+++5.456.984.M41+++
+++Rexon, Subsector Drake, Sector Yamata, Segmentus Obscurus+++
+++Harland II - naval docks - Crewquarter Yellow-754+++
The last thing he had heard were the footsteps coming closer. Since then, everything had turned into a blurry haze. Lars recalled vaguely that he had waited at the other end of the service tunnel, his puny hammer drawn, franticly trying to keep his ragged breathing in check to avoid the gangers noticing him before he would smash in their skulls. How long he had been standing there, wasn't clear anymore. After an indefinite time he had withdrawn to the station, avoiding all contact with other workers or techpriests. Somehow he had made it back, without having to face other members of his crew. He remembered thirsting for a shot of amasec, but visiting The Limp Mechadendrite had seemed like the worst plan.
So now Lars was sitting in his quarters. It were only the most basic of accomodations: a livingroom with a built in kitchen, that could double as a bathroom, and a second chamber that contained the steel, prefab bed that was just a bit too small and only gave him about 30 centimeters to walk next to. He had barricaded the door of his quarters. One of his two chairs was pushed under the doorhandle and of course the bolt and chain were on. The room was a mess. Lars wasn't the most tidiest of people at the best of times, but he seemed to remember that he had begun packing his stuff to get the warp out of there, only to realise halfway that he had nowhere to go. So he had stopped packing. Fortunately, with the packing he had also found an old bottle of sherrin, which wasn't as good as cheap amasec, but would do the trick. Getting drunk had seemed like a good idea at that point. Now it seemed that the wisdom of his plan had been flawed.
*Clank, clank* The knock on the door agravated his headache, but still it seemed like the least of his problems. Lars stiffened. "Lars? Are you in there? Freddy told me that you didn't show up for your shift. Are you in there! Lars!"
'Frak. That was Ellen. Of course, Akira. Perhaps M5 wouldn't come asking after Svenson. His wife sure would.'
"Yeah, I'm in he..." he started, but he had to scrape his throat before he could actually make himself heard. "Yeah, I'm in here, Ellen!" The headache made his reappearance on Lars' priorty list. Shouting through the door wasn't helping. Lars stumbled to the sink, putting his head under a thin stream of tepid water. "I'll be... I'll be right out Ellen!" he yelled, spitting out the water he got in his mouth. Lars picked up a dirty tanktop from under the table and tried to dry his hair. Next he shoved the chair from under the doorhandle and opened the door, just wide enough that he could look outside. There he saw Ellen, silverhaired, wrinkled, blue-eyed Ellen. As their eyes met, he saw a million questions in hers and a warm feeling of compassion and care. The guilt hit him harder than his hangover. Here she was, the new widow. She wouldn't even know Svenson had been killed.
"My boy. Are you alright?" the woman began, but Lars shook his head ever so slightly. If anyone didn't deserve compassion, it would be him. "Have you seen Gerrit? I heard you were working together yesterday. He hasn't... He hasn't come home this night." The despair on her face briefly made place for a brave smile, "I went to the Mech, but Gregor told me Gerrit hadn't been there. So I also went to Huren's Bar. You know how Gerrit sometimes goes down there to avoid me, but..." her face turned back to despair, "They told me he hadn't been there either. So..." Lars shook his head, avoiding looking in her eyes. "I'm sorry, Ellen. I was with him last night, but he wanted to finish something. He said something about duty. Haven't seen him ever since." Before Ellen could ask more questions, Lars pushed the door shut. He couldn't take any more.
'Duty. Akira. How dare you take that word in your mouth.'
+++5.457.984.M41+++
+++Rexon, Subsector Drake, Sector Yamata, Segmentus Obscurus+++
+++Harland II - naval docks - Enforcer station Zulu Foxtrot+++
"So tell me again son. You were working late on the Emperor's Fury, when your buddy, erhm," Lars filled in the gap rather angrily. "Svenson!" The enforcer at the other side of the table raised his hands in a calming motion. "Right, right, your buddy Svenson, saw a groove in the plating and went investigating. You didn't accompany him, but after a few minutes, you did hear a scream." Lars shook his head violently. "No, no, not a scream, I heard a loud bäng." The enforcer nodded annoyed. "Yeah, yeah, but then you heard the scream, didn't you say?... So you went to look for Svanson and," "Svenson, sir, Svenson." Lars corrected. "Svanson, Svenson. Your coworker, right? So, you found him knocked dead." Lars wanted to scream, but managed to restrain himself. "He was still alive then sir."
This had been going on for a few hours. After the visit of Ellen, Lars had decided that the best remedy for the gutwrenching feeling of guilt and the headache from the hangover would have been to finish the bottle of sherrin. When he woke up, several hours later, he came to the realisation that the medicine had cured neither of his conditions. When he took a hot shower in his shabby bathroom/kitchen, the last words of Svenson kept ringing through his head, mixed with the expecting look in Ellen's blue eyes. Was it the shower or was it the fact that for the first time in nearly a day he wasn't under the influence, neither from adrenaline nor from alcohol, but when he dried himself with his last clean towel, Lars felt a new kind of resolve. He would bring the men and woman who did this to justice.
