novelraw Chapter 204: Mining Sector Mystery (2)
Chapter 204: Mining Sector Mystery (2)
"The Raven Lord?"
Soshyan furrowed his brows, then turned to Sol beside him, evidently seeking his opinion.
Following this, Sol stepped forward and asked through his helmet:
"I'd like to know more details."
The Arbitrator then proceeded to recount everything that had transpired underground in exhaustive detail.
After listening, Sol fell entirely silent.
"Could it be Chaos cultists?"
Soshyan inquired cautiously.
But the other man shook his head.
"Chaos cultists would never expose themselves so willingly, nor would they ever let a group of Imperial Enforcers escape.""Then who could they be?"
"I can't guess either, but..."
Sol stopped halfway through his sentence, then looked toward the Arbitrator.
"Thank you very much for your assistance. Has there been anything unusual about the local Ecclesiarchy during this time?"
"Not for the time being. The local Bishop is a muddle-headed, incompetent swine; we didn't expect him to be of any help."
"Is he a local?"
"Yes."
"Aside from that, have there been any other strange occurrences recently worth mentioning, or rather, any inexplicable events?"
Hearing this question, the Arbitrator thought for a moment before turning and retrieving a dataslate adorned with the golden emblem of the Departmento Justitiae from his assistant.
"Recently, the Adeptus Mechanicus reported an attack. I have prepared a brief summary of the incident."
Soshyan took the dataslate, slowly reading it from the very beginning.
On the surface, it was a severe murder case. An Adeptus Mechanicus office located in Mining Sector 14 had been attacked by unknown assailants late at night, resulting in the disappearance of four Adeptus Mechanicus tech-priests. By the following evening, the Adeptus Mechanicus had located all four individuals, but three had died horrific deaths, leaving only a single survivor.
Soshyan's attention was immediately drawn to one key point—Mining Sector 14.
Because it was also in Mining Sector 14 where the Arbitrator's squad had encountered that heretical cult.
The four Adeptus Mechanicus members were all lowest-level apprentices hailing from Gryphonne IV. Their names were Bodri, Medo, Durand, and Faya.
Their daily work consisted of maintaining the massive super-heavy equipment in the mining sectors, ensuring their safe operation, and periodically submitting inspection reports.
None of these four individuals seemed particularly special. Whether in terms of their origins or their technological expertise, they were merely the most utterly ordinary members among countless thousands of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Yet they were all abducted and brutally murdered in a single night, with only the tech-priest named Faya managing to survive.
The other three were not so lucky.
Bodri was discovered in a garbage dump by a cleaning servitor performing its routine sweep. Someone had attempted to burn his remains and discard the corpse into the city's ancient sewer system. However, the augmented portions of the Adeptus Mechanicus members were incredibly resilient and difficult to destroy—though overall, very little of his biological body remained, as if he had been completely torn to shreds.
Based on the remnants, it was impossible to confirm whether his missing body parts had simply rotted off and washed away, but the markings left on his forearm bone convincingly appeared to have been gouged by something resembling the claws of a wild beast.
When Medo's remains were found beneath the roof of a boiler room, the Enforcers gained even more profound revelations regarding this case.
Not only had this female member of the Adeptus Mechanicus suffered the exact same injuries as Bodri, but her brain, eyes, and heart had also been surgically excised.
These horrific wounds left behind a bloodless, desiccated husk that had been entirely baked dry by the smoke and heat radiating from the heating pipes—one could even say smoked—while tightly wrapped in dark green cloth and pinned beneath the roof rafters using industrial nail guns.
Cross-referencing her state against Bodri's led the Departmento Justitiae to the firm conclusion that the latter had likely also had his brain stem, eyes, and heart removed.
Prior to this, they had merely assumed that the conspicuous absence of those soft-tissue organs was due to the near poison-level corrosiveness of the organic waste fluids covering the trash heap.
