Editing Commissar Techpriestess love story (section)

=== Chapter 17 ===
Their eyes adjusted to the dim light, as they shuffled through the gloom, the chattering and murmuring of the psykers around slightly unnerving the vox officer. Rogal sighed as they continued, the metallic tang beginning to fill his mouth. The pair reached the middle of the room, where sat, upon a raised dais, sat,
“Hjarl?” Rogal called, the ornate throne rotated, a huge grinning man turned to face them, a huge grin on his face,
“COMMISSAR,” he boomed jovially, “HOW GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN,”
Rogal smiled, bowing his head respectfully, “It’s good to see you too, Hjarl,”
“RIGHT, WELL LETS NOT WASTE ANY TIME, TAKE A SEAT AND LETS HAVE A LOOK AT THOSE SOULS BOYS”.
Tiberius rolled his eyes, taking the seat offered, leaning back and closing his eyes. Bright lights flashed behind his eyes, as Hjarl dove into his mind, fractal patterns spiralling through his mind. He felt the psykers laughter reverberating within his skull, before he felt the horrifying feeling of being hurled high in the air, before being slung back into his chair. His eyes snapped open and he took a deep gasping breath, slumping forward. Hjarl laughed uproariously, clapping a hand on the vox officers shoulder, eliciting a groan of pain from Tiberius.
“YOU’RE CLEAN, LITTLE MAN. A KINKY ONE, BUT CLEAR FROM TAINT. HIM ON EARTH IS HAPPY WITH YOUR SOUL.”
Rogal helped his friend from the chair, and into another, a kindly low level pexpath handing him a cup of water. The commissar flopped into the chair, his long legs splayed out in front of him, as Hjarl rolled his wrists, flexing his hands before clamping them over Rogal’s temples.

The taste of metal filled Rogal’s mouth, as his consciousness feeling like it was being squeezed through a tube. Images of his life flashed by, he saw his childhood home, on a farm on a backwater world, before the war came. His parents had left him at the schola, like so many parents did. He saw his days in the schola, days spent in the workshop, the smell of sawdust filled his mind. Literally filled his mind, he saw and understood the metaphysical representation of the smell of sawdust as a concept, a spiralling sphere of light. The commissar saw his graduation ceremony, his first assignment, how he and Tiberius had earned their promotions. He saw the first time he noticed Octavia, months it seemed before the present day, he saw how he had noticed her every day since, unaware of his attraction to her. The commissar heard as if under water, the laughter of Hjarl, before his mind was thrown back into his head and he slumped forward. Sucking his tongue to the top his mouth, he tried to scrape the metallic taste from his mouth. “SHE’S A GOOD WOMAN, I CAN SEE WHY YOU LIKE HER. THE EMPRAH SMILES UPON YOU BOTH, “ Hjarl boomed happily, “YOU’RE CLEAN COMMISSAR. NOW BOTH OF YOU GET YOUR SIMPLE MINDS FROM MY HALLS,”
Rogal shook his head, trying to clear his head, as he pulled himself to his feet. Tiberius patted him on the back, as the pair made there way out from the psyker’s complex, the armoured doors opening, a wave of heat washing over them. The Secretariat was waiting there for them, a smile on her face, “Thank you for your time gentlemen,” She said, “Right this way,” 
The pair looked at each other and smiled. They had passed, again, had they not, they knew the Hjarl would have crushed their heads and their souls in a matter of moments. Following the secretariat, the entered the elevatus once more, the apparatus humming as they returned to the lobby.

