Then.........The interior of the Cathedral of Saint Sardavia rang with music. The great nave, a series of Gothic arches three hundred meters high and nearly a kilometer long, was hung with tens of thousands of sacred buntings. Each bunting was an individual work of art, a piece of silk which had been lovingly dyed in votive patterns and stitched with hair of the supplicant to create stylized devotions to Saint Sardavia and the God Emperor. Many of those patterns had already begun to run, the interiority of the cathedral so monumental that the breath of the hundred thousand congregants below was condensing and falling as a misty rain. Streams of varicoloured water ran down the vast oozlite column which supported the arches vanishing into cracks in the ancient stone floor. The noise was enormous. The simple breathing of a hundred thousand human beings created a continuous semi-gale which guttered the flames of the foot thick votive candles which sprang from the floor like fungus in a dark cave. The sheets of melted wax glittered with votive coins, tossed by pilgrims against the walls of the chapel to eventually be covered over by fresh candlemelt. Some, those that landed close to burning flames, grew hot and sank slowly into the wax around them, giving an impression of impatience. The millions of tapers added a sibilant hissing burn to the mix as well as heating the air almost five degrees above Sigma Nillium’s balmy midsummer twenty. The cries of preachers and pardoners, the ringing of bells, and the buzz of conversation combine to create an almost physical pressure which squeezed the chest like a vice.
And that was before the music.
Nine choirs of nine hundred and ninety nine choralists. Women below the age of twenty one and gelded males raised their voices in a version of the Triumph of Terra so intricate and so baroque with polyphonic embellishments that it was all but mesmeric. Each choir sang to a Hymnal - a latent psyker who had been ritually lobotomized and then grafted into one of the nine pillars. Each pillar rose, seemingly from the gilded cervical vertebrae of the blinded and gilded Hymnals, branching out from the their frost covered backs in twisting verdegris traceries before splitting and coiling up towards the arches. The music, received from the choirs and transmitted through the hymnals flowered through thousands of pipes, ringing through the cathedral as more than just sound. It pulled at the mind and tugged at the soul praising the God Emperor in a might antiphonal chorus which reflected and refracted off the walls and ceilings until it reached such a pitch of intensity that newcomers to the cathedral fell to their knees and and wept.
The reason for the crowds, and the music, was that on this day, Saint Sardavia’s day, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine young women, had been gathered to offer their vows to the God Emperor of Terra. They would speak their oaths of devotion and then be taken off to Cannon schools to begin the harsh and arduous training which might eventually lead them to a place in one of the Sororitaic orders. Most would go to the Hospitalars and Dialougues but a few might one day win the ultimate honor of admission into the chambers Militant. That was, at least, the theory. A selection of girls, chosen for their beauty and lack of political connections, would find themselves quietly sold off to slavers who would convert them to high end joy girls for deviant Ecclesiarchs, reprobate nobles, and other interested and well monied parties. Among the Ecclesiarchs it was semi open secret, tolerated in exchange for a river of bribes, inducements, and favormongery.
“Keep your censor straight or I shall have you whipped!” Reverend Father Pytor Grim snapped at one of the two temple guards who flanked him. The guards wore flowing robes of white and crimson cloth, their faces covered by gold veined porcelain masks which had been etched to resemble jigsaw pieces. They carried brass censors attached by chains to the ends of long wooden poles. The smell of burning menander root wafted out, sharp and pungent. The guard straightened his pole without comment. Each of the Reverend Fathers, noticeable for their brown robes and long conical head dresses, had a pair of such guards. Pytor muttered in disgust as he walked along the assembled ranks of girls, their eyes all upturned to the massive gilded aquila at the end of the nave, it’s fifty meter wingspan cunningly designed to reflect the musical worship back down the cathedral as though the voice of Terra itself were singing. High Prelate Comier himself stood between its feet atop a pulpit so encrusted with gold and jewels that the simple white robed vestments of his office seemed to shine like a diamond amid the tacky splendor. Hundreds of servo-skulls, each one taken from one of Sardavia’s martyred companions, circled around him like predatory fish.
