Zuukind civil war zone, Celestuial bureaucracy controlled space. Planet: Rotatha 4. Town: Saltspire [hider=Last episode] Inquisitor Vempt received an unexpected guest after performing comunion, a wounded Forensakai woman who appeared to have a connection with his absentee predecessor. After an encounter with the Rekshai 0001 6613 7906 that ended in the unfortunate damage of theocracy property, the two now head for the towns dock to investigate the hanger the mysterious woman’s ship is supposedly in hoping it can provide them with answers or sufficient legal mandate to hold the woman for questioning. [/hider] [i]Having a biological warmachine with me as I made my way across the small town towards the docks was about as detrimental to my standing with the locals as I had expected, the people of the town giving us a wide berth where before i had managed to get at least a few polite how do you dos from passers by. Damage control for this was going to be a nightmare. I hindsight I should have taken the car rather than traveling on tail, but there are few things I’d like less than spend any time trapped in a small metal box on wheels with a feral killing machine. So by our own power we went, along the uncomfortably hot concrete pavements heated by the still sweltering late afternoon sun, till eventually we arrived at the town’s only port. One thing the monster made easy was getting access to the hanger the wounded women had parked her ship in. The manager of the port was rather reluctant to let me in despite my credentials but one look at Sixer and he was more than willing to cooperate. Sixer being what the Rekshai had informed me, menacingly perhaps, or maybe politely, I couldn’t understand its tone, its name was. A biomech unit having a name was ludicrous of course, but I felt it wiser to humor the beast in this instance. It was at least easier than referring to it by its full designation.[/i] The manger nervously escorted the pair to the specific hanger holding the ship. The structure itself was a large steel framed structure with kevlar paneling filling in between the metal struts, the bear bones of colony infrastructure that no one had ever seen the need in replacing. The ship inside was not much better, a battered black angular thing about the size of two trucks welded side by side, that an expert in human military history might compare to a F-117 Nighthawk, but which Vempt just thought looked ugly as sin. [i]It was unfortunately typical of current design trends, gone where they days of sleek shining vessels designed by gifted artisans, the civil war had replaced such extravagance with need for prideless efficiency, where every second of manufacturing time was precious.[/i] As the pair approached the black mass of angles and gave the exterior some closer inspection it became evident that the ship wasn’t in a poor state because of age, but rather because it had been attacked, one side was scorched and partially melted , presumably by a wide beam laser, while the surface was also rendered with clawmark like gashes from higher intensity beams. That the ship had survived being hit said more about the intentions of the attackers than the toughness of the ship, these were clear signs of attempted disabling rather than destruction, which meant either the ship had escaped a pirate attack or it had run foul of either the bureaucracy or republic’s police force, all of whom could potentially want to capture the ship, crew and cargo for financial or legal reasons. [i]Looking at the thing it was clear why the manager had been so hesitant to let me in. Not reporting an incident like this was inexcusable and could only mean that he had something to hide. If he didn’t he would have informed the theocracy at once that the region contained some hostile force, be it marauders, pirates or worse, republic raiders. That they hadn't wanted this found out meant either they had been paid off by our woman or where in on whatever operation she was running. That was just a hunch of course. A pretty good one I would bet, but you can't just go around arresting people on hunches. Some Inquisitors did do that. It was basically an open secret that the theorcary was ok with it if you got results, but I ain't one of the ones know for getting results. Not yet anyway. That all changed today.[/i] “Right. Let's crack this thing open and…” Before he could finish Sixer had stabbed the ship’s main door with its Pilum and, demonstrating just how easy it would have been for the ships attackers to just destroy it, slicing a person sized hole in it, wielding the twin pronged force spear like an oversized can opener. After two seconds of slicing the Biomechanical warmachine stepped away and bowed slightly with a hand pointed, with what what Vent could swear was mocking theatrics, at the hole it had created. “Way is open holy one.” “I can see that.” the priest responded falsely before muttering under his breath “what is it with this thing and ruining doors” Despite his contempt at the method of gaining access Vempt nonetheless slithered through the freshly cut hole, carefully avoiding touching the freshly sliced metal with either his tail or his serpents. After being forced to cut open the inner airlock himself for 30 seconds the priest finally got a look at the inside, and what he found was not a pretty sight, for right behind the airlock was as mall corridor containing 3 bodies. One was a Vaun, a biomechanically reanimated and brainwashed human cadavers used extensively during the crusade through Orionic empire, but a rare sight in the subsequent civil war. Not enough raw material available. It and a Lonoxi drone were lying close to the entrance and both were wearing lime green painted vtol capable space combat armor bearing the symbol of the Volt Viper’s mercenary organization. [i]Guess that's what she meant by being attacked by snakes[/i]. One seems to have been armed with a laser pistol, the other with a strange flechette gun. Both of them had had a hole punched clean through said armor, presumably by the woman’s gauss pistol, a skillful and risky thing to do, because missing or over penetrating with a too high powered shot could have punched a hole in the hull, dooming her along with the invaders. Across from these two bodies was one of a Draskavian, the bear sized avians found most commonly in the Republic of equals, who had a large semicircle of flesh burned out of their chest. Blackened ribs were visible sticking out the charred crater, some of which was presumably made of the remains of a number of the Draskavian’s vital organs. [i]Looked like the pair of vipers had managed to jet over to this ship and had been let inside only to be ambushed by the crew. A risky move on both sides and it seemed that nearly everyone had paid the price. The woman who piloted the ship back had only survived because by the narrowest margin. I could see the knife-like projectiles of the fletched gun, some coated with her drying blood, still sticking to the far wall, suck there as sark evidence of her brush with death. Why had they all taken these risk however? Why had the crew not surrendered, why had the mercenaries not vented the ship prior to boarding? What or who was so valuable that both sides had risked life and limb to secure it. That was a mystery yet to be unraveled.