Darkness and Light

[Koval]

Slate: Sensitive files encrypted beyond own ability to access. Non-encrypted data very small in volume, likely not of any interest. Depressing lack of salubrious content, unless encrypted. No psychic presence detected beyond own psi-probe. No corruption evident.

Editor Nachtigaller evidently uncomfortable and/or distracted. Likely not used to descent by skyhook.

Arbitrator Adams not interested, apparently irritated by inability to reach shotgun. Conclusion: too dangerous to pursue, will switch attention to Arbitrator Muradov unless similarly discouraged.

"I should very much imagine that they have been recorded on this," Severino answered, waving the data-slate lazily in front of Nachtigaller. "Any Interrogator worth his salt would have recorded everything that he wished for Creed to see, yes?"

"That slate could be dangerous," Regin warned him. "You heard the Judge. It's not been psi-scanned properly. There could be anything in there."

"There could be," the psyker remarked playfully, "but there is not. If there was any trace of corruption in this object, then I would have recognised it by now. Whatever happened to Clay, it seems that he was certainly very thorough in his note-taking. And very chaste, too."

Sister Ellis showing signs of irritation and possibly disgust. Sudden tension in shoulders. Eyes suddenly staring at me, one eyebrow raised. Mild twitch in trigger finger denotes contempt for psykers. Will have to stay outside striking distance of her.

"I don't even want to know how you reached that conclusion," Sister Ellis sniped from across the hoist capsule. "But in any case we might have been spared the inanity of your observations had you been sufficiently observant to notice what I have been working on since before we arrived."

Annotated pict-recordings, displaying unknown sigils and script. Some notes legible, others too spidery to decipher. Note-stack covered in writing, hand the same, apparent attempts at translation still in progress. Most recent annotations hastily added, being no more than a couple of hours old at most.

Safety thankfully active on all firearms within reach.

"Ah, Sister, it would be rude of me to look through your belongings," Severino offered, hoping to placate the Dialogous.

"That doesn't stop you looking through anyone else's," Ellis countered.

"Sister, you must realise that you have a very good reason to want to shoot me dead. Unfortunately for you, everybody else sees more reason to keep me alive, and for my part, the benefits of being alive are... rather obvious. I simply do not wish to disturb this happy equilibrium."

"You're not fooling anyone, psyker," Ellis sighed.

"Rest assured, dear Sister," Severino smirked, "fooling anyone was not my intention."

[CorpusWolf]

Dreki laid his rifle at his feet as he loaded his wrist mounted crossbow with a bloodfire tipped arrow preparing for the landing, not wanting to be caught unaware by any locals. Dreki chuckled coldly as he watched the exchange between Severino and Sister Ellis, choosing to engage the investigation materials instead of involving himself in the dispute but enjoying it nonetheless.

As Dreki looked at the poorly imaged pict-recordings he had a bad feeling like he had seen these signs somewhere before, however felt it would be more beneficial to view some better quality imaging of the signs before bringing his insight forward to the group. Dreki had learnt well from the death of his mentor and shall not divulge his conclusions to others until absolutely sure that everything has been checked.

[Macabre]

Memoro.

   I was disturbed from my slumber by the bustling of a tall figure, inelegantly trying to fit both himself and his leather duster comfortably into the crash chair. I opened one eye to catch him gazing bewildered and befuddled around the rest of the capsule. I raised an eyebrow as he looked at me puzzled and mumbled to himself;
   "Safety harness?" before noticing the straps above his shoulders, "oh, we've all got a safety harness. That's nice." and proceeded to retrieve the locking clasp from behind his lower back where he'd been sitting on it and fumbled it closed. He huffed a nervous sigh as he leant back into the hard embrace of the chair.
   I spied the administratum a-quill-a tattoo poking out from beneath his collar and was instantly intrigued with the question of why a clerk was dressed more like a frontier journeyman.
   My musing was broken as a conversation regarding the markings snatched at my attention to three other members of the team talking with the officer-in-command of our escort of local lawmen; The golden-skinned, hard nosed senior agent and de facto team leader, Regin. A wiry haired young woman with augmented eyes that frequently blink-clicked like the shutter of a pict-recorder, her demeanour suggesting a scholar or librarian. She was the enquiring source that had drawn my scrutiny, but it was the third figure, the unassuming man she had just passed a slate to, that sent a shudder down my spine. He was a mind-witch.
   His entirely unremarkable features broke into a smug smile as he fondled the tablet, turning it every which way whilst studying it closely through squinted eyes, but all I could see in him was the laughing features of Provost Keane.

