Not being well versed in the use of machine spirits Harmonia keeps her focus on the spirits of the living, their morale in particular.  Gathering those few who escaped injury she spends most of the first hour after the fight organizing them and having them distribute supplies to the wounded, even going so far as to prep a few longer range parties of those more familiar with the quiet parts of the ship to go search for wounded in unusual locations just to make sure the Xenos didn't cause to much trouble elsewhere on the ship.

After a short while the inquisitors team appear in the opening and descend on the grav lifter, with them are three Eldar and the man in a black body suit who joined them when they entered. The Eldar have a graceful elegance about them, even though one of their number is badly injured with a serious burn on his neck and one side of his face and several deep cut wounds. They are dressed in lose flowing robes of some silky substance, in pale muted colours, the blood soaking through the robes of the injured one seems to be a brighter red than human blood.

“Your people have much savagery and skill,” one of them says, stepping forward a little towards Searlait, ”we are thoroughly beaten and our lives are forfeit.” There is hardly any accent in his voice but it is very hard to read any emotion into it.

”We would ask one small boon from our conqueror and in exchange will not vaporise our ship along with your own,” the voice remains steady and free from emotion.
.

"Savagery as claimed by someone who attacks those without call as they arrive into a system." she says coldly to the Xenos leader. As he makes his request for a boon she says "State your request, I will not hold be beholden to it until I know what is asked"

 Explorator Tesla has relatively little to do with significant policy decisions at this juncture - he has provided advice regarding the Xeno vessel but circumstances have overtaken it, and it is not really his place to decide larger matters of policy, so he instead focusses his considerable augmented intellect upon matters of repair and refit, improving the efficiency with which the Pious Lament can be expected to recover from its recent trials.

” Each of us carries a stone like this,” the Eldar indicates a pale blue gem on a silken cord around his neck, ”they might be considered as the ‘dog tags’ your Militarrium wear. Gather these from all of our dead and let just one of us return them to our people. We have an auxiliary craft that is still intact and such a merciful deed would be known by the all of our race and could influence any future encounters. Without this, our souls as well as our lives are forfeit and all we have left is the bitter bile of vengeance.”
.

 There has always been something of a mystery regarding the gemstones which feature so prominently in every single Eldar suit of armour - technotheologically dead, for the most part and yet wired into the most fundamental systems of the suit by anathema-adjacent circuitry, but when the Eldar mentions 'souls' Jak looks up from where he's plugged into the cogitator network to express his opinion of the matter.

 "If the loss of these gemstones represents a loss of the soul of these Xenos to the Immaterium, then this is in effect, a hostage negotiation. I counsel against the destruction of the stones, of course - feeding the creatures of the Immaterium is never wise - but to permit the recovery of these hostages in exchange for all Imperial data the Xenos have access to, up to date information regarding the system or even a ransom of stolen Archeotech drawn from the Xenos contacts would all be appropriate in this situation." he states, "Assuming that our Inquisitorial associates declare it acceptable to do so."

"Please, act as you see fit in this matter, there will be no reprocusions from the inquisition."

Searlait pondered on the Eldar's request for a few moments and listened to the Inquisitorial agents comments on no repercussions as to her response and the Tech-Priest's caution of the stones destruction and data to be gained, she replied "I counter your request for the stones safe removal with the following, 1. I will allow you to recover as may stones as possible from the dead of the ship attached and on My vessel, 2. I will allow a search of the debris of the other vessel under close guard to recover any survivors and stones of the deceased. 3. I will take one in ten stones into my protection to ensure you do not further harm my interests, Any of your kind currently alive will be allowed to stay as such, should you wish up to two of you may stay on this vessel under close security to maintain vigil over these remaining stones with the rest being returned to you people at my earliest convenience at a mutually agreed upon spot. 4. Any information you possess about the plans Gilvan Vexel has and what your part was to be in it an why you agreed. 5. Cessation of all hostilities of your people against me and mine, failure to do so will see forfeiture of their safety and lead to the destruction of the Stones in my possession. Agreeable?"

