Philips tagged in between two of the armoured soldiers, as were dozens upon dozens of the freshly freed prisoners. Not too far behind him was Scaiffe. He wanted to kill the bitch, but he could barely walk at this point.

He had thought about ways to kill her despite it all. There'd be dead soldiers. He might be able to steal a weapon, shoot her before anyone had a chance to intervene. He was a mercenary, after all, and a good one besides. He knew how to handle firearms.

And he knew how to remain focused. The appearance of that enormous giant, that Charger, didn't frighten him that much. He'd seen soldiers in mech suits before. Fancy, fairly useless things. Whatever the man was encased in wasn't a mech suit though, but simply an enormous suit of power armour. It didn't intimidate him much either. He'd stared the Empire's automated war machines in the face, and those hadn't scared him either.

That void behind the helmet, however… That was a different manner. It was as if the man wasn't there. He might have been exhausted beyond measure, but even so he should have felt something. It was as if Charger wasn't real, as if he didn't exist. He was completely invisible to them. He had looked at Scaiffe. He had found her visibly disturbed and gazing up at the visor of the metal giant with fear in her eyes. Which means she's felt it too.

Scaiffe regarded the men around her with the wariness of someone who's been beaten by everyone she ever met. She didn't snarl at them, but it was a close thing. She might have done so if she hadn't been so bone-wearyingly tired. And if they didn't have dozens of incredibly heavily armed men all over. And an invisible giant. Who had just singlehandedly turned an entire chokepoint into paste. Without breaking a sweat.

Even so she still hissed as one of the normal soldiers, normal in the way that she could at least sense the man's mind, tightened a wound dressing on her arm.

"Easy girl," the man smiled from behind his visor. "That's the best I can do for now. You'll get proper treatment aboard the Naglfar. A shower too."

She locked eyes with him, boring down on him with a look of pure hate. The man reared back a little from the sudden sight. His eyebrows turned into a frown, but rather than respond he simply kept up his work.

It surprised her. She wasn't used to not getting a reaction. She'd expected him to hit her, snarl back. Put her in her place. Instead, he just… continued. As if it didn't bother him.

She glanced over at Philips, who was in the front of the column. She knew he was looking at her regularly. She enjoyed that. She knew he wanted to kill her, but she knew he'd not get a chance.

Then she saw him freeze in place and her instincts kicked in. She pulled herself free from the soldier, tearing open her wounds in the process, and jumped behind him, using his armoured body as cover.

It took her a long moment to realise that nothing happened. Nothing except a ripple of fear and shock going through the gathered minds of the freed prisoners. Slowly, carefully, she peered out from behind her human shelter. Finding it safe, she walked, carefully, never taking her eyes of Philips, she walked to the front. Once there she found her own breath falling short as well.

"What in void's name happened here?" Philips whispered, shocked by what he found.

Heavy booming footfalls announced the arrival of Charger. "They tried to ambush us here." There was a violent amount of delight in his voice. "As you can see," he chuckled darkly. "It did not work."

That was an understatement. It was a large room, what it had originally been was impossible to tell due to the damage. Well over a hundred soldiers, many of them wearing what once upon a time had been power armour, had been laying in wait. Given how they were positioned, he knew his liberators had come out of a hallway on the opposite side. Straight into prepared positions. Straight through them. The defenders had been butchered. He tried to read the flow of battle, trace the way the dead had fallen to determine how the fight had evolved.

He couldn't. The enemies had been smashed aside. Torn to pieces. As if a bull had stormed through them, ignored whatever fire had come its way, to then brutally tear apart whatever opposed it.

He had no need to ask who had done it. The bull in question was chuckling darkly right behind him, putting a massive, armoured gauntlet on his shoulder. Even though the man applied no pressure, he still felt his knees almost buckle from the weight alone.

Instead, he looked at some of the downed weapons, before whistling appreciatively at the bent remnants of a heavy machine gun. "Isn't that the Sterkenich Mark Seven?"

"Good eye," Charger grumbled good naturedly. "Mark Eight, actually."

He eyed the giant with a professional eye. The armour seemed thick, but… "Shouldn't that have turned you into cheese?"

