Something I threw together after reading your comment. Thanks for the inspiration! (Sorry about Grammar and spelling, using text to speech.)

Julia and Raul

Julia Relampago could rather confidently say that her entire trip to Adumbria had been a complete and utter waste. When she and her brother Raul, had been summoned to the handmaids of Emilis, she had felt both apprehension and excitement in near equal measures. Years ago they had been imprisoned by the authority of the previous governor, due to their parents, voicing resentments that so much of their planet's wealth was being channelled into pleasing offworlders and the governor's personal wallets. For that, her parents had been sent to one of the mini prisons that the governor kept across the planet, despite the fact that they were minor nobility, and even claimed some distant relation to the governor's family. That relationship was the only thing that saved Julia and Raul from joining their parents in whatever dark hole they'd been sent to. When the liberation finally came, their family hadn't been reunited as so many others had. They had found out that their family had been permanently, broken five years previously, when their parents had been illegally executed, on the governor's personal orders.

Life on Slawkenberg had not been easy, but the two had made it through thanks to each other and the communities which had survived the Governors of Slawkenberg for generations by acting as each other's support networks. Even in the lean years, when the two are living on the street, not knowing what happened to their parents, the siblings had each other, and while it wasn't much, it helped them get through some of the worst times. Their eventual joining of a circus, which would one day bring them into close contact with the handmaidens, had seemed at the time to be nothing more than a minor job, another part they played in order to keep themselves fed. When the revolution came in full force, they happily joined in with everyone else. Raul had even volunteered to join the mutinous planetary defence force, although he had quickly found out that he did not meet the minimum strength requirements. Considering the sheer absurd state of physical prowess, most of them seem to demonstrate, that there was very little chance of the 5,5' man ever being able to meet the requirements.

When the dust settled, Julia and Raul ended up in front of a woman named Krystabel, who claimed she saw potential in the two and could use their help as agents. She spoke of how their Lady Emili, who was supposedly not dead but Appothiosed (Whatever that meant), and was now sending them directions from beyond the grave, wanted them to be the vanguard of her efforts on other worlds, to bring them under her and Cains sphere. It had been a heady vision and one that Raul had quickly jumped on, despite the fact that it seemed to be a very loosely defined Vision at the time. Several years on however, after Julia had managed to get her own Cadre of Vanguard troops, and Raul had spent some time with both the Borgs and administrative cliques that emerged, they had been informed that their services would be needed now to spread the Revolution and liberation across the Stars.

Despite all that and all she was thankful to the Revolution for, Julia still wanted to punch whoever had gotten the idea of deploying her and her VV cadre to this blasted world with these idiots. She had known, at least intellectually, that Slawkenberg was not a typical world, liberated or otherwise. She had been prepared to accept a lot of culture shock, and even to adapt her methodology to her new environment. But nothing she could have done would have prepared her for the sheer absurdity of the Adumbria cults. It wasn't so much that she was forced to deal with people who didn't operate as she liked, so much as she wasn't sure how any of these people were still alive, never mind planning to overthrow their Imperial Oppressors.

For one, the Cults seem to be almost entirely devoted to the Prince. Julia was a follower herself, of course, it's how she got assigned to this mission after all. But it struck her as incredibly weird that there weren't any followers of any of the other gods, seemingly anywhere in the organization. Whether it was the fighting element, where instead of bringing in army representatives to train them, they simply seemed to pick up as many weapons they could take as many drugs as they could, and then plan to charge their enemies. This seemingly slapdash approach to everything that wasn't directly related to pleasure even extended to the organization of the different cells. When Julia had asked about who was arranging transport between the different commands, the lady who ran the bordello that she had been first directed to seemed to not understand the question, and make grand statements about how she was one of the Prince's favourite subjects on the planet. As far as non-sequiturs went, was right up there with "How do we plan to win this battle?" "By the grace of and faith in the emperor". As far as Julia could tell, the organization strategy seemed to largely just be that, 'whoever could control the individual cells got to run them, and then whoever exerted power over that person, got to lead the next level up'. The grand majority of the cults planet-wide organization was being run out of a small office in the upper levels of a bordello, literally within walking distance of the planetary capital's main administrative district, Julia had even decided to check how long it would take for somebody to possibly walk from the Cults main headquarters, down to the official headquarters of the Planetary Defence Force. It had taken her 40 minutes to walk there directly, or a four-minute bus ride, which she took back, arriving literally at the end of the street, within eyesight of the cult's headquarters.

