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As soon as the trial was over, cleared on all charges the Emperor is indeed merciful (sometimes), STILL-Interrogator Greg Sargent, better known as ‘Sarge’, took care not to rub his wrists once the shackles were off. It wasn’t that he wasn’t happy to be free of them, it was just that he knew better than to show such weakness in front of a room full of Inquisitors (not to mention their personal Interrogators, teams, their Interrogators’ teams, and assorted gawkers). About the only reprimand he’d personally collected (although his team had collected their fair share) was taking Inquisitor what’s-his-name’s- Herennius, apparently- rosette and position without authorization at the behest of a literal madwoman. As ‘punishment’, it had been declared that he was no longer an Inquisitor, and would never be promoted past the rank he currently held.Behind him, he tried not to hear Doc, Fumbles, and Nubby honest to the Emperor crying. Or Aimy’s gleeful cackles. Or Twitch and Tink’s scramble for a detonator and drone controller respectively.At least their search of the pair before turning themselves in had been thorough. Blowing up a significant portion of the Inquisition presence in the sector immediately after being acquitted on all charges was not a good idea. And neither was rubbing outright tech heresy in their faces.Oak looked amused and sad at the same time. The grief was likely not due to any disappointment in the outcome, but because he was missing Interrogator Ulmus, who had sacrificed himself for his Inquisitor in the battle with the daemon that had a vendetta against Oak.And was the reason that this trial had been held in a city on the other side of the planet from the original Inquisition HQ. Which was minor damage compared to the last few times the daemon had been taken down, according to Oak’s trial.“Virius,” a tall man, flanked on one side by a man who would have been even taller if he didn’t apparently have a vendetta against proper posture and on the other by a shorter man with the aura of a guardsman inducted into the Inquisition, with bright blue eyes, salt and pepper auburn hair, and a well-tended short beard approached Oak, a warm smile on his face.“Albus,” Oak responded with equal warmth, before rattling off something else in a very formal High Gothic.The other Inquisitor laughed and responded in kind, before looking at Sarge, and saying in Low Gothic, “But we shouldn’t speak of such things in a language the subject does not understand.”Sarge blinked. That went against everything he’d ever expected of an Inquisitor, particularly a noble one. While he was boggling, Oak nodded towards ‘Albus’, and said, “Shall we adjourn to a more appropriate venue for this discussion, then?”“Of course,” Albus responded, almost before Oak had ended his statement. Sarge deduced, and was proud of himself for doing so, that the Inquisitor must be a psyker.And for not flinching when he realized that.In truth, it was an easy decision. The only sane choices were Aimy and Doc. And Doc, while a good combat medic and loyal soldier… had a tendency to let the less stable squad members run over him when he was put in charge. Aimy, on the other hand, was literally born to command, could speak High Gothic, was reasonably diplomatic, and, while she still had a dislike of being reminded of her altered hair, now that it was all Sororitas white was less prone to violence regarding it.Plus, the only people she committed violence on for mentioning it were people Sarge routinely clobbered himself for overstepping boundaries.And she was the only one not behaving in an embarrassing fashion at the moment.“Aimy!” the guardswoman stopped her cackling and obediently turned her attention to Sarge, “With me.”She made her way to where Sarge was standing with Oak and the other Inquisitor and his retinue.Once Aimy arrived, Sarge told her, “You’re now my second in command. We have a meeting right now, apparently, and the Inquisitor has requested we both attend.” He did his best to keep the sarcasm that kept wanting to leak into the statement to a minimum, and reflected that the diplomacy adept would be so proud.“Sir,” Aimy responded with a blandness that could only be masking shock and terror. The other Interrogator winced a little, but the guardsman who was apparently his second in command rested a hand on the tall man’s bare wrist and the vaguely pained expression subsided.Sarge wasn’t sure what to make of that. He thought the man might also be a psyker, but what the guardsman’s role in the team, beyond second in command, was a mystery.Especially because the guardsman didn’t act like someone who was routinely puppetted by a psyker. Sarge had met a few of those unlucky bastards while serving the Inquisition, and they had a uniform attitude of depressed terror and desperation.As they adjourned to a private meeting area, which turned out to be Oak’s private quarters in the new Inquisition HQ, Sarge kept an eye on the other team.What Sarge had initially assumed to be weird shadows on the other Interrogator’s face turned out to be a blindfold. Why the other man was blind, or for that matter, why he didn’t have augmetics instead was a mystery Sarge wasn’t sure he wanted to unravel. The guardsman, however, remained a precise seventy-five centimeters to the Interrogator’s left side and slightly in front. From that level of precision, they must have been close associates for some time.Putting aside the mystery of the psyker Interrogator’s blindness and the guardsman’s oddly close contact with the man, Sarge inspected the other two men.As the man was wearing a blindfold, Sarge couldn’t tell what color the other Interrogator’s eyes were, or if he even still had them. But he was tall, probably as tall as Sarge, or maybe even taller if he would actually stand up straight. He had auburn hair as well, was clean shaven, and… slender, almost delicate in appearance. At least compared to Sarge or the guardsman. If it weren’t for the ears and the fact that he was openly walking around a damned Inquisitorial base, Sarge might have actually accused the man of being an Eldar.Turning his attention to the guardsman, Sarge saw that he was bulky. Some of the weight appeared to be fat, but a significant amount was clearly muscle. He had scarred hands, both burns and cuts, but as he moved them, Sarge saw the man’s hands were surprisingly dexterous. The burns and cuts appeared more mechanical than explosive in origins, so Sarge pegged the man as a mechanic, rather than a demolitions trooper.At least as a secondary specialty.Studying the man carefully, the fact that his seemingly simple laspistol looked to be heavily modified for distance and precision when a skilled guardsman looked carefully, how the man never missed a step, the caution in every movement, the way he seemed to be cataloguing the most precise way to eliminate any potential threat to the Interrogator stepping just behind him and the Inquisitor to one side from a suitable distance…Sarge’s educated guess was ‘marksman’. Possibly even ‘sniper’.Unlike a number of guardsmen Sarge had encountered since leaving Generis, Sarge, and even the rest of the 99th (before its near annihilation and official destruction), had never had any issues with snipers, even before Aimy had joined his team. While snipers were doubtlessly crazy, leaving the relative safety of the lines and massed fire for an outward flank, they weren’t the special kind of crazy you found in close combat specialists.And anyone who could send an enemy line into disarray without the dubious precision of an artillery strike was good by them and worth giving a beer or three and a place in their barracks.Now that he’d performed the assessment he was comfortable with, he looked at the three through the filters the diplomacy adept had tried to teach him.The ones about social class and origins.The Inquisitor, Albus, appeared to be of noble birth, he had the casual superiority of a highborn man, although his being a psyker blurred things. Psykers either reverted to previous habits once they were out of the Black Ships, or consciously rejected them.The Interrogator was probably from a similar background, although he appeared to be avoiding looking too highborn.The guardsman was clearly common as dirt. Even in the finery expected in a place like this, nothing could hide his origins as no more exalted than Sarge’s own.The walk was longer than Sarge had expected. About halfway to their destination, he determined that the two Inquisitors were not going to any room in the complex of buildings that were now the sector’s Inquisition Headquarters.Instead, they were headed for the shuttleport.Sarge briefly panicked when he thought of the trouble his men could get up to without a steadying influence, before the other Inq- Inquisitor Albus- broke his thoughts’ death spiral and said, “If you would care to contact your men via comm-bead you may. Your frequencies are no longer being jammed.”Although the proof that the Inquisitor was actively reading his mind was- disturbing- Sarge knew and appreciated a good idea when he heard one.It was a quick enough matter for Sarge to reestablish contact with the rest of the squad and instruct them to make their way to the disused warehouse he had also hastily requisitioned, He instructed Doc and Twitch to undertake a thorough search of both Nubby and Tink before they settled inNot that Doc and Twitch were above making off with unattended items themselves, it was just that1) they were less prone to do so regularly,2) they tended to steal a limited class of items each, and3) they were prone to stealing less in a sitting, namely limiting it to only what they could discreetly carry.And at least their definition of ‘discreetly carry’ was less… generous than Nubby’s or Tink’s.
* * *
Virius Quercus or, as he was known to most of his subordinates, ‘Oak’ tried to put his thoughts in order as he made his way to Albus’s shuttle. Even though he was in the company of friends, or at least those he considered to be as trustworthy as could be managed in his line of work, he couldn’t let himself lose himself in bitter reverie.By the standards of their previous engagements, Quercus’s battle with the daemon had been downright restrained, minimal casualties and only the city holding the former Inquisitorial Sector Headquarters destroyed.But one of the casualties was far closer to his heart.Ulmus might have gone willingly, almost joyfully, to his fate, but even knowing that his Interrogator had agreed to that beforehand did not ease Quercus’s heart or assuage his guilt.Even now, though, Quercus couldn’t see a better solution to the problem.He had known that the daemon would switch hosts when it was threatened, as had Ulmus. His Interrogator had known as much about the daemon as Quercus, just in case he had died before he was able to bind the damned thing. Quercus hadn’t even had to ask. Once he had stated that they would need to assess on the fly where the daemon had gone to ground immediately after it abandoned its host, Ulmus had volunteered as trap…And bait.The Interrogator had known exactly what he had been getting into, or at least, as much as any non-daemonhost could. And had prepared himself for that role, so that Quercus would not be risking the life of any who was unwilling to give it.Sacrificing the life of anyone unwilling to give it. They had both known the truth of the matter, no matter how much Quercus had tried not to think of it.Tried to deny it.But had been necessary, and better to sacrifice one for all the worlds that would have burned had the daemon escaped yet again.Quercus would hold that comfort, however cold it might be, as bulwark against the ever-bright memory his eidetic memory augmetic would send him of Ulmus’s possessed face, with its expression of blazing hatred as he forced the daemon into the first of the Tesseract Labyrinths that would hopefully be its final resting place.He felt the brush of Albus’s mind, painfully bright against the darkness of his thoughts as always, and shot his colleague a sharp glance and equally sharp thought to tell him to keep his nosy inclinations to himself.Albus’s mental presence retreated, but he still gave Quercus a set of looks and gestures that clearly stated, ‘If you don’t want me to touch your mind, you should make an effort to think more quietly. Even Newt was hearing your thoughts.’Which was a concern. Albus’s Interrogator might prefer to ignore the minds he could barely pinpoint when they were within half a kilometer, but if someone was doing the equivalent of shouting, even he couldn’t help but notice.Deliberately focusing on pushing his emotions down, Quercus spent the rest of the journey to Albus’s shuttle deliberating on something expected: all the work he would have to put in rebuilding his networks and all the favors he now owed an assortment of people.Including Albus, although his friend at least wasn’t going to draw out the process. The other Inquisitor had been quite straightforward about what he wanted in return for his assistance.Fortunately, what Albus wanted was also well within the scope of an Inquisitor’s duty, although perhaps not the Ordos Xenos. But at least it was close enough, as well as being involved in one of Quercus’s school’s former cases.Which gave them an in. The Ordos Hereticus might choose to quibble after the fact, but they had agreed to give Quercus his school back, which meant that all previously unresolved ongoing cases were still ongoing.Hopefully, Interrogator Sargent would not react… too badly to the other matter that Quercus had shared with Ulmus. While Albus would handle the matter either way, it was always troublesome to observe the reactions before the other Inquisitor took the memory of the revelation away if they reacted dangerously.Or performing an even more delicate mental surgery to lock the knowledge away behind such strong shields that even the strongest psyker would have to destroy the mind of the person to shatter them.And that would certainly defeat the purpose of using such a strong psyker in the first place.The group reached Albus’s shuttle within an acceptable time frame. The nice thing about being with two astropaths, however damaged one was known to be, was that no matter how much a self-important, arrogant bastard an Inquisitor might be, no one wanted to disturb them.Including other astropaths and psykers.Even Sciscitat, recalled for the trial, subsequent binding of the daemon, and the second trial from Jack Hive of Joseph Haarlock Sucks At Cards took three steps towards Quercus, noticed the astropath Inquisitor turn his head to track the path with an expression that could have been classed as ‘mild disinterest’, if the man’s eyes hadn’t narrowed, however slightly; the blind Interrogator astropath’s head moving in the same arc; and the former guardsman who had a far more identifiable expression of anger and whose left hand tracked downward to the identifiably modified laspistol, and decided he had elsewhere to be.Unusually, Quercus wasn’t certain what expression was on his face. He tried to control his expression, but he was certain that the mix of emotions he was feeling actually showed. He was grateful that Sciscitat had followed his instructions on what to do, but was furious as to how he had chosen to do it.
* * *
The journey to the other Inquisitor’s shuttle was made in a silence Sarge should have found awkward, but which surprisingly wasn’t. Even the feeling that the two psykers and, to his surprise, the other guardsman, were having a conversation that didn’t involve anyone else, had not made it so.And he and Aimy almost laughed when the group encountered Sciscitat. Psykers were undoubtedly creepy, warp-tainted individuals, but when they were able to intimidate the most self-righteous, obnoxious, oblivious asshole Sarge had ever had the misfortune to meet…They were definitely worth keeping around. At least for a little while.Once they were in the shuttle, the guardsman turned, smiling, towards Sarge and extended a hand, “Jacob Kowalski, Interrogator. Maybe you’ll be able to catch me up on what’s happened on Generis more recently. It’s been a while since I left home.”Sarge took Kowalski’s hand and gave a brisk shake. The man’s grip was firm and confident, clearly without any need to try and establish dominance, not that Sarge was going to rely on anything so simple as a handshake to tell him anything significant about his personality.Trying not to frown, Sarge asked, “What unit did you serve in?”With a wry twist of his lips, Kowalski answered, after giving Aimy’s hand an equally firm shake, “The Generian 52nd.” and went back to helping the other Interrogator, leaving Sarge gaping.After all, the Generian 52nd, was infamous in the Sector for the circumstances of its disbandment… sixty years ago.Before Sarge told Kowalski anything about Generis when he’d left, he was going to make certain the other man told him how a man who looked to be in his mid-thirties at the oldest could have served in the 52nd.Well, actually, the how was obvious. But the corresponding why was unclear.In an effort to not think about that whole waiting mess, Sarge inspected the shuttle.His first impression was ‘overstuffed mess’. On second glance, he upgraded that assessment to ‘overstuffed, possibly heretical mess.’But on third glance, and observing the way Inquisitor, guardsman, and even the blind Interrogator spread out, the Interrogator and guardsman both hefting technical devices, Sarge was struck by the cleverness of the layout. The three men seemed to be fully aware of where everything should be in the clutter, and were using that knowledge to determine whether anyone had come in and tampered with the area.And while certain items were questionable, none of them crossed the line to outright heretical, save for in the eyes of the most hardline Redemptionist.Which, really, a hardline Redemptionist would probably find more fault with the shuttle’s owner being a psyker, even if he was Sanctioned. Questionable artifacts would not be the first fault one would catalogue.Speaking of psyking, the Inquisitor flashed a small, amused smile at Sarge’s musing, further confirming his status.Again, Sarge tried not to flinch. Fumbles was bad enough, and the psyker’s clumsiness with most psychic workings was enough to bring comfort to him. The way the Inquisitor kept dipping into his mind without Sarge even noticing was worse.After a good five minutes, the conclusion appeared to be that nothing had been disturbed and no bugs were present. The Interrogator (and hopefully they’d get an actual name for the man now that everyone was confident that they weren’t being overheard) pulled out a small, circuit-covered device from one pocket and set it on the table, tapping his fingers on it in a complex pattern on all sides.Sarge could feel the air flatten briefly before reasserting its three-dimensional spread. Aimy let out a muffled curse.Everyone turned to look at the guardswoman, and Sarge received his answer without ever having to ask, “I’ve always hated signal jammers being activated.”The other Interrogator smiled at that, ducking his head as he said, “I know, it isn’t the most pleasant of sensations. But it at least defeats long-range spying attempts with anything short of xenos technology.”Before either Sarge or Aimy could muster a response to that, he leaned forward in his seat, making an effort to be open, but not extending his hand as the guardsman had, “I’m Newt Scamander, by the way.”The Inquisitor also leaned forward with a smile, although he, too, avoided a handshake, “Albus Dumbledore.”While Aimy was responding with her full name, Sarge spared a moment to be satisfied with his earlier conclusion that both Inquisitor and Interrogator were of noble birth, for while the ‘Newt’ part didn’t fit and ‘Dumbledore’ was odd, the other parts were certainly noble names.And he didn’t get so lost in his satisfaction that he couldn’t respond with a brief, “Greg Sargent,” when Aimy had finished with her entire name.Oak, obviously, didn’t need to introduce himself, and now that the conversational niceties had been observed and the room made as spy-proof as could be managed, got down to business, saying in the creakiest tone he could manage, “So I suppose you are wondering why I called you all here today.”It got a suppressed snort from Scamander and Aimy, and a bit of a smile from Inquisitor Dumbledore, which was probably what Oak had been going for.“Interrogator Sargent, as my new second in command, there is something you need to know.”And any amusement Sarge might have felt at the cliché disappeared. That kind of statement always preceded something fucking awful.With a sigh, both Inquisitors went very serious. Oak sat forward, and said, “Despite what the Chaos Space Marines and cultists say, the Emperor is not dead.”Which must precede a gigantic- “But… he is dying.”Sarge wanted to cover his ears. He couldn’t be hearing this- this heresy, from his boss. The Inquisitor. Beside him, Aimy audibly choked.But it couldn’t be denied. Oh, they might have been faking the piles of communiques and requisitions and high level Explorators being sent out- everything.However much he wanted to believe that, though, Sarge knew they weren’t. He knew what it sounded like when superior officers lied. And neither Inquisitor was lying now.Furthermore, Sarge might be a semi-literate noncom, but he still had dealt with Administratum paperwork. Everything that had been shown appeared legit, and he and Aimy had been permitted to inspect it closely.And Aimy certainly knew what legitimate paperwork looked like.Eventually, the evidence ran out, and Aimy spoke before Sarge could get his mouth to work, “W-why… Why are you- you telling us?”Inquisitor Dumbledore replied, gently, as though he hadn’t just been responsible for leaving their worlds in a complete wreck, “Because there is a high probability that you will be encountering this proof again on your next mission. And… because Virius and I are working to lay the groundwork for what will come after. Which requires a certain amount of foreknowledge on the part of our closest subordinates.”He leaned forward, “If you truly cannot handle the knowledge, I will take it from you. Even if you can, I must shield the knowledge in your minds. A truth this dangerous must be acted on with great caution, and its very existence is, of course, heretical in the extreme.”Scamander looked like he wanted to say something, but Kowalski laid a hand on his, and signaled with the other, ‘Now is not the time.’Sarge’s mind continued to spit out denials before he slapped it down. All the denials in the world couldn’t make what Sarge had determined to be the truth, however uncomfortable, untrue. Which meant that Sarge’s responsibility was what it always had been: protect his team, his world, and the Imperium. In that order.The Imperium wouldn’t survive in its current form, but the point of this was to make certain that something survived.Steeling himself, and looking to Aimy to ensure he wasn’t putting words in her mouth, Sarge said, “Very well. Perform your… modifications. If you must.”
