StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Prologue

The Eldar are arrogant. It’s a truism to all those who’ve had dealings with them, but I’ve found, in my explorations of their activities during my Inquisitorial Career, that they are so arrogant that that little dictum needs to be repeated and expanded upon. The Eldar are immensely and unjustifiably arrogant.

I reflected upon this as I leaned against my stick on the grim surface of Thangod Colony, a small settlement on Beta-Coplin XXI. It had been the victim of Eldar raids, on and off, every century, for a great many millennia. The Kabalite Eldar pirate raiders these were; the worst kind, and also the most arrogant.

They came every hundred years to this world, when the moons blocked out all light from its star, a celestial alignment that appealed to their dark sense of drama. On occasion, they’d been stopped. The traditions of the locals had developed through many phases to try and save themselves. Going to ‘The Hiding’ a network of tunnels cut out with meltas, had been an option for several centuries, but the superior auspices of the aliens had rendered that fruitless.

Then the tradition had become to arm everyone but the children. That had only increased the size of the raids as the aliens learnt there was good sport to be had.

After that, they’d tried leaving randomly selected sacrifices outside settlements, but the eldar had disdained such easy pickings, scarring and cutting those who were left out, but otherwise leaving them in favour of those who weren’t resigned to their fate.

I’d eventually learnt of this shocking regularity and made it my business to be there for the next ‘Devil Night.’ And so, my companions and I waited now, as the last rays of the sun faded.

The comm. bead in my ear crackled, “Stars are right,” Magos Santiso reported, the pre-agreed code for the activation of the webway portal. I tuned into the feed of one of the spy-flies watching the portal, now a blue tear in space that seemed projected from a piece of wraithbone. Capering dark figures could be seen riding spiked, angular skiffs.

The fly, perched on a rock, watched as transport and attack skiffs roared into the sky, headed east, covered in armoured warriors. Some I recognised by their heavy armour and ritual white face plates to be the bodyguards of the alien warlords. I nodded to myself in satisfaction, “They approach,” I whispered, “be ready.”

My followers signalled their readiness in their own ways. Sathila merely raised a finger a fraction of an inch from the hilt of her sword while Santiso nodded gravely, his white and burgundy hood flexing as he did so. Anasasia smiled a little, disabling her ‘limiter’ with the customary twitch of her neck, and fiddling with one of her digital weapons. I didn’t really feel her presence too much, my mind was no longer quite as that of other humans, but Sathila and even Santiso reacted visibly.

Of course, we weren’t on our own against such a raiding force. The Fire Drakes were there. Heavyset guardsmen in carapace armour with backpack fed lasguns and flamers. I’d diverted them to make this little raid possible, though, returning my attention to the spy-fly’s feed, I had full confidence in their ability to rout the eldar.

Our mission, on the other hand, was far more select. The alien warlord, I wanted her. My investigations as a member of the Ordo Illimunas, the group of inquisitors dedicated to investigating the reports of ‘Illuminated’ individuals behind a number of heretical conspiracies, and bringing these individuals to justice.

On many occasions, these persons had been implicated with the eldar, and so my investigations primarily concerned that xeno-breed these days. My efforts with ordinary eldar pirates had only met with moderate success, for few of those I could capture were sufficiently adept at navigating that eldar ant’s nest.

The screech of eldar engines could be heard now, and I watched the concealed positions of the Fire Drakes carefully. They were positioned so as to resemble, on auspexes, the normal inhabitants of the settlement – currently aboard the Drakes’ ship. Huddling in houses, they wouldn’t draw much attention until they began gunning down raiders who entered the hovels.

The engines shut down as the eldar vehicles began gliding on their suspensors, and my group prepared ourselves. Cackling, whooping and mocking cries in the tongue of the dark eldar could be heard, as the invaders spread throughout the settlements. Then the first harsh snaps of lasguns, some of the cries became startled.

“Magos” said I, “Inform the Scrutiny to eliminate the portal.”

He nodded, and I turned to the building’s barred window, looking westwards. A column of brilliant brightness illuminated the stygian devil-night, and I drew my sword, a gift from my mentor upon my elevation to the status of inquisitor, it was a xenos weapon. A phase-sword, made into a swordstick, its blade shone with its own illumination, and yet was simultaneously covered by a smoky darkness that I knew to be parts of it entering and leaving real space, in anticipation, telepathic circuits in its grip, that had been crafted to prevent anyone but me from using it, could feel my anticipation, and the alien blade returned it, yearning to slay eldar.

The retina-searing brightness of the lance shot that had incinerated the webway portal, fated, leaving a vertical white line on my vision, I blinked to clear it, as the sounds of battle increased all around, doubtless the eldar weren’t coming to this building, too occupied with the Fire Drakes.

“All units. Begin counter attack,” I said, and Sathila opened the hovel’s door, bounding out with a lithe grace that was similar to that of the eldar themselves. Here and there, eldar warriors cut Drakes down, their barbed blades sliding between plates of carapace armour, or their foul weapons ripping wretched screams from guardsmen as alien poisons coursed through valiant veins.

Santiso’s gun chattered as the stubber flung out shells into the body of a capering, dancing gladiatrix, picking her from her feet and throwing her from her feet as inferno shells burst within her. ‘Serves the alien bitch right for dancing around naked in a battle,’ I thought to myself as I sprinted across the open road towards the alien leader’s vehicle. She’d dismounted, now, and was gleefully cutting apart a fire-team of Drakes, her bodyguards standing back and letting her get on with it.

I raised my bolt pistol and shot one of them, for all the good it did against their powered alien armour. They turned almost as one, and Santiso managed to poke an inferno shot through the hip joint of one of the incubi, resulting in a gout of flame bursting from its groin in an image that would have been in other circumstances, hilarious.

Their mistress said something, and pointed at us. The four remaining incubi sprinted towards us. Santiso’s shots and mine did little, and though they sprayed him (and myself, though it pattered off my conversion field like rain against the tin roves of the settlement) and I with splinters, and he bellowed in pain as several of his organic parts were ravaged.

The first Incubus was upon me, and I lashed out with my blade to block its fearsome, long-headed glaive. They crackled, and I stepped aside. The phase blade sensed my change in intent, and the glaive fell through it. The eldar gargled something as he fell, my sword having flickered through his neck and severed only the arteries and nerves therein.

I whipped the blade around to transfix the one struggling with my swordswoman through the spine, like an obscene display of an insect; it thrashed briefly, its plate armour increasing the illusion. Anasasia ducked away from another of the fleet creatures, and Sathila lashed out to distract the eldar, earning a slice from the blade for her trouble, crying out in agony as she fell.

The remnants of the Drakes were disposed of, but more were coming, felling one of the bodyguards with staccato las fire. Their leader was on me now, her mesh armoured, lithe body twisting this way and that as she batted my blade away with a flurry of blows, forcing me to parry frantically.

She twitched as a needle penetrated her flank, and then went rigid as her system tried to accommodate a hefty dose of Stun from one of Anasasia’s needlers. I cut her wrist, a paralysing stroke, and her nerveless hand dropped her power sword to the floor with a clatter. One of the bodyguards hit me, and I could feel a line of fire, as though my flesh were being chewed, even through my carapace armoured back. I fell, and the incubus raised his weapon, though I couldn’t see it until Santiso gracefully replayed it for me.

A double shot from Santiso through the back of the Incubus’ head, crunching through the armour on the second strike, saved me, and I rolled over in the dirt, the eldar beside me, even more disabled than I was.

“Valkyrie…” I gasped, “Now…”

Santiso nodded, and I was sure he was signalling for the transport to come down and collect us. To my eyes, it seemed like half the eldar army was turning on us now, and Sathila went down to a splinter shot. The Drakes were still on them though, and las fire ionised the air and burnt almost decorative patterns onto my vision. The throbbing roar of engines echoed over the settlement again, but these were no eldar drives, but the throaty roar of our transport coming to collect us. Santiso grabbed me with a mechadendrite, and the eldar, already recovering, with the same, helping me to my feet, and divesting the raider of her other, ‘agoniser’ blade.

The dropship landed, and I stumbled in, falling flat on the floor. “Back to the ship…” said I hoarsely, and moments later, we were in the air. It was, after all, a massacre, just as I’d hoped, the raiders were completely exterminated, and I had my prize…

Hah hah at the eldar. Masterstroke, even; the look on the Incubi's face when his weapon passed through the Inquistor's phase blade would have been comical.

Desperately in need of a quick edit, but well-written and entertaining. A little bit of polish could go a long way here.

Feil wrote:Desperately in need of a quick edit, but well-written and entertaining. A little bit of polish could go a long way here.

It's meant to be somewhat poor english. Hastily written first person account don'tcha know.

Nice, good dirty fun.

I'll be watching this.

I've had a go at re-jigging the style to be as illiterate as before, but a little more 'designer illiterate' tell me what you think. Parenteses ahoy!

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Chapter One

The Scrutiny of Justice was an old ship, one I’d found six years ago now – then – as a hulk, and persuaded my associates in the Adeptus Mechanicus to get it refitted. Of course, that had been only the first part of the Scrutiny’s journey. After that, had come the difficult matter of getting a non-naval crew. I’d had altercations with the navy, and I didn’t want to let them keep too much of a hold on me. Easy enough to replace their conscripts – I solved the mutant problem on a hive world, and got a crew of motley mostly-volunteers.

Mostly-volunteers, because even the strictures of naval enlistees were better than those of the slave class they’d come from. Indeed, many held a tremendous and flattering loyalty to me personally, though they knew not the full details of my calling.

The officers and specialists were harder to procure, but in the end, a trawl through disreputable hive-spaceports had turned up several hundred likely candidates; the kind whose service records held up to scrutiny about as well as the hollow festival mannequins of the world I’d collected most of them on would hold up to bolter fire.

