[IC] The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

[Penny]

The strange metallic beings continued to march on the pyramid firing as they came. The weird green beams slashed up towards the pyramids where the cultists had made their strong point. Their landspeeders were parked in a rough perimiter around the base of the pyramid creating both a barricade and a series of strong points as the vehicle mounted weapons were turned outward. As I watched one of the chaos worshipers in tattered house armor charged down the side of the pyramid and leaped into the approaching metal men. With mechanical precisions their bayonets flashed, impaling him through the heart and amputating both hands within a single heartbeat. The satchel charge he had been carrying went off in a blinding sheet of flame and smoke. The over pressure knocked us all of our feet, all of us except the metal monstrosities. The leading wave were blasted to fragments that sparked off the walls, but the rest of them continued to advance at a measured walk. It was beyond terrifying. It wasn't just their total lack of fear, nor the absolute implacability they displayed. There was a psyhic hatred that hung in the air, cold and metallic. It was the absolute certainty of the eradication of organic life. I could see that our troops were hanging on by the edge, their eyes were wide and staring, and their fire increasingly wild. I reached out with my gifts in an attempt to bouy their morale. I should have known better. I had thrown my power around a couple of times in Hadrian's service, but I was no combat psyker. A dozen men, paniced and jacked with adrenaline, bit down on my mind.

"OUCH!" I shouted, though I doubt anyone heard anything over the raging gun battle. I staggered sideways as their neural pathways fused slightly in my confusion. I heard screams and curses. Men staggered and stumbled. Then they came up together firing with shocking precision. I realised to my shock and horror that their experiences had been combined like pouring two bottles of amasec. Each man suddenly had hundreds of years of marksmenship training. The green PDF had the battle experience of the veterans, and the veterans had the adrenaline and heightened reflexes of the greenhorns. They poured fire into the enemy, hiting one at a time with coordinated fire. I mostly just tried to stop myself from throwing up.

"Stop them!" someone screamed from the pyramid, in a voice laden with pshycic energy. I felt further pshycic phenomen building, an obscene mixture of human and xenos energies.

"They must be trying to use the xenos technology," I shouted, then, feeling stupid, repeated the same thing through the comm bead.

"Can you stop them?" Hadrian responded, the tenseness in his voice making it clear that he wasn't unaware of the growing storm of power.

"I can..."

CRACK!

I opened my eyes and found myself standing in a metal corridor of similar architecture to the vast chamber in which I had just been standing, though it was far tighter. There was another crack behind me and I spun to see one of the metal men appear out of the air. By pure luck it was facing the otherway, but it immediately began to turn. I lifted the force staff by reflex and unleashed a blast of energy. It was paniced and uncontrolled, but the tip was nearly touching the creature. Frost exploded into existance as a ball of mental force ripped from the staff. The metal creature was ripped to pieces, its arms legs and head blasted off in a spray of greenish light. Most disconcertingly, I caught a glimpse of its head as it careened away, green eyes still staring balefully at me.

"He deserved it," a voice said behind me, I spun in panic trying to level the staff. Hadrian caught the weapon halfway along the length and blocked it.

"Easy," he said soothingly. I relaxed and lowered the weapon.

"What happened?" he asked, stripping the magazine from his weapon and replacing it.

"They used some kind of xenos teleportation device, it is built into the structure I think, the psychic force it required must have been tremendous, and they must know an awful lot more about this place than we do."

[POOHEAD189]

The halls here were large, but they weren't seemingly endless like the other areas of the facility. The only perpetual direction one way or another seemed to be up, and it was only because I could not see past the darkness after a few dozen meters. As it stood, Emmaline and I were in an unremarkable hall in an entirely remarkable, dangerous place.

"We only need to know two things." I said sternly, holding aloft my autogun. I had lost my shotgun in the firefight and subsequent teleportation. "Where the sorcerer is and how to get out of here once he is dead."

"Very pragmatic," she said. I looked at her to ascertain if she was joking. Her face was serene, gazing back at me with her pretty eyes. I realized I was being harsher than usual. She tended to be the one person to make me laugh, beside Lazarus. Thinking about it actually caused me to feel a bit of levity in that moment.

"That's me, all business." I remarked. It didn't do to panic now, and Emmaline asking questions on how exactly we were to get out was another thing I was not prepared to answer. All we could do is move forward, and so we did at my insistence. She clutched the staff, more sure of herself now that we had taken a taste of combat and survived. I had no doubt the next time we found a xenos or cultist, she would throw them a hundred meters down the next hall.

Unfortunately, I would find out soon.

The next bend in the hallway, we had entered a bizarre corridor; an almost exhibit of stalls. What appeared like strange glass covered the walls, sectioned off by huge dividers of the xenos metal. From what we could tell, the glass shined a glare we couldn't view until we stepped in further, and the sight was horrible and breathtaking.

I saw a man's face. A face contorted into a scream. He wore the robes of an ecclesiarch, his skin tanned as if the sun still beamed on him brightly. But the robes he wore were unlike any I had ever witness. Their symbols were strange, runic, and the few I recognized were old-fashioned even thousands of years ago. The next stall held an Ork, or what I thought was an Ork. It's skin was red rather than green, and demonic horns sprouted from its cranium. I couldn't feel the chaos taint on the xenos, but I knew it was there, locked in this prison of eternity.

"Hadrian..." Emmaline said, drawing my attention. I gasped when I turned.

Across the hall was another prison of stasis. A giant in baroque, bronze power armor, holding a weapon that looked very much like a storm bolter, only of a distant, weird design. It wore a tall helm with a red mane, and I thought it to be one of the venerable custodes for a brief moment, but I had seen the guards of the emperor before. They were taller than this squat monstrosity, though whatever this was dwarfed an astartes in size.

Click clack click

We turned, weapons held at the ready. What approached was a machine, but it wasn't sentient or sapient as far as I could tell. I would later find out it was a thing called a Tomb Spyder. As large as a ground car, it had many limbs working in perfect unison. I thought it would come at us immediately, but it seemed content with checking the status of the hall and the consoles, it's subroutines likely just maintenance. Either way, I loathed the thing.

I leveled my pistol at it. As I did so, before my finger touched the trigger, I saw more forms. Not the walking things I later learned were called Necrons, but machines that crawled across the ground. They were stout, the size of large dogs. I was not initially concerned, but there looked to be dozens, no, hundreds of them. They clattered and skittered, charging forward like a wave past the Tomb Spyder.

Emmaline waved her staff forward, the front thirty scarabs suddenly crushed or tossed back into the darkness behind the relentless tide. Oil burst forth like blood, xenos-material crippled. I fired into the mass, hitting either its 'eye' or center mass with every shot. But I could not reload quickly enough, and soon I took a step back. They swarmed forward relentlessly, and we knew their mission was merely to kill.

With a burst of sudden thought, to this day I did not know if it was inspiration or panic, Emmaline scrambled over to the closest terminal. She hesitated a moment, but began to smack and poke at the console, frantically trying to get it to work and do something, anything.

"Emmaline! We need to run!" I started, but even as I finished my scream, there was a change in the glass. It glared brightly in a brief flash, and then dissipated like liquid that retreated rather than fell with the law of gravity. A scarab hit me in the stomach, sending me to the ground. My quick unsheathing of my power sword saved my life, slicing it in half even as it bore down on me. Its two sides fell to my left and right, and I pressed a tired hand on the floor to lift myself up before I was overwhelmed.