* * *
Newt was certain that Interrogator Sargent had no idea how long he’d been reflecting on the knowledge Albus and Virius had imparted. It had taken literally hours of reflection and soul searching.Although he could not ever remember being a devoted servant of the Emperor- for all that Sanctioning and Soulbinding were supposed to burn away all disloyalty to the Emperor of Mankind (Newt and Albus both agreed that was a load of horseshit), the Black Ships had destroyed any love for the Emperor he might have held in his four-year-old heart.And it had never been rekindled.Anyway, while Newt could not remember ever being a true devotee of the Emperor, he also never took joy in the destruction of another’s faith. It was times like these that he almost believed the Ecclesiarchy had a point about ignorance being a perfect state of bliss.Except that humans were rarely blissful under the yoke of the Imperium, although the masses were certainly ignorant. Which merely proved that the Ecclesiarchy was also full of horseshit.Newt’s vision- well, Jacob’s vision actually, shifted as the other man laid a gentle hand over Newt’s, and the astropath realized how close he had come to vocalizing that last set of thoughts. Jacob’s other hand made the signs for now is not the time in Generian Battle Sign in the path of their shared visual field, and Newt nodded his acknowledgment.Interrogator Sargent might be taking the revelation very well, so far as such went, but that didn’t mean it was time to be sloppy and reveal more heresy than intended. This entire situation was like walking a razor’s edge. Any ill-considered action, however minor, could upset the balance.Taking a moment to send a burst of reassurance to Jacob that Newt was no longer on the verge of ill-considered speech, Newt was able to not react when first the Interrogator, then his second, gave permission for Albus to perform the delicate mental surgery to shield the knowledge from outside observers.The amazement Newt always felt when he witnessed Albus’s delicate mental touch was, as always as well, built on a foundation of fury long gone frigid as the void of space that such delicacy was forever barred from him. The decades had dulled the edge of it, but it remained present.If only Leta had even waited before attempting-Jacob projected a stronger current of loving comfort. Despite everything, that never failed to warm him. There were compensations, even to his present state.If Newt hadn’t been crippled, Albus would never have brought Jacob into Newt’s life.Oh, the Inquisitor might well have commandeered Jacob from the Generian 52nd, but it would not have been to act as Newt’s eyes, so that they no longer had the revolving door parade of agents who could not, or would not, adjust to Newt’s methods.And Newt would not give up Jacob, even for the opportunity to see with his own eyes once more.Biting back a smile that would certainly send the wrong message were it to surface, Newt returned his attention to what Albus was doing.Even with the fog that was a combination of Warp energy, present at some level in every living thing, and the equivalent of a cataract in his psychic vision, Newt could now pinpoint powerful psionic energy better than he had before Albus had paid a visit to the Witches of Footfall. The conditions might have been hellish, but then, Newt had known little but hellish from four to sixteen, and the healer the Witches had managed to acquire had at least removed some of the barriers to sensing what was close at hand.By ‘close at hand’, Newt meant anything within half a klick. Which was a vast improvement over his previous clarity radius of two klicks with almost nothing sensible within that range (save for pure daemonic energy), so he’d take it.While swift was the enemy of thorough, Albus had learned enough of mental processes in general and the specific ‘cuts’, ‘splices’, and ‘additions’ that were necessary to conceal the knowledge from outside viewers, while still allowing the possessor to think on it, but not speak of it to anyone who they didn’t already know it, to perform them with a speed that was almost insane.All without turning the subject into a warp-tainted meat-pretzel, mentally or physically.Within the space of minutes of their agreeing, Interrogator Sargent’s mind had been modified. In just as many, so was Lady von Humpeding’s.Although perhaps he should avoid even thinking of her with that title. From what Newt understood, the markswoman disliked being called by her full name or title.And, honestly, given what a mouthful her full name was, and how ridiculous the bare family name sounded, Newt couldn’t blame her.
* * *
Sarge wasn’t sure what he had expected when he’d agreed to let the psyker Inquisitor into his head. Well, actually he did, but didn’t exactly want to bring it up, even in his mind.He’d expected to have no head, or at least a nasty headache and a serious case of warp-taint.Instead, he had gotten the sense of a gentle, wry humor and the faint aftertaste of some citrusy candy as the Inquisitor’s mental presence withdrew.Aimy actually looked peaceful when Inquisitor Dumbledore pulled his hands away from her shoulders. Of course, she immediately shook herself and her face immediately re-set into its usual neutral expression trotted out for when she was dealing with unfamiliar superiors.Oak, who had remained quiet to this point, broke the silence, “Now that is out of the way, we must address the official reason you were brought here.”Sarge, Aimy, and Kowalski leaned forward in concentration. Scamander tilted his head towards Oak, but then Sarge wouldn’t expect a blind man to face a speaker with his useless eyes. Better to indicate his attention with an actually useful sense.Sarge and Aimy then almost gave themselves whiplash when Inquisitor Dumbledore stood and seated himself behind his desk. It was probably so that when he and Oak gave the particulars of the case, the rest of them (save for Scamander) wouldn’t constantly be switching visual fields, but it was still jarring.After giving Sarge and Aimy a chance to resettle themselves, Oak began, “You will be receiving no official written orders for this mission, although certain cover-orders shall be given as a briefing, as it is a rather… delicate situation you are to investigate. Shortly before the Conspiracy made their final push, I-ʺ Inquisitor Dumbledore cleared his throat slightly, and Oak corrected that to, “Albus and I… finally discovered where a significant number of the children from Mourne Chorea were sent. And who was paying for them.”It took Sarge a moment to remember that Mourne Chorea was the name of the planet that the Squad’s second ever Inquisitorial mission had occurred on. The planet with the missing psykers.While it took Aimy a little longer to recognize the reference, not having been on that mission herself, she got it quickly. As with many of the Squad’s assignments, she had heard the story (and the ritual cursing of Sciscitat, Snitch, and Nutjob that accompanied it) many times.“It appears that an old… acquaintance of mine…” The hesitation in Inquisitor Dumbledore’s voice before naming whoever it was an acquaintance was far from reassuring, “Is attempting to raise an army of psykers in the name of his beliefs on the planet Choer Celeste, based on the dogma that psykers bear the true blessing of the Emperor, and are destined to rule humanity in his name.”So they were, apparently, going to be required to go up against an army of psykers. Sarge should have known that the apparent blessing of their acquittal was merely setting them up for something really, really bad.“We don’t expect you to actually fight the psykers,” Surprisingly it was Oak who stated that, not Inquisitor Dumbledore. “We merely need you to remove the leader. Quietly. The rest can be sorted out by the Ordo Hereticus. But the leader…”“The leader is a man called Gellert Grindelwald. He’s actually going by that name again,” The distant, pensive pain in Inquisitor Dumbledore’s voice was unexpected in a man who had showed nothing but absolute self-control in the entire time Sarge had known him. “He is a rogue Sanctioned seer, with significant telepathic powers. Not an astropath… but that would have been too dangerous for him…”Sarge decided he needed to clarify a point in that morass, “Rogue? Not-ʺInquisitor Dumbledore’s sharp blue eyes met Sarge’s, and Sarge lost the thread of what he’d been about to say at the soul deep pain that he could not hide. Or so Sarge thought. The next time he looked into the Inquisitor’s eyes, the pain was no longer apparent. But Sarge didn’t make the mistake of thinking it was no longer there, no matter how much his experience whispered warnings not to trust any psyker, “Yes. Not tainted, or possessed, or insane. Rogue. Despite what some, even those who should know better, may think, evil can exist without the other three states, although I must admit it is often found in conjunction.”There seemed to be nothing else that could be said in response to that.Oak reasserted control over the briefing, “Interrogators. Both of you will be assigned to this mission. You may choose your retinues as you see fit, although we request that no more than a dozen total persons embark. You will be transported to Choer Celeste via the Dawnlight of the Ancients, commanded by the Rogue Trader Brenon Keller. Interrogator Scamander and Specialist Kowalski,” here Oak was clearly speaking directly to Sarge and Aimy, “are both familiar with the Rogue Trader and her vessel. While the Occurrence Border is currently in dock, they are still in the process of resettling Magos Smith.”At least they weren’t going to have to deal with a dangerous psyker cult after a journey on that space hulk…Although Sarge caught Kowalski relaxing at hearing that, too.Which was another story Sarge needed to hear from the man.Hopefully he’d be able to have that discussion soon. Especially as it seemed the briefing was over. Sarge and Kowalski were each handed a data-slate by their respective Inquisitor. Even though Kowalski wasn’t the Interrogator, Sarge didn’t need to ask why he was receiving the briefing materials. The actual Interrogator being blind and all.After the Inquisitors handed over the data-slates, it was clear that the briefing truly was over. And Sarge really, really needed a stiff drink.He had no doubt Aimy also needed one as well, so he turned to Kowalski and asked, “Where can a guardsman get a decent beer around here?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
There was something to be said for getting back to your roots, thought Jacob. He had brought Interrogator Sargent and his second in command, along with Newt of course, to a hole in the wall drinking establishment that, because it was a predominantly ratling bar, also served good food, that pretty much no other Inquisitor or Interrogator team ever visited, even though there were a few private dining rooms.He had to choose a place with food, though, because Newt didn’t drink.Well, really couldn’t drink.That Woman’s actions had damaged his abilities and, more importantly, his control over them so severely that to drink was to unleash the hell that had been inflicted by the Black Ships and betrayal on the entire system, in addition to on himself.Fortunately, they were all able to learn from their mistakes, so that had only happened the once.Feeling Newt tense at the turn of his thoughts, Jacob forced himself to not go there. Even now, Newt didn’t hate That Woman, and Jacob hated her enough for both of them. But the dissonance of emotion did nothing for Newt’s mental state.Once the meals and drinks had been delivered to the room and the adolescent ratling server had left, closing the door behind her, they began talking beyond the minimal, and very awkward, pleasantries.Jacob could understand the awkwardness, although he wasn’t really a part of it. Interrogator Sargent was just coming to understand how much he didn’t know about social interaction (at least with anyone who wasn’t another guardsman). He and Markswoman von Humpeding were also trying to adjust to the knowledge that the Emperor was dying, and that when he did, everything would change.Of course, experience didn’t always cure social awkwardness. Newt was a prime example. Although he was half a decade older than Jacob, the man still acted like the awkward teenager he had been when Albus had rescued him, albeit less prone to hiding under furniture.It was Interrogator Sargent who finally opened the real conversation, “So. The Generian 52nd.”“Yes,” Jacob answered, trying not to sound nervous. He’d been Newt’s eyes, his most trusted subordinate (although Newt refused to call him such) for longer than Interrogator Sargent had been alive. Longer by far than he’d been in the Guard.But something about the sheer sergeantness of the man put him in the same awkward state as any raw recruit.Newt projected strength and assurance to Jacob, and he bit back a smile. Newt had never served in the Guard, and had always held a mistrust of authority.And had the strength of will to get away with it.The point was, he had just passed some of that strength on to Jacob, who allowed the resolve to stiffen his spine and meet Interrogator Sargent’s gaze. With renewed confidence, Jacob began to tell his story.“I was born around nearly a century ago on Generis, as you have doubtless figured out, Interroga-ʺThe man cut Jacob off before he could complete the title, “Just Sarge. If- we’re going to be- working together, you might as well call me by a name that will actually get my attention, Guardsman.”“Then in that case, you should call me Jacob,” Jacob responded.The other Interrogator looked to Newt, who answered the unasked question, “Just Newt will suit me.”Markswoman von Humpeding rounded the informal introductions out with, “Aimy, please, just Aimy.”Now it was Jacob who bit back a smile, although it was harder for him than it had been for Newt, earlier. Mostly because he was feeling Newt’s amusement in addition to his own. He looked at In- at Sarge, and surprised a slight, but clearly amused smile off the man’s face, which nearly brought one to Jacob’s (and he refused to dignify Newt’s reborn amusement with his attention) again.Unfortunately, the tale Jacob was going to have to tell was not amusing in the slightest.“As I said, I was born around a century ago, give or take a few years, on Generis. At the time there was a rebellion on some half-feral mining planet that still had enough agricultural potential that they could mostly feed themselves, so the Generian regiments were called up to go support the nobles and restore the planet’s tithe capacity for the hives and Forge Worlds. And destroy their fertile land so that those who remained might never rise against the Imperium again.”Jacob felt, more than heard, himself give a slight, bitter huff of breath, too dark to even be related to laughter, “I didn’t know any of that at the time, of course. I was just a manufactorum worker whose number came up and proved to have a knack for machines and sniping. Of our battalion, an eighth never made it to the planet. We were transported on a vessel that happened to be bound in the right direction, even if its captain had just lost the front section of the vessel due to misjudging his ship’s ability to tow a space hulk. The Occurrence Border.”Both Sarge and Aimy swore with great feeling. There was really no other appropriate response to that, so Jacob continued his tale, “The men and women who died on the Occurrence Border were lost due to the fact that the idiot captain never bothered to deal with the aftereffects of the front… falling off, and so the Gellar Field didn’t cover the entire ship consistently. Young Sam and his father, Chief Engineer Ol’ Bill, explained that the areas were weakened both physically and psychically. But anyway, those sections were destroyed. And once we got to the damned planet, the 52nd was promptly infested by Genestealer cultists.”Although Jacob tried not to remember that period, for all that it had brought him Newt, he could still remember the creeping wrongness that had riddled the camp. And his instincts screaming at him to avoid certain people and areas.Which, he had later found out, was all that had saved him from becoming an infestation statistic himself.Not to mention what had happened once the Inquisition came.Trying not to breathe in remembrance of the battlefield cremation of the newly infested cultists, Jacob forced himself to continue, “Fortunately for those of us who were not infested, the Ordo Xenos Inquisitor assigned to investigate was Albus Dumbledore. He knew that the infestation must be purged, or many more people would suffer a fate worse than death, but he made certain, as only a powerful psyker can, that only those who were tainted died, and that they did so as painlessly as possible, for they had not asked for the infestation. Of course, the tally of the dead still ended up at a quarter of the original battalion strength but-ʺ“Better that then the entire battalion,” Sarge stated.Everyone but Newt drank most of a beer before Jacob concluded, “Albus, apparently, had his eyes out for anyone who was ‘wasted’ in their current position. He needed to find a subordinate with a certain set of skills and characteristics. Namely, able to-ʺAnd then Jacob felt Newt, silent to that point both physically and mentally, did the psychic equivalent of clearing his throat. Jacob paused.Newt didn’t say anything, but Jacob understood that Newt was asking permission to say what Albus had been searching for, and found in Jacob himself.Knowing intimately how long it had taken Newt to be at all forthcoming about such matters, Jacob let him speak, although he was fully prepared to defend the man should either Sarge or Aimy be rude about the matter.Inclining his head towards Newt, Jacob waited to see.“Albus needed someone to literally act as my eyes, as I am… damaged. I lost my physical vision in my Soulbinding, as almost all astropaths do. However, the compensatory element of Soulbinding was disrupted before it had a chance to… take. Hence, not only am I physically blind, I do not have the senses that allow other astropaths to- to function.”Sarge looked like he wanted to say something, but clearly thought the better of it, letting Newt continue in his own way. Newt didn’t notice, of course, he was caught up in not letting his pain show too much, “Albus- Albus knew that if I didn’t show any signs of being useful, there would be many who would call for my death. So once we determined that I was able to… access the vision of another… without taking over their entire mind… and once I was… relatively stable… he assigned one of his retinue to act as my eyes.”Again, Sarge looked like he was thinking about interrupting, but didn’t. “However, that… well, it didn’t work out. And neither did the second or the third. So Albus was looking for a more permanent solution. And in Jacob, he found it. Our personalities complemented each other, and we could live with each other’s presence.”Finally, Sarge spoke, although there was little trust in his voice, “Just sharing sight? No mental control whatsoever?”Jacob bristled, but Newt remained calm, “Yes. Just sight. I have only taken control of Jacob’s body once in the sixty years we have been together, and that was to override the mental control of a daemon which had paralyzed him and would have eaten him.”Now Jacob spoke, “And that was so disturbing to him he vomited once it was done. And had nightmares the next six months after spending way too much time trying to think of any way he could have done it without having to go to that extreme.”Newt didn’t move a muscle physically. Mentally, however, he did the equivalent of gently resting a hand on Jacob’s. ‘It doesn’t matter anymore now, Jacob. That was fifty years ago. And it doesn’t matter if he believes us or not in the now. We both know the truth.’
* * *
Sarge wasn’t certain he believed the self-identified astropath about his not controlling th- Jacob. While he thought the reactions from the two men were too different to be one mind in charge of both, that didn’t change the fact that an astropath, by definition being nuttier than squirrel-poo (and prone to exploding), could conceivably have a split personality.Deciding that now wasn’t the time for that argument, even with himself, Sarge prompted, “So you weren’t actually with the 52nd when it… disbanded.”“No,” Jacob responded, “I heard about the… mess… but I was across the segmentum at the time.”One conversational quirk Sarge noticed in Jacob was that the guardsman didn’t swear by the Emperor when virtually any other guardsman would. That, more than anything that he’d been shown, confirmed for Sarge that what the two Inquisitors had said about the Emperor was true.The grim downward spiral of Sarge’s thoughts was interrupted by Aimy asking a surprisingly welcome question, if on an almost as dark subject, “How is the disbanding of a Legion this… touchy… a subject? Legions are disbanded every day across the Imperium.”“Not like the 52nd,” Jacob answered, “The circumstances of the disbanding of the Generian 52nd Medium Infantry are akin to those of the disbanding of the 413th Cadian, and would have permanently destroyed the reputation of a world less stolidly and unambitiously pro-Imperial.”Aimy blinked. And blinked again. Finally, she asked, “What did happen with the 52nd, then?”“After half the company was destroyed by the rebels of… wherever it was. I certainly can’t remember now,” Jacob began, interrupting himself briefly before concluding, “The remainder then apparently decided that they’d had enough of being thrown away like yesterday’s cold recaff and deserted en masse. After destroying as much of the command structure as they could. Which, as it turns out, was all of it.”Sarge was surprised to hear the faint edge of satisfaction in Jacob’s voice when he spoke of the annihilation of the 52nd’s command structure.Apparently, there had been little to no love lost between the former guardsman and his commanders.Aimy swore. Sarge thought she might be expressing as much appreciation as disapproval, and he had no idea how the exact same words and tone could convey such different emotions.Sarge, Aimy, and Jacob got through half of another bottle of beer each before they were all comfortable enough to address the remaining business.Which was who the poor sods were that they were going to be dragging on this mission.Sarge opened his mouth, but the astropath spoke first, “You have a larger retinue than I, but our core personnel do not number a dozen, even including ourselves. Is there anyone who you would prefer to add?”Giving the astropath a wary look despite himself, Sarge answered, “That depends. Who are you bringing?”Newt gave a fluid shrug, “My core retinue are comprised of Jacob and a pair of sisters, both recent acquaintances. A former low-level arbite and her sister. Who are also a telekine and a telepath. I requisitioned them before- well, let’s not get into the before here.”It didn’t take much for Sarge to figure out that the ‘before’ meant ‘before the Black Ships could claim them’, and he wondered how much authority Inquisitor Dumbledore held, that he didn’t have to send newly discovered psykers to the Black Ships, but decided not to pursue that thought.Besides, Oak didn’t send psykers to the Black Ships, either, at least not so far as Sarge knew. The psyker children he and his men had rescued were, again, so far as he knew, being raised in some sort of creche that certainly wasn’t the Black Ships.Doing his best not to shake his head and show weakness, Sarge concluded that if he was already going on a mission with the equivalent of three and a half psykers (Jacob might not be one, but he was intimately linked to one, which was little different as far as Sarge was concerned) he might as well bring, “Fumb- ah, Lucian Weir, Telepath of the Silver Aeon.”Sarge saw Newt bite back a smile, before nodding and saying, rather ambiguously, “Fumbles is fine. I’m certain he appreciates being considered a part of something.” Before Sarge could respond, he continued, “Anyone else?”“Senior Enginseer Jimmothy Craft,” Sarge answered, thankful that he could at least remember Jim’s full name off the top of his head. Jim would probably appreciate getting off the Occurrence Border for a while, even if Hannah would not approve of him leaving, much less without her.But one of the ‘cog-bros’ as the squad had dubbed their tech-priest allies, would have to remain on the Occurrence Border, if only to make certain the mad magos didn’t infect the tech-acolytes with any of his crazy. The Occurrence Border was still hosting Magos ‘Smith’ after all.Jim was the more easygoing of the pair, and Sarge had a feeling that the tech-heresy of his own team was minor compared to that practiced by Newt Scamander.Also, if Hannah had to deal with Tink regularly, his team would probably be down an obnoxious techie.Newt’s nod was slower this time and his expression serious, confirming Sarge’s suspicions. But the man clearly wasn’t going to put up a fuss about Jim, so Sarge would take that as a win.Even if he was going on a mission with four and a half damned psykers.
