The pilgrims

During the small-talk, Yuri takes a look at his dataslate, to see if any of the persons present appears on his list of minor offenders. He soon identifies one of pilgrims travelling the abott as Drok, a wanted criminal who is suspected to dabble in the dark arts. The acolytes decide to take a closer look at the priest’s quarters. During dinner, Drizz rises and saunters away and up the quarters of the priest’s followers. After he passes the sailors standing guard, he pops a vox-bead into his ear and creeps up to the door leading to the cabin of abbot Tamas’ unwholesome retinue. Behind the door he hears something like prayer. Getting closer to the door he makes out a low, repetitive chant “My blood – for you! My pain – for you! Blood! Pain! Blood! Pain!” together with scraping noises, like metal on metal. Something clearly is amiss.
Drizz knocks on the door. As it swings open, he mutters a phrase under his breath and extends his mind into the Sea of Souls. Drok, a twitchy man in his twenties, looks out on the corridor. Although he glances right at Drizz, his mind, clouded by the psyker, is unable to see the man standing in plain sight. As Drok moves out on the corridor to look for his visitor, Drizz steps into his cabin. Drok shrugs, and returns to his little ritual. He closes the door, takes off his shirt and proceeds to castigate himself with a ball of iron nails, which he rolls on his chest and back, softly chanting all the while. His blood runs freely. Drizz just stands in the corner, unsuspected and invisible. After some time, the flagellant cleans himself up, puts on his clothes and leaves the cabin, firmly locking the door. Drizz is finally alone, and quickly starts to rifle through Drok’s footlocker. Under a few scraps of threadbare clothing, he finds the bloody instrument of castigation, and a knife made from a single shard of rusty steel, with a few unwholesome symbols welded on the blade. Its hilt seems to be wound with human hair. The whole thing has the stench of the archenemy upon it. The second footlocker in the cabin reveals similar instruments. Drizz is not able to make head or tails of those things, but he knows that the good abbot seems to travel with a retinue of chaos cultists! He alarms Yuri via voxbead. The voidborn leaves the lounge and frees Drizz from the locked cabin. The two acolytes discuss the recent developments and agree to stay observers, for now, although Drizz would like to flash their inquisitorial badges, shoot the abbot and his henchmen and be done with it. But the priest seems to be small fry – not important enough to reveal themselves as agents of the Golden Throne.

The night passes without incident. The next day, the Cygnan Martyr has moved far beyond the normal shipping lanes. To the stern of the ship, a large, flickering storm front has appeared during the night, but the Cygnan Martyr makes good headway. At midday, the sailors mount two water-cooled heavy stubbers on the observation decks. The weapons sport gun shields and appear ancient, but well cared-for. When Yuri asks about this, a sailor says “We’re quite on our own out here, and at times, there’ll be wreckers about. They go for lone vessels, but mostly they turn tail when they see some guns on a ship. But I’d wager that, even if there are wreckers about, they’ll stay wherever they hole up, with the storm rolling in and all. No need to worry, good sirs.” The Cygnan Martyr stays on her southward course for the next hours, while the storm approaches.

The sailor’s optimism seems to be ill-founded. Soon, as the airship passes the Southern Shard, with its spires of an abandoned hive rising from the acid sea, a small fleck comes unstuck from one of the rusting towers and starts to intercept the Cygnan Martyr. The alarm is sounded, and the captain orders this men to stand to and repel boarders. Wreckers are on the Cygnan Martyr's trail. An airship nearly twice as large accelerates out of the red tangle. It seems to be fit for scrap, a mess decaying machinery and rotten armor plating, festooned with grisly trophies and ancient replacement parts, but it rapidly gains on the acolytes’ ship, its thrusters howling under the strain. The men and women on the Cygnan prepare for conflict. The sailors grimly arm themselves with lasguns and hefty tools, Vymer and Quill check their shotguns, while Octavia Nile and her adept vanish into their cabin. Her bodyguards stay behind, all cool and professional. Nahun Grist moves up and down the deck, exhorting the men to stay steadfast. The abbot and his pilgrims seem to have locked themselves into their rooms to pray for our defense against those that would harm the pious servants of the Emperor. Drizz and Yuri prepare for battle, but keep an eye on the others – for battle is an excellent time for all kinds of underhanded play.

The wreckers’ ship is only a hundred meters away when a volley of rockets erupts from the armored compartment under its gas balloon. Someone screams “Incoming!”, and the defenders on the Martyr’s observation deck scramble for cover, as the missiles go in. One white trail passes the Martyr above, then another. The third goes under the observation deck, the fourth missile hits it squarely. Drizz and Yuri are thrown on the plating, while Vymer is smashed through the windows of the lounge by the impact. The explosion showers the stern with shrapnel, and shouts and screams fill the air. The whole airship shakes. While the fireball blows out, a fifth rocket smashes into a thruster. The thruster whines for a second and cuts out. Trailing black smoke, the Cygnan Martyr turns to meet her attacker.