A massive foot stepped out of the stall, encased in archaic steel-plate. The next step crushed the nearest scarab as if it were made of paper. I saw Emmaline gaping, holding herself on the ground as the massive man stepped forward, its weapon igniting, tearing through the mass of scarabs. Dozens were shattered every second, and with the terribly loud weapon came a scream from the giant, echoing out of its plated great helm. A cry of rage and madness. Luckily, I would soon find the madness would subside. It was a temporary phenomenon his strain of post-human dealt with when first made by the God-Emperor.

Never in all my years did I ever believe I would meet one of the Emperor's legendary Thunder Warriors.

[Penny]

I stared in shock as the gold armored figure ripped into the scarabs, sending metal flying in all directions. Screaming with rage the armored warrior charged across the room and grabbed the tomb spyder by one of its forelegs. He drew back a vast metal fist and drove it into the side of the creature. It drew back its hand and struck again and again, dishing in plates with the sound like a pneumatic hammer on hull platting. With a roar of victory he plunged his fist through its armor and grabbed a hold of its inards, ripping out a handfull of sparking green cables. The spyder spasmed wildly and then collapsed to the floor. The warrior grabbed the things head in both hands and wrenched violently. The head came free in an explosion of green fire that flickered and arced across the armor. For a few seconds I could see the giant's skeleton through the armor. The green light died and the giant stepped clear, smoke coiling up from his golden armor.

"Holy Throne," I breathed in shock. My mind was screaming 'astartes'. I had never seen one in the flesh, but they were a frequent enough subject of sculpture and painting that I could tell this wasn't one of the Emperor's Chosen. It swiviled its head to look at me and I backed up rapidly, my guts clenching. The monster took a step towards me, flexing its fingers.

"We are servants of the Emperor!" Hadrian shouted. The brute paused, head swiviling to Hadrian. I got the impression it was surveying the Imperial iconography on his equipment. I probed at him with my mind, shoving all the images of the Emperor I could think of at the thing.

[POOHEAD189]

Emmaline later told me his mind was a conglomeration of intense emotions, unbridled and chaotic. It was hard to imagine he was a coherent being, let alone one of the oldest servants of the emperor. The Thunder Warriors were the precursors to the astartes, and I had only heard of them in the oldest of texts my master had made me read. I saw Emmaline clutching her head, screaming for her life. The huge bronze warrior did the same, crying out intensely, piercing my ears like a knife.

His archaic gun pummeled the walls with rounds before he threw it from his hands and began to pound the scarabs, hunks of steel flying everywhere as he vented his anguish, his voice reverberating along the walls. I didn't speak any further. Instead, I made my way over to Emmaline and shook her gently, calming her down as best as I could.

"Emma! Stay with me!" I cried, and held her until her screams subsided and she fell limp into my arms. I felt her chest and breathed a sigh of relief when I felt her heart. It was strong but erratic, like her. As the seconds passed, it became more steady. She opened her eyes slowly, but I didn't see. My eyes were on the the thunder warrior, whom I had noticed had stopped screaming. On his knees, he breathed heavily. If I had not known better, I would have called him a mere statue.

"You... are...a man..." The Thunder Warrior said softly, or softly for such an immense being.

"Yes," I said, holding Emmaline protectively. "I am an Inquisitor of the Imperium of Man."

"What is that?" He asked, his voice slow. "Why... was I shown the High Commander?"

I spoke with surety. "This is the forty first millennium. You have been asleep for over ten thousand years."

The warrior was frozen, but from my meager psychic skills, I felt emotions. I wish I was as skilled in the art as Emmaline. I couldn't tell if it was confusion or rage. It was far more subtle than his earlier emotions, but after many moments he moved, getting to his feet. He grabbed his weapon, and I when he turned he found I now stood between he and Emmaline, my power sword ignited.

"These things were xenos? I remember them..."

"Help me kill them, and the cultists or wish to summon daemons using their foul tech." I asked him, unmoving before the juggernaut.

He said nothing, but I felt his affirmation with my mind. He turned to face the wall, and I helped Emmaline to her feet.

[Penny]

I slowly let up on the emotional baffle I was holding on the Thunder Warrior. It's mind was not human in the conventional sense, even less so than an astartes although I was yet to encounter those particular servants of the Emperor. The rage and confusion of the Thunder Warrior was understandable, if monstrous and dangerous, the psychic backwash however was less so. In the Thunder Warriors mind I saw the Emperor. Not the Emperor as the god I had always thought of him as but as a man, a mighty man certainly, but no more divine I was. It was a shocking revelation to be sure, but not one I had time to unpack right at that moment. Those few moments of contact would have profound repercussions for my own belief and my relationship with the Ordos, but that remained in the future.

"Let's go," Hadrian said and lead the way out of the strange chamber. I briefly considered trying to free the archaic ecclesiarch but dismissed the notion. I felt like I was in enough spiritual peril as it was. No doubt if we prevailed the Ordos would take care of the rest. We ascended via sloping ramps, steps apparently not being part of the xenos architectural style. Almost at once we came across bodies. Most were our men, some pierced through by impossibly sharp bayonets, one unfortunate was severed neatly in half from crown to crotch, apparently having materialized half inside a wall. I could feel the psychic tug of what was going on above, a queasy sort of discomfort as someone picked at the edges of the Immaterium. The greenish veins of the structure were beginning to take on a purplish undertone which made my skin crawl.

"There is someone..." I began, sensing a presence ahead of us, but before anyone could act a PDF trooper leaped from cover and aimed his lasgun at us. He froze in place at the sight of the Thunder Warrior, his lip quivering and his finger frozen on the trigger.

"He is with us," Hadrian called, though whether he was addressing the guardsman or the superhuman I wasn't sure.

"Sir," the PDF trooper replied, he attempted to sling his rifle but made a mess of it, giving up and going for a patrol carry.

"Follow and provide rearguard," Hadrian directed, grabbing the man by the jacket and shoving him back past the Thunder Warrior and myself. We found a half dozen more troopers as we climbed, four of them Imperial guard who had been in the last stages of bludgeoning on of the metal men to scrap when we had arised. The sergeant, a grizzled man with a cigar between his teeth and a glowing augmented eye turned to watch us approach.

"Emperor's balls, what the frak is that?" he demanded when the Thunder Warrior strode into view. The golden armored warrior drew himself up, somehow becoming even more intimidating.

"I am Lucius Raj," the creature rumbled as though declaring he were the tide.

"Good to know," the sergeant replied in an offhanded tone, though I could see that the tip of his cigar was quivering.

[POOHEAD189]

"The xenos had captured an astartes. Thank the Emperor we found him." I lied to the Sergeant, and subsequently the men. The Angels of Battle were well known enough by name, but most men in the Imperium had never seen a true Space Marine in the flesh. Emmaline had seen two, and had been lucky enough to tell the tale, when I had first liberated her from the chains of the cultists. Figuratively speaking, of course.

"Ast-" The Thunder Warrior began, but I gave him a look that told him it was unwise to speak. He thankfully listened. I was not sure he would. From my readings, the Thunder Warriors had been mad, violent conquerors. Perhaps that was only when they were having their fits of rage from the gene modification. He decided they were in dire enough straights to take that chance.

The men saluted, looking at the warrior in awe. The Thunder Warrior didn't respond in kind, but rather gazed at them for an uncomfortable few moments of silence before the Sergeant bade them put their hands down. They did so, and I cut to the chase. "Status? Where are the chimeras?"

"Another one was taken down after you were...gone. Chimera B is missing. We got separated in the fight." Sergeant Radvek reported. "Some of our men might be alive somewhere in the facility, but this is all I have right now. Nine, including myself."

"The cultists?" I asked him, impatient.