He barked out a laugh. "In theory, yes. But they lacked a critical component."

Philips raised an eyebrow.

Charger pointed towards a heavily mauled corpse lying about twenty feet away from the weapon. It had been hit by something that had seen the man's chest cavity be destroyed. "A living gunner." The giant let out another loud laugh, and gently pushed Philips ahead. Which was surprising in itself, given that it wasn't easy to be gentle encased in power armour.

"I lead the charge," the man said. "A given really. I wasn't named Charger because I hang back. I'm a lot faster than the rest of the team. Blitzed them, went to town on them and kept them from drawing a clear bead on me by staying in the thick of them. By the time they'd been thinned enough to risk friendly fire, the rest of my team stormed in and finished what was left." He shrugged, the massive shoulder plates rising like mountains. "We didn't give them much time to react. We needed to get in hard and fast. Get to you before they got their shit together and had a chance to kill you lot off."

Scaiffe barely listened to the man talking, instead taking in the raw carnage. Men in power armour had been rammed flat against walls or slammed into the ground. Armoured suits had been dented, the plates crushed into the vulnerable flesh beneath. Those corpses had been reasonably intact, however. The men without power armour… She had seen such deaths before. When people fell from high altitudes and slammed into concrete. When she used her psionics to crush people into a wall. Skin that was torn open, organs turned into puree, bones shattered and sticking out in every which way… It made her feel giddy. These men had been her tormentors, captors and enemies. She relished in seeing them this thoroughly trashed.

She let out a soft giggle, startling those around her that were not part of her cabal. It also earned her a murderous glance from Philips, which only served to further heighten her mood. She followed along, taking the time to kick separated body parts the way a normal girl would kick rocks.

"Why did you save us?" Philips finally asked, unable to hold back the question any longer. They'd been stumbling through the demolished environment for the better part of an hour by now. They'd stuck to the main hallways mostly, but here and there they had followed a hole in the wall where the attackers had decided to take a shortcut. All along the route they found more men waiting for them, and he knew there had to be hundreds aboard the station, if not more. Whoever had decided to break them out had a lot of means at their disposal.

"Not that I'm not grateful for the rescue—"

"You're right to be concerned. I'd be too in your case," Charger replied. "Honestly, I don't know. I was told to get you lot out. Our boss told us so. You want information, you ask Stalker."

"Stalker?" Philips asked, not realising what he was walking into.

"That would be me," a quiet, ghostly voice said from right behind them, causing him to scream and jump aside. The newcomer, another man equipped in an armour as massive as that of Charger, if slimmer, simply continued to walk beside them, his footfalls making almost no noise.

"Voids! You're damned worse than X."

"X?"

He shook his head, willing his heartbeat back to normal. "Guy I once knew. Fellow mercenary. Big and scary, like you." He glanced up towards Charger. "Hell of a trooper. Tackled a few chokepoints like that and got out alive. Nearly as big as you, too."

"Sounds like a guy I'd like to meet," the man chuckled.

"You wanted to know why we rescued you?" Stalker asked, not allowing himself to be side-tracked.

A myriad of possible answers flashed through his mind, from snarky and sarcastic to pleading and polite. In the end he settled for a simple "Yes."

Stalker turned his head slightly, looking at the man. The visor was impossible to see through, and suddenly he found himself glad for it. "Asset denial. So the enemy cannot use you," came the cold answer.

Philips decided to shut up for now. They'd promised them food, medical treatment and a shower. Void only knew how long it'd been since he had one.

When all else fails or is out of reach, he reminded himself, just focus on getting your next damned meal.

Surprisingly enough Charger and his comrades kept their word. She had expected things to go south as soon as they were off the station. Instead, after a fun little walk-through carnage and corpse, death and destruction and a pretty heavily demolished facility, they entered a fairly intact hangar. Given how much of it was still in one piece, she reasoned it hadn't been their initial point of entry.

