Suffer The Little Children [Dark Heresy] - IC

[Saldre]

Olympus waits for the laser to start cutting by itself.

"Hmmm... this thing isn't doing its job... for some reason..." He says, scratching his head. He leans down to examine it, realize he has no idea what he exactly expected it to do.

"Maybe we need to ask politely?" He turns to Phrenz, perplexed.

"You! Get this thing to work! Open up those hatches." He says to the hangar's owner.

[LCP]

Heironymous, Olympus & Phrenz

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"I've never used one of those things in my life!" whined Hayle. "You brought it!"

[Saldre]

Olympus sighs.

"Well, it can't be helped! I guess if I push this button here maybe it will..." He says, pressing a red button.

[LCP]

Olympus, Heironymous & Phrenz

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CLUNK.

A row of green runes lit up along the scarred read-out screen on the top of the las-cutter. Standing up, Olympus examined them with a raised eyebrow, holding the implement rather too casually to be safe.

Still nothing happened. Turning the tool from side to side, the assassin found a metal cover on the tool’s side that had seemingly unlocked when he pressed the button – opening it, he found a hefty knife switch underneath. There were yellow and black stripes around it, and an exclamation mark in a little triangle, and another little triangle with a black line ending on what looked like a tiny, burning man... but he assumed they were probably just decoration. He pulled the switch.

With a high-pitched crackle, a beam of red light blazed from the las-cutter’s business end, slicing into the metal of the hull about two feet above and to the left of the pressure doors. White-hot, molten metal spat from the point of contact – as the assassin stepped back in alarm, the beam wobbled round in a wide figure-of-eight, carving a ten-centimetre-deep track of glowing steel behind it.

Getting a grip on the humming las-cutter, Olympus heaved it round to point at the door before it melted straight through the hull. His handiwork was not particularly precise or steady, but after a minute or two, the doors’ seal had been entirely cut through, the hydraulic locks that held them together severed into two pieces. Stepping back from the still-glowing doors, he shut the las-cutter off, climbing down the gangplank to go to work on the other hatches.

While the pressure doors opened into the darkness of the shuttle’s cabin, the hatch in its belly seemed to lead to a small cargo hold - again, with the shuttle powered down, the interior was too dark to see anything but a couple of vaguely oblong shapes from outside.

Moving round to the front, he turned the cutter on the smaller hatch under the nose – it fell open almost immediately as the powerful beam melted through its locking-mechanism. There was a metallic rattle, and the assassin found himself staring down the gaping muzzle of a heavy bolter, the open hatch having allowed it to fall freely into its firing position. This was not an access hatch – this was a concealed turret.

[Saldre]

"Well that's that. It wasn't too hard, but let's hope there's nothing else over in the ship." He says, and turns to the enter the shuttle.

"lets see what we can find in here!"

[senrath]

"Good luck." Phrenz called, still gripping his hammer. He decided to remain outside the ship, to make sure that Hayle didn't do anything stupid.

[LCP]

Olympus (and anyone else who enters the shuttle)

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Climbing the gangplank, Olympus pulled the broken pressure-doors apart – stepping inside, he hesitated for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the darkness inside the shuttle.

He stood in a narrow corridor, five compact metal lockers built into the opposite wall – to his right, the corridor opened into what looked like a crew compartment, the shadowed outlines of bunks built into its sides. On his left, towards the front of the craft, a metal door presumably lead to the cockpit – a large wheel seemed to operate the lock.

[hr]

Jericus

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The terminal began to beep.

PLEASE IDENTIFY.

[Saldre]

"Check the hatch while I look around here!" He says to Phrenz. "Looks like its (Relatively) Safe!"

Then, he makes his way towards the lockers and tries top open them.

[LCP]

On the Shuttle

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The lockers opened without difficulty: three of them were empty, while two of them held compact autoguns, hanging by their straps from hooks inside. One of the lockers also contained a pack of clips that looked like they fitted the weapons.

[Saldre]

"I guess they came prepared..." He says, then heads towards the cockpit door.

