“Did you just have this laying around?” I asked Hadrian as Lazarus fiddled with the seals of the Sororitas power armor. It was very impressive, grayed ceramite with gold and red highlights and intricate traceries in gold and silver. I flexed my arm, listening to the slight whir of servos as I opened and closed my fist. My hair had been treated with a platinum/white dye and then pulled back into a severe braid that coiled around the back of my skull to keep it out of the way. Clara was artfully applying a black fleur-de-lis tattoo to my right cheek to better disguise my face while my left eye was covered with a combat view finder with a red glass lens. I had to admit I looked nothing like the mopy noblewoman I had been portraying till this point.


“I try to plan for a number of contingencies,” Hadrian replied blandly. We were sitting in one of the shuttles which connected us to the Caledonia. The sturdy vehicle would supply me the privacy to change as well as a short hop across the city, hopefully bypassing any unpleasantness that might have attended a direct route.


“Sure, I bet he has one of those leather death cult outfits for you in case the ‘contingency’ arises,” Clara snickered, making bunyip ears with her fingers at the word contingency. Hadrian shot her a look that quieted her laughter, even if it didn’t quite banish it from her eyes.


“I hope at least it has been deconsecrated,” Lazarus said, slapping a hand against my chestplate as he spoke the ritual of percussive maintenance. The view finder lit up with unintelligible runes and I felt the faint rush of environmental cooling systems against the plastec body glove I was wearing underneath it. 


“There is nothing more holy than the work of the Inquisition,” Hadrian countered, avoiding a direct answer. A blat of binaric from Lazarus suggested the point had not passed him over either. Lazarus withdrew a slender parchment and placed it against my left breast. He let out another string of binaric and then produced a slender gun which spurted red wax over the top of the paper. He fumbled in his robes and withdrew a chain on which a number of brass seals hung like hab keys. Finding the appropriate symbol he pressed it into the wax to create a neat seal.


“Stand,” Lazarus instructed and I complied feeling the power of the servo assist as I did so. Clara passed behind me and fastened a short cape around my shoulders before lifting an ornate bolt gun from the engraved case which had held the armor. She wafted the incense over the gun, using both hands to bear its considerable weight. 
“For Terra’s sake Em, don’t try to actually fire this thing,” she cautioned as she slung the weapon over my shoulder. I lifted the weapons experimentally, finding that with the power assist it had almost no weight at all.


“Your confidence in me is touching,” I told her, earning a quirked smile.


“I’m more worried about the holes you might put in me with it if you do,” Clara retorted. I slid the strap of the weapon around to keep it in place beside my thigh.

“If I’m a Sister of Battle shouldn’t I get a flamer or something?” I asked. There was a collective wince.
“Em, we love you, but I’m giving you a bolter only under protest,” Clara said gently. Lazarus nodded vigorously and made the cogwheel sign of the Omnissiah with his hands. I rolled my eyes and tried to make a rude gesture, the extra foot of height I picked up from the armored boots banged my fist against the low ceiling of the shuttle to the considerable amusement of the party. 


___


Pentecostal Rememberence proved to be several square miles in size. It was ringed by a high parapeted wall, complete with baroque gatehouses encrusted with gargoyles. In more settled times the gates were opened at certain hours to allow pilgrims access to the gardens within, assuming of course they made an appropriate donation. Now the great wooden gates were closed and armed militia men walked the walls, pikes and las guns on obvious display. I strode forward at the head of our little party. We had left a score of our escort to secure the shuttle in the alms park a few blocks away, retaining a dozen of the blue smocked Caledonian’s for show. Clara, Elektra and Hadrian formed the other three points of a diamond with me, Lazarus having been left behind to command the men at the shuttle. Partially, this was because he was a seasoned soldier and attuned to the shuttle, partially it was to ease any potential theological difficulties between the two Imperial cults. 


“Approach no further!” a voice called from the wall, “This precinct is closed while the Primate is in meditation.”


“Authority is not given to you to defy the will of the Most Holy Emperor of Mankind!” I called back, touching my words slightly with my psychic gift so that they echoed off the wall despite my lack of amplification equipment.


“Open your gates or He will see them opened,” I commanded. There was a long silence and then, just as I thought they were going to call my bluff, the gateway swung open. Fraternus militia stood on the other side in a wall to block passage. They were dressed in white robes which were more than a little grubby with dirt and gun oil. Most had las guns across their chest at something like porte arms. I strode forward with absolute confidence.
“I am Sister-Palatine Eudoxia of the Order of the Eternal Rose, I have come to deliver Lord Deckard, the duly appointed Ecclesiarcical Envoy to his Holiness,” I announced, glossing over the exact source of Deckard’s appointment. The leader of the militia stared at me for a moment before his eyes hardened.  


