It's cold in your cell. That's the first thing you notice when you regain consciousness, every single time. The air is chill and sharp with the scent of antiseptic, and when you slump bonelessly to the ground the metal deck plates burn your skin on contact. You moan, twitching weakly in a liquid heap, but this time there are no guards, no bands of metal and plasteel closing around your neck and arms. You lie there insensate for a time, a beached fish on a metallic shore, and bit by bit the sedatives leech from your flesh and life slowly returns. You roll over onto your back, limbs flopping weakly, and from your new position slowly make sense of the world around you.
The lighting is dim, that's your first clue. The lumi-strips across the ceiling are flickering and faded, running on reduced power or otherwise damaged and in need of repair, and the light they cast serves mostly to darken the shadows behind every tube and console. The door on the wall is shut, a brown-black smear of rusted decay splashed across the hinge and wall like a stroke from a mad painter, and in the background the ever-present hum of the ship's engines has given way to cold silence. That something has gone terribly wrong here is apparent, but as for the how and the what, you are left in ignorance with answers not yet forthcoming.
Slowly, you pick yourself up, a tingling warmth spreading across your skin as your gifts dispel the last of the lingering chill of stasis. It takes you a moment to regain your feet, and several more before you feel able to stand without leaning against the open rim of your casket, but compared to true sleep-sickness the symptoms are relatively mild. No guards come, no alarms begin to blare, nothing serves to break the silence as you rise and regain your self control. This too is a sign of something wrong, the clue to some disaster in the making, for never since you first fell into their claws has the Inquisition left you free and able to act.
This is a test.
You shake your head, banishing the thought. On Malfi you saw such things done all the time, a prisoner or debtor given some free slack in their chains just to see what they would do with it. If a man has the taste of freedom betrayed often enough, he will soon come to learn that escape is impossible, his bondage unbreakable. That the Inquisition could and would do such a thing you do not deny, but you do not think this is among them. The quiet, the rust, the absence of guards, these things are signs of weakness, not omnipresent strength.
Is it even real? Perhaps you are already at Scintilla, your mind running through the same routine over and over again, smoothing away the little details…
You bite your lip, hard, and bury the whispering thought beneath the brief spike of pain. It doesn't matter if that's the case, staying still and cowering in your cell won't get you anything worth having. You need to move, need to plan, need to take action of some kind. The other caskets seem like a good place to start, so with a decisive nod you approach the one next to your own and brush away the layer of ice that covers the window. What you see inside…
There's not much in your stomach, which is perhaps the only mercy. It takes you some minutes to stop retching even so, and when you rise to your feet again you take several deep breaths of stale air to regain some manner of equilibrium. Then you look once more, just to confirm what you saw, and mutter a prayer to whichever god or spirit might yet be watching. It seems to you that whatever strange technology the Inquisition uses in keeping their captives sealed and quiescent is less than perfect. The man in the casket next to you was clearly held immobile and insensate as designed, but the fungi that apparently got in there with him was not nearly so inhibited. By now, there's not much there but rot in the vague shape of a man, the surface broken by stained finger-bones and the surface of a twice-filled skull.
Did he feel it, somehow, even in his slumber? Did he know what was happening to him?
Growling, you shake your head. One thing at a time. Taking a moment to brace yourself, you check the other chambers in turn, just to be sure. The inhabitants of each are dead, though thankfully none in quite so organic a manner as the first. Instead, most of the caskets hold nothing but blackened bones and small piles of ash, the small display panels on their side blinking warnings about termination protocols into the silent air. You can only assume those were meant to happen with your own casket as well, but… yes you can see the same warning flashing on your panel, but for whatever reason they failed to activate. Was that by coincidence, or design?
Frowning, you discard the caskets and turn your attention to the strange cogitator column at the chamber's heart. You're used to such things being built into walls or upthrust plinths, but the elements seem the same - crystalline screens, an alpha-numeric pad for inputting commands, a few blinking lights that you assume have something to do with the appropriation rituals. The console responds to your touch, so it's not gene-locked or entirely nonfunctional, but a brief attempt to access the ship status update is thwarted by a demand for clearance codes that you do not possess. Well, that's fine, obviously there would be limited information for a cogitator in the prisoner storage area. Instead you focus on local reports, updates on the stasis chambers themselves and status updates, and swiftly find the last report about you - prisoner zero four two five, how lovely they don't even use your name in the records - being returned to slumber. Three months after that… aha!
Alarms triggered in main prison hold... General prisoner uprising in effect... Emergency lockdown protocols active... Sealing Sanctum Gate between Prison Hold and Upper Decks... Sealing stasis crypts I-XX on Medicae Deck 3... Sealing Investigative Laboratoriums I-V on Medicae Deck 3... Medicae Decks switching to tertiary reserve plasma power generators… Lockdown protocols in effect, pending uprising resolution… pending...pending...pending…
With a sinking feeling in the very core of your being, you scroll forwards through the seemingly endless date stamps next to each inconclusive update. A month, a year, a decade… two centuries. You remember screaming at Inquisitor Tahr, the touch of cold steel against your neck, the sudden enforced slumber of sedative drugs. You remember it like it was yesterday, and yet if the data in this machine is to be believed, it has been two hundred years since first you were imprisoned.