"They were killed to a man. Larkin here attests to it. He was our rear when we retreated." Radvek stated, indicating a guardsman with a stony visage. I asked him directly and Larkin said so himself, and I saw no lie in his eyes.

"That still leaves Bahometus and the rest of his forces." I reasoned.

"There's more?" A soldier asked, but buttoned his lip when the sergeant glared at him. I nodded and stated what they needed to hear: "Much more, and not only cultists, either... Daemons."

[Penny]

We didn't need any sophisticated method to find our way to where Bahometus and the coven were at work. There was a wailing psychic wrongness in the air that screamed their location. Even the troopers, bereft of any mental gifts, could feel it, the hair on their necks prickling and standing on end. We passed more bodies as we advanced deeper into the xenos lair. Many were the metal men we had seen, their chrome bodies hacked and mutilated almost beyond recognition. The bodies of our own men were worse. We found them in ones and twos, their entrails ripped from their chests and strung around the walls like bunting, blood spattered everywhere. I was trying very hard to come up with a suggestion that we ought to pull back and let the navy sterilize the site from orbit, but I couldn’t find a way to do so that wouldn't make it sound like I thought running away was the right choice. Abruptly, the corridor opened into a vast plaza. The place must have been a mile square, completely composed of black stone veined with the unwholesome xenos green. A large pyramid stood in the center, surmounted by a spinning point of sickly purple light. The pyramid had protrusions like skeletal arms that emitted an arcing greenish discharge around the light, as though containing or conjuring it. There were a dozen or more smaller pyramids surrounding the first, their points glowed green, and periodically bolts of green lightning snapped between the smaller and the larger structure. The air was ionized beyond belief, though not quite enough to block out the filthy stink of the warp that permeated the place. Great obelisks of silvery metal erupted from the ground around the central pyramids, rising nearly to the ceiling before sinking away again to no rhythm I could determine. Xenos glyphs glowed on their surfaces in green. Some remained up for minutes, others only a few seconds, before sinking into the floor leaving no sign they had ever been there. I felt stark terror at the sight. Who knew what this place had been designed for. We were like ants who were toying with the controls to a battle tighten in hopes it might flatten a few other ants.



“We have to reach the central pyramid,” Hadrian declared, as though that were simply a matter of marching over there.



“Commander,” Lucius said in a voice that was probably conversational for him but registered as a shout to the rest of us. We followed his out stretched bronze finger and saw dark red figures running towards us. There was no mistaking them as human. Each had six spindly arms tipped with razor sharp talons, the top two arms held swords that looked to be made of black and red stone that thrummed with malevolent energy. Their faces were beyond horrible, vaguely equine and eyeless save for where brass studs marked with hideous eye searing glyphs had been hammered.



“Throne preserve us,” one of the guardsmen muttered. I tried to share the sentiment but felt a welling of despair as I remembered Lucius’ mental images of the Emperor as a man, a great general to be sure, but just a man. There were a dozen of them, yipping and calling in what might have been language but what I preferred to think of as simple animal noises. Suddenly an obelisk erupted beneath the feet of the demon pack, throwing the bulk of them two hundred feet into the air. Daemonic they might have been, but they cracked like eggs when they hit the ground, oozing an oldly luminescent smoke. A pair that had been by the edge of the pack had merely been knocked off their feet. They scuttled forward like spiders, regaining their footing as they came.



“For the Emperor!” Hadrian shouted and the troopers opened fire. Laz bolts ripped through the air, their energy leaving lingering purple tracks in the ionized air. The lead daemon shuddered like a man hunching against the snow, las bolts blasting smoldering craters in its carapace. The second one, seemed to race past the first, like a drafting swan. It leaped into the air thirty feet from us both blades and four sets of talons raised to strike. I knew I was going to die. It was a certainty. If not from these two daemons then from the other packs I could already see heading towards us on sparking claws. An icy feeling settled into my stomach. Without really thinking about it, I lifted the force staff and pointed it at the leaping horror. My will exploded through the psycho-conductive alloy. This was no unfocused panicked strike like the one I had employed while escaping the ball. It was a hard lance of pure will, just like Hadrian had taught me. It caught the Daemon in mid air. The thing might have been inhumanly fast, it might have been impossibly strong, but so long as it wasn’t touching the ground, it was simply an object in motion. The blast caught it in the thorax and hammered it back like a juvie hitting a hive ball. It shrieked in rage for a brief moment before it hit the obelisk which had so fortuitously dispatched its companion. It wasn’t a clean strike, it hit the trapezoidal edge of the structure and flew off at an angle, its back shattered and trailing glowing warp smoke. Its companion continued to stagger forward, but the death of one of the things seemed to have lifted the fog of panic from our troopers. The panicked fire became accurate and placed, the whole front of the daemon glowed like metal that had been overheated. The thunder warrior stepped into the hail of las fire as though it wasn’t their and drove a great fist into the things glowing chest. It burst apart in a spray of ichor.



“Forward!” Hadrian screamed and strode towards the pyramid weapons raised.

[POOHEAD189]

The daemons surged forward, tongues lolling and arms brandishing wicked blades. I felt intense clarity, as one might feel before a duel or a major surgery, or perhaps during a shuttle wreck. Only once before had I seen a daemon, and this number of them chilled me to the bone for the briefest of moments. My will was then transformed into a fury of retribution. The foulest beings in the universe and the warp beyond now streamed before me and I could not remain frozen with indecision.

Emmaline looks to have felt the same, whether by cognitive thought or her sense of survival. The men followed suit and let off a volley of fire, and I cried to the Emperor for guidance.

Lasbolts and slug rounds were sent back at us, cultists hiding behind alcoves and pillars for cover. Luckily it seemed the warp was not intensely strong here, even if I felt it tinged with strangeness, even moreso than usual. The daemons were many, but their numbers were still finite. Lasbolts riddled them as they ran, but many other ducked and dodged with preternatural speed, eyes filled with hatred and forebidden knowledge.

A daemon entered my range, and though it could cut me in two with the merest swipe of its claws, I had been trained to deal with any situation involving the threat beyond. I stepped back and my sign of the emperor, before performing a ritual pattern I had been taught by my late master. The sweep of the power sword and my own hand was like a holy symbol in motion, causing the daemon to growl in fear and backstep, flinching for the crucial moment I needed to ignite my blade and cut through its midsection. It's body dissipated into strange, iridescent dust.

A few of my men had been overrun and cut down, heads and arms flying free of their bodies. The others had made a firing line, the sergeant throwing a grenade behind one of the metal outcroppings. There was a yelp of surprise and the explosion detonated, likely killing a few cultists from the shrapnel. To my right, the Thunder Warrior, Lucius, unleashed his archaic bolter into the daemons. It was not a blessed weapon like the astartes, coming from a time before the heresy, but its sheer firepower and force cut swathes through the loping warp-beasts and any cultist unfortunate enough to peek out of cover at the wrong moment. Even as I watched, a daemon made it to the warrior and cut a jagged line into his armor, only for the warrior to crush the thing beneath his elbow in a move not unlike a wrestler, before it could do further damage.

"Press forward!" I cried, cutting another daemon down.

I saw cultists fly out of cover into the silvery protrusions from the ground and breaking bones against the obelisks. I knew Emmaline was to thank for that. By the Emperor, we were winning!