Rogal stretched his arms out, relishing the warm afternoon sun on his face as the pair walked away from the Administratum building. Beside him, the lean vox officer tapped on his earbead, patching himself back into the sea of communications, feeling whole once more. The commissar checked his chronometer, looking at his companion and clicking his tongue. The metallic tang hadn’t left his mouth, and he knew it wouldn’t for hours, but, there were ways to get around that.
“Officers club?” The burly man asked his companion, who nodded tiredly,
“That is the best idea I have heard all day,”
The pair walked through the well-established Administratum complex, and Rogal felt a pang of jealousy that his men were only just getting a barracks, while the paper pushers were here in relative luxury. He sighed, knowing that it was just a side effect of how war was waged, and that any complex like the one they inhabited would be divided up like this. The world was sparsely populated, so this was the main guard base on this land mass, and had only ever supported a couple of regiments. With the orkish invasion, those regiments had been bolstered by forces from across the sector, the majority of guardsmen in tents and other temporary shelters, spread across the base. The Administratum had claimed the main parts of the base, and the Mechanicum the vehicle pits, which had grown nearly over night as prefab shelters were assembled all around, expanding the workspace threefold. Ducking his head, the Commissar followed his friend into the officers club, soft lights and pleasant music greeting them as they strode up to the stairs to the main bar. A couple of officers shot sidelong glances at Rogal and his onyx uniform, before returning to their games of cards and regicide. Tiberius knocked his knuckles on the bar, a barmaid walking over, she smiled at the pair, “What can I get you boys?” She asked, bright and cheerful.

“I’ll take an amasec triple over ploins,” Tiberius said, leaning forward, “What about you, Commissar?”
Rogal smiled warmly, “An amasec combination seven, neat, on ice, if you please,”
“As you wish, Sir’s,” The barmaid said, grabbing a pair of coasters and glasses, placing them on the bar with a clink. Rogal turned and leaned against the bar, looking at his scruffy friend,
“So,” He began, “You and Caelistis, details, now.”
Tiberius chuckled, shaking his head, “What sort of details?”
“We can start with the how’s, why’s come next, and then the what’s, after I have a few drinks. I don’t know if I want to know what you get up to.”
The vox officer laughed, “Oh, there are things that woman can do that would make you eat your hat and like it,”
“Fifteen Thrones, boys,” The Barmaid said, interrupting the pair. Tiberius fished out his wallet, flicking out a crisp twenty throne slip, and handing it to the barmaid, “Can we get some crispseeds to go with them?”
The bar maid nodded, pulling a bowl from under the counter and filling it with the salted seeds Tiberius had asked for. Rogal took his drink and scanned the club for a table, spotting one in a corner booth. He nudged his companion, nodding towards the seats, and the pair moved off.
The commissar took a seat in the corner of the booth, his long legs extending out under the table, his friend sitting to the side, the bowl of crispseeds between them.
“To another successful test of purity and faith,” Tiberius said, raising his glass, “May we continue to make him proud,”
“To the Emprah,” Rogal concluded, clinking his glass to his friends. The pair drank, Tiberius finishing first. He took a few crispseeds and chewed them thoughtfully, Rogal watching him with steely eyes,
“What?”
“You, Magos Caelistis, details, now.”

Tiberius sighed, “We met when she came to repair a malfunctioning vox relay. She was all feisty and making jokes and we got to talking. This would have been about the time you were out at the front, helping disrupt those maglev shuttles the greenskins were using to transport supplies.”
Rogal nodded, taking a pinch of the seeds for himself, flicking one into the air and catching it,
“So I take her out to dinner at that little place over the other side of the Administratum area? Panachatto’s. We ate and talked and drank, and made plans for the next week.”
“Right.”
Tiberius smiled as he continued, “So we meet up the next week, she asks me over to her quarters, and tells me to bring all this stuff, I think nothing of it. We have dinner, and she’s constantly asking me to hand her things, or do something.”
Rogal laughed, “Oh, how terrible for you.”
“I know, so I go with it, escalate things a little, and next thing I know, she’s got me pinned to the wall with her dendrites and she’s whispering things that would make a cultist blush in my ear. The rest, as they say, is history.”
The commissar nodded, “Sounds about right for you. Does she know about your little, quirk?”
Tiberius took another handful of the crispseeds, picking through till he found a particularly large one, “Yeah, I told her about a week in. She understood, told me if it ever got too bad though, she would drag me to the doctor herself and get me medicated. She, just, gets me.”
“You’re very similar,” Rogal said, a smile spreading across his face, “I saw a little bit of her file when I was replying to the inquisitor.”
“Oh really?” the vox officer asked, leaning in conspiratorially, “What did you read about my mistress,”
“Do you have to call her that?”
Tiberius nodded happily, his commissarial friend just shook his head, “Well, she got in some trouble with her collegia back when she was on Peretaraus."

