Penny

Death's Edge: A Warhammer Story

I smiled, pleased to be back on safer territory. Courtesans were an established fact of Tilean life but such things were looked on much less fondly in the Empire. Perhaps they had a sufficient supply of pretty young noblewomen and could make do without, or perhaps they just lived as rumor reported, in smoky castles where porcine housefraus stomped about dolled up in silk.

“Luckily I am a past master at making men think they can dance,” I teased. Standing up and allowing Kian to lead me a few steps out into the piazza. Music was already playing, as was the custom in Remas of an evening. A trio of musicians, one on lute, one with a fiddle and a third providing harp and occasional percussion were already filling the square with music, repaid for their efforts by a free meal and the occasional tossed coin. On this occasion they were all men, though it wasn’t uncommon for women to play either, I had done so myself on occasion when I had needed coin in a hurry. I reminded myself to check my still packed bags and make sure my flute was still in place and hadn’t been sold by servants for a few gold pieces.

As Kian and I stood the band smoothly altered their atmospheric harmony into something slightly more spritely, it was a rondel, though the form was common from sea side tavern to noble villa with varying degrees of energy and lasciviousness. I made a slight curtsey and then we began to dance. It was a simple thing, repeating curves and reverses of direction accented by spins which lifted the hem of my skirt in a whirl. I wasn’t sure if Kian was downplaying his skill or if he was simply a very quick learner, but though he made a few missteps in the first few minutes, he rarely repeated a mistake and within no time was dancing as well as anyone born to the city might have managed. It was possible my own performance was more Trantioan than would have been the fashion here, but there was no one here to gain say me. I curved gracefully in to Kian, allowing him to arrest the dips and leans with a hand on my back or a touch of my waist. Within minute other couples, diners and passers by began to join and the band moved into a spritely waltz which featured quick kicks that stretched the calves.

“What are you laughing at,” Kian asked as we whirled and curvetted together to the sound of the minstrels.

“I’m just trying to decide if you are the best Priest I have met, or the very worst,” I snickered.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

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

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

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

Death's Edge: A Warhammer Story

The chicken was delicious as was the sauce it was seasoned with. I marveled that it had been within my lifetime, admittedly my early lifetime, that the tomato had been introduced into the Tilean diet. The sharpness of the sun roasted fruit perfectly picked up the garlic, onion, and vinegar, blending them to perfection. I took a sip of the crisp sweet champagne and savored it for a moment. Kian was certainly proving to be an interesting man, he was widely traveled and surprisingly educated and erudite for a priest. So much so that I briefly considered if he might be some kind of spy merely playing the part of a clergyman. That notion had to be rejected, there was no way Imperials, with their simple and blunt faith in their God, would tolerate such a charade. Plus if it were a subterfuge he would have every reason to play up to the stereotype rather than cataloging, fairly bluntly, his somewhat ambivalent relationship to his church.

“Well, it isn’t anything as interesting as trying to learn magic,” I admitted.

“I’m an orphan too, I think my parents died of the plague when I was still a baby but I honestly dont remember,” I continued. That had been the story I had been told at the Convent and I didn’t see any reason to disbelieve it. Occasionally pretty children were sold to the Convent by parents who had no other options, but I didn’t think that had been the case with me.

“I was raised to work at court, as a handmaiden or a lady in waiting,” I explained. That was technically true, though most ladies in waiting didn’t learn nearly so much about secret communications, cyphers, and burglary. They weren’t trained to ingratiate themselves with others, emotionally or sexually, though they probably got a fair amount of on the job training. I had provided some of that myself when the situation demanded.

“There is always a place at court for someone who can read and write, recite poetry and dance,” I told him. A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.

“Sometimes one does wear our their welcome at a particular court though, which is why it pays to be adaptable,” I confessed.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

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

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

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

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

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

/Hadrian/ I thought/spoke.

/I see him/ came the reply.

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

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

/This man is an error/

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

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

“Frak.”

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

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

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

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

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

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

Death's Edge: A Warhammer Story

"A stolen rose, how romantic," I smiled, running my fingers over the stem looking for thorns before I tucked the blossom behind my ear. I picked up my glass and took a sip. The wine was tart and fizzy on my tongue, the stuff was ruinously expensive, shipped from Brettonia, but it had taken Tilea by storm in recent years. I wondered if a priest could afford such extravagance, but that wasn't really my concern, if he wound up being chased through the streets by Caprese's bully boys, that wouldn't stop me returning the palace.

