Vex Chronicles 1: Infection

A young woman

Eredius III, Ede prime, secure cogitator complex

Sill yawned. But Vex didn't put that against her. The half-ogryn knew that all of this was important. But standing around and stare at men who stared at cogitator screens was not how she wanted to spent her time. Sill was a girl of action and big explosions.

Everyone of Vex's entourage was assembled around the hololytic table. Ak Kressman had brought a new face with him. Welcius was a local from the lower hive, an ideal guide to Kressman's explorations. Welcius knew firsthand how to survive and live in the shadier part of the spire. And he and Kressman were quite similar. Both were hardened veterans, old but still going healthy and strong.

The woman of brass had returned alongside Kressman. "Request: Exchange list access for cultist kill-shot images."

Kressman groaned. "She had burned all the bodies. We need those pictures..."

Vex narrowed his eyes and looked at Corra. Had she done this deliberately or was this simply a coincidence? Whatever the case, they needed the list to be complete. There was no other choice...

"Markos, assist the warpriest. And give her a full copy to what we already have."

Vex's interrogator nodded. Together they begun to work. Picture after picture wandered over the holo projector as they put names to images and crossed more dead cultists off from the list.

"I hate how dependent we suddenly are on the Mechanicus," Vex mused towards Kressman. "They could put any kind of data into the results..."

"Your mistrust goes a bit too far, gramps." Sill threw in. "You should really learn to trust the metal priests."

"I agree." Kressman nodded. "We should concentrate on helping them instead..."

Vex touched the memory unit above his heart. The Mechanicus had caused Meredith's death. As if he could ever trust them again... The traitorous tech priest Cax had chosen his misguided ideas over the loyalty to inquisitor Meredith. And when the priest of mars had held back crucial mission details, it had spelled doom for Meredith and half of her retinue.

Inquisitor Meredith had bled out in interrogator Ilvex's arms. And when tech priest Cax saw his precious data slip through his own bloody fingers, he had forcefully uploaded the data archives into interrogator Ilvex's memory implants. But the dying tech priest had lost control of the transfer. He had uploaded more xenos data into Ilvex's brain than the implants could contain. It had overloaded the implant and allowed data to spread uncontrolled.

It was a minor miracle that the doctors had found the cause of the interrogator's coma. They had implanted further memory banks into Ilvex's skull and lowered the load. It had taken Ilvex many years of recovery to separate his own memory from Cax's data. And in the end Ilvex was no longer Ilvex. Vex had been born.

Vex had kept that fact to himself. And when he had been promoted to full fledged inquisitor, he had not taken over Meredith's surviving retinue. Inquisitor Vex had formed his own. Vex needed a new life, a new beginning. And that he had found. He had turned weakness into strength. Vex was not Ilvex, Vex was not Cax. He was himself. And he was every fiber a servant of the Ordo Xenos of the inquisition.

But Vex's relationship to the Mechanicus had forever been strained. Meredith had been his mentor. And her death had left an aching wound. The moments the two had shared had just been intimacy between friends. At least that was what he always told himself. But sometimes Vex still longed for the moments of Meredith's sweaty bodies tightly pressed against his.

Vex banished those memories – as he always did – and addressed the assembled people. "The cult is nearly defeated. Our psy shock grenade took a heavy toll on their ranks. Only a few stragglers are still at large. We are close to victory."