"A representative of the local government-" began Sarge, only to be interrupted by one of the Adepts. "It's not actually a government per se." explained the elderly Diplomacy Adept. "It's a Triumvirate of the Administratum, Astra Telepathica, and Shipmasters' Union, which has split all aspects of running the station into separate jurisdictions, and operates each according to their own organization's internal rules. We're meeting with a representative of the Astra Telepathica first, due to the ruling of 245.M39 that incoming information takes priority over-" Sarge cleared his throat, and made the universal gesture for Get On With It. "Yes, yes, you don't actually care, I know, but you must understand that they'll find it tremendously insulting if you refer to them as a Government." Sarge acknowledge the Adept's point with an annoyed little wave. "That's why you're coming along to do most of the talking, while Jim and I wait until it's time to talk shop." The elderly Diplomat let out a little frustrated sigh, and leaned back in his seat. Sarge watched him for a few seconds, then continued his briefing. "As I was saying, we'll meet the representative and he'll take us up to talk about sending a message to the Scythes, getting a replacement Astropath, and requisitioning parts for the Cells and medical aid for Gravis." There was a brief pause as Sarge mentally reviewed his chore list one last time before continuing. "Now, I'm going to be making it clear that this is all on Inquisitorial authority, so there shouldn't be much resistance, but since we're going to be staying here for a while, I'd rather not make any enemies by being too heavy handed with our demands." The Adepts all nodded in agreement, but the Captain snorted in disgust. Sarge turned to face him and his nervous Quartermaster. "Which is why we will be acquiring fuel and all the mundane replacement parts for the ship the normal way, unless you fall short that is."

Sarge tensed at the sounds of mayhem coming through the comm, then relaxed as the crashes ended in a slamming door and a distant, but all-to-familiar, cackling laugh. He shook his head wearily, and leaned on the terminal's call button until the curses resolved themselves into Doc's rather harried voice. "I'm here, damnit! Everything is fine, Gravis is all ready to go, and the rest of the patients are stable enough to be left here for a few hours." Sarge began to reply, but was cut off as the Captain interrupted him. "What about my Navigator, and your Psyker for that matter? Seemed like the bug really did a number on them." "The Navigator woke up half an hour ago and scampered off back to his sanctum. Said he'd prefer to treat his own injuries." Replied Doc, raising his voice a little. Sarge barely made out someone in the background muttering about the "ungrateful damned mutant," but didn't comment on it as Doc continued. "As for Fumbles, I got his scrapes and bruises patched up, but I'm not sure if he suffered any mental damage from whatever the Zoanthrope did. I'd like to have the locals take a look at him, but Nubby… sprang him." Sarge sighed. "Right, I'll have a chat with him after this." He closed the comm connection, and dialed in a new contact code. While the terminal chimed, he turned back to the rest of the room. "I think that covers everything, so if there aren't any questions," the Quartermaster began to raise his hand, but the Captain pulled it back down, "then we'll all meet in Bay 38A in..." Sarge faced the terminal as the channel opened, "ETA Bill?" "Almost got the docking sorted, it’ll be about twenty-" there was a horrible crunching sound, and somewhere in the background a pressurization alarm started to wail, "ehh, call it forty minutes." >The All Guardsmen Party: Tyranid Delivery Experts

It took a lot of wheedling from Nubby, Tink, and even Aimy, but eventually Sarge accepted that Fumbles was somehow critical to their shopping expedition. And when I say "somehow critical," I mean that not even Nubby knew what he wanted the psyker for: when pressed he just shrugged and muttered about "genral in-su-rance." Anyway, Sarge accepted, mostly because Aimy was going along to make sure no one did anything overly retarded. When Doc arrived, and finished laughing, Sarge negotiated a temporary truce between him and Nubby in exchange for a promise to bring Fumbles to the Station's medbay as soon as he'd finished doing... whatever. Speaking of Doc, he and Sister Valerie had an entire little medical convoy set up in the cargobay, waiting for the door to open. The whole array of kludged-together medical machinery keeping Sergeant Gravis alive had been put on wheels and strapped into something that looked like a sort of heretical mobile-torture device. It was bloody massive: between the air-tight freezer case containing the Space Marine's lower-half, the various crates full of his gear and the medical supplies they might need during the short trip, and the generator which kept everything powered, the whole thing weighed more than some tanks. It took three cargo servitors just to push it, and a pair of Valerie's minions to keep everything running while she sat there and handled each new medical emergency the Tyranid bio-weapon threw at her. After Doc had wandered back over to his girlfriend, Tink pointed out that, really, the medic should've been thanking them for keeping Fumbles away from that huge pile of delicate machinery. Everyone else quietly agreed.