Two centuries, locked in stasis. Everything you knew, everyone you knew… no! Focus. Focus. Everyone you knew might as well have been dead the second the Inquisition took you regardless, certainly they would have better sense than to willingly pick the association back up even if you did manage to escape, you dealt with that and you can deal with this. Push it down, box it up, put on your mask and
think.
Gritting your teeth you return to the Cogitator, keys clacking under your fingers as you pull up every piece of information your nonexistent clearance can grant you. It looks like there were several warnings spaced across the years as the power supply to this branch began to run dry, none of which were ever heeded, while the most recent one was followed by an immediate activation of the termination protocols. That makes a grim kind of sense, you suppose - the Inquisition would prefer to keep you and those like you in custody, but if the stasis chambers were about to run out of power they'd naturally default to a fail-deadly solution, venting what you think might have been plasma from the main reactor into each casket in turn.
The process failed in your chamber, but it was clearly supposed to have happened regardless, which means that your survival was a matter of… not chance, nothing ever really comes down to chance, but rather insufficient maintenance and whatever damage the prisoner revolt managed to inflict before being put down. And it must have been put down, else the other prisoners would have come for you, but the lack of guards or other representatives of authority suggest that the solution found was an ugly one. Like a street brawl with knives, you suppose, or an unsanctioned duel - one side might have died first, but the winner's prize was the privilege to bleed out in the infirmary a short while later.
Well, that gives you a starting point, some manner of structure and direction to everything. If the ship is abandoned and drifting, as it apparently has been doing for two hundred years, then you need to find a means to escape before you starve to death or go mad from isolation. You know little of voidships save that they can be the size of a city, which means that you ideally need some form of assistance and backup. The authorities won't help you, any surviving prisoners who rose up… well, their descendents by this point you suspect, if they haven't fled already there is something stopping them, which in turn means they won't help you. Ergo, your best choice is those in a similar position to you, any potential survivors of the faulty termination protocols.
Satisfied with your logic, you set about escaping from this chamber. Thankfully the hatch isn't locked, just stiff and unmoving from centuries of neglect, and though you sweat fiercely and nearly pass out at the effort you manage to get it prised open soon enough. That done, you slip out into the corridors beyond, looking for the other stasis chambers and the prisoners held within. The silence is oppressive, the complete absence of the droning engines and cycling air vents putting you constantly on edge, but between your gifts and the complete lack of life signs you feel safe enough to eventually creep along the various passages in search of your quarry.
Most of the stasis caskets, as it turns out, are either empty or filled with nothing but corpses. At least a hundred people died when you woke, you think, but it's hard to really take an accurate count given the condition of many of the facilities you have access to. There are, however, four that seem to have similarly survived the purge, each with data-screens helpfully listing the nature and crimes of their contents.
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Prisoner Zero One Three Two Nadia Black
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Name: Nadia Black, Lady
Species: Human
Crimes: Fratricide and Daemonology
Interrogator Notes: Third in line to House Black, Rogue Trader Dynasty (c/ref: Marcus Black, Asset). Turned to daemonology in an attempt to secure inheritance, partially successful. Interrogation priority is source and nature of unclean tutorial, potential access to Black family void charts and reports.
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Prisoner Zero Three Three Six Hephastius Bore
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Name: Hephastius Bore, Magos Biologis
Species: Human (Disputed)
Crimes: Unsanctioned Experimentation, Heresy
Interrogator Notes: Magi of the Lathe Worlds, cast out after experimentation on splicing warp-flesh with mortal tissue. Numerous self-inflicted surgical augmentations, appears sincere adherent to Omnissian Creed. Interrogation priority is nature and potential replicability of augmentations, insight into Lathe Magi politics and factionalism.
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Prisoner Zero Three Nine Nine Unknown
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Name: Unknown
Species: Aeldari
Crimes: Piracy, Trespassing, Murder of Inquisitorial Operatives
Interrogator Notes: Aeldari of unconfirmed faction, current speculation 'Crow Spirits' corsair band. Ambushed meeting of xenos-smuggling cartel, disrupting Ordo Xenos sting operation in process. Interrogation priority is identifying motive for ambush and potential information source of xenos-relic smuggling rings ('Cold Trade') in Calixis sector space.
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Prisoner Zero Zero Zero One Ciro
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Name: Ciro (disputed)
Species: Human, Adeptus Astartes
Crimes: Blasphemy, Mass Murder, Sedition
Interrogator Notes: Subdued and captured on Shrine World Maccabeus Quintus, capture later believed to be a willing sacrifice aimed at providing distraction for accomplices (c/ref: Vault Primus intrusion). Chapter or Legion origin unknown, subject extremely dangerous. Interrogation priority is learning motive and identity of accomplices and any further operations in Calixis space.
