Apologies for the lack of updates over the past few weeks. Had a few things going on I won't burden you with.

Now, it is time to return to the sciroccos and the sands of Prawa V.

For context, I've already finished this story and we're about 1/3 of the way through. This is the first draft, so any and all constructive criticism is most welcome. I've not yet returned to it to revise for the second draft, so am open to ideas. (Yes, @W.A.Rorie, that includes your mini-Napolean complex Cyclops.) On a slightly different topic, I am going to pick up some Kreig Death Riders soon and convert them to represent the Scandi nomads. Looking forward to it! But, I have so much else to paint. But, I want more models. But, I have so much left to paint....you know the story.

 

Anyhow, here we go:

 

The air in the office had gone stale. The only sound was the slow churn of the cogitator’s cooling fan — faltering, now. It let out a low whine and rattled as it drew air through its dust-clogged vents. A faint scent of ozone crept across the room, sharp and dry. The heat it gave off blended with the weight of lamp-glow and the dust stirred by old paper.

Scrolls lay unfurled across the desk, overlapping in long arcs of yellowed parchment. The ink bled in places. Some of the seals had cracked when he broke the bindings. One was still faintly scented — sweet, brittle, like dried fungi left in a mine locker too long. The script was in multiple hands: faded stamps, half-legible annotations, marginalia in a style he hadn’t seen outside of recovery court reports.

 

Kasnyk stood over it all, monocle flickering. “Overlay patrol routes with decommissioned facility grid. Apply compliance-era topography filter. Match for inconsistencies in power draw.”

The cogitator’s hum deepened. The screen strobed slightly — it wasn’t meant to run this hot for this long.

 

Across the display, lines shimmered and redrew. Patrol paths curved and nested in awkward patterns. A few coincided perfectly with power retention lines. Others bypassed old bunkers — ones officially listed as “cleared,” but still drawing heat and cooling resources.

 

He tapped the side of the monocle. “Cross-check redacted facility codenames with sealed archives. Confirm any entries tagged 329.”

 

Pause.

 

Kasnyk’s breath left him slow and controlled. He turned away from the screen for a moment, rubbing the bridge of his nose. The room smelled of dust and hot copper, of old paper and machine breath. Behind him, the cogitator whirred again — slower this time, struggling. He reached toward the centre of the desk, clearing space, arranging the layers with precise hands.

 

A single zone remained blank. Not blocked. Not encrypted. Just… absent. Patrols moved around it. Supply shifted past it. Everything curved.

 

He stared. A long moment passed. He leaned forward, one hand flat on the desk.

 

The lines converged. Patrols. Supply. Power. Marek. Rakoczy.All of them — circling nothing.

 

And yet, he knew. He swallowed once. He didn’t smile. He didn’t sit. He just stood there — eyes fixed, alone in the heat, while the cogitator continued to hum itself toward collapse.

 

The cogitator was still running hot. The cooling fan wheezed like a winded beast, struggling against a backlog of compiled overlays and archive decrypts. The room smelled of metal fatigue, old oil, and the dry bite of ozone. Scrolls lay peeled across the desk, anchored with dataslates and half-empty mugs. Parchment curled at the corners. Ink had begun to smear where Kasnyk’s fingers rested too long.

 

He barely noticed. His monocle fed him blinking overlays: redacted vault codenames, sector patrol paths, topographic heat profiles. Somewhere between fatigue and obsession, the patterns had begun to blur.

 

A knock.

 

He didn’t answer. The door opened anyway.

 

Aleksy Klimek stepped inside, clutching a slate under one arm. His boots thudded softly against the metal floor. “You asked to see me, sir?”

 

Kasnyk blinked, then nodded toward the second chair. “Sit.”

 

Klimek set the slate down beside a teetering stack of old requisition orders and eased himself into the seat, glancing once at the glowing cogitator. “You’ve been at this all night.”

 

Kasnyk ignored the remark. “Take a look at this sector breakdown. Theta designations. Focus on venting cycles and active power routes. Something’s not… aligning.”

 

Klimek leaned forward, brushing aside an empty recaf tin. His eyes scanned the overlapping schematics. His brow furrowed. “Sir—Vault Theta-6. See the vent cycle log?”

 

Kasnyk made a dismissive gesture. “I’ve seen it. Slight deviation. Not enough for a flag.”

