Fortunately for our mouthy techie, nobody upstairs was in any condition to beat the shit out of him. In fact the only one of them that even seemed aware of our arrival was the Fringe-Worlder, who waved at us with the bloody stump of his right arm and asked how "y'all's" part of the mission was going. Sarge managed to convey an entire after-action report's worth of disgust and annoyance with a single grunt, which got a weak laugh from the man and a disapproving look from Doc as he tourniqueted the bleeding limb. While Doc began triaging what was left with the other team (deciding to start with their Interrogator, whose power armor had somehow failed to stop a dozen autopistol rounds), Sarge's attention was caught by a large figure in blackened, smoking Sororitas power armor struggling out of a hole in the wall. The Big Sister stumbled over to the windows and tossed the half-slagged remains of a plasma cannon out of them, yanked her equally ruined helmet off and began screaming a string of decidedly un-sisterly Vostroyan curses at the distant gunship. Sarge blinked as he finally recognized the face and voice as belonging to Ivana Krushyu, former minion of the traitorous Lord General Omurov, and one of Bane Johns numerous girlfriends before he'd been hauled off by the Inquisition. Sarge, no longer feeling capable of surprise, just let out disgusted sigh at the universe's perverse sense of humor, and asked the valkyrion woman if she had any injuries that needed treatment. She stared at him for a second, and then dropped to her knees screaming and clutching at her head.

Back across the room, Ivana finally transitioned from tortured screaming to a mix of hysterical giggling and tears. Not being emotionally equipped to deal with crying women in general, much less one a head taller and twice as burly as himself, Sarge decided this probably meant she was uninjured and beat a rather cowardly retreat. He'd only got a few steps before the crying abruptly stopped, and a large power-armored hand grabbed him by the shoulder. A deep, scarily-focused voice informed him that he was Needed. For A Thing. Right Now. Sarge made a small whimpering noise. To our not-so-fearless leader's relief, he was only dragged over to where Doc was failing to treat the other team's Interrogator's numerous autopistol wounds. Completely ignoring the medic and his work, Ivana saluted her half-dead Interrogator and in a parade-ground voice announced that Interrogator Sargent was formally requesting to transfer to their team. The requestee's confused "I am?" earned him a glare, a possibly broken shin, and a threatening "Yes, you are"; Sarge wisely decided just to go with it and hope that it wouldn't all end in some sort of Inquisitorial tribunal for gross misconduct. In a complete farce of Inquisitorial procedure, with Ivana creatively interpreting the pained gurgles of her superior officer, Sarge was inducted into the retinue of Inquisitor what's-his-name. Then, since said Inquisitor had last been seen being sucked screaming into a hole in the warp after trying to use his psyker powers on Bane, and his Interrogator had apparently kicked the bucket mid-ceremony, Sarge was appointed acting Inquisitor, handed a shiny Ordo Hereticus rosette, and put in charge of the team. At least, that's what Ivana said was going on; the Fringe-Worlder accused her of being crazier than a bag of something or other, but recommended we just play along and keep the rosette away from her until we'd gotten out of there. We quietly agreed with him.

Nubby was picked up from where he'd been left moping heartbrokenly around the wrecked art museum, and was attached to the shell-shocked Ganger, who just nodded along vacantly with his self-pitying monologue. From there we made our way back along the trail of destruction Bane had left in his wake, collecting what was left of our teammates who'd tried to attack the two decoy sorceresses and ran afoul of their "bodyguard". Of the four of them: >The Deathcult Assassin was dead: he tried to knife-fight Bane. >Face was still breathing but completely catatonic and bleeding from the eyes. Doc put it down as "warp bullshit" and said he'd probably be fine. Or he'd turn into a deamonhost. One or the other. >The Cleric had been shot. Again. >One more of our Interrogator's cybernetic murder-dogs was definitely dead, and another had had last been seen sailing out a window, but the woman herself had made it through unscathed thanks her decision to chase the decoys instead of Bane. Thankfully, the Cleric was still capable of walking, so only Face had to be carried, and the Interrogator was actually being cooperative for a change. We'd expected yet another argument about who was in charge, or at least some incessant whining about her dead pets, but she just quietly fell into line at the back of the group and even followed Sarge's orders. We were incredibly grateful for this given the difficulty of sneaking our whole ragged little patrol passed all the Goons and Secret Police. Twitch declared it to be incredibly suspicious though, and Ivana constantly seemed to be watching the Interrogator when we weren't on the move too.

The Scan Van was waiting for us at our eventual exit along with the definitely-not-full-of-orks truck, which was being driven by two heavily armed men we didn't recognize, but the Fringe-Worlder vouched for. We decided these strange men, who'd almost certainly been tasked with killing our team in the event that we doublecrossed their now-dead Inquisitor, were just the folks to take our large collection of wounded teammates (with one specific exception) off for medical treatment by their team's actual real doctor. Sciscitat probably didn't agree with that judgement, but we were suffering some mysterious comm interference. Once the truck had pulled out, we directed our attention to the Scan Van, or more specifically, its driver. During the hike out, the question of what to do about a certain problematic tech-priest had been raised, and the other priest had been tapped for some expert advice in dealing with his die-hard orthodox counterpart. This wasn't intentional, we just forgot he was in Tink's pack and could totally hear us. In any case, he cheerfully suggested turning our cogboy off and on again. With our lasguns. Admittedly the "on again" part would be tricky, but he thought it was still worth a shot. We decided we liked the Torso-priest.

