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

[POOHEAD189]

The lower hive have various sections populated upon the surface of the hive city, generally on the outskirts of a base of the grater spire. The gaseous waste from the hive is usually released in said areas, but with proper equipment one could stand outside there and feel the wind against their skin and the heat or cold of the day, depending on what counts for seasons on the homeworld.

The under hive has no such luxury.

The structure of an under hive is made of several hab domes welded together with tunnels and shafts over a period of centuries, giving it a honeycomb-like structure within a vast cavern entirely underground. The interior of it is an immense, industrial-scaled cathedral of metal and decay, where machines the size of battleships have been abandoned in ages uncounted, though one would be hard pressed to find any difference between them and the makeshift structures made by desperate hands. Some rumor that some gangs worship those ancient machines that stand the test of time as ravenous gods, to which they sacrifice captives. A dome provides a wide open space, divided into zones of factories, houses, commercial buildings, and other structures. Between each dome, the maze of tunnels and shafts is the scene of bitter gangs wars and bloody raids. Varying tunnels with lifts are located around the greater area of the under hive, granting people with clearance access to and from the under hive, though there is little security on the bottom. Luckily most steer clear of the lifts, as the doors opening are just as likely to be a squad of arbites instead of unsuspecting prey.

I wore a large blue-black coat, wrinkled and torn with a winged collar framing my strong neck. My shoes were worn and my trousers were a drab brown, and plastered upon my face were prosthetics that gave the area around my left eyebrow a swollen look and a large jagged scar running across my face. I sported a wide brimmed hat to help cloak my features, regardless. Arbites Ortega had accepted my offer to accompany us, much to Emmaline's displeasure, but it took some convincing to the arbites to adopt similar costume and eschew his normal uniform, though he did wear his carapace armor under his jacket, as I did.

The lift shuddered and clanged concerningly, threatening to send us in an endless free fall down the clattering shaft at a moment's notice. The steel cables twining and singing as our lift ran through them. I merely breathed deep and held faith I hadn't survived eldritch xenos, chaos sorcerers, and a ruptured kidney to die in an elevator in the ass of a hive city. I clutched Emmaline to steady her, reinforcing my support for her idea.

Initially we had deliberated on making an assault, locating the most likely places were gangs met and with lighting tactics, cordoned off the area and make sure no one got in and out, leading to a lengthy process of interrogation. I was not in favor of this option, but Emmaline spoke up as an opposing voice and I supported it wholeheartedly. Incognito was a far better solution, even if it leads to a greater risk of ourselves. As the lift elevator grinded to a halt and opened up, spewing forth a rancid smell of sweat and decayed metal, I hoped we made the correct choice.

[Penny]

The boundary between hive and underhive was a fluid one. The deeper one moved into the bowels of Gravemire the greater the dilapidation became. Ortega believed that the underhive began where the Magistratum no longer maintained order, but an arbiter of his rank was far beyond such day to day concerns. As we moved lower we passed beyond places a patrolman could safely walk the streets. In these liminal spaces Sanctioners lurked in fortified bastions, making deals with local gangers to maintain the peace and striking out only to maintain the balance of power in their favor. These areas were marked with burned out ground cars and improvised barricades. Below this area, the true underhive began.

I had elected to dress in the dark cloak of a charm woman. Part prostitute, part herbalist, part soothsayer, it was one of the few roles that allowed a woman to move in the underhive with relative safety, as well as explaining the presence of two physically imposing men. I had agreed to wear a prosthetic belly which simulated the late stages of pregnancy which gave us a place to stash equipment and a reason to turn away prospective johns. My right arm was the only flesh bare to the eye, and it had been covered with a temporary tattoo that gave the impression of scales.

As we stepped out of the elevator I tossed a few low denomination slates and a carb bar to the gangers who longued by the portal. The extracted similar tribute from others passing down from the higher levels on whatever business they had. My pose as a charm woman made this kind of transit believable as the profession was tolerated, at least unofficially, for several levels above the underhive proper. One of the gangers, a bald man whose scalp was entirely covered with overlapping gaudy tattoos, tried to reach out and touch my belly. Ortega swatted his arm away, to the laughter of his companions.

It took us nearly an hour to reach out first goal. The Wheel Market had once been a section of raised roadway. Now the burned out ground cars formed the basis of market stalls, their rusted metal caked with flaking paint in a variety of gaudy colors. Ribbons of grubby fabric linked stalls in makeshift awnings that fluttered in the intermittent breeze created by the air reclaimers. The ancient pilings that supported the place had also been painted with surprisingly artful designs, the the areas low enough to be easily reached were defaced by gang tags, and bullet holes marred the ferrocrete columns where paint cants couldn’t reach. A miasma of greasy smoke hung over the place from the cooking of unidentifiable meat over fires of what might have been hexamite but might also have been trash. Hawkers cried the merits of their wares, fried carb string, sauteed sump rat, and joylik whose diversion from poison would probably take a Magos Chemistrae to find.

I frequently glanced at Hadrian. Like Selenica, I had grave reservations about him being on this mission so soon after his surgery. He had pointed out that Clara, while a formidable fighter, didn’t have the experience in subterfuge that he did, and that Lazarus was too obviously augmented to blend into such a tech poor environment as the underhive. Odds were very good he would have wound up sacrificed to the Machines within minutes of entering. Ortega had been good enough to spread the word that Hadrian had died during his surgery, hopefully giving our unseen opponents the notion that they were safe for the moment.

We wandered among the stalls for some hours, letting ourselves be seen and making such small purchases as were appropriate to a charm woman. I kept my psychic senses open, but it was impossible to pick up clear thoughts amidst the bustle of stinking, ragged, humanity. After an hour or so, we made our play. I approached they stall of a man selling what passed for electronics. The vendor was a skeletal man, worn looking and completely hairless. The malformation of his face and body, the legacy of stripped augmetics, declared louder than his filthy red robe that he had once been a Priest of Mars.

“What can I do for you sister?” he asked in a voice that rasped with years of lho smoke.

“I have tech to sell,” I told him, and then reached into my pocket to produce a small black box. His eyes widened briefly as he saw it, before narrowing with shrewd avarice. It a vox thief that Hadrian had been carrying when he had been shot. The unit was high grade, unmistakably ordo equipment to anyone who knew what they were looking at.

“Ten slate,” the vendor said dismissively. I scoffed and made to tuck the vox thief away.

“A hundred!” he whispered with sudden desperation. His eyes cut around, fearful that the other vendors, mostly selling machine parts and minor tech, might catch wind of what was going on.

“A thousand,” I replied, and held up a finger to forestall a counter offer, “if you haggle further it will be ten thousand.” His malformed mouth worked for a moment and then he reached into his robe, rummaging around for several seconds before clandestinely slipping a pouch of slate chips across to me. I opened it slightly with one finger, then nodded to Hadrian, who scooped it up and tucked it away in some hidden pocket. I slid the vox thief across to the vendor who all but ripped it out of my hands.

“A pleasure doing business with you.”

It took less time than I had imagined. We rented rooms on the top story of a cheap flop house which catered to transients. The proprietress, a sour faced woman with a lazy eye, warned me against practicing my business, making allusions to this and that gang which needed to be cut in to anything that made slate. I nodded my agreement and we retired to our rooms.

