[@Quinntessential] [@DrunkasaurusRex] [@BCTheEntity]

Surrounded by skull-masked, armored mercenaries, Astartes-sized giants, tall, slender-limbed Eldar and tribal Ferals, the handsome, golden-haired Apollyon Kaicero looked remarkably out of place in the dim drop-pod flooded with feeble red light. He was of middling height and slim stature and dressed like an affluent aristocrat, his high-collared, black longcoat disguising the ballistic fiber woven into the rich fabric and the form-fitting flak cuirass he wore underneath. The yellow sash around Kaicero's waist, about a hand's breadth wide, seemed an odd sort of detail in the apparel of a dangerous mercenary and yet, that is what he was. And many things besides. 

Kaicero unabashedly met the meandering stares of the other warriors with bright, sky-blue eyes that quietly whirred and hummed every time they refocused. Kaicero returned the deep-set, heavy-browed gaze of the giant opposite him with a smile and a wink. The ex-Astartes grunted and shook his head; Kaicero quietly laughed to himself. He was excited. According to the intel this would be a simple job that required a great excess of the thing that gave him the greatest enjoyment in life – killing. There would be many opportunities for artistry to please his nameless death-god, Kaicero was sure of it. The only gripe Kaicero had with the current situation was the crest of the eight-limbed Arachnosaur of Thran Primus pinned on the lapels of his coat. It was an eyesore and completely unnecessary. Who was going to mistake [i]him[/i] for a pirate? 

The drop-pod crashed into the colony with spectacular force and Kaicero relished the rush of the combat drugs he was glanding into his system to prepare him for the upcoming fight. It was something similar to slaught or psycho but more refined, obviously, as it wouldn't do to turn into a mindless berserker. He felt strong, fast, edgy, dangerous.The bottom dropped out of their pod and the twelve mercenaries fell into the colony boots-first. Kaicero landed softly, bending his knees to disperse the kinetic energy, raised his Xenarch death-arc and looked around. 

The aristocrat's bionic eyes were already adjusted to dim lighting conditions and Kaicero could immediately make out all the necessary details due to the enhanced brightness and contrast. The low, wide corridor was obviously in dire need of a makeover; rust covered every metal surface, including the grating beneath their feet, and grime was smeared all over the drab, plastek walls. The lumo-strips drilled into the ceiling flickered and crackled and sirens blared, whiningly, somewhere in the colony. Their Kroot companion, Malkath, immediately sprinted away and disappeared. Kaicero looked over his shoulder at the twitched-out maniac with the enormous, weaponized bionic arm and the lanky, colorless Eldar. “So it begins,” he said and smiled at Gisimae and Harvin. 

Without waiting for a reply, Kaicero set off down the corridor at a brisk pace. He fiddled with his death-arc as he walked, turning a small dial this way and that. The electrical glow of the capacitor fitted inside the metal body of the exotic weapon dimmed slightly. There was no need to use full charge in such confined spaces. Kaicero didn't want to blow the walls out every time he fired his weapon and it was unlikely the pirates would be heavily armored. The corridor branched out at several points along his path and it was at one of these junctions that the aristocrat casually stepped through a malfunctioning sliding door, whistling a pleasant tune and not bothering to check if anyone had followed him. The room in front of him was probably the mess hall, judging by the furniture – long tables littered with plates, mugs and cutlery and horrendously stained by what could only be colony grog. It was initially empty but two blustering pirates ran headfirst into the room, their weapons at the ready, through a door on the opposing end, hollering something incoherently. They stopped in their tracks.

“Hello,” Kaicero said, aimed the death-arc and pulled the trigger. One of the pirates, a scantily-dressed, grimy fellow with a stubber, was immediately struck by a blast of lightning and thrown against the far wall with a sharp [i]crack[/i] – he'd shattered the screen of a terminal embedded in the wall. The pirate's chest was blackened, plasmic discharge sprang up around the wound and his limbs twitched with coursing elecricity. The other pirate screamed something obscene and opened fire with an old Guard-issued lasrifle. Kaicero dove for cover behind one of the long tables, executed an elegant combat roll and sprang to his feet a full ten yards further down the hall. He pulled the trigger again, but the death-arc's thin, electrical feeler-tendrils, crawling across the surfaces of the floor and the tables like glowing spiders, didn't manage to connect with the pirate this time. Annoyed, Kaicero sighed and dropped to the floor again. It was a beautiful weapon and wonderful when it connected, but rather innacurate. The Xenarch obviously favored brute force over precision. The pirate hosed the table down with lasrifle and unloaded the full clip of his weapon. Kaicero, crouched low, checked the power meter of the death-arc's capacitor – enough charge left for two shots. It was a convenient weapon in that the capacitor, far beyond the Mechanicum's abilities, recharged on its own over time, but it also meant he could run out of juice in the middle of a firefight without a way of manually reloading. Kaicero decided it would be best to save those shots for now. There were other ways of taking down the pirate.

He slung the death-arc around his torso and pulled a combat knife out of his coat. While the pirate was busy reloading with clumsy fingers, cursing as he did, Kaicero lept up and over the table with feline grace and speed, his coat flapping behind him in the slipstream. The aristocrat charged the pirate and plunged the combat knife into the pudgy flesh of his enemy's chest where it neatly slid between his ribs. Kaicero smiled at the gurgling pirate, curled his other gloved hand into a fist with a crisp creak of leather, and punched him in the face. The impact broke the pirate's nose and he dropped his lasrifle to the floor. Kaicero pulled the combat knife out of the Scarred Maiden's chest and stepped back, watching dismissively as the pirate slumped against the wall, blood spurting from his chest with the frantic beating of his heart. Kaicero briefly considered cutting the man apart and arranging his body into a shape that would please the death god, but decided against it. There were many more enemies to kill. 

Kaicero slipped the combat knife back into his coat after wiping it clean on the pirate's clothes and unslung his death-arc. He resumed whistling, picking up the tune where he left off, and headed down the door the pirates had come through. That took Kaicero into another corridor, a much smaller one, with a few windows to the outside. They were so filthy the aristocrat could barely see through them. “Degenerates,” he mumbled and rolled his eyes. 

Meandering through the colony eventually brought him to the cell block. He'd encountered another pirate on the way there, a skinny fellow lifting a surprisingly big auto-rifle, who came face to face with Kaicero when he rounded a corner. He'd opened his mouth to scream something and Kaicero had jammed the barrel of his death-arc between the Scarred Maiden's teeth and pulled the trigger. The result had been spectacular. The doors of the cell block were all closed – and presumably locked– except one, a heavy steel door with the bolt undone. Kaicero stopped to look at it, cocked his head and chuckled. It seemed one of the prisoners had escaped. “Where are you?” he called out in a sing-song voice, looking around. “The cavalry is here, dear.”