    Twenty-two years ago, I had served as part of an expeditionary team under Inquisitor Rajesh Patenjali, and after successfully cataloguing the halo-hieratic of the heliotrope mirror-priests (a sun worshipping race that looked remarkable like hairless bats), we were en route to the nearest Ordo Xenos archive cache, when we were redirected to the city of Kotos on Ithica after receiving an emergency astropath signal. Many recognise the name of Ithica as a horror story; The Brainflayers of Ithica. We had learned that corrupted elements of the Arbites precinct within the city had been working to an abhorrent agenda, led by malefactor and commanding officer of the arbitrator psi-section, Provost Horatio Keane. For years they had been secreting away latent psykers from the tithe-hunts, specifically those whose powers leant towards the telepathic discipline, and trained an army of pushers and thought-rapists with plans of sector-wide subjugation and domination.
    The psykana coterie aboard the ship spent what little time we had preparing us with mental training techniques so that we may resist the effects of the witches. However, despite these cautionary provisions, they were mostly in vain. For several weeks, the inquisitorial taskforce fought a guerilla war against legions of pushed civilians and mind-wiped zombies and out of the forty trained agents sent down, only seven survived relatively intact. Some fatalities were caused by physical injuries from firearms and suicide bombers, but worse was those who had succumbed to the mental violation of the Brainflayers; forced regressions, psyche-scouring, mind-wiping, and worse (such as a technique called psi-locking, literally trapping a persons mind within a labyrinth of their own nightmares).  
    Salvation came after two months with the arrival of the Ordo Hereticus and their chamber militant, my battle sisters. Within three days of punishing retribution, the loyal forces had forced the enemy back to their last stand; the city's bastion-precinct. I had been present during the final storm and the execution of Provost Keane, who was laughing with insanity even while we gunned him down.

   My gun hand twitched automatically, drawing the attention of the mind-witch Severino, who fixed me with amused eyes. Instantly the psykana training kicked in, throwing up faith-blockades, Kertzhämmer locks, dead ends, synaptic traps, Reichöven spirals and just for good measure, painted my mind-corridors with passages from the Litany of Spite.
   He started talking to me, but I cannot recall how I answered, I was only glad when his smug attention was drawn back to the others and allowed myself a sigh of relief. I reached into the folds of my winter robes and withdrew a steel flask embossed with the fluer-de-lys, unscrewed the stopper and took a long draught, wincing slightly as the warm liquid hit my gullet and spread outward across my chest. Before that fateful event, I had always thought that, whilst distasteful, witches were necessary cogs in the Imperial machine. After all, wasn't Him on earth the greatest psyker who had ever walked across the stars? And His psychic servants soulbound to Him? No, I had realised the truth back then, that mortal witches were dangerous aberrations, easily tainted by avarice and insanity and like a honed blade, so easily turned upon its master. Only the Godhead that is the Emperor was beyond such corruption.
    My neighbour had become increasingly agitated as the martian priests had dissolved from soft intoning to quiet bickering, so I tilted the flask in his direction;
   "Hey journeyman, a little blessed sedation for the travel down?"
    He took the proffered canteen and sniffed the neck cautiously; "holy wine?" He enquired.
    "Haha, 'wholly' Tilean amaretto!" I chuckled.
     He declined with a grimace and handed it back, restoppered. I shrugged as I pocketed it, noticing that his attention had already switched back to the techpriest trio who seemed to be in a heated discussion about grease, which seemed to distress him further.
    "Don't worry, the Emperor protects." I said, reverently, which seemed to reassure him and he nodded enthusiastically.
    It was at this point my lexicogitator chimed and printed out a thin slip of carbon parchment which signified that it had made a breakthrough in decrypting and translating, at least part of, the mysterious markings using complex algorithms for analysing syntax, idioms, precursors, symbolism, semantics, grammar and other mechanisms of language. I tore off the strip and brought it close to my eyes. Next to a small rune, barely more than a circumflex, it read; THE.
   Typical, but at least it was a start.