* * *
To say that Newt wasn’t enthused about going on a mission with a damned techpriest was an understatement. However, if he did, he suspected that Jimmothy Craft was probably the best he could get stuck with from what he’d heard of the Enginseer.Not that Inter- Sarge- is likely to be happy, either. Even after decades of seeing, if only through others’ eyes, and feeling, if through a cracked, warped, and clouded mirror, the faces and emotions of others, Newt had a hard time reading expression and matching that to emotion, not to mention trying to then use someone’s emotional state to then try and predict their next action. However, there was no doubt that Sarge, like most of the Imperium of Man, feared psykers.But Newt could live with that, because unlike most of the Imperium of Man, he didn’t also hate psykers.Newt could more than understand a fear of psykers. A weak-willed individual with psychic power was nothing more than a volatile explosive (although the Black Ships were too cruel a fate to deal with that when a mercy blade would be just as effective and far less dangerous for everyone concerned). But far too many of the strong-willed who went to the Black Ships were deemed too dangerous and thrown to the Emperor along with the weak-willed.That would have been Newt’s fate if not for the intervention of Albus, not once, but twice.Jacob sent a wave of soothing mental energy, and Newt forced himself to not chase that hare off a cliff. The galaxy had troubles enough without fretting on ones avoided.Newt would have physically leaned towards Jacob (the ratlings who owned this tavern were assiduous about ensuring their guests’ privacy), but he didn’t know how either Sarge or Aimy would react to such open affection, and between two men no less.They’d had some poor experiences with other Inquisitorial teams over the decades.Regarding which, Newt was going to have to have words with Tina and Queenie before they all shipped off not only with Sarge’s team, but on the Dawnlight of the Ancients. This being their first trip on that vessel.Queenie would probably only have issues with one party, but Tina, as by the book as she tended to be, would doubtless conflict with both.Jacob gave Newt a ‘pay attention’ nudge. His attention snapped back to the conversation at hand, just in time to hear Sarge ask, “Should we have an actual look at these data-slates then?”Making certain he didn’t sound even remotely challenging, Newt answered, “If you’d like.” He was certain that part of why Sarge wanted to see the background information was to make certain that both he and Newt had been given the same data.Newt took no offense at this paranoia. No Inquisitor gave his or her more remote (or expendable) teams everything they knew, not even Albus or Quercus, who were both actually very open examples of the breed. And Sarge had only just been promoted to personal Interrogator, so he was used to far less… detailed briefings.Not to mention that there was always the worry of some hidden agenda on the part of your allied team on joint missions.Jacob keyed on the data-slate Albus had given him as Sarge also activated his from Quercus. Aimy leaned over, head almost resting on her commander’s shoulder as she tried to read over it. Not that Newt wasn’t doing the same thing mentally with Jacob, but it made an interesting picture.Sarge wasn’t a particularly quick reader, although he didn’t have to use a finger and vocally spell out longer words either. Jacob was similar, so Newt spent much of the lulls in between coming to the end of the ‘page’ and when Jacob would pull up the next section contemplating what he would need to do to maintain peace between the various factions on the journey.He thought it would be an… interesting… introduction, between his newest subordinates and Sarge’s team’s presence, to the officers of the Dawnlight of the Ancients, with the many secrets on all sides.Hopefully they’d be able to get the posturing and aggression out of the way quickly. While it would doubtless be entertaining at first, Newt knew that all to soon it would become very wearing.Jacob and Sarge finished their examinations of the data-slates at about the same time. Newt quickly communicated to Jacob that the data-slate should remain on and, before Sarge could ask, Newt picked up the device and proffered it to the other Interrogator.Give the man credit, he didn’t sit there gawping at the slate for an eternity either, unlike some of the other Interrogators Newt had dealt with over the decades. In fact, all he did before reaching out for the data-slate after indicating that Aimy should offer theirs, was raise a single eyebrow in disbelief.This time, the examinations took far less time. Which was comforting as it meant the orders were essentially identical.About the only difference between them was an iteration that yes, Twitch and Nubby were still officially banned from investigating anything, as Interrogator Sargent well knew, with ‘hopefully this will help forestall the otherwise inevitable argument’ from Virius on Sarge’s and a password protected vid recording that Newt was deliberately not searching for the password to and Jacob wasn’t demanding (especially as they knew from the timestamp and designation what it was of), and the list of what creatures Newt could claim he’d been sent after from Albus on his own.From any other Inquisitors, those notes could have seemed condescending, but Newt, at least, could read the affectionate tone of both.While Jacob was still more focused on reading Sarge’s expression and closing down the other man’s data-slate, Newt took a moment to bask in Albus’s affection, which had been the first comfortable friendliness Newt had ever known.Whatever had possessed the Inquisition to send the older astropath to Terra aboard the Black Ship the Punisher of Tempests, notorious even among the other Black Ships for the cruelty of its Sisters of Silence and Inquisitorial monitoring crew alike, Newt was both aghast and grateful in equal measure.Even after a century, Newt still didn’t know what had caused Albus to leave the shielded confines of the upper decks, or even the numb resignation that permeated the few low-security psyker holding levels, to plumb the depths of the isolation cells, but-Jacob gave the mental equivalent of a tap on the shoulder and Newt came back to the present, hoping he hadn’t inadvertently projected anything. When he looked through Jacob’s eyes to Sarge and Aimy, he didn’t think he had…Certainly Sarge wasn’t looking like- well, like everyone except Albus or Jacob, or even the rest of Newt’s team, did when he accidentally shared his history- when he shut the data-slate down and handed it over to Newt.And Newt did have to laud the man’s intuition. While Jacob always received the data-slates from Albus, once they were read he always placed them directly in Newt’s hands. It was the best balance of propriety and pragmatism they could manage.With a small smile and a brief bow, Newt took the slate and slipped it into one of his coat’s many internal pockets.That was the only bit of fashion Newt had adopted from his home world and birth rank. He might have been born into the nobility of Lion’s Bastion, but he had been but four when the Black Ships came. He hadn’t even known what his home planet was until Albus had shared Newt’s own file with him.But anyway, both Albus and Newt appreciated the long coats that had been fashionable in Albus’s youth, and which still were to this day. They were such wonderfully concealing items of clothing, and the practice of sewing hidden internal pockets was so very useful, especially in the Inquisition.And if it was bright enough, people remembered the coat and not the man wearing it.
* * *
The dinner had been very good, as had the beer. Even the company had been surprisingly pleasant, once Sarge got used to the fact that he was dealing with a guardsman and a self-described ‘broken’ astropath who were both old enough to be his grandfather.While Newt, at least, looked young enough to be his son.Sarge had done his best not to think about the occasional flashes of… something… he’d kept getting from the astropath. Fragments of despair. Anger. Betrayal. Hope.And a fierce, soft, infinitely powerful emotion that could only be love.He could only hope that the dark memories associated with the dark emotions hadn’t stuck. And wasn’t too keen on the softer thoughts either.After all, Sarge knew for certain he wasn’t deeply and passionately in love with Jacob Kowalski, especially not for decades.Sarge tried not to think of families, or love for that matter, for that led to thoughts of what he had known he would lose the moment he stepped onto the troop transport that had taken him and his legion from Generis.Even then, he’d known that he would never return.He never spoke of the sheer envy he felt for Doc and his Hospitaller, or Aimy and her mother. Sarge had left behind a wife and daughter on Generis, and Susan, his wife, had been positive she’d been pregnant again when he’d been called up.Even now, he wondered in the dark of the night if she’d indeed had a child. Whether it had been the son they’d been hoping for to carry on the family name, or another daughter, who he still would have cherished.Although Sarge had deliberately avoided learning such facts about the soldiers in his charge, he knew Twitch had also been married, with a child definitely on the way, and Crisp had been a grandfather.At least the Inquisition had done one merciful thing.It had declared them all dead, so their families could at least have some closure, and receive any benefits that should come to them on a soldier’s death.While that permanently shut the door to going back, Sarge knew enough now to understand that, odds were, they would never have been allowed to return to Generis, anyway. The tales of returning regiments usually involved the Cadian Legions, or Elysians, or those from some other world devoted to turning out Guard troops, and so more valuable than the ‘common rabble’.None of the branches of Imperial Governance have any love for common troopers who have seen too much.Shaking his head as surreptitiously as possible (and he’d obviously been corrupted by all the long-winded bastards he had to deal with regularly), Sarge pulled his mind off those paths.Newt and Jacob (or Strange and Steady, as Sarge was already beginning to think of them) had taken a moment to contact the Occurrence Border, so Jim and Fumbles should be waiting at the warehouse.They were undisturbed as they made their way through the quiet streets to said warehouse. Sarge suspected that the local underworld was spooked at the presence of all the Inquisitors that had descended on the city, not to mention the battle with a major daemon that had occurred not half a world away.It probably wouldn’t last, but Sarge would take their absence for now. Especially as it meant that Nubby was… at least less likely… to have acquired too much contraband in the intervening hours.In fact, once Sarge and Aimy had entered the warehouse and made their way past the first set of traps (Twitch having, however grudgingly, given them instructions on how to bypass the fortifications when they called after dinner), they were confronted by the sight of a Big Box of Do Not Touch.A cursory glance changed that assessment to a thoroughly booby-trapped Big Box of Do Not Touch. Apparently, Twitch, at the least, wasn’t in the mood to take any chances with Nubby and Tink’s kleptomania and will to be stupid and had taken a proactive approach to the problem.Another set of traps negotiated, and they were where the squad had set up quarters in what had once been the central offices for the warehouse complex.Waiting there for them were an extremely disgruntled Tink and Nubby, a proud Twitch, a letter writing Doc (likely his requisite ‘if I die on this mission’ sappy goodbye to Hospitaller Valerie), a vaguely confused Jim, and a vaguely concerned Fumbles.Jim managed to speak first, overriding anything Tink or Nubby had been about to bitch about with a sharp wave of a mechadendrite, “What’s this about a new mission?”Before Sarge could say anything, Tink stepped out of Jim’s swatting range and said, “Is Oak mental?! We’ve barely just gotten back our stuff (and you made Doc and Twitch take some things that were mine to begin with) and our lives?! We can’t trust the word to have gotten out yet about our innocence, much less- owww!”The techie’s rant was cut off by Twitch and, surprisingly enough given that the man had barely looked up from his writing, Doc responding to Sarge’s impatient gesture. Twitch had obligingly swatted Tink across the back of his head, while Doc had delivered a firm kick to his shin.Nubby, ever a believer that discretion was the better part of valor, had kept his mouth firmly shut.Once Tink had settled back into a mutinous silence, Sarge spoke, “Yes. We are going on a mission. However, we are not going alone. Apparently, this is a joint mission combining the interests of both Oak and another Inquisitor, who both believe that this is worth the attention of their personal Interrogators.”As the squad took in the specific emphases, Fumbles asked, timidly raising his hand like he was in school and asking a teacher’s permission to speak, “W-who is the… other Inquisitor? Or- Interrogator?”The psyker was rarely so bold as to venture a question, so Sarge took a moment from his previously scheduled rant to answer the young man, as patiently as he could “The Interrogator is called Newt Scamander. His Inquisitor is-ˮ“Newt Scamander?! You mean Albus Dumbledore’s Interrogator Newt Scamander?” Fumbles practically shouted, before looking a bit guilty and more than a bit scared, clapping his hands over his mouth so as to not let any more sound out.Sarge could feel one eyebrow lift at such an unexpected outburst, and could see similar expressions of shock and confusion around the room.Before the silence could stretch too long, Sarge answered, “Yes. That Newt Scamander, apparently. I doubt it is a common name anywhere in the Imperium.” He paused, “Do you- know him?” Sarge couldn’t believe that Strange and Fumbles had ever had the opportunity to meet, unless it had been in whatever period Fumbles had been serving Bane Johns.
Fumbles looked, sad wasn’t quite the right word and neither was disappointed, but wistful wasn’t a word Sarge ever wanted to use, particularly with regards to another man, “No. We were both… shipped… to Terra on the same Black Ship. Decades apart, naturally, but the Inquisitors of the Punisher of Tempests still remember him. And Inquisitor Dumbledore of course.”
Frowning slightly at the hesitance around and emphasis on ‘shipped’, until he noticed that Fumbles was looking nervous again, Sarge weighed his very strong desire for information against an equally strong desire to never know anything about the lives of psykers, the Black Ships, and the lives of psykers on the Black Ships.
Eventually, the desire for information won out. Seating himself so that he wasn’t towering over the scrawny psyker, Sarge carefully asked, “What have you heard of him? Of them?”
Eyes darting about the room for a few moments, Fumbles eventually decided that no one was going to get him out of telling what he knew and he began, “Newt Scamander holds the distinction of being the most frustrating psyker for the Inquisitorial staff of the Punisher of Tempests, by now in large part for his stubborn refusal to die and let someone collect on the death pool.”
* * *
The psyker, who thought his original name was probably something like ‘Useless Runt’ or ‘Scrawny Bastard’, had been renamed ‘Lucien Weir’ by the Inquisition of the Punisher of Tempests, and had at first accepted then learned to thrive under the designation of ‘Fumbles’ by his current team, was confused at the emotions his fellows were projecting when he mentioned the Inquisition death pool of the Black Ship.It wasn’t like the men and woman of the Astra Militarum- the Guard, he reminded himself, the rest of them disliked the designation as members of the Astra Militarum almost as much as Fumbles hated being called ‘Lucian’- who he worked with were shy about making bets about morbid subjects.Oh. After taking a momentary sounding of the emotions, Fumbles thought he might understand. They were making the assumption that the psykers on the Black Ships were considered… wards, for lack of a better word. Something that the Inquisition teams should be protecting, not betting over when it would finally die and rejoicing when it did. At least not without some offense greater than mere existence.It was a sweet thought, and Fumbles actually felt his eyes getting misty behind his welding goggles, but not at all reality.Rather than telling them that, Fumbles continued, “Every psyker of the Punisher of Tempests… rather hopes to be a second Newt Scamander. Not just in terms of his longevity, his refusal to do anything save defy the odds, but in terms of how he now serves.”After a pause, Fumbles stumbled into his understanding of Interrogator Scamander’s history, “He was brought abord the Punisher of Tempests when he was four or five, along with his older brother. It was noted that while House Scamander protested the elder- Perseus?, Theseus?, Harscesis?- something like that- anyway, the elder brother’s removal was protested, but not the younger’s. Which seemed to set the mold for the next years. While his older brother was removed to the low-security level after a few years, Newt was left in the isolation cells.”Although Fumbles was genuinely trying not to read anyone’s mind, he got a whiff of ‘explains a lot’ from Sarge and Aimy, along with a blend of puzzlement from Nubby and Tink, a hint of bewildered anger from Doc, and… positively nothing from Twitch.It was as though the demolition trooper’s mind had shut down when the Black Ships were first mentioned.An interesting reaction, and one that supported a conclusion Fumbles had reached long ago regarding Twitch but was certainly not going to share with anyone… Except perhaps Interrogator Scamander. He might actually know what to do about the potential mess that bringing that particular truth to light could cause.Disengaging from the surrounding minds as best he could, Fumbles continued, “About the only person who spent any length of time with him was a young woman, the Untouchable daughter of a high-ranking Sister of Silence, destined to become a full Sister of Silence herself once she became an adult.”Fumbles caught the confusion at the mention of the unnamed Untouchable, but she was important to later events, so he had to mention her at this point in the story.“When Newt was eleven, Albus Dumbledore was sent to Terra on Inquisitorial business by way of the Punisher of Tempests. No one knows why the man chose to leave the crew quarters to wander through the isolation cells, which were and are heavily psi-shielded and have clearly posted warnings. But he found Newt’s cell, and apparently something he’d been seeking for years as well. According to the few old hands, he then spent a significant amount of the three years it took the ship to finally reach Terra with Newt, speaking to him, testing his knowledge, and sounding him out. When they arrived on Terra, his only words to the Inquisitorial staff were ‘Let me know the minute young Scamander is either Sanctioned or Soulbound. I claim him for the Inquisition.’”“And Newt, after a bare two years, was indeed Soulbound to the Emperor. But- this is where stories get confused,” Fumbles paused, trying to find a way to condense the stories into as bare a simplicity as possible, “Some of the Inquisitors insist that he seduced the Untouchable girl, and they stupidly consummated this attraction while his abilities were still unstable from his Soulbinding. Others say he led on the Untouchable girl, and then refused, so she took what- what he’d been offering up to that point. And a very few say that she was the one who seduced him.”As he waited for his teammate’s verbal reactions, Fumbles actually felt kinship with Sarge for the first time as the older man thought ‘Like fuck any of that bullshit actually happened.’It was Doc who asked the key question, “And what do you think really happened?”Carefully, Fumbles answered, “I don’t know what really happened. But I do know that none of the three stories are true, even without seeing the teller’s thoughts.”“And how is that?” Twitch challenged, although he almost seemed delighted at the reasonableness of his paranoia.Behind him, Doc caught the same note in the man’s voice and began readying a tranq to make certain that it was ready for if Twitch began attempting a more explosive form of challenge to his delusions.Change that ‘if’ to ‘when’, actually.Fumbles didn’t back down, “Because if Newt had been anything other than the purest victim, there would be only one story, with only the barest minimum of variation, and it would be quoted to every psyker of the Punisher of Tempests as an example of the innate perfidy of psykers, and how fortunate we are to have someone to drive us away from our natural inclinations. The very fact there are three mutually exclusive stories says that there is no way they could factually blame him. For anything. As it was, though-ˮThat was when Twitch’s paranoia finally won over his need for information and innate self-preservation instincts, “That was when the Inquisition of Terra revealed it was under the control of ork-cultists, and-ˮDoc administered the tranquilizer before Twitch could get himself too worked up. And dangerously heretical.As always, Fumbles wondered why it was so easy to tranq Twitch, at least before he got a full head of steam worked up.Maybe it was because Twitch subconsciously knew he needed it to remain in reality.Or he was so focused on his madness that his true talent was subsumed in the false visions his paranoia created for him.Fumbles made the mistake of looking up at that moment to see the half angry, half curious expressions on everyone’s faces, and realized that the curiosity was a reflection of his own. Deliberately trying to focus on shielding, which he’d always been useless at, he forced himself to finish the story, “As it was, he was going to be destroyed. Inquisitor Dumbledore intervened, literally a bare hour before he was set to die. The only reason he is still alive is that Dumbledore swore that he would start by seeing everyone on the Punisher of Tempests utterly ruined if they did not give Newt over to him immediately, and then he would move up the chain of command from there.”Shaking his head, Fumbles confessed, “As I said, every psyker who has been shipped to Terra by way of the Punisher of Tempests since has hoped that they will be a second Newt Scamander. As far as I know, I’m the one who has come closest, even if I did have Bane Johns in between.”And he almost got lost in the memory of being used as a luck reservoir for the mad, vampiric psyker. Fumbles knew even if he hadn’t died from the ill fortune that was left behind when Johns had drained all his positive chances, he would have ended up committing suicide.At least, if he’d been able to work up the energy.But Fumbles wasn’t so lost that he didn’t hear Sarge.“Fumbles, just how old are you, really?”There was no harshness to the demand, but a demand it was. Surrendering to the inevitable, Fumbles answered, relieved to finally be given permission, even if it was just from himself, to tell the truth.“Eighteen. I had my eighteenth birthday two weeks before the Occurrence Border entered this system.”
