Skarkon snaps her fingers. The noise is surprisingly loud and you find yourselves wondering where the Inquisitor learned that trick, before realising that the sound came from inside your own heads. Nonetheless, you are all distracted by Skarkon's brief display of psychic power.
"That'll do, Kemimi," she informs the seeress, and with a look that's somewhere between dazed, confused, playful and vacant, Kemimi goes quiet.
It's Troy that breaks the silence. "I couldn't really tell from the pict feed -- can we rewind it to see if there is any obvious damage to the structure?"
Skarkon rewinds the feed to ten seconds before the enemy missile hits and replays the Arvus' final moments. Unfortunately, the level of detail isn't sufficient to determine whether the structure's been damaged or in any way compromised; certainly there's nothing obvious that you can see. Once the Arvus starts to lurch into its fatal descent, Skarkon busies herself with another dataslate in an attempt to glean any information that the Arvus' sensors may have picked up. Judging by the look on her face, nothing's leaping out at her.
"In short," she mutters, "we don't know."
"Humm. Would it be possible to send down some probes to conduct a perimeter sweep?" Troy suggests. "Maybe see if there are any vehicle tracks or foot prints? Maybe a landing site?"
"Ordinarily I'd use the Dreygur's own sensorium to conduct a survey, and carry out further observations from a gun-cutter or Arvus," Skarkon admits. "I don't maintain autonomous probes, and if I did I'd have to find some way of deploying them to begin with. That said..."
Skarkon puts two fingers to her ear. "Master Drees, hail the Undying Light for me -- see if Lady Roche had any hunter-skulls or surveillance drones on board."
You're dimly aware of something squawking very faintly in Skarkon's ear before she lowers her hand.
"If Helena did have probes, they'll be harder for the missiles to track than the Arvus was. We can enslave their data-feeds to the Dreygur's sensorium and find a way in."
"Taking a place like that by force wouldn't be easy," Troy reminds her. "You would need hundreds of men, and lots of support equipment. Usually."
Troy's pointed glance towards Twiscian and especially Kemimi isn't lost on Skarkon, but she ignores it.
"What of the other Inquisitor’s ships? With their Inquisitors dead or missing, you have authority to commandeer their vessels," Brother Aret adds. "With focussed fire from orbit even frigates will level their defences, and then we assault the breach by lander, including whatever forces the other ships can provide."
"Then you're suggesting I use Roche's probes -- assuming she has any -- to triangulate attack coordinates for an orbital bombardment," Skarkon notes. It's not a question, but an observation.
Aret nods slowly. "“Certainly we risk damage to the fortress, but we lack the time to sit in orbit and wring our hands while we wait for the enemy to respond. Casualties may be heavy, but weighed against the loss of an Inquisitorial fortress the losses would be acceptable.”
"Again, we risk having to dig our way into the fortress," Skarkon answers. "We can, however, leave the option on the table, as I'd rather not have to worry about the defences at all. Though in the interests of expediency, we should do the same with teleportation, and similarly I doubt the launchers can track incoming drop pods."
[OOC]
If your characters weren't previously aware that Skarkon's a psyker, they are now. I imagine it'll be a not-entirely-unexpected surprise for the Guardsmen.
[/OOC]