Secret War: The Annihilation Plague (Part 2)

Chapter 20

Chewing on her protein bar and rubbing her tired hazed eyes, Karmen stepped into the lounge. Vex, as always, sat at his cogitator as Arlathan roamed around, eating from a liquid food pouch. They'd brought the food down with them, weeks and weeks worth, as they couldn't afford to risk buying food from local stores or anything for fear of eyewitnesses, a paper trail, etcetera, etcetera.

Sitting on another couch were Dellenger and Torris. Torris seemed to be teaching Dellenger the intricacies of Adeptus Arbites' procedure. Karmen smiled and swaggered on by trying to draw the gaze of Dellenger's beautiful blue eyes, but he seemed intent on staring down at his toes as he nodded at Torris' words.

'You all right, Karmen?' said Torris, causing her to pause and turn to him. Torris was smirking at her knowingly.

'I'm fine, Marcel, don't you worry your fuzzy head about me.'

Torris shrugged. 'Well, when a daemon could burst out of your brain and slaughter us, it makes me worry a little.'

'That's not going to happen, Marcel.'

'That's some famous last words there, Karmen,' he said.

'There was a Sanctioned Psyker that happened to, back on Rolsteria more than a decade back,' said Dellenger. 'The daemon tore through a few dozen troopers before it got taken down by three flame troopers burning it to shit and back.'

Karmen couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at his almost wistful tone and looked at Dellenger. Their eyes met, and she felt lost in them instantly. Despite this, she couldn't help but wonder, after decades of service in the Imperial Guard, why in hell did he look so youthful?

'Thank you for that enlightening story there, Dellenger,' she said, then she tore her eyes away and approached Vex and Arlathan.

'Found anything frigged up dark evil, heretical secret the data yet, Vexxy-boy.'

'Please do not call me that,' said Vex. 'And no. So far, I'd say they are loyal, just too faithful in the local administrative organisations. They haven't even sent anyone to look into the quarantine buildings yet.'

Karmen sighed. 'Of course, they haven't. They deem it's still a local issue, then?'

She looked at Arlathan. 'They should've called in the Inquisition, at the least.'

'We overheard one of them talking over that with the Judge during our infiltration,' said Dellenger, making Karmen turn to him, but he had his eyes on the floor again. 'Didn't we, Torris?'

'Yeah,' said Torris. 'Seems they don't like us much.'

'Can't say I blame them,' muttered Dellenger.

'Did you get this Arbitrator's name perchance?' said Arlathan.

'Nah,' said Torris. 'What? You thinking he could be an undercover enemy there to actively discourage them from informing us?'

Arlathan grinned and pointed at Torris. 'Exactly!'

'That'd be one hell of a coincidence,' said Dellenger. 'The double agent just so happened to be the one to walk past us as we were there.'

For a good few seconds, there was a pause.

'Good point there, Dellenger,' said Karmen, smiling. 'And-'

The annoying sound of someone shushing interrupted Karmen, and she turned to find Vex had his finger raised; his Vox headphone pushed against one ear. He lowered it and faced them, his face an even whiter shade of pale.

'W-what's wrong, Vex?' said Arlathan.

'The higher-up himself just sent out a communication via only the highest-up channel,' said Vex. 'He only said, "The attacks are to begin soon."'