The gangers probably thought they were being stealthy as they crept down the hall towards the room we had rented. There were six of them, each carrying heavy powder and shot pistols and a variety of knives and clubs. The reached our door and one of them produced a small hand drill with a large circular cutting bit. It cut through the cheap flak-board like gelatin, emitting a stream of dust as it did so. The ganger behind him had produced a small drink can, packed with phosphorus and other combustibles, which he shoved through the hole, a sparking fuse sputtering as it did so. There was a crash and flash of light and then the gangers kicked the door from its hinges and rushed into the room after their improvised flash bang. The room was empty, just three filthy palettes with no sign of habitation beyond a few empty food pails and cups of recaf. It took them a surprisingly long time to accept this, a process that involved considerable shouting. No one came to investigate the shouting or the explosion. It was that kind of place.

“You are sure you can follow them?” Ortega asked when the gangers finally agreed we weren’t there and headed out. I nodded. I had plenty of time to identify their minds. We were watching from the empty room across the hall, using data slates and some simple but effective picters strategically pressed into the walls. The fiber optic transmission lines were passive so even a sophisticated sweep might have missed them, not that there was much chance of that in a place where the ambient level of tech rose above 'sharp stick' only by degrees.

“Yes,” I told him, “now we just have to hope they lead us back to whoever hired them.” That was a pretty good bet, the vox thief, in addition to the audio of the assassination attempt on Hadrian, had been cunningly updated by Lazarus to contain snippets of other conversations that hinted at what we knew of the conspiracy. The Under Council was the logical market for the information the tech priest had no doubt gathered, and they would certainly want to know how a charm woman came to possess it.

“Let’s go,” Hadrian said, adjusting the hang of his weapon beneath his clothing.

“We don’t want them getting too far ahead.”

[POOHEAD189]

The squalid streets were as every other space in the under hive, speckled with obscene markings and brown, crusted spots spattered about at random. Refuse and trash were piled sometimes as high as a man while large, mutated rats and other creatures that had evolved to live down here rifled through them, sometimes scuttling over coats that held either sleeping or dead men. I was certain we, at least, wouldn't be spotted via smell as we slunk through the alleys following our quarry.

I moved stiffly, constantly placing a reassuring hand on my belly to make certain my bindings were tight and my armor was strapped tight around me. The pain was sometimes all-encompassing, though I would never admit it. Fortunately, my movements were more of my volition than necessity, merely to keep myself from bending over or getting to comfortable in a foul position to mitigate the wear and tear on my stitches and Selencia's hard work. Emmaline sometimes glanced my way, but never said anything. Every look made me stifle a sigh, my irritation of her unfounded, at least in this regard. Perhaps it was because I still felt somewhat inexperienced myself, despite my ascension from Interrogator almost six years ago. Old grievances died hard, and while I excelled in every area Kronus had groomed me in, being the youngest of the cadre for many years had instilled in me a distaste for anytime someone fretted over me during active service, even if it was completely understandable.

Our mark took its sweet time, the gangers harangueing one another and almost getting in a knife fight over a stimpack filled with narcotics, taking alternating routes I was certain were unnecessary. My inner compass was always keen, and Emmaline and Ortega also began to mutter on where the throne they were going to until finally they turned a corner into a wide multi-crossing street. We had just ourselves made it past the turn as the last ganger was skulking into a large, dented door of scrap metal. Outside a bouncer stood, a mutant considering he had four arms and a third eye open at the base of his neck.

We approached lazily, passing by a beggar who assailed us with pleas for creds before I snarled his way. The poor fellow crawled off on his belly and left the lane open for us to make it to the door.

"Never seens you scats before," The bouncer rumbled, its third eye blinking rapidly. "S'move on before toss a mad scene, ya skin?"

I wasn't too keen on the colloquialism, and it did not seem to be the norm for the entirety of the under hive, but it was similar to other dialects in the Imperium, particularly amongst mutants.

"Boss says s'feel moves here, just some blunts here to make slates for sally, read?" I responded in a grating, almost harsh whisper, and reached into my jacket to produce a few slates. "Give us a plate and we give the slate. Can't be runnin' off keys, ya fall, twist?"

The bouncer thought for a moment as he took the slates, his third eye halting its incessant blinking to examine the payment. There was a harsh, gutteral sound from his stomach and something roiled within there behind his stained top. If I had to guess (and hope) it was simply another, larger mouth. He gave a small "Read, read," before opening the door so we could enter. I held it open for Emmaline and once all three of us were in, our sense of smell was no longer assailed by excrement but obscura smoke and what passed for drinks in this sleazy underbar.

"Be on the lookout, and keep your profile low," I warned them, before descending down the dark steps into a room of dancing gangers, blaring music, and flickering lights that only enhanced the darkness of the shadows.

[Penny]

I followed Hadrian down into the gyrating mass of dancers. The smell of unswashed bodies and obscura was intense but I was able to keep a mental lock on the increasingly agitated minds of our targets. Lights flashed overhead in jarring asycrony with the Pound music blaring. A woman nearby followed my progess with huge golden eyes. A man wrapped from head to toe in chains cursed at me as I bumped into him, but Ortega shoved past him on the other side, deliberately clipping him with a hip to take his attention away. Our targets were approaching the end of a bar, behind which hundreds of bottles were racked up, lit by bright blue lights that gave the whole scene an underwater feel.

At the end of the bar was an open area where a cloaked figure sat in lonely splendor. Tough looking gangers covered from crown to toe in tatoos preserved their boss' sanctuary. They had las weaponary, modern but heavily used, nothing like the guilded show pieces we had seen on Havernos.

Hadrian and Ortega closed in, Hadrian sliding up to the bar close enough that he might be able to hear what was being said, Ortega taking a shot of what smelled like pure alcohol from a tray proffered by a mostly naked waitress. I slipped a little closer, probing gently with my mind to ascertain if there were any mental protections or wards on the conversation.

"Hey there," a voice said from behind me. I turned to see the golden eyed woman. She was wearing a diaphanous dress which seemed to hint at her figure without actually revealing anything. I wondered if it was an expensive synthetic, or merely an ingenious low hive expidient.

"Hello yourself," I replied as she reached out a hand and patted me on the hip. I opened my mouth to make some excuse that would end the interaction when I felt a slight itch at my hip. I looked down and saw a drop of blood on the fabric of my robes. I looked up and saw her twiddling a ring on her middle finger. I noticed there was a tiny needle protruding from it a second before I slumped into her arms and darkness closed over me.

Wakefulness came slowly. I was immediately aware of a cottony taste in my mouth and a buzzing in my head. I opened my eyes to find myself tied at the wrists with some kind of electrical cord. My arms ached from the way they had been tied over my head, secured to a beam. I was in a shallow alcove that had been closed off with a woven net of rusted razor wire. The improvised cell was coated with grime, but clear of any item larger than a pebble. Beyond the wire was a large dark space, obscured by the glare of a lumen hanging just beyond the cell. Rather belatedly I realized I was naked and glanced down. To my shock I discovered that arcane sigils had been painted onto my body with some kind of industrial paint.

"Runes of Warding," a feminine voice said from beyond the wire, I could just make out the gleam of golden eyes.

