The explorator voidship Voidspear sailed through the the storm that was the imaterium. Only its gelar field keeping the horrors and deamons of the warp at bay. Even still, it was a dangerous process, the deamons wanting at the sight of the mortal crew on board. But to call all of the crew mortal, wasn't an accurate description. For this was a ship belonging to the cult mechanicus and all its occupants were of the same allegiance. Well, not all of them, somwhere in the armory, there was inquisitor Canosius, tasked with keeping the ship loyal to the Emperor, even more loyal than to the Omnissiah.

After a particular incident involving T'au technology, the Inquisition deemed it necessary for this particular ship to be supervised.

It was of course, a futile effort, as the Arch Magos found more than enough ways to keep the inquisitor "busy".

But currently, the inquisitor had more pressing issues, than supposed "stealing" of ammunition.

For the gelar field was failing, and that would allow the deamons of the warp to materialise inside the ship, and if you ware unlucky enough, inside you. But he was trained for these kind of situations, he was an inquisitor after all.

Inquisitor Canosius walked with confidence, he always did, even when he actually felt none. But today he was confident even on the inside and not just outside.

He had finally managed to find evidence of the schemes against him.

During his extensive investigation on the missing ammunition, that had partially took place during the warp incursion. He had discovered that the skitarii that took the ammunition had orders to do so from the arch magos himself.

So, the inquisitor went to confront the arch magos and demand an explanation. And it he didn't get one, or it wasn't to his liking... Well, that's what his master crafted boltpistol was for.

But even as he walked through the doors to the command center that the arch magos resided in, he hoped it wouldn't come to that. He always did. It was the his least favourite part of being an inquisitor by far. More than walking through the many sewers of the hive cities, even more than being tortured by heretics and mutants.

But he was an inquisitor, it was his job to kill. So he never showed his distaint for it. Nor did he act like it.

So, he swallowed his conscience and walked over the many cables that littered the floor to the arch magos.

He was a weird sight to behold to be sure, but so was every tech-priest.

He was sitting on his command throne in the center of the room. Well, sitting wasn't entirely correct to say. For to sit, one would require to have a butt and reasonably amount of legs. But the arch magos had neither.

He had many legs running on the underside of his body that it self stretched on the ground like carpet, it looked almost like a cross between a centipede and a spider. Except a humanoid body sticked out where the head would have been

The shape of his main body was largely human with a head and arms. Only, he had more then two arms. The arch magos had four main arms, only one of them was biological, and in addition many mechadendrites and servo arms. It was hard to tell where one arm began and another ended.

His head was probably the most striking feature, for both his eyes were replaced with several small blue optics and cameras, further intensifying the spider like appearance. His entire mouth and nose were replaced with a astartes rebreather and the back of the head was sunk into a top part of a terminator armor he was partialy in places wearing.

All in all, he almost looked like a smaller version of Belisarius Cawl.

Finally, when Canosius was halfway to the arch magos, had said magos noticed him.

"Ah, it is good to see you inquisitor. I was just about to ask for you." He said in high gothic, the sound being entirely synthetic, due to the arch magos no longer having a mouth.

"I believe there is a heretek hacker on board with my authority and identification." Continued the arch magos. "I also believe that said heretek was the cause of the stolen ammunition."

The inquisitor appeared mildly surprised, he raised an eyebrow and gave the arch magos a questioning look.

But internally, he was shocked. He was used to shock of course, and learned to never show it fully, but he was shocked nonetheless.

Because of this single information and the fact that he said it before he confronted the archmagos, meant that now his evidence wasn't enough. Were it be almost any other person on this ship, or even in the Imperium, his evidence would have been enough for an immediate execution. But the arch magos wasn't every other person. To kill such a high ranking member of the Mechanicus without sufficient evidence, even if he had previous record of not so exceptional behaviour, would surely worsen the relationships between the Inquisition and the Mechanicus beyond what was acceptable.

"I will look into this supposed hacker." Said the inquisitor. "But tell me archmagos, if this hacker is really that skilled to cease your authority, then how did you discover them?"

"I realised his presence when my personnel reported doing orders that I had not issued. Later when I looked more into it, I discovered digital traces in the noosphere. I also discovered the name: Nullus that was attached to the traces, both of which I believe were left intentionally. It should also be noted that there is no tech-priest nor any other personnel with that name on board." Said the archmagos without any emotion, as was typical for magi of his status.