Even the membership was completely insane. Despite being widespread enough to have literally hundreds of thousands of members, and holding sway over members of the Council of Claimants, they had apparently neglected to do anything even tangentially related to the PDF and Planetary Defense Fleet. When she had asked, all she got was a series of utterly confused and befuddled expressions, like she'd asked if they had considered just walking up to the Governor's palace and politely asking if they could be in charge. Worse still, they hadn't even infiltrated the Arbites, whom one would think such an organization would target relentlessly. Supposedly the son of the Planetary Defence Force Commander was even a low-level officer there. Literally a traffic cop. Julia struggled to understand why they hadn't sent any kind of agent to bring him into their fold, and thus secure access to the highest echelons of local government, or at least competent local government. They didn't even need to convince him fully, just maybe send someone to try and become his significant other, so they would have influence.

Honestly at this point, Just asking if they could be put in charge might have been a smarter idea, considering that, despite effectively being nobody in charge of the entire planet, and all the members of the council, that were trying to take charge being so corrupt as, that it was public knowledge that most of them were actively murdering the competitions associates, the Cult hadn't actually gained power, yet, or put all that much effort into seriously attempting to have one of their candidates be put in charge. Then again, having had the misfortune of having to talk to the man on a few occasions, and worse, talking to his cousin, who was about 100 times worse, so much that Julia had already begun planning how she was going to quietly have him shot, she could understand the lack of enthusiasm for that route. Regardless, this planet was probably the single most primed world in the Imperium to be liberated, and these idiots were dropping the ball to an impressive degree. Even her attempts to have her VV Cadre start trying to train some of the members had fallen through impressively, and they had taken one look at the training and discipline that would be required, and then just gone off to do their own thing, often involving taking large amounts of drugs. One of the pitfalls of being assigned as an advisor, as opposed to actually leading.

That wasn't even to mention the fact that their entire weapons and logistical network was centred around a single person. Not a member of the cult mind you, which would have been bad enough, but just some random Freight operator that they had shown up and threatened, then given large amounts of untraceable currency. So not only was their entire network based around a single massive point of failure, but this person was probably the least inclined to help them possible, and they've given him massive amounts of money. It had taken Julia no more than 5 minutes to find out just how much he was spending on Joy girls and large amounts of drugs, which raised the question of how nobody else had noticed this man smuggling massive amounts of cargo, and spending several times his annual salary on illegal pleasures. The fact that he hadn't even been caught in a general corruption investigation was truly remarkable.

Julia did not wish to question either the Liberation Council or Lady Emili for sending her on this mission. She understood that this was important and despite the fact that this planet didn't seem to be worth it in any meaningful capacity, the people here were still entitled to liberation from their oppressors. Though, If she could be so bold as to make a request to Lady Emili personally, she would really appreciate if they could just have one bloody meeting that didn't devolve into an orgy, feast, drug party, regular party, torture session or a combination of all the above as this one had. At least she had her brother's arrival to look forward to. It was a rather new, and not exceptionally pleasant experience to be separated from her brother for the first time since they were kids. According to the last message she'd gotten from him, which the Lady had been kind enough to pass along in dreams, their fleet was expected to arrive in a month or so. Hopefully, he'd had more luck with the Ravagers and they could use the experienced manpower of the fleet to free this planet for good. And if not, at the very least, he would be close by again, and she could have intelligent conversations with somebody who wasn't part of her task force.

Raul Relampago was starting to realize an important fact about his joint deployment with the Ravagers. That it was probably going to end up being a colossal waste of his and everyone else's time. He'd been really optimistic at first, especially when he was greeted at the docking Bay by a cadre of men in blood-red fatigues with clearly well-used weaponry. He and the other members of the Envoy Protection detachment that had been sent quickly exchanged the required pleasantries and we're looking forward to their attachments in the Ravagers. That was until they stepped out through the next door, and he seemed to get an actual look at the rest of the Ravagers members. They had been the vaguest attempt at establishing a uniform, as all of the men that Raul saw, were at least wearing red fatigues. However, the fact that more than a few of them seem to have been dyed red with blood, as opposed to actual dye, did not represent an overly encouraging sign. Nor was the fact that the first he could tell nobody seemed to have anything even resembling a standard issue weapon. Raul wouldn't hold this against them too much, after all, everyone made modifications, and his sister's VV cadre clearly altered their equipment to be more comfortable to use. It was common for them to change some settings or pick up pieces of equipment that they found were useful, but that was relatively minor. The fact that some of the Ravager members seem to be wielding full-on swords, which they insisted were combat knives, while others were using Lasguns that more resembled polearms, and anything else said that if anybody had suggested standardization of equipment on board these ships, they have been promptly bludgeoned over the head and likely stabbed many times with multiple different improvements.

