This is the ongoing tale of a bunch of guardsmen who got drafted into the Inquisition after their regiment was reduced to a mere 37 men by a combination of Orks, Heretics, more Orks, Tyranids and, of course, their own leadership. Currently they work for an Inquisitor that is the 40k equivalent of Professor Oak, he provides teams and missions to Interrogators who need to get some leadership experience before becoming full Inquisitors. >Most previous chapters can be found here: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?searchall=all+guardsmen

So no shit, there we were, five hungover guardsmen in a shuttle conference room, getting briefed on a desertion problem so massive that a literal army of Commissars couldn't stop it. At least that's what we thought the briefing was about, it had been written by an Inquisitor with an accent so thick that he was nearly impossible to understand and he'd felt the need to include that accent in his writing. This problem was compounded by the fact that the bathrobe-wearing man reading it obviously didn't really give a damn and would often skip whole sections or pause to inject snarky comments. The man in the bathrobe was our new Interrogator. We'd been hanging out in our section of Oak's ship when this guy burst in, dodged Twitch's reaction shot, and threw a briefcase into Sarge's lap. Then, without so much as pausing to introduce himself, he told us we had an hour to get the the party started before the girls arrived and left again. The briefcase was full of money and marked 'Evidence'. We didn't over-think the situation, Nubby grabbed a few other guardsmen and went to get supplies, Sarge formed an impromptu cleaning detail, and the rest of the squad went to see who else was up for a good time. Things were already getting pretty lively when the mystery man returned over a dozen sororitas and half of the all-female assassination team from Deck G in tow. Just saying that we were surprised really doesn't do the situation justice, if it weren't for the large supply of liquid courage most of the guardsmen present would have fled in terror. It was one hell of a party, shame none of us could really remember it afterwards.

The half-assed briefing came to a crashing halt when the rest of our team came in and demanded to know who we were and why we were on their shuttle. In retrospect it's easy to see why they didn't recognize us as the team's muscle, none of us looked very professional. Twitch and Nubby were obviously hungover, Doc was asleep across a row of chairs, Tink was still half covered with tape, and it was going to take some serious solvents to get the hat and eyepatch off Sarge. As for the Interrogator, most folks don't imagine a man lounging around in a bathrobe when they hear the phase "senior Inquisitorial agent". With one exception the rest of the team consisted of the fifth worst type of people you find in the Inquisition, bureaucrats. Coming in right between insane zealots and raging paranoids, they were the sort of extremely serious and tedious individuals that don't derive any actual satisfaction from their life or see why you should either. They'd all been some sort of special Arbites team or something, but two of them were just adepts with shock-mauls and the other two were the most tedious arbitrators in existence. To a man they were unpleasant to be around, it was easy to see why the Interrogator hadn't invited them to the party, and their fifth was even worse. He was the absolute worst type of Inquisitorial teammate, a psyker. Not a nice sane psyker either, he was a mutterer and radiated a sort of depressing aura. His mere presence was so mind-numbing that it was had to be either the result or cause of his teammates' personalities. The Interrogator got them all calmed before anyone drew a firearm or the psyker exploded, then made a few introductions and ditched us. He tossed the briefing documents to one of the adepts and just wandered off, obviously he had better things to do than sit around planning the mission. After an hour or so of tedious discussion we all decided he had the right idea and followed suit, no one seemed to notice when we left.

While the Interrogator partied and the boring people did boring things, we settled into our own routine and brought Tink properly into the squad. Tink got his name because 'Fix' would have been confusing on the battlefield and he had the poor taste to complain that Tink was a sissy name when someone called him by it. Back in the regiment he had been one of grease monkeys who hung around the motor pool and armory. He wasn't an enginseer and got rather snippy if someone called him one, he was just a helper who had picked up far more knowledge than the average tech-priest would want him to have. This made him a lot more useful if you wanted to get something fixed without also receiving a lecture on machine spirits and maintenance rituals. Tink was a solid trooper who pulled his weight despite being rather scrawny and hopeless when it came to close range combat. He could fix just about any technical problem a guardsman could have and was the only plasma-trooper we knew that still had all his original fingers and no skin grafts. That said Tink wasn't exactly popular with the rest of the regiment; the problem was that, not too fine a point on it, he was weird. The man had some serious issues with tech-priests, couldn't keep his mouth shut, was nearly as bad as Nubby when it came to respecting personal property, and while he liked to say he had an 'affinity' for technology, the rest of us just called it a fetish. Prior to joining us he'd been part of a team that was, as far as we knew, still alive and pulling guard duty at some research facility. When Doc and Sarge tried to get more info about why he wasn't still with them, all they got was some dark muttering about "hidebound reactionary dinosaurs standing in the way of true science" and "sexual harassment". No one felt the need to press further.