”You are generous with your terms Lady Saoirse and we will comply with the understanding that I can only speak for my crew, not my race, regarding the cessation of hostilities.”

True to their word, on this occasion, the Eldar power down their ‘bomb’ straight away, and also the hole cutter at the back of the temple is deactivated is by strolling one of the legs in a series of complex gestures. Solestones are gathered from all the deceased on the ship, but only two are recovered from the other ship which had literally been blown to bits, the Eldar have no interest in the bodies after that, or any of their materials, including their damaged ship. Once Jak has patched the temple roof and ensured it air tight the Eldar, (with permission), close the hole in their own ship and realise the clamps so that it is floating free, after retrieving an auxiliary craft about the size of a gun cutter.

When questioned they tell of an association with Galvin Vexel going back fifteen years, starting with a trade of Eldar artifacts that he had obtained with some human artifacts that their previous leader had obtained and developing into a mutual piracy pact in which Vexel would supply details of a human ship, the Eldar would raid it for slaughter and slaves and Vexel would come in afterward and loot the ship’s carcass. It seems that twelve ships had met this fate and they had also raided four human settlements. They give precise details on each of these collaborations, including the locations and dates. This latest venture was a little different to the rest as Vexel wanted the Pious Lament intact. I had been easy for them to smuggle an agent on board with the cooperation of Master Fesian, the previous Captain’s aid, and Blake al'Duath the High Factotem. The agent was complicit with Fesian in the Lord Harington Velspar’s death but the plans had to be changed and bought forward when Lady Saoirse was so quickly instated as the new Captain.

The intention when attacking the ship had been to blind with an attack on the auspex capability, to ‘decapitate’ it if by taking out the bridge and senior crew and to board and cripple it by taking out the drives. None of those things went to plan, the attack in the auspex fin failed, the attack on the bridge failed and their ship, although cloaked, was spotted and fired upon which disabled its gravity wings, as a result it barely made it to the Lament and ended up on top of her, rather than underneath, cutting through to the Temple rather than the Engineerium, and coming up against the heavy resistance that thwarted them.

While this goes on, life in the rest of the ship continues, the pious Lament drifts along is previous heading towards the planet with it’s drives powered down, and on-board people pick up the pieces and try to get back to normality.

.
.

As the state of crisis resolved itself and reports filtered to the bridge, the Navigatrix allowed herself to acknowledge her own condition. The efforts to stabilize her by the emergency response teams had been sufficient to allow her to ignore the true extremity of her injury and, perhaps ill advisedly, ignore it through effort of will and testing of her withered and treacherous form. The continued pain of breathing, articulation of any sort, and the dull, agonizing scraping and pulling of battered ribs, shattered carapace, and bloodied clothes had driven the point home, however, that she was of no further use until properly administered to.

It was quiet conversations via microbead with her heads of security and peers then that arranged for the rotation of duties as they applied to her station and position as an interim solution... and to ensure she had sufficient escort and support to endure the journey to come. Her strength was dubious at the best of times in matters of the physical... to test it further now seemed to invite the indignity of a collapse in some transit station between here and the Hospice. A fate that was best not explored if only because one addled mutineer or another might take one last opportunity to wound and disrupt the smooth operation of the Pious Lament.

++I suspect it's not a surprise but for now I'll retire to see about repairs and addressing my... varied injuries. Lady Sheridan shall stand in should any assistance be required from House Shiraishi in the interim.++ the Navigatrix offered via both spoken voice and vox channels to those departments and officers that might be impacted by a duty rotation among the Navigators of the vessel. Her tone civil and composed but still breathless and tinged by a certain, concerted note of effort to keep it that way.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:24, Sun 23 Apr 2023.

Searlait has the entire story recorded by servo-skulls, servitors and adepts while having a member of astropathic choir to assist where needed. Once the chronicle is complete she has a secondary copy compiled unto a data-slate and hands it to Tungsten "I believe this should be the evidence needed to declare Galvin Vexel Excommunicate Traitoris" she says.


