+Requested Planet: Port Wander+

+Sector: Calixis+
+Sub-Sector: Drusus Marches+
+Planet Grade: Battlefleet Orbital Station+
+Tithe Grade: Aptus Non+
+Geography: N/A+
+Environment: 1.02G/26 C+
+Naval Commander: Larius Sans+

THE KNOCKING on the cabin’s door drew his attention away from the screen of the data slate he held in
his hand. He stood up, straightened his red Mechanicus robes and moved for the door. The holo-
display was already active, showing a clean-shaven gaunt youth dressed in a uniform of a junior naval
officer.
“Yes.” He stated as much as asked in a deep machine-like voice as he came to stand before
the holo-display.
“Tech-priest Ferrus, your shuttle has just docked at the hangar bay P22/7 and is awaiting
your arrival.” The junior officer recited his message with the perfect diligence of a well-drilled naval
officer, a rarity in the corner of space they were currently in. “Your cargo has been retrieved and is
on its way to the shuttle as we speak.”
Ferrus pressed a button next to the holo-display and the door was momentarily retracted
into the ceiling. Ferrus looked down at the junior officer – the youth was of above average height,
but he was still taller.
“I will escort you, Sir, as soon as you are ready to depart.”

HE HAD switched off the engines and left the Arvus Lighter on backup power so that he could get it up
and running as soon as his passenger arrived. Then he climbed out of the cabin.
“Fuck, yeah!” he exclaimed as he took a look at the hangar bay, his jaw working tirelessly on
the gum he had in his mouth.
“Freelance pilot Jace Xantov?” came a voice and he turned to see a female officer approach
him, her buttoned-up naval uniform failing to conceal her buxom figure.
“It’s Jace the Ace, baby. Wanna meet the legend behind the name?” He flashed a broad smile
and winked, while she returned him an icy-cold stare.
“Tech-priest Brutis Ferrus will be here shortly.” She ignored him, which didn’t discourage him
in the least as he continued swaying next to her, his eyes scouring her from head to toe. He was a tall
and well-built youth, with corded muscles, although this was presently concealed by the space suit
he wore. He did take his helmet off, however, and she could see his smooth face with a number of
rings piercing his eyebrows. She shuddered. He could have been attractive and a catch, she thought,
were it not for his repulsively irritable demeanour.
“Your credentials,” she stated calmly. When no documents were shown, she looked up at
Jace only to be greeted by his impossibly wide grin.
“I like a girl who is adventurous,” he replied.
“Your identification papers, boy! Now!” Jace stepped back, surprised by her outburst.
“All right, missy!” he exclaimed defensively and took out his documentation before
mumbling to himself ‘you frigid bitch’. She did not hear him as she brought the documents to a hand
held device which scanned them before returning the information they contained. Without a word
she gave him back the documents before continuing to ignore him.
Rhythmic footsteps drew their attention and they were joined by four more officers who
wheeled in a large box, reinforced with metal railings and bearing a large seal that was half cog half
human skull – the symbol of Adaptus Mechanicus.
 “I’ll open the cargo hold.” Jace moved to open the lighter’s cargo compartment, but was
surprised to see that the officers did not move to load the large container. They must have noticed
his confusion and told him that they were to await the tech-priest before loading it. Hearing this he
simply shrugged and moved to lean against the lighter’s fuselage, while continuing to eye the female
officer and fantasise.
The long awaited passenger did eventually arrive and Jace straightened up upon seeing him,
not out of a sense of respect, but to get a better look at the so called Priest of Mars. Sure, they had
them on station, the tireless technicians who, with the aid of numerous servitors, made sure that
Port Wander stayed afloat and functional deep inside the inhospitable void. But this priest was
obviously special since he travelled alone and had requested a private shuttle transport to the
station, a service he paid for handsomely.
The man was very tall, even taller than Jace, who thought himself taller than most. He
certainly did not expect to see one of his kind towering over him. He also did not expect someone
from priesthood to cut such an impressive figure.
The man must have been close to hundred kilos in weight, but not at all fat. As a matter of
fact for the first time, as Jace took a closer look, he paid attention to the things that made the tech-
priests of Mars what they were. Two snake-like tentacles rose from the man’s shoulders. Jace
thought them to be backpack mounted or something, but then realised that they were actually
“growing” from the man’s shoulders. One appeared to have an optical instrument at its tip, while the
other had an assortment of utility tools that probably aided the priest in his everyday line of work.
Jace also noted that his chest did not expand and contract as the man breathed, if he
breathed at all. There appeared to be a metal grill over his face, which in turn was covered by a deep
hood, and the man moved with mechanical robot-like precision instead of with a human spring to his
step. He saw coal dark fingers holding a long shaft as he walked – a shaft at whose end was the
wicked head of an axe that was connected with a thick power cable to a metal box on the shaft.
“Shit! A power axe!” Jace stared at the man as if he was a lifelike reconstruction of a long
extinct animal species in a museum. The man simply walked to the crate and examined it, checking
some details on it then turning to say something before moving towards the lighter.
“You must be my pilot.” Jace dropped his helmet in surprise, and heard the giggle of the
female officer. He would have had quite a few things to say to her, but the tech-priest now stood
right in front of him. And buzzing like an insect close to the priest’s head was a human skull – former
human skull and now one of those servo-skulls that many people in important positions utilised as
aides.
“Yes your highness, sir.” Jace faltered, lost for words and feeling all inadequate.
“I do hope your flying skills are what I was led to believe they are, and that the clumsiness
you are displaying is just a statistical error.”
“Of course not!” Jace protested. “I mean, whatever you were told don’t begin to scratch the
surface of my abilities. They don’t call me “The Ace” for nothing, you know.”
“We shall see.” The tech-priest said simply and walked past Jace into his transport.