Doc and Twitch tackled Sarge and took away his combead, but the enraged screaming had already started by that point so we just went with Plan B and Tink reactivated the jammer. Our new tech-priest informed us that we were idiots delaying the inevitable; Doc reminded him that we were guardsmen. The beauty of Plan B was that, between the limb-attachment (a process which involved a lot of sarcasm and backseat surgery-ing from the patient) and the inter-hive traffic delays caused by some big dust storm thing and all the Arbite patrols, we got twelve hours of napping in before the inevitable shit-show of the debriefing. This was a very good thing, because the revelation that not just one, but BOTH of the Conspiracy agents were our ex-bosses didn't go over well with the Inquisitor. Or anyone else for that matter, especially the two new guys from the other team, who turned out to be REAL Inquisitorial Stormtroopers and were therefore already a bit ill-disposed towards us. It was only Sciscitat's repeated assurances that we were too stupid to have actually planned everything that kept us from being branded traitors on the spot; Sarge thanked him for his support. That set the tone for the rest of the debrief, though admittedly it could've been worse: for instance the tech-priest might've still been alive (that thought alone was enough to keep our morale up through the whole thing). Also, Snitch was too wiped out to do much of his usual fact checking, so that was nice, and Face spent most of the meeting lying in a corner muttering "wiggle your big toe" to himself. The Interrogator was doing a little better (see: bitchy), but some sort of feud with Ivana drew most of her fire off us, so it was mostly just Sciscitat, the Cleric, and the two Stormtroopers picking everything apart and finding varying degrees of fault with our every action.

Anyway, despite her supposed memory problems, Ivana also chimed in to claim Bane had some sort of subtle mind control powers, and that these had already been used on the Ganger (which explained why she wasn't present). Ivana's teammates backed her up on this, but were a bit less supportive when she went on to accuse our Interrogator of being "compromised" as well. Twitch was totally on board though, and excitedly began listing all the "suspicious" ways our nominal superior had been acting. He probably should have stuck to just the post-mission stuff though, the amazingly detailed log of her personal hygiene habits and what fiendish plots they might be hiding didn't really help his argument. To Sciscitat's credit he took Ivana's (if not Twitch's) accusation seriously enough to wake Snitch up and have the psyker take a few pokes and his Interrogator's brain despite some pretty strong protests on her part. Unfortunately, he had a bit less patience when Snitch declared her to be clean of outside influence and Ivana still persisted. The term "crazy bitch" was used a few times. Eventually, between her teammates and Sarge's own reassurances, Ivana was convinced to settle for a vague promise to keep an eye on our Interrogator. Since things had pretty much stalled by this point, Sarge decided it was time to raise the question of just what in the Emperor's name we were going to do about Bane and Angelica. The Fringe-Worlder earned our undying approval by immediately suggesting nuking them from orbit, but this was shot down by Sciscitat on the grounds that it would destroy the Artifacts in their possession. Twitch grimly added that he wouldn't believe Bane was dead unless he personally saw the body. Even if we called in a full Exterminatus, some scavengers would probably just find him a few weeks later in a stasis-equipped refrigerator up in orbit or something. Doc hushed him, and Sarge took the floor to present Plan C.

We belatedly realised that, despite not being physically involved in the recent mess, the Inquisitor hadn't been having the best day. When Sarge tried to explain how terrible his idea was and how dead we would all get attempting it, some sort of dam burst inside the man. It was... well, you couldn't call it "impressive" exactly, what with his stature and the fact that he was only a hologram, but it was definitely a bit surprising. Like being savaged by a fat little dog. A yappy one. It would've been hilarious if he wasn't our direct superior. Sciscitat's little tantrum ended with him declaring us banned from all meetings, and ordering us out to do some "things, very important things, things at least two hives away from here". Tink smugly pointed out that it would be a tad tricky, given where we'd left our van parked. The Inquisitor almost grinned as he pulled up a hologram of a tiny three-wheeled ground car and informed us that the tech-priest had managed to order us a replacement before his unfortunate demise. Certain people around the table snickered; Snitch began to inform everyone what we thought of our new ride, but paused at a glare from Sarge, who very pointedly remained in his seat. After a few seconds of mutual glaring Sciscitat pulled up another hologram, this time of a familiar massive armored figure standing in front of a whole precinct of Arbites. Nubby swore and threw one of the several beer bottles he'd emptied over the course of the meeting through it. The Inquisitor ignored this, and grimly informed the rest of us that, if we couldn't even follow the simplest orders, he knew a certain rising star in the Arbites who'd probably be willing to trade all sorts of support for information regarding van full of guardsmen. We took the hint.