[Necris]

The ride down was a gut wrenching pulling affair as the sealed carriage plummeted down the tether, the whole trip took two hours in which Syng and the other Militiamen sat in silence accustomed to the crushing sensation the descent caused, as carriage came to a loud squealing halt as it slowed and jerked before the locks engaged and the sealed doors slid open the air of the world rushed in, rich and warm it carried a bitterness to it which stuck at the back of the throat, it smelled of ash and rock dust, industry and machinery.

Syng pulled his rebreather off hooking it to his belt as he stepped shakily from the carriage his sheriffs did the same pulling on soft caps to sheild their eyes from the stark white sun, he strode off his foot steps becoming more certain and solid as he moved away from the group and approached a militiaman detail as they approached the carriage, they were heavily armed with compact las carbines and las pistols, they saluted as they stood to one side for the team to disembark, He turned to Severino.

"The relief detail you arrived during the secruity change over, they'll take the carriage up after we've moved out of their way."

He gestured to a fleet of waiting vehicles.

"I was unsure as to how many would be in your part, they can take you to the resiencies use by Mr Clay or to the Precinct hub to review the evidence, I suggest you rest get accustomed to the atmosphere of the world the light can cause headaches and the grit does stick in the back of the throat."

He strode to the first Car and waited until a pair of his escort opened the door.

"I must beg your leave I have other duties to attend, I shall be waiting to receive you at the precinct in due course."

And with that he slid into the car resting back in the seat he let out a long breath as he rubbed his temple.

"Take me to the Governess."

++

The driver took them to the hab Clay had used as his residence it was constructed from a material produced from the mining slag, it was heavy, dense and retained the heat of the days sun well into the night, the windows were a tinted vitrified glass made from the dust that populated the upper atmosphere it created a strange latice pattern when the light hit it illuminating rooms in a myrid of colours, the space would easily house a trader and his staff with dozens of small rooms anexed in a wing to of their own while the main chamber had all of the comformts needed for a prolonged stay all the comforts save for the fact Clay'd, had the suite cleared of most of it's funiture save for a large table in the centre of the room which had until recently been filled with image captures and scribbled notes, these had all been collected up after Clay's death and placed into storage as none of the Militiamen could make any leaway into the interogators organisation of connections which he'd mapped out across the table and floor.

The master bedchamber held an elaborate double bedof forged iron with a thick and plush matress and silken throws, not like the staff rooms which held simple cots of pressed steel and thin matressed with rough spun blankets, the militiaman that accompanie them a Sheriff by the name of Jalos Pec informed them that when they'd cleared the suite they'd found half a dozen weapons which had been placed into the evidence locker alocated to Clay and his evidence, he spoke candily with them as the residecny staff worked refil the fruits and peice meals that were required by the complex ower and changed to speaking frankly with them when he was sure they were alone.

"I worked with Clay when he was here, I was his liason for cases and he included me in a lot of his works, I didn't like the man much he was a bastard is truth be told but no one deserves what he got, I mean we don't even have a whole body."

He told them of the details he could recall of Clay's death, the manner in which he organs had been arranged had caused a sickness deep with in him, not a revulsion to the act something deeper.

"When I looked at it as a whole I felt like there was something within me, something squirming away in my guts fighting to get out it made me feel like all the light in the universe had gone out, like there was something nothing but despair and misery left."

Even talking about the corpse made his go pale and feel queasy he told them of the warehouse where he had been found the whole district was abandoned had been for over three decades the owners had been off worlder part of a larger trade organisation they'd been excuted by the Inquisition for the trafficing of unregistered psykers and of exporting the illegal drug sap, the property in the warehouses had been seized and destroyed, no-one had dared touch them since in a legitimate sense for fear of being tainted by their legacy, they were however used by muties to hide out and the local militiamen often performed sweets and purges to route out the filth.

The warehouse in particular had been shedualed for a sweep it was almost as if Clay had been butchered there to leave a message.

