Jagged Tooth Grin
10-10-2004, 08:58 PM
Mud splashed on the heavy robes of the dark figure as he stumbled again. Picking himself up, and trying not to think about what he tripped over in the darkness, the robed man moved off. He could hear them chasing, the rusted metal of the pipe he was travelling echoed the sounds from a fair way off, and while not close, he knew that they would catch him soon. The pipe was as dark as the starless night on the surface above, punctuated occasionally by the patchwork of light from a grating or small holes from the rust. In the distance he could hear an inhuman cry, and shivering, he hurried along. In his hand, Levinus carried the final message of a dead man. The old man, who to Levinus had always seemed a titan of humanity, unstoppable, lay on the end of the tunnel from which he was now fleeing, torn apart by twisted shapes. Soaked in blood, Mud and sewage, Levinus finally came to the grate he was looking for, and with a heave, he kicked the rusted metal off its hinges. He could hear his pursuers were getting closer, and as he dropped from the pipe he landed awkwardly and stifled a cry of pain. Hobbling down the passageway he paused briefly to throw a small present for his followers in the pipe. A frag grenade on a thirty second fuse, knowing full well it wouldn't stop them. Levinus offered a brief prayer to the Emperor, hoping that the small explosive device would at least slow them down long enough to complete his task. Squinting as his eyes adjusted to the light in the passage, he limped down the corridor.
Ramon Hapethess sat upright in a shot, awake instantly, mumbling to himself he lay back down on his pallet bed and prepared to sleep. An explosion in the bowels of the palace where he now slept, a punishment for falling out of favour with the governor, was hardly a new occurrence. Boilers blew at least twice a week, this week had been especially bad, thought Ramon as he prepared to sleep, that was the seventh in as many nights.
But Ramon's silent reverie was broken by the noise of a sharp knock on the door. 'Who could be calling at this hour' he muttered under his breath before calling out.
“Who is it disturbing an old mans sleep?”
The only immediate reply was a loud bang as the door shook on its hinges, after a brief second a voice called out
“Open the door this instant or I will take it off at the hinges!”
Ramon picked his way across the floor in the pitch darkness with practised ease before unlatching the door.
“Identify yourself, or I shall call the palace guards” he stated to no avail as the intruder swept past him and slammed the door closed. He heard rather than saw the flickering of a candlewick being lit, and began again to protest this intrusion as the unknown figure began dragging the pallet bed across the doorway
“Who are you? And why have you forced yourself into my chambers at such a late hour?” he inquired again, this time with slightly better results.
“My name is irrelevant, you will know me only as Inquisitor.” Stated Levinus with much more command than the young apprentice felt, before trusting a signet ring into the hands of the old astropath.
Ramon's sightless eyes widened upon feeling the rings symbols
“I apologise my liege, I did not know. You sound young for one of such a honoured profession”
“Any further questioning of my age or status will result in your execution, now do as I say and relay this message” Levinus barked, anxious that his minor ruse hold out, he may only be an Inquisitorial acolyte, but his message and mission are both that of a fully fledged Inquisitor, one who died just minutes ago to send it, and he would not fail now. Handing the bewildered astropath a small plate with engraved code. “Be on with it!”
Ramon could not understand any of this coded message, but he did not need to in order to be able to relay it, and so he began, opening his mind up to the warp and reaching out towards those whose only job was to listen to such calls. A process he had done many times before today, but this time was different, it felt as though something was blocking his calls, pushing him down and drowning out his cries. Struggling against this unseen force he persisted.
So deep was his concentration, so disconnected from his body was his thoughts, that he hardly heard the small shrine to the emperor being dragged across to further barricade the doorway, the sound of the scraping on the door barely noticeable at all. Then there was a tearing sound and a screech of metal warping and twisting, before the roar of Levinus' bolt pistol, then there was a scream. Detached as he was, Ramon neither heard the new intruders, nor did he feel beyond the faint tug at his chest before spiralling into darkness.
