The squad is sitting along one side of a table across from a group of dangerous looking men and women. Both sides are trying to stare each other down over the impressive array of official looking documents piled on the table. At a word from Sarge, the squad’s melee specialist, Cutter, puts down his chainsword and carefully pulls three documents from the pile. Across the table a woman in a black bodysuit does likewise and Sarge winces as he sees which ones she’s holding. There’s a brief whispered argument on both sides of the table, then Doc, glaring daggers at Sarge, picks a large folder and starts going through it. A large metallic man on the other side immediately grabs a few documents prompting Twitch, the squad’s demolitions expert, to explode out of his chair and lunge across the table. He’s stopped by a hand on his collar and a warning shouted by a hooded man sitting off in a corner. Sarge pulls out a few files, shoves them into Twitch’s hands, then orders the trooper out of the room.

So no shit, there we were, on a ship headed out to some nameless Inquisition facility, to teach a bunch of fresh recruits how to be proper Inquisitorial goons. In our humble opinions this was stupid as hell: we were definitely goons, but it was hard to find anyone less proper than us. When you hear the term “Agents of the Inquisition” you’d usually imagine a bunch of people in billowing cloaks, armed with masterwork power weapons, and acting all dark and mysterious. Maybe they’re not all beautiful or darkly handsome, but the ones that aren’t are definitely covered with impressive scars and fancy looking augmetics. You’d expect them to swoop in, interrogate and possibly torture anyone who looks shifty, maybe make a few other people disappear, then do something eldritch and fly away into the night. You would not expect a bunch of guardsmen wearing sweaty fatigues and constantly looking either bored, frustrated, or confused. The point is that we didn’t look like proper agents, we didn’t act like proper agents, and we definitely didn’t have any idea how to teach a bunch of recruits to be proper agents. Sure all of our missions had been relatively successful, but aside from a few tactical situations we hadn’t actually done anything complex. We didn’t interrogate people, we didn’t assemble theories or hypotheses, and we didn’t leverage secret arcane knowledge. We just followed around our superior officer and did what we were told, if investigations were called for we typically just asked someone who looked smart to do it for us. All we really ever did was stand around until someone screwed up, then applied explosives and las-fire to the problem until it was fixed. While this seemed to work for us, it definitely wasn’t the way things were supposed to be done, and Oak probably wouldn’t thank us for teaching the rookies to act like that. This was the worst idea since, well, putting Nubby in charge of buying a ship.

Aside from the initial briefing, our Interrogator probably said less than a hundred words to our team over the course of the trip. Some people would have been offended by this treatment, but we liked him; he seemed a lot less likely to get us all killed than any of our previous bosses. Instead of bothering our Interrogator, we mostly interacted with the other team. They seemed like fairly solid folks, for a bunch of fancy agent types that is, but they were obviously a little unhappy about our presence on the mission. While they tried to be polite, it was easy to tell that they thought we were a bunch of dim grunts and didn’t believe any of our stories about our previous missions. Orders were orders though: if Oak said that we were half the training team then they’d make sure we did half the work. We would’ve settled for a quarter, or maybe an eighth. Trainee records needed to be reviewed, locations needed to be chosen, resources needed to be requested, duties needed to be assigned, and lessons needed to be planned. As the only responsible members of the squad, Sarge and Doc handled most of this. Nubby was occasionally called in to lend a hand with the requisition paperwork, but Twitch and Cutter were left to their usual pastimes of paranoid booby trapping and obsessive sword drills Now, Sarge and Doc did their best to get us the cushiest jobs, but they were outnumbered and the other team wasn’t born yesterday. The crafty buggers weren’t about to let us stick them with all the crazies, criminals, and incompetents while we sat around drinking beers with a bunch of well trained PDF troopers and Arbites. In the end we all sat down to a negotiation and got the best deal we could. At least we managed not to get stuck with the damned psykers.

We touched down after a few weeks of idleness or frantic lesson planning, depending on whether you asked Twitch, Nubby, and Cutter or Sarge and Doc. The Interrogator directed both our squad and the other team to separate fliers, and said that the trainees and all our requested materiel would be waiting for us. As a sort of afterthought he reminded us that he’d be back in a few months for the final review, and then got back in the shuttle and left. It was reassuring to see that the other team was just as surprised and confused as us by his sudden departure. Everyone stood there and milled around until the shuttle took off and a pair of men walked over from the parked fliers. They asked if there was anything else we needed to do here and reminded us that the trainees were waiting. As we split off to our flier, Sarge promised to keep in touch with the other team, who according to our guide, would be operating out of a separate facility half a continent away. This came as a surprise since none of us had paid that much attention to the location briefing. We’d expected to all be in the same facility and able to work together. Honestly it was all a bit distressing: our boss had just ditched us and the people we’d planned on asking for help and advice would be nowhere near us. We were going to be pretty much alone with the trainees. Sarge and Doc began to really worry about the quality of their plans, and the rest of us felt just a little guilty about slacking off. Once we boarded the flier, our guide introduced himself as one of the Interrogator’s organizers. There were four of them at the facility: a doctor to watch the trainees’ health, a pair of tech-priests to keep the place running, and him. He was the facility administrator and would be getting everything ready for us. He’d handle all the paperwork, interface with the local authorities for us, and do his best to fulfill any supply requests we made. Twitch immediately asked for several tons of explosives, but Sarge interrupted the Administrator before he could finish asking what type.

