Black Horizons
By SFaccountant
Chapter 13
The Righteous and The Lost
Mining Nexus Ishrem
Deck 3-9
WARNING: Gamma-level quarantine zone – infestation marker present
DO NOT UNSEAL
“Dang, how long has it been since anyone’s been in here?”
“The air is breathable. But very stale. I think this section has been cut off from normal ventilation flow.”
“Standard procedure for biohazards. Wonder what this section was used for before they cut it off? Might find something useful left over.”
“You’ve only been here for a few hours and already you’re trying to pick the place clean, eh?”
“Old habits die hard. Anything they left in here they gave up for lost ages ago. They won’t miss it.”
The steady clunking of power armor boots followed the mares of Phage Squadron while they explored the abandoned section of Ishrem station. The lumens were out entirely in these rooms, and Breezy Blight and Rot Blossom led the way with a pair of high-powered lumen torches build into their armors’ shoulders. Poison Kiss used a light spell to illuminate the space around her, while Erin Whyd used a tiny hand lumen that had seen extensive use in the depths of Ulaisse.
The abandoned rooms were very dusty, with many boxes and crates scattered about. A table to the side had a dirty plate sitting on it, the contents hardened and decayed to a gray crust. Clearly this space had been evacuated very quickly before it was sealed off.
“Ooh, look! Webbing!” Blossom said brightly, casting her lumen against some pale, silky fibers stretched over a corner.
“Huh. So, what, the infestation is spiders?” Breezy asked hesitantly.
“While us humans tend to have a strong fear of little crawly things, I don’t think they’d close off this many rooms over spiders,” Erin assured them, stepping past Breezy Bright.
Erin shined her lumen over the stretch of fibers, squinting at it. It was surprisingly thick for what looked like a cobweb, although that was mostly due to the layer of dust that had collected over it, making it look less like a web and more like a dirty sheet. The space under the webbing was empty except for a rough oblong shape, and after a few seconds she backed away.
“There’s something under there.”
“Should I gas it?” Breezy asked, the jaw plate in her helmet snapping open.
“Breezy! Simmer down,” Kiss chided, trotting past her. “There’s no need to make a fuss, the visor reads nil. Here.”
Kiss levitated the plague knife out of the sheathe on her side and then swiped it across the webbing. Then she floated her magic light over the dark object that had been hidden under it. It was a husk: a dry exoskeleton left over from some kind of large insect. Its legs and a long tail were curled up, forming a ball of dusty chitin.
“Awww, it’s dead,” Blossom said sadly.
“What is it?” Breezy asked. “My visor scan is just saying ‘insufficient data.’ I don’t think I can identify it in that state.”
“Neither can I. Doesn’t look like any insect I’ve ever seen. I’m no expert, though. Don’t even know all the different bugs crawling around the underhive on Ulaisse,” Erin admitted. “It looks big enough that it could have been a threat if there were more of them.”
“Well if it’s dead then there’s no need for a quarantine anymore, is there?” Breezy asked.
“Let’s give the whole place a gander before we decide there’s nothing to worry about, yeah?” Kiss asked. “Blossom, you’ve got point. Breezy, if you DO see something that needs to die, use your bolter first rather than fouling up the place, hear?”
“That’s not very Nurgle-y of you,” Breezy chided.
“Stuff it! Miss Whyd doesn’t need to start her new life in space with a fresh case of lung mites!” the unicorn snapped back.
“I appreciate the thought,” Erin assured her. She was digging through a small crate to the side and picking through the contents. “Huh. Grenades. These could sell for something.”
“Ooh, autoguns!” Blossom cast her torch lumen on the wall, illuminating a brace that held three semi-automatic rifles in lockup. The weapons were in visibly poor condition, never maintained well even before they had been abandoned indefinitely to this place. “There’s some armor on the other wall. Is this an armory?”
“Looks more like a guard office. They probably have a few of them scattered throughout this rock,” Kiss explained. She walked up next to Blossom and shined a light on the next two doors. “Let’s see… that looks like the loo. And this one… looks like a lockup, maybe? There’s no tag and just a little lock icon on the door.”
“Well I don’t think we need to use the restroom and I don’t think I can get those guns free without better tools, so let’s see what’s behind the mystery door,” Erin volunteered.
Like everything else in this section, the door was unpowered. Kiss slammed a boot onto the manual override sleeve next to the doorway, magnetizing the sole and pulling the sleeve free. Erin reached over her head and pulled the lever, grunting slightly at the resistance from the rusted cogs in the wall. With a squeak the door shifted in the frame, and then Erin was able to pull it open entirely.
“WHOAA……” Blossom stood in front of the doorway, instantly enchanted.
“NOPE.” Erin shuddered, instantly repelled.
Erin started to close the door again, but Rot Blossom slammed a boot down in the doorway, blocking it open. Kiss and Breezy blinked in surprise at their reactions, and then shifted over to see what was in the next room.
Whatever it was intended to be in the past, the room was currently in a state of halted construction. Plates of metal and sheets of plastic were stacked against the walls, half of which were bare rock that had been hollowed out. Cables hung slack from ceilings and walls, rebar stuck out of unfinished sections, and blocks of rockcrete were bolted into the deck for furniture and installations that had long been abandoned. None of that, however, had provoked such fascination and disgust from the intruders.
Near the rear of the room was a cluster of what were obviously eggs. They were colored like rich amber and curiously phosphorescent; the eggs themselves lit much of the area in a soft, golden light. Most of them were only a bit bigger than chicken eggs, but the translucent shell allowed the explorers to see a coiled dark shape within each of them. The egg clusters were piled atop heaps of decayed matter, and scraps of bone and shredded cloth were scattered around them.
“Okay I can see the crux of your difference of opinion here,” Kiss admitted. “Miss Whyd, you stay back. This is where our Chaos shenanigans come in clutch.”
Blossom raced ahead, squealing in delight, but Erin looked back toward the exit nervously. “Can I close the door?”
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t close the door,” Kiss replied. “It’s not easy to open without power or hands.”
“I really want to close the door,” Erin protested, hiding behind the wall.
“You were completely fearless a minute ago,” Breezy pointed out, “are these really that scary?”
“I was fearless when faced with a single dead alien bug and I am very scared of the many live alien bugs, yes! I’m not sure what’s confusing about that!” Erin retorted. “I’ve done these sorts of explorations a lot and ‘glowing insect hive on top of human remains’ is a very reliable indicator of danger!”
“Okay, fair, but we don’t know they’re alive for sure,” Kiss reasoned.
“They sure are!” Blossom said happily. “Ooh, this big one is pulsing! I think it’s reacting to my presence!”
Kiss grimaced. “Well isn’t she just chuffed. All right, close the door. Just don’t run off. We’ll tell you when it’s safe.”
A horrible squealing noise came from the wall as Erin did exactly that, slamming it closed behind her. On the other side of the room, Blossom was giggling with delight as one of the egg pods started to break. The creature within the translucent shell was squirming vigorously, struggling to escape.
“It’s hatching! You guys! This is so cool!” Rot Blossom said, absolutely enthralled. Her helmet disengaged and the pieces folded away behind her head and into her gorget.
Poison Kiss shared a glance with Breezy Blight, and then she addressed the earth pony. “Hey, uh, Blossom? I know we really aren’t the technical sort and Chaos magic isn’t the most predictable anyway, but are you sure these bugs can be… ah… domesticated like the usual lot?”
“None of my bugs are domesticated, Kiss! That’s not how it works!” Blossom leaned down on her belly, cooing in delight as the pod split open at the top. Viscous ooze started draining from the breach, and the creature inside started to nose its way out.
“Look, what I’m asking is: are you SURE you’ll be able to control them? I’m guessing the bobby here didn’t turn this place over to the bugs just because the eggs clash with the wallpaper!” the unicorn demanded. She unholstered her boltgun, levitating it on a cloud of murky yellow.
“Yeah, of course I can!” Blossom said, following the insect’s progress very closely with her nose almost pressed against the pod’s shell. “Eventually.”
“Eventually?! When is eventually?!” Kiss demanded.
Blossom didn’t seem to be listening, as she was too busy staring in fascinated awe. The strange insect finished crawling free of the egg and unfurled its legs and wings, taking a few seconds to scrape off the slime. It resembled a big dragonfly with thick, pointed legs and a very long tail that ended with thickened stinger. Its four glassy wings were longer than the main body, and its eyes had a bright green tint to them.
“Here you go, little one,” the earth pony cooed, holding out her boot next to it. “Aren’t you a handsome thing?”
The insect clambered up onto her greaves and she lifted it up to her face. Its mouthpieces – obviously sharp but not especially dangerous-looking – quivered in the air, and a pair of antennae whipped forward and tickled her nose.
“What is that thing? My helmet gizmo’s got nothing,” Kiss mumbled while Blossom nuzzled the alien. Her visor had bracketed the insect, but no useful data-screed emerged to identify it.
“Well there’s gotta be a ton of alien bugs out in the galaxy, right? I wouldn’t expect the suit cogitator to know most of them,” Breezy reasoned.
“Well what if this is the sort of bug we should be squashing on sight? Shouldn’t the tactical visor be letting us know if it’s dangerous?”
“Kiss! No!” Blossom protested, whipping her head around. She was presumably glaring at the other mares, but her eyes were completely covered by her mane as usual. “Put your gun away! They’re fine!” Behind her more of the larger eggs were starting to break open, and more newly hatched aliens were squirming free of the nest and cleaning their wings.