THE LIGHTER lifted and left the starship as soon as the outer hangar doors opened. It was a small speck
against the large bulk of the space-faring vessel and one of many that buzzed like flies all around the
space station. Port Wander was the last civilised haven before ships would enter the Koronus
Expanse – an uncharted area of space on the rim of the known Imperium of Man, where the Imperial
rule was almost an alien concept.
Their craft glided slowly towards the main shuttle bays of the station and Jace was busy
exchanging landing information with the station’s traffic control. He suddenly felt a presence and
turned to see the tech-priest sitting next to him.
“Sir, it’s better you remain in the passenger compartment until we dock, for your own
comfort.” Jace tried to send the tech-pries away without sounding impolite.
“You fly this thing alone?” Ferrus asked with a hint of amusement in his mechanical voice.
 “Yes. What does it matter?” Jace asked while busily pressing a series of buttons inside the
shuttle’s cockpit.
“Then I am convinced that you are a good pilot.” Ferrus replied. “The STC for the Arvus
Lighter specifies the presence of a co-pilot in addition to the pilot to fly it.”
“The SD what?” Jace asked half listening to the tech-priest.
“Standard Template Construct, or the technical schematics for machines that have been
approved by my Ordo.” Ferrus explained.
“Well, I’m the only pilot and co-pilot you get with this lighter, priest, and I’m good enough for
both.”
“And you are not with any of the ferrying families of the station?”
“No. There are just me, myself and I running this business. That way, between the three of
us, I get to keep all the earnings.”
“But those earnings are not what they could be if you belonged to a family, correct?”
“No.” Jace was finding this conversation depressing. What did it matter to this tech-priest
how good a living he made from his freelancing activity?
“Would you be interested in making some extra earnings on the side?” Jace remained quiet.
“I can provide you with five hundred Throne Gelts on a non-personalised pay-card if you can
land this shuttle at a docking bay I specify, as opposed to the one you would normally dock at.” Jace
considered the proposal as the station loomed ever larger in front of them.
“Why would I want to do that?” Jace tried to sound disinterested, but Ferrus read his
reaction well.
“Because you need the money.”
Jace laughed heartily. “You’re trying to show me charity to earn some good graces with the
Emperor?”
“It’s Omnissiah, actually. The Priesthood of Mars does not worship or serve the Emperor. But
your mistake is forgivable.”
“Whatever,” Jace snapped nervously, while keeping his eyes trained at the void outside the
cockpit and trying to stay focused on his job. “The point, priest, is that you can’t just change your
approach to the station. You know, it’s a spaceport. It has control towers. It monitors the traffic.”
“And the machine spirit can be reasoned with, you know,” the priest responded, adapting to
Jace’s style of speech.
“What?” Jace exclaimed confused and actually turned his head from the cockpit canopy.
“You might want to keep your eyes on the traffic,” the priest stated calmly, and Jace saw that
he had just enough time to turn his craft and avoid another shuttle that was moving on its
predefined trajectory. The accident avoided, the priest continued talking.
“Having analysed your responses made up to this point, I’ve arrived to the conclusion that
abiding by the letter of the law is of a lesser concern to you than the likelihood of being caught while
performing a nefarious task. This has further led me to the conclusion that should the likelihood exist
of mitigating the risk of being caught you might be willing to reconsider my offer.”
“Low Gothic, if you please,” Jace responded to everything the priest said, indicating that he
didn’t understand any of it.
“I can fool the control tower and allow us to land undisturbed at a shuttle bay of my
choosing.”
“How?”
“I happen to be a tech-priest, if you hadn’t noticed. Dealing with technology is my specialty
by design.”
“And what will you do?” Jace was sceptical about the whole idea, but Thrones were Thrones,
and it wasn’t as if he owed anything to the dreary, depressing and fatalistic Imperium of Man. He
watched as the priest gently slid into the co-pilot’s seat and guided one of his mechadendrites to
connect with the console in front of him.
“Allow me.”
AT ANY point in time a hundred or so shuttles are out and about in the void surrounding Port Wander.
This is in addition to starships that are at dock or orbit the station. Hundreds of IDs are connected to
hundreds of strings of data that identify the vessels, note their times of arrival, scheduled
departures, order of business, owners and cargo. In this sea of stringed data one shuttle suddenly
became docked where it wasn’t and another one received clearance to lend at a docking bay that
was recently decommissioned. The glitch in data was momentary and went unnoticed by operators
who monitored the surrounding traffic.