In the morning we marched onto the central training field looking imposing and professional in our Evil Goon Uniforms. Well, trying to at least. Sarge looked fine, but Doc looked like he was about to throw up, Twitch had spent all night messing with the perimeter defenses, no one had told Cutter to clean his uniform so it had a fair bit of blood on it, and Nubby looked like Nubby. We weren’t sure whether it was a good or bad thing that the trainees didn’t look any better. Aside from the PDF, none of them were in matching uniforms; this offended our guardsmen sensibilities even before we even registered what the owners looked like. Their spastic collection of clothing included: priestly robes with hand sewn =][= symbols, poorly fitted bodygloves, ground-dragging trenchcoats, several sets of old and battered scribes’ robes, and to top it off, two of them had the poor taste to dress up like Cadet Commissars. They looked like idiots, they milled around on the field like idiots, and what they held in their hands proved they were idiots. Every, single, one of them was armed. Not just armed, but heavily armed. Someone must have opened up a giant crate of autoguns, handcannons, and swords then told everyone to take whatever looked cool. One of the criminals looked like he was carrying over a dozen pistols, an old scribe was struggling to hold up a heavy stubber ,and some idiot had let all of the priests have hand flamers. As we stared at the mob of trainees, we realized that no one here had heard of trigger discipline and, judging by the flickering pilot lights on those flamers, they hadn’t heard of safeties either. Twitch and Nubby tried to casually move behind Sarge and Cutter. Upon seeing such a shameful display, Sarge’s NCO instincts kicked in and he started bawling out the recruits. Unfortunately, before he could get up to speed there was a loud bang followed by a scream. The shouting had surprised one of the scribes and he’d shot himself in the foot.

Every day started with physical training, but instead of Sarge leading everyone through their morning jerks together, they had to be split up. Sarge took the few healthy recruits and put them through the usual routine, Twitch did his best with the moderately unfit, and Doc handled the ones that looked like they were going to have a heart attack. This division slowed everything down a lot, and the problem was compounded by the difficulty of getting everyone out onto the field at a reasonable time for PT, which is to say before dawn. In the Guard, we would have just flipped them out of bed and dragged them to the field, but some of those scribes looked like they were at death’s door and we wanted to get as many as possible through the program. As the days went on PT began to start later and later in the morning, and trainees started sneaking out of Sarge and Twitch’s classes. Aside from the PDF and a few scribes who seemed keen on their change of lifestyle, all the little buggers seemed bent on avoiding as much work as possible. If we didn’t keep an eye on them and send them back, then they would all wind up lazing around with Doc’s band of old fogies, asthmatics, and land-whales. Of course, avoiding hard work was a perfectly understandable goal, in fact most of us swore by it; but that sort of thinking was supposed to be reserved for proper guardsmen, not trainees. We spent a lot of time forcing the lazy bastards to work, and it didn’t endear us to them.

The scribes were generally terrified and exhausted, and obviously thought of us as a bunch of dumb grunts that were only there to torment them. Most of them seemed sure that this was either some bureaucratic screwup or a pointless formality before they got cushy desk jobs. As time went on they got more and more snippy, and none of us could think of any way to deal with the problem without falling back on the Guard method, i.e. beating the shit out of anyone who complained. Unfortunately, Sarge and Doc vetoed this solution on the grounds that the Inquisition probably considered these scribes to be more valuable than the average Guard-trainee, and would frown on any breakage. On top of this, the scum and priests were developing some worrying habits. The criminals were a relatively minor issue: they’d quickly figured out that we were usually too busy keeping the scribes in line to watch them, and were generally slacking off. They were staying out of the way, but their general contempt for us wasn’t doing our reputation any favors, and they persisted in antagonizing all the other recruits. At Doc’s suggestion, Nubby was put in charge of winning over his criminal brethren, and explaining the fine line between malingering and malicious lingering. Meanwhile, the priests were developing that special flavor of crazy (mad zealotry with a dash of pyromania) that we recognized from every damned Inquisitorial cleric we’d worked with. They were far too eager for a chance to use their flamers on a live target for our liking, and the relationship between them and their less-than-holy fellows was getting rather strained. It was obviously only a matter of time before one of the priests snapped and tried to “purify” someone, but we weren’t exactly sure how to deal with the problem before it happened. Our attempts to convince them to “stop being crazy” and detailed explanations of what would happen if they lit anyone on fire without our direct orders were just met with blank stares and mutters that sounded like “damned is the sympathizer”. Finally, and to our considerable surprise, the PDF were causing problems too. Most of them were solid troopers, and we’d have been happy to have them at our back any day of the week, but there were two damned Cadet Commissars mixed in with them, and they were NOT happy about taking orders from lowly guardsmen.

Eventually we got the fitness regimen and weapon drills running smoothly enough for us to devote some time to lectures and team exercises. Neither of these went well. Lectures don’t work well when the students don’t respect their teacher, or believe anything they say for that matter. When we talked about our previous missions they’d nitpick everything we said, analyzing every stupid decision we made, or pointing out all the things that couldn’t possibly have happened. Twitch got in a heated argument about whether a box full of Orks could possess a regiment of guardsmen, and Cutter decked one of the scribes after he kept pointing out that a Knarloc couldn’t survive in a spaceship. The priests would interrupt our stories with accusations of heresy, and those damned Commissars started riding our asses about not following standard procedures, especially the part where we didn’t purge the orky regiment. The only ones who didn’t cause problems were the scum and PDF troopers, but they seemed more interested in enjoying the stories than learning anything. Instead of serving as a demonstration of effective strategies, our evening storytimes turned into a sort of horrible, aggravating torture. The practical demonstrations went a bit better, but not much. While it was hard to argue about the truthfulness of a lecture on the planting and defusal of mines, the students tended to question why it would be their job to worry about that sort of thing when there’d be tech-priests around, or guardsmen for that matter. It was damned hard to get the little buggers to understand the importance of being a well rounded agent instead of a specialist, especially when they could point out that we were pretty damned specialized ourselves. They kept complaining that they were here to learn to be Inquisitorial investigators not guardsmen. Well, except the PDF troopers; they were fine with the idea of being guardsmen, bless their little olive-drab hearts.