It wasn't a complete shambles, like some other exercises we'd seen, but the arbite team didn't want to be there and the psyker's aura made us all pissy. Little fuckups kept happening, there were some injuries, and whenever the Interrogator joined in his team would win. Mostly everyone blamed the training lasguns, they were utter shit and jammed on every other shot. There was also the fact that none of us could really get serious in a fight like this, we wanted to fight dirty and use explosives and the arbites didn't want to fight at all. Nothing was going right. We all just moped around and got more and more frustrated until Sarge snapped at the psyker, who'd failed to hit anyone all day, and told him to "Do something useful damnit". A minute later a small localized ship-quake shook the bay and knocked crates onto both Tink and one of the Arbites. Then for an encore the psyker manifested a layer of ice in the floor, which he then slipped on, causing him to fly face first into the wall and knock himself out cold. The Interrogator called a halt there and suggested that we not try this again. He then wandered off to see if anything was happening down on level six while we dug Tink and the Arbite out and Doc checked the psyker for a cracked skull. Perhaps unfairly, the pysker got most of the blame for that shit-show and from then on we called him Fumbles. This did not seem to make him any more depressed than usual.

None of us had really gotten into the whole mission planning thing with the rest of the team, we figured they'd tell us anything we really needed to know when the time came. Doc and Sarge had taken a few peeks at the reports the adepts were putting together, but most of the info we had was from the original mission brief. We knew that we were fighting the Orks for this planet for some unspecified reason, we knew that things weren't going well, and we knew that something about the amount of soldiers deserting here had drawn the Inquisition's attention. What hadn't known was that the Rupert was the fourth Inquisitor sent here to sort things out and that two of Oak's Interrogator teams had died here as well. Just to reiterate, this mission had already killed DOZENS of experienced inquisitorial agents and THREE full blown Inquisitors. One dead Inquisitor might have been understandable, but three was just ludicrous; the second two, at least, must have known that someone was gunning for them and they'd still been wasted without anything to show for it. Three of the nastiest buggers this side of Terra had come here, with their entire retinues and all their Inquisitorial authority, and died horribly; now it was our turn. Of course we found it odd that the Rupert, who had all the self preservation instinct of a lemming, was still alive. Alfred explained that he had personally foiled over a dozen assassination attempts and that anything overt was being blocked by the Inquisitor's numerous political connections with the local brass. There were three regiments camped around the mansion and a pair of frigates were undergoing 'repairs' in synchronous orbit directly overhead. Apparently the other Inquisitors had either operated discretely and died discretely, or had demanded protection and been surprised by how quickly unpopularity can get you killed in a warzone. Sometimes it pays to be every senior officer's cousin, schoolmate, comrade, or drinking buddy.

The Rupert provided rooms for our team in the mansion he'd commandeered, but we didn't get much time to enjoy them. Under any of our previous interrogators there would have been some intel gathering and basic plan forming, which is to say someone else would do that while we kept our heads down, but Bane didn't seem keen on sitting around. He burst into our rooms, wearing his damned bathrobe and neatly avoiding all of Twitch's traps, at an ungodly hour and told us to gear up for a trip to the battlefield. Sarge tried to ask the Interrogator just what the hell we'd be doing up at front, but the man just vaguely said that everything would work out, then wandered off before any of us could navigate the minefield in front of the door. Less than an hour later we were all sitting in a flier, watching Tink as he frantically went through the manual and poked at the controls. The Interrogator sat in his seat and cheerfully deflected or ignored the frantic questions from the rest of the team about where we were going and why we were going there. For our part, we'd accepted that he wasn't going to tell us anything and just grabbed our usual kits and strapped in for the ride, except for Twitch, he had what might be called his 'Ork Loadout' on. None one sat near him and the two seats he'd piled with explosives and weapons. After a few minutes the was a shout of success from the cockpit and the flier's engines began to warm up. A second later there was another shout, from the co-pilot Alfred had found for us, followed by a loud crackling sound as the nose gun went off and burned a neat hole in the side of the mansion. There was a short, mostly whispered argument between the two pilots and Tink came out from the cockpit, got our destination coordinates from the laughing Interrogator, then settled into the co-pilot's former seat.

So no shit there we were heading into a combat zone, with no support, to find a bunch of heavily armed former-guardsmen then ask them why they were deserting and where they were heading. It really says something that it was only the third worst plan we'd been part of. The flight got a lot more interesting as we neared the front, the ground-war on this planet was one of the bigger ones we'd seen. The sheer number of troops we could see below us was staggering, you could actually identify hotzones from the glow of mass lasgun fire. We all clustered around the windows, but after a few minutes it stopped being amazing and was just depressing. A near endless tide of guardsmen was marching into the fight, supported by millions of tanks and fliers, and all it was achieving was a stalemate. It was easy to see why desertion was a problem, the fight was bloody pointless and it was obvious that most of the soldiers sent to that front weren't going to be coming back. The spot where we landed wasn't an active battle, it was a fairly wide valley that used to hold a fair sized town or something. It had been turned into a charred wasteland by artillery, the only movement we could see were soldiers standing watch up on the edges and the flash of artillery in the distance. It looked like the barrage was coming down right where the line was supposed to be, none of us speculated on whether they'd been allowed to pull back before the suppressive barrage was started. Tink set us down in a dell a klick or two outside the town, or rather the loaner pilot set us down while Tink carefully watched what buttons he pressed. The Interrogator cheerfully reminded us that, officially, everyone left here was a deserter, so all we had to was find someone ask them some questions, then head back to base for dinner and drinks. We shared a pained look with the other half of the team as he bounded out the rear hatch, then followed him into the no-man's land.