The drop ship pulled into one of the ship’s large landing bays – you’ll likely have access to information on the Devastation class cruiser, a fine ship design now sadly associated with the Archenemy’s fleets. This is what the Scrutiny started out as, though it possessed some refinements on that design - each of which contained entire squadrons of fighters and bombers, torpedo bombers and shark assault boats. Huge amounts of equipment were piled around the bay as we disembarked with our captive. I held on to the copula that held the shuttle’s heavy bolter at the side door, and tried to get used to the slightly higher gravity on the ship again. “Get her contained,” I muttered, and Santiso dragged the Eldar from the shuttle, out onto the chaotic deck. Anasasia carried Sathila, still disabled by the Eldar weapons. “Medicae with her. And me,” I added, sheathing my sword again, thankful, for once, of the ‘stylish’ cane scabbard of it as I limped across the deck.

We left the Beta-Coplin system at high speed shortly after. Fortunately for our itinerary, the system was compact enough to make this a two-day journey, long enough to be sure that Sathila was out of the underhive, and for my back – ironically, a harder wound to treat, wiring her up to a de-tox vat for a week worked quite easily. My wound took much longer, and left a scar that remained there until… It is a later tale, how I lost it.


As I made my exit from the less than competent ministrations of Medicae Thaltus, actually, I malign unfairly, gruff though he was, our medicae was up to the task of putting one’s body back together after most wounds, and from the medicum situated on the deck reserved for my use and the use of my people, I ran across the ship’s captain. Mydar Sephulian. Now, be assured, reader, that you’ve never met a more petulant man in your life. Mydar’s not the type to quibble, or complain (at least, not with any modicum of subtlety), he just insults those who annoy him. Even me. He’s a tall fellow with blonde hair, a blue eye (the other being a crimson glowing prosthetic, still rather tasteful, though he had it covered in gold and enamelling) and rugged good looks – a bit too heavily built for my taste, and he preferred women anyway, but still. Anyway, I kept him around because he happens to have a rogue trader licence of considerable antiquity, which is useful when you want to pose as something other than an inquisitor.

Obviously, having just been cut up on the surface, and quite painfully wounded (and that’s beside Thaltus’ seeming aversion to anaesthetics) I wasn’t in the mood to speak to Mydar who had a garrulous-quarrelsome look about him, so I did my best to sidle out of the way down the corridor, slipping behind a gargoyle-lion encrusted archway into a little alcove littered with mops and cleaning gear and even a few spare servitor attachments.

“You!” He cries with trademark impudence, and I hear him coming after me, which needless to say, dismays me greatly. I poke my head around the corner, and step out. “Mydar?” says I, deciding to pretend that I hadn’t been avoiding the blasted reprobate, I quickly turned and studied the gargoyle intently, “That you old fellow?”

He wasn’t taking this for a second, “Aye,” says he, turning around as he caught up with me, “I see you’ve finally gotten us away from this blasted planet. What boring and dangerous heist are you taking us off to now?”

He didn’t like me, though he had to live with me, mostly because the crew’s loyalty was to me, not him. If it weren’t for that, I had little doubt that I’d have been chewing hard vacuum years ago. What Mydar wanted was to be getting rich, not, his own words, mind ‘carting a mad inquisitor around to every pirate hole and xeno nest in the segmentum.’

“I don’t know,” I answered, truthfully, “We’re best heading off to re-provision for now. Then maybe make a stop at the station,” the station was another of my resources. I called it the station, anyway, Mydar insisted on calling it the dock. It was, he told me, an orbital dock. He wouldn’t tell me why it was one, given that it sat in an asteroid field, and wasn’t in any kind of orbit that I could see either.

“Oh good,” Mydar said, “You won’t be trying flat out to get me killed this week then?” he asked and I fixed him with an angry stare.

“Try to remember that I am an inquisitor. I go where I must to protect the Imperium…”

“I’ll remember that when you start acting like one,” he said.

“Oh joy. I’ve told you many times. All my activities are aimed at long-term security of the Emperor’s blessed domain… In any case, don’t you have a ship to be flying?” I goaded him, and he finally relented and went away.


Magos Santiso was better company, or at least, more respectful company. He, like most of my closer warband, like my sword, had been something of a ‘gift’ from my mentor. Contacts, far more valuable, and at times, more tangible than the phase sword, in a myriad of organisations - Santiso was the product of his links with the Adeptus Mechanicus, the same links that had indebted me by allowing the covert re-commissioning of the Scrutiny of Justice had furnished me with something of a technical advisor in Santiso.

A radical among the mechanicus, he was. He had recidivistic tendencies that clashed with my own innate traits but didn’t contradict. He believed in a different angle to the Quest For Knowledge. When he’d first explained it to me, it sounded relatively reasonable. The rebuilding of lost technologies using what was understood as a starting point, and what was known of lost relics as a control and testing mechanism.

I didn’t understand at the time the daunting magnitude of that incalculable task. But nevertheless, Santiso’s approach had its advantages, in building plasma weapons, at least, he’d made certain strides, though I wouldn’t actually use one of his slender, compact creations unless there was no other weapon to hand. I’ve seen the charred test-servitors he occasionally flushed out into the void.

On this occasion, I was discussing eldar technology with him. Which was to say, I was hazarding guesses based on my own (expansive, by the standards of laymen) knowledge of technical mysteries, and he was deftly rebuffing them as insane, impractical or farcical.

The poisons were interesting, in their way, and we both agreed that the weapons could be made significantly more lethal if the Eldar desired it. Fortunate for Sathila that they were crueller than they were intelligent – knowing of their cruelty, let that not be taken as advice for you to consider them foolish. Their cruelty is immense, and it’s small wonder that it exceeds their intellect. It exceeds mine too.

I often wondered how much of a radical Santiso truly was. He seemed to have an interest in alien technology; had certainly never levied any complaint at my employment of such artefacts. It didn’t surprise me that much of the alien equipment the Drakes and we had retrieved disappeared into his laboratories. It didn’t annoy me, either. I turned a blind eye to his radicalism; the least form of repayment for some of the more egregious favours he’d arranged for me.


I spent the next few days of our journey out system ensconced in my library, passing between states of fugue and frantic research into the small body or works that had been produced by my ordo. A veritable pall of opiate smoke (a habit I still cultivate, if any of you are reading this with a critical eye, I attest that my speech pattern is nothing to do with it, for most of the natives of my homeworld have a rather debased Gothic dialect, and it’s something I’ve never been concerned enough to completely shake – ‘The natives of Kelebar,’ one noted scholar says, ‘treat the laws of tenses as if they’re not laws, nor even guidelines, but maybe recommendations, and this is at the best of times.’ I say I’m a bit better than that, but some of my acquaintances, Mydar for one, have been known to disagree) would have collected in the roof section if it weren’t for extractor ducts up there. When Mydar finally returned again, he was coughing with the drug-haze I’d managed to put out in this bout of funk.

He sheaf of papers tied together with string at the corner onto my desk, their contents in the mostly precise writing of one of our astropaths. I scanned them briefly, and Emperor help me, missed out on the point. “What’s this?” I asked, leafing through the descriptions of ork raids two hundred light years away.

“Page five,” he said, and I turned to it. Human wolf-packs working with orks, nothing particularly unusual, and in its way, good news for the Imperium. Such alliances tend to fall apart after a brief time of cooperation, usually violent. I skimmed the report of one of the surviving officers from a recent raid, and looked up at him; I’ll grant Mydar this, he’s a fine investigator, in his way. Inquisitor material, I suppose, were it not for his lack of loyalty to the Imperium, and complete dearth of piety.

“Eldar,” I said, and frowned. The flighty aliens did have a habit of turning up in matters of interest, especially to my eye. “Still, not that special,” I added, “Though I’ve not seen this kind of ship falling in with raiders before.”

Mydar nodded, “That’s far from all, either. You know you wanted an eye kept on any reports of demons?”

Doesn’t every inquisitor of some worth, though? I’m far from unique in this respect. In truth, it’s those rare individuals who’re somehow purged of the daemonic, those who shake loose its shackles, that interest me. The stability of the Imperium is to be preserved at all costs, such is – was, oh was, much has changed between then and now - my own belief, anyway. You could call me an amalthian, though I involved myself less in some of the less complex matters which threaten the Imperium than I did in the esoteric, be they chaotic or incestuously disloyal in some other perverse way.

Change was the worst thing that could happen to the Imperium, already its precarious position was assailed. It needed people like me to move about in secrecy and shore it up, cut away the webs of entrapping spiders that lurked ahead of it, and sear out the cancers of the obscure.

Oh yes, my astropaths listened for reports of demons. Always they did that. Not listening for demons – for few could hear of demons and manage to broadcast the truth, but for those who were mistaken for demons. Be they mutants or those few, rare creatures that could sheer off the puppet-strings of the warp and begin their own work about the Imperium, their own tumultuous plans for changing things for the better. Warp-touched fantasies. Dangerous.

“Yes?” said I.

He tossed another perforated parchment from some autoscrivener upon my desk. I took it, and read through, slowly, at a measured pace of contemplation that seemed to irritate Mydar, he took up a stylus from the desk and toyed with it.

“Aye, this is interesting,” I concluded.

“Same system. Same time. Professional, too,” he said.

“I agree,” I said, “Captain, take the ship to the,” I checked the other parchment, “Opal-Gnosis system.”

“This would go a lot faster if we find ourselves a new navigator,” he said, frowning.

Our navigator had been lost in transit several weeks (to us, how long we’d languished in the warp was difficult to know, our present date was unconfirmed) ago, and we’d been relying on calculated jumps since then. Opal-Gnosis was around a sector away, quite a journey, all told, that would entail about a day of warp-time, and far longer, real time, maybe up to forty days – forty jump for a maximum safe – or as safe as one could be – distance calculated jump.