The Admin had a nice arrangement with the local government. A few of his contacts kept him apprised of any missions that could be used for training, and if the instructors accepted, the local forces would stand back and let the trainees have a crack at the problem. This was a pretty agreeable arrangement for all parties involved. Now, we didn’t have any illusions about the quality of our trainees. They were utter shit, but this was the milkiest of milk runs. A feral ork raid had crawled out of a section of the swamps where they bred, sacked a few farms, and then ran back to their hovels with the loot. A fair sized counter-offensive was being formed by the locals to purge the nest, possibly with the help of the other team’s trainees, but we knew that was far out of our pathetic batch’s league. Instead, we had our eyes on one of the sacked farms, where a few straggling gretchin and squigs were still wandering around. Our trainees could fly in and have a nice simple game of Hunt The Gretchin, while we watched and made sure everyone stayed safe. It was just about the easiest mission you could ask for. Hell, a grocery run in a lower-hive hab block was more dangerous. These were feral gretchin and completely ordinary squigs: they were weak, stupid, cowardly, and armed with nothing but knives and pointy sticks. Our trainees would be armed with high-quality ranged weapons and they could just slowly sweep the area, gunning down the little buggers before they even got close. We put together a clean and simple plan of attack, made sure everyone understood their role, and even checked their weapons for them. There was no way that anything could go wrong. The op was practically foolproof: we would have trusted it to a bunch of kids with slingshots. It was amazing how hard they screwed it up.

Of the seven deaths, only three were directly caused by the greenskins. The first was the teamkiller who was gunned down by the gretchin with the stubber. Another pair of gretchin accounted for a cleric who had a little too much faith in the Emperor’s protection and too little sense to run when his gun ran dry. The final one was a scribe who dove for cover in a mulch pit which was already occupied by a half-dozen squigs. As for the others: good ol’ fashioned friendly fire took down the poor PDF trooper who killed the gretchin with the stubber, as well as the scribe whose death started the whole mess. The last two deaths were Commissar related. Most of the stubber-armed gretchin’s fire had been directed at squad five. The xenos’ poorly-aimed shots probably hadn’t come anywhere near actually hitting them, but the tracers flying overhead were enough to spook the two scribes in the squad. The two nerds ran for it, ignoring the orders and accusations of cowardice coming from the Cadet Commissar in charge of their squad. Enraged by this blatant cowardice and disregard for his authority, the Commissar drew his sidearm and placed three rounds through one of the scribes’ backs and drew a bead on the other. Before he could get the shot off though, a stray round, which neither the criminal or PDF trooper in his squad saw the source of, took him in the head. Someone stabbed his corpse a few times as well, but we put that down to a gretchin who must have somehow gotten hold of a ‘Type 7: Princeps’ Special’ switchblade. As far as injuries went, the worst one was a cleric who got badly burned when he used his flamer inside an enclosed space; an enclosed space that just so happened to be made of wood and filled with hay. Aside from that, two trainees were badly hit by stray shots, and a scribe broke both his legs when he tried to take cover in what proved to be a very deep and very dry well. There were a few dozen lesser injuries spread across the whole group, but those were the only really nasty ones. All in all we lost eleven men, nearly a quarter of our trainees, but that wasn’t the end of it.

None of us were strangers to the odd reaming; it’s just part of being a guardsman. In a way, people yelling at you is almost comforting, it’s a reminder that the world hasn’t changed and you’re still right where you always were: at the bottom of the pile getting shit on by everyone else while you hold their asses up. Any of us could stoic our way through a dressing-down without blinking. This one crossed the line though. It was one thing to be chewed out by your superiors, in private, for mistakes made by your and your men. It’s quite another to be berated by a group of your colleagues, in front of your subordinates and allies, for every damned screw-up since the Emperor decided that Horus would make a good warmaster. They even had the trainees chime in, whining about unfair treatment and poor lesson quality. That surviving Cadet Commissar was especially vocal, throwing out accusations of incompetence, cowardice, and heresy. Sarge got the worst of it, being the nominal superior and first member of the squad they could find. The rest of us watched as he went from embarrassed to ashamed, to angry, back to ashamed, then straight past angry, furious, and murderous to a sort of zen state. The man was beyond anger, beyond shame and beyond fear; he was cold and calculating and was taking note of every single thing they said. The lecture petered to an end when the psyker on the other team started looking nervous and pulling at her teammates, suggesting that they still had a mission to do and they really ought to be going, right now. As the other team got back into the gunships and flew away, Twitch asked if he should hit his detonators before they got out of range. Sarge just shook his head. We gathered everyone up and headed back to base. There was no talking during the flight or when we landed. No reprimands, no lectures, no punishments. Just directions to get some sleep. That night we reevaluated our lesson plans. This would not happen again.

The next few days were nothing but PT and weapon drill. There were no team exercises, no demonstrations, and no lectures. Nothing but sweat, yelling, and as much food and sleep as they could get. No one was exempt; it didn’t matter if you were old or weak or overweight. The only way to get a break was to be too sick or injured to stand, and the second Doc or the base surgeon okayed it, you were back on the field. None of us knew how to be or train proper Inquisitorial Agents, but we damn well knew how to soldier. We were going to make every one of them into a guardsman, or kill them trying. Once everyone began to adapt to the new regimen, we split them into squads and made the PDF troopers squad leaders. With both the Commissars gone the troopers really started to shine; every one of them proved to be a good leader and they were put in charge of keeping their squaddies in line and leading the drills. After all, they’d been through boot before and knew exactly how it should work. With most of the basic training being handled by the troopers, we started doing demos and lectures again. This time we didn’t even try to fit our lessons to the trainees’ roles. Instead, we just focused on teaching what every guardsman should know and didn’t put up with any arguments. It didn’t matter whether or not it was something that an Inquisitorial Agent needed to know; we said it was important and they were going to learn it, whether they wanted to or not.

Of course, everything wasn’t magically better. Some of the trainees couldn’t take the strain and others tried to desert. We didn’t waste any time on frail ones: they were handed over to the Administrator in the hope that he’d find a place for them somewhere else. The deserters were retrieved and fitted with good ol’ fashioned penal legion collars for a few days while we explained how preferable death was to angering the bloody Inquisition. After that was fully explained, we removed the collars and offered them another chance to run. There were no takers. Finally, there were also a few recruits who were just so abysmally bad with their weapons that we just gave up on them. There’s only so much you can do for someone who hits themselves more consistently than their target. Anyway, between the incompetents, the wounded, and the unfit, we lost another eight trainees before we started doing exercises again; but the ones who could hack it performed much better than they had before. We ran them through the usual Guard training drills, complete with pig guts and razorwire. Everyone hated it and even the PDF troopers complained about the stupidity of learning trench warfare as an Inquisitorial agent, but they still went through the exercises and that’s all we cared about. We kept making the drills worse and worse, with Twitch adding dozens of little surprises, Doc and the base cogboys transforming servitors into horrible monstrosities, and Nubby bellowing horribly retarded orders at them while they drilled. They bitched, they moaned, and they began to really hate our guts, but that hatred was the final ingredient needed to really bring them together. When we started the competitive exercises again they actually worked like teams. The scribes were still the weak link in most squads, but their squadmates and leaders began to actually work to support them instead of ignoring or mocking them. They were doing damned well, but we didn’t let them get overconfident: if a team was kicking too much ass, we’d enter the exercise ourselves and show them how it was really done.