There were a few seconds of shocked silence then a rain of las-fire poured out the door, barely missing the Interrogator and clipping one of the adepts. Sarge and Twitch both immediately popped nades and put them through the building's windows and Nubby laid down some suppressive fire on the doorway, giving Doc the cover he needed. While the rest of us got the fight started and pulled the wounded adept to safety Tink stepped back, pulled down his goggles, and raised his plasma gun. If you've never seen a plasma gun in action imagine a cross between a lasgun and a slug thrower. Instead of projecting a brief beam of powerful light, it gathers together an incredibly hot ball of energy then lobs it out like a stubber, but unlike a stub round that blob of plasma will burn through just about anything that gets in its way. Also it's bright blue, make's an incredibly ominous whine as it charges, and occasionally vents superheated gasses onto the user. All in all lasguns are a lot easier and safer to use, but when you want to destroy armor or punch through a wall, accept no substitutes. Tink put several rounds through the walls on either side of the door, killing the poor bastards taking cover against them and opening firing ports for Sarge and Twitch to use. After that the fight was pretty one-sided, we had better positions, weapons, and training, but the real kicker was when the Interrogator came through the back door with the rest of the team. For all of his lack of tactical sense, the man was an impressive fighter, he swept in and wiped out the last four deserters before they managed to turn to face him, neither the arbites nor the psyker got a shot off before it was over. It was an impressive end to the battle, unfortunately the whole thing was spoiled a little by the wounded adept's screaming and the fact that none of us had remembered to leave someone alive for interrogation.

Within a minute of entering Nubby was trading lho sticks for rumors and had Twitch started collecting info on local Ork patrols. Of course these guys didn't know anything really useful to us, why would they? They were just a bunch of poor suckers who'd gotten screwed over just about everyone on either side of the war; none of them had any secret nefarious plan, they just didn't want to die. Mostly they just told us that the troopers above the valley were shooting anyone who tried to leave, which was pretty much what we expected from the commissariat, they did have one piece of interesting info though. One of them said that some former officer was pulling deserters together for a push out of the valley, they didn't want any part of it but we were free to try if we had a deathwish. Unfortunately, before Nubby could get directions from them the screaming started. It came from the area where Doc was distracting the Interrogator and sounded awful warpy, the second it faded it was replaced with the sound of gunfire. The deserters all immediately ran for it and we decided to pull back to help instead of trying to stick with them. We commed Doc as we ran in an attempt to figure out what the hell was going on, but the medic wasn't making much sense, all we were able to establish was that someone was an idiot and Orks were involved. When we finally made visual contact with the team they were holed up in some rubble and exchanging fire with a bunch of deserters in another pile. The four of us started to flank around, but before we got halfway we were interrupted by a loud "WAAAGH" and the arrival of a squad of greenskins on the opposite side of the fight.

Sarge had a very weird discussion with the interrogator while Doc complained to the rest of us. He didn't seem to mind that we'd gone off to do our own investigation and seemed inordinately happy with the scrap of info about someone organizing the local deserters. When Sarge and the arbites pointed out that none of us had the slightest idea where in the large, ruined, ork-filled valley this was happening, the man only laughed and assured them that the deserters we'd just fought had probably known where it was. Sarge adopted the very patient voice you use when talking to slow children or armed madmen and explained that those deserters were very dead now, it was unlikely they'd be giving us directions. Five minutes later Sarge and Nubby were digging through the corpses looking for any "secret notes" or "maps to the hideout". Ten minutes later he was swearing sulphurously as he delivered the map to Bane. Unbelievably it really was a map to where the deserters were mustering, with detailed directions and everything. We didn't even need to have the Adepts translate the version of gothic it was written in, the Interrogator just happened to have studied it back in the schola. None of us were very happy about this turn of events, for one thing it meant we weren't going to be leaving the valley yet, and for another it was complete and utter bullshit. Sure, occasionally you find some random thing that just happens to be exactly what you need, but it's pure luck, you don't get to depend on it happening as part of your plan. It was unfair that the universe was playing along with him and when it finally stopped it was probably going to get us killed along with him.

Doc was the one who first recognized the landmarks from the map, but it was Twitch who spotted the stubber nest. By the time we saw it the Interrogator was already half way across the killzone. The entire team piled up at the edge and watched as Bane walked up to a wrecked lamp-post then paused to check his map. Sarge frantically flipped his com to the Interrogator's channel and told him to freeze, instead he turned to face us and loudly asked why everyone had stopped. Everyone held their breath and waited for the stubber to open up on him. Eventually we ran out of breath. Somehow the two deserters in the nest completely failed to notice that a man, in a flapping cloak that screamed "Inquisition" no less, was standing behind a post half as wide as him and talking on his combead. In a choked voice Sarge explained the situation, prompting Bane to lean out and stare at the nest for a few seconds then start talking in a loud stage whisper. This was more than we could handle, Sarge peeked around the corner and verified that the hostiles looked like real soldiers and neither one was blindfolded, then jerked back as the stubber swung to bear on him. We all heard one of the deserters tell the other that he might have seen something. Sarge, Doc, and the Arbites started to argue over their coms with the Interrogator, who was whispering so loudly that we could all hear him from across the street, while the rest of us got into a fairly heated discussion about just what the hell was going on here. Tink was of the opinion that something warpy was happening, though Fumbles denied this and claimed that everything was normal. This prompted Nubby to start blaming the depressed psyker for "screwin wit da laws of fisiks", while Twitch, of course, blamed everything on the Orks. The argument came to a crashing halt when Tink's voice rose almost to same level as the Interrogator's and the stubber opened up on our cover.

