Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean.
Innocence proves nothing.
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
It is better to die for the Emperor than to live for yourself.
Life is the Emperor's currency, spend it well.
And a hundred more catechisms rippled across the cool, still surface of his mind. Lessons from his youth ever quarrelling with lines written in the Good Book.
To burden a man unready, is to do them a disservice.
Every life has its place in the great tapestry of the universe. Some need help finding it.
Curiosity is a virtue, but when not tempered by wisdom, it kills.
Humanity divided is humanity lost. Only united can we stand against the horrors of the Old Night.
Never doubt: it can always get worse. Never fear: it can always be made better.
Urdal was ever uncertain, just how many holy books his Lady had gone though.
“And how many of those were heretical or Xenos.”
Some of Her sayings that he had dutifully recorded is his Good Book she would elaborate on, when time allowed… and his companions could tolerate their talks on philosophy and religion.
In this, they were fools.
Yes, Lady Pyrrha Nikos was among the deadliest living beings in the sector. And a warrior at heart.
But her heart did not long for war, only combat.
And when the blood was wiped and the fighting done, she liked nothing more than to spend time with her students, talking to them. It was hypocritical, how his teammates complained and lamented their long talks… when all of theirs were the same.
Nobles bad. Chaos bad. Life sad, but hopeful. Most xenos bad. Mutants bad and sad.
Clean air nice, novel food good, happy family amazing.
Urdal did not blame them for their failures. For they were not their fault, entirely.
“Elaine… any faithful imperial would have killed her on the spot, and not thought of it again.”
Yet here she was, abhuman. The mutant had shed her mutations, one by one.
What remained was a class of abhuman from their Master’s home: Faunus.
Urdal had met several of them so far, and it proved one truth: so long as there was faith and will to fight, to cling to the Light of The Emperor, even a mutant was not beyond salvation.
For this alone, Urdal knew many of his fellows who would declare him the heretic.
“How small minded I was.” the man everyone knew as Goodbook mused. He was determined to collect as much wisdom as he could from his Master. To make a new, Good Book, to guide the people of Sanctuary and all that came from it into a new age.
That was his most sacred task, to be the bridge between the faith of these hidden cities, and the wider Imperium. One he swore he would not fail in.
Urdal had another surname once, long ago. He’d shed it, joining The Ecclesiarchy. Spent long years in study and suffering, purging his body and strengthening his mind for the trials ahead.
He, once a lowly menial, had managed to graduate into the ranks of the preachers and been attached to a regiment of The Emperor’s holy Imperial Guard.
“Or so I once thought.” Not that the Guard was holy, but that the duty was, and that, under the ministration and careful guidance of himself and his brothers, they would lead the Guard to glory and holy purpose.
The early days were kind enough. Though three campaigns, Urdal had served as Preacher and confessor to his men, no matter how unworthy he knew himself to be for the latter role. Some of his brothers scorned the men, others were driven to ever greater zeal by their lacking faith, yet Urdal ever remembered his roots.
That the faith of most men was a quiet thing, spoken only during prayer times was not failure. It was what most separated him from those orphaned into the kind hands of the Adeptus Ministorum. Trough his past, Urdal better understood those they ministered.
As bloody battles took their toll, he found himself rising in rank until his was the faith that decided how the guard regiments under his charge would be ministered. Against prevailing doctrine and the school he’d been thought, Urdal implemented what was so obviously right to him:
Regular, regimented prayer, during which time their men would be taught holy songs to lift their spirits and steel their spines in battle. Icons made by hand from their preachers, blessed by holy oils and waters to be attached and gifted to every officer and men who distinguished themselves.
Simple things that matched the training and lives that the men they were to muster knew and already accepted at home. Yes, there was a time to burn heretics, and they were ever careful of sin, infiltrators, rebellious sentiment or cowardice… but by The Emperor, he’d met some preachers who believed their men should be ritually whipped every week, if not each day, as if they were all flagellants.
