I have been remiss in filling out those pages, burying myself in ship matters to fill out my days instead. Sister Argenta declined to tell me more about the late lady Theodora's transgressions, which only fuelled my fears. Mistress Tlass laughed like a goat when I asked her if she knew — so I suppose she did and also believed I was in on that horrendous joke made on my honour. The High Factotum, when I evoked the possibility, scoffed and refuted it as ludicrous — but then, he was never in the late lady Theodora's secrets. I didn't dare speak to any others. As for Her Ladyship… while she has been most kind and understanding at first, she also told me in substance to get over it — that what was done was done and we should rather get busy fixing Theodora's mess. But I worry about my family on Dargonus; I hope none of them got corrupted or involved in the late lady Theodora's machinations.

Anyway, we have now spent the better part of two weeks in Kiava Gamma orbit. By the Emperor's grace, only a fraction of the population had been sacrificed to that blood-curling cogitator; we found millions who had gone into hiding in the lower levels of several hives where they had been able to mount effective guerrilla defences against the heretical tech-priests. Governor Gaprak is still dead, of course, but the local nobility was able to point Her Ladyship to another Gaprak who, showing more sense than her great-uncle, had scurried away into hiding at the first sign of trouble. One could accuse her of cowardice, of course, but it was all done in the name of insuring continuity of power within the line, and she has managed to keep a semblance of order in the lower hives. Her Ladyship frowned, because this was achieved by liberal application of brute force — but she didn't frown too much either, because it meant many had been saved who would have otherwise perished to feed Cubis Delphim's delirious ambitions, or fallen prey to scrap-code infection. As to this, Magos Pasqal and his esteemed cogboys have devised a, how did they call it, Ritual of Purification that shall allow for a wide cleansing of the Kiava Gamma noosphere. It should fry the heretics' brains and therefore greatly ease the retaking of the remaining pockets of apostasy for our forces, Her Ladyship and us of her retinue having better things to do than fight like grunts, and the remnants of the PDF being incompetent as ever. Let us hope the whole sorry business is soon wrapped up so that we can depart in search of the road to Dargonus.

I do sleep badly these days, despite the medicae's drugs, but perhaps journaling again shall help. It did help after my beloved Quatharina's last sickness and, while the comparison is unfair to her sweet soul who never strayed a single day from the Emperor's light, all these mysteries around the late lady Theodora's despicable behaviour are perhaps the single other excruciating upheaval I have felt in my life. I once went from Navy officer living in marital bliss at Footfall to errant Seneschal burdened by grief, and now I have gone from proud instrument of the Emperor's will to unwitting collaborator of heresy. I still cannot get over the way I allowed myself to be fooled and yet, it gives me hope: hope that corruption didn't spread in the late lady Theodora's direct entourage and that it can therefore be easily uprooted from the rest of the protectorate.

Ah, I am rehashing these thoughts again! I have written them several times now; this shall be the last. There is nothing to gain from dwelling more on it. The important thing is that fate now permits me to redress my wrongs at Her Ladyship's side. She shall have no more devoted servant than me to help, in my meagre ways, her goal of restoring the lustre of House von Valancius. Perhaps the Koronus Expanse has become too complacent to the great Rogue Trader dynasties: Incendia Chorda is, after all, a bully before she is a pious woman, and Calligos Winterscale… well. The less said concerning him, the better.

Very few things can happen on a voidship upper decks without the First Officer knowing. I am quite conscious of the irony of this statement where I am concerned, but it remains just as true today as it was over one hundred and fifty years ago when Lieutenant-Commander Voralberg imparted this particular bit of wisdom to the young and dashing sub-lieutenant I was at the time. Lieutenant-Commander Voralberg, who ended her distinguished career Rear-Admiral of the CLXVIIth Fleet during the Golgenna Crusade when an Ork-infested hulk took down her Overlord-class Battlecruiser by somehow translating from the Immaterium right into their plasma chambers, had noted I often left my quarters at night to join one Quatharina Kalisiz in the greater privacy of her own, which led on a memorable occasion to my running to my post missing half my uniform after an unexpected battle drill was rung. Ha, to be young again!

