Thy Fearful Symmetry - Dark Heresy (IC)

[Thragka]

"I doubt we will be able to secure or destroy it at this juncture," said Tauron, almost snappishly. "If we are unlucky enough, we may just be able to identify it."

[Destro_Yersul]

"I wouldn't put money on us seeing it coming, if it came to that. I think it's best if we just get off the station." Tychon replied, still focused on the corridor and its load of armour-clad kill team goons. "Wouldn't you agree, Madame?"

[LCP]

From the other side of the door Tychon had just closed, there came the sound of a spray of gunfire, followed by a muffled scream. Bad things were happening in there.

"Wouldn't you agree, Madame?"

The Margravine nodded. “Absolutely,” she said.

As Red’s vision finally cleared, he nosed as boldly as he dared around the corner of the corridor. Through the falling spray from the sprinklers, he could see no sign of the men who had blinded him – the last of the kill-teams’ rearguard had disappeared around the far corner, the receding echo of their boots and the spent case of the flash grenade the only traces they left behind. In the other direction, Nova could only see the gathered gloom of the station's industrial innards, dimly illuminated by distant furnace-lights. The tunnel wound emptily away out of sight between the nearer banks of dormant machinery.

There was a reverberating, bestial howl from behind the door, accompanied by the desperate wailing of the caged Kroot. Bad things were definitely happening in there.

OOC:

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Unless anyone wants to re-open the door and jump back into the thick of things, we can break combat time here.

[Thragka]

Tauron visibly relaxed when Tychon shut the door. "In that case, my lady, Mr Kastor, may I suggest that we egress quickly? I am certain somebody on this station will be coming down to attempt to take control of the situation. I am not sure we would want to be here when that occurs."

[Destro_Yersul]

"You may, Titus, and I'd agree with you. Before we go, though, I think we ought to see if Captain Vyres made it out the main door. It was opened just before I shut that one." Pointing at his own door, Tychon started down the hall after the kill team. He didn't intend to go back into the darkened auction hall: that would be suicide, if the sounds coming from it were any indication. "Erasmus, do you have a way out for us yet? I doubt Octavian's friends mean to accomodate enyone else on the lift."

[Rizhail]

When the howling and wailing began, Nova flinched. Staring hard at the door, she turned to face it...

LCP and Lurkers only (unless the latter also like surprises)

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...and the entire corridor changed in the blink of an eye. Gone were the darkened steel walls, the sealed door, the weak lights high above. Gone were the others hiding in the alcove from threats all around.

White stone walls streaked with dried blood led to a great wooden gate, sunlight shining through cracks in its surface and highlighting the heavy dust drifting through the air. The bestial howls and wails were still there, as whatever beast the arena's masters had chosen for the day mauled the poor bastard thrown into the arena before Nova. A thunderous roar began in the crowd outside, drowning out the final screams of the beast's victim.

She stepped toward the gate slowly, carrying the mismatched blades she had been able to scrounge from the piles of scrap and broken gear her peoples' captors liked to toss down to the slave pits. Her fingers and toes tingled, the beginning effects of whatever drug had been injected into the pit fighters before their fights.

All of this happened in moments, and Nova was thrown into shock. Even as she tried to recover, she felt a presence in her mind, something pushing her away. The vision and sensations suddenly grew distant as a voice, one that sounded so like her own, spoke to her. It had a sing-song quality to it, taunting her as darkness closed in.

My turn...

...and calmly walked toward the door, staring intently at it. She stopped a few steps short, eyes narrowed.

She snapped out of whatever trance she was in, and looked back over her shoulder at the others. "I'd suggest Phipps in front, anyone who can't fight in the middle. I'll be a few steps behind, just to make sure nothing follows us. There are a lot of nasty things in that room besides lot 11 that could try to escape."

LCP only, again

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Goodbye cautious, Inquisitorial Nova, hello bloodthirsty, mentally borked Nova.

She's going to wait for the others to head down the corridor a ways before she (quietly, if possible) opens the door and takes a peak inside to see what's happening. Fighting will likely ensue.

And if she can get through this adventure without burning another fate point, I will be pleasantly surprised.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Red flattened his back against the wall as the others flew past him.
Fighting Lot 11 wasn't exactly something he had in mind for a good time, and killing Rhodes was.

Then Nova spoke.
"Um. Nova. The fighting is this way." he said, indicating the corridor with the bayonet-point of his rifle.

