– Present –
Janus
Elena exited the shuttle into the warm, hot and humid air of the agri-world known as Janus. The sun blinded her mutated eyes and she made a conscious effort not to back down into the shadows. She stayed still for a while, while her companions followed her. There was a feeling of excitement and agitation amongst her wardens and even amongst her retinue. Abelard and Idira were both particularly entranced to come back to the planet. Idira had told them about the wonders of the world, the main one being its armasec. Jae had Idira promise to share a drink, and both women planned to take Vigdis along. The banter between these three seemed unreal compared to the seriousness of the rest of the retinue, with Cassia being the exception, as she politely declined the invitation but showed interest in visiting the tropical glass house and its exceptional range of bird species. Abelard had agreed to take her to the visit, and Elena and the Seneschal shared a brief smile. Heinrix and Pasqal remained as grim as ever, and Argenta frowned upon Jae and Idira's association.
Abelard had told them about this world : a beautiful, exotic planet with a unique biosphere. Its fertile soil led to a rapid growth of plantations, making it the most rentable agri-world of the whole system. It had fed many colonies and planets and Theodora had made it produce high-quality products. In consequences, Janus had always been at risk of being snatched away or plotted against, because of its abundance and luxuries. The von Valancius's fleet would traditionally station in orbit around the planet, monitoring every vessel traveling by. Because of the warp storm, none was patrolling in the area for now.
The whole thing was administered by the planetary governor, a woman named Vistenza Vyatt, and no issues had ever been reported under her rule. Theodora only traveled there every once in a while : the planet was fine on its own, the governor competent.
Elena had asked for the transport shuttle to land a bit farther away than the landing zone. She had not explained her motive to anyone, and most had just concluded that she desired to get a look at the main palace from a distance. The truth of it was that the voidborn knew she needed a few minutes to adjust to the pressure of the planet. The sun, the warmth, the gravity ; all that had soured her mood and she could not rejoice at walking over her world, the first gem in her new crown.
She really hated jungle and tropical worlds. It felt impossible to breathe there. Elena focused on her breathings, glad that Jae was chiterring with Argenta and Abelard still teaching them about the merits of the world. She put some effort in maintaining her composure and stood tall, despite her biological reflex to tuck her shoulders in.
Unfortunately, Pasqal had noticed her unease and had stopped by her side. He was more hunched than usual himself, his mechadendrites slowly roaming around, in delicate patterns.
" I have noted before that your eyes possess a high number of photoreceptors. It is advantageous in void environments but leads to sensory overloads on heavily exposed planets. Lord Captain, there are simple implants that could correct this. Ocular extraction and replacements would indeed prove more opportune for combat situations."
Elena narrowed her eyes, and looked at Pasqal. The Magos seemed very serious. In his opinion, offering to cut off her eyes and replace them with cyber was a kind gesture, one that showed respect. However, she had already lost her eyes once, when she was sanctioned, and was not ready to do it again. There was only one memory that her mind could not quite recall perfectly and relive, and it was witnessing the glory of the Golden Throne on Holy Terra. Ever since, Elena had been especially disgusted by anything involving eyes gouging out of their sockets, melting inside your skull, and other things like that. She was quite happy with the ones she got back thanks to Maria and was not going to abandon them.
" Thank you, Pasqal, but I'd rather endure."
The Magos shook his head in disapproval, and added, with a hint of disappointment and vexation : " Otherwise, temporary solutions can be engineered in the form of simple lentils."
" That looks promising."
Pasqal's disappointment was visible at this point, as he probably thought that solution was unworthy of a person of status and quality, but still he nodded : " I shall work on that."
Elena looked around, and was surprised to find Heinrix and Cassia behind her. She had been so engrossed in her own biological reaction to the planet's atmosphere that she had forgotten about Cassia. The young woman had gripped over Heinrix's arms, standing tall but pale, the gills on her cheeks vibrating slightly. She blinked furiously. At her side, the Interrogator stayed stoic, his gesture and body language knightly. Elena understood that the Navigator was having the same experience as she did, but probably even stronger, considering it was her very first time over a jungle planet. Elena remembered how harsh it had been for her too at the time.
