Warhammer 40,000: Stavrakis- The Hunt For Valakt

Enemy Revealed

As it so happens, nothing even tried to stop us. Gro'Kna was acting as our point man and scout, once again I brought up the rear and the two remaining Hasskar mercenaries were sweeping left and right. It was too quiet for my liking, after the last two incidents. It had been two hours since then, and no one had attempted to murder us. There were still flecks of red colouring the edges of my vision, meaning there was danger all around us, but we saw nothing.

Soon enough, the hand-milled wall plating of the residential areas gave way to more robust, factory cut sections of metal walls more akin to armour. All of the critical areas of the hive were built with armoured sections of walls. Hardened ceramite plates sandwiched by triple bonded steel, all baked in huge Mechanicus forges until it resembled a thick sturdy mass. Emergency lighting faltered and winked out as we got nearer to the Inquisitions domain. 

The power field of my rapier was all the light we needed. We passed a large reinforced bulkhead door, and from here there were no more divergent passages. It was one straight corridor all the way into the heart of the Inquisition. I held my blade above my head, managing to cast a slight aura of light to cover me and the mercenaries.

"Gentlemen, it's a straight run to the Inquisitoria Officio here, so let's pick up the pace." I strode past them taking the lead. Soon we had caught up to Gro'Kna.

"Listen." I said, and he cocked his head to one side. "Do you hear that?" I pointed at the ceiling.

"I do not." He replied, looking up.

"The sentries are offline." I whispered. "We could have been atomized before we ever stepped past that huge bulkhead. Someone wants us here."

I then pointed to a number of grills set into the wall. They were the size of a man, but far wider.

"Not so secret hatchways. They swing open on silent hinges, allowing packs of hunting dogs and their handlers to blindside any group able to make it this far."
The hatchways were silent. Some enterprising Interrogators spread rumours that you could hear the baying of the dogs out in the main corridor, but today they were silent.

"I shall wait here?" Gro'kna offered.

I nodded silently and beckoned to the mercenaries.

"The main gateway will be another fifteen minutes walk. I Hope you are ready."

The huge gateway of the Inquisition loomed ahead. It was not only huge, but dense and menacing. Each door face had the crest of the Inquisition etched onto it: a thick stylized 'I' behind a glaring skull. The eye-sockets contained powerful lascannons, that I had just noticed, were powered up. 

So we were playing by their rules now. The mechanism itself was simple. A passcode would be entered onto a keypad, and a scanner beam would then take a pict-scan of your Rosette. In this manner, it could relay the size, the bearer of the Rosette and the makeup of the Rosette to a Gate Warden inside. In times like this, an emergency keycode could be entered which would bypass the Warden entirely. I punched in my regular passcode first. 

I held onto the hope that there were still friendly individuals inside. The colours blurring my vision had turned black and grey. Small hope then. I held up my Rosette to the scanner beam and waited.

"Hm." I uttered. Those close to me knew that nothing good was meant by that. I entered my regular passcode again, and again the scanner beam played up and down my rosette. Nothing. It was almost as if the protocols for entering had been re-written entirely.

"That's odd." This was slightly worse. I keyed in my emergency passcode this time. No reaction. Only the Lord Inquisitor placed as master of the Inquisition in this sub-sector had the authority and means to dispense emergency entrance codes. The fact that mine was not working...