"Asgard, gather a guard unit and escort the Eldar to gather their stones, make sure none are hidden "

++Wing commander Simian Laurel, return the fighters to their decks, rearm and refuel. I will probably need you to take some guests to investigate that wreak++

"In six hours, barring anything untoward, we start moving in system towards our target of Gelron to spread the light of the God-Emperor!" she addresses the crew before departing and making her way back to her quarters, quickly disarms and sees to her frightened child.

As it happens, Faith is the member of the choir who helps with recording the testament. Despite her outward expression of calm professionalism tinged with just a hint of eagerness, she's actually quite intrigued by the Eldar soulstones. To think, one can store an entire person, an entire spirit, inside a shiny bauble! How fascinating!

After properly recording the statement and ensuring that the First Officer's sub-office gets copies, Faith returns just in time to hear the Captain hand off the search and recovery operation to the Master at Arms, whereupon she volunteers her services.

"I have some experience with the divinatory arts; I believe my last waystation graded my proficiency at the Silver Aeon. I believe I could be useful in your search!"

Gregory is a little unnerved by meeting an actual real-life xeno outside of battle for the first time, but the Captain has ordered him not to kill them, but to help them, and as a military man, he understands the significance of dogtags as a remembrance of fallen friends. Between professionalism and empathy, there is little room for animosity and soon that is forgotten as he shifts his mind to carrying out his duty.

"Understood, ma'am," Gregory replies with a salute before turning to Faith.

"So, you're one of Scarlet's girls, then? You're welcome to help, but-"

One of the Eldar points out that there might be soulstones in space, and Gregory nods.

"Well, like he-" Gregory is briefly at a loss as to whether the xeno he is addressing is indeed male or female; the void armor isn't helping "-Or she said, there might be soulstones in space, and frankly speaking, our boys aren't that good with zero-G stuff yet. I can lend you some of my breachers; they have void training and should be useful for grabbing stuff from the void. Will that work for you?"

When the ceasefire had been agreed upon, Rav repositioned so that he could assist in the search for whatever these Soul Stones were that the Eldar seemed desperate to retain and protect. When WC Laurel called for assistance in the retrieval, he'd volunteered his craft to assist immediately. He'd never seen the inside of an Eldar craft before.

Rav initiated a return to base. Several of his Interceptors were badly in need of repairs. The rest of his wing joined him in returning to the Pious Lament's hangar bay so that repairs, refits, and refuels could be performed on each of the vessels. Once the Umbra I touched down and mag-clamped their landing gear onto the hangar bay floor, Ravandio Rathnyr powered down the vehicle and got up out of his chair. He hadn't realized how tightly he'd been gripping the control sticks on his craft until he finally uncurled them and the joints ached. He laughed softly. It hadn't been from nerves. He hadn't been nervous while he was out there in the void. It had been from excitement.

Rav 'kissed' the tips of his fingers (or rather mimicked the action since he was stuck in a helmeted void suit) and slapped it on the hatch that opened up out onto the flight deck. Umbra I had kept him alive once again. He made his way to where it was that WC Laurel had instructed him to muster for boarding the vessel and assisting in search.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:00, Mon 24 Apr 2023.

 With the Eldar having little interest in the remnants of their wrecked vessels, once these 'soul-stones' have been collected, Jak occupies himself in a number of tasks of varying degrees of urgency.

 Extensive auspex scans of Eldar technology in use, in operation and being shut down are gathered, annotated and cached for transmission to the next Forge-World that they visit - as well as copied for his personal records - along with a report containing an extensive supposition on the nature and importance of the gemstones that they're gathering, with a specific observation that the perfidious Xenos may well place so great a value upon them that securing them from battlefields may well give the Adeptus the means to compel them to return long-lost archeotech held by them.

 He also serves as the central hub for the repair efforts, not so much by physically going out and welding anything himself, but by standing next to the biggest communications station he can find and linking directly to the local ships cogitators to coordinate resources, staff and reports to maximise the effectiveness of their damage control operations.

