Knowledge Is Power [Dark Heresy] - IC

[Etcetera]

"I wonder if the Secutor had a data link with his gun-cutter. It could prove problematic if he did."

Jericus mused for a few moments.

"Let's try the sanctum first."

[Destro_Yersul]

"If he did, it might be the only functioning record of the schismatical here. It also might try to kill us." Hieronymus didn't look too pleased at the prospect. "It might also be gone, or inactive. Either way, it probably has its own way of contacting anyone in orbit. Sanctum's on our way up."

Peering towards the ceiling, the provost shuddered involuntarily. "It's too empty out there. I'd like to stay inside unless absolutely necessary."

[Thanatos 51-50]

Red nodded along, following the logic train of his comrades.
Getting into a firefight with a voidship would be, well, problematic.
"Yeah, never was much a fan of not having a good, solid piece of Hive over me, but that's how people get places. Apparently. On less... Emperor-blessed worlds. So I hear."

[LCP]

The lift for the Sanctum descended with a solemn choral chime. Shutting themselves in once again, the Acolytes waited in silence for the elevator to haul them up.

When they reached the Sanctum itself, its heavy blast doors were standing open. The chamber beyond was dark, the light of the great cogitator-banks extinguished: the silhouette of LIRA's throne was all that could be distinguished from the doorway. Squinting through the shadows, the Acolytes could just make out a crumpled figure at the foot of the servitor's seat...

[Destro_Yersul]

Stepping past the blast doors, Hieronymus looked about the gloom. The room seemed so different from the last time they had been here.

Approaching LIRA's throne, the provost stopped a short distance away, watching the figure on the floor. "Vale?" he ventured cautiously, taking a few more steps closer.

[LCP]

The crumpled figure didn't move.

[Destro_Yersul]

Approaching to just within reach, Hieronymus looked down. "Vale?" He reached down to nudge the adept, already sure what had happened, but feeling the need to check anyways.

[LCP]

Stepping inside, Jericus saw a heavy knife-switch on his right. It brought the lights back on, throwing the Sanctum into clear view.

Vale was clearly unconscious: the man’s face was white as parchment, his warm robes wetted by the round pool of blood that had gathered underneath his left leg. He was missing a kneecap, and a fair chunk of the leg around it. It was clearly a wound from a high-calibre rifle, the bullet having blasted clean out the other side… but then, given the current population of the planet, not much deduction was necessary about the weapon in question.

Overhead, the great inverted pyramid of processors hung silent and still, every running-light extinguished: acrid-smelling smoke curled down from the cogitator banks, carrying the sharp stink of burnt metal. Preservative systems had frozen in mid-flow, bubbles floating aimlessly in cylinders of clear fluid. The Sanctum’s multitude of screens were all black. Sat on one arm of the central throne, an owl stared aimlessly at the newcomers.

Slumped on the throne was the body of a little girl. Before, head upright, lips moving, it had seemed like a living thing, however unnatural and unnerving. Now, without any perceptible change, LIRA was nothing more than a fragile corpse, dwarfed by the harsh lines of her metal fortress. The child’s head was bowed forwards, kept above the level of her shoulders only by the cat’s-cradle of cables that buried themselves in her eye sockets and cranium.

“Wh…”

Vale stirred, the man’s eyes blinking blearily open through a sea of shock. “Wh.. you..”

[Destro_Yersul]

"I told you Mr. Rhodes wasn't happy." Hieronymus glanced around the sanctum, searching about for anything he might be able to use to bind Vale's wounded leg. "We're going to have to get you to a medicae. I really am sorry about all this, Vale."

[LCP]

The Sanctum was well-supplied with all things metallic and complicated - medical supplies, not so much.

"I tried to stop him," mumbled the Adept, "but he shot me." He blinked up at Heironymous. "Calls himself... a gentleman?"

"We're going to have to get you to a medicae. I really am sorry about all this, Vale."

"Sorry," managed Vale. "You're sorry?"

It seemed about all he was capable of. His eyes closing, he sank back onto the floor, his chest still rising and falling in shallow breaths.

[Destro_Yersul]

Hieronymus sighed, and settled for tearing off the shreds of the sleeve on his much-abused uniform. "It's more than you'll get from Rhodes," he told the adept, inexpertly tying off the leg wound. "You really shouldn't have gotten in that man's way. Now, come on."

Doing his best to carry Vale, Hieronymus stood. Taking one last look around the silent chamber, the provost inclined his head respectfully to LIRA. "Sorry to leave you here, LIRA, but the living are more important than even the honoured dead. You were... a challenging opponent." Turning away, the provost made his way back to the elevators.

"Get us up to the landing pad. I'll take my chances with the Secutor's ship. Ignace, can you do anything for Vale here before we get up top?"

[Thanatos 51-50]

Red ignored the bleeding Dectalogue as he strode confidently up to the enthroned corpse and drew a single arrow from his quiver, index finger running over the three small red lines near the fletching and laying it at LIRA's feet.
"This is what we did back home when a child was dragged into our fight and was killed as a bystander. That's my mark. When you go to see the Emperor, ask after the others. See that they're all right."