“Blossom, I have the UTMOST faith in your weird bug control powers; don’t misunderstand me,” Kiss replied firmly, “but that thing is huge and scary and if it touches me I’m going to-“
The alien’s tail suddenly whipped forward, driving its barbed tip deep into Blossom’s neck. Breezy and Kiss screamed, each of them recoiling and swinging their guns up to point at the earth pony. Blossom recoiled in return at seeing her companions aim at her, and the alien had to jump onto her ear to keep its footing.
“I knew it!” Erin shouted in horror from behind the door. “They’re going to kill us all!”
“No! No, they’re not! Everyone just CALM DOWN!!” Rot Blossom shouted, shielding her face and her insect passenger with a foreleg. “Everything is fine! Stop screaming!”
“The bloody thing stung you!” Kiss retorted, although she did lift the muzzle of her boltgun up to point at the ceiling instead of her squadmate.
“Relax! It’s just implanting a larva!” Blossom said, exasperated. “Lots of my bugs do that, it’s part of the symbiosis!” The alien’s body pulsed, and something was squeezed through the lengthy tube of its tail into the wound in Blossom’s neck.
“… Oh. Oh, okay.” Breezy dropped her gun back to the floor, exhaling heavily. “Sorry about that.”
“Is that better? That sounds worse!” Erin shouted.
“Look, try not to think about it,” Kiss replied behind her. Then she watched as three more of the alien bugs flew past Blossom and started hovering in front of her and Breezy. Their eyes glowed gently with a color similar to the eggs. “Hey, Blossom? The larva thing isn’t how these fellows say hello, is it?”
“Well, no, it’s how they begin turning victims into fodder for their nests,” Blossom admitted, “but it doesn’t work like that with me, obviously!”
“I’m not worried about you, I… I, uh…”
Poison Kiss blinked rapidly as her vision started to blur. Strange colors leaked from the insect’s eyes and whipped about in the air, like neon inks flooding onto a canvas that wasn’t there. Rot Blossom started to shrink into the distance, as if she and Kiss were being pulled apart by a force unseen. The buzzing sound of the alien’s wings intensified, seeming to flood through her helmet’s aural filtering.
“Thuh… uh… nngh…” Kiss kept staring at the bug’s eyes as they got closer, mesmerized. Her horn sparked every couple of seconds, and she felt twinges of sensation that she recognized as magic energy flowing. The rest of her thoughts and senses were rapidly turning to mush.
Breezy Blight started to make insensible blubbering noises just a foot away and swaying back and forth on her legs while another alien hovered above her head. The wings of her flight pack twitched up and down without activating, as if subject to impulses that weren’t quite reaching the rest of the pegasus. Another alien bug landed on her shoulder pad and then clambered up onto her helmet. Its legs poked at the various parts of the armor: the visor lens, the cap plate, the aural dish. Then one of its legs scratched at the rubber shielding between the mare’s neck and the gorget. Its tail curled upward, positioning to strike.
A knocking sound came from the door. “Hey… Kiss? Are you okay? What’s happening?”
The insect hovering in front of breezy was suddenly tapped sharply by Blossom’s boot. It immediately whirled about and started buzzing around the earth pony’s head.
“All right, knock it off girls,” Rot Blossom chided, walking up to Breezy and nudging the alien clinging to her helmet. It promptly jumped onto Blossom’s head, its mouthparts making an irritated clicking sound.
Breezy yelped in surprise as her senses suddenly snapped back into focus. She looked back and forth rapidly, trying to ascertain what had happened and if she was in danger. Meanwhile, Blossom poked at the insect hovering in front of Kiss with her nose. It immediately broke away and landed on her shoulder plate, and then Kiss stumbled backward.
“Wh-What… the hay… was THAT?” Poison Kiss gasped.
“Not sure. They looked like they hypnotized you for a second there. Maybe some sort of primitive psychic ability?” Blossom asked while the four insects scuttled about on her head and back.
“Insect PSYKERS? You’re telling me there’s a clutch of man-eating, psychic bugs on this station?! On the other side of this door?!” Erin shouted.
“RELAX. I have things under control,” Blossom said, her ear twitching as one of the aliens nibbled at it. “Besides, there are only four of them. The rest of these eggs aren’t close to hatching yet.”
“But when they DO hatch, they’ll immediately hypnotize the first person they see and infest them with flesh-eating larvae?” Breezy asked.
“Well… yeah, that’s a pretty fair assessment,” Blossom admitted. “I don’t know much about their life cycle yet, but that seems to be a big part of it, sure.”
“Champion. So now what do we do with them?” Kiss asked. “I’d advise wiping them out, but you’re not going to do that, are you?”
“Of course not!” Blossom gasped, clearly offended. “They’re my babies and I love them! I’m going to take them home!”
“This is a deeply unhealthy attachment to a bunch of monstrous aliens you just met,” Erin mentioned, still shouting from the next room.
“We’re with Nurgle, lass. ‘Unhealthy’ comes with the territory,” Kiss chuckled. Then she looked over to a stack of metal crates on the side of the room. “Breezy, you and Blossom start packing the eggs in those boxes. I’ll punch a few holes in one of them and we can use that one for the hatchlings.”
“I have these ones under control! You don’t have to cage them!” Blossom insisted. The aliens clinging to her vibrated their wings in tandem, as if trying to verbalize agreement.
“We do have to cage them, because that’s the only way Miss Whyd is opening the exit again,” Kiss explained. “She’s liable to weld us in here otherwise.”
“I have already found a plasma torch!” Erin assured them.
Blossom sighed, her ears hanging down. “All right, fine.” She lifted up a boot again, and one of the aliens bounced off of her head to land on it, facing the bushy-haired earth pony. “I’m sorry girls, but you’re going to have to stay in a box until we get back to the ship. Be good and I’ll get something for you to eat when we get there, okay?”
“I hope they can eat something besides humans and ponies,” Breezy mumbled, carrying a metal crate on her back.
“Can it and get this sorted,” Kiss commanded, drawing her plague knife with her telekinesis. “Looks like we’re bringing home some souvenirs.”
Mining Nexus Ishrem
Spire 3, primary spool
A squad of five Iron Warriors marched up the road to one of the columns that spanned the height of the cavern. Their gait was lax and their weapons weren’t drawn, but the locals nonetheless made themselves scarce as soon as they saw the gleaming power armor or heard the rattle of weapons and ammunition. A few residents dared to peek out from behind windows, corners, or other forms of cover, and as the Chaos Space Marines ascended to the spire base a much more interesting convoy followed them.
Solon led the way, his chassis clanking noisily and his pointed legs leaving a trail of dents in the flooring plates. Behind him was Norris Delgan, looking very out of place with his pressed coat and pony attendant trotting along behind him. Jewel Bracer was wearing her usual vest and respirator mask, but had been given a flat-topped cap and boots to complete the outfit. She also had a pair of plasteel cases hanging on her flanks like saddlebags. Behind the Trademaster was a train of Dark Techpriests and attendant servitors, although groups of them were breaking off and heading to other parts of the station. Gaela was among the tech-clergy, although rather than a clanking servitor in her wake she had Spike clinging to her servo harness.
“Is it just me, or do the locals seem more… on edge than usual?” Delgan asked. “Usually they all gawk openly at the Techpriests and some bold rabble even approach to beg favors. They’re all in hiding now.”
“They’ve alwaysh been shkittish in my experience,” Solon remarked, another blast of exhaust spiraling from his smokestacks.
“My Lord.” Gaela sped up to walk beside the Warsmith and then bowed her head. “On our last visit you still possessed your daemonic gift of terrifying presence. That may account for much of the reaction on previous occasions.”
“Ah. Good point,” Solon admitted, leaning back to look at the massive spire that housed the station’s leadership suites. “Maybe there wash a violent incident recently. There wash a lot more hull shcarring than I remember on the way in.”
“You mean there was some kind of battle here?” Jewel Bracer asked, quirking an eyebrow.
“Fights break out all the time on Ishrem, although they differ widely in scale,” Delgan explained. “Obviously there’s a number of drunken brawls, but at times an entire crew is implicated in something and the greater part of the station turns against them. And then there are the occasions when the slavers get a little too bold.”
Solon laughed, which sounded somewhat like a truck backfiring. “Do you remember when they captured that Dark Acolyte and actually tried to shell him back to ush?! Shtrung up the entire lot of them on the tertiary shpire and had the mercsh practice shniping! Ha ha! Maybe THAT’SH why they’re sho nervoush!”
“Yeah, I think that would do it,” Jewel agreed, her mask obscuring her grimacing face.
A static noise erupted from behind them, and Gaela glanced over her shoulder. Kaelith was scuttling past the other Dark Techpriests, and they were all breaking off toward their respective work sites. The Dark Magos loomed up, and Gaela briefly made eye contact with the cluster of glowing sensoria under his hood.
“… I must depart for my objective zone,” she declared, turning back to Solon and bowing. “Please excuse me, Warsmith.”
“Of courshe. Have fun!” Solon said. He waved as she departed, much to the embarrassment of his escorts.
“I should also take my leave,” Delgan announced, snapping his fingers. Jewel Bracer stepped up to him, and the man and pony bowed their heads to the Warsmith. “I have much to do at the scrap and weapons markets and several contacts have already reached out.”
“Are we going to visit the slave market too?” Jewel asked, her ears flipping down.
“No, we won’t,” the Trademaster assured her.
“You already have shufficient labor from Gessheim?” Solon asked while Kaelith crawled up next to him.
“Yes, we do. But it’s mostly because I saw the Equinoughts marching that way,” Delgan’s expression remained perfectly disinterested, but Solon laughed again.