It was in the ships, and moving from world to world, that Urdal’s simple view of the Imperium shifted. It was in meeting men and women, fair and foul, in station low and high, that his faith was tested and tempered.
It was in facing Orks, that he learned the perils of zeal without wisdom, and the importance of the officers and tactics so many of his brothers so disdained and dismissed.
“What folly.”
But it was Ragan IV that forever changed his life.
Going in, all thought it was just another rebellion. And so it began.
It was not until the regiments of the guard were spread out, all over the Feudal World, that the cultists showed their true hand. Having men they’d fought beside suddenly turn traitor was a shock, but nothing his schooling had not readied him for. Urdal himself had dispatched several assassins, and his battle chants had aided morale and battle, until the Captain could extract them from the ambush.
Their unit had been both lucky and not, to be so close to the capital. To be able to retreat to what should have been safe grounds, some provincial nobility falling to the Great Enemy… only to discover that all of them had.
The fighting had been fierce, building by building in that nightmarish feudal sprawl. Their weapons and armour far superior… but equally, they were beyond outnumbered and drowning in bodies that delighted in pain.
Temptation had claimed the city, and Urdal had been left praying for any still innocent and loyal souls that remained upon the face of the whole world. For in those bloody, smoking streets, it seemed that all of them had fallen and were coming to kill them.
And then… the scream. The cursed song, the skies turning red and purple. Urdal did not like remembering those cursed minutes or hours. Even today, so many years later, the memories were unclear. Muddled.
Brother had turned upon bother, as every boy, girl, man and woman that had huddled in their huts and houses came out into the streets to paint them red in bloody, damned revelry and perversion.
As if it was all some dance, and they were all invited.
Prayer, prayer helped… but it only helped so much.
Yet despite that, Urdal would never forget.
Barricading the doors behind them.
Making their last stand with the few loyal souls remaining on the rooftop.
The crowds and horrors tearing down what loyal Knights remained, and a Chaos Knight approaching as their doom.
Watching in horror, as the King’s castle ruptured, a massive monster rising out of the rubble to proclaim the Doom of an entire world… and the red spark turned blinding lightning that stuck it in its moment of triump.
Witnessing a miracle as a single, human sized knight and red power armour duel the horror that had just destroyed a castle to a standstill, rallying what Knight’s remained… and then unto death.
The death of the heretics, the death of the deamon.
So long as he lived, Urdal would never forget: there were heretics, and there were heretics.
If nothing else, his Master proved that, that cursed day. Even if it went against everything he’d ever been told, how could he strike down one who had not only saved his life and soul, but the lives and souls of a whole world?
Who’d faced a direct servant of one of the Four, and banished it?
Those were not the deeds of some cowardly witch. Those were not the deeds of a handful of his Angels, but of their own greater champions.
Even if they’d tried to end her, all it would have won them was their deaths.
For in the aftermath, she was death. Where ever the red woman walked, heretics died, and Chaos Knights were broken like toys.
So instead, Urdal had sworn to watch this dangerous woman in the aftermath. Accompany her and learn all about her, all the better to enable the Inquisition that no doubt pursued this heretic to deal with her. And in the meantime, guide her deadly spear into targets that would aid the Imperium.
To his folly. To his grace.
For certainly, it had to be The Emperor’s Own mercy that stayed his hand that day.
How else would he have come to accompany his Master, to learn from her?
Urdal still watched for the betrayal. Was ever ready for it.
He did not expect the Lady Nikos to do so, but that was the nature of betrayal: it comes unexpected.
Should she ever prove unworthy of his trust, Urdal would die trying to end her… but in his heart and soul, Urdal knew it was old caution that made him keep such habits up.
Nothing else.
Such a day would never come, and with each month and year spent in Sanctuary, watching it grow?
His fears had died. It was a slow death, but inevitable. Fully murdered at last, when the first of the new Elite Hunters passed their Fourfold Trials. His student, freely allowed to learn of and worship The Emperor… if that was their wish.
Here was a new blade for the Emperor and the Imperium to wield against the horrors of the Old Night.
Urdal Goodbook would guard it well.
