"We have Magistratum en route," Ortega confirmed over the howl of the valkyrie's turbofans. The Arbite was now dressed in full black tactical armor along with the black cloak of his office. He carried a powerful looking automatic shotgun along with the battered and much used power maul with which he had ended the life of the cultist in the manufactorium a subjective lifetime ago. Hadrian clung to a stanchion, his face pale. Selenica had said that the drugs she was giving him could only keep him going for so long. He needed to give his augmetic kidney time to proper bond with his tissues. He was risking worse damage by being upright at all, much less preparing to attack. 

"What about the PDF?" Hadrian demanded. I  knew that he had issued orders for troops to be brought to readiness, but I hadn't heard of any plan for their deployment. Ortega shook his head.

"They haven't moved from their deployment areas, though they assure me they are about to move out at any second," he reported. Hadrian gritted his teeth.

"Could their commanders be compromised?" he asked. Ortega shrugged, the heavy armor making the gesture surprisingly diffident. 

"Corruption, incompetence, graft," he spat, grinding out each word as though it were a curse in the eyes of the God-Emperor. It wasn't unusual for PDF units on peaceful worlds to be far below their listed strengths, with the rations and equipment that the Munitorum provided for non-existent troopers to line the pockets of their commanders. I suspected that if that were the case here things were not going to work out for the would be entrepreneurs.

"You are sure of the target?" Ortega asked as the aircraft banked hard, climbing the hive spire in a narrowing corkscrew. It was my turn to nod. Once we had realised that the cult needed to broadcast its message the only possible choice was to use the holovid systems which serviced most of the upper and mid hive. The only broadcast stations with access to the whole thing were the Governer's emergency address system and the Ecclesiarchy Prayer Mandate, which broadcast sermons and blessings planet wide several times a day. That thought had led back to the priest who had purchased me from the gang. A quick search through one of Lazarus' data grafts had revealed that the cleric in charge of the broadcast station was one Joachim Pressler. The holo image was younger and there were less lines on his face, but it was clearly the same man.

"We are sure," I responded tersely. In the time it had taken to whistle up the gunship I had taken the opportunity to remove the glyphs that had been painted on me. This had to be done with an industrial solvent and my skin prickled as though with a gentle sunburn despite the counterseptic Selenica had applied. I had dressed in a black body glove with soft inlays of silver and gold. My hair was tied back in a hasty bun and I had my force staff as well as a heavy naval pattern revolver. 

"I again recommend we neutralize the power plant," Lazarus interjected. Hadrian shook his head but didn't respond. As he had explained earlier there was no way to know they didn't have some kind of backup generator and we wouldn't know about that until it was too late. We circled around one of the gilded sub-spires of a mercantile house, weaving through the occasional air traffic. Ahead of us I saw the Cathedral of Saint Arestus, a gargantuan sub spire, encrusted with turrets, buttresses and leering gargoyles.   

"Approaching broadcast station now sir!" the Valkyrie pilot yelled over the thrust noise, his face antonymous behind a visored helmet. I could see one of the turrets ahead, easily ten stories tall in its own right. It nearly doubled that with the bewildering array of vox antennae that were clustered around the feet of a stone angel blowing a great trumpet. The overall effect looked like mold growing up around the statue's feet. 

An alarm blared in the cockpit. The pilot whipped his head back to the controls.

"Auspex painting us!" the pilot screamed, a moment before I saw a half dozen flashes light up among the antenna. Missiles rose like fireworks, riding upwards on trails of smoke that wove together as they tracked.

"Evasive action!" Hadrian shouted, but the pilot was ahead of him. The valkyrie lurched sideways, the fans screaming as he climbed for height. I saw one missile slash by to the left and then one struck the starboard fan. The blast threw me into my retreats as the craft slewed sideways and plummeted, my stomach dropping out as alarms hammered my ears. Black smoke poured from the ruin of the starboard engine is the port screamed with the redoubled strain. The drop, for a mercy, carried us through the rest of the salvo before they could correct.

"Brace for..." the pilot screamed a moment before we hit the arm of the statue with another shriek of rending metal. The pilot wrestled with the controls, arms building as he tried to keep us level by main force. The forest of antennae rushed up at me like impaling spikes. There was a tremendous crash as we hit, the remaining engine running so hot that I could feel the heat on my cheek. I squeezed my eyes shut as we ricochet down through the pylons, metal shattering and bending all around us. The passenger compartment filled with smoke that was whisked away into the turbo fans as we finally slammed to a halt, thirty meters in the air atop a bent transmission antennae. I opened my eyes and glance forward. The pilot seat and the cockpit had been pulped to ruin, blood leaking from the ruined corpse of the heroic aviator.

"We should extract before the fire spreads," Lazarus announced calmly.