Penny

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

I closed the door to the office with a click and threw my arms around Hadrian so happy to see him alive and functional. He yelped in pain and I flinched back, blushing scarlet at having forgotten that he had been shot only hours earlier. The office was one of a senior scribe, empty save for a large desk with neatly organized paper baskets and a large passage written on the wall: A moment wasted is a moment stolen from the Emperor. Cheery as always. I cleared my throat and toyed with a stray strand of hair, reluctant to admit what I had done, then I squared my shoulders and summarized.

"I believed Arbiter Ortega might have been involved in signaling the assassin who shot you," I began, tackling the easier of the two matters first, if kidnapping an Arbites officer could truly be described as 'easier'.

"I uhh... conducted a psychic interrogation," I admitted.

"He screamed a lot," Clara added unhelpfully and I shot her a sideways glance.

"There won't be any permanent damage," I said, a touch defensively. Ortega had certainly been trained on how to resist interrogation, I had sampled some of those memories and he was no more damaged than any other servant of the Emperor by my mental rummaging.

"He didn't call the assassin, but I think someone may have had access to the vox net he was using to contact the authorities, I asked Lazarus to run it down," I explained. Hadrian looked somewhat troubled but he didn't interject.

"Then I interrogated the other witness to the shooting," I rushed on, hoping against hope that I wasn't going to have to make a full accounting.

"Other witness?" Hadrian asked, arching an eyebrow at the closed expression which stole over Clara's face. "What other witness?"

"The shooter," I explained, "I...uh disabled him after he shot you." Hadrian's face was confused and skeptical.

"Lazarus said he was dead," Hadrian prodded. I licked my dry lips, trying to find an artful way to evade this line of inquiry. Clara apparently felt no such compunction.

"Oh he was dead all right, but that didn't stop her from asking questions. Just ordered his corpse to sit up and spill the ploin juice," she said, plowing remorselessly forward.

"I would hardly say I 'just ordered' him to do it," I added crossly, reflecting on the colossal effort it had taken. Clara rolled her eyes.

"Really not sure lingering on the creepy-ass sigils, nude bathing, and applying a dead guy as makeup are going to improve the take away here sister," Clara retorted.

"You... raised someone from the dead?!" Hadrian demanded. I crossed my arms beneath my breasts hugging my storm coat tight.

"Well technically I only called his spirit back to answer some questions," I admitted.

"Technically is doing A LOT of work in that sentence," Clara opined.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

“He is innocent,” I declared, blinking away the taste of blood from a Drill Abbots blow to the stomach in the courtyard of a world I had never seen. The Arbite was chained to an interrogation chair, a bolus of psychoactive nicosapine feeding into his jugular via an intravenous catheter. He had been stripped naked for the interogation and his scared body was a mass of coiled muscles. He let out an explosive breath that hazed the air with spittle before stumbling forward with a metallic clatter of restraints. Sweat dripped from the point of his nose, falling to splatter onto the dusty cobble stones. His lips moved in a Litany of Abjuration, banishing the Xenos, the Mutant, and the Psyker with a special emphasis on the last.

“Frak you…” Ortega muttered his tongue and mouth swollen from where he had bitten them. That had been careless, next time I’d have to remember to use a bit. I stood up, my skin chilled to ice from the prolonged mental intrusion into Ortega’s mind. He was hardened and trained, but it hadn’t taken Selenica long to remove the implanted blockers from beneath his scapula. Blood oozed from the dressings she had applied, inadequate to the trashing struggle he had pointlessly put up.

Clara leaned against the wall, hand casually on the butt of her heavy Hecutor 40. She was projecting an aura of dangerous calm but in my current psykically active state I could sense the unease that came with holding a member of the Adeptus Arbites. In theory our Inquisitorial status gave us every right to do as we pleased, but she was painfully aware that if Hadrian died our conditional status might be revoked and we could be in a world of trouble.

“You could.. have… just asked me,” Ortega mumbled. I turned to regard him, aware that in my leather storm coat, high boots, and severe hair I looked more the Inquistor than Hadrian did most of the time. My stomach churned at the thought of him. We hadn’t heard anything since he had gone into surgery.

“Yes but we couldn’t have trusted you,” I told him. The fact that an assassin had been on site so quickly and had known that Hadrian was an Inquisitor was troubling and Ortega had been the only one outside the team working his vox unit.

“Shall I release him?” Clara asked, her tone wary having seen me mental violate a member of the Lex Imperialis elite. Realistically she or Lazarus should be in charge, I was the newest member of the warband. I doubted it was the fact that I was Hadrian’s bedmate that had led them to defer to me. Rather I was in charge because I had acted as though I was and I appeared to have a plan. As so often in life, acting as though something were true made it so.

“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “Get a medicae, someone other than Selenica to see to his wounds and get him a sedative. He is going to crash pretty hard in a few minutes.” The mental intrusion I had conducted was extremely taxing and the load of drugs I had used to make it possible were going to be an unpleasant companion for Ortega for the next few days. I blinked my eyes, trying to separate his memories from my own. It wasn’t going to do me any favors either.

