Another few hours of driving later, we discovered that the target was a "bank" in the same sense that a divisional armory is a "gun rack". Yes, there was something bank-like in there, and that was the part we were going to rob, but it just happened to be situated inside an entire sub-spire belonging to some sort of merchant shipping Cartel. This discovery did not make us very happy, and neither did the painfully long briefing we received from Sciscitat's Interrogator via combead. A lot of the briefing was just stuff about the Cartel, which mostly boiled down to "think Rogue Traders, except with less megalomania, more bureaucracy, and deep Administratum ties." Not being particularly interested in any of the fine details of the Cartel's sub-sector wide political connections, we strategically muted our combeads and spent most of the lecture getting some absolutely terrible "breakfast flavored" soylens wraps and fuel-station recaff. Eventually, possibly when she realized none of us had said anything for over half an hour, the Interrogator got to the point, which was that strange heavily armed men in shitty vans were not typically allowed on the Cartel's sub-spire. Unless that is, they were a PDF patrol sent to do a sweep for mutants in the sub-spire's sewers. At first we were fine with this, we could pretend to be a PDF patrol in our sleep. Literally. The part that spoiled what was left of our appetites was where we were expected to actually go out and perform the sewer patrol. Sarge had suggested that the inherent laziness of PDF troopers would give us enough leeway to just sit around in our van for the whole mission without blowing our cover, but the Interrogator insisted that us fighting ravening mutants while wading through waist-deep, er, waste was a critical part of Sciscitat's plan. Unfortunately (for everyone involved) this turned out to be true.

Admittedly it was impressive (and a bit worrying) that the crazy Choir Master had actually carried through with his threat and sent these wanted posters to every astropath in the sector... But, seriously, who goes through all that trouble and then uses an EDITORIAL CARTOON for the mugshot? Psykers man… Our high spirits lasted for most of our drive through the (comparatively) clear and clean streets of the sub-spire, but faded as we reached our destination on its lowest level. We parked our trusty vehicle on the curb outside a maintenance station, where a pair of workers in stained coveralls met us. We were guided to a hatch that looked far more vault-like than your average manhole, and the grimier of the two men promised to stay by the hatch for six hours to let us back out. If we weren't back by then, he said, they'd check the filtration system in about a month, and send what was left of us back to the PDF. While Sarge thanked the men and reviewed the few grainy vids of the mutants they supplied, the rest of did a final gear check and made sure our rebreathers were as tight as possible. When we got the word go, the hatch was opened, and something that looked like a cross between a man, a donkey, and a squid launched itself through the gap. Twitch shot it in what was probably the face, and then swore as the piddly little lasbolt failed to kill it. Fortunately, instead of following up the attack, the slavering mutant let out very human-sounding scream of pain and retreated. This didn't stop Twitch from flinging himself backwards and opening up on full auto, but the hatch-cover soaked the fire just as well as the mutant would've, so he only hit the maintenance man holding it open once. It turned out the guy's hand was already an augmetic so he was fairly understanding about the whole thing. Sarge made Twitch apologise, the area under the hatch was carefully checked for any more lurking mutants, and one by one we plopped down into the muck.

Anyway, the majority of the sewer's occupants wanted to get shot about as much as we wanted to get shivved with a piece of sharpened fecal matter, and we quickly came to a mutual understanding with them. This wasn't anything official mind you, the presence of Cartel security monitors meant we couldn't just announce that we were just passing through on a secret Inquisitorial mission, but we managed to convey the gist of it by making as much noise as possible, waving our lights around, and loudly announcing the complete lack of mutants we were seeing. So, by the standard of armed patrols through ass-deep (or neck-deep in Nubby's unfortunate case) sewage, it was a fairly pleasant experience. Or it would have been if it weren't for the Inquisitor's fetish for overly complicated plans. He'd put together this amazingly complex series of carefully timed infiltrations, misdirections, psychic tricks, and cogitator infiltrations, which was supposed to result in them nicking the doohickey without the Cartel even finding out they'd been robbed. We were fine with all that, it wasn't like we wanted to get into a shooting war with someone who could afford to employ entire goon-battalions, and our part was actually pretty simple. All we had to do was to sneak into one of the sub-spire's auxiliary power stations via the sewers and do something technical to some sort of feed line thingy. Honestly, we were a little hazy on the fine details, but Tink claimed it was all "super simple", which was good enough for the rest of us. The problem was that, for some reason, the Inquisitor didn't trust us to get our part done unsupervised. Which is why, instead of just giving us a map and the codes to the security doors, we were being guided through the sewers via combead. By the tech-priest. The one who hated us.

Getting into the power station's maintenance tunnels turned out to be a bit of a problem. This was partially because the people who ran the place had put quite a lot of effort into separating the vital heart of their sub-spire from the mutant-infested sewers adjacent to it. Mostly though, it was because the tech-priest kept insisting the only possible entrance was located in a chamber which just happened to contain an entire mutant village, complete with hovels, barricades, and what looked to be a sizable militia. When Sarge pointed this out to the tech-priest, he just made a suspiciously snicker-like sound and asked how that was HIS problem. After a brief debate, we decided that there was no way in hell that we were going to try fighting our way past seventy-ish spear-carrying mutants, and an alternative approach was needed. We spent a bit of time searching the immediate area for likely-looking passages and checking the map Tink had been compiling (so we could navigate our own route back, thank you very much), but weren't making much progress until Doc suggested just asking the Mutants if they'd let us through. The rest of us, especially Twitch, thought this was a bit overly optimistic, but there wasn't any real harm in asking, so Sarge approached to what he felt was just beyond spear-chucking range and committed diplomacy. To our considerable surprise given Sarge's diplomatic track record and all, things actually went pretty well with the mutants. As it turned out, not only did a few of the mutants know how to speak a sort of horrible gargly version of Gothic, they were also fairly well disposed towards us on account of how much effort we'd gone through not to fight them. "Well disposed" isn't the same as "stupid" though, so they weren't keen on the idea of letting a bunch of armed goons pass through their village, but once Sarge explained our destination they were more than happy to point us towards an alternate entrance to the maintenance tunnels.

