AN: This'll be the last of this for a while, as other things have taken my attention.

((()))

Bridge, Bread Reckoning, 179 M41

"...Is this some form of ill-inspired humor?" Zechariah asked as he stared at the... creature's face on his primary pict display.

"It's no joke," the four-eyed creature said harshly, "You will heave to and prepare to be boarded, or we'll blow your damn ship to pieces and settle for selling the scrap!"

Zechariah turned to face Tracotensis, and gestured towards the alien. Tracotensis, standing beside the Captain's Throne, considered the situation for a few moments before responding.

"I believe, captain," She said, "That we have encountered pirates."

"Pirates?" Zechariah said, clearly bewildered, "But...!"

He gestured towards the deck of the Bread Reckoning, then towards the enemy vessel handing a few hundred kilometers away in the void. The pirate ship was roughly a tenth oc the Bread Reckoning's mass, and something like half a percent of its total volume. Zechariah had no clue what the pirates thought they were doing threatening a vessel that was not unarmed, and so much larger than it.

"Remember captain," Tracotensis continued in High Gothic, "It would be best to take the vessel intact, so we can study more current data records."

Zechariah shrugged, decided the pirates were probably insane, and turned to face the pictcaster.

"Okay," He said, confusion clear in his voice, "Come on over and board I guess."

The four-eyed creature sneered at him, before cutting communications.

"That Xeno," Zechariah decided, "Is a special kind of idiot," He paused a moment to activate the Bread Reckoning's internal vox, "All hands, prepare for boarding action. Try to keep a few of them alive for questioning."

((()))

Zechariah personally met the 'boarding party' at the airlock. The pirate ship had moved to within a few hundred meters of the Bread Reckoning's hull, and sent out a small shuttle. The boarding party consisted of eight 'soldiers' of mixed race and gender, and they opened fire on him as soon as the hatch opened. Psychic prescience being what it was, he'd already raised a psychokinetic shield by the time they opened fire, and after a moment of staring at the tiny little projectiles that had been mashed flat against his shield, he shrugged, and moved to counterattack.

The first pirate pulled a knife when Zechariah approached he/she/it (he suspected it was a 'Turian'); Zechariah broke the hand the weapon was in, broke the weapon in the Turian's face, then moved on to the next of the boarders. In all, he had to kill six of them before the last two were willing to surrender; it seemed that the pirates were crazy and stupid.

"Very well then," Haarlock said to the two Xenos cowering at his feet, "You will pilot this shuttle back to your own ship, declare to them that you have the Bread Reckoning's captain aboard, and then remain quietly in the shuttle like good little captives once I am aboard."

Too terrified to speak, they nodded.

((()))

Pirak was, in his own esteemed opinion, a rising star amongst the pirates and slavers that did 'contract' work for the Batarian Hegemony. In fairness to him, he had begun his pirate career by taking an unarmed shuttle loaded with a dozen mixed cutthroats (including himself), and seized a Salarian Frigate in orbit over some nameless rock in the Terminus Systems. Unfortunately, it hadn't occurred to him that part of the reason the boarding action had succeeded, was because half of the Frigate's crew was on the planet's surface, conducting surveys.

It also had not occurred to him that the Dreadnaught-sized freighter he was attempting to seize was even larger proportionate to his frigate, than the frigate had been to the shuttle he had seized. Or that said freighter might have a considerably larger crew than his freighter. Of course, when the boarding shuttle he sent over returned and docked with his frigate again, all of that became irrelevant because one of the sapients aboard was a Beta-class Psyker, not that he had any idea what that meant.

Pirak, intending to get some gloating in over the 'defeated' merchant captain, met the returning shuttle at the airlock. When the hatch opened, rather than a terrified and battered two-eyes, he found a shuttle full of bodies and blood, and a single being that he did not recognize standing over them all.

"You would be the captain of this vessel?" The being asked.

"This is my ship," Pirak said, instinctively going for his gun in spite of his bewilderment, "Who the hell are you?"

"I," The being said, "Am Interrogator Zechariah."

He paused for a moment to snap his fingers, and a dozen heavily armored and armed soldiers appeared out of thin air around Pirak, then stormed off into the rest of his ship without saying a word. Pirak turned back to face Zechariah, only to find that he'd been disarmed, and was somehow unable to move.

"Now," Zechariah said, reaching out and resting a finger directly between Pirak's four eyes, "Allow me to show you why I am known as Interrogator as I sift through your juicy brainmeats for delicious little moresels of information."

Pirak tried to scream, but he could not move; soon enough, he was screaming within his mind instead.

((()))

"This vessel is an offense to Omnissiah," Tracotensis declared as she stormed out of the captured Frigate's engine room to speak with Zechariah, "It appears that its technomats have not even heard of a maintenance ritual, much less performed one. If, in fact, this vessel possesses technomats at all."

"Considering what passed for 'the brains' of this little endeavor," Zechariah replied, holding up the slack-jawed drooling form of Pirak by one arm as he spoke, "I am not surprised in the least. Was there any useful data within their cogitator arrays?"

"Yes," Tracotensis said tartly as she strode towards the nearest hatch, "Miserably unsecure things that they were. I have not seen machine-spirits so neglected since we first landed on Sinophia."

"Were you able to ascertain the location of their base of operations?" Zechariah asked as he dragged Pirak's catatonic body along after the Magos.

"Affirmative," Tracotensis said as she opened the hatch, then floated out into Bread Reckoning's number two cargo bay, where the frigate had been stored, "I shall proceed to the bridge and lay in the course at once."