No matter how the presence of heretics all around him, or the very idea of goodly heretics discomforted him.
***
Magos Michiko Kappa observed the incoming reports. They were reaching a tipping point. The enemy advance had been slowed down significantly, but projections showed that they’d reach the gates of Sanctuary within four days.
“Vexing.” the Magos concluded. Well within projections, but hope was an ever bothersome emotion. It had its place in the machine of the sprit, but that was not among the cold calculus of war.
Kappa would have preferred to keep the rotations going for at least another week… but it was not to be. With 20.47% of the Sanctuary guard currently down as casualties, 12.51% of which were expected to recover to full bodily ability with appropriate treatments, and with another 2% operating at reduced capacity, the ability of the guard to contribute to delaying actions was rapidly deteriorating. With 52% of the guard required to keep watch and purge the surroundings of Sanctuary from perils of the Underhive, what could be spared for the advance was no longer enough.
Steady rotations among the guard had allowed each member to gain experience fighting his misguided, doctrinally ossified fellows on the other side, and the hunters, both graduates and those still in the later years of the Academy, had each gained as much experience fighting an army that fought sufficiently as the Plague Warp Source to qualify for Academy Credits.
Losses among them were as expected, a mere 2.1% lost to youthful, inexperienced folly.
It was best to remove such fools from the ranks before their mistakes could doom more of the crop.
Magos Michiko Kappa was foremost a gardener. His work highly valued amongst his fellow Logisticians, as it allowed them to harvest materials out of the sump with unmatched efficiency. His generatorium expertise was more by necessity than inclination. Without power, nothing could work, and it was following power fluctuations that often revealed Logician positions.
As such, this position had been formulated upon the idea of being power self-sufficient.
Michiko Kappa was uncertain how his role in maintaining the hostile biome beyond their compound, and the gardens and farms within, had slipped into an outright maintenance designation. But despite what he had considered wasted time, at the time, it had proved both useful and a compliment to his own skills set.
Truly, the Pursuit of Knowledge showed that no Knowledge was useless.
He had made a note of it. Again.
That such had also kept him out of sight and out of mind of the test subjects had proven the greater boon. The Magos had little doubt that should “Kiki” learn and understand how connected a Mechanicus enclave was in the noosphere, his life would shortly come to a painful end.
That his body was distant from the experiments did not mean his mind was uninvolved. He was, after all, a genetor by trade and preference, Renegade or not. The least of them, which is why such maintenance duties fell to him, but still one of them.
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The Lady knew.
She had always known.
“And I am not so useful, that I cannot be removed.”
It was strange to know that what had saved his life had not been distance, but choosing where he preferred to die. A hobby, an indulgence to his more irrational side: the flower garden he oft used to calm himself, in place of drugs and injections.
It had demonstrated a 6.1% rise in efficiency and 4.2% increase in effectiveness, as well as a 12.4% decrease in maintenance and down time, by merely making the most aesthetically pleasing garden in one of the domes and regularly attending it for short breaks. Yet no matter how he tried, while aesthetics could be studied, quantified and qualified, his pursuit of Beauty had ever been fruitless.
He’d gone there to die, when the screams of his fellows filled the noosphere to bursting.
Beauty was such a strange thing. He was still learning of it. It was very clear, he’d known so little. That there was yet so much more to learn.
Magos Michiko Kappa had come to understand that he deserved to die. For all the wasted time and resources, all the wasted lives him and his had thrown away in their ignorance.
But dying would be a waste as well. So he lived, in service. Hoping that the improvements he produced would outweigh the waste done. Knowing that in the eyes of his Warden and Lady, they never could.
Her obsession with the worth she assigned to each life, he could not understand for the longest time.
Not until one of those mewling, useless babes rose up to be able to contend demons.
Not until a mutant shifted and changed, slowly becoming closer to the perfect human form, until it was merely abhuman.
Then he understood.
Much like sumps and mines, there was rock, there was metal, there were rare earths… and then there were those most precious of resources, scattered, hidden and buried amongst it all. Impossible to see or refine without the finest of forges, the best of sensors.
