Katiya took her jacket wordlessly and pulled it on, feeling the familiar sense of purpose and resolve that it conveyed flow through her. If she was going do die now, she would at least be dressed to meet the Emperor. The interior of the maunfactorum was dark, scafolding and gangways reached up into the shadowed night and a soft red glow was cast from a dilipidated stained glass window depicting the Omissiah. The window was missing more glass than it still had, giving it a dappled and skeletal appearence. The air outside had a faintly frenzied quality to it, the energy and excitment of the mob lingered somehow in a sharp tang at the back of the throat.

"Well lets see what we can see," she said and swung herself up onto a gangway, clambering upwards into the superstructure with Connor behind her. As they rose more and more of the darkened city came into view. Electric luminators were rare, the grid having been disrupted, here and there a promethum lamp glowed, but the majority of light came from torches and small fires what had been set in the course of looting and arson. When they reached the fifth and final story she could make out the scholam where the regiment was billeted. It was surrounded by a ring of torch bearing protestors whose shouts mingled into a dull and distant rumble. Wordlessly Connors proffered a battered amplivisor, which she lifted to her eyes.

"Well they aren't shooting yet," she observed, "that is something."

The guardsmen at the scholam were drawn up between the buildings, chimeras had been turned into improvised cover, their side armor pointed at the mob so that one of the sponsons and the multilazer could bear on the crowd like miniature pillboxes. Sandbags and furniture had been piled on the roofs to create improvised parapets behind which guardsmen crouched with lasguns pointed. Even so they were outnumbered several hundred to one. If anything popped the standoff might turn into a bloody massacre within heartbeats. Whether the rioters had the stomach to overrun the tiny Imperial force really depended on how willing they were to take casualties.

"No way we can get through that without getting torn to pieces," Connors observed delicately. He might rightly be concerned that the question could be considered cowardice.

"Agreed," Katiya said, "and if we stay here someone will stumble on us eventually, we cant allow that. Tearing us apart might be the trigger for this all going to frak."

"Well we can't get there, and we cant stay here, so...?" Connors asked with a shrug of his shoulders. Katiya's white teeth glittered in the darkness.

"So, I think we best go visit your friend the Governor."