I should know not to make such assumptions. That was when Bahometus entered the fray, sending an arc of purple light coalesced in black lightning into my column of men. Six of them were hit dead one, and though the attack looked to be something that moved with weight and mass, it merely passed through them. They screamed as horrible, unrelenting change corrupted their very beings. Tendrils and spikes erupted out of their bodies, breaking bones and snapping necks as their limbs and extremities were replaced with bulbous, unnatural growths and horns of some unknown form of cartilage. I nearly vomited at the sight, and with one move a quarter of my men were killed in the most abhorrent way possible.

"Emmaline! Stop him!" I cried, pointing at where the tendrils of energy had appeared. I did not expect her to kill the sorcerer, only to check him as we moved closer for a killing stroke.

[Penny]

"Stop him?!" I demanded, shocked and appauled at the carnage all around me. I was no Sanctioned Adept schooled in the disciplines of pshyic combat. I didn't have the first clue at how to combat a warp tainted madman. I lifted the force staff and leveled it at the distant pyramid before lowering it hoplessly. It was abundantly clear that if something wasn't done, none of us were going to get out of here. It seemed unlikely that Bahometus was interested in an illusoary harem. My eyes fell on Lucius and his battered gauntlets and I remembered the way he had torn appart the tomb spider.

"Ok," I breathed and began channeling into the staff. It wasn't a tool for subtlety, but it was a tool for projection. A phalanx of tomb spiders began to scurry from the side of the pyramid, mandibles clacking in robotic irritation. Immediately gunfire began to flicker in their direction. Sweat began to bead on my brow and I started to fall behind the group. Keeping my focus became extremely difficult as my vision was split in two different directions. Bahometus' horrible psycic presence lashed out, blasting a furrow through the tomb spiders. They crumpled and flew in all directions. Several of them scrambled to their feet and continued thier advance. A second blast of malevolent energy tore into them and again the horde was scythed down.

Even I wasn't that good.

I couldn't keep track of enough pieces of debris to make it believable. Bahometus roared in rage which stabbed into my mind. I slapped back at him with everything I had. It wasn't much, a pillow to a charging bull. He grabbed hold of my mind and bored in, intending to finish me there and then.

I stood on a broad golden plain. The sky above me was weird and filled with flickering and unwholesome lights. Something terrible lurked just beyond the horizion, hungry and malevolent. A dark stain was rapidly spreading across the golden field. In a broad arrow at the head of the shadow strode a figure, dark, formless and terrible. It was Bahometus, clad in his own self image. He was in my mind. He was invading my mind.

"It is over, whelp," he said in a voice that seared my marrow, "you might be Cognitate, but even they are nothing compared to the power I will have once I have opened the great rift."

"I might be what?" I asked, the word tickling at the back of my mind like dust in a sinus.

"No matter welp, your interference ends here," he sneered, reaching out with his mind intent on snuffing me out like a candle.

“Oh frack,” I mouthed and then did the only thing I could think of. Five Emmaline’s stood on either side of me. Emmaline-Who-Is-Brave charged forth with the force staff leveled while Emmaline-Who-Is-Desperate picked up a rock and hurled it at the approaching Chaos Sorcerer. Emmaline-Who-Is-Terrified turned and bolted away across the golden plain, blond hair streaming behind her like a banner. Emmaline-Who-Has-A-Plan disappeared into some other facet of our mind while Emmaline-Who-Thinks-On-Her-Feet flew up into the sky as though she were wearing a jump pack. A dozen other facets of my personality reached in their own ways, fighting, fleeing or freezing depending on their individual aspect. Bahometus lashed out with warp lightning and obliterated Emmaline-Who-Is-Brave before she could reach him with the staff. She flickered out of existence and then appeared somewhere else in the golden field, looking confused but characteristically determined.

“You think this trickery will save you?!” the chaos sorcerer roared.

“Here is hoping,” said Emmaline-Who-Can’t-Keep-Her-Mouth-Shut before Emmaline-Who-Looks-Out-For-Others whisked her out of the way of the heretics eldritch blast.

[POOHEAD189]

Sickly green lightning arced across the hellscape as daemons leaped into view across the battlefield. Like anti-bodies, the xenos stamped forward out of the alcoves and eldritch doorways to fight off what infestation of man and cultist it could. They came out slowly and in small numbers, but I feared if we took too long we would be overwhelmed before we could fight our way out. I could sense the men's fear, but no one would leave until I slew that bastard bahometus.

While Emmaline did her part, I raced forward, cutting down another snarling daemon, the otherworldly entity spouting out a curse in a language not meant for human ears as it dissipated into the nether, cut in twain by my blessed power sword. Shotgun shells and bolter rounds pierced through the horde that leaped at us as the lesser warp-entities had to turn and face the xenos in their assault from the flank. One piece of luck when you're the lowest in the foodchain is that most adversaries tend to overlook you. As it was, my force of troops and myself were about a quarter the strength of either the daemons or the xenos and the two liked one another as much as they enjoyed my presence.

Lucius the Thunder Warrior made good on his name, his boots tramping across the xenos steel like rolling thunder across the hills as he stamped over both xenos and cultist, even taking a glancing blow from the gauss rifle of the necronic weaponry and moving without complaint, though it sheared through the armor of his right shoulder and sent blood streaming down the opened muscle. I moved to follow him, but I felt as much as heard Emmaline collapse behind me. I turned and saw her hit the floor, and yet her hands gripped the staff as if it were her only hope of salvation.

Duty warred with my heart as I watched her, and I took one step toward her fallen form before I took a moment to think. No, the quicker I killed Bahometus, the quicker I could help Emmaline.

"Corporal Hergen! Guard her with your life! Ravjek, get four men to hold the perimeter to keep our rear secure! The rest of you, with me!"

The men moved with precision, any idleness that might infect their mines purged from them after my orders. When men had a direction, it didn't matter if it let to their dooms. It was better than no direction at all.

I wheeled forward again and ran like hell, pivoting to hug the right, away from the main engagement as I passed by the floating obelisks and pillars that hid what cultists bahometus could spare away from his main body. Bald heads and wild spikes from their rags and armor betrayed their positions. The first heretic I passed only saw a glimpse of me before I cut his head in half with a swift stroke, never slowing my stride. Lucious and Ravjek's fire took what little attention we were granted and it wasn't long until I leaped over a small, steel wall and saw the loathesome Bahometus shuddering under some weight, his acolytes surrounding him.

I pulled out my autogun with a quick-draw honed from a dozen years of fire practice and sent round after round into his shield of lackeys.

[Penny]

Bahometus reached out to crush me with his mind, I felt my essence burn under his mental lash and evaporate to nothing. Emmaline-Who-Plans-Things heard the scream as another fragment of my mind was crushed. I could feel Bahometus's frustration growing. He had expected to crush me with a single savage blow, and well he might have done, if my mind had been a single unified whole. His psychic abillity was beyond my own, but his approach was that of a sledge hammer. Now he found himself in maze of mirrors, his strength easily sufficient to smash anyone of my aspects, but there were too many for him to overcome quickly. I would never win the psycic duel, but I didn't need to. Bahometus couldn't escape my mind now he had engaged it. I just had to stay alive until Hadrian and the others caught up with him in the real world and pounded the Emperor's Judgement into his skull.

Emmaline-Who-Can't-Leave-It-Alone appeared behind Bahometus. He was stalking through an enless swath of silken wall hangings, each painted with a scenes of luxuriant excess. A wine caraffe shattered against his skull, spraying remembered wine and fragments of leaded glass in all directions. Bahometus whirled as Emmaline-Who-Can't-Leave-It-Alone dived into a painting in which a half dozen Emmaline's-Who-Exist-In-Paintings were dancing hand in hand. They all lifted their hands to their cheeks in shock and then fled in all directions.