But all the more precious, for they were the ones necessary for the forging of not mere weapons or armour, but Artefacts.
Humans were the same. Potential.
They did not water this Sanctuary garden for the common grasses. Nor the uncommon grains. Even the fruits would only serve their purpose to nourish and shelter the rest of the garden, or to trade their services to the Imperium for benefits and raw materials.
They were looking for those rare genetic miracles. The rare chance where faith, luck and fortune intermingled to produce true improvement: the next step on the Path to Knowledge. A flower that could be carefully tended until it grew into something far greater, like a miraculous cure.
For Knowledge could not merely be sought or chased from ancient ruins, but grown anew.
For this, the Imperium declared him and his Renegade, heretic. Because they dared remove the shackles choking them all, and innovate.
They were fools.
They were wise.
The Lady sat him down one day, explained it:
“By stepping beyond the bounds of what was, by trying to innovate, you embrace Change. Giving one of the Four a foothold in your works and thoughts. They do not need to corrupt every working, or even most.”
Her voice tonalities indicated a solemn plea.
“All it takes is one. One mistake, one moment of weakness or loss of concentration… for it all to Fall.”
“You would forbid innovation?”
“I would guard you from threats you cannot perceive or combat, while you do so.”
It was not her “mercy” that won his loyalty. It was the long years that followed.
She was no fool. Not a menial, or unlearned herself. The Lady had not burned or destroyed their archives, instead seizing them to use the records to lay down the bones of her new Academy.
For they were extensive records indeed.
No, it was the plagues. Again and again, despite all his sensors, assistants and random checks, the Lady would warn him of plague before he and his fellows ever found it.
Just as every now and again, she’d walk into his lab and make a small adjustment. Isolate and burn a single plant. Correct an equation that he was sure was already right. And even if her correction was wrong?
It might take him hours and days to find the mistake, after it was pointed out. And months for the projections to finish showing him what would have happened to his innovative research… if she hadn’t.
Reckless. Despite his finest preventative measures, he’d been reckless. Wasteful.
They all had. For how could they conceive that the Enemy could not merely corrupt their results… but adjust their archives, alter recordings, cloud their very memories?
The worst part was, when she did not even understand the workings she was correcting. Only see that they’d been meddled with.
Magos Michiko Kappa was loyal. Not to the High Lords of Terra, or the Fabricator-General of Mars, but to his Lady.
For even as she lay a blindfold upon his eyes, warning him away from warpcraft… with her actions she both showed him the dangers of it, and shielded them all from such perils.
It was easy to be loyal, when, if not for her intervention, one of his experiments would have eaten him.
Or several.
And it did not hurt that her ways and means, incomprehensible as they were, had demonstrated another path to preserving Knowledge. For once one of her new Order took the final of four steps into being an Elite? It marked the Union of Body and Soul.
Slipping the cruel grasp and endless deterioration of Time.
For the Soul was Immortal.
If any of his students could become an Elite Dust-smith or another Professor, like the Grandmaster?
His lessons would propagate for millennia to come. Become the seed of a new, better Order.
That was why he’d cut ties with the most of the rest of the Logicians, despite the promises made and the threats it had called down on Sanctuary. They did not understand. Couldn’t, for they did not have access to the data he had collected himself.
Data he would not have believed, if another simply offered it to him.
It also did not hurt that he’d gotten access to much of the archive to advance his own learning, even if his time was sharply limited. It was not as if his body needed particular attention to perform routine maintenance.
As the newest report was typed up and joined the rest in the restored and highly segmented Sanctuary noosphere, the line was crossed.
Orders were given for the Elites to retreat.
It was time to rouse the Master Hunter.
Unfortunately, Urdal Goodbook was not one of the ones that would accept carrying a scanner into battle. Which meant that if he wanted to have any records of the man’s Semblance fully unleashed, the Magos would have to join him on the battlefield.
Vexing.
***
It was unfortunate, but expected, that the moment the Skitarri unleashed their rad weapons, most of them would depart.
