Quartday, Gobert 8th 067.M42
We had to move today. After nearly a week of nothing but waiting and wondering, Remy finally came back in the night and told us we had to get out, he'd found us a ship.
We'd all been waiting for him, so we had what we needed packed and ready. We've been living out of packs and kitbags, washing clothes as we wear them, making sure we were ready to bug out at any moment. All of us had been getting on each other's nerves. I wasn't allowed to go out too often, in case one of the cult's lap-dogs caught sight of me and traced me back to our hideout. Maddy wanted to stay with me, she didn't feel right that I was trapped, essentially. The others came and went as they wanted, but nobody wanted to be too far from the hab in case Remy returned in a hurry - we couldn't afford to have anyone too far away.
When he came, it was in a Saints-damned hurry. We got no vox warning, nothing. We were just resting, trying to sleep and suddenly he was there, knocking out the code on the door and telling us we needed to get our gear and move. He didn't have to tell us twice, we were out the door almost before he'd finished saying anything. Nate wouldn't let us linger even if we'd wanted to.
I'll admit, there was a part of me that wanted to tell them to just go without me. The urge was strong, it was on the tip of my tongue. Just go. Send your orbital bombardment. Leave me here to die in peace. But something stopped me, I'm not entirely sure what it was. A sense of duty. The fact that out of everything, one of the few things I haven't lost is Maddy, even if I'm not entirely sure whether I actually had her or not in the first place. I couldn't bring myself to just throw it in. Not like that. So I picked up my gear and followed the rest of them.
Remy kept us moving through the back streets and the alleys, scouting ahead with Maddy to make sure it was clear before coming back and leading the rest of us through when they could. He said that the followers of the cult have gotten more bold, the corruption is spreading, and it took him some time to find a shuttle that he could be assured didn't have some link to a corrupted organisation. I asked if that meant what I thought it did, that the corruption was potentially spreading off world to the rest of the planets and stations in the system, and if it was how could be expect to stop it?
Nate told me that the Inquisition had means, more than just a cell of acolytes, to deal with an infestation of this scale. In the short term, destroying the bulk of the cult on Asphodel and the creatures pulling its strings will apparently disrupt the cult and throw any offshoots of it into disarray, allowing the other Inquisitorial agents to hunt them down and ensure they don't spread any further. But apparently the reason it's so urgent for us to get to the Navy is because the rest of the agents that the Inquisitor can bring to bear are still several weeks away yet.
The Navy will also be able to tie up and engage the Kai-Tens, hopefully disabling their warp-capable craft and stopping them from being able to escape. Obviously any planning about the void tactics will be up to the Navy and run past their Captains and tacticians, but Nate said he will be urging them to move first on the Kai-Ten fleet and at least cripple them, before turning their guns on Asphodel. It makes sense. If we bombard the planet without dealing with the fleet, that gives the Kai-Tens a chance to flee and potentially spread their corruption and foulness to even more places - if they haven't yet already.
I don't know what I expected when it came to making our escape. So many other things have gone so wrong, the cult has seemed to be ahead of us every step of the way. I expected that we'd get to the shuttle port to find the entire might of the cult, the mutants and corrupted followers and the genestealer-beasts arrayed ahead of us. Maybe that they'd have turned the Arbites against us, or every shuttle would be damaged and smoking, or we'd find that Remy had been caught and corrupted and was leading us directly into a trap. But we didn't. He wasn't. We made our way to the shuttle port and everything seemed normal. Servitors were loading cargo lighters, deck crew were performing repairs, refuelling vessels and hauling shuttles from their holding spaces out to the launch platform. Pilots and passengers were coming and going, normal men and women, no strangely bald or oddly pallid figures, no hunched and twisted forms wrapped and hidden in robes. We made our way through the Administratum checkpoint, handing over the papers that Kel had written up for us. No alarms went off, we weren't diverted for any extra scrutiny of our documents, and we were sent through on our way with a few stamps and a cursory question or two about our intended destination.
And now here we are, boarded on our shuttle and waiting in the launch queue. We're not free and clear yet. I'm still waiting for something to start climbing over our shuttle and trying to prise its way inside. Or for us to get off the launch pad and a missile to lock onto us, or for the engines to just explode for no reason. But for the first time it feels like something might have gone our way. Now we just need to figure out how to get a Navy fleet to listen to us. I hope Nate has something up his sleeve, because right now to me it seems like we're a series of madmen with some circumstantial evidence.