* * *
It took Sarge a moment to process the revelation of Fumbles’s true age, even though he had suspected the psyker was significantly younger than his official age pretty much from the very beginning of their close association.It took even longer for him to be able to speak, because the revelation made him furious.It was one thing to use and discard a man of Sarge’s age, one who had lived life and left behind a legacy. Sarge hadn’t exactly been thrilled about being given command of Doc or Cutter, or even Aimy, who, at least at the beginning, had been far too young as well.And they’d at least been men (and a woman), not boys (or girls).There were planets in the Imperium where fourteen was not too young for that kind of service, but Generis had never been one of them.Confusion flickered around the room, not to mention through Sarge’s head. For a moment, he was confused at being confused, then he realized that it wasn’t his confusion in the first place.Looking to Fumbles, Sarge could read the puzzlement even through the bulky welding goggles that shielded the psyker’s now incredibly sensitive eyes from the light (and from the sight of people who… might not react well to the fact that they were huge).“Why are you angry? I-I’m a psyker. I have to- I am meant to be used, just as all psykers are from their Sanctioning or Soulbinding. There is no place in the Imperium for a useless psyker,” in a plaintive tone that would be termed ‘heartbreaking’ if Sarge could ever admit such a word could be applied to his emotional state, Fumbles begged, “Please, don’t send me away.”The young man’s voice actually broke at the word ‘away’.Sarge would have responded quickly, but the depression and despair sheeting from the psyker like a rainstorm cut off any ability to actually form words, and it only got worse the longer the silence stretched.Forcing himself to finally speak despite the feedback doom-loop of negative emotion, Sarge ground out, “Unless you do many more jags like this, you don’t need to worry, Fumbles. You’re still the best psyker we’ve ever had.”The joy at that was just as painful as the despair and depression it replaced. Especially for a man who still remembered lost fatherhood. It spoke of a prolonged emptiness and lack of care.In an effort to shake off the lingering pain, Sarge seized upon the unwatched vid recording that had been appended to his briefing. He hadn’t wanted to watch it in front of the other Interrogator, although he’d had a feeling that Strange knew what exactly it was.He said, “Before we get too settled in, I want us all to watch a vid Oak sent with the mission background.”Sarge had set down the data-slate before Fumbles had begun his recounting of what he knew about Strange. Fortunately, as it turned out, because he would have crushed it during the fraught story. Aimy handed it to him before he could even begin seriously looking.The password prompt was ‘Vampire Ork?’ ironically enough given their recent conversation. Figuring Oak would require proper capitalization and spacing, if not the man’s title (either formal or past), Sarge keyed in ‘Bane Johns’.After making certain that Twitch wasn’t looking.The last thing he wanted was for their demolitions trooper to fall into another paranoid doom-loop. Doc might not be quick enough this time, although at least so-called ‘medical ethics’ wouldn’t prevent him from administering another tranq, no matter how soon it had been since the last one.Of course, the fact that Twitch rapidly built up a tolerance to any tranquilizer they managed to get their hands on meant that, at least in Sarge’s inexpert opinion, they could administer those double doses.Whether they should was, of course, Doc’s prerogative.Anyway, the vid recording was a relatively short clip, all things considered. No more than four minutes. As Sarge keyed it active, he saw that the initial part was actually a message from Oak, little more than, “What I hope will be a bit of reassurance that we are not sending you out with a crew of incompetents. The Conspiracy was certainly surprised by this.”With that, the vid abruptly switched to a corridor somewhere in the Inquisition’s previous sector HQ. It was clearly a security recording- no, two security recordings. The second camera had taken a bit longer to register. Strange, Steady, and Inquisitor Dumbledore (for some reason, the name Silver kept coming to mind… well, that or Smooth, which sounded like either a knock-off brand of motor oil or a knock-off brand of whiskey) were walking down the corridor in the first feed, while the Inquisitorial troops in the second feed very clearly got their minds controlled by a psyker.Who, given the focused but not… honed expressions of the men in the first feed, were not being controlled by either of the known psykers.Given what he knew, Sarge could offer a sure bet on what was about to happen, if not necessarily the details.Sure enough, all three men in the first feed paused, clearly hearing something. It didn’t stop the weirdest grenade Sarge had ever seen from dropping in the space they had just cleared and…Well, Sarge couldn’t see it having any effect, but clearly it did, because Strange and Silver both dropped to their knees, Silver’s eyes slamming closed and both men’s hands going to their ears. Even Steady flinched.If Sarge had to guess, the grenade had been something designed to cut off psychic senses, and while Steady wasn’t a psyker himself he’d had one watching through his eyes for long enough to be attuned to his… partner’s mental presence.Distantly, he heard Fumbles explaining these thoughts to the rest of the squad.At least, until the assassins dropped from the ceiling too late to actually take the three by surprise. In fact, they lost five of their number as they descended.Apparently, they hadn’t expected Silver and Steady to be in any condition to return fire.Strange wasn’t firing, but then, having a blind man firing any kind of distance weapon was stupid. The reason Steady only got off two shots to Silver’s three was because he had taken Strange’s elbow and guided the youthful appearing man to the wall and waited until his back was to it before stepping away and firing.Of course, Strange’s lack of sight didn’t stop him from quite accurately going for the throat of any assassin who stepped within an armlength of him, and anyone who tried to take the blind astropath down from a distance got shot by Silver or Steady in short order.Meanwhile, on the second feed, the controlled guards had stiffened and collapsed when the psychic grenade had gone off.It hadn’t taken them long to shake off the spell and regain their feet, though.And they looked pissed. Sarge could tell, even with the recording having no sound, that the leader was yelling orders for his men to split up. Half of them went charging out of the corridor in one direction, and the officer himself led the other half out of sight of the vid recorder.The half that didn’t contain the officer also went out of sight from the recorder. Sarge returned his attention to where a thirty-man squad had been whittled down to fifteen in short order. But the remaining fifteen were clearly making a plan…Right up until they heard something off vid recorder.The leader of the assassination squad had looked hopeful, even triumphant, at what he was hearing, and possibly seeing, sparing a few moments to gloat at Silver.Then he saw how the guards from the other corridor under the second in command of the guards was approaching, and he got the most hilarious expression of sheer, pants-wetting terror on his face before an Inquisition-style las-beam drilled a new hole in his head.But what struck Sarge, once he recovered his composure and with the laughter of his squad in his ears, was that neither Strange, Silver, nor Steady looked anything but quietly determined.Once Sarge was certain that his troops were as ready for the next bit as possible, he dropped the real bombshell, “Unfortunately, we’ll be travelling to the next mission by way of some Rogue Trader Inquisitor Dumbledore knows.”And sat back to hear the renewed cursing and demands to know what the hell Oak was thinking.
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At way too fucking early in the morning, especially considering the drinking she had done the night before, Aimy forced herself to wakefulness before Sarge did it for her.As it was, she almost dropped the damn mug of recaff she had made in an attempt to get herself functional when Sarge yelled, “TIME TO RISE AND SHINE, GUARDSMEN!” And then used his augmetic hand to actually fucking catch the fucking knife Twitch threw on reflex.Fuck had his reflexes improved since getting that augmetic.Putting aside the recaff she knew she wouldn’t be able to finish anytime soon, Aimy joined the morning exercises. Nothing like being yelled at by your superior officer and forcing your muscles past the point of utter exhaustion first thing in the morning to put aside any other shit getting fucked in your life.Sarge was in particularly fine form today, especially where Twitch, Nubby, and especially Tink were concerned. As those worm-brained numb-nuts were the idiots who had raised the biggest fuss over travel via Rogue Trader, apparently Sarge was determined to make them too tired to even think of doing something fatally stupid.As it was, Aimy suspected that she, Jim, and Fumbles would be running interference between the Rogue Trader and the team an unhinged amount.They had finally finished exercises when Sarge got a comm from, at least from the sound of things, either Oak, Inquisitor Dumbledore, or Interrogator Scamander (Silver and Strange, as Sarge had been alternating with their formal names last night).He turned the comm off with a bit more force than was strictly necessary, but his voice held no more anger than usual when he spoke to the rest of them, “We will be off in an hour. Oak requests that you send instructions for disarming the perimeter to- Matt- Twitch.Twitch was still panting lightly from the exertion, but he still answered, “He’d have been better with Mack. He’s the best of them at disarming traps. Matt is the best at setting them.”Sarge scowled a little, but waved off the pedantry, “I don’t think Oak is any better at keeping them straight than the rest of us. It doesn’t matter who you send the instructions to, all that matters is that you send them. Now.”Grumbling almost as badly as Tink when one of the techie’s brilliant fucking ideas backfired (although fortunately for him, in a lower register and far more softly than Tink could ever manage) Twitch grudgingly began sketching out a complex series of diagrams and very detailed set of instructions on a data-slate. Sarge watched this for a moment, before signaling Aimy to take overwatch and make certain Twitch finished his assignment.With a grumpy sigh herself, Aimy settled in to fucking wait.To her surprise, but also her great relief, Twitch’s diagramming didn’t take over long and, at least to Aimy’s drunken memory of what she and Sarge had passed last night, was complete. Aimy put her hand out for the data-slate before Twitch could password protect the diagram.The demolitions trooper pulled it back with an actual fucking growl. Sighing, Aimy said, “I will password protect it, Twitch.”After giving her a suspicious glare for long enough that Aimy thought she might have to fuck her dignity and call for Sarge, Twitch finally handed the data-slate over.Biting back a sigh of relief, Aimy made certain the demolitions trooper could see that she was, indeed, password protecting his precious fucking file.As it was, she still kept the slate afterwards to make certain that it didn’t get rigged to a fucking det-pack, or any other kind of explosive for that matter, before getting handed over.It made packing her kit rather difficult, because Aimy didn’t think it particularly wise to set the data-slate down. At all. Between Twitch’s paranoia and Nubby’s sticky fingers, there was too much of a risk of tampering. Or outright theft in Nubby’s case.Fortunately, Sarge saw Aimy’s predicament and came over to relieve her of the data-slate once he’d packed his own kit.Aimy hoped that Merek Pess had at least half of Sarge’s common sense.Merek Pess, Aimy’s betrothed.Who she had never met.That was something her mother had dropped on Aimy shortly before they entered their final descent to Sector Inquisitorial HQ. That Aimy was going to be married to an up-and-coming officer from her mother’s command in five years’ time.Although it could have been worse. Aimy knew that the other man who her family had been considering as her betrothed, one Jerenvian Annatar Kuredias Faustus Gallius Querronen Mattius Raspathis, hadn’t had any common sense whatsoever.Which was probably why her mother had decided against him in the end and forced the decision through their other relatives. Her marriage to Aimy’s father had been very unhappy, and the Lord General had enough respect for her daughter to not put Aimy into a relationship doomed to failure from the beginning.Well, that and Jerenvian had probably made the mistake of doing the same thing in front of Aimy’s mother as he had in front of Aimy when she was a teenager and he a young adult.Jerenvian had always sneered at the von Humpeding lineage requirement that, at least the heir, must serve a term as a common guardsman before being promoted, although that promotion was, of course, a foregone conclusion for the scion.Unless he or she really fucked up, that was.And Lord General Aspira Miranda Julienne Decima Calevie Eulalia Eleanor Kessah von Humpeding was not someone you wanted to sneer at the closely held and most cherished family traditions of.Especially not if your family wished to ally with said traditional family.Idly, Aimy tallied the odds that Jerenvian would live out another five years himself. The Raspathises were likely to be very unhappy with their firstborn. Especially as this was the third arranged marriage he’d managed to sabotage by being an over-confident, elitist shithead.Furthermore, Caspiel and Sophia, his younger brother and sister, twins if you please, were both already married with children. The Raspathises might practice absolute primogeniture, but that was easy enough to get around.All that was required was for the eldest child to conveniently die before inheriting or producing an heir. Sophia might be indifferently ambitious, and Caspiel completely so, but both their spouses were said to be social climbers of the highest order.Aimy caught Fumbles shooting her a glance that mingled confusion, interest, and discomfort, and decided to stop the familial and familiar musings for the moment.It wasn’t as though life had no other challenges more immediate than the five years her mother had given her to come to terms with the fact that she was going to marry.Everyone had finished packing in the allotted time, and were waiting outside when a groundcar driven by Max pulled up, with Mark riding shotgun.After duly trading passwords made up on the spot to satisfy Twitch (much to Fumbles’s shared amusement, although at least the psyker mostly kept himself from giggling… out loud) and handing over the data-slate with the instructions for how to disarm the warehouse, they loaded up and headed for the spaceport.Once they reached the spaceport, Oak was there himself with a slender, dark haired, twenty-something woman whose demeanor screamed arbite. Nubby probably would have done something… unforgivable, either by Strange or Sarge’s standards if Doc and, surprisingly enough given the issues they’d had with a particular senior arbite on their last mission, Twitch, hadn’t grabbed him.Fortunately, Oak seemed more amused than anything else at the byplay and the arbite only rolled her eyes. Apparently, she was used to that reaction, although she was clearly the age she appeared, unlike Strange or Steady.Neither of those young-old men would have so much as twitched.Well… unless it was a ploy to relax whoever they were dealing with. But in that case, it wouldn’t have been so obviously genuine as the arbite’s.Once Nubby had been prevented from doing anything too stupid, Oak stepped forward, “Interrogator Sargent, as I have already given you your orders, I will keep this brief. I expect all of you to be… tolerant… of the Rogue Trader Albus is sending you with. I believe you will find her and her command staff to be- refreshing.”Marching orders given, he gave a brief nod to the arbite and said, “Give my regards to Albus and best wishes to Newt and Jacob. I have a ‘genius’ Inquisitor to speak to. About appropriate communication. Or rather, the complete lack thereof.”Then he left.The woman wordlessly acknowledged Oak’s statement before turning back to Sarge. Without the distraction of their Inquisitor, Aimy could see that the woman was indeed young. The guardswoman’s assessment was that she was probably only a few years younger than Doc. Probably in the twenty-five to twenty-seven range, so a little older than Doc had been when she’d first met the squad and a little younger than he was now.But she had been very well trained by whatever branch she’d first served with, as she snapped off a textbook salute to Sarge, “Former Arbite-Investigator Tina Goldstein, sir. I have been instructed to bring you and your command to Inquisitor Dumbledore and Interrogator Scamander, sir.”Aimy could tell that Sarge wasn’t overly thrilled by the confirmation of the woman’s status as a former arbite, but he still managed to politely nod to her.Which was all the acknowledgement that Goldstein seemed to be expecting, so she had that going for her at least.From her complete control in the face of the emotional slurry that had to be surrounding everyone, Aimy was positive that the former arbite was not the telepathic sister.But all thoughts of telepaths, and other psykers for that matter, were driven from everyone’s head when they entered the central compartment of Silver’s highly modified shuttle, and found the air suffused with the scent of what smelled like positively heavenly pancakes.And before any of them could try and talk themselves out of believing that those divine pancakes were too much to hope for, Silver ever so casually looked over from his seat at the table that predominated this room and waved them all to be seated, “Ah, you’re here just in time. Come and sit, take off isn’t for another two hours. Plenty of time for a good meal.”
* * *
Albus was very grateful for the decades of practice (he’d say centuries, but it seemed a bit ridiculous to use that time frame to describe slightly over two hundred years. Even Virius never used centuries in the context of his life, and he was a hundred years Albus’s senior) at maintaining a serene expression given the wash of emotions that was flooding him.There were times he was almost jealous of Newt’s… gift… from the Emperor. It was at least less immediately painful, even if it did bring problems with most tech-priests.The Inquisitor knew what his fate should have been. He had been granted a fuller measure of the Emperor’s (Marduk’s, he reminded himself. The man might have been eternal, at least until his betrayed creation, the Primarch Horus, had struck that most grievous wound, but he had a name other than the title he had given himself), but he had also seen things that should never be known to another in the once-man’s mind.Secrets that could bring the massive edifice of the Imperium of Man crashing down like the crumbled forge-cathedra of Skapula should they be spoken.And Albus had, in fact, been identified, if not necessarily in depth.Briefly.That had been the one time he had ever taken over another mind. The assessing Inquisitor had his mind rewritten, in a far more brutal fashion than Albus could manage now, had rewritten his assessment of Albus, and then been suicidal enough that he pulled a knife on one of the Custodians.Albus’s only regret in the matter was that he had been unable to perform the same manipulation on the Inquisitor who had assessed Aberforth. His brother might never have forgiven him for not saving Ariana, but Albus knew Ariana had been beyond saving.No matter what, she would have gone to the Astronomicon.Fortunately, although he knew it was not a coincidence, Jacob and Queenie came out of the kitchen, proudly bearing heaping platters of pancakes, and Newt trailing behind like a silent, if rather brightly colored, shadow.As Newt seated himself between Albus and Interrogator Sargent, Albus sent a brief whisper of a thank you.Newt sent a tangle of complex emotion that any of the Inquisitors who had dealings with the younger man on Terra or the Punisher of Tempests would never believe that he was capable of feeling, much less sending. The main threads were ‘it was no problem’, ‘you have no reason to feel guilty’, ‘my pleasure’, and ‘stop hitting your head against that damned wall’.But it wasn’t just Newt’s attempt at scolding reassurance that snapped Albus out of his funk. Instead, it was a voice which first stated, ‘Silver’ but then went physical as, “Sil- Inquisitor Dumbledore. Why did you want us here? Not that I’m ungrateful for the pancakes, but it seems-"Even without telepathy, Albus could fill in the rest of the statement.Before he answered, though, he wanted to ask, “Silver?”A lesser man than Interrogator Sargent might have blanched, or avoided Albus’s gaze, particularly at the reminder that Albus was a psyker.Interrogator Sargent, however, thought, clearly trying to phrase matters in the most diplomatic way possible, before stating, “Members of the Guard have a tendency to give call signs to our associates. Silver was the best fit for you.”Albus could see that. He’d been called a silver-tongued bastard by many of his colleagues, with various degrees of fond teasing, and occasionally a silver-tongued devil by those who he’d strove against, whether within the Inquisition or without.And, well, the man had practically shouted to Albus that the other call-sign that he had considered was ‘Smooth’, which sounded like a cheap brand of peanut butter substitute.Before Albus could answer, Queenie interrupted, “Strange?! You’re calling Newt Strange?”Tina bristled, but Albus was amused, Jacob gave a slight snort, and Newt only looked confused at Tina’s annoyance and Queenie’s surprise, “Why is that so confusing? I am ‘strange’ by any measure you care to name.”As for Interrogator Sargent’s staff, Mason R. E. Fell (Albus couldn’t quite catch what the initials stood for without pressing harder than he wanted, which certainly confirmed his and Newt’s suspicions about the man), or rather, Twitch, as he was known to his teammates, had been quickly restrained by Lady Corporal von Humpeding on one side and Medicae Trooper Jude Fix, better known as ‘Doc’.Even though Twitch was the only trooper to be taking a more… proactive approach to the perceived threat of Queenie’s erratic abilities, all the Guardsmen on the other Inquisitorial team, save Lady von Humpeding was thinking some variation on ‘God-Emperor, not again…’, with the only variation being the strength of the disgusted frustration.Queenie looked like someone had just slammed her face first into a door, and even Newt couldn’t escape the emotional morass.It was Newt who did break the silence, turning his head to face Queenie’s approximate direction. “Queenie. I know it is very difficult for you, but with Sarge’s team in particular you really need to avoid responding to their thoughts rather than their words. They have had the unfortunate luck to be forced to work with Mal Garrus of Sciscitat’s staff, you see. Twice in a significant number of their cases.”He gracefully ignored Corbin Acme’s (also known as Tink) whine about how once was more than enough.Albus fully expected the look of shock, with a little bit of horror and regret thrown in, that Queenie’s face displayed. “Oh, you poor dears! I am so sorry. I- I’ll try to not respond to your thoughts.”Queenie truly meant what she said, but Albus knew, as did Newt, Jacob, and Tina, not to mention Queenie herself, that she would doubtless slip again.But at least it wouldn’t be as a gleefully malicious tattler.Fortunately, although she and her sister were not technically Sanctioned psykers, the regimen Albus had instated at his and Virius’s training facility had, thus far, seemed to be just as effective at keeping the Warp at bay.However cold a comfort that might be.Returning to the original subject, Albus said, “I asked you to join us because leaving for a mission is always easier over a good meal, which is something that I suspect you have not had in quite some time.”Interrogator Sargent gave Albus a suspicious once over (the suspicion was probably not helped by Tina muttering, not quite quietly enough, that going to face death was always best after a decent meal), but after a few moments decided to take Albus at his word.“Now,” Albus said, “Let’s actually enjoy this food while it’s still hot.”