From there it had been a quick shuttle trip into another ship. Even there it was clear that a heavy battle had just occurred. Plenty of bulkheads were closed, blindingly red warning signs promising a painful death to anyone dumb enough to open them, repair crews and automated bots moved up and down in every direction, teams of firefighters dragged their heavy equipment around as they moved from hazard to hazard, engineers fiddled with dials and called out read-outs, … Even to a layman such as herself it was clear that the ship had taken a heavy beating.

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Even so they were warmly welcomed aboard. Medical personnel took away those severely wounded while those with lesser wounds were taken away for a quick treatment. She'd tried to protest, but Charger had taken her apart and told her, in no uncertain terms, that if she started being a pain in the ass, his boot would start being a pain in hers. She had tried to glare at him. She had never wielded to threats of violence before, and wasn't about to start now, but he had just laughed at her. There hadn't been superiority or anger in it. Just a statement of fact. Her inability to get a read on his mind threw her off even more, and she had acquiesced.

Now that she as in a small cabin of her own, she was glad that she had done so. They had doused her in antiseptic, cleaned her wounds, deloused her, removed the worst bits of her broken teeth and sent her off with an appointment at a later date to get her dentures fully fixed, if she so wanted. She'd been able to luxuriate in a long, hot shower in a communal area, each person getting a little cubicle to themselves. Fresh clothes had awaited her by the time she was done, and after that she'd had the free choice of going to the mess hall and eating there, or picking up the food and going to a cabin of her own. There was just enough place for her to stand and turn without bumping into the bed, the cupboards above it or the small table. The mattress was hard —and without lice— and there was a small computer at the desk connected to the onboard media library.

In short, it was absolute heaven. The shower was downright orgasmic, the food was actually spiced and tasted of something other than boiled calories, she wasn't shackled to the walls, nobody had punched her, hit her, raped her, insulted her or spat at her. Everyone had either been a fellow prisoner, and therefore too out of it to care, or been polite and helpful.

It grated on her like nobody's business. Every act of kindness set her teeth on edge. People weren't like that. Nobody gave out a meal for free. They always expected something in turn. The only question that remained was what.

She wanted to dwell on it. She really did. The entire situation reeked of suspicion, of a honey trap meant to lure them in and swallow them whole. She wanted to go out, contact the rest of the cabal, start plotting plans to break fully free once they were planetside.

Instead, the months of torture and the hours of intense combat finally claimed their toll. Before she even realised it, she was fast asleep on the bed and out like a light.

Philips roamed the long hallways of the ship. The Naglfar, he reminded himself. Have to remember the name. It was common courtesy to do so. Whoever their rescuers were, whatever their plan was, they had been friendly and polite about it, even going as far to grant them rest and respite from their ordeal. He didn't fully trust them, but he saw no need to antagonise them. He hoped that Scaiffe would. He had seen how Charger loomed over her when she had begun being, well, herself, and fully hoped he would apply the boot to her ass. Preferably with lethal force.

He would behave himself, though. No killing or attempted killing of Scaiffe. He owed his mysterious benefactors enough to not start a battle between people possessing a sixth sense on their own vessel. he'd warn them of her character, of course. He owed them that much, too.

He still did not know what to make of the people around him. Most of the prisoners were too weak, mentally and physically, to be anything other than eternally grateful for the rescue and didn't question being saved in the slightest. Others, those more resilient of mind, were suspicious as well. The cabal would follow Scaiffe, and he had no doubt that she'd be up to her monstrous activities in no time. And his liberators were even more of a mystery. He sensed the strong bonds of camaraderie amongst the majority them. It was burning brightly. They moved with a professionalism that spoke of high levels of training and dedication to the cause. And they have tech to match. They were a total mystery. Even the wealthiest mercenary companies tended to not own more than a handful of cruisers. A battlecruiser, on the other hand…

His thoughts were interrupted by the sudden sense of being watched. He had felt that way for quite a while now, but now it suddenly intensified by an impossible factor. It wasn't his sixth sense that told him. As a matter of fact, that sense told him he was all alone. Not that he trusted it fully anymore, not with those giant soldiers who had no presence about. No, what warned him was years of working as a mercenary. His instincts were screaming that someone was watching him.

"Hello?" he called out after a moment of hesitation. It made little sense for them to kill him just after saving him.

