The Aeldari warrior began her accounting.
One week. Three nobles dead, including the Confessor.
The Arbites investigation pieced together her thodology after the fact. She had taken several household servants — not killed them, taken them — and extracted everything she needed to know. Nas. Addresses. Which nobles had participated in what. She had a list, and she was working through it.
The Spire went into a different kind of fear.
The earlier panic had been general, diffuse — alien fleets, the end of everything. This was specific and personal. It had nas attached to it. Lords who had purchased Aeldari prisoners, lords who had been present when the Confessor perford his work, lords who had laughed — all of them understood now that she knew who they were.
They retreated into their estates with every guard they could muster. Powered armour on every bodyguard. Multiple overlapping patrol rotations. Access points sealed.
None of it helped.
She was through walls before sentries registered she existed. Where she couldn't find a weakness, she made one — the power blade cut through armoured doors, armoured bodyguards, armoured everything, with the quiet efficiency of sothing that had been designed for exactly this. The bodyguards in powered armour died faster than the ones in flak plate, because she was used to that particular threat profile and had developed opinions about where to put the blade.
The Arbites collecting bodies afterward noted that the kills showed consistent technique. No wasted motion. She had studied the layout of each estate in advance, identified the fastest path to the target, executed, and left.
When the Spire flooded the upper levels with infantry — every street covered, every junction manned — she adapted without apparent frustration. She stopped targeting nobles.
She moved down to the Mid-Hive and started on governnt buildings instead.
The Arbites precinct. The Interior Ministry. Three Ecclesiarchy temples. One per night, sotis two. Every administrative worker inside, killed. Three-digit casualty counts, consistently. The lights across the entire Hive burned at full power around the clock — every dark corner eliminated — and she continued working.
If she wasn't stopped, the projections were straightforward: within a few weeks, the Mid-Hive bureaucracy that connected the Spire's authority to the general population would cease to function. No administration ant no enforcent. No enforcent ant every grievance that had been accumulating for a decade erupting simultaneously.
The nobility convened again.
"We negotiate. Release the prisoners. Give her what she wants."
"Release four more of them so she has allies? That's your solution? Idiot."
"What else do we do? All our frontline regints are engaged against the rebels, we can't recall them without losing ground. We have maybe a dozen garrison regints in the Hive, and those are demonstrably useless against a single target—"
"Send an astropathic call for Space Marine support. Even one squad would change the equation."
"They're not coming. They have actual threats to deal with. This doesn't qualify."
"Send the call anyway. On the off chance soone responds—"
"You want to trouble the Adeptus Astartes over a problem you created? By doing things that should have had every one of you on a pyre? This is your doing! Everyone in this room who attempted to—"
The eting dissolved. A subsequent eting dissolved. A third eting produced docuntation of the previous two etings dissolving and was itself adjourned.
Nothing was resolved. The Aeldari warrior did not, as so had apparently hoped, simply stop.
The nobility, whatever their collective failures, were quite motivated on the individual question of personal survival.
General Zeppelin used his authority to pull the 109th Regint into his personal estate as a protective detail — public soldiers, private purpose. This was not unusual. It was barely worth remarking on.
When Kian led his contingent into the estate and saw what the General's family actually owned, he had to recalibrate.
A Spire tower. The whole thing. One of the great columns of the hive's upper structure, privately held, with the Zeppelin house crest on every external surface.
And three thousand household troops. All of them in full powered armour.
Three thousand soldiers in powered armour, Kian thought, trying to keep his expression neutral. He has more power-armoured troops than I have troops total.
If the man had a daughter of appropriate age, Kian would have been working up a very different kind of proposal.
He was still processing this when a steward directed him to a briefing.
The General looked terrible.
The famous composed authority was still present in structure, but the surface was wrong — heavy shadows under his eyes, face drawn, and sothing in his expression that Kian, watching carefully from the corner of the room, read as a man who had sothing on his conscience and was hoping very much that the Aeldari warrior's list was not comprehensive.
Right, Kian thought, pressing his lips together to contain his reaction. That's interesting. The righteous General. Very composed in public. Apparently not quite as selective in private as his reputation suggested.
She had only killed people who directly participated. She hadn't made mistakes yet.
The fact that you're this frightened, old man, suggests you had a more direct role in events than you've admitted to anyone.
Kian kept his face professionally neutral and paid attention to the briefing.
The General spread his hands.
"She moves faster than our targeting systems were designed for. Standard lasrifles and autoguns cannot penetrate her armour at engagent distances before she closes to lee range. We need to change what we're carrying."
He gestured. Soldiers carried in weapons cases and set them on the conference table. The latches were released.
Bolt carbines.
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