Bizmoe
Hive 37
301.415.M41
The Weeping Towers of Hive 37 were tall black silhouettes against the orange setting sun of Bizmoe. The cool autumn air blew the banners hanging from the crenellated structures gently, power lines and communication wires twanging in the breeze. Hallowcan decorations filled the windows of the hive, little shrines to ward away daemons and other monstrosities piling up as was tradition on Bizmoe.
On the outside of the Weeping Towers were two enormous water veins, pumping into the indoor waterfalls for which the towers were named. The waterfalls themselves were a kilometer deep, artfully designed so that they were not only pleasing to the eye but so they also provided coolness to the temperature. The insides of the towers were decked in the finery typical of upper hive levels, used primarily by Ministorum adepts who went to the tops of the towers to meditate and pray.
Inquisitor Timmett could see the towers from his landing bay on the other side of Hive 37. As the door behind his rented yacht slowly shut, he blink-clicked a pictograph of the towers against the setting sun. That was for his private collection.
A servitor skull buzzed up to him and piped out a demand for payment. The old inquisitor's chiseled brow furrowed and he pulled out a credit bar in the name of one of his alternate identities and waved it in front of the skull. Its scanners registered the card and confirmed payment, and it buzzed off about its other tasks.
Timmett was wearing black trousers with his IG-issued boots, a hand-me-down pair he had received when his brother died fighting Tyranids some decades back and a gilded brass cuirass over a black top. He covered himself with a wide crimson cloak, which he felt sufficiently disguised his armor and the bolt pistol holstered beneath his left shoulder.
He locked the aft hatch of the yacht he had rented, a long smooth white machine of native origin, and left the landing bay. Behind him, he saw the bay's servitors attaching charging cables to the fuselage.
Quietly, Timmett slid into a private vox-link booth off the ascending hallway to the spaceport lobby. He keyed in the private code to contact Hugo Rikk, the operative he had sent to Bizmoe in advance to ensure that the daemon-host he was tracking did indeed have a presence on the hive world. Not only had Rikk confirmed that the daemon-host Timmett knew as Karkiss was a presence here on Bizmoe, he had uncovered the sorcerers who had summoned the daemon-host and the cult to which they belonged.
Rikk had brought with him his apprentice, Carla Welth, a young Cadian girl with enough determination to become a Kasrkin if she had wanted to be. But fate had brought her across the galaxy to the Sagittarum Minoris subsector, where Rikk had picked her up and she had become part of Timmett's staff.
The line buzzed four times before Rikk answered.
"The gun needs ammo, the hand will need amputation soon," Rikk said as soon as he was on the line.
"Neg the ammo," answered Timmett. "The whole hand needs amputation?"
They spoke in a private code that Timmett had derived from his own common speech. Though the code seemed plain enough, it became more complex as it needed to be.
"The whole hand on the block," responded Rikk. "Three mids, the arm. The gun needs ammo."
Things were far worse than Timmett had expected upon arrival, though he needed more clarification as to what exactly the rush was. Within three days the problem would be even worse, and he would have something even bigger to deal with. Was Karkiss enacting a plan so quickly?
"Ay see kay, reload imminent but put glass on the scar," said Timmett. "The scar needs full-size caretakers, grip miniatures in the primary."
"Ay see kay, miniatures in the primary," confirmed Rikk.
Timmett closed the line and sat in the booth, considering what he already knew.
He had first started hunting the daemon-host Karkiss four years before on the planet Lemdis. He had discovered that the daemon had been haunting the planet's capitol Brightcourt and spreading a viral epidemic there which was causing the working class to die off in droves. When Timmett had attempted to confront the daemon-host, the creature was called back into an anchor device and he was taken off-world.
Timmett tracked the anchor's warp signature across the Sagittarum Minoris subsector for the better part of a year before finding and eliminating a cult of Tzeentch to which Karkiss had seemed to belong. With the elimination of the cult, Karkiss's tether to his anchor had been severed and the daemon-host had been able to flee the planet again in the company of the cult's arch-priest, Serxis.