[Etcetera]

"There's a larger elevator shaft some distance from here if we turn left at the corridor - it's might be a little more policed than the freight, but I guess it'll do."

[LCP]

"Phipps stays with me," said D'Aragnia, forcefully. Her eyes tracked between the different Acolytes' faces as they discussed their options - she was paying close attention.

"I doubt Octavian's friends mean to accomodate enyone else on the lift."

"Octavian?" she repeated. "Whyever not?" She looked over her shoulder at the closed door. "It's that awful Stubbs woman who started the shooting. Octavian needs to get out of here as much as we do."

[Destro_Yersul]

"Likely Nova assumed you would be going with us to the elevators, Madame D'Aragnia. It's the best option, I would say, and means Phipps stays with you and comes with us. As to Octavian's friends? Because they were the ones shooting down the corridor at Mr. Bosc just then. I don't know about you, but I'd rather find a seperate elevator than risk being on the receiving end of friendly fire." Tychon hoped the explanation would be enough to assuage the Margravine.

[LCP]

D'Aragnia looked uncertainly towards the corridor.

"The fastest way out of this pit has to be the way we came," she said. "Octavian knows me. He wouldn't shoot."

She sounded less than certain.

Something soft and heavy hit the other side of the closed door with a reverberating thump. A terrified scream preceded a chattering chorus of automatic fire, the impacts of the bullets ringing through the bulkhead walls - somewhere over the muffled din, Jericus thought he made out the squeal of shearing metal...

[Thragka]

"With the utmost respect, Your Ladyship," said Tauron softly, "without a doubt you noticed that Mr Rhodes barely placed a single bid, and certainly none with the intention of winning a lesser lot. He even went as far as to leave the room just before the conflict erupted. I would go so far as to surmise that he is intimately associated with the pandemonium. We should not trust him."

[Destro_Yersul]

"Regardless," Tychon put in, "Things seem to be escalating in there. We should go, and quickly."

OOC:

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I put in an earlier post, but you may have missed it. Tychon headed over to the far end of the corridor to see if anyone made it out through the main entrance. Did he see anything? he's got high enough move to get there and back pretty quickly.

[LCP]

D’Aragnia seemed to take pause to consider what they had said. Satisfied that the immediate fire-corridor ahead was clear, Tychon made a quick dash forwards through the sprinklers’ haze, ignoring the falling water as it soaked his clothes. Coming to the T-junction at the far end, he slowed his pace, all too aware that enemies might be waiting to the left or to the right. The right, however, was his more immediate concern: to the left, the jury-rigged tarpaulin they had passed on the way down - and its attendant leak - provided at least some obscuring cover.

Peering slowly around the corner, Tychon could see a trio of human figures outside the auction hall’s main entrance. Looking more than a little ruffled, Lazerus Norton had emerged into the centre of the corridor, accompanied by his barbaric bodyguard. The Vargarian was gripping the third man by the shoulders, pinning him to the wall. Behind the gladiator’s muscled shoulders, Tychon caught the gleam of burnished augmetic hands. By the sounds of things, Norton wanted answers as much as they did.

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Sorry Destro, missed that.

[Destro_Yersul]

"Norton!" Tychon hissed through his teeth, half-hidden behind the corner. If Lazerus looked his way, he would see Mr. Kastor beckoning hurriedly, and shooting pointed looks at the door to the auction hall. If he didn't, well, Tychon had no time to stick around. A quick glance to see where Rhodes had gone, and he'd be off back to where the group was standing by the side door.

At least his coat and hat were water resistant.

[LCP]

Norton's head whipped round like a startled dog at Tychon's attention-grabbing hiss. The big man's eyes narrowed - Tychon noticed he still had his pistol in his hand.

Tychon's charades regarding the door seemed to confuse him. Nonetheless, he took a step back, glancing backwards into the darkness within - hearing a lingering scream from inside, he mashed his palm against the keypad of the door. Automatic security kicked in, and the gates slid shut.

Looking briefly left, Tychon could see no sign of Rhodes or his escort in the red-lit shadows of the corridor beyond the tarpaulin. From this position, his line of sight was fairly limited - but it would have been difficult for so many to hide so completely in the cover the decaying fixtures offered.

[Destro_Yersul]

Talking quickly, in a voice just loud enough to be clearly understood from here, though ultimately less concerned now that the door had closed, Tychon kept glancing both directions, to make sure none of the kill team was coming back. "Norton, your adept's with us. Down the hall. We're leaving, you should come along. Bring brass-hands. The Margravine and I want answers too."

