Inquisitor Elizabeth Horncastle was not dead. If she was, she wouldn’t have been in so much pain.

Her chest burned where a Necron’s warscythe had struck her. It stunk of ozone and charred flesh, oozing with blood whenever she dared to stir. It was cauterized, blessedly, which meant that bleeding out wasn’t an immediate problem. The pain, however, was enough to keep her prone, face pressed into the floor grating of the Valkyrie gunship as it rattled away from the battlefield, unharried by anti-aircraft fire. Deep red lights cast an angry glow over the troop bay, which was occupied by a pair of grey-suited and masked gunnery chiefs. They were fussing over their heavy bolters, folded back on their armatures and away from the aircraft’s side doors, which were closed. The soft hum of grav-repulsors floated from somewhere nearby as her servo-skull, Spooky, floated worriedly about the fallen Inquisitor. Occasionally, it warbled and hummed in a concerned tone.

Her mind reeled – she’d been on the steps of the pyramid, the squad of Scions sent to ‘mind’ her having been set on by Lychguard. She remembered cutting down a trio of the elites, and being struck, but how had she gotten to the gunship? That came up blank. She attempted to look up, but lifting her head sent a lance of pain through her body great enough to send her back to the deck with a gasp.

“You’re welcome.”

The voice came from above and behind Eliza, and did not seem to belong to the gunners. She tried to stir again, to turn and roll, but her first effort had exhausted her.

“Wh-” She stammered. “Who’s that?”

“The God-Emperor Himself,” The woman’s voice, gruff and irritated, was unmistakable. “I’ve stepped down from the Golden fucking Throne to look in on you. How’s my favorite little pain-in-my-ass doing, these days?”

“Lux?”

Eliza’s guess was answered with slow, sarcastic applause.

“Wow, with wits so sharp, I can see how you earned your rosette.” There was a huff, and the toe of a boot worked itself under Eliza’s side, gingerly rolling the fallen Inquisitor onto her side. Inquisitor Lux sat on one of the benches that ran the length of either side of the Valkyrie’s troop bay, her long Militarum-issue stormcoat open to reveal the gleaming plates of carapace armor. Her close-cropped blond hair was dirty, and her face was streaked with blood. A bolter sat on the benches to her right, its magazine popped loose and empty nearby. The other Inquisitor’s expression was pinched and annoyed, but that was far from unusual where Horncastle was concerned.

“Elizabeth Horncastle,” She sighed, shaking her head. “You look like grox shit that’s been cooked on plasma coils.”

“Nice to see you too,” Eliza croaked back, deadpan. “How did I-”

“Get here? You were unconscious. I dragged you back to the gunship. Corbin’s lot gunned down the Necron officer that got you. Like I said, you’re welcome.”

“Throne,” Horncastle breathed. “The others, the Scions…?”

Lux shook her head. “The Emperor will remember their names, because I sure as shit won’t. You owe me a squad of Stormtroopers.”

Eliza squinted. “As I recall, you sent them on orders to shoot me if I went off-mission.”

Spooky trilled in alarm, drifting protectively between Lux and Horncastle. The former laid a hand on the servo skull in an attempt to calm it.

“Just their gear, then. Take it out of the Ordo Xenos’s investiary, and be glad it wasn’t a shoot on sight order.”

Inquisitor Horncastle rolled her eyes, only for Lux to goose her in the side again with a boot. “Well – I’m not dead. That seems like a good sign?”

Lux nodded. “Can I be brutally honest with you?”

“Never stopped you before.”

“Oh, fuck you, Eliza.” Lux shook her head, but there was a hint of humor in her voice. “I thought you’d be the first that the Engine’s power would affect. My Scions were on orders to put you down if it happened. E’lara, too.”

Horncastle tried not to twinge at that, but her shoulders sunk. Above her, Spooky floated close with a mournful little trill. “I… I understand. It would’ve been in line with what you said before we deployed. Yet-”

She winced in pain, as she shifted to sit awkwardly with the back of her head against the opposite bench. Spooky squalled in complaint. “- I didn’t feel it. The pull that you described in the briefing, that Epistolary Ashes warned me about. I’ve never had much attunement to the Warp, never been a Psyker, but – this felt different. There was just… Nothing.”

Lux squinted, then sighed heavily. “There you go, taking a good situation and making me suspicious of you for it. Do you have any theories?”

“Not yet, not without data and testing.” Eliza raised an eyebrow at Lux. “Speaking of data, you didn’t answer my question – were the Raptors successful?”

“Lady Branwen’s still pulling her forces back. Last I saw, she was leading a charge on the Engine itself. But-” Lux reached past her bolter for a dataslate, narrowed her eyes as its green glow cast her face into contrast with the red of the Valkyrie’s troop bay. “Multiple data returns from scans of dead Xenos leaders. Nearly a dozen, by the looks of it. I’d hazard that it’s enough.”

Horncastle nodded with effort. “… You’re attempting to map the Engine’s Empyric Waveform, and perform Predictive Hexagrammatic Modelling in an attempt towards Aetheroempyrian Distruption.”

“Emperor’s Teeth, you sound like Cato.”

“But am I wrong?”

Lux peered up over the dataslate, rolling her eyes. “Again, fuck you, Eliza.”

“I don’t have time for such things, Inquisitor. I’m too busy.”