“Yes, we do need one,” I said, “But getting one ensconced might be troublesome on short notice,” I shook my head. “Head out-system and prepare to jump.”

“Foolish, but, very well,” Mydar said.

“You never know,” I mused, “If our captive divulges what I want from her, we may never need a navigator again. Did you have the cell prepared?” I asked.


He had, of course. The interrogation suite was a few decks below, one of the old officers quarters that hadn’t been needed with our less expansive but tremendously enthusiastic crew complement. The cell in which our drachon was confined was one of those that had undergone the most remodelling. Rather than the rococo chambers around in which guards could languish in exalted surroundings during their boring task, this was a well that covered three decks.

White, it was all so, blindingly so. At the top of the well, a darkened chamber, one could look down below, lean on the top of the cylindrical cell, and observe proceedings below. The only access to the door at the bottom was by a long stairway that spiralled around within a second sheath of thick wall, blocked off in several areas with thick doors only operable from the top-section, where the controller could observe the prisoner contained within directly as well as the stairways upon screens.

I’d taken the liberty of, some time ago inscribing upon my brain what was known of the languages of the Eldar. Enough to communicate, to the normal specimens, at least, but not enough to grasp the subtleties, the implications, the connotations, all of these eluded my grasp. My brain, it should be stressed, barely contains any meat at all. During my time as an apprentice, as an explicator, I’d had an unfortunate encounter with a death-world nerve-parasite that had necessitated such a replacement. I’d actually seen my brain, ornate rustproof steel and crystal wafers which had required some extraordinarily invasive procedures to implant. For a time it worried me how much of the knowledge in it was lost, how much I could trust my memories or even my thoughts. But in the end, I had decided to put such concerns out of my augmented mind. It had been part of why I’d initially started with various mind-altering chemicals. A necessity of linking fully with an implant such as that was to get the remainder of the human parts into a state of malleability, though I was barely conscious for the beginning of this process.

I was still an interrogator, some might say. I had never shied away from interrogating subjects, as some of my brethren in the inquisition did. It isn’t a task to be delegated.

I went down into the chamber and walked around the prisoner, who kept her eyes shut as though she didn’t deign to look upon me. She was attractive, that I’ll say, and as I’ve implied, I’m generally uninterested in females. But this particular alien species is certainly attractive physically. Slender and yet muscular, she seemed to make a wiry, taut build look soft in a way that was quite hard to pin down. I doubt it helped the impression because she’d been divested of the clothing she’d been retrieved with, more than for humiliation (which I doubted would work on an Eldar anyway) but because everything she wore seemed to incorporate some sort of sharpened punching or slashing blade.

A series of narrow tubes ran from high above to punctures in her arm. I ducked under them as I wandered around the ornately padded chair she was strapped to, and leaned on it behind her.

“I shall,” I said, “explain how this is going to work.”

No answer, one doesn’t expect that, of course.

“I don’t plan to torture you,” I added in the craftworld Eldar language; I had no doubt that one cousin race’s leaders understood the other’s well enough. This at least elicited a soft snort of derision; well it should. Part of the inquisition prides itself on torment, but its efforts are as those of children compared to her sect.

“You’re going to live a very long and healthy life…” I added, “Let me explain how. We’re fairly confident that we’ve gotten the nutrition feed here,” I reached out and tapped one of the tubes, setting it swinging, “configured about right for your race. So, in theory, we can keep you here indefinitely.

“I’m told your kind are fond of their senses,” I added, walking around in front of her again. Eyes open now: Progress. I stared into those pools of darkness with their exaggerated pupils, and smiled a little. “So that’s my leverage. There’s two ways things go from here. Either you tell me what I’m interested in knowing – and if your information leads me false, be assured my threat will be executed! And I will allow you out of here, under certain strictures, to serve me, for, oh, a hundred years. Or you will dis-pleasure,” oh yes, attractive indeed, my emphasis had slipped there, I’d misspoken, I could see in the slight, restricted tilt of her immobilised head that she’d noticed this too.

“…me,” I continued, “in which case, I’ll arrange for the removal of your sight, and hearing, vocal system, too, for what its worth. Even olfactory senses. Then I’ll leave you in this condition, with orders for your continuous feeding, in this rather meagre way.

“You don’t seem aged, and I’m told your kind can live for millennia. That’s a long time to spend in a dark, silent, tasteless and odourless tomb. Alive, if only in the most base way.

“So, shall we begin our little conversation?” I asked.

The alien seemed to be thinking upon the sincerity of my threat – total, I shall add – and she convinced herself in a few moments of its veracity. Her dialect makes even the word for ‘yes’ in the Eldar tongue into a near expletive with a harsh bite to it.

“Good,” I said, wishing for another chair, “Let us discuss then. I would like to hear of your spider-way…”

I'm rather surprised that you can still manage Warp-jumps without a Navigator. Of course, they're always interested in the We Way (truth be told, I really had no idea what he was up to).

Ford Prefect wrote:I'm rather surprised that you can still manage Warp-jumps without a Navigator. Of course, they're always interested in the We Way (truth be told, I really had no idea what he was up to).

They're short range only jumps, are slower by about a factor of five, and are more hazardous and everyone without Navigators (or skilled Chaos Sorcerers) is stuck at those speeds. That's one of the reasons the Tau Empire (and other xenos in similar positions) will have problems should they grow larger than a relatively compact size.

Ford Prefect wrote:(truth be told, I really had no idea what he was up to).

All will become obvious when I write it. Okay, it probably won't, but it will become rather less mystifying.

Chapter Two

I learnt much of my Eldar in that deep well of truth, a white pit wherein no lies could be told. It took me a while to realise that the Scrutiny was approaching its final warp jump, some had gone quickly, some slowly, but I had little clue as to how long might have passed in real space, in real time.

Leaving the interrogation pit behind, I went to the bridge to see what activity Mydar could find. Re-synchronising with the Opal-Gnosis system’s primary world, we found that we’d made rather good time, in all, taking slightly over a month to arrive.

The system was named firstly for its star, a blazing blue-green, a spherical turquoise opal that boiled in the dark velvet of the sky ahead of us. One of these systems that the administratum classified as ‘civilised’ it was enough of a trade crossroads to attract pirates, and sported some dense asteroid belts and planet rings where raiders could congregate away from the infrequent patrols of the Navy and the system’s ever-replaced small flotilla of (frequently captured) system ships.

Gnosis, of course, was from the aspirations and cult views of its inhabitants.

Our problem was finding the base that the various pirates in the system used. We’d emerged some way from the main navigational jump point, we did after all, look like an unregistered ship, a traitor vessel, and we were broadcasting no codes. It wouldn’t do to run across a few navy ships under such circumstances. Even so, we were still left with a massive problem.

The locals hadn’t located the pirate base in their system (I assumed! I might be wrong, but I doubted it, for the enemy were observed taking system ships and using them in raids.) Though of course, if the Eldar were behind all of this, perhaps they were using their spider warren to make it seem that way.

In any case, there must be a wide artery of that organ in the system somewhere, and that was my destination. I cared only about the corsairs themselves in so much as they appeared to be complicit in the activities of an ‘illuminated’ person.


It came time to tell Anasasia of the suspicions I had developed about the goings on in Opal-Gnosis. I didn’t tell her of the Ordo Malleus outpost on the planet, which I was not supposed to know of anyway, and how the distraction caused by the recent – long past, in truth – disturbances and attacks had lead me to believe that a more direct raid on the Malleus library might be planned.

Anasasia is, as I’ve said, an untouchable, an anti-demon. She’s technically at least as attractive as Sathila, but she doesn’t seem so. As well, always to me she’s seemed to be detached and unemotional, though I’ve seen her behave just like anyone else, it would seem to be an effect of her peculiar nature.

“You see,” I was explaining, “the message we intercepted spoke of, at the same time as orbital assets were distracted in dealing with a pirate raid, a demon-mutant leading a raid against a small arbities courthouse. They finished several of his compatriots, but he seemed to have gotten what he’d come for.”

“You think he was illuminated?” she asked.

“I think so. The activity is unusually brazen, but it’s backed by powerful distractions. Here, another report, shows a hive-riot was in progress at just the same instant.”

“What did he get?” she added.

“The reports don’t say, but I suspect it’s proscribed demonic treatises. Several chaos cults on Gnosis have been killed by mysterious means, too.

“Could the demon man not be working for the general good of the Imperium, then?” she asked.

“He probably believes that he might be,” I said, “Fighting evil, as it were.”

“So, why not leave him to it?” she asked.

“Ah, you name it. Xenos links, personal greed. No, I plan to find this man, and then deal with him…” I simplified, oh the risks from some such conspiracies had been found before, sinister alien-linked plans to control the Imperium and manipulate the destiny of mankind against the will of the Emperor.

“Where do the raiders enter this?” she asked.

“There are Eldar among them, and they seem to act as a support mechanism. Yes, I should say they’re related, either he controls them, or he has information from them that he uses in his planning. They’re the best lead we have, at any rate.”


So we waited at the edge of the system’s sphere, above its plane, listening to hours old vox traffic from the inner system. Hours and then several days passed. We ate and slept and listened, until finally my patience gave way, and I decided to try a more ambitious means of finding the raiders, one that might not have been my normal preference, were we not so desperate for some clue to make our time productive – the Emperor hates the idler as he hates any other traitor – and so I retired to the top of the forward mast. A crystal dome that was sometimes used by navigators topped it. Sealed and decorated with devotional icons. An ideal roost while I attempted to divine the course of action that would best serve.

The Emperor’s Tarot wasn’t something I often had cause to use, indeed, it was a very dubious thing, in my mind. Close to sorcery, despite the purity with which it was accounted by all of its users. I shuffled the pack in the cold navigator’s pod, and looked down at the weapon-festooned spear-point of the ship’s prow.

