“Luciene, I’m—” Myr began as the angel wept in the center of the room, still cradling the lifeless body of Zaer in her arms.

  “Sorry?” Luciene interrupted, then nodded. “So am I. We knew this was a trap when we took the contract, so why did I let him leave on his own? It was as he always had, but I should have known better this time.”

  “How could you have, Luciene?” Kor’Kassan asked, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I heard the conversation with Cornelius same as you. Same as Zaer. We three heard the same hints, the same secrets hidden from us. There was nothing more to know.”

  Luciene wiped an arm across her face, smearing tears between wrist and cheek, and then nodded and rose to her feet. “I don’t know why we’re here. Spring the trap, my stupid idea, and then what? What for?” she asked of herself, shaking her head. “Return to Katabasis. There’s nothing for us here.”

  Zet stepped up to Luciene, still looking down over his former rival. “That may be easier said than done. I am now detecting additional Inquisition vessels in orbit, while that Thunderhawk has escaped my gaze.”

  “Just as well. I need something to punch,” Luciene hissed, fists clenching by her sides. And then, in a blink, she was gone. Not her by her own volition, however; her wings never unfurled, and she never made to move. It was, instead, as though a great, invisible hand reached through the facility and grabbed hold of her, yanking her away from the group. It tore a hole in the side of the building, too, whisking her away across the surface of Ranéla to some faraway destination.

  “Wha—” Zet, among others, started, but they, too, found an immaterial emptiness taking hold of them, and the next thing they knew, they were not where they once were.

  ***

  Human

  Kane threw off his helmet, lurching, body refusing to adjust from the sudden and merciless spacial Translation. No vomit exited his mouth, though to him, it felt like it ought to have. Myr adjusted better, but still stumbled back against the remnants of a conveyor belt. They were still in the materials processing facility, just shunted into some other room on their own. But they were not on their own, not quite. “Hardly Imperial outfits,” the bronze-skinned, silver-eyed woman said, an arm still clad in flesh crossing over a mechanized augmetic. “Defectors, then, which is a more polite term for traitors.”

  “Trantos,” Myr asserted, drawing her own conclusion as to their host’s identity. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

  “Bless your lucky stars I’m not Trantos,” the unknown woman replied. “I could ask the same of your crew. He was a friend.”

  “Ours too,” Kane retorted, and finally righted himself, at which point his eyes went wide upon getting a better view of the beautiful, jumpsuit-clad pilot before him. “It’s you.”

  “It’s me,” the woman agreed, eyebrow raised.

  “I dreamt of you,” he said in slight whimsy.

  “Creepy,” she replied, voice flat and uncaring.

  “You…you called me insignificant, then knocked me out with that metal arm of yours,” Kane explained.

  “Well, that does sound like me,” she shrugged. “I’m not here to talk dreams, and I’m not here to discuss your gang’s horrific mistake. I’m here for your surrender. Concede now, or I will beat you both into compliance. Throne knows I need something to hit, so go ahead, resist. I don’t need to be psychic to see it in you.”

  Kane and Myr looked to each other, and in silent assent, drew weapons upon the Inquisition pilot standing ahead of them. She was just a pilot, right? Surely not as dangerous in close quarters as a veteran of the Militarum or, worse, a Death Cult Assassin. Both had the same thought at the same time, and both beliefs shattered at once when the presumptive pilot closed the distance to them before either of them had aimed true. A heel buried itself in Myr’s gut and launched her back into the conveyor belt again while a non-augmetic hand grabbed hold of the back of Kane’s knee, pulling him off balance and letting him fall to the ground.

  A moment passed while Kane tossed his bulky, T’au-made weapon aside and reached to his waist for Cornelius’s—damn him!—stub pistol. In that moment, the Inquisition Agent sparred with Myr, and to Kane’s horror, it was not much of a match. Their unknown assailant was faster, stronger, and apparently more skillful, even, than a Death Cult Assassin, parrying aside any blow Myr managed to get out amidst a flurry of augmetic-backed jabs of her own. By the time Kane had finally drawn and aimed his stub pistol, the Agent had grappled around Myr’s body and in one clean motion, tossed the pair of women into the air. The Agent threw Myr further across the room while landing a short distance to Kane’s side, and spun like a snake on the ground to kick the stub pistol from his grasp before he re-oriented it to her.

  Kane rose to his feet, not to fight the Agent head on, but seeing that Myr had recovered likewise and tackled the Agent from behind, restraining the would-be-pilot’s arms for a moment. Kane moved to assist in bringing the Agent down, but she instead jumped back against Myr, forcing the latter into a backstep, and plunged her feet into Kane’s gut, kicking him away and knocking Myr off balance. The Agent landed atop Myr’s front, bashed a shoulder into Myr’s face before rolling off her, and then drew and trained a Laspistol on Kane, who was still stumbling to his feet. In desperation, Myr threw herself onto the Agent again, this time just trying to wrestle her to the ground, and at that, finally succeeded.