Waiting just long enough to see Norton's reaction, Tychon headed back down the corridor to rejoin the others.

[Rizhail]

Nova took a few steps back, taking up her spot at the junction between the main corridor and the side door Tychon had sealed, patiently waiting for the rest of the group to follow the gunslinger toward the other entrance to the auction hall. She noted Tychon gesturing and talking to someone around the corner, but did not follow, guarding the group against whatever might try to follow from the auction hall.

LCP Only

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If the rest of the group follows Tychon, Nova will slip back over to the door, try to crack it open, and get a peak inside to see what's going on (and what might be in there to fight).

If anyone else *cough*Red*cough* bugs her about moving on or otherwise draws attention to her, she'll give up on fighting the beasty for the moment and move along. She's crazy, but she's not willing to evoke anything more than mild suspicion in the others just yet.

[Thragka]

"Erasmus, can you find out where that elevator shaft emerges on the main level? We do not want to go stumbling blindly into the unknown."

[Etcetera]

Jericus did so.

[LCP]

Regarding Tychon warily, Norton made a curt gesture to Thrax. The scarred gladiator pulled the Constantine Representative away from the wall, ready to drag his prisoner along after his master.

The second the Vargarian’s eyes strayed towards Tychon and Norton, one of the Representative’s mechanical hands balled into a fist. The red robes of the silent bidder’s sleeve fell back, revealing an augmetic forearm behind the augmetic hand, as he delivered a clinical uppercut to the burly gladiator’s jaw.

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The Constantine Representative attempts to break free: we’ll represent this as an attempt to escape a Grapple.

Representative - (1d100)[7] vs. Thrax - (1d100)[90]

Let's not bother with a clunky bunch of initiative rolls if you guys want to get involved – let’s just do this in blocks, you then NPCs. After this post, you're up.

Thrax was taken completely by surprise. The blow knocked him back with surprising force, freeing his grip on the Representative's slight figure. Standing on his own two feet, the robed man looked poised to run. It was a funny thing, Tychon reflected in the split second that was available to him - there was nothing about the Representative's body language that betrayed a single iota of fear...

~

Still lingering with the others outside the side door, Jericus began to trace the route of Central Elevator Array 81B. It appeared to be part of one of the clusters of personnel lifts that ran down from the junction between the market dome and the Stack. Assuming they could ride it all the way up, it would deposit squarely in the centre of the hab-levels. Going it down, it seemed to lead only to the lowest bowels of the refinery decks.

[Destro_Yersul]

"None of that," Tychon said under his breath, crossing the distance between him and the representative in a few long strides, then dropping his shoulder and crashing heavily into the other man. The short run up had given him the advantage, sending his erstwhile opponent sprawling. Taking another step, the Carnodon appeared in his hand, pointed downwards. "No more tricks."

With any luck, that would give Thrax the chance to grab him again. This time, Tychon reflected, they might want to tie his hands. Let him be fearless if he liked, he wasn't about to get anywhere if Executioner had any say in the matter.

[LCP]

Tychon's takedown was perfectly executed, but its result surprised him. Rather than the soft impact of human flesh, his shoulder crashed against hard metal with a stab of pain - the Constantine Representative fell back against the floor with a noise like a shelf of saucepans, his concealing cowl falling back.

The face beneath the hood was, like the arms and hands, a sculptural work of brass that was curiously inhuman in its symmetrical perfection. Glass eyes stared blankly up at Tychon from perfectly-burnished sockets. Behind the brass faceplate, tubes of some recycled fluid fed in to some hidden kernel of surviving flesh.

The Representative made no move to escape as Thrax grabbed hold of him - it? - again. It had no words in reply to Tychon's demand - only an internal burble of electronics somewhere inside its augmetic body...

[Etcetera]

Jericus' eyes lit up at the sound as it rekindled memories of long days spent under the watchful eye of old Magos "Clumsy" Kurtz in the Schola Mechanicum.

He poked his head round the corner, proffering the dataslate to Tauron.

"Boss! Need any help with the metal man?"

Now that Jer thought about it, he didn't recall being very fond of Magos Kurtz.

[Thragka]

Tauron took a moment to look at the schematics Jericus had managed to coax from the dataslate. He frowned. We're not getting to the shuttle without navigating that bedlam.

