Setting:Cloudburst/Disaster

Perhaps the name of the asteroid cluster came from the bad luck story that it hosted, or perhaps it was just a portent. Either way, Disaster is a well-covered-up story of greed triumphing over self-preservation.

In M39.873, shortly after the formal declaration of the neighboring Celeste Subsector, a small convoy of Imperial ships crossed the Disaster area. Consisting of four Explorator ships from Cognomen and one Rogue Trader ship from what is now known as Brotherhood, these five ships sought out unknown technology. The Explorators and the Trader had a mutually beneficial arrangement in place. Whenever caches of technology popped up in the path of the flotilla, the Explorators would pick it over for any signs of Omnissiah-blessed technology, while leaving the xenos junk for the Rogue Trader. The Trader, in turn, would dispose of anything too heretical to be sold in the Imperium, while keeping a few choice trinkets for sale. For a time, this worked well. However, one day, while examining the remains of an unknown alien freighter, the Explorators discarded the remains of what they concluded was an alien robot. The Rogue Trader, hungry for wealth, did not discard the machine, as they should have done. The Trader kept it instead, and came to admire its beauty, its perfect proportions, and its clearly advanced nature. Over time, the Trader came to hold more and more xenos relics. The crew of the vessel noticed nothing, concerned as they were simply working and staying alive, and could not tell as they slowly lost their minds. Over time, the power locked away in the robot spread through the ship.

Eventually, on a trip back to Disaster, the Explorators and Rogue Trader were met by an Inquisitor from the Ordo Malleus. The Inquisitor, he proclaimed, had read a message from the Emperor in the Tarot. He insisted on boarding each ship in turn, looking for what he sternly promised would be ‘immediately, obviously visible Warpcrimes.’

The Explorators blustered, but ultimately could not refuse. One by one, the Inquisitor boarded each Explorator ship, declaring each in turn to be uncontaminated. When the time came for the Inquisitor to board the Trader ship, however, the vessel stopped responding to all hails. The Inquisitor demanded boarding. Again, they were refused. The Inquisitor finally forced their way in with a Melta torpedo. The Inquisitor’s shuttle departed again, only forty seconds later, and commanded the Explorators to cast the ship into a nearby star.

The Explorators refused, shocked at the proceedings. The Inquisitor transmitted two images to the lead Explorator, who commanded that the ships of the flotilla cast the ship into a nearby star. Coming from one of their own, the order was obeyed at once. After the vessel had been disabled and flung into a nearby white dwarf, the Inquisitor revealed that the entire crew had been replaced with unholy monsters. The cameras on the hull of the ship he had flown through the Melta hole had shown crew members fused to each other’s bodies, pulsing with sick fluids, wrapped in metal cables and flailing in delight at scenes of carnal hell enacted on each other, and worse. The Rogue Trader, the Inquisitor said grimly, had been infected with a Slaaneshi daemon’s powers, and sold their entire ship to Chaos.

Sickened, the Explorators related the tale of the smashed robot. This left the Inquisitor with a tough choice. The Explorators, after all, had managed to miss a daemon outbreak in their own flotilla, but had done so while doing their own jobs. They had disposed of the robot, after all, and the Rogue Trader had had no obligation or order to collect it. The Explorators, they argued, had missed something they should have caught, because they were just working that hard on their real job.

The Inquisitor eventually decided to remand the flotilla to the Cognomen Magi, and the five remaining vessels flew back to Cognomen, where the entire incident was covered up, and the Explorators responsible punished outside the sight of the Inquisition (partially because their transgressions included disobeying an Inquisitor, something Cognomen is sensitive about at the best of times). The Rogue Trader’s Warrant of Trade had been on their ship at the time of its destruction, it transpired, and the House in question is now lost to history, like so many others who interpret their permission to entreat with xenotech as a right to ignore its risks.