The Occurrence Border managed to dock with the station a mere three hours after the first attempt, which was a new record according to Ol' Bill, and the bay doors creaked open to revealed a rather angry-looking welcoming party. The pale Scribe and slightly-singed Techpriest at the head of the party looked around the bay for a few seconds, probably boggling at its bizarre layout or all the exposed wiring, then demanded to see the "Captain of this so-called vessel." Sarge stepped forward, his Inquisitorial costume flapping dramatically in the slight breeze caused by the various leaks in the bay's void-seal, and flanked by the Diplomat and Jim. The Scribe couldn't actually get paler, but he did turn a faint shade of green at seeing Sarge and hastily began apologizing. The discussion that followed was highly amusing for us, both because the Scribe was terrified out of his mind, and because Sarge just stood there and looked stuffed. After he waved the Diplomat and Jim forward, he spent the whole time doing an impression of an especially grumpy exhibit in a wax museum. The only member of the welcoming party that wasn't unnerved by this was the damaged techpriest, but Jim chirped something in binary at his fellow cogboy, and the priest wandered off without saying a word. Between his terror and the fact that his only ally had just abandoned him, the Scribe was putty in our Diplomacy Adept's hands. All the little fees and fines concerning our docking were waved, the Station Security troopers were dismissed, and after one look at Sergeant Gravis, Doc's medical convoy was rushed off to the Station's main medbay. Sarge, Jim, and the Diplomat were led out of the bay by the Scribe, bypassing the scanner-filled checkpoint that separated the docking bay from the rest of the station. The rest of us followed a conspicuously-slow Security guard to a side-door, which he sort of accidentally held open while picking up a bag of money that must've fallen out of his pocket.

Down in the bowels of the station we noticed the same agitated atmosphere as Sarge noticed above, except with less Station Security and more burly mercs walking the street. Not being constrained by a need to appear all Inquisitorial, we pulled ourselves out of traffic and just began asking random people what was up. We quickly determined that either: a daemon-filled space-hulk had entered the system, a hive fleet was about to attack, all the astropaths in the Telepathica had been possessed by daemons, the Emperor's divine judgement for something or other was imminent, or random drunks and dockworkers were a terrible source of information. The closest thing to useful information we got was from a bored merc, who said that the "Pathica called a meeting of the Big Three" and advised Nubby to bugger off before he got a boot up the ass. No one thought much of this information when we commend it to the rest of the team, except for Twitch, who got far too excited when he heard all the doomsday predictions, and Doc. The medic had arrived at the Station's Medbay without incident, but said he wasn't surprised the the Astra Telepathica had called a meeting, since the Medbay was absolutely packed with astropaths. He'd actually been told by the head medicae that Sergeant Gravis would have to wait his turn, and they'd been shuffled off into a storage bay since no real rooms were free. Sister Valerie was not pleased with this treatment, but Doc was looking on the bright side, and began looting antidotes and other medical supplies with the sort of enthusiasm one would usually expect from Nubby. Since a whole pile of injured Astropaths is generally considered to be a bad sign when visiting a space station, Sarge made slightly-grumpier faces at the old Diplomat until he got the hint and started asking the Scribe pointed, but still very diplomatic, questions. Unfortunately, the Scribe just fell back on the Chain of Command, and promised his boss would fill us in.

Getting official approval for Sergeant Gravis' medical treatment was easy, and the Prefect seemed confident in the local Medicae's ability to fully treat Tyranid bio-weapon that'd infected him. Likewise, most of the stuff on Jim's part list was accepted without comment. The first hiccup was when we got to some of the really powerful psi-resistant materials: the Prefect claimed they were in stock, but couldn't be released without authorization from the sub-sector capital or the official use of an Inquisitorial seal. He claimed that due to the "incident", it would be a long and difficult process to get authorization, but he saw no other option if we wanted to be discreet. Sarge pondered this for all of three seconds, decided discretion was overrated anyway, pulled out his Interrogator's Rosette, and plugged it into a proffered dataslate. The Prefect seemed quite happy that everything was going to be above-board for once, saying that after the code was verified by the Telepathica's databases, there'd be no trouble getting the materials or anything else on the list. Sarge cheered up at this, and was considering asking to add the fuel bill to the list, when the Prefect added "except for the Astropathic messages." With that, the discussion finally turned to the "incident". According the Prefect, roughly half a day ago some sort of psychic attack had hit the station. Every Astropath who had been working in the Choir-Chambers had suffered a severe case of exploding-head, and those who hadn't been on-duty had suffered everything from nosebleeds, to seizures, to complete mental breakdowns. It wasn't just limited to the Astropaths of the Telepathica either, several of the ships in system had lost their astropaths, and other varieties of sanctioned psykers had been affected too, albeit to a lesser degree.

