Five days later
Aboard an Imperial Navy Troop Transport
Officer’s Quarters
Gazing at a report screen, Arbor nodded in satisfaction as the last Devil Dog was secured in the transport’s vehicle bay. It had been a difficult fight, but his House’s leaders had agreed that his cause was worthy. Further deliberations in the Grand Council Chamber had dragged several other Noble Trading Houses aboard the plot.
As he had pointed out to them, even if the Eastern Fringe Trading Company was innocent, a few secrets would undoubtedly pop up. If nothing else, the embarrassment of inadvertently working with xenos and warp-smiths would undoubtedly cost the Company contracts to the Benetarian Noble Trade Houses. Agents would be dispatched, merchants questions, Rouge Traders employed. It might take several years of waiting, but the payoff could be good.
A rumble shuddered though the transport as it cast off its moors and kicked its engines to life. It was starting the journey back to war. Arbor glanced out a viewport at his homeworld. “Very lovely”, he thought, “but odd that I don’t feel like I’m leaving home, but returning home”.
Planet Dawnbreak
Battle Sister Garrison Armory
Gyrfalcon adjusted her armature-mounted magnifying glass. Looking though it, she carefully cleaned the servos of her armor’s left gauntlet. During the last Eldar raid, a shard had penetrated the wrist joint and flooded it with corrosive poison. What a pain this was, but if she tried to pawn the chore off on a cog-boy, she would never hear the end of how she didn’t properly respect her armor’s war spirit.
"Well you can tell by the way I use my gun, I’m a Bug hunten man, now I gotta run! The battle’s loud, but its got no sound without my las-gun around!"
Though compared to the noise the locals called music that was pouring out of a nearby vox, a coggie be-atching might be better.
“Canoness Gyrfalcon?” called a young voice.
Gyrfalcon glanced up and rolled her eyes. It was typical, turn off the communication vox to get some work done and someone just sends a runner. Sounded like a novite page. No sense blowing her top on her. “Over here!” she called across the bay.
The girl, clothed in a simple dress bearing the Emerald Blade’s sword symbol, darted over. “It is my most sorrowful duty to interrupt you at work, Blessed Canoness. The unclean laymen at Orbital Command asked that I hand you this handheld holoprojector, as it relates to you holy work!”
Carefully hiding her smile, Gyrfalcon took the device and dismissed the page-girl. Had she ever been like that? Emperor only knew, it was so long ago. She tapped the message rune.
A hologram of a middle age looking man in the uniform of the local PDF appeared. “Canoness, I am most sorry to interrupt you. I hope to the Emperor, whose light flows though you, that you were not at prayer or castigation. I only interrupt because of a strange situation. At 07:00 local time, two ships came out of the Warp.”
The hologram switched to an orbital augury’s viewpoint. The ball of light showed a naval task force of four frigates and a Dauntless-class light cruiser sailing out of an warp exit rift. The augury’s IFF quickly tagged it as the General Ereinburg. Dancing like a sprite in the ship’s wake was a smaller shape. Even if the IFF tagged it, Gyrfalcon knew the ship. It was the sloop Foxhound, personal transport of one Inquisitor Belisarius Mell’vo. Built at the high-tech dockyards of Volograd, the sloop had a raked design closer to an Eldar craft than the block shaped light cruiser it was tailing. She sported powerful enough shields and guns to fight a frigate to a draw.
The man’s face appeared once more. “The…owner…of the smaller vessel requested your presence, among others at landing. He had Throne Agent signal codes.”
Tearing for the door, Gyrfalcon turned back on her vox to call for a ride to the spaceport. Perhaps there was something more to what she had found in that lab after all. The Inquisition wouldn’t be poking its nose into the matter otherwise.
The spaceport was bustling. Even on a world on the fringes of Imperial territory like Dawnbreak the port was a community hub. Perhaps the case was especially so for a new colony. The whole settlement had grown up around the place. Space ships powered down though the atmosphere, screeching as they decelerated. Crates were lifted onto loaders. Passengers shuffled about.
It took Gyrfalcon a good fifteen minutes to push though the bustle to the waiting center she had been told to go to. Without her armor, she looked like another official everyone was content to ignore. Looking somewhat disheveled, she spotted Colonel Arbor standing by a view window, a few aids scattered about. He glanced over at her.
“You know,” said Gyrfalcon, “I’m not amazed you look like you came back from a pleasant stroll, you son a be-atch! Not a crease on your uniform!”
