Hello Part two of the new boy drop please enjoy~
Additional info - this would take place a few weeks after the bean blurbs (Which I'm wrapping up next I promise)
It took three days to finally find something.
The bootprint in the grime was… large. The last thing Klara had expected was a giant trundling through their sumps, but apparently thats what she’d been chasing in circles. It was well worn, and certainly not of the Lockheart standard issue judging from the treads. She stooped down to get a better look, noting anything that might be searchable later.
More examination and inquiry into the repairs had been met with nothing from the other techpriests. Klarissa was quite sure there was someone down here. Judging from the quality and quantity of the work, someone skilled with ample time on their hands. So, likely none of the congregation, as time especially was in short supply.
All the scouring and tracking, all the comparing maps and hours of searching, and this was it. All she had to show for her efforts was a single print.
There was a sinking feeling that she’d been given this rather than finding it. Her quarry seemed quite content to remain unseen and unnoticed in the winding labyrinth.
“Alright.” Perhaps a different approach. She straighted, arching her back to relieve the pressures of stooping. This search had hardly been pleasant for her. Now her stateroom had the unmistakable tang of sump to all the upholstery, despite her best efforts. “Alright, I see. You don’t want to be found.”
Taking to yourself in the underbelly of the Monarch was certainly not her lowest point, but the infuriating search had certainly consumed more of her time and sleep than she’d ever admit.
“Well. I am only down here to inquire after you. Make sure you’re well. And ah…” this truly was ridiculous, maybe the poor air was getting to Klara after all. “I wanted to thank you, for the work.”
That much at least was true. The three days of searching might have been a waste in turning up specifics of the mystery crewmember, but it had been illuminating in displaying the breadth of skill and work which had been put into these halls. It was shocking, to say the least.
“I’ll… If you’d allow it, I’ll bring some food tomorrow. I don’t know what you’re eating down here but it can’t be good. The least I can do is see to it you’re taken care of.”
A small part of her hoped that would elicit a response. The silence of the ship was still her only companion, though the women couldn’t help the nagging feeling of being watched.
All this time it’d been there. Like an itch, unscratchable but demanding of attention.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
And so a new routine began. Bringing down small baskets of food. Then blankets and the like. She’d used the bootprint as a size reference and had to requisition some. Thankfully with Zarbag on board, and now the newest Marine rabble the poor seamstress didn’t even bat an eye at the measurements.
Since the arrival of Herschels newest guests, things had seemed so far outside Klaras control it had been dizzying. Talk of war and peril so great the woman simply couldn’t comprehend. She’d seem violence, yes. And the politicing of the present scenario was one she had easily settled into. But the planing and manuvering around seemingly endless threats, and the business with the navigators, astropaths, and now the Librarian was simply too far from her area of expertise.
This had been a welcome escape. Playing host, investigating, she’d even hand baked some sweets, a task she’d not done in years.
A painfully domestic play at a life she’d left behind.
Quite mercifully, she’d kept too busy to think long on it, and such resentment was pushed away for another day.
She had someone to coax out. To earn the trust of. It reminded her of the feral cats that used to stalk the grounds of her Family estate. Hopefully their guest was in a better state, though in the dark depths anything goes.
It had taken another few days to finally begin hearing them. Heavy footsteps now echoed around corners, and down shadowed hallways.
The first confirmations. The bootprint might have been some coicidence, or even she supposed Zarbag in his wanderings. The food and gifts disappearing could be chalked up to the strange creatures that lived down here. But those were footsteps. Bipedal. Purposeful. Distinctly not the lumbering Ork, for they were far too quiet for that.
Eventually she’d sat down at a corner, setting a basket of breads to her side, nearly out of sight. A peace offering. An opportunity.
“I don’t, ah.” She’d pulled a small bun from the basket, careful to keep her head trained forward despite her insatiably curiosity to peak. “I don’t even know your name. I’ve been babbling at you all these days and completely missed the basics.”
“I’m Klarissa. Klarissa Hyperion, Adept-Liason to the Lord Trader. It’s nice to meet you.”
Again, nothing. Perhaps it was too soon. But at least she could eat lunch. The woman focused on the food, not daring to cast her eyes towards the floor she sat on. Best not acknowledge the grime. Aproblem for the laundry later.
“I’ve been on the ship… well I don’t think it’s been a year now. Close. It’s hard to keep track of time, I find.”