He spoke of the other murders as well, Clay had been monitoring them looking for signs, there had been six in Jakro County a refinery worker, a whore, a tavern keeper, a bookkeeper and a mine supervisior and a missionary, their all had a similarities the brutality of the cuts that killed them single strikes that cleaved to the bones, their tongues cut from their mouths and their eyes torn from the sockets, a strange thing that linked them all was the middle finger of the left had was missing but the nature of the finger's removal was always different the bookkeepr had had his hand smashed apart by something blunt, the whore's had been removed by a surgical laser, the missionary's had been bitten off, the refinery worker's had been sawn off by a blunt blade, the a tavern keeper's had been snapped off as if by some inhuman force and the mine supervisior's had been cut off by machinery driven into the gears of a mine hoist. He said that clay thought these different methods were strange as if the murderer was playing trying different methods to see which worked best but the order of the bodies discover didn't make sense they had been found in the order of Whore, tavern keeper, refinery worker
Missionary, bookkeeper and mine supervisior. He'dd suggested that there could be more than one murderer but Clay didn't think so he thought there was only one doing the killing and the trophy taking, he'd said there were too many clues that suggested one killer but he'd never explained himself.

He talked at length of the other cases minor infactions that Clay had dismissed as not Ordo business, he spoke of the markings, they they were gaudy and most commonly daubed in red but others had been in browns and colours of paints found locally and dumped at the scene, Clay had been enraged by them and demanded to know what the commissioner Belasy of Jakro Country was doing about it, when the report had returned that he'd passed it onto the local mission Clay'd gone into a rage and vowed to see Belasy stripped of his rank and the matter settled, he thought it was more to do with holy sites being desecrated than anything else though, and it continued for a long while descending into the day to day business of the militiamen and finally his conversation eventually turned once again to business.

"So what do you plan on doing?"

[CorpusWolf]

As the disembarked the car, which brought them to Clay's abode, Dreki listened to the conversation between Severino and the local law enforcement. Deciding absorb the information given by the sheriff and contemplating making his way to Jakro County where the murders seem to have been centralised.

While Dreki was thinking over his decision, before bringing it before the investigatory team's leader, he turned to Sister Ellis.

"Sister, did I hear you say that you have Tilean Amaretto in your flask?" Dreki inquired while removing his helm to stop the smoked glass from obscuring his face. Dreki had always preferred viewing the world through his range finder. This probably stemmed from the long investigations he had been on with his master, who refused to allow him to remove his helm in the company of others.

"Only the best, ofcourse." The Dialogous replied with a clear half smile crossing her face as if amused buy Dreki's question. When the Sister handed over the flask Dreki took one deep swig and passed it back.

"Now it's time to discuss taking a team to Jakro, I'd say. It's my experience that although if there is a cultist presence here they will not be there, it will help me to track them." Dreki spoke without emotion as he remembered the teachings of Inquisitor Adustum. After replacing his helm and re-engaging the blue heads up display of the range finder he double checked his hand bow and made his way to the head of the group. "Also, I am done with this degenerate excuse for law enforcement." Dreki huffed as he left the company of Sister Ellis.

[Van Helser]

Godday believed that the Emperor had a special place for the faithful dead whose deaths were brought by His enemies.  He knew his parents were there, and he hoped that it would be his resting place too once his business in the mortal realm was done.  He hoped the dead of Jakro County had found their way there along with Interrogator Clay.  The fate of the Throne Agent was a chilling reminder for Godday that servitude to the Inquisition was no protection from the Imperium's most degenerate enemies.  Those that had brought him low had to have had great power and reach to track him down and kill him.  No Interrogator Godday had met was lacking martial prowess so for him to have been bested spoke of a dangerous foe.  Whatever safeguards and security Clay had in place had been circumvented.  Had there been a glaring oversight on his part, or had his operation become compromised?  Godday was of no doubt that Clay had been killed because of his investigation – someone had known what he had discovered.  He was close to a breakthrough and that had brought the enemy down upon him to silence him, in the most terrible of manners.

The subsequent display of Clay's body was a warning to any who would have followed in his footsteps.  The stamp of heresy was all over his death.  Indeed, all the deaths were ritualised, as was the way of a cult from outside the Emperor's light.  The unfortunate six had been selected for death, whether randomly or for as yet unseen reasons, and stripped of the middle finger of their left hands.  Godday did not know the individual significance of that, but trophy taking was commonplace enough among the degenerate.  The seemingly random nature of removal of the trophy was odd, but the relatively few deaths could be hiding a pattern. 