She took a few steps back, feeling heavier than usual and less graceful, but it didn't seem to transpire from her.
Noticing her, Cassia flashed her a brief smile : " Elena. It is good you have deviated the landing zone away from the governor's reception ! I think I need a few minutes to…adapt. Mister van Calox has been patient enough to bear with me. "
Elena blamed herself for not thinking about it, and glanced at the Interrogator. Inscrutable, he barely shrugged. " It is only natural, Lady Orsellio."
" I think I found my balance now."
Cassia let go of Heinrix's arms, and, slightly inclining his head, he left them alone.
" I shouldn't be bothering someone as highly educated as you with voidship jargon, but, where I come from, we call this experience "crustrunning", said Elena on a whim.
" How…imaginative, "replied Cassia politely, but as if trying to keep the lowborn jargon away from her with a stick.
" And we call people that live on such crusts "sunsuckers." "
Cassia now looked blankly at her.
" I've never heard you say that before", she said. " It is…colorful language."
" I thought you like colors."
Cassia's lips involuntarily tugged up in a smile. " There is a lot I can admire in you, Lord Captain, but your sense of humor is not where you shine best."
" Let it just be our little secret then."
Cassia looked better. She took a step forward, and another. " Look. I'm perfectly fine. I will be…crustrunning…before you even know it."
The both of them joined back the group, who politely acted as if nothing was wrong. On a silent agreement, Abelard lurked back by Cassia's side, distracting her with tales of the planet while they walked to the palace. Elena gestured for Heinrix to take the Seneschal's usual place by her left-side ; she knew it wouldn't please Abelard but, after their last fight, she felt better fighting alongside another sanctioned psyker. Heinrix didn't seem to mind his advancement in the formation. Argenta stood at her right, her face looking serene in the sun, her scar shining a very pale pink upon her cheek. She seemed to enjoy the climate and fresh air.
As they grew closer to the palace, more and more people were there, all standing in a hail of honor. There were soldiers wearing dark-green armor and helmet, standing straight and saluting ; others, roaming around in patrols ; a multitude of servants, wearing simple and ample clothes of various colors, hushing behind the lines with caskets of fruits, flowers or linen, trying to get a glimpse at the Rogue Trader ; and noble people, clad in elegant uniforms and dresses, gathering together and ever graciously bending into reverences or salutes, with various degrees of inclination.
The governor's palace was wide and tall, carved up in white marble. It was built around a main plaza which was actually used for the reception, but most often used for open air markets, balls, ceremonies. The palace was beautifully intertwined with gardens and hothouses, exotic and lush plants whose vibrant green and pink flowers contrasted against the hot white walls of the palace. Vistenza Vyatt was there, in the center of it all, with her servants at her side. The governor was a beautiful woman, aged in her forties, tall and slim, wearing a lavish silk gown with indigo and black fabric. Her blonde hair was pinned in a complicated, elegant bun over her head, showing off her angulous and assertive features. Her high cheekbones and piercing green eyes gave her an aura of authority and charisma.
Elena felt something cold crawl over her neck, feeling her psychic senses raising up in vigilance, wanting to tell her something. She didn't want to give in to a precognition right in front of all these people, her servants now ; the news of Theodora's death was alarming enough to them without perplexing them with her nature as a psyker. However, it wouldn't do to just ignore a danger lurking by.
She glanced at Abelard quickly and gestured for him to go forward.
The woman looked at her expectantly, and then bowed graciously.
" I welcome you on behalf of the noble House Vyatt ab Artam. My name is Vistenza Janus Vyatt ab Aram of Koronus. By the grace of the Emperor and the will of Rogue Trader Theodora von Valancius, I serve as planetary governor and Imperial commander-in-chief of this world."
Fortunately, Vistenza was apparently amongst those that loved to hear themselves talk. Elena took advantage of her presentation to close her eyes briefly, focusing on the sense of warning. Argenta didn't even take notice of her short absence ; Heinrix, on her side, glanced at her, but remained silent.