As the Prefect left, he handed the dataslate Sarge had plugged his rosette into to the transfixed Scribe. He told the flunky to go run the code, THEN go fetch Choir-Master. Hopefully the knowledge that the whole thing was going to be an Official Inquisitorial incident instead of a cloak and dagger charade would keep the man calm. When the two Stationers had left the suite, the old Diplomacy Adept pulled out a small device which emitted a sort of low buzzing sound, and rounded on Sarge and Jim. The lecture Sarge and Jim got was scathing and brought back painful childhood memories involving unfinished homework assignments and failed tests. It started with the importance of never admitting fault and maintaining at least the appearance of competence, and then shifted into a general lecture on how to react to a diplomatic crisis. Sarge bore the lecture stoically, automatically standing at attention and adopting the blank expression employed by NCOs across the galaxy. His only movement during the whole thing was to put his combead on mute when the rest of us figured out what was going on and started snickering. Jim just turned his ears off after the first minute. After what felt to Sarge like half a millennium, the old Diplomat's lecture concluded with a bitter comment about how, on top of everything else, the Scribe had run into the Choir-Master on his way to verify our identity. Sarge blinked as the Diplomat detailed how the head Astropath was too angry to even form coherent sentences, and had either punched a hole through a wall or severely broken his hand. After a thoughtful pause, Sarge asked the Adept how exactly he knew this, and got a pithy reply about diplomacy being as much about listening as talking.

Back on the Occurrence Border, Twitch had grumpily followed Sarge's order and was watching as the Cogitator Adept began pulling in vid feeds from the Station. Soon every screen in the room was filled, either by a feed from the Station, or one from the suicide skulls, and for a brief moment Twitch felt like he'd become a god, between the vid feeds from the Station and the ones from his suicide skulls, he could see EVERYTHING. Twitch could see the corridors around the dock, some of them filled with busy people, others sealed and empty. He could see crewmen hauling goods in and out of the docking bay, and the Captain arguing over price with a harassed-looking Stationer. He could see Fio working diligently in the Psyker Holding Cells and trying to ignore the way the Zoanthrope's metal-plated face seemed to follow him despite the stasis field. He could even see Nubby, Tink, and Aimy as they checked various seedy bars for their black market contact. For the first time in years, Twitch's paranoia faded away as it was replaced by an overwhelming feeling of Control. It lasted all of fifteen seconds, and then something inside the jumble of warped and twisted mental gears that made up Twitch's mind went *PING*. Twitch reeled as his mind automatically began cataloguing every single suspicious object, which is to say every man, woman, child, animal, servitor, and overlarge barrel on the Station. He wound up sprinting from the room, leaving the confused, but relieved, Cogitator Adept to monitor everything in peace, while he went to go put as many explosives as possible between himself and the horrible mass of potential threats that was the Station's population. A few minutes later, the rest of us were informed by the Cogitator Adept that Twitch had begun booby trapping every locked door, air vent, and maintenance hatch in the docking bay. We decided that, all in all, it was better just to let him do it, and warn the Stationers to only use the main entrance.

Now, Nubby's heritage had been a matter of much speculation back in the Guard. Not in the sense of who his parents were, because even he admitted figuring that out was a lost cause, but as to what horrible combination of Human, Abhuman, Farm Animal, and possibly Gretchin genetics had produced such a "unique" individual. Determining what to put the trooper's species down as had been a trial for several munitorum clerks, and eventually the issue had to be sorted out by the Commissar. He'd decided that, for lack of any better fit, and because the Generian 99th was not officially a mixed-species unit, Nubby was Human. He'd even issued the disgusting little trooper an official card saying so, just to avoid the discussion coming up again. The point is, that Nubby, much to the relief of the entire race, was NOT a Ratling. Despite (or possibly because of) this, Nubby had always gotten on very well with the little buggers, and this case was no exception. After a bit of amiable chatter, the Marketeer and a few of his half-pint bodyguards led us off to a discreet warehouse to talk business. At the door all of us, except for Nubby, who they were understandably reluctant to frisk, were subjected to a very thorough security check. Our anti-scan cloaks, knives, las-pistols, holdout weapons, and the home-made shockstick which Tink insisted on calling his "Power Wrench" were temporarily put aside, and we were each asked to supply a little bit of blood. They put the blood into some sort of scanner, which they claimed was checking to see if we were psykers, genestealers, polymorphine users, or anything else which might compromise the deal. We passed of course, and were allowed to keep our combeads, electronics, and even our weapons, since Nubby was a "known factor." Also, because the warehouse was monitored by a dozen remote controlled las-turrets.

Once Tink and Aimy had been relegated to helping the sole cargo-servitor that had remained in the room fetch boxes, the haggling resumed. Crate after crate of narcotics, dubiously acquired valuables, and those well made and untraceable small-arms the Inquisition issues were exchanged for xenos-made circuits, tools, and materials. At first it seemed like our supply of illicit goods was going to run short before we had everything on Tink and Fio's list, but as the negotiations continued, the Marketeer became more and more relaxed and generous with his exchanges. A careful observer might have noticed that the change in the Ratling's attitude seemed linked to how much time he spent within twenty meters of the cargo-pallet, and how Nubby, Aimy, and Tink tended to stay away from said pallet. This was, of course, what Nubby had wanted Fumbles for. They'd pulled this sort of con quite a few times, though usually not with Fumbles was encased in a shipping crate and hopped up on a downright unhealthy amount of stimulants. The psyker wasn't directly messing with the Marketeer's mind, that'd be too obvious to any observers as well as the Marketeer himself when he walked out of range, and honestly we didn't trust Fumbles to do that sort of thing for any length of time without something exploding. Instead the little psyker was just sitting there, concentrating on thinking calm and happy thoughts, and letting his aura do the rest. With Fumbles' help we made it down to the last item on our shopping list with two crates, not counting Fumbles' and our other backup crate, still unopened. Unfortunately, that last item was a sticking point: not even under the effects of the feel-good aura, and with a big box of only-slightly-warp-tainted Servitor Control Units up for offer, the Ratling refused to even admit he knew what Wraithbone was, much less part with a big ol' chunk of it.