The room on the far side of the door turned out to be one of those weird mechanicus combination shrine and control room dealies. As we tracked sewage over cogboy-themed religious icons and the occasional piece of delicate machinery, it occurred to us that the tech-priest might've had an actual reason for not wanting us to come this way. Not that any of us particularly cared, but it did shine a bit light on why he was screaming at Sarge loud enough for the rest of us to hear him despite our muted combeads. Sarge, being aware that there was probably a limit to how many doors we could breach before triggering an alarm, announced a short halt to see if the furious cogboy was going to calm down enough to start giving directions again. Twitch, Nubby, and Doc respectively used this time to barricade the door behind us, nick the candlesticks, and wipe off as much filth as possible at the expense of a tapestry depicting the discovery of a new type of toaster by Tech-Saint Gearface. Despite his personal tendency towards tech-heresy, Tink didn't join the rest of us in desecrating a holy mechanicus shrine. Instead, the techie wandered over to the main control altar, and after a few seconds of translating cogboy glyphs, excitedly informed the rest of us that he could use it to disable a thing, overload another thing, and start some sort of cascade. When the rest of us just stared blankly at him, he explained that this would automatically trigger the thing which the Inquisitor had sent us down here to do. Sarge was a bit dubious, and claimed to remember our orders involving going to the main transformer room and doing something a bit less catastrophic sounding, but Tink maintained it would have the same end result. Probably. That is, assuming "logical" failsafe design. And good maintenance practices. And none of the capacitors being too full. And no stupid machine spirit shenanigans.

We eventually entered the target, "Distributor Room C", via a small conduit-filled tunnel and found ourselves on a raised catwalk above a room full of large, occasionally sparking machines which we assumed were the distributors. Thanks to our aerial perspective we didn't have any trouble finding the machine which controlled the power flow to the upper levels of the Cartel's sub-spire, and Tink was easily able to identify the control altar on it that he needed to sabotage. The problem was that said control altar was currently in use. By another Inquisition team. It was a bit an awkward situation. We considered going down there and asking them if their super secret mission was going to take very long, and if they wouldn't mind if we snuck in ahead of them, but we got the feeling that wouldn't go over well, so in the end we decided to kick the problem upstairs. To nobody's surprise, it took a few tries to get the tech-priest to patch us through. He was a bit leery of our identification of a bunch of random people in our way as a highly trained Inquisition team that just happened to be infiltrating the exact same facility at the exact same time as us, and suggested that they might just be a simple maintenance team and we might just be a bunch of paranoid idiots. Sarge rather sarcastically pointed out that the "maintenance team" consisted of a combat-auged tech-priest with a pair of gun-servitors, a mohawk-sporting underhive Ganger carrying her bodyweight in firearms, and a Sister of Battle in full body armor. Honestly, and some people accuse US of being unsubtle… The tech-priest was very obviously in the middle of trying to figure out a scenario where we could still be wrong, when the distributor-thing the other team was messing with let off a massive bolt of electricity, the lights went out, and Sciscitat cut into the channel himself with a screech about how we'd reset the thing too early and had nearly killed three of our teammates.

Fortunately for Sarge and Tink, the catwalk was a sturdy sheet of metal instead of some flimsy grated surface, and easily withstood the hail of stub rounds sent their way by the Ganger. The Sister and her bolter were another matter though. The pair of troopers sprinted across the catwalk just ahead of a line of shrapnel-spraying craters, only barely managing to make it behind a big support pillar before they were hit. The rest of us unanimously decided that there wasn't any more time for dicking around about whether the people below us were dirty traitors or just misguided homicidal assholes, and opened fire on the two gun-servitors before they could bring their heavy weapons to bear on Sarge and Tink's position. Despite the relative piddly-ness of standard lasguns, a triple helping of pre-aimed, braced, and full-auto bolts on each was enough to put both servitors down. The one armed with a heavy bolter just keeled over as its metal-filled skull popped, but the plasma-gun armed one went off with a very satisfying bang, tossing the nearby tech-priest backwards and thoroughly wrecking the control altar. This caught the attention of the Ganger and Sister, who both switched to laying down suppressive fire while moving to pick up their damaged cogboy. This was a terrible choice on their part (as any of us could have told them) since even with the Ganger firing a weapon with each hand and them both fanning their fire back and forth in an attempt to cover all of us, it still left their backs open to Sarge and Tink.

Our embarrased shock at the situation was interrupted by the sound of a heavy security door beginning to close behind the hostile team. Thinking fast, Nubby and Twitch both shot the door's control panel. Thinking a bit less fast, but a whole lot harder, Tink sprinted out from the secure cover he'd been cowering behind and managed to put a pair of shot's into the servos controlling the door, which proved to be a lot more effective. Before the techie could smugly point that out to anyone though, one end the bolter-cratered catwalk he'd run out on gave way with a grinding screech. Lacking any better way to get to ground level, the rest of us scrambled down the makeshift ramp after him. Sarge made it to the half-closed door first, and sprang back from it with a curse as a pair of autogun rounds hit him in the helmet and chestplate. Neither round penetrated fortunately, at least not much, but it was enough to convince him to wait for the rest of us. A few seconds later Twitch tossed through one of our limited supply of flash grenades and we scrambled into the hallway weapons ready just in time to see a side-door slam shut. Sarge swore as the door's control panel emitted a burst of binary and flashed a bright red cog icon, told Tink and Twitch to either unlock it or breach it, and took a second to address the increasingly angry noises coming from his combead. Doc and Nubby snickered has he told the Inquisitor we were "handling it", asked him to stop bothering us, and suggested that if he wanted us to stand even the slightest chance of catching the other team, much less capturing one of them alive, to have our useless ass tech-priest undo whatever theirs had done to the door. The Inquisitor didn't enjoy being told to cram a sock in it, but after a few seconds of yelling the door sprang open. This surprised the hell out of Twitch and Tink, who dove into cover on the far side a split second ahead of a hail of bolts, autogun rounds, and bright-blue las-fire.

We'd steadily gained on the enemy team thanks to our innate guardsmanly ability, plus the fact that two of them were wounded and the third seemed dead set on walking everywhere. Sarge was actually entertaining the thought that we were going to be able to pull of our ordered capture, when one of the two doors at the end of the corridor opened to disgorge a pair of servitors and a trio of servo-skulls. The damned tech-priest screeched something and the whole group began lurching and hovering towards us prompting Sarge to declare that Shit Was Fucked: it was time to pop nades and end this, regardless of what the damned Inquisitor wanted. An expertly-aimed barrage consisting of two frags and a krak sailed forwards to wipe out the enemy team before they could escape; unfortunately, the tech-priest saw them coming. Sarge, Nubby, and Twitch's expressions abruptly changed from grim satisfaction to alarm as their own grenades, gripped firmly in the jaws of the three servo-skulls, zoomed back towards them. The three troopers began frantically backpedalling and firing at the suicide skulls, and then switched to a full panicked sprint as their shots missed and the skulls gained even more speed. It was only a few well-aimed shots from Tink and Doc, who were far enough back to put their full attention into firing, that prevented outright disaster. The two skulls carrying frags were knocked out the air and went off behind some obstructing pipes, while the one with Twitch's shorter-fused krak detonated short of its target. Twitch, Nubby, and Sarge were pelted with a fragments of red-hot metal and bone, but their armor protected them from the majority of it and they climbed back to their feet with only superficial injuries.