"You are quite the suspicious one," a voice said, coming from nearby. He turned around like lightning, but found the hallway empty.

"What?" he muttered, unable to comprehend.

The voice laughed and this time he located it. His head shot up and he found a long, heavily armoured soldier hanging from the ceiling above him. Then it dropped and landed nimbly in front of him, the soldier somehow managing to reorient their body hundred-eighty degrees in less than a second. The thud that accompanied the landing reverberated throughout the metal floor as they stood up to their full height. Larger than him, but less so than Stalker or Charger.

"Hello Philips. You are up early," the voice said. It wasn't unkind, but it wasn't exactly gentle. He couldn't place it. It was utterly unreadable. There was… Something to it that caused his hairs to rise. The feeling of being watched grew exponentially.

"I… " He cleared his throat. "I don't need much sleep."

A laugh.

"Am I correct in assuming we have you to thank for our rescue?"

"That would be a fair assessment." He felt a smile. "What gave me away?"

He stared up into the dark visor, calculating his answer. Eventually he gave up, shrugged and stated the truth. "Your confidence. You move as if you own the ship."

That earned a much longer laugh. "You would be correct. I am the Commander." A hand was offered and he shook it.

"Walk with me. I wager you are eager to stretch your legs after being locked up that long. Did you know you were there for eight years?"

He nearly collapsed at the number, but a quick hand caught him. Part of him was surprised at how gently he was held. Soldiers in power armour weren't supposed to be that nimble, especially not when moving that fast. A suit of armour was a rough weapon, not a fine tool. "Eight years?" he stammered, the number blowing his mind.

"You're a survivor, Philips. Your records attest to that. Anyway, to answer your questions. I heard you already got a bit of a response from Stalker?"

"Sort of," he ventured carefully. The words "asset denial" hadn't put him much at ease.

Another laugh. "Don't worry. We have zero intention of killing any of you off. We will offer you a job, however. And it is my sincere hope you'll take it. My goal isn't simple preventing the enemy from making use of you, though that is a start. Have you ever paused to wonder why you were caught and kept there? What they wanted to do with you?"

He paused, and the Commander patiently waited beside him. He wracked his brain. He had thought about it. More than once. And he thought he knew. "At first I thought it was because I found out something about history that I wasn't supposed to. But that wasn't the reason at all, was it?" He turned to face the Commander, stared into that dark, reflective visor and saw himself in it. Weakened. Bruised. But not beaten. "They use people with a sixth sense to keep the people into hating the Empire."

The Commander nodded.

"But why? Those sods are long dead! Unless…" Suddenly it clicked. He took two steps back, looked around the hallway of the gargantuan vessel. "No…" he whispered. "That can't be. You…"

Another laugh came out, this one far, far stronger than the one before. "Oh goodness no. Not in the slightest. We're not Imperial at all. As a matter of fact, we have nothing to do with them." The Commander shook their head. "We have a few things with them in common, but we are an… organisation, shall we say, which makes good use of their tech. And we happen to share an enemy. The problem being, of course, that most people will make the same connection that you did. You can see this presenting a problem for our image."

He nodded, slowly. Unsure whether or not he was being told the truth. They had no reason to lie, as far as he knew, but he didn't know that far to begin with. And if they were telling the truth, then his life was about to become a whole lot more complicated.

"Now, about that job. I am asking you to throw your lot in with us. You're a capable soldier. You've been a mercenary before, you know how to use your strength in battle well and you're wise and experienced enough to be a good field leader."

"So you plan to use us as soldiers?" he asked. "Fighting who?"

This time the smile he felt coming from the Commander was an icy one. "Whoever I tell you to. Our enemy has every advantage. I will not subscribe to niceties."

He mulled that over. He did not like it. The Delta Goons had shared sensibilities, knew when to fight and when to let the other guy run with his life intact. To sign up with something like that was out of his moral comfort zone. "And if I decide to not take your offer?" he ventured, carefully. He gave the Commander the benefit of the doubt for now. They had been honest and open about it, after all.