“Immortal Emperor of Earth, guide me,” I prayed. “Show to me the way to best serve you.” I tuned the screens all around, which would normally show information on the vast ship when it was underway. One I left blank and inert. Another I made to display a picture of Gnosis itself, the next most promising planet, then the next, and finally a moon around the system’s diminutive gas giant, and a cut of the asteroid-field that circumscribed the entire system out beyond that titan’s orbit.

I dealt the first card onto the blank screen. It would, for now, serve as my signifier card, a premonition of my own destiny perhaps. Face down, I didn’t look at it, but instead, moved on to press the cards onto each screen in turn.

I turned over my own card. It was, interesting, to say the least. The alien, I could tell by the script engraved on the card, though I didn’t quite recognise the figure, it looked like a blend of the demonic and the alien, statuesque and golden, with horns that would be reminiscent of those of a demon, if they weren’t swept back in the way Mydar slicked his hair. It was reversed, I could tell that from the facing of its curiously shaped head, human, but for a slit in its forehead similar to that of a Tau.

The alien reversed, a sign of danger, in itself. But reversed. It could mean anything. The defeat of aliens, a traitor to aliens – I was no such! The figure means nothing to me, but that shouldn’t be too strange, for there are more alien races than there are worlds of the Imperium. Fortunately, few are important enough to need the attention of an inquisitor. This must be one such.

I turned over the card that rested on the screen displaying Gnosis, a grim, marshy looking world with a solitary moon.

The visage of a demon leapt out at me, red, horned, and twisted. Very much a classic depiction, Khornate, perhaps, but it too faced off to the side unusually. The Demon reversed. It was the divination card of the ‘illuminated’ conspirators that I sought. Perhaps.

Perhaps it merely referred to the recent defeat of chaotic cults on Gnosis? Or to the Malleus library stationed there.

The next largest planet, uninhabited but for some mine workings. This card was The Labourer. It was a way for the tarot to say that the planet held nothing of special interest. A humble man who laboured in the Emperor’s name righteously is no cause for Inquisitorial Investigation. He has faith and control as his guardians.

The next, similarly, showed the rarely seen card of ‘The World’ another message of unimportance. So it continued until I reached the moon of the gas giant. The Traitor. A laughing figure in what appeared to be the costume of a pirate, complete with power cutlass and Eldar pistol.

Nothing of interest further out, but instead, it seemed both a clear divination and a complex one. It was clear enough where to go, but what did the alien inverted mean, as my own signifier? Inverted, reversed – defeated, concealed? Did it portent a defeat of aliens? Or that I conceal aliens somehow? Indeed I did, I harboured one aboard my ship, alive. I blasphemed mightily in doing so, and prayed briefly for guidance. I would slay my Eldar when I had learnt all that was of interest from her.

Or could maybe, the inversion of the alien, a symbol of woe, mean that I could use the alien? Was that not what I intended to do by extracting information about the eldar web-way, after all? Might it not also mean that my alien endeavour was doomed to fail?

This was why I hated divination. It rarely gave anything resembling a clear picture.


Nevertheless, I went down and persuaded Santiso to make up a little piece of equipment that I anticipated needing in the future. Then I gave Mydar his instructions. We made haste for the solitary moon of the solitary gas giant in the system. This was a rare enough combination, in my experience. The giant was largely methane, which meant that there was little of interest there and so no industrial development. It had been used for a time as a test area, when the navy in this region was more prevalent, and several other, lesser moons had been smashed to rubble by nova cannons and torpedoes. There was a ring that had, at last estimate, according to the sector’s navigational codex, contained no less than four hundred and fifty torpedoes that had either gone deadfall due to misdirection, or failed to detonate. A navigational hazard indeed, and one that Mydar had been quick to point out, the place was effectively a rather diffuse minefield, and we couldn’t afford to screech out the naval codes that would get us through it.

I imagine that the day after was even more nerve-wracking for the turret gunners than it was for the rest of us. Despite that, it was false caution, as I had anticipated it would. Such torpedoes were a resource, even the duds, for rogue fleets, as they could be re-commissioned even with very little skill.

Thus it was doubly beneficial to us that we did not detect any. Firstly because of course we were safe from that particular threat, and second because it suggested strongly to me that the pirates I sought were indeed to be found here. It took time, though. Three days in all, orbiting perilously close to the plane of rocks and debris.

I spent the time interrogating the Eldar woman, whose name I had discovered to be Kirareq, and making, in part, good on my offer. Replacing fixed constraint with a highly modified numb collar (an invention occasionally used on Black Ships, with the less dangerous ‘guests’), courtesy of Santiso. An encoded MIU with me, within me, allowed me to demonstrate quite efficiently that if I either willed it, or if something happened to me, my little pet would be rendered quite, quite catatonic. I even implied quite strongly that the effects could be made permanent in the case of my death, which was rather true, though they were more likely to kill her. Not that I trusted her out of the cell, mind.

I learnt quite a bit more about the web-way once it appeared that I wished to uphold my end of the bargain, and I was even becoming proficient in understanding the dark eldarin language, aided of course by the artificial talent for memory that came with my alteration. It was around the time that I learnt of her need for ‘the essence of beings’ was her term. Souls. She even commented that my own would be...

I took the opportunity to introduce her to Anasasia, with her limiter switched off. I didn’t think I had any means to induce fear in the eldar save complex threats of deprivation. And in truth, I didn’t. I don’t quite understand her reaction, in humans, I think it might be shock; the eldar became still and mute until I removed Anasasia from the room, and she seemed less cooperative in our next interview.

This of course, did nothing to stop her lusting after souls. An addiction, she claimed it to be, and that she would cease being useful to me if not allowed to kill and consume. To this day I doubt the veracity of that claim, but nonetheless, I considered offering some of the less useful of the crew to slake her thirst, but debased as the mutant stock of the ship’s ratings was, I had no desire to allow an alien to consume loyal humans under my eye. So, instead I merely made no promises to the creature, and left her.

You may detest me for this dealing with aliens, but there is no need, I have doubts about my own purity enough to last a lifetime. More, to last as many lifetimes as I may live, be it rejuvenated or otherwise. But this is one of the least contentious matters, in truth. The benefits for the Imperium if it could seize control of the web-way: Indescribable!

As I’ve said, our search for renegades and traitors took three days, long days of waiting and searching, before we finally found anything, or rather, before we were finally found. I was on the bridge at the time, with Mydar and Sathila, who’d managed to extricate herself – for a time, no more – from the medicum.

Word came from the Sensorium, they had detected contacts, frigate displacement, headed towards us. No less than ten. It might have taken us a time to find them, but they’d certainly found us before we found them. The frigates came on silently, and I had to restrain Mydar from worrying, and from launching fighters from our bays.

Of course, he liked my next instruction even less.

“Drop the void shields,” I said.

“What?” he hissed.

“Drop the shields,” I repeated, “I want them to be convinced we’re not navy,” ships like ours were common enough in the reserve fleets, and occasionally even in the main fleets of various sector battlefleets. “We’re still out of range of everything they might have except torpedoes, and we can put them up again before they would impact.”

He hissed reluctantly but complied, snapping orders off to the crew.

The shields were lowered, and nervous faces stared almost dependently up at me in the command pulpit. “Send to approaching flotilla,” I said.

“Aye Lord,” replied one of the officers.

“This is the Free Trade Vessel Galactic Meridian,” it was a poor name, but one the licence we used from time to time lumbered us with. Mydar’s ancestors clearly had poor taste, “Our intent is non-hostile. We believe that we may be able to do business with you.”


It was a gamble, of course, they weren’t expected to take our word on it, but rather, when they came aboard, and observed our mutant crew, not to mention my pet eldar, they might get the idea that we weren’t anything more than scum like themselves. It was a ploy that may seem far-fetched, but it had worked before and it worked again.

Of course, our luck didn’t hold out for long.


They didn’t want to, unsurprisingly, negotiate with us on our ground, and so it was up to me, as a supposed trader, to go over to their vessels. The lead ship of the squadron, and, as I was to learn, the most significant human ship there, was a sword class frigate.

But first off, I decided to boost my credibility as a true rogue by taking Kirareq with me. This may seem odd, but of course, one of the things I had offered for continued cooperation was the chance to work for me in violent ways and situations. Walking down into the pit, I checked Santiso’s little toy, and returned to her the body armour she’d arrived with. I wasn’t fool enough to give her back the weapons – not that we’d need them anyway, with luck, and those that we were taking would be my own concealed ones, such as the phase sword.

The Scrutiny had its own supply of small craft, as I’ve said before. Ranging from shark assault boats like those used by much of the Imperial navy to some cannibalised bombers (including some torpedo bombers, which could even deliver melta-torpedos, which I’d acquired a while back, to top flight fighters and a large collection of shuttles. Most of those, however, were festooned with devotional, and even inquisitorial, icons, so they were out. Instead, we were going to have to go over in a bomber.

You may never have seen a star-bomber in your life, and if you’ve not ridden in one, trust me, you do not want to. A brief meeting with Mydar and Sathila to discuss our ‘backup plan’ as the bomber was unloaded. Of course, we had to radio ahead to persuade our esteemed hosts that we only had such vessels, and warn them in order to avoid being shot up. We weren’t carrying a payload, but instead had it replaced with a teleport homer in the aft bomb bay. Normally a starhawk has a crew of a dozen or more; depending on the pattern. This time, however, there were only two pilots – I had them pick the least human looking of our complement, fortunately most of the pilots were mutants chosen for swift reaction times (such a crew, I assure you, has advantages over the blessed norm, at times, the differences aren’t significant in the grand view, but picking those with superior eyesight as gunners, and those with excessive musculature as armsmen, and so on, can make for an individual crew that excel in their roles. Of course, there’s rarely enough to go around in some of the more specialised roles) without much regard to looks.