"Keeps you from using that beautiful brain of yours to do anything unfortunate," she expanded. I reached out for my gifts to ensnare her mind, but my grip on the Immaterium slid away like water on a pane of glass. The lumen flickered ever so slightly.

"Oh don't worry, we've sold brain jobs before. The Under Council pays good slate for 'em, believe you me."

[POOHEAD189]

It all happened so quickly. So quickly in fact, that I did not immediately realize Emmaline was gone for what I estimated was nearly half a standard minute. I had gnabbed a few quick snippets of a conversation that I tangentially supposed was potential information on gang activity. Apparently a group called the Black Suns were large in this area, supposedly moving in on the turf of the Blooded Men, leading to eight dead the last day in a scuffle that served as the spark that would lead to the inevitable explosion of the tinderbox. I was not sure which group, if either, we were following, but as I turned to give my customary glance to Ortega and Emmaline, the latter was now gone.

I stiffened, lifting myself from my chair and immediately walking toward her last known position. My peripheral vision was undulating like the dancers, my focus on the floor just at the edge of the gyrating gangers and slummers. I pushed past a pair of drugged up men grinding against one another and found nothing on the floor, scratching out my suspicion she had collapsed. My eyes whipped around the area, not finding Emmaline but catching Ortega's eyes. He looked at me questioningly and I indicating there was trouble. He took another swig of the drink and set it down, making his way over to my position.

"What it is?" He asked.

"Emmaline is missing."

"Maybe she skipped town," He said, shrugging his broad shoulders. I shot him a dangerous look. I knew he did not entirely like her from the interrogation she had enacted upon him, but I knew Emmaline. She either found a lead, or was taken by a lead. Damn, either way I felt she should have signaled for me before whatever had occurred had happened. I sighed and turned, my eyes passing over another pair of eyes that were planted on mine. They moved away quickly, and anyone else would have suspected it was just a coincidence. But I stalked over to their position at the tables. A scrawny ganger with buggy eyes and an elaborate tattoo of an Imperial Titan on his arm glanced back at me, and then asserting that I was approaching, started to move himself. I cursed, trying to hurry and push past the crowd to reach him, but my injury kept me from moving as I normally would. I took out my gun, yelling him to halt over the blaring music as he made his way passed the bar to the exit.

He found Arbites Ortega suddenly appearing before him, punching him in the stomach and bowling him over. He spat on the floor, eyes wide from the hit. I made it to them with bated breath.

"Let's see what this scrawny rat knows." He said, taking him by the arm and neck and hauling him out into the street.

[Penny]

It is difficult to keep track of time when you are hanging by your wrists in a cell. There are techniques, counting heartbeats and the like, which can accomplish the task, but I have never mastered them. It seemed that I hung there for several hours at least. Once, a man in a welding mask and a gangers jacket came in and lowered me to the ground, enough that I could use what might laughably be considered, the facilities, before stringing me up. He reached out to grab my breast but a voice from beyond the lumen barked a short negative command and welding mask grunted and departed, restringing the network of razor wire as he went. I tried every trick I could think of to access my powers but it was useless. Whatever sigils they had used were more than effective at keeping me blunted.

After an indeterminant time the lumen dimmed and the wire was unbound with a rustle. A man in the robe of a Ministorum preacher, complete with a clerical tonsure entered the room. He was clean shaven and his face was harshly ascetic. He held a book of hours clasped before him and and wore a golden pomander around his neck, emitting a sweet and citrusy scent which I found unpleasant.

"I am Father Bertrand, do you have a name Child?" he asked in a gravely voice. I wont say an yImperial Priest was the last thing I expected to find here, but it was certainly way down on the list. If my nakedness or the sigils bothered him he was doing an excellent job of concealing the fact.

"Lara," I lied, "Lara Sternberg-Hauser." The Sternbergs and the Hausers were two middle ranking merchant combines who had recently made some marital alliances. The sort of people who could afford to pay ransoms but not the sort of people who could get a gen-flexed kill team dropped on you for messing with them. The priest compressed his sour mouth into a flat line, clearly not taking the information at face value.

"Can I have some clothes, please Father, these men have been staring at me and I'm scared," I blurted, partially because I knew that humanizing yourself in the eyes of a captor was always a good idea and partly because that was the sort of thing a scared Guilded Girl might blurt out. Truthfully a scared Guilded Girl would probably be bawling her eyes out but that seemed like a low reward play. The priest opened his mouth, clearly irritated at being interrupted, then closed it and made a curt gesture. The man in the welding mask entered a moment later and lowered me to the ground then wrapped a cloak around me, giving my bottom a squeeze as he did so. I yelped in pretended terror, earning the fellow a disapproving glance from the priest as he departed.

"And what were you doing so deep in the underhive child?" the priest asked sternly.

"I... I came to listen to the Pound, real twist music you know?" I blurted out, for all the world sounding like a juve caught with her hand in the joylik cabinet.

"And you dressed as a Charm Woman to do this?" the priest asked, his skepticism clear.

"It was the only way to get passed the gangers," I whined. The priest nodded, tapped his lip and then slapped me across the face hard enough to make stars flash before my eyes.

"And your psykanna gifts?" he asked, his tone hardly changed.

"What...what gifts," I asked, tears running down my face in a completely believable and authentic display of pain.

"Do not be tedious Lara, there are ways for us to tell these things," the priest continued. I shrank in on myself, pretending to be cowed.

"My mother, when she found out, she didn't want me to go on the Black Ships, thought it might be useful to have a... have a..." I stumbled.

"Have a witch in the family?" the priest asked. I nodded my head.

"You aren't going to... turn me over to the Inquisition are you?" I asked, my voice quavering with simulated terror. The priest tutted disapprovingly, though there was a slight flinch he didn't quite manage to conceal. He didn't like talk of the Inquisition, though that hardly made him unique among even loyal servants of the Imperium.

"Perhaps that is what I should do, but you needn't fear child, the Holy Work of the Emperor can find use even for one so wretched as you. The priest turned and nodded at the man in the welding mask.

"Let her down, we will take her," he told them with a curt nod.

"You ain't paid for 'er yet!" the man in the welding mask complained. The priest gave a tired sigh.

"You will be paid, as per our agreement," he replied "Or rather, the agreement of my superiors and yours, whom I doubt very much would appreciate your money grubbing." This was sufficient to end the argument and I was lead out of the cell and through a network of filthy tunnels. We entered a small room in which a half dozen tough looking gangers hulked. Four of them were obviously with the priest and were well equipped with what looked to be millitarum las rifles and an assortment of knives and autopistols. The other gangers were clearly with my captors and they quivered like dogs beset by larger rivals. The priest produced a black bag and pulled it over my head before leading me through the far door.

I tried to keep track of where we went, but it was no good. At times we walked, at other times we seemed to be in a vehicle. I think there was even a short stretch of what might have been rail travel, though I highly doubted any such system were working this deep in the bowels of Gravemire. As we reached the end of the journey it grew quiter and the air grew colder, taking on a taste of rust and old metal. The blindfold was removed with a tug and I found myself in a metal room with an ancient flak board desk on which sat an ordinary looking scroll. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed a massive hollow tube. Girders and gangways projected from the side like cillia and I realized we must be inside one of the massive ancient machines. I could see equipment being loaded into crates, though from this far away I couldn't tell its purpose.