“Hadrian is going to make it,” Lazarus said from the interrogation room door. “He will need an augmetic kidney. I have already arranged for an appropriate unit.” I felt the icy hand in my guts unclench at his words and uttered a silent prayer of thanks to the God Emperor that I didn’t technically believe in. There was a touching hint of human emotion in Lazarus’s words, his care for Hadrian as evident from that slight slip as it was from his careful selection of augmetic kidney.

“Is he awake?” I asked urgently, Ortega and the interrogation momentarily forgotten.

“Unconscious, Selenica is looking after him now, she say it will be several hours before he wakes,” Lazarus said. I nodded saddened that he wasn’t awake for me to speak too but also obscurely glad. This whole mess was my fault and I needed to take steps to repair the damage.

“I need to go to the Hotel Imperial,” I declared, “Clara stay here with Lazarus and…”

“Whoa, whoa,” Clara interjected holding up her palms before her.

“You might have big Rosette energy right now Emm, but no one is going anywhere alone while we have snipers shooting at people,” she declared. The set of her jaw told me that arguing wasn’t going to do me much good.

“Fine,” I replied, holding up my palms in surrender, “Come with me. Lazarus and Selenica will stay with Hadrian.”

“I think we should consider bringing Lucius down from the Caledonia,” Clara said, “we have too many moving parts already and we don’t know what we are dealing with.”

“No, his mind is still too unstable, if we put him in the middle of all these people there is a good chance his rage is going to overpower him,” I told her.

“Hotel Imperial has plenty of security, as does this building,” I explained.

“What are you going to do at the Hotel?” Lazarus asked.

“I need you to look into Ortega’s vox equipment,” I told Lazarus, deftly avoiding the question. “He noticed a slight staticy hiss that he put down to interference, but I’m not so sure.” Ortega himself might be just what he appeared to be, but I still wasn’t willing to give up on the idea that he had a role in what had transpired, even if it was unwitting.

“My Lady,” a diffident Administratum Drone said from the doorway. I looked up at him, noting that he was doing his very best to look at nothing and no one in the room. He was at least imaginative enough to be scared when Ordo operatives started working over an Arbite in his holding cell.

“Your air car has arrived.”

___

“I don’t like this Emmaline,” Clara said as I touched an ivory on the biblioquary. Inside the shimmering void shield, the articulated finger bones of a priest turned a page of the ancient manuscript. The Biblioquary resembled a lectern save that the book inside was completely enclosed in void shielding and the wood was inlaid with devotional verses in tarnished silver. Such devices were used for the handling of questionable books, those suspected of having a malign influence, but which for one reason or another, the Inquisition deemed worthy of study. This volume was from Hadrian’s library aboard the Caledonia and I had made some study of it during the months following the Baphometus affair. Hadrian had introduced such works to me slowly and usually under his supervision. The Journal of Saint Theresa of Availa wasn’t the most precious work he had shown me, but it was one that had captured my attention. According to the legend Theresa had been the head librarian of the Tyrarch of Vestebos, and he been ordered by that Tyrant to compile all the arcane lore in the famous Libracate Obscurus of that world ahead of the advancing Imperial crusade under Warmaster Siscus. According to the story, Theresa had pretended to comply, only to burn herself along with the books to prevent the Tyrarch from taking his blasphemous knowledge with him when he fled. The truth was somewhat more complicated. Ninety nine volumes were said to exist, scattered in secret libraries and private collections. The Inquisition had to date acquired six, usually when someone began reproducing and distributing them. This volume was one such reproduction, something Hadrian’s old master had acquired after participating in a purge. The books themselves had no numbers, though Inqusitor Kronos tersely identified it as ‘the seventh astral volume’ without further context.

“I know that you don’t Clara,” I said, fighting down the urge to raise my voice.

“But Hadrian is counting on us, the cult here already knows that it has been exposed. It is either going to shut down, or it is going to blow up. Both of those things are bad for us and for the Imperium. The only chance we have is to move quickly, and if you have a better option Id love to hear it.” Despite my best efforts my tone became somewhat hectoring. My worry about Hadrian, my own sense of failure, and the effort of reading the book were all wearing on me. As was my trepidation about what I was about to attempt.

“I don’t…. I just feel like maybe we are going a little too far,” she admitted. The fear in her voice nearly made me give the whole thing away. Clara wasn’t afraid to die, but she was afraid that what I proposed to do was worse than being cut down in a gunfight.

“You don’t have to stay if you…” I began, but she cut me off, laying a calloused hand over mine.

“If you are going to do it lets just get it over with,” she said.

_____

The Hotel Imperial catered to aristocrats. That meant that it had seen its share of strange revels. The decadence of the Imperial aristocracy was such that nearly any excess could be imagined and excused. I suspect that if the Gravemire staff had seen what was going on in the ballroom of the floor we had booked even that tolerance might not have been enough. In the center of the great marble dancefloor lay the assassin, his body covered in a thick viscous cocoon of oil which spread slowly across the white marble like the stain of corruption. Around him in an intricate and expanding spiral pattern hundreds of kilos of rocksalt had been poured out, weaving its way through a series of complicated interconnections to the very edges of the dance floor where they terminated at the bases of thick votive candles, each of which had been used at a funeral. The doorways and windows were laced with intricate latices of prayer ribbon, tied together with sprigs of sage and strands of my hair. Tribesmen from the Caledonia stood flanking each doorway, their eyes bound with blindfolds of sable velvet, each holding a silvered mace in one hand and a bronze saltzer in the other. Each man had been washed in salt water and had his heart and lips marked with sacred oils. Incense burned in a dozen places, filling the air with cloying perfume.