We got the impression that Inquisitor Sciscitat dearly wanted to strangle us with his bare hands, or failing that, to dedicate a proper few hours to chewing us out. Judging from all the chatter we could overhear on his line though, he was a tad too busy for either. After a few enraged sputters, he bitterly declared that he didn't have the time or crayons to explain the degree to which we'd failed him, told the tech-priest to get us up to the bank before the shooting started, and closed the channel. As the cogboy rather smugly directed us down a side corridor, we overheard the Inquisitor telling the rest of the team that "the idiots have done it again" and to enact Contingency Plan Theta-Seven or something. We made a few choice remarks of our own, but didn't bother transmitting them. We sprinted through the maintenance tunnels, hurrying to join our comrades up in the bank and regain our lost honor on the field of battle. Well, at least we started to, but then we got to the stairs and realized that we were currently on "Level -57" and our destination was on "Level 184". How either the Inquisitor or the tech-priest expected us to not only climb over two hundred flights in less than thirty minutes (wearing full armor and rebreathers no less) AND THEN go directly into combat… We took one look at those stairs and unanimously decided to go back to the van and just find a way into the bank from the outside. The tech-priest wasn't happy with our unilateral decision, or what we told him to do with his directions, and loudly declared that he had more important things to do than guide us back through the sewers. Sarge told him that suited us just fine and suggested he go do those better things. The Inquisitor was called in to yell at us, but things were evidently getting hectic upstairs, because he just to told the tech-priest not to waste time "wrestling with pigs" (whatever that meant) and both of them finally stopped bothering us.

Using the map we'd compiled ourselves instead of the tech-priest's oh-so-helpful directions, backtracking through the sewers went a hell of a lot smoother. We reached our entrance with only two shots fired, and while we did pick up a fresh coating of muck, it only reached our knees this time, thank the Emperor. We knocked on the hatch and were let in almost immediately by the two maintenance guys, who seemed surprised to see all of us still alive and in possession of all of our limbs. They had a lot of questions about how things had gone and if we'd seen any mutants messing with power conduits, but Sarge told them we'd file an official report when we got back to PDF HQ and led our not-quite-run back out to the van. When we were about halfway out of the building our combeads finally reconnected to our team's non-boosted channels and we suddenly got a far better idea of how much shit was going down. The tech-priest and Snitch were calling out all sorts of warning about Cartel security movements and the position of the rest of the hostile Inquisition team we'd encountered. Face and the Assassin were halfway into some vault, but were worried about some flier that had just landed. The Cleric and Interrogator were dodging patrols while trying to get to somewhere ahead of the other team. Sciscitat was in the middle of this all, calling out a constant stream of orders intermixed with vague curses about "greedy idiots", "traitors", and "incompetents who couldn't follow an order if their lives depended on it". We assumed the last one was directed at us. Sarge was debating whether to check in now, or put the inevitable screaming lecture off until we'd driven up to the bank, when he caught sight of the van and stopped dead. The rest of us peeked around him and started swearing as well as we saw the thick papering of traffic tickets covering our vehicle, and the singed, bleeding, vindictively glaring Traffic Officer standing in front of it.

To nobody's surprise, when we informed the boss that we'd reached the topmost level of the sub-spire and needed directions to our entry-point, we got yelled at for how long it'd taken us. This completely disregarded the fact that if we'd gone up the stairs we'd have still only have been about halfway up, but by that point we'd given up on expecting reasonable reactions. When Sciscitat finished venting, he directed us to the side street where the scan-van was parked. We were told to park our vehicle, meet up with Snitch (who would be both our guide and escortee), and gear ourselves up for a fight. We got a lot of worried looks from the Cartel merchants and scribes walking the street as we piled out of our van. This wasn't that surprising given that we were in full armor, carrying as much ammo, explosives, and situational toys as we could, and still covered in a not-quite-dry layer of fecal matter. What WAS surprising was that nobody ran screaming or called the Cartel's security force the second they saw us, not that we were complaining, but either they had way too much faith in their outer-perimeter or one of our teammates had done something impressive to explain-away our presence. We tried to ask Snitch which it was as he hopped out of the scan-van and led us to a nearby service door, but greasy little weasel was more interested in complaining about our smell and asking why we kept thinking about some Arbite. We decided that conversation could wait for later, and resolutely thought about other things until the service door slid open and let us into yet another set of maintenance tunnels.

As we advanced Sciscitat finally got his shit together, and ordered us to ignore the battle (duh), avoid engaging any Cartel security forces (also duh), and to meet up with and assist the Interrogator. At his directions jogged down two halls and around a corner until we found ourselves in a window-lined hallway running the bank's entire south side. We kept our weapons ready, but thanks to advanced warning from the Inquisitor and Snitch, managed to dodge into side rooms and avoid two groups of Security troopers heading towards the battle. Once again, a few scribes saw us, but even covered in dried shit and carrying a psyker over one shoulder, Sarge's aura was enough to convince them that we were The Authorities and everything was under control. Back when the shooting had first started, the Interrogator had found herself being very politely, but firmly escorted out of the gallery she'd been supposedly touring and into a shielded conference room. Her cover was still intact of course, but her unwanted protective detail refused to release her or budge without orders from the very distracted Security chief, leaving her somewhat trapped. She was sipping the rather decent tea that had been fetched for her and debating whether there was any way she could kill all five of her guards before one shot her, when there was a knock on the conference room's heavy wooden door. One of the guards flanking the door asked the other who it could be and reached for the door's handle, then it hit him.