"Sit and read child," the priest directed. I shall return slightly.

[POOHEAD189]

"You will talk," I promised, my pistol out as I shoved the ganger into the alleyway. The putrid smell of refuse and trash wafted through a lone breeze, likely caused by a hive-ventilator close by. Ortega did not seem to notice, likely because he had delved into the underhive on more than one assault. The burly arbites casually strolling to the other side of the alley in case our newfound friend had any funny ideas about escaping.

"Talk!? About what?" The thin man asked desperately, a cold sweat on his pathetic features. He had the look of someone who, even given the best facilities and medicine, would not be sought out for his looks. His nose was large but weak and his chin almost nonexistent. His eyes were beady and his neck was so thin I felt I could snap it with one strong shake. He looked as if he had been beaten recently as well, his left cheek blue and a clear wild fear in his eyes. There was some rash creeping up his neck that was clearly untreated. But I did not begrudge him any of his misfortunes or maladies, in fact it made me feel a slight tinge of pity. Unfortunately for him, my pity was overwhelmed immediately by my worry for Emmaline.

Something stirred near the closest garbage pile, all six of our eyes whirred to the alley as a wild haired ne'er-do-well woke up from a drug-infused nap. He smacked his toothless gums and blinked, trying to focus on us.

"Get out of here!" Ortega barked. The man stiffened at the roar, but did not immediately move. I could use my will, but I needed to curb that temptation, so I did something slightly less conspicuous and put a bullet into the ground by the man's feet. The shot echoed through the alley and he jumped, scrambling over browned parchments and ruined food and what was likely feces and ran out into the main street. I turned my attention back to the ganger and placed the barrel of my gun in his face, slowly adding pressure against his skull.

"Where did they take the blonde woman?" I asked.

"Who are they!?" He screeched, legs shaking.

"Shouldn't we ask who he is working for?" Ortega interrupted. I gave him a glare, but he did not relent. "If we can find the girl, then good. But whatever this is, it's bigger than her or any of us. You did not come to this city to halt cases of kidnapping. She knew the risks."

"Why would they take her if we were not on their trail? If we find Emmaline we find the ring." I insisted.

"Speaking freely, anyone who could would take a woman like her if they saw past her disguise. Trafficking for pleasure girls is a large business. We need to focus. The Undercouncil is the issue here."

"This man..." I said, bearing down on the cowering prisoner. He would likely soil himself any minute, I imagined. "-watched us only when we began looking for Emmaline. He knows where she is. I still do not know if he is a member of this Undercouncil, but I will follow this lead."

"Or he simply knows who you are."

"Who is he?" The ganger asked quietly, but I ignored him. My iron eyes fixed on Ortega.

"Are you disagreeing with me because you wish to remind me of the bigger picture or are you disagreeing with me because you truly believe the issues are separate." I asked him.

Ortega paused for a moment, and then sighed. "The former," He admitted, and gestured to give me the go-ahead for whatever I was going to do. With that settled, I turned to our unwilling contact. I would use my will this time. "What is your name?"

He shuddered as if struck, and Ortega almost fell to his knees. He had a strong will of mind, but he was not used to such psychic assaults, even if they were on the periphery of my attention. Ortega backed away to grant me some room as the ganger began to bleat out answers. "Irban Retch!"

"Who is your master?"

"Lord Nurgle!"

Both of our eyes whipped to his own when we heard the blasphemous name, and I noticed he finally did soil himself. A wet puddle grew larger from a trickle dripping from his pants leg. Luckily the alley already smelled of piss. Small mercies, I suppose. I loomed over him, summoning my will once more.

"Where is the blonde woman?..."

[Penny]

I sat in the cell, disliking the greasy feel of the borrowed cloak. I opened it and rubbed at the glyph on my right breast, the paint remained stubbornly in place. I scratched more enthusiastically but the pigment was bound tight. I would need solvent to remove it, or perhaps to literally scrape my skin away to disrupt them. I looked around the room for something that might do the job but nothing jumped to mind. Perhaps I could break the flakboard desk and use a fragment of it. I cut my eyes to the door and saw two gangers watching me through the bars.

"Priest told you to read," one of the gangers said, though he seemed as intereted in trying to get a look under my cloak.

"So did my scholam marm but here I am," I responded acidly. I picked up the scroll and tapped it on the tabletop.

"Read," the ganger growled. I glanced at the scroll, wondering why they were so interested in it. Whatever it was I wasn't eager to follow the script.

"You going to come in here and make me?" I demanded.

"I'm going to come in there and do something to you," he threatened. I lifted the scroll as though I was going to open it, then ripped it in half. The ganger shouted and ripped the door open, lifting a truncheon as he stalked into the room. I kicked the desk at him as he came. Sneering he dogdged aside, baring his teeth in a snarl. I dived under the table, rolling between the legs and out the door. The second ganger grabbed at me and seized a handful of my cloak. I let go of the cloak and bolted, running naked down the gangway and deeper into the guts of the giant machine. Shouts of alarm rang behind me. I was gambling that they wouldn't shoot me, which was a hell of a thing, but it beat waiting in a cell for whatever they had in store for me. I skidded around a girder and ran into a slender ganger with an autogun, he bounced back then swept the butt of his weapon at me. I twisted sideways and plunged off the edge of the gangway with a scream. I tumbled through empty air for a heatstopping second the crashed into a network of cables. I made a desperate grab and got hold of a handful of greasy cords arresting my fall into a palm burning slide. I crashed onto a lower level and scrambled to my feet, bolting away along a line of pylons. A moment later I reached an open hatch big enough to admit a rhino. I ducked through into a large cathedral like vault that had been filed with machinery. Dozens of gangers with flamers were down on the main floor, each of them had a flamers and were in the process of hosing down some kind of machinary with gouts of prometheum. The whole place stank of burning petrochemicals and hot metal. As I watched a ganger with a mallet came forth and struck one of the burned machines with his weapon. It shattered into shards of hot metal.

"What the frak?" I asked, then ducked into an alcove as I heard shouting gangers rushing down metal access stairs.

[POOHEAD189]

"This is bigger than we thought," Ortega said, ducking back behind the hab-wall with me. Even from this distance, the smell of prometheum was evident, threatening to sting the nostrils. Irban Retch hadn't been as helpful as I would have liked, but what he did tell us gave us a rough direction and we made all speed across the slums to reach this place. It was an old factory, refurbished from an even older imperial frigate. The parapets had oxidized, leaving the tips of the normally blackened steel a dull grey. Refuse and old, rotted corpses littered the ground before the gaping maw of what I surmised was the bay, old chains and gridded rafters creaking as men gathered on the floor below, igniting machinery in some form of cleansing, the purpose of which I knew not what.

"We are following a system spanning conspiracy in league with the ruinous powers. Would you prefer they congregate in smaller groups?" I said, my voice dripping with barely suppressed irritation.

I was not unused to working with people not in my retinue, at least in a limited capacity. However, the last few days had been quite taxing and at the current moment, my lover and the woman who was rapidly becoming my closest confidant was captured by a cell of chaos terrorists in the bosom of a hive. I was in no mood for the constant questioning. Ortega merely grunted, checking his weapon. He bore a combat shotgun with a reduced barrel, granting greater concealment.