Glimpses of the future
There's a young person calling for your help in the basement. Their cries for mercy join those of the other captives. The place smells like sex and alcohol, with underlying scents of blood, leather, metal, fire. It is dark and crowded with malevolent entities, shadowy figures impossible to look upon. It feels like defilement and mindless behavior. It tastes like first blood and also like wet humus and rotten fruits.
In the center of it all stood Vistenza, sat upon two servants whose muscles trembled under the efforts. She wears a crown of thorns and her arms are coated in blood. From her foot grow roots and twisted plants. A woman on her left is combing her hair, adoring it with rubies and knives-like jewels.
There are other things lurking by. Tall, slender figures, not like the shadow at all, but quite imperceptible as well. Their movements screamed of menace. The feeling of an imminent attack jolts you with a surge of adrenaline and stress, twisting your mind in a paranoid knot. Everyone wishes you dead. Trusting someone here is just another way to die.
While Elena's mind was elsewhere, Abelard smiled and saluted : " It is a good sign when a Rogue Trader's Seneschal does not visit a subject planet for a long time. Isn't that correct, Lady Vyatt ? It means the governor is able to take care of all matters and there is no need for the Seneschal to interfere."
Vistenza let out a musical laugh. " I hear praise in those words and I thank you for them." She turned her attention back to Elena. "In truth, your arrival in the place of the esteemed Lady von Valancius is quite unexpected. "
Elena's dark eyes slowly lifted back to her.
" Lady Theodora is dead. I am now head of the dynasty," replied Elena evenly.
Vistenza's eyes widened slightly. "Such tragic news. I shall order a month of mourning - "
" Take cover !" cut Elena sharply, sensing the coldness of death down her neck. Without further ado, Elena jumped forward onto Vistenza and pressed her down to the ground. The governor gasped with indignation just as the sound of an explosion, followed by a wave of burning heat and shrapnel, rolled over them. Elena tucked her head in. She felt a familiar feeling tug inside her as Heinrix called to the Immaterium and formed a telekinetic shield over them and Argenta, who had followed behind and knelt in such a way that she would take a hit before the Rogue Trader did. The rest of the retinue was laying on the ground, some suffering wounds from shrapnel.
As Elena's hands grabbed Vistenza's dress clumsily, her psychometry abilities triggered. The dress felt….exactly like those demons that attacked her on the flagship before. Like vileness and pleasure bonded together. She relived scenes from Vistanza's past in a flash, passing so fast through her mind, like a kaleidoscope, that she couldn't quite figure them out. The psychic communion, though involuntary, left her dizzy. Mistaking her slowness for surprise caused by the attack, Argenta passed an arm under hers, lifting her up. The distance shut down the psychic connection.
Argenta gave her a concerned look, glancing briefly at her chest in order to check for injuries. In the absence of any wounds, she let her go and took position in front of her, covering for her.
The assailants had surprised them by exploding a wall from a nearby building. How did they manage to go there unnoticed was certainly something they would have to settle once the immediate battle was done. They were armed with military quality weapons, but most of them didn't seem to have proper training and were very young. The veterans and older ones would prove to be more dangerous. Most of them carried grenades and incendiary weapons and were already throwing them at the reception party. The civilians amongst the crowd were fleeing in a disorganized fashion while Vistenza's and Elena's wardens were busy fighting back the assault.
Behind her, Vistenza got back up, shivering, her hairdo disheveled. Two bodyguards covered for her as she got carried away in the crowd of civilians towards a most secure location inside the palace.
Elena gestured for her retinue to hold back the assault. Argenta swiftly took the nearest rebels out. Those were indeed very young men and women. Abelard breached into the fray, his sword slick with blood as he pressed through a lieutenant. With barely any sign of emotion or strain, Cassia put her talons to her forehead and third eye, and suddenly the group of assailants was bundling together, knocking into each other in the process. Pasqal's electrical axe made short work of them.