"Excellent," Zechariah said with a smile, chucking his oblivious burden out into the cargo bay before following after the Magos, "Hopefully, they'll have slaves there. Slaves are such excellent sources of information once you've freed them..."

((()))

Mess Hall, Bread Reckoning, Bekke System, Nemean Abyss, 2127 CE, 179M41.

The mess hall of the Bread Reckoning, like a number of other compartments, was designed to serve a two-fold purpose; in this case, it doubled as a briefing room.

"My source of information," Zechariah, standing at the front of the mess hall, gestured towards the drooling husk of Pirek he'd decided to keep around as a visual aid for educational and intimidation purposes, "Lacked the wisdom to view things through a military mindset, in spite of his chosen profession, so the our available intelligence is limited."

He sent a silent command through his cybernetics and a pict-caster activated on the wall behind him, showing an overview of the sole inhabited planet in the system they were entering.

"This is Bekke, a world that serves primarily as a center of trade and port facility," Another command cuased the display to zoom in on the only major settlement on the planet, "This is Landing, the only city on the world with port facilities. Its economy is based primarily off of serving as a transshipment point for materials mined in the region, as well as booty and slaves taken by pirates, and providing assorted services to the crews of the ship that land there. There is some very limited light industry and agriculture, mostly to provide for the inhabitants own needs, and some simple consumer goods that pirates frequently desire, such as toilet paper."

Zechariah paused for a moment, turning to look out over the assembled Space Marines, Stormtroopers and Naval Ratings taking part in the briefing; he even spared a glance at Magos Tracotensis and her small escort of Skitarii.

"Which is unusual," Zechariah continued, "Because based upon what I've gathered, most of those who engage in trade with Landing cannot find their asses with both hands."

A chuckle ran through the audience, and Haarlock smiled briefly at his own joke, before his countenance took on a more serious note.

"Which does not mean we will underestimate these people," He said firmly, "Based on what we've been able to glean from their vessel's databanks and the minds of their surviving crew, their standard weapons pose little threat to Carapace armor, they lack cohesion, their battle doctrine is near-nonexistent, and we will for all intents and purposes be fighting an armed mob once they land. However, that armed mob will have a scattering of heavy weapons and grenades, and as ever, our objective during the assault is to return with zero casualties."

Zechariah paused again to level one of his mid-grade 'Serious Business' expressions at the men and women under his command, before pressing on.

"We'll be inserting via a combination of infiltration, orbital drop, and landing," He continued, "Drop pods will be loaded and released before we make orbit, on a ballistic course to land around the city's military base. This strike team will be heavily armed, heavily armored, and comprised entirely of volunteers. While the drop pods are coasting in on ballistic, the ship will attempt to negotiate landing rights via conventional means, and prepare to storm the starport from within. Once the ship has landed, Myself, Magos Tracotensis, and an elite selection of Skitarii and Adeptus Astartes, as well as a few of my personal assassins, will teleport into the governor's mansion, and either capture or decapitate the local government, timing our strike to when the drop pods make their landing. Once these two prongs of the assault have begun, the forces that remained aboard the Bread Reckoning will begin their portion of the assault. Is any of this unclear?"

A brief glance around the room showed no hands raised, and none of the men or women raised any verbal questions.

"Our first priority, is attempting to locate any slave pens; stolen memories indicate that many slaves are highly skilled and educated, and as such will likely be the most valuable sources of information. Of only slightly less priority, is the recovery of any cogitator arrays or data slates with useful intelligence. Intelligence indicates that the locals armor and shielding is weak against energy weapons, so Bolters will not be utilized during this mission; as far as rules of engagement go, capture of officers and other leaders is desireable, but only so far as reasonably possible. Any Xeno that engages in hostility is to be suppressed with maximum force, and all who surrender willingly are to be stunned and prevented from regaining consciousness until such time as we have taken full control of Landing."

Zechariah turned to fully face all two-hundred some soldiers assembled for battle, just over two-thirds of the Bread Reckoning's crew, and waited a moment for potential questions before continuing again.

"Who wishes to volunteer for the drop deployment?"

((()))

Landing was, like many other cities of the same name, the settlement where the first colony ship on planet had landed. Unlike many other worlds with a city by that name, it was the place the only colony ship had landed; Bekke had a great wealth of light and heavy metal resources, but within a month of the first colony ship landing on it, vast Element-Zero deposits were discovered elsewhere in the Nemean Abyss, and further colonization efforts were diverted. Unfortunately for any hope of efficient mining in the region, the primary movers behind colonial efforts were Batarians, and while some mining occurred, they mostly brought crime to the region.

Bekke, being both the first inhabited world in the area and controlled by Batarians, naturally became the local port of call for every pirate, thug, and slaver in the region. Some mining did still take place on the world, but the few thousand colonists interested in such were quickly overwhelmed by those who moved to Landing in order to fence the pirate's booty, or pander to their tastes. In all the city had grown to some thirty-thousand permanent residents, with between eight hundred and five thousand temporary residents from ships at port at any given time. The humans of Earth had not yet made contact with the Citadel or Terminus races, but if they had, Landing would have been described as 'a hive of scum and villainy.'