When you're committing something that might technically be considered mutiny, especially against the Inquisition, it's important to keep up your momentum. Best to not get bogged down in little things, like the actual meaning of the rules and ordinances you're citing, or whether they even really exist for that matter. Which is why the first thing we did after Sarge's announcement was mute Sciscitat's hologram. The second was to position Doc as close as possible to Snitch, who quickly turned green and spent the rest of the meeting trying (and eventually failing) to keep his lunch down. The playing field nicely leveled, Sarge delivered his pitch. Now, over the past months we'd given our fearless leader no end of shit for his little diplomacy lessons and their lackluster results, but this is where they finally paid off. He might not have had quite the poise or menace of a REAL Inquisitor, and he probably shouldn't have referred to his predecessor as "Inquisitor what's-his-name", but he still managed amazingly well all things considered. Sarge explained that we were going to go off and start our own team, just us guardsmen and Ivana, and WE were going to go kill Bane and Angelica. Nobody from the other team was required (or even asked) to come with us, they had their own very important mission to complete after all, and it would no doubt be easier accomplish with their two primary opponents dead. Of course, we'd still liaise, cooperate, and SHARE CRITICAL INTEL with them just like any other "friendly" Inquisition team would, but they had their objective, we had ours, and that was all there was to it. I'd like to say we left to mixture of stunned silence and scattered applause, but it was more of a "you won't last ten minutes" atmosphere. The moment was spoiled even further a few minutes later when Doc poked his head back in to ask if the Torso-Priest could give us a ride, since there was no way we were ever going to fit Ivana into that three-wheeled thing.

That truck served us well over the next few days, the flier, well... It'd occurred to us that there was a bit more ground traffic on the planet than was normal, but we'd put that down to local custom or whatever. It never occurred to us that there was an actual legitimate reason until Tink reached the edge of Jack Hive and saw how much bigger that little dust storm had gotten since we'd driven through on the way back from the mission. I mean, none of us were desert worlders, we'd thought the giant force-shields over all the Hives had been for orbital defense or something... What sort of messed up planet has sandstorms that cover whole continents? And why would anyone ever build hives on one? We asked some of the locals, but all we ever got was some bullshit about planetary ecology and Rogue Traders working in mysterious ways. Anyway, we'd already decided it'd be for the best if we left Jack Hive, so we wound up just hawking the flier instead of trying to figure out how to transport it via ground or armored shuttle. Of course doing this required getting Nubby sobered up and at least nominally functional, which was a project all on its own. Doc made liberal use of the various anti-something-or-other pills that'd come with Ivana's stuff. They'd been handed over by a pudgy old woman who we assumed was the other team's surgeon, and had come with a detailed administration guide, but Ivana insisted she really didn't need all (or really any) of them, so we had plenty to force down Nubby's throat until the desired result was achieved. Doc hadn't exactly approved of this treatment, not that any of that "medical ethics" and "substance dependency" stuff had actually stopped him from administering the pills, he just complained a lot while doing it. Sarge promised he'd figure out a better solution, possibly involving an actual licensed therapist, once we got to our new base.

We could almost hear the various people who'd (futilely) tried to instill Inquisitorial professionalism into us sighing and rolling their eyes as we were processed through the checkpoint and escorted to the third-largest PDF base in the Hive. They weren't guardsmen though, they didn't understand the colossal inefficiency, inflexibility, and general incompetency that was the Departmento Munitorum (well, at least when applied to any problem smaller than planetary invasion). There were stories of entire misplaced regiments who'd settled, started families, died of old age, and passed into local legend before their reassignment orders came through. At which point they were presumably dug up by their descendents and shipped off to the front, much to the exasperation of whichever Lord General was running the operation, not to mention the poor grunts holding out for reinforcements. The point is that we probably had a good year or seven before anyone from Administratum noticed our unexpected resurrection, and while the locals might be a bit more on-the-ball, they were also a lot easier to mislead, confuse, bully, and bribe. Add to that we were Real Guardsmen, with the scars and war stories to prove it, and, well... By the end of the day we had our very own barracks, with attached motor-pool, plus a stack of chitties for the base mess, several sets of insignialess Haarlockian PDF fatigues, and even an advance on our first week's pay. Certain people were in favor of putting in for the years of backpay we theoretically had coming too, and maybe some travel comp if Tink could fabricate the proper documents, but Sarge ruled it was better to quit while we were ahead. It wasn't like we really needed the money anyway, between the flier, several miscellaneous items our former teammates hadn't really needed, and a few small shiny objects that'd fallen into Nubby's pockets while we'd been in the Crime Lord's little art museum, we had the budget situation fairly well covered.

This was not your usual The Talk. It did start that way, with the typical "she was using you", "you've got to move on", and "it was never really like that", the problem is that that last one isn't supposed to be quite so literal. Yes, he did spend a lot of time with her and had been "given" quite a few mementos to remember her by, but those were more grounds for a restraining order than a deep heartfelt a relationship. And then there were the weeks of one-sided conversation with her while she was medically paralyzed next to him in the medbay, and the similarly one-sided pen pal relationship afterwards... Sarge and Doc both tried, but they had to keep stopping to go and alternatively laugh and swear at the perversity of it all. It was draining, it was frustrating. Doc was about ready to go back to the pills (and possibly grab a few for himself), and Sarge was considering the merits of locking the idiot up in the brig for the rest of the mission, but eventually they got through to him. Except by they, I mean Twitch and Ivana, who shelved the whole "love" issue in favor of focusing on Angelica's newfound relationship with Bane, and to an, um, unexpectedly detailed degree. The end result was... well... acceptable. Simmering betrayed rage (at least insofar as Nubby was capable of that emotion), WAS an improvement over drunken, heartbroken sobbing after all. Even if it did come along with frequent rants about how nobody could ever compare someone as unquestionably lesser as Bane Johns to such an upstanding individual as Nubby Nubbs, valiant Hero of the Imperium and all around Nice Guy... We took what we could get, there was shit to do and people to kill.

