"There are few things more alien in this universe than the mind of a traitor - Adeptus Logis Arquebius"
The grey-tinged rain beat against the Glas-tech windows in steady sheets, almost drowning out the tuneless wails of the motley band of musicians the establishment laughingly referred to as "The Entertainment". A local woman had clambered onstage in a drunken haze, and proceeded to add her own vocal talents to the meagre accomplishments of the three youths who seemed to be playing entirely seperate pieces. Zan Kalleq scowled as the vox-amplifier picked up the signal from the mistuned electrophone, resulting in a squealing peal of feedback that seemed to cut beyond his hearing and instead register as a grinding in the back of his skull. Sensing that they had outstayed their welcome, the musicians hastily bade their farewells, and scurried out to a back room, their disappearance met with a few sparse, laconic handclaps and a murmur of discontent. Why in the name of Terra had Halorum requested to meet on this backwater rock anyhow, considering all the places open to him? Kalleq sighed and went to finish his synthliq, stopping inches from his lips when he saw the bloated bug nestled in the dregs of his glass, and tossed it dejectedly to the floor. Burying his face in his hands, he cursed the day he had ever agreed with Kuarl Halorum to take this job, easy as it had sounded on the vidlog screen - right now all he wanted was a warm bed, a hot meal and preferably a member of the opposite sex to keep him company. A flicker of a smile played over his lips as he imagined these luxuries, and he sank back into his chair, awaiting the arrival of his companion.
It had been almost three weeks now since Salim DeLocke and his sister Jenna had run away from their home to join their new family. Born into luxury, wanting for nothing, they had been dulled by the constant lack of adventure and spontaniety by the restrictions advocated by their father, and after 18 years of stifling oppression, Salim could take no more. He always had dreams of becoming a mercenary, a pirate, a rogue trader - as a child he had threatened the serving girls with his ThermoPlas cutlass, only a toy but wielded with such enthusiasm that he had put two in the medical quarters before his father had forbidden him access to such playthings. And Jenna... well, Jenna had always been a dreamer. Romantic ideals of finding a handsome and wealthy trader to sweep her off her feet had always been in her dreams throughout her childhood and now as she entered adulthood, they seemed to haunt her every waking moment too. Of course, her pragmatist mother had told her not to be so silly, that such things only ever happen in stories for little children, not in the lives of real women - and besides, she was to be engaged Master Lukas Hass, youngest of the once resplendent Hass dynasty. Nowadays they had a reputation for gambling, fraud and extremely shady business deals... and Lukas was the worst of the family: short tempered, scarred from countless drunken brawls and uglier than a marsh-grox in a slaughterhouse.
So... now they were here, in the pouring rain, dressed in the stinking layers that had served as clothes for the last nineteen days, emaciated from lack of food, rusty stains on their outfits showing where Salim had managed to catch a wild nandabite for a few mouthfuls of meat charred over barely glowing embers - and hoping that their adventure would have a happy ending after all. They had heard hearsay from the more loose-lipped servants of a band of adventurers wandering in the wilderness of Dolar Tertius and decided to stake everything on a new life - but surely they couldn't keep going for much longer.
Salim cocked his ear and gestured his sister to be silent... that couldn't be...? He broke into a run, dragging Jenna behind him as he ploughed through the vegetation, hope spurring on new reserves of energy. Breathless, they staggered out into a fire-lit clearing, shielded from the deluge by wide branches lashed together overhead, where a group of about 14 figures, clad only in diaphonous white robes stood, hands linked, and singing clearly into the night air. A young woman with glittering purple eyes turned to Salim, and offered a smile that he was powerless to avoid returning. Finally... they had arrived.
Dripping wet, but with a broad grin on his doughy features, Halorum took his seat opposite Kalleq and ordered a synthliq. "Zan old man! You look terrible!" the fat man exclaimed with a wink, "What have you been doing to yourself?". Kalleq sighed wearily, but couldn't keep the corners of his mouth turning up in a wry smile. "It's good to see you again - I thought you weren't going to turn up at all, but obviously the lure of those Imperials won over your cowardice?" Halorum took mock umbrage at this slight - it was an old routine between friends, the truth being that they'd worked together for so long, and known each other longer, that it was impossible to imagine it being any different. They get a job, they finish the job, they enjoy the spoils... it had been that way for nigh on ten standard years now, and didn't show any signs of stopping anytime soon.
"So, what's the story, mother?" Halorum cooed, before bursting into raucous laughter. Kalleq reached into an inner pocket of his battered flight jacket, a souvinier of a past jobs long ago, and pulled out a handheld archive viewer and a slim chip. "This is our story. If we can pull this one off, we won't need to lift a finger for months... maybe even years." he slotted the chip into the device and placed it in the table beween him and his companion. A blank panel on the viewer jumped into life, first displaying the ComTel company logo, then the crest of the family DeLocke. Halorum let out a small gasp of breath at the sight of the coat of arms, and Kalleq could see he was impressed, despite having already been given a cursory brief on this commission. An image swam into view, first an unclear, ghostly image, then as the camera focused on it, the features became distinct - a woman, pale, eyes red from crying by the looks of it, good features, if a little skinny. Halorum adjusted the speaker control to little more than a whisper above the bustle of the bar, and both men leaned in to listen. "He-hello? Is this recording? Very well... gentlemen? I assume you already know why you have this message, I spoke to a mutual friend who recommended you highly..." Halorum nudged Kalleq's arm and grinned at this endorsement, Kalleq hissing his displeasure at the interruption. "...done this type of work before, but this time we need your services most urgently. You already know that you are to find a missing person - in actual fact, this isn't quite true. Both our children have... have..." At this point the pale woman's facade of calm broke down and she wept openly. "...please, please find them... find our babies and you can name your price... please..." The screen froze and faded to dull grey.