 One modest aside sees him propose to the Lord-Captain and Ordnance Master Vanlen that the tumbling wreckage would make a serviceable gun-crew-by-crew training target in the time they have before acceleration can commence again and they begin to pull apart.

Faith nods eagerly as Master of Arms Asgard lays out her assignment. One would think she had just been freed from a decade-long oubliette from her response.

"No problem!" she replies, making a mental note of what she'll need for this endeavor. Voidsuit, magboots... runabout? She vaguely remembers how to pilot one of those, but she would much rather let someone competent do that instead. She listens attentively to Gregory as the latter talks to the flight boss and sends word to detach a squad to report to the Flight Deck for their assignment, then quickly briefs faith on what she should be doing.

Half an hour later, after leaving Nevermore safely secured aboard the ship, Faith meets half a dozen breachers on the Flight Deck, outside Docking Bay 4, where Ferrum Aeternum is docked. A techpriest has already laid out some kind of strange sheeting in the main hold of the guncutter and is reciting the prayers of engine-activation over its drives while the pilot is complementing his efforts with tbe Litany of Preflight inside the cockpit. The breachers are a little nervous about being in such close proximity to a "warp witch", but Faith can tell that there isn't much malice there; after all, they've seen the Master at Arms being all chummy with Scarlet and that's gone a long way to defusing the misgivings they have about her. While they are of the opinion that six people to assist Faith in recovering Eldar baubles is five too many, orders are orders, and the extra Thrones for zero-gee work are always welcome.

After everyone has emplaned and Ferrum Aeternum is awaiting takeoff permission from the Lament's void traffic control, Faith briefly outlines a flight plan that she'd like the pilot to follow. According to the Emperor's Tarot, this unconventional course has the highest chance of yielding success in their endeavors. The pilot is somewhat confused, but reasons that Faith must have her reasons given how insistent she seems to be about it.

The first waypoint is almost two full VUs directly above the Lament and well beyond the limits of a conventional search pattern. Faith is so eager to urge the breachers to "prepare to catch it!" that she's on the verge of opening the hatch and heading out into the void herself. The puzzled breachers nevertheless set up the salvage nets used to keep large components from drifting away during open void repairs, and almost immediately they see it; a damaged chunk of the xeno vessel heading their way, followed by several xeno corpses in voidsuits tumbling through the void. Whatever Faith did to get this informatio, it was accurate enough to set them up on an intercept coursefor it despite everything having happened a few hours ago. The breachers are so surprised by this that Faith has to tap their helmets to get them to bring the bodies - and their attendant soulstones - back inside. Once she's satisfied with the haul, she directs the pilot to head to their next waypoint.

This one is a tiny asteroid little larger than the guncutter itself, which the Lament's augurs would have disregarded as an auspex glitch or otherwise insignificant detritus. With expert maneuvering from the pilot, the guncutter matches velocity with the asteroid, holding course less than 10 meters away from it, which is enough for Faith to jump out of the hatch (attached to a spool of climbing line, of course) and make landfall. Upon landing, she pauses briefly, then heads straight for a little hollow on the asteroid's surface and emerges with a void-armored xeno's body. Its armor's maneuvering thrusters are broken and it apparently died from a ruptured air supply. According to Faith, the last thing it did was bury a small cache of soulstones underneath it, which she found and retrieved.

The third stop is closer to the Lament; almost zero degrees on the Lament's horizontal plane and nearly 180 degrees straight behind it. By now, the breachers have been convinced of the efficacy of Faith's powers of prognostication and they don't question her request for them to voidwalk and collect the Eldar bodies tumbling slowly through the void. Unfortunately, it seems they were killed by sprays of shrapnel and as such, most of their soulstones are cracked or destroyed.

The rest of their time is spent following a more standard search pattern, recovering individual bodies and soulstones whenever Faith's divinations tell her there is something to find. However, the constant course corrections and maneuvering burn through fuel much faster than their previous plan of heading to specified points, and by the time Faith shrugs and says she can't pick up anything else, the pilot announces that they're bingo on fuel. Having made a good-faith attempt to recover as many soulstones as possible, Faith agrees that they should return to the vessel.