* * *
Nearly a hundred years old and Jacob still never got tired of seeing people enjoying food he’d made. It was just as heartening as preparing the food in the first place.It was a skill that Jacob took no shame in employing or bragging of.He was very glad, though, that he’d had Queenie to assist today, because if she hadn’t been able to help, he’d have had to get up even earlier this morning, given what he knew of guardsmen’s appetites.For a good long while, the food was enjoyed in a silence that probably should have been uncomfortable, given that Tina had admitted why Jacob always made certain to go above and beyond immediately before Newt’s team went out on a mission.Instead, the careless comment had seemed to relax Sarge’s team.Interestingly, Tina was also the one who broke the silence with words, asking over the clinking of silverware, “If Inquisitor Dumbledore is ‘Silver’ and Interrogator Scamander is ‘Strange’, then what is Guardsman Kowalski, Interrogator Sargent?”Jacob nearly rolled his eyes for both himself and Newt. They kept trying to get Tina to cut down on the formality in front of teams who were more casual themselves.It really wasn’t working so far.Newt’s mental voice came whisper soft through Jacob’s mind, :Five thrones she ends up as ‘Book’.:Biting back the snort, Jacob allowed, no bet. It’s a sure thing, to come to the fore, before answering instead of Sarge, “’Steady’ of course. I’ve been ‘Steady’ to Guardsmen since I was one myself.” And let the stares of astonishment and expressions of slight worry that he was also a psyker roll off him with the ease of long practice.Jacob let the assorted questions from those who hadn’t learned his story yet flow over him and applied himself to the pancakes.Once the conflicting slough of questions had dried up, Jacob said, “Either ask Sarge or Aimy if you need to hear it before we reach the Dawnlight. It isn’t a subject I want to revisit over breakfast. One meal with that looming over me in a day’s time is more than enough.”Sarge did indeed begin telling his troops the story Jacob had recounted for him and Aimy last night, fortunately in a voice soft enough that Jacob could tune it out with ease, and, from Newt’s reaction, even less detail than Jacob had given.Both suited him well.He was rather surprised, if equally pleased, that neither he nor anyone else needed to fill in the squad as to Newt’s background.As bad as Jacob’s history was, Newt’s was even worse.Sarge’s team’s far too young psyker, for all that the boy was currently older than Newt had been when Albus had claimed the younger man as part of his retinue, called Fumbles for reasons Jacob was going to have to find out from someone, Newt if no one else volunteered, gave Jacob an assessing look.Then Newt and Albus both noticed the assessing look, and got assessing looks of their own, although with their shields, at least Queenie wasn’t going to interrupt whatever conference the astropaths were engaged in.If anything, she was more absorbed in listening to Sarge’s troops and their reaction to Jacob’s history, even in the bare bones fashion it was being told.A significant part of her interest was that the telepath was always fascinated by the ways a story changed with every teller. Another reason was that she wanted to correct any inaccuracies.And finally, Queenie was interested in anything to do with Jacob.To be honest, that worried Jacob a bit, but both Albus and Newt were certain it was nothing more serious than a girlish crush, and a strong fascination with the connection between Newt and Jacob.When he’d asked her himself, once, when Newt was sedated for treatment of a fairly severe wound he’d gotten in the course of his duties, she’d said that their linkage was beautiful. And that she appreciated being around men whose primary reaction to her wasn’t blind lust.With that, Jacob had to be satisfied.Newt ghosted a gentle smile at Jacob, without the expression reaching his physical mouth, and Queenie visibly followed with her eyes, which warmed as she followed the affection.Well, he couldn’t begrudge the much younger woman a chance at something that apparently looked as beautiful to her as it felt to Jacob. The Warp and the minds of men alike were full of far more nastiness than even Jacob, eyes of an astropath as he had been for half a century, could even imagine, despite all he had seen.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Sarge was both grateful and rather disturbed by the friendliness of the other Inquisition team. Even with Flit’s (Queenie’s) non-existent sense of privacy which was so similar and yet completely different from Snitch’s, there was a lack of oppressive rivalry or obsession with control of the operation.Even Book (and he had tried not to hear Strange whisper ‘I won’ to Steady over the only name that would fit such a by the book woman as former-Arbite Tina Goldstein), while she decried their team’s informality seemed more resigned than anything else.He would have assumed it was some psyker… mirroring… thing, if Fumbles hadn’t been acting completely normal.At least, completely normal for a highly empathic psyker who tended to mirror and amplify the emotions of those around him. Which is to say he’d spent half the meal relatively normal as the different emotions canceled each other out (at least so far as Sarge could tell based on the young telepath’s responses), a quarter of the meal practically bouncing out of his seat with anxiety (when Twitch was particularly worked up), and the last quarter smiling serenely (when he was mirroring Silver).However, both his and Sarge’s anxiety ratcheted up dramatically when Silver spoke directly to each of them in their heads, :I need to speak with both of you after the meal and liftoff. Newt and Jacob will be joining us, but no one else.:In Sarge’s experience, an Inquisitor wanting even a semi-private word with anyone was a very Not Good Thing.Of course, it didn’t help that, although Silver appeared to be shielding Fumbles’s output to the rest of the team, he wasn’t shielding Sarge from it. If anything, their anxieties appeared to be locked in a feedback loop.Strange… might have looked towards them, or at least faced them. Sarge was having a great deal of difficulty not puking up his pancakes, but he thought he’d seen that. But there appeared to be another psychic shield put up between Sarge and Fumbles.Whether the shielding had been put in place by Silver or Strange, Sarge was very grateful for it.He was even able to finish his pancakes. It might seem petty and small minded, but the pancakes were so good and the opportunity so rare that to waste them was at the least a crime, and at the greatest a terrible heresy.And the last thing Sarge needed was for someone to investigate him for breakfast heresy.Strange… snickered. Which at least confirmed that he was sensing Sarge’s thoughts and probably also meant it was his shield keeping Sarge and Fumbles out of each other’s’ minds. Sarge gave him a mild stink-eye, which he was certain was lost on the man and would have been even if he could see on his own, although Steady obviously caught it as he shrugged and rolled his eyes upward in the universal expression of ‘psykers, man, what can you do’.It was reassuring that, even though the man was so very connected to Strange, he could still feel some exasperation about this psyker shit.Once breakfast heresy was thoroughly averted by all and the dishes were brought back to the kitchen and appropriately cleaned and stowed, Silver led everyone to the central compartment, a comfortably appointed space with launch chairs enough for everyone.Once Sarge’s team were settled, if a bit nervously in Twitch’s case, Silver stated, “There is a bit more business Newt and I must attend to with Interrogator Sargent and Fumbles. Make yourselves comfortable in the meantime, we will return shortly.”Before anyone could protest, Steady signaled in Generian Battle Sign ‘All is well. Officer and non-com business.’ And slid a tea cart which, particularly after the ample quantities of pancakes was probably unnecessary at this point, but which Nubby, Tink, and even Twitch began raiding immediately.Rolling his eyes himself, Sarge took a moment to hope that they wouldn’t explode. Apparently, there was little enough here to worry about if even Twitch wasn’t coming up with paranoid fantasies.Silver escorted Sarge and Fumbles back to the same office as yesterday, which was still an overstuffed, semi-heretical mess. There was less inspection today, simply the same signal jammer as yesterday being activated.The man didn’t mince words once everyone was settled, either. He began by addressing Sarge, “Ordinarily I wouldn’t introduce this subject even to one who already knows, but is not a member of my personal retinue. However, I think it will help matters for one other member of his team to know this of Fumbles.”Sarge wasn’t sure what the pause was for after that statement, but he didn’t want to show too much impatience with a man who was clearly a close friend (or at least a close ally) of his boss.Silence was apparently the right answer, as Silver continued, this time not addressing Sarge, “Fumbles, I’m certain you have noticed that after your Sanctioning, you had… differences from the other telepaths in your cohort, as well as from the powers you had before being taken into the Emperor’s presence.”Fumbles looked nervous, but eventually nodded under Silver’s assessing gaze.The older man continued, “Furthermore, you had knowledge that couldn’t be explained by anything. Bits of emotion or memory that you knew weren’t yours. That you didn’t dare to tell anyone else, even to check yourself, because even though you knew where they came from, their content was too unbelievable, even outright heretical to dare speak of to anyone in authority.”Now Fumbles looked terrified, but before he could say anything, Silver cut him off, “You are not the only one.”Before Fumbles could speak any words of denial, Strange pulled out a travelling case and opened it.Rather than the interior of any such case, there were a lot of little mechani-magical parts, working together in a manner that even Sarge recognized as strangely familiar.After staring at the workings for a few moments, Fumbles asked cautiously, “A tesseract labyrinth? But- it isn’t-”“No,” Strange smiled. “It isn’t Necron, Aeldari, Votann, or of any other xenos origins. I made it. I haven’t quite gotten the miniaturization power requirements right, and Virius didn’t want to risk knowledge of my techniques getting out, anyway, or we would have used something of my design to trap the daemon, but this was constructed and extrapolated from what I received.”Sarge broke in, “Received?”Strange answered, plainly, before anyone could interrupt with something that might be a bit more diplomatic (and less useful for Sarge’s processing), “Most astropaths merely get a sense of certainty and a fanatical love of the Emperor from their Soulbinding. I got a headache and a few thousand techno-heretical schematics, in addition to the intuitive sense to make them reality, which I think we can all agree is much more useful.”Silver was too poised to show any response to that, although Steady looked like he was trying desperately to not kick Strange under the table.But Sarge couldn’t disagree with the analysis. After all, his team had found their T’au pulse weapons far more useful than any comparable Imperial armament, and the same went for Tink’s drone (although he would never admit that to the techie). More than once, it had seemed to him that the Adeptus Mechanicus was mostly concerned with suppressing useful technology that the core priesthood hadn’t come up with than anything else.Even if he would also never say that anywhere, even here.He had no doubt that Silver had caught most of that, so he took a moment to think, ‘And what did YOU get that you shouldn’t have?’To his surprise, Silver’s eyes grew distant and sorrowful, only meeting his gaze briefly before dropping to his desk.But the man did answer, “Secrets which must never be spoken, for the most part, because they would destroy the Imperium.”And he sent to Sarge, but probably not Fumbles, :And while the Imperium is doomed as it is, this would do worse than the Emperor’s death.:Before Sarge could find his voice again, Silver briskly stated, “And powers of charisma and telepathic finesse that are beyond any other psyker I have met, including other astropaths and up to the Primaris psykers. Which is probably a great part of why I am still alive. Astropaths tend to burn out and die young, even without falling to the perils of the warp.”That was something Sarge had never known. And had never wanted to know, either. The last thing he wanted was to feel empathy for a bunch of even creepier than normal psykers.Probably sensing that Sarge had had enough of this conversation, Silver returned his attention to Fumbles, “What have you noticed-" the man’s gaze snapped to a slim data-slate on his desk which had just started chiming.After giving it a few moments of his attention, Silver turned an exasperated look towards Sarge, “Interrogator Sargent. If you would please go inform Troopers Acme and Nubbs that first, you and Fumbles are fine and do not require their assistance, second, that the camera they are attempting to hack is one outside my office and that, furthermore, there are no cameras inside my office for just this eventuality, it would be much appreciated.”
* * *
It took Fumbles a few moments to place who the hell ‘Trooper Acme’ was. Nubby was a far more familiar quantity to the young psyker, and unlike the rest, his actual name was never far from anyone’s mind.However, it was hardly a surprise that Tink and Nubby were the ones currently in trouble with Inquisitor and Interrogator alike.In the few moments it took Fumbles to figure out that it was Tink who was also in major trouble, Sarge had bulled out of the room and was making that clear to the men.“WHAT PART OF PRIVATE, OFFICER, AND NON-COM BUSINESS WAS HARD FOR YOU TWO IDIOTS TO UNDERSTAND?”Before Fumbles could get lost in Sarge’s stress-relieving temper tantrum, Silver’s deceptively gentle mental voice slipped into Fumbles’s mental ears, and said, :While Interrogator Sargent is dealing with that situation, perhaps we might delve into subjects that he has no wish to know.:Fumbles caught the nuanced shadings of that ‘know’, and understood that it wasn’t because Sarge was fragile, but because the man already knew more than he, personally, was comfortable with.And that Silver also felt guilty to forcing a certain knowledge on the man.Also, there was a hint that Sarge- “REALLY, TINK?! SINCE WHEN DOES A TRIP TO THE BATHROOM INCLUDE ATTEMPTED ETHERIC WARFARE?!” -understood enough about the secrets the psykers shared that to truly know more would break the man.Fumbles didn’t want to speak the truths either. But there were ways around that.He opened his mind to both the other psykers, displaying the depression that wasn’t his, but rather born of ten thousand years of perverse interpretation of the Emperor’s philosophy.That, despite taking on the mantle of the Omnissiah of the Techpriests of Mars, the Emperor had truly despised religion in general, and being considered a religious figure himself in particular. He had lashed out at one of the Primarchs for making him into a figure of religious devotion. That later men had then made a god of him…Well, Fumbles was depressed for a reason, and it wasn’t due to a naturally melancholic disposition.At least, not at first. Between the Emperor and what Bane Johns had done to his psychic powers, it was pretty much engrained in him now.“REFLECTIVE?! I SUPPOSE YOU MEAN REFLEXIVE, NUBBY?! AND SINCE WHEN IS ‘HACK INTO THIS RANDOM CAMERA’ A REFLEX?!”Silver opened his mind in turn, and the first thing Fumbles got from the man was a wry humor at the reaming going on outside the door.For a man as absolutely controlled on the surface, it was good to know he was human enough to enjoy the taste of schadenfreude.But what Silver had gotten from the Emperor in addition to his expanded psyker gifts was chilling. He’d received an understanding of how the Primarchs had been… constructed. As well as the lack of care the Emperor had for those who he had publicly named his sons.Those who did share a significant portion of his genetic material, although privately he denied any connection.
‘It is in the nature of a creation to call his creator ‘Father’.’
But the bond only went one way, as had been made clear in Silver’s mind. At best, the Primarchs had been intended to return to Terra and be warehoused in, admittedly comfortable, prison apartments that had been prepared for them.At worst, they would have returned to be rewarded with death… or study.‘HOW BIG OF AN IDIOT DO YOU THINK I AM, TROOPERS?! NO, DON’T ANSWER THAT!’Fumbles actually jumped at that interruption from Sarge. So did Strange.Silver didn’t, but a less nervous nature and far more people-oriented personality, combined with the majority of a prolonged lifetime living with the secret just revealed, he was used to the interaction of that weighty secret with regular life.Before Sarge could interrupt their communion with another bellow, Strange opened his mind to Fumbles as well.Strange’s first thoughts were for a bewildering array of animals, slipping through Fumbles’s mind before he could focus on any one of them. The second set were an equally bewildering array of technology, which lingered slightly longer before vanishing into the Immaterium as the thoughts of animals had before them.Finally, they got to the meat of what Strange remembered.The astropath, who could only be called younger when compared to his mentor, remembered the building of the Emperor’s Webway, the delicate construct that was meant to enhance human psychic energy and exalt humanity beyond the heights the Eldar had reached.At the minor expense, of course, of placing Magnus the Red into the keystone slot.Given what Newt remembered of the Emperor’s views on sorcery, as opposed to non-Warp tainted psionics, it was a bit of a mystery why that was an acceptable solution, but then, the man would never have sacrificed himself to the project.The Empire had been built on the bones of those the Emperor had sacrificed instead of himself, when he was the man who could have survived virtually any danger--short of that which Horus had delivered.Horus had rent the Emperor’s soul as surely as the Emperor had rent his. Between that, the entombment in the device euphemistically termed the Golden Throne, and the prolonged burning of himself to fuel the Astronomicon, not to mention the tithe of souls to feed himself (eke out as much life as he yet can), it is unclear that he could come back.(And I hope he doesn’t, a dark part of Fumbles whispered.)Neither astropath showed any sign of having heard that treacherous thought, so Fumbles hoped as he never had in his life that they truly hadn’t.“NOW, YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO GET OUT OF MY FACE, TROOPERS, AND YOU’VE ALREADY WASTED TWENTY-NINE OF THEM!”With that final bellow, Sarge reentered the office, appearing far more relaxed than anyone who’d just spent several minutes screaming at someone else about their idiocy should, and carrying a small data-slate clearly of T’au manufacture.
* * *
The past few minutes had been very chaotic for Newt. Between the jumble of emotions that were erratically intruding from the row in the hallway and the painful emotions emanating from the other psykers in the room, with equal eccentricity, it was a distinct relief when Sarge came back into Albus’s office, pulsating a sensation of proud ‘I’ve still got it’, combined with diminishing anger, and overlayed with a keen relief that he hadn’t had to stay in the office with a collective of telepaths the entire time, over the foundation of a hope that they’d gone about the necessary discussion without him.Of course, even Newt could tell that the other Interrogator wasn’t pleased when Albus not only responded to the thought, but answered effortlessly, “Yes, we confirmed the requisite background and knowledge, however we still need to discuss practical matters.”Muttering mutinously in his head, although he managed to avoid doing so aloud, Sarge waited for the discussion of ‘practical matters’ to begin.Looking Sarge directly in the eye, with neither man so much as flinching, Albus said, “The most interesting feature of these… expansions of ability, for lack of a better description, is that they are accompanied by a distinct decrease in the frequency of severe warp distortion.”Sarge looked like he was contemplating an argument in Jacob’s eyes, but Albus forestalled that, “While we are by no means immune to it, Fumbles and another young man, of my retinue rather than Quercus’s, are proof of that, not to mention the individual I am sending you after. However, we should all be severely warp-tainted, given that all of us tend to use our powers reflexively, and some almost constantly.”The sensation of a man who desperately wanted an argument, but couldn’t come up with a convincing one, crackled sharply across Newt’s mind.Behind his blindfold, Newt winced and pressed his lids together over his useless eyes. He hated when the fog surrounding his mind dissipated enough to get a clear glimpse of what another was thinking and feeling. It was almost as bad as daemon-taint.It wasn’t the sensations themselves that bothered Newt, but the sudden, painful sharpness that always occurred without any warning. Daemon-taint might not be in any way pleasant, but it generally built slowly.And when it didn’t, there were more important things to deal with than the roiling disturbance in Newt’s psionic senses.But even the emotions of humans, when his mind received them with the clarity it was supposed to, was as sharp as a whip-crack, and just as painful as the lash landing.Newt nearly jumped when he felt a hand rest itself on his knee. After a moment spent getting himself under control, he realized that the owner of the hand was Jacob.He gripped the resting hand probably a bit too tightly until the fog swirled back over his psychic senses, filling the universe once more.Once the fog was back in its place, Newt judged the room.Unfortunately, the spasm in his psychic powers hadn’t gone unnoticed. Through Jacob’s eyes, he could see Fumbles and Sarge staring at him. Well, Fumbles was staring, Sarge was more glaring.“What just happened?” Sarge demanded.With a sigh, Newt answered, “I don’t always have the same level of perceptual impairment, Sarge. Sometimes it clears, which is as painful as a brightlance beam would be to Fumbles now. And when the clearing comes when I am unguarded, I have an equally unfortunate tendency to… share… the pain with any susceptible being.”Newt hoped Sarge would leave matters at that, but instead the man asked, “And how did this come about? Fumbles told us the official stories, but I need the truth.”While Newt could feel Jacob getting ready to deny the statement, and knew that Albus preferred to leave painful matters unstated (despite the explosions that inevitably resulted when they were bottled for too long), Newt couldn’t deny the man that truth.Especially as the official stories hardly showed Newt in a trustworthy light.Doing his best to project trustworthiness, Newt began, “I did love Leta. Not romantically, of course. She was as abandoned and disregarded as I, which was why she even came down into the cells in the first place.”The cells, where in between cycles of severe torture, Newt had nevertheless managed to find some happiness, training the rats that ordinarily fought the psykers for food that he would share what he was given if they were polite. Where he’d met Albus, and his feet had been set on a brighter path than he could ever have hoped for when he was but a four-year-old boy torn from his brother’s arms, never to see Theseus again, with either his own eyes or those of another-Theseus had died aboard the Punisher of Tempests. He’d escaped the ship the only way possible, for all that he’d been removed to the less socially isolated upper decks. The cruelty had drained him of both spirit and vitality alike.One day he simply- hadn’t woken up- when Inquisitor Terhet applied the excruciator.Leta had the grace to tell him that.Albus had confirmed it.“Leta… for the longest time, Leta was the only kindness in my life. A beam, however broken, to cling to in the storm. I didn’t like her for all that time. She was, after all, an Untouchable. One of the soulless.”Shaking his head, Newt whispered, “I still don’t believe that Untouchables are truly soulless. But a number of them do seem so. Leta’s mother killed three men for not siring a girlchild on her, only the fourth gave her the girl she needed before he was also… disposed of. When the brainwashing drugs started wearing off.”Bearing down and forcing himself to remain present, Newt began speaking of the most unpleasant part of the whole matter, “When- when she- Leta. Came into my- my cell. She- she said. That. She hoped- I- hoped I could h-help her. With- with something.”Taking a deep breath, stiffening his spine, and pushing through the pain, Newt forced himself to conclude his recounting, “Sh- she wanted a child. One who wasn’t an Untouchable and, if female, thereby doomed to become a Sister of Silence. She thought the only way to accomplish that with any degree of success was to- was to- was for the father to be a psyker. A-and she- she decided that I should be the father. No matter that my abilities were not yet fully developed.”Or that he hadn’t been even given the opportunity to say ‘yes’, much less able to truly consent even if she had.Newt never allowed himself to dwell on that overlong.It wasn’t that he was stupid or denying what Leta had tried to do.He simply couldn’t think of that without irreversibly tainting the only thing which had gotten him through those first seven years before Albus had found him and decided that, if he couldn’t save all the psykers on board the black ships, or even all the psykers on board the Punisher of Tempests, he could at least save Newt.