Father Pytor returned his gaze to the kneeling girls. Each one wore a white shift and a gauzy veil secured by a chaplet of wild flowers. Behind them stood two sponsors. In most cases these were parents, though a few were represented by minor nobility or even Ecclesiarchs if they warranted it. Pytor touched each on the forehead with a brush dipped into a vial of sacred oil, mentally noting the prettiest specimens as possible candidates for sale. Those with run down looking sponsors, simple artisans in their best clothes, or down on their luck traders renting luxury garments they could not afford were the best candidates. No one to follow up on a child who was certainly serving the Emperor off world. His eyes fell on the petulant face of a young woman, perhaps thirteen years old. She was quite lovely, with rich brown hair that curled slightly beneath the constriction of her chaplet. Honey colored eyes blazed from beneath her veil and her youthful slimness was already giving way to what would become her womanly figure. Her skin was clear and her garments were fine, her sponsors though… they were clearly muscle, their identical suits of synthweave marking them out as the guards of some noble house. Pytor nodded inwardly, this wouldn’t be the first noble house looking to rid itself of a troublesome daughter and gain some favor in the eyes of the Emperor in the process. The girl had probably been brought here against her will, the guards more to prevent her from fleeing than to vouch for her soul. Pytor added her to his list.
“Bless you my child,” Pytor intoned as he anointed her forehead.
“Do you swear to defend the Imperial…” the High Prelate’s voice swelled from innumerable tannoys and speakers held aloft by servitor cherubs. Pytor watched the girl out of the corner of his eye. According to the data slate she was the bastard daughter of the Duke of Belforma, one of the great planetary dynasts. Like many of his bastards the girl was more vital and energetic than his listless legitimate heirs, necessitating their removal from dynastic politics. Belforma was consequently, if illegitimately, well represented in the schola progenium, ministoroum, and other arms of Imperial authority. So long as it was off world, and out of the lines of succession and dynastic politics.
There was a sudden commotion at the entrance to the nave, not so much sound, even gunfire would have been muted over the buzzing roar of the High Prelate. Instead there was a wave of jostling as a ripple of movement transmitted itself from the entrance to the knave. Sponsors and temple guards tried to shield priests and initiates with their bodies, preventing an incipient trample with knots of braced muscle. The hymn faltered slightly, the audible portion dropping out of sync with the psychic undersong. Pytor muttered a curse and glanced around to see one of his guards leaning down to whisper in the girl's ear. He opened his mouth to shout a reprimand to the man when he saw the girl’s eyes open wide. One of her sponsors reached out to shove the guard away but with a shocking turn of speed the temple guard grabbed the man’s hand and yanked him off balance, bringing his knee up to crack into his victim's chin. The second sponsor took a step backwards and drew a handgun from his jacket. The girl dropped sideways into a three point brace on both hands and one leg. Her other leg lashed out and drove her foot into the side of her minder’s knee. There was a crack as bones and cartilage gave and a scream audible even over the increasing chaos that was engulfing the knave. The minder’s gun went off blasting skywards like a starter's pistol at a gymnasium. The crowd opened like an iris around the gunfire, the faux temple guard whirled his staff and knocked the gun from the screaming minder’s hand. The girl caught it with one hand, tearing off her chaplet and veil with the other as she leaped to her feet. The fake temple guard drove the iron ferrule at the bottom of his staff into the groaning man’s belly, air and vomit exploded from the stricken sponsor's mouth. The girl shouted something triumphant and then ran for one of the side exits followed by the false guard. Every few seconds she fired into the air, sending people diving out of her way as she vanished from the cathedral, the sound of her silvery laughter somehow hanging in the air.
Now.......The Old Man was dead. Auspex confirmed it. Their own eyes confirmed it. Orthelio Bathazar Belchite, by the Grace of the Immortal Emperor, Captain and Rogue Trader, lay in the bottom of a rocky gully encrusted with spurs of glyphsalt in hues of reddish purple. He was naked, or nearly so and his waxy skin was salt burned and sand blasted, save where the chrome of his augmetics had been polished bright by the wind blown grit. The Old Man had been an impressive specimen, something Imperial science could be proud of given his nearly three hundred years of age. He looked to be around fifty, powerfully built with the compact physique of a boxer. There was a look of surprise on his lined face, a look justified by the cratered wound that had nearly decapitated him. Judging from the look of it, the wound was made by a las blast, the skin around it partially cauterized and then broken open by the liquid shock passing through the tissue.
