The skies above Thedias were always rich with starships - though many had fled in the face of the oncoming Hive Fleet. The only thing keeping many in place had been the shadow cast in the Warp, preventing them from fleeing. One of those ships was the secondary vehicle of the Inquisition.
It was as unassuming as the
Price of Redemption had been glorious.
And its belly, like the
Redemption, had a series of small nodules. One blew away in the silence of the void - and then from it dropped a single black shrouded, sensoria guarded drop pod. It screamed down towards the cerulean clouds of Thedias. The only sign of its movement was a streak of orange light through the bright skies overhead. And it was seen. A single rigger on the back of an airship, whose membership in the cult was entirely ideological - he had never been Kissed, though he hoped he would be some day.
He saw it...and he used the thing that had drawn him to the Cult. The thing that had made him wish to find succor in someone who spurned the Imperium's stultifying superculture came in handy.
He closed his eyes and stretched himself. He felt the snarling brush of danger - and then the connection.
They're coming.
***
Magus Xandra frowned as she used a hammer to ram in the explosive piton, each impact driving along her arm. As she worked, the rest of the mining crew she was with milled around her. "M'lady," one of the miners said, his goggle covered eyes wide and stairing. "You cannot be here."
"It's my plan, I should be here to at least make sure you don't all get butchered," Xandra said, her voice flat. "We're a Sisterhood, not a Some-Women-Hide-In-The-Back-hood."
The mining crew all looked at one another. Their heavy lascutters - which they had been using to weaken struts in the complex that the Sisterhood's habitat had been built atop - were still smoking. The leader grabbed onto Xandra's arm. "Magus...Xandra..." He said, using her name with emphatic care. "There are space marines coming - if we do not survive here, if we do not win this day, then we will need
you to keep the fight going." He smiled, showing sharp teeth. "Your plan will be with us. Your training."
Xandra's bulky shoulders slumped. The hammer in her hands almost slid between her fingers. She closed her eyes, then took the other cultist by the shoulder, gripping firmly. Her voice was a husky snarl. "Give them the death they so ardently worship, my brothers and sisters. For the Child."
"For the future," the chorused response came.
A low
whump echoed throughout the cave system. Dust pattered overhead and Xandra started to hurry towards the elevators as the miners got to work. Deeper in the tunnels, the pure hissed and waited, their attentive focus honed and drawn in taut by Xandra's will. She still felt the strange detachment they had - the lack of the voice of the Star Children. But the pure were not stupid - they were not fools. They knew as well as everyone else that the future depended on working together. She came to the elevator and looked up - and sent a prayer to her brothers and sisters on the surface.
***
The door to the drop-pod thumped into the red dust that spread along the bottom the canyons. The repeller fields that stretched above the canyon roof and kept the worst of the pressure and acid off so that work crews could get at the immense riches that sprouted from every wall hummed quietly, undisturbed by the passage of the precisely aimed pod. Brother Olrax stepped from it with a grunt, his heavy boots sending up spurts of blood-red dust around their soles. Behind him, Brother Gaius and Brother Hatoshi emerged, their weapons at the ready. Their heads swiveled and spotted a work gang that was gaping at them in shock. The work gang looked entirely normal.
They dropped to their knees, their rubber gloves planting down to the ground, bowing low in reverence.
"Ah, the mortals greet their saviors, eh, Olrax?" Hatoshi asked, his voice wry, amused.
"Hurm." Olrax began to stomp forward. Gaius, always the quiet one, simply took his auspex off and began to sweep it in a slow arc. Hatoshi knelt down beside the mortals, his black armored frame still towering over them.
"Stand," he said. "You have nothing to fear from the Death-"
Olrax snatched one of the men up by the scruff of his neck and slammed him into the nearby wall. Hatoshi jerked to his feet. His voice
clicked as it came through the directional vox. "Olrax, what are you doing?"
"We have no time for this," Olrax growled. "Half our brothers are already dead, and I will not let them get away through leniency."
"Is that the ghost of Theoboldius speaking in your ear?" Hatoshi snapped, while Olrax took his helmet off with his other hand. The man he had grabbed was looking stunned, blood dripping down his neck. Hatoshi took his helmet off - his former jests and easy smiles replaced with a fierce frown, his eyes flashing. "Or your own ego?"
"If we had found the cult months before, then our brothers would not be galactic
ash," Olrax snarled, then looked back at the mortal he had pinned.
"P-Please!" The mortal choked out. "I'll tell you anything!"
The others had already started to draw away.
"Yes," Olrax said. "You will."
The man screamed as his arm wrenched free. Hatoshi turned his head aside, disgust clear, as the mortals broke and ran.
It took one slow chew before Olrax spat the offending tissue out, triggering his Belcher's Gland at the same moment - so both landed in the same pile and hissed, bubbling.
"Xenos taint," he said, then thumped the helmet back on. "Kill them all."
Hatoshi shook his head, but drew his pistol, aimed, at the mist shrouded fire.
He did not miss.
***
The Space Marines had not taken the bait. The plan was a bust. That meant there was only one option: Immediate and total withdrawal. Give ground, to spare lives, and to let the wastelands of Thedias do to the Marines what bombs and cave-ins were meant to. Xandra's mind reached out as the ashcan that was her get-away vehicle was prepared, her retainers working to bring aboard the last of the children and the most important records. The less important records were being doused in promethium. Her mind felt the outermost defenses - and then felt them flash, then go dim. Pain wracked her as she clenched her teeth.