My eyes followed the dilapitated spires of the ancient warship and the age old furnishings of the inexorable modifications and chopping the locals would attempt on it to utilize it for their own ends. Eventually my eyes spied an entrance to the south, on the left side of the greater bay. An ornate helicum column framed arch that was now resplendent with grotesque graffiti that somehow managed to make a bastardation of even the horrid symbols of the accursed chaos gods.

"Are you with me?" I asked Ortega, eyes moving from the field of debris to the arbites.

Ortega nodded grimly, cocking his shotgun as an assurance. I nodded and began to move, keeping low behind the wall before crawling our way to a ruined groundcar. We paused to assure ourselves we weren't seen, and then made our way to the archway, stepping down the stairs into the darkness while rusted steel and petrochemicals invaded our senses.

[Penny]

I don't know if you have ever tried to hide from a group of heretics while naked and painted with arcane sigils, but it isn't even as much fun as it sounds. I ducked through access ways and pipework, worming my way deeper into the decayed heart of the ancient machine. From what I had seen the heretics knew they had been made, judging by the fact they knew Hadrian's name, that was because they had been warned and not merely because their man had been killed. I dearly wished I were sifting through astropathic communiques rather than dodging las bolts in the underhive to find the answer. They were obviously burning the evidence of whatever it was they had been doing here, denying intelligence to Hadrian and the Ordos.

"Find the bitch and kill her!" someone shouted off to my left and I turned right, heading away from the sound as silently as I could, my shoulder blades itching for the las bolt I was certain they were about to collect. I heard activity up ahead of me and slowed my pace, peering out from the edge of a gangway into a vast open space. It took my mind a moment to realize it was a starship shuttle bay, though turned on its side when whatever ancient ship this was had crashed here. Dark fluids fell from above, making the air shimmer with rainbow refractions.

"Throne of Terra," I breathed as I realized that every ancient refueling line had been broken open and were currently spilling ancient prometheum down into the void below. All it would take would be a stray blast and this whole place was going to go up like the mother of all fireworks. I doubted the higher ups had bothered to inform their low level cultists about this face. A las bolt burst against the bulkhead beside me in a shower of sparks.

"She's on the shaft rail!" someone shouted. Praying their wild firing didn't touch off the waterfall of volatile petrochemicals I bolted up a nearby set of stairs, chased as I went by a stream of las bolts.

[POOHEAD189]

Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink.

A hammer pounded on something in the vast corridors, the shadows long and oppressive. Ortega and I moved in and out of the sparse light sources making as little noise as possible, despite our heavy boots pressing down onto gridwork floors that creaked dangerously. There was a smell of heavy machinery and some sort of chems in the air, not to mention the petrochemicals I viewed earlier. Whatever was happening here, I knew it was against the well being of the Imperium. Once we found Emmaline, I would try and level this place or cut the head off the snake.

First, however, I needed to find my lover. No, my aide. Damn, it was getting hard to justify the rescue mission even to myself. I felt wholly selfish, and yet I could no more stop in my pursuit of her than in my dogged pursuit of the enemy. Luckily for me on that day, they were one and the same. We rounded a corner, piping like snakes coiled about us in the tunnel, and up from a long stairway came a scrambling, very naked Emmaline. Her eyes wild and her lustrous hair unbound and wild.

"Emma!" I cried, lowering my gun. Ortega lowered his a moment later. Emmaline slammed into me, and though no doubt my carapace armor could not be too comfortable against her bare skin, she hugged me tightly all the same. I hugged her back despite the pain in my abdomen. "Emma, you're ok. We're getting you out of here." I started, but she shook her head.

"No, no, they're right behind me!" She breathed desperately. I stripped off my jacket and placed it around her shoulders, letting her hastily tie it around her. I was taller than her so it served as a short dress in a pinch. "We need to stop them Hadrian!"

Lasgun fire arced up at our direction, scorching the ceiling just before us. It caused all three of us to flinch and we backed up further into the tunnel. Ortega lifted his shotgun and took out a krak grenade from his belt, thinking to use the narrow stairway to funnel the enemies into an explosion they couldn't escape. Emmaline's blue eyes went wide as saucers, her mouth gaping open. "NO! WAIT!" She cried, but the grenade was already sailing down the stairs. We heard a curse as the projectile hit the leading pursuer.

"What!?" I asked her.

"Run!!!" She screamed with all the desperation she could muster.

We looked at one another and realized simultaneously she was scared enough to heed, and bolted back the way we came.

[Penny]

The explosion was like a landslide. The krak grenade went of with little more than a snap and then there was a great whuffing sound which sucked all the air in the shaft down into it. Debris and dust ripped past us in a hurricane as we bolted up flights of stairs, tugging at our new found clothes. A moment later there was a colossal crack and then a boom so loud I felt it in my bones. For a moment all was confusion and chaos. Hadrian threw his arms around me as we were picked up by some momentous force and smashed into the ceiling. I had a moment to think how angry Selenica was going to be that a wounded Hadrian was taking this kind of punishment and then I was laying on the ground. Fire licked all around me and my ears rang like a gong. I could see Ortega, helmetless and bleeding from the nose shouting at me. I pulled myself clumsily to my feet and staggered towards him. Hadrian rose as abruptly as a carnival target beside me. Ortega grabbed him by the shoulders and shouted something that no one could hear. It was only then that I felt the floor shifting. My eyes widened and I ran, scrambling alongside Ortega and Hadrian. The whole turret was coming down, thousands of kilotons of steel and ferocrete. We reached what had once been an observation post in time to see the entire edifice slumping sideways.

"JUMP!" Ortega yelled, pointing to a gangway that was rapidly sliding away. I bolted for the edge and leaped, having just enough time to look down into the roiling pit of smoke below us, an unfathomable and unsurvivable depth, and then I was across, hitting the gangway and stumbling into the wall. Hadrian and Ortega followed a second later and we turned to watch the final destruction of what had once been a lance battery of a proud warship. It seemed to fall with slow majesty, crashing into the depths below like an avalanche of rust and debris.

"I guess that is a little more effective than flamers to cover things up," I said, my voice cracking due to the coating of dust from the air.

"Im afraid you will have to close your file on the Under Council Inquisitor," Ortega admitted.

"Not quite," I said after a moment and then held out the two torn halves of the scroll they had been trying to compel me to read.

[POOHEAD189]

Hours later...

I was glad to be sitting down, again. My abdomen felt like it was close to splitting apart, though Selencia assured me that was merely the pain of healing, but it did little to assuage my uneasiness. A part of me selfishly wished that the document Emmaline found would lead us elsewhere, so I may heal in peace for the weeks or months it would take the travel through the warp in order to find our next clue in this increasingly complex web. Of course, if we could solve the entirety of this case over the next few days on this forsaken hiveworld, so much the better.

I sat in a room with Emmaline, Ortega, and Lazarus. There was a large table at the center of the office where the two strips of paper Emmaline had acquired lay. Around them were pentagrams I had inlaid, bolstered by protective prayers to the Emperor of Mankind. Initially I had sought to reconnect the parchment to make it whole again with some adhesive, but I thought against it. No telling what that could turn the scroll into, as paranoid as that may seem. One could never be too careful dealing with items of the ruinous powers.