As I’ve said, the lead ship in the corsair flotilla that had drawn up around us (they’d taken their time to move into a sphere formation, most of them either facing towards or parallel to us. They knew their craft, well enough) was a sword class frigate. Or rather, that was what it had started out as. It looked like it had been pillaged by orks, and indeed, the aggregation of metal parts that replaced its prow seemed to come off an ork vessel. On its bow was the legend ‘Grief Bringer’ – I couldn’t be sure if that was a title it had borne in imperial service, or something of its debased crew. There was a chapter of the blessed Astartes by that name, so perhaps the former.

I’d never really anticipated being in a gutted bomber with two mutants and an alien warlord, on my way to parlay for entrance into a pirate fleet. Can mutants serve with purity, you ask? Psykers can, after all, and yet, I wondered if my tolerance of mutants, and aye, of aliens too, now, might represent moral cowardice on my part. Perhaps, yes, perhaps it did - does. I’m still undecided on the matter, which is in itself moral cowardice. You might find this cowardice hard to credit in an Inquisitor, but I assure you it’s there, a flaw that runs through my character as a weak join can run through an armour suit.

The landing area of the frigate was tatty, used, far from regulation. Bits and pieces of debris covered the area, and there were extra defensive slits and ports cut in the walls that looked like they housed auto or las cannons, or something just as dangerous. It was not anything that this vehicle couldn’t sweep away with contemptuous ease, if it had a crew to operate all its various guns, which of course, they’d been able to see weren’t manned before allowing us to dock.

Taking my swordstick I clambered down from the aft of the cockpit, lithe, lethal, lascivious alien with me, and into the forward bomb bay, empty but for the clamps that would hold and deploy fusion bombs in normal events, The crew boarded through this area, bordered on all sides by airtight seals. It was easier to fit them in this way, though I thought it somewhat insane, supposedly they could fit an extra two bombs in by using this method. The airlock-ramp hissed down, an area that served as a projector that fired the contents of that bay forwards at speed. Walking down the steps, alien an ominous and galling presence beside me, I looked around the bay. I could see the shadows where guns and scum lurked, ready to cut me down. Breath heavy in my chest, I resisted the urge to visibly watch the alien beside me, I had to be seen to trust her – easier said than done.

At last the fop I took to be the ship’s captain strode out into view. Dressed in what seemed to be a navy uniform, but with a flair and trim that was ostentatious beyond the limits of good taste, and with a power axe that looked like it could hack through bulkheads where one would expect an effete but deadly enough sabre.

“You’re a brave man, to come here unarmed,” he said, looking me up and down, “or does your appearance conceal lethal little tricks?”

“It might,” I said, “but I’m relying most on the fact that my ship-captain has us this ship locked on with his fore chasers. It’s only fair that I let you endanger me as well.”

He laughed. He was a short, stocky fellow with a sort of unscarred handsomeness about him that suggested he was either very good at avoiding fighting, or very good at ending fights quickly. Given his armament, I suspected it was very definitely the latter. One to watch, this fellow was. “We’re all capable of annihilating each other?” he asked, “Good. So, you’re a trader, are you?”

“I am,” I said.

“What’s it you trade?”

“Whatever’s to hand,” I said, “but I suspect I might be best off offering services,” I smiled, “Of the violent type perhaps.”

He laughed again, “I like it,” he said, I can’t recall if he was eyeing my Eldar (my Eldar, Emperor Preserve, I think of her that way!) at the same time, “Come, let’s away, and talk,” he said, gesturing to a bulkhead behind him, and we started off, leaving the bomber where it stood.

"She even commented that my own would be ..." Finish sentence!

Also, he's a smooth operator, this inquisitor.

Interesting my lord. Please produce more.

On the nitpicky side, you didn't close the parenthesis when talking about possible pirate bases in the beginning.

Grammatical fuckups fixed.

And Ford doesn't get an end to that sentance, though I debated it.

Ah well. You know, this is actually the first time i've ever seen the Emperor's Tarot used (not just alluded to, like with the Land Raider technical diagram and its auto-tarot reader) in any of the 40k fiction I've ever read.

Ford Prefect wrote:Ah well. You know, this is actually the first time i've ever seen the Emperor's Tarot used (not just alluded to, like with the Land Raider technical diagram and its auto-tarot reader) in any of the 40k fiction I've ever read.

I've used it, but I think just in the RP threads. It does figure prominently in the Inquisition War series by Ian Watson.

Imperial Overlord wrote:I've used it, but I think just in the RP threads. It does figure prominently in the Inquisition War series by Ian Watson.

Speaking of which, I've just read The Book of the River by him (excellent, of course) and I conclude that he really likes tarot.

Hmmm. Very Inquisition-War influenced...and that's a very, very good thing. Timeline-wise, is it contemporary to those books?

White Haven wrote:Hmmm. Very Inquisition-War influenced...and that's a very, very good thing. Timeline-wise, is it contemporary to those books?

As a matter of fact, quite the opposite. This is, as will be seen in a few chapters time, around 100.M42. Speaking of the timeline of the Inquisition War, I noticed the other day that they missed a bit in the edit of Chaos Child. Eldrad Ulthran's now meant to be nearly rooted to the dome of Crystal Seers in around 900.M40.

All I can say is MORE!!!

NecronLord wrote:

White Haven wrote:Hmmm. Very Inquisition-War influenced...and that's a very, very good thing. Timeline-wise, is it contemporary to those books?

As a matter of fact, quite the opposite. This is, as will be seen in a few chapters time, around 100.M42. Speaking of the timeline of the Inquisition War, I noticed the other day that they missed a bit in the edit of Chaos Child. Eldrad Ulthran's now meant to be nearly rooted to the dome of Crystal Seers in around 900.M40.

...Bloody hell, that didn't mean enough to me. Time to reread...

Apologies for how long this took. It's generally been one thing and then another. Oh, and I've actually been studying for once... Action at last. And a deepening of the plot.

---


Chapter Three

The Grief Bringers’ interior was like nothing so much as the mid levels of a hive city. Run down and depressed, but for the best part functional, if occasionally patched hastily. I wondered did they have access to tech adepts? It wouldn’t surprise me, at least in their lower levels of seniority, they were after all, mortal. Of course, there were always alien technologies to trade, and newly captured ships to tear apart.

As we got up to the command decks, they returned to the semblance of an Imperial warship, marbled blue floors and high colonnaded ceilings on which devotional images persisted valiantly despite the wretched condition their ship had fallen into. Presumably no one had troubled to get up there in order to deface them. It pleased me.

A meeting room off this massive cathedral that preserved its integrity had a window to the outside of the ship, a circular rose window of stained glass that was doubtless buried under many hand spans of transparent material that was layered on by the bucket-load to resist micrometeoroids and small debris. Walking over to it, I could see a few distortions of the gas giant’s clouds where craters disturbed the smoothness of the outside of the window. It was no protection against a weapons strike, of course, but this kind of chamber was not crucial to the functioning of the ship, and thus shielded only against the canker-forming emissions of space, rather than the vastly more powerful energies of weapons.

“So,” he says, sitting down, “Introductions perhaps?”

“Certainly,” I said, “I am Harq Serphellian. This charming pet of mine is Saqrillan.” Emphasis on the ‘ri’ if you’re wondering about the pronunciation I gave it.

“Flag Captain Grenda,” I wondered if that was his rank originally. He didn’t have that look about him at all. A mutineer at some stage, I imagined.

I sat, and my Eldar did likewise, slinking down into a chair beside me. To look at her, you could see a manner that frightened me. She looked like the predator that she was. Fortunately, Grenda seemed to take this in his stride, no doubt his crew looked that way whenever he discussed pay.

I considered at the time that it might have been wiser to take Mydar, who was after all a rogue trader, however unsuccessful a one. However, I soon banished those thoughts and had to knuckle down to arguing our prices – or rather, our cuts. We were to get a cut of all the activities of the band, provided we did our share. Of course, they were keen to have as powerful a vessel as the Scrutiny. He even talked about using our ship to take navy cruisers and add them to the fleet. Dauntless class would be about the limit, said I, but they didn’t seem to find this a problem. Of course, much as I dislike the navy, I had no intention of doing that – attacking servants of the Emperor going about their lawful business? Hah! But it was best not to let them see that, or questions might be asked.

“Four shares should be about adequate, given our ship,” I said – true enough, underselling, in fact. We should have had six, (seven or so, if one counted all the various upgrades we’d picked up over the years). He was still keen to get less.

“Three,” he wrangled.

“Hardly, I’m going low with four,” best not to be seen as a fool.

“Three and a half,” he proposes.

I stuck to my guns with four though, and he relented, he’d be a fool not to for a full cruiser – and a fool to take one, if he’d known the policies of the navy as well as the man he dressed as. The navy would take note of our presence and dedicate more resources to opposing these pirate scum.


Now you may think that with my agenda, I should press him for information right away, but that’s a fool’s idea. Instead, you must be subtle with that sort of thing, until you have a subject restrained, it doesn’t do to show your hand. So instead, I bade him a cordial farewell, and said that I’d have to return to my ship.

Our quest was to find the truth of the incidents in this system, not to tip off the captain of the first ship we met that our claims were fraudulent.

Before leaving the room however, the matter came up of how I wished to draw my share. ‘Materiel, Riches, Slaves?” My Eldar recognised that word of Gothic at least, I didn’t care to know how she had learnt to perk up at it’s mention, but it seemed prudent to go with her opinion. I bade her be quiet in her own tongue.