Some Time Later, Location Classified
The Terratis Listening Station sat silently and unknown in empty space, not listed on all but the most highly classified maps, and even there it is listed simply as a single symbol. Within the station (which was little more than a large Lander craft attached to a meteor whose path had been altered to fill the needs of its occupants) there was virtually no movement. The single squad of imperial Storm troopers sat at their posts, unmoving and attentive, despite the dull routine. The fact that any approaching ship would be picked up by the scanners long before being close enough to launch an attack was irrelevant, since these men and their masters knew full well that ships weren't the only dangers to this outpost. So they stood and watched. Further into the station, a round room, with 12 pods around the edge, cables snaked from the pods to central computer banks. The pods occupants, hooked up to the life support machines and computers via their pods, lay staring emptily into inner space. Without warning one of the psykers sightless eyes twitched a little, then the readouts on the central banks began to churn out data and the three attendants began to crosscheck information slates. The station commander, a grizzled Colonel stood impassively watching his charges, his expression hardly changing when the bases klaxons began to sound. Outside, a series of slim, jagged shapes shifted into material space and opened fire. The astropath who was receiving the message let out a faint gurgle as blood began to well up from his throat, the closest attendant hurrying to wipe it away. Outside the heavy doors of the inner sanctum lasfire could be heard, as the storm troopers began engaging the hostiles. The astropath coughed blood once more and died, along with one of the other eleven, one of the attendants nodded silently to The Colonel, signalling that the message had arrived, The Colonel looked down at his display and grimaced. There was no way the station was going to survive this attack, but such a fate did not worry him, he knew his duty and would give his life willingly, as would every other man on Terratis. He ordered the ten remaining psykers to begin transmitting, as he readied his laspistol and prepared to sell his life as dearly as possible.
A brief flash of blue light, and suddenly there were 5 warriors standing inside the sanctum, tall and lithe, their armour adorned with spikes and hooks, and trophies of their victims, they raised their rifles, which like them, where long and slender, and began firing into the pods, their occupants screaming as they died to the slivers ripping flesh from bone. The Colonel fired at one before ducking behind his console, and had the satisfaction of seeing one of their warriors fall to the ground gurgling from the throat wound, before his console was peppered with a mass of jagged shards. Another flash of light, and The Colonel found himself staring at another warrior, this one was wearing one of his men's faces over his helmet, the flayed skin still fresh and dripping, in his raised hand was a bulbous pistol like device, which spat dark energy, engulfing him. Fire burned throughout The Colonels nerves, as he began to pass out, unsure if his message had been relayed successfully, but knowing he couldn't allow the stations data to be captured, he tried to reach the self destruct protocols, which had armed as soon as the first alarm rang. But his arms wouldn't move, paralysed by agony, he swore at the leering flesh-clothed tormentor and with his last bit of strength bit off his own tongue and swallowed it. As he choked, unconscious from the pain, the warriors surveyed their spoils, pleased with their prize. But then The Colonel died, and with him, the stations final safety device clicked over, and Terratis detonated.
In a small unmarked sector of empty space, a small meteor blossomed with fire, and began its new journey into the unknown, its occupants, destroyed in the blast, would not be mourned, for they never existed to begin with, and those who would learn of the truth would know their sacrifice was necessary.
A Brief Time Later, Ascillia Prime, Pacificus Sector
The Ork bellowed, straining against its shackles as it tried to lunge at the robed man observing the display impassively. The greenskin's spittle flecked the air and its large jaws snapped open and shut mere inches from the cowled head of Lord Inquisitor Jonas Gabriel. The Inquisitor examined the Ork from under his hood, his gaze as cold and calculated as the glowing red eye, unblinking, in his left socket. To the right of him, a smaller man in grey robes watched the display timidly, carefully avoiding the thrashing prisoner. The Ork, who, despite the shackles and restraints still dominated the room with its sheer size, showed no signs of stopping his bellowing, despite having been captured and held like this for over five hours now. Lord Gabriel turned to address the assistant, who twitched slightly at his name.
“Initiate Caine, please administer the test substance, starting with 20 units, and then adding a further unit every minute, be sure to note when this brute stops its incessant howling, and when it succumbs, calculate how large a dose it had tolerated.” Gabriel motioned to the vials of bluish liquid on the table. “We shall find a use for this pathetic wretch yet.”