* * *
Any lingering satisfaction, much less an actual hold-over from his previous good mood, had fled from Sarge as soon as he felt the sharp pain from Strange, as well as the comparison which the sudden intensity of it had brought to mind, a thought which the psyker had shared with everyone around him.The comparison of that pain to the lashing of a whip spoke of a great familiarity with such pain.And while Sarge didn’t doubt that Strange could find enough trouble on his own, much less as Silver’s chief investigator, he doubted that, even over the course of over eighty years, he’d had enough prolonged exposure to whippings for that to be the first comparison which sprang to mind.Which meant it had to have been formed early. All too likely begun when the man was still a boy younger than Katie Sargent had been when her father left her and her mother behind on Generis.Silver was giving him the same look Sarge had given his brother before he’d left Generis, leaving Susan, Katie, and the presumed child-to-be in his care. It was best described as ‘you’d damn well better take care of them or I’ll make you suffer in ways you could never imagine’.Sarge might not understand the bond that linked the Inquisitor and Interrogator. Of his team, only Fumbles could probably come close to understanding it, and that was because they’d deliberately shared some of it, and what they hadn’t Fumbles had likely picked up as an incredibly powerful telepath.But he didn’t have to understand the nature of the connection to know that both men, at some level, depended on each other almost as much as Strange and Steady appeared to.With that in mind, Sarge nodded and deliberately sent ‘I will protect them like they are my own men.’Once the silence had dragged on long enough, Sarge broke it, “Are we done with these uncomfortably personal topics?”He hadn’t thought Strange would appreciate dwelling on the subject, and the expression on the other Interrogator’s face certainly supported that assumption, although it was harder to read than Sarge might have expected with the blindfold covering the man’s eyes.Sarge had never quite realized how much he relied on another’s eyes to tell him how they’d react.Silver quirked a grateful smile at Sarge, but only responded to his verbalized thoughts, albeit not in the best way so far as Sarge was concerned, “For now. Between your team’s luck and Newt’s, I have no doubt you will find uncomfortable topics enough in the days ahead.”Although he wanted to argue, Sarge knew he couldn’t.Activating something on one of his data-slates, Silver stood. Almost before the man had begun to rise, Strange and Steady stood as well.“Let’s make certain your ‘Nubby’ and ‘Tink’ aren’t doing anything else… foolhardy.”And that was an order, however much it had been phrased as a request, that Sarge could get fully behind.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Jacob was very relieved that the discussion of unpleasant topics was over for now. Particularly the unexpected ones.While he knew that Sarge had truly felt that he needed to discover exactly what had gone on with Leta and Newt, he still was a bit sore at the man.Particularly because he knew that Newt would be having nightmares tonight.At least Newt had his self-constructed tesseract labyrinth now. When the days he was certain would bring nightmares occurred, he and Jacob would sleep in it, with its specially constructed habitats for not only Newt’s collection of psychic beasts, but for Newt and Jacob themselves.Once they were back in the central compartment, Sarge immediately went over to Aimy and Doc and began a sort of whispered conference.Twitch was still raiding the snack cart, which given that the man was probably about ten kilos underweight, wasn’t particularly worrisome. Tink and Nubby were sulking under the watchful gaze of Tina and Jim, interestingly enough, although Jacob suspected that Aimy and Doc had been the original watchdogs.Queenie was currently sitting slightly away from Tina, but Jacob had a feeling she’d been talking to everyone else. She was simply so gregarious that it would have been extremely worrisome had she been by herself. Fumbles immediately walked over to sit beside her.Almost immediately, she turned, and the two telepaths were soon engaged in an animated, not to mention half telepathic, conversation. They both seemed very happy to have someone to talk to who they didn’t need to waste actual words on.In short, things were good, and from the window Jacob could see the Dawnlight getting nearer.That was going to be a very interesting first meeting.To be honest, it always was.It had been right from the beginning.Of course, Jacob hadn’t been there for the very beginning of Albus and Newt’s relationship with now-Rogue Trader Brenon Keller, but from their accounts, not to mention the memories Newt had shared, it had certainly been… memorable.Just about as memorable as Jacob’s own introduction to the former Adepta Sororitas, in fact.Even with his decades of experience, Jacob had still ended up on his ass with a dislocated shoulder and wondering how even a daemon (that was what Albus had assumed Brenon was at the time) could manage to surprise him so badly when he was expecting trouble.Well, surprise him and still leave him with an intact and attached head to be surprised with. Daemons didn’t tend to have that level of forbearance.To be utterly frank, while Jacob liked Brenon, she intimidated the hells out of him. Even more than the squad (or to use the proper terminology, pack) of Space Wolves who had nearly left him and Newt a head shorter themselves.Maybe it was that he knew at least some of the horrors which had shaped the Rogue Trader into the woman she was today, rather than her simply being another blank faced, white haired Adepta Sororitas or megalomaniacal Rogue Trader.Jacob had no illusions he knew everything.He also had no delusions that he wanted to know everything. What Jacob had picked up from Newt and overheard from Albus, not to even mention what had poured from her own mouth, was hard enough to bear.The capacity to bear such knowledge directly was, perhaps, the one thing that Jacob actually envied in Newt. But then, that capacity was likely a matter of selection. A telepath or astropath who could not bear the knowledge that their psychic senses gave them died, either by their own hand or by that of another.Before Jacob could get too lost in that mess of a topic for thought, Newt’s hand rested over the clenched fist he hadn’t even known he’d been making, and a soothing mental… hum, for lack of a better descriptor… was sent his way.Ignoring the possibility of getting odd looks, Jacob relaxed his fist and placed his other hand over Newt’s.When he did look, however, most of Sarge’s squad were very carefully not looking in their direction. Doc had the look of a fascinated romantic about him, and Twitch seemed a bit jealous, as Sarge and Aimy had last night as well, but no derision or scorn was to be found.Well, Generian guardsmen tended to disregard matters which had no impact on a trooper’s performance, or at least they had when Jacob had been drafted.It was good to see that nothing had changed, at least in that regard.Especially as he and Newt were going to have to work very closely with Sarge’s team.
* * *
For all that Nubby and Tink had refused to believe it when he told them they shouldn’t bother trying to spy on Sarge’s meeting with certainly-not-an-ork-Inquisitor Dumbledore, aboard this vessel was the first time the inside of Twitch’s skull had stopped itching for longer than half a minute in years.Twitch had no idea how or why, and right now, he didn’t even care.Even he couldn’t see how a species as restive as orks could be behind this absolute, blissful peace, and he was so grateful for the relief that he was deliberately not reading any further into it than he had to, despite knowing it was psyker-related.For now.He knew that all too soon, this unexpected peace would end, and the paranoia would probably be worse for having been gone, however briefly.However much he was uncomfortably jealous of Strange and Steady’s extremely obvious romantic relationship, paying attention to their open, if surprisingly reserved, affection was better than stewing over the inevitable return of his paranoia.Well, since the two of them had been together for over fifty years by all accounts, it actually wasn’t that surprising that they didn’t need to display their affection more dramatically than the occasional gentle touch. Especially as a significant number of worlds had… problems… with two men (or two women) in a sexual relationship.And it probably didn’t help that the Ecclesiarchy was firmly in the camp of ‘no fun is to be had. Ever.’ A significant number of Ecclesiarchs would probably ban sexual relations between a man and a woman if they knew that they wouldn’t destroy the Imperium by doing so.Twitch couldn’t understand it. Even in his darkest moments, that which had gotten him through was not the (imagined) love of a distant and unforgiving Emperor, but the very real love of his wife, Leah.Well, and the knowledge that his at-the-time unborn son wouldn’t be drafted like Twitch had been.Assuming no major recruitment drive went through, that was.But Generis did have a law stating that an only son of a man drafted into the Generian Guard units could not be drafted into the Guard himself because, unlike a number of branches of the Departmento Munitorum, the Generian Munitorum was not entirely staffed by idiots.The surest way to destroy a productive planet, after all, was to ensure that no one was left to sire or birth the next generation.While Twitch had no doubt that the ruling was nevertheless broken many times every sweep, but still had hope that the nobles of Generis would allow it to be kept in the case of the son of Mason Richard Eustace Fell.After all, the Fells comprised the longest-standing horse breeders on Generis, and the planet’s nobles loved their traditional horse sports and spectacles.No one from Twitch’s current life would believe he was one of those Fells, but his brothers and sister would likely believe what role he filled on his current team.After all, he allowed himself the slightest of smiles, how often did Trevor literally refer to me as ‘bombproof’ when I was breaking the three-year-olds to harness and training them?Adolescent horses and high explosives had more in common than most people would think, requiring a steady hand and a great deal of patience to avoid bad things happening.The weird doubling of vision that occasionally flashed about him wasn’t going on either. Twitch didn’t miss it, even though there were plenty of times it had saved his life to think he’d seen snatches of the future.He refused to believe that those flashes really were the future. If they were…That reality was too horrible to contemplate.Even if it would bring him comfort to know that his son was still on Generis and likely to die there an elderly man. Because that was what those flashes told him.Twitch couldn’t be a psyker.He refused.Before his thoughts could go any further down that path, the smell from the tidbits on the teacart beside him reentered Twitch’s brain.Equally refusing to waste this one moment of peace from his paranoia, Twitch picked up the tea sandwich and began applying himself to the contents of the cart with renewed vigor, either not seeing or ignoring the exchange of looks and gestures that Strange and Silver sent each other over his head.
* * *
Sarge knew he would eventually have to question Twitch’s uncharacteristic passivity. For now, though, he’d enjoy a span of minutes, two hours even, without the paranoid accusing people and random objects of being cleverly disguised orks.Besides, he knew that discussing the matter right now would only break the spell that had taken hold of the demolitions trooper.Which, however accurate that phrasing might turn out to be on examination, was something no one needed.As they initiated an appropriate boarding vector to approach the ship that Silver had referred to as the Dawnlight of the Ancients, Sarge finally decided that his troops and he needed to make a better impression than their everyday wear would allow.But he refused to even think of wearing the full rig-up that Alfred had conjured for them. The evil goon uniforms without all the fiddly nonsense would have to do.Admittedly, he was still half amazed and half annoyed that Alfred had managed to find replacements for his and Doc’s… vanished, completely vanished into thin air!… sets, not to mention an additional set for Aimy on the Occurrence Border, but if Strange and Silver weren’t going about yelling through their clothing choices ‘Look at me! I’m in the Inquisition! (And a huge idiot! Yay!)’ Sarge wasn’t going to do so either.Everyone was more appropriately dressed by the time they were on the final vector to reach the Dawnlight. Appropriately groomed was, as always, a crapshoot. The usual culprits were, of course, not turned out well, although Twitch had managed a better presentation than normal.Looking at Jim and Fumbles, they were both as usual, not to mention as formal as Sarge was personally comfortable with.Fumbles looked more worried than anything, likely about the possibility that the Rogue Trader would have issues with his eyes. His psyker jacket was rumpled but clean, as was normal. Jim was looking somewhere between curious and apprehensive. His enginseer robes, while fine by the standards of the Occurrence Border, especially of late, were a bit worn.Not to mention stained with oil, xenos lubricants, and other- stuff.Stuff it was probably better not to look too closely into the origins of.While Sarge suspected that the enginseer would have preferred to be better turned out, it was damned hard to maintain a good wardrobe aboard a glorified space hulk. Even the captain’s uniforms hadn’t escaped the travails of the ship, and the former navy man had the best full rigout of any onboard the Occurrence Border.Meeting a Rogue Trader, a species known for its overly dramatic pretensions of style, would be… interesting.Sarge heard something that sounded like a snort from the direction of his fellow Interrogator, and when he looked over, the man had an expression that was so innocent it had to be fake.Shooting a glare that bounced off the other man’s facade of innocent amusement, Sarge did one last check of himself immediately before the docking clamps fastened to Silver’s shuttle.Of course, nothing could have prepared Sarge for what actually met them when they disembarked. A woman with Sororitas white hair in a uniform that was at least three orders of magnitude less fiddly than that of any other Rogue Trader they’d met (except for the hat, which was only two) in black trimmed with silver and rose gold almost teleported across the bay to end up practically chest to chest with Silver.And by her furious expression, not to mention the air of ironic innocence that Silver himself was projecting (which only seemed to add to the woman’s anger), she was ‘yelling’ at the top of her mental lungs.So taken aback was Sarge at the sight of anyone yelling at a two-hundred-year-old psyker-Inquisitor, and said Inquisitor deliberately putting on the demeanor of a naughty schoolboy it took him longer than usual to begin his threat assessment of the rest of the Rogue Trader’s senior staff.Of course, once he began his assessment, his mind stuttered to a stop almost immediately at the sight of some kind of lizard-woman hybrid.In a crew uniform.
* * *
Doc saw Sarge freeze and decided to peek around the stunned noncom before Nubby, Tink, or- Emperor forbid!- Twitch got there.Although Twitch was, at least, bracketed by Jim, Fumbles, and even Flit. There should be enough people there who were able to read if Twitch’s paranoia was getting the better of him and take appropriate action if necessary.Of course, once Doc looked out from behind Sarge, his brain stuttered to as complete a halt as the nonco- Interrogator’s.Not even Silver beginning to say, “Actually, I believe you’ll find-” before being cut off by a redoubled mental rant could break either of them out of the shock of finding a lizard-woman… thing… who appeared to be baring her teeth at them.After a few beats, the… entity’s… open posture registered in Doc’s mind as friendly, and he realized that she wasn’t baring her teeth.She was broadly smiling in amusement, watching the Rogue Trader telepathically rake Silver over the coals. However, she wasn’t doing more than smiling that incredibly toothy smile.Unlike Strange and Steady who weren’t even trying to hide that they were signaling private bets about how long the rant was going to continue.The Rogue Trader did spare a moment from her haranguing of Silver to make a sharp gesture at the pair. It wasn’t obscene, as it would likely have been had any of Doc’s fellow guardsmen made it (and he included himself in that, despite his even self-acknowledged over-socialization), but the only response either Strange or Steady gave was an amused eye-roll from Steady and both of them switching their bets and commentary to purely psychic communication.Returning his attention to the lizard-woman, Doc began examining her with a more assessing eye, the shock beginning to wear off.The woman was tall and lean, with one raptorish and one mostly human arm. She had sharp, hooked claws on the raptor arm, and from what he could tell, the legs were also jointed more like a raptor, a fact that even the best tailoring could not successfully disguise. She also had a long, whiplike tail, which looked like it might be prehensile, which probably compensated for the lack of dexterity in her raptor arm. Her eyes were the most eerie part. They were a golden color that was absolutely not found in humanity, but the external anatomy was certainly human.And she kept shooting almost- shy- looks at the guardsmen. When she looked at Doc and Sarge, her expression softened further into an earnest invitation that Doc recognized.More, Doc had to admit, from self-reflection than any of his fellows.None of the rest of them, save for Fumbles and, possibly, Jim, held shyness anywhere in their natures.Doc had been a latecomer to the squad, anyway. He had only volunteered to join the Guard after Nora’s number had come up for their family. His youngest sister had been just seventeen, and had a temperament even less suited to the military than Doc.She had always been a small, fragile child, prone to flights of gentle fancy.Their older brother, Harold, was a skilled technician in one of the manufactora. Although he had volunteered in Nora’s place as well, he had been refused as ‘too vital’ for production.And Megan and Laura, their older sisters, were new mothers. And while the Sargent families, among others on Generia might have long traditions of volunteering for service in the Guard, the Fixes never had.Interestingly enough, the last Fix to volunteer for Guard service had been Doc’s great-aunt Freya.Who had served with the 52nd.Now that Doc had access to a man who had actually served with the Generian 52nd, he’d have to ask if Steady knew anything about Freya Fix. Whether she had actually deserted as the official story held or if she had instead died before the Legion had taken- extreme measures.He glanced over towards where Strange and Steady were, to see both men were looking at him with extremely honed expressions.And then all of their attentions were captured by the sound of bone hitting void-grade and thickness metal.Doc was pretty sure he knew what had caused that sound and, like the rest of his squad, turned around with intense apprehension.