Raul had requested to talk to the Quartermaster, in order to see if there was some Supply issue that perhaps Slawkenberg could help remedy. After all, if everybody was using different weapons then it must have been a massive logistical undertaking to keep these men supplied. that was when he figured out that there weren't actually any Quartermasters on board the ship, and the closest thing that he could find were the few members of each gang because effectively that's what they were, who had managed to stockpile some equipment. these men didn't seem to have anything like proper storage, maintenance or even plans for how to get new equipment if their old supplies broke. one of them, a slightly more lucid woman named Catherine, simply said that during each raid she would basically just steal any of the weapons that she found on the slain enemies, and bring them back on board before the battle was over. When asked about how she kept everything loaded and made sure everybody had enough ammo, she seemed to stop and look at him as if his blue jacket suddenly made him speak a different language. Eventually, she seemed to just dismiss him from her mind, and went back to hoarding her own little pile of equipment, that she would only give out to those who were in her own little gang. Yet another way that each of the gangs seems to hold power within their particular sections.

Then there was the food, by the Liberator, the food. When a tone had been played over the internal Vox system, signalling that the meals were ready, it seemed as if every single member of the cult had sprinted towards the meal hall, and more than a few instances attacked other members that got in their way. When they got to the mill hall, after having to provide first aid to over a dozen members of the ship's crew, it was almost exclusively meat. Raul liked Meat probably more than what is strictly healthy, after all his units medic had suggested that he eat a bit less meat and a bit more vegetables if he wanted to keep his body in fighting shape. Even for him, this was excessive. It seemed like the entire crew was subsisting on huge amounts of meat, some small amount of vegetables that each member seemed to take only under threat that the kitchen staff would beat them if they didn't, and biscuits that one of the envoy's members swore they had seen two Ravagers use to stab a third one.

As far as any of them could tell, they didn't seem to be much in the way of command structure, or even something as basic as a clearly organized formation layout. They had asked dozens of members what squads, platoons, or companies they belonged to, and got nothing more than a shrug, it was as if the entirety of the ship's fighting complement had been rounded up, herded into one big cargo bay, and then basically just left to figure out everything from there. They couldn't find anybody who was actually in charge of supply, or of things like communication and repair. The entire fleet was basically operating under vague hopes and incredibly bloody rituals that did not seem at all necessary if they had brought in any kind of technical support. One of his friends from the circus back home, Tristan, had told him once that for the most part maintaining equipment was really just a matter of figuring out what parts were broken and making sure they were either replaced or kept operating within standards. It wasn't all that complicated, especially if you wanted to ignore the more theological aspects of it. Probably why he'd ended up as a Borg Accoylte.

On a far more personal note, this voyage was also boring as dirt. He had tried to engage some of the men in card, games, dice games, or anything else to pass the time. Unfortunately, most of the Ravagers were so far gone mentally that didn't seem to understand anything that didn't involve basic fighting, and the ones that did looked at him as if he had just announced that they should all jump out of the airlock together. The only thing they seemed to do for entertainment was training, although, considering that almost all of it just developed into a massive brawl that left significant minutes of casualties, Joe, we really doubt that the Commissar would have approved of this kind of training or large rituals where they routinely executed their own members, in order to try and gain favour. The fact that he had now seen almost 50 of them be rendered casualties in their voyage, really did not speak particularly highly of these rituals as an effective strategy. Generally speaking, you still want some of the men alive when you get to the objective.

The space marines had for the most part seemed even more confused about these questions when they were brought up. Raul had gone to them to see if they could put things back to order, after all, they were half a dozen superhuman warriors with centuries of experience, surely wrangling some blood-maddened cultists would be no problem for them. Instead, they largely ignored Raul or seemed baffled that Deranged acts of murder against their companions were anything to be stopped. After a week or two, Raul stopped, asking them, especially since they seemed to be rapidly losing what little patience they seem to have. For Genetically modified super warriors, they were incredibly short-tempered. All they ever seemed to want to do was sit in their own little section of the ship, talking to each other and glaring at anybody who got Within Bolter range of them, as if resenting the fact that since they were allies it was frowned upon killing them. Now that Raul thought of it, he couldn't actually remember if any of them had introduced themselves to him or if they just sort of glared at him and his lack of a red uniform when he had walked in.

Hopefully, by the time they got to Adumbria, Julia and her local forces would have the political situation pretty much in hand, and us showing up is really gonna be more of an odd spectacle, as opposed to something really necessary. Knowing his sister, whatever mess they were in when she had arrived she had gotten the entire thing running like a well-oiled machine. Having a bunch of space marines on hand means that, even if not, they would certainly be able to win, but Raul really hoped that Julia had everything mostly done and or at least was having a lot better luck than he was.