The gentle movement of air behind her was the only confirmation someone had sat down. No noise, no words, just the air displaced by their movement.
Her breath hitched. Every ounce of willpower was needed to not spring around. “I wanted to thank you, for the work you’ve done. The Monarch is in better shape thanks to everything you’ve done.”
As Klarissa reached for a pastry, her hands brushed against theirs. Cold metal. Large fingers reaching for the same sweets as her.
Even though she knew they were just around the corner, it still shocked her. The startle was enough to elicite a slight “Oh” from the adept.
They had recoiled immediately, far quicker than her reaction.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Klarissa was careful to keep her eyes trained on the wall ahead. Her curiosity wanted nothing more than to scramble around the corner, to see who it was. But that wouldn’t help them move forward. Instead, moving slowly, she pushed the basket around the bend and out of sight. “Have them, please. I can always bring more.”
She heard the gentle rustling of the basket, after a pinfully long moment of hesitation.
Now that she was listening intently, the gentle and soft noises one associates with augmentation could be heard. Clicks and whirrs, the sounds of life among the Mechanicum. Not what she expected to find, but perhaps understandable.
They broke the silence, to her surprise. Their voice was hoarse. Younger sounding than she’d expected, for sure. To no surprise it was laced with hesitancy.
“It really is no trouble.” Klara was painfully aware of how egar her response was. So quick. How the schola mistresses had chastised such emotive displays. Such was the curse of a perfect memory, the smallest things brought it all rushing back. “I can bring more, so long as you promise never to tell me what it is you’ve been eating down here all this time.”
The echo of a laugh. More a huff. But no more response.
So it was their meetings went from then on. An exchange - food for a few words here or there. Over the days Klara managed to pry a couple longer sentences out of them, the most notable being ‘I do not know how long I’ve been down here.’ Which simply raised more questions than anwsers.
Their tone was unreadable, usually steady and even. The few times any discomfort was shown were only when the Ork was brought up (understandable), and when mentioning the Lord Trader (less so).
What little relationship they’d manage to build was far too tenuous to pry, so the Adept simply listened, noted, and chatted away. The mysterious guest was at the very least, an attentive listener.
The routine continued for a week, then two. At one point the corner they sat at had been cleaned up, the floor lacking the usual green brown muck.
Klarissa’s thanks had been met with silence.
It was only at the beginning of their forth week that things had changed. The ship had recently charted a course towards an old outpost, but travel in the new wilds of the stars was slow going and difficult.
The adepts had been abuzz, every crimson cloak aboard the ship was on high alert, waiting for the cascade of problems that could happen during even the safest of flights.
The Engineseer had eventually taken note of Klarissa's continued excursions down to the lower decks. While she had pried him for answers, the expert defecltions and diversions in his mannerisms were enough to make a planetary governor dizzy. He gave no information up. His emotionless metal face betrayed none of his thoughts.
She’d even tried to elicit any sort of emotional reaction from him, telling him he was a slippery metal bastard and how difficult he made her life. The man took it as a compliment, and changed his official title in all the Mechanicus records to “Metal Bastard Trayan”.
Klarissa was almost sad she’d barely seen Trayan and the Lord Trader interact, considering that liasoning was now her job to manage. Almost.
Optimistically, the binaric of his missives was at least not daming in tone. He seemed rather amused by the spectacle and made no real efforts of stopping it. ‘You are free to continue your investigations after the ship returns to realspace. Until then, see to your duties above.’
It was always the ‘and yet’s that pulled her. Drove her. She’d seen what things could emerge in the dark during these trips. Knew the dangers. She’d watched a horror rip the arm off an Ork for Thrones sake.
So it was that Klara was making her way down the access stairs to their meeting spot. The wrench was heavy in her hands, unused for many months now. The tool she had made into a weapon. Hers, handaugmented. A simple and nondescript object, easily overlooked and easily smuggled, made for a great backup incase any indevours, rather inevitably, went wrong.
Klara hoped it would not be needed today.
Still, one time getting chastised for not walking the ship armed during these journeys was enough, as so Klara pushed open the heavy maintenance door knowing she was at least armed.
Immediately, it proved a prudent decision.
Whatever cleaning had been done had been rendered moot. Ichor and slime covered the walls, and a deep red stain trailed across the floor off into the darkness.