* * *
Even through the warp-fog, Newt could feel the roiling… fear might be a bit too strong a word… anxiety when he heard the sound of bone clattering against the docking bay deck. He turned his head towards Jacob, who had turned his own head towards the sound.To both their complete lack of surprise, given what they knew of Sarge’s team, Tink had gotten tired of being silent witness to a lecture that was only being performed telepathically and had demonstrated his usual dangerous lack of discretion.By taking the grox skull off his T’au drone.There was a silence that seemed to be getting dangerously sharp, so Newt and Jacob decided to do their duty and defuse the situation.At the same time and without discussion.Jacob immediately turned away from the drone and closed his eyes. Newt responded, as Albus and Brenon would fully expect, given their knowledge of each other, “Thank you, Jacob. What you don’t see I can’t report. And you certainly didn’t see a T’au exploratory drone of the DX-9F classification, which has been modified for stealth operation and tech interfacing. Not at all.”Queenie giggled, and Newt could literally hear Tina’s eyes rolling at the complete lack of subtlety in Newt’s statement (not that she had much room to talk). Sarge’s team seemed a bit stunned into silence.And Brenon, who had remained quiet through the skull hitting the deck and Newt’s deliberately poor acting, turned towards Albus (Jacob had opened his eyes and looked in that direction once more) and said, with minimal inflection, “’So heretics, radicals, and renegades all are we?’”Albus responded with the deceptive mildness he brought to any dangerously emotional line of questioning, “I would never say that.”After a beat, he continued with the key addendum, “Out loud.”Brenon broke the silence that enfolded the docking bay following that sally with a snort, “Of course you wouldn’t, you silver tongued bastard. Now, I have to explain the ship’s laws to the new team you’ve decided to drop on me. Unless you’ve decided to spoil my fun with that.”“Now Brenon, you know I know you too well to take such joy away from you. Besides, it is always better for the Captain to lay down the rules of her ship.”Although Newt had no idea what the precise contents of the thought he could feel Brenon shooting at Albus were, he could guess them well enough and smiled.He smiled even more softly when he felt the mental equivalent of a playful swat aimed in his direction next. It was so similar to the playful nips of the occamys or, for that matter, the playful swats of the nundu cubs.He refused to get so lost that he thought of Jacob’s playful nudges and mock blows.Not because he disliked the affectionate buffets, but because in situations like this, it often brought to mind far more distant memories of Theseus-Before.Pushing that behind a shield in the depths of his mind, Newt sensed the vaguely familiar mind of Lady Bri come to stand at Brenon’s side.Taking care not to brush against her mind more than casually, per their negotiations for her becoming Brenon’s Seneschal, Newt took equal care to listen to what Brenon would say. Even though he’d heard it a number of times over the years, he always made certain that nothing had been added or subtracted from the rules of the Dawnlight.Assumptions, as one should expect from the word itself, always came back and bit you in the ass.“Right,” Brenon began, as Newt himself began cataloguing the command staff with her. Henix was there, so obviously despite her yelling at Albus, she had trusted Newt and Albus enough that she hadn’t absolutely forbidden the mutated Void Master from appearing to her new guests.Brenon introduced both her present senior officers.What was surprising was that Mistral was not one of them. The Arch-Militant and the Senechal were the most… conventionally acceptable of the Dawnlight’s senior officers, and while Mistral, like most voidborn, had difficulty relating to planet born individuals, she had an irrepressibly gregarious nature.And, unlike most voidborn, she usually refrained from using the insulting slang that was common to all voidborn no matter what ship they were born on. Newt had been on enough ships to have heard any number of words: ‘rooters’, ‘dirt-suckers’, ‘drowners’, ‘soil-churners’, ‘grav-crips’, ‘flailers’. The voidborn had names as varied as they were unpleasant for the planet born.Newt took no offense. He understood that the invective was as a result of the fact that voidborn usually encountered the planet born in one of two ways, neither of them conducive to a good relationship.The most benign introduction of a voidborn to the planet born came when a planet born individual came aboard a ship as a passenger. However, that meant they tended to see the voidborn as part of the ship, and tended to make more trouble for the lower decks crew than the crew thought the price of their passage was worth.Especially as most such guests didn’t actually do anything useful, aside from pay in thrones.More unpleasant was when planet born were conscripted into void service. Then the voidborn would have to deal with a bunch of hysterical conscripts, who might not have even known that the void existed, much less that travel through it was possible. Even if they did know travel was possible, they didn’t know a void engine or Gellar field generator from a food dispenser, or the vagaries of the senior crew the way a voidborn did.And the voidborn were made responsible for these unlucky ignorants, and then had to turn them into useful members of the crew.Shaking his head in an attempt to dislodge the grim thoughts that had infiltrated his mind, opposing his initial determination to actually listen to Brenon’s warning speech, Newt refocused his attention on the outer world, “First, know that you are only aboard because Albus vouches for you. Your presence on my ship is allowed only out of sufferance for him.”Well, at least his dark musings hadn’t taken too long in real time. That was always the beginning of her stating of the rules of the Dawnlight for allied Inquisitorial teams.“Second, a key part of my agreement with Albus is that maintaining the privacy and secrets of the Dawnlight and her crew are paramount. You will remain only within the areas indicated that you may enter. Any locked doorway, passage, or similar is to remain so, and no methods of bypassing them are to be used. If any are breached, we will know. And the life of any trespasser is forfeit, whether to the traps that we have placed on restricted doors, what has been concealed within those forbidden portions of the ship, or by my command. No questions.”Before there could be any protests over the uncompromising edict, Brenon hastily addended, “We aren’t idiots, though. Should we come after you for breaking these restrictions, it will only be because we have hard evidence that it was you and you alone. If a crew member decided to show you through, out of malice or innocence, they will die either instead of, or at least in addition to, the outside violator.”Without a significant pause, she continued, “Also, if a senior crewmember invites you into a restricted area and escorts you herself, there will be no repercussions. They all know to tell me who they wish to bring into a location and why. If I don’t approve, that is the end of the matter. However, be aware that permission to enter one area does not extend to any others.”There had been the noise of at least one person protesting at various points through Brenon’s laying out of the ground rules, cut off each time by a distinctly fleshy thump.Newt got a spark of affirmation from Jacob at that analysis, and was pleased both at his identification and at managing to not flinch at each of the blows.Well, saying blows was a bit of an exaggeration. While Newt could tell from the sound of flesh striking flesh that they were very strong, he also had perceived enough of Sarge through Jacob’s eyes, not to mention read all the reports he could get Jacob’s hands on regarding the other man, and the sound of his passage, that the man in question had a punch that could stagger a warhorse, if not an orkish warboss or similarly hulking opponent. If he truly wanted to damage his men, he would have been able to do so easily.Especially as Tink, Nubby, and even Twitch were paying more attention to what was being said, rather than Sarge’s location.Tink and Nubby Newt could, at least sort of see why they were audibly protesting, but Twitch…It wasn’t that Newt didn’t think the rules wouldn’t be equally onerous for all three men, but why wasn’t Twitch-?Unless he was…Ah, that would explain a lot about the man’s idiosyncrasies, now wouldn’t it.Before Newt could pursue that thought, Jacob gave him a mental tap. Shrugging off the spell of his own reverie, Newt refocused on Brenon.“Now, psykers not of the crew are under similar restrictions with regards to their powers as their physical presences, particularly where I and my senior staff are concerned. The agreement we have with Albus is that our minds must remain inviolate, insofar as can be managed. We will not punish an accidental look, but you must otherwise leave us be. Which includes not seeking us out, but rather allowing us to approach you.”Newt could see Queenie and Fumbles nodding out of the corner of Jacob’s eye. Queenie’s might be more reluctant, but they both agreed to that restriction, which was all to the good anyway in Newt’s opinion.It meant that they weren’t absolutely restricted to quarters, at least at this time, which was the most common fate of any of Albus’s younger psykers when they slipped up and found out that, while Brenon wasn’t technically any kind of psyker herself, she still possessed an uncanny insight as to when psionic powers were being used near her, even if the psyker wasn’t targeting her.Not to mention the ability to psychically ‘yell’ at the top of her lungs without giving herself a headache.Albus’s current theory (he’d come up with half a dozen over the past ten years) was that these oddities of ability were a combination of Brenon’s Sororitas training, the mix of genetic material that had contributed to Brenon and her ‘sisters’ containing the genes of a powerful psyker (possibly even the Emperor himself), and the examination through Brenon’s mental eyes Albus had performed while Brenon had still served aboard the Icarus.Before everything had gone sideways for that ship.He was just glad that they’d figured out that the ever-shifting and shrouding confusion that was the result of Leta’s disruption of Newt’s developing senses had actually sharpened his ability to sense daemonic taint or it all might have ended very differently.Brenon was wrapping up with the actual ‘welcome to the Dawnlight’ portion, which was always… endearingly awkward. And brief.The former Sororitas was no better than Newt when it came to interacting with people.“So- now that you know what is- what is expected. Boreas here will show you to your quarters in his sister’s absence.” She regained confidence, “I understand that due to poor experiences you would prefer quarters adjacent to the Gellar field generator. I am willing to grant you that accommodation, but before you begin… ensuring your personal perimeter, my Arch-Militant will assess your ability to set stable charges. She insists, and as she rarely asks for anything, and what she does require is always reasonable, I insist you hold off on any perimeter securing until she is able to come down herself.”“Where is Mistral, anyway?” Jacob asked. “She’s usually here as part of the meet and greet.”Brenon hesitated, before answering, “She’s a bit occupied with other matters. Also, she’s currently helping Exa with some rather delicate repairs on the void suits in Bay 75. Apparently, some weird flea-lamprey thing ate the sealing, and they wanted to make certain everything was in order before they were required.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
As he and his team, as well as Strange’s, made their way to the quarters they had been assigned, Sarge began assessing the situation and what he’d have to do to manage the possible troubles with this Captain Keller’s very defined rules.Nubby, oddly enough, would probably be less of a problem than on the Occurrence Border. The clarity of the rules, not to mention the stated punishment associated with breaking them, should lead to the despicable little trooper’s self-preservation instincts to dominate his tendency to work his way into the largest storehouse of valuables and then steal any which weren’t bolted down.However, Sarge had no doubt that he’d have his hands full riding herd on Tink at the very least, and probably Twitch as well, at least until this ‘Mistral’ woman bothered to show up.Hopefully Strange and Steady wouldn’t be quartered halfway across the ship so Sarge could pick their brains about how best to avoid stepping on the Rogue Trader’s toes. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t bother, but something about Rogue Trader Keller made him want to avoid antagonizing her.And it wasn’t her straightforward statements about killing anyone who disobeyed certain of her rules.The quarters Sarge’s team was escorted to were… surprisingly nice. Very basic, of course, but looking to be equivalent to quarters for officer recruits rather than Guardsmen or even NCOs. Each room held two sets of bunks facing each other on each of the walls perpendicular to the door, and the obvious assignment was made at once (because Sarge was certainly not going to quarter Aimy with anyone other than Flit or Book after her experiences with the sexually harassing sleezebags of Commissariat officers she’d had to deal with in the Penal Legion camp (even if she’d found common ground with one)).Even if nothing else, it would save a lot of wear and tear on Nubby and Tink.Speaking of, those two got the room nearest to the Gellar field generator, meaning that they would have to get past everyone else to try and get out and make trouble. And Sarge was going to ask Twitch to alarm the doorway to their quarters, at least until the promised visit of ‘Mistral’, when he could take more extreme measures if necessary.Sarge would have been more concerned about two of his three biggest troublemakers being in the same room, especially as they tended to egg each other on. But at least Fumbles wouldn’t be with them.That had been a bit of a shock, considering that the psyker, for whatever reason, tended to trail after Nubby like a lost puppy. But Strange and Steady had claimed the younger psyker, citing the need to discuss a few things with him.While it would seem like Sarge should be equally worried about that, instead he was relieved that the two individuals most likely to literally explode would do so in an area separate from the rest of the team.To his surprise, Jim had offered to share the same room as Nubby and Tink. But he wasn’t going to argue. Tink and Jim had been getting long amazingly well, something about T’au vids and drones, and Jim’s augmetics meant he wasn’t as affected by Nubby’s… unique odor. He could turn his nose off if it became overwhelming.Sarge, of course, was across from Strange and Steady, in the quarters further away from the Gellar field generator, and was sharing with Doc and Twitch. Given that their demolitions trooper had become even more intensely paranoid after whatever had given him a bit of peace, and had had to be tranqed by Doc.It was another few hours, and Sarge had been afraid they’d have to tranq Twitch again, which would do nothing for the demolition trooper’s ability to demonstrate effective bomb setting and defusal, when the ship’s Arch-Militant finally got down to this section of the ship.Of course, once she was there, they all finally understood why she hadn’t been present at the meet and greet.At first, Sarge had thought the woman was dangerously overweight, particularly for a combat-focused specialist aboard a voidship.Then the way the weight was distributed registered, and the former husband and father understood why the Arch-Militant had been kept out of the way of potential danger.The woman waddling her way down the ship’s corridor with great surety and awkward grace wasn’t fat.She was very heavily pregnant.Grateful that no one had been witness to his annoyance about how long it had taken her to arrive (except for Strange and Fumbles, who at least hadn’t spoken of it), Sarge checked his first impulse, which was to go and assist her. The woman was a warrior, if not a soldier, and she would doubtless appreciate the gesture as much as Aimy would, and quite probably with equal grace.Twitch’s mind, unusually enough, seemed to be running along a similar tack as Sarge’s (at least where the Arch-Militant was concerned), and Nubby… well, was as respectful as he always was. Sarge did have to grip Doc by the shoulder and signal that intervention would not be appreciated, and Strange did the same with Fumbles.Of course, that left Tink, who apparently thought he was being helpful by blurting out, “Should you really be down here like that?”Fortunately, the woman seemed to appreciate bluntness, as she returned with an equally direct, “You must come from a terribly sheltered planet. Shipboard duties don’t put themselves on hold for private life. The only reason I’m not in armor is because I can’t actually fit myself into it at the moment.”Turning to Sarge, she gave a deep nod, “I am Arch-Militant Mistral khi’Bitter Gest, Interrogator Sargent-”“Sarge.” Given how awkward her own title sounded, even after (presumably) years holding it, Sarge wasn’t going to force the woman to keep calling him by a title that he still had to stop himself from looking around to figure out who the hell else was named ‘Sargent’ when he heard it.With the flash of a smile, she responded in kind, “Mistral, then. I understand that you also have a history with Gellar field failure, which is the only reason I am considering allowing you to set up explosives around my generator.”Everyone, except Strange and Steady, took a moment to consider the implication of the ‘also’ in Mistral’s statement.Book was the one who finally broke the silence, “Your generator?”“Yes,” Mistral responded flatly. “I am the head of security, and functional second in command of engineering, as well as having been aboard a ship which had Gellar field failure and lost the majority of my family and shipmates to it. It is my generator.”
* * *
Watching Arch-Militant Mistral running Twitch through increasingly difficult feats of expertise, both verbally and practically, Doc took a moment to actually look at the woman, rather than react to the fact that she was pregnant.Without the girth from the baby, she would be very lean, but was composed primarily of wiry muscle, rather than fat. Even pregnant, it was obvious to see the play of muscles in those lean limbs. Her face was long and angular, but despite the occasional harshness, showed more signs of good humor and a cheerful temperament than the usual grimness and severity. Her hair was a blonde so pale it was nearly white, and her eyes were blue, although not the intense blue of Silver (when the Inquisitor wasn’t using his psyker powers).She also seemed satisfied with her examination of Twitch’s demolitions skills, especially as she actually leaned over to inspect the trooper’s work more closely with every indication of fascination rather than suspicion.As she finally stood, pressing her hands into the base of her spine, she suddenly stiffened, and her eyes flew open, “Oh!”Strange’s head turned so that his ear was towards her and he tilted his head. Fumbles and Flit also looked towards her, and their eyes widened.“What’s going on?” Sarge- demanded.Strange stepped closer, taking the lead from Steady for the first time since Doc had seen the pair, “She’s just gone into full labor. I suspect she’s been having small contractions for a bit, but her water’s just broken.”Mistral nodded, before an expression of mingled pain and panic fell across her face, “New- Newt. I-I can’t deliver- on my own. The wise women and cunning men all agree. It’s- too dangerous- for the babe- s’they said. And- I- I can’t bear-”A more intense contraction caused Mistral to lose the thread of her speech, but Strange nodded, “You don’t wish for Medicae Malix to perform the operation.”After an infinite forty-five seconds, the contraction subsided enough for Mistral to nod herself, although her nods were frantic. Doc wondered why she was so terrified of her ship’s senior medical officer, but Strange seemed to understand in a way that went beyond him simply being able to read the woman’s mind.Strange turned towards Steady, who shook his head, “I can be your eyes during a difficult birth with the creatures, but this- this is a bit too unfamiliar for me. I can’t be your eyes and hands for this.”Before Doc could even begin to puzzle out what the hell that meant, Strange turned towards him, and everything but fear was driven from the medicae trooper’s head when the psyker asked, “Will you be able to do so, Doc?”“M-me? Y-you want me to…” Doc’s voice gave out for a moment, “I don’t even know how delivering babies works!”“You will not need to,” Strange said, “And I swear by Jacob’s life and my honor that I will not take over your mind. I will just make use of your eyes and hands, just as I make use of Jacob’s eyes.”Doc could hear both Sarge and Twitch step forward to protest, either verbally or more directly, over the panicked pounding of blood in his ears, but another gasp from Mistral dragged everyone’s attention back to the situation at hand.In the face of this situation, however uncomfortable the solution was to Doc, there was only one choice.“Do it. Quickly. Before I lose my nerve.”The psyker could tell that Doc was serious. At a gesture, or more probably an accompanying mental command, Book dashed towards the room Strange was sharing with Steady and Fumbles. Doc looked over, and nearly shot Twitch, because the man had just appeared at his left shoulder with Doc’s kit.Book came back with a device Doc had never thought he’d see, particularly from an Interrogator. It was a sterilization field generator.“I’ll show you why I have it later,” Strange said, which did nothing to assuage Doc’s curiosity, but Strange immediately set about raising and setting the field around Mistral, and Doc pulled out topical analgesics, forcing himself to remember what his sisters and professors had said about what shouldn’t be used on pregnant women. Eventually, he just went with the mildest, even if it might not be the most effective.Then he pulled open his medicae field surgery kit, and set out the surgical tools. Finally, just to waste a bit more time, he went and washed his hands with his strongest antiseptic for the full three minutes, despite the presence of the sterilization field.Ignoring the looks when he came back out, Doc went to his patient.The Arch-Militant had progressed unbelievably quickly, or she’d been in labor for a lot longer than it had seemed. Fortunately, she wasn’t inclined to screaming at the moment. Doc always hated it when his patients were screaming. It always felt like he was doing something very wrong, even when he knew that pain was unavoidable.Carefully, Doc knelt and pulled Mistral’s tunic up and trousers down to clear a visual field. He administered the analgesic and waited.And nearly shot Strange when the psyker approached, movement that was a bit too silent for anyone’s good. But the astropath was apparently expecting the move and pushed Doc’s sidearm down and away from anyone else before Doc could fully bring it to bear.Blushing, or at least flushing, a bit, Doc waited for Strange to say something.Fortunately for everyone’s nerves, Strange was very direct, even if what he said was far from comforting, “Stay where you are. While the analgesic is working, I’ll need to be adjusting to your mind and body.”Doc closed his eyes, and reiterated, “Do what you need to be-before I lose my nerve.”Strange bowed his head, placed his hands, not on Doc’s shoulders, but on his face. One long hand rested on Doc’s forehead, the other along the length of his face. Doc couldn’t feel anything of the psyker’s thoughts, but his eyes closed once, twice, three times, longer than a blink, but without any input from the medic.And while Doc did turn himself around, his hands performed some basic limbering exercises with equal input from Doc.There was another sound, as another contraction hit Mistral. But immediately after that, Doc caught movement out of the corner of both his eyes. He looked, and Flit and Fumbles were approaching. Strange said, using his own voice, thankfully, “Fumbles, could you please sit by Mistral’s head and keep her calm? And Queenie, Tina, act as additional pairs of hands if needed.”Fumbles sent a pulse of affirmation, Book nodded, and Flit said, “Of course.”Then Doc’s hands began moving without his input again, reaching for the forceps.As his hands used the forceps to test for the deadening of sensation, Doc, in an effort to distract himself from the situation at hand, began humming.He graduated to singing, without real thought, when his hands picked up the scalpel. “Where’s my discharge from this war?”And was jarred when Twitch and Sarge chimed in at the next line, “It’s never-never-here, my friend.”He was the only singer for the next line, “When’s the next ship off this world?”“It’s never-never-when, my friend.”“Well, what are the girls like on this world?”Doc could hear the amusement in the response, “You never-never-mind, my friend.”Aimy joined Doc for the next line, “Hell, what are the guys like on this world?”The amusement was redoubled, “You never-never-ask my friend.”And even Tink joined in at the chorus, “And time’s what we’ve got most of, and time is what we spend, and time is what we’ve got to do in Neverneverland.”Doc continued, with Twitch accompanying him, “When does the wind stop on this world?”Sarge and Aimy, “It’s never-never-still, my friend.”“Then when does the mud dry on this world?”“It’s never-never-dry, my friend.”Twitch dropped out, and Sarge picked up, in the place of Nubby who apparently wasn’t in the room, “What’s that floating in my brew?”Now Twitch and Aimy, “You never-never-know my friend.”“But why’s it swimming for its life?”“You never-never-ask my friend.”They all rejoined at the chorus, “And time’s what we’ve got most of, and time is what we spend, and time is what we’ve got to do in Neverneverland.”Doc and Aimy began the next verse, right as Doc’s hands began gently separating the low incision they had made while Doc was distracting himself, “What’s that thing there in my bunk?”Twitch, Sarge, and Tink all joined in, with great amusement, “Hope it never-never-moves, my friend“But what do I do with it in my bunk?”“You never-never-tell, my friend.”Tink’s unusually happy voice joined with Doc’s, “When are my spare parts gonna come?”“You never-never-know, my friend.”And Tink’s voice became a parody of his usual whine, “But what’ll I do without my gun?”“Just never-never-run, my friend.”As the next chorus came around, Doc’s hands seemed to have found purchase. Hopefully Book and Flit had strong stomachs, “And time’s what we’ve got most of, and time is what we spend, and time is what we’ve got to do in Neverneverland.”It was to a heartfelt, “When’s the whiskey gonna come?” from all the guardsmen that Doc’s hands pulled the baby from Mistral’s belly.Doc was about to relax into the rest of the song as his hands carefully cut the cord which had delivered nutrients to the child, “You never-never-know, my friend,” when he realized that Mistral’s abdomen was still too distended to be accounted for by her putting on weight because of the pregnancy.Pulling his attention from his eyes and what his hands were still doing, even as Flit took the child from them, Doc sang, “What are we drinking till it comes?” with everyone else. There was another baby.Sarge gave the response of, “You never-never-ask, my friend.”Doc’s hands pulled the incision back and out of the way a second time, and he, Twitch, and Tink all sang, “When’s the shipment gonna come?”Everyone rejoined with the next, “You never-never-know, my friend.”Even though he was trying to not feel what his hands were doing, Doc could still feel them carefully taking hold of the other child, and the next line, “Where did that ship get stuck this time?” came out a little strangled, at least on Doc’s part.Perhaps in response to Doc’s redoubled nerves, the next line came out a little too hearty, “You’ll never-never-guess, my friend.”Flit had finished drying the first baby, placing her- no, him- in the Arch-Militant’s waiting arm. Doc sang the next chorus, but he did keep half an eye on the mother and child, even as he sang, “And time’s what we’ve got most of, and time is what we spend, and time is what we’ve got to do in Neverneverland.”At least Strange was mostly done, from all appearances, so he didn’t need Doc’s eyes as focused on the incision at the moment. But Doc still sang with Sarge, “Where’s the generals in this war?”“They’re never-never-here my friend,” the rest of the guardsmen sang.“What are we doing till they come?” Doc thought that he could feel that the second baby was almost out.“You never-never-ask, my friend.”The baby was to the incision. Doc could feel it, and threw himself into the next call with great enthusiasm, “Where’s this hole we’re digging end?”The rest of the guardsmen joined in the response, “It’s never-never-done, my friend.”Just as his hands began the final removal, Doc began the final couplet, “But why’s it warm at the other end?”And they all concluded, “Cause Hell’s never-never-far, my friend.”Book began cleaning off the second child, and Doc could see that this baby was a little girl, even as they all sang, “And time’s what we’ve got most of, and time is what we spend, and time is what we’ve got to do in Neverneverland.”As Book brought the girl to her mother’s waiting arm and Doc’s hands began gently but quickly removing the afterbirth, which was a source of bit of rather queasy fascination for Doc, the chorus repeated, “And time’s what we’ve got most of, and time is what we spend, and time is what we’ve got to do in Neverneverland!”There was a beat, then another, of silence. Finally, as Doc’s hands began to stitch the layers of muscle, skin, and minimal fat together, Mistral smiled and said, “Thank you. Especially for such a misfortunate song. I was afraid your song would turn out to be too positive to be the first thing heard by such young ears.”After that surprising declaration there were another few beats of silence. Aimy was the one who finally broke it, “What the fuck does that even mean?”With a huff of laughter, although Doc could see she was doing her best to remain in control, Mistral explained, “There is little enough fortune, even for us voidborn, and much that can drain it. We of the Khi do not wish to use any of it up in the first minutes of a babe’s life.”Doc was dead in the middle of the curve of understanding. Fumbles seemed to have no confusion about that thought process, and neither did Twitch. Aimy, Book, and Tink seemed to have the hardest time wrapping their heads around that. Sarge seemed a bit confused, and Flit seemed to be more bothered than confused.