So, the Breach and Clear went fairly smoothly. Especially considering that, due to Snitch's snitching, we were forced to do it "WITHOUT starting a gunfight with security and getting us in the exact same mess those other idiots are in, by the Emperor how do you even managed to breathe unassisted?" While we'd been at it, Doc and Snitch successfully kept several scribes and a curious janitor from getting close enough to make out anything but a few muffled thumps. Nubby, who was performing the same duty at the other end of the hallway had a bit more trouble when a pair of servant-types tried to get past him with a snack trolley for their "guest". The servants got a bit fussy when Nubby told them to bugger off but leave the snacks, especially when he started eating the hideously expensive dainties in front of them. Fortunately, before they got around to actually carrying out their threat to call the head of Security, the Interrogator and Snitch came over and were able to convince them all was well. The rest of us grabbed a few bites for ourselves as we passed, because hey, free snacks man. The Interrogator led us at a brisk run to a maintenance closet, which turned out to be occupied by the Cleric, who'd gotten a bad electrical burn from somewhere and seemed to be grumpy with us for some unspecified reason. Doc helped him with his burn, while the Interrogator seized the bag of gear he'd been carrying and locked herself in the closet. We loitered around, watching the perimeter and trying to gauge how the other team's gunfight was going, and in a disturbingly short amount of time, the Interrogator re-emerged in full combat gear (though her cyber-mastiff still had its bows on). Without a word of explanation, she signalled us to follow, and broke into a run towards the western edge of the bank.

While the Interrogator interrogated, barking questions about vaults, codes, and artifacts at the terrified banker, we kept an eye on the door and lounged around the front office. Doc gave the Cleric a quick once over, choosing to just throw a bandage on the man's shoulder instead of trying to dig out the autogun round lodged in it. Those of us not on door duty established that the security guards hadn't been carrying any salvageable munitions, and had moved on to checking the banker's office for "important clues" (see: snacks and/or a minibar), when Snitch finally caught up. Upon arrival the huffing and puffing psyker, who was probably regretting his decision not to let Sarge carry him again, was called up to assist with the questioning, while we were told to get out and "go secure the perimeter or something". We found that order to our liking. On the list of desperate and heroic Imperial Guard defensive actions, this wasn't one. I mean, theoretically the Cartel must have had some real crack troops, they were a sector-wide shipping conglomerate after all, and just holding their sub-spire against the local underworld must've taken at least a few competent troopers. Those guys must've been busy somewhere else though, possibly fighting the other team, because the Security troopers that got sent our way were even more pathetic than raw Guard conscripts given the lack of Commissars to stiffen their resolve. Might've been a different story if all those automated sentry turrets had been working, but since two separate Inquisition teams had infiltrated their systems, someone was probably really regretting skimping on their troops' training budget.

The Inquisitor hadn't managed to close all the work-area doors in the quadrant before he'd been kicked out of the security system, so Tink (with the grudging assistance of the tech-priest) used his dataslate to seal the ones he missed. The tech-priest was not informed that step-two of this process involved frying the closed doors' controls. After assisting Doc and Nubby, Tink was working his way down the last section of offices, near where Sarge and Twitch were building their big barricade, when he noticed something on his map and paused to scan the cubicle-filled office area with his goggles. He commed Sarge and asked, just hypothetically, if it'd be worth knocking down a few flimsy walls and giving the hostile team a little surprise right as they reached their destination. It really was just too good an opportunity to pass up. A few minutes later, during which the big barricade was finished and a rather dubious escape route was planned out, all of us were gathered in a cubicle a few meters away from the door leading to the other team's supposedly-secure left flank. Twitch had just put the finishing touches on the nice fat satchel charge that would be our opener, when the Inquisitor commed us and demanded he and Tink immediately return to the Banker's office. Sarge asked if it could wait, since we were about to sort out the whole "hostile Inquisition team trying to beat us to the objective" problem. What we expected was grudging acceptance and a bit of yelling about not informing him of our plans; what we got was an enraged scream of an order to pull back IMMEDIATELY. Sarge tried to placate Sciscitat, explaining that whatever it was he needed doing, it could probably wait until the other team was dead. The Inquisitor didn't respond too well to this, just repeatedly screaming "NO" while (judging by the sound) slamming his keyboard against his desk. Sarge's attempts to get an explanation for this odd behavior were interrupted by someone opening the door.

Honestly, at this point we just gave up trying to understand the overall strategic situation; it was just such a colossal mess and it seemed like we were getting more intel from the guys we'd been shooting at than our own teammates. The important thing was the other team was friendly and running interference for us while we looted the thing from the vault, and we needed to get moving right now to help with that, because a dozen fliers full of enemy reinforcements had just landed. Also, our teammates were in the vault now (somehow), Face and the Assassin were chasing someone on the roof, Snitch needed to do something, the tech-priest was seeing odd power readings, the Cleric had gotten shot (again), and the Inquisitor was going to flay us alive if we didn't get moving RIGHT NOW. We got back to the office to find it empty except for a now-comatose Banker and a previously hidden passage leading into the vault. The place turned out to be even larger than expected, with thousands of lockboxes lining the walls and a dozen sub-vaults scattered around the room. To all of our disappointment (especially Nubby's) there were no loose piles of easily-pocketable cash, gold, or jewels lying around, just a bunch of dead Cartel security guards, a few potted plants, and a dug-in squad of those Secret Police guys trading fire with our teammates. Sarge reported our arrival and went off with Doc and Nubby to sort out that mess, and sent Tink and Twitch do whatever super important thing the Inquisitor had wanted them for.

Over the next few seconds we realised three things. Firstly, our long range comms were down, cutting us off from the Inquisitor and most of the rest of the team. This bothered the Interrogator and Cleric a lot more than us. Secondly, that hadn't been Twitch's bomb. The demolitions trooper looked at his detonator in confusion for a few seconds before hesitantly clicking it, triggering a much smaller and closer explosion, followed by a burst of painful psychic wailing which sent Snitch into convulsions. Twitch nodded in satisfaction and looked at Tink, who after a few seconds of blank staring, excitedly declared that it must've been the power station overloading. Finally, the entire bank was on fire and the water in its sprinklers had probably been sitting stagnant for the better part of three hundred years. As our teammates, the Interrogator especially, swore and gagged, Doc pointed out that we'd become disturbingly used to these smells. Sarge nodded, clicked his combead a few times to check if it was going to spontaneously start working, and then announced that it was time to make like a tree and jump out of a burning building. Back before we'd left the van there'd been a discussion about how much gear to bring, aside from a full combat load and our entire limited supply of explosives of course. Twitch had insisted that he wasn't going up in any up-spire deathtrap without a way to get down, which is why he'd be bringing his grav-chute. Tink had chimed in, assuring the rest of us that the chutes were much less bulky now that he'd removed the extra bits (like all the safety features and backups). The two of them had been pretty smug when, after verifying there weren't any less insane options, Doc and Nubby had proposed just jumping out the window as a possible escape route. Of course, that decision had been based on the theory that we'd be alone, but Tink said he was almost positive the chutes could take a little extra weight.

