The Inquisition III

[Lady_Canoness]

This is the third story of the Inquisition and continues the story of Inquisitor Godwyn. The Inquisition: A story of Secrecy and Intrigue, and The Inquisition II: A story of Truth, Trials, and Mystery, can be found in the back pages of this forum.

 

It is not necessary to read both The Inquisition and The Inquisition II prior to this story, though I do recommend it in order to grasp certain concepts of this story.

 

As with my previous works, I will strive to maintain a high level of both writing and story-telling throughout The Inquisition III, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I do writing. To be honest, I try to take breaks from writing from time to time, but I am so hooked on this story that I really can't :P

 

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*prologue*

 

It was a dreary place, ill-suited for the human condition, yet within the ship's vast metal guts the cold air recycled through the dark corridors precipitated the kind of human potential expected of an entire sub-sector that had been captured and condensed down into a single vessel. So much potential – so much life – bottled and stoppered before it had so much as grasped its own vitality.

Descending through the core of the ship, the iron grate on the lift clattered aside and the visitor stepped off. His head brushing the surface of the ceiling, the new arrival observed his surroundings with a cold scrutiny as the lift slowly rumbled upwards and away behind him. Facing the visitor in a semi-circle, the wardens watched him in silence before exchanging glances behind their visored helmets. He expected they knew why he had come, and already he could feel their reluctance to accede to the demand he had not yet put forward.

“Prisoner 011-03548821,” he said, his loud, clear voice filling the dark spaces of the ship, and the wardens, once again glancing at one another, came to agreement allowing the visitor to pass.

As prisons went it was worse than most, and as he followed the guide down the corridors left purposefully dark the visitor could sense the lives that flickered behind sealed doors where all that remained of the people within was a number stencilled in white over black iron. Like animals they were cooped up and afraid, and like animals they pooped themselves when their captors marched past their doors. All they knew were the footsteps that came from one way and passed to another before a door would open and they would hear the screams. They would cling to their memories of families and friends from the life that was stolen from them, yet memories alone could not contend with the knowledge that one day they their door would open and it would be their screams that they heard.

“This is it,” the warden announced, stopping outside of the door labelled with the number the visitor had expected. He moved to the purge panel posted beside the door in preparation to douse the occupant within in a cloud of warding unguents, but the visitor stayed his hand with a silent motion and ushered him aside.

“That will not be necessary,” he reminded the warden in a cautioning whisper, and the man backed away, allowing the visitor to open the door and duck into the tiny cell beyond.

011-03548821 was a number to which was attached a biometric profile detailing physical traits and limitations along with the state and progression of the subject’s mutation. The list was exhaustive, conjured up by Administratum scribes to encompass everything about a life including date and place of birth, known family and lineage, civil records, and personal history. Of all the elements the scribes collected, down to the tiniest details of genetic coding and urine sampling, only one thing was missing from the record attached to 011-03548821, and when the visitor bowed his head to enter cluttered mass of human trappings caught between four walls he had one question to which he had no answer:

“What is your name?” he asked the person within.

Buried beneath a tangled blanket that smelled of sweat, fear, and pee, a pair of tattooed arms and a scalp of unwashed hair appeared as the prisoner dragged herself into the corner of her cot against the scratched metal walls and trembled in fear.

Stooping under the low ceiling of the cell, the visitor closed the heavy metal door and blocked the warden’s view before lowering himself into a crouch so that he was more or less at level with the quaking human being under the sheets.

What is your name? he asked again, though this time without using his voice.

A pair of tear-streaked blue eyes appeared over the edge of the quilt along with the forelegs of a distinctive spider tattoo on the side of the young woman’s face.

Spider.

“You know what I am, Spider?” the visitor asked, once again using his voice.

The girl behind the blanket nodded.

“Then you know that I will not harm you?”

She did not respond – instead tucking her head back under the blanket.

Around the dismal cell was everything the prisoner held dear in this world: bits of cloth torn from a blanket to make different shapes, figurines built clumsily from the hot wax that dripped from the solitary torch that lit the dank room with its orange glow, pieces of paper scavenged from meal wrappings, and intricate scrapings on the walls where the bare metal had been revealed to make patterns from memory.

Of particular interest were these crude murals, and the visitor studied them carefully. The darker ones were obviously older than those that had been freshly scratched. And the method…? The girl’s broken and bloodied finger nails spoke for themselves.