He turned to the others as they were attending their errands.
"I take it from all the dead luminators and such that there's now way to use any comm or auspex gear down here?" He asked, mostly to Jericus, before returning to the lift and snapping a fresh power pack into his rifle.
"If so, I guess up is the only way to go."

[Etcetera]

Jericus did a quick circuit of the room, searching for any of the aforementioned systems.

[senrath]

"I can certainly try to help." Ignace said as he approached Vale. Raising his hands he let his power flow into the man, working on knitting his flesh back together.

Spoiler

Show

Manifesting Healer.
(1d10+5)[9](14)vs 7.
Healing (1d5)[3] wounds, removing Critical Damage first.

[LCP]

A faint but unpleasant smell emanated from the air around the psyker as the flesh under his hands began to crawl back together. There was not much he could do to repair the wound the hunting rifle had torn, but it stopped the bleeding at least.

Making his circuit of the room, Jericus tried not to let the mechanical ruin all around them get to him: nestled between two dead cogitator units, he found it. Electromagnetic communications – nothing to write home about, but Prol IX was within a couple of light-minute’s hailing distance. That was, if system monitors hadn’t already been dispatched to investigate the Byzantium’s appearance.

The controls, the screens, the connections all appeared to be dead, wired up to the central system like everything else in this cold, silent sanctuary. Professional eyes searching the dial-studded panels, the Tech-Priest saw what he was looking for – another heavy switch, to engage the reserve power.

The switch clicked, and the device faltered into life. Not exactly a clean comms channel... but enough for a simple broadcast.

[Destro_Yersul]

"You found the comms?" Looking over from the elevator, and still carrying the unconcious Vale, Hieronymus called over tot he techpriest. "Ok, see if you can get off a distress signal, and let's all just get the frak out."

[LCP]

The signal was easy to send. It took seven minutes for the reply to return from Prol IX, carried at the speed of light from receiver to transmitter. It took twenty-one hours for the Gilded Ark to make orbit, accompanied by a remora-like shoal of system monitors. When it arrived, the Spire was edging towards twilight, Prol VII’s slow rotation finally dragging its faint sun down towards the horizon. The Acolytes had found a battered space-heater in the Adept’s common room, the interior temperatures outside their bolthole by now well below zero.

For the first time in decades, shuttles thronged the airspace of Hub 1/A. Still mumbling incoherently about ‘vandals’, Decatalogue Vale was stretchered onto a medical vessel – on the landing-pad recently vacated by Rhodes’ own sleek vessel, a familiar Arvus-pattern lighter touched down, the pilot waving to the Acolytes across the termite-like crowds of Adepts that were bustling into the Library.

“Best make our move,” he said, as they came within earshot. “I don’t know what you’ve done, but there are some fellows with us who don’t seem so happy about it. The chief won’t want you people getting bogged down in politics.”

Sure enough, a bevy of Adepts in the vestments of local authority were approaching through the crowd, their dust-dry expressions looking extremely serious. As the Acolytes began to board the lighter, they quickened their pace, practically shoving their way towards the little void-craft: too late, as its turbines screamed into life, a shockwave of suddenly-heated air making robes billow and flap on the ground. The little shuttle heaved itself up into the air, its nose angling towards the cloudless, darkening sky: engines flaring, it left the landing pad behind. Below them, through the thinning air, the grey world of the Library dwindled away.

[hr]

The Prol VII Incident, as it was recorded, was one of the most dramatic in the long and dusty history of the system, providing a welcome relief from the disputes of the Centurist and Pyratic archivists on IX. In the wake of the devastation wrought on the Proscribed Vault, and the priceless archaeotech thought-engine designated L.I.R.A., an official Inquiry was established. Presided over by Arch-Decatalogue Jospeh Jarndyce, it quickly became one of the most tangled cases in the Sector, complicated by an enigmatic lack of cooperation from the highest authorities within the Omnissian cult, and whispers of Inquisition interference. When Jarndyce finally succumbed to a heart defect at the age of one hundred and fifty-seven Terran years, his grandson, Jeremiah Jarndyce, took over the Inquiry. It is still ongoing to this day.

Amidst the tangled threads of the investigation, one clear villain did emerge – the Cantus nobleman, Octavian Rhodes. His guilt, if not his motives, being quickly established, the pursuit of the heretic was given over to the Calixian Ordos. His assets on his home planet were quickly frozen, the interrogators of the Ordo Hereticus beginning to work their way through his servants and extended family. Of Rhodes and his immediate relations, however, no trace was found, even his escape from the Prol system itself remaining a mystery.

The vessel Byzantium, meanwhile, had disappeared back into the Warp as suddenly as it had arrived. Its existence confirmed, Inquisition archivists began to search for records of the vessel’s specifications. Unfortunately, the records in question had been thrown into a state of disorganisation by LIRA’s destruction. On orders from the system authorities, ten thousand indentured Adepts were deployed to the hallways of the Library. Their task: to catalogue, by hand, the contents of the archive planet, in order to replace the knowledge that had been lost with the cogitator-banks. Hopefully, by the time they got to ‘B’, some information on the ship might come to light...

THE END.