"So... two kiddies ready to be picked up and taken home, eh? Sounds just like my kind of deal, especially if you hear the words 'Name your price' as well!" Halorum fidgeted in his seat excitedly. "You see, if it's as easy as I think it's gonna be, we'll be sitting back and sipping imported Redfang this time next week!"
The fat man leant forward conspiratorially and spoke in hushed tones. "I had a word with some of my... contacts... in the shipping lanes. Seems a small vessel, a survey craft apparently, was tracked to the surface of Dolar Tertius - about 5 klicks north of here. And I'll give you three guesses where the flight path originated?" Kalleq shook his head, although he was sure what Halorum was about to say. "Caelentor Prime! Right outside the DeLocke's door! If my sources are correct, they must have just sneaked out, made their way to the Light hangar just outside the grounds, and come here, though the Emperor alone knows what they'd want on this mudball!" Kalleq took all this in, then a puzzled look crept over his face. "So why wasn't a search made on the surface for the craft? If these DeLockes are so important, then surely someone would have acted on all this information?" Halorum's face was set in a smug grin as he shook his head. "Not so, old man, not so! As you may have noticed - it's the rainy season," he swept a thick hand at the buffetted viewports and let out a bark of laughter "And finding a shuttle that may or may not have taken these kids off-planet, in these conditions, to a low-ranking family who hardly govern a square klick on a planet the other side of the sector is not high on the agenda for these guys. I heard they have some other problems to deal with. Nasty problems, if you get what I mean" Halorum tapped the side of his nose and chuckled. "So, Zan my man, this means that we have this all to ourselves - and remember, "Name your price". It doesn't get much better than this!"
Since being inducted into the group, Salim and Jenna had been made to feel like they were family. Their bellies filled with exotic meats, procured from some unknown source, and given wine that made their heads spin. They were led back to a huge artifice made entirely of pure white marble, breathtakingly beautiful, and given beds, softer than any they'd ever experienced before. The following days passed as if a dream, bathing in perfumed unguents, eating and drinking anything they desired, sleeping out the remnants of their time in the the wilderness. But still, there were times when they were almost ignored, shut in their quarters while the rest of their new friends retired into rooms unseen. After several days of being alternately pampered and abandoned, Salim confronted the girl with the purple eyes and demanded to know what was being done behind their backs. Instead of a reply, the girl pushed his back to a wall and gently pressed her lips to his, before breaking off and turning away with a subtle smile. Dazed, yet aroused, Salim followed her as she tiptoed delicately through an ornate doorway.
Zan had been cruising in the shuttlecab for almost two standard hours now, and as far as he could see, they weren't getting anywhere. The absense of landmarks, natural or artificial made navigating through the sparse wilderness a thankless job. Praise the Emperor for small mercies, he thought - at least there was a semblance of a track beaten down by the migrations of whatever beasts lived in this place, and at least the shuttlecab was warm. But how long before they were forced to make their way on foot? He shivered and squinted through the tempered plaspex of the drivescreen as if to make out something in the endless gloom stretching out in front of them.
Halorum was peering intently at a small tracking device, not standard issue to the public but he had managed to get hold of one via one of his many contacts. If a Citizen was found in possession of one of these, there was no telling what would happen to them - the Inquisition wasn't too keen on anyone else having too much knowledge, and this multiband tracker gave more knowledge than even the loosest lipped informant. Suddenly a faint keening sound emanated from the voxspeaker and a red pulse appeared in the corner. Haloran's face split into a wide grin as he realised that he had picked up what was almost certainly their prize. "We've hit the big time, my friend! Bearing of 297, distance... looks like about 4 klicks. Anything this solid has to be the craft!" Kalleq drifted the transport between a pair of twisted and gnarled trunks on the left, disappearing into the murky night beyond.
It had only been two days since it happened, but already it seemed like forever. Salim had followed the girl behind the doorway, and then... He struggled to remember exactly what had happened. The only things that could be recalled were a sensation of spinning on air and a heady musk unlike anything he had ever smelt. Even now, thinking back to it caused his head to ache uncontrollably, and he lay down again and closed his eyes. After that...whatever had happened, he had woken up back in his bed - and at his side was the girl with purple eyes. He grinned with the thoughts of what acts he must have commited in his fugue - both their clothes had been in disarray, and he had ached... by the Emperor, he had ached! And of course, there were the marks. Nails across his upper arms, scuffs of ropes along his wrists, and even the faint but still-present indents of teeth on his chest. Peering down at his body again, a look of puzzlement crossed his face - if he didn't know better, he could have sworn they were animal bites.