"The paper is not recycled." Lazarus declared, having analyzed one half of the parchments. "It's old, perhaps decades old, but well preserved. This came from either the upper spire or off world."

"Off world. The upper spire's papers are lighter in color and thinner in texture, unless someone made a special order." Ortega said. "I see no stains on it beyond a bit of moisture from your woman's sweat. Your man from mars is right, it wasn't made from within the underhive."

"Written in high gothic, but the style is archaic," Emmaline pointed out. I nodded.

"Only a few use such a manner of script today. I've only seen one other like it," I said. "A text written by a cardinal of the Ecclesiarchy."

That brought a few stares.

"Are we going to put this together and read it?" Ortega asked, and all eyes moved to myself. I knew we would need to at some point, but only under careful scrutiny. Perhaps there was no taint of the warp on it, and it was a mere propaganda piece, but I would not leave that to chance. I shook my head.

"Soon, but not yet. And Ortega, would you and Lazarus be kind enough to vacate the room for a moment?" I asked, though it was obviously an order. The arbites hesitated, but reluctantly followed Lazarus out, who had moved as soon as I had spoken as if he were a cog in a wheel. The door closed behind them, audibly. I used what little psychic talents I had to lock the door in place, before regarding Emmaline.

"Are you alright?" I asked her.

She nodded, her pride wounded but otherwise she seemed fine. "Yes, thanks for saving me."

I allowed myself a small smile. "And thanks for saving me," I said, which caused her lips to broaden in a smile as well. As much as I wished to make up then and there, I knew time was likely of the essence. "I want you to read this document."

Emmaline blinked rapidly. "After... after what I did?"

"The papers are well warded, and I'm here with you. But I need someone to read it who knows what the power of the warp in both its purified form and it's less so- form feels like. Don't worry. If you don't want to, then I will do it. But we need to see what is on it in order to understand it. However, you cannot read it aloud. That is what they wished of you, yes?"

"Yes," she said quickly.

"Then let's begin." I said, and silently, secretly placed my gun in my lap below the table. I was not planning on using it, but if something took hold of her, I would rather both of us die than have some daemon take control of her body and wreak havoc.

That's not going to happen, I told myself.

[Penny]

I had conducted considerable purification work in preperation. Upon returning from the underhive I had bathed twice. Once a simple cleansing of the flesh, the second a medative bath with sacred ungents, oils, and a thousand strokes of a blessed brush. I had dressed in immaculate robes of gray silk, never worn and never to be worn again. I wore earings, rings, and bracelets of silver, each piece from an inheritance. I had meditated for several hours, attempting to purge the vestiges of my previous ritual from my mind.

"I'm as ready as I can be," I told Hadrian and I moved the two halves of the scroll together. There was no sudden surge of warp energy, no dramatic dimming of the lights. Nothing untoward happened. I fixed my eyes on the top of the text and began to read.

"It appears to be a standard Ministorum tract," I observed, my eyes following the words as they spilled down the page. They were printed in high gothic, there as no giltwork but the style was highly ornate. It was printed but the type face used had been fashioned after actual writing. I had seen such tricks in the past, attempts to pass of printed works as originals by famous poets or authors.

"Printing presses," I realized, "that is what they were destroying with the flamers."

"It is an injunction to follow the teachings of Him on Earth, to obey the consel of true clerics," I continued, deliberately using different words to those presented in the text.

"It says to ob...ob.. ob ... ob..." my mouth worked on the syllable. My eyes told me it was the first part of the word obey, but my mind sought to unpack more from the word. It was as if entire syllogies of meaning were packed into those first two letters. My mind flashed back to the texts we had recovered from the dig site on Havenos.

"ob.. ob.." my mouth continued to work. I could hear Hadrian shouting my name, taste my own blood in my mouth. Pain tore threw me like an electric shock, the very neurons of my brain aflame. It was the Word. If only could get the word out of my mouth it would all be ok. It was a matter of pleasant fraternal confidence. I was in a classroom with dozens of other children, each attractive and well groomed. Stern faced proctors watched us as we recited from plates of etched copper.

I could smell burning, the thick pile of carpet around the edges of the warding circle was smoldering. Hadrian had slapped the scroll out of my hands. I could see the letters O and B had burned through the parchment every place they occurred. It was going to break me. I would not be broken. I could not. Not until I had warned Hadrian of what was buried in the innocuous scroll. My will crystalized in an instant and I smashed at the obstacle in my head with the full force of my psykanna gifts.

"ob..." I gabbled. Hadrian slapped me hard across the face, snapping my head to the side.

"Obey!" I screamed and dropped to the floor, my body shaking with exhaustion and my mind fluttering with images of the dig site. The long hours I had spent trying to decode the mythic cycles. They had learned the word, and the word had made slaves of them. I could see the swamps being drained by blasphemous eight armed xenos with stone tools. Hundreds of them pausing in unison to bay their obedience to their God-King on his cyclopean throne. I knew without a doubt that if it hadn't been for the extensive safeguards Hadrian had put in place, I would have been reduced to a mindless and obedient slave in an instant.

"It's a Geas," I said, my lips split and bleeding from the effort of speaking a word that was not a word.

"A compulsion to serve," I explained as Hadrian helped me to my feet.

"That is why the tribesmen died when their chieftains were killed, why they kept attacking when normal men would have run," I realized, suddenly replaying the attack on Havenos.

"Throne above, they can bind people like insects to a hive Hadrian."

[POOHEAD189]

Emperor's light.

It was every inquisitor's knowledge that chaos was utterly enthralling if one was to delve too deep into its clutches, but this was another level of coercion entirely. To compel anyone to serve after merely reading from a scroll, it must have been enchanted powerfully. But to what end? There had to be a concrete goal to the heretics, utilizing this compulsion for some aim beyond just spreading corruption. I shook my head, dabbing the blood from Emmaline's lip with a cloth. Her blue eyes were wide, but by the Emperor's Mercy I saw the same woman I loved still in there.

"Hadrian, they can enslave millions of people." She repeated, clearly stating it again so she could also come to terms with the visions that had bombarded her mind. Her slim fingers clutched my jacket.

"Potentially, but even chaos has limits." I said, considering. I looked to the left as I pondered, mind whirring like the cogs in a mechanicus cogitator. "If they could simply read the words and force someone into servitude, they would have done that to you, or worse, they would have tried to broadcast the message across the lower hive. They also cannot print it on any piece of parchment, or it would easily be mass produced. No, there are only a specific number of these scrolls with the spells of compulsion writ upon them."

"So one needs to read it for themselves in order to be influenced," Emmaline remarked, holding her head as she shook off the aftershock of the assault on her mind.

"Which means they cannot enslave the entirety of a hive without special circumstances or equipment." I said.

"Like a holovid?" Emmaline asked, hopeful she was correct but equally yearning to be wrong. "Where would they have access...?"

"We're going to the upper hive." I said.

