Waiting at the roadside was the sleek, black gravcar which the Inquisitor had lent you for the mission, which she'd done with a practiced casualness that belied the immense trust inherent in the gesture. The Inquisitor was not given to material sentiment; objects were to be requisitioned when needed and given away when not, just
things to serve a purpose. The car was one of a very small number of exceptions.
As an Inquisitor, Praxis didn't feel the sweat poured into coin. She could spend it like breathing, not that she had to. She had to reach back decades to remember when food needed money, money needed work, and work needed food. She tried to force herself to remember, to put herself back in the place of a juvie in Hive Tempestora on the waiting rolls for factory work, but it grew ever-more abstract and with it things ever-more were simply
things, all the social forces regulating them overruled by dint of her office.
But there were things she valued. Gifts she could never requisition, things she still needed to earn. Her inquisitorial icon, though she still thought of as belonging to another. The sonic machete that Marvel-Ann had arranged for her to take from a Mechanicus forge, patterned after the home-forged knives of the plantation workers and, to her, both a romantic keepsake and a statement of purpose. And a belt-buckle gun, which you'd touched once and felt such overriding
loss that you'd spent the rest of the day in bed, the only tangible object left from a man whose story she'd never told you and which was too painful for her to even think.
Of these, the car was simply a car, but her handing you the keys was so momentous the moment had seemed to warp space and time around it, heavy like a black hole.
And then, like the enormous idiot you were, you'd given the keys to Castallya Solaali, and immediately regretted it upon seeing her smile. That same smile was plastered on her face now, as she waved to you, standing up in the driver's seat and getting her soldier's boots all over the flawless leather interior, while simultaneously introducing the altar boy waiting by the stairs to some interesting new vocabulary painted onto her carapace.
"Dahl! How'd it go!" her voice, deep and joyful, carried easily over the sacred silence of the cathedral front. "Have a fun time, didja?"
Your face lit up, somewhat in spite of itself. You could be a little gloomy, even you could admit it, but you couldn't help but smile around Cass. This was, of course, hardly a universal opinion of the woman; most people quite plainly thought she was
loud or
annoying or perhaps
degenerate, but after a lifetime of fitting into other people's boxes in the Schola Progenium Cass had graduated far beyond caring a whit for what anyone else thought. Normally, this sort of attitude got you killed, but if you happened to display it in near enough proximity to Inquisitor Praxis, it got you a job.
"Great, wonderful. They were very friendly," you assured her, as she effortlessly leaned over to pop the side door and push it open. In another life, Cass was the very model of a perfect Stormtrooper; six-foot-two, broad-shouldered, chiselled features, ready-made for her marble statue after her inevitable glorious martyrdom. In
this life, however, she'd been shuffled off into a penal battalion after being caught stealing.
From her commanding officer's quarters. A dress intended for her commanding officer's wife. Which she had been wearing when they took her in.
"Where's everyone else?" you asked, and Cass shrugged, jamming her finger on the ignition and shifting gears with the sort of confident carelessness that characterised all her mistakes.
"Our scribe said she was chasing down something important, and I may have left the big guy behind after telling him I'd be a minute," she said, as the car rose up off the street and toward the spires, the engine warbling. "So! You get a word with the Sisters, then?"
"I'm afraid they're still not taking transfers from their brothers in the Scions, even when those brothers are sisters," you joked, leaning back into the plush seat and shutting your eyes as the city rose up around you, the scaffolding of enormous steeples and half-finished vaunted roofs reaching for the heavens. Light from the morning sun glinted off golden tiles and marble gargoyles and the sweat of the builders, flooding the streets like a liquid poured over the world. "Look at this place!"
"It's pretty, I'll say that for it," Cass said, then she spit over the side of the door. "Wasted though. Who's gonna get a view like us? Not none of them down there, huh?"
Cass was still midway through what the Inquisitor called her political education, but she'd fought through the slums of a hive city and retaken rural settlements abandoned to the enemy for cost saving. She caught on quick to the general attitude in the retinue.
"This could be housing, or factories. Or hell, farms, like them vertical farms on San Leor, could feed the planet with plenty to spare," she added. It was a bit forced; she was trying to show she was learning.
"It could still be cathedrals," you said quietly. "But because people wanted them."
She nodded solemnly, strangely quiet for a moment, then she broke back into that stupid smile.
"Nah, it'll be gambling dens and chem-halls," she said confidently. "You know the rabble."
"Joygirl's paradise," you confirmed. "Decadence and sin as far as the eye can see."
"Speakin' of decadence, if we're done-" she began, but there was a crackle from the vox mounted above the glovebox which cut her off. She slowed the car and dipped into the wind-shadow of a mighty steeple, sheltered behind an eagle's wing, as you plucked the mouthpiece and clicked
transmit.
"This is Seraphim, go," you responded. There was a brief pause.
"Seraphim, this is Ravenwing. We have a problem," the voice on the other side, an older woman's voice, said. Rhonda Wienu, part of your retinue. Vaguely, nearly lost in the static, were lower, angry tones, somebody bellowing in rage. "Do not, repeat,
do not return to your quarters. Fall back to secondary rally point."
"What's going on?" you asked, dropping the pretence of vox discipline, and the headset squealed.
"An old friend dropped by, we got a tip-off through customs control," she said. "They're probably already at your door. Fly low."
The implication of that statement was clear; they might have already gotten to the PDF, which meant they might have control over the Hydra and Manticore batteries around the city. They could swat you out of the air with contemptuous ease; the streets were your ally.
"Cass, get us to the fallback point, stay under the rooftops," you ordered, and her jokey demeanour disappeared in an instant, replaced with the stormtrooper. She thumbed the controls to raise the roof and put the car in a steep drop toward the streets, nearly skimming the edges of the scaffolding.
You popped your glovebox and reached inside.
---
Other than her webber, what weapon does Dahlia carry for self-defence? Keep in mind; Dahlia is about five foot even.
[ ] Write In a Warhammer 40k sidearm, ranged or melee. Vetos may be in effect for particularly egregious options.
Where is your secondary fallback point?
[ ] A cafe in the shopping arcade in the Talons, an upscale region for clergy and visiting dignitaries. The upscale public surroundings limits overt options, but it being well-guarded may be a double-edged sword right now.
[ ] A construction site at the edge of the city which was originally supposed to be worker's housing, which was abandoned mid-construction to redirect resources toward temples behind schedule. Excellent cover and out of the way, but also nothing preventing a foe from bringing real force.
[ ] The rooftop garden of Bishop Lyrzike, a quiet supporter of Praxis' who has offered you safe haven. While you'll have the protection of his estate and guard, if something goes wrong you may implicate one of the Inquisitor's most powerful supporters at a critical time.
