Two-and-Mirror

In the cluttered mid-hive of Sibellus, a journeywoman metal
fabricator suspected of stealing Mechanicus archprints and using
them to build cages for the Beast House vanished from her
family’s modest forge less than an hour before the Arbitrators
blasted in the entry hatch. There was no spoor for the Mastiffs
to track, and whatever papers she used to escape from the hive
and possibly from the planet, were good enough to pass Arbites
checkpoints that had been put on alert for her.
At the far borders of the Malfian Sub-sector the shipmasters
of the long-haulers Tread of Generations and Rock of Sybea arrived
in orbit at Cindar to confer with a delegation of the Machenko Dynasty. Detectives had set their traps very carefully. The ships
were suspected of conspiring to delay shipments of fissile elements
to Cindar, running the fuel stocks for the reactors critically low
and driving prices so high in the resultant panics that the Dynasty
could charge almost any price they wished. When the doors
closed, however, every trick, device, and spy the Surveillors had
planted went dead, their machine-spirits struck blind and deaf
until the doors opened and the Dynasty delegation graciously
showed their visitors out. The next day both ships departed, and,
by amazing chance, every informant the Detective-Espionists had
placed onboard ended up in the same drunken group that just
happened to be left behind on the docks when the ships pushed
back and left for their jump points.
Such alarming reports have been crisscrossing the
Great Precinct more and more frequently. The Arbites can
see the evidence of activities of Two-and-Mirror, but have
barely begun to piece together any information about the
organization, let alone land any counter-blows to it.
Two-and-Mirror has no real criminal aims of its own. It is an
enabling organization, one with a unique channel of information
into the heart of Adeptus Arbites operations and the skill to
construct countermeasures that it sells to any criminal willing
to meet its prices. It knows techniques to foil very specific
design loopholes in cyber-mastiff and grapplehawk sensors, and
it knows Verispex doctrine and can wreck the evidence those
adepts look for. It knows the techniques of the Detectives, and
can extract information on their informants and operations. It
knows many of the Arbites’ codes and their code-breakers, and
can translate the former and thwart the latter---always for a price.
The most unnerving thing about Two-and-Mirror’s techniques
is that they are obviously based on intimate knowledge from
within branches of the Arbites, and they are able to update that
knowledge as it changes. That indicates multiple points of failure
within the Arbites, all organized and made available for buying,
or to a handful of senior Arbites who can obtain the information
through proper internal channels before they sell it outside.
Neither option helps Precinct Commanders sleep at night.
Two-and-Mirror is elusive, even to its customers. It is almost
impossible to find; rather, its representatives will discreetly make it
known to clients that they have skills which may shortly become
very valuable. Agents, drops, and meeting-places are marked with
the combination of symbols that give the organization its name---there will be some combination of a hand, a bird, and a mirror,
different each time, that will provide the clue. The symbology is
a wry crack at Two-and-Mirror’s nature: the eagle of the Adeptus
and the gauntlet of the Arbites, inverted in reflection.