Then, seconds later, the second level went dim and dark. A few she had webbed into her connective mind survived scant horrifying seconds and...
Oh by the Star Children.
The flashes she saw.
Seared inside of her mind, nausea thick and gut wrenching, a woman scrabbling vainly with one arm, her insides sprawled next to her detatched shoulder. The bolt shell had burst in her left lung. The wrenching feeling of her neurons collapsing in the face of total shock left the Magus gasping. A man, pinned to a wall by such shocking, sudden force that his entire head crunched and the flare of confused agony was as brief as the image through narrowed, slitted eyes: A space marine, back turned, impaling him with a single thrust of his brutal combat knife - while the bolter roared.
Each time it roared, another part of her died.
"Magus! You must come!" One of her retainers said.
The door to the garage exploded inwards with a blue-white flare of plasfire. The figure that stepped through was black armored, with an insectile assemblage of auspex systems mounted on his helmet and an intricate combiweapon -
ten thousand years of labor and they only make better tools for killing! - that had an underslung plasma launcher with a bolter mounded atop it. His pauldron, the only part of the Deathwatch that showed their prior chapter's livery, was painted with a white field and a blue bird upon it. Another imperial eagle, another carrion bird, to peck at a better future.
"Get the children out of here!" Xandra shouted, waving her hand as the hideous mutant aimed its weapon at the vehicle. The wheels roared, bit, and the plasma-gun launched a small, glowing star at them. Xandra, her head still aching with the aftertaste of so many deaths, wrenched her hand up in a curving arc. A field of pure telekinetic force thumped into existence with a low
whump, catching the plasma blast within it and enfolding it. The ball of starfire roiled, boiled, trembled, trying to wrench free and reach its target. It took every bit of her focus to keep it contained. Then, at last, the orb detonated as the magnetic bottle containing it failed.
Xandra stumbled backwards.
The ashcan rolled out, shooting into the canyons beyond.
The space marine flicked one massive thumb and with a soft
click she knew what was coming next. The bolter stuttered and half a dozen bolt shells flew into her telekinetic shield, their gyrojet rockets blazing as she lifted her arm, snarling. "Pathetic!" Xandra snarled. She brought her hand twisting down and crushed every bolt shell into the ground. The rippling explosions sent tiny shrapnel, some of which skimmed along her broad shoulders, her hips, her cheek. Her robes fluttered around her, tattered as her eyes crackled with lightning. "You came to kill children, you butcher!" She brought her hands together and a vast replica of them, invisible but oh so very tactile, closed around the space marine, wrenching him into the air. His arms trembled and he strained, his auspex crunching as she cupped her hands and squeezed her fingers, interlocking them as her mind sang with the raw power of the Warp.
The armor strained.
The helmet creaked.
The space marine fired another plasma bolt. The high energy weapon impacted in the wall about six meters above and to the left of Xandra's head - shockingly close for such an awkward angle, for such a desperate shot. Molten metal hissed and she snapped her head to the side.
She saw the blur.
She heard the thunder.
The pain of her own body, when finally felt, was a shockingly distant compared to the agonies of her cult. She looked down, and saw the knife protruding from a few inches below her sternum. Her legs felt numb. Her back ached. She gasped as the space marine held her up - his helmet was off, and his features were not Cadic or Imperial mongrel - he had the look of prisoners who were hauled off Shaxix or Luden II. His eyes were...
Shockingly human.
"You fought well, witch," he said, then set her down. She lay there, gasping. The other marines stepped over - each splattered in blood.
"She's still alive," the one in the middle said, his voice reproving. Xandra clenched her jaw, tight.
"The interrogator may want someone so highly ranked, I thought," the helmetless space marine said, shrugging one shoulder.
"No, you wanted to show away," the one in the center said. "As always, is this but a game to you?"
"A game!?" The space marine grabbed onto his leader's cuirass. "I seek to
save the lives of mortals - you seem to find them merely a fine repast!"
"You-"
The two were nearly brought to blows as Xandra glared at them, trying to draw breath. Her hands were just barely able to move. Her eyes flashed with fury as the two marines were drawn apart by the third. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly gentle and shy.
"I-I...reported in. The In...Interrogator...wants her...f...f...for a triumph."
"We'll send them running..." the leader said. "Like rats."
He lifted his boot and Xandra knew nothing but nightmares and pain.
---
Here is where the imperfect information game is in your favor. The Inquisition thinks "hive fleet destroyed, the genestealer cult is in disarray, easily broken." So their plan is to attack your Sovereignty twice - they've accomplished the first attack, and believe they can (by breaking Magus Xandra on the wheel on interhab vox-broadcast) accomplish the second. They think that'll be enough to zero your Sovereignty and, thus, destroy the cult (any company whose Sovereignty hits 0 collapses and is easily cleaned up.)
They're wrong, of course.
[ ] Fight Defensively (Xandra dies nobly and with bravery, inspiring the cult rather than demoralizing them)
[ ] Fight Offensively (Write in your plan on how you get her back!)
THE SISTERHOOD OF THE LEVITHAN
(Cycle 1, Month 2 - the Month of Scampering)
MIGHT: 2(1) | TREASURE: 5(4) | INFLUENCE: 4(3) | TERRITORY: 1(0) | SOVEREIGNTY: 4(3)