Of course, there are a few first rules of being a guardsman and there was a little confusion about which one Sarge meant. It wasn’t: “The gun is always loaded”, “Stay the fuck in cover”, or “If at first you don't succeed, call in an air-strike” and it DEFINITELY wasn’t: ”It’s not stealing if they’re not from your unit and they didn’t really need it”. Nubby got a hard look from Sarge after that one. With a weary sigh, Sarge explained that the First Rule of Being a Guardsman in the Inquisition is: “If the job looks hard, make sure you actually have to do it first”. None of the trainees seemed impressed with this piece of wisdom; at least, not until the rest of us volunteered some reasons why these disappearances might not be their problem. Then, because subtlety is completely overrated, we also suggested a few things that could be done with their time in the city if this turned out to be someone else’s problem. That got them thinking, and as everyone boarded the fliers, we heard the squad leaders talking. They were already brainstorming who they could dump this mess on, and what to do with their R&R afterwards. Bless their weasley little hearts. There was no point messing around with subtle entrances, we just landed at the largest police barricade, blatantly flashed our credentials, and turned things over to the trainees. We watched, tears in our eyes, as they practically marched onto the scene, looking exactly like a bunch of guardsmen trying unsuccessfully to look like civvies. They were growing up so fast. The squads split up and stomped around the cordoned area with a complete lack of subtlety, loudly asking questions about whether there were any evil cults, daemons, or mutants around. If you knew where to look, you could see the other team’s cleverly disguised or concealed trainees staring with their mouths open. Within minutes, one of their instructors appeared out of the shadows, and asked us just what in the Emperor’s name we thought we were doing here.

The agent explained that his trainees at the scene had found signs of struggle and a few emblems that matched no known cult, Imperial or otherwise. He talked a lot about footprints, dropped items, and other stuff that none of us listened to. When he wound down Sarge thanked him and asked Doc’s squad to present their findings. The squad leader stepped forward and made his report in a nice clear parade ground voice. His team had gone to the local Arbites precinct and asked if they had seen any heretics, daemons, xenos, or mutants recently and if they knew any reason that groups of people would be disappearing. They had, of course, not seen anything, and had suggested looking for slavers or PDF recruiters as a cause of the disappearances. Sarge thanked the trainee, and turned the floor back over to the agent. Neither he nor his trainees seemed very impressed with the short report, but they didn’t make any comments and continued with their findings. The other team’s trainees had tracked down a few witnesses and examined their minds and blah, blah, blah, no psychic activity, but definite signs of cults, blah, blah. Once he was done, Sarge’s team reported that none of the local temples had seen any xenos, daemons, or mutants, but the Church of the Divine Man and His Living Saints was pretty emphatic about the Third Convocation of the Emperor’s Blessing being a bunch of heretics. They had also suggested that the disappearances were a sign of imminent rapture, or that the Mechanicus was making an extra large batch of servitors. By then, the agent was getting a little frustrated and had obviously noticed how little attention most of our trainees paid to his teams’ findings, though we were at least making sure none of them fell asleep. One of his trainees gave an exceedingly boring report about surveillance records and people wearing matching robes, which is, of course, a classic sign of cultists. Some of our trainees snickered at this.

All of us were accused of horrible incompetence, astounding laziness, and quite a few other things. We bore these accusations like the stoic guardsmen we were, but some of the trainees felt the need to respond by accusing the agent and his trainees of ridiculous paranoia. Sarge quieted them down and reminded them that paranoia wasn’t always a bad thing and pointed out how often Twitch’s had saved our lives. Being compared to Twitch did nothing to improve the agent’s mood and he stormed out with his trainees in tow. As he left, Doc ran out after him and apologised for our behavior and lack of useful findings. This might have mollified the agent, but Doc followed it with an assurance that everything would be sorted out when we got our appointment with the Administratum. Once they were gone, everyone broke into laughter. Our trainees weren’t stupid and they’d realized that we were playing with a stacked deck long ago. It had become a game: the stupider they thought we were and the more time they spent chasing imaginary cultists, the funnier it would be when we proved them wrong. We went to sleep proud of our trainees; they were adopting the proper cynical guard outlook surprisingly fast. In the morning, we all went down to the Administratum for the meeting. Most of the trainees were left outside, but Cutter’s squad went in and we sat and watched as they went through the questions. The head scribe assured the squad that there were no heretics, daemons, or xenos around and only a small number of minor mutants according to the last census. As far as the disappearances went, they didn’t know anything about slavers, and neither the PDF nor Mechanicus had filed for a recruitment sweep. However, a Rogue Trader with a permit to press-gang had been cleared to operate in that area, and now that the scribe looked at it, there’d been a bit of bureaucratic mix-up. Apparently, a key piece of paperwork had been misfiled during press-ganging application process, and the local authorities hadn’t been properly informed.