"I will destroy you puny witchling!" he roared, launching himself at the painting. His psyche ripped through into a new vista of my mind. He caught sight of Emmaline-Who-Is-A-Decoy and charged after her. Mist swirled around both of them as they ran through a landscape of pilled stones and half completed arches. Emmaline-Who-Is-A-Decoy leaped through one of the archways with the Chaos Psyker in hot pursuit. Light blazed from all directions as they burst into the nave of a vast basillica. Emmaline-Who-Went-To-Chapel-That-One-Time stood before the Aquilla, knelt in prayer. Bahometus staggered at the sight of the slighly tarnished Aquillia, somewhat imprecise from my fragmentary memories of Echlisiarchy services long ago. The Chaos Psyker's pained walk suddenly became a run as Emmaline-Who-Has-Recently-Learned-The-Emperor-Was-Just-A-Man came running out of an archway. The Aquilla began to melt and sag. Emmaline-Who-Can't-Leave-It-Alone, crash tackled the new comer and drove her back out of the thoughtscape but the damage was done. Bahometus obliterated Emmaline-Who-Went-To-Chapel-That-One-Time and her melted Aquilla. A roar of frustration rang through my mind as this latest victory did as little to advance his cause as the last.

Above me Hergen crouched, keeping low to avoid notice amidst the chaos of battle. He could see me sweating under the strain, rhymes of frost crusting my clothing. The corner of my mouth twitched up in something like amusement.

[POOHEAD189]

One acolyte was pierced in the shoulder, a slug punching through ligaments and sending him barking a cry of pain until the second slug ended his life. Another was gunned down with two to the chest, folding in his strange metallic fetishes he wore on his black robes, blood spewing out onto the steel floor. The third had more time to act, arcing his staff at me to send a wave of psychic energy crashing over me as if to crush both my mind and body. I raised my mental defenses and focused my will, redirecting his psychic assault to the 'left' in my mind, though the realm of the mind was much different than physical reality where left and right were not really concepts one could utilize. Before he could regroup for a second assault, I put a round through the center of his head and then fired at Bahometus, only for my autogun to click empty.

I holstered it with a scowl and sprinted forward, igniting my power sword. Bullets sprang across the steel at my feet and I fired wildly to my left at the heretics across the next alcove, killing one and sending another to the floor with a glancing shot. Even as I whirred back around and found myself bearing down on the helpless sorcerer, red dots of light returned to his visored visage, glowing brighter as he regained his sensibilities. Damn, I wasn't quick enough!

He hissed a sibilant word of power and whipped his hand forward, blue lightning arcing towards me with an attempt to hit center mass. I dropped my autogun and gripped the hilt of my blessed power sword with both hands, crying out a litany of the emperor. The lightning seared into the blade like a rod, the power in the weapon flickering for a brief moment as the warp-lightning was dissipated. It did not stay out, however, the weapon roaring back to life as I got within striking range. Bahometus raised his goat-headed staff, blocking my first swing with the stave. Clearly it was imbued with powerful warp energies if it could survive a single stroke of a power sword.

I pressed the attack, hacking at his left, only to feint and redirect my blade to scrape across his right shoulder. He screamed with abandon and went to bludgeon me to death, but a quick block and a riposte that clove a jagged line through his chest ended his ambitions to kill me, sending the chaos sorcerer to his knees. Black bile one might mistake as blood oozed from the wound. The staff fell from his fingers, and I looked on with disgust as something slimy and alive wriggled from within his chest cavity.

Heavy breaths escaped his horned helm, and for the first time in five years I heard his voice. It was intensely deep, and yet held an echo as if he spoke from down a metal corridor.

"I... am not done, inquisitor. You cannot stop the Changer of Ways." He warned, drawing in a long, wet breath. "My death is just the beginning. You will know before the end, there is no stopping the Ruinous Gods."

"If your death was just the beginning, you would not have fought back. I won't listen to a lying cur." I spat, my blade twirling in an arc of light that burned the senses before I held it aloft as an executioner, as taught in my physical-exams of the sword. "Bahometus, follower of the dark gods and thrice damned sorcerer of the warp, I, Hadrian Drakos of the Ordo Malleus do sentence you to die. You will receive no last words."

I did not know if he would have protested. He did not seem to, and without delay or hesitation, I sent my sword down. Not through the neck, but at the top of his skull so I could split him in two and cleave through whatever mutations lay inside of his accursed body. The light from my weapon was blindingly bright, and as my sword hit the steel below, the daemons that fought the xenos grabbed their horned heads and screeched in unison, a sound that pierced into the very brains of all that heard it. Even the abominable intelligences of the necrons were slowed for a moment as the daemons began to ripple like mirages on the desert and fade away into nothingness.

[Penny]

Bahometus was growing desperate now, smashing fragments of my mind with increasing speed, almost as fast as I could flake them off the core geode like center of my psyche. Emmaline-Who-Is-Prone-To-Panic was growing increasingly loud in the corner of my mind, as palaces of gold were smashed to powder and forests of gleaming emerald trees obliterated in ugly purple firestorms.

"How can you resist!?" Bahometus roared in my mind, his figure swelling with each victory until he reached to the imagined sky like some horrible titan. I clamped down hard to prevent Emmaline-Who-Makes-Wise-Ass-Remarks from interjecting something that would doubtlessly cost me several more fragments of my mind. Bahometus' elephant sized eyes bored down on my from the mind-sky and then a smile slowly crossed his face.

"You seek only to delay me until that cur reaches me, clever for an untrained witch," he pondered. Suddenly he held a great goat headed staff in his hands, nauseating energies crackling and sparking around it.

"But enough games," he sneered, then drove his staff into the mind-floor. Rather than lancing out with incredible power as he had done before now, this was a blast that emanated from where he stood. It ripped up the fabric of my mind like the earth recoiling from a meteor strike. If my mind had been unified I could have withstood it, but Bahometus had correctly deduced that he faced only one dimensional shavings of my personality. They shattered like glass before the wave, the foul chaos energy abrading my mind away like an inrushing tidal wave sweeping the ocean floor.

"Going out with a metaphor?" Emmaline-Who-Makes-Wise-Ass-Remarks snarked.

"She thought 'like glass before the wave' so its a simile," corrected Emmaline-Who-Is-Smarter-Than-Everyone-Else.

My mental defenses collapsed in a sudden moment of shocking vulnerability. If he had chosen to Bahometus could have obliterated me in that moment, but he was already desperately trying to pull free of the quicksand of my mind, and the sudden lack of resistance was as effective as a banishment might have been. His dark light flew upwards and away from me.

I snapped awake, sucking in air ionized by las fire. I couldn't see anything. I was very cold. I brushed the hoarfrost from my eyes and lashes and sat up. All around people were yelling. The soldiers whose minds I had accidentally fused were all around me, like bees protecting a hive. Several of them were dead, feeling like missing teeth in my gums.

"Are you alright ma'am?" Rok Hergan, a boy who had once clubbed a Magistratum officer over the head with a sports paddle to recover a book of ration stamps his family had needed. The las gun in his hands shimmered in the tomb air, hot from firing to the point it was nearly visible. A bayonet socketed on the barrel was wet with a purplish fluid that oozed and hissed on the steel. Everything hurt. It felt like I had been scourged with an electro flail way beyond the point of fun. I pushed myself to my feet. The force staff was still gripped in my hand. I pulled away my palm and left skin on the half, burned and fused to the metal. The pain was an annoying background thrum. The daemons were fading, and the psychic background wrongness too. It was replaced with the eerie Xenos background wrongness. The remaining cultists were in dissary, easy meat for the metal men now their daemon allies had deserted them. Another of my bees went down, I felt the gauss rifle rip his flesh from his bones in technicolor agony. I vomited nosily onto the metal floor. I became aware of the chug chug chug of a big engine beside me. With painful deliberation I hauled my head around to see I was sheltered from the distant pyramid by the bulk of a chimera. There was an insanely loud keening noise as its multi-laser stuttered death into some unseeen target. Aware of my intentions Hergan scooped me up and carried me into the back of the vehicle. The interior was loud with the report of the rattle of one of the sponsons and with comm reports. The other teams were back in contact, the Inquisitors now shouting orders and reports across all bands.