Back down in the warehouse, the miniature Marketeer had recovered from his shock and was inspecting the quality of the Powersword while Nubby chattered at him from just outside Fumbles' radius. Behind them, Aimy and Tink dug out the small crate labeled "Talc-10kg" the Ratling had directed them to, and complained at eachother. Aimy was in the middle of telling Tink, who was too busy whining about how much he'd wanted to dissasemble that sword to even pretended to listen, that Sarge was going to blame HER for this, when she noticed the Ratling freeze. After a quick kick to his shin, Tink noticed too, checked the screen of his drone controller, and gave Aimy a thumbs up. As Aimy and Tink came over to see what the problem was, Nubby finally realized that the Marketeer wasn't listening to his list of things he'd accept as "change" for Gravis' Powersword and the Control Units (y'know, since they were obviously worth WAY more than a spooky chunk of rock). He sidled up to the frozen Marketeer and tapped him on the shoulder. The Ratling spun around, still gripping the sword, and Nubby jumped back with a little scream as the movement triggered a VERY painful memory. This in turn set off the Ratling, who held the sword in front of him like a shield, and hastily began backing up and gibbering about needing to use the bathroom. We all watched as our black-market contact ran out of the room and slammed the door behind him. Aimy let out a pained sigh, and asked Nubby if there was any chance the Ratling would be coming back, or could at least be convinced to return the Powersword before trying to kill us. Nubby just cackled, and began divvying out our big-boy guns from one of the remaining boxes, while Fumbles burst from the other, began shouting about how we were all going to die, and immediately faceplanted as his still-asleep legs betrayed him. Aimy caught her rifle and casually headshot the warehouse's cargo servitor, then sighed again and activated her combead.

Now this is where some men might have gone into shock, or exploded in irrational anger, or sunk into despair, but not Sarge. He allowed himself half a second of ironic satisfaction at the way his cynicism had, once again, been justified, then removed that stupid Inquisitorial hat and started belting out orders. Admittedly, those orders were to just do what we would've done anyway, but as someone or other said, "Never give an order that won't be obeyed." So, as a reminder, we were split up into four groups. Well, five if you count the Captain, but when Sarge commed him to report the situation and coordinate things, the ex-navy Officer just told Sarge to do something anatomically improbable, and said he'd meet us back on the ship. Judging by the amount of gunfire and screaming in the background, he had things under control. Anyway, Doc was stuck in the Station Security-filled medbay in the mid-north part of the Station, Aimy and company were in a warehouse on the lower levels of the eastern side of the station, Twitch and the Occurrence Border were at the west-most docking bay, and Sarge was almost at the top of the central spire. Our options were limited, we were split up, ass-deep in increasingly hostile territory, and, in Sarge and Doc's cases, practically unarmed. We did have a ship-full of armsmen, plus a few nearly-functional lance batteries, but the Stationers knew that and were already deploying men in that direction. We were far too outnumbered, outgunned, and (though it pains me to admit it) ethical to start an all-out war. Plus, it's a bad idea to blow holes in a space station while you're still on it. They'd have to sit back and hold down the fort while we did our best impression of a bunch of Catachans on their way back to base after a night on the town. It was time to fall back on that old Guard classic: Regroup, Retreat, Repeat.

Once the rest of us had started moving, Sarge muted his combead, swore a lot, then took stock of the situation. He was in a small office and bathroom suite with only one exit, which lead to a large conference room. Said room was probably occupied by a few of the Choir Master's bodyguards, who would be watching to make sure he didn't go anywhere while the Station's leaders plotted their attack. His assets consisted of: >1 Laspistol (Standard Inquisition Issue) >4 Laspistol Power Packs (Charged) >1 Combat Knife (Notched) >1 Roll of Duct Tape (Olive Green) >1 Combead (Muted) >1 Inquisitorial Costume, with Hat (Stupid) >1 Three Hundred Year Old, Bug-Planting Diplomat (Grumpy) >1 Jim (Whimpering in a Corner About How Everything Keeps Happening to Him) This was not, of course, anywhere near enough to take on the small army of armsmen, gun servitors, and very-angry psykers inhabiting the Astra Telepathica, not to mention the Station Security forces outside. In fact, by Sarge's reckoning, it probably wasn't even enough to take the six to eight body-guards that the Choir Master had brought with him, but the Diplomacy Adept disagreed. The aging Diplomat drew an ornate las-pistol from his robes, and suggested taking the Station's leadership hostage while they were still only a few rooms away. When Sarge just stared at him, he explained that with sufficient "leverage" it'd be easy to re-open negotiations and smooth everything over. After a few more seconds of staring, Sarge decided that nothing the old Diplomat did or said would surprise him anymore, and made "Fight through a bunch of heavily armed men and start a volatile hostage situation" Plan B.