[senrath]

Shrugging, Phrenz headed over to the shuttle, intent on climbing into the cargo hold and having a look around.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Red reaches over and punched the play button on the dataslate in the vidscreen (We left it there, right).
"These Children?" he asked, pointing at Father Lysenko as he went through his speech, quite ready to halt the playback of the dataslate in case the prophet went into a screaming rage.
"You know who their masters are?"

[LCP]

Shuttle – Cockpit

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The cockpit was surprisingly spacious for what it was – three swivelling leather chairs were bolted into the deck in a forward-pointing ‘V’, surrounded by a wall of curving instrumentation panels. A twin-handled steering column rose from the mass of dials and switches in front of the central chair, while a hefty-looking joystick was built into the arm of the one on the right, articulated, steel-sheathed cables running from beneath its base into the control desk.

In one section of the controls, a device that looked singularly out of place seemed to have been plugged in – where the rest of the controls were flush with the metal, it seemed to have been added on, sitting in a deep slot about the size of Olympus’ chest, the centre of a nest of power cables. Never much of a tech-head to begin with, Olympus had never seen an instrument like it: a mass of folding, forked antennae had been unfolded from a compartment in its upper half, while its lower half was occupied by a small, circular screen. A pale blue line circled the screen at regular intervals – it would leave a small, glowing trace whenever it passed the point about thirty degrees from the vertical, a dot that would fade and re-appear as the circling line passed over it again.

[hr]

Shuttle – Cargo Hold

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Heaving himself into the cargo hold, Phrenz had no difficulty seeing through the gloom – aside from a set of folding steps leading down from a hatch in the ceiling, there were only two objects in the dark, claustrophobic space. Oblong plasteel boxes about the size of a coffin, they were bolted securely down to the floor, each one nestled in a cradle of umbilical leads and power supplies that docked into a crater-field of ports on their sides.

[hr]

Red

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”Yes! Yes, he brought the taint to Sibellus. Sinner! Heretic!”

The man was getting more worked up.

“The Watchers control him. But he is not the one they are waiting for! No! He is their slave! They are all slaves! The Watchers are their masters, the Watchers that hide their faces from the light. They fear the Emperor’s judgement!”

[Thanatos 51-50]

Red looked intently at the madman.
"Who are the Watchers?"

[Saldre]

"Don't Touch Anything Olympus. Oh boy, you have gotten way over your head now... But I wonder what would that button do if I... No! Time to call someone who would know what's going on around here..."

Olympus contacts the Tech-priest, requesting his assistance, then describing the strange glowing device that seems out of place to him after briefing him on what they have found thus far.

"Well you know... its blue... and there's this line... it goes round and round... and then this dot blinks... but the line keeps on going... in circles... and its glowing..."

[LCP]

Red

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”The Watchers! They’re the ones behind it all! Always watching me, waiting to catch me on my own. I stay in the Emperor’s light. I stay away from the dark places.”

He looked around the apartment as if he was a little uncomfortable being inside.

“Lysenko brought them with him. His masters – the Watchers are his masters – but his masters sent the Watchers. The God-Emperor told me so.”

[Destro_Yersul]

Hieronymus shakes his head as though trying to clear it. "Sorry," He says to Mr. Hayle. "You should've just told me what you knew." Then he goes up to look in the shuttle. Finding the lockers, he decides to police one of the compact autoguns just so he'll have something with a little more range. He takes a couple clips of ammo as well, and moves towards the cockpit.

LCP Only

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Seriously, LCP only.

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"No, not this time. He doesn't need to die."

[senrath]

Phrenz took one last look around the cargo hold to see if he had missed anything, before contacting Hieronymus with his communicator. "Hey, can you come into the cargo hold? There's something that I want you to take a look at."

[LCP]

Olympus Only

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As he stood in the cockpit, Olympus began to notice a change on the strange device's screen - as the blue line swept round, a new, very faint dot was developing in its wake. Right next to the centre-point around which the line revolved, it seemed to point back to him...

[hr]

Jericus

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Jericus inputted his identifier - the screen flickered and went black. After a second or so, a new message appeared.

