You settle on checking out the trophy room on the morrow, before heading back down to Oasis for the Founding Day festivities. With your plans settled, you collect your plates, pop the pantry hatch, and place the dishes in the sink before heading to bed.

The next day you rise with the morning watch. It's not quite dawn down on Oasis, but that's what happens when every watch is eight hours long, and a 'day' consists of one watch on, one off, and one asleep for the average crewman. It's nice and regular, but after a few cycles, you have to check your chrono to figure out what date to put on the paperwork. Your schedule is different, of course, effectively being off watch until Warp transit, and then not going off-watch again until the transit is complete. The fatigue almost does more damage to Navigators than the Warp Exposure, depending on how you count fatigue-induced errors and the time-distorting effects of the Warp.

You shake your head to clear the maudlin thoughts away, and head for your closet. Opening the doors, you nod in appreciation of Canala's handiwork. You had just tossed things on hooks and hangers in no particular order. She has them neatly sorted by casual, working, and dress occasions, then color-coordinated them. Your shoes are all neatly on a trio of new racks, sorted in the same manner, and the armor stand and weapon chest sit on their own.

You move three robes over next to the combat gear: baggy dark browns and grays to wear over your armor, intended to give you at least a little concealment if it comes to a fight. Then you pick out one of your new light-weight robes form the 'working' category: a nondescript brown robe and matching comfortable steel-toed leather boots. You rolled your eyes when Faunia insisted on the steel-toed part while you were making your list, but you have to admit they are quite comfortable. You complete the set by placing your sleeping kerchief on your bedside table for when you come back and replacing it with a more formal one.

Properly dressed, and with your night-clothes neatly sorted for cleaning, you pick up your laspistol and mapslate before heading out. You close and lock your door, consult your mapslate, and head off down the corridor.

You bypass the Arboretum deck, and walk on by the Library Vault and Temple to the Emperor. Both varieties of Tempe to the Emperor actually, given the temple to the Omnissiah you note is a deck above your route. The lift glides to a stop, and you glide off down one of the spinal corridors just below the bridge and just behind the landing bays. Conference rooms and offices for the bureaucratic types line the walls, but you pick up on the slowly-increasing ostentatious displays of wealth as you approach the VIP landing bay. You are moving from the working areas of the Ignis to the 'display' areas, intended to impress, over-awe, and / or intimidate business contacts not already in awe of the Ignis herself. The trophy room itself is quite near to the VIP landing bay, and you have to shake your head as you open the door.

The carpet is a set of assorted furred predator hides, heads on. Two more scaled predator hides hang from one wall, along with several more stuffed big game heads on wooden plaques. The obligatory side-bar of expensive alcoholic beverages and hunting rifles takes up a second wall. The remaining two walls are covered with paintings, plaques, artifacts, and curios. It's all so stereotypical over-blown Rogue Trader chic that you have to shake your head at it. The more your eyes wander over the room, the more your mind starts picking at why Faunia would have a room like this.

You slide your fingers along the scaled belknor-hide as some of the pieces start to come together. Faunia is (from your experience) a practical sort, not given to ostentatious displays of non-functional wealth. So this whole room is out of character with her. But the Ignis herself has a two-faced personality, you muse, considering the 'Deathwatch private quarters' notation on your mapslate. Those quarters are buried in the aft third of the ship, right above a 'cargo hold' that your mapslate notes as containing two Steel Rain drop pod launch bays, just behind a complex mass of machinery marked as a Teleportarium and Emperian Mantle stealth system. This 'Trophy Room' is forward, up near the bridge, both main cargo holds, their cargo-handling facilities, and the VIP landing bay.

This room is part of the 'face' Faunia shows to guests, however important, that are not in the know about her covert nature as a Shipmistress of a Deathwatch Fast Transport Ship. Part of the Ignis' and Faunia's cover as a legitimate Rogue trader specializing in express cargo delivery. Well, as legitimate as Rogue Traders ever get. You have to wonder how much of her performance in front of Bishop Rynald was just for show. Not much, you decide. He really did push almost all of her buttons, and if he did try to kick any complaints back up the line, they'd get squashed by the Ordo Xenos at some point. Not fast enough to have them simply vanish, but soon enough to prevent a firestorm.

You consult your map slate again, looking at the schematics just inside the Deathwatch section of the Ignis. As private as the Deathwatch tends to be, they do have to interface with the rest of the Ignis. And you have spent a little bit of time with them, usually when they were checking in on the Von Senbastions or the Dannans between missions. Just enough that off-duty and out-of-combat they are human writ larger than mortal life. Danus, though he's Chaplain Danus now you remind yourself, had a dry gallows humor, tempered by all of the secrets he had to keep locked away. Lord Pyrus has a love of good craftsmanship, and often worked on his own weapons in his spare time. And Helheim had an insistence on two rooms: one a dining hall where the restrictive formalities of military life could relax just a bit, and a trophy room for items collected on missions.

