Snippet #2109496

For lack of any more important tasks at hand, and unable to find Osbourne or any other person who could give him directions to the Enginarium was—or better yet give him a map of the ship—Holt had spent the past half hour methodically searching the ship one hallway at a time for the cogitator core. If the rough map of the hallways he'd had his servo-skull transcribe onto a data-slate was accurate, there was only a few places left in the ship that could plausibly be the Enginarium, and at his current pace, it would take less than a quarter hour to get there.

Holt rounded a curve in the hallway, and heard someone shout.

"Oi! Mate!

The tech-priest looked up and saw a tall, unkempt looking man walking towards him.

"Mate...You got a stick?"

Holt rolled his eyes, although the augmentics' uniform glow would make it quite difficult to notice for someone more than a few feet away.

"Stick; shorthand for a Lho-Leaf Tube, a common recreational narcotic, particularly among lower class laborers and soldiers in the Imperial Guard."

The tech-priest shook his head.

"I am not nor have I ever been in possession of one, and considering the damage the smoke and residue from a Lho-Leaf Tube can cause to local air purifiers I wouldn't provide you with one if I did, much less use it myself."

"Not that I could even I wanted to." added Holt, tapping the metallic mask of his respirator unit. Simultaneously, he noticed the man's penal legion brands, the deep imprints in his neck from a collar of some sorts, the numerous signs of healed chemical burns on his arms, and the distinctive odor of industrial chemicals that permeated the air around the man.

Not one of the workers, collar was removed, and workers didn't appear press-ganged...Has worked with chemicals fairly recently, and probably for quite a while before given scarring...facial brands combined collar marks combined with supplementary information naturally indicate penal legion background. thought Holt.

"Hmm...Am I correct in assuming that you are one of the good Inquisitor Osbourne's other recruits?" asked the Tech-Priest.