Cog and Mita swept into a culvert at the base of a particular hab, the memory of its pitted surface and its devotional graffiti no less vivid for being stolen from the bounty hunter's brain. Only on closer inspection was the sham inherent to the construction made plain, and then only through a careful appraisal of tiny details. No clothing dangled on flexing poles from tiny slit-windows. No shadows moved behind blinds and drapes, as they did in surrounding habs. No preachers ranted in fiery oration from the stepped buttresses along each corner, replaced on this edifice by tail human figures: servitors with long shanks and countless eyes, which stood in silent voyeurism of all within their gaze.

It was a statement, of course.

You are being watched.

They left their impeller bikes at the central entrance, and Mita could feel without extending her psychic self the cold intellect regarding them. Through numberless electric eyes, through a myriad of cameras — both hidden and overt — its perpetual interest bored into her from somewhere within.

This, then, was the information broker. And to her senses, which relied upon the whimsy of emotion as a retina relies upon light, his astral presence was a thing of jagged edges and ugly ambitions.

She stepped inside scant seconds behind Cog. It saved her life.

He had used combat servitors, of course. Clever.

Devoid of emotion, lacking even a basic self awareness which might have betrayed them to her senses, they were as invisible to her astral gaze as any other machine. They dropped from recesses above the door and sprung from concealed pits in the rockcrete of the lobby with only the whine of smooth hydraulics to betray their movement. Four of them: sleek models with gangly parts and chequerboards of surgical scars, ramshackle homunculi with a dangerous, graceful aesthetic. Two racked ungainly weapons from plastic holsters, deformed remnants of human flesh held together by circuit wiring. Autoguns — multibarreled and undecorated — loomed in each cybermetallic paw.

The two others started forwards, bird-jointed legs endowing them with a predatory, hopping gait, like reptiles hybridised with zombie corpses. Each sported a shimmering forceblade in the place of a left wrist — flesh and absorption coils interknitted like brambles — and a three-digit powerfist to the right.

Two to shoot the hell out of any trespasser, and two to get in close and finish them off. Cute.

The autoguns opened fire with a roar and Mita ducked on impulse, acknowledging even as she did so that it was a futile gesture: not a single part of the lead firestorm could find its way to her. Bullets impacted on Cog's broad chest like stones striking the flanks of a tank — punching ragged holes in his robe and plucking messy eruptions of blood and flesh into the air — but appearing only to enrage him further. He stretched wide his tri-jointed arms and roared like a beast, great fists clenching in rage, bullets whining as they ricocheted from steel knuckles. A gobbet of his flesh painted itself across Mita's brow, snapping her awake from the urge to freeze up that had seized her. She dropped to her knees and grabbed for the holster at her waist.

She was an interrogator of the Ordo Xenos, warp-dammit. She wouldn't be bested by a hivetown infomerchant and his metal cronies. She'd come prepared for this.

Her boltpistol was loaded and armed before conscious thought even impelled her to seek targets, and she squirreled her way forwards to peer between Cog's legs with the weapon supported in both hands. Through the oscillations of his robe — now tattered and dripping gore — she caught a brief glimpse of the nearest gundrone, wide eyes rolling in metal sockets with whatever vestiges of machismo its human biology retained. She took her time drawing a bead, recalling her training, shutting out every other element of the world, dissolving peripheral threats on a wave of focus, then fired.

The servitor jerked backwards once, then spun at an impact upon its shoulder, then arched backwards with a sudden snap as a third shell caught it in the centre of its forehead. The warheads detonated one by one — dancing their victim like a ghastly marionette — until its head burst apart on a cloud of shrapnel and brain flesh.

Towering over her, Cog's living shield was quickly losing its efficacy. His roar grew weaker with every instant, replaced all too often by anguished moans, and the fabric of his robe drizzled moist gore around his feet like a saturated sponge. Doing her best to stay behind him — and to shut out her shame at accepting his unspoken sacrifice — Mita became aware of a blurring shape to her left. The first of the combat servitors closed with an electric rattle, its face a featureless mass of stretched skin, pulled taut around a single fish-eye lens. Its attack was as brutal as it was efficient — a horizontal hack with the crackling blade instants before a vertical swipe with the powerfist — a combination impossible to dodge. She backed away with a wordless howl, aware already that she was as good as dead.

Cog saved her yet again, clawing with an exhausted grunt at the servitor's head and throwing it, knife chopping uselessly at his tree-like arm, across the room, bowling over the remaining gundrone in the process. Mita followed his lead without hesitation, pumping a glut of bolter shells into the knotted machines as they struggled to disentangle, watching with enormous satisfaction as they blew apart with smoke and sparks dancing around them.

The intervention was one effort too great for Cog's wrecked body: mangled to the point of dissolution, eyes thick with a film of blood and tears, his massive legs gave way and he slumped to the ground with a hiss, hands reaching out.

'Didn't... didn't saved Mita,' he burbled, child-like. 'Suh-sorry...'

'Oh, Cog...' she whispered.

And then it was just her, and in a slow motion dream that had no business invading her reality, the second combat servitor hopped gaily from the plumes of smoke and ripped her boltpistol away, crumpling it in its powerfist.

It placed its blade to her neck and chirruped.

'Shit,' she announced.

'I wouldn't go that far, dear,' said a voice, startling her. 'I thought you did rather well, considering. Het-het-het.'

The curious tone seemed to come from the servitor itself — or at least from the enamel speaker-mouth hooked above its ragged ear — but its unctuous tones stood incongruous against the machine's vapid mind. Someone speaking from afar, then, using this murderous machine as a mouth.

'You must be the information broker,' she said, feeling ridiculous.

'Het-het-het,' the voice sounded positively delirious, its weird laughter grating at her ears. 'Very good, yes, very good! And you must be the inquisitor's witch, yes? Yes? Heard so very much about you, het-het-het. Blinded one of my agents earlier, even, poor little lamb.'

'The muggers? That was you?'

'Het-het-het. It pays to find out as much as possible about strangers in my city.'

'"Find out"? They tried to murder me!'

'Yes. Het-het-het. So I found out you can't be killed by cretins. You see? Thus my metal friends, here.'

The servitor thumped itself on the chest with a hollow clang. Like a puppet, dancing to its master's strings. At its feet, Cog shifted his weight and groaned, watching events through rheumy eyes. Not dead, then. Yet.

'Who are you?' Mita said, the forceblade's charge prickling at the skin of her throat.

'That, my dear, is something you aren't in any position to discover.' The servitor cast an eye — independent of its twin — down to the bleeding giant on the floor. 'Not now that your pet ogryn can't quite find his feet — het-het-het.'