Now, it's been said that, the military grapevine can actually outpace the Astra Telepathica. If the story's good enough that is, which is where the problem lies for Inquisitorial types. Secret heretic cabals, shadowy puppet masters, and secessionist plots don't qualify as "interesting" , at least not according your average grunt. If Sarge had gone in there trying to get info on Angelica and her Conspiracy buddies he'd have struck out (well, maybe not if one of them had seen her in person, but even then it wouldn't be her nefarious plots or political maneuvering that they'd be talking about). Fortunately though, our other target just so happened to be Bane Johns, self-styled Interplanetary Man of Mystery, and just about the least subtle person this side of the Eye of Terror. Sarge didn't even have to try: the second story he heard was about someone gunning down an entire underhive street-racing ring for stealing his car, finding out it had actually been towed, and somehow winding up sleeping with the daughter(s) of the hive's Traffic Control Coordinator. All while blind drunk. The third, sixth, and eight stories were all Bane too, and it didn't take long to find out there was actually a celebrity tabloid dedicated entirely to him. It was honestly sort of sad, especially when Sarge realized he'd seen the tabloid on sale weeks ago. It definitely raised the question of what the hell Sciscitat and his minions had been doing all this time. (I mean, how do you just ignore something like "Gas attack on planetary rare metal reserve! Business mogul thrown from private flier! Deadly hat attacks! Famous aerobatics ace falls in love! You'll never guess what these four things have in common!")

Twitch practically cried when he cracked open the first crates (plural) of detpacks, mines, razorwire, grenades, other types of grenades, and assorted anti-armor ordinance. The rest of us were a bit more interested in the box containing half a dozen excellent-quality Hotshot Lasguns (with full attachments) and a nice standard, Guard-issue, hopefully machine-spirit-free, Plasma Gun. Tink's modified Astartes weapon was gleefully tossed into the nearest trashcan, which immediately caught fire. He was less happy when Sarge made him put out the trash fire, fish the gun back out, and then strip his modifications and get the thing re-consecrated. Y'know, just in case any Space Marines came asking for it for later. There was probably a limit to how much Astartes wargear we could "misplace" after all. Anyway, once Twitch was resupplied, the ensuing frenzy of fortification was everything we'd wanted over the weeks in that damn hab. It did wonders for our relations with the Military Police too: just one little incident was all it took for them to decide they'd rather submit politely worded notes via post instead of banging on our door in the middle of the night. Of course, there were some raised eyebrows up in the local brass, but a little extra fortification is far from the oddest thing a visiting guard regiment has done (especially if you include feral-world regiments or Ogryns), so they didn't kick up too much fuss and Sarge got them sorted in exchange for a promise not to extend the perimeter any farther. As for the one particularly annoying PDF Commissar who started poking his nose where it wasn't welcome (possibly for the same Nubby-related reasons the MPs had been), a short chat with Twitch and our "Valhallan Auxiliary" convinced him he really didn't want any part of our craziness. In fact, he seemed firmly convinced we should be kept as far away from his troops as possible, just in case we were contagious or something.

Scisistat wasn't returning our calls and our former team had relocated from the hab base without leaving a forwarding address. The other team hadn't moved though, and over the next two weeks Doc occasionally drove over to chat with their friendly old adept/surgeon about our former teammates' health and all the medications Ivana wasn't taking. For some reason his visits just happened to coincide with the times when everyone else was out of the base, and it always seemed that either the Fringe Worlder or Torso-priest had left a copy of their latest briefings lying around the medbay. The fact that Doc's half-assed espionage got us MORE intel that we'd ever gotten while on Sciscitat's actual bloody team should really illustrate the man's opinion of us. In any case, most of the stuff Doc got was about the stupid artifacts, which were decidedly Not Our Problem, but there were some useful tidbits on The Sorceress too. Between what he got and Sarge's stuff on Bane, we had more than enough to get started with, and before long The Plan began to really take shape. The basic theory hadn't changed much since its initial inception, but since it was cooked up by a bunch of tired, shot-up grunts in the back of van, on their way home from a catastrophically failed op, that probably wasn't something to brag about. In any case, the first step was splitting our targets up. Bane was threatening enough on his own, we shuddered at the thought of what he could do if someone with an actual functioning brain was calling the shots. Of course, of the pair he'd be the easier one to distract (and Tink had a surprisingly good idea for that), the problem was that Angelica knew this too and was good about keeping an eye on him. We needed to fix that.

I mean, it wasn't like we set out intending to steal the artifact. It was just that, of the the five, Angelica and Bane already had two (the Crime Lord's and another they'd gotten earlier), then there was the one we'd blown up (ON ORDERS), and finally one Ivana said her team had retrieved, which meant Sciscitat had it now. This just one left spooky artifact out in the wild, and we didn't much like our chances of getting to it before the people who were, you know, actually trained for that stuff. We did look into other options, such as Twitch's perfectly reasonable idea of mining all routes out of the upper hive and just waiting until Angelica found the last artifact herself. The problem was that even though the number of routes between hives was limited by the massive rock-storm (it stops being sand or dust once it's bigger than a grape), there couldn't possibly mine ALL of them. Well, actually we probably could, we were beyond well stocked at this point, but you can't just leave massive piles of explosives lying around on pieces of crucial hive infrastructure... someone might steal them. Anyway, if she found an artifact on her own, she'd probably bring Bane with her, which was exactly what we were trying to avoid here. We also toyed with the idea of just creating a fake artifact, which we could be sent some place Bane wasn't welcome, such as that Merchant Cartel. One of the reports Doc had gotten had a few pictures of the last artifact (another spooky box thing), and Tink was fairly certain he could rig up a close enough duplicate out of cardboard or something. Even better, since there wouldn't be any actual artifact stuff inside, we could just pack box itself full of explosives. Both Sarge and Doc vetoed this idea on the grounds that it involved the words "fairly", "close enough", and "cardboard". Also, she was a psyker and would presumably be able to tell the difference between an ancient eldritch artifact and a forgery, regardless of quality.