Arbor couldn’t help but smile. “I called ahead and asked Customs to provide an escort. One can’t appear…sloppy in front of an Inquisitor.”
Gyrfalcon tried to brush down her robes and uniform. “Yeah, I’ll consider that in the future.”
Outside, a shuttle from the Foxhound was just landing, thrusters tossing up a cloud of dust as the pilot gently touched down in a landing crater. The viewport windows rattled from the intense sound, then stopped as the engines faded. “Well, let’s go see him,” said Gyrfalcon.
Walking through a tunnel out to the crater, the pair and the entourage entered the landing bay just as a ramp opened up into the thruster-heated air. A pair of bodyguards swept out, dressed in full combat armor. Auspex and gun barrels scanned the area.
A figure appeared at the ramp head a moment later. He was dressed in a dark blue armor-cloth and a tan duster with matching wide brim hat. An ornate power sword hung on one hip and a master-crafted plasma rifle was slung across his back. From behind his dark, short beard, Inquisitor Belisarius Mell’vo of the Holy Ordo of the Inquisition grinned at Arbor and Gyrfalcon.
“Well, ain’t you two a site for sore eyes?” he boomed in course drawl. He casually waltzed down the ramp, followed by a mass of agents, hanger-ons, interrogators, and other assorted rift-raft an Inquisitor will tend to accumulate. “So, I hear you-all are having some mutant problems in these parts, eh?” He came up to the pair, arms spread almost nonchalantly. “Well, come along, I got a nice hostel rented. You can tell me all about it there, though first I want to hear how ya’ll are doing…”
Taking the Inquisitor’s old-style ground car to the best hotel on the planet, the imaginatively named Aquila, the group piled out and was led up to the penthouse by Belisarius, interrogating them the whole way about minor things from their personal lives.
A maid opened the door to the suite. Luxury glittered from finely gilded surfaces and the smell of high quality leather wafted out. Marble countertops gleamed and several servo-skulls hovered quietly in a corner, awaiting commands.
The Inquisitor ushered Arbor and Gyrfalcon in while Arbor’s aids were ushered to a servant’s lounge. He handed his coat and hat to a butler. “I do say, Canoness, that’s mighty embarrassing. You really had to see the visiting Missionary with a stain on your rump? What did you do to that page girl? I hope you didn’t punish her too hard?”
The door shut, and Belisarius’s posture changed. He seemed to become more businesslike and serious. He glanced at the butler. “All clear and scanned, Jakob?”
The pale man, whose stance suggested someone very skilled with a gun or blade, nodded. “Yes, Inquisitor. To the best of our knowledge, no bugs, and we have activated the privacy generator. Sentries and snipers are even now positioning themselves.”
Belisarius nodded. “Good man. I do indeed appreciate all of that hard work. Do me and yourself a favor and get some of that fine sipping whiskey. Pour yourself a finger or two and bring the bottle on over to us.” Even his voice had changed. The rough drawl had switched to a softer, more refined; educated, burr. Neither Gyrfalcon, nor Arbor was surprised. They had both dealt with the man before. “Now that we all have a pit of privacy, kindly tell me everything you know about labs, Eldar, and mutants.”
After several hours of listening to the two speaking and asking a few questions over a few glasses of whiskey, Inquisitor Belisarius halted the two. “Sounds like you all been busy. Good. The Emperor helps those that help themselves.” He put down the tablet that he had been jotting notes down on.
“I’ll be blunt, you two have earned that. I’ve just returned from investigating a rather nasty pirate ring. Turns out they were nest of Forsaken Powers worshippers. It was a long, slow, and hard investigation and infiltration. I came here for a break, so to say. Should be a nice and easy investigation, but I’m not sure how long I’ll stay. Or you two.” He held a hand up at their protests.
“War’s brewing with the Orks. A Waagh is brewing up, near Angola. Deathwatch teams are deployed to try to break it up, but I just don’t think they can make it. If a Waagh brews up, we’ll need every manjack to put it down.”
Gyrfalcon piped up. “Well, we should try to get as much done as possible, right?”
Belisarius nodded. “Yes, indeed. It seems to me this Eldar of yours is a bundle of information that you can’t squeeze anything out off, right? Tomorrow, I’ll have a chat with this fellow and we’ll see if he’ll be so kind as to speak to me.”