Back to the matter at hand, however. I have issued today a blanket reminder to all bridge personnel that gossip is against regulations. They should, of course, refrain from chatting when at their post, and I will take personally disciplinary action against any who will discuss the private life and paramours of anyone on the bridge. It is unfortunate that I shall be hindered, rather than helped, in this endeavour, by the smug satisfaction Mistress Heydari displays whenever Her Ladyship and Master van Calox are in immediate vicinity of each other. Dear lady Cassia, too, is not very helpful, as she does tend to stare and comment at the changing of people's colours, but fortunately her speech is often cryptic enough that no one really notices. I have actually resorted to ask for Mistress Lanaevyss's help: she is an intimidating presence and, while she cares very little for normal occasions like dinner, tends to hover about people in dark corners. She calls it her Path, capital P obvious. She was slightly puzzled at my request but, since it would help the elantach, as she calls the lord-captain, she agreed to shush gossipers, should she meet them. I do feel bad for her: we have recently found another aeldari wreck. No survivors. She has since been quite crestfallen. I think Her Ladyship meditated with her once or twice, to help her process those feelings of grief, but I don't know what came of it.

Anyway. Her Ladyship and Master van Calox, as for themselves, behave with nothing but the utmost courtesy and are irreproachable in every matter. As long as they are on the bridge, that is. I have glimpsed Her Ladyship once leaving the private quarters section of the officers' deck before breakfast and Peli, her favourite orderly, once discreetly brought Master van Calox something he had apparently forgotten somewhere. One can therefore say my suspicions were already at an all-time high, and then today happened.

While before we tended to immediately leave the random systems we found on our quest for the von Valancius worlds, now Her Ladyship insists that we at least scan all planetary bodies and investigate anomalies. An excellent measure, for sure, when one is worried about heretics at one's front door, although it regrettably lengthens our journey to Dargonus. On our arrival to the Pillars of Viridice system — a most useless place, according to the books — we thus registered a distress signal coming from a frozen planet that was nothing more than a snowball trudging along its orbit. For how long had it broadcasted? We were duty-bound to investigate.

This world, when we landed on it, proved to be in a state of perpetual twilight: while the local sun was shining, it was so far that it gave no warmth and was but a pinprick of light in an ocean of darkness. Gloom permeated all; in the deep sky, where a few clouds ran like shadows along merciless blizzards, stars twinkled with indifference. Our shuttle — Her Ladyship's personal pilot being excellent as always — had alighted a stone throw from the massive silhouette of a broken voidship. One knows, of course, that grand cruisers are massive things, but this often gets forgotten in the vastness of the void. This close… The Monarchia's Bane black shadow was an overwhelming presence that dwarfed us, radiating on our scanners with whatever warmth her dying engines still provided, despite being gutted, her compartments open, her shielding torn by the violence of the crash. For the Monarchia's Bane had crashed, that much was obvious, and only luck had saved it from total annihilation, it seemed.

We (Her Ladyship, Master van Calox, Mistress Heydari and me) scrambled inside, through a tear like gaping maw. Our eyes grew accustomed to the dark. It was relatively warm compared to the pitiless exterior, warm enough that snow, having drifted in, had melt before freezing again in patches of black ice. The wind howled in a most forbidding manner. Not a welcoming place.

In order to understand better what fate had befallen the ship, we looked to reach the bridge, and that meant climbing over gutted staircases, defying vertigo over abysses open like geological faults, and generally scrambling around in a fairly undignified manner. Our personal luminators sometimes showed us cadavers mummified by the cold, dry air. Sifting through their pockets brought us nothing. They were dressed like enforcers, sometimes, but mostly voidsmen and women. Many bore an insignia I didn't recognise: a pillar carrying a great eye. Others, clad like Stormtroopers, carried the inquisitorial symbol. No civilians, at any rate. I must say, it was a deeply unsettling place. Even Mistress Heydari, who must have explored her fair share of wrecks (and not the good kind), made a grimace under her furs.

'Shereen, I have no idea what this voidship was,' she said, 'but it is like no other I've ever seen. The corridors we follow run along the hull without ever going to the heart of the ship. But even cargo ships have access ways to their holdings. Here, there's… nothing.'

'Nothing but plating,' added Master van Calox. 'Layer upon layer of plating inscribed with warding signs and runes, shrouding the holds in a maze of madness. Even you must be able to feel their influence — a permeating feeling of hopeless dread, a certainty that tomorrow shall be worse than today and that struggle is useless, because life itself is useless…'

'You know what this place is?' asked Her Ladyship.

'Yes. It is a Black Ship of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica.'

'Witch hunters,' murmured Mistress Heydari.