[Penny]

"We have Magistratum en route," Ortega confirmed over the howl of the valkyrie's turbofans. The Arbite was now dressed in full black tactical armor along with the black cloak of his office. He carried a powerful looking automatic shotgun along with the battered and much used power maul with which he had ended the life of the cultist in the manufactorium a subjective lifetime ago. Hadrian clung to a stanchion, his face pale. Selenica had said that the drugs she was giving him could only keep him going for so long. He needed to give his augmetic kidney time to proper bond with his tissues. He was risking worse damage by being upright at all, much less preparing to attack.

"What about the PDF?" Hadrian demanded. I knew that he had issued orders for troops to be brought to readiness, but I hadn't heard of any plan for their deployment. Ortega shook his head.

"They haven't moved from their deployment areas, though they assure me they are about to move out at any second," he reported. Hadrian gritted his teeth.

"Could their commanders be compromised?" he asked. Ortega shrugged, the heavy armor making the gesture surprisingly diffident.

"Corruption, incompetence, graft," he spat, grinding out each word as though it were a curse in the eyes of the God-Emperor. It wasn't unusual for PDF units on peaceful worlds to be far below their listed strengths, with the rations and equipment that the Munitorum provided for non-existent troopers to line the pockets of their commanders. I suspected that if that were the case here things were not going to work out for the would be entrepreneurs.

"You are sure of the target?" Ortega asked as the aircraft banked hard, climbing the hive spire in a narrowing corkscrew. It was my turn to nod. Once we had realised that the cult needed to broadcast its message the only possible choice was to use the holovid systems which serviced most of the upper and mid hive. The only broadcast stations with access to the whole thing were the Governer's emergency address system and the Ecclesiarchy Prayer Mandate, which broadcast sermons and blessings planet wide several times a day. That thought had led back to the priest who had purchased me from the gang. A quick search through one of Lazarus' data grafts had revealed that the cleric in charge of the broadcast station was one Joachim Pressler. The holo image was younger and there were less lines on his face, but it was clearly the same man.

"We are sure," I responded tersely. In the time it had taken to whistle up the gunship I had taken the opportunity to remove the glyphs that had been painted on me. This had to be done with an industrial solvent and my skin prickled as though with a gentle sunburn despite the counterseptic Selenica had applied. I had dressed in a black body glove with soft inlays of silver and gold. My hair was tied back in a hasty bun and I had my force staff as well as a heavy naval pattern revolver.

"I again recommend we neutralize the power plant," Lazarus interjected. Hadrian shook his head but didn't respond. As he had explained earlier there was no way to know they didn't have some kind of backup generator and we wouldn't know about that until it was too late. We circled around one of the gilded sub-spires of a mercantile house, weaving through the occasional air traffic. Ahead of us I saw the Cathedral of Saint Arestus, a gargantuan sub spire, encrusted with turrets, buttresses and leering gargoyles.

"Approaching broadcast station now sir!" the Valkyrie pilot yelled over the thrust noise, his face antonymous behind a visored helmet. I could see one of the turrets ahead, easily ten stories tall in its own right. It nearly doubled that with the bewildering array of vox antennae that were clustered around the feet of a stone angel blowing a great trumpet. The overall effect looked like mold growing up around the statue's feet.

An alarm blared in the cockpit. The pilot whipped his head back to the controls.

"Auspex painting us!" the pilot screamed, a moment before I saw a half dozen flashes light up among the antenna. Missiles rose like fireworks, riding upwards on trails of smoke that wove together as they tracked.

"Evasive action!" Hadrian shouted, but the pilot was ahead of him. The valkyrie lurched sideways, the fans screaming as he climbed for height. I saw one missile slash by to the left and then one struck the starboard fan. The blast threw me into my retreats as the craft slewed sideways and plummeted, my stomach dropping out as alarms hammered my ears. Black smoke poured from the ruin of the starboard engine is the port screamed with the redoubled strain. The drop, for a mercy, carried us through the rest of the salvo before they could correct.

"Brace for..." the pilot screamed a moment before we hit the arm of the statue with another shriek of rending metal. The pilot wrestled with the controls, arms building as he tried to keep us level by main force. The forest of antennae rushed up at me like impaling spikes. There was a tremendous crash as we hit, the remaining engine running so hot that I could feel the heat on my cheek. I squeezed my eyes shut as we ricochet down through the pylons, metal shattering and bending all around us. The passenger compartment filled with smoke that was whisked away into the turbo fans as we finally slammed to a halt, thirty meters in the air atop a bent transmission antennae. I opened my eyes and glance forward. The pilot seat and the cockpit had been pulped to ruin, blood leaking from the ruined corpse of the heroic aviator.

"We should extract before the fire spreads," Lazarus announced calmly.

[POOHEAD189]

I make it a point to be honest in these briefings, and I will not change that policy here. Emmaline tells me that I had secured a cable-line from my belt to the antennae and had rappelled her down safely, whilst the others followed on the same line. Lazarus had purportedly climbed down on his spindly mechanical limbs like a great spider, using the grafted steel and flaws in the material to cling to. I cannot recall that, truthfully. All I remember is the pain.

If you haven't been shot and then hastily placed into surgery before surviving an aerial crash, I can confirm it feels like hell. I felt a wetness around my abdomen, but I did not bother to check, and I assured Emmaline I was alright, once my vision refocused and I could see more than a red haze.

Once my eyes could see well enough, the first sight I was privvy to was a young aritocrat with an illegal chem-inhaler, gazing at me with hopelessness in his eyes. His glasses were ill-balanced on his nose, and he seemed to take my bloodshot look as a sign of hostility. The acne-ridden youth threw the chem-inhaler into the air and ran back across the steel decking of the landing into a pair of double doors. I looked and saw other youths hastily following, dropping or tossing spraycans they had been using to vandalize the side of the hive with crude drawings depicint Saint Allesia in coitus with some unknown Ecclesiarch. I checked my auspex as I inquired on where exactly we had landed.

"We have arrived at the broadcasting hub for the entire hive of Gravemire, inquisitor." Lazarus said as we began to move forward, wading through the forest of antennae on the path towards the doors. "However, I deduce the displays that monitor the activities broadcasted will be inside."

I unholstered my gun, the sparking valkyrie above us making a sudden rending of metal as it plummeted the last thirty meters to the floor. Black smoke choked the air and plumed like a beacon into the sky as we departed, and another small explosion buffeted the air.

[Penny]

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.

[POOHEAD189]

I briefly activated my power sword's energy core, the blood marring the blade evaporating instantly before my eyes. I shut it off, but did not sheathe it. Something told me I would have more use of it soon. Clara bit off the end of her bandage and finished tying it up, hefting her lascarbine with an iron will writ on her face. Lazarus seemed perturbed by their surroundings, but otherwise unharmed. Ortega watched the zealot with open suspicion, but made no move to strike her.

"Lead on," I ordered her, retrieving my autopistol from its holster. I felt a sharp stab in my side, but I gave no indication I felt a thing. There would be plenty of time for fretting later.

Elektra nodded with tear laden eyes, all but running out of the room to better fulfill what she likely thought was her act of redemption. I am not a priest, but the Inquisition is the left hand of the Emperor and one cannot be in the Ordo Malleus without some knowledge of sacred texts and rites. I was not comfortable being placed in the shoes of one who speaks for the Emperor himself, but I was not unused to such treatment, and in an extremely convoluted way, Elektra was not entirely incorrect.