Even among Skitarri, only some could endure their “holy light” for any length of time.
Thus, much of the Legion wasn’t present. They were busy up-hive, purging the various manifactoriums, quarrelling with noble troops and the local Mechanicus, leaving the duties of supporting the expert troops to combat servitors.
That this purge and pursuit was allowing agents of House Nikos to recruit extensively among the most open minded was a boon not to be squandered.
In the weeks and months to come, Sanctuary would benefit from the influx of technically minded personnel.
Most of them would never be able to overcome the lessons the cult had impressed into them. They would never rise into command or research positions, but for all that, their service would be no less earnest or beneficial.
Managing that web of agents was Urdal Goodbook’s biggest headache, and the largest reason why he had hesitated to be the one left behind.
Despite the head of the agents begin good at their job, they were not a Huntsman. And so matters of intrigue that had no business on his desk ended up there anyway.
For most, he sent them back approving of the recommendations. Some needed more consideration, and with those, he acted as best he knew how. Knowing and accepting that he was failing both his Master and Sanctuary.
But his best was still far better than letting all those choices and chances lie fallow.
The magos entering his chambers came as a relief.
War, now war he understood. And breaking those bound to rigid doctrine was something he’d had plenty of practice with.
***
“Still think none of them are capable of learning?”
“Lathe-Hesh is infamous for its conservatism. I would be surprised if more than 1% seriously considered the idea of surrendering to what they consider hereteks.”
“Which you are not.”
“We are all heretics, as you well know. Perhaps, your dust-smiths might count as hereteks, as they practice warp-craft. The designation was always meant to mark servants of the Four.”
“Which we are not.” the Master Huntsman stated, less than amused by the implication.
“Just so.” the flat voice of the Magus confirmed.
“You remain ever disagreeable company, Magos.” the Huntsman complained.
“Such has proved only efficient. It reduces time wasted dealing with foolish requests.”
“Some days it’s hard to tell what’s serious and what false with you Magos.”
“As it should be.”
“I did not take you for a politician.”
“We are all politicians. Dealing with infighting, relations and politics between different factions, interests and entities comes with titles and ranks.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“To be directors and regulators feeding instructions to lesser cogs working beneath us, we must understand how to command them. Anything else would be wasteful.”
“Now I remember why we never talk.”
“Excellent.”
The Preacher of the four Master Huntsmen was far more efficient and palatable communicating through formal reports. None of this “small talk” or “chatter.”
It was to be discouraged at every opportunity. The magos had made the mistake of encouraging him to talk once.
Never again.
“I’d rather listen to the endless chanting of the puritans, then be drawn into more prayer. At least the rites of tech-priest served some practical purpose, riddled by tradition and inefficiencies as they are.”
Even understanding that there was some true purpose to them that he could not properly detect, the Magos could not assign values to unknowns. Thus, they remained wasteful, for clearly, Sanctuary did not require nearly the same levels of pointless chanting, “purity” seals, and “holy” oils.
Yes, The Omnissiah was Holy. But His servants required much improvement to even begin to approach His Grace.
If there was one thing the Magos appreciated, it was a reliable tool. Being able to call upon a Huntress regularly, to have her check if the oil, water and seals were actually effective or not, was a boon he could not and would not dismiss.
The fools above and in the Lathes had no such advantage. They had to make up for it by employing many, many flawed layers of protection.
Instead of the one properly working one he and his could use because they understood what they were doing. Even if they, themselves could not entirely perceive the results of their work. That was the beauty of specialisation: having tools that could perform work they themselves could not.
The difference that made in production speed and costs… was significant at scale.
“Ah. It is starting.”
Remaining in cover, Magos Michiko Kappa extended several cheap mechadendrites to better record the event. That two were lost before it began was well within projections.
***
It was a silly thought to have, as he crept up closer to the advancing enemy formation, but he was reminded of his own Elite trials. The burn of radiation getting ever closer was not so different than the burn of plagued air and ground. Until now, he had been uncertain how close the circumstances were to fighting the Plagues, but they came close enough. Especially with the fires and dust kicked up by all the construction driving foul and burning air deeper into the tunnels.