The saner members of the squad watched in increasing alarm as first Twitch, then Tink and Ivana chimed in to add their support, and began planning was quite possibly the most harebrained heist in Inquisitorial history. When they got to the part with the clown masks and the giant wooden badger, Sarge finally put his foot down. He stated, in no uncertain terms, their heist was the exact sort of stupidity we'd been fighting with since we'd been "volunteered" for Inquisitorial service, and that wasn't even touching on the fact that we didn't actually know if the artifact was still in the other team's base, or how shaky our plan for baiting out ONLY Angelica was; we were not even remotely qualified for this sort of thing. Fortunately, we knew a few people who WERE. Admittedly they were the exact same people we were planning on stealing the artifact from, but that just put them in a uniquely good position to get it for us. All we had to do was convince one or two Sciscitat's minions to sell him out, and according to Ivana, there was one specific person who was uniquely primed to do just that: his Interrogator. Sure, she seemed to be the man's most loyal follower, and probably hated our guts even more than he did, but if what Ivana said about her being "compromised" was true... At first we hadn't put much stake in Ivana's whole "compromised" thing, but then the other team's surgeon asked Doc for a consultation on the Ganger, who'd been kept in medical confinement ever since her encounter with Bane. It hadn't been pretty: the trash-talking, mohawk-sporting, gun-nut who'd reminded us so much of Aimy had been reduced to something like a strung-out Obscura junkie, except somehow so much worse. Every conversation with her inexorably turned to Him, had Doc seen Him, did Doc know anything about Him, had Doc MET Him? When Doc had come back, he had a quiet word with the rest of us about taking Ivana more seriously, which we did (not that he much liked the end result).

Two days of frantic scrambling later, Sarge and Ivana were in position on a maintenance walkway overlooking Interchange 7JU-4, trying to look as bored and PDF-like as possible, and hoping their heavy weapons weren't visible from the lanes below. Across the way, Doc was leaned against an inappropriately camo-netted lascannon, desperately trying to ignore Nubby's dissertation on the inherent deviousness of all women. Above both groups, perched on the network of pipes clinging to the underside of the junction's 16-lane northbound overpass, Twitch sat with his pile of detonators, watching the incoming traffic like an especially jumpy hawk, and periodically rechecking the distance markers he'd placed along the roadside. Thirty kilometers away (some of them vertical), Tink double-checked his comm connection to the "auxiliaries", watched his chrono tick down to 0, and stepped into Seven Hive's most famous club. He then sheepishly stepped back out, and proceeded around to the service entrance before the bouncer tore his head off. At T plus fifteen minutes, Tink had changed into his disguise, delivered his package, and was in position in the discrete spot the bribed paparazzi had told him about. At twenty, one of the lookouts Nubby had hired ("onrably 'tired PDF vet'rans, evry one of 'em") reported a flier with a Planetary Government IFF transponder landing, and a man with a "real fancy lady" exiting. Tink switched his dataslate over the appropriate feed, and immediately recognized Bane and Angelica, and switched to visual as they entered the club proper and proceeded to their usual spot. He watched them careful as they settled in and ordered drinks, patiently waiting for the moment when Angelica would quietly slip away. Then he kept waiting.

In the pained silence that followed, Doc quietly told Sarge it was probably time to call Scisitat and tell him what was happening. He could actually hear the noncom's teeth grinding from from the far side of the interchange, but didn't get a response. Rather than argue, the medic just sighed, dialed his long-range comm to the Surgeon's number himself, and asked her forward him up the line. He'd gotten as far as the Torso-priest (who's immediate response was to ask what we'd fucked up), before Sarge finally manned up and grudgingly took over the call. Now, Sarge had been embarrassed before, in fact since joining the Inquisition he'd been "the most embarrassed he'd ever been in his entire life" on several occasions. It didn't seem possible, surely there was some upper limit where you'd actually literally die of it, but somehow he kept managing to reach new heights. His conversation with Sciscitat, admitting we'd lost the Sorceress, who was probably halfway to Jack Hive to pick up "an" Artifact, maybe just possibly from the Cartel's subspire, was one of those moments. (He did at least manage to remember the old Diplomacy Adept's advice about admitting things, but it was a bit of a moot point, since the Inquisitor's first words were "It was YOU!") Actually, skipping over the abuse, mockery, and general Angry Inquisitor Noises, Sciscitat took it surprisingly well. He eventually confirmed Angelica's arrival in Jack Hive via the governmental vactrain and her acquisition of the Artifact, and agreed to track her for us. He even grudgingly admitted that we'd chosen the best spot for our ambush, which was vaguely worrying given we'd never told him that. He instructed us to hold position and refrain from contacting him again, he'd let us know when Angelica was on her way back, and would provide tracking information once she was in our hive, but in the meantime he had far, far more important things to do. Sarge accepted this as gracefully as he could manage.