“What does that mean? What is Princess Twilight going to do with them?” Jewel Bracer asked, looking between Delgan and Solon.
“You can ashk her about it when they get back from their little errand,” Solon replied, heading up toward the spire again, “but I imagine there’sh another fight brewing in Ishrem.”
Mining Nexus Ishrem
Reactor pit 7 (inactive)
“Sub-routine 9 engaged. Cease hostile action or-“
Applejack’s tail whipped forward, striking the servitor in the face while it lumbered around to get its heavy stubber aimed toward the attackers. It reeled backward, and then the farmer swung the tusks of her helmet for its leg, sweeping it off its feet.
“Karkin’ xeno scum!” screamed a man through a metal face mask while he reloaded a laspistol from behind a corner.
Rainbow Dash flew by, laughing while her multi-colored mane whipped about in the air. Autogun fire trailed after her hopelessly, the guards emptying their magazines while she rocketed up and out of sight.
The men ducked back down to get their bearings while pulse fire zipped by overhead. One started gesturing to the ramp out of the pit, while another started blind-firing over the edge of the defunct cooling linkage. A moment later a photon grenade landed between them, and the men screamed as their vision went white.
“Reposition!” Jerriha shouted, stepping out behind a cell. She fired her pulse carbine at the man who was still blind-firing, taking his arm off at the elbow. Three Fire Warriors dashed into the pit, rushing to get a better firing angle.
A scream came from above, and a smoldering human body slammed onto the vent hood behind her. Jerriha winced from the impact, turned, and fired a single shot to ensure the victim was put out of her misery.
“What happened to just checking the place out to map its security?!” Jerriha shouted while loading another photon grenade in the underbarrel launcher.
“I’m sorry! Things escalated really fast! I’M SORRY!!” Twilight shouted from above. Her horn flashed, and the armored alicorn teleported to deal with some men on the other side of the pit’s rim.
“They shouldn’t have tried to buy me!” Rarity snarled, slicing into another guard with her power sword.
“They wanted to know if you were for sale! They’re slavers! What did you expect?!” A few bullets struck the plate above her head, and she ducked back behind the cage.
“It was still offensive! And that PRICE!” Rarity spun around and booted her opponent over the pit’s edge, sending him hurtling onto an uplink node. “Do I LOOK like an 80 throne mare to you?!”
“Ain’t that a lot of money in bits?!” Applejack shouted while she charged another position.
“FOUR DIGITS IS THE FLOOR AND I WILL HEAR NOTHING MORE ABOUT THIS.” Rarity’s plasma gun shrieked, steam pouring from its induction coils. Three blazing projectiles struck a length of upright metal casing serving as a barricade, burning molten holes right through it. A corpse slumped to the floor a moment later, smoke billowing from its chest.
“Guys, they’re pulling up something in the back!” Rainbow Dash announced, swooping down into the pit before pulling up and flying back out. “It’s in a cage and sounds mad!”
“Is it mad at US, though?” Rarity shouted from behind an empty coolant tank.
“Doesn’t make as much difference as you’d think!” Jerriha replied, shouting up from within the pit.
Twilight shot a blast of lightning from her horn, and the purple arc struck a shuddering gun turret that was trying to track her. The control regulator blew out, and Twilight galloped past the smoldering remains to approach the new threat. An elevator was slowly climbing up to the main floor carrying a heavy, rusted shipping crate and the apparent owner of the slave market.
“Xenos scum,” snarled the man through the respirator grafted to his jaw. He rushed to the back of the container and grabbed a release lever. “All you’re good for is killing each other! HYAAH!” He pulled the lever down, and a loud creak came from the container’s door hatch.
“Give it up!” Twilight shouted. The force harmonizer floated off her back and shuddered, and then the bright purple energy blade erupted from between two of its poles. “Your guards can’t beat us! It’s over!”
The container door flew open, and a dark blur erupted from the vessel. A paw with thick, sharp claws swatted the harmonizer out of the air, throwing it into an empty waste feed. Twilight barely had time to recoil before a second swipe slammed into her, throwing her across the pit and crashing into an empty pen. The bars gave way on impact, luckily proving to be much weaker than the ceramite shell covering the alicorn’s face.
Twilight’s assailant stood up straight and roared. The sound was low and gutteral, but the sheer volume caused the Fire Warriors and ponies of the 38th Company to flinch. Rarity winced and turned away, as she hadn’t brought her helmet to cut the incoming noise. Pinkie galloped up behind her and stopped at the edge of the reactor pit.
“SPACE KITTY!!” Pinkie shouted gleefully while the alien creature snarled.
It was indeed shaped like a feline, although it more resembled an enormous panther than any house cat. About five feet tall at the shoulders and more than twice as long, the beast had a leathery-looking hide of dark purple riddled with bony spines along the back and tail. Its head possessed no eyes or ears but its jaws were quite conventional, boasting thick, curved teeth with elongated fangs. It’s tail was long and whip-like, with a crown of especially large spines near the end. Shackles were locked onto each of its shins, but they weren’t attached to anything; loose chains with obvious damage trailed behind each leg, speaking to previous attempts at restraint that failed. The only apparent means of controlling or containing the creature was a hefty metal collar with several blinking lumens and a very conspicuous battery pack on it.
“OUT OF THE PIT!! High ground, now!” Jerriha bellowed, taking aim with her carbine. The Fire Warriors broke for ladders and ramps that led out of the vast reactor berth, and Jerriha launched a photon grenade at the alien slave-beast.
The grenade struck the ground right in front of the animal, exploding with an intense burst of light and a deafening ring that echoed through the cavern. The beast didn’t so much as flinch. It sniffed the air as the visitors scrambled for better ground, and then suddenly darted toward the nearest Fire Warrior.
The soldier leapt onto a ladder, only for a massive paw to slam into his back and tear him back to the floor a moment later. The claws pierced the back of the Tau’s body armor and dug into the flesh beneath, and the Fire Warrior screamed as he was pinned to the ground.
With an agitated growl, the beast opened his jaws, only for an energy beam to latch onto its collar and tug it sharply to the side. Its jaws snapped in surprise and confusion, sending ropes of drool splashing onto the Tau below.
“Hey! Pick on somepony yer own size!” Applejack taunted, pulling back on the gravity lash. The beast lurched to the side, lifting off of the soldier, and then it turned to snarl at the heavily armored mare.
Applejack turned sharply as the alien pounced, catching the paw against her shoulder pad. The force of the impact pushed her several feet across the deck, but she retained her footing. The claws bit hard into the ceramite shielding and then the other paw raked across Applejack’s back, throwing sparks into the air while the outer armor layers were rent apart.
“Get up! Get out of the pit now! When you have an angle on it, give me volley fire!” Jerriha shouted, grabbing the Fire Warrior that had been attacked and pulling him to his feet. Blood ran down the back of his armor, but the soldier staggered over to the ladder and then started climbing.
“Wait!” Fluttershy’s voice suddenly came from Jerrihas’s commlink. “Please, don’t shoot it! I can stop the alien kitty!”
“What? How?” the Fireblade demanded while she jumped onto the ladder herself and began to ascend.
“I don’t have time to explain! I just need you to get that collar off of it! Uh, that is, if it’s not too much trouble-“
“It is! It is WAY too much trouble!”
“Pleeeeeeeease?”
“Fine, whatever! Don’t blame me if it eats the orange pony because of you!” Jerriha shouted. “Fire Warriors! Target the neck restraint! Hold fire until you can get a precise shot on the collar!”
Applejack threw her head to the side, punching into the alien’s leg with the tusks of her helmet. The feline beast recoiled, spitting out a few chunks of ceramite while it snarled.
“You wanna taste some more Apple?! Come back here, varmint!” the farmer shouted, advancing on the beast.
It swiped with both of its front paws in quick succession, knocking Applejack to each side while carving jagged scars into her armor plating. When it jumped back again, however, the mare just huffed in annoyance and plowed forward again.
“Orange pony! Try to pin it down! We’ll shoot off the collar!” Jerriha shouted.
“Ah have a name, ya gray hooligan!” Applejack snapped, firing her gravity lash onto the alien’s collar.
The lumens on the device blinked rapidly, and then the creature roared as a new flood of psycho-catalyzer stimms surged through its body. A pair of pulse shots from above struck it in the neck near the collar, searing through skin and muscle and singing the battered metal of its restraint. This immediately pushed the alien deeper into its frenzy, and the next swipe of its claws knocked Applejack clean off her hooves.
“The collar! I said shoot the collar!” Jerriha spat while the alien jumped on the heavily armored mare.
“I am TRYING! The wretched thing won’t stay still!” the nearest Fire Warrior retorted, kneeling at the railing around the pit’s edge.
Rather than arguing further, Jerriha dropped onto one knee and switched her pulse carbine to single-fire mode. The short gun was far less accurate than the rifles, but the Fireblade nonetheless extended the tactical scope and waited for her moment.
Applejack unleashed her heavy flamer at the feet of the alien, spreading it along the floor and hoping to get some room. The eyeless creature leapt away in an instant, neatly dodging the tongue of flame and incidentally the next pulse shot that had been aimed at its neck. Applejack stood back up, but the moment she was upright again the alien spun around in place. Its tail lashed out over the flames and smashed into the farmer, the spikes punching through the outer armor before she was hurled into a defunct cooling tower.
The alien immediately sprinted around the fire toward Applejack’s landing spot, dodging another pulse shot from above. It slipped under some disused piping with shocking agility, shielding it from above while it raced toward the stunned farmer. Applejack started to roll over onto her feet, and the alien crouched down in preparation to pounce.