Durand was the last victim discovered. When his remaining organic tissue was dredged from the sewers, he was merely presumed to be a casualty of some gang conflict, until people discovered Adeptus Mechanicus cogwheels and certain distinct mechanical components.
Due to the unique environmental conditions of the locations where the bodies were dumped, it was anatomically impossible to pinpoint any exact date or time of death, but judging from the autopsy results of the first two victims, they likely all perished around the exact same time.
In other words, around midnight on the night they were abducted. Faya also claimed to have escaped from the unidentified kidnappers right around that exact time.
When he was injected with massive doses of sedatives, stuffed into a burlap sack, and dragged out of his dormitory, he had been incredibly terrified. However, his self-modified emergency medical belt later injected him with a massive dose of adrenaline, helping him regain consciousness, after which he utilized a stun grenade to facilitate his narrow escape.
It appeared that Tech-Priest Faya's vigilance and preparedness had ultimately saved him. However, Soshyan saw numerous suspicious points in this narrative.
Unless this priest had somehow perfectly anticipated that all of this would happen and made the corresponding preparations, his luck was simply far too incredible.
"At first, I thought we might be dealing with a group of cultists."
The Arbitrator subsequently explained:
"But as the investigation deepened, I discovered that this pattern of killing seemed far more extreme. It wasn't merely savage murder or simple acts of vandalism, but rather felt much more like a highly specific, purposeful ritual."
"What makes you think that?"
The one asking the question was Sol beside Soshyan. Wearing his helmet, he appeared to be just an ordinary warrior.
The Arbitrator tilted his head and looked at him, as if Sol was directly questioning his competence.
"In my experience, if this were truly the destructive sabotage of cultists, they would definitely want these acts to be discovered. Those heretics would revel in the terror and fear they manufacture... But the reality is that great effort was expended to conceal those corpses. This leads me to believe that the killers were more interested in death itself, rather than the societal impact caused by that death."
"Could it possibly be murders committed by Genestealers?"
Sol's words caused the atmosphere in the room to instantly tense up. Given that murders committed by cults were usually highly concealed, cultists could continue their subversive work entirely undetected.
"Murders by Genestealers?"
The Arbitrator pondered for a moment.
"Indeed, this possibility exists. Though based on my past experience, these xenos mostly resort to kidnapping or direct slaughter as their criminal methods. They don't seem to favor this type of ritualistic butchery. Usually, only cultists lean toward severing the victims' hands and tongues, since those are organs used for communication."
He began to recount the numerous horrifying cases he had witnessed in the past.
"I once handled a case where all the victims had their brains extracted because the cultists needed to ingest the spiritual substance of their prey, or as they would say... the soul. On some other worlds, cultists also gouge out the victims' eyes, because the eyes are the windows to the soul. In fact..."
"Everything you've mentioned thus far seems to share another underlying connection."
"What?"
"Psykers. These things are all related to psychic powers."
The Arbitrator stood stunned for a moment before suddenly realizing something.
"You're saying they were looking for a psyker!"
Sol nodded.
"And they most likely didn't find one."
"Because he escaped."
Soshyan immediately followed up. The Arbitrator practically jumped out of his boots.
"Faya! Faya is a psyker! He is the one the Genestealers were trying to capture! No wonder the interrogators let him go so easily back then..."
"Very well. It seems the Departmento Justitiae now has a new direction. Before the plan for the next phase of operations is drawn up, everyone should do their absolute best to stabilize the situation for the time being. Capturing that Adeptus Mechanicus tech-priest must take utmost priority... I have reason to deeply suspect that he definitely has some sort of connection with that Cult of the Raven Lord."
The Arbitrator nodded forcefully.
"I will immediately organize personnel to secure Faya first, and then subject him to rigorous interrogation."
Subsequently, he stood straight, crossed his arms, and offered the sign of the Aquila.
"For the Emperor."
Soshyan returned the salute.
"For the Emperor."