We wanted to just shoot the guy, we really, REALLY wanted to. If Aimy had been there to guarantee us a kill shot we might've gone for it. As it stood though, it was just too much of a stupid risk to be worth it. It wasn't that we were in hostile territory, cut off from our superior and half our teammates, and watching our escape vehicle burn to the ground in front of us. Or at least not just that. As the Traffic Officer stepped out of the van, he waved a badge we hadn't seen before in the air. Several specks circling in the smoke above the sub-spire descended and resolved into an entire platoon of jet-bike riding Arbites who, despite the fact that he was wearing a traffic cop's uniform, began following the man's bellowed orders to lock down the entire street. At the back of the alley, the scan-van started to pull out only to stop and return to its spot as two jet-bikes blocked the exit. After a few seconds the tech-priest got out, shot a glare in our direction, and disappeared through a small maintenance hatch before the Arbites started rounding up pedestrians. Escaping from the sub-spire proved to be more embarrassing than anything else. The initial debate over what to do had involved a lot of totally unjustified criticisms from the Interrogator and Cleric, and possibly few harmless threats of roof-throwing from some of us, but before things escalated Snitch woke up and announced Face was calling him. The psyker and assassin turned up in their little fliers, and while they didn't have nearly enough room to fit us all, at least they got our teammates out of our hair. The fliers also had long range comms, which put us back in contact with Sciscitat, who was very busy with other things and wanted us to hold position for "six to fourteen hours". Sarge told him and the rest of the team where to shove it, and announced our intention to get out on foot.

We spent most of the uneventful hike out through the maintenance tunnels talking with our new friends. Sadly the old armored guy (who turned out to be yet another Interrogator) wasn't that talkative, and the limping Ganger mostly just swore and glared at us, even after grudgingly accepting some drugs from Doc. The fringe-worlder, on the other hand, seemed happy to tell us as much as his boss would let him, and over the following two hours he painted us quite a picture. Admittedly it was conveyed in a nigh-incomprehensible drawling accent interspersed with far too many "quaint" sayings about his granpappy's ol' grox, but it was still more than we'd gotten from our own team. The gist of it was that everything was a complete clusterfuck. Basically, when the Conspiracy had made their move on Oak, they'd stolen several eldritch artifacts from one of his little facilities. The artifacts had been taken to the Conspiracy's base here on Haarlock's Wager, which we knew about because one of Oak's allies had followed their ship. Unfortunately, instead of waiting for backup like a sane person, this Inquisitor had just gone in guns blazing, which is why this was our problem now. To the guy's credit though, it was also why the planet's third moon had a shiny new metal-rich asteroid belt around it instead of a top-secret orbital facility and only one traitorous Inquisitor in the system instead of four. Unfortunately that last traitorous Inquisitor had proved to be a bit a problem. According to the fringe-worlder she was just a junior member of the Conspiracy who'd actually arrived in system after the attack had lready started, but she turned out to be a powerful Sorceress with a pet Demonhost, which she'd sicced on the Inquisitor's vessel while he was busy. The end result was our guy being trapped on a hostile planet, desperately trying to hide the artifacts and get word out before he was torn apart by an enraged daemonhost. He was only moderately successful.

Interestingly, nobody present (aside from the Ganger) held us to blame for the deal with the Cartel going south. They'd already been prepping in case that notoriously mercenary institution turned on them, hence their sabotage team in the basement and all the heavy weapons they'd brought to the Bank, but the hand-off had actually been going smoothly right up to the point where the Sorceress had landed on the roof. A short chat between her and the Cartel's Planetary Executive Officer later, Security was trying (very unsuccessfully) to kill them. At this point we had to supply some of our own details, explaining that our team had actually been trying to beat them to the prize, and all the confusion with us misidentifying them. The fringe-worlder reciprocated with the story of how their Inquisitor had nearly run into Face and our Assassin while all of them tried (and failed) to kill the Sorceress before she escaped in the PEO's armored flier. The rest we all pretty much knew: everyone started working together, Sciscitat was tasked with grabbing the artifact, but had us destroy it instead for some reason, and both teams were able to make a mostly-clean escape thanks to the "spontaneous" explosion of the power station under the Bank. Nobody had even died: most of the other team (including the tech-priest and Sister we'd shot up) had extracted via a disguised flier, while the three walking with us had pulled out on foot after getting cut off from the LZ. So really, when you looked at things objectively, it had been a pretty successful mission. Sure, a few people had gotten shot (three times in the Cleric's case), the Arbites might've impounded our vehicles, and we'd heard some very building-collapsy sounds somewhere above us on our walk. Oh, and we'd destroyed the artifact instead of stealing it, but that had been Sciscitat's idea, not ours… Still though, not a COMPLETE failure right? For some reason we didn't feel like the Inquisitors would agree with us.

We didn't get to see the meeting between the two Inquisitors; in fact, we weren't even allowed into the base. Our teammates at the door, the Interrogator especially, acted like it'd been OUR idea to spend half a day tromping around in the sewers and refused to let us in until we'd visited the shallow pool of chemical-laden water that the locals referred to as a "lake". At least all the acid meant we didn't need to bother with soap... or scrubbing… Tink recommended that we clean our weapons and more delicate equipment somewhere else. Anyway, by the time we were finally readmitted to our own damn base the other team and their Inquisitor had left, leaving us without any handy distractions when Sciscitat had us step into the secure conference room for our debriefing. Honestly, it didn't go as bad as we'd expected, partially because Sciscitat too distracted with something else to properly chew us out, but mostly because Snitch wasn't there to rat us out as we creatively shifted blame onto various other parties (mostly the other team and the tech-priest). Still though, there was a lot of yelling about insubordination, stupidity, Arbites, and sharing intel with the other team. He seemed especially peeved at us for bringing that other Inquisitor to our secret base, which was a little unfair since we hadn't said a word about it. I mean, he was a psyker, what were we supposed to do? Shoot him before he read our minds? We did point out that Twitch had actually tried to do that, but that only got us yelled at more. Eventually though, Sciscitat got tired of yelling at us and getting monosyllabic responses, and ordered us back out to our quarters, where we were to "Just stay out of the way and try not to unsuccessfully kidnap any more interplanetaraly famous Arbites."

