Campaign: Damos Crusade
- Astropathic communique to Inquisitor E., from imperial psyker Elric Nilius.
I have news of a Chaos agent in the Jika system. Let me start from the beginning though.
I'm with the other command crew members of both Erika Damos and Vandal Conningham, and we have a couple of hours to kill before we need to board our respective starships. So we decide to go slumming, each for our reasons (easy women, etc...). We end up in a place called the Court of the Dead, a vast sprawling bar that can't decide if it's a live music venue, a strip joint, or a liquor establishment. The place is run-down, and even now 100 years after the events on Jika it still hasn't been rebuilt.
As soon as Red Ded, the ork kommando enters, the whole place goes quiet. So he starts blathering really loud, surprisingly coherently for an ork, and eventually the mood settles. Moll, the young arch-militant girl, is at the bar and the bartender passes her a drink. After the first gulp it's clear that she has never had a hard drink in her life. An unassuming man that I don't recognize approaches her and makes a "friendly" wager to see who can drink the most. She says "Desu", and accepts. This can only end badly. Allen, the explorator from Vandal Conningham's crew, sees this and quickly starts walking towards them.
Meanwhile Leo and Nicole (our void mistress) are hanging out next to the performer gyrating on the stripper pole. I can't quite hear it all, but it seems like Leo is hitting on Nicole. Whatever was said it interests the stripper, who encourages Nicole to join her on the stripper pole. But it seems like Nicole is demure, and refuses.
That's about when the explorator from Erika Damos' crew, Millien Rengrave, takes the musician's stage (pushing the entertainers to the side). He's got a quick beat going and then starts talking, not singing, to the beat. Though he doesn't quite have the hang of it (yet), it is somewhat catchy and I see people enjoying it.
At the bar not far from Moll is the ork kommando Red Ded, minding his own business, when a slightly inebriated burly man approaches him. Loud enough for all to hear he tells the ork "I don't like you". The ork doesn't seem worried and says something to the effect of "that's okay I don't like you either". But the man isn't done, and tells him "I don't like your kind - I think you should leave". Finally the ork has had enough and punches him clear across the bar.
That's when 12 men, wearing black armor with no insignia and equipped mostly with flamers, suddenly barge into the room from all 4 exits.
The leader looks about the room, almost seems sad (or resigned?), and says "Kill them all"! His men open up with their flamers and the entire sprawling bar is engulfed in fire! Millien Rengrave, our explorator, gets the worst of it and almost immediately catches on fire. The "desu" girl Moll also catches on fire, as does the other explorator Allen and the ork kommando eventually. The musicians are running around screaming and the stripper gets charred onto the pole she was dancing on. The bartenders on the far side of the room, next to the arch-militants Kalei and Greaves, are on fire and run around screaming right into the wall of liquor, which creates a double-flambe.
Arbitrator Victus Dredd, in Vandal's crew, fires his shotgun straight up into the air and loudly declares his station and rank. The men with flamers seem to ignore him. That's when in all the confusion and chaos some of us notice that there's a man that seems to not be bothered with the flames. He ducks through a door into a supply cabinet room. The arbitrator sees this and immediately pursues him. I follow as well, but I'm further away.
The ork kommando Red Ded opens up with his own flamer against the leader and 3 other black-clad enforcers. The leader catches on fire, briefly, but one of his men pushes him to the ground and the flames are put out. The two arch-militants Kalei and Greaves engage the nearest enforcers, but they are each out-numbered 2 to 1. Fortunately the fire suppression systems turn on at about this time, which is good news for several of our crew who were about to become "well done". I learn later from one of the explorator Allen that he over-rode the fire systems and turned the sprinkler systems back-on... they had been suppressed.
I finally make it to the supply cabinet room, where Leo and Nicole have taken refuge and are fighting a retreating action. In the wall on the far side of the supply room I see a giant man-sized hole, as if the wall itself melted to allow someone to exit. I hear the arbitrator Victus Dredd on the other side, and jump through the hole myself. We're now outside the bar. The explorator Millien Grave, who fled into the hallway, shouts that he saw a fleeing man go towards the station's hub, and Dredd and I run in that direction.
To be continued...