The other team didn’t believe us at first. Hell, we wouldn’t have believed us: it all looked too cut and dried, but there was more than enough proof. We had the official documents and permits, the logs from the shuttle that’d taken the civies away to their new and exciting lives aboard the Trader’s vessel, the note from the head scribe explaining the accident, and the press-ganger himself beerily waving and confirming that it was all him. There were no cults, no secret societies, and no complex cover-ups; well, at least there weren’t any involved in the disappearances. It was all just bureaucratic mix-up, a simple mistake. Just. Like. We. Said. It. Was. It was glorious watching their faces as it sank in, seeing them go from disbelief to anger to utter disgust. We didn’t gloat too much; there’s such a thing as winning gracefully, but some of the inebriated trainees were a little less restrained. They might have made some very unpleasant enemies if the party’s designated thinkers hadn’t hauled them away in time. Once everything had sunk in and we considered the score suitably evened, we invited the other team to stay and party with us, but they made lame excuses about needing to go see to their own trainees. As they left, their leader, the suave agent fellow, swore that they had actually found a cult, even if it wasn’t linked to the disappearances. Sarge told them to have fun and asked them to give us a call if they needed some fire support when they located the heretics or whatever: now that our point was made, we were done pretending to be even slightly interested in investigations. Our guests dealt with, we got down to the very serious business of teaching our trainees how to hold a proper victory celebration. Super-professional Inquisitorial educators, that’s us.

While we’d been doing our final polishing, the second team had been chasing the cultists they had spotted during the mission. Despite the shit we had given them about paranoia, they were a veteran Inquisitorial team, and if they still thought there was a real cult around here there probably was. We weren’t going to go look for it ourselves of course, we probably wouldn’t be very helpful and they certainly didn’t want us there, but the Admin had kept us updated on their progress. The second team rebased, infiltrated, called in some local support, rebased again, and so on. It was interesting to watch them bouncing around the planet hot on the trail of something, and we made sure our recruits saw their progress: it was probably educational. Whatever they were chasing was serious: a few of their trainees died and someone or something messed up their psyker chick real bad. That didn’t stop them though, and eventually they found what appeared to be the cult’s primary evil lair. We’d received a few little summaries about what they were dealing with. The cult was some sort of end of the world thing: worshiping ancient death gods, prophesizing their return, and other such silliness. As far as practical details went: everyone in the cult appeared to be suicidally devoted to it, and their base showed signs of some sort of weird archeo or xeno tech, but at least their doctrine was decidedly anti-daemon and psyker. While that last part was unquestionably good news, we found it a little unusual as well, since all the cultists we’d encountered were all about the warp-stuff. Also, something had mentally mangled the psyker chick, which didn’t track well with their supposed lack of warpy powers. The cultists’ base didn’t look too huge or well armed, but it was a very weird cult so the other team wanted the purge done by someone more experienced with spooky stuff than the locals. Ideally they’d put out a call for reinforcements from Oak or some other Inquisitor, and then sit tight and observe the cult while waiting for backup to arrive. Unfortunately, something or other had lead them to believe that time was critical, so they were going to have to settle for us guardsmen and our dubiously-educated trainees.

So no shit there we were, flying towards a cultist base that had just been cratered by a UFO, listening to the other team advance and hoping against hope that this wasn’t about to turn into a rescue mission. We made it almost all the way there before the screaming started. A crude plan was formed as we landed. The other team had activated their locator-beacon and we were going to head right for it. Twitch would take a squad and secure the perimeter and fliers, Cutter would be on point with another squad, Doc’s squad would cover our rear, and Sarge would lead the rest of the squads from the middle with Nubby acting as aide. Nubby complained about the arrangement and was reminded that, after the whole ship-purchasing fiasco, he was banned from command until the Emperor stepped down from his throne and told Sarge otherwise. The frequencies the other team had been using were a complete mess, filled with a few screams and lots of static. Something in here was screwing with comm signals, and their fancy low profile models weren’t punching through well. Ours were doing a bit better, but only the vox-casters were getting through clearly. One of the recruits with a caster was put in charge of cycling through their frequencies and telling everyone to fall back to our positions. The cult’s base was a sort of giant low bunker. It had one large entrance, a few side doors which we left to Twitch, and a huge-ass hole in the roof that was probably not in the original design. The hole was slightly on fire and appeared to be glowing green, so we decided to go in through the front door. There was a trainee from the other team lying in a few pieces just outside the main entrance and the first cultist we saw was in similar shape. The second, third, and fourth cultists we ran into were all alive though. They were also nuttier than squirrel shit and armed with an automatic shotguns.

The recruits on our flanks began to report possible enemy contact, usually flashes of movement or odd sounds on their comms. During a brief firefight with a nest of cultists holed up in some sort of storage room one of our men dodged into a closet and didn’t come back out; he was dead by the time his squadmates noticed his absence and went to check on him. Two more trainees died this way, and a pair of recruits chased a fleeing enemy around a corner, only to find the cultist eviscerated and still twitching. They swore something had flashed away into a dark corner as they approached, but didn’t find anything when they checked. Everyone was getting jumpy, and a trigger happy recruit nearly shot the first friendly we ran into. A few surviving trainees from the other team, usually in groups of two or three, followed our vox casters’ signal and made contact as we advanced. For the most part they were in good condition, if disorganized. Their command structure had fallen apart when their comms went down, and they’d been wandering around killing cultists until we’d shown up. Sarge put them on the flanks to act as scouts since they were stealthier than our boys, not to mention a little more expendable. None of the rescued trainees had any useful info for us until we found a solo one with a nasty face wound. She was panicking hard and waving a power sword around in the middle of a brightly lit room, and it took both a tranq and a stimm from Doc to get her talking properly. Most of what the terrified trainee had to say was gibberish, but she was fairly insistent about glowing eyes watching from the shadows and blades coming through the walls. The panicked trainee’s info fit with what we’d observed, and some of our former scribes said they recalled reports of daemons and daemonhosts phasing through solid objects or emerging from shadows. Most of us found this explanation for the attacks to be extremely worrying, but Nubby chose to look on the bright side, and began gloating about how he was always right and how much money everyone owed him. Sarge adjusted his standing orders to include staying away from walls and unlit areas, and then told Nubby to shut up and do something useful, such as figuring out a way to trap or kill whatever was stalking us.