“Are those your drawings?” he asked, and the lump under the blanket where the young woman’s head would be quickly bobbed in reply.

The crude markings meant nothing to an untrained eye, but to the visitor they were something more. Each one represented a dream, not a memory – a dream so vivid that it could only be exorcised through pain and process. The girl must have dwelt on them for some time to be so driven, and she had carved up the walls in a frenzy with the top of the murals marking the extent of her reach. Much could be gained through studying such things, but it was not the deciphering of dreams that the visitor had come for.

Why are you here?

She didn’t ask the question as would a normal human being, nor did she transmit it telepathically – it simply surfaced so clearly to the edge of her mind that the visitor needed only pluck it loose like the petal of a flower.

“I am here because I can help you, and you can help me,” he said, but the words had hardly left his mouth when the ripples of disbelief washed his way from her being. No one like him had ever helped her, and since she’d been locked in this prison seven months ago not a soul had stepped into her cell without suffocating her under the so-called blessed oils first. To them, she was mutant, a witch, and a danger good only for one thing, but the visitor was not like them, and in time she began to feel it. She wanted to know if it was true. Would he help her? How?

“Tell me first about your dreams,” he coaxed, “and then I will help you.”

Images of a skinny girl walking upright out of her cell seeped from her mind. She was powerful indeed. The wardens had reason behind their fears, but power did not make her dangerous: once again it all came down to how she was used.

“Your dreams,” the visitor repeated, tell me of them.

She shivered – a shiver that shook the walls – and then opened the gates to her mind.

The visitor had thought himself prepared yet even so he found it difficult to wade through the upheavals of an untrained mind. The dreams were there, but their veins were scattered and twisted between skeins of fear and loathing bungled around misunderstandings and presumptions of girl growing into her body and mind. For a brief fraction of a second the speed at which it flooded forth seemed over-powering – that such could be held within single soul! – but in time the visitor found control and held together what would have otherwise been a raw tide of emotions.

And then just like that it was done.

The girl had dropped her blanket and was looking at him with a mixed look of adoration and repulsion across her face. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen, and with the stained blanket laying over her lap as she sat in the corner of her cell, the visitor could see that a variety of tattoos covered her body, though by far the most prominent being the spider from which she took her name.

“Can you really take me with you?” she asked, the mounting hope and veiled fear evident in her voice.

The visitor nodded. “Yes,” he said. She was far more powerful than he had originally anticipated, and that would make matters difficult.

“Can we leave? Now?”

He nodded again. “Yes.”

She stood up without invitation and her blanket fell around her ankles.

The visitor scowled. She wore no clothes – like an animal she was allowed none – all she had was her tattoos that covered her from head to foot, and, like an animal, she thought only of an escape and not of the dangers that such an escape could mean for her. And dangers there would be.

For a mind like hers, untrained and unbound, there could be no niceties or gentleness. Hers would necessarily be a life of training and focus, where every duty was to be taken seriously and where every lapse could be punishable by an eternity of damnation. It was no kindness releasing her from her prison, though indeed she thought of it as such, for what awaited her when the wardens opened her door would be a quick death in the service of the Golden Throne, though when the visitor walked her out of the prison she would instead be stalked by a multitude of horrors waiting to enslave her into unending torment where death would be a wish unfulfilled. But she did not know this.

The visitor rose to his feet and rapped on the door in preparation to leave, but before the young woman would go anywhere there was one question that she needed answered in return.

“What is your name?” she asked him, staring up at the giant that towered over her in the tiny room.

The space marine smiled gently. “My name is Orion Aquinas,” he said, his voice a soft hiss. “You may call me that if you wish.”

She smiled and, prisoner no more, walked free from her cell with the Librarian.

[Azekai]

The space marine smiled gently. “My name is Orion Aquinas,” he said, his voice a soft hiss. “You may call me that if you wish.”

She smiled and, prisoner no more, walked free from her cell with the Librarian.

 

:tu: Huzzah! This bit made my day.

 

It keeps getting better and better . . . you really have a knack for description and natural dialogue.

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

yay! new story, cannot wait to see more.

 

I really like your style, that prolouge kept me guessing, I suppose it was a Black Ship?

[Lady_Canoness]

Thank you kind sirs for your generous responses, and I am very much looking forward to giving you more ;