Vex Chronicles 1: Infection

High Examinata

Eredius III, Ede prime, secure cogitator complex

Vex stood alone in front of the hololytic table. Kressman had returned, pressed some local food into his hands and was off. Sill had demanded more, lots more. And if the big ogryn wanted something, she could get quite demanding. And so Vex had called a break.

But Vex hadn't joined the others. Vex wanted to have the room – and the hololytic table – all to himself. His scientific heart ached to try the table. Soon a green in green replicate of his meal hovered above the hololytic device. Local food for the masses that still tasted quite good. Rye, soaked in spicy oils, cooked and sprinkled with grated cheese. Wheat and milk, two products the agrarian world had in abundance.

The archeotech cogitators had just finished analyzing the chemical composition. The level of details was quite marvelous. A single grain hovered in front of him, scaled to the size of a man. And there were barely any data artifacts. Vex needed one of those tables!

A thought crossed Vex's mind and he slipped out the memory unit he carried above his heart. And soon the life-sized holo-pict of inquisitor Meredith hovered in front of Vex. When he saw the stern eyes and the scarred face, he could nearly hear her raspy voice berate him. He again felt like the inexperienced interrogator under her gaze.

Vex reached out his hand and touched the holographic Meredith's face. He missed her and longed for a touch that he could never again feel. It felt as if her death was the beginning of a long series of misfortunes in Vex's life.

Meeting Kressman had helped in pulling him out of his swamp of self-mistrust. By giving Kressman a purpose the inquisitor had regained his own. On Kashmire they had been tested. A necron tomb on a feudal world, woken up by foolish priests of the Mechanicus. Vex, Kressman and Hanson had formed a local resistance from militia and mercenaries. It had been a slaughter. Men with swords, black powder weapons against the necrons. A fight that had brought Markos into his service.

But then genestealers had returned to the deathworld of Hader, Vex's headquarter, in the form of the ash beasts. The outbreak had been a hard blow to Vex. Because it had been where Vex and Meredith had tried and failed to stop an infection, just to be forced to end many imperial lives with exterminatus. And those as beasts had even survived exterminatus. Now the dead planet was under permanent quarantine and all operations had moved into the space stations that circled it.

Vex's next misfortune after a brief dark eldar incursion had been the loss of Gospel II to the tyranids. It had caused Vex to retreat into the burrow of his lab. But saving the naive giant Sill had been a blessing in disguise. The half-ogryn girl's humor had ultimately pulled Vex back out of his sulking.

A few smaller encounters had followed. But Eredius was the first event where Vex felt that his assistance really mattered. And that was balm for Vex's aching soul. For the first time he had done something good without the shadow of Meredith's death weighting down his heart.

With a final salute and few tears, inquisitor Vex finally said his goodbye to his mentor Meredith. But it was not the relief he had hoped.

The others slowly trickled in and Vex quickly removed the memory unit and Meredith's image disappeared. Sill still chew down bowls of rye and cheese. Vex sighed and collected himself.

"The xenos creature knows nothing," Vex revealed. "Cassilia doesn't know who let her in. But our assumption was true. The cult managed to get their hands on the maintenance plans."

"She must have manipulated them." Markos joined "A path that lead her all the way into the Administratum. We have to backtrack her steps."

"Your logic has one little flaw," Arbitrator Cassinius corrected the interrogator. "Cassilia could never have manipulated the maintenance plans. She managed to exchange the servitors, yes. The maintenance work is coordinated from her office, yes. But even they have only fragments of the plans. The Administratum Victum maintains the full plans and only hands down what the individual repair crews need to know. Cassilia got in deep, too deep. But the Victum office if out of her reach. It is manned by the highest masters of the Administratum. And it is all the way up the spire."