“If you have any quantity of prisoners, they would be most gratefully received. Otherwise, materiel is always welcome.” I said, ah yes. A preference for prisoners; Let this despicable scum think what they wanted. I would receive their prisoners, at least should they be human I would, and eventually see them to safety. After all, was not protecting the Emperor’s subjects the goal of my vocation and function of my office? It was good to me to sneak a pure purpose in through the lies.

What my Eldar might have thought I didn’t care to ask, she was in for a disappointment in any case.


Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. Oh no, we were being observed, they were no fools, and found many excuses to come aboard our vessel or scan us in the week that followed. Some of their number came and went, and it was no surprise. They needed to fence, and rest, and go where they were unknown or even welcome. I rested too, before our first active piracy.

I rested, and remembered, and dreamt. I dreamt of the Over-Bishop of Starnis. Back to a world I had visited and purged years ago, as an apprentice inquisitor, with my master. Starnis was another world of the Imperium, far away from here, the here of Opal-Gnosis. Starnis was a world with little value, a feral world of fluted temples and dusty hamlets. In places firearms were known, but that was about the limit of technology available to its citizens, until the Imperium found it, of course.

I still have, well, had until recently, a pistol I acquired there. A curiosity that can fire up to four bullets at once from barrels directly above each other, and contains two revolving drums of eight bullets each. A selector lets the hammers strike any of four bullets either in turn or altogether. It doesn’t work well, of course, but it’s an interesting little weapon that packs quite a punch (and a recoil) when all are shot at once.

Starnis was a faith-confirming experience. Its rightful – it’s inherited, rather, failure in the Emperor’s eyes removes any right in a person – overlord, Lord Sterling, was executed for the rebellion. Not a matter of foul powers or aliens this rebellion, but one of lunacy. The leader of the rebels, the reclusive Over-Bishop, was known to have secluded himself in a palace he’d built on a massive bridge over a wide river with thousands of female ‘attendants’ as his personal rebellion. This Over-Bishop was doomed to failure from the start, of course.

His army had crossbows and spears.

Our presence there was wholly coincidental. We were Ordo Xenos (at this time, I had yet to encounter the Illuminas) not Hereticus, but Inquisitor Ralei holds the opinion, or so he’s said, that an Inquisitor who does not turn his hand to all of mankind’s enemies is allowing himself to overspecialise. Just as austerity, fine and commendable in the ordinary man, a man who must by the perversity of the universe, aspire narrowly and gaze lowly, narrows the horizons of an inquisitor dangerously. An Inquisitor must remember all options.

We spent a few days in the town that passed for the Bishop’s capital in Starnis. One in four men of the town must have been a bow-wielding soldier and about as many were ‘criminals’ of some stripe or another. One of the bishop’s proclamations had made all things the property of the ‘state’ (run by the Over-Bishop), and of course, gave them illogical priorities for work that didn’t produce enough.

Of course, the Over-Bishop was a rampant madman, whose blasphemous claims included that he was the brother of the Emperor, the son of some sort of sky-spirit, and was soon to join with his brother - which might have been true were he loyal.

In the decade since the rebellion on this world had begun, over twenty percent of its population had died in the war between loyalists and the rebels. It was a sign of the planetary governor’s ineptitude that he had relied on his own under-equipped and ineffectual forces (the planetary defence force of Starnis was barely, firearms, as I said, better than the Over-Bishop’s forces, and smaller) when even a slow response to a request for Imperial Guard – even a demi-company – would likely have quashed the rebellion long before we had arrived.

Lasguns were rare enough in their forces, and of the thousands of soldiers we saw there, crossbows and spears, as I said, were about the limit. In the end, we penetrated the palace of the Over-Bishop and put him to the sword. It was then that I first saw the true restraint of the Inquisition in action. The ability to solve a problem with minimum force is a great thing, aye, even the purging of aliens, done minimally is a divine grace – let crucifixions and pyres lie by the wayside, smash enemies of mankind as simply as possible. Recidivist and monodominant fanaticism aside, the greatest weapon an inquisitor can possess is a sense of precision. Replacing the rebel ‘Over-Bishop’ and the governor both with Adeptus Terra - Departmentus Reclamata – officers served far better than any purge in eventually bringing Starnis back into line with the Imperium.

I didn’t know why this experience came back to me at the time, but it did inspire me that perhaps a solution for these pirates could be devised that would return their ships to the Imperium. The Imperium needs every aid it can procure in guarding its borders. I’ll tell of this in time, it’s unimportant at this point in my story.

I ordered Mydar to keep an eye out for any unusual activity, and gave a through briefing to those few crew I allowed to socialise with the pirates as we cruised towards the larger wolf-pack fleet. They had a mission, after all, to find and report any rumours they found of who might be responsible for the raid on the planet.

Sure enough, after almost half a month, a long time in which we were required to take part in several actions, two successful, three thwarted. The Imperial Navy was performing commendably against them, and in private I vociferously praised their efforts. We also, as part of our ‘booty’ – how repellent a word for – took one of the navigators of our victims, whom I inducted into the secret of our mission amongst the scum of the universe, though not into our greater mission. His name was Telcis Van Muran. I feel obliged to tell his name, because soon, no one will remember that he died the noblest of deaths, except the Emperor. What a torment that knowledge must be; for not only is the Emperor’s struggle a torment in itself, but he is aware of those who give their lives for him, aware of the suffering of mankind.


Nevertheless, I shall not dwell on Him, for time is short, and service of Him, I best tell my tale now, rather than retell His own, a task done perfectly by those better able to sermonize than I. It is of some importance that my account of events be found and relayed to the Ordo Xenos, to the Inquisition, and I can only hope that it will be.

We found our target aboard what is called a Galaxy class troop ship. Ancient vessels these that display prominently their pre-Imperial roots. Instead of the soaring spires of devotion that typically cover Imperial ships, this vessel had semicircular domes upon its dorsal surface, and a stubby warp-keel, designed in a time when the warp was easier to navigate – or rather, when it was harder to navigate but less turbulent. It was a slow ship by modern standards, but valuable for its efficiency in landing and forming a beachhead, although it carried fewer passengers than modern troop ships, it also carried a heavier armament, and could easily and securely disembark even the largest titans down its massive ramps. The vessel would almost certainly have served in the Great Crusade, acting as the base of an entire regiment of the Imperial Army, from their initial recruitment, through to the reformation into the Guard. Perhaps the Emperor himself could even have set foot upon it, or Horus the cursed. Such mysteries accompany venerable ships.

It mattered not, of course. The Emperor’s will was that we locate our target and put him to the sword. I wanted more, however. I wanted an interrogation – to put him to the question and thence to swift dispatch. And that meant going aboard. Boarding even. The greater heresy of our foe was quite obvious, in truth, because of how closely the shark like ship of one of the Eldar captains lurked with his own. No outcast ship, this. The outcast ships of the Eldar were somewhat simpler to operate than their naval vessels. Not dependant on interface with the spirits of their crews, nor requiring the mastery of the path of the mariner that others did. So spoke my resident expert on the matter. This was a Shadowhunter. All of this my pet Eldar was quite happy to tell me in exchange for an opportunity to join my boarding crew. And why shouldn’t she be? She was of one sect, they of another. Not chaotic, she stressed, such monstrosities only existed deep within the eye of terror, and even she would not speak of them. The look of a frightened animal came upon her when I asked. A horror to be remembered and considered should right thinking man ever venture so deep into the cess-pool of the Ruinous Powers.

It wasn’t difficult to procure a suitable costume as an ‘outcast’ for her, of course, much could be bought from the outcasts who were present, for a certain price, but it was in fact necessary to ‘disappear’ one such alien for its equipment. Even I, seasoned deviant that I was at the time, questioned the wisdom of such an act, but the cooperation of my Eldar had been scrupulous so far – she obeyed as well as any human, provided she feared me.

It was in this guise that we arranged to visit our target’s ship, having bought or stolen every scrap of information available to us in advance. We were uncertain whether or not we would be recognised for what we were, or whether this would, as we originally intended, remain a ‘scouting’ mission.

The pretext we used was trading, and although I doubted the master of this ship was any more interested in that than I, like myself, he had to keep up appearances. Besides of course bringing myself and my Eldar creature, I brought Sathila and Santiso (who begrudged greatly my order to eschew his typical mechanicus heraldry) with me, and a larger number of the crew.

Disembarking, and having all of our supposed traders disembark, we left our craft empty. The interior of the heretic ship was much more regulated than those of the other pirate craft we’d visited, and its denizens were attired in a uniform manner that suggested a cohesive military force. I didn’t like that a whit, of course, but there was naught to be done.

I won’t say I was surprised by this, or by anything else I saw when I was in the heretics’ ship, it was efficient, admirably, aye, admirably, let us not mince words and split technicalities, there are often admirable things about heretics and aliens, their inferiority is not what it is supposed to be, but rather their inferiority is in the deviance of their spirit, not of their works, run, tidy, and devoid of the proper devotional material that should be on board any kind of military ship. The fellow’s ship seemed like it had a small army on board, which I feared would torpedo my plans, but in the end, only served to inconvenience me and delight my Eldar.

My meeting with the ship’s master wasn’t what I expected. I’d imagined that our demon-man would be using someone expert (Mydar, for his various faults, could never be imagined to be a poor captain) in the role, rather than himself. Instead, he met me himself, and I couldn’t resist a thin little smile, if he was this incautious, I might just have some luck.

He was tall, but walked in a slightly hunched manner, perhaps a defect, or perhaps he did so because he sought to be at least partially disguised. His face was ever so slightly elongated, I didn’t want to look too closely in case he should notice but I would say that most of this ‘stretching’ came from the nose area moving down in to form more horse-like structure. If he was Illuminati, then I would imagine he had once been the vessel of one of the creatures of the dark god associated with pleasure, though one never could tell and I would make no wagers on the matter.