A MESSAGE appeared on the display screen in front of Jace, confirming that he was to bring his vessel
into the designated docking bay. Except Jace could not recall ever leaving that bay in the first place.
“I’m receiving some misleading landing instructions,” Jace stated in a voice tinged with
worry.
“No, you are receiving the correct landing instructions. You may proceed according to them,”
the priest stated calmly as he retracted the mechadendrite from the console in front of him.
“I don’t understand.”
“It is quite simple,” Ferrus began, “I’ve contacted the landing cogitator’s machine spirit via
the open communication channel it had with your lighter, and convinced it to make a few alterations
to our planned root.”
“You can do that!?” Jace replied with obvious astonishment.
“I’m a tech-priest of Mars,” Ferrus replied simply, as if the answer should explain everything.
“Of course, this is not your ship that you’re landing,” Ferrus continued.
“What do you mean ‘it is not my ship’?” Jace thought for a moment that he should smack this
tech-priest, damned be the Thrones he would lose by doing so. But he couldn’t understand his
present situation for which, he knew, he would need to rely on this same tech-priest.
“What I mean is that your lighter landing in a landing bay other than the one it left might be
construed as being sufficiently suspicious to warrant an investigation, which might jeopardise your
career as a freelance transporter,” Ferrus spoke matter-of-factly.
“I’m touched by your concern for my wellbeing, tech-priest, but I wanna know what you did
with my ship!” Jace was squeezing the control wheel, hoping that that will prevent him from
attacking the tech-priest.”
“Physically, this is your ship, Jace,” Ferrus continued, “but the machine spirit thinks it is a
different ship, while for that actual ship, which is safely in the bay you should have landed in, it thinks
it is your ship. Some minor work needs to be done on both the ships for them to fully change their
identities, but that is not our present concern. As soon as we land I will organise things with my
fellow priests to do the necessary work and you will have your ship back.”
Jace gave no reply. He was confused.
“So I just follow the landing instructions?”
“That’s right.”
“And you take your cargo off and sort out my ship?”
“And give you the non-personalised card with five hundred credits.”
“And I walk free?”
“As if nothing had happened.”
Jace typed in the coordinates and guided the ship to its designated landing bay. He was in
this now, for sure.

THE LANDING bay was dark, save for a few backup lamps that flickered. As the lighter touched down, a
cloud of dust went up, indicating how disused this part of the station actually was. Jace absorbed it
all with his senses and wondered what was to come next.
The seat next to him was empty. The tech-priest had moved to the compartment area even
before they entered the bay from the void.
 “You may disembark!” he heard Ferrus addressing him in that voice that was a command and
an instruction all at the same time.
Lost for what to do and at the mercy of this strange tech-priest, Jace pressed the buttons and
turned the switches that would initiate the lighter’s shut down procedure. Then gingerly he got up
and got out. He saw Ferrus standing not far away from the lighter, perfectly calm and looking in his
direction.
“So what now?” he asked the tech-priest.
“We unload the cargo,” Ferrus replied.
“Just the two of us?” Jace asked with surprise, “It’s a big thing, you know.”
“Not just the two of us. We have some helping hands here.”
Suddenly, stepping from the darkness behind Ferrus, were several figures, armoured and
armed, weapons in hand. Reflexively – more out of fear than because he hoped to achieve anything –
Jace drew his bolt pistol. His reaction was met with barrels raised and pointed his way.
“You bloody traitor! What you playing at?” His hand was flying from side to side, not sure
which target to lock on. If he shot the tech-priest, would they panic? Would he be able to kill him just
like that? And then what?
“You are very edgy, Jace,” the tech-priest began calmly, “Not a good trait for a pilot.”
“You won’t take me that easily!” Jace shot back, his fear feeding his defiance.
“Take you where?” Ferrus continued, “We’ve got business to conclude.”
“I don’t need your dirty money!”
“You don’t? But you just lost your transport. What will you do without your tools of trade?”
Jace remained silent, realising that even if he were to escape, he’d be without his source of
income. Still, he did not lower his gun.
“Believe me, Jace, I intend to see our agreement through.” Ferrus continued, “You’ve taken
me and my cargo to where we needed to get. These men are here to take it over for further
transport.”
“They’re not cargo handlers! They came in with guns, ready to fire! I’m not stupid, you
know.”
“Just a precaution. When you are in my line of work, you’ve got to be careful. But let us not
dally here. These men will take the crate and carry it where it needs to go.”
“And where does it need to go?” Jace cut in before considering if he really wanted to know
the answer.
“That does not concern you. What concerns you is that I will give you this non-personalised
card containing 500 Thrones. It should help you get over the next few days of staying low. That’s the
time my people will need to fix the identities of both lighters so that you can have yours back and
that the other guy or girl, whoever the unfortunate sod may be, can’t.”
“Wait, you’re putting me out of business for the next few days!?” Jace was so surprised that
his question was almost a shriek.
“I am letting you live, boy, because I might want to do business with you again someday. Had
I exhausted your usefulness you would have been dead the moment we landed.”