Atrium III
Things have become almost funny in what happens when Cypher and Taza are together. Things mesh together in an uncomfortably weird situations that seem to possibly work out for the better.
This time we were heading out to Artuim III, a small administrator library on the outskirts of the Core worlds. It is about as far out as the Imperium’s administration and information net goes, so it is a small data library, nothing more.
The purpose of our raid is to secure a couple of data cores from the library, determine how they are made and then to make devices that we can use to siphon off information from larger data cores without having to actually steal the data cores.
This would be beneficial because our theft would then become unnoticed and the Imperium wouldn’t change data, or plans based on our future “information recovery”.
The idea was to pop into Artuim III with the riders, Taza of course and Lavinia, the Silent Sister and her escort. Lavinia would sit onboard the ship and command the base to allow her inquisitor access to search for heretics. Taza would come on board, “interrogate” and mostly find someone that can get us close to the cores so she could steal one or two.
Things weren’t quite as we had hoped though. When we arrived there were three See ships surrounding the base and some sort of standoff since the base had arrested a See officer and was holding him.
Taza immediately changed her plans and instead decided to come in to investigate this. This should give her more access to the See and the base as she “determines” what the Imperium should do.
Taza landed with two altharin “slaves”, made up of Lhyssa and Quinn, and had a human advisor in a miniaturized (human size) Luca and one Primaris guard with Cypher in the armor. She walked the base like she owned it, coming off as a bit weird, dangerous and pretty exotic. It worked perfectly.
She found that the See officer seemed calm, cool and collected. He gave her some name that didn’t pan out (later it turns out he goes by “Sparks” now). They had the normal back and forth between Taza. Taza saw something and decided she might use Sparks to get to the core. Especially after she found his “deck” and it was as advanced or more so then most on earth… it seemed to be able to be used by Psykers.
Sparks had evidently done something to the core to cause the Library to send a full Librarian out to look at it so everyone was in a holding pattern. The base didn’t realize that this was a trap by Sparks, but Taza did.
Taza gated Sparks out and after some “getting to know each other time” they were able to come to some sort of agreement. He is a “shadow runner” or at least the Core’s version of one. He was a sorcery adept (I am still unclear on what that is) whose focus is on technology. He is more advanced and much better at it then the limited technology spells I have seen Daikan use, maybe we can figure out how he does it.
I don’t believe the details of their agreement has been hammered out, but when she gated Sparks out she went to leave system and found he could interdict her (adept powers?). So now we wait for the Librarian, this is so Taza can take whatever tool the Librarian uses and we can build a device that can remotely deck into data cores. My understanding is it still has to be close (maybe a hundred feet) but you don’t have to get into their reinforced secured holding tanks.
So now we wait for the Imperium’s representative, I believe our cover is still holding up and the base is listening to us. It just seems to work out for Taza and Cypher, although I our beliefs dictate that things always even out, and if that is the case I worry about what the payment we will have to make for this serendipity will be.
Until the stone returns to dust.
Petna.
A Candle in the Warp 