Against this morass of thousands of largely corrupt, selfisha, and armed thugs, Zechariah Haarlock had arrayed some two hundred and eleven men and women. Men and women who had been hand-picked over the centuries to enter his personal service, the least experienced of whom had three decades of experience, the most experienced of whom had over five centuries, not counting the functionally-immortal Space Marines or Tech Priests (or time distortion during Warp travel). Thousands of pirates, most of whom had training to the extent of 'muzzle of weapon towards enemy, pull trigger,' and equipment looted from the dregs of military surplus decades old. Two hundred and eleven men and women trained for war, most blooded in war against the likes of the Tau, Tyranids, Necrons, Orks, or even Chaos, equipped with Carapace armor, laser weapons, and an indomitable spirit for the grunts, while the elites carried conversion fields, Hellguns and Meltas, Power Armor and Chameleoline camouflage.

By the time the Bread Reckoning's three drop pods had been released from her cargo hatches, Landing's traffic control was barely aware the large freighter was in the system. By the time it reached orbit and secured landing rights, Haarlock was confident of a decisive victory with reasonably low losses. By the time his vessel had landed, he'd already picked out which vessels in the spaceport to prioritize for capture and study, accounting for possible suicide detonation of some of them as he assigned each team its objectives.

At the end of the first hour of the operation, he would realize that he'd failed to account for the fact that he wasn't facing foes of either fanatical dedication, or literally incapable of experiencing 'fear' in a meaningful way.

((()))

It was the equivalent of five AM on the local clock when the Drop Pods slammed into the ground around Landing's 'military base.' There was a watch posted; they thought they were dealing with meteor impacts. There were other people on the base that were awake; they were mostly drunks returning from a late night on the town. Most of those asleep responded to the loud crashes by rolling over and falling back asleep.

Still, a handful were competent enough to grab their weapons and see what had happened. Those close enough (and foolish enough) to stare at the pods in the seconds after they crashed down, saw them unfold like metal flowers, and massive armored figures step out. Due to laser beams moving at light speed, this was also the last thing the gawkers saw, as the Adeptus Astartes opened fire with pinpoint accuracy, cutting the sentries down before they fully realized they were under attack.

The nine Space Marines in the assault force immediately blitzed forward, taking snap shots at targets of opportunity as they advanced, moving to seize control of the base's armory, HQ, barracks, and motor pool. Stormtroopers in Carapace armor with sealed helmets moved up behind them, cutting down stragglers, and picking out strategic points to set up heavy weapons and entrench. Entrenchment that would prove largely superfluous, as eighty percent of the personnel on base surrendered when the first pair of Shadow Wardens reached the barracks.

((()))

At the starport, a Turian 'customs official' had been preparing to board the Bread Reckoning in order to determine what value of bribe he should demand for allowing the large freighter to land. Once the ship had touched down, he walked up to the vessel's forwardmost hatch, and demanded to be allowed aboard. The hatch opened, and he found himself face-to-face with figures clad in jet-black armor with skulls painted over their faceplates, and nasty-looking weapons in hand, all of them pointed at him.

"...I guess we'll skip the inspection and import fees?" The Turian said weakly.

The officer in command of the squad decided that someone who regularly inspected a ship and its cargo would be a worthwhile source of intelligence, and nodded his head towards one of the women in his squad. She took a step forward, pulled out a shock baton, and smacked him over the head with it, immediately rendering him unconscious.

Docking procedures went very smoothly once that was taken care of.

((()))

The governor's mansion was a large, gaudy structure owned by the Batarian noble who had backed the initial colony expedition. Once he had realized that there was more money to be made serving as what amounted to a large-scale refuel station, whorehouse, and transhipment center for booty and slaves, he had fully thrown himself into the endeavor, and had made himself very wealthy off of the proceeds. He was not a complete fool, however, and had invested a large portion of that money in buying for heavy security measures for himself from Elanus Risk Control Services. The mansion had kinetic barriers strong enough to endure a light orbital bombardment, automated turrets on the walls, security mechs patrolling the grounds, and fifty well-paid mercenaries garrisoned within to serve as his personal security detail.

Most of these security measures were rendered irrelevant when Interrogator Zechariah and his assault team appeared directly in the villa's party hall. For the assault, Tracotensis was escorted by three female Skitarii, and only two of her Storm Warden allies had accompanied her, both of them Librarians capable of discouraging people (and machines) from noticing them, while Haarlock himself had taken the guise of an Asari, and brought two female assassins (wearing sealed Synskins) as his escort.

"I am Matriarch Imperious!" Zechariah boomed out the second after they appeared, "And I claim this world in the name of the Hereticus Tenebrae!"

Response from the security forces within the mansion was prompt, and they immediately found themselves under fire. Aside from the two assassins, none of the strike team had been selected for the assault team based on the skill known as 'subtlety,' and return fire came from plasma guns, Meltas, grenade launchers, and Multilas. Interrogator Zechariah even managed to get a shot off with his Hellpistol before the initial response force was all cut down, along with most of the furniture, surrounding walls, and a number of trees in the garden outside.

"Of the Hereticus Tenebrae?" Tracotensis asked as the strike team began fanning out into the building, "Could you think of no better name?"

"We are supposed to seize their attention," Zechariah said with a shrug, before kicking a hole through a concrete wall, and stepping out into the mansion's grounds, "A malevolent star seemed appropriate to the task."

((()))

There were a half-dozen different 'slave pens' in Landing, four of which were directly adjacent to the space port for reasons of convenience. Reald Trak's pen was the closest, something he'd been thankful for many times in his life, as it meant he got the lion's share of business with the pilots simply because he was the easiest trader to reach. Within three minutes of the attack on landing beginning, he was cursing the location of his business for the first time in his life.

