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| The Inquisitor and several of his acolytes, standing before the Mantis Warriors Razorback APC Dao Găm |
The Inquisitor held his right hand by his side. Around him the air grew leaden, heavy. The charge that always lay in this place, that quiescent during his mundane works, a thrumming energy
in potentia, began to crawl its way toward reality. His fingers arched into a complex pattern, a perfect geometric web. Points of jale light formed across points on his glossy protective gloves.
Behind the Inquisitor, his mortal servants shifted. Leth the Silent’s porcelain mask grew colder as the shadows began to flicker, blending from fuligin to sangoire. Beside him, sparks of dead colour flared on the Dimachaerus’s swords. The Exile ignored the prickling across its scalp, activating a gleaming rune on the deck panel; a holo-projector flared to life, showing a scarred planet.
Their Inquisitor master raised his left hand. Behind the soft gurgling of his rebreathing unit, he was speaking words in a helical tongue. Both hands now moved, exactly mirroring, and the unnatural lights dimmed on the hand; following a binaric chant, they were replicated, exactly, on the false-light sphere which hovered over the command deck.
The shadows returned to black. Lights returned to reds and blues; monitors to healthy green-on-black. Across the desk from the Inquisitor and his people, Lieutenant Commander Gwak Chae'u of the Mantis Warriors cleared his throat.
“I take it those are to be our targets then, Lord Inquisitor?” The distaste for the rank was concealed, to a point.
The Inquisitor’s inhuman eyes flickered. “Yes, Commander. You may inform your master.”
“I - he is uncomfortable…” Gwak’s expression flattened. “That is to say, we have made the error…
The Exile’s pointed ears flickered; some alien expression of amusement, although its oval eyes betrayed no emotion. Behind the Inquisitor, one of his more human minions coughed and shoved a cigar in his too-wide mouth.
"You have rather more recent experience fighting other Astartes than most, Mantis Warrior.” The rebreather unit hissed. “Ergo, you are perfect for this investigation. Dixi.”
Lt. Comm. Gwak held his eyes for a moment and then, bowing, withdrew.
The falselight globe spun lazily above the briefing table, witch-lights gleaming. The scarred world was in turmoil; icons indicating renegade forces blinked in and out of focus, pursued or pursuing their Imperial prosecutors. Here the crossed, sanguine axes of Orkish mercenaries grew brighter as they ravaged a promethium depot; there a white rose collapsed in pixel fire as a cathedral’s defenders changed their allegiance.
The witch-lights followed their targets’ icons, flickering only as the falselight projector’s machine spirit ran the inflow routines. Unlike the turmoil across much else on the map, the sword-and-wings icons remained steady as faith…
