Have you ever been through obscura withdrawals while on psy blockers. It's pretty unlikely if you have the clearance to be reading this. By the time we reached the Caledonia the shakes were passing to be replaced by the deep to your bones prickling burn. It feels like someone is scrubbing your body with sand with every tenth grain actually a stinging nettle. I do remember my first sight of the ship though, a great phallus of rusting steel and gleaming ceramite well over a kilometer long. She was fat at the base, crusted with great crenelated towers from which hung the sensorium and the four great lance batteries that protected her from pirates and xenos alike. Forward she tapered to a great adamantine prow, curved and painted with green and gold squares in a curious checkerboard, each square thirty meters in diameter. She buldged slightly in the middle, to perhaps half the width of her aft nacelle, with two great bays for taking on the cargo that was her purpose for existing. I have seen bigger ships since, but at the time, even as strung out as I was, it made an impression. In some ways it was lucky I was still coming down. Although I hadn’t seen a rosette it was clear I was in the custody of the Inquisition. I had convinced myself, partially as a coping mechanism, that if they wanted me dead I would already be dead. I tried not to dwell on the fact that they might simply want to torture me for any information I had before they rectified that mistake.

 

I must have cut a fine figure. Hair disheveled, clad only in a set of fatigues for which my hips were too wide and my legs too short. The shirt similarly strained across my chest, held in place by two buttons which valiantly preserved what passed for my decency. There were no shoes. A fact I was reminded of when the dropship docked in one of the cavernous hangers and I was escorted, none to gently, down onto a deck which had so recently been exposed to the void of space. It burned my feet and I kicked out the folds I had added to the pants so i could walk on the fabric. In short order I was frog marched out of the vaulted ceramite hanger with its smell of burning prometheum and questionable void shields into a rusted corridor with a smell of old soup and partially functional air recyclers. It was there I first saw the servitors. The Imperium is, of course, awash with servitors of all kinds but I do not believe that I have ever seen the likes of these. They were humanoid in form but their necks and backs were augmented with great plumes of feathers, each spun in brilliant patterns from some kind of ceramic glass to give them the appearance of fearsome predators from some forgotten barbaric world. Some of them raised and lowered these faux crests in imitation of threat postures as we passed, or perhaps that was a reaction to the space marine escorting us. They showed little original organic material and what skin remained had been fastidiously painted with some kind of shiny black lacquer, the joins between flesh and machine often accentuated with gold rings or brass rivets. I supposed there might be an argument to make against practicality, but they certainly were impressive even in my dazed condition.

 

The astartes shoved me into a cell without deining to speak to me. The cell had begun life as a cargo vault. A void shielded chamber meant to preserve the most valuable cargos against the perils of star travel. The hissing milky field of the void shield was equally effective at containing psychic phenomenon of all kinds which was why the Inquistor picked it for my stay. To my surprise it was furnished, if one can apply the word, with a pallet, a blanket and two buckets for ablutions. A meal of processed protein cubes and steamed root vegetables had been laid out on a tray that sat upon a battered looking rug. To my surprise I found that I was famished. I literally couldn’t recall the last time I had eaten. I demolished the food in a few minutes and washed it down with a canteen of water which had also been set down for me.

 

I will admit that my fear caught up to me then. I knew that I was unsanctioned. Probably the best I could hope for was to be sent via the Black Ships to Terra where the Emperor alone knew what fate might await me. More likely I would find myself floating out of an airlock after some period of extreme unpleasantness. Luckily the withdrawals were enough to keep me from completely devolving into a blubbering mess, though I admit there was a deal of blubbering involved. Eventually though I managed to pull myself together and thought I couldn’t quite sleep, I wrapped myself in the blanket and laid down to wait for whatever was to come.