Four minutes after the attack began, something blasted in the primary entrance of 'Trak's Emporium,' and every electronic device in the building not operating on independent power shut down. Trak, who'd just entered the atrium on his way to his office (it was where he kept his credits), shrieked in terror, and switched course towards the nearest exit from the atrium, one that led to the actual holding cell where the slaves were kept. He glanced over his shoulder as he ran, but saw nothing but smoke in the doorway; as soon as he made it into the holding cells, he slammed the door to the atrium shut behind him, and manually forced the lock into place.

It was a heavy steel door, designed to be functionally impossible for slaves to break through; if the power didn't come back on, he'd not be able to unlock it, but hopefully it would be enough to keep him safe until the raid was over. Sure, if they managed to loot the credits from the safe in his office, that'd be an unfortunate loss, but-

Something slammed into the door hard enough that he could feel it from a meter away, and Trak nearly fell onto his ass from shock. That something slammed into the door again, then again, and the steel surface of the door around the locking mechanism began to distort. Trak just stared in shock as the pounding assault continued, until a massive armored hand smashed through the surface of the door, and reached up to grab the locking mechanism.

Trak turned to run again, but he was too late; an ear-splitting shriek sounded as the lock mechanism was physically torn from the doorframe; seconds later it smashed into Trak's back, the intruder literally using whatever happened to be at hand to stop his flight. Trak felt his spine snap as twenty kilograms of steel smashed in it, and the breath was stolen from his lungs as he tumbled across the bare concrete floor.

Some atrophied part of his brain pushed him to try to keep scrabbling away with one arm, while the other desperately tried to draw the pistol at his belt, but the steady thump thump thump of his assailant's approaching footsteps due to unreasoning terror, and he lost the coordination to succeed at either. Something seized him by the scruff of his nightshirt, and he gagged as his chest was compressed and pain stabbed him through the severed nerve endings of his spine. He thrashed, but was helpless to resist as his implacable foe twisted him around, and he beheld a terrifying metal visage.

"You prey upon your own kind," An impossible vast voice boomed out, from the black skull-like face of the monster's helm, while glowing blood-red eyes gazed mercilessly upon him, "You are a coward, and you are weak."

Another armored hand was raised, an enormous blade held within.

"The Emperor has no mercy for scum such as you."

The knife was the last thing Trak ever saw.

((()))

Kara was an Asari, and she had been a slave for her entire (rather short) life. Asari slaves were rare, especially in Landing, because capturing and effectively controlling Biotics was difficult, and the nanomachines that were intrinsic to Asari Biotics and reproduction also tended to gradually erode and disable the control implants Batarians used over the course of six to nine months. Still, the harder something was to get, the harder it was to keep, the more valuable it was, and as a result, Asari who were taken captive were highly prized, and usually functioned more as status symbols than anything else.

Of course, 'bed slave' was part-and-parcel of 'status symbol,' which was why Kara's father was a Batarian noble she didn't know the name of, and she'd been sent away from her mother as soon as she was able to eat solid foods. Kara wasn't sure how old she was, but she remembered about ten years of life, most of which had been spent knowing that once she either reached sexual maturity or someone found a 'special buyer' with enough money, she was going to 'earn' her food on her back with her legs spread.

Watching Trak get a knife stuck through his four-eyed face was the single happiest moment of her life. Then the armored giant tore the door off of her cell, and Trak's death became the second happiest moment of her life. The giant (she wasn't sure what species it was, but was pretty sure it wasn't a mech going by how it had spoken), began systematically tearing open the doors off of each cell in the slave pen; Kara covered her ears to protect them from the painfully loud noise after the first few, and followed along in its wake.

"The ship I belong to will be departing by dawn, or shortly thereafter," The giant boomed once all the cells are open, "It is your decision whether to depart with us, or take your chances on this world."

Kara knew where she was going.

((()))

The assault on the military base had easily been the least successful of the three during the opening blitz, for a single reason; it had actually taken a casualty. One of the relatively rare Turians amongst the base's population had been on watch at the armory when the attack had begun, and he had immediately equipped himself with the heaviest weapons Landing's 'military' had when he first heard gunfire. 'Heaviest Weapons' in this case meant a grenade launcher, and when an armored giant had entered the Armory, he'd gotten off precisely one shot before a plasma bolt had melted half of him and set the rest on fire.

Unfortunately, the single grenade he'd fire struck the plasma pistol just after it had fired, causing it to detonate, and melting one of the hands clean off the Space Marine who'd used it. This reduced said Space Marine's combat capacity by seventeen percent; he drew his knife in his other hand, and proceeded to butcher the remainder of the armory's watch crew without incident.

((()))

"This is very cathartic," Haarlock mused idly, his voice coming out as a soft alto due to his disguise, "It really had been far too long since we've been on field operations. I haven't been in mortal peril since we left Calixis. Well, if you can call this mortal peril..."

He paused as he considered the Turian he was holding aloft via telekinesis; the Xeno had been using Biotics, something that as-yet recovered intelligence had not indicated their species was capable of, and, before being rendered unconscious, had actually managed to land an attack against Magos Tracotensis. If the Xeno had targeted one of the other members of the assault team, he might have actually done some form of damage, but as Zechariah had long since learned, it was usually easier to damage a tank than a Magos equipped for battle.