Alas that he didn’t meet me in the landing bay, but rather far into the warren that was his own ship. We spoke, cordially, as two simple traders and deviant pirate scum would. I had his measure, and infuriatingly, it was not long before he had mine.

I could tell from his stance, his manner, the way he looked at his guards, that he knew me for what I was. Yet we continued, positioning one another mentally. He smiled. I looked impassive, as best I could, simultaneously ignorant of his thoughts yet sustaining the pretence of the suave and far from innocent trader.

We sat at a small table of ivorybone wood from a distant world. My cane lay propped against the high armrest of the amaranthine-padded chair – the same white wood made it – I sat at. One admires his taste, too. Behind me and to my left, kirareq was doing a far inferior job of playing the demure courtesan and trophy conquest than Sathila was on the other side. Further to my right, Santiso sat impatiently, twisting and turning with uncharacteristic impatience. His reason, I would hazard was that he rarely sat for any period of time. Mechanical claws scratched ivorybone beneath the vision of our host.

He’d probably have been annoyed if he had seen.

“Of course, a courtesy visit such as this is most appreciated. One rarely gets social calls in the wilds,” he said.

“Oh, I quite agree,” I said, resting one hand on the table, bringing the other up to go through my hair, here sitting long and loosely arranged into braids, a signal, imperceptibly picked up on by Sathila, her downcast gaze ideal. The shift in her tension brought the Eldar to readiness, and the guards around the room seemed to pay more attention than they already had been to the two females, “It seems as if no one wants to simply talk, why, not even I…”

I crooked my finger, and an invisible needle flew, a tiny bang of supersonic motion rippling through the air, as I rose.

The women turned. Kirareq had a sword, now, and more besides. That power sword flittered forth, cutting and gutting one guard, as her pointed heel shot up to another, crunching disgustingly through the orbit of one guard’s skull. Sometimes I regret the enhanced observation capacities of my ‘enhanced’ mind. I have learnt not to dwell on such things.

Sathila leapt, as one of them brought their hellguns down, the snap-snap-snap of its semi-automatic fire being echoed by ‘booms’ from the marbled walls breaking as parts of them exploded outwards in showers of shrapnel that bounced merrily off Santiso’s body under his unmarked robes. His stubber blazed to life and burnt down two more of the guards. Sathila killed. Kirareq killed. Santiso killed.

I scurried under the table.

Not from cowardice, mind, for though I am a coward, I am a moral coward only. No, I was crawling quickly to our demon man, sword unsheathed. I didn’t aim to kill him of course, but there were guards that side, one trying to carry his master from the room, attempting to pull the trembling body from its chair.

The ivorybone legs of chair and table swirled as the smoky blade passed through them - the guard’s legs slid sideways as the power field, leaving the smoky tang that I know so well in the air, bisected them. Another was plunging down to slay me. If he’d fired through the table with his gun, I dare say I should be dead now – dead not dying, though perhaps I should well be dead now.

Through sheer luck, or the Emperor’s Sovereign Will he did not, instead, not thinking his act through, he dived down to bring his weapon to bear. As the Eldar killed one poor man with a weapon through the eye, so too did I, my bloodless blade flittering in and out in a moment, leaving him to twitch as his nerves acted randomly. His trembling hand fired, but missed me.

The guard who had tried to evacuate his master was sharp, I’ll give him that, or perhaps the shock of his maiming had not yet reached him – perhaps his nerves had been charred to oblivion before reporting to his mind. He unslung his weapon and pointed it at me, twisting his body. I brought the sword around, its alien material passing through floor and the thrashing body of my captive alike without incident. I snapped it up into place in line with the barrel of his weapon, which burnt merrily as it was cut. By sheer chance, as it did so, he squeezed the trigger.

It was remarkable, but because the power fields of power weapons, even my alien phase blade, reflect energies directed against them – thus they parry one another – the energy discharged deep within the gun, which promptly exploded with a flash and a deafening boom-crack. The man screamed as high speed ejecta – fortunately this was mostly projected away from me, thanks again to my weapon and more so thanks to my conversion field – blew though his body. The rest of the energy happily converted both forearms and a large part of the man’s chest to gas or plasma, and pulverised what was left up to the neck.

I wasn’t spared as miraculously as you might think, either, for the flash nevertheless, at a greater distance, blinded me, and pieces of the weapon cut me in passing. For that matter, one of the demon-man’s legs was wounded terribly as well.

My companions butchered the remaining guards quickly, and came to my side. I’ve generally, thank Him, had better odds than in that moment, stuck on a hostile ship, after a loud firefight, blinded and in pain, with a captive unconscious, immobilised and bleeding heavily.

And that's how we do things in the Holy Inquisition.

Well done.

Chapter Four

“Ouch!” I said. Well, to try and return to honest reporting, I suspect it was more: “Arghfrakbastard!” I screamed with a lot of kicking.

Nevertheless, it worked to a small degree. In that it seemed to me that I had one eye open, a bionic torn from one of the guards. I have no doubt – I could tell from Sathila’s grimace – that it looked repulsive, crudely taped onto my forehead, with leads trailing from it to the small external ports of my MIU, which had fortunately been intended to handle a feed from a gunsight.

Magos Santiso explained later that the persistent pain while I was wearing the thing was due to the impulses from its sensor conflicting with those from my optic nerve; one of his more comprehensible utterances. At the time, he merely said “The pain is good.”

I replied inappropriately again, I think I may have said something along the lines of ‘I’ll give you pain,’ under my breath, and if he’d heard it, he gave no sign, instead turning to try and patch up the prisoner. Something which was rather easier than healing me – and probably much more painful, as it consisted solely of cauterising his wounds with the flat surface of a power knife.

“Take the leg off,” I said, it was obvious that he was going nowhere in the near future, and he wouldn’t need it again in the future. With a curt nod, he set to work. I on the other hand, was attempting to get used to what was an admittedly crude augmetic; my vision was grainy and a little lopsided – it hadn’t exactly been well attached to my face, and was on at a slight angle – as well as occasionally disrupted by ghostly images.

Sathila was busily checking out our remaining hellguns, and picked up two, putting one on its shoulder strap and holding the other ready. Meanwhile, our tech priest was busy restraining our captive with webbing. “Who’s carrying him?” Sathila asked.

“Santiso,” I said, replacing my phase-blade in its sheath and thrusting it through my belt, “Kirareq and you up front, Santiso and I will take the rear.”

The Eldar looked quizzically at me, and I repeated the instruction to her; I anticipated having to teach her Gothic. I had a feeling that she understood it perfectly anyway, however, but didn’t care for it. The conceited xeno-freak liked to defy as much as she could without overstepping my lines.

‘Do you actually have a plan of escape?’ she asked.

‘Ah, I’d almost forgotten,’ I said, taking a vox-pulser from my pocket, and pressing the stud on it. Supposedly it had a very simple machine spirit that did only one thing; squeal to a receiver.

The lights flared, and the chamber trembled. Staccato pulses of light flashed and the enemy were upon us. Sathila rolled aside, crawling to one side of the door, the lintel of which glowed cherry-red from the heat of the blasts that had gouged a crater in the other side. She fired. A gurgle heralded a death.

‘A superlative plan’ Kirareq snapped; I have never formally learnt how Eldar sarcasm works, but I’m certain that was it, ‘I am inspired.’ She looked at her hellgun like it was excrement, and leaned around the corner, her arm snapping straight and killing another guard.

The techpriest hefted two, one in each hand, clearly aiming to show off, and I scooped up the last as we began to run into the corridor, stepping out first, bolts of focussed light invisibly hissing past my ears, a polarised flash showing where one skimmed my Eldar field generator. I shot at the groin of the last of the guard party, cursed my aim as I missed, and Santiso dealt with it, and pieced his abdominal armour.

“Where now?” demanded the Eldar in her own tongue. To see if she did understand gothic, I cried that we must reach our bomber’s berth, and quickly. She evidently did.

A shrieking voice summoned the ship’s crew to arms as we ran through the vaulted lobbies, and some officers – or so I assume – bolted from staterooms in various states of undress. Kirareq shot several down, “Forget that,” I said, as some of them began shooting back at us, evidently unprepared, and dodged through a connecting corridor.

“Any idea how precisely we get there?” asked Sathila, easily matching my pace, looking out ahead of us.

“I know the route, roughly,” I said, “I don’t forget things.”

“Shame that it’s quite a way, and they’re not going to be unaware of us for long.”

“There is that. But don’t worry, they’ve got other problems courtesy of Mydar.”

A closed door locked with a key-cipher pad barred our way, and I began to put in a sequence of numbers that should; on navy vessels, override such mechanisms. It didn’t work.

I kicked it.

Our techpriest began to work on it, and I lay against a buttressed metal wall of the companionway, breathing heavily.

A laspistol shot knocked a piece out of the floor by my toes; they hopefully weren’t going to shoot the magos in the back, he had their leader strapped onto it, but they might not get the message. I leaned out, steadied my gun, and let off a few shots which all missed by prodigious margins.

The door sighed slowly open, and a bouncing ball hit nearby and began rolling towards us. Kirareq dodged out from cover, skipping low, and sending it flying up the other way with her boot before diving back out of the way as several las bolts punched into the supple outcast armour we’d purloined for her.

“Through, before they get another!” I cried, and ducked, stooping as I did so. The dull ‘crump’ of a krak explosion echoed down the corridor, followed by an urgent howl.

“Forget it!” I said, as the magos began to work on closing the door, “better to be ahead of them!”

As if to prove me wrong, a bolt spanged off the doorframe and whirled past my eyes. “Run!” I cried, pointing down a companionway, only to see it crowded with armsmen. “Down another way!” I corrected myself as the bright flashes of shotgun blasts crackled along an impromptu line ahead of us.