No wonder so many of his students were struggling with this. It would be endlessly draining to someone without his advantages even with Aura. Without it?
The moment any opening was made, to strike from ambush, the guard would find themselves bathed in the same kind of invisible fire by automated and automatic reflexes, as well as the air and dust coming in through the opening. When the rad light wasn’t even worse, and visible.
Success in the Fourfold Trial had many benefits. But while an immunity to corrupting influence and the manifold increases in aura capacity were what were touted and lauded among the student body, Urdal considered the Gifts of equal value.
There had been too few Elite Huntsmen raised to establish any kind of certainty… but what their Master in the art had told them felt right.
The possible Gifts were as wide and varied as Life, Souls and Semblances… but the likely ones were simple and easy to both understand and predict.
The unnatural might to stand up to any foe, from learning to master their own Wrath. By uniting Soul and Body, they could strike with the strength unparalleled outside of power armour, without expending any Aura.
The grace and speed to dance between bullets and lasbolts, from denying Temptation, Sensation. Extending into Mastery of self and movement, down to the last, finest details and the ability to tell mass and momentum to ignore you, in blinks and moments where one was more soul than flesh.
The ability to rapidly heal, or shrug off lesser attacks and lessen even great blows… if they were not backed by holy or unholy might. Less useful against their most hated foes perhaps, but very effective against most Xenos.
And for those lucky few, having their Aura recovery rate keep up with their Aura capacity, instead of lagging far behind due to their only additive increases compared to the multiplicative growth of capacity. That was a boon like few others for their endurance and for Semblance use.
It was, after all, the greatest weakness of Master and Grandmaster Huntsmen and Huntresses: their Auras could be worn down or exhausted.
Urdal still preferred his own Gift from that trial. Being able to ignore and shrug off lesser threats and attacks without any Aura loss was almost as useful as the ability to rapidly recover. How it allowed him to ignore most environmental threats didn’t hurt either, even if this field was bit too hot, even for him.
It was always good for a laugh, to throw himself among the bunch of Orks with nothing but his fists, no aura, and watch them struggle to even bruise him. Few things are worse for the morale of an Ork party, than the leading Nob badly losing a bare-knuckled brawl with a mere “puny” human.
“Just as long as they aren’t wrestlers.”
Urdal hated all Xenos, as any dutiful servant of The Emperor should… but Ork wrestlers were the worst.
Fittingly, the Changer was harder to pin down. The currently written lessons told students that his Gifs were focused around the mind: honing senses, expanding memory, gifting talents for work mechanical or craft.
This was not Urdal’s experience. His own walk through the many false mirror labyrinths had set his hatred in stone. Fed his faith from a quiet flame to a blaze that he rarely let out among such impressionable youngsters.
The many false hopes and fake futures, his wide and varied doubts, buried and hidden even from himself… no longer hounded his steps, for the Changer had thrown them all back in his face, and laughed. He had withstood them all, in that mirror labyrinth, and come out the better man for it.
His faith unshakable, his will unbreakable. For what trial or test could compare, after that harrowing experience?
No matter the monster’s insistence that that was “All according to plan.”
There was a reason why the order of the trials was personal and by choice… yet still, every Mentor told the students to leave the Changer for last. His was the only trial where even in success, one might find failure.
The nightmares still haunted him, at times. More recently, since one of the more promising students failed to listen to their warnings and took the Changer on before his time. Passing the trial… only to weeks later commit suicide.
“What a waste.”
Urdal knew not what Gift he’d gotten from his trial… only that it was never discussed. Accepted.
And that their loss had cooled passions and interest in the whole of the Fourfold Trials.
Likely just as the Changer intended. Urdal had acted to oppose that malaise immediately. Instituted regular tarot readings as “voluntary” part of the approval process going forward, for the faithful.
For only blessed divination could oppose sorcerous sight.