Way down in the black market warehouse, Aimy and Tink put the finishing touches on the cargo pallet. Said pallet looked nothing like the one that had left the Occurrence Border: for one thing it was much fuller than it used to be, the stack of crates on it was nearly three meters tall, and they were held in place by dozens of straps and tarps. Because this was far more weight than the pallet could handle, or anyone wanted to push around, a few grav-plates had been scrounged from the warehouse by Nubby, and more or less randomly slapped on. Finally, the treaded bottom half the warehouse's cargo servitor had been fastened on as an incredibly grisly external motor. The thing looked horrible, with a coat of red paint and a few stubbers you could pass it off as an Ork Trakk, but it handled surprisingly well. The only interruption during the whole loading and modification process had been about a minute after the Marketeer had fled, when the las-turrets in the ceiling had suddenly swiveled to track us, and then went still as the EMP grenades Spot 2.0 had placed on them went off. There'd been no other attempts to kill us, partially because Tink had used his heavily-modified plasma gun to weld the warehouse's doors shut, but mostly because of Fumbles. The hyped up psyker spent the whole time jittering back in forth in front of the main entrance, emanating all sorts of mental unpleasantness at anyone who got near it. He claimed that after the third time the Ratlings had lost their nerve, they'd decided that, since they had all the warehouse's exits covered, they could spare the time to call in a few teams of disposable bigguns to tackle the scary guardsmen for them. The major flaw in their plan was that we had the aforementioned heavily-modified plasma gun, and no intention of leaving via the doors.

Our trip through the station was shockingly swift, stealthy, and professional. At least for certain values of "stealthy" and "professional", but there's no debating the "swift" part, or the "shocking" for that matter. Since our dismembered-servitor propulsion system was capable of pushing the loot pallet at speeds best described as "unsafe", we piled onto it and sped through the corridors like… Well, like a bunch of drunken guardsmen on leave. Thanks to the maps provided by the Cogitator Adept, the scouting abilities of Spot the Wonder Drone, and a plasma-gun-enabled disregard for inconveniently placed doors and walls, we took a very direct and underpopulated route to the medbay. That's not to say that we didn't run into anyone on our trip, but thanks to Spot and Fumbles, we generally saw them before they saw us. We managed to avoid or sneak by a few potential witnesses, as well as some Mercs and Security officers. Others were handled by sucker-punches and the application of Tink's not-actually-a-power-weapon Power Wrench. When that wasn't an option, we had Fumbles cloak us, or edit a few memories, though sometimes this didn't work either, and a more efficient approach was called for. Violence was only our last resort mind you, it's not like we were some sort of high speed murder-barge shooting down the Station's corridors with no regard for collateral damage, innocent lives, or speed limits. At least not most of the time. Anyway, if you disregard maimings, psychic trauma, property damage, and other little things like that, our expedition was practically bloodless. Which is to say that there were DEFINITELY under 10 deaths, and most of those were Mercs and Bounty Hunters, and everyone knows they don't really count. Oh, and the maintenance worker that got ran over by the loot-pallet really should've known to look both ways before entering such a long and obstruction-free corridor, and had probably been drunk anyway.

The only reason Doc didn't immediately panic and do something stupid, was that Gravis chose that exact moment to try and die again. The nurse ran over to assist, and Doc began barking orders at, for lack of anyone else, the two Security officers. Now Doc may not have been a REAL doctor, but he'd gotten quite good at keeping Sergeant Gravis alive over the last few weeks, and that medical confidence infused his voice with doctorly gravitas. The two Security officers stood there in shock for a second, and then, compelled by the voice of medical authority and the sight of an honest-to-the-Emperor Space Marine (well, half of one) lying on the table, they lowered their weapons and began helping too. Now in an ideal galaxy, after they helped him save Gravis, Doc would've sent the two Security goons off on some pointless errand, and they would've spent hours running around looking for a cans of headlight fluid or elbow grease before remembering that they were supposed to be arresting him. What actually happened though, was that halfway through the procedure, a whole mob of people burst into the storage room. Only three of the intruders were Security grunts, the rest consisted of the other nurse, Sister Valerie, the Station's head medicae, and a very-angry looking man who turned out to be the head of the medbay Security detachment. The room was immediately filled with yelling, as the Security Commander started chewing out his men for swabbing the traitorous heretic's brow instead of arresting him, and the two men tried to defend their actions. At the back of the group one of the newly arrived goons began relaying a report to headquarters, another called for backup from the other search parties. The third goon was stuck trying to placate the head medicae and Sister Valerie, who were angrily demanding to know what all this talk of heretics and arresting was about.

