Yvraine was talking into a communicator with increasing agitation. Something wasn’t going as the traitorous seneschal had planned. Camilla screamed internally as she pulled at the code holding her to the control throne. Unfortunately, circuitry designed to connect her nervous system to the ship was just as effective at connecting the ship to her nervous system and even twitching a finger was an enormous effort. No matter how she strained the ship would not be moved. Not the Ship. Her Ship. If what Yvraine had told her was true, then the Navarre was her birth right, not simply something the Old Man had chosen to bequeath to her. It belonged to her, and she belonged to it. The ship wasn’t fighting her because it wanted to, it was being forced to by Yvraine. Camilla reversed her efforts, sending her mind into the ship rather than struggling to pull away from it. Vast sections of the ship were locked away from her by the code geas, but the Navarre was there, she could taste the dust of far worlds, feel the crackle of the void shields on her skin, the odd taste of the liquor of the Immaterium and the remembered electric hows of lance batteries. For a brief moment she broke through and while she couldn’t move she could see through the sensors. Deep in the bowels of the ship she saw the ship's people shifting nervously at the clangor of alarms. Armsmen, some loyal to Yvraine, others to her, some simply scared and confused, were fighting desperate close quarters battles in the compartments and accessways around the barracks. The pilots were at their birds, uncertain of what was happening, but ready to lift if the word came. Ground crews huddled in their ready bunkers, old riot guns and improvised weapons in hand.
She saw the bridge from the eyes of the surviving servo skulls.
The carnage was immense, the dead and dying lay in their hundreds, shredded by las fire or ripped to bloody rags by grenades. The Navarre’s mighty machine spirit grieved, in its alien mechanical way, for hands and input jacks that would never again touch her systems, or call crisp orders that would send her sailing out into the voids between worlds. It was an effort for Camilla to remember that they were friends and not merely components of which she had been fond. Jocasta and Alcander were there, ludicrously outnumbered but desperately trying to reach the void shielded throne. Suddenly Camilla knew what she had to do.
“Whatever you're doing stops now, I can take your implants off your corpse if I have to!” Yvraine snapped as she noticed the glass eyed focus which had come over Camilla’s face. Camilla didn’t really here her, her focus was entirely on Jocasta and Alcander. She reached out with her mind, unable to offer a command but instead hurling a wordless plea to Navarre's machine spirit.
A lot of things happened at once.
Jocasta was cowering behind a console as a storm of las fire swept over it, heating the metal casings until they glowed cherry red. Behind her one of the vast red and white banners was burning, coils of smoke being sucked towards the ceiling by vast air extractors. She was sliding the last magazine of rounds into her pistol when suddenly the control throne shuddered and one of the facia plates slid back to reveal an interface port. At first she took it as a malfunction as the cogitators' distressed machine spirit spasmed under the las fire that the guards were pouring into it. She slotted the magazine home and fired as one of the traitorous armsmen tired to flank her. The gout of magnesium infused uranium, cut him into two burning halves and set fire to another of the banners in a spray of burning blood. A second glance revealed that below the access port a light was blinking. Zero, one, zero, zero, one, zero, one, zero. Jocasta blinked in surprise.
“I thought you would never ask!” she cried and thrust her hand against the access plate.
Jocasta’s scream was audible even over the din of the gun battle. Camilla tried not to imagine the agony her friend was undergoing as the code geas poured into her augmented body. But as it poured into the Armsmaster, it poured out of her. Yvraine didn’t know what was going on, but it was too far divergent from her own plan to be welcome. The decision flashed in her eyes and her finger began to tighten on the trigger. Camilla blinked the void shield down a heartbeat before Alcander pulled the trigger. Yvraine screamed and clutched at her face, her own shot going wide and ricocheting of the actuality sphere. Camilla came up off the control throne like a coiled spring, smashing into the Seneschal and hurling her to the ground. Yvraine was too seasoned a fighter to be taken so easily and she swept Camilla’s feet from beneath her with a powerful kick. Ozone from the void shield stung at their sinuses and made their eyes water but did nothing to lessen the fury of the battle. Yvraine tried to throw herself across Camilla but the would be Rogue Trader anticipated it and used the momentum to toss her Seneschal into the control throne with an impact that would have shattered ribs if not for the body armor that traded broken bones for bruises. Yvraine rolled into a sitting position and whipped a hold out las from her boot, firing an instant too late as Camilla came at her with a vibro stiletto, forcing her to use the gun to parry the blow. Yvraine drove her knee into Camilla’s unarmored belly, driving her back as air exploded from abused lungs, smoke billowing from her nostrils like a startled dragon. The Seneschal launched herself at her rival, grabbing Camilla as the two went down in a flurry of short punches and kicks that resembled a cat fight, if both cats were hungry carnadons rather than the domestic variety. Through luck more than skill Camilla came up, stradling Yvraine’s chest and raining blows down on the older woman, so furiously she was blooding her knuckles on the bones of the Seneshal’s face. In desperation Yvraine reached out and caught the fallen ceremonial power sword. The blade screamed to life as she brought it around in a clumsy haymaker that would have cut Camilla in half if she hadn’t thrown herself off the woman in a desperate evasion. She came up on her feet and pulled her own sword from its scabbard. The jeweled hilt glittering as she exposed three feet of priceless vampire steel worked with the jagged watermark of its bloody forging. Yvraine came at her with a master’s discipline despite the mass of bruises that covered her face. Camilla’s blade twitched towards the blood flowing from a split lip and bloodied nose. Powersword met vampire steel in a screaming cascade of sparks. Parry low, twist, strike high, short punch, kick, strike again, riposte. The two women clashed in a web of steel that ended in a clash of swords as the two women stood breast to breast, heaving and sweating.
“Nice try, but I was always better with a blade,” Yvraine snarled, and shoved Camilla back, no elegant footwork able to account for fifty pounds of weight and muscle. She drew back her sword to strike when three ragged bloody holes erupted in her chest. Senechal frowned and looked down at the ruin of her chest, then lowered her sword. The powerblade fell from her fingers as she sank to her knees, the ancient weapon clattering to the deck, the power field hissing as it touched tacky blood. Camilla turned to see Alcander lowering his smoking auto gun. Behind him two banners were falling, both on fire, and whipping up a wind as thousands of pounds of burning linen fluttered from the sky.
“Ah thenk,” he commented judiciously, “we mey 'ave creked the cess.”
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