Of course, she had been the most heavily armed member of their team, making use of four Particle Emitters on fully automatic fire between her regular arms and mechadendrites, making it not unreasonable to assume she was the greatest threat in the assault team. Unfortunately for the Turian, he glowed when he had activated his Biotics, giving his location away to Zechariah's assassins, who had standing orders to incapacitate and capture any Biotic they could. The Turian had rather decisively fallen into the 'could' category.

"He is fortunate that he did not stain my robes," Tracotensis said waspishly in High Gothic, "The gravitic distortion within my chassis will force a recalibration of every sensor mounted amongst my core structural elements."

"I'll be sure to inform him of that during interrogation," Haarlock replied drily in the Asari tongue, before turning to the assassin standing beside him, "Any other biotics recovered thus far?"

"It appears that Landing's governor kept an Asari chained to his bed," The assassin replied, "We have recovered her, and she is being kept with the other handful of slaves we have freed amongst the household staff until we are prepared to retreat from this world. We also discovered what appears to have been an escape tunnel underneath the governor's bed."

"Excellent," Zechariah said, clapping his hands together, "I assume it had been used?"

"Yes milady," The assassin replied.

"Very good," Haarlock said, before turning towards the estate wall, "It appears I have some vermin hunting to engage in. Do see to it that the place is burned to the ground while I'm gone."

Their words, of course, were for the unarmored Turian soldier who was on the mansion's roof; it wouldn't do for their planted information to die in the fire after all, would it?

((()))

"Sir," Battle-brother Jericho Kent reported over the Shadow Warden's dedicated Vox channel, "Rescue operation within the first slave pen have succeeded. However, I have experienced a complication during extraction."

"A complication?" Brother-sergeant Bulwark asked, "Explain."

"I am forwarding visual data to you now," Jericho said, activating the pict-recorder built into his helmet, and directing the feed over the Vox, before looking down at his 'problem.'

Latched firmly onto his armored leg, was a slip of a girl with blue-green skin, odd tendrils sweeping back over her head, and the most adorable gray eyes the Shadow Warden had seen in decades.

((()))

Within the Landing spaceport, chaos reigned. There were just under a dozen pirate and slaver vessels docked at the facility, only two of which answered to the same master. When the Bread Reckoning's crew began their assault on the port, none of the other ship crews knew where the attack was coming from, only that it was coming. Distrust, jealousy, and grudges were all common amongst assorted sapients crewing the ships, and even more common between the crews; once the shooting started, it wasn't confined to the Imperials and those who they were fighting.

Some pirates fired on other pirates, some slavers fired on pirates, and some of the dock personnel started shooting at everybody. Tiny lumps of metal at hypersonic velocity were spewed everywhere, spilling Turian, Batarian, Salarian, Volus, Asari, and even in one case human blood. Through sheer volume of fire, when one of the Imperial fire teams swept through the landing bay of an obsolete and surplussed Turian Cruiser, one round found its way into a gap ion the neck of one stormtrooper's armor, and tore his neck apart, killing him within seconds.

It didn't prevent the Imperials from seizing the ship, but it was the only fatality that the Imperial forces suffered during the attack.

((()))

Those denizens of Landing which were both conscious, and in the right location, to see what took place just before dawn on 'Main Street,' would remember it for the rest of their lives. At first, none realized the significance of the single Asari strolling casually down the street while gunfire wracked the spaceport, garrison, and governor's mansion, but some had the wit to realize that she wasn't just drunk, and such nonchalant behavior was drastically out of place given the attack on the city. Those who realized such, were the only to understand the totality of what happened; one even had an Omnitool, and used it to record everything that he saw.

"I!" The Matriarch boomed out, her amplified voice echoing up and down the street, "Am Matriarch Imperious, of the Hereticus Tenebrae!"

Her arm reared back, then she slammed her right arm down into, and through the pavement, Biotic flare nearly blinding as the surface of the road shattered. When the debris and light had cleared enough for the onlookers to see clearly again, the Asari was holding a squirming Batarian aloft by the collar of his night robe.

"This," The Matriarch continued, "Is the former ruler of this world. He not only permitted slavery, piracy, brigandry, and thuggery, he actively participated in and profited from them. This."

Her other hand (wrapped in purple luminescence) swept out in a blur, striking the Batarian across the face, and knocking his head from his body, sending it careening across the street to splatter against a nearby wall.

"Is the price he pays for his villainy. The Hereticus Tenebrae suffer no such moral turpitude in the systems we visit," Her gaze swept up and down the onlookers as she casually discarded the headless corpse, "This time, it is only the pirates and the leaders we have come to punish. Pray that we do not find cause to come visit once more."

With that, she turned and began walking down the street, heading in the direction of the spaceport.

((()))

Shortly before dawn, the strike teams that had seized control of the garrison were first reinforced, then evacuated, by a set of cargo haulers. The base's inhabitants who had survived to surrender by and large saw nothing of what happened, as they'd been forced into the barracks, and stripped of all equipment. They had all remained their, watched by armored giants whose faces they could not see, while the base's computers were stripped, wiped clean, then burned, and their personal equipment was looted. None of them dared move until the last of the assault team retreated, and even then, only a handful had the courage. Those who did, were able to see a trio of hovering vehicles hauling away both their assailants, and the metal vehicles they had arrived in.

That handful of soldiers were also the only ones to be outside of the barracks when the Hallucinogen Grenades the Imperials had left behind detonated.

((()))

"Sir!" One of the Stormtroopers guarding the primary vehicle entrance to the spaceport called as 'Matriarch Imperious' approached, saluting sharply.