"There it is!" You exclaim quietly. Just inside the main crew access to the Deathwatch Quarters is a pair of large open rooms. One is marked 'dining / feast hall', the other is marked 'DW Trophy Room'. You drift out of the 'Trophy Room' and head back toward the lift. You can only hope that the security isn't too tight. You do have general-purpose high-authority access codes because of your rank as the Ignis' Navigator, but they don't get you quite everywhere.

Two and a half hours later you approach the large, nondescript hatch that marks the entrance to the Deathwatch Quarters. You pause a short distance from it to give it a once-over, looking for obvious extra security. You find nothing, just the usual coded-lock for middle-security areas, one that would be accessible to crew moving to a particular destination, but enough to bar casual wanderers or passengers lost in the Ignis' bowels. You let out a breath and enter your access code. The door chirps and admits you freely, though it does close and re-lock behind you automatically. You check your mapslate, not wanting to wander too far in, and turn left for the dining / feast hall first.

Within six steps, you feel like someone is watching you. You brush it off as extra security cameras, and keep moving. The hatch to the feast hall is wood, not metal, hung on huge hinges, and opens with a pair of big iron handles. You grin, already having an inkling of what you will find inside. When you open the doors, you have to grin. Classic Helheim.

Big wooden table, flanked by matching benches. the occasional ale- or grease-stain soaked into the wood. Fire pit near the back wall, banners hanging from the walls. The smell of roasted meat, strong ale, and old war stories hangs in the air. You breath deeply, taking in the homely odors. Much more like Faunia to associate herself with a room like this. Practical, multi-purpose (doubling as a mission planning room, in all likelihood), and with no pretensions to be what it isn't.

The Deathwatch trophy room is just across the hall, but you still feel the eyes on your back as you swish across to open the standard ship hatch to that room.

The hatch opens on a scene much more professional and less egregiously opulent that the 'Trophy Room' back at the other end of the ship. Six plinths line two of the walls, each with the skull of a fallen foe and plaque denoting what it was. The skulls range from little bigger than your fist to the size of your torso. You have no idea what any of them are, but more than one of them shows only a single killing blow. The back wall has two shelves of odd little curios: little bones, bits of metal from armor or implants, broken blades, spent bullets, a rusted or bloodied scrap of wire, the list is longer and more varied than you can memorize in a breath.

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But it's the weapon rack that draws your attention. A simple wooden frame holding three weapons upright. The left hand one is clearly a primitive hunting spear, eight feet in length, its flint tip the size of your open hand, and with a grip scaled to Space Marine hands. For you, it would be a short lance or polearm. For a Space Marine's enhanced strength and size, it would be a practical throwing weapon. The rightmost weapon is a staff made of a bone-like material, covered in deeply carved runes. Dried blood and an ozone stink both still cling to it. You need only a passing moment to know it as a focus staff of a psyker, probably alien, who died while channeling Warp Energy through it. The center staff is perhaps six feet in length, and made of what looks to be gleaming chrome. Nothing marks its length, no blade adorns its end, yet it sits in a place of honor in this Trophy Room, between two weapons of much greater prestige.

You feel the eyes on your back again. This time, you know someone is watching you, waiting. Given the state of the feast hall and the presence of a single large-caliber bullet-hole in several of the skulls, you have an idea who may be watching you. So you take a not-so-wild guess. "Come on out Helheim, I can feel you staring at me again."

The hatch hisses open, and you hear someone thump on in armored boots. Helhiem's familiar baritone rumble all but shakes the room. "Told you she was a sharp one Wraith."

Another person sighs loudly, and thumps down to the deck from the ceiling right behind you. Startled, you take one long step forward and spin in place. A black-armored figure stands before you, even the characteristic silvered left arm of the Deathwatch muted and ash-dulled. The right shoulder bears an off-white insignia of a stylized bird. Wraith, you presume. "What gave us away, Navigator? Helheim clanking around and sloshing his mjod everywhere?" His voice is a mellow tenor, and you get a hint of laughing curiosity in its depths, backed by an adamant discipline.

You shake your head. "I felt eyes on my back since I entered these quarters. Before I entered the feast hall, I brushed it off as an extra security camera. Between the feast hall and here I felt them for the second time, tracking me, which made them not a machine. The third time was shortly after I entered this room, which meant that whomever it was had followed me through the door when I passed through it. I know of Helheim from my first cruise on the Kukri, and saw him startle the shipmaster more than once before he started deliberately stomping a boot before entering the bridge. Plus the decorations in the feast hall are evocative of his style, so I took a stab in the dark."

Wrath shakes his helmeted head, and Helheim holds out an ale-horn to him. "Drink up newblood. Told you she would come poking around, and she'd spot you first!"

Wraith takes a step back from you and accepts the horn. He disengages his helmet to reveal a light skinned face with deep set dark eyes. "I'm thinking she didn't spot anyone. Didn't even look up, and guessed your name, not mine."

