Part 2 - Counter-Attack

Based on Xanthis's knowledge of the ship (obtained from his investigation of any information he could find while awaiting for a mission) the agents decided to split up and take varying routes to the Lance Array area. Surviving several assassination attempts by Loxatl merceneries along the way though at the cost of the lives of several of Mann's Guardsmen.

Picture File 12/YUNSJHND-4972 Loxatl Mercenary

The Team approach the area stealthily and despite a botched kidnap attempt by Varn, salvaged only by a sniper shot by Kallos the Agents manage to remove the guards and take a prisoner. With Kallos needed for the assault the interrogation of the prisoner is left to Xanthis...

Several servitors lay wrecked at various points around the entrance chamber interspersed with a few human bodies that look like some of the few humanoid members of the engineering staff. There are a few armoured bodies that look like the more cultist looking invaders from earlier but not in any amount that could be considered inconveniencing to the attackers.

Further in you can see several of the more heavily armed intruders that attempted to assassinate you in the crew quarters at strategic points around the entrance and on the gantries that lead to the other decks above. Large machines surrounded by coils of power cables, consoles and items that you don't understand the function of fill much of the area. Amongst this mass of machinery are several gigantic servitors which are presumably part of the weapon firing process. Enemy activity seems to be concentrated around the consoles at the far end of the Lance array area however the team is initially too far away to see exactly what's going on.....

As is to be expected given their preferred methods of problem solving the agents systematically exterminated all opposition and then Xanthis and the agents repaired the weapon array via Luciens voxed instructions.


The consoles began to hum and whine, various lights and screens illuminate along them and they hear the grate of machinery from behind them as the large servitors begin to slowly grind into life...

The vox crackles to life...and Lucien starts to speak "Perfect" "I now have access to port weapon targeting and am engaging the power feeds to the lance array's..." "You might want to get out of the main firing bay as sometimes the energy feedback is less than kind to organic components...by which I mean you..." he then chuckles in a slightly worryingly insane manner " Firing in 10, 9, 8, etc."

The agents feel rather than hear the energy weapon discharging as the hairs on their bodies stand on end from the static discharge and the deck below their feet vibrates with barely controlled power. From their vantage points they can see several worrying arcs of energy feeding back across the bay where they were a few moments ago...evidently crew safety isn't a consideration when most of the crew are servitors...or even then considering that some of the weapons crew were presumably human...the team begins to realise that Lucien might have become somewhat less stable than they remember...

As if on cue the Vox crackles again with Same insane chuckling "The fools had lowered their shields, presumably in order to send a 2nd wave of assault vessels and they obviously weren't expecting any return firepower...wait while I scan for damage..." You can hear the faint sounds of keys being tapped "Well that hole in their main power core should keep them occupied for some time...I'm going to divert what's left of the power to the laser turret defences in case a 2nd wave is actually on the way..." There's a brief pause followed by several words in a language you don't understand "What the hell...our own bridge is attempting to deactivate our weapons systems...well that confirms my 'traitor' theory...at least they're locked out for now" The familiar background noise of gunfire fills the vox feed "I'm going to have to fall back to a secondary position...it looks like the last of my servitors has been destroyed and I can't get to the Murder servitor bay to reactivate any more manually" more gunfire "See if you can get to engineering and we'll see what we're going to do about our traitor problem..." More gunfire and this time it's deafiningly close "Rebekah, Borgia, Amethyst...gather anyone left alive...were leaving..." there's an explosion and then the vox cut's off...

Delayed only by Xanthis's brief experimentation with one of the devices he discovered attached to the body of the rogue Magos they had discovered there the team then decided to head to engineering in order to rendezvous with Lucien Baptiste and to re-arm themselves before attempting to re-take the bridge.

Via a somewhat unorthodox yet (eventually) effective set of interrogation methods Xanthis discovered that many of the invaders had been recruited by the Mechanicum Heretek Magos Vathek and he had apparently set aside his normal solitary methods to assist in the elimination of Crows followers and the destruction of the Corvus. Why he would involve himself in such an action however was not discovered.

The main entrance into engineering is a wide corridor some twenty metres across that allows heavy equipment to be moved from the servitor service areas to other primary areas of the ship. Normally the entrance is protected by large blast doors but these have been melted and mangled by some kind of explosive device. Inside the entrance is a gigantic pile of dead bodies consisting of hundreds of dead cultists, heavily armed intruders, engineering servitors and a few engineering staff as well as a small quantity of Murder Servitors that seem to have been torn apart by the impact of hundreds of small weapons. In amongst a particularly large pile of corpses is a female body that looks remarkably similar to Luciens 'assisstant' Rebekah...The rest of the walls are riddled with the signs of intense combat and the naked bodies of several people have been crucified against the walls though they look like they'd been hideously defiled before their deaths.

Note : It was observed by several of the players that the defiled female bodies may well have been there before the cultists invaded...the respect the team has for their fellow agent Lucien apparently knows no bounds...

As they continued down the main thoroughfare they could see more bodies of the same types though there are less and less the further in they go. They also notice that the dead seem to consist of more heavily armed enemies and servitors rather than cultists and engineering staff. Side corridors show the same scenes of death and combat as the main tunnel. Some of them have had primitive barricades erected in them but many of these are now splintered and overturned. There are several more crucified bodies 'decorating' the walls but these have been decapitated as well as mutilated. Shapes that hurt the agents eyes to look upon have been smeared across the walls in a mixture of blood, excrement and impaled internal organs. Xanthis's extensive knowledge of Forbidden Lore revealed that they are symbols relate to both the chaos gods Khorne and Nurgle.

Ahead they can see an area relatively clear of battle damage. A large symbol has been painted on the floor using a large quantity of blood and other foul substances. Eight bodies are scattered evenly around the edges of the circle on makeshift alters and there's an almost naked figure of a woman chained in the centre across a piece of girder that appears to have been dragged there from somewhere else, the chains are pulled tight so her back is arched painfully across what you presume is another improvised altar of some kind. The whole area is suspiciously quiet...

Choosing to ignore this unholy sight for the moment the team moves on...Suddenly a horde of cultists appeared from nowhere, seemingly limitless in number...