Not counting the handful we’d recovered on our way, the second team was down to just a dozen men and women led by the agent and cogboy instructors. Only the combat-focused trainees were left: there were a few former arbites, a pair of psykers, a handful of their more well-armed generic agent types, and that damned cadet commissar we’d “transferred” to them. They looked absolutely exhausted, and most of them were wounded to some degree, but they all perked up as we entered the room. Except for the commissar that is, he just glared at us. The boss-agent gave us a quick rundown as we got our boys into position alongside his trainees. Apparently, when the UFO had cratered, his team had gone in fast and hard. A few of them stuck together to check out what had landed, but most had split off solo or in small groups to cover more ground or something stupid like that. They’d been kicking ass right up until they’d reached this room and poked their noses into the crater. The agent explained that the second one of his trainees had entered the crash site, everyone’s comms had gone down, the solo trainees started getting picked off, and his main force had been attacked by the ship’s defenders. Sarge was in the middle of asking what he meant by “ship”, when one of the men watching the crater shouted a warning. Black and green metallic critters began boiling out of the crater-hole and everyone started shooting. The attackers were small, quick, and there was a whole lot of them. If it weren’t for the choke point between the room and the crater, we would’ve been in serious trouble: those things would’ve been a nightmare to face in an unrestricted area or close quarters. As it was, we were able to hold the tide of metallic attackers back with volleys of fire and a few grenades; at least until something covered with claws came out of the damned floor and shredded two recruits.

Sarge and Nubby took stock of the situation while Cutter ignored both Doc and the cogboy’s protests and wildly chopped at the remains of the spider-worm. A few trainees from both groups had died during the attack, mostly to the spider-worm, but a few of the smaller metal bugs had gotten through and done some unpleasant things before they were smashed. Ammo was getting low and we had a fair number of wounded, including Cutter, who finally collapsed after reducing what the cogboy called a “technological marvel” to a pile of scrap metal. A quick council of war was held and the other team finished filling us in. They believed that the hostiles were a type of xenos called Necrons, and that the thing in the crater was one of their ships. Despite our general lack of proper Inquisitorial education, the name rang a faint bell; something about techno-magical powers, looking like skeletons, and refusing to die. That didn’t seem quite right to us, since none of the enemies we’d fought had looked anything like skeletons and the spider-worm seemed pretty damned dead now that Cutter was finished with it, but the agent and cogboy seemed fairly certain, so we just went with it. Anyway, the ship in the crater was in surprisingly good condition, especially considering how it had arrived, which excited our better-educated counterparts to no end. They said it was both an amazing opportunity for Inquisitional research and a dire threat to the planet. Apparently, Necrons were famous for their use of teleportation technology, which was rumored to have the range and power to bring in an entire army of ground-troops from across the galaxy. Obtaining working samples of said tech for study was absurdly difficult, to say the least. So the agent and the cogboy were all excited about a chance to loot the ship, but we were a little more concerned about the whole “providing a gateway for an invading xenos army” aspect of things. Our well-honed survival instincts were telling us to call the locals and have them bomb the entire temple until the ship was either blown to pieces or buried under a few thousand tons of rubble, and then bomb it some more, just to be sure. The other team objected to this perfectly reasonable solution on the grounds that the Inquisition would consider an INTACT sample of Necron teleportation tech to be far more valuable than a mere planet. Unfortunately, they were able to back that incredibly stupid argument up with a less-stupid one about how the Necrons might start teleporting in before the locals got their shit together. Lacking any reasonable counter-arguments to that, we reluctantly agreed to head in and see if we couldn’t deactivate the ship’s teleporter-thingy. Twitch was commed, and we started getting ready for one hell of a breaching operation.

Bertha was obviously intended for use by someone far stronger than a normal human, and everyone held their breath as Twitch wobbled under the bomb’s weight. While he fiddled with the timer and magnetic clamps, the rest of us pondered how to get it onto the ship without blowing ourselves up. The other team had marked a line across the crater entrance and according to them anyone crossing it would trigger another scarab attack. They’d done a little testing and it seemed that it was only people that set them off; rocks, las bolts, bullets, and even grenades were fine so long they didn't detonate against the ship. Since we weren’t keen on fighting scarabs while carrying an oversized melta-bomb, this all meant that we needed to figure out a way to get Bertha onto the ship’s hull without anyone entering the crater. Since the typical ranged melta-bomb deployment method of just throwing the thing as hard as possible wasn’t an option, the agent suggested that the last two surviving psykers could levitate the bomb across the gap. Sarge vetoed this on the grounds that it was an incredibly stupid idea, and was thankfully able to supply a far more reasonable solution. Nubby and a few recruits were sent to collect pipes and scrap metal, while Sarge regaled everyone with the tale of how we’d dealt with a similar problem involving a tentacle daemon. By the time Twitch had the bomb ready, a long, ugly, and surprisingly-sturdy pole had been constructed, and a fulcrum was set up on the edge of the line. Bertha was attached to the pole with her clamps facing forward, and with the help of several trainees, we slowly pushed the rod along the fulcrum. It was touch and go in a few spots, especially when a seam got stuck on the brace and nearly tipped it over, but we got it across and clamped to the hull without triggering an attack or blowing ourselves to little pieces. Once the breaching charge was in place, our trainees set up their heavy weapons, we finalized our attack plans, and everyone shielded their eyes as Twitch hit the detonator. Bertha was a melta-bomb, so “her” detonation wasn’t the usual flash, bang, and shockwave of high explosives. Instead, there was a sort of hissing-crackling sound along with intense heat, blinding light, and a whole lot of smoke, which began to roil as scarabs swarmed through it. We responded by opening fire with our heavy weapons, and just holding the triggers down until the smoke cleared and the scarabs stopped coming.