All the while, the assailants posted in the back - those that were the oldest, most experimented - kept on firing at them. Circling around the front of the group, gesturing for Jae and Heinrix to follow her, Elena ducked from cover to cover until she got a good aiming shot at the leader. Heinrix bashed into the veterans, distracting them away, while Jae and Elena aligned sniping shots at them.
Amidst the battle, the enemy managed to take a shot at Vistenza Vyatt - Elena saw the crouching sniper, ignoring them pointedly. For once, the Rogue Trader didn't seem to be the point of interest of the attack, but merely a passerby that got caught in it. Clearly their intentions were to murder the governor. Noticing the sniper, Elena quickly changed her position to take a shot - but as soon as she got the man in her longlas lentil, he fell dead, a bullet headshotting him with deadly precision. The shot was so clear and beautiful that Elena had to take a look back - it wasn't Jae, she was sure of it, as the smuggler was busy encouraging and advising Heinrix from afar. And no one else in her retinue was proficient in long ranged firearms. She caught the sight of a tall warden, crouched upon a balcony, their head wrapped in a beige shawl ; as soon as Elena's attention focused on the silhouette, it disappeared with a quickness that was both gracile and offsetting, in an indescribable way.
They neutralized the last rebels quickly. The assailants had managed to harm both Idira and Pasqal with incendiary grenades. Jae had been shot at, but seemed to take it well. She had opened up a flask of rum that she was sipping by while waiting for Pasqal to fix her up.
They spent some time examining the corpses. The governor had been taken inside for her protection, to Elena's annoyance. What kind of governor disappeared without an explanation after an event like that ? Sensing her foul mood and anger, Abelard had come closer to her, trying to rationalize the situation - but Elena wasn't receptive to his attempts at soothing her down.
She kept glancing around, feeling the anxiety and paranoia rise up in her. She had to make a conscious effort to back down. Paranoia had always gone hand to hand with divination abilities. There were three ways to deal with it : either you crumbled under the stress of sensing death and danger all around you at every time - and you ended up pretty much like Idira, getting jittery and nonsensical every time your precognition knocked at your mind's door. Or you could become cold, tough, lost in over-analyses and incapable of trust or any form of emotional connection to anyone or anything. Older diviners, those that survived long enough, often ended up being complete sociopaths. Then there were those slowly fading into obsessional behavior and compulsive thoughts, over interpreting every sign, to the point of mania and putting themselves and others in grave danger for nothing. Elena wasn't sufficiently self-aware to discern clearly which category she fell in - but she knew she had to fight the slow ascent of craziness deeply connected to divination.
It was a hard thing to do, when you found yourself a Rogue Trader and crazy became your daily life. What was the part in her soul that was just the normal, expected crazy, and what was the threatening part of the Immaterium slowly twisting her into a poor, void shell of herself ?
That was typically the kind of question that she should have never been able to formulate, even more so while investigating a mutiny scene. Yet she felt absent and detached, uninterested in her retinue's findings. She couldn't help but think about the strange shape eluding her vision, this sniper from above protecting Vyatt. She searched for traces of the unknown individual, to no avail.
She could tell that her closed-up attitude had been noticed by her companions.
" Have you had a vision ?" asked Heinrix after a time, while Idira and Abelard were busy interrogating the wardens on the attack and investigating the building it came from.
" How would you know that ?" she replied.
" It is in my line of work to know things, Elena. In this case, I have noticed several physiological clues often correlated to psychic intuitions. I shall spare you the details", he replied indifferently.
" Oh, please, don't. Amuse me." It was a way of delaying her answer and weighing if she wanted to share her impressions, and they both knew it.
Inhaling calmly, Heinrix lifted his hands. " Let's see. One : unusual loss of tension in the maximilla muscles." One finger went down. " Two : enlargement of the pupil's diameter." Another finger down. " Three : cardiac rhythm is paced up. Four : eyelid is -"
" Now you're just messing with me", she said, perfectly knowing that he was making things up. Of course Heinrix would be the sort of creepy guy that noted down in his private diary all these little hints and clues, and would by now totally read into her facial expressions like an open book. But he was not the type of person that would reveal what he knew to you. These fake clues were just ways of distracting her.