With that, the Inquisitor strode from the room, taking one last look at the Ork, captured in the last wave a little under six hours ago. The Ork, belonging to one of the many clans that have proven to be a menace in this sector of space, was one of the few survivors of the ambush. The warboss had died to a sniper round to the head, and while the loss of such a premium specimen was considerable, Lord Gabriel considered it a job well done. The invasion had been stemmed, and the threat to the planet had, for the moment, subsided. As he stepped out of the hab-structure, hastily converted into a laboritorium, and into the bitter ice winds of Ascillia, he showed no sign of the cold.
The glacial fields stained with blood, both human and Orkish, although, the Inquisitor noted with grim satisfaction, a lot more green corpses littered the ice than human. Off towards the left flank there was the sound of battle, as another batch of greenskins threw themselves piecemeal into the guns of the imperial Guard defenders. With the warboss dead, the Orkish hordes had lost whatever little coherency they had once had, soon infighting would erupt, and the survivors would kill each other off. An explosion punctuated the screams of fallen Orks, as one of their crude vehicles stalled and crashed on the ice flow, its occupants burnt alive.
Jonas smiled and watched as a grim looking man with a sheathed power sword approached, carrying a dataslate under one arm. The colonel proffered the encrypted data to him silently, and then waited while Jonas read it. After decrypting it with his signet ring, the Inquisitor examined the report, apparently there was more resistance in the amber sector than predicted, and although it would slow down the reclamation of that block, it would not halt the removal of the green tide from this world.
Whilst reading this report, a hunched figure hurried out of one of the smaller buildings in the encampment, “Lord Gabriel, there is a most urgent matter that you must attend too, its Mother.” The savant babbled, falling over his robes in the deep snow. Mother, was the coded designation for Lord Gabriel's personal astropath, which suggested she had received a private message. Jonas nodded to the Colonel, acknowledging the good work, and hurried off to see what was the matter.
Mother was a young girl, no more than 17, and due to her service of the Inquisitor for around 3 years; she was much wiser than she looked. She sat cross-legged, some sanctified candles burning to purify the air and ward off dangerous spirits while the young girl meditated. Despite being blind and concentrating hard on her ritual, she head Jonas enter and offered him a seat next to her, which he took. Then she relayed the message she had received. After listening to the orders silently, Jonas stood solemnly; he turned to Mother as she awakened from the trance needed to decrypt the messages safely, and began blowing out the candles.
“I'm afraid I have dire news,” Jonas said, “Prepare to leave, I will go gather my men, dust off will be in 2 hours, we have dark matters to attend too” with that he swept out of the room, pausing only to issue a few commands to the waiting savant, who hurried off to start preparing the Lander for the imminent dust off. Lord Gabriel stepped into pace alongside the Colonel, as they walked over towards the main bunker.
“It appears I will not be able to stay and assist you in the final cleanup, more pressing matters have been brought to my attention, though I am confidant you will be able to handle the rest of this operation, and my report will reflect your men's efficiency and resolve. My men and I will be leaving within two hours, and we would appreciate some supplies from the stores.”
The Colonel nodded, and thanked the Inquisitor for his help, before heading into the bunker to finalise the day's reports.
Magos Oedipus heard the Inquisitor approach, his augmented hearing able to pick it out over the humming of the engines.
“Inquisitor, how goes the specimen?” he inquired, his attention never diverting from the small data readouts spooling across the mini dataport inlaid into the engine base, a few brief tweaks, and the engines humming stabilised into a dull roar.
“The Specimen is progressing well as yet, but I'm afraid we must leave now, the research will have to continue in our absence. Please prepare for departure.” Jonas struggled to be heard over the engines, although he needn't have bothered, Oedipus heard everything quite clearly.
As expected, Malius Hellen was found right where the fighting had just been fiercest, despite being stationed to defend a section nearly a mile away. The penitent commissar wiped the flecks of gore off his chainsword on the back of the decapitated Ork, and suppressed a grin.
“Sir, I felt it was my duty to provide moral and physical support to the brave men who were under assault.” He explained.
Jonas new full well that a member of the commissariat is well allowed to use their discretion when it comes to postings in the front line, but he suspected that the young man, not quite a fully fledged commissar, simply wanted to kill more greenskins. Of course, he thought with a smile, that's exactly the dedication he needed, and precisely why he had requested this particular commissar to his retinue.
