It was not unlike dancing, dancing with a very unskilled very irritating partner. I followed Hadrian’s moves easily enough, anticipating his attempts to pull me too and fro, but I just didn’t have the mass or the strength to push him off balance. At one point I tried to kick him and he shoved me over onto my ass.

 

“Don’t try that until we have shown you how,” he advised as I climbed to my feet, “you don’t have the strength or the leverage to make it count.”

I elbowed him in the kidney and he flinched back slightly. I followed it up with another elbow aimed at his throat but he managed to get his hands infront of that one and spin me away, grabbing me from behind. I lunged forward with what momentum I had and twisted hard, driving him into a bulkhead though not hard enough to make him loosen his grip.

 

“Good,” he approved and let me go, “always try to use your enemies strength to make your attack. We continued sparring for another two hours, by the end of which I was thoroughly done with the exercise to the point that even the fact that it might save my life seemed too small a comfort.

 

“Enough for today, let’s hit the showers,” Hadrian suggested. “Then I have a surprise for you.”

 

Somewhat to my disappointment the surprise did not involve the showers but that was not to say it was impressive. The armory on the Caledonian, one of several I was later to learn, was immense. It reeked of gunoil, burnished metal, propellant powder and more exotic scents I couldn't name. Urien was a collector of sorts, a trophy taker might have been a better term and Hadrian’s personal collection was also extensive. The sheer variety of implements of death was a little overwhelming. Some weapons, like the las carbines and flamers, were familiar enough from imperial service. Others I thought I recognized from tales and texts, like the bejeweled Aeldari shuriken catapult. Others were so alien that their very relationship to violence was alien to me.

 

“Don’t bother with the xenos stuff,” Hadrian advised when he saw me looking at a strange glove like thing that might have been a gun and might have been a whip. I arched an eyebrow in surprise. We were the inquisition weren’t we? Didn’t that allow us to use the tools of the enemy? Or did they just not trust me not to shoot myself in the foot.

“Heretical xenos tech?” I asked skeptically. Hadrian shook his head and chuckled.

“Well yes, but mostly its because we don’t have alot of ammunition for them, it isn’t as though I can whistle up a corrupted Aldeari and ask for a few extra magazines of ammunition for yon splinter rifle,” he told me, making a gesture which might have been aimed at anyone of a dozen bizarre looking weapons. I had no idea what a splinter rifle might be. Well that wasn’t strictly true. Presumably it was a rifle and it either fired splinters, or made things splinter when it was fired at them. Emmaline Von Morganstern, ace Inquisitorial Operative, blinding powers of deduction.

 

“Oh,” I said lamely and continued through the collection into a more recognisabley imperial section.

“Might I suggest a sling shot, low risk to the rest of us,” Lazarus sniped as he followed in our wake. 

 

I ignored him and picked up a gold and chrome hand gun with a black rubberized grip. The slide had been engraved with various images of St Sabat and with tiny curleques of text that seemed to be a variation on the Prayer for Accuracy. A half dozen magazines lay beside it, loaded with fat blunt ended rounds. I placed it on an arming tray and added the magazines beside it, then took a standard magistratum issue riot gun and a bandolier of reloads.

 

“I have fired a pistol before,” I declared loftily, glossing over the fact that it had been a las derringer designed to be pushed up against the target before being triggered, effective at scarring off unwelcome attention from men or their irate wives. I wondered what had happened to it, presumably the hotel I had been abducted from had taken it as collateral to my unpaid fees.

 

“What about a melee weapon?” Hadrian mused, turning his head to make it clear he was asking Lazarus. The Skitarii made a series of clicks.

“In all honesty, I would consider lending her your force staff, she cant cut her fingers off with it and her instinct is going to be to rely on her psychic powers if things go wrong. Which, if she gets into hand to hand combat, they most certainly have.”