You are not recognised as having access to this data.

Please remain in your seat. An Adept of the Bureau will be with you shortly. Do not attempt to further interfere with this terminal. Do not attempt to contact a legal representative.

Innocence Proves Nothing.

[hr]

Heironymous Only

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No peeking.

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Weak. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me.

You do know you've left him alone out there? He's probably selling you out to the local law enforcement as I speak.

[Etcetera]

Jericus looks for any areas in which to conceal himself near the cogitator, or any side doors or cupboards.

Edit: Just read OOC thread.

Jericus leaves the Bureau. Immediately. And makes his way to the shuttle. Quickly and inconspicuously.

[LCP]

Jericus

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Leaving the maze-like offices of the Administratum, Jericus saw a couple of cowled adepts hurry past him in the direction he had just come - they did not seem to notice him, and he managed to make his way out of the building without further incident. Stepping onto one of the public transit-crawlers, he made his way to the shuttle port.

OOC: Feel free to rejoin the others whenever you feel appropriate.

[Etcetera]

Jericus, following Olympus' instructions, makes his way to the star port. He locates the manger containing the parked shuttle, and pokes his head in.

"You'll never believe what I've found."

He then pushes past into the cockpit and examines the "blue thing."

Let's see if I can actually pass a skill check.

Common Lore [Tech] Aiming for a 40 or lower... (1d100)[70]

Hmm. My last three failures were round numbers. How odd.
7 is the number of Nurgle!

[LCP]

Jericus

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The object was certainly no ordinary device: its formidable array of antennae included designs that Jericus had never seen before, and of whose purpose he was unclear. The materials of one or two of them also seemed odd – the tech-priest had the sneaking suspicion that he was looking at an act of techno-heresy, or worse, cannibalised xenotech.

The screen in the centre, however, was clearly a standard-pattern scanner read-out, calibrated to a five-kilometre scale. What it was scanning for, he didn’t know, but it showed one clear reading around a kilometre to coreward of the ship, and another, very faint one right on top of the scanner.

To understand more about its purpose, he would have to take the machine apart.

[Saldre]

"See: I told you it glowed, and blinked. Either way, we didn't have much luck here: maybe back in the shuttle?" Olympus says as he heads out to join Phrenz.

Remembering something, he stops and turns to face Jericus again.

"You said you had found something?"

[Etcetera]

Jercius ignored Olympus, too involved in his work to notice what was going on around him.

He attempted to determine a basic location for the blips on the scanner.

[LCP]

Jericus

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The scanner's scale was too large to put a precise location on the faint signal on top of the scanning hub - at a guess, it was probably coming from somewhere inside the ship. The strong reading, meanwhile, was somewhere in the near wing of the Seaward Quadrant.

[Etcetera]

Jericus attempts to disassemble the scanner and determine it's use.
Tech Use (1d100)[40]
Nope, still a fail. And another multiple of ten.
It would seem all Jericus is good at is bludgeoning daemon-things.

[LCP]

Jericus & Olympus

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Pulling a screwdriver from the recessed of his robes, Jericus began to disassemble the machine – the interior was a bird’s-nest of wires, four adulterated cogitator-boards boxing in a strange, cylindrical component. Inside, a sliver of a smooth, ivory-like substance was suspended by strands of copper wire that seemed to lead back to the antennae, the terminal of several arcane-looking sensor devices opening onto the inside of the suspensor cavity. Like a compass-needle, the sliver had oriented itself in the direction of the strong signal Jericus had seen on the screen, seeming to twitch and shiver occasionally, but keeping its bearing. He had never seen anything like it.

Checking back, he realised his disassembling the scanner had somehow disconnected the screen: the display was now dark. Looking back at the tangle of wires, he began to realise what a monumental task a repair might be.

[Saldre]

"It's not glowing anymore..." Olympus sighs.

"But this isn't a time for puzzles: your going to have to tell us what you found out, before the Interrogator bites a bullet."

[Etcetera]

Jericus hands the dataslate with his accumulated findings to Olympus, and starts studying the sliver more intently.