Vergil Hawr enigma still eluded her. Secunda made a mental mark to return to that question at some later point. Even her own cog-damned terminal was not harmless, it was time for protomaga to join the club. Fortunately, the bioaugmentation capsule was nearby.

Unfortunately, Secunda had serious doubts that she had enough Motive Force blessed giga-jolts to make the complex autosurgeon work and bless her with her usual level of firepower. Besides, given the complex situation at hand, she was somehow unsure that spending another six weeks incapacitated would be something she could afford. Toros twitched the corner of her mouth as she paced the laboratorium, precisely controlling her pacing to step over the bodies without breaking her stride. She was denied a way forward, and rational approaches were unlikely to help out.

[i]Fortunately[/i] for her, she was not a completely rational beast and build herself a career through using the things of the past when being denied the future. She held onto a trace of sentimentality, an old memento still preserved in a stasis chamber to remind her of older, brighter, stupider days. She approached it with a pained smile of a deadbeat father returning home after two decades of running a trivial logistic operation to see how much has changed. Secunda pressed the desactivation rune, and, after three seconds of whirring, performed several field rites of percussive maintenance until the lock finally gave in.

Explorator fleets were not a place of abundance - far away from home, you had to do with what you had at hand, everyone had to pull their weight, and nobody had the luxury of having any luxury. "Themis-pattern" explorator armour has been a grim embodiment of that doctrine. Every single explorator adept is handed out a damaged standard-issue Militarum flak armour, usually with some splatters of the previous owner here and there. Your survival was your own responsibility from that point - there would be no replacements, no quartermaster check-ups, no maintenance, and no oversight. There has been an expectation that either the owner changes the armour into something better or the armour finds itself a better owner. No two sets looked quite alike after two decades. This one has seen her through a much longer service.

Secunda exhaled as she allowed the robe to slip off her. She had not donned her suit for a better part of a century - Archmagos had to maintain her status with something more... imposing... than a flak jacket reforged a dozen times. Couldn't quite get rid of the old beast, they had a long story together - story of patching the holes, begging artisans for their help, scrounging for supplies, stealing secrets, replacing parts and praying that it would fit together. Instead, Toros stuffed it here, unsure what to do. Protomaga ran her fingers between the scarred crimson argent-alloy plates and felt the xeno-mesh cells hardening below, tickling her with the static counter-charge. She missed this feeling.

Armour spirit, a dumb little beast, flashed green on all checks - verification, chems, ammunition, explosives, servomotors. Injector needles bit right where she remembered them to. Even the little trinket from Pathos Gamma was still purring its infra-song from the corner of the gorget. Secunda half-closed her eyes. She felt good. And she planned to feel even better after she blasts someone's ork puppet limb from limb.