We circled around to another entrance in hope of finding some less weird guards than the selectively blind ones that'd shot at us. The main entrance to the deserters' compound had at least two gunners covering it and a few troopers lounging around in front of it. A protesting Nubby was kicked out ahead of us to act as emissary and sidled up to the troopers with his hand held comically high in the air. None of us heard what he told the guards, but they quickly lowered their weapons and let Nubby join them at their post. Lho sticks were exchanged, a bottle materialized from somewhere, and after a few more minutes than were probably necessary he called us over. Nubby made a round of introductions, starting with Sarge, who got a long appraising look from the man in change, and ending with Doc. When the desters saw we had a medic they perked up and started asking pointed questions about the state of his medkit, i.e. how many ampules of painkillers he had and how many he really needed. Doc shot Nubby a glare and ponied up about a third of his supply, this immediately made us several new friends and one of the troopers happily agreed to show us around. The tour consisted of a meandering walk through the collapsed buildings that made up the compound, and ended in an open central area populated by a few dozen deserters. He dumped us on an oddly cheerful man, who welcomed us to the "First Free Army" and informed us that we were extremely lucky. It turned out we'd arrived just in time to hear an important announcement from the general, after it was over he'd see about getting us fit in, but for now we should just listen. A pair of men who could've been Sarge's brothers came out of a nearby building and started barking everyone into formation. As we shuffled around Twitch spotted a single soldier wearing a Valhallan coat and hat, a preposterously large mustache, and a dozen things which obviously marked him as an Inquisition agent.

While the General explained that he'd heard reports that an unmarked flier had landed in the area and listed all the horrible things that the commissariat would do if it found us, his two henchmen started traversing the line of deserters. They carefully went over each man, occasionally asking them questions or inspecting their equipment. We all nervously checked ourselves over and eyed the Interrogator, who'd apparently gotten tired of standing straight and was now in a pose best described as 'lounging'. As the inspectors worked closer he took out a lho stick, jammed it under the fake moustache, and drew out his trainee rosette. We watched in horror as he flipped off the top and lit his lho stick with it. Just to be clear here, the man had a LIGHTER installed in his INQUISITORIAL BADGE OF OFFICE. Emperor knows why he had it done or how he got someone to agree to fiddle with the thing, but he used it right there in the middle of the deserter base, then dropped it back down his coat. It sat there and peeked out the front like a poorly camouflaged trainee on guard duty. Both Doc and Sarge frantically whispered at him to put it away, but Bane just stared at them blankly and before the point got across the two henchmen reached us. Twitch passed review without comment and they actually stepped back a bit when they reached Nubby, his unique odor could affect people like that, Tink didn't get off so easy though. Whether it was his bulging pack, fancier than usual armor, or near permanent expression of petulance mixed with superiority, something about him bothered the inspectors. One of them stepped behind the techie and flipped open his pack, exposing his stash of gadgets and the bulky plasma-gun. The other goon smiled a shit-eating grin and loudly asked the General what sort gear a "slimy little commissariat weasel" would carry.

Secure in the knowledge that no spies were present, the General outlined a complex plan for escaping to the rendezvous with the trader. There were a lot of regiment names, passphrases, waypoints, and other stuff we really didn't care about, then the parade was over. As the other newbie deserters walked off to do whatever it was they did around here we quickly pulled together to hash out a rescue plan. Unfortunately the Interrogator didn't have any time for that, he made a beeline for where the General and his goons were talking with a few of the recruits. Sarge and Twitch went off to rescue Tink, leaving Doc and Nubby behind in the square. Their job was to grab the Interrogator and convince him not to do anything suicidal until Sarge returned, in Doc's opinion this was not an ideal plan, but there hadn't been time to think of anything better. Both troopers hustled after the Interrogator and got there just as he reached the group of chatting deserters. They watched in horror as Bane, hand outstretched and fake mustache bristling, Interrogator walked right up to the General and greeted him in a horrible Valhallan accent. What followed was string of stereotypical and cliched comments that would've mortally offended any actual Valhallan. Both Nubby and Doc had served with the iceworld regiments before and it was physically painful to hear the interrogator calling everyone comrade, joking about how hot the climate was, and complaining lack of alcohol in the camp. It was lucky that a deserter's hideout is the last place you'd find a real valhallan and incredibly lucky that no one here knew that or, apparently, had ever met one. The General welcomed "Ivan Ivanov" with a smile, laughed at his jokes, and promised he'd go far in the First Free Army. Doc and Nubby had about a second to feel relieved, then the General spotted them. His smile turned into a suspicious glare and he asked Doc just which regiment he was from.