After a few seconds of thought on the ethical and tactical problems raised by the whole hostage thing, Doc told the two terrified Station Security officers to collect their unconscious commander, as well as the catatonic-with-fear head medicae, and get the hell out. Then, at Sister Valerie's insistence, he also shoved the three now-melting corpses out into the hallway. As an afterthought, he collected the dead officers' shotguns and ammo, set up a firing position using the sliding door and the sturdiest crate he could find, and thanked the Emperor that their storage room was at the end of a corridor. It should be noted, just for posterity, that Doc did NOT actually stop to check what was in the crate he used for his barricade. That really wasn't his fault though: he was very busy with defending the room, it was an innocent mistake, and the Tribunal DID clear him in the end. Anyway, as Doc worked, he did his best to bring Sister Valerie up to speed. She did not find the news that the Astropaths had betrayed us surprising, and recommended purging them all in holy fire before we left. Doc made that agreeing, but noncommittal sound which comes naturally to all boyfriends, and skipped ahead to the part where they needed to pack everything back up and hold out until backup arrived. Since by this point the Security reinforcements had arrived and needed to be continually discouraged from advancing down the corridor, Doc was put on barricade duty, while Sister Valerie and her minions handled the packing and keeping Gravis alive.

The entire barrage of grenades went off directly in front of the door to the storage room. The shockwave bent the door inward, ragdolled Doc across the storage room, and left him pinned under the heavy crate he'd been using as a barricade. He was pretty definitely out of the fight at that point, but luckily, Sister Valerie was there to rescue his sorry ass. Now this is where things get a little fuzzy, because Doc was concussed, mostly deaf, bleeding both internally and externally, and is the very definition of a biased witness where his girlfriend is concerned. According to him, she calmly instructed her minions to finish packing, pulled a crate off the mobile medical suite, and kneeled down in front of it. Then, head bowed in prayer, she extracted Sergeant Gravis' Astartes Mark Vb Godwyn Pattern Bolter, and started glowing with the Divine Light of the Emperor. We know this next part was bullshit, because Sister Valerie couldn't carry a tune with a bloody wheelbarrow, and had actually been banned, very politely mind you, from participating in the choir during the Occurrence Border's morning services. But Doc insisted that as she rose to her feet surrounded by a halo of divine light, and started singing a battle-hymn so divinely beautiful that it was painful. Then, a-singin' and a-glowin' like a bloody angel, she walked over to the door, and began mowing down wave after wave of Security goons with Gravis' bolter. Now, we saw that hallway afterwards, and there definitely weren't enough bodies to constitute even a single wave, but we couldn't deny that she sure as hell shot the place to shit. She must have put at least three magazines of Astartes-sized bolt rounds down that hallway, though "down" really isn't the right word: the vast majority of the bolt-craters we could see were along the corridor's walls, ceiling, floor, and somehow even the door behind her. She had about as much control over that weapon as a toddler trying to walk a fenrisian wolf.

Sarge's defense of the Office Suite was not as exciting as Doc's desperate holdout, this was largely because the Stationers knew Sarge was incredibly dangerous form the beginning, and didn't bother sending a few waves of poorly trained Security officers to their deaths. Instead, they called for the Station's best SWAT team, and set about fortifying the entire Telepathica headquarters to prevent any chance of escape or rescue. This sounded very bad to Sarge and the Diplomacy Adept, and they shared that opinion with Jim, who didn't respond except for fending Sarge off when he attempted to un-jack the tech-priest's mechadendrite from the comm terminal. There was a brief debate over whether he was okay, and if the "try and cut into a maintenance shaft" plan should be performed yet. Since the Cogitator Adept said that Jim was, for lack of a better word, talking with over fifty other tech-priests, Sarge decided to keep waiting, and set about fortifying the two-room suite. Then, once he'd reached the point where the suite was as fortified as physically possible, he commed Twitch for some advice, then fortified it even more. At about the same time as Doc was wantonly employing Tyranid bioweapons against three unsuspecting Security officers, the SWAT team finally launched their assault. Eight men, armored in matte black, void-sealed carapace armor and wielding the best automatic shotguns the Administratum could requisition, silently entered the main conference room and took up positions covering the door to the suite. One of them carefully opened the door's control panel, found the emergency override, and began counting down. At zero the door slid open, but did not reveal the group of desperate heretics they'd been expecting. Instead, all that was on the other side of it was the sheer metal surface of the suite's table, and a lumpy object the size of a basketball, which had been wedged against the door, and fell into the main conference room as it opened.

Eventually though, the committee reached a decision, and unfortunately, it was a pretty good one. The Telepathica knew enough about their own headquarters' to get into the ventilation system without a tech-priest's help, and the Shipmasters' Union was able to furnish several canisters of sedative gas. Once Sarge and his heretical companions were incapacitated, they'd send in some men with lascutters and rebreathers, and that would be that. Sarge immediately taped up every vent he could find, but did not feel especially confident in the ability of a single layer of duct tape to fend off a chemical attack. His nerves began to fray as he overheard the gas being delivered then sent off to be deployed, and Jim still hadn't moved. The only thing that kept him from just forcing the tech-priest to wake up and trying to cut through the wall with his last two power packs, was the old Diplomat's calm assurance that he'd lose consciousness long before Sarge would, and could be used as a sort of final warning. Luckily, though it didn't seem so at the time, it never came to that. Right as the elderly adept started feeling woozy, Sarge noticed the telltale hum of a lascutter and a spot on the wall of the partially flooded bathroom began to glow. Sarge spared a few seconds to curse the Stationers for not mentioning that the assault was starting within the bugs' pickup range, then got ready to go down fighting. As a sort of afterthought he gave Jim a whack upside the head, partially to try and wake the him up, but mostly because he was rather angry with the enginseer. Jim didn't snap awake though, this was because he was already awake, and was in the process of turning around when Sarge swung. The end result was Jim sitting on the floor, checking if his nose was broken, and calling Sarge some very unkind words. Sarge responded with a few choice insults on his own, but stopped when Jim pointed out that he was being very ungrateful for someone who'd just been rescued.