" Hardly so, Lord Captain."
She glared at the Interrogator, whose face was as imperturbable as ever. But the slight irony in his voice was pretty obvious to her, now that she had time to adjust to his ways. It was in the microsecond of pause just before he said "Lord Captain."
" I think you forgot the loss of the ability of speech in your list of symptoms. Mutism is often said to be an undesirable side-effect of psychic effects. That's too bad, really." Now she was just playing dumb and stubborn and making things up too.
Heinrix raised a stoic eyebrow. " At least the existence of this unfortunate side-effect demonstrates that you had, indeed, a vision in the first place."
" Ah, really ? That's an interesting point, van Calox " she replied in fake idiocy.
Now it was his turn to glare for a second. Apparently Heinrix was too smart to enjoy maneuvering dumb answers. That almost brought a smile to her lips. As Heinrix was probably about to say something unnerving and leave, she finally said, more seriously :
" You shall have to forgive my manners. I am not in the habit of sharing details of my precognitions with others, unless they asked for a reading of their fate. I find it never goes well. "
" I can relate to that", replied the Interrogator, still slightly defensive from their exchange. " However, I dare insist that any piece of information that could prove important to me in regard to my attributions should be shared, in an objective of efficiency."
Now, her other companions were closing up their investigation and their discussion on the side was drawing attention. They respectfully stayed far, but she could see the frown on Abelard's face from there. They had other things to do than talk - and, in Abelard's opinion, there was always something better to do than talk to Heinrix.
" Do my precognition have the same value as confirmed information in your eyes ? Do you trust me that much ?" she asked back.
It was petty, but she liked the feeling of being the one unnerving van Calox for once. His glare gained in intensity as he fell silent.
" Don't give me your classical silent treatment strategy", she added swiftly.
He sighed, chasing away the flash of annoyance in his eyes, and regaining his stoic composure. " I don't know what you're talking about," he replied. Someone less accustomed to Heinrix's ways of speaking would not have noticed the little, underlying tone of amusement behind the strained attitude. " Anyway, to remain on the subject, I believe your latest precognition on Rykad Minoris proved interesting enough and I respect your training and sanctioning. I can't pretend to decide what is of informative value or not in a diviner's talent. Prescience is a complicated gift to interpret. However, it would seem stupid to be deprived of potential crucial clues. I'd rather know what your psychic intuitions are. That is, if you can trust me that much. "
She could see the rationale in it, and found the answer elegantly phrased. Of course, he didn't answer her question at all and even managed to twist it back at her, but that was just an Inquisition's agent signature's move. The cleverness brought the shade of a smile to her lips.
" Fine. You have convinced me."
She proceeded to describe to him the details of her vision : the people calling her out for her help, the odor of rotten fruits, Vistenza coated in blood, the tall, unknown shapes in the shadows, and the demonic vileness she felt when grabbing her dress. As she went on, she saw Heinrix's eyebrows frown more and more. In the end, he just nodded his head pensively.
" So ? What do you make of it ?" she asked. It was odd to share her thoughts with anyone. Most of the time, people ended up not really believing her. Sometimes, on the other hand, they believed her so much that they lost perspective. In both cases, talking about her visions proved counter-productive. She was curious to see how another psyker would react.
" I shall keep a peculiarly vigilant eye on this one, in order to find material evidence to corroborate your instincts. However, what you describe is a quite clear sign of heresy - which would not prove to be too surprising. As I've told you, there are other worlds in your protectorate where heresy has taken roots already. I am not going to lie to you : this is not good."
Elena inhaled, taking in the underlying consequences of Heinrix's feedback. Maybe she was wrong to share this with him. If he believed her dynasty to be rotten to the core and her worlds to have all fallen into heresy, the temporary's flexibility of Calcazar was at stake and this could not bode well for her.
But things were as they were. She understood that the situation still needed to be investigated - but in her heart, it was already settled. She was certain that Vistenza had partaken in heresy and nothing could change her mind. "Why" and "how" were unclear for now.
It was time to head back to the governor for some answers.