Sarge grinned with relief as his PDF-issue scanner picked up the first confused chatter on Arbites' bands. He reminded Tink to return as soon as he was sure Bane didn't need any more combead prodding, and turned his full attention to the ambush. According to Sciscitat, now that Angelica had her prize she was travelling in a six-vehicle semi-armored Secret Police convoy. Not that the armor would do much good against the literal crates of high explosives that'd been crammed under the interchange. Admittedly there was going to be a bit of collateral damage, but this was Inquisitorial business; the civvie body count would be positively miniscule compared to, say, an Exterminatus. The noncom was doing a final weapons check with Ivana (not that they'd really be needed once the explosives had done their bit), when he received the final awaited from Sciscitat. What Sarge, and the rest of us, were expecting was a last minute update on which of the reserved lanes under us Angelica would be taking. What we GOT was a slightly-breathless warning from the Inquisitor that the convoy had started turning towards Underhive, possibly to take the Artifact to some secret warehouse instead of the Secret Police HQ, Bane's nightclub, or even the Arbite Precinct, like we'd planned for. She'd still be passing through the interchange, just on a completely different, and far lower, section than the one we'd set our ambush on... Sarge didn't even stop to swear, there wasn't time and he didn't know any words vile enough for the current SNAFU anyway, he just grabbed as many Krak launchers as he could carry and started sprinting along the walkway. Ivana shrugged and jogged after him, carrying their heavy bolter one handed and humming to herself.

The first Krak missile was right on target, it punched through the "armored" glass of the lead car's windshield like wet paper, reducing the vehicle and its occupants to flaming wreckage before they even registered the attack. The second car, driving slightly farther back and left in the other reserved governmental lane, spun out as it tried to evade and cartwheeled a good fifty meters before it came to a stop. None of its occupants got out before Sarge's second Krak hit its exposed undercarriage. The rest of the cars in the convoy, including the more-heavily armored limo in its center, reacted professionally enough, but they were in a remarkably shit tactical situation. There were obvious advantages to taking the governmental fast lanes, with their secured entry points and the chest-high barrier separating them from the common rabble clogging the rest of the highway, but the disadvantage was being pretty much trapped in a two lane killbox. The only smart move available was to try and bust through the wreck of the first cars and keep moving, but three more Kraks (Sarge's last one, and two from where Doc and Nubby had just come out on the wall above them), were enough to completely block the way. With a massive pileup of other governmental vehicles already blocking way behind, the Secret Police took the only option left to them, and started getting out to return fire.

As Sarge dropped down and began pushing through eight lanes of semi-stalled traffic, and Nubby and Doc left their nice safe drainage pipe to take turns sprinting down the exterior stairs below them, Tink finally reached the interchange. The techie cut off his call to Bane with a final hammed-up death-gurgle and directions to "avenge him" and tried to figure out just where the hell in the giant concrete rat's nest the fight was. Tink's attempts to get directions from his distracted teammates were interrupted by someone dialing his combead directly and screaming "STOP THIS TRUCK" in his ear. Tink looked around in confusion, eliciting more more yelling, before he finally spotted a tanker wallowing through traffic next to him with a small figure jumping up and down on top of it. Tink took in the size of the tank, the bright red FLAMMABLE markings on its side, and the detpacks in Twitch's hands. The techie then briefly tried to remember how many crates of explosives they'd packed in the bridge he was currently riding on, before giving up and weaving through traffic towards the tanker with a shout of: "Ohhhh shit Twitch, you're gonna get us all killed." The surviving agents of Task Force Spectre, handpicked by the Inquisitor herself to act as her last line of defense, let out a ragged cheer as the mystery attackers suddenly began pulling back. Their cheers were cut short by a massive crunching sound above them, and they looked up nearly eight levels to the overpass above them and the truck cab hanging over its edge. All nine agents watched, too stunned to even notice a chunk of debris that flattening their commander, as the truck teetered on the lip for a second, before finally tipping and dropping directly towards them. The limo's occupant, unsure what was happening, peaked out the door for a second, before slamming it shut and pouring every ounce of her newfound powers into her shield. The tanker was about ten meters off the ground when the detpacks on its side detonated it in a massive, oddly wet-sounding FWOOP.

As we mowed down the whatevers-they-weres (NOT shit-daemons, whatever Tink said), Twitch and Sarge began tossing short-fuse frags into the cloud until we were finally rewarded with a pained yelp and a filth-splattered figure zipped out of the smoke. Once again Sarge was hit in the chest, except this time by two amazingly-aimed bolt-pistol rounds, knocking the burly noncom back a good two meters, and pretty much destroying what was left of his chest armor. He was still capable of swearing though, so Doc declared him stable, and joined the rest of us firing at the sprinting figure. Angelica was moving at a fair clip, but her shield seemed to be failing and between three lasguns, a plasma gun, and Ivana's bolter we managed to tag her at least twice. She still managed to reach the maintenance door she was aiming for though, slicing through it with that sword of hers and rolling through the gap into the tunnel beyond. We followed at a more leisurely pace and felt a nice warm tingly sensation as she discovered it was a supply closet. It was quite possibly the most beautiful cursing we'd ever heard, in multiple ways. As all of us (except for Sarge who was still trying to remember how his legs worked) fanned out around the door, Angelica stopped cursing. In an impressively haughty voice given the circumstances, she announced that she had the Liber Demonica with her, and we'd never be able to kill her without destroying it. She informed us it was a stalemate, and instructed us to go get our Inquisitor so she could make a deal with im. Doc shrugged, looked over his shoulder and asked Sarge if he cared about any Liber Whatsits. The Acting Inquisitor told him where he could shove any stupid artifacts, and Doc passed that information on. Along with an entire bouquet of incendiary grenades courtesy of Twitch.