Using a haughty tone of voice that definitely didn't fit him, Jim began spouting a bunch of stuff about jurisdictions, re-prioritizations, and other such weasel words; it was complete bullshit, but luckily, Sarge was fluent in bullshit. The gist of it was that Jim had told the cogboys that he and Hannah had been given a vitally important mission by the Ordos Juris, and namedropped the two Magi that we'd so memorably encountered. This was, of course, a VERY creative interpretation of being told "go gain experience in the Inquisition, and we'll recruit you into the Ordos Juris if you survive", and Sarge took a small amount of pride in how much a cynical lying bastard Jim had become. The local tech-priests couldn't directly assist with Jim's mission without knowing what it was, or being given some sort of authorization from higher up, but they could definitely help him return to his ship. Furthermore, if he made sure it didn't threaten the Station, they could make sure that said ship would be able to leave the system without being attacked. This was great news, but Sarge couldn't help but notice that only Jim and Hannah's escape and safety were mentioned, and pointed that out. Jim actually smiled a bit at that, and explained that the cogboys had no interest in us AT ALL unless we did something to significantly damage the Station. They'd wouldn't help us, but they wouldn't help the Stationers either, and they wouldn't do anything to stop us from following Jim on his very-safe trip back to the Occurrence Border through the Stations maintenance corridors. In the end, Sarge sent the Diplomacy Adept off with Jim, but didn't go with them, because the Doc situation was heating up and Twitch was handling things just fine by himself. As they headed off, one of the tech-priests grudgingly showed Sarge to the nearest public corridor, then slammed the door behind him.

Now, it's been said, by just about everyone who's Sarge, that in the entire history of the Imperium there's been no one so inherently a Sergeant as him. He was born for it, destined for it, it was if the Emperor reached down and said "This guy, right here, he's going to be biggest, baddest, most sergeanty guy ever, and nothing can ever change that." He just sort exuded sergeant-ness, and anyone with a drop of military blood in their veins noticed it immediately. Well, as Sarge entered that bar full of mercs, he turned that aura up to eleven. Sarge came through the bar door looking, despite his slovenly uniform, like he'd just stepped off recruiting poster, and every man in that bar, including the bartender, came to attention. Sarge surveyed them for a few seconds, then announced that he knew where the heretic bounties were hiding, and that Station Security was too chickenshit to handle them. He'd called them here, because they were toughest, meanest, nastiest men on the station, and if they followed him into this fight, they'd also be the richest. Then Sarge turned on his heel, and marched back out of the bar. The mercs, bounty hunters, and assorted scum in the bar all shared a look, then stampeded after him. A short while later, Sarge and his small mercenary army shoved their way into the medbay lobby and demanded to speak to the commanding officer. Unfortunately, the security commander, who turned out to be the guy Sister Valerie had tranqued, was a bit less credulous than the mercs had been. He demanded to know who Sarge was (and no "Sarge" is not a name, it was a rank, what's your NAME merc?), what outfit he was from, and why he was there. Sarge, who knew from experience that claiming to be "Sergeant Sargent" would result in a fair bit of wasted time, discreetly checked the name on his ill-fitting jacket, and announced the he was Sergeant Kelly, the men behind him were Kelly's Heroes, and they were there to get rich or die trying.

Sarge's speech ended with a final bellow of "CHARGE" and every man in the room, both the mercs and the security officers, surged towards the hallway that led to the now-empty storage room. Sarge didn't go with them though, as soon as they turned, he covered his eyes and bolted for the lobby's door. Up on the ceiling, Spot pulled a few pieces of string that had been run through the rings of a dozen flash and smoke grenades, and right as Sarge hit the doors, the lobby exploded into light and smoke. In the confusion, which quickly grew deadly as nearly fifty armed men panicked, no one noticed a section of wall collapsing, or the large blurry shape going through it. Sarge stumbled through the lobby doors, feeling rather proud of how well that had worked out, and nearly collided with eight men in matte black armor. He froze for a second, resisted the urge to raise his shotgun, and told them that a bunch of heretics disguised as mercenaries had just attacked the Security forces. The leader of the SWAT team swore, and led his men through the doors. Sarge waited until the last one had gone through then sprinted like hell. As he reached the end of the hallway, a side door slid open to reveal Aimy, and somewhere behind him someone yelled "HEY YOU". Something stung Sarge in the side as he ran the last few meters to the door, and Aimy responded by leaning out and neatly putting a bolt of plasma through the offending SWAT trooper's helmet; then both of them were through the door. Despite the fact the SWAT team following them had a nice clear trail of Sarge's blood to follow, they didn't manage to catch up. This was primarily because Aimy kept shooting the control panel of every automatic door after she closed it, but also because any Guardsman worth his salt is a good runner. Before long they reached the rest of us, Sarge was tossed onto the loot pallet next to Doc, and the whole convoy rolled out.