These weren’t half-dressed officers, or surprised guards. They wore the broad glossy black plates carapace armour and burgundy robes over them, Arbities-style helmets protecting most of their faces and giving them a stubby, bald look. They broke and ran towards us as they realised that we weren’t planning to make a fight of it. Perhaps they recognised their commander and were holding their fire back a little.

The junction was where one corridor linked with another, but one of the corridors – the one with the armsmen, terminated. And the two groups couldn’t see one another. We were still being shot at by the officers who were hustling along after us; if they had more grenades, they weren’t using them yet, thankfully, just pistols.

One of our Eldar’s guns ran dry. It didn’t matter so much, as we were back in the formation we’d intended, slowest at the back. They’d certainly figured out who Santiso’s passenger was it seemed, and so they were mostly aiming for me. A thin line of smoke curled from the thong on which my conversion field talisman hung, as the thing heated up inside my robe.

I could hear the thump of the armsmen’s feet as they neared the corner, and stopped, suddenly, turning and shooting wildly up the corridor towards the officers, who stopped, took cover, and returned fire into the backs of the armsmen. This confusion among my enemies only killed one, I must confess, but it is amusing to reflect upon, and caused both groups to panic for a moment.

“This way!” snapped the magos, opening a heavy door. The passageway beyond curved away to either side, and there was no definable floor in the chamber, simply ribbed coppery metal that formed a circular cross section broken only by the alcove in which the door stood and a few nozzles.

I toppled in and rolled to the bottom of the pit, where Sathila already lay. The Eldar was on her feet – typical. Santiso snapped the door shut and spun a circular wheel, driving bolts shut, I assume. “I need something to block this with.”

“Not worth it, they’ll shoot through,” I replied, trying to clamber back to my feet in the toroidal chamber, and finding that they wouldn’t obey. My ocular implant flickered uncertainly, perhaps not reacting well to whatever machine spirits lurked in this room.

“They will not, it is adamantium!” he said, jamming one of his guns through the wheel-lock and applying the force of both limbs and his mechadendrites to bending it to obstruct the wheel. I sighed, letting my weapon hang from its shoulder strap, and pulling the graven metal scabbard of my sword off, “Try this,” I said.

“What is it?” he asked, catching it without looking at it in one of his tendrils.

“I don’t know, same metal as the sword,” I said, and he jammed it in without a word.

“Good. That should hold them,” he said quickly, “Now, we must find the other exit. We should be able to stay here indefinitely, but they’ll come in after us.”

“What is this place?” I asked, pushing myself up, looking around. I realised that it was dark, my eye was showing it regardless by some arcane wizardry.

“A reserve plasma cell,” the techpriest declared, walking steadily on the ribbed metal.

“A what?” Sathila snapped, echoing my own sentiment.

“When the reactors are in operation and the ship is idle, plasma is transferred to chambers like this one. They also form capacitors for weapons, but this one is not directly connected to any system, suggesting an ancillary role. Overflow for the ship’s shields, maybe,” he said, sure-footedly walking ahead, using his tendrils to support him, almost as extra limbs, above and to each side of him while we had to stumble along, the Eldar and I – I didn’t know how the xeno-bitch could see – having to help Sathila.

“So, you’re saying that at any moment, this thing could boil us?” I asked.

“No, Inquisitor. Magnetic compressors would activate first to contain the plasma. We would be crushed with lethal effect before the plasma sluices opened.”

“This is better than the corridors how?” I demanded, we’d curved around to the right, following the chamber’s shape.

“Outside,” a thump echoed through the chamber, as the guards found the door, no doubt, “they were actively seeking our deaths,” I noticed that my bared blade shone with a soft, golden radiance, “Here, there is a much smaller chance of our destruction,” the tech priest finished.

“Here,” the tech-priest said, pulling himself up to another alcove by the mechadendrites, “This door should lead into the corridor you wanted to go down,” he said, twisting the wheel, pushing the door outward very slowly, and looking through it cautiously.

None needed telling that it was imperative that we move quietly as we hauled ourselves out of the chamber. The captive strapped to the tech priest’s back was my main concern; he may regain consciousness and give us away. It was groundless, and we again began to hustle down the companionway as quickly as we were able.

“We should get onto the lower tier landing areas in a minute,” Santiso whispered, “but there’s a bridge over a materiel bay first, used for getting into titans.”

“You think there’s titans here?” Sathila asked, a little too loud for my taste.

“No, it’s unlikely. But this form of ship was invented for forced-landings, carries substantial armament, and sixteen large bays which can be fitted for landing and takeoff, or as storage for titans. This way, we’ll probably make it to our bay without being seen.”

“Provided no one looks up.”

“They have other concerns,” I put in, as we reached a stout, blast door.


The door opened into a vast bay, easily higher than any single chamber I’d been in on any starship, and wider, too, a deep chasm in which stacks of sealed metal boxes were piled high. A narrow bridge ran across this span, with waist high meshed banisters on either side, the same mesh making up its floor, welded at the corners, over wide pipes which would, thankfully, obscure the view of most of those who might be passing below. The bridge was wide enough for two of us to stand abreast upon it, so that the crewmen might pass one another by more easily. “Close the door quietly,” I bade the techpriest as we all moved onto the meshed bridge, aware that the area around us shook with every step, making a painful rattling noise that I was sure would attract the attention of any guards.

I needn’t have worried, the bay was deserted and we scurried across the bridge fitfully; besides, the noise of our footfalls on the bridge was obscured by the sounds of battle from the adjacent compartment. So far the plan was working perfectly.

You see, a bomber is typically able to do quite a bit of damage to an area of an enemy ship, and while ours had been de-powered, my signal to Mydar had been prearranged to order him to open fire on the ship we were on – just one concerted lance blast directed at the ship’s shields, enough to overload them and allow him to teleport; to a homer inside the bomber’s forward bay. From there its new crew were able to take the controls and bring the ship’s minor weapons online, followed by a few boarding parties, who were to try and take control of the bay.

We paused to look over the bridge’s side, and there was quite a sight; armour for a company, civilian vehicles of every kind, tanks, half tracks, armoured personnel carriers, and some dreadnought-like machines I didn’t recognise. “What’re those,” I said, pointing, though not over the side of the bridge.

“They are Knights of the Mechanicus,” Santiso said, eyeing the pair of them, spaced as though there was another removed, “Ancient war-constructs, like dreadnoughts, or a form of super-heavy power armour; from the same era as this ship, they are essentially miniature titans, but more automated.”

“It will be a shame to destroy all this.”

“It will be heresy,” he said, “but a lesser heresy than is being committed here,” he concluded, “now, let us hurry.”

We fled across the bridge to the other side, occasionally you could feel a tug of gravity that suggested that the battle was still ongoing; though doubtless Mydar was holding back on us.

I plunged my phase sword through the lock on the other door, and we opened it. Smoke poured from the gap, and I could see the other door opposite it, a narrow gap in the bulkhead led to the bay we sought, and its bridge and the door at this side, had been immolated. It was as though the wall was a pudding of some sort, that a greedy child had scooped part out of. The bridge in the other bay was collapsed atop the bomber, a squat blue-painted vehicle with extra armour haphazardly bolted on to make it appear less ‘new’ and Imperial. Guns boomed and chattered from blasted bulkheads, the crew of the traitor ship had several entrances to the bay secured, and there were enough of them to halt any advance; and stymie us nicely.

“How’re we going to get past?” Sathila asked, crouching beside me and peering over the lip of the vertical crater.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said, “We need to get down into the other bay. Magos…”

We didn’t bother trying to use the elevator mechanism, but rather we took almost a minute climbing down a ladder, except for Santiso, who was down in a shot, even with our captive on his back. He pulled him loose and tossed him down in the narrow compartment at the base of the ladder, under a flickering yellow luminator. It was difficult to imagine him attacking a Malleus laboratory, but of course, now that I was in the middle of his army, I had a good clue how.

There was a connecting passageway between the two bays, you see, with high walls, which were open, but now, on the floor, we could see that men with tripod-mounted guns guarded it, blazing away at the pitted side of the bomber, which probably wouldn’t be flying again. They weren’t looking for us yet though, and we flitted across the materiel filled bay’s floor as ghosts.

“Santiso,” I whispered, “Can you work something here big enough to put those guys down and get us to the shuttle without getting shot up?”

The cacophonous battle raged next to us, and we ducked behind a vehicle I didn’t recognise, its weighty armoured bulk reassuring against my back.

“Who the…” A crewman stood looking at us, for the instant before Sathila shot him, the hellgun bursting his neck and most of his head apart. A futile effort to kill silently, the ‘bang’ of flash-boiling meat was deafening, and my heart was, to put it poetically, in my throat. Would they notice? Would they come?

I didn’t – do not – especially fear death. I feared failure, and that seemed to loom like the shadows of the war machines all around us.

“Quickly,” I snarled, checking my own hellgun, holding my sword angled down at my side, and taking the rifle in a pistol grip.

He didn’t need further telling, of course, and disappeared, surprisingly quietly.

The chattering of bolters and the piercing shriek of lascannons skittering off void shields echoed into the room, and I realised we’d had some luck, no one was coming to investigate, yet.

A loud rumble from the other side of us warned us that Santiso had found something to do the job, and I looked on in astonishment as an antique, scuffed land raider roared into view.

“Nice…” I said, jumping into the trailing rear door, into the comparatively spacious white interior of the tank.

We made it about half way through the next bay, crushing the heretical troopers under the neglected vehicle. One of the Knights reared before us, its lascannons burning through our vehicle, smoke backing into the passenger compartment as it melted away one of the tracks and sent the land raider careening around in a circle. Santiso shot back, but our weapons didn’t harm its defence field, and it bore down on us. I could see it on the whickering screens of the trooper’s area.

“Run!” I shouted, and we did.