As much as we'd have loved to sit and watch our ex-boss' remains smolder in the hive-light, there wasn't time. The ambush had only taken a short while (only about a dozen or two "rounds" as us professionals call them), but the Secret Police had to have reinforcements on the way, and they probably wouldn't call things off just because their boss was dead. Even more worryingly, the combead Tink had given Bane was completely dead, and we could overhear chatter about SOMETHING leaving the Arbite's HQ at high speed. It was time to get moving and, if possible, avoid dealing with any freakishly powerful secret agent types until we'd at least had time to patch ourselves up. Sarge, with a bit of support from Ivana, led the way back towards their side of the Interchange, where the faithful cargo truck had been stored. As we moved the noncom put in a courtesy call to Sciscitat to let him know Angelica was dead, but didn't get through, so he had Doc leave it with the Surgeon instead (no mention was made of any spooky Liber things though). We were just entering the stairwell when a high pitched whining sound drew our attention up towards the top of the interchange. An Arbite Eagle shuttle, pouring smoke from its engines and weaving a tad drunkenly, shot down out of the sky, caromed off two walls, a support pillar, and a truck full of mattresses and a physically improbably manner, and skidded to a halt in the general vicinity of the maintenance closet. From the far side of the traffic, we heard a distance, surprisingly heartfelt-sounding >NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO >*breath* >OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO As the pitch rose and got angrier, Sarge instructed the rest of us to move faster.

The vast majority of the grenades either overshot, undershot, failed to detonate, or somehow bounced out the door past Bane, but judging by the swearing and faint "mawp"-ing sounds, at least one of the flashes must've hit the target. Not that being blinded stopped the man from opening fire, and somehow managing to hit the back of Doc's helmet, a tank of fire suppressant on one of the first responders' backs, and the crippled maintenance guy. Twice. Twitch hastily moved his explosives-filled pack around to his front side, and led the retreat down the foam-filled hallway (until Nubby passed him). Nubby found the exit into the parking garage blocked by even more emergency service guys and a fire-truck. Time being of the essence, rather than ask nicely, the little trooper bellowed at them to make a hole, kicked two in the shins, and left the rest to Ivana and Sarge, who scattered the stragglers like bowling pins. As he passed, Twitch tossed his pack to a particularly nervous looking fireman and instructed him to "RUN, FOR THE LOVE OF THE EMPEROR, START RUNNING!" The guy took one look in the bag, started screaming, and did. Our trusty cargo truck wasn't parked far away. Most of us piled in and started swapping gear and doing field repairs, both on our kit and ourselves, as fast as possible. Tink, looking around and taking in the number of explodable vehicles filling the garage, decided that this was just about the second worst place to fight Bane, and got in the driver's seat instead. Those of us in the rear were abruptly thrown to the floor, then the wall, and then the other wall, as Tink attempted to "drift" the six-wheeler down the garage's exit ramps before Bane finished whatever the hell he was doing to those poor fire guys.

As Bane landed, we noticed the bastard wasn't quite looking his usual unruffled self. Back when we first came up with the whole distraction plan there'd been a bit of debate over who to sic Bane on. We wound up deciding that, given how much trouble a certain member of theirs had given us, the Arbites owed us a favor, and man did the boys in black deliver. While the bastard was still upright and looked suavely self-confident as ever, he'd collected a dozen minor scrapes and bruises, and from the look of things some (probably deceased) hero of an Arbite had popped him square in the eye with a shock-maul. Even more importantly though, the man was breathing heavily, and as he'd dropped down into the warehouse (without a rope or grav-chute) a distinctly warpy breeze had come with him. Just this once, we took that as a good sign. Upon landing right in front of Sarge and Ivana, Bane launched into this whole spiel about how he didn't know who we were, or what we wanted, but he had a very particular set of skills, and so on... We all just stood there, listening to him monologue like a bunch of idiots, until Twitch abruptly snapped out of it and opened fire. The rest of us immediately shook whatever it was off and followed suit, pouring five lasguns' and one bolter's worth of fire after the man as dodged backwards behind a row of crates. None of the shots hit, of course, but we hadn't really expected them to, at least not yet. That killing part would come later, for now it was all about keeping up the pressure, which is why Sarge and Ivana pushed forwards after him, while the rest of us moved around the flanks to cut him off.