The last piece in this puzzle was the symbols.  Something about them had upset Clay, and Godday reckoned that the daubing had been heretical, something that an experienced member of the Inquisition would recognise but a layman would not.  Godday himself was no more than a layman himself when it came to such matters, but the Dialogous adept, and possibly the psyker would be better placed to understand them. 

'It would seem that there are a number of leads to follow up,' Godday said to the team.  'I feel that Clay was killed because he was close to a breakthrough; if we know what he knew, we will get closer to his killers.'  There were some nods of assent.  'Clay's work has to be worth going over.  I am certain that we will turn up leads that the militiamen could not.  Could we have access to it Pec?'

'That shouldn't be a problem.  It's all in storage back at the station bunker,' the Sheriff answered.

'Good.  That's where I would like to start, or at least, where I'd feel most useful.' 

[Koval]

"Evidently, whatever Clay was working on will not be beyond our own abilities to evaluate," Severino suggested, "though I do worry that it will take us quite some time. It certainly infuriated him."

He paused, breathing slowly as his perception reached out to touch the unseen.

Stress marks and a slight indentation on the table.

"The table is well-used. Clay must have spent many a night hunched over it, working feverishly until the small hours looking for any clues he might have missed. Recently, too. He would have been noting down the little details as soon as he spotted them, an autoquill in his..."

A handwritten note in Pec's pocket.

"...right hand, his shorthand notes meaning something only to himself and Creed--"

"Inquisitor Creed," Godday reminded him sharply, a hint of weariness in his posture.

"Well, in any case, the notes only meant anything to those individuals who were meant to see them," Severino shrugged. "Nonetheless, Clay strikes me as a troubled individual, but the sort of troubled individual who would forget the needs of his own body, too caught up in his research, but then overcompensate for his negligence and make the problem worse."

"Don't tell me. You've already deduced that Clay had a personal harem of twelve young girls and a hrud, and that he got through them all every night," Regin sniped, nonplussed. "And he'd see the hrud twice a night on festival days."

Indentations on the bed.

"Close, but apparently that is not so," the psyker answered with a sly grin. "Clay slept alone, but--"

Too big an indentation to have slept soundly.

"--it strikes me that while he was a heavy sleeper, his investigation troubled him. Hardly a surprise if he would delay going to sleep in order to make one last mark on the page."

Ashes on the floor and a faint smell in the air.

"In order to offset that, he smoked."

"Clay smoked even before he buried himself in his investigation," Pec interrupted. "I didn't see him an awful lot at first, but when I did, he always had a bloody lho-stick hanging out of his mouth."

"I can tell you now that his problem got much worse. The ash on the floor has a history; the more recently it fell, the more of it there is. Whatever he was investigating, or the investigation itself, took him over almost completely. Couple that with his sleeping habits and we are looking at a mystery that would have eventually driven Clay over the edge."

"Clay was an Interrogator," Regin reminded him. "If you honestly think that Clay was so troubled--"

"Then either his willpower was lacking," Severino interrupted, "or the same thing that pushed Clay to the edge will drive us mad as well."

He turned to Pec.

"We need to see his work."

[Inquisitor Octavian Lars]

The speeder was a very bumpy transport vehicle, but it did the job, and was armed with a meaty gun turret, which I hoped I could use at some point, but it seemed unlikely. My thought bubble was broken when the Militiaman, whose name was Khaden shouted,
"There's a riot ahead, get on the gun just in case."
I relished the opportunity to fire a weapon of such immense calibre. From experience, I noted that it was a Sword firearms Light autocannon chambered in .50 which was going to chew through the crowd should it come to fire it. I look out towards the front of the vehicle through the slit in the metal gun shield and saw dense crowd armed with petrol bombs and other such like.
"Does this happen often?" I called towards Khaden
He replied "Yes, and with increasing regularity!"
"Right then, let's get this show on the road" as I racked the slide and brought the gun to bear.
"Don't fire unless they attack us." Khaden warned.
"How about a warning volley?"
"Fine by me!"
The report of the gun was satisfying and I let rip with calculated efficiency to scare the crowd, who parted before the transport.