"We ship you off to a planet where we dumped everyone else who didn't sign up with us. You'll be free to do as you see fit there, except leave the planet. Not that we have a lot of psionics there, it's mostly normal folk. The prison facilities are scattered and well defended. Finding them is hard. Breaking them open even harder." He felt a hard look settle on his face. "We do not always reach the cells in time. Your breakout made it a lot easier for us."

"What is it you're not telling?" he asked. It seemed to good to be true.

"As I said, you can't leave the planet. It's habitable, but it'll take about three years to get there if we’d make for it in a straight line. A few ships play ferry from the designated pick-up points to there and back. Total travel time will amount to five years. You'll be safe and free there, but you're not getting back to re-join the fight." A brief pause. "Or to strike back at those who murdered your family."

He felt red hot rage flare up, before forcing it down just as quick. Of course they'd know. They had kept the air from being vented. They had taken control of the facility's computers and probably knew all about him. "I won't sell my morals," he softly whispered.

The Commander shrugged. "As I said, it's your choice. You were one of the few I couldn't predict. I know Scaiffe will leap at the chance. She'll be a bit of a loose cannon, but honestly, about the entirety of the galaxy is our enemy and I really can't bring myself to care for a few extra casualties."

"Hang on" he shouted. "You can't let her out! You need to kill her!"

The Commander turned, still giving off that sentiment that a smile lurked beneath the helmet. "Oh really? Tell me why."

He took his time. His mind had been pressed against hers, or the reverse rather, often enough that he intimately knew several of her worst atrocities. She had bragged with them, used them to show off just how strong she was. Then there were the things she had done while imprisoned. He described every action, every heinous, monstruous act. Rape, torture most foul, dozens of cases of murder, every crime she committed that she had broadcasted. The list was long. Far, far too long.

When he was finally done, he looked up at the Commander, hoping, pleading that they'd consign Scaiffe to the black. "And?" came the horrifying, utterly uncaring answer.

"And?" he shouted. "And! And she's a monster! You can't let her loose on the galaxy."

"But I will," came the ice-cold answer. The Commander continued walking. "It's a shame I can't assign one of my more reliable men to her, but I need them elsewhere. Shame I don't have any reliable field commander that I could put her beneath so she focuses on the mission rather than her own desires."

Finally he saw the corner he'd been pushed into. "Oh you damned bastard," he hissed. "if you put me together with her, I'll kill her."

"Hm. I don't think you will. Your strength is wholly insufficient."

"Then I'll try it anyway."

The Commander shrugged. "Then you'll die and I'll lose an asset I didn't have to begin with. And then Scaiffe will be free to reign terror on the galaxy unopposed." The Commander stopped and laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Go to bed, Philips. Think about it. Either you sign up with us and you get to keep a leash on Scaiffe, prevent her from going off the rails and in turn you'll get a good income, chance at vengeance and I'll give you the freedom to pick your targets, as much as possible. Or you can go free, leave it all behind. I'll not hurry you. You've got a week or two to make your decision. In the meantime I'll ensure she behaves."

"Sure," he snorted, anger making him unreasonable, but he no longer cared. "As if you can do that."

The Commander turned, very, very slowly. He felt a grin form behind the visor. An impossibly dangerous grin. One that spoke of death and pain on a scale that was beyond his ability to comprehend. Of a darkness so black it threatened to choke the life out of him. Of an endless void, not simply an absence of things, but of an emptiness so hollow it hurt. He felt sweat stream down his back, every hair rising, his eyes going wide with abject fear.

He stumbled backwards, crawled further until he hit a wall, in a bid to move away from this pure horror that was the mind of the being in front of him. "What— what are you?"

The Commander slowly walked towards him and leaned down, bringing their helmet next to their ear. "Go to bed, Philips. And pray I won't visit you while you sleep."

Then they pulled back and walked away, waving casually at him, the sensation utterly disappearing. "Good night."

He shook his head, rivers of sweat pouring off him, as he tried to clear that blackness from his mind.

He hadn't imagined it this time. Charger, Stalker, every other towering soldier he had met had been lacking a presence.

The Commander, however, had a presence, one they could show and hide at will. And they had shown it to him.

And he prayed to every star in the void that he'd never, never feel it again.