Camilla Atrantio slid down into the gully, triggering a small avalanche as her booted foot dislodged dirt and crystals of glyphsalt. She was pleased that she had dressed for this occasion, a form fitting body glove with integral cooling and armor plating stitched into its fiber weave covered her from head to toe. A long scarf had been wound around her head and her eyes were protected by large polarized goggles that gave her a vaguely insectile look. Even with all that protection the relief from the constant enervating wind that the gully provided was immediate. Godfarthing was an arid place, ninety percent of the surface covered with salt deserts and rocky badlands. Civilization, such as it was, existed in a pair of hives at each pole, and in long canyons cut through the limestone of ancient and long evaporated seas. There were isolated freeholds out in the desert where the nomads harvested glyphsalt but they were strange, exotic, and little trusted by the canyon dwellers. By an accident of geological topography the world was unusually flat with a maximum variation in altitude of less than a hundred meters. The result of this was that great wind storms howled around the globe encountering nothing that could check their progress and break their momentum. Over the passage of the eons the wind had stripped more and more soil and rock as it circled the rock, slowly sand blasting what little resistance the limestone could muster.
The slow excoriation was a blessing for the world, something the preachers never failed to point out in their interminable sermons, as the slow erosion had exposed the glyphsalt which was the source of the world's considerable wealth. Camilla was no Magos Biologos but she understood that the valuable crystals were the remains of a life form which had existed on this planet millions of years ago, crushed and condensed by the passage of time in the same way as prometheum. The Old Man had come here to negotiate with the locals for a cargo of the stuff. He had come down from orbit nearly a week ago and hadn’t made contact since. He might never have been found, might have been sanded away to nothing by the winds out here in this lonely gully, if it hadn’t been for his augments. The metallic elements weren’t much, but the crust of Godfarthing had no native minerals that registered ferric on the auspex and the tech priests on the Navarre had been able to scan the area around the Old Man’s last known location.
“Damn,” Camilla muttered as she pulled down the scarf which protected her lips and face from the ever present sting of flying grit.
“Orthelio!” Yvrine Caldes cried, scrambling past Camilla to throw herself down atop the body. Yvrine was dressed much as Camilla was, though she was taller and broader, heavily muscled where Camilla was lithe. Yvrine’s skin, visible now only at the back of her neck, was dark, almost black. Camilla had sailed with her uncle for nearly five years and the fact of his death seemed impossible. So many times she was sure he had died, only for him to reveal it was some clever ruse, some trick or stratagem. Not this time. Not ever again. Camilla turned away from the weeping Yvrine, her own eyes stinging. Before she left this planet she was going to find out who did this. Find out, and make them pay.
_____________
The heretic screamed, though the sound was muffled by the huge glass helmet he wore. They liked killing heretics on Godfarthing, though the heresy did tend to be more in the nature of settling scores with unpopular and powerless neighbors rather than actual collaboration with the Archenemy of Mankind. The method was unique at least, though it was doubtful this fact much comforted those condemned to it. Rather than fire, heretics on Godfarthing were executed by wind. The man on the gallows had been fitted with a helmet of clear glass that was connected by hoses to the howling wind storm which raged above the canyon wall of Jujeni Primary. The hoses funneled the grit down into the helmet at firehose pressure, the abrasive blast stripping away the soft tissue of the head, face, eyes, lips, by slow degrees. It was technically possible to drown as the sand filled the execution hood, but most people bled out from shredded veins and capillaries long before the mix of sand and blood could choke the ruins of their lungs. Men in long sober robes and women in dresses of blue or green with starched wimples watched. A few children threw rocks at the dying heretic, though patrolmen in flak armor and bowel helmet with sun visors half heartedly dispersed them with blows and threats. A preacher, ecclesiarch would have been two strong a word, dressed in the scarlet robes of a Red Imam, called the Emperor's judgment on the man who was still, incredibly, not finished dying.