"Most of my suitors tend to be Tilean," I admitted, "a woman can only stand so many poems extoling the 'chocolate hue of her hair' or the 'flashing of chest nut eyes' or whatever else.

"You aren't a musician are you Master Priest? You aren't going to write a lute song or something?" I teased.

"How is it that you came to serve this Sigmorr of yours?" I asked, placing my chin in my hands and leaning forward.

"It is strange to me that one would study in Tilea and decide to go back to fog and beer and beastmen," I admitted.

Death's Edge: A Warhammer Story

I let the stiletto I had produced from my sleeve into my belt, as it would have been impractical and indecent to attempt to resheath it fully dressed. I was very glad to have avoided a street fight as I was far from dressed in my street fighting clothes. I had donned cream and gold quilted vest over a loose white shirt and a divided skirt of a slightly more cream hue stitched with soft golden flowers. In deference to my greater knowledge of Remas' streets it didn't quite reach the ground though the few inches of exposed black leather boots were unlikely to be seen by all but the most dedicated Peeping Tomaz or the occasional beggar.

"I knew I should have brought a handbag," I complained, producing a silk kerchief from a pocket and wrapping the weapon before hanging it from the belt of woven leather strands that depended from my right hip. I frowned at the fleeing and unconscious men. It was possible that De Pounce was in league with Telli, it was possible Telli even summoned De Pounce and made him aware of Kian's jocular insult, but that was moving very fast by the standards of Reman politics. Kian wasn't even the Ambassador, tangling him up in intrigue wasn't going to be a great coup, other than perhaps as a source of gossip on the Imperial delegation. Even then, what was that gossip likely to be? They had completed their task, would eat and drink on the people of Remas for a week or two then go back to their sausage scented homes.

I put the problem from my mind, I wasn't in Remas to sus out gossip or play political games, other than as required by my need to live comfortably and eat and drink well. Though I had to admit not getting brutalized by street gangs was also a priority. We headed out onto one of the cities many Piazzas in time to see men at arms shoving their way though the gathering evening crowd. Reman's were a proud bunch and they responded by jostling and hurling insults and occasional fruit at the column of mailed soldiers. They wore the red and Gold of Luccini and carried a great standard with the emblem of that city. There were perhaps a hundred of them formed up around a palanquin carried by some impressively muscled bearers.

"Who are they?" Kian asked and I turned to glance at him.

"Luccinians, come to broker the peace with Trantio," I explained. He probably knew their nationality, his Tilean being as good as it was, but he might not know that delegates were assembling to end the costly war. Probably a few villages no one had ever heard of would change allegiances and everybody would be happy except for the Condottieri who would immediately begin fomenting another war to keep themselves paid.

"The Reman's do not appear pleased to see them," he observed as a ripe tomato burst against the side of the palanquin, sliding slowly down the paintwork to leave a long red orange streak.

"Nobody like Luccini," I snickered, "and the Reman's dont like to bow and scrape." The soldiers were most of the way across the square now and I led the way down into a small courtyard walled with knee high stone. A dozen tables stood beneath colorful umbrellas, surrounded by neatly tended flowers and shrubs.

"Ciao!" the proprietor called. I hadn't met him but Giovanni Caprese was well known by reputation, a short squat man with enormous mustaches. He hurried over to our table as we took a seat.

"What can I do for you tonight!" he enthused.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There's Always a Price: Sci Fi Bounty Hunters

Jocasta's head snapped sideways in the middle of the description of how she had single handledly dragged a wounded Dirk to saftey while fighting off another score of pirates.

"Anyway long story short, I am a hero," she announced and then took the shot that she had been using to represent the main building. The drinkers cheered and heckled as she stepped away, then paused, ducked back, picked a half burned lux stick took a drag then dumped it into a mostly empty tumbler with a sharp hiss of quenching heat.

"Jocasta Ap'Gwyn," Valgrayne said as she approached.

"My completely deserved reputation preceeds me," she said as she cleared the alert Dirk had beamed to her implant. She took a seat across from the smartly dressed man.

"I was just suggesting to your partner here that I had a job for him, but he pointed out that as a member of the Guild he was not at liberty to take it. You aren't a member of Guild I take it?" Valgrayne asked.

"I'm not a member no, I have .....uh... background check issues," she admitted. Valgrayne arched an eyebrow but didn't comment.

"It seems to me that if an unaligned operative were to take a job and Mr Crimson here was able to render some assistance it might not be seen as a violation of any Guild regulation," Valgrane explained.

"Ok... seems like alot of small talk to go through before asking me out," Jocasta said, "What is this job and how much does it pay?"