No one did look though, everyone was busy staring at Doc who had already sweated out half his-body mass and was going for three-quarters. He just barely managed to answer all the questions aimed at him without blurting out something about working for the Inquisition, but it was obviously just a matter of time before he either tripped up or fainted. Right as things reached their most dire the Interrogator finished, walked up to Doc, and threw an arm around his shoulders. In that horrible accent he chastised the General for being too suspicious of "bosom companion Comrade Doctor-Boy" then told a series of horribly cliched jokes. Just like that everyone was all smiles again. The General stated that any friend of Ivan's was a friend of his then shook Doc's damp hand and went to talk to some other recruits. Doc practically collapsed in relief and Nubby grumpily swore at them both from the puddle he'd been shoved into by one of the goons when he wouldn't shut up. The three of them headed in the direction Tink had been taken and Doc pulled out his combead. Before he could call anyone the air was filled with Twitch's screaming and, on reflex, both soldiers hit the dirt, dragging the Interrogator down with them.

The squad came back together as they all made for the same exit. Tink was walking on his own, but Sarge was carrying all his gear. Doc slapped him with a stimm, just to be on the safe side, and eyed Sarge who was half covered in blood. The Interrogator asked how he'd sprung the techie and Sarge just stared back, glanced at the chain bayonet he was still holding, and gruffly said that he'd explained the Chain of Command to Tink's new friends. Both Nubby and the Interrogator broke into rather tactless laughter, until we all saw Twitch coming in at a dead sprint. None of us stopped to ask why Twitch was running, it's not a question you ask demolitions experts, you just do your best to keep up with them. As we cleared the city a final barrage collapsed our exit, crushing a few deserters who'd been hard on Twitch's heels. Sarge commed the other half of the team and told them to get ready to bail, then we all just focussed on running. We were almost to the arbites when the deserters launched their pursuit. A dozen ex-guardsmen took turns chasing us and taking potshots at our backs and behind them a salamander burst through a wall then turned to face us. The General himself was standing out of the top hatch and blasting at us with a pintle-bolter while yelling at his troops to run faster. We got a few shots off as they closed and the Arbites laid down some decent covering fire, but keeping to cover was slowing us down and the salamander steadily gained on us. Both the mines Twitch dropped behind us were easily dodged by the salamander's driver and as we reached the arbites it became apparent that we'd have to at least disable the vehicle if we wanted to escape on foot.

Once everyone could see again we finished off the last deserters in the salamander without incident, unless you call Tink overheating his plasma gun and dropping it on his foot an incident. The important thing is that no-one else died and the other deserters legged it after salamander was dealt with. The end count was two dead (one of the adepts died while we were away), two wounded, and one very unconscious psyker. The Interrogator said we weren't allowed to just leave him, so Sarge carried him while the arbite carried the adept. The two dead were given a proper military cremation courtesy of Tink's plasma gun, which he managed to overheat and drop on his foot a second time during the quick service. That done with we all headed back for the flier, which the copilot confirmed was still completely secure. As we walked the Interrogator congratulated everyone on killing a dangerous rebel and helping him secure a piece of critical information. He happily told everyone how the information we'd found identified both treacherous Rogue Traders and traitors within the local guard command, it was sure to be a key part of our investigation. While it really was a good haul, especially for how stupid the whole mission concept had been, most of us just ignored him and Tink actively glared at him while muttering about how unfair the universe was. When we got back to the flier and anger towards the Interrogator was redirected towards the copilot, who had failed to mention the two other fliers or the woman holding a gun to his head.

Since none of us had anything better to do we all followed Fumbles' example and took a nap during the flight. This meant it was a bit of a shock when we woke up in some villa with a few dozen guns in our faces. We were relieved of our weapons by some of the hardbitten men around us, who might as well have been wearing shirts that said "Deserter Mercenaries", and this time Tink kept his mouth shut when his plasma gun was taken away. Fumbles was still out of it, so Sarge carried him as we were herded to rather nice waiting room. Ivana and the Interrogator ditched us there, presumably to talk to the boss without us guardsman dirtying the place up. They took half the guards with them and this evened the odds to the point where some of us started to get ideas. The men who'd disarmed us hadn't been nearly thorough enough. Doc only had his medkit and Tink had nothing, but Sarge still had his boot-knife, Nubby had a stubgun, and Twitch had his backup-backup grenades as well as laspistol. Even if the rest of the team and the copilot had nothing we had enough firepower to take the guards and after that we'd have their shiny combat shotties. On top of that we could see the flier sitting on its pad just a short sprint away, there was a real chance that we could escape and even ditch the Interrogator in the bargain. It was very tempting, but none of us wanted to leap into action and risk getting killed yet. Except for Twitch no one was absolutely sure that these guys were planning to kill us, after all they could have just done that back in the valley. Then we overheard one of the guards asking another if the boss was planning to kill us personally like the other Inquisition goons.