  Kane scrambled for his stub pistol once more while Myr fought a losing battle with the Inquisition Agent on the ground. As soon as he thumbed the hammer of the pistol back, however, the Agent lurched away from Myr and kicked out one of his ankles, again making Kane fall, this time to his hands and knees. He looked up just in time to lock eyes with his assailant, and he froze; her eyes, stunning though they were, burned of steely violence. This was no pilot before them! No, Kane saw then that he was within a whisper’s utterance from someone who loved fighting. Not killing, not shooting, not war as he or Myr may have known it. Whoever this Inquisition Agent was, they craved a good scrap, and thus far, she was disappointed with what they had offered her together.

  Then an arm careened against Kane’s neck and threw him onto his backside. Before he knew it, a great weight fell upon his chest and throat, the Agent’s knee pinning his neck to the ground as she sat on his front. The Agent had, in a single, clean motion, plucked his stub pistol from the ground and turned it upon Myr, where she shot the Laspistol Myr had just grabbed from the ground and aimed against her. The las weapon recoiled out of Myr’s hands, stinging her wrists in the process. The Agent then turned Kane’s stub weapon against him, and though it was a single-shot, hammer-cocked pistol, opened fire in four lightning-quick blasts around Kane’s head.

  Then, a pause at last, as Kane stared down the barrel of his own gun. “We done?” the Agent asked the pair, cocking the pistol once more.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “My gun only had five shots in it,” Kane replied. The Agent looked to the weapon in her hands and pulled the trigger once more.

  Click.

  No, they were not done.

  ***

  Necron

  While momentarily stunned from his own unwilling Translation, Zet had no organs to churn or physical adjustments to make. His eyes instantly reassessed his surroundings, and had he wanted it, he could just as easily teleport himself back to where he had been a moment prior, or onto Katabasis outright. But, he saw despite the darkened shadows that encompassed him, he had a guest. “My, aren’t you a vision,” he spoke to the unlit, vacant storage shed his internal geopositioners found themselves in.

  “The last thing I need is to be complimented by a machine, much less a Xenos one,” came the disinterested reply from dead ahead of him. Were Zet a creature of flesh, a host of adjectives to describe the woman’s eye-catching form may have flashed through his mind. As it was, he only generated an objective analysis—Imperial, Callidus, Assassin; Threat Level: Negligible. “Against my better judgment, I’m to subdue you and procure your cooperation. I recommend complying.”

  “Oh ho ho, presumptuous little thing, aren’t we?” Zet chuckled. If his laugh unnerved his would-be captor, she did not display as such. “Unluckily for you, you and your gang have just murdered one of the first genuine allies I have had for millions of years. No, there shall not be cooperation on this dreadful day, not from me.”

  “We’ll see how long that lasts,” the Assassin shrugged, and then darted across the room and leapt for Zet, bringing a leg around for a roundhouse kick. Zet was content to let the attack connect while he studied the creature further.

  In the milliseconds before the kick connected with the side of his head, he noted that the Assassin had crossed the room in an inhuman shortness of time, surpassing the pace of even the Astartes he had had the misfortune of encountering—and bisecting—over the years. Zet also observed that the woman was particularly well-muscled; though covered head to toe in Imperial synskin, the promiscuous tightness of the faux-flesh revealed both a provocatively lustful visage as much as it did the knotted muscles otherwise hidden beneath the skin. Threat Level: Minimal.

  In the nanoseconds before the Assassin’s blow landed, Zet looked deeper still. His attacker was unlike any human he had ever seen before; her muscle density was well in excess of even the most enraged Orkoids he had observed. And upon reflection of the movements she took to approach him and launch her attack against him, Zet noted that at a microscopic level, every twist and turn of her body was carried out with absolute perfection, even insofar as his systems, systems which had defied and defeated the Old Ones, could tell. But still, she was only human, Zet judged. Threat Level: Moderate.

  And then her attack at last connected.

  Necrodermis bent and warped as the Assassin’s calf crushed the Necron’s skull inward, shattering servos and mechatronics behind his face. Zet careened away, launched across the room in the blink of an eye. He may as well have eaten a Battle Cannon blast to the face, though that, he decided, would have at least deflected off his Necrodermal body and imparted most of its kinetic energy unto the ground where it finally came to rest. Not so for the woman’s leg, which hit him and did not buckle or bounce away. “Ar-e you so-me s-ort of m-onst-er?” Zet creaked out, forcing himself to his feet as his voice modulator repaired itself within his twisted neck. His living metal head buffed out the cracks and smoothed the dents that had been smashed into his face, though there were many and the process was not as swift as his assailant had maneuvered.

  Threat Level: Severe.

  “I destroy monsters,” the Assassin answered. “No, I am something far worse. Surrender.”

  “I think not,” Zet replied, voice already repaired, and summoned his warscythe to his side, its fractal edge illuminating the darkness more than the glimmer of his body managed. And then Zet bore witness to something that left even one such as he perturbed: from a wrist-mounted contraption on the Assassin’s arm sprung forth a green energy weapon of C’tan origin, something that could meet—and perhaps even beat—the phase blade of his scythe. Threat Level: Catastrophic.