“Well, please try to pay some attention to your posting next time. But right now I need you to collect the men of the Cadian 7th 7th and the Styxian 3rd 38th, and bring inform them that we will be leaving this campaign to attend other matters in just under 2 hours now.”
The young man looked vaguely dejected at missing out on a chance to purge amber sector, but agreed, and went off to find the 2 squads of stormtroopers, attached as the personal vanguard of Inquisitor Gabriel.
Once safely onboard the orbiting mothership “The Hammer Of Righteousness” the Inquisitor addressed his navigator. Sabin Resic had declined to go to the planets surface, instead preferring the relative peace and quiet of space. Once he finished greeting his lord, he was quickly and concisely given directions to put the ship on a course that would take her out to a safe jump distance and then join the rest of the crew in the briefing room. Stepping silently, out of habit, his footsteps in tune with the ships air purifiers, he set off to do just that, and then, hopefully find out what was so important that an Inquisitor of Lord Gabriel's status would need to be pulled out of an ongoing operation to address.
The holo-display flickered slightly then stabilized, the wire frame representation of the planetary system cast a green glow across the room. The display zoomed in on one of the three planets; two moons orbited the largish planet. Next to the display, Lord Inquisitor Gabriel stood on his podium, surveying his crew sitting around the display port. Two squads of stormtroopers sat at rigid attention, the young commissar took notes on a dataslate. Sabin stood over next to the door, while the Tech Adept sat hunched against the back, his Servo arm making him appear nearly twice the size he really was. Mother sat in on the briefing, even though she could not see the display. She didn't know what was coming, outside of her trance she could not recall the messages, a safety feature the Inquisition insisted upon.
“This is Sidivus Major. Only inhabited planet in the Sidivus System. It was a high yield mining world until around two hundred years ago, when the ore wells dried up. Both moons, however, are high in these same ores and are being mined. The ore in question is highly valuable for the creation of certain components in the subsystem manoeuvring drives on the larger freighter ships. The planet itself is nearly entirely barren rock, the cities are built on high ridges to protect them from the sandstorms.” Jonas paused as the Display focused on the largest of the cities, Sidivus Prime. “We have reason to believe that the planet may have been infiltrated by an insidious Xenos threat. We recently received a message detailing the presence of dangerous mutations, however the message was incomplete and lacked the appropriate authorisation codes of a sanctioned Inquisitorial agent. None the less this is a threat we cannot ignore and as such we must be vigilant. We will be arriving under the guise of an Imperial Guard General and his staff, until I need reveal myself you will know me as General Ostalan. We will arrive at the system in two days warpwise, so use that time to train, rest and be ready. This is your enemy.”
With that Lord Gabriel strode out of the room, but not before he set the display to show a vicious figure, hunched over and malicious, its four arms poised to attack. A Genestealer.
Ramon Hapethess sat upright in a shot, awake instantly, mumbling to himself he lay back down on his pallet bed and prepared to sleep. An explosion in the bowels of the palace where he now slept, a punishment for falling out of favour with the governor, was hardly a new occurrence. Boilers blew at least twice a week, this week had been especially bad, thought Ramon as he prepared to sleep, that was the seventh in as many nights.
But Ramon's silent reverie was broken by the noise of a sharp knock on the door. 'Who could be calling at this hour' he muttered under his breath before calling out.
“Who is it disturbing an old mans sleep?”
The only immediate reply was a loud bang as the door shook on its hinges, after a brief second a voice called out
“Open the door this instant or I will take it off at the hinges!”
Ramon picked his way across the floor in the pitch darkness with practised ease before unlatching the door.
“Identify yourself, or I shall call the palace guards” he stated to no avail as the intruder swept past him and slammed the door closed. He heard rather than saw the flickering of a candlewick being lit, and began again to protest this intrusion as the unknown figure began dragging the pallet bed across the doorway
“Who are you? And why have you forced yourself into my chambers at such a late hour?” he inquired again, this time with slightly better results.
“My name is irrelevant, you will know me only as Inquisitor.” Stated Levinus with much more command than the young apprentice felt, before trusting a signet ring into the hands of the old astropath.