That got a snort out of Lux. “In less fancy words, yes. We’re trying to build a method to resist the engine. Those auspexes we handed out to the Raptors were a prototype, but they were set to a wider band. I figure with this data, we can better focus the resistance.”

Eliza nodded slowly, an intrigued expression reaching her glowing eyes. “Fascinating.”

“I should hope so, because you’re going to help me build it.”

The fallen Inquisitor started to reply, but the Valkyrie pitched forwards, the whine of its engines changing as the gunship fired its VTOL thrusters. Lux was able to stay braced in her seat, but the momentum sent Eliza tumbling back to the deck with a yelp of pain. This time, the Ordo Malleus Inquisitor rose from her seat to kneel on the deck next to her counterpart, and lifted her into a seat. Behind them, the gunship’s main ramp lowered as it opened to the dusty, iron-and-gunpowder-tinged air of Exitus, ruined buildings stretching off into the distance about fifty feet below. A figure leapt into the bay as if it were an easy jump, coming to a graceful halt next to the two Inquisitors. The gunners started with alarm, reaching for pistols, but Lux raised a hand to halt them. The figure was cloaked and hooded, the dark green of her cameleoline fluttering about her lithe, blue-armored form in the breeze of jetwash. Beneath her hood was a familiar smirk.

“I was wondering if you’d make the rendez-vous point,” Lux remarked, turning back to the new arrival. Already, the rear ramp was swinging closed as the Valkyrie’s main engines flared with acceleration.

E’lara Veilwalker shrugged a shoulder, adjusting the long, thin-barrelled Aeldari rifle on her back. “The corrupted mortals are broken and fleeing. The shorn-souled and their thralls likewise were too obsessed with the Engine to present any obstacle. It was but a trifle, Madame Lux.”

The Aeldari ranger tilted her head to the front of the troop bay – and the pair of obviously agitated Navy gunners. Even in their full-face masks, they cast glances at their sidearms, and the pair of armature-mounted heavy bolters they’d recently secured away. “Will these Mon-Keigh be a problem?”

“Not unless they want to end up on a pyre.” Lux replied, for the benefit of the crew. “For the time being, you’re under the aegis of the Inquisition.”

Satisfied, E’lara pulled her hood back, exposing sharp features, long blond hair, and pointed ears. She turned her gaze down, and her smirk widened.

“You’re injured again, Elizabeth Horncastle.”

Eliza’s expression went blank. “So kind of you to notice, E’lara. Thank you for not shooting me.”

“There was no need,” E’lara shrugged, impassive. “You did not bend the knee to the shorn-souled.”

She reached down, but only to give a pat of greetings to Spooky. The servo-skull chirped happily, nudging E’lara’s hand before floating over to examine Lux’s dataslate with curiosity. Blue-white scanning lights flickered out from the little floating drone and over the slate’s screen. Behind her green glowing eyes, Eliza’s eyes lit up with scrolls of data, measurements, graphs, and so on.

“Fascinating,” She murmured, looking back up to Lux. “You said you wanted my help building this device? T-to counter the effects of the Apocrypha Engine?”

“I said that you’re going to help,” Lux clarified. “You’re in mine and Cato’s custody, still, Eliza. And you’re going to make yourself useful.”

Eliza nodded. “What’s our first stop?”

Lux’s reply came slowly, as if she was explaining something to an especially defective Servitor. “The Apothecarion of the First Blood. You’re no good to me dead. Is your Infocyte still around?”

“On the ship. I had her tapped into the local vox-net.”

Lux leaned forwards. “Good. We’ll need her. Hopefully Lady Branwen cooperates, too.”

Horncastle’s expression tinged with immediate concern. “Cooperates with what, Lux?”

–

It was said that the Emperor’s Space Marines did not feel fear, feel pain, or grow tired. Yet, when Branwen Lycaeus stepped from the boarding ramp of her gunship as it settled onto the hangar deck of the First Blood, she couldn’t keep the exhaustion from her face. It wasn’t the fatigue of the battle on Exitus, nor the casualties suffered, nor the Raptors’ hurried withdrawal and evacuation from the planet to their orbiting Battle Barge.

It was the fifty Battle Sisters arrayed about the hangar.

Their blue armor gleamed, obscured only by the pure white of their robes. It was not an Order that the Chapter Master recognized offhand, but she didn’t take pains to familiarize herself with religious zealots. The red eye-lenses of their helms were fixed on the Raptors, and their weapons – bolters, meltaguns, and flamers, were held at a low ready. A caution to the Astartes to make no moves.

Branwen’s lip curled, and she stepped forward. Her great two-handed blade, Tyrant’s Due, was already in one hand, her thumb poised to activate the weapon’s disruption field. She let the weapon rest low, but kept the engravings on its flat edge plain for the Sororitas to see: Sic Semper Tyrannis – Thus to Tyrants.

“What is the meaning of this?”

The Battle Sisters did not answer, but another voice did, as a tall, thin, pale figure in a long coat stepped forwards and produced the seal of their office – the stylized I of the Inquisition.

“Chapter Master Branwen Lyceaus, I am Inquisitor Cato, of the Ordo Hereticus. You are hereby required to submit yourself and all personnel involved in ground operations for screening related to the effects of the Apocrypha Engine. I ask that you secure your weapons, and order your Raptors to stand down.”

Their voice grew a touch softer, more sympathetic.

“Please, Lady Lycaeus. Do not make this difficult.”