"Who are you!?" I demanded, unmoved as the enemy rushed to their master's aid, reloading their lasguns. A few knelt and readied their weapons in unison, but a burst of bullets rattled across them like acid rain. I didn't have to turn behind me to know it was Clara. Blood spurted from their shoulders and abdomens, one managed to scream and fired wildly, but his shots hit naught but air. Emmaline reached me and pleaded for me to move. 

"You should know, brother." The other inquisitor said as Emmaline grabbed at my arm. He smiled, and the image was burned into my eyes and memory, and it would stay for years to come. "It's never that easy." 

"Hadrian!" She screeched, and like a dam breaking I felt my limbs loosen and I moved, turning and hurrying out of the courtyard as lasbolts scythed through the smoke, scorching the eldritch rock of the walls. Emmaline and I reached the others, but we didn't slow. It seemed the emperor was with us, because we managed to follow the main thoroughfare and follow its winding path back out of the impossible landscape with only the dizziness of the warp to contend with. I felt dried mud crunch under my boots as I stepped back onto the blasted land of the old settlement. 

For a moment, we almost made it out without being noticed, but the guards overseeing the slave labor turned and saw our desperation. Selencia stumbled and I caught her, and it was clear we weren't the locals guiding the heretics we had masqueraded as. There would be no reason the same group would run out with more or lesser numbers. As the dregs approached with their weapons, barking their bastardized gothic, I raised my hand, presenting three fingers, then four, then crooking one finger to slide down the front of my face. 

"What was that?" Emmaline asked, hoping it was something good no doubt. 

"After six months you should know by now, Em." Selencia said. "It's for the contingency." 

Even as she spoke the last word, the closest mutant to their left lost the upper half of his body. It took a second for the sonic-boom to hit them, spraying mud and fetid water and bloody shrapnel half a kilometer in every direction. It gave everyone pause, all save me. "Come on! We need to get to the dock!" I cried, pulling out my handgun and dispatching two men to our right with well placed shots. Another man lost his legs, again, courtesy of Lazarus's transuranic arqebus. 

As we moved, I spoke to Emmaline. "Can you get to Lucius from here? Speak to him?" 

"Maybe..." 

"Tell him to break the wall," I said. "Flood it!"