Ramon's sightless eyes widened upon feeling the rings symbols
“I apologise my liege, I did not know. You sound young for one of such a honoured profession”
“Any further questioning of my age or status will result in your execution, now do as I say and relay this message” Levinus barked, anxious that his minor ruse hold out, he may only be an Inquisitorial acolyte, but his message and mission are both that of a fully fledged Inquisitor, one who died just minutes ago to send it, and he would not fail now. Handing the bewildered astropath a small plate with engraved code. “Be on with it!”
Ramon could not understand any of this coded message, but he did not need to in order to be able to relay it, and so he began, opening his mind up to the warp and reaching out towards those whose only job was to listen to such calls. A process he had done many times before today, but this time was different, it felt as though something was blocking his calls, pushing him down and drowning out his cries. Struggling against this unseen force he persisted.
So deep was his concentration, so disconnected from his body was his thoughts, that he hardly heard the small shrine to the emperor being dragged across to further barricade the doorway, the sound of the scraping on the door barely noticeable at all. Then there was a tearing sound and a screech of metal warping and twisting, before the roar of Levinus' bolt pistol, then there was a scream. Detached as he was, Ramon neither heard the new intruders, nor did he feel beyond the faint tug at his chest before spiralling into darkness.
Some Time Later, Location Classified
The Terratis Listening Station sat silently and unknown in empty space, not listed on all but the most highly classified maps, and even there it is listed simply as a single symbol. Within the station (which was little more than a large Lander craft attached to a meteor whose path had been altered to fill the needs of its occupants) there was virtually no movement. The single squad of imperial Storm troopers sat at their posts, unmoving and attentive, despite the dull routine. The fact that any approaching ship would be picked up by the scanners long before being close enough to launch an attack was irrelevant, since these men and their masters knew full well that ships weren't the only dangers to this outpost. So they stood and watched. Further into the station, a round room, with 12 pods around the edge, cables snaked from the pods to central computer banks. The pods occupants, hooked up to the life support machines and computers via their pods, lay staring emptily into inner space. Without warning one of the psykers sightless eyes twitched a little, then the readouts on the central banks began to churn out data and the three attendants began to crosscheck information slates. The station commander, a grizzled Colonel stood impassively watching his charges, his expression hardly changing when the bases klaxons began to sound. Outside, a series of slim, jagged shapes shifted into material space and opened fire. The astropath who was receiving the message let out a faint gurgle as blood began to well up from his throat, the closest attendant hurrying to wipe it away. Outside the heavy doors of the inner sanctum lasfire could be heard, as the storm troopers began engaging the hostiles. The astropath coughed blood once more and died, along with one of the other eleven, one of the attendants nodded silently to The Colonel, signalling that the message had arrived, The Colonel looked down at his display and grimaced. There was no way the station was going to survive this attack, but such a fate did not worry him, he knew his duty and would give his life willingly, as would every other man on Terratis. He ordered the ten remaining psykers to begin transmitting, as he readied his laspistol and prepared to sell his life as dearly as possible.
A brief flash of blue light, and suddenly there were 5 warriors standing inside the sanctum, tall and lithe, their armour adorned with spikes and hooks, and trophies of their victims, they raised their rifles, which like them, where long and slender, and began firing into the pods, their occupants screaming as they died to the slivers ripping flesh from bone. The Colonel fired at one before ducking behind his console, and had the satisfaction of seeing one of their warriors fall to the ground gurgling from the throat wound, before his console was peppered with a mass of jagged shards. Another flash of light, and The Colonel found himself staring at another warrior, this one was wearing one of his men's faces over his helmet, the flayed skin still fresh and dripping, in his raised hand was a bulbous pistol like device, which spat dark energy, engulfing him. Fire burned throughout The Colonels nerves, as he began to pass out, unsure if his message had been relayed successfully, but knowing he couldn't allow the stations data to be captured, he tried to reach the self destruct protocols, which had armed as soon as the first alarm rang. But his arms wouldn't move, paralysed by agony, he swore at the leering flesh-clothed tormentor and with his last bit of strength bit off his own tongue and swallowed it. As he choked, unconscious from the pain, the warriors surveyed their spoils, pleased with their prize. But then The Colonel died, and with him, the stations final safety device clicked over, and Terratis detonated.