We followed her brusquely, hurrying through a short corridor and passing a door bedecked with reliquary fetishes and scripture etched in blood. The zealot stepped through and shrieked as if she had been shocked, but no one else complained as they passed, finding we had entered a small lobby leading to a stairwell made of plascrete and adorned with crudely wrought symbols of the emperor made in stone and placed to frame the stairs on every level we passed.

"How many of these followers are there in the main hall?" Ortega asked as we reached the correct floor. Elektra turned to me, eyes pleading. I nodded my consent, and she turned to Ortega, placing a hand on Emmaline's arm for what I imagined was support.

"Dozens, though they might not all be present. I don't know if the master is there, either." She lamented cryptically, looking away as if ashamed. Ortega racked his shotgun again in preparation as Emmaline inquired about who this master was. But Elektra would simply shake her head and mumble, unable or unwilling to speak. Emmaline glanced my way helplessly, and I knew well enough that Elektra's mind was already fragile enough. Delving deeper could break her, and I was not yet prepared to kill a woman who had renounced the ways of the ruinous powers.

"Ortega, Clara, take point. Shoot anyone who does not look like a civilian, and quell anyone who does. I go in next. Emma, behind me. Lazarus, once we sweep in, find the roots of the station and pluck them. We need this cut immediately." I said. "Elektra, stay with Emmaline. I don't want you caught in the confusion."

"Right boss," Clara said, stepping to the left of the door, eyes peeled. Ortega joined her, signaling readiness. She nodded, and he waited for my go before he went. The big arbites raised his weapon, and blew the handle off the door with a well placed 10 gauge shell. The door lazily began to open before his foot sent it all but flying off its hinges. As he pulled back the forestock, Clara was already moving in. Her lascarbine cracked, superheated beams of red scythed into the room. I saw figures turning in surprise and falling, scorch marks erupting on their barely clad forms and one even lost a forearm, the lasbolt hitting him just at the joint of elbow. Ortega barreled through as Clara rolled to the left, gunning down three zealots with five slugs. I followed in after, giving a quick survey of the room that lasted less than a second.

There was a central table festooned with wiring and candles, a great collection of scrolls piled at its center. Skinny, used men and women in rags operated various consoles, or had been before they had run for cover. Dead PDF guards occasionally littered the floor, and the room along with its subsequent hallways swarmed with zealots. I stepped forward, igniting my power sword as a zealot wielding two long butcher knives leaped over its fallen companion and bore down on Ortega before he could rack another round in. My sword cut through him from abdomen to collarbone in a backhanded stroke. He fell with a cry to the emperor on his lips.

The irony was not lost on me.

"Lazarus, find the signal before they can utilize it!"

[Penny]

I followed Hadrian and Ortega into the primary control chapel, keeping well behind the combatants. To my horror I realized that most of these poor folk were simply loyal Imperial subjects who had been misled by their corrupted masters. That wasn’t entirely true as I saw a handful of Haverni tribesmen cut down by three rapid coughs of Ortega’s weapon. He let the empty shotgun drop and snug up on its sling as he unshipped his powermaul and brought it crackling to life, driving the but off it into an onrushing zealot hard enough to spurt blood from the unfortunate man’s mouth.

Lazarus pointed to a wide arched door through which the cable conduits poured so thickly you couldn’t walk on stone to reach it. A half dozen enemies were forming up to block our progress, though how they planned to do that was unclear. It became a moot point as Lazarus fired his trans-uranic arquebus into the group. The report of the weapon was so loud and so bright that it stunned everyone in the room with its report. Most of the leading three enemies simply dissolved into a prismatic burst of expanding tissue. The survivors were hurled backwards like ragdolls, already dead from the hydrostatic shock of the blast. It is easy to think of Lazarus as a techpriest but he was also a soldier, scrambling up over the conduits with the speed and acumen any Imperial Guard trooper would be proud of. I followed with considerably less grace, the archway looked like a mouth with the conduits forming a braided and extended tongue, an image I did not find comforting. Cables rolled and twisted beneath my boots but I kept both my feet and my grip on my force staff. From somewhere ahead of us the opening bars of Gloria Imperator began to play, crackling with the traditional vox static.

The broadcast was starting.

The control chapel itself was a massive circular room with a raised central diaz. Atop the diaz stood a stone altar laid out with relics and incense burners. Great column soared three stories into the air, oozlite chased with gold, which supported a domed ceiling painted with sporting cherubs around a triumphant Emperor. A large gilded aquila hung behind the altar backed back carvings of the lives of the Emperor and his Primarchs. Thousands of niches marked the walls like the holes in Cembrian cheese. Each of these had once been an ossuary, but the bones of the faithful dead had been unceremoniously dumped onto the floor to form a knee deep carpet of tangled bones. Each ossuary now held a scroll. I tried to make a quick mental count but there must have been hundreds of thousands. Statues of saints, twenty feet tall, ringed the circular space. Perhaps half of them had been draped with chains which suspended cages in which naked men and women were suspended. Electrical cabling and neural linkages had been plugged into their eyes and spines, spilling outwards like a spiderweb towards the altar but not visible by the pict casters which would capture the service. This was why the Under Council had been interested in buying black market psykers. The broadcast was not just to be physical, but psychic. They were making the broadcast station into a psychic antenna. I shuddered to think of how many millions it would reach.

Behind the altar stood a priest in full vestments including a golden mitre. The distance was too great for my eyes but I was sure this was the priest I had met in the underhive. He raised both his hands, beginning his address. I lifted my pistol and fired, the bullet ricocheting off the altar. I tasted violets in the back of my throat as psychic energy began to flow outwards from the captive psykers.

“Lazarus!” I shouted but as I turned towards the Skitarii I saw three figures burst from side alcoves. They were squat and heavily muscled, twisted and grotesque. They plowed through the bones like snow clearing engines, flinging cracked remains in all directions. At first I took them for mutants, but then I registered the stim injectors and pacem visors wired into their skulls, as well as the long neural whips which had been grafted to the stumps of their arms. Arco-flagellants. Men and women who had been condemned for blasphemy to serve as living assault engines, their nervous systems rewired for pure aggression. I could smell the stink of chems from here as their biology was hyper charged for war and pain and suffering was pumped into their cerebrums, filling them with the raw need to kill as the only answer to their agony. The charged in eeire silence, with only the clatter of flying bones, like a million rolling dice, to accompany them.

Above me the priest was beginning to drone into his opening address. I fired at him again, this time the shot glanced away not from the alter, but from a shimmering veil of psykannic energy he was drawing in from the unwilling donors. Cursing I turned and shot twice into the nearest captive psyker, his body jerked twice and went still, blood dripping from the cage as his body went limp, the power moving down his neural plugs sputtering and dying. If I could kill all the donor minds perhaps I could shoot the priest… but there was no time. Lazarus fired his weapon again, reducing one of the arco--flagellants and six feet of bone covered floor into a blue-white flare of calcium fire. The remaining two charged on as though they had not noticed. I fried at one of the onrushing brutes. A slaught injector on its shoulder burst in a spray of chemicals. I had just enough time to be proud of hitting something with my handgun when the bow wave of bones hit me, throwing me from my feet and down into the swirling maelstrom of the dead.