In total, they come back with 25 largely intact soulstones; not a bad haul for several hours of work. More importantly, the breachers appear to be much more comfortable around Faith now; some of them even smile to her as they make their way out of the storage hold after dropping off what they've recovered.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:13, Tue 25 Apr 2023.

With the current troubles seemingly having been taken care of Garu signals his teams to cease current operations and go back to preparing for the arrival on Gelron.  He does re-route Gleece to accompany him after hearing that Asgard has been given orders to escort the Xenos.  Making his way to him the Master of Whispers remarked to Asgard, "Asgard...if you don't mind a few of mine coming along to help with the search on the ship to help out that would be appreciated."  The man wasn't wearing his usual noble garb; beautiful robes and tunics, expensive shoes and glistening rings with rubies.  Instead it was far more menial looking in nature as if a scholar or academic with a satchel and some tools.  The same could be said for the four others that were there with him.

Gregory turns as he hears Garu addressing him.

"No problems there," he says. "Could use people who know the underdecks well. If you don't mind, could you spread the word? I know you and Vormav have... connections among the crew. Tell them that anyone who's taken anything from the xenos' corpses or the corpses themselves will be duly compensated if they turn the items in to your people or mine, no questions asked. I don't blame people for seizing opportunities, but the Lady gave her word, and I'd rather not have one of her people make a liar out of her."

Gregory holds no illusions that he can find everything and everyone with just the armsmen - the disruption to normal operations would be too great. Might as well enlist the crew as well. The flip side of this arrangement is that if Gregory or ship security finds anything which looks like a precious xeno gemstone on the crew, it's immediate confiscation and brig time for the crew member in question. Classic good-cop, bad-Arbites routine.

While he's gearing up for the search, he receives word from Virk about losses incurred during the recent combat. They require attention, especially since might be an upcoming planetary landing...

++I'll speak with Mr. Church about it later. Need to take care of this soulstone business first.++

Then he turns back to Garu.

"We'll be moving out in about half an hour. I'll see you at the Temple-Shrine."

***

After getting reports on where the xenos were sighted, Gregory allocates platoon-sized units of fresh armsmen to go around recovering xeno bodies and weapons, bringing them all back to the storage hold that's been designated as xeno containment. That way there's a centralized location for Enginseer Jak Tesla and their Eldar "guests" to visit and check the effects of whatever they've recovered.

Then, it's time to collect corpses. Quite a few of the bodies have spittle or other, more noxious substances on them; the xenos did a fair bit of damage and the survivors were understandably upset at the killers of their comrades. Gregory loads them all up into the "meatwagons" (corpse transport trolleys) that have been reserved for the purpose. Crew corpses go into their own meatwagons, so the Ecclesiarchal contingent can commend their souls to the Emperor before their fleshly shells are rendered down into corpse-starch. It's a tedious process, but a necessary one, and eventually, it is complete. Maybe some of the bodies or some of their trinkets have been spirited away, but that's for Garu's people to handle.

It doesn’t take long to locate all of the xeno bodies, there were only four bodies and one prisoner left on the bridge after the assault there withdrew, the agent who was killed when trying to access the warp gate that Hadrian had destroyed and nearly two hundred in the chapel. Only fourteen Eldar had survived and their leader confirms that all of his crew are accounted for.

The other Eldar ship that had been blown to bits by a well-placed broadside did not fare so well, there were no survivors, apart from the fighter pilot crews who had fled the scene, and only twenty-five of their sole stones recovered by Faith, non the less, the Eldar captain seems very grateful that the humans had taken the trouble.