In a small unmarked sector of empty space, a small meteor blossomed with fire, and began its new journey into the unknown, its occupants, destroyed in the blast, would not be mourned, for they never existed to begin with, and those who would learn of the truth would know their sacrifice was necessary.
A Brief Time Later, Ascillia Prime, Pacificus Sector
The Ork bellowed, straining against its shackles as it tried to lunge at the robed man observing the display impassively. The greenskin's spittle flecked the air and its large jaws snapped open and shut mere inches from the cowled head of Lord Inquisitor Jonas Gabriel. The Inquisitor examined the Ork from under his hood, his gaze as cold and calculated as the glowing red eye, unblinking, in his left socket. To the right of him, a smaller man in grey robes watched the display timidly, carefully avoiding the thrashing prisoner. The Ork, who, despite the shackles and restraints still dominated the room with its sheer size, showed no signs of stopping his bellowing, despite having been captured and held like this for over five hours now. Lord Gabriel turned to address the assistant, who twitched slightly at his name.
“Initiate Caine, please administer the test substance, starting with 20 units, and then adding a further unit every minute, be sure to note when this brute stops its incessant howling, and when it succumbs, calculate how large a dose it had tolerated.” Gabriel motioned to the vials of bluish liquid on the table. “We shall find a use for this pathetic wretch yet.”
With that, the Inquisitor strode from the room, taking one last look at the Ork, captured in the last wave a little under six hours ago. The Ork, belonging to one of the many clans that have proven to be a menace in this sector of space, was one of the few survivors of the ambush. The warboss had died to a sniper round to the head, and while the loss of such a premium specimen was considerable, Lord Gabriel considered it a job well done. The invasion had been stemmed, and the threat to the planet had, for the moment, subsided. As he stepped out of the hab-structure, hastily converted into a laboritorium, and into the bitter ice winds of Ascillia, he showed no sign of the cold.
The glacial fields stained with blood, both human and Orkish, although, the Inquisitor noted with grim satisfaction, a lot more green corpses littered the ice than human. Off towards the left flank there was the sound of battle, as another batch of greenskins threw themselves piecemeal into the guns of the imperial Guard defenders. With the warboss dead, the Orkish hordes had lost whatever little coherency they had once had, soon infighting would erupt, and the survivors would kill each other off. An explosion punctuated the screams of fallen Orks, as one of their crude vehicles stalled and crashed on the ice flow, its occupants burnt alive.
Jonas smiled and watched as a grim looking man with a sheathed power sword approached, carrying a dataslate under one arm. The colonel proffered the encrypted data to him silently, and then waited while Jonas read it. After decrypting it with his signet ring, the Inquisitor examined the report, apparently there was more resistance in the amber sector than predicted, and although it would slow down the reclamation of that block, it would not halt the removal of the green tide from this world.
Whilst reading this report, a hunched figure hurried out of one of the smaller buildings in the encampment, “Lord Gabriel, there is a most urgent matter that you must attend too, its Mother.” The savant babbled, falling over his robes in the deep snow. Mother, was the coded designation for Lord Gabriel's personal astropath, which suggested she had received a private message. Jonas nodded to the Colonel, acknowledging the good work, and hurried off to see what was the matter.
Mother was a young girl, no more than 17, and due to her service of the Inquisitor for around 3 years; she was much wiser than she looked. She sat cross-legged, some sanctified candles burning to purify the air and ward off dangerous spirits while the young girl meditated. Despite being blind and concentrating hard on her ritual, she head Jonas enter and offered him a seat next to her, which he took. Then she relayed the message she had received. After listening to the orders silently, Jonas stood solemnly; he turned to Mother as she awakened from the trance needed to decrypt the messages safely, and began blowing out the candles.
“I'm afraid I have dire news,” Jonas said, “Prepare to leave, I will go gather my men, dust off will be in 2 hours, we have dark matters to attend too” with that he swept out of the room, pausing only to issue a few commands to the waiting savant, who hurried off to start preparing the Lander for the imminent dust off. Lord Gabriel stepped into pace alongside the Colonel, as they walked over towards the main bunker.
“It appears I will not be able to stay and assist you in the final cleanup, more pressing matters have been brought to my attention, though I am confidant you will be able to handle the rest of this operation, and my report will reflect your men's efficiency and resolve. My men and I will be leaving within two hours, and we would appreciate some supplies from the stores.”