"As you were," The 'Asari' said with a nod as she entered, "The port is fully secured?"

"Yessir," The Stormtrooper said with a nod, "We rounded up the last of the ground crews thirteen minutes ago, and Magos Tracotensis and her Mechanicus have begun to subvert the Machine Spirits of the vessels in dock."

"Very good," Zechariah said, shedding his disguise with a shiver as he moved out of view of any watching from outside of the spaceport's outer wall, "What of the equipment within the port itself?"

"There is too much for us to recover it all within the operational timeframe," The Stormtrooper said, "Brother-Sergeant Bulwark also wishes to speak with you regarding the matter."

"Where is the Brother Sergeant?" Haarlock asked.

"At the Eastern edge of the spaceport," The Stormtrooper said, "Dealing with some form of complication relating to the seizing of the slave pens."

"I shall go to speak with him at once," Zechariah said with a nod, "Be warned that this entrance has become the most likely target since I arrived through it."

"Yessir."

((()))

Two and a half kilometers from the spaceport, the governor's mansion burst into flame, and the promethium-fueled flames caused it to collapse into rubble within minutes of the fires beginning. None still living mourned its passing, though certain parties searching the wreckage in the coming days would wish its computers had not been so thoroughly destroyed.

((()))

"Brother-sergeant?" Haarlock called as he entered the space port's control tower, where the leader of the Shadow Warden detachment was tearing cogitators from their mountings and loading them onto a cart, "I understand you have a suggestion regarding the disposition of equipment we will not have time to recover?"

"Yes, Lord Haarlock," The Shadow Warden said, offering the Rogue Trader the respectful nod of an equal, "I recommend bombardment of the port once we retreat. Our only other viable option is demolitions, and I do not believe we possess enough explosives to accomplish this."

"The Bread Reckoning's sole armament of sufficient scale is its Macrocannon," Zechariah replied, raising an eyebrow as he looked up at the Astartes, "And we do not have the means to disguise the effects of a laser weapon of that size within a reasonable amount of time."

"True," Bulwark said, seizing the last cogitator unit, before beginning to wheel the cart towards the control tower's elevator, "But the pirate vessels which we have seized possess ballistic armaments capable of fulfilling the necessary role."

"You took the vessels intact?" Haarlock said, faint disbelief bleeding into his voice.

"Most of them," Bulwark said with a shrug as they entered the elevator, "The scum spent as much time fighting each other as us, and their discipline was truly wretched. I have not seen so pitiful a display in centuries."

"The soldiers at the governor's mansion," Zechariah said as the elevator began to descend, "Fought as a reasonably seasoned Guard Regiment. I appear to have assumed that the space port's defenders were of similar quality."

"Fortunately for us, they were not," Bulwark said, "But even if they were, I doubt they could have prevented us from taking the merchant vessel that was here as a prize regardless. All but the merchant vessel and the largest of the corsairs will be able to fit within the Bread Reckoning's holds, and I supremely doubt that the Magos has not yet subverted their machine spirits, and taken control of them."

"This plan seems to be acceptable," Haarlock said with a nod, "Now I believe you said that there was a complication from the slave pens?"

The elevator door opened, revealing another Shadow Warden, who was attempting to carefully pry a small blue girl off of his armored boot, with little success.

"I see," Haarlock said, nodding gravely, "An out of context problem."

((()))

The Bread Reckoning lifted with the dawn, along with every other vessel that had been within the space port when it landed. The Imperial-built vessel launched last, and not until the other vessels had already begun to bombard the spaceport with low-intensity fire, throwing massive plumes of debris into the air. Between the dust, debris, the glare of the system's star, and the smoke from fires within the port, none of the city's inhabitants were able to gain a clear view of the ships departing, particularly the Bread Reckoning.

Every sensor capable of tracking airborne or spaceborne objects within Landing had been destroyed. Every cogitator bearing records of her arrival had been seized, or wiped and destroyed. Every being that had been in the space port when the Bread Reckoning arrived had either died, or was taken with when the Imperials left the world; even the impressions she had left on the space port's landing pad were destroyed during the bombardment as the vessels left. She had arrived during the dead of night, with no running lights active; no one outside of the port had even seen the shape of her silhouette.

A combination of facts that would be very frustrating to certain interested parties down the road.

((()))

Council Chambers, Presidium, Citadel, 2127 CE.

"It is unlike you to be late, Crassius," Tevos said, favoring the aging Turian councilor with a rather dry look, "Especially for a briefing of such direct military concern."

"It's not like me to be old," The Turian grumbled as he entered the room, and it closed and sealed behind him, "But it is what it is. Is this chamber secure?"

"It is now," Paren, his Salarian counterpart, said as he activated a complex mish-mash of electronics on the center of the small briefing room's table, "Or as secure as it can be within current technological limitations."

"Good," Tevos said, nodding gratefully to the Salarian, before turning to the only non-Councilor in the room, "If you would give your report, Spectre Vasir."

"Of course Councilor," Tela Vasir replied, activating her Omnitool to bring up a display of the Nemean Abyss, before zooming in on the world of Bekke in particular, "The Shadow Broker caught wind of some form of attack on Landing, the sole spaceport and settlement of note on Bekke, and as I was already near the Nemean Abyss, he asked me to investigate unusual rumors regarding the attack, as part of our arrangement."

"What sort of rumors?" Crassius asked gruffly, "I assume it was more than just another pirate or slaver raid on one of their rivals?"