  “Have at it, then, and make your move,” the Assassin invited him, pointing her energy weapon his way and assuming a duelist’s stance. “Unlike you, however, I will not be dumb enough to let you strike me.”

  “A miscalculation, indeed, but one that will not be repeated,” Zet agreed. But walking and running was for lesser creatures, as his peers would say. Zet, instead, phased out of reality and rematerialized himself within striking distance—and beyond retaliatory distance—of his target. A trick of the Deathmarks, taken and repurposed for himself; if that kleptomaniacal archivist had any wisdom at all, it was that Necron trinkets were best used in conjunction with one another, rather than in isolation. Yet teleportation or no, the Assassin was ready to catch Zet’s warscythe against her far-shorter weapon, and despite the Nemesor’s otherwise-unmatched strength, she held her ground with ease, showing no signs of a struggle.

  Indeed, Zet finally realized, he had deduced the real extent of the threat posed by this creature, human in appearance and vocabulary only.

  ***

  T’au

  “What is the nature of your relationship with the angel?” a voice behind Kor’Kassan asked him before he even regained his bearings.

  “Mutually beneficial,” he answered, and spun on his heels and shot twice with wrist-mounted Pulse Blasters, once from each arm. But, he found, no one lurked behind him. Instead, Kor’Kassan found he had shot a simple, plascrete podium to hell, upon which rested a voxcaster of Imperial make. He glanced around, noting his surroundings; he was in a vacant meeting hall, which was darkly fitting, within which rusted support columns dotted the otherwise empty floor, rising to the ceiling.

  “You are no combatant, are you?” the voxcaster asked. Kor’Kassan grumbled to himself and reached to his backside, detaching and engaging a MV1 Gun Drone, which bobbed to and fro as its antigrav generators spun up. Its frontal eye illuminated the otherwise dimly lit scene, and the drone began to scout about the room. “The shoot-first-question-later type is no professional operative.”

  “I’m an engineer, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to defend myself,” Kor’Kassan replied, still searching his surroundings for signs of life.

  “Clearly,” the voxcaster drawled.

  “Hey, I’m in no toying mood! You and yours have just killed a longtime friend of mine!” Kor’Kassan roared, tensing up and pointing his wrist-cannons aimlessly about the room. His drone continued its search.

  “And yours likewise of mine,” the voxcaster answered. Kor’Kassan paused, arms lowering. “She hadn’t told you that bit, had she?”

  “No. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “And I yours.”

  Kor’Kassan heaved in a deep breath, and then waved toward his drone. It abandoned its search, instead flitting over toward its master, engaging protective protocols. “You’re in this room somewhere, aren’t you?” Kor’Kassan asked. He got no response to that one. “Fine. Tell me this, then: are you here to kill us all, or to talk? Because that ship of yours up there could’ve done the killing bit much more simply than all of this.”

  Silence, again. Then a figure stepped out from behind a support column, Bolt pistol drawn but pointed toward the ground. Kor’Kassan’s drone did not open fire upon the figure that had until then eluded its gaze. “The original plan was to talk. The assumption was most of you wouldn’t have been willing to,” the woman said. Her skin was as dark as night, her black hair braided over her shoulders, and her body hidden beneath the overzealous garb of the Imperial faith. “Do you have a name, T’au?”

  “Kor’Kassan,” he answered.

  “Zha Trantos,” she returned with a nod.

  “The Inquisitor,” he asserted.

  “There are three on this world, yes. One seeks to parlay with your Necron ally. The other with the angel,” she explained, then winced. “I do not imagine either conversation will be as civil as ours.”

  “And the humans? Our humans?” Kor’Kassan clarified.

  “Our pilot,” Zha answered, and winced again. “She may be the punchiest of the bunch, alas.” Zha then paused and shook her head. “This has all gone wrong. It has been going wrong for years now.”

  “Perhaps you should consider a new line of work,” Kor’Kassan suggested, and was met with a dry, deathly glare that sent a shiver down his spine. “Or not. If you’re here to talk, what about?”

  “Your angel. How she came to be, what she has been doing, and what she could do instead,” Zha explained. “I imagine she has done some good by your side, something you’ve found meaningful. But I also suspect that both you and she have been unwitting pawns in someone else’s game, and trust me, I’m perilously familiar with what that’s like.”

  Kor’Kassan looked away from the Inquisitor, brow furrowing. Then, he admitted aloud, “I admire her.”

  “I did too, once,” Zha said. Kor’Kassan looked at her, puzzled. “Before she was an angel. Kor’Kassan, engineer, can we sheathe our weapons and hold a real conversation? Or need I subdue you like my fellows are liable to do to yours?” He stared at her for a moment more, and then raised a palm below his drone, whereupon it powered down and came to a rest in his hand.