Centarax Secundus
Kel looked over at his captain, trying to hold off the pain in the back of his mind for just a little longer. It was uncommon for a Rogue Trader to let an asset as valuable as his senior astropath to accompany him planetside, but with all the money Captain Korus owed him from the last game of 21 they had played, it was an old game of chance, some gamblers even claimed it came from ancient Terra; either way it was easy enough for a psyker to cheat at it. The pain in Kel's mind spiked again; so all these years of fighting it really were in vain, like the thing always said; all those years of protecting the veil between realities, of timing his failures, of scaling them, a dying old man pulled to the void here, a swarm of bugs dumped into the warp there. Through the taunts of the daemon and its original choices of beings to take across the veil between realms, Kel had learned its secret, its purpose. To pull a null through from the other side, to free itself in a galaxy with no defense against it, that was the beasts goal. Kel was no hero, but he had a sinking feeling he wouldn't survive being the daemons conduit on this end. Kel knew that for a fact when the beast went two years without making an attempt to jump to the other dimension; Kel knew it had to be that, the shape of it felt the same, it always felt so similar when his mind was dragged there, when his soul wrestled the daemon in that other realities quiescent version of the warp. Kel knew he was going to die this time when there were nearly three years between this attempt and the beasts last one; and two weeks ago when it started, Kel realized that he would fail as well. But after all these years of defeating the beast, Kel was determined to thwart it one last time; it wanted a null, Kel would give it a psyker, and if he could only hold out for a few more moments, it would all happen just past a security checkpoint; and the wytch would die before it could ever wreak havoc on humanity. Three more steps, just past the checkpoint…
Korus looked back at the Astropath, seeing as the man had threatened to bankrupt him to be part of the payment leg of this job he had been surprisingly distracted for the duration of the trip. It didn't matter that much though, and Korus would rather have the aging astropath happy than angry; angry psykers were bad for business, happy ones however… he'd take as many as he could afford. When Kel collapsed Korus' heart leapt, one of his first crewmen and oldest friends; they'd been working together for over 40 years, and Kel was his closest friend and greatest advisor. When the old astropath began emitting a purple aura, the sickly light of maelific warp activity, and the guards at the docking bays security checkpoint moved to action Korus' fear went from concern for a friend to fear of corruption for a brief moment, then his muscles tighten; ready for action.
Agaroth screamed with joy, he was in complete control this time, the mortal weakling barely clinging on by the bond that had been forced on both of them. When first it happened Agaroth thought the Changer of Ways was punishing him, and Agaroth had tried to break through to the other reality as quickly as he could. It had always been his part in the Great Scheme; to link this reality, where Chaos was so vibrant, with others; to spread the Lord of Deceits realms, expand his power-base well outside that of its siblings, so that Tzentch could once again rule over all of Chaos, over all of reality. After Agaroths last failure, his lord had told him that the plan was changing; the terms were still the same, exchange a psyker from this realm with a null from the other, the lack of chaos with the peak of it, anchoring him in the other reality; from where he could open a gateway home. Agaroth didn't know what the gates would do for Tzentch, or why his Master didn't open the gates the same way he did when he was corrupting planets in his home dimension; but Agaroth had long since been cowed by the great Bird, and merely existed to serve now. Moving at ridiculous speeds, Agaroth hurled himself at a ship full of nulls. The mortal exerted almost all of his power trying to steer the pair at a minute ship filled with psykers. It was no matter, there was an even bigger ship full of nulls behind it, and it was orbiting a planet of them.
Kel pushed again, he held the pressure this time… fading, one last hope…
-{*(*[^]*)*}-
Low Orbit, Myrkyr
The blue dot of the Tachyon Flyer pulses, and disappears.
"I hope the Scarheads-" Alema Rar starts to spit something toxic, but is cut off; a purple pulse enveloping the spot where Anakin lay, Tekli was thrown back from Anakins chest. Whatever was happening, Anakin had a sinking feeling that he would not survive it unchanged. Anakin felt a familiar hand clamp on to his arm, then a pulling sensation; realizing that whatever the Vong had used on him, he wouldn't be around to finish the mission. The sound was deafening and there was no way Anakin would be able to shout over the sudden clamor, so he did the only thing he could do a veritable force shout to his siblings: THE QUEEN!
The light was gone almost as quickly as it came, bouncing off into the depths of the grashal, devastating a large portion of it in a brilliant purple flash. Jaina turned to where Anakin was lying, a quip about the Vongs latest fireworks; then it hit her… Anakin was gone. The crater, the blast marks; the disembodied foot… the gaping hole in the force where Anakin should be. She fell to her knees, years of emotional shielding stripped away in the blink of an eye. The vong… those sith-spawned vong bastards! All memory of the plan the team had been working on gone, only vengeance on her mind, she charged down the hill.
Agaroth blasted through the psykers, the mortal smashed and rent by the impact. He careened off into a formation of nulls advancing through the shacks the elation of victory coursing through him, not realizing how diffuse he had become, how weakened he was from the last impact. Not until he smashed into the formation, not with the force of a Greater Daemon of Tzentch, but with the force of a Screamer… maybe a Prince. The formation was torn to shreds, decimated. Agaroth was anchored, but not in his complete form; he would not be free to travel as he wished, he would still be bound to another, and as the cloud of gore settled Agaroth saw his carrier, too blinded by rage and grief to notice a parasite, a rider, using her. And when he found a better host, or a planet that would work for a portal, he would find a null, and blast one open; it would be a long process, but his lord was a patient one.
-{*(*[^]*)*}-
Centarax Secundus
In the blink of an eye Korus saw his friend disappear, replaced first by a pair of humans, who were then covered in a shower of gore and body-parts, clearly not human by the look of them. Korus didn't know what happened to his friend; the only other senior crewmember that he had taken with him on this leg of the mission, but he intended to find out. The guards were stunned by the sudden gore, clearly not used to the sort of things that happened around psykers, but they wouldn't stay stunned for long and chances were good that they would be killing the only lead to the fate of his friend… well, he wasn't called a Rogue Traders for nothing. With a nod of his head and a hand gesture his guards opened fire on the port guards; help that loyal is hard to come by, shame that they would have to stay behind to act as a rearguard. Korus dove for the gore pile, his arms finding a large masculine form, he groaned in pain when Korus lifted him, a few seconds later Korus was at the ramp to the lighter they had taken to the surface; that's when the firefight started in earnest. Korus laid the wounded man down and sprinted back to the pile of gore, it took him almost half a minute to find the other person, smaller, more feminine this one; when he lifted this one he immediately noticed that she was missing her left foot, and half of the accompanying shin; and that she was in the same armored bodyglove the man was in. An autogun round zipped through Korus' left forearm as he boarded the lighter. He nodded to his guards as he slapped the control that would close the boarding ramp, before setting the girl down.
"Pilot, lift-off NOW!" he ordered "And have the chirgeons on the Emperors Bounty prepare to receive two casualties, I want our guests to be at full health as soon as possible. And make sure their kept apart; I want the truth from them, and if they can corroborate their stories I'll never know if one's lying" Korus smirked, how quickly his roots as an acolyte came back to him.