"And why was I not informed of this before?" a
Asked Canosius suspiciously.

"The first verifiable order that Nullus gave was 16.34 hours ago." Replied the archmagos immediately, almost too immediately.

This is going to be a long investigation. The inquisitor though to himself. But it was his duty. And inquisitors always do their duty.

This is going to be a long expedition. The arch magos thought to himself. But he was an explorator of the Mechanicus, it was his jobs to lead expeditions into unexplored or poorly explored corners of the galaxy.

But he didn't expect their emergency exit of the warp would brought them into previously unknown system. And by unknown he didn't meant noone was yet in this system, but that the existence of the system in its entirety wasn't known, even the machine spirit of the ship with all its sensors was surprised at their sudden appearance in this system.

Which while normally still unexpected and unusual, wasn't something that the archmagos hadn't experienced before, there were so many systems in the galaxy that to think humanity would know of them all or even most of them was foolish beyond mere stupidity.

But what made this particular unknown system so unique, was its proximity to inhabited space. Indeed, this system was almost in the middle of a flourishing sub-sector with its own defence fleet and even an astartes home world.

And what was worse, they had lost almost all fuel and raw resources when a Tzeentchian deamon blew up holes in the storage and fuel rooms, venting most of their contents into space.

So now the archmagos had to make a fictional heretek hacker, keep this ship from falling apart because of the gelar field failure, explore this anomalous system, and get enough resources to be able to make it back to Imperial space. Well, he supposed that he already was in Imperial space, so that was one less thing to worry about.

"[Scifionsa, have you managed to contact the governor of this sub-sector?]" The arch magos asked in binary over the noosphere.

"[[Contacted sub-sector governer] = False. [Hypothesis] = Something is blocking all low frequency electromagnetic radiation and psychik communication.]" Answered Scifionsa, also over the noosphere in binary.

"[Do you really think that is the case, or it is some else to us unknown factor?]"

"[Likelihood of [Hypothesis] > 50%. Until more data is gathered, [Hypothesis] is the most probable answer. However, [Hypothesis] has many uncertainties and it shouldn' be thought of as the absolute truth. ]"

"[You sound almost excited about it.]"

"[Opportunity to gather more information about inability to contact outside systems. [Gathering information = learning.] [Learning = sacred duty of the Omnissiah.]]"

"[Do you not find our situation concerning?]"

"[Generating concern.]" Answered Scifionsa almost sarcastically, not that any actual emotion was transferred in binary.

"[Arch magos, I have news that require your attention.]" Said the chief enginseer of the Voidspear, Mechus, over the noosphere.

"[You have my attention chief enginseer. How are the repairs going?]"

"[Not well I am afraid, archmagos. But that could change very soon.]"

"[How so?]"

"[We have scanned the planets of this system and found that the second (2th) planet has extreme amounts of metals, heavy metals, and possibly gemstones. If we were to establish mining operations on that planet, we would gain more than enough resources to completely repair and refuel the ship.]"

"[Scifionsa, I though that all electromagnetic radiation is being blocked.]" Asked the archmagos, this time, both through the noosphere, and the air as sound, as Scifionsa had made his way into the command center by using an elevator.

"[Changing [Hypothesis]. [Hypothesis] = Something is blocking all electromagnetic radiation and psychik communication going outside the system.]"

"[Mechus, you certain that such observations are correct?]"

"[Yes, archmagos.]"

"[I sense a catch]"

"[The system is inhabited by xenos of unknown technological and martial prowess.]"

"[That could prove problematic. Scifionsa, call for the xenobiologist Biomeca.]"

This is going to be even longer than I expected. Thought the archmagos sadly.

Author's Note

Feel free to skip my pointless mumbling of an Author's Notes.

Alright, my first actually finished chapter. I've had many ideas for stories in the past, even started a few of them, but this is my first actually finished chapter. I write very slowly and I am not a native English speaker, not that you could not notice.

So for that reason, I am going to try writing a lot more briefly then I would normally prefer and try skip some parts. If you don't like it, then that's too bad, because this is all you're gonna get.

Also, you are legally obliged to point out any of my mistakes and/or grammatical errors, failure to do so will result in conversion to a servitor. You have been warned.