 

“No, not just slight. It’s purging every nineteen hours. Look at the others in that zone — twenty-eight, thirty-two, some as long as thirty-six. That’s steady baseline.”

 

Kasnyk stopped.

 

Klimek pressed on, a little more confidently. “That frequency suggests internal heat build-up. Which means something’s running in there. A generator, maybe. Or thermal bleed from active systems.”

 

Kasnyk turned fully toward the screen. “You’re certain?”

 

Klimek nodded. “It’s not just Theta-6, either. I was running a comparative when I noticed another spike — Sector 12, southern reach. No vault codename. Just coordinates. No record of habitation.”

 

Kasnyk’s voice dropped. “But it draws?”

 

“Same vent rate. Power spike around the same hour every cycle.”

 

Silence.

 

Kasnyk tapped a stylus against the desk once. Then again. His thoughts were already leaping ahead. “No turret,” he murmured. “No marking. Not Imperial pattern.”

 

Klimek tilted his head. “Sir?”

 

Kasnyk straightened. “Nothing. Good work, Aleksy. That’ll be all. For now.”

 

Klimek stood, glancing once more at the screen before collecting his slate. “Sir—if you don’t mind me asking. That Sector 12 anomaly. What do you think it is?”

 

Kasnyk looked up at him, face blank. Then, with just the faintest narrowing of his eyes: “Something no one wants us to find.”

 

Klimek left, the door clicking shut behind him.

 

Kasnyk waited a beat, then moved to the comm terminal at the rear of the room. He keyed in a line request. Clearance denied. “Flight support for investigative flyover is non-essential. Declined.”

He exhaled.

 

A pause.

 

Then reached under the desk and withdrew a flat tin — dust-covered, corners worn. He pried it open, selected a small item, and stared at it: a ration token. Not legal tender. But enough, in the right hands.

 

“More than your job’s worth,” he murmured. He shut the tin, keyed in a private channel. “Kasnyk. I need a favour.”

 

-----

 

The wind had settled. The dust hung in the air like a faded veil, stirred only by the slow shifting of langkløv hooves and the soft creak of saddle leather. In the distance, the Resistance patrol faded into the horizon — first as shapes, then heat-blurred smudges, and finally nothing at all.

 

Ælka stood on a rise of packed sand, her weight leaning subtly against the shaft of her walking staff. She wore a linen tunic stained by years of sun, layered beneath a leather breastband reinforced with stitched bone and thread. Her forearms were wrapped in hardened bracers, the leather dulled and scarred. Tough breeches, desert-worn, were tucked into heavy, dust-filmed boots that reached mid-calf. Her face, as always, was mostly concealed — a cloth wrap over her mouth and nose, her head covered in gauze and woven cloth. Only her eyes were exposed: lined, dark, and steady. Strands of long grey hair spilled from beneath her head covering in an uneven curtain, soft and dry like wind-carved scrub.

 

She spoke without turning. “They walk toward something they do not understand.” The words carried no malice. Just certainty.

 

Stenrik stood beside her, hands at his belt, watching the same empty horizon. His frame was compact, wiry — not with the mass of a fighter, but the lean tension of a cliffside climber. Every tendon was taut, every motion efficient. He had already re-secured his mask after the meeting — an old, functional thing, scratched and patched, its lenses clouded at the edges. Now he lifted it back into place with a practised tug of the strap.

 

His voice came muffled through the filter. “If that is what must happen to prevent a war, so be it.”

 

He moved with precision, swinging up onto the langkløv beside him — the tall, long-legged desert beast shifting its weight as he settled. Its hooves pressed deep into the sand. Ælka’s mount stood nearby, snorting gently, saddle tassels clicking in the breeze.

 

A younger nomad lingered behind them, eyes still fixed on the fading trail. “Why help them?” he asked quietly.

 

Ælka turned to him just enough to be heard. “Because Kova walked with us. And because they walk toward something no one else will.” She looked back out across the desert. “Hun kender varmen fra støvet.”

 

The young man nodded, uncertain but trusting her wisdom..

 

Far ahead, the Resistance convoy had already vanished into the dunes. Only the dust lingered, swirling like mist.

 

Ælka said nothing more. She pulled her face wrap tighter and mounted her langkløv, moving with the slow precision of someone who had done this for decades.

Behind her, the desert waited.