Halorum paused for breath, leaning against the ruined stump of a long dead tree as lightning crashed in the heavens above. Kalleq sighed inwardly and not for the first time wished that his friend had been a little less indulgent in his youth - all the decadent revelry and unfettered hedonism of the young Kuarl Halorum was coming back to haunt him now. Not like me, Zan mused wryly. Back then, when all his contempories were brawling and sinking enough toxins to numb even one of the Masters, Zan only had the desire to better himself. He managed to talk his way into being trained in general weapons usage by a crippled veteran of the Cthonian battalions, reduced to a walking shell by his experiences, who successfully deserted and just disappeared into the morass that was his home society. Once he felt confident enough, he had constantly stived to put himself to the test - he joined the hive militia on Tantalus, his own personal crusade to clean up the underlevels coming to an abrupt end when corrupt 'officers' ambushed him and beat him to within a hair's breadth of his life for disrupting the flow of bribes; He had spent a short stint as a Bounty Hunter, tracking known felons - until he had bitten off more than he could chew and gone after Rahamin Giza, the self styled Lord of a Thousand Knives who had set up a camp on Arianis. He had only just made it away alive when his contact failed to mention that Giza had stationed just under a hundred fanatical underlings to protect him. He still managed to fulfill his contract when one of his stray las-rounds richocheted and drilled into a crate packed to the brim with looted grenades, but after that... surely one person's luck can't last forever? A cry of help snapped him from his reminiscings and into his current plight - Halorum had somehow slipped and become buried up to his thighs in a thick mudbowl, slipping further down with every movement he made. "Zan! Help me out here!" The fat man's face was contorted in a mask of fear, so comical that Kalleq had to force his lips together to avoid bursting into laughter at the sight. "Hold on tight," Zan grasped his companion's forearm and pulled him bodily from the morass with an audiable sucking sound. "And for the love of the Emperor, watch where you're going!"
It seemed that there were no tears left in his body to cry, yet some hot moisture still forced itself through his eyes. How had he managed to get into this situation? Salim choked back a rising of bile in his throat and attempted to focus his vision through the blur. He could make out a number of figures - four, maybe five? - standing in a semicircle around him, laughing and cooing at his prone figure. One of them stepped round out of his line of sight, and he immediately felt a flash of agony writhe down his back as his bonds were tightened and his body stretched further. At first he had gone along with it, thinking it could be a new experience - and he was willing to perform almost any act for the girl with the purple eyes - but it had degenerated into this, strapped into manacles and hung from the low ceiling, tendons and muscles stretched almost to breaking point, joints screaming in flaring pain as they began to seperate. Salim gritted his teeth against a scream as he felt his shoulders ease away from their sockets, and - then it stopped. A wave of relief and pleasure soaked through his broken frame as his muscles relaxed and he was able to take deep breaths once more. Daring to look again he saw the girl with the purple eyes glide back in front of him, smiling her dazzling smile, and suddenly everything was perfect.
In the grey-yellow light of the clearing, the building seemed to stretch into the twisted trees as far as Zan could see, and seemed as incongruous as a dancing girl in a convent. The walls, pure blocks of marble by the looks of them, didn't so much look clean as gleam spotlessly, a state sharply at odds with the encroaching jungle. Pillars at least 50 feet tall held up fascias and balconies jutting from all faces, giving the impression of a number of temples joined into one leviathan structure. Set into the side facing Kalleq was an enormous archway, through which he could see a great torchlit hall, stretching into darkness. Zan turned to Halorum, who merely shrugged and motioned to proceed up the stairs. Something about this place felt wrong, very wrong, something so blindingly obvious that it took Kalleq the time to scurry to the archway before he realised exactly what it was. The fact that it was there in the first place, uncharted, just happening to be in the very spot that they were looking - and that it should by all rights be ancient, but it gleamed almost unaturally, even in the low level luxbeams of the cab. Every sense in his body screamed at him to get out of there, that it wasn't worth it, to just cut his losses and run.
He looked back for Halorum, but he wasn't there. Turning, Zan saw the fat man already standing in the shadows of one of several naves leading from the great hall, looking at him almost as if he wasn't there. "You seem in a hurr-" Zan started, but stopped dead. The short hairs on the back of his neck rose up when he saw the smile on the face of his companion, the smile a hungry predator gives to its prey seconds before the kill. He stepped backwards once, twice, spun around only to be confronted by a line of youths, outfitted in white flowing garments and carrying lengths of plasteel and masonry. Halorum chuckled behind him, a humourless laugh that was ridiculously high pitched, yet with an edge that suggested less than total sanity. Looking back at the fat man, Kalleq saw he had drawn his stubber, and had it aimed directly between his eyes. "I'm sorry Zan, really I am..." murmured Halorum insincerely, then grinned even wider as his eyes flickered behind Zan's left shoulder. A second later, Kalleq's vision exploded into a flare of brightness as he was struck from behind, then darkness claimed him.