“Here kitty, kitty!” Rainbow Dash shouted, blasting by just a foot from the alien’s nose. It flinched back, taking its attention off Applejack, and then stood up and stuck its head out to try to track the flyer’s position.
A pulse blast promptly struck its collar, and a bloom of sparks shot into the air from the ruptured battery case.
“Got it!” Jerriha shouted, lifting her carbine as the alien snarled and began to flail. “Okay… now what?”
Red warning lumens were flashing all over the collar and sparks kept blasting from the battery pack to roll down the alien’s leg. It threw its head back and forth, thrashing violently, and then started clawing at the damaged collar.
“There! It’s working!” Fluttershy shouted and uncloaked, startling several nearby Fire Warriors who had no idea she was there. She took off into the pit, curving into an intercept course with the alien predator.
“Applejack! Grab the collar with your gravity lash!” Twilight came galloping out behind the beast, her (slightly dented) force harmonizer floating alongside her head. “When I give the word, pull as hard as you can!”
“All right ya creepy varmint, stop squirmin’!” Applejack grunted, snapping her tail forward.
The whip of humming energy latched onto the collar, and the beast staggered. It snarled and tried to back away, dragging Applejack slowly across the deck while the restraint squealed at the stress.
“I’ve got it!” Twilight shouted, flying over the alien and hurling the harmonizer through the air. The psykant weapon struck the collar and magnetized, holding fast on the side of the ring opposite the gravity lash. Twilight’s horn casing pulsed, the circuits in the helmet glowing bright purple. “NOW! PULL!!”
The alien thrashed back and forth, its claws scratching the deck plating furiously while it tried to deal with the barrage of stimuli. The force harmonizer was surrounded by a purple glow and started to pull away, and at the same time the tractor beam started drawing the collar in the opposite direction. The metal strained and the devices on the collar sparked furiously, lumens flashing chaotically before blowing out one by one.
Then another two pulse shots struck the collar from above, and the ring broke in half.
“Got it!” Twilight cheered, the glow around her horn fading. “Now Flutt-“
She didn’t get any further before the alien beast dashed by, whipping its club-like tail into her while passing. Then it raced back across the pit and darted under a half-scrapped reactor vessel. The alien curled up as best it could, shielding itself from further attacks from above, and then it started furiously scratching at its neck, snarling defensively.
“Whoa! Twi, you okay?” Rainbow swooped down next to the young Princess and then landed beside her, looking over the battered armor plating.
“Yes… Yes I’m… fine,” Twilight grunted, slowly pushing herself upright. “The spines didn’t penetrate the inner armor layer.”
“Yeah, but they hit hard enough to dent it so that they dig inta yer flank when ya move,” Applejack grumbled. “Shy, ya sure ya got this? This critter ain’t from our neck o’ the woods!”
“It’s all right Applejack,” Fluttershy assured her, landing ahead of the other mares. “Leave everything to me!” Her helmet hissed and then disengaged, and the meek pegasus shook her head briefly to let her mane flow loose while she approached the alien.
Twilight grimaced, and then turned her head to look up at Jerriha. Jerriha held eye contact for a few seconds, and then made a series of swift motions with one hand. The other Fire Warriors moved to the very edge of the pit and crouched, each one aiming their pulse rifles at the reactor shell. Jerriha herself lowered her own weapon and waited.
The alien detected the approaching pony immediately, snorting and baring its teeth. A deep growl came from its throat, and its tail started slapping against the ground, generating a terrible sound as the spines tore at the corroded reactor plating. Fluttershy winced slightly from the noise and slowed her approach, but otherwise showed no particular concern as she walked up a makeshift ramp to the large bowl that had once held a fission reactor.
“Oh, dear… That collar really hurt, didn’t it?” Fluttershy asked, stopping at the edge of the shell. The alien snapped its jaws threateningly, a rumble again rising from its throat. “You don’t have to worry. We don’t want to hurt you.”
It raised its head and sniffed the air. Its lips curled back, revealing rows of blade-like teeth as it snarled. Fluttershy pouted, and then twisted her head around.
“Uhm, I’m sorry to bother everyone, but… the alien is feeling very threatened by all the firepower in the immediate area. Could you give it some space?” Fluttershy asked.
“Can’t ya tell it that this firepower was just cleanin’ up the brutes that locked it up a minute ago?” Applejack asked.
“That… Uh… That’s kind of hard to explain right now, actually. It’s REALLY agitated, and a lot of what the collar was doing to it hasn’t worn off yet,” Fluttershy squeaked. “I promise it will be all right! I’ll explain everything but I really need the guns pointed somewhere else, okay? Please?”
Twilight groaned, but quickly backed off. “Come on, let’s leave her alone. Jerriha, stand down, please! Applejack, did you see where they were keeping the slaves?”
The other mares turned away from the reactor shell, trusting Fluttershy to handle the strange feline. Jerriha hesitated, but eventually she shrugged and waved off the Fire Warriors, moving to speak with them away from the pit. Fluttershy walked into the reactor vessel to address the alien more closely while they had some space.
“I saw ‘em over here ‘fore the boss hit that button that shut everything down and turned on the gun turrets,” Applejack said, trotting to the section of the pit opposite the beast. A metal panel with a bright red lumen on it and a keypad was attached to a rail, and a large slab of scrap metal salvaged from a container blocked access to the space beyond.
“That lock panel is too simple for a data inload,” Twilight said regretfully, analyzing the machine with her bionic eye. “I can see the power routing though, so maybe if we cause a surge we’ll be able to disable the-“
Rainbow zipped overhead, twisted about in the air, and then smashed an aerial kick into the lock panel, denting it inward and shattering the display screen. She bounced off into a showy somersault, and then Applejack rammed one of her helmet tusks in under the damaged slab. With a sharp twist the device was ripped free of the railing and the attached clamps fell apart.
“… Okay well OBVIOUSLY if we’re just going to break it I could have done that, too,” Twilight grumbled. “I just thought it might scare the people inside.”
Applejack mag-locked a boot to the makeshift door and walked alongside the railing, dragging it along with her and exposing the space beyond it. Four men and a woman were huddled together in the corner, along with two children; a boy and a girl. The room was barely ten feet wide, and numerous open plugs on the floor and ceiling suggested it was designed to feed cabling to other pieces of machinery.
In Twilight’s defense they did look very scared, which was not helped in the least when a pony-shaped suit of power armor approached and summoned a light at the tip of its horn. Most of the slaves were stunned silent, but one of them was blubbering in terror on the floor at the sight of her. Twilight took a moment to check the cell interior, and then took a deep breath to address the liberated humans.
“HI EVERYONE WE’RE HERE TO SAVE YOU!!” bellowed Pinkie Pie, jumping on top of Twilight’s back and grinning widely.
The slaves jolted in surprise, and the one on the floor stopped gibbering, blinking through the tears. The children went wide-eyed, staring in awe at the fluffy-haired pink creature.
“Wh… What are…” one of the men started to speak uncertainly, overwhelmed.
“We’re ponies!” Pinkie chirped. “We’re super cute aliens from a faraway planet that are friends with the Chaos fleet currently in dock! We saw that there was a slave market here and came to rescue you from a lifetime of miserable bondage!” She struck a heroic upright pose, still standing on Twilight’s back.
“That’s… well, accurate enough, I guess,” Twilight said with a dry chuckle. “You’re all free to go now!”
Rainbow swooped down from above and then cut her flight pack, dropping onto the deck with a resounding clang. “Yeah, uh, about that… You’re probably going to want to leave Ishrem with the fleet, though. The boss slaver got away.”
“Ya didn’t see where he ran off to from up there?” Applejack asked.
“Nah, he ducked into some kind of tunnel and then I heard the sound of a lot of metal being banged around so I flew back.” Rainbow Dash shrugged. “So if you guys just walk out of here to live among the slightly cleaner metal shacks I guess he could find you and lock you up again. Sorry.”
The imprisoned humans looked over the various ponies dubiously, and the woman slowly raised her hand. “You said… you were with a CHAOS fleet?”
“Yup! The BEST Chaos fleet!” Pinkie insisted. “So if you’re going to come with us you’ll want somepony to explain that you were freed from the slave market and are joining of your own free will, otherwise they might also just enslave you again.”
“That sounds like a poor choice,” another of the slaves remarked, furrowing his brow.
“It’s not great,” Applejack conceded, clamping the end of her tail onto Pinkie’s back and placing her onto the floor, “but ya get to choose, at least. We can offer y’all that much.”
“But before that, let’s get everyone else free,” Twilight interjected. “I saw a few other pens like this in the reactor pit, but they were all empty. Is there another level where they keep more people locked up?”
“No, not that I know of,” the woman mumbled. “I think we’re all that’s left.”
“What? Just the seven of you? There were more guards than that!” Twilight exclaimed. “Does he supplement the slave trade with sales of exotic, deadly pets?”
“You mean that eyeless xeno with the claws? No, he’s had that thing for years. Don’t even think it was for sale.”
“Something happened recently,” offered one of the men, wringing his weathered hands. “I don’t right know what. But they sold a lot of us in the past week, very quickly. I think mostly for ship crew? And nobody new has come in, as far as I know.”
“Huh. That’s odd… but convenient?” Twilight started to turn around. “Well, you folks should deliberate on what to do next. I’m going to check on something and then we’ll be heading further into Ishrem.”
“I want to go with the pony,” the little girl said, cautiously approaching Pinkie Pie.
“We can’t trust them!” yelped another man, shuddering. “They’re aliens!”