By the end of the week Doc had gotten all of us, including those of our teammates who'd gotten themselves shot, back into fighting shape. The one exception to this was Snitch, who'd developed some sort of irrational nausea around Doc, and kept spewing everywhere until the medic gave up and let someone else try treating the psyker's minor injuries and infections. Tink meanwhile, had repaired Doc's grav-chute despite the medic's protests against ever using the damn thing again. He also made a few more attempts to fine-tune his uncooperative plasma weapon, but got yelled at when he tried to test it inside the base. Twitch and Nubby, through a dedicated campaign of whining, dark comments about what Twitch might build himself, and threats to go to the other team, managed to convince Sciscitat to refill our limited supply of explosives. Nubby then went to the other team anyway, but only managed to score a handful of nades off the Ganger before her boss yelled at her for trafficking on Inquisition time and stopped bringing her to our base for meetings. Sarge just kept an eye on the rest of us and enforced that not-leaving-the-base rule until the next artifact was found. Our first clue that progress had been made was our entire team returning in the middle of the night and rushing into the communications room. The second was when the other Inquisitor showed up at our hab unit's front door with half his posse and informed Sarge that he would level the entire hab-block if we tried to go get the artifact without him. Sarge, not being paid enough to deal with this sort of Inquisitorial power-politics bullshit, just showed them all into the comm room. Ignoring the massive amount of stink-eye directed towards him by our teammates for doing this, Sarge invited the rest of us in to help keep an eye on the dangerous people we'd just let into the base (really though, it was just so we'd all be there to protest if they tried to send us into the sewers again).

The other Inquisitor, perhaps still feeling a bit unhinged from his change in worldview, announced that our only option was to enter the poker tournament ourselves. Surprisingly, Face immediately seconded this, volunteering to be the one to enter, and even more surprisingly, so did the Assassin, who proposed using the one artifact the second team had recovered themselves as our ante. The idea began picking up speed at an alarming rate, with several of our theoretically sane teammates, as well as Tink and Nubby, excitedly offering suggestions. The rest of us had enough experience with bad ideas to recognize a truly terrible one in the making, and watched with growing unease. Doc made some futile attempts to politely interject some sanity into the conversation, while Twitch just muttered to himself about psykers making everyone suicidal tightened his lead-foil lined helmet. Sarge was steeling himself for a more-yelly attempt than Doc's, but was beaten to it as Sciscitat blew his hologram up to maximum size and volume, and loudly demanded to know whether everyone had lost their minds. We deeply appreciated the ensuing lecture on why we would NOT be entering a high profile poker tournament guaranteed to be attended by our enemies, or risk the single artifact in our possession in said tournament, or count on some sort card-reading of x-ray eyepatch to guarantee us victory. Admittedly, we could've done without him using us as a reference point for the relative stupidity of an idea, but whatever. As Sciscitat wound down everyone looked a bit sheepish; especially the other team's Inquisitor, who kept shaking his head and quietly asking himself what he'd been thinking. They all perked back up before long though, and by the end of the briefing had hacked out a "far simpler" twenty-seven stage plan to sneak in and steal the evil box thing while tournament was in process. Thankfully our part was going to be nice, simple, and almost certainly sewage-free.

For lack of anything better to do (and because we'd been ordered to) we kept an eye on the vehicles going over the causeway. Not that anybody actually expected anything important to come in that way: the Inquisitors had intel that the Sorceress would be attending the tournament and had distributed some pictures of her to us, but she'd obviously be landing up at the pad with all the rich people. The most anyone expected were some reinforcements if the Crime Lord discovered our infiltration, or possibly a few APCs of Secret Police if the Sorceress decided to take a more direct approach, both of which would be dead obvious. Since Twitch tended to watch hard enough for a dozen people, he was put in charge of this while the rest of us kicked up our feet and made the best of our first excursion outside the base in over a week. Over the course of about three hours of idling Twitch managed to spot a dozen "suspicious" catering vehicles, Sarge punched out a ganger who seemed too interested in one of the getaway-cars, Tink and Doc learned never to buy a "genuine meat product" Sausage-inna-Bun from a street vendor, and Nubby got told that while spitting over the edge at passing vehicles was almost acceptable, hucking beer bottles at them definitely wasn't. Deprived of his entertainment, our self-appointed quartermaster wandered off for a while and met various Guys who he proceeded to get to Know; he returned a bit later to tell the rest of us that he was a little short. Once we were done laughing, Nubby clarified that he'd worked out a dubious chain of deals with the assorted scum around us, but hadn't brought quite enough merchandise to get the deal he wanted. He asked Sarge if, hypothetically, our teammates needed all those fancy little bells and whistles their vehicles had (and ours didn't) more than we needed, say, a krak missile launcher. Sarge decided it was time to take a break from guarding the getaway cars. This proved to be an incredibly good decision.

Twitch switching from his usual paranoid muttering to a more active problem solving mode was enough to get our attention. Sarge pulled himself away from the the vid feed to see what had him riled up while Doc quietly prepped a tranq. The two of them arrived to see the bridge below suddenly empty of all vehicles aside from what looked to be a sort of armored luxury vehicle. The courtyard at the far end of the bridge was similarly devoid of all the caterers and servants that'd been there earlier, instead there were nearly three times as many of the eclectically armed Goons that served as security for the Crime Lord's manor. The reason for the increased security became apparent as a portly, overdressed, but still somehow menacing man came out of the manor. Sarge swore under his breath, and was about to interrupt our teammates to inform them that the Crime Lord was meeting someone at the back entrance, when the armored limo stopped just inside the courtyard's big gate. Sarge, Doc, and Twitch all froze as yet another strikingly beautiful woman climbed out of the vehicle and a creeping feeling of dread washed over all three of them. The woman who exited the armored limo looked almost nothing like the pictures of the Sorceress we'd been given, but the almost supernatural grace and poise with which she greeted the Crime Lord were gnawingly familiar. As a faint musical laugh drifted up from the courtyard, Twitch suddenly tensed and started rocking back and forth while swearing under his breath, before darting away towards the van. Doc and Sarge shared a looking of dawning horror as they finally recognized the Inquisitorial traitor and apparent Conspiracy member formerly known as Interrogator Angelica Dominicus. Or, as Twitch called her, "The Bitch"