Eventually we reached the edge of the city and cruised through the urban landscape while I scanned the buildings for one which would be easily defensible.
After an hour of searching, the sun was going down, but I found one that fitted and made my farewells to Khaden. Once inside, I boarded up the windows and contacted Gala on a long range vox.
"Gala?"
"Calibre, found anything?"
"I got us a big house and a good field of vision as well as a nice tower."
"Good work, anything else?"
"Civilian riots are building up, also, I like the look of a militia trooper called Khaden. If you want, you could get him for an inspection. He could be of use."
"Thanks for the tip, what are the co-ordinates for the building?"
"54.65N, 73.92W"
"Thank you, see you later."

[Inquisitor Sargoth]

It was cold here. The flesh on Lina's face prickled until the other mind disabled her perception of the sensory neurones there. Her core temperature remained stable and such a limited exposure was insufficient to cause frostbite, it noted, almost comfortingly.

Lina was always quiet, but at this moment her silence was reverential. She stood within a veritable artefact, taller than a Titan and older than the Imperium itself. The others seemed apprehensive, even bored, but she grown accustomed to the lay ignorance of the Omnissiah's triumphs.

She fancied she could feel the spirit of the skyhook – a fitting name, heavy with symbolism - a slow presence, beautiful in its simplicity. This was no mere elevator; this was a stairway to the heavens themselves.

The voxcaster built into her throat muttered prayers and the occasional question to the adepts that tended the skyhook in bursts of terse machine code. They replied somewhat warily – they seldom saw the ordained here – but there was a pride here, and she heard it even though the flavourless code.

Her other mind shared her fascination in its own sterile way, cataloguing the dimensions of the box, attempting deduce the nature of what machinery could be seen, recording the prayers and the mundane conversation around her.

Mundane or not, it was her duty to listen, to take in as much data as she could. The others shivered and chatted, occasionally bickering in a typically organic fashion.

Their body language was guarded, especially that of the local enforcer (Designation:  Syng). The other mind whispered that his heartbeat was slightly faster than would be expected of a man of his build – nervousness was the obvious conclusion.  The other fluctuating heartbeat belonged to Severino, but Lina was used to such biological eccentricities from the psyker.

They handed her a data-slate to decrypt, a simple matter. Her metal fingers danced as she input standard codes to reveal log entries and notes. There was a second level of encryption that would require a key, possibly a passcode, known only to the deceased operative (Designation: Clay).

Several passages leapt out at her, the other mind diligently recording them and pedantically overlaying corrections to the man's punctuation.

++These markings have finally struck a chord; they are not of human design. Nothing I know of, neither heretical or loyalist, matches the shapes and forms there is something distinctly xenos about them – I should  be able to confirm this when I view them personally but until then I am unsure of what made them. ++

The other mind did not recognise the symbols, somewhat unsurprisingly given that their shared database of xenos languages was so small. Sadly, it seemed unlikely that a backwater world such as this would provide her with any way in which to expand it.

++I cannot believe the locals have not drawn this conclusion- all of the murders have taken place within a ring of markings. Do these symbolise a territory marked out by a simplistic predator? I have mapped locations of both, and from the locations and evidence provided by the locals I believe I have narrowed down the location of the murderer. When I travel out to the county I will test my theory. ++

++The taking of trophies perplexes me. The tongue I understand. It reminds me of the orks, or the kroot, who have been known to take trophies to mark their prowess in killing and to raise their standing amongst their kind but... the eyes and fingers... The eyes do not serve as trophy - they cannot be displayed for lesser kin to see, they serve as little to endear the sense of the kill. As for the finger, I understand why one might be taken but the manner of removal does not match. Surely a hunter would take the fingers in the same way, as they have the tongues? I cannot fathom the how arbitrary it seems. Perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye. Nevertheless I will uncover this mystery. I travel to the county on the next rotation. This will not elude me for long. ++

Lina was not beyond emotion, which she had mixed feelings about, she thought with a rare smile. The information was disquieting. Trophy-taking was common enough, but Clay was clearly missing something. The removal of the eyes – a small trophy, true, and difficult to preserve – was a custom in several death cults. Many faiths and cultures, human and xenos, placed a great significance on the eyes of the deceased and ascribed to many odd beliefs to them. Some believed a corpse without eyes would never enter the afterlife. Others ate them to gain the knowledge of the dead. Some whispered the deceased's final sight remained burned onto the retina. To an adept of the machine-god, such superstitions were practically laughable, but relevant.