None of us had paid much thought to Fumbles. We certainly didn't want to carry an unconscious body with us as we ran, so we had left him to the arbite and adept to worry about. He was awake now though, and for the first time since we met him he didn't fuck up. The psyker waved his hands and one of the incoming guards turned around then hosed his squadmates with point blank, automatic shotgun fire. It was pretty gruesome. Some of the guards got shots off at us before they died, taking a chunk out of both Nubby and Sarge, but not doing any serious damage. The same couldn't be said for the fire that came in from our pursuers though, their first volley blew the adept to pieces and forced us all to duck and return fire instead of continuing our sprint. The going got much slower after that, becoming a fighting retreat instead of an all out run, we were still making progress though and could hear the flier's engines spinning up. Unfortunately we weren't the only ones who noticed the flier getting ready. When we were about fifteen meters from it, a rocket lanced out of the entrance. We watched in horror as the rocket went right through the windshield, then the copilot, and went off in a fireball that killed our only real chance of escape.

The time the weapon search was very thorough and an untouchable was brought up and handcuffed to Fumbles. Once we were all subdued a man in a ridiculously gaudy overcoat came out to gloat at us a little. Well really it wasn't just gloating, there was a fair bit of praise mixed in. He seemed genuinely impressed with the mess we made and went so far as to offer us jobs in his personal guard. This was actually a pretty attractive offer, especially after the Arbite claimed he'd rather die than betray his duty, then did. There's a moral in there somewhere about pointless bravado. The Trader put his bolt pistol back in its holster then ordered his men to take us away to think things over. As we were bundled off Tink and Doc noticed that, for once, the Interrogator wasn't talking or flirting. Instead he looked rather ill and actually stumbled over his own feet and fell when the trader slapped him on the back. Doc put it down to having one of his teammates executed in front of him, but Tink formed a suspicion which he shared with Twitch during the walk to the cells. We were all, except for Fumbles, given one cell to share. It was really quite nice of them not to split us up and the cel wouldn't have been too bad if it had more than two bunks. As it was we made ourselves as comfortable as possible and mulled over the situation. That is to say, Sarge and Doc mulled over the situation, Nubby just went to sleep while Twitch and Tink excitedly whispered about something.

The note explained that Bane had "seduced a high level subordinate to our cause" who had confirmed the presence of high ranking traitors in the Imperial Guard. Furthermore the traitors would be arriving tomorrow and we'd be taken out for exercise as they arrived. Our gear would all be provided and the guards present would be working with us. As long as we were ready we'd be able to take out the traitors and escape all at once. It'd be an understatement to say we were surprised. Assuming it was all true the bastard had actually come through for us, the plan sounded relatively solid and if we pulled it off it'd turn a pretty abysmal failure into a major victory. The problem was that none of us could see how he'd done it, except for Tink that is. Tink and Twitch's excitement boiled over when we read the note and they let us in on their secret. According to them our Interrogator was a powerful psyker or possibly a vampire ork. Of course this was rejected by Nubby on the grounds that Bane hadn't exploded, summoned any daemons, or gone some variety of crazy during the mission. Tink claimed that most psykers didn't do these things, but had a great deal of difficulty convincing anyone. Especially when Fumbles was brought up as an example. His theory went that the Interrogator was some sort of nascet, which we took to mean sneaky, psyker who used his powers to make himself incredibly lucky. Furthermore, Tink claimed he did this by stealing other people's luck, which was why things kept going to shit for us, but not him. This was a compelling theory and was backed up nicely by the way he acted around the untouchable and how Fumbles had always screwed up so massively around him. At this point Twitch reiterated his theory of vampire ork as opposed to sneaky psyker, but didn't manage to convince anyone. Before we went to sleep a plan was hatched and that night we had some very strange dreams.

In the end the Rupert vowed to do his best to pinpoint us using this "damned warp mumbo-jumbo", then went off to see who was shooting holes in his wall with a sniper rifle. Leaving us in a sort of awkward collective dream which became progressively weirder until Doc managed to wake up give everyone a good kick. None of us were able to look at Tink without feeling uncomfortable for a while after that and we all felt sorry for Twitch. No one should have to spend their entire night being continuously ambushed by Kommandos, especially not ones wearing maid uniforms and sporting mechadendrites. In the morning a shift of guards came for us and, as promised, they didn't actually lock our cuffs. Similarly, when we picked up Fumbles we all felt the weight of his aura as the replacement Untouchable activated a limiter. A whispered word from Doc stopped the psyker from starting a bloodbath the second his powers were returned and we all followed the guards through the villa. While Sarge quietly went over the arrangements with the guard captain and Doc brought Fumbles up to speed, the rest of us sized up the untouchable. We had plans for him. Our "exercise area" was a large courtyard with a fountain at one end and a landing pad at the other. There were a few guards standing near doorways and some more on the roof, our escort warned us that these guards were not friendly. Bane and the valkyrie were waiting near the fountain, next to a row of flower boxes which poorly concealed all of our gear. The Interrogator was in costume again, he'd replaced his coat with one that matched the guards and gotten a hat too. Once again his rosette was visible just sticking out of the front of the coat, none of us commented on this.