Down in the courtyard Sorceress' head whipped around, and while we were too distant to actually see her expression curdle as she recognized Nubby's sawed-off form, we sure as hell felt it. Sarge lunged for the little idiot and yanked him off his perch a fraction of a second before a bolt of warp-lightning passed through the space where his head had been. Our cover being very definitely blown, Doc and Tink immediately returned fire, but with only limited success. The medic's lasbolts merely plinked of a sort of psychic shield, while Tink, who still wasn't sure what exactly was going on but knew when to shut up and shoot, missed her entirely and loudly blamed the sights on his gun. The kludgily-converted Astartes plasma weapon, which the rest of us were beginning to expect had a bit more of a machine spirit than your average lasgun, responded by venting a jet of superheated has in the general direction of Tink's face. The bright side of all this, was that instead of carefully aiming for a headshot, the Sorceress settled for just firing her next lightning-bolt into the concrete barrier. That was not our best moment. Four of us were on the ground, ears ringing and covered with small shrapnel wounds. Nubby was yelling at everyone to stop shooting before we accidently hit his girlfriend, Doc and Sarge were trying to get back up and do just that, and Tink was hurling yet more abuse at his plasma weapon while trying to hold it as far from his face as possible. Down across the bridge, in a show of comically misguided gallantry, the Crime Lord pushed the Sorceress behind himself and instructed his Goons to open fire. Simultaneously, the doors on the armored limo slammed open to reveal a team of far-better armed and armored men and women, and the big anti-vehicle defenses above the courtyard gate began tracking towards our position. Then Twitch fired the krak launcher he'd ran and got while the rest of us were fooling around.

The problem with our self-appointed kill mission was that the target was currently on the far side of a long cover-less bridge and a few dozen hostile, heavily armed men. Fortunately though, said heavily armed men weren't reacting in anything approaching a coordinated fashion. At the time we put it down to a mixture of poor training and the fiery death of their boss, but we were later informed that it "undoubtedly" had more to do with a large-scale attack on their comm network flooding them with contradictory orders. Apparently Sciscitat had taken Sarge's advice about actually doing something useful for a change to heart. In any case, the Goons in the courtyard were wildly spraying fire across the entire garage, and while most of the people inside it with us were keeping their heads down, a significant portion had started shooting back. The cherry on top though, was the sudden arrival of what seemed like half a battalion of Secret Police, complete with air support. Complete and utter chaos doesn't even begin to cover it. After a few more unsuccessful attempts to snipe the fleeing Sorceress, Sarge announced it was time to pursue while everyone was busy shooting each other. His initial order to put on our grav-chutes and jump across the gap to the Manor was rejected by the rest of us on the grounds that slowly floating through a massive crossfire like so much living skeet was a terrible idea. The subsequent plan to drive across the bridge in our teammates'' suped-up getaway cars was much better, but met with a minor snag when it turned out that a little more than just their hubcaps and radios were missing. Nubby shrugged and said he'd been intending to get some "cheaper" replacement wheels later; the rest of us just glared at him as we climbed into the only other vehicle available.

Between more or less attempting to lift a van from the inside and the subsequent landing it was a minor miracle that nobody broke anything. Well, not any bones at least, the grav-chutes sure as hell weren't going to be seeing any more use though. We disentangled ourselves from their remains and grabbed for our weapons as Tink weaved through the crossfire towards the wrecked courtyard gate and the burning remains of the armored limo. This approach was finally enough to focus some hostile attention on us, which we reciprocated. As we burst through the flaming wreckage into the courtyard, wildly firing out in every direction and screaming at the top of our lungs, Twitch paused to ask himself if, WE were the real Orks all along. This philosophical quandary was interrupted by Doc, who'd spotted the Sorceress sprinting for the big main doors at the far end of the courtyard. Everyone who could manage a shot out the front window, except Nubby, laid fire on her, but despite the heels and dress she made damn good time, and the few solid shots we landed weren't enough to break down her shield before she'd made it through and slammed the heavy doors behind her. We weren't going to let a little thing like that stop us though, in fact we weren't even going to let it slow us down. On their own, the poorly-aimed shots Sarge got off with Tink's unreliable plasma gun wouldn't have been enough, but fortunately that wasn't our only heavy weapon. At the time we'd been entering the van, the discovery of two more krak launchers and revelation that Nubby had hawked the getaway cars' wheels for an *extra* one earned the little trooper yet more ire, but we all quickly came around to his and Twitch's way of thinking. The second of our three anti-armor missiles blew a sizeable hole in the doors, which Tink subsequently widened. The horrified expression on the Sorceress' face as the shitty van burst through the doors and barreled down the hallway towards her was something to treasure.

Given the impossibility of opening any of the doors, Sarge and Doc just pushed a hole through the debris covering the windshield and the rest of us climbed out after them. The Sorceress didn't stick around to watch this of course, but fortunately a pair of terrified maids were able to point us in her direction. As we ditched the van (hopefully for good this time) and double-timed it down the hallway, we noticed a significant increase in the chatter on our combeads. From the sound of it everything had hit the collective fan: our teammates up at the big party upstairs were caught up in some sort of firefight, a few of the others were yelling about chasing someone, and the other team had abandoned stealth in favor of racing to the vault. Interestingly, according to the map Tink got from them, the Sorceress was heading that way as well, and we were closer to it than almost everyone else thanks to the fact that we'd driven halfway through the Manor instead of walking like chumps. Sarge was about to point this out and offer to lend a hand, after we'd killed the Sorceress of course, but was interrupted as we rounded a corner and more or less ran face first into an entire Goonsquad. The six eclectically-armed men were even more surprised than us; you could tell because we fired first. Now, we'd all been bitterly complaining about the quality of our current weapons, but against soft targets (like say, a bunch of idiots running into battle with no more armor than a cheap suit and a fedora) a lasgun does just fine. At that range we didn't even need to aim, hell, we didn't even stop, all five of us just held down the triggers and kept running. The only reason one of the poor dumb bastards survived long enough to *try* and return fire, was because the bulk of his comrades blocked our initial spray. Twitch and Nubby jogged backwards for a second and sorted that out while the rest of us fired at a blond, red-dress-wearing blur diving across the hall ahead of us.

We emerged into the stairwell on the far side of the door (we'd been hoping it'd just be a closet or something, but oh well), to find things a bit more lively than we'd expected. The Sorceress had made it a good four levels above us and was trying to keep a low profile. The dozen or so Goons engaged in a pitched gunfight a few levels above her, not so much. Judging by the familiar weapon sounds and the comm chatter, the guys on the far side of the gunfight were the second Inquisitor's team; we decided they probably had things under control, and kept our heads down as we sprinted upstairs after the Sorceress. Whether due to the leg-injury or a finally running out of psychic steam, we steadily gained on the Sorceress, but she still managed to exit the stairwell (one level below the gunfight) before we could line up a shot worth taking. Fortunately, the ID card we'd acquired opened this door as well, and we piled out into a poshly-decorated hallway only a handful of seconds behind her. The first thing Sarge, who was on point, saw as he came through the door, was another door directly opposite him. Said door was labeled "Security" and contained several Goons hastily grabbing heavy weapons and body armor. Before any of them could register what was going on, three grenades had sailed into the room, the door had been slammed shut, and a bust-bearing plinth had been braced against it. That little problem nipped in the bud, Sarge, Twitch, and Tink turned their attention down the hall to the right, where the Sorceress was sprinting towards an ornate pair of doors and screaming at the two men guarding it to help her. They did, of bloody course, which was a pretty terminally stupid decision on their part.