The augment systems immediately kicked into gear. Mental counteraction measures to stress, stabilizers on shaking hands. Not enough to entirely stamp out the fear, she was still mostly human. But it stopped her from freezing, or worse, fleeing.
She took a step forward, than another, every detail of the scene was being etched into her memory. To be perfectly remembered. Every smell, every rending scratch and rent in the wall, every drop of…
“Hello?” Klara called out, cursing her stupidity for still not know their stowaways name.
There was no response, though the unmistakable itch of being watched was back.
It was not the sound of familiar bootprints that eventually broke the silence. But the padding of wet, taloned feet.
The creature which met Klarissa in the dark hallway was a dreadful thing. Too many eyes. Too many teeth, jutting out from strange angled from a wide, snarling jaw. The dim reds of the emergency lighting did nothing to help the strange shadows that clung to it’s recesses, like liquid shadows.
It did not give her a long chance to ponder the impossible sinews that stretched and pulled over a monstrous frame. Instead, it lept forward with a worbaling snarl.
There was a split second where Klarissa wasn’t sure what to make of the maw careening towards her. A wasted moment, but in the tight hallway dodging was out of the question, and fleeing likely would have ended poorly.
Instead, in a panic, the woman slammed the wretch into the jaws, forcing them open. Even then the grasping talons pushed her back, slamming her head against the ground. The beast was far heavier than anticipated. The cloying scent of rotting meat rolled off undulating tongues as the thing attempted to snap it’s jaws closed.
Dazed from the fall, Klarissa tried to ignore the hot breath of the rabid thing. It’s weight. The fact she was pinned deep in the ships underbelly without having told anyone where she was. Instead, an arc of sparks and lightening erupted from her hand, her arm, traveling up the length of the wrench, and jumping to the creature.
It growled, but did not budge, instead thrashing back and forth. Her grip on the weapon slipped. The thing sunk it’s claws deep into her shoulders, and tried to pull the wrench out of reach.
She’d never tried this in full force. It was a good party trick, useful for powering doors open or closed. Trayan had been quite explicit that if she wanted to cling to flesh this art was strictly forbidden. And yet, Klara could see no other choice.
With every ounce of strength, Klara bent, pushing back against the creature. Reaching up, She seized its sharp teeth with one hand, the wrench in the other, and let lose what motive force she could muster.
Her muscle ached, her hands and arms burned, the pressure and heat in her limbs and head was unbearable. In that moment, Klara was sure being eaten would have been the preferable option. Any cries of triumph were soon laced with agony. Light flooded the hallway, bliding white and blue. For a split second, there was agony. There was pain. There was the hope it was over.
Both Klara and the creature twisted and spasmed, then separated as fatigue hit her. Both of them left smoldering and whimpering on the ground.
Everything ached. Everything burned. The pounding in her head was unbearable. She felt she’d just walked through fire. Despite herself, Klara tried to curl into a ball. The Engineseer had been right.
Her right arm was unusable, the pain as she tried to move it so intense her vision swam.
She did not get a chance to try the left, as her advisory had recovered far better than she had. Bleeding gums and smoking teeth seized on her right leg. Biting down hard. Klara couldn’t help but scream as she heard cracking.
Staring into the beedy eyes as the creatures knwed on her leg, Klara was sure this was it. “You” She sputtered “You wretched little thing.”
The sudden gunshot was cacophanous in the cramped hallway. Moreso as it seemingly came from so close. The thing released her leg and immediately rounded to it’s left and directing a singed snarl around a corner.
In the darkness, with her vision swimming, it was hard to make out. The flash of a gun, the silver of a knife, the blacks and greys of something large moving far too fast. The monster didn’t stand a chance, and soon it was dashed against the wall, shattered and broken.
Klara could swear it started to melt.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
The thing draped in greys and blacks now knelt beside her. Though, thing no longer. A face to a voice could now be placed, as even in her current state the woman was sure this was who she’d been speaking to for the past few weeks. The same tone, similar inflections. Controlled, but not scrubbed of emotion.
Outfitted much like Herschels new guests, the man was not nearly as broad as some of them were. One of his eyes had been replaced with one large and one smaller lens, which glowed ever so fainly in the darkness.
“I do think you’re right.” Her left arm got her propped up just a bit, off the floor, enough to help stop her head spinning. “Thank you.”
A nod. He rubbed at his stubbled face. Eyes flitting between deeper into the passages and Klarissa.