"Fleet Command to all ground units," a voice boomed so loudly it nearly blew my eardrums out. The operator dumped the gain with a curse, tearing his own headphones off. The transmission was coming through at maximum gain to give it the best chance of cutting through the chaos of the comm net.

"Multiple Xenos vessels of unknown origin appear to be attempting to lift from the planet. Structures on the planet appear to be Xenos spacecraft. Recommend immediate withdrawal, we are sterilizing as many as we can from orbit. Repeat immediate withdrawal is imperative." Every few seconds the communication pulsed with disruption that must have been from the discharge of their vast lance batteries. My splintered mind was having trouble putting it all together. These vast pyramids were actually starships? Even as the thought formed I felt the floor shudder beneath us.

"Ma'am?" the driver called, looking back from the controls in obvious terror.

"Retrieve the inquisitor, full speed damnit!" I commanded. The chimera lurched across the metal floor, throwing up rooster tails of sparks as it built up speed. I tried to reach out to Hadrian with my mind and nearly vomited again, my psyche was still to fragmented to face the warp. I could only hope he had heard the fleet admirals desperate warning, and hope that we could get off this ship before it lifted.

[POOHEAD189]

I looked down at the chaos sorcerer with contempt, feeling wholly unsatisfied at the death but knowing it would hit me eventually. I wonder if Kronus could see me, and if he would approve of my one-man crusade and if I could have served my time better elsewhere. I knew that was not the case. Any heretic and damon summoner was worth my attention, but when one suffers a loss, even if only the loss of a familiarity, they began to question things. I breathed in deeply and sheathed my power sword. I felt an intense wave of indecision. Now I did not know what I would do with myself. Yes, I was to go home finally, but this was my first and only mission alone...

The rumbling grew louder, and I turned to see the last Chimera rolling up. I blinked, as if seeing it for the first time. Lucius Raj stepped over to me, crushing the skeletal corpse of one of the machine-xenos as he did so. Bleeding with dented armor, he was harmed but very much not dead. I looked from the Thunder Warrior to the cavernous halls of the strange eldtritch sanctum, and the Chimera's back end fell open like a falling anvil, swinging with a loud squeak before a thunderous crash onto the ground.

"Hadrian! We have to go!" Emmaline called to me.

She was alive and well! Good. Her face and the faces of the men, along with sergeant Ravjek spurred me into action finally. My eyes steeled and I stepped away from the rotting corpse of Bahometus, vaulting over the short wall and stepping onto the chimera.

"Make room! We need space for one more." I told them. "Ravjek, you and Hergan go up front with the pilot. Lucius, hurry aboard!"

"No, commander." The Thunder Warrior said, his helm betraying no emotion. I could hear none from his voice either, and yet there was something touching when I expanded my mind to sense the outer rim of his thoughts. "This is no longer my world. My galaxy. Let me die here fighting these things. I can keep them busy while you escape."

"You'll only be trapped in stasis again!" I yelled, my hand gripping the railing as I leaned over the dropped, back walkway. "You have the opportunity to do some real good here. Come with us." I felt as if my words were clanging against his archaic power armor as effectively as small arms fire, and yet I sensed he was on the precipice of a decision. I looked him square in his visor and spoke with all the authority of my office. "For whatever brief time it has been, you have been under my command. And I never leave a soldier behind. Get in here and let me show you the Imperium you helped create those millennia ago."

Another few seconds passed, Emmaline gripping my arm and whispering we needed to go. The soldiers murmured and I felt Ravjek watch intently.

The Thunder Warrior stepped forward and entered the Chimera, slowly so we might move back and give the giant space. The machine creaked under the weight of the gene-warrior, but with a squeeze we fit. The Chimera began to roll before its back hatch even shut, loud cranking and exhaust whisping in the air as the green, sickly glow of the xenos chamber was slowly shut away.

[Penny]

The fleet action continued for another three hours before the rising pyramid ships forced an Imperial withdrawal. Forty two of the odd metal vessels had been smashed to the ground by concentrated lance fire, but a combination of orbital mechanics and the shear number of enemy ships conspired against them. Three of the ships were able to make orbit and once they reached the heavens they opened fire. The greenish beam weapons they mounted swatted one of the Imperial destroyers with concentrated fire. The first salvo blew out its void shields and gouged deep wounds in her flank. A concerted Imperial torpedo salvo provided just enough cover to allow the crippled ship to escape into the Immaterium. That done, the fleet withdrew to the edge of the system. The pyramid ships did not pursue, instead they vanished, though our astropaths detected no entry into the Empyrean.

All the Inquisitorial teams had suffered heavy losses, it was a miracle none of the primaries had been killed. Barnabus Amator, the one man who might have had some insight into the strange xenos, was the only surviving member of his party. A partial gauss rifle hit had stripped most of his right arm away, though he still managed to reach the extraction site under his own power. He was a mass of blood and wounds, and while it was hard to credit he would survive, the medicae predicted a full recovery.

Our own party was decimated, and even those who survived were wounded. I was psy-shocked and my hand was burned, though a slop of counterseptic and pain suppressant gel and some skin sealant had taken care of the worst of it. I could feel my surviving seven troopers. None of them had said anything to me about the haptic meld I had accidentally inflicted. I could tell they were a combination of afraid and euphoric. I had to agree with them. I still hadn't found a way to close down the link, I was starting to worry that there wasn't a way to do it. I calmed them with a thought, sending out a sense of confidence that was entirely manufactured. I was an untrained psyker and I had made a mistake. If the Inquisition found out about it, they were likely to take a very dim view. Perhaps an unsurvivable bad view. I decided not to bother Hadrian with the matter.

"Elements of Battlefleet Hyros are enroute," a naval lieutenant was tell Hadrian as she entered the debriefing room.

"Admiral Triton indicates he plans sustained orbital bombardment against the downed ships and and any surviving ground targets. He anticipates arrival withing seven sidereal days, and a conclusion of operations withing nine." The Lieutenant reported, then saluted and withdrew.

"How are you feeling?" I asked looking over his wounds.

[POOHEAD189]

I had been stripped of my coat and carapace armor at the insistence of the medicae specialist, my wounds having been cleaned and bandaged appropriately. Now that the adrenaline was off, I felt about a century older, though I stood with poise and betrayed no hint of discomfort. I had so many bandages on my form I felt half-man like Lazarus. Speaking of the tech-priest, he stood beside me with his staff in hand, one eye scrolling across the debriefing room where the other two inquisitors stood present. They had the misfortune of both losing their aides in the fighting, Barnabus being the sole survivor of his contingent. If there was any resentment, I did not sense it, but I would not put it past them. Small wonder my command had led to all except my unit being almost decimated to the man.

"I feel like I've been shot four times, but I think I was only hit twice..." I said in an attempt of humor. I gave her a tight lipped smile to her, but resisted the urge to run my hand through her hair. The other inquisitors need not be worried over our fraternization at this time. "It does me well to see you're alright. And you too, old man."