We weren't actually too concerned about the alarms, security seemed to be a little preoccupied currently, but the half-dozen las-turrets that descended from the ceiling as the vault went into lockdown were another matter. Everyone grabbed cover behind the biggest, most expensive exhibits available, and stuck to them as the turrets started scanning back and forth. The question of just how good these turrets were was answered by Tink, who poked his nose out to try and line up a shot while the one closest to him was turned away, and very nearly got his head blown off as it spun to face him far faster than he could draw a bead himself. After a few seconds of pondering the situation himself, Sarge asked if anyone had any clever ideas for getting us unpinned. Tink had a few, but they all seemed to require either his drone or other plasma weapon; Sarge told him to cram a sock in it. Nubby's suggestion that we smoke the entire room and hope we were better at spotting the turrets than they were at spotting us was rejected when the trooper refused to actually test it himself. Twitch's idea to just chuck explosives everywhere and hope the turrets all failed before the ceiling did was, as usual, made Plan B, and Sarge regretfully went with Doc's suggestion. Our fearless leader took a deep breath, put on his most professional-sounding voice, and commed Sciscitat for help. The Inquisitor was incredulous, to say the least, but after a few probing questions, some cogitator checks of his own, and a slightly-sarcastic description of our current location from Sarge, he acknowledged that not only had we cornered the Sorceress, we'd done it in the exact vault where the artifact was located. He had far less trouble believing that we'd gotten our self pinned down by a bunch of turrets.

By the time las-turrets had finally been deactivated for real, and we'd very carefully tested the fact using the time honored helmet-on-a-stick technique, Sarge had collected three more minor las wounds. Doc immediately went to work treating the noncom as well as his own arm wound, while the rest of us debated what to do about the trapped Sorceress. Sciscitat's instructions were to hold position and wait for "the real Inquisitorial agents" to show up and deal with her, but we weren't quite sure our combeads had transmitted those orders correctly though. From the sound of it, those "real" agents were having one hell of a time getting to our position, and we were feeling a bit uneasy about how smug our old boss had looked as she locked herself in that vault. Tink poked around the vault's brain-spattered controls a bit, and was able to find a vid feed of the interior, but it was only showing static. Twitch examined the vault's exterior, even leaning out the windows to check the one flush with the Manor's outer wall, he discovered no hidden doors and a lot of squiggly sigil-things which were probably there to foil anyone trying to get in or out using magic. Reassured that the Sorceress was probably still inside, he and Tink unilaterally decided to start melting a detpack-sized hole in the door. When Nubby asked, they told him it was an air hole. The hole was just over halfway through and Sarge was ambulatory, if not happy, when time very abruptly ran out. We weren't the best informed about what'd been happening before then, we'd been listening to what comm chatter we could overhear, and Sciscitat had said something about the rest of the team needing his guidance with a more important problem as he'd signed off, but that was just general stuff. The first real clue we got that something had gone badly wrong was when someone started frantically screaming "DAEMONHOST" over the general channel.

The falling object turned out to be a man in a big black coat as opposed to some sort of daemonic bird-monster. We still shot at it though, just out of reflex, but failed to score any hits and quickly gave up in favor of watching whoever it was fall a few hundred stories to their death. That wasn't what happened though; instead, the small figure below us spread his coat out like some sort of parachute, which seemed to do a lot more to slow his fall than the laws of physics dictated. As we watched, the man glided outwards, barely missing the widening spire below us, and swooping through the two lanes of air-traffic crossing below us. Any question of whether the thing below us was the Daemonhost vanished as he pulled of an obviously supernatural series of acrobatics, striking glancing blows off fliers, doing a one-handed pirouette around a protruding vox antenna, and briefly dangling off a passing servo-skull. Even more impressive (given our own experience with hive traffic), was the way that the fliers he didn't purposely hit went out of their way to avoid him. Whether it was telepathy, the sheltering hand of a dark god, or pure bloody luck, the man (if you could call him that) left a path of confusion and destruction behind him as fliers swerved out of his way, sometimes right into oncoming traffic or the hive around them. It was an impressive and terrifying display, but on the bright side, every second it continued put him farther away from us. We all breathed a sigh of relief as, with a last little midair flip, he vanished into the permanent smog layer below. Most of us had turned away towards more pressing tasks, when a panicked choking sound from Twitch called our attention back to the window. We watched in disbelieving horror, as a flier suddenly rose up out of the clouds with a small, black-coated figure standing proudly on its roof. Our opinion on the matter was summed up for us as someone upstairs screamed "BULLSHIT" and opened fire.

It was horrifying, almost like we'd all simultaneously been replaced with a bunch of raw PDF recruits. Both Sarge and Doc's guns sprayed sparks out their power packs in the lasgun equivalent of a catastrophic weapon jam. Nubby's still fired, but stitched a line of shots across the room, hitting both Twitch and Tink in the process, as half a kilo of powdered masonry was blown into his eyes. Tink, who was more ready for a weapons failure than the rest of us, immediately dropped his overheating plasma weapon, only to then fall directly onto it as Nubby's shot hit him in the leg. As bad as all that was, what happened to Twitch was even worse. Despite taking a hit in the side, he fired our last single-shot krak launcher directly on target. The missile was halfway between the windows and the gunship when, I shit you not, a pigeon that'd been nesting on the building's exterior flapped directly into its path. The impact fuse, which shouldn't have activated on such a soft target, did. All of us, even Tink, boggled as Twitch's missile went off in a blast of flames, concussive force, and charred feathers a good five meters short of its maximum effective radius, and then dove for cover as the gunship returned fire. To our amazement, none of us were killed by the salvo of lascannon shots, but that was only because the gunship turned out not to have actually been aiming for us. As the vault's perforated outer wall fell outwards with a scream of tearing metal, the gunship spun around to reveal its open troop bay, where the suddenly horribly familiar figure of the "daemonhost" stood waiting. We watched in dawning horror as, with a psychically-propelled jump, the Sorceress leapt across the gap to gunship's troop compartment and into the waiting arms of fellow ex-Interrogator, and self-styled Interplanetary Man of Mystery, Bane Johns. Words failed us.