“Sugarcube, y’all were captured and locked up in a pen that Ah’d be ashamed to house pigs in, held fer sale, and from the looks’a things nearly starved. All by other humans, not aliens,” Applejack retorted with a snort. “You don’t gotta trust us if’n ya don’t want, but don’t go actin’ like WE’RE the monsters here.”
“I’m still a little hung up on the Chaos thing, actually,” murmured the woman. “Aren’t they insane cultists that swear allegiance to evil gods and wage an endless, pointless war with the Imperium of man?”
“They’re not insane,” Rainbow Dash assured her. “Well, most of them aren’t.”
“Do you, uh, have anything to say about the evil gods and war?”
“No, that stuff is completely true. It’s kind of a problem, but there’s not a lot we can do about it, really,” the pegasus admitted.
Pinkie giggled as the children carefully pet her mane, completely entranced with the bushy pink curls.
“… Well, y’all think it over. Ah wanna go check if our friend is done taming the cat alien.”
“You’re doing WHAT?!”
Twilight heaved a deep sigh as she approached the broken reactor foundation. All around were the remains of the short but desperate combat, with many dead bodies still lying on the floor next to their blood-stained weapons. She didn’t feel sorry for the slavers or regret killing them, but as she scanned the remains of the people she and her friends had slain she couldn’t help but feel uneasy.
“I’m proud that we freed the people here, but it’s just a little frightening how easy we default to violence now,” she grumbled to herself. “I really wish we could have at least made a futile, naïve appeal to human dignity and mercy before Rarity cut that man in half.”
Twilight lifted up into the air so that she could peek over the edge of the reactor dish. The alien was still laying there, grumbling while its tail dragged back and forth irritably. Fluttershy was laying next to its head, gently scratching the beast’s throat with the tiny servo arms on her chest armor. She was speaking to it very softly, so Twilight couldn’t pick up what she was saying, but there didn’t seem to be any dangerous tension.
“At least one of us is making friends,” the young Princess said to herself, slowly lowering herself back down to the deck.
“Hey, Sparkle!”
Twilight twisted her head around. Jerriha was climbing down the ladder at the edge of the pit, her carbine strapped to her chest again.
“Two of my Fire Warriors were wounded in the firefight, plus the other one that got clawed up by the beast. I think they’ll be fine, but they’re in enough pain that they don’t feel like window shopping for today.” She reached the bottom and dropped down to the deck. “The others decided to escort them back to the flagship. They’re a bit nervous after immediately getting attacked and killing the first residents we spoke to and don’t want to press their luck.”
Twilight winced. “Ah, okay. I’m sorry about that.”
“I’M not,” Rarity interrupted from above.
Jerriha didn’t bother addressing the unicorn, walking up to Twilight. “So what’s the plan now?”
“Wait, you’re… not going back with your squad?” Twilight asked hesitantly.
“No. Did you want me to?”
“I just thought you might want to make sure your subordinates were okay. Or maybe you were also a little annoyed with being dragged into a gunfight immediately,” the Princess reasoned, tactfully avoiding a direct answer.
“No, actually, I’m rather pleased I got kill something. Especially slavers. I hope we get to do that some more.” Jerriha nudged her head toward the reactor shell where Fluttershy was. “Are we going to finish off the slave-beast now that it’s been lured into a false sense of safety?”
“No! Heavens, no!” Rarity exclaimed, awkwardly descending the ladder by mag-locking her boots to each rung. “Fluttershy has the poor mongrel under control. There’s no need to harm it further.”
“What are you going to do with it if not finish it off?” the Fireblade asked. “You can’t let it loose in here; it will just murder the residents until they get enough people and firepower together to kill it anyway.”
“I’ll ask Gaela what we can do,” Twilight said, bringing up the vox channels available. “While we’re at it, maybe she can use something to find… er…”
“Find what?” Rarity asked, dropping down from the ladder.
“I was going to ask her if there was any way she could find the slaver boss, but… the vox is down. There’s no connection,” Twilight explained.
“What? You mean it’s jammed?!” Rarity asked, instantly alarmed.
“Unlikely. Old rusting hulks like this generate a lot of magnetic fields and radiation bleeds that interfere with transmissions,” Jerriha offered. “They either rely on internal comms systems or relay boosters to route communication. But those are probably in shabby repair in a place like this.”
“What a wretched place,” Rarity grumbled. “I shudder to think of the quality of the beauty spa they have available. But I suppose I’ll find out soon enough; are we going to move on?”
Twilight turned around. “Rainbow Dash, what do the freed slaves want to do? We’ve got to go!” she shouted across the pit.
Rainbow zipped across the area and did a quick spin in the air over Twilight’s head before settling into a hover. “They’re staying in Ishrem! They’re not cool with the Chaos thing, I guess. They’re going to take what they can from the dead guards and start a new life here.”
“Why do THEY get to scrape the dead for spending money? We’re the ones who killed them,” Jerriha pointed out.
Rainbow, Twilight, and Rarity all turned to stare at the Tau Fireblade silently.
“… What? It’s a fair question. Are we space pirates or aren’t we?” she said defensively.
“Didn’t you say you were a slave?” Rainbow asked. “I mean, you make a good point I guess but shouldn’t you be on their side?”
“Taking down a fortified position with armed guards to free them from captivity is ‘on their side’ quite enough, if you ask me. I’m not fighting for ideology anymore,” the alien fumed, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Shas’vre, please just let it go. All the better that we don’t have to go rifling through the dead bodies,” Twilight implored her. Then she turned around. “Fluttershy! What’s the status on the alien? We’re getting ready to leave!”
“It’s still very upset and isn’t in a very cooperative mood,” Fluttershy called back, her statement followed by a throaty growl from the subject of the conversation. “Although I’ve gotten the point across that we’ve freed it from captivity and don’t mean it further harm, it’s very defensive and still, erm… I guess ‘inebriated’ would be the technical term!”
“Is the alien a boy or a girl? You keep saying ‘it’,” Rainbow asked.
“I’m not sure, actually. I’d really like the angry drugs to wear off entirely before I started asking it about its sexual characteristics,” Fluttershy answered.
Twilight groaned. “All right, look: we’re heading out and there’s something wrong with the vox that makes communication difficult. Do you want to stay here with the alien? We can come back for you later.”
“Oh, okay! I’ll stay here for now!”
“You’re going to leave her alone with that thing?” Jerriha asked. “She has only one weapon system and it’s completely immune to it!”
Rarity tittered. “Darling, we’re ponies. Our mightiest weapon isn’t guns or blades; it’s our hearts!”
The Tau Fireblade stared silently at her for a few seconds, and then looked over to Rainbow Dash.
“It varies a little bit from pony to pony,” Rainbow admitted. “My mightiest weapon is that shield thing that lets me ram into stuff without dying. My heart is a close second, though.”
“Yo, we ready to go?” Applejack announced as she and Pinkie approached the group.
“I think so, yes.” Twilight turned and addressed all her friends. “Fluttershy is staying here for now, but we’re going to the scrap market next.”
“Shouldn’t we try’n hunt down the slaver boss and finish the job?” Applejack snorted.
“No, I think we’ve actually caused enough damage for now. I don’t want our entire shore leave on a space city to turn into another mission. That said… try to stay together and keep an eye out for anyone shadowing you. I don’t think there’s anyone here more dangerous than we are, but we don’t know how these people will react to someone charging in and wiping out a major business. Let’s go!”
Mining Nexus Ishrem
Deck 2-1
Security hall access
“Blasted xeno scum! Come out of nowhere, pretending to negotiate! Then the moment I try to cut a deal the knives come out! Never trust the alien! Never, ever trust the alien!” The head of Ishrem’s slave market growled to himself while he ran between the barricades that led to the security annex, making a beeline for the heavy blast doors at the end.
This area was made to be easily defended, with several raised balconies for gunnery positions, barricades, and a pair of heavy autoturrets in the ports on either side of the door. Time and decay had taken much of the fortifications apart, and scavengers had helped themselves to the rest. The only functional part of the annex that still remained was the entrance that protected the barracks within.
He reached the door and pushed a button next to it. The door didn’t open, but a brief blast of static came from the vox caster above the button.
“Dobbs, it’s Cerimo! Raise the Executor! Some xeno freaks are raiding the place! I barely escaped with my life!” he shouted into the door panel. The he took his hand off the button to wait for a reply.
After a few seconds, he got one. “Xenos, you say? There were no alien vessels detected on approach. What kind of xenos were they?” asked a cool, feminine voice.
Cerimo frowned, and then pushed the button again. “Miss, I need you to get Dobbs right away. This is an emergency!”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” the woman responded dryly.
The slaver slammed a fist against the door panel, and then pressed the button again. “You useless slug! Open this door immediately or I’ll see you spaced!” he snarled.
There was no reply from the vox. However, a moment later there was a click from the door, and it slowly yawned open. Cerimo took a few heavy breaths to get his temper under control, and then rushed in as soon as the opening was wide enough for him.
“Dobbs! Dobbs you drunken freak, where are you?!” he shouted, stepping past the empty guard office.
He stopped in the hall and sniffed the air curiously. Normally this place smelled like cheap synthehol and vomit, but there was a very different scent in the air this time. It was strong, but not especially pungent, and so completely unfamiliar that for a moment he worried there might be some kind of gas leak.
With that moment of hesitation, he detected voices coming from down the hall, in one the barracks. Cerimo set his jaw and rushed toward it, slamming a fist onto the door access button.
“Dobbs! Are you in here you drunk son of… you… uh…”
Cerimo stopped just inside the doorway, shocked still.
“O keeper of the light, guide our darkened path with your radiance,” whispered dozens of voices at once.