Rogal paused, taking a sip from his glass “Something involving the faculty generators and a rather unfortunate junior magos.”
“What did she do?”
The commissar laughed, “Well, she apparently engineered something called a sequential magno pulse launcher? Anyway, she apparently fired her hand using one of them at said junior magos, in an incident that got reported by the student voxnet as “The greatest spank”.”
Tiberius chewed on his crispseed, the corners of his mouth twitching,
“She had put the junior magos in a set of stocks,” Rogal continued, smiling as his friend tried not to laugh. 
“Report says her hand was embedded in his augmented ass so hard it took a pair of servitors half an hour to work it free,”
Tiberius coughed and spluttered, his resolve broken, as he laughed. The commissar joined in, managing to gasp out, “Best bit is, she got in more trouble for making the magno gun thing than she did for actually hitting that cogboy,”
The vox officer took a few deep breaths to calm himself, the grin still plastered to his face.
“I love that woman,” he said, raising his glass once more, “To techpriestesses, and the men who love them,”
Rogal knocked his glass against his friends, “To techpriestesses,”
The pair drank to their women, Tiberius lowering his glass first, “We should bring them here. For dinner. Tonight.”
Rogal looked around, the officers club was a nice place, the ornate architecture pleasantly light on skulls. Shrugging his shoulders, “Sure, why not.”
Tiberius clapped his hands with glee, “Mistress will be so pleased. I’m a good boy,”
Shaking his head, the commissar took another swig from his glass, “That’s kind of creepy, Tiber,”
The vox officer looked at him apologetically, “Sorry, you know how it gets sometimes,”
“Easy old friend, don’t worry about it,”
Tiberius smiled, “Thank you. Anyway, what about you and the darling of the Mechanicum?”

“What about me and Octavia?” Rogal asked, his face impassive,
“You’ve been spending a lot of time together, anything, interesting happened?” Tiberius raised an eyebrow suggestively, “Some carnal calibrations?”
The commissar shook his head at his friend, “Commissars ask questions, we don’t answer them.”
Tiberius grinned wolfishly, “Oh, so something has happened?”
“We don’t answer questions,” Rogal repeated, a smile spreading across his face. Tiberius tilted his glass at his friend, shaking his head with amusement,
“Right, well I’m going to take that as you have done something with her. Good work, sir,”
Rogal just nodded, as he pulled his dataslate from his pocket. 
“If we’re having dinner here,” He said, thumbing to his datacast manager, “We should probably invite our guests, shouldn’t we?”
Tiberius nodded, pulling his own slate from its pocket on his chest. The pair sat in silence, typing their messages to their respective women. Rogal finished first, placing his dataslate on the table, and taking a few more crispseeds. Tiberius finished his message, following suit and placing his slate on the table, grabbing his glass and taking a drink. 
“So there’s a whisper on the vox that we’re closing in on the orks, should be one final push, and we’ve retaken the planet.”
Rogal smiled, “About time, enough blood’s been shed here,”
“Blood of the martyr is the seed of the Imperium,” Tiberius quoted, “But what’s more interesting is they want to build up a presence here.”
“You mean garrison the planet?”
Tiberius nodded, “Get the population up a bit, start tithing the place.”
Rogal nodded, taking a few crispseeds and chewing them as he pondered his friends information. The burly commissar sat, considering his options. He had been waiting for a chance like this, and now with Octavia quickly becoming a major part of his life, maybe it was time to take that chance.