Two more Necrons stepped out of the far door along with a swarm of scarabs. They just stood there and traded fire with us like the others had, except with the scarabs repairing them almost as fast as we did damage. It was damned disconcerting watching their wounds sort of flow closed and some of the recruits began to panic fire. Without the heavy weapons Twitch’s squad had brought down it would have been bad; it took a pair of our single-shot krak missiles to kill them. As soon as the last two hostiles were dead Sarge ordered another advance, which ground to a halt a mere ten meters into the next room, when another pair Necrons entered through the far door and opened fire. The room was long and thin, with good cover along the sides, but no safe way to move forward. Our Guard instincts told us to dig in and trade fire from our superior cover, but the cogboy claimed he could sense more Necros teleporting in somewhere ahead of us, which meant that attrition tactics might not work in the long term. The question was whether we were killing them faster than their reinforcements were arriving, and even if we were outpacing them, whether we’d reach the teleporter before we ran out of men or ammo. While Sarge and the other team’s were arguing over whether to risk more aggressive tactics or not, Nubby was back at the entrance to the room, sitting in the best piece of cover available. His attention was evenly split between taking pot-shots at the Necrons blocking forward progress, and visually inspecting the pair of dead xenos near him for anything worth pocketing. The little trooper nearly shit himself when both the Necons began to slowly pull themselves together and climb to their feet. Operating in a blind panic, Nubby sprayed one Necron with las-fire, kicked the other between the legs hard enough to knock it across the room, and ran forward screaming like a little girl. Only sheer luck kept him from getting hit as he ran through everyone’s line of fire. Sarge looked back when he heard Nubby’s screams and swore. Back in the recently vacated room more of the Necrons were reanimating.

The grenade barrages before each push were our best weapon against the Necrons, since that necroderpis stuff they were made of just shrugged off most las and stubber fire. The hostiles were reinforcing in pairs with a few bugs repairing them, each barrage would handle the closest pair and most of our fire would focus on softening up the next two before the process repeated. Sarge kept everyone organized and moving, Twitch took potshots with his remaining krak missiles whenever he had a chance, and Nubby dedicated himself to making sure any downed Necrons nearby stayed that way. The boys were starting to run out of grenades as we reached the end of the long room, but when the door opened to let a pair of hostiles though, we could see a big glowy platform thing on the far side. The platform looked sufficiently teleporter-like to us, and all we really needed was line of sight, so Sarge called a halt. Our trainees set up their heavy stubbers, we readied our few remaining krak launchers, and when the door opened again, we sighted all our weapons on the platform while a final barrage of grenades handled the advancing Necrons. As the door slammed back shut, we all held our breath, focused on holding our aim steady, and hoped like hell that we’d be able to get a clean shot on the teleporter the next time it opened. When the door finally slid back open, we all fired our launchers. Sarge’s shot went high, sailing over the platform and blowing apart a section of wall. Nubby’s shot was wasted on one of the advancing Necrons, but that cleared a path for Twitch and the stubbers. Our last krak missile and a stream of AP rounds sailed through the door as it slammed closed again, and while we didn’t see them impact the teleporter, we sure as hell felt it. There was a loud crackling bang, the entire ship shook, and then things got weird. First everything went all tingly and green colored, next Nubby spotted some of the Necron corpses sort of fading, then the walls went all wobbly, and finally there was an almighty *CLANG* and everything went back to normal.

So no shit, there we were, standing on the bridge of an alien vessel, staring slack-jawed at a pair of Chaos Space Marines, both of whom seemed just as surprised as we were to find anyone else here. Everyone held very, very still and waited for someone to make the first move. We had them heavily outnumbered and they had us heavily outclassed. If this turned into a fight, it was going to be a bloodbath. The staring contest stretched a little longer, and our nerve began to crack. Sarge carefully stepped forward and, nonchalantly as possible, asked the marines if we could help them with anything. This just got more blank stares and an awkward cough from Nubby, until a third figure entered the room. The two marines stepped aside to reveal what was obviously a Heretek, who, after a fit of buzzing and giggling, told us that yes we could indeed help them. Now, most any tech-priest looks sinister, but the difference between an ugly cogboy and a full blown heretek is damned noticeable. Aside from all the metal tentacles, eerie lights, dripping thingies, and pointy bits, this one practically radiated insanity. The second you saw him it was obvious that this guy wasn’t just fucking nuts; he was also bolts, screws, rivets, and those metal clampy dealies you use on the prefab field buildings. In a voice that seemed to be stuck looping between five different settings, and in between bouts of hysterical giggling, the Heretek demanded “the device”. No real clarification was needed: he wasn’t just staring at the cube on the pedestal, his eyes had actually extended out of his head on little mechadendrites. Sarge, mind racing, stalled for time by asking the crazy metal man what the cube was and why we should hand it over. This triggered an exasperated groan from both marines as the Heretek launched into a rambling monologue.

Eventually Nubby stomped back to the rather distracted Sarge and Twitch and reported success. The Heretek had agreed to let us live in exchange for the box and he’d even thrown in the Necron ship on account of it being a “boring thing that attracts even boringer things”. That was about the best deal we could expect to get and Nubby had bought just enough time to finish the preparations, so Sarge accepted and stepped away from the pedestal, poker face firmly in place. In a loud, clear voice that just happened to be directed towards the vox unit, Sarge announced that we’d be withdrawing to the room behind us. We’d be back there sitting still, while the Heretek and two chaos marines with bolters went up to their shuttle, the one on the roof, that would take them to their ship, the one that was in orbit. We would stay down here and do absolutely nothing to SABOTAGE THEIR SHUTTLE or INTERCEPT THEIR SHIP. Sarge’s acting skills may have left something to be desired, but the Heretek didn’t seem to notice and the marines didn’t seem to care. He also somehow managed to fool the commissar since the idiot accused us all of heresy and might have caused serious trouble if Nubby hadn’t come up behind him and kicked him very firmly between the legs. The second kick was probably uncalled for, and the third definitely was, but no one said anything: we were all busy slowly backing out of the room while watching the marines. Our retreat had taken us almost all the way to the door when the Heretek told us to stop. Hearts racing, we all froze and watched as his mechadendrites shot out and ripped the cleverly concealed explosives off the box and pedestal. The crazy cogboy made a comment about not needing any more explosives, thanked us for the thought, and tossed the detpacks to Twitch, who nearly fumbled them in his surprise. We all kept backing up and tried not to let our disappointment show. This was apparently not a problem we could solve with detpacks. At least not immediately.