I have heard of Black Ships, of course, but this far out from the Solar Segment they are rare and few. They carry psykers — rogue and unsanctioned — to Holy Terra where they will be put to the Imperium's service; it is said that, in the more populous systems of the Calixis sector, a Black Ship's arrival is met by a witch hunt of extraordinary size to meet tithe requirements. Here in the Koronus Expanse, however, I had never heard of their coming. While Rogue Trader protectorates are subjected to the tithe in many ways, the great Houses Warrants of Trade do carve exceptions for witches, as illustrated in the late lady Theodora's protection of Mistress Tlass. Perhaps those hunters had thought to hit a rich, untapped seam of psykers by venturing beyond the borders of the Imperium. Finding out what had brought down the ship became more urgent. It was hard to imagine such a barren place to be a hotbed of rebellion but, with rogue witches potentially free from any semblance of oath of service, one never truly knows.

As luck (or lack thereof) would have it, the way to the higher decks was interrupted by a chasm nothing could bridge. Indeed, a whole chunk of the ship was missing; we could see it some way off, where it had vaporised in a jumble of metal. So we had to backtrack and search for a way across the holds, in the hope that corridors on the other side of the wreck would be passable.

After another arduous trek in that oppressive place, we finally found a gateway to the holds. The door had been blasted open from the inside. Still, we heard no noise; the section appeared to be empty. Death prevailed everywhere.

The first compartment appeared to be some sort of airlock, or checkpoint, or both. It was open to the sky. Everything — walls, floor — was some sort of gleaming black metal; our footsteps echoed ominously. I nearly jumped out of my boots when a repressed moan drifted to me, but it was nothing, just Master van Calox who, frowning and sweating, struggled against something invisible to us. Her Ladyship was quick in walking back to him; she put a hand on his shoulder and asked if he was all right. He forced a smile — an extremely unusual expression on his face — and assured her he was. A bold faced lie, in my opinion, and I am quite sure the lord-captain didn't buy it anymore than I did.

'I merely feel the effect of the null bay,' he said, looking around. 'To a psyker, it is like trying to breathe through a wet cloth.'

Without a word, the lord-captain motioned us all to get moving, but she herself kept by Master van Calox's side and surreptitiously held his hand.

What came beyond was worse. Mistress Heydari, who had brought along a heavy duty crow-bar for that very purpose, pried a stuck blast door open. A potent stench of decay made me gag. Emergency lumens were still blinking. In their dirty red light, I glimpsed the shape of cadavers, overgrown by masses of alien fungi, oozing pools of putrefaction made more terrible by the fact it was properly warm in there. Warm and humid and stifling like Horus's armpits. Our path, however, lay through this compartment — through rusted cages filled with too many miserable bunks broken by the stigmata of heavy enemy fire. I stepped in, we all did, and once we were free of the pernicious influence of the null bay, visions of hell took over our brains.

Prone silhouettes cowered and crawled before armed soldiers. They screamed and they pleaded and they sobbed. Some were children. Some were in the full strength of their age. Others looked old and defeated, trembling against the walls. They all begged from something to stop — a shriek, apparently, tearing through their ears — even though the Stormtroopers beat them with the butt of their hellguns to silence them and said there was no shriek. In their panic, the crowd was maddened by such reaction. One of the prisoners tried to grab a Stormtrooper's weapon. The soldiers opened fire on the crowd. The vision dissipated, barely: it was the same place, and the same bodies, lying where we had seen them fall. Through a broken vox-speaker on the wall came a rasping asthmatic rattle that shook my scattered my thoughts and set my nerves on edge with its screeching, cacophonous un-melody. We four living human beings were varying shades of ashen green. We pushed through. Another compartment was much the same. The next, however, carried no traces of weapons fire. Not enough ammunition left, maybe. Instead, more bodies — this time, twisted and mutated and cracked open, eyes bulging not for decomposition but for a sorcery that had taken over and deformed, and preserved, their bodies. The Warp, most probably. Rank water had pooled in places, deep enough that eyeless fish covered in tumours were able to flop around on members that were neither fin nor leg.

I was about to suggest a strategic retreat in order to get a flamer (a heavy flamer) when the blessed cool of fresh air reached me. We all rushed forward, following the draft as if it had been sent by the Emperor Himself. Only twenty meters and a torn bulkhead separated us from a corridor where, blessedly, frost and ice had encapsulated any festering horror that could linger. The corridor was open to the outside — it was, in truth, little more than a crumbling catwalk suspended over fifty meters of night, but to our eyes was a paradise on par with the fairest gardens of Janus! We sat — we needed the rest in order to collect ourselves, after such ghastly atrocities. Well, except Mistress Heydari who went some way off to violate a cogitator's seals and coax its Machine Spirit into telling us more. The robber princesses of Efreet are made of stern stuff!

