As the crew debated Ophelia?s guilt in the murders, Zen prowled the depths of the ship. He tried to take as many walks through the maintenance systems as possible. Partly because he needed to handle the stress away from the men, partly so he could see what they were doing and keep tabs on the traitorous lot.
As his heavy boots clanged over the thin catwalk below him, he looked in through the heavy grates into various rooms of the ship. In the medical bay, Irish still was held in the massive network of tubes that kept his frail shell breathing. His arms were nearly lost in the forest of plastic vines and copper branches that kept the psyker in their loving embrace.
Several more paces brought him to a small lift. He seemed perplexed at first. He?d never been down this particular corridor. He looked around him and tried to find the identification number on the bulkheads. Zen whipped out a small spherical lantern and tossed it into the air. It floated aloft by some unknown mechanism, Larenxis had given it to him prior to his death.
The light revealed that Zen had indeed taken a wrong turn. Currently he was at Bulkhead 30, farther into the labyrinth than he?d ever been. He decided to see where the lift went and climbed aboard. The machine slowly ascended towards another level, from which there seemed to be a strange noise emanating. As he slowly walked down the small passage, the lantern hovered beside him.
As the commissar reached the source of the noise at the end of the tunnel, he felt an icy chill hit his spine.
?I?ve been tracking you for quite some time, Commissar, but the wait has made you even more interesting to me. Your habits are most peculiar but predictable.? a voice said. Zen fumbled about as the lantern was obscured in a cloud of smoke. A small box near his head continued to drone on in a mechanical fashion. ?Where Wolvaroo failed, I had to improvise, this recording is tragically as close as you and I will be able to meet. I try not to get personal in my killing, but this was truly something I looked forward to, too bad it never played out just right.?
Zen drew his pistol and shot the box, the recording stopped but the smoke was already seeping into the hall. The noxious cloud exploded into his lungs and suddenly he collapsed on the ground. Whatever chemical had been used, it began to work its way through his lungs, at first a slight warming, then, with the fire of a torch it began to burn. The commissar wretched as the gas finally entered his bloodstream. His heart skipped a beat and then with a shudder it stopped.
Hours later, a gaunt figure crept into the hall where the body lay, it's skin red with the ruptured veins. The morbid cargo was quietly hauled through the tunnels, into the Imperial Guard barracks. The body was propped up in a chair and holding another box. This playing another loop:
?Ding-dong! The witch is dead??