Virtanen placed his hand on the stranger’s shoulder, ‘Let me speak to them.’

The man moved out of the way, ‘Careful, they’ seem awfully twitchy. Understandably.’

++ Halvar coming in ++ he broadcast over the reactor’s comms net as he squeezed past the human.

‘Well met Kin Brôkhy Jorgen,’ he said, reading the name, rank and role that hung in glowing runes above her head on his ocular monitor. ‘The human speaks the truth. The thing is … dead.’

If it had ever been truly alive he thought, the stench of the creature’s biological parts filling his nose as they continued to burn. Thank the Core I have a strong stomach.

‘Well met,’ she didn’t use his title, for which he was grateful. His cloneskin should not be something that the humans should learn about. Thankfully, he was wearing a maintenance technician’s purple coveralls. Obviously the plasma pistol was an issue, but there was a security element attached to maintenance technicians due to the stray creatures found in the labyrinthine corridors and tunnels of Jomsburg, so he wasn’t too worried. ‘Coming in?’

He nodded, breathing a sigh of relief as the reactor team lowered their weapons. Friendly fire was a misnomer. No fire was friendly, and his vat-mother didn’t raise him to get crisped by fellow kin with twitchy trigger fingers.

Still feeling somewhat cautious, he stepped through the doorway, muttering a ‘Follow me’.

The human didn’t argue, following him through the door. Virtanen turned to look at the person who had saved him. They wore a full body-sleeve with some sort of chainmail weave covering it. For a human, it was surprisingly understated. The only thing that stood out, clear as day, was a small pin attached to their upturned collar.

‘Ah,’ said the human, glancing down at where Virtanen was looking with a somewhat embarrassed tone. ‘Yes. That. My Rosette.’

Virtanen looked closer, capturing the Inquisitorial Rosette with his ocular monitor, adding it to the knowledge library of the core. It was different to those that he had seen before. A skull on top of a cog was at the centre of the main stem of the “I”.

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‘Your rosette?’ asked Jorgen. Inquisitors were part myth, part legend, all nightmare, and nothing like the man who stood before them. He had strange haircut, one side of his hair was long, hanging below his strong jawline whilst the other side was bare scalp.

Bare, that was, except for a series of data studs jutting out of an elaborate tattoo. His build was, she thought, medium for a human. He wasn’t a hulking beast like the Adeptus Astartes, nor was he a weakling. She judged he was whipcord strong.

But it was his eyes that held her attention. There was a spark to them. Humour, life, determination, and a sense of focus which she would never want to be on the wrong side of.

‘Yes. Apologies for not announcing my arrival sooner. I was somewhat distracted by the hunter-gatherer,’ he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. ‘For which I must also apologise. It was sent to extract data from your reactor’s cogitator.’

Jorgen frowned at the unfamiliar term. He pointed over at the computer terminal she worked at. ‘Cogitator, you know, parses information, accepts commands, runs programmes et cetera.’

She smiled, ‘Computer, we call them computers.’

‘Kompyooter,’ he said, mulling the word over in his mouth as if he was tasting a fine wine. ‘An old word, sounds like High Gothic.’

‘Why is an inquisitor in our stronghold?’ she asked, ignoring all of the message requests that were popping up on her ocular monitor.

‘I’m from the Ordo Mechanicum, we keep a careful watch on our friends from Mars. One of whom, I’m afraid to say, felt that they could take advantage of your hospitality and steal the data from your reactor.’

‘Why did you stop them?’ Virtanen asked. ‘Are you not both from the Imperium?’

The Inquisitor nodded, a slight smile on his face, ‘Indeed, my fellow tunnel warrior. However, the thirst for knowledge can be all consuming, and the knowledge can possess a taint. I would rather we had cordial relations with you and your people.’

And stop one faction of the mechanicus gaining too much power, no doubt, thought Jorgen, schooling her face to hide her thoughts.

‘Now, would you be so kind as to help me dispose of that infernal beast, and then I would be terribly grateful if you could introduce me to Mjotour Haaken, so that I can start to make amends.’

Jorgen nodded and blink-clicked a command to her apprentices who rushed to obey the order.

‘Our Lord will be here shortly. He’s ever so interested in learning more about the hunter-gatherer,’ she said, smiling at his discomfort.