Instead of surprise or denial, all we got was confusion. The general stopped, looked at Sarge, then back to his group, then back to Sarge. He shrugged and was about to start speaking when Nubby spoke up and accused the other general of being Ourumov. When that didn't get a reaction Tink said the man in the cloak was obviously Ourumov and told him to take it off. The cloaked figure turned to the other general and asked the "Gue'vesa'o" what an Ourumov was. There was a brief discussion where it was explained that Ourumov was the name of the Lord General that commanded the eastern front on the south continent. Last they heard he was holed up on the far side of the moon, planning his revenge on the Inquisitor General. So yeah, wrong bunch of traitors. Awkward... Anyway, even if none of them was Ourumov, someone had recognized the name. Twitch was watching the Interrogator and Ivana for vampire ork shenanigans and noticed the valkyrie flinch like someone had tased her. He made several logical leaps, all of which were incorrect, but led him to the right response anyway. He screamed "PLAN B, PLAN B" and tackled the untouchable. Plan B was like Plan A, except we were fighting everyone instead of just the Trader's men and the traitors. Sarge grabbed one if the supposedly friendly guards and threw him at one of the bodyguards while Nubby kicked the other in the groin with the full force of his augmetic legs. Doc and Tink used the split second of breathing room to dig out our weapons and Fumbles grabbed Twitch a roll of ductape. Bane immediately drew his pistols and killed a bodyguard and the captain before he was forced to dodge a haymaker from Ivana. The haymaker completely missed the Interrogator and knocked out the traitor general that had been coming up behind him. Then cloaked figure and the surviving two officers started screaming about it being a trap, the bodyguard and guard Sarge had thrown shot each other, and the courtyard exploded into chaos.

As bad as we were getting messed with by the Interrogator's field, the valkyrie and guards closer to Bane were getting it worse. Men would stumble into shots aimed at his back, guns would explode in their users hands, and one man threw the pin at him instead of the grenade, poor bastard. Ivana soaked a ton of punishment before a shotgun blast knocked her down to her knees, the Interrogator gave her a little bow and sprinted after us. We made it to the shuttle without any major injuries, piled in, and gave the pilot a choice between an exciting new career in the Inquisition and a grisly death. Bane jumped in a second ahead of the slamming doors and we rose into the air as the villa began to explode below us. Several cars and fliers made it away before the whole thing went up and the infuriated voice hailed us over the vox. The Rogue Trader swore undying vengeance and promised Bane that he'd "get him next time", Sarge left the Interrogator to exchange witty banter and watched to make sure no one was following us. When was finished tormenting the Trader Bane smiled his stupid grin and congratulated everyone on a job well done. We might all be rough around the edges and nowhere near as experienced as him, but we'd pulled through. In fact he'd be proud to have us as permanent members of his team, a few years learning from him would turn into real secret agents. Sarge smiled a grin even wider than the Interrogator's, signaled Twitch to turn off the Untouchable's limiter, and beat seven kinds of shit out of the smarmy bastard.

So no shit, there we were, watching our Interrogator rocketing into the distance and preparing to assault the Secret Moon Base of a traitorous Lord General. That's not something you get to say often. We swapped into one of the assault shuttles and borrowed some void gear for the assault, no sense dying of asphyxiation before we even got to the enemy. The plan was simple, kill or capture anyone who wasn't part of the strike force, the boys the Rupert sent us were pretty pumped to hear that we didn't have any crazy-complex strategies for them to follow. It was good that they were happy, because the assault began to look a lot more dangerous as we came around the moon. Lord General Ourumov's Secret Moon Base was not actually very secret, mostly because someone had parked a bright red Kroozer over it. Twitch alternated between ecstatically telling us that Orks really had been behind everyone and worrying about whether there were any Kommandos in the base. As far as we could tell it wasn't attacking the base, just sort of hanging there. We were pretty sure that no one was dumb enough to try and hire a Freeboota as a transport, but it certainly looked like that was what was happening here. We put in a quick call to the Navy, then chilled our heels until a hail of macrocannon shots came in at an appreciable fraction of light speed. While the Orks re-evaluated their decision to hold still in what was mostly Imperial controlled space, we launched our assault. Our bird was in the second wave, none of us had real experience in void battles, so it was better to wait for the fight to get inside before we participated. As battles go it was a pretty good one; we had more men, better troopers, and the element of surprise, it would have been a quick slaughter without the freebootas. The assault teams cut in from every direction, splitting up the defenders and wrecking the chain of command. They pinpointed the HQ within minutes and we moved in for the kill.

Our push forward slowed and stalled as we neared the end, not because there was too much resistance, but because there wasn't any. The halls were empty except for corpses with autogun wounds. Sarge called a halt as we waited for our duct-taped untouchable to be brought forward by some troopers, we weren't going anywhere near the Interrogator without him. Once the untouchable arrived we got him crammed into Sarge's pack like a toddler and made sure we could turn off his limiter in an instant. Our secret weapon ready, we carefully made our way forward until we heard voices and an ominous hum. Twitch edged around a doorway, flinched backwards, then waved us up. What we saw in there was at least the third weirdest thing any of us had encountered. The Interrogator was tied to table and what looked like a ship's point-defense laser was suspended above him. A massive Ork with a gold plated cybork arm and a tricorn hat was slowly stomping in a circle around the table and a pair of gretchin were operating the laser's controls. As we watched a beam about the size of an arm crackled out and started rotating up the table towards Bane. The gouge it cut in the floor looked to be about ten meters deep. While this was all rather odd, the outright weird part was what Bane and the Freeboota were doing. As the beam crawled towards the Interrogator's spread legs he didn't scream or plead, instead he calmly talked with the Ork.

