Bahometus was growing desperate now, smashing fragments of my mind with increasing speed, almost as fast as I could flake them off the core geode like center of my psyche. Emmaline-Who-Is-Prone-To-Panic was growing increasingly loud in the corner of my mind, as palaces of gold were smashed to powder and forests of gleaming emerald trees obliterated in ugly purple firestorms.

"How can you resist!?" Bahometus roared in my mind, his figure swelling with each victory until he reached to the imagined sky like some horrible titan. I clamped down hard to prevent Emmaline-Who-Makes-Wise-Ass-Remarks from interjecting something that would doubtlessly cost me several more fragments of my mind. Bahometus' elephant sized eyes bored down on my from the mind-sky and then a smile slowly crossed his face.

"You seek only to delay me until that cur reaches me, clever for an untrained witch," he pondered. Suddenly he held a great goat headed staff in his hands, nauseating energies crackling and sparking around it. 

"But enough games," he sneered, then drove his staff into the mind-floor. Rather than lancing out with incredible power as he had done before now, this was a blast that emanated from where he stood. It ripped up the fabric of my mind like the earth recoiling from a meteor strike. If my mind had been unified I could have withstood it, but Bahometus had correctly deduced that he faced only one dimensional shavings of my personality. They shattered like glass before the wave, the foul chaos energy abrading my mind away like an inrushing tidal wave sweeping the ocean floor.

"Going out with a metaphor?" Emmaline-Who-Makes-Wise-Ass-Remarks snarked.

"She thought 'like glass before the wave' so its a simile," corrected Emmaline-Who-Is-Smarter-Than-Everyone-Else.

My mental defenses collapsed in a sudden moment of shocking vulnerability. If he had chosen to Bahometus could have obliterated me in that moment, but he was already desperately trying to pull free of the quicksand of my mind, and the sudden lack of resistance was as effective as a banishment might have been. His dark light flew upwards and away from me.

I snapped awake, sucking in air ionized by las fire. I couldn't see anything. I was very cold. I brushed the hoarfrost from my eyes and lashes and sat up. All around people were yelling. The soldiers whose minds I had accidentally fused were all around me, like bees protecting a hive. Several of them were dead, feeling like missing teeth in my gums.

"Are you alright ma'am?" Rok Hergan, a boy who had once clubbed a Magistratum officer over the head with a sports paddle to recover a book of ration stamps his family had needed. The las gun in his hands shimmered in the tomb air, hot from firing to the point it was nearly visible. A bayonet socketed on the barrel was wet with a purplish fluid that oozed and hissed on the steel. Everything hurt. It felt like I had been scourged with an electro flail way beyond the point of fun. I pushed myself to my feet. The force staff was still gripped in my hand. I pulled away my palm and left skin on the half, burned and fused to the metal. The pain was an annoying background thrum. The daemons were fading, and the psychic background wrongness too. It was replaced with the eerie Xenos background wrongness. The remaining cultists were in dissary, easy meat for the metal men now their daemon allies had deserted them. Another of my bees went down, I felt the gauss rifle rip his flesh from his bones in technicolor agony. I vomited nosily onto the metal floor. I became aware of the chug chug chug of a big engine beside me. With painful deliberation I hauled my head around to see I was sheltered from the distant pyramid by the bulk of a chimera. There was an insanely loud keening noise as its multi-laser stuttered death into some unseeen target. Aware of my intentions Hergan scooped me up and carried me into the back of the vehicle. The interior was loud with the report of the rattle of one of the sponsons and with comm reports. The other teams were back in contact, the Inquisitors now shouting orders and reports across all bands.

"Fleet Command to all ground units," a voice boomed so loudly it nearly blew my eardrums out. The operator dumped the gain with a curse, tearing his own headphones off. The transmission was coming through at maximum gain to give it the best chance of cutting through the chaos of the comm net.

"Multiple Xenos vessels of unknown origin appear to be attempting to lift from the planet. Structures on the planet appear to be Xenos spacecraft. Recommend immediate withdrawal, we are sterilizing as many as we can from orbit. Repeat immediate withdrawal is imperative." Every few seconds the communication pulsed with disruption that must have been from the discharge of their vast lance batteries. My splintered mind was having trouble putting it all together. These vast pyramids were actually starships? Even as the thought formed I felt the floor shudder beneath us.

"Ma'am?" the driver called, looking back from the controls in obvious terror.

"Retrieve the inquisitor, full speed damnit!" I commanded. The chimera lurched across the metal floor, throwing up rooster tails of sparks as it built up speed. I tried to reach out to Hadrian with my mind and nearly vomited again, my psyche was still to fragmented to face the warp. I could only hope he had heard the fleet admirals desperate warning, and hope that we could get off this ship before it lifted.