[/i] Vempt carefully slinked around the aftermath of the showdown and slipped past the sealed door to the cargo hold into the cockpit. A two person affair it fitted two general species chairs rather than one’s specialised to the two owners, which, along with the distinct lack of any decoration or other modification to the insides of ship, gave the impression that the two people had not been very attached to the vessel itself. Vempt slipped into one of these chairs, which managed to accommodate him uncomfortably, and picked up a small glass pane, held by a thin adjustable arm stand, that acted as the ships main interface, and booted it up, only to be confronted by a password screen. [i]locked. Unfortunate but not unexpected. I’d need to get a technician in here to take a look at...[/i] “Secrets? I can get them for you” [i]Sixer, like a antigrav mine, completely derailed my train of thought and sent it crashing down into an abyss of disbelief[/i] “You? Unlock this? What are you going to do, tare it apart?” the perturbed priest asked before quickly adding “Please don't do that.” In response the Rekshai gave a short grunt that might have been a laugh and then reached behind its head and pulled a short wire out from its helm, one presumably leading back to the cyberware inside. Then it bent down and opened a maintenance panel located at knee height at the front of the cockpit and set about rummaging around in the ship’s internals as Vempt watched. After a few moments Sixer reported that it had “found it”, followed by a soft click of the jack being plugged in. On the screen several passwords were entered in lightning succession until the device hit a cap of attempts and displayed an error mandating a day’s wait till the next attempt could be made. Before Vemt could admonish this failure the timer denoting how long it would be till the next attempt rapidly cycled down to zero, the day seemingly whizzing by in a flash, at which point more passwords were tried, then more and more and more until finally a correct guess was made and the device displayed a simple welcome message. Without looking at the screen Sixer seems to know that its task was complete, the little cable being unconnected and rapidly spooling back into the back to their head as they extracted themselves from the maintenance panel. “Little voice says she is done. Enjoy your secrets holy one.” [i]Automated hacking software. Figures.[/i] “Good good. Go sniff for drugs or something while I look into this” “Yes. Check hold. Hunt for secret compartments. Your will’ll be done.” the apex-predator responded before slinking out the bridges door, heading towards the back of the ship. An occasional tapping of claw against wall could be heard following it, slowly receding deeper into the ship interrupted only briefly by the rending of metal as the monster broke into the cargo hold. [i]That makes three. At this point i was far past caring and instead got stuck in with trawling through the ship’s computer. There was, both blessed and frustratingly, very little to see. While it was good not to have to trawl through gigabyte’s of personal files and the irrelevant horrors that might lay within it also gave me very little information about who the woman and her dead accomplice were. The flight logs had been scrubbed clean, as had all records of external communication and the cargo manifest. Doing so was illegal, naturally, but seeing as the three corpses on the ship were reason enough to arrest her, this didn't really give me anything new. It was luck and frustration that lead me randomly to check the ships controls, but in hindsight it was the most important thing I did that day. There, in the controls for the shields, I discovered a stealth function of some kind, unusual but not unheard of for civilian ships traversing less than safe regions of space, which lead me into checking the ships specks. Why it wasn't hidden I did not know, but there in the list of installed systems was something called a Ersterban stealth module with a production date that made it archive-tech, real grade A pre-civil war stuff. Anything made at the height of the empire that was still around was valuable beyond belief, so much of that stuff couldn't be made anymore due either to budget constraints or the blueprints having gotten lost during the collapse. This kind of thing being on a civilian ship was suspicious to say the least. There were rare cases of archive-tech being available on black markets, but generally only the major powers had access to relics or the capability to make small amounts of the stuff. As a result you could often use archive-tech components as an indicator of who had made something. Which power had had a hand in my duplicitous scheme I wondered. It was time to find out.[/i] Vemt pushed away the glass interface and then used a wrist mounted computer to compose a request for information about the cloaking device. After he sent it the message first went to the local radio tower, from which it was sent to the planets only interstellar relay. There its inquisitorial signature bumped it to the head of the queue to be broadcast out from Rotatha 4 via a micro wormhole generated within the relay. From there it pinged from world to world until it arrived back at the capital world and inquisition hq. There it retrieved classified info from the theocracy’s tech database, in the process tripping a number of data snooping systems installed by the vaios departments of the inquisition itself. Two of these automated systems managed to trip over each other when they noticed the search request and attached report explaining why the request had been made, each detecting that the other had noticed something relevant with the data and bringing all of this to the attention of their respective creators. It took about 10 minutes for the subsequent inter departmental meeting to unveiled a colossal fuckup in internal comunication. Vempt, entirely unaware of all this chain of events he had set off, continued to dig through the ship’s computer till a small beep from his wrist informed him the data he wanted had arrived. It was at this same moment that a man came through the door holding a gun.