While Doc was working on the shuttle problem, Sarge was trying to have a vox conversation while running. He’d managed to contact the Rogue Trader who’d helped us set up the whole kidnapping thing, but he was running into problems. The Trader had maneuvered his ship to our general side of the planet, but while he’d have been happy to lend us some orbital fire-support in exchange for a bit of Inquisitorial good-will, getting in a fight with another warp-ship was an entirely different matter. To put it bluntly, he wasn’t going to risk his ship, even on an ambush, for a mere bunch of Inquisitorial henchmen. He needed some sort of motivation. Sarge didn’t have time, or breath, to spare arguing with the Trader. We needed the man’s help: there were no other ships close enough, or well-armed enough, to stop the Heretek’s vessel, so Sarge cut a deal. It wasn’t a smart deal, in fact there was a very real chance that Inquisition would have him killed for even considering making it, but it was the only way he could see out of the current situation. Sarge offered the only really valuable thing he had: one slightly used Necron ship. You better believe that caught the Trader’s attention. Sarge gave what evidence he could that the ship was actually there and greed did the rest. The Trader said he’d handle whatever vessel the Heretek was using or damn well die trying; the prize was worth it. That done with, we laid on the speed. It was a clear run up through the bunker, since all the cultists were either dead or fleeing, and we all ran flat out. There was no real plan, it was just going to be a matter of getting to the roof and hitting them in the rear while Doc held their attention. No finesse, no trickery, just the biggest sucker punch we could manage. We either made amazing time or the Heretek had taken a while getting the box off the pedestal, because we got there right as Doc’s ambush hit them. Let me tell you, that was really something to see. Hell, we were so busy watching that we almost forgot to fire our weapons.

Cutter was being kept on his feet by a cocktail of drugs that would probably kill him the moment they ran out; his time was measured in seconds. Seconds were all he needed though. He didn’t bother with dodging, parrying, or any sissy stuff like that: all he cared about was doing as much damage as possible. Mechadendrites ripped off chunks of flesh, a sparking weapon nailed him in the legs, and some sort of injector just barely missed his heart, but Cutter ignored these trivialities. He lodged his faithful chainsword firmly in the Heretek’s chest and wrenched it upwards with berserk strength. The deranged cogboy screamed and flailed as he was bisected, writhing so violently that pieces started flying off, one of which landed within Nubby’s reach and was promptly pocketed. As the chain-blade reached the base of the Heretek’s neck, his screaming finally coalesced into one word repeated in a dozen voices: “Burn”. There was a second of unnatural silence, followed by a rising humming sound, and then the Heretek exploded into a fireball that engulfed both him and his attacker. Cutter laughed as he burned. All in all, there were worse ways to go.

We sat in that ship for what felt like days. The hole we’d melted in the hull was clogged with debris, so there was nothing to do but wait and hope someone came looking for us. There were fifteen of us all together: us four guardsmen, the wounded agent we’d left in the ship, eight of our trainees, and two more from the other team. As usual, Sarge took command of the whole show and got everyone up and moving. Doc was hauled to his feet and told that living wounded took priority over dead heroes. Sarge promised that he’d be allowed to sit around feeling guilty about Cutter and all the trainees he’d drugged once we’d been rescued. Twitch and Nubby had already started collecting what food and water had been in people's packs, so they were put in charge of rationing after a stern reminder that everyone got a portion, not just us and the trainees they liked. Supply-wise we had a few weapons, a little bit of food and water, a medkit, and one Necron box thing that Nubby had snagged. Not much useful stuff, but at least the creepy-ass green glow the ship emitted meant we weren’t going to run out of light. Our time down there wasn’t as bad as you’d think. Everyone was so tired that we slept through most of it, and our short periods of wakefulness were occupied with the usual Guard pastimes of poker, pointless tasks thought up by your Sergeant to keep you out of trouble, and idle vandalism. The most exciting moment of the whole experience was when Nubby and Twitch emptied the thermite out of a few anti-armor rounds, and used it to write their names on a few of the bulkheads. Long before food and water became a problem, our boredom was interrupted by a titanic groaning sound and some disconcerting fluctuations in the ship’s gravity. We all wandered down to the debris-clogged hole we’d entered through, and watched as the rock and rebar began to shift, and then float away. As the last of the debris rose away from the opening, there was a sudden lurch, and the entire crater-wall began sliding past the breach. A few seconds later we were nearly blinded as the Necron ship rose into full sunlight. The ship’s ascent slowed to a stop as it reached the top of the crater, revealing a blasted hellscape where the cult’s facility had been. All things considered, we thought it looked absolutely beautiful, and stood there basking in the sunlight and thanking the Emperor for our rescue, until a broad-shouldered man in a tricorn hat and a gaudy coat climbed up onto the edge of the hole and told us to get the hell off his ship. Apparently, he was a busy man with things to do and xeno-tech experts to see.

It took a lot of explaining, mostly by Sarge and the agent. The whole story was gone through, from start to finish, sparing no detail. The Interrogator didn’t judge or lecture, he simply made sure he had all the facts straight then put them all into a neat report. In the end he decided this was above his paygrade, took our recruits, and sent us all back to Oak with the little Necron box. The agent and his psyker companion were told to stay on the planet until they’d fully recovered from their injuries. The trip home was about as normal as warp travel gets. Nothing particularly interesting happened, unless you count Twitch nearly killing a naval rating who was cleaning the air ducts. Or Doc getting accused of stealing from the ship’s medbay while observing the head Medicae’s surgical procedures. Or Sarge catching Nubby selling several crates of medical narcotics that he’d “found somewhere” to the crew. Anyway, we survived the trip, and since the Interrogator’s report had been sent ahead of us, an escort was waiting for us when we docked with Oak’s ship. Our entire group was marched to the Inquisitor’s office and our story was gone over yet again. To our surprise Oak was not angry, not even when we mentioned giving the Rogue Trader the Necron ship. He shrugged that off as something to be dealt with later, if the Necrons didn’t deal with it themselves, and focused his attention on the little box Nubby had retrieved instead. It seemed inordinately important to him: he asked us a lot of questions about what the Heretek had said about it and was a little annoyed when we couldn’t give him anything besides insane babble. In the end he took the box, told us we all did exceptionally well, and instructed us not to talk to anyone about it, even inside the Inquisition, without his direct permission. Then we went and got drunk again.