"Indeed Councilor," Vasir said with a nod, "There were a number of common themes amongst the rumors, three in particular. First, those that conducted the raid freed nearly every slave in Landing, and seized every ship in port during the attack. Second, that the assault was led by an incredibly powerful Asari Matriarch, who single-handedly tore the Governor's mansion apart. Third, and this is what drew the Shadow Broker's attention, that every last soldier participating in the raid was equipped with effective man-portable laser weaponry."

"Understandable that this would bring the Shadow Broker's attention," Paren said with a nod, "Not having definitive answers regarding such a thing would ruin his credibility. What did you discover?"

"I was able to confirm the first rumor in its entirety," Vasir said, grimacing slightly, "Though it wasn't easy, as the governor's mansion had been leveled and the computers seized or destroyed, the data records and sensing equipment at the spaceport had been seized or reduced to slag, and the same had been done to what serves as a military base in Landing. I had to go through merchant's records of business with the ship captains regarding sale of loot and purchase of supplies to confirm which ships had been there during the time of the attack, and collect vid recordings taken by civilians after the attack to make clear what had happened to the ships."

"And the slaves?" Tevos asked, a hint of hope in her voice.

"All five slave traders in Landing had been killed, their prisons torn open, and their 'stock' freed," Vasir said with a hint of satisfaction, as she replaced the image of Bekke with one of an empty set of cells, a deformed steel locking mechanism lying on the floor between them, "It took very little prodding for me to get firsthand accounts from the locals; the freed slaves brutalized the bodies of their captors, and the remains left a strong impression on those in Landing who saw them."

Vasir paused for a moment to replace the image with an image of an Asari in an unusually bulky hard suit.

"I was also able to pick up a number of Omni-tool recordings of the Asari who at least claimed to lead the attack, and much of that rumor was true as well. She claimed to be 'Matriarch Imperious,' and I have four different sources of footage that show her punching a hole five feet through the ground, then dragging the Batarian who'd ruled Landing out from the escape tunnel he'd been trying to use, before slapping his head off. I should particularly note that the patterns to her Biotic fields were unusual, and she somehow managed to both track the little slug through the ground, and breach the tunnel without crushing him in the process. None of the footage or still shots I was able to find show her carrying specialized scanning gear, though that armor is bulky enough to conceal a sensor array. She didn't destroy the governor's mansion though, I inspected the ruins myself, and they were brought down by some intensely hot incendiaries melting the structural supports, causing it to collapse."

"And the laser weapons?" Crassius asked patiently.

"That," Vasir said, frustrated resignation clear in her voice, "Is the one thing I can't confirm or deny definitively. Whoever carried this attack out didn't want to be found or recognized, aside from the one face and name they deliberately showed, and they covered their tracks damn well."

"Unfortunate," Tevos said sympathy in her voice and on her face, "What were you able to recover?"

"The Governor had hired personal bodyguards from Elanus Risk Control," Vasir said, "One of whom managed to make it out of the mansion without being captured. I agreed to transport him to one of ERCS's facilities on my way back to the Citadel in exchange for his account, and had considerable time to debrief him during the trip. He informed me that 'Imperious' was part of the initial strike on the mansion, and, working with an elite team of heavily armed, cybernetically augmented, and Biotically capable soldiers, completely slaughtered the Governor's bodyguards. He personally saw one set of exceedingly powerful solid-projectile weapons used against his comrades, and a variety of flamethrowers."

"Flamethrowers?" Crassius said incredulously, "Nobody's used such weapons since the Rachni wars! They're too volatile!"

"That is what he claimed," Vasir said with a shrug, "He wasn't in his armor, so he didn't have any recording equipment available during the assault, and as I said, the attackers were very thorough in seizing or destroying digital records at every site they struck. The mansion had been burned to the ground, so I couldn't exactly differentiate between burn damage from the fight over the mansion, and that done by the fire that brought the mansion down. The spaceport had been outright bombarded when the attackers left; a full forensics team might have been able to pull something useful from the rubble, if they'd been on-sight before the locals started looting it, but I couldn't get much of anything from there myself. The military base, on the other hand, was at least somewhat intact."

Vasir paused again, and began cycling through a number of pictures of the dilapidated Landing garrison.

"Obviously," The Spectre continued, "The base's computers and records were also seized and destroyed, but as the structures themselves weren't destroyed, they at least bore some physical evidence as to the nature of the attack."

"Were there no survivors to recount the tale?" Tevos asked.

"There were," Vasir said, grimacing again, "In fact, the attacking force used some sort of orbital drop pod," Vasir called up an image of three large craters on the perimeter of the base, "To kick off the attack, hitting at around four AM, local time, and catching the base completely off guard. They cut down the guards almost effortlessly, and took just over eighty percent of the garrison captive. The problem is that at some point, they deployed a psychotropic gas on the soldiers there, inducing hallucinations and temporary insanity. None of the accounts I have are particularly reliable, so I'm mostly relying on the physical leftovers of the battle."

"Damn," Crassius said, a hint of respect in his voice, "These people are professionals."

"Yes sir," Vasir said frankly, "The one common theme I had from the soldiers, the survivor of the mansion attack, and the civilians who saw part of the engagement, made it clear that they wore standardized armor, none except for 'Imperious' showing even an inch of skin, they moved in disciplined fire teams, and made extremely effective use of blitz tactics and fire support from heavy combat mechs. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were about, and accomplished it with extreme, lethal efficiency.

"Understood, Tela," Tevos said with a nod, "You were saying about the physical evidence?"