It was not that gift he drew on now, for all his reinforced faith had made using his Semblance simpler, cheaper in Aura.
No, Urdal Goodbook called on the Gift he’d gotten out of his trial with Khorne. Who hated and wanted to destroy everyone and everything.
The Master Huntsman had rejected such all-consuming hate… but he had learned from it.
Not his, overpowering strength.
No, instead his Soul, his Semblance? It had learned a universal truth.
The fires of hatred needed not promethium to burn. They could be fuelled by anything he hated.
And in this moment, after weeks of reading reports of his students struggling, suffering? After signing so many retirement papers due to loss of limbs or greater injury, and delivering so very many condolences and regrets to guard widows?
Urdal Goodbook hated these Skitarii. But more, he hated their weapons. He hated the radiation that so poisoned and ruined everything it touched, that wading through it would remind him of one of the Four.
And perhaps, the worst of them, if the Life preachers were to be believed.
Thus did Urdal Goodbook take his deep well of hatred of Nurgle… and turn it to those who would irradiate entire battlefields as carelessly as Nurgle spread his plagues.
And just as he passionately hated those unnatural plagues… he decided to that he hated radiation.
It lit a spark in his very soul. He threw it.
***
It was both fortunate and unfortunate that so much of the Legion was busy inside the Hive, beyond the Underhive and the irradiated halls claimed by the Vanguard. Thus did they avoid the racing conflagration that consumed multiple maniples of Skitarii Vanguard and many a battle servitor.
Losing enough Vanguard to fill multiple War Cohorts, if not a full Macroclade, or two? It was a disaster.
Losing such a concentration of specialists who were best suited for the close quarters combat inside a hive was a body blow to the Legion, even if it was but a fraction of their full numbers.
In the minutes it took the firestorm to race out of the hive, the Legion immediately began to split their efforts. To ensure those who dared resist the righteous wrath of the Omnissiah would be promptly annihilated and could not escape from this latest perfidy. Without allowing those among the local Mechanicus that had betrayed its precepts any chance to escape their righteous punishment.
For projections showed that if the enemy had unleashed such a weapon now, the Vanguard had to have gotten close to their stronghold.
And all the while, relations between vessels in orbit were rapidly deteriorating… what with the purges disturbing production quotas, the skirmishing all over the planet disturbing the refit and repair schedules of the Imperial Navy… not to mention how a few orbital “interventions” over Volg had infuriated the Nobility who held positions over that Hive city, and begun a series of “clashes” that well would have been wars on a less inhabited planet.
In short, the situation was in near free-fall, and a certain Ordo Xenos inquisitor was furious to be recalled to deal with this mess. For she’d been out in the outer reaches of the sector, doing her duty. Yet with the Ordo Machinum Inquisitor still missing on the expedition, she was the one with the most influence over the Lathes, as the designated temporary replacement.
Unfortunately for her and the Ordo Machinum Inquisitor, she would arrive too late. For it had taken her time to untangle herself from her investigation, without endangering it, and her investigation was clear on the other side of the sector.
For even as the tunnels of the Underhive burned, then melted and set fire to what was beneath them? While the Vanguard melted and fried, and the Legion descended down in force… into the masses of monsters and worse things fleeing the advance, and then the rampart fires?
A young looking woman stepped out of a transport, high above in the port in geostationary orbit above the Nova Castillia hive.
Unlike so many other travellers, she soon found herself where no passenger should, deep in the bowls of the maintenance tunnels. There, she stripped out of her travel clothing and slipped into her armour.
Which was void rated.
The travel clothes went into the hidden cache in the long deserted corridor and red Mechanicus robes were pulled out and packed away, alongside a variety of useful implements.
A little over two months after hearing about the invasion, Lady Pyrrha Nikos opened the outer doors… and walked out.
No matter how horrible this galaxy got, the feel of wonder always took her whenever Pyrrha stepped out on her own into the void. To be just another tiny light among the other stars?
Listening to them all sing, unknowing and uncaring of any mere, mortal concerns?
It was wonderful.