict boards in disrepair, and the overturned Solas-Harkonstar, laying like a dead beast across the block. Good car, he had heard. A couple of years ago he might have been able to afford it, but those days were as far off as Terra, in his mind. Had he known the tires weren't so good in rain, he likely would have thought better than to buy one, anyhow. It had not done Ranborne any favors. Then again, neither had his greed. 

Alcander inched slowly to the edge of the corner, poised in the alleyway. Briefly, he thought he heard something. A soft, rhythmic noise. Something solid. Footsteps? He wasn't sure, it could have easily been the heavy drip of rain from a pipe. He held his breath, closing his eyes for the briefest of moments. His eyes snapped open when the ident on his arm slate pinged. It wasn't loud, but it was loud enough. Something had changed, and he realized the noise had stopped. Without pausing to consider, Alcander dove out of cover as plasteel and rockcrete burst around him, its hard surface no match for the propellant base, mass reactive detonator cap of a bolt round, with a depleted deuterium core and diamantine tip. He knew the sound before he even looked, having used and been fired at with bolt pistols in several operations on distant worlds. 

Alcander hit the ground in a roll, water scattering like shrapnel, catching himself with his foot on the edge of a pothole. His hat gone, Alcander's black hair matted and whipping as he raised his own gun, a standard issue laspistol courtesy of the bastion. He had always hated laspistols during his years as an arbites. They were too bright, and had less stopping power than he was comfortable with. He much preferred autoguns, but his probus had insisted, and the brass decided what was what. Alcander saw a figure through the glare and the rain, moving to kneel in the street, so fast was Alcander that Ranborne looked like molasses as he pivoted his hip and realigned his boltpistol. The bald pate and congenial face curled into a mask of anger and fear. He did not like that was the last memory he would have of him. He had counted Ranborne as an ally; a friend, even. But his friend had tried to kill him, and was turning to finish the job. 

Alcander pulled the trigger, and finished it first. 

Ranborne's body hit the ground, and his boltpistol clattered onto the street, the barrel still smoking like the flesh on Ranborne's visage. Alcander caught his breath, wiping his eyes and pulling his hair away from his face. The world had been all black and white, until his laspistol had blared red, the discharge still burned into his retinas. After a moment, he drew himself up to his feet unsteadily, and still keeping his gun trained on Ranborne, approached the fallen man. He had wanted to talk to him, to ask him why. To give Alcander a damn good reason for his betrayal. He wouldn't have accepted money, or pressure. He had to know, dammit. But there was nothing, he knew. He looked down at Ranborne's corpse, and he realized he would never find out. 

He holstered his laspistol, and after taking a moment, he withdrew his sleeve to activate his armslate and call in the verispecs. But on the touch screen, he saw a notification. It was what had sent the ping earlier, and he read it. It was a call from bastion command to come in, he was being relocated, to turn on the beacon on his armslate to await transport. Briefly, Alcander wondered if this was another trick by Ranborne, one final play from beyond the grave. But he dismissed the idea, and activated his locator. A small, red flash ticked on and off, and he set himself down by the curb to wait, watching the corpse of his former friend, making sure the rats didn't get to him. 

Minutes later, lights flared as a groundcar turned a corner, bumping up and down as it rolled down the street. It pulled up just a meter from Ranborne's body, and Alcander knew it wasn't the verispecs. Whoever this was, they were quick bastards. He couldn't see through the tinted windows, but the car door opened a moment later, and a man he did not recognize stepped out. He wore an expensive jacket, not the cheap-novaplas the merchants and business men of the upperhab tried to pull off as rich. The truly wealthy wore natural fibers, and this man, with his slicked backed brown hair and sharp eyes, had to be from wealth, or work for it. 

"Alcander Mires?" He asked. Alcander noticed he ignored the rain, like him. "Come into the vehicle, have a lho-stick. We need to talk." 

"I need to wait here until the verispecs arrive. And I don't smoke, I quit a few months ago." Alcander remarked. He felt somewhat jaded, petulant. Ranborne's body was not even cold, and he had so many unanswered questions. He did not care if this man was Sanguinius himself, he was not the least bit interested in what he had to say. "Whatever you want to tell me, you can tell me right here. I'm working." 

"I've been told you're no longer on this investigatus, but whatever you wish." He said, straightening his jacket. The rain had somewhat abated, as if it did not mind wetting Alcander or Ranborne's corpse, but it made an exception for one of the gilded. "I am a representative and aide of your new employer. You are to be taken to the nearest gate, and transported to the upper hive, where we have a transport waiting to take us off world. At that time, we wi-" 

"Off-world? I fought hard for this station, I'm not going anywhere. And who the hell do you represent?" 

"The Lord Captain and Rogue Trader Orthelio Bathazar Belchite, Architect of the Trade, and the Emperor's Chosen servant, guardian of these systems." 

Alcander just stared at him, and the two men merely looked at one another for a handful of seconds before the probator rubbed his eyes with two fingers, and stood up, taking in a deep breath. "You said there would be lho-sticks?" 

"I thought you quit." The man reminded him. 

"I've had a rough day."