'No,’ she said, voice reassuring. 'Look. You see? Not a hair. Now calm!

Cog nodded, accepting her words with child-like trust. He thrust his massive hands into the pockets of his robe and appeared to switch off, like a machine devoid of fuel.

Mita turned to Orodai with a smirk.

'Now,’ she said, mollified. 'Perhaps you'd care to explain why you requested our help?'

Orodai's eyes narrowed, twinkling.

'Perhaps it would be best,’ he said, and this time it was he who smirked, 'if you see for yourself,’

Sergeant Varitens did not like mutants. Sergeant Varitens did not like psykers. Sergeant Varitens did not like disobedience or poverty or aristocracy or crime. He did not like the underhive, or the upper spire, or indeed the middle tiers.

As far as Mita could tell, skating delicately across the surface of his mind, Sergeant Varitens did not appear to like much at all.

(Sergeant Varitens did not like the Inquisition.)

(Sergeant Varitens did not like women.)

He and Mita were getting along just famously.

'And what is this zone called?'

'Lady, it's the warp's-arse underhive. We don't call it anything,’

'But... these settlements... They must have names. What do the people call th-'

'Look,’ Varitens turned away from the Salamander's cab, sighing through the mike of his voxcaster. 'You want to stop and ask some of these filth what they call places, or where the local sights are, or which

unfortunate bastard they just ate for dinner, you be my guest. Only don't come running to us when you look down and some godless mutie has his teeth in your leg,’

They travelled in silence after that.

The underhive had not been what Mita had expected. Trawling across its debris-flows and pitted causeways in the vindictors' Salamander, she found herself admiring the diversity, as if there were some secret beauty - some hidden order - lurking in the decay. Here, salvaged waste was gold. She found herself impressed by the colour and vivacity of the sights, as if life had recoiled from the squalor of its environment in a storm of clashing hues and decorations. Gaudy totems leaned from the shadows, bright graffiti announced a dozen changes of territory: each gang name crossed through by its latest conqueror. Underhivers variously raced for cover or came out to watch as the vindictors passed; shady characters with hands reaching for - but never openly wielding - whatever weaponry they hid within heavy cloaks. Here there was vibrancy in the dark - like the perfect scarlet of a deep sea tubeworm - and Mita struggled to despise it as profoundly as Sergeant Varitens so clearly did.

Commander Orodai had assigned the sergeant as her tour-guide. She suspected he'd done so out of spite.

'Tell me, sergeant,’ she said, tiring of the silence, 'what manner of crime warrants the attention of the Emperor's glorious Inquisition? And down here in this most...' she parroted his emotionless voice, 'wretched of places, to boot?'