The lord-captain, of course, had sat by Master van Calox's side. I heard her ask, quite low, if this was the same ship that once transported him.

'No, thank the Throne,' he replied in the same tone. I swear that I was not voluntarily eavesdropping! 'You shouldn't worry about me, Katov.'

Never did I think I would see that man twitch with unease! That icy, cold, Interrogator, squirmed under Her Ladyship's scrutiny like a cadet caught in a compromising position. The lord-captain pursed her lips in return, the reflected glow from our luminators making her face sterner than it probably was.

'You do not always have to appear invincible. Especially around me. But suit yourself.' Now, the concern in her voice belied her straight spine. Master van Calox gave her a surprised look, unexpectedly sad, and after a few seconds replied with a rasp.

'To be honest,' he murmured, 'it is like I am back aboard the Black Ship that took me from Guisorn III.' He smiled crookedly and added: 'Now that's strange. Telling you about it, the vision dissipated.'

Oh, Void take me, I would have rather accidentally walked on them both naked and doing the deed than witnessed such a scene! It would have felt less intimate. But my mortifying ordeal wasn't done. They must have forgotten I was there (and I was making myself very small in my corner), because van Calox brought Her Ladyship's hand to his lips and kissed it, eyes closed, with the fervour usually reserved for holy relics. Thankfully, I was saved by Mistress Heydari loudly calling for shereen to come and see whatever she'd found — and, now undistracted by the lord-captain's presence, van Calox noticed mine. He looked at me with quiet defiance, and I looked back.

'Just get on with it,' he proclaimed. 'Say whatever you are going to say. It will certainly be preferable to your silent and palpable condemnation.'

'I am torn between two desires — to lecture you about your shoddy timing and choice of setting, or to express my astonishment at Her Ladyship's choice.'

The women's voices drifted to us. They were going about some Inquisitor named Yutan Holl and the logs he had made documenting a sudden Chaos uprising amongst the prisoners. Clearly, he had decided the situation to be unsalvageable and put the ship on a collision course with the nearest planet. Master van Calox's voice, when he replied, was colder than the cutting wind that howled over our heads.

'First Officer Werserian. The very thought of ordering a man of your years and service to shut up is anathema to me. So let's not reach the point where I am forced to do so.'

I rose and stretched my old limbs before gracing him with an answer.

'Tell you what, van Calox,' I said, 'and let this sink in. Should you hurt the Lord Captain in your capacity as agent of the Golden Throne, I would have no choice but to bow to the inevitable. Should you do so, however, in your own personal capacity, I would take great joy in nailing your severed head to the steps of Her Ladyship's throne, so that she may step on it everyday until it is nothing but dust.'

Am I grateful to the lad for saving Her Ladyship's life when she breathed that poisoned air on the bridge and melted her lungs? Yes, of course. Have I developed a certain fondness for him, seeing how ever courteous and thoughtful he is towards our dear lady Cassia, talking to her about books and stuff? Maybe. But in the aftermath of learning that Her Ladyship saved the dynasty — saved me — from becoming accidental Chaos worshippers, I can confidently say I shall do everything in my power to ensure not only her safety, but her well-being.

The rest of our exploration was quite uneventful. Oh, we did meet with a score or two of undead heretics, who, despite their chest cavities torn open and heads being half caved in, had beating hearts and an evident will to dismember us, but they didn't prove to be much of a challenge. The bridge was a glasshouse of festering rot where we were able to ascertain that no outside help had come to those minions of the Ruinous Powers. Mistress Heydari was delighted with several valuable knick-knacks she had found. Once all the slime and gore is removed from them, I am sure they will be restored to the glory they once had in the pockets of the inquisitorial agents and witch hunters who carried them around.

Once we were back aboard the Emperor's Mercy — and quite happy to be so, as the Black Ship itself put a terrible pressure upon our minds — Her Ladyship ordered an orbital bombardment, just to be sure. A virus bomb would have been better, but of course those weapons are not readily available to a Rogue Trader. Still, our Mezoa lance satisfyingly scorched the Monarchia's Bane and its surroundings, changing them in an impressive crater where ice and snow would bury whatever remained.

I then spent over an hour scrubbing myself in a searingly hot bath but, despite washing my hair three times, I cannot get the stench of the Black Ship out of my nose. I shall burn some incense before going to bed where, I hope, no vision of pleading psykers being gunned down will pursue me.