Lazarus let out a small, particular code of binary which I had grown to learn was a derisive snort of a laugh.

"Inquisitor Amator and Reichgleib, I am truly saddened at your losses. But be comforted in the fact that we have this day halted a plan that would have decimated the entirety of the sector. My people and resources are at your disposal for anything you need prior to your departure, and you have my eternal thanks." I strode forward, holding a small cane I had been granted to hold my form up so as to approach the desk. "Do you have anything you wish to report to me before word reaches the Ordo?"

"No. The Xenos known as the Necrons are not unknown to my ordo." Barnabus said. "But I did manage to requisition some samples. It was the last thing Terminos managed to gift me before he fell in the fighting."

"A good man." I said, though I had my reservations on collecting xenos technologies for research without being under extreme supervision, but he was an inquisitor and it was his right. "Cornelius?"

"Yes, we came across a strange catacomb of glass except...the glass was made from some unknown warp material that held time in place. There were things there I never thought I would see, but I would need to look over my books before I could comment further. I was told you viewed something similar inquisitor?"

I knew this was coming, and I nodded my acquiescence. "Yes, and my aide and I even managed to open one. We found something we never would have thought possible. Come, let me show you something." I told them, and without waiting for their questions I turned about face and walked to the door at the back of the room with Emmaline's help. Lazarus opened the door and kept it ajar as we walked into the larger foyer where my squadron of men stood as rigid as statues, and the towering, hulking form of Lucius Raj stood, his warhelm held underneath his arm.

He had a shaven, brutish head with strange eyes that looked almost animalistic, and a jaw one could use as a cudgle. And yet he had a nobility to the barbaric look, gazing down at the inquisitors with a gaze that was almost judgemental.

[Penny]

The Inquisitors seemed appropriately awestruck by the sight of the Thunder Warrior. There was a quiver of something like existential awe in the air. I remembered the glimpses I had gotten into Lucius' mind when I had been trying to convince him we were on the same side. The Thunder Warrior showed no sign of being intimidated by his august audience.

"What is to be done with him?" Reichgleib asked. "He may possess much knowledge that is useful... or dangerous."

Lucius Raj made a vocalization that sounded like a growl and took a step towards the Inquisitors. Men reached for weapons under the threat of the big warriors approach. I knew exactly the sort of thing they were afraid of. I had seen it. But Lucius had saved my life. I couldn't just let them drag him off to some facility for dissection.

"Sirs if I may," I interjected. Hadrian gave me a warning look but didn't interfere.

"During the rescue of this great warrior, I touched his mind. He was confused and beset by towering rage. I don't know if it is a natural condition or a consequence of the xenos techno sorcery, but he remembers little," I told them. I could see this had not yet convinced them.

"With proper psy-investigation it may be possible to reconstruct much. He should be taken to conclave," Reichgleib stated.

"Speak as though I am not here again, and it will go poorly for you," Lucius rumbled.

"Psy-investigation wont work," I lied confidently, "the rage and instability of Thunder Warriors is well known." I hadn't known anything about it of course.

"Mental collapse is a likely result of any invasive psy probing," I assured them. All three inquisitors were looking at me with some skepticism, though I hoped in Hadrian's case this was a front.

"What do you suggest Adept, seeing you are apparently an expert in these matters?" Reichgleib pressed. I was an expert in my way, but I didn't think this was a good time to get caught up on the specifics of my experience.

"Allow him to continue in the company of Inquisitor Drakos," I suggested, "time and routine may allow for mental reconstruction and stabilization. Debriefing over a longer period may furnish more information than an intense round of psi-probing." I cleared my throat.

"Also keeping him mobile will prevent any... factional considerations from taking hold," I said obtusely. All the Inquisitor's faces blanked in a studied neutral. Hadrian had told me only a little of the factionalism in the inquisition. I felt sure all of them felt I had just made a pronouncement of deep import, perhaps even a profession to a faction of my own, though I had no clue about where such loyalties and politics even began.

"Perhaps she is not without some merit," Reichgleib grunted. "What say you Amator? There are three of us, a quorum to decide this matter."

[POOHEAD189]

Barnabus Amator looked undecided, holding his silence grimly as he looked. The Thunder Warrior might not be wholly impressed with these humans, but the Inquisitors had also seen their fair share of wonders. A Thunder Warrior was new, but at the end of the day the awe came from the historical significance and the direct hand of the emperor in his creation. Still, other than being larger and more prone to outbursts as the tales said, he was a post-human just like an astartes, and they were not uncommon to ones such as the inquisition. They would decide his fate whether he respected them or not.

"I feel as if a few of my colleagues would be better able to answer," Inquisitor Amator said, rounding on the large behemoth of a man. "This should be brought up with the Lord Inquisitor."

"I will inform Lord Inquisitor Mordecai as soon as I am able." I assured him. "However, in the meantime if you have no objections, I believe we should take my aide's advice. My team already has quarters fit for an astartes and I am now bound by no mission until I find another lead."

Banrabus acquiesced after a few moments of deliberation. "Very well, just keep him under intense watch."

"I am certain I will be under much scrutiny." Lucius Raj rumbled. His accent was archaic and it was clear he was attempting to sound not too dissimilar to the inquisitors, though whether it was to mock them or to better communicate was hard to guess.

The meeting was adjourned once we traded files on their dataslates, and both the Inquisitors were sent back to their ships and the Mobius volunteers were disbanded with my thanks. I made certain to add a few more thrones added to their salaries as a thanks. The following day was spent with much preparation for departure to Pacitus, including an introduction to Urien's crew about the nature of our guest and assurances that the ship of the Caledonia would be available for use after the next trading season. I went ahead and asked Lazarus to make ready to collect whatever logs we could on freighters coming to and front Pacitus in case the Lord Inquisitor Mordecai asked for my assistance or something went wrong with Lucius. To that effect, I also asked Lazarus to have his rifle with him at all times. The Thunder Warrior was trustworthy, but if he was to lose his sanity then we could not make enough preparations. It would be almost as terrible as a rampant custodes.

Two days later, with all reports of the enemy xenos ships gone and being sniffed after by Barnabus once he regained his strength, we set a due course to Pacitus, my home. I was very much looking forward to healing there and reviewing what my agents had gathered so as to find a new course of action, but I could tell Emmaline was a bit nervous. She had always been on the move, even more than I had. I still recall when she had professed she had never had a true home since she was a girl. I hoped the world would not disappoint.

[Penny]

Chapter 2

We had been on Pacitus for nearly six months when the messenger arrived. When Hadrian had told me he had a home there, I had imagined a townhouse, or perhaps a series of grand appartments in a hive. Agesola House was far beyond that. Nestled on a hilly bluff that overlooked the sparkling Amaranthine Sea it was formed by a series of terracotta tiled buildings connected by covered porticos and interspaced with carefully tended gardens. The weather on the Sarnis Peninsula was warm, though I was told that gales occasionally blew in in the winter months that could lash the place with cold rain and, occasionally, sleet. Agesola had a main house, a guest house and a library building, as well as a covered amphitheater that served as as a training field and target range. There was a ring of stables and outbuildings including a hanger in which several speeders and aircraft were secured and a barracks for servants. On the landward side the grounds fell down in a series of terraces which contained ploin trees, olives, figs, and a sour type of seedpod which was much prized in local cooking. At the base of the hill stood a fence of warm stone which marked a perimeter. As a physical barrier it lacked authority, but it was set with sensors and auspex receptors that made crossing it without notice all but impossible. Beyond the fence stretched several hundred square kilometers of forest, in which game of all sorts could be found. The nearest human settlement was the Universitariat of Sycathrace, a hundred kilometers away on the far coast of the peninsula. It could be reached by a winding track through the forest, though aircraft or taking a boat around the point was a much more practical option.