The scent was much stronger here, and it finally jolted his memory. Incense. The smell was incense.
“We are your warriors and we are servants to thee, we stand free of blindness to heart, free of hypocrisy, vainglory and deceits, but captive to hatred, malice and anger, to the filth, the alien, the heretic.”
The slaver stared slack-jawed as some forty women knelt in the emptied barracks and said their prayer. Every one of them wore power armor adorned with various crossed, Aquila, and fleur-de-lis. Their helmets rested at their knees, sitting atop their weapons: mostly boltguns, but a quick study of the room revealed many flamers and even the odd plasma gun among them.
At the other end of the barracks was yet another woman in power armor, hers adorned with many strips of parchment fixed to the plating with red wax. She was standing at a podium with a large book placed upon it, carefully perusing its words. She did not look up at Cerimo’s intrusion, nor did any of the others.
He considered apologizing, but ultimately decided against making further noise and started slowly backing out of the room. Before he cleared the doorway, however, the head slaver felt his back touch a hardened metal plate.
“Lord Cerimo,” said a voice behind him, “I’m going to have to ask you to surrender your weapon.”
He turned around, quivering, and was not terribly surprised to see another woman in powered armor blocking his path out. This one had her helmet on, and was holding an enormous two-handed chainsword over her shoulder.
“I… I think I’m in the wrong place, actually,” Cerimo said, acutely aware that the only person he’d given his name to was the woman he’d screamed at and threatened over the vox. “I’ll just be on my, uh…”
She reached for his waist with her free hand and took his stubber pistol. His words trailed off into a whimper, and he offered no further protest.
“You may continue,” the woman said, shoving him backward to clear the doorway.
The door shut, and then locked. The woman at the other end of the room slowly closed her book.
“Meditate, my sisters. Find your peace, so that your wrath shall emerge pure and true when the Emperor desires it,” she announced. Then she beckoned to Cerimo. “You. Approach.”
The slaver gulped, slowly walking across the barracks between the ranks of kneeling women. He had very little idea of what was going on, but he knew who these women were. Not that he’d ever seen any of them before, but the notorious warrior nuns of the Imperium were simple to identify by attire alone. Protected by blessed power armor and equipped with wargear usually reserved for the Astartes (albeit appropriately sized for use by mere mortals), the Adeptus Sororitas – known commonly as the Sisters of Battle – were difficult to mistake for any other fighting force.
The woman behind the podium had a tattoo over her cheek of the fleur-de-lis and a circlet boasting the Imperial Aquila: the twin-headed eagle of the Imperium. Such symbols were relatively rare in Ishrem, and almost never treated with any particular honor, but as the head of the slave market stared into the Sister’s unblinking green eyes he considered that now was an ideal time to start.
“G-Greeting, blessed preacher,” he said uncertainly, “I hope I haven’t disturbed your, ah, what do they call it? Ministrations?”
“You have,” she replied curtly, causing him to flinch. “Tell me your name, Pilgrim.”
He only briefly considered lying, recalling that the other Sister knew his last name and there were hundreds of others on the station who knew who he was.
“Heinral Cerimo,” he said stiffly. “Do you happen to know Richan Dobbs? He was leading the security team here, last I heard. I worked with him on occasion.”
“It sounds like you two were friends,” the Sister said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Cerimo’s heart sank and his face started to go pale.
“Now then, Lord Cerimo: I believe you spoke of xenos while you were trying to force your way in here. Explain.”
“Ah. Yes. Well.” The slaver stood up straight and wet his lips. “How to put this… A group of xeno soldiers arrived in Ishrem, in the… the market where I work. They attacked me and killed my guards, and I barely escaped with my life.”
“Such a harrowing trial,” the woman replied, her expression not shifting at all. “Although it does not strain credulity that a place such as this would have xenos roaming about unchallenged, there are no alien vessels docked to the best of my knowledge. Do you know where these vermin came from?”
“Yes! The bore the markings of the… uh, the blasphemers! They worship the dark gods!” Cerimo claimed. “A merchant fleet docked with us today, and all sorts of corruption and heresy spilled into Ishrem! They must be stopped!”
The woman at the podium nodded. “Indeed. It is imperative. Describe these aliens.”
“Well… a little more than half of them were like us. Walked on two legs, and had hands. They all had on these blue and black armor suits and carried rifles I never saw before that fired big flashy energy blasts. Plasma, maybe?” He shook his head. “I only knew they were xenos because one of them took its helmet off. It had blue-gray skin and black eyes, with no nose on its face.”
“An abomination that cannot be permitted beneath the Emperor’s gaze,” the Sister said softly.
“Right! Yes. For the Emperor, they must be destroyed. Sure.” Cerimo wet his lips. “But the rest of the aliens were stranger. They were smaller, four-legged creatures with long faces and pointy ears on top of their heads, like animals. Most of them wore heavy armor adorned with the traitor’s marks, but there was one that was not. It was… pink.”
The woman quirked an eyebrow. “Pink.”
“Yes. Very pink. Its body, its hair, its tail. Bright pink. Except for the eyes.”
“An oily black, like the very void?”
“No. They were bright blue. Very pretty, in all honesty, but she was strange and annoying. And then the ones in armor started killing my men.”
The Sister frowned, and then took out a dataslate from beneath the podium. She held it up so that Cerimo wouldn’t be able to see the screen, and then started tapping and swiping at it.
He glanced left and right, his nervousness palpable. The atmosphere here was oppressive, and the way the women sitting on either side of the room completely ignoring his presence while they prayed in silence made him feel even more uncomfortable. He found dealing with the drunken, violent thugs that usually made up the security services on Ishrem much more pleasant, and he hoped that not all of them had expired in whatever had happened here.
“May I ask… why… why are you here?” Cerimo asked nervously.
“It surprises you to see devout servants of the Emperor in this blighted place,” the Sister replied. It was not a question, and she did not look up at him as she spoke.
“Well, uh… yes. I suppose it does. No point in denying that,” he coughed into a fist. “Are you here to… to fight the, uh, the heretics?”
“Should the Emperor will it, we would gladly cleanse the rest of this rock,” she said. “For the moment, we MAY be called to a higher purpose. Rest assured, however: the blasphemous scum shall find their final redemption soon enough.”
“The… The rest of… it.” The slaver took a moment to digest that comment. “So… THAT’S why the underdecks were locked down…”
The woman absently nodded, slapped the side of the dataslate she was staring at, and then jabbed at it more forcefully, clearly frustrated with whatever she was doing.
Cerimo tried to steady his heartbeat. “Ma’am, may I ask… is Executor Gaines… still alive?”
“He still serves the Emperor in this world, yes. Ah! Finally!”
With a triumphant smile, she turned around the dataslate. “My apologies, pilgrim; there was much data to shift through on this unit. Tell me, is this symbol at all familiar to you?”
Cerimo stared at the image on the dataslate. It was a starburst emblem of some sort, displayed in mono-color green. It seemed immediately familiar, and it was only due to the lack of proper coloration that he didn’t recognize it immediately.
“… Yes! Yes, I do remember this! It was on the shoulder pad of one of those wretched aliens! The little four-legged ones!”
The Sister looked pleased. “Go on.”
“This was the chatty one with wings on its back and a horn coming out of the forehead. Never took off its helmet, and I think it may have been aided by some sort of witchcraft. It vanished and reappeared at will!”
“And where is it now, pilgrim?”
“I’m uncertain. It was in reactor pit 7 when they attacked me and my men, but by now? No idea. They might be dead, or fled the station for all I know.”
“Reactor 7… that will do, pilgrim.” The woman made a shooing gesture with her hand.
Cerimo considered, very briefly, that he was being dismissed to return to the main deck of the station. That hope died painfully when two Sisters stood up and immediately seized him by the shoulders. Wordlessly they dragged him toward the exit, ignoring his stuttered protests and assurances that he could make it on his own.
Once the man had been carried out, the Sister at the podium opened her book again. She waited expressionlessly, flipping the pages of the tome and slowly scanning the words.
A scream echoed through the halls, followed by the sound of a boltgun’s discharge.
She smiled and looked up. “Another soul speeds to the Emperor’s side. May he be redeemed in death.”
“The Emperor’s mercy is exceeded only by his wisdom,” droned several of the warriors kneeling. “Every human soul will be judged. May the righteous be graced and the unworthy be cleansed.”
“Sisters… it has been a long wait, but it seems that He has smiled upon us for our diligence. Traitors and heretics infest this rock like lice, feeding on the Emperor’s good works and preying on innocent souls. We have been forced to witness this heresy, silent and unblinking, our faith and patience tested for the sake of a greater design. That trial is almost over.”
The other Sisters of Battle began whispering prayers over their weapons and loading them.
“Arm yourselves and steel your souls. We go to war yet again.” The woman at the podium withdrew a small handheld device from within it and brought it up to her lips, depressing a button on the side. “Inquisitor Gholth, I have a lead. The creature is here, as you anticipated. I will meet you in the strategium.”
Mining nexus Ishrem
Sub-deck 2-4
Waste processing adjunct
“Be the flame of righteousness and the hammer of justice.”
“Hello? Techpriest? Command? Anyone?! What’s wrong with this thing?” Lightning Dust asked, tapping her headset with the flat of her wing.
“Comms are down entirely? Can you tell?” asked Mantis.
“I can’t be sure. This kind of unit doesn’t tell me much about the connection like the consoles do, so all I can tell is that the link failed. I hope they’re not just ignoring me,” Lightning grumbled.
“Your hatred is the sword of the Emperor; let your fury cull the forsaken from the stars.”