"Yes ma'am," Vasir replied with a nod, bringing up a collage of pictures, each showing a close-up view of a small distortion, crater, burn, or other form of damage on a metal or concrete surface, "I found a couple dozen of these markings, and judging by where they fell, they were the results of stray shots striking the given surface, and they all resulted in damage from thermal transfer. I took chemical samples of the burn marks, and the results of testing them have led me to two possible conclusions regarding the rumors of laser weapons in particular, and the attack on Landing as a whole."

"And that would be?" Crassius asked.

"Either this attack was, as 'Imperious' stated, a raid to free slaves and discourage slavery and piracy, wherein the attackers have taken such pains to cover their tracks both to protect themselves from reprisal and add an air of mystery and fear to the assault. If that's the case, these burn marks are the result of incendiary rounds that burn Oxygen/Hydrogen, because I didn't find any chemical traces of less prevalent incendiaries, which would suggest that the 'Hereticus Tenebrae' have developed what they feel is a field-safe means of storing Oxygen and Hydrogen for use as incendiary fuel."

"And if that isn't the case?" Tevos pressed.

"Then someone has made a quantum-leap in energy weapon technology," Vasir said grimly, "And Bekke was the first large-scale field test."

((()))

Inquisitorial briefing chamber, Deck 18, Haarlock's Might, 2128 CE, 180M41.

"...It is an impressive empire," Khan summarized the briefing on information recovered from Bekke Haarlock had just given, "But the 'Asari' would do well to take a tighter reign upon their vassal races."

"They're giving women a bad name," One of the women at the briefing table growled, "Have they no respect for their own strength?"

"Perhaps," Haarlock said with a nod, "Perhaps not. In all, what we need now is a means by which to prepare these 'Citadel Races' for the coming conflict."

"Indeed," One of male Inquisitorial agents said, "Clearly one of the first steps will be to begin devising fertility drugs effective on each of these species, in order to raise their population."

Every single person in the briefing chamber; Inquisitor Khan, Interrogator Zechariah, the other eleven agents, even the pair of servants waiting in the wings to attend mundane needs, all stared at the man.

"...That is an unusual course of action," A woman wearing hooded robes eventually said, "Even for the Inquisition."

"Indeed," Khan said, "And likely not the most effective. Their technological base is sufficiently advanced to make delivery of such an agent extremely difficult against unwilling targets. A propaganda campaign to change cultural values would likely be more effective."

"Instigating such a thing," Haarlock said, "Would require prolonged infiltration or direct cultural contact with the Asari and their client races."

"Indeed," Khan said with a nod, "For this and many other reasons, we shall start with the infiltration option, and proceed from there. The vessels that we have seized offer an ideal vector for accomplishing said infiltration, though they will need to be crewed almost exclusively by disguised females," Khan paused and swept his gaze around the table, meeting each of his subordinate's eyes before continuing, "Recommendations of further objectives for this infiltration campaign?"

"The first is the most obvious," A man with a synthesized voice buzzed out, "This 'Extranet' should be thoroughly infiltrated and mined for data. The second is slightly less obvious; the mechanism by which the network functions, these 'comm buoys,' must be secured for our own use, and a communication network with the Bastion Sector established, so that we may maintain intelligence and communication parity with the Citadel Races. If we allow our command and control loop to remain at the comparatively tepid speed allowed by Astropaths, we will be at a crushing strategic disadvantage."

"Of course," Khan said, a small, brutal grin curving across his face, "We shall devote an entire Starship to this task; untold wealth of information awaits simple task of setting appropriate intrusion spirits to retrieving it for us. This is not an advantage that can be allowed to go untapped. Other suggestions?"

"We should establish a known legal entity within their territory," One of the women suggested, "Something simple, such as a modest manufactory or trading concern. Eventually we will need more overt contact, and establishing a past history will serve us well when the time comes."

Khan nodded at the women, before turning his gaze towards the others.

"Production focus regarding Starships should change," One of the men suggested, "With the scale of vessels that the Asari hegemony favors, there is little need for us to produce escorts, when their fleets can fulfill that role. Proper capital ships will be needed far more than escort hulls."

"Indeed," Khan said, "And even should contact with the Citadel turn sour, and the Asari divine our location by some unknown means, we have few enough systems that less strategic flexibility should not yet be an issue."

Silence reigned around the table for some time, none of the other Inquisitorial agents volunteering anything, until Haarlock chose to speak.

"A final recommendation," He said looking Khan directly in the eye as he spoke, "Would be regarding the few Asari amongst the slaves we freed. As they all possess these 'Biotic' gravitic manipulation abilities, I would recommend both applied study to granting a similar ability to our own soldiers, and training those willing to form a force we can deploy within Citadel space without revealing ourselves. A secular reflection of the Sisters of Battle, if you will."

"This sounds like an acceptable venture," Khan said, returning Zechariah's gaze evenly, "Though due to the expense involved, and focus on naval build-up, the program will have to either be of very small scale, or you will have to fund it from your own purse, Zechariah."

"Understood, Lord Khan," Zechariah said with a nod.

"Very well," Khan said, turning his attention to the rest of those present, "Unless there are further recommendations, we will now adjourn."

((()))

AN: For those of you not in the know, financial difficulties have strapped my time availability for writing fanfiction these days, hence the slow-down to (roughly) monthly updates. If you're interested, my original work (which I actually charge money for), is available over on Smashwords; there's a link in my author profile.