"This is bigger than we thought," Ortega said, ducking back behind the hab-wall with me. Even from this distance, the smell of prometheum was evident, threatening to sting the nostrils. Irban Retch hadn't been as helpful as I would have liked, but what he did tell us gave us a rough direction and we made all speed across the slums to reach this place. It was an old factory, refurbished from an even older imperial frigate. The parapets had oxidized, leaving the tips of the normally blackened steel a dull grey. Refuse and old, rotted corpses littered the ground before the gaping maw of what I surmised was the bay, old chains and gridded rafters creaking as men gathered on the floor below, igniting machinery in some form of cleansing, the purpose of which I knew not what. 

"We are following a system spanning conspiracy in league with the ruinous powers. Would you prefer they congregate in smaller groups?" I said, my voice dripping with barely suppressed irritation.   

I was not unused to working with people not in my retinue, at least in a limited capacity. However, the last few days had been quite taxing and at the current moment, my lover and the woman who was rapidly becoming my closest confidant was captured by a cell of chaos terrorists in the bosom of a hive. I was in no mood for the constant questioning. Ortega merely grunted, checking his weapon. He bore a combat shotgun with a reduced barrel, granting greater concealment. 

My eyes followed the dilapitated spires of the ancient warship and the age old furnishings of the inexorable modifications and chopping the locals would attempt on it to utilize it for their own ends. Eventually my eyes spied an entrance to the south, on the left side of the greater bay. An ornate helicum column framed arch that was now resplendent with grotesque graffiti that somehow managed to make a bastardation of even the horrid symbols of the accursed chaos gods.

"Are you with me?" I asked Ortega, eyes moving from the field of debris to the arbites. 

Ortega nodded grimly, cocking his shotgun as an assurance. I nodded and began to move, keeping low behind the wall before crawling our way to a ruined groundcar. We paused to assure ourselves we weren't seen, and then made our way to the archway, stepping down the stairs into the darkness while rusted steel and petrochemicals invaded our senses.