“Hopefully it’s just something wrong with the sub-deck. Once we’re out of here I want you to try again,” Mantis ordered.
“Are you sure you want to leave already? There might be more clues further in as to what happened here,” Lightning Dust asked.
“Quite sure, Captain. We cannot complete our mission here with the residents dead, so I’d like to withdraw before we run into what killed them. It’s not our job to bring the perpetrators to justice,” Mantis answered.
“Deliver to the heretic with expedience. Then there’s a little ‘less than’ sign and a three. I guess it’s supposed to be a heart?”
Mantis stopped and turned his head around, looking exasperated. “Scratch, was it REALLY necessary to recover all the discarded munition casings from the kill site?”
“But they’re really cool!” Vinyl Scratch protested, dropping the one she was reading back into a little bag that hung from her neck chain next to her Chaos star amulet. “They’re like fortune cookies, but with violence.” She levitated another one, bringing it close enough to read the etching from the glow of her horn. “Kill the heretic. Purge the mutant. Cleanse the unclean.” She let it fall back into the bag. “Dang, I wouldn’t want to be any of those guys!”
“There’s the exit door! Scratch, put them away, I need your full attention!” Mantis declared. “Everypony bunch up! As soon as we clear the doorway we’re heading back to-”
A hefty clunk came from the blast door, and Mantis felt his heart leap into his throat. Then a groan came from the bulkhead as it started to lower itself.
“Defensive positions! Move!” the Hierophant shouted, rushing to the side of the tunnel. He and Lightning Dust ducked behind a wall of scavenged metal siding. The other ponies likewise retreated to cover behind whatever trash was large enough to conceal them, and the guards checked their lasguns.
When the door lowered far enough, Mantis could see four men standing behind it, autoguns raised and pointed into the slum. They all wore environmental suits in varying states of disrepair, and lacked any identifying markers Mantis recognized. The humans sighted an earth pony peeking out over a junk heap and immediately opened fire, spraying bullets into the garbage.
“Hold fire! We are not an enemy!” Mantis barked, ducking back beneath the wall.
“I don’t think they agree,” Lightning Dust mumbled as the bursts of gunfire continued. “Let’s take ‘em down.”
“No! Leave this to me,” the pale-faced stallion insisted. His horns started to glow with a dark purple energy, and then his eyes flashed.
The door finally opened completely, and the gunmen on the other side moved to find their own cover or crouched. They kept shooting into the slum at any spot where they saw a spot of light coming from the ponies’ lumen torches, as the halls were still otherwise dark and they didn’t have any active light sources of their own. The ponies remained suppressed, huddling low under the barrage.
Suddenly, reality seemed to peel away around the soldiers. They were swallowed in a beam of light that seemed to come from all directions at once, and their surroundings appeared to simply wash out into an empty, white void. The men whirled around, confused, clutching their guns to their chests in a rapidly rising panic.
“You don’t have to die here, you know.”
They whirled to find the voice. Mantis was sitting in the middle of the squad, his eyes aglow. The stallion looked up at the gawking soldiers, glancing from one to another.
“What do you hope to accomplish here? Do you know? Did your masters explain what you were getting into?”
“Alien! Witch! Kill it!” shrieked one of the soldiers, unloading his autogun into the stallion.
The bullets vanished into the pony’s body, and another of the soldiers screamed as the burst of gunfire somehow tore through him instead. His body disintegrated into a crimson mist before the terrified humans, vanishing from sight but leaving a blood-colored scar on his corner of the white void.
“Gerkin?! GERKIN!!” shouted another guard in a panic, his weapon quivering in his hands.
“Tragic,” Mantis noted calmly, looking away from the shimmering red mark. “And avoidable. You cannot kill us. But you can be saved, you know.”
“What… What do you want?” gasped a soldier, falling to his knees.
“Peace,” Mantis said. His body distorted, and then he was suddenly closer to the fallen man, their noses just a few inches apart.
“P… Peace?” spat another of the guards. “You’re xenos! Pirates! PSYKERS!! Evil Chaos-worshiping scum!”
“And yet I ask nothing from you except to put down your weapons and allow our passage. There are many who cross our people and perish. I do not want you to be among them,” the stallion’s eyes pulsed, and the surrounding void started to distort. Walls appeared, bearing the same empty white color as everything else but suddenly giving the area a sense of claustrophobic scale.
“I’m not surrendering my weapon to you!” screamed the man who had already fired once at the apparition. “Get up, you cowards! Fight it, kill it!” He raised his autogun again.
Vinyl wet her lips as magic surged around her horn, watching the three remaining guards with the rest of the ponies. The humans seemed to be staring and reacting at nothing while mumbling loudly and staggering about blindly. The non-unicorns were watching in fascinated confusion, but Vinyl Scratch was keyed in to the spell just enough to pick up on what came next.
“That one,” she hissed, thrusting a hoof at one of the quivering guards that was raising his autogun again. “Shoot him on my signal!”
“What? But, the Hierophant said-”
The man let out a tormented scream and raised his gun, suddenly shooting at the ground in front of him. Unlike last time, his shots didn’t hit another guard, and Vinyl thrust her leg forward.
“NOW! FIRE!”
The guard opened fire into Mantis, the bullets vanishing into bursts of colored light on contact with his body. The other men recoiled, gibbering in terror. Mantis turned to stare at his assailant, the glow in his eyes dimming.
The man shooting screamed angrily. His scream went on for two seconds, then four, and then the gunfire stopped but the scream continued. It went on for too long, shifting from an enraged snarl to a shriek of horror and agony. Then the soldier unraveled, his body crumbling into glowing cinders.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Mantis repeated, embers floating around his head. “You have a choice. Peace.”
The remaining two guards whimpered and let go of their weapons. The autoguns seemed to float in the air rather than falling, and then in a few seconds they disintegrated, vanishing into the emptiness. The two men wept quietly, one huddled on the ground and the other standing with his hands covering his eyes and head.
“Thank you, brothers,” Mantis said.
Then his body seemed to evaporate into a dark mist. The mist spread outward, peeling back the whiteness that surrounded the humans. In its wake was left recognizable color and texture, rapidly surrounding the men entirely. Granted, it was the dingy color of grimy metal over stone and the texture of rags and other trash, but it seemed real. The two guards gasped in relief and fearfully looked around the area. One of their number was dead on his back, riddled with bullets. Another was dead on his belly, his back a mess of sizzling lasburns.
Vinyl Scratch crept by behind them, their autoguns floating in front of her. She was followed by the guard ponies in their entourage, all of whom were watching the humans nervously. Mantis walked out from behind the metal sheeting he had used as cover, trotting straight for the two gunmen.
The men recoiled at the sight of the twin-horned creature, backing away to the wall and whimpering. Mantis didn’t seem to mind the reaction, and he stopped just outside of arm’s reach, looking up at them. His eyes were empty of magical light now, and though his horns no longer glowed there were wisps of smoke that rose from the tips, like smoldering candles.
“And once again: thank you,” Mantis said calmly.
“What… What was that? What did you do to us?” asked one of the guards, ripping off the headpiece to his suit. He blinked his bloodshot eyes repeatedly and wiped his sweat-soaked face.
“Dark witchcraft, of course,” the pony explained without a hint of shame or concern. “Not the most profane sort, but much harsher than the tricks you’ve seen before, I’d guess.” He tilted his head to the side. “Who sent you here? And why?”
“Our job is to keep anyone out of the underdecks. With force, if need be,” one of the men said, trying his best to stop quivering before the much shorter creature.
“If you were supposed to keep people out, why was the entrance unguarded? We would have left without difficulty if someone had been posted to turn us away.”
The two surviving guards looked quite embarrassed at the question. “We were, um, not at our post.”
“The blast door was sealed and the lock cogitator smashed,” grumbled the other, his hands held up as if he was being held at gunpoint. “You can open it manually, but who would? There’s no point in standing around to keep people out.”
“Or at least, that’s what we figured until one of the Techpriests asked if there was an environmental hazard in the slum because there was a team crawling around in here and she needed to know if your survival chances warranted correction,” finished the first man. “Personally, I regret coming back. I don’t know why the Executor wants to keep you from meeting the muties, but it wasn’t worth anybody dying over. Not even Daur, bastard that he was.”
Mantis looked over to the other ponies. Vinyl arched an eyebrow. Then the Hierophant addressed the humans again.
“Do you know what’s in there?” the mutant stallion asked.
“Filth, squalor, and the unluckiest bunch of void dregs on this rock,” sniffed one of the guards. Then he glanced over into the entryway to the slum. “Speaking of which, they’re being awfully quiet in there. I figured they’d rush the alley if we opened the doors again.”
“… That would be a ‘no’ then,” Mantis sighed.
“What? What are you talking about? Did something happen in there?” The man holding his arms up finally dropped them. “Are the slum dregs all right? They’re not my favorite folk, but I didn’t think being trapped down here for a few cycles would do any harm. Most of ‘em never leave.”
Vinyl Scratch used her magic to open the pouch around her neck and withdrew a boltgun casing, the worn metal jingling pleasantly against the others. She levitated it above her head, increasing the intensity of her magic so that it would be bright enough to easily see. Then she turned it until she found the beginning of the text etched into it.
“Justice is not delivered with words, but with fire. Let your weapon sing the Emperor’s will,” the unicorn read. Then she cut her magic, letting the casing drop back into the bag.
Of the two humans only one had his face exposed, and Mantis watched in fascination as his expression shifted from confusion to understanding and finally to horror in the space of seconds.
“I suppose you have some insight as to this tragedy, then?” the stallion asked.