I entered from the southern door. It was actually slightly to the south east but such specifics matter less than the intention in such proceedings. I was naked save for a long golden chain which had been wound seven times around my body. I had been bathed as the men and anointed with oils. I had the crematorium ashes of a man I had killed on my eyelids, in this case provided by the unfortunate cultist who had been ripped apart by the servitors. I paused as I entered, allowing the blindfolded tribesman time to close the entrance with the prayer ribbon and herbs. Clara walked beside me. She was dressed in an armored body glove and held a pistol in one hand and sword in the other. She looked more than a little uncomfortable but did not complain, the time for such objections come and gone. I knelt down and lifted a small silver gong and striker from the ground. I struck the gong and then began to chant, walking forward at a measured pace. Each time a verse ended I struck another peel from the gong, my feet traveling the path of the spiral marked out in salt. The candle flames guttered and lowered as I moved forward, though they never quite extinguished. Clara followed in my wake, silent and uneasy. All around us the shadows darkened, seeming almost to move and coil as the struggled against the feeble light of of the candles.

It took perhaps ten minutes to reach the center of the spiral. By then I was glowing with a faint witchlight that seemed to cling to me like steam on a cold day. The oily corpse lay on the marble, a black void against the white stone. The autorifle lay beside him, surrounded by its own ring of salt. I stopped in place and raised my hands, the sudden cessation in my low chant ringing like a bell around the vast ballroom. I closed my eyes and focused my will, reaching out with both hands as I struggled with the currents of the Immaterium.

“Awake!” I commanded in a thundering voice. Every candle flame in the room suddenly flared to the size of a grapefruit. Wax spattered in all directions, splashing several of the tribesman. They remained stoically silent as instructed, their feral world origin serving me far better than would a similar group from less superstitious beginnings. The candle flames flared in weird asynchrony for a few seconds and then the salt touching them caught fire, beginning to slowly burn inwards, tracing the spiral in fire like a trail of slow burning gun powder.

The oily corpse sat up, eyelids flying open to reveal wide and horrified blue eyes. The corpse thing screamed and threw itself at me. I was ready for it and managed to avoid flinching by a massive effort of will. The body struck an invisible barrier and recoiled collapsing to the floor and beginning to sob. The droplets of oil continued, spattering my naked body with loathesome slick splotches of filth.

“What is your name?” I asked the weeping corpse. The corpse sobbed and hacked, bringing up lungfuls of the oil which had drowned it in great sprays.

“You have murdered me!” It raged, “you have damned me!”

“You have damned yourself. What is your name?” I demanded mercilessly. It scrambled to its feet and lunged, crashing once more into the invisible barrier.

“You will join me in the flames for this blasphemy witch! She Who Thirsts will suck the marrow from your living bones for eternity, She will…

“What is your name?! Thrice I ask and done!” I thundered.

“Jogar Carden!” the corpse screamed, the words ripped unwillingly from its throat.

“Emmaline,” Clara said in a low urgent voice, “the flames.” The fire was almost halfway around the spiral now, burning inward like a Saint Catherine’s wheel on Ascension day. I didn’t respond to Clara, I didn’t dare take my attention from the dead man. Sweat was running down my brow from the effort I was expending, mixing with the oil droplets to run down my clammy body.

“Who sent you to kill Hadrian Drakos?” I demanded. The corpse screamed though more in desperation than anger.

“You can’t let me go back, you can’t let me go back to the torment,” he pleaded.

“Who sent you to kill Hadrian Drakos?” I repeated.

“Please, you cant let them have me, for the Emperor Sake…”

“Who sent…”

“The Under Council!” the corpse shrieked, unwilling to be compelled a second time.

“Where can I find them?” I demanded.

“Emmaline,” Clara repeated her voice trembling as the fire seemed to accelerate towards us, a trick of the spiral more than a real effect but no less frightening for that.

“Save me and I will tell you, save me and I will…”

Time was very short now, the binding would only last as long as the salt burned. There was nothing I could do for this heretic, nothing I could offer him, not even oblivion.

“Where can I find them, I need to know before the flames…” The crack of the autogun was deafening in the acoustic space of the ballroom. The corpse flew backwards, spraying a great gout of oil from an exit wound in the back of its now ruined head. I sagged to my knees as Clara lowered the oily autogun, its barrel still smoking. The light had returned to normal, less than a foot of unburned salt between the center of the spiral and the smoking ruin of the binding spell.

“Is it over?” Clara asked, though from the tone she already knew the answer. I sagged to the floor, toppling over to lay on the oily floor. I felt stained, but not from anything as common as machine lubricant.

“It is over.”

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.