Eldar bodies are laid out in the Temple, seeing as that is where most of them are to start with, Human bodies are removed to the Mortarium, there are eighty-two of these including those who died on firing the first broadside. The Mortarium has a limited number of viewing tubes but as it is a dedicated area in the corner of the Hall of St Gothren rather than a separate room, space is not a limiting factor and the remaining bodies are laid out on medical gurneys, tables and whatever else comes to hand, once draped in a white sheet it matters little what they are lying on, equal respect is afforded even to the lowliest loading serf. Five of these bodies are of Mechanicus personal, (three from the gunnery accident, two who died defending the auspex cogitators), these are placed on white draped gurneys to one side of the Mortarium.

Meanwhile Mr Yorick, (Master of the Vox), has been monitoring vox coms on the planet and reports that there are several public service broadcasts and that everything else is heavily encrypted in one of a seven different syphers. The manufactorum on the other hand is broadcasting a continuous series of three dimensional coordinates at quite a low power.

Paklor Ank, (Master of Etherics), has identified several areas on the surface whose auspex signatures are consistent with conflict in progress.

OOC Do any of you guys have skills in cryptology or anything of that nature?
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Garu nodded, "I will pass it along."  He gestured to those that were with him to proceed with their work while he asked Mr Yorick to patch through some of the vox comms for him to process on the data-pad while quoting things to his auto-quill to write so he could make quick comparisons.


ooc:
08:54, Today: Garu Finnigan rolled 3 -- 5 degrees of success using the Only War system with a target number of 46.  Challenging Trade (Cryptographer).
:P

OOC:
Faith is a trained cryptographer too (SLore Cryptography) because all astropaths may have to process coded communications. Can she assist Garu? It would reduce the difficulty of the roll by 10 and give +1 DoS if he suceeds. Though it may be a little unfair/unnecessary since eh already rolled...
This message was last edited by the player at 13:09, Tue 25 Apr 2023.

Later in the evening after Shireen is put to sleep, she spends another hour with Medb, just lying together after the stresses of the day. After that she had a duty to return to and she got up wearily and heads to her offices and the mountain of data-slates, scrolls and petitioners that the adjutants corral, correlate and prepare in the priorities she would seem most important.

Before taking any of these she sends a quick missive to Asgard to attempt to have all weapons returned to their armouries and checked for clear function, have all xenos weapons, armour & equipment collected, catalogued and stowed together in a guarded store-room until further notice. Have the Xenos put into another room with a guard platoon on protection and incarceration duty.

Once done she calls to the adjutant to send in the first of the petitioners, a member of the ships Chirurgeon with current tallies of deaths, injuries and missing, sectioned into the work crews then sub-sections. She accepts this, thanks them for their work and dismisses them to rest as the next is lead in, and the litany of status updates go on for hour a few hours. Once done her chrono chimes indicating that her own timing has been hit and she feels the reactors in the ship power up to full as they begin to move in system.

Making her way to the bridge she watches as they leave the debris of battle. All their ships recalled but prepared for short notice launch. "Status Report" she says taking a seat unto the command throne.


OOC: Spend time w/family. have xenos stuff collected. Have info about the planet relayed to her

Gregory delivers a quick rundown of the number of bodies found, equipment and soulstones collected, as well as Faith's contribution to the deep void retrieval operations. He also informs the Captain about losses taken during the boarding action and states his intentions to supplement them with twists and other undocumented denizens of the lament.

He does add one last question at the end; "May I ask how you intend to dispose of the xenos and their effects, Ma'am?"

Vormav makes an appearance on the bridge. He takes note of Mr. Asgard's intention to use the undocumented. "I was preparing a report on that topic but interdepartmental negotiations have been slow going in the wake of the battle. The undocumented insurgents that we captured. They seem to have been psychically conditioned by the Aldari. I'm yet to determine if the damage can be undone by the Astropathic department on board. I've made my concerns about the undocumented no secret but any we recruit should be thoroughly vetted both by medical and by our telepaths."

"I'm also curious to know the intended fate of the xenos materiel. I know a few wealthy officials who would pay a healthy stack of gelt to have one of those trophies mounted on their wall."

"Hm, nobody told me about that. Well, if they were compromised by the Eldar, we can use them as penal troops. Better them than someone actually loyal to the Dynasty."