Camilla took another bite of the ploin and chewed thoughtfully. She was a striking woman apparently in her mid twenties. Long brown hair was coiled up in a crown braid that framed a beautiful face with high cheekbones which gave her a lean and hungry look. Her skin clear and sunkissed like expensive sidan wood. Intricate traceries of electrum had been laid into her skin, the outward sign of fabulously expensive neurolinkages and synaptic architecture. Where the dress of Godfarthing tended towards the severe and practical, she was dressed extravagantly, in a shimmering jacket of woven skarsilk, a pair of long, form hugging, trousers, and a pair of leather boots crisscrossed with intricate tooling. Jewels glittered at her fingers and throat, hung with fine sapphires. A pistol, a chrome Hecutor-10, hung in a quickdraw rig on her left side, and a long blade with an ornate hilt hung in a leather scabbard on a belt across her chair. The other patrons of the cantina, mostly staff members of the Hugensulk Administratum Liason, gave her a wide berth and suspicious glances. Godfarthing was a conservative place, Emperor help it but it seemed to be an affliction that all desert words shared, and she did not fit in. That was all right, Rogue Traders did not fit in anywhere, they were, by definition, outsiders.
“We should return to the ship,” Yvrine remarked, not for the first time. The Seneschal’s face was puffy from recent tears, though her voice was steady. With The Old Man gone, they needed to return to the ship, formally pass the Warrant on to his successor, read his will for Throne’s sake. Camilla shook her head. Despite Yvrine’s entreaties, she wasn’t going to return to the ship until whoever had slain her uncle had been brought to justice.
“I am sorry to keep you waiting Madmoiselle Captain,” a pinch faced man in a suede doublet apologized as he strode into the cantina followed by a pair of sanctioners, or magistratum, or whatever they called themselves here on Godfarthing. The Holy Order of Emperor Bothering Tough Guys With Clubs Club or something, Camilla had no doubt. The speaker was Anwarna Abadi, the senior law enforcement officer in Jugeni province. His rank was something like equivalent to a High Marshall though few world’s this far out in the Zionian Spur conformed exactly to the regulations of the centralizing bureaucracy. Anwarna was a pinch faced man, his face seemingly ill equipped to deal with the flabby excess of a sedentary life style, with a wispy collection of gray hair which had been combed over his head in a sad attempt to deny the ravages of age.
“Make it up to me by having something useful to say,” Camilla encouraged, her voice a rich contralto with the slightest touch of aristocratic haute. Both of Abadi’s bodyguards stiffened, accustomed to dealing with such disrespect with blows but unwilling to risk such a thing against an off worlder of uncertain, but certainly high, status.
“I have reviewed my department’s files on the matter, and I am afraid that I can only conclude that your friend…”
“My Captain, Rogue Trader Orthelio Bathazar Belchite ,” Camilla interjected. She was being petty, but that was how one dealt with petty officials afterall.
“Your Captain as you say,” Abadi continued, “was murdered by desert bandits.” Abadi drew a folio of pale brown paper from his coat and opened it, spreading it out to reveal picts of the gully. A tent of metallized canvas had been erected over the gully and the sight had been picted and searched by what passed for local forensics. There were further pictures from the medicare mortis autopsy, analysis of the wound, tissue sampling. All of it made sense and yet, none of it did.
“This is the same file you transmitted to me yesterday,” Camilla observed, her voice level.
“The same, inadequate, file.”
“With respect Captain…” Abadi began.
“I piss on your respect!” Camilla snapped, her voice like a whip crack. The guards put their hands on their truncheons but didn’t attack. Abadi stood up fast enough that his chair tipped over and hit the paved floor with a crash.
“Do you seriously expect me to believe that a Rogue Trader, who came to this planet with three armsmen, went alone into the desert and was killed by random bandits. Bandits who your own people noted, never operate this close to the canyon? That these imaginary bandits not only killed him, but stripped him of everything of value except for priceless augmetics?”
“Mad’am I…” Camilla swatted Abadi across the face with the folio and then tossed it to the ground, scattering picts and reports over half the cantina.
“If you and your officers are too incompetent to see that, then I will find someone who can,” she declared, standing and tucking the folio into her jacket. With a flick of her wrist she settled her sword belt around her waist, high on her right hip.
“And as it happens, I have the perfect man for the job….”
@POOHEAD189 
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