Hadrian told me that, though tastes varied, most Inquisitors maintained such a property as a safe place to rest and recuperate between operations. It seemed a lot of luxury to me, though as I was to learn, Ordo work meant years or decades would pass between visits. I found that swimming in the clear lilac waters and walking through the gardens were a balm to my spirit. The hours I spent in training with small arms and psychic disciplines less so. I also learned a deal about the structure of the Imperial Inquisition. Hadrian considered himself a Monodominant and I didn't disagree, I was yet too knew to the whole business to consider my own philosophy. By his authority I was granted the rank of Adept and presented with a rosette of my own, though plain and lacking in the rank insignia that Hadrian had earned. It was the only rank that I could hold within the Inquisition. As an unsanctioned psyker I couldn't become an Interrogator as this required approval from the Ordos themselves. Approval which wouldn't be forth coming unless I was granted a Sanction, which meant assay and transport on the Black Ships. I think it bothered Hadrian more than it did me, I didn't have ambitions in that direction.

I spent hours at psychic exercise too, absorbing what Hadrian could teach me in long sessions in the amphitheater. The psychic connection I had forged with the soldiers back on the Necron world seemed to have been broken by our voyage through the Immaterium, though I occasionally awoke from dreams of standing picket duty or with the taste of counterseptic in my mouth. My real work, if you could call it that, was with Lucius Raj. We spent hours together going through psychic communions. My impression of the Emperor as only a man grew stronger, though my certainty that he was a remarkable one went someway to allying the existential dread that caused me. Perhaps it was possible for a 'mere' man to ascend to Godhood. If Keeler and others who had known him felt he was divine, I could keep my own skepticism at bay. The contents of our sessions was recorded and passed to Hadrian who, I assume, passed it on to his own superiors in the Ordos.

Hadrian was not home bound while at Agesola. He took me to Primogena, the capital, a two hour trip by aircar and we spent pleasant evening at the theatre or enjoying the museums and restaurants. He had a cover identity as a local landowner with no reference to his official station and we blended in easily enough. We also visited the Universitariat and its surrounding town, which was a charming place with many book shops, eateries, antique dealers and other pleasant diversions.

When I wasn't otherwise occupied I spent time in the library. Hadrian's library was well stocked and I supplemented it liberally from our trips to the city and universitariat. I had little in terms of formal education and it was very patchy, largely focused on blending in to the semi-legitimate underside of the Imperial aristocracy. These months gave me a chance to read broadly, especially in history, which was brought to life to me by details provided by Raj. I started to keep my own journals, of which this writing is a one. Hadrian had a number of works of psykana lore also, some of which were proscribed. I read these eagerly. Most of my craft I had learned by instruction or by trial and error. Some of the works were restricted to members of the inquisition in a void shielded vault in the basement of the library. Hadrian allowed me to read some of these, though only with his supervision. He politely but firmly refused to grant me unfettered access. Although I spent weeks searching the library, I was unable to find any mention of anything called the Cognitae.

I was returning from a swim one warm afternoon, climbing the gentle curving stairs from the beach to the main house, when an unfamiliar flyer circled over head and landed. I didn't take it as unusual until I reached the patio where Hadrian and I took our meals in fine weather. Hadrian was in the process of signing a slate and taking a cylinder from a man in the livery of one of the private Astropathic guilds in Primogena. It struck me as strange that our own astropath, a pimply faced apprentice who went by Trasic, had not received it directly. Hadrian nodded and the courier hurried off, presumabley heading back to his flyer. I strolled up, draping my towel over my shoulders like a ladies shawl, a white contrast to my dark blue one piece bathing suit.

"Is it a dinner invitation or something?" I asked as he cracked open the wax sealed cylinder.

[POOHEAD189]

Those six months had been lovely, in my estimation. For the first time in my years as an Inquisitor or as apprenticed to one, I had an extended time to relax and to take stock of all of my affairs. At first I had kept busy with whatever I could, cataloging my library based on relevance to the ordo and reviewing what news I could, as well as the previous logs I had made to find anything I might have missed. However, both Lazarus and particularly Emmaline (and in fact I believe one encouraged the other) had continually wore me down until I put my pen down and set my brain to a neutral so I could enjoy myself, and eventually, with great effort, I did. The days were bright and full of laughter and the nights were warm, and when it wasn't, Emmaline and I would keep one another warm in varying ways.

I kept a strict training regime, but I allowed myself to indulge once or twice when Emmaline insisted, and I spoke long with Lucius Raj, cataloging historical events of the Unification Wars so as to be analyzed at a later date. His ideas of the Emperor were unsurprising, given many Adeptus Astartes chapters had similar views. But it was odd to hear when coming from a warrior who had seen the Emperor in his holy radiance. I did not know what to make of his opinions, saying how he was but a man but also brimming with power beyond what any might be able to believe.

I spent much time with Emmaline and had made it a point introduced her to my staff. My captain of security, Clara Strong, a brown haired no-nonsense woman with a love of assault rifles and a flak jacket strapped on at all times. My head of staff, Demetrius Richter, an elderly but strong fellow who worked for Inquisitor Kronus for over fifty years as a butler before he served another thirty as the head of staff. He was my subordinate, but in the quiet times I could tell he felt I was akin to a grandson to him, and I did come to him for advice.

I had been fixed by my Magus Biologis, Selencia Aethil, a pretty woman with beautiful red eyes and raven black hair from a world in the Segmentum Tempestus. She had told me her world was a planet in perpetual twilight, and her exotic looks had garnered much attention by the men of Agesola. I recall when I was younger having similar thoughts myself, and I even played the part of her lover before, albeit to keep other men from harassing her when Inquisitor Kronus and all of our retinue went out to the theater or festivals. Little did any of her would-be-suitors know was that she was capable of ending life almost as well as she could heal it, she the best medical specialist in the system and could sniff a contagion out of the air like it was a tossed ball.

Finally, six months having seen no sign of him, I received a cylinder from Quintin Volsac, my communications officer stationed a few hours away in the mountains. He wasn't a native to Pacitus, but he spent his days in Primogena when not at the outpost where he received all of my communicaes and checked them for any contamination or dangerous contents, and he also patched me through to any ship in orbit I needed to come into immediate contact with. We did not see one another much, but I trusted him. When Emmaline picked the cylinder up and I saw the red marking along the length of the material, I snatched it away from her. He had labeled it as gravis nuntius, one of the most serious messages I could receive.

I opened it up hastily, placing my books down and tossing my glasses to clatter across the desk. I opened it like a machine; as quickly as possible without any hurried movements. Lazarus liked to point out how I would be welcome in the priest-hood of mars. I usually shot him the same look I often did. Once opened, I found the message had come from an associate of mine; a bounty hunter named Samara Bandir who had been following a lead on the planet Havenos, a feral world in the Segmentum Obscurus. Her last communication was with the local Imperial captain who had been given this message by her before she disappeared.

Her lead was a low-life named Nagrip, who had been taken in amongst some of the local tribes, providing them with illegal materials in which to summon something innominatus, or something unsafe to mention in the message. That was two months ago, if the date on the message was correct. I exhaled a breath I did not know I was holding, and handed the message to Emmaline.

"We're leaving within the week." I said, standing up from my chair. I needed to speak to Lazarus and get in direct communication with Volsac. I needed a ship as soon as possible.