“I, uh, realize this is an awkward question to ask an alien goat thing after shooting at you, having my mind broken by sorcery, and you killing half my team, but by any chance is your ship hiring crew?” he asked anxiously.
“Always,” Mantis replied. “Captain Dust, have you contacted the Dark Techpriest?”
“Nope. The blasted vox set still isn’t working,” Lightning Dust complained. “I’ll give it another try when we reach the main deck but any further than that and we may as well just return to the ship and tell them in person.”
“Unfortunate.” Mantis turned back to the humans. “If you would seek work with the Lords of Chaos, then I will vouch for you, brothers. But I must ask what the threat is that you seem to have identified.”
The surviving guards looked at each other doubtfully. “Well, you see, about a week ago there was… an incident.”
Mining Nexus Ishrem
Deck 4-9
Black Adder’s Gallery
“An Imperial battlecruiser? Here?”
“Aye. Must have bribed or tortured the location out of a smuggler. They reached the center of the asteroid field and had Ishrem in their sights. The station tried to bring its defenses online, but it never stood a chance. The crew admits half the cannons don’t work and I’m pretty sure they’re lying about the other half.”
Delgan scratched at his chin thoughtfully as he sat across the table from an elaborately dressed woman with a bionic eye and arm. Jewel Bracer sat in the chair next to him, while a pair of grim masked guards sat to either side between him and his contact. The rest of the room was almost totally empty, with only a single pair of men eating in the far corner.
The place had the look of a restaurant and lounge, and made a passable attempt at a luxurious atmosphere despite the crude environs. The walls were made of polished wood and decorated with framed paintings, pict-captures, and old weapons (with any working internal parts removed and sold, surely). One wall was a large armorglass fixture, looking out on the asteroid field. The room was lit primarily with clusters of candles, which Delgan supposed contributed to a “romantic” atmosphere. Helpfully, the dim light also made it hard to easily identify and target individuals from the entrance, which had saved more than one guest from assassination by unhappy business partners or mutineers.
“So what happened? Ishrem couldn’t have fought its way out of the confrontation, yet here it stands,” Delgan asked, lifting a glass of amasec to his lips.
“The battle was brief. The Executor called the patrol fighters and prepared them for a suicide run, but it never happened. The Imperials loosed a few volleys that didn’t break anything important, but when there was no retaliation they stopped. Eventually the ship turned around and left,” the woman snorted, shrugging her shoulders. “A fortunate result for me. Most of the docked ships launched and bolted, but I was in no shape to leave so quickly. Of those that fled, a handful tried to speed past the battlecruiser toward the exit route. They were ripped apart by macro-cannons. Some fled through the asteroid field.”
“Did they survive?” Delgan asked.
“Maybe! They sure as shard didn’t come back to let us know!” laughed the woman. “After that incident this place has been a mess. The traffic is a fraction of what it used to be, the markets are almost bare, you hardly see a station guard anymore, and Executor Gaines is no longer available for meetings or even passing questions.”
“That’s the least disastrous result you can hope for from an Imperial warship appearing at your preferred hideaway,” Delgan mused. “It must have been on a peculiar mission to find a major smuggling base and move on without a fight.”
“Mmm. That or maybe the Executor talked them down. I know the vessel hailed Ishrem on the primary channel but Gaines took it to a different one to parley. Regardless if it were restraint or diplomacy, I doubt I could have gotten out of the docks in one piece otherwise.”
Jewel Bracer quietly tapped away at a dataslate while they spoke, recording the highlights of the conversation. A young woman emerged from a side door carrying several dishes of food and approached the table. The guards stood up and placed their hands on their weapons at her approach, but otherwise didn’t interfere as she started setting out plates.
“Your steak, Lord Trademaster. Steamed fish for Captain Varya,” the server said, setting out the dishes. The last plate had boiled greens, and she circled around the table before leaning down and placing it on the floor next to Jewel Bracer’s chair.
Jewel stopped working at the dataslate, staring down at the vegetables. Then she looked up at the server with an eyebrow quirked.
“She’ll take her meal on the table with the rest of us,” Delgan said calmly, smoothing his napkin over his lap. “Furthermore, she’ll need her own set of cutlery.”
The server looked skeptical while she picked up the dish again, studying the mare’s legs. “It doesn’t have hands.”
“She’ll manage,” Delgan drawled. Then he tapped the edge of his glass. “Additionally, do you have any amasec that hasn’t been watered down with low-grade synthehol, or should I simply expect a discount when the bill comes?”
“I’ll… I’ll see what I can do, my Lord,” the server grumbled, placing the plate of vegetables and a spare fork in front of Jewel Bracer.
“Thank you,” Jewel Bracer said, her voice a bit frosty.
The server recoiled and almost tripped, surprised to hear the pony speak. Then she quickly turned and scurried back to the kitchen. Delgan watched her go with a cold glare, but the woman across from him leaned forward and placed her chin on her hands to watch.
Jewel reached up behind her neck, and a gentle click came from the back strap of her respirator mask. She slipped it off and then placed it next to her table setting, and then took her fork in her hoof.
“Oh, your alien is rather cute,” Captain Varya said with a smirk. “I’m a little disappointed.” She leaned back in her seat again. “What with wearing that mask the whole time I was sure she had a predator’s teeth or a disfiguring injury or something like that.”
Jewel Bracer ignored her and started eating while Delgan chuckled. “Miss Jewel Bracer is one of my new employees from a recent acquisition. I think she gives my entourage a friendlier, more approachable atmosphere, don’t you think?”
“Does she do any xeno tricks?” asked his contact. “Aside from holding a fork with no fingers, I mean.”
Jewel took a bite of her dish, and then briefly dabbed her muzzle with a napkin before replying to Varya. “We possess the power of Friendship,” she said in a dry tone.
“I’m surprised that the power of Friendship is of any use to a Chaos pirate,” the Captain mused.
“She once talked an Iron Warrior out of murdering a work crew, which helped my timetable considerably,” Delgan interjected while he cut his steak. “These little ones are full of surprises, I’ve found.” He pierced the meat with his fork, grimacing at how tough it was. “By the way, Miss Bracer: Inform the fleet at once that there was a recent Imperial presence here. They may wish to take measures.”
“Of course, Trademaster,” Jewel Bracer dabbed her mouth again and then put on her headset. She dropped down from her seat and then stepped away from the table.
“They seem quite pleasant and docile,” Varya mused, smiling while she ate a bite of her fish. “Do you have any for sale?”
“No, I do not. The ponies aren’t quite that docile,” Delgan replied. “If you want one you’re going to have to talk it into joining you. Which isn’t hard in my experience, but I’m much more charming than you are.”
Captain Varya laughed, but before she could offer more of a response Jewel Bracer returned to the table.
“Trademaster, I’m afraid there’s something wrong. I can’t raise anyone on the vox,” the mare said, a small frown on her muzzle.
“Blasted relays in this place have probably been scrapped and sold for spice money,” Delgan huffed between bites. “If the Executor doesn’t do something about vagrants stealing the machines eventually they’re going to get bold and take apart the vaporators and you’ll all suffocate in here.” He pointed at Jewel. “Raise the Dark Techpriests instead. They can transmit the information and hopefully get the relays hammered back together, too.”
“I already tried that,” Jewel said, her voice calm but urgent. “I can’t raise anyone on the vox.”
Delgan froze mid-bite, and Captain Varya arched an eyebrow.
“Really, now? The interference in here isn’t usually THAT bad.” She took a small communicator device, barely larger than a bullet, and rolled it in her fingers before thumbing the switch. “This is Varya. Give me a status report on the ship.”
Her thumb slipped off the vox transmitter and she waited for a response. Nothing but a gentle static crackle came from the device.
Delgan and his contact looked at each other, and some sort of unspoken understanding crossed between them. Delgan put down his fork and gulped down the rest of his amasec, while Varya shoved her plate away and stood.
“It was a lousy meal anyway,” she sighed, pulling on her coat.
Delgan stood up and drew his power sword. “They get worse every time I make port, honestly. Miss Bracer, put your mask back on. We’re leaving.”
“Yes, Lord Trademaster.” Jewel fixed her mask back into place and then slipped the carrying case onto her back again, although she still looked uncertain about what was happening. The boots for her forelegs were pushed out from under the chair, and she quickly slipped them on.
“Oi! Where do you think you’re going?! You lot still haven’t paid!” complained the server, rushing back out into the dining hall.
“And YOU haven’t brought me a better drink,” Delgan sniffed, “so I’ll be accepting a discount on my order.”
“So cheap,” Jewel Bracer mumbled under her breath as she trotted to the exit.
“I’m a resident, just put it on my tab,” Varya said, drawing and checking her laspistol.
“We don’t do tabs, you know that!”
“Now is a great time to start! If we survive, I’ll cover it! If not, then who cares?” She bolted for the exit, rushing past Delgan and Jewel.
The server was getting ready to shout something else, but hesitated. “If… If we survive? Survive what?”
Delgan didn’t pause, but Jewel Bracer slowed next to the exit and then stepped over toward her. “I don’t know either, but… listen. If something bad happens and you need to get out of here, head to dock complex A and make for the big ship. Tell them you need to speak to a merchant seneschal.”
The woman looked perplexed, but she listened carefully and nodded. “Dock A, big ship, merchant seneschal.”
Jewel Bracer smiled under her mask. “You’re not a very good worker and rather rude, but we employ a lot of people like that. I hope you’ll consider the opportunity if this place is in fact at risk of imminent destruction.”
“Miss Bracer! Don’t fall behind!” Delgan barked from the outer hall.
The mare whipped around and sprinted out the door.