[i]"Deploy."[/i]

Times had changed in Houndclaw. Marshal November was the bleeding edge of that transition. The only thing old about her was that she arrived in less than two minutes from being signaled. She had always been [i]fast[/i].

She first appears as an ultraviolet reflection in mirrorshades. Then she enters simultaneously through every door and window and ventilation shaft - noospherically networked cyborg bodies in perfect synchronicity. She wears skintight synthskin bodygloves and sleek grox leather trenchcoats; showing everything and concealing everything. There is such potential violence in the dancelike coordination of her motion that it seems like she must be armed even though her hands are empty. Once she stood upon the battlefield in armoured plating and fired radium artillery into biotitans so large they blotted out the sky. That memory does not feel a tenth as lethal as she is now.

"Sister Kota," she said. "Good to see you again."

She offered all seven left hands for high fives.

You served alongside her during the Porphyrios Invasion. It was hard not to - she was the striking arm of the Skitarii legions. That meant jumping from dropships on grav-chutes to deliver crates of ammunition, repair components, and salvage teams whenever a unit had become bogged down in heavy fighting. Then she was off again, grinning and saluting as she left you to face the horrors alone. "Professionals do logistics," she'd say as she abandoned you for the third time to face the horrors. Hard not to love her. Hard not to hate her.

"How you been? Last I saw you there was an incoming Ravener hive," she said, as one of her copies placed an ident-scanner against Toros' forehead and got a loud, negative beep. "Is this biotrash bothering you?"

Ah crap. Skitarii are [i]simple[/i]. They live in a world of magic, machinery and mystery, and endure it with a studied ignorance. The Machine says that you are not the Archmagos, and so Toros Secunda is nothing more than an unsanctioned clone with no personnel record. Biotrash. Everything that makes her difficult to trick and difficult to bribe is now a [i]problem[/i].