It's the last one that breaks you. Not that you notice it at first, two focused on your mission and your goals as you read through the little details on the side of the functioning casket, but when you begin to hyperventilate there's no escaping the little voice at the back of your mind any longer. That's a Space Marine, that's an Angel of Death, one of the God-Emperor's own holy servants, how can it be here, it's not fair, it's not
possible…
Stop. Focus. Compartmentalise. You can't deal with this right now, so focus on what you can, on how you can improve things for yourself. Deal with everything else later.
So, step one. You have four potential assistants in navigating this ship and escaping. None seem to have been freed by their stasis caskets, but given the dregs of power still in the system you'd be surprised if the power held for any more than a handful of days. Each could be useful, you think, pushing past the little part of you that scoffs at the notion of an alien being any kind of ally and the rather larger part that gibbers at the thought of an Astartes aiding a renegade. Of an Astartes
being a renegade.
If you free them all, you'll have the most aid possible, but the least control over the remaining situation. More voices, more rivals, more chances that someone else will take charge and exert control, this is basic stuff, the most fundamental of survival skills. Thus you need to make a decision for who to release, and who to leave… or, perhaps, whose casket to sabotage. You're not a tech adept but you are fairly sure that cutting some of those power conduits would be very unhealthy for whoever was inside. Once you have made that decision you need to settle on how to convince them to help… well, no, that's obvious, you have a shared interest in escape. Instead you need to focus on that first impression, the meeting that will define your relationship in their eyes and your own.
Nobody looks good in prison rags and half-faded bruises, so you go in search of your equipment, the tools and equipment you had when you were taken. Logic says there is no particular reason to think that after two centuries your gear would still be useable or even present, intuition tells you to check the third room from the right just outside your cell, and sure enough inside the room you find several rows of blank metal boxes stacked high against the wall and marked with dry, featureless numerals in loose procession. For a moment you hesitate, unsure which to open to make use of… then you sigh, hunt down box number zero four two five, and crack it open to find everything you were wearing and carrying at the time of your capture neatly in a neatly folded and organised pile.
As a duellist, your chief duty was of course the spilling of blood for your noble (and not-so-noble) patrons, but Malfi is no place for a blunt instrument and actively hostile to those who lack a certain degree of panache. The slashed doublet and half-cloak that await you are as much a piece of your role as any soldier's uniform, as are the neatly polished boots and the rakishly offset feathered hat. Donning each in turn grants you a real sense of peace, of focus, of security in a world that has been so very difficult of late… though, you must concede, after two hundred years your sense of fashion is probably wildly out of date. You'll need to amend that before you set foot on a civilised world once again. Still, one thing at a time, if they kept your clothing then surely… ah!
Malfian duelling is an ancient and respected art, tightly bound by codes of etiquette and chivalry developed over millennia. As such it is absolutely riddled with ways to cheat in a respectable sort of way, the use of poisoned or otherwise augmented weapons among them. Given such, you thought little of it when the Menagerie provided for you a dueling sabre inlaid with psycho-conductive wires and ritual foci, designed to channel the might of your mind and soul into the cutting edge of the blade. Given that it was your use of such a distinctive weapon that ultimately betrayed you to the Inquisition you should probably have been more cautious… but you cannot deny that you feel much better with the force sword belted by your side and hidden by your half-cloak.
Taking one final breath to steady yourself, you return to the incarceration chambers and make your choice.
There are four other surviving prisoners here who could be freed and convinced to aid you, each with their own advantages and drawbacks, especially in combination. For each you have the option to free them, to leave them imprisoned, or to restart the termination protocols (naturally, this will be done before freeing anyone else).
Prisoner 0132 - Nadia Black, the treacherous voidfarer. Has great knowledge of void ships, likely the easiest to get along with given your complimentary backgrounds. Also ambitious, treacherous and willing to use daemons in pursuit of her goals.
[ ] [Nadia] Free the Prisoner.
[ ] [Nadia] Abandon the Prisoner
[ ] [Nadia] Terminate the Prisoner
Prisoner 0336 - Hephastius Bore, the Heretek Magos. Vast knowledge of technology and biology (thus a skilled medic), likely to be relatively logical. Also quite possibly insane and a mutant, given he spliced his own flesh with that of summoned daemons.
[ ] [Bore] Free the Prisoner
[ ] [Bore] Abandon the Prisoner
[ ] [Bore] Terminate the Prisoner
Prisoner 0399 - Unknown Aeldari, the lone alien. Apparently highly skilled at information gathering, stealth and infiltration, which could be of great use in escaping this prison hulk. Is also an Aeldari, with all that implies.
[ ] [Aeldari] Free the Prisoner
[ ] [Aeldari] Abandon the Prisoner
[ ] [Aeldari] Terminate the Prisoner
Prisoner 0001 - Ciro, the renegade Astartes. A space marine apparently skilled in infiltration and guerilla warfare, his combat prowess would be of immense aid should the ship not be as abandoned as it appears. You have very little ability to contest him if he decides to take charge or ignore you.
[ ] [Ciro] Free the Prisoner
[ ] [Ciro] Abandon the Prisoner
[ ] [Ciro] Terminate the Prisoner