Clay had seemed somewhat fixated on the lack of care given to the taking of the fingers. The man was an experienced investigator and he had noticed something amiss. Lina loathed using a word as imprecise as 'clue', but this qualified. Nonetheless, investigators actively looked for patterns. It was easy to imbue any irregularity with meaning, a false positive. Lina and the other mind were in agreement that such assumptions were below her.

The other mind had little regard for instinct and insight over proven fact, but Lina put forward a tentative hypothesis of her own.

The bodyparts were being taken for a purpose beyond simple trophies.

***

Lina was experiencing annoyance. An unworthy emotion, one that fogged the mind, but present nonetheless. The psyker was making countless assumptions and suppositions based on miniscule evidence, as was his usual style. Her other mind was incapable of such emotion, but it nonetheless criticised him. So many variables unconsidered. So many alternatives.

What irked Lina the most was the fact that he was probably right. Whether it was the man's trained instincts or his psychic senses, he was seldom wrong. You could hear it in his voice, an undeserved confidence and assurance.

Lina had only minor additions and upgrades to her olfactory receptors, though her other mind was able to process the data more efficiently. The room did indeed smell of lho.

The other mind buzzed. Immediate physiological effects of lho; reduced intraocular pressure, increased heart rate, lowered blood pressure, dryness of the mouth, muscle relaxation. Neurological effects vary strongly by dose. Inhibition of motor control and impairment of working/short-term memory common with stronger doses. A poor choice of drug for an investigator, perhaps, but Lina felt it was enough to cast doubt onto Severino's spurious assumptions of stress-induced 'madness'. Such hyperbole... Though perhaps he had been guarded in the entries in his data-slate, as these were accessible by anyone with Creed's codes; they were rational, even calm. The deeper level of encryption, his private musings, would reveal the truth.

"I may be able to decipher the notes," Lina said, quietly. The others could not hide their surprise – she had not spoken once since they had made planetfall. "If the body has been preserved I would like to examine it. If not, pictographic records will have to suffice. In addition, I will require a key – most likely a password or code – to access the deeper levels of encryption on his dataslate. It seems unlikely he would leave such information lying around. Suggestions are welcome."

[Necris]

++

Hidden away in Solent County away from sight in an old mine town long since stripped of all resources met six figures, one came from the town a hooded figure sat upon a chair with six insectoid legs that hissed and clicked as it moved to greet the others coming from the swirling sands beyond the towns limits, one of their number wore a crimson long coat his face hidden behind a rebreather the others wore a mix of clothing each garment finely worked they hid their faces behind masks or pearly white. the crimson coated one spoke to the one coming to greet them.

"More have come."

"It is as predicited, we move closer to our goals."

One of the Pearly masks perked up a short figure in layers of lace that tugged at the bloated female figure beneath, her voice was a thick lazy slur

"They serve the same as the one before."

"It is as predicited they will lead to the source."

A tall mask spoke his voice chipped by a metalic hiss.

"You are sure the source will be eliminated?"

"The hunter is prepared, the rituals ready, the source is doomed, all we need do is succed here."

Another of the party spoke a childs voice issuing from a vast figure larger than any of the others gathered.

"Why did we not use the other?"

"He was a tiger, not a wolf, we need a wolf pack to get to the source, not a solitary hunter."

The crimson coat spoke again.

"Why do we not just act against them?"

"That is not the prediction they must come to us of their own will, and they will come it has been seen."

The chair bound one turned it's hooded head to the last figure.

"Do you not have anything to add sister?"

The last figure dipped it's head slowly then turned and walked from the group heading back into the swriling sands she moved like smoke gliding along the fabric of her clothing swirling around her.

"Still our sister does not speak, a shame she has a loverly voice, till we meet again."

The insectoid legs hissed and the figure turned and headed back into the town vanishing in the dying light the others turned and followed the silent sister out into the sands