Rather than let Sarge and Ivana bum-rush him, Bane came around Doc and Nubby's side of the of the crates in a dive. The man was firing both his fancy little auto-pistols (not the specially inaccurate ones Tink had given him) on full auto, and somehow managed to simultaneously knock out a control line on one of Nubby's augmetic legs and hit Doc in both the shoulder and helmet, all before even hitting the ground. The pair's return fire missed wildly as Nubby's leg spazzed out and sent him plowing into the medic. Tink and Twitch, firing down the row, did considerably better though, forcing Bane into another acrobatic dive, this time "enhanced" by blast of howling wind which sent Doc and Nubby the rest of the way to the ground as he launched over them. Rounding the corner, Sarge and Ivana both took potshots at the magical flying Interrogator, and then sprinted after him as he passed behind a stack of boxes. Sarge was still sprinting when he reached Bane's row, which turned out to be a mistake. The noncom threw himself into a dive, but misjudged his aim and plowed straight into a large shelving unit, catching four autopistol bullets and a small (but surprisingly heavy), crate to the groin in the bargain. Behind him, Ivana rounded the corner a bit more carefully, and stitched a line of bolt-rounds after Bane as he ran UP the same shelving stack. As admittedly cool as this maneuver was, it also took the man up into Tink and Twitch's line of fire, and the universe went slightly runny around the edges as the pair lined up their shots. For a brief second the warehouse was replaced by a screaming SOMETHING, with Bane hovering in the middle of it cackling, then Tink's weapon misfired. Twitch's didn't, and Bane dropped back down off the shelves with a girly little yelp as a lasbolt grazed his the thigh.

Twitch and Tink entered the row to find Sarge in the middle of what might be described as a Kung-Fu battle. One that Sarge, despite being stronger, faster, and undoubtedly meaner, was definitely losing. Tink, confident in his ability to fire into melee, announced it was time to even the odds, and shot Sarge in the arm. Twitch suggested he not try that again and started moving closer. Sarge, who was starting to really feel the broken ribs and blood loss, and was getting really tired of the little voice that kept promising him untold power in exchange for a small price, decided that enough was enough. As the bastard wound up for another of his stupidly effective chop-things, the noncom rushed into the blow and pulled his combat knife. He was very surprised when halfway through his attack everything went wobbly and suddenly the knife wasn't in his hand anymore. Sarge paused, perplexed, and tried to figure out where it had gone. It wasn't in his right hand, where it was supposed to be, and his left hand appeared to be missing entirely, which seemed a vaguely worrying. He directed his gaze downward, and was relieved to find the missing blade was merely lodged in his chest, he hadn't lost it after all. Secure in the knowledge that the Commissar wouldn't be angry at him for misplacing his wargear, the noncom decided it was time to sit down and take a quick nap. As he nodded off, he vaguely wondered if all the blood around him was his, and if he would be yelled at for making a mess. On both sides of the row, Doc, Twitch, and Tink watched as Sarge staggered backwards and collapsed, and a rain of blood started falling from the warehouse's roof. All three of them looked up into the storm, then back down to where Bane was standing over Sarge, and opened fire.

When the flash of light faded, we found ourselves looking at pretty much the same thing, and not a four-story axe-wielding daemon, thank the Emperor. We were pretty sure the blueish veins covering what was left of his body were new though, same with the steadily growing horns and the feathery black wings. We responded to the sudden appearance of an actual, by all things unholy, DAEMONHOST, with the calm professionalism of true Inquisition agents and kept firing. Because honestly, what the hell else were we supposed it do? Run? FROM THAT? We knew a "die tired" situation when we saw one. And anyway even with his little upgrade Bane still wasn't looking that healthy, for all we knew it'd only be a few more shots before he keeled over. Right? Well, actually the thing's next move certainly seemed in line with our assessment: instead of descending on us in a storm of daemonic fury, it waved a hand in the air and the warp rifts around us suddenly solidified. A creature that looked like a horrible amalgamation of twenty different creatures clawed out of the one nearest Tink and Twitch, while Bane himself started floating upwards to the largest rift the warehouse. Twitch and Tink immediately shifted their fire and began falling back, while Nubby and Doc kept dutifully kept on Bane, right until the arrival of a second interdimensional horror from a portal on their side of the row. The hard decision of where to focus our fire, and whether to desperately try and kill Bane before we were clawed to death by his minions was a tricky one, especially without Sarge there to make it. Fortunately, before we dithered ourselves to death, the problem was simplified for us. Ivana, stained head to toe in blood (whether her's or the warpy stuff we couldn't tell) came screaming out from back of the warehouse and hit the slowly rising figure with a flying tackle, yanking Bane down away from the growing portal.

We weren't exactly surprised to see the Traffic Arbite walk through the door, it just sort of fit the way the day was going, and we took some joy in the fact that some unknown individual had shot him a few dozen times. The two hundred or so men and assorted vehicles he had with him, which had apparently been waiting just outside the warehouse for a good portion of our battle, were just icing on the cake. The real surprise was the man who walked in alongside the Arbite. Of all the things we'd expected, Inquisitor Sciscitat personally hauling his chubby butt down to the battlefield to rescue our sorry asses certainly wasn't one of them. And, as it turned out, we were right not to expect it. Instead of telling his new Arbite buddies that we were all friends here, and asking them to help patch us up and secure the site, Sciscitat's first order was to get us all in cuffs. (Even Sarge, though he at least assigned a pair of Arbite medicaes to continue Doc's work, that the Emperor for that at least.) The man was practically giggling as he explained that no, we certainly weren't members of HIS team, and suggested that the Arbites should run Sarge's rosettes (both of them) against their databases. His response when the one turned up as completely invalid and the other identified us "Rogue Inquisition Agent, 'Interrogator' Greg Sargent, and Associates"... well smug doesn't even begin to cover it. The last thing we heard as we were walked out to the waiting APC (or stretchered in Sarge's case), was the damn bastard snickering to himself as he "advised" the Arbites to ship us directly back to the Inquisitorial Sector Headquarters. Where, as he put it, they were sure to give us a fair and speedy trial. Well, he was half right...