The tech-priest's mention of "metal man" caught his attention. Stowing the dataslate, he tried to see what was going on. He nearly smiled, vague notions of blasphemy against the Mechanicus's Omnissiah coming to mind. Is there no heresy someone on this station will not perpetrate?

[Destro_Yersul]

"We're fine, Erasmus. Mr. Norton's gladiator has hold of him."

Cursing mentally, Tychon gave thanks for the thick weave of his greatcoat. It had probably saved him from the worst of the impact. Rubbing his shoulder with one hand, he kept the handcannon trained on the representative with his other.

"Should be moving on," the gunslinger said to Norton. "It's going to get a lot less healthy around here once Lot 11 is finished with whoever was left inside."

[Thanatos 51-50]

Red followed the rest of the party, slowing sweeping his laser sight over all the angles of approach and keeping his head on a swivel.
When he made it up to Tychon, the rifleman let loose a heavy sigh.
"In retrospect." he said, "I really hope I was wrong in pegging Millie as our enemy's agent." he muttered aloud, looking at all the brassworks.
"It's not going to be any fun questioning this one, though."

[LCP]

“There’s beasts I bid good money for in there,” said Norton, looking back towards the door with a pugnacious expression. “If this is some trick, the Beast House’ve crossed the wrong man.”

He looked back to Tychon, nodding along the corridor they had come from – and down which, presumably, Octavian’s masked allies had retreated. “We get the lift back to the top, we get the station guards down here, right? You get what’s yours and I get what’s mine.”

"In retrospect." he said, "I really hope I was wrong in pegging Millie as our enemy's agent." he muttered aloud, looking at all the brassworks.
"It's not going to be any fun questioning this one, though."

Red’s words seemed to give both Norton and D’Aragnia – who had followed behind – pause for thought. The circus magnate narrowed his eyes in slow concentration.

“What enemy?” he asked.

Nova Only

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Lingering behind as the rest of the group trickled after Tychon, Nova crept up to the edge of the door. Sliding it back by a fraction of an inch, she pressed her eye to the gap.

The auction chamber was dark and still. There was something dark slumped on the other side of the door – it smelt of blood, but its shape was so torn and maimed that it was hard to say whether it was a human body. On the other side of the hall, the second side door stood open, shedding a dim, pale light over the wreckage of the scene.

Lying face-down amidst the crushed and scattered chairs, an immense body lay with one scarred hand reaching out for a fallen shock-prod. Something had torn the Ogryn open, tearing out a section of spine through the corded muscle of the abhuman’s back. In the faint light, Nova could just about make out Grum’s gaping, glassy-eyed face staring blankly back at her, the Ogryn’s blood-streaked skin turned greyish-white in death. The gangers’ harnesses hung torn and bloody from the ceiling ducts, but there was no sign of what had killed them – only the bloody ruin it had left behind.

It looked like the others in the auction chamber had made their escape, probably through the open side door. Still trapped in their cage, the Kroot were keening pitifully, raising the occasional animalistic sound from the other lots. Of Lot 11, there was no sign – but one of the ventilation ducts had been torn wide open, opening a dark gullet of metal in the high rafters.

[Thanatos 51-50]

"You just witnessed Mister Kastor in action." the "bodyguard" replied bluntly. "Do you honestly believe that a man of his martial prowess would require somebody like me if he didn't need to maintain vigilance against an enemy? We had intelligence that such an individual may have an interest in this auction as well and was likely acting through an agent. Mister Kastor judged that we should come despite this fact."
Red turned his impassive smoked armourglass facade to face the circus magnate. "That is just a tiny bit more than you need to know."

[LCP]

“That right?” said Norton. “You want to keep a tigher leash on this one, Kastor. He don’t know how to speak to his betters.” He looked to Red. “You understand?” he demanded with aggression. “No bloody low-hive muscle talks down to me. You brought your enemies here, you put the rest of us right in the bloody line of fire!”

“Something, no doubt, we can hold Mr Kastor accountable for once we’ve got above-decks, Mr Norton,” said D’Aragnia from behind. “According to his assistant, there’s another lift further into the tunnels behind. Apparently,” she said, lingering on the word, “the way we came is cut off.”

“Thrax,” barked Norton, still obviously in a bad mood. “Get this one on his feet.”

The Vargarian gladiator manhandled the Representative upright. The metal man seemed to take the rough treatment with total equanimity, still not speaking a single word. Tychon wondered if he could.