The Colonel nodded, and thanked the Inquisitor for his help, before heading into the bunker to finalise the day's reports.
Magos Oedipus heard the Inquisitor approach, his augmented hearing able to pick it out over the humming of the engines.
“Inquisitor, how goes the specimen?” he inquired, his attention never diverting from the small data readouts spooling across the mini dataport inlaid into the engine base, a few brief tweaks, and the engines humming stabilised into a dull roar.
“The Specimen is progressing well as yet, but I'm afraid we must leave now, the research will have to continue in our absence. Please prepare for departure.” Jonas struggled to be heard over the engines, although he needn't have bothered, Oedipus heard everything quite clearly.
As expected, Malius Hellen was found right where the fighting had just been fiercest, despite being stationed to defend a section nearly a mile away. The penitent commissar wiped the flecks of gore off his chainsword on the back of the decapitated Ork, and suppressed a grin.
“Sir, I felt it was my duty to provide moral and physical support to the brave men who were under assault.” He explained.
Jonas new full well that a member of the commissariat is well allowed to use their discretion when it comes to postings in the front line, but he suspected that the young man, not quite a fully fledged commissar, simply wanted to kill more greenskins. Of course, he thought with a smile, that's exactly the dedication he needed, and precisely why he had requested this particular commissar to his retinue.
“Well, please try to pay some attention to your posting next time. But right now I need you to collect the men of the Cadian 7th 7th and the Styxian 3rd 38th, and bring inform them that we will be leaving this campaign to attend other matters in just under 2 hours now.”
The young man looked vaguely dejected at missing out on a chance to purge amber sector, but agreed, and went off to find the 2 squads of stormtroopers, attached as the personal vanguard of Inquisitor Gabriel.
Once safely onboard the orbiting mothership “The Hammer Of Righteousness” the Inquisitor addressed his navigator. Sabin Resic had declined to go to the planets surface, instead preferring the relative peace and quiet of space. Once he finished greeting his lord, he was quickly and concisely given directions to put the ship on a course that would take her out to a safe jump distance and then join the rest of the crew in the briefing room. Stepping silently, out of habit, his footsteps in tune with the ships air purifiers, he set off to do just that, and then, hopefully find out what was so important that an Inquisitor of Lord Gabriel's status would need to be pulled out of an ongoing operation to address.
The holo-display flickered slightly then stabilized, the wire frame representation of the planetary system cast a green glow across the room. The display zoomed in on one of the three planets; two moons orbited the largish planet. Next to the display, Lord Inquisitor Gabriel stood on his podium, surveying his crew sitting around the display port. Two squads of stormtroopers sat at rigid attention, the young commissar took notes on a dataslate. Sabin stood over next to the door, while the Tech Adept sat hunched against the back, his Servo arm making him appear nearly twice the size he really was. Mother sat in on the briefing, even though she could not see the display. She didn't know what was coming, outside of her trance she could not recall the messages, a safety feature the Inquisition insisted upon.
“This is Sidivus Major. Only inhabited planet in the Sidivus System. It was a high yield mining world until around two hundred years ago, when the ore wells dried up. Both moons, however, are high in these same ores and are being mined. The ore in question is highly valuable for the creation of certain components in the subsystem manoeuvring drives on the larger freighter ships. The planet itself is nearly entirely barren rock, the cities are built on high ridges to protect them from the sandstorms.” Jonas paused as the Display focused on the largest of the cities, Sidivus Prime. “We have reason to believe that the planet may have been infiltrated by an insidious Xenos threat. We recently received a message detailing the presence of dangerous mutations, however the message was incomplete and lacked the appropriate authorisation codes of a sanctioned Inquisitorial agent. None the less this is a threat we cannot ignore and as such we must be vigilant. We will be arriving under the guise of an Imperial Guard General and his staff, until I need reveal myself you will know me as General Ostalan. We will arrive at the system in two days warpwise, so use that time to train, rest and be ready. This is your enemy.”
With that Lord Gabriel strode out of the room, but not before he set the display to show a vicious figure, hunched over and malicious, its four arms poised to attack. A Genestealer.