As we rode up the elevator Twitch brought us up to speed on how the defense of the Occurrence Border had been going. Apparently, largely thanks to the amount of flank Twitch's mines and skulls had been able to secure and the resulting terror in the attackers, it had gone very well. Casualties had been low, at least on our side, and the Captain had even been able to launch a small offensive to "liberate" some much needed supplies. The only really bad development was that the Stationers had cut off the refueling pipe fairly early on, and no one had been able to figure out a way to steal any either. There was also the slightly worrying news that a few boarding shuttles had been launched by the Station. The few of these that had landed in the well populated sections of the ship were easily repelled by the armsmen, who had a rather significant home field advantage, but a few had landed in the tainted areas. Most of those shuttles hadn't taken off again, and Twitch predicted an increase in the amount of daemon activity until those poor bastards died and stopped feeding the things, but the two shuttles that had taken back off were almost more worrying. They'd landed in the Warp Fungus bay, so by now the stuff was probably already spreading through at least one of the Station's shuttle bays. Sarge commed Jim and asked him to send everything we had on the Fungus to the local cogboys, and we all hoped really hard that this wasn't going to turn out like the whole Necron thing: two sub-sector-wide disasters in a row would be really hard to explain to Oak. After the elevator ride it was just a short walk through some blasted-open bulkheads to our docking bay. As we arrived, senior armsmen started bellowing orders, and an orderly retreat started. Twitch watched carefully as the men fell back, and began pulling color coded detonators off of his harness. One-by-one the abandoned defensive positions were demolished, and everyone filed back aboard the Occurrence Border.

After he finished laughing at Sarge's expense, the old Diplomat brought Sarge up date. Hannah had explained the Mechanicus' neutrality to the Captain, which is why the bridge wasn't in a panic. The Occurrence Border was headed out of the system, but since the tech-priests on the Station, as well as every ship in the system, were preventing the use of any anti-ship weapons, there was no need to rush. Sarge though this was a dangerously optimistic viewpoint, but didn't feel like arguing with Captain, and anyway, it meant that Tink and the rest would have more time to repair the Psyker Containment Cells. Sarge was about to leave the bridge to see about having the buckshot removed from his side and changing into uniform that fit and didn't smell of urine, when the communication officer called him over. The Station was broadcasting a message, unencrypted and addressed to him by name of "The Heretical False-Interrogator Greg Sargent", which turned out to be a vid from the Station's leaders. Or more precisely, it was a vid from the Choir Master, the other two leaders mostly sat in the background and looked scared, and you couldn't really call it a message either. It turned out to be nearly twenty straight minutes of wide eyed ranting and death threats, which went from frightening, to amusing, to tedious, then briefly back to amusing when the enraged Astropath managed to break a blood vessel in his eye and had to be taken away to calm down. Unfortunately, the vid resumed after that, and the Choir Master shifted from pointless screaming to promises of vengeance. Among many other things, he vowed that every choir from Ultramar to Terra would hear of our crimes, which struck Sarge as a very petty and stupid form of vengeance. It'd cause immense annoyance the in the short term, but it would ensure that Inquisition found out, and get everything sorted out that much quicker.

His curiosity sated, Sarge turned to leave the room, but paused as the something on the vid caught his eye. It was a fat man, wearing what Sarge recognized, thanks to some unwanted training on the subject, as Floral-Printed Tau formal robes. As the animated figure gibbered in Tau-speak, Sarge realized that he was looking at some bizarre caricature of ex-Inquisitor Lars Weebu, and with dawning sense of horror he realized what was going to come next. There was a blast of shrill music, followed by a few lines of text which Sarge hesitantly translated as "Super Deserter Gue'vesa Action Heroes", and the scene change to a group of six characters wearing Tau flak armor. Sarge's eye scanned the horrible big-eyed characters for the telltales he knew would be there. There was the red cross on one, the bandoleers of explosives on another, and then there was the half-sized character with his psyker-robe wearing sidekick. At the back of the group he spotted a character with chevrons, who looked far grumpier and grayer than seemed appropriate, and finally there was… Well, it had the oversized plasma gun, and the goggles, and the drone, so it had to be… but... "Umm, Tink, why… why is your character female?" The techie froze, and slowly looked up at Sarge. Jim snickered. "Ahh… w-well.. y-y-you see…" stammered Tink. Fio, seeing that Tink was having trouble, decided to help. "That actually just happened, last week they were fighting the dread wych Ynageza and she cast a spell which-" "FORGET I ASKED."