That plan wasn't working out though. He had walked to the nearest enforcer station and had asked to talk to a senior officer. Instead, they had put him in a small, 2-by-3 room with beige flakboard walls and a fat bloke whose uniform had been stained with crumbs and grease stains. The man had told him to spill his story, but even before he had come to the shooting, he had been interrupted numerous times. The man asked him to go over the story again and again and appeared completely unable to retain the slightest order in his story. Lars started thinking that the man was doing it on purpose to detect lies in his story.
'Perhaps this lump of fat is thinking that you killed Svenson, Akira. Perhaps they have found his body, floating in the void and they suspect you threw him out of an airlock.'
Desperately Lars slammed his fists on the small, plasteel table in front of him. "Look mister, the proof of the sabotage is to be found aboard the Emperor's Fury. If you would look for Svenson's body..." Lars swallowed, "You'll see that he's been shot twice! So how about you and I go looking there, so you can stop this incessive questioning and start believing me." The enforcer at the other side of the table - Lars could read his nametag: sergeant Quinlan - wasn't impressed with Lars' outburst. "Sit down, son! You'll answer questions just as long as I want to hear your answers! We found your buddy Svenson alright, but the gunshot wounds you're telling me about... Well, suffice to say that we have strong reasons not to believe you."Lars was baffled. He slumped down in his chair and it felt like the ground had fallen away from under his feet.
"That will do sergeant!" A voice cut through the room, sharp and menacing. Lars looked up only to see Quinlan's spotty face pale. "Yes ma'am. Of course ma'am. Do you believe this fra... You believe young Ekika here?" This time it didn't fell to Lars to correct the inept sergeant. "Akira, Quinlan, Akira. At what point will you get a dataslate to note things down? Your beerflooded brain can't seem to hold on to any information..." The woman laughed mockingly, "Right, I forgot Quinlan, you're too far gone to be able to write, isn't it? Now, get out of here, so that I can have a word with Akira here."
The fat enforcer scrambled up from his chair and stumbled towards the door, pressing himself against the doorframe to avoid touching the petite woman standing there with her hands on her hips, eyeing him with a look that would set his fat, square shaped head on fire. Quinlan failed miserably and a look of disgust flashed over the woman's face. The woman then inspected Quinlan's chair and decided to ignore it, leaning against the table instead. "And now you, my good boy. We will have a little talk. Arbitrator Mahara, at your service." she says with a mean grin on her face. When the woman presented herself, Lars followed Quinlan's example. His face lost all colour and the brief moment where he had thought things might be looking up when someone stood up to the fat man's pestering, ended rather abruptly.
The woman standing before him, casually leaning against the plasteel table was about 1.55m tall, well trained and quite beautiful. Her auburncoloured hair was tied in a tight bun and a couple of almondshaped brown eyes were boring themselves into his. She wore a battledress with a little, black stitched insignia of the Adeptus Arbites on her collar. Although Lars wouldn't think twice about asking any other woman looking like her for a night out, this one radiated menace. Although her posture seemed relaxed, Lars got the feeling that she could reach over the table in an instant and knock him out clean. Not to mention the robust and deadly boltpistol hanging at her left side.
"I couldn't help but overhear your story, Akira. Is it true?" Mahara asked. "O-O-Off course, i-i-it's true." he said and hastily added, "Ma'am." She gave him a little smile. Lars couldn't be certain if it was because she wanted to put him at ease or whether she was grinning like a shark ready for the kill. "But the fact that we found the body of Svenson - he still had his ID tag on, so we presume it was him," she said, with a dismissive hand gesture, "without the wounds you described, would mean what exactly?" Lars paled a little more, especially when he wondered what impression his whitened face might give the arbitrator. "I don't know... Ma'am... I only heard 'kashlick-kashlick, boom'. And when I went l-l-looking, I found a-a-a lot of blood. I assumed..." Lars' voice trailed off. "You assumed correctly Akira. Someone did his best to cover that up and with the effect of the void and the extra bruising, they nearly pulled it off." Lars remained silent.
'Can this be true, Akira? Does she actually believe you?'
"I believe you Akira." Mahara confirmed his hope, "I didn't have Zephr in my sight, but it wouldn't be beyond him. Threatening his gangmembers wouldn't be either. It's that piece of information that made it plausible, my young friend. It seems like you're off the hook." She gave him another smile, but again Lars wasn't sure if it was a genuine smile or more of a smile that said 'That's right. Go on. Think you're off the hook. It'll just make the surprise a bit bigger later on.'
He decided to give the woman a cautious smile himself. Mahara bursted out laughing. "Not too dumb, are you, Akira?... That's right. You might be off the hook for murder, but it seems like you're in deep shit. You see. If what you tell is true, and those thugs have had a go at that valve, that means they are sabotaging the ship. A good friend of mine, Mech-deacon Hellion, has said that if they could pull off the same stunt on the other valves, the ship would explode before it sailed out of the dock. Which would cause the entire dock to go down... Sooo, I need you to do something for me Akira. To serve your Emperor. I need you to get in the good graces of Zephr."
Lars looked at her incredulously, but he soon realized that unlike the fact that Mahara smiled a lot, she didn't joke around.