She was tired. Holding herself up was difficult. All the muscles in her arms still spasmed from the effort of the fight, and soon Klara had no choice but to drop back to the ground.
That seemed to be the deciding factor for whatever struggle was happening with the man. He sighed, them began pulling off the cloak he had been wearing.
Klarissa did her best to stifle the agony of next few minutes, as he worked to try and splint the broken leg. Everytime she slipped, and a yelp or gasp escaped, the man would immediately stop and look to her. It took a nod before he’d begin again.
She couldn’t help but feel he was nervous.
“Thank you...” Klara croaked, her voice hoarse. She tried vainly to get a response.
He nodded, but remained silent. Back to packing up his things. To fiddling with his gun, cleaning his knife. Eyes always flitting back to the door.
“I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you…”
“You might still be. With what could be on the floor down here.” He pointed matter of factly at her leg “Infection is likely.”
This time, the man actually stopped to look at her. No distractions. No fiddling.
“Gavus.” Klara echoed him. Somehow the name didn’t quite suit the feral, skittish man in front of her. “Thank you, Sir, for saving me. I obviously needed it.”
“Do you want to stay down here?”
“Yes or no, Sir.” Persistence. She needed answers. Already she felt tired beyond fatigue. If he was right, there wasn’t time to argue. “I believe what you say about my leg. Despite the recklessness of my actions I’d rather not die today.”
Klara tried to keep a strong conviction about her words, but there was a growing concern. She;d been trying to get her mind back to useful thinking. Back to maps. To ways up and out of the ship sumps. A few levels up there was a disused maintenance lift. If the man would at least put her in the lift there was a chance she’d be found in a few hours.
But if she was going to sit and wait, she’d rather get started. “So, do you want to stay down here?”
To her surprise, the response was “No, I do not.”
Blinking, it took a moment to circle thoughts back. Plans had gotten far easier, then. “Well, in that case, I’m afraid I will need to ask for assistance in getting out of here.”
Gavus took a moment to gather her up in his arms. Or, arm rather. He hardly needed both to lift her up and begin slowly towards the access stair.
The armered breastplate was cold against her skin, but she could feel heat through the arm of his right sleeve as they walked. His left arm hummed, purring in the dark. It appeared to have been completely replaced, metal all the way through to the shoulder.
His footsteps were purposeful right until the threshold of the stairs. Then, he hesitated.
“Sir.” Klara gently placed a hand on his chest, patting the breastplate. As though she’d need to get his attention. Though, it seemed more likely the man was painfully aware of her every movement. “I promise you, Gavus, I won’t let anyone bother you.”
“Anything could be up there.” He muttered. Quietly, more to himself than her.
Gavus met her eyes. Confusion and fear flitted across his face.
One last, long look into the corridor, and then the man stepped through the doorway and into the stairs.
R’tan frowned. He had only known Zorael for a few weeks, and already knew this was the Librarians favorite game. “It is. Only an Iron Hand would be stubborn enough to live in a sump for years.”
++Craftsmen truly are birds of a feather, I suppose.++ He laughed, the breathy hiss mirrored by actual mirth over their mental link.
“What did you think of him?”
The sergeant knew better than to play. Zorael could keep him wrapped in circles for hours. The Librarian delighted in teasing every angle of conversation out of someone.
The Blood Angel pondered. Shifting ever so slightly while he did so. ++I would not speak for him so quickly.++
++There are dark things in the unwalked places, Firstborn.++ Cold eyes turned to meet him ++A scout might have descended those stairs, but there is no way of knowing if a scout has ascended them++
R’tan scowled. The boy had been quite terrified, having the two of them appear to question him. Gavus Thren hardly seemed more than a lost acolyte. To suggest otherwise was cruel.
++Not cruel++ Zorael cut him off ++Prudent. We are walking outside the Emperors light, with what has happened to the Eye. Any new face can not be assumed friendly until proven so.++
“Should we have left you on that rock, then?”
++The smart choice would have been to, yes.++ The fanged smile Zorael flashed was disarming in its sincerity ++But you are not a prudent man, R’tan Estar, and that is why you are beloved by those who follow you.++
Alone for thirty years, slinking around the ship… On the one hand, the Librarian was right. On the other, they were at present undermanned. Every brother would be needed in the coming days.
“I will speak for him. He will become my charge.”
++I’d except nothing less.++
++No, delighted. Our journey will be interesting if nothing else.++
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