Helheim laughs and hoists his own horn. "That why I've this one to drink down! Don't think anyone this side of Pyrus could spot you, truth be told. Skål!" He throws back the horn and downs over a pint of mjod in a single long swallow. That much strong drink, just about the only drink you can think of that can actually get a Space Marine drunk, would lay you out cold and give you a hangover for three days. Helheim just belches and gestures for Wraith to follow suit.

Wrath shakes his head ruefully and downs his forfeit. "So you've met our Navigator before?"

"Aye. Know her father, mother, an' aunt well enough to. Good People, been through hell an' came back clean all three of them. Pyrus sent her a gift for her eighteenth birthday, by way of her father. Rubicon would have presented it himself, had he not been laid up after Blinding Shroud at the time. An' I'd have sent something along too if I wasn't getting re-built again after Burning Jester."

Wraith looks at you with a new appreciation. "My apologies Lady Dannan. You keep good company indeed, to be regarded so highly by so many."

You shake your head in slight embarrassment. "I just do my job the best I can. Figured I'd take a look at the Ignis' Trophy Room, see what kind of image Lady Faunia was trying to project."

Wraith nods, thinking something through. "Saw right through the showpiece up at the bow and came down here looking, eh? How did you know what rooms to check?"

"Pulled a Damage Control Map when I came aboard to find the Officer's Mess."

Wraith and Helheim both frown. Helheim asks the question that is clearly on both their minds. "So that led you down here how...?"

You pull out you mapslate and hand it to Wraith. "I put a copy of it on there. Only file on the thing, it's that big. Reason for that is that the Damage Control version of the map is intended to get damage control parties wherever they need to go when everything is on fire, voided out, blown to hell, or all of the above. So it includes everything, every compartment, passageway, duct, and wire, all labeled and searchable. 'Trophy Room' pulled up the showpiece as you called it, while this whole block simply shows up as 'Deathwatch Private Quarters'. Zooming in and reading the noted compartment names gave away the feast hall and actual trophy room's locations."

Helheim nods in understanding, while Wraith whistles. "Whoo-eee. She wasn't kidding when she said this map shows everything. Even has data-links to the technical documentation and manuals, complete with reference numbers."

Helheim grins. "Out of the mouths of the uninformed. Thank you Lady Dannan."

You raise one eyebrow, inviting further comment.

Helheim shakes his head. "We've had to retrieve map-data on ships on more than one occasion, and the deck guides are hopelessly inadequate for our purposes six times out of seven. This kind of data is going to exist on every ship at every damage control station, and will get us where we need to go to do what we need to do much better than we could in the past."

Wraith hands you back the slate. "That's the understatement of the day, perhaps even the week. If we had this kind data back during Spectral Temple..."

Helheim shakes his open hand in a gesture of uncertainty. "We wouldn't have been chewed up quite so much, but Danus probably wouldn't be a Chaplain either. Fate and Wyrd stick their hands in everything for a reason."

Wraith ponders for a long moment, then slowly nods his head. "That is true." He glances at the weapons rack that you had studied so intently earlier.

Helheim follows his gaze, then cocks his head. "Ah. Yeah, that would link into the family wouldn't it. And those two certainly play the long game. Got the lifespans for it too."

"Can someone tell me what is going on?" You interject, "in a way that isn't shrouded in things never said?"

Wraith purses his lips in thought. "Can't say much, but I'll say what I can. During Blue Apollo, a follow up to the cleansing of the space hulk Malignus Maximus in this system, we came across the central staff there in the ruins of a wrecked Eldar escort. The same one that Tristan and Mu'randa Von Sebastion, and Yasha Dannan had cleared during the initial cleansing of the same hulk. That implies a link between that staff, the individuals who left it there, and those two houses."

Helheim scratches his chin. "The last things left there were a set of distinctive amulets, wedding gifts from those same individuals. Which would indicate that this staff was also intended as a gift, but was placed there later for the Deathwatch to find, presumably by the same individuals. Then you come wandering on in, just for a look-see, and end up heading smack-bang for it."

It is your turn to nod slowly. "A deathwatch team that contained members who were also part of that same initial cleansing operation? One coincidence too many I think."

Wraith grunts. "Try six or seven too many. Can't elaborate, too many mission details involved, sorry."

Helheim shrugs. "If it was meant for you, then you should be able to pick it up, no problem. If not, then you won't be able to lift it. I haven't been able to since putting it there."

You ponder what you know about the staff in question for several minutes in silence. Wraith and Helheim simply wait, seeing that you are thinking it over. Your choices boil down to only two, and you get the feeling that this will be your only chance to make this choice.

On one hand, the individuals who are presumed to have left the staff behind on purpose have obviously given gifts to your aunt in the past, and this may indeed be a gift intended for you.

On the other, that assumption rests in turn on several other assumptions, which are based on shaky inferences at best.