It had taken Timmett more than two years to track down Serxis, and only came to discover that he had been left for dead in the craft which he had used to escape from the inquisitor before. Karkiss was seemingly gone. That is, of course, until the word had reached Timmett's ears about the Carcass of the Grandfather cult that was taking hold in the underhives of Bizmoe. The name itself was too much of a coincidence, but a little digging from his savant, Edoir, had discovered that the Carcass of the Grandfather was daemon worship aimed at pleasing a deity known as the Carcass. It could only have been the escaped daemon-host.
Now that Timmett knew he was close to the answers he had searched for for some time, he had come to learn that the cult he had been tracking was far better off than he had previously imagined. He would have to meet with Rikk and Welth and find out exactly what they knew so that he could send any pertinent data to Edoir to be analyzed.
Exiting the booth, he nearly ran into a short man with enormous green eyes and a polished silver vox amplifier instead of a mouth. His head was completely bald, and had large cables running from the sides to his back, spine and shoulders. A pair of mechadendrites extended from his back, poking out through the back of the man's purple velvet robes.
"My apologies," said Timmett, trying to edge past the man.
"Your apologies are accepted," the man replied in a monotonous electrical tone. "But I believe it was simply my own presence within close proximity to the private booth's door which caused you discomfort."
"Indeed," nodded Timmett, and he began to walk off. The half-mechanical followed him.
"May I ask where you are headed, Sir?" asked the man. There was a slight hum to his monotone when he spoke, which Timmett assumed meant the man must have been pleased with himself.
"Didn't you need to use the vox-link?" spat Timmett.
"Negative, Sir," the man answered. Timmett spun on him.
"Then what do you want?"
The half-mechanical stopped suddenly, his eyes bulging in fear. When he spoke, however, his tone was the same. "Sir, you are causing my anxiety level to rise 83%. May I ask you to level your tone?"
"You certainly may not!" barked Timmett. "Who the hell are you and why are you following me?"
"My name is Adept Lucian Alfexus," the man took a step backwards, the multi-faceted manipulators at the ends of his mechadendrites gyrating furiously. "I am a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus, dispatched from the Transit Corps Engineering department. I have been sent to find the vacationer Timmethy Alaron, and you match his pheromone trace."
Timmett thought for a moment, looking the adept up and down. Alfexus seemed to calm down a little with Timmett's silence, his manipulators slowing down in their gyrations some.
"What the hell do you want?" Timmett asked. "I didn't call for a Mechanicus adept."
"Perhaps not, Sir," intoned Alfexus. "But the servitors recharging your rented vehicle have found several anomalous materials in your energy tanks that could not be identified. When I discovered them, I was truly fascinated to find that they were psychoreactive substances that fail to dilute the ship's fuel to the point of inoperability. Please inform me why it is that you added these psychoreactive substances to your vehicle?"
Timmett's heart froze. "I added nothing to the vehicle," he said. "What do you think it could mean, Adept?"
"Well, Sir, I would expect one could quite easily trace the emotional signature of the substances through the fabric of the warp," said Alfexus flatly. "But such practices are of course against the law. If you cannot provide me with the proper authorization for such techniques, I'm afraid you will have to be detained by the Arbites for questioning."
Timmett thought for a moment before collecting himself. "First of all, your quarrel is with the Goldline Luxury Cruiser Rentals, not with me. I have already said that I did not add anything to my ship's fuel and so the fault must lie with the rental company."
Alfexus's manipulators began to gyrate again and he raised a hand slightly as though he were about to say something, but Timmett interrupted.
"Secondly, you will contact the Arbites about such a matter and send them to the doorstep of Goldline." Alfexus blinked in clear surprise.
"Confirmed, Sir," replied Alfexus.
"Anything else?" asked Timmett.
"Negative, Sir," answered the Adept. He remained where he was.
"Well I am leaving then," said Timmett, and he turned to stalk off back up the hallway towards the lobby.
After a moment, Alfexus stepped into a vox-link booth.