* * *
Newt was close to hyperfocused on the task of using Doc’s hands to sew up the large surgical incision that they’d made in Mistral’s belly. However, despite the need for intense concentration, he was still able to keep half an ear on the conversation happening around him.Once those who were able to understood what the voidborn had done her best to explain, Newt let Doc take more control over the stitching, eventually pulling out of the much younger man’s head entirely.Of course, since Jacob had, not unexpectedly, failed to return yet from the errand Newt had sent him and Nubby on, his withdrawal from Doc’s head meant he was blind now.In an effort to distract himself from his temporarily helpless state, Newt asked Mistral, “Were you planning on singing a song yourself?”There was another huff of laughter, again restrained to avoid jarring the man attempting to keep her internal organs internal, before she said, “I’d thought about it. But even before the babes’ unexpected arrival, I knew better. Can’t support properly if you’ve got a hole in your abdomen, even if it doesn’t interfere with the diaphragm in and of itself. No, Zephyr was going to sing for them.”“Anything in particular?”Now the Arch-Militant’s voice sounded puzzled, “Phaedra’s Blessed. For the family history.”“Do you mind if I take a look in your head for the tune and lyrics?”Mistral’s voice sounded a combination of amused and hopeful, but all she said was a surprisingly bland, “Sure.”Newt did, and once he had, he hummed a few bars, taking the place of the instrumental introduction before launching into the song, “Aleth Phaedra was the captain of the Blessed and her crew, and she flew and fought the Blessed in the Wars of ’82. Now the Blessed was the tightest ship ‘tween here and Alamayne and the crew of Aleth Phaedra was the same.”Despite his crippled psychic senses, Newt was familiar enough with Jacob’s mind to pick the man out from the miasma of sensation that was his ‘natural’ world, and he was approaching this area, although Newt couldn’t really tell how close he was.But that didn’t stop Newt from moving on to the next verse of the song, “On patrol in Sector Seven, keeping watch on Barber’s Sun they were jumped by three light cruisers, though they weren’t a match for one. As they came to general quarters and they sent out the alarm, Aleth must have known they’d fin’lly bought the farm.”He rarely sang for anyone but the beasts and Jacob, mostly because he couldn’t judge how his audience was taking it, at least before they went actively hostile. But Newt trusted that either Mistral, Fumbles, or Queenie would let him know if the audience decided they weren’t going to take anymore, “Now they say that Aleth Phaedra was not one to cut and run, and they say that when she fought ‘twas with the fury of a sun. But they say she made her bargain with some power of the night, that she sold her soul to win her final fight.”From the rest of his audience, Newt got the vaguest sense of ‘wasn’t expecting that’, which seemed to satisfy Mistral for some reason, “No one living saw that battle, though the fleet was quick to leave. But at the site they saw a scene no sane man would believe; three light cruisers cut to ribbons, wreckage scattered all around, but no sign of Phaedra’s Blessed could be found.”There was a suitable hush as Newt launched into the chorus, “There are stories of the Fiera, the Celeste, and Markham’s Pride. There are stories of the Horsemen and the Ladies at their side. But the tale that makes my blood run cold, ‘cause I know that it is true is the tale of Aleth Phaedra and her crew.”“I was second mate on Terra’s Dream, a freighter of the line, running loads of precious metals to the colony on Nine. I was standing second watch on that most uneventful flight,” the door opened, but Newt could tell that it was simply Jacob back from his mission and, if Nubby Nubbs decided that he was going to try and get close to the sterile field, even his teammates would have no issue with shooting him, although they’d probably aim for something not immediately fatal, “When the pirate ships appeared out of the night.”As Jacob neared, Newt didn’t let his approach distract him from the song, “Well I thought our fate was settled, for they had us four to one, and you can’t fight bloody pirates when your freighter has no gun. So we stood by to be boarded by a party yet unseen, when another ship appeared upon our screen.”Newt linked with Jacob, and vision poured back into his mind, with the warm sensation that was simply Jacob. The contrast to the song should have been either jarring or grating, but the warmth with which Mistral thought of the song made it neither, “First I thought she was a pirate, but the vector was all wrong. Then I thought the fleet had found us, but the signal wasn’t strong and our hailing brought no answer, and I felt a sudden dread for the stranger’s shields were up and glowing red.”Now that Newt could see, he sent a wordless query to Jacob as to who had accompanied them back to these quarters. “Now the courage of that single ship is shown by very few, and I thought none but a madman would fly her as she flew. She was outgunned, she was outnumbered, but a cheer came from our lips when she swung to fire on the pirate ships.”Jacob turned his head so Newt could see. Brenon was there, of course. Newt would have expected nothing less given how protective the former Sororitas was of those she considered her own. Evie was also there, with a pregnant long-haired orange cat.Or rather, feline. Newt wasn’t going to make assumptions.But now it was time for the bridge in the song, “And the stranger’s beams burned brighter than all beams I’d seen before, and the stranger’s shields were harder than the heart of any whore. And the battle rent the ether, as we watched and shook our heads, four pirate ships she cut to bloody shreds. Four pirate ships were cut to bloody shreds.”Given how the Rogue Trader of the Bitter Gest had predominately made his living, it was halfway surprising that Mistral enjoyed this song so much, “Just as quickly as it started then the fighting was all done, for the pirate ships were shattered and the stranger’s ship had won. She matched v and lay beside us, and we watched her full of awe. And she dropped her shields and this is what we saw.”Well, perhaps it wasn’t such a great mystery. There was obviously some deep familial history here, and besides, the Rogue Trader she had originally served under had, at least by reputation backed by crew reminiscence, always preferred to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. After all, one couldn’t commandeer the services of a ship’s crew of corpses.At least not without the hand of a Chaos Power.With that in mind, Newt sang the penultimate verse, “There were thirty holes clean through her, and a gash along one side, and we knew that when it happened every soul on board had died. Then she rolled to show her markings, and we read them and we knew the fate of Aleth Phaedra and her crew. She was the Blessed… and a grave for all her crew…”Everyone’s attention appropriately caught, as much by the situation as Newt’s rendition, if not more so. Obscurely satisfied, mostly because he was no real musician, Newt began the final verse, ignoring Jacob’s denial of his own denial, “Then she turned as if to leave us, but instead began to fade; first her hull, and then her bulkheads, as we trembled there afraid. But there are twenty men who’ll swear with me, the last to slip from view were the bones of Aleth Phaedra and her crew… Dead white bones of Aleth Phaedra and her crew…”After letting that last line trail off as he had heard in Mistral’s memories of this song, Newt sang the final chorus, “There are stories of the Fiera, the Celeste, and Markham’s Pride. There are stories of the Horsemen and the ladies at their sides. But the tale that makes my blood run cold, and I swear that it is true, is the tale of Aleth Phaedra and her crew. Yes, the tale of Phaedra’s Blessed and her crew. They’re out there… Aleth Phaedra and her crew….”Even once everyone had concluded the song had ended there was still silence for a good few tens of seconds.Finally, Doc broke the silence as he finished stitching the incision shut (and quality work it was, too. Far too many combat medicae took the need for haste as excusing sloppiness). He asked a surprising question of Mistral, “Is that song true?”At the confused looks shot at him from various parties, Doc clarified, especially for Evie, Brenon, and Nubby, who hadn’t been there when Mistral had requested the song and weren’t linked to Newt, “You said the song has family history associated with it. Is that because it is true?”Mistral gave a weary smile and did her best not to laugh, both because of the stitches in her belly and the babes still nursing at her breasts, “There are… mixed statements as to its truth. Various of the elders of the Bitter Gest said it was just a space fairy story. But the song came to the khi’Bitter Gest by way of my grandfather, who settled on the Bitter Gest as an end to his Ramble. He swore that not only was the song true, it happened that while he was aboard the Lament of the Maelstrom, the ship was saved from an Ork attack by Phaedra’s Blessed. And he was not a man given to fanciful tales or wild imaginings. Not even as a part of his songcraft.”Everyone took a moment to process that, before Brenon strode forward. She looked at Mistral, the babes, back at Mistral to examine Doc’s stitching, then over to Newt.After a beat, she said, “Thank you for sending Jacob and- and Nubby, with word of the immanent birth and your plans. I wish…” Brenon let that trail off.Newt understood what she wasn’t allowing herself to say. She wished that Mistral’s prearranged plans could have been activated, but they both understood that Newt wouldn’t have acted if there had not been a significant risk to both Mistral and the babes.And Newt also understood that, had he not sent word of what he had planned, she would have filleted him, and probably Doc as well. But they didn’t need to speak of that, because he had taken the appropriate steps to maintain their positive relationship.Speaking of pregnancy, Newt bent down and offered a hand to the orange feline, who had apparently decided it was safe to approach him.Her approach, not to mention the way her purr soothed the Warp as it reverberated through it as well as the physical world, told Newt what this creature was, and he felt Jacob give him a sharp look as Newt couldn’t contain his excitement. He let the creature nose his offered hand, before turning his attention towards Evie, “She’s a gyrinx, isn’t she?”The Dawnlight’s astropath transcendent answered, cautiously, “Ye-es…” She paused, clearly thinking, before saying, “You’re probably the best man to ask this of. Do you know how she can be pregnant, when there are no other felines of any kind aboard the Dawnlight?”“That’s the fascinating thing about gyrinxes,” Newt said, grinning with the enthusiasm beasts of any kind brought to him, “They’re all female. Or rather, all the physical members of the species are female. The andrinxes, the males of the species, only exist as a Warp ghost, for lack of a better term. They aren’t daemons, but they aren’t corporeal entities. Only when a gyrinx is bonded to a psyker can she amplify her mental presence enough to attract the attention of an andrinx when she is in season. The female kits are always gyrinxes, physical creatures like their mother. The male kits are always incorporeal andrinxes. Gyrinx physiology, not to mention their milk, is a truly fascinating thing, especially as before one gives birth, you can identify how many ‘rinx kits there are, both gyrinx and andrinx, but once they are born, only they gyrinx kits are corporeal. Just think of what characteristics are necessary to feed both physical and noncorporeal young, and you’d-”Jacob physically and mentally elbowed Newt in the ribs, and he realized that everyone had a sort of glazed expression on their faces, which had probably occurred about… halfway through the lecture in most cases.“-anyway, that’s how she can be pregnant without any apparent male feline around. What’s her name?”Blinking her sightless eyes, Evie answered, “Eos.”Newt smiled, “Fitting, I suppose, for a golden colored feline aboard the Dawnlight of the Ancients.”Ignoring the renewed confused looks from people who hadn’t had the psychic crash course of insanely ancient Terran mythology that had been inflicted on him, Newt stood.Eos proceeded to rub herself all across Newt’s legs, detoured to Jacob’s for a less thorough, but still enthusiastic, semi-passive scent marking, before making her way back to Evie looking proud as only a ginger feline can.
* * *
Newt was so taken with Eos’s expression of feline pride that he, as usual, failed to notice that he was wearing the human equivalent, and making almost everyone very uncomfortable when they considered the similarities.In an effort to distract himself from that, Jacob asked, “So what happens now?”Of course, the assorted sharp glances that shot his direction weren’t any more comfortable than Newt’s similarity of expression to the gyrinx.Eventually, Brenon answered, “Well, we’re going to get Mistral off the floor of the corridor leading to the Gellar Field generator and back to her and her husband’s quarters for one. Then we’ll all go about our business until you start your usual tour of the messes. After that, I don’t-”“They’ll all be coming to the dedication ceremony, of course,” Mistral’s voice was weaker than usual, but strong enough to carry across the corridor to all parties.Brenon paused, looking down at her Arch-Militant for a moment before blankly asking, “They will?”“Of course they will,” Mistral answered, “Newt and Jacob would be in any case, given their significant history with the Dawnlight-” Jacob felt a comforting warmth at that, and Newt ducked his head to hide the blush heating his pale cheeks, “-although their teams may or may not have earned the distinction on their own accounts before this. And Sarge’s team has more than earned themselves spots. Not only did Doc act as Newt’s hands and eyes while Jacob and Nubby were fetching you, and the rest gave the babes a proper song.”She was human enough to wrinkle her nose as Nubby’s… unique odor penetrated her brain, and amended, “Although Nubby will have to be thoroughly scrubbed before he’s allowed entrance.”Fascinatingly, Nubby barely uttered a word of protest. Maybe the babies were working some sort of magic on him.Newt smiled, and sent, :Only the magic that any young creature possesses.:Well, young of any type were indeed charming, even murtlap kits. The adults were beaver sized tentacular rats that only Newt Scamander could find beautiful, but once their fur came in and before they went through a major growth spurt, Jacob could admit they were cute.Shaking his head, Jacob could feel that Newt wanted to see the babies more closely, an emotion Jacob himself seconded. Turning toward the new mother and her children, Jacob looked for both of them.Both babies had full heads of hair and were fair-haired, the little boy with a shock of the almost white-blond his mother possessed, while the girl was a blonde that was almost silver, likely coming from her father. Both had the blue eyes common to infants, across species no less. And both were light of weight, even for twins, although they were both longer than one would expect at the same time.That wasn’t terribly surprising. Mistral was a tall woman, after all, and given that their father was likely voidborn as well, so was he in all probability.Voidborn came in two body types, very tall and very short, although both were equally lean.Just then, a man with the same messy silver-blond hair as the baby girl and a frame as lean as Mistral’s came bursting in, looking more than a bit panicked. He almost ran over Newt, would have if Jacob hadn’t pulled his focused Interrogator out of the way.“Mistral! They- they said-” he began babbling.Before he could do more than gibber for a few seconds Mistral fondly said, “Tez.”The man came to a halt so absolute he almost literally froze. Mistral smiled, and whispered in the sudden silence, “Breathe.”She waited until he followed the request. Once he was, indeed, breathing, Mistral began, “Tez, these are Interrogator Scamander’s and Interrogator Sargent’s teams. Newt, Sarge, Jacob, all, this is Tez, formally Tezcatlipoca khi’Adamanta et Obsidian.”Tez looked around the circle of Inquisitorial personnel and almost, but not quite, paled. Before he could make his escape, though, Mistral spoke again, “They’re not here to pry any secrets out of us. Brenon wouldn’t allow it in any case.”A faintly embarrassed expression flashed across Tez’s face, before it smoothed and he inclined his head in a display of humility and apology in one. “As you say, Mistral. W-who are you intending to nominate as friend-fathers and friend-mothers for them?”Looking up at Tez, she suddenly smiled, “I believe Newt and Doc will stand as friend-fathers on my behalf, and Evie and Henix will, of course, stand as friend-mothers.”Blinking, Tez looked utterly baffled, but understanding rapidly flickered across his face and he said, “Then in that case, I shall nominate Jacob and-” he paused, before dropping to his knees beside his wife, pulling out a die. He threw it, and then his gaze flicked from man to man. Finally, he said, “You.” And nodded towards Twitch.Twitch looked as stunned as everyone else likely felt. Except for Newt, who was projecting a controlled aura of ‘that’s what I thought’.Jacob thought back on Tez’s actions, and projected, Is he a seer?Newt sent a vague smile, before saying, :Technically no. He doesn’t have the power to open any sort of a rift in the Warp or influence that realm beyond that of any sentient being. He just has… a strong sense of intuition.:Well, that wasn’t unexpected for a voidborn. They tended to have strong psychic talents in every line Jacob had ever heard of. And he’d heard of a lot over the last sixty-odd years acting as an astropath’s eyes. And were very attuned to diverting the currents of fortune that ran through the universe to their benefit.Tez continued, “And Lady Bri and Explorator Exa will act as friend-mothers on my behalf as well.”Queenie spoke then, “Why not Captain Keller?”Mistral answered readily, “The Captain is the guide of the entire ship’s destiny. She, or he, cannot spend the influence to ease an individual’s way through life. And a friend-parent cannot be a member of the Clan. It is more usual for those of other shipboard clans to act as friend-parents, but it is far from necessary.”“What- what is- expected of a friend-parent,” Doc asked. Jacob had much the same question, and everyone else who had been nominated and was in the room looked grateful as well.Although Mistral’s energy was clearly beginning to flag, she still answered, “Your presence at the dedication. Ritual responses that will be gone over between now and the time. Ceremonial gifts based on perceived need, there’s a number of examples. I’ll have Zephyr bring you a list. Nothing obviously dangerous, of course,” which was aimed almost entirely at Twitch, “Or terribly expensive. It’s all about giving them a good start in life, and someone to watch out for them outside of the Clan. Give them a place to go should they be stranded without kin. And to speak for them to the Omnissiah. Or God-Emperor.”As always, there was a slight pause when Mistral spoke of the Emperor that was never there, even when she spoke of the Omnissiah for all that they were considered one and the same. Also as always, Jacob wondered what that was about, but he’d yet to find an appropriate time to ask.Before anyone could ask more questions, Sarge and Newt both cleared their throats at the same time. They paused. Sarge gave Newt a bit of a wary side-eye and Newt cocked his head, his equivalent movement. Then Newt indicated that Sarge should speak.With a vaguely surprised expression on his face, Sarge did, “I think, Mistral, you need to go back to your quarters. Will you require any assistance?” With the question, he broadened his attention to include Brenon and Tez.Brenon answered readily, “Just getting her up. We brought a stretcher down with us.”