“I am afraid I cannot allow…” I struck him full across the face with my armored gauntlet. I had meant it as a chastening slap, but the servo assisted armor struck him with the force of a scumball bat. His jaw snapped shut and he was hurled into the masonry of the gatehouse with a bruising crunch before dropping to the ground in a boneless heap.


“Frak,” I heard Clara say but I raise both my hands as though appealing to the heavens, not slowing my stride.


“Alas, your brother has sinned by impeding our progress. To impede the Holy Emperor’s work, even in error is a grave sin, for does not all heresy draw its strength first from error? Pray brothers and sisters, pray that such sin does not enter your own hearts, for should you sin again, having thus seen the Emperor’s Will made clear, you will stray from the shame of error into the abyss of heresy. Fall to your knees and pray that such heresy, and such need for chastisement, should never be needed in this holy place!” I patted my bolter for emphasis on ‘chastisement’ before continuing in a resonant voice: “For to be thrice mistaken is to be thrice damned, and condemned to the fires of perdition!” I pronounced, my face upturned as though in conversation with the Emperor as I strode past. One by one the Militia fell to their knees dropping their weapons and clasping their hands in prayer. We strode past them into the gardens, my face shining with a light which wasn’t exactly holy.


“Throne above Emmaline,” Hadrian hissed through clenched, “ease up on the whammy.” I let the psychic force I had been projecting fade to a background hum, the feeling of sanctity dissipating in my companions. All of them were trembling in the aftermath of my display, despite in Hadrian and Clara’s cases, being hardened by training against it.


“For fraks sake, your face was glowing, and for a second it looked like you had wings of light,” Clara muttered, making the sign of the Aquilla in the direction of the cathedral. Elektra was staring at me wide eyed in a disturbingly reverential fashion. 


“Sorry, I got a little carried away,” I explained. It was easy to do in a place like this awash with the psychic background of Faith. Clara muttered something uncomplimentary as we continued on along a winding path that lead through the gardens. Gardens was perhaps a bit of a misnomer, it was more like an ornamental forest, complete with carefully tended groves, ponds and streams. It was laid out in an elaborate spiral that pilgrims were expected to walk before approaching the baroque cathedral that rose like a needle from its heart. Now and then agricultural servitors, gilding in the forms of praying saints, trundled past intent on their tasks. We ignored the circuitous root and marched across country as it were, arriving at the gates of the cathedral in time to be greeted by a trio of robed clerics. 


“Envoy Deckard, Sister-Palatine,” the leader greeted us in a colourless voice, “His Holiness is expecting you.” We were lead through a series of halls and back passages to, of all things, a bed chamber. It was dominated by a vast four poster bed in which a frail man reclined in an absurd combination of bed clothes and a primates jeweled miter. His face was lined with great age and a pair of half moon spectacles had been surgically attached to the bridge of his nose. His face had an unhealthy pallor from the several pict screens around the room, some of which showed data that was meaningless to me and some of which showed video feeds of various sermons and reports.


“Ah, the Lord Deckard of which we have heard so much so recently,” he declared in a peevish voice. I performed a genuflection, my knee thumping a little harder than desired into the plush carpeting.

“And Sister-Palatine Eudoxia, yes welcome child,” he cooed.


“I am Primate Fulstes, which of course you know, and if you are here regarding my vote…” before Fulstes could continue one of the vid feeds enlarged with the flashing emblem of the Ministorum and then faded to show an aquiline man in his late middle years. 
“My children,” the man, whom I recognised from picts as Primate Hildebrand, began.
“It is with great regret that I come before you today, so soon after the Ascension of Blessed Ratsini to his eternal reward.” He had a practiced oratorical voice, honed on years of sermonizing and theological debate.


“I would not violate the period of morning so appropriate for my departed brother without the gravest of justifications and I fear, these are graver than any we have heard in many years.”


“Heresy must never be far from the mind of the faithful and we must be ever vigilant for its stench, but to watch for heresy, and to discover it in our own institutions are too very different things. Therefore it is with a heavy heart that I must tell you of treachery so base that it is difficult even for me to believe.”


“Oh frak,” Clara muttered in the background.


“I have been shown incontrovertible evidence, that the murder of Blessed Ratsini was conducted by none other than agents of the false Primate Osten Von Mandelbrot! I call on all true sons of the Emperor to subdue this false prince so he may be questioned and punished.”


“I know this truth will be difficult to accept for we held this viper to our breasts as our very brother, but should any doubt the veracity of these claims…” The pict pivoted slightly to a silk covered cushion, with a theatrical whisk the Primate pulled the silk free to reveal a familiar object, the black and silver skull of the Inquisitorial Rosette.