At this point the beam was getting pretty close and we felt it was time to do something. We weren't quite ready just to let the Interrogator die, not when the mission was almost over and we knew we could subdue him at a moments notice. Tink linked up a shot on what looked like the most critical component of the laser, the rest of us got ready to open fire, and Fumbles sat in the corner since we wouldn't let him use his powers this close to the Interrogator. Twitch fired, the gretchins both exploded, and the laser went haywire. Before it cut off completely the beam somehow split apart and simultaneously cut every single one of the Interrogator's restrains, this did not surprise any of us. The first volley of las fire hit the Freeboota square in the chest, the second was stopped by his augmetic arm, and the third was delayed as we scattered away from a well thrown stikkbomb. Sarge and Doc took the right, peppering him with unaimed las-fire while frantically dodging a rain of slugs. On the other side Twitch, Nubby, and Tink all took careful aim at the back of the Ork's head. Twitch's gun jammed, Nubby managed to hit the floor AND the ceiling, and Tink's plasma gun overheated. All three troopers stared at each other in panic, then scattered as another stikkbomb landed between them. As they ran they were treated to the sight of Bane rising up behind the Ork with a comically small switchblade. The way he jammed it into the Freeboota's ear wasn't funny though.

It wasn't the best monologue, we'd heard one or two really good ones, and this was only sort of middling. Sarge signalled everyone to start lining up their shots, quietly calling targets over the comm while the idiots bantered. It was an agonizing wait, Nubby and Tink both nearly cracked before it was over, but it paid off. Bane dismissed something the traitor said, turned to face Ivana and asked her if she would listen to her boss… or her heart? Doc threw up a little in his mouth. The valkyrie went from zero to sixty in about half a second, the two storm troopers nearest to her were reduced to chunky salsa. Bane did some sort of ridiculous backflip behind a table, hefted the freeboota's shoota and somehow managed to use it to hose fire across the troopers. While they did the showy stuff, we placed four solid headshots and knocked out the door controls behind the traitor. The fight ended with Ourumov being suspended from one of Ivana's fists while she used the other lift the Interrogator high enough for a sloppy makeout. Sarge voxed the Rupert to report our success while Tink and Doc pried the terrified Lord General down and tranqued him. Nubby and Twitch retrieved Fumbles and verified that no hostiles were left in the area. At this point Sarge called the mission a success, and started to reach behind his back to turn off the Untouchable's limiter. A second later he was covered with a spray of bone and meat as Bane casually blew the taped-up prisoner's head off. Couldn't let a traitor like that live, could he?

Three men entered our room, we recognized the one on the right. He was the Interrogator who'd been our nominal superior while we were playing teacher, now he was all done up in combat gear. The man on the left was an untouchable, but not a normal one, he had an aura like Fumbles in a suicidal depression, and that was with his limiter on. The middle man was tall, covered with scars and augmetics, and had a servo skull hovering over his shoulder. They made themselves comfortable, greeted us all by name, then congratulated us on surviving our mission. We kept our mouths shut and waited for the shoe to drop. Eventually they got tired of playing the big scary Inquisitors and only getting monosyllabic responses, the middle one stood back up and fished around in his shirt for something. He drew out a rosette which identified him as a member of the Ordos Hereticus and asked what our opinion was of Interrogator Bane Johns. Sarge sat up a bit straighter and asked why he was so interested in the opinion of a bunch of grunts. The Inquisitor smiled back and said we were the first team to survive a mission with him, so were the best men to judge whether he was a dangerous untrained psyker who might become a serious threat to the Imperium. Every single one of us grinned like a kid in a candy store. Unfortunately the moment was slightly spoiled by Twitch saying that we thought Bane was a vampire ork.

They let us watch when they stormed into party, deactivated the limiter, and dragged the drunken Interrogator out behind them. It was glorious, especially when he kept trying to do martial-arts moves and hit himself. It must suck to live a life where everything you do just magically works, then have it taken away. Nubby suggested that we should send him a card or something, perhaps a tasteful goodbye message like "Enjoy your life in a psi-shield inquisitorial dungeon, don't forget to write". We really shouldn't have laughed at that, it only encouraged him. When they took Bane Ivana had tried to put up a fight, but Oak's personal Interrogator drew some sort of small sleek pistol and the valkyrie was asleep before she got half a meter. We heard him tell his men to pack her up, he knew someone who might want to offer her job. We decided that was as fair a chance as any of us had gotten, and went to bed. We stuck around the planet for a few days after the Inquisitor left, partially to see if the Rupert needed help, but mostly because we had to wait for a ship that was going our way. The dapper man was a little concerned over what had happened to our Interrogator, but accepted our assurance that it was all for the best. He would've loved to spend some time swapping tales with us, unfortunately he was rather busy running the war. The Rupert said he'd intended to hand off command to some of the less corrupt generals after the purges, but everyone seemed to think he was doing an wonderful job and wanted him to stay until the war ended. Hopefully that wouldn't take too many years, morale had improved greatly after the purge, and deserters no longer seemed to be disappearing off planet in surprisingly large numbers. He put that down to the execution of Ourumov and all of his contacts, but we remembered the other group of traitors and weren't so sure.