[i]Noon the next day...[/i]

Kneeling down, I removed my glove and wiped away the sand to reveal a warped, glass-like object. My fingers curled around it and lifted it off the beach easily, examining the crystalline material. It was no piece of technology, just the coagulation that occurs when a lasbolt strikes sand. Judging by the arc of the burnt sand, they had fired from the treeline and not on some vessel. I tossed it to the side and sighed, lifting my eyes off the beach to look at the gnarled corpse that had once been Samara Bandir. 

Her clothes had been torn and picked at by some avian creatures, and her body had been mostly stripped of flesh. In life she had been a lovely but brutal woman of dusky-brown skin and a severity to her manner that Hadrian could only hope to match. He made a silent prayer for the Emperor's Peace upon her, but he had been prepared for this moment after having received the vision from Emmaline. At his left stood Selencia Aethil, who stood with a stony visage that only Hadrian could see past to the flickers of pain behind her eyes. The Magos Biologis and the agent had been long time friends. It was a small mercy that an autopsy wouldn't need to be performed.

Emmaline and Lucius were keeping the locals busy, the psyker making a show of ordering myself to check the corpse so she needn't be bothered, and then performing some theatrics of investigation elsewhere and making up some nonesense about an arbites being able to 'sniff-out' their quarry from some bioenhancement that did not exist. It gave us a scant few minutes to have some time with Samara and give our condolences, as well as investigate in peace. I would have to thank her for that later.

I suspected a few effects had been taken off her, but from a quick search I found an auspex scanner that had unfortunately not served her well, a small compartment in her belt that held a index digi-weapon, and a pack of the lho-sticks she was always so fond of. Even now I could see her leaning on a railing back in the pacitus hanger, smoking and teasing me after a scolding Kronus had elected to discipline me with. The late inquisitor often liked to prepare his rants, and I had quickly become accustomed to all of them. At that particular time, it had been his 'Penal Legion' scolding, which he often used if I disobeyed his orders. Brushing the memory aside, I realized what I could not find on Samara's body was her rosary, her data-slate, any overt forms of weaponry, or the necklace Selencia had given her seven standard years ago. I slid off her remaining boot and retrieved my knife, sliding the keen blade under the sole and popping it off with a 'click.'   

"We're dealing with amateurs." I said off-handedly. Any professional would have searched her far more thoroughly. I plucked out her miniature vox-recorder, which had a microscale tracking device installed, and a counterseptic for emergencies just beside it. 

"Perhaps they were just expecting some arbites and not a member of the inquisition." Selencia reasoned as I handed her the recorder to be listened to later. She took it and then glanced at the small rippling waves that licked the shoreline. Havenos was populated by small, freshwater seas due to a celestial anomaly like a meteor shower that had melted great glaciers and formed basins from the impact craters.

"True," I admitted, placing the boot back on. "They might not have known whom she was working for. Only that she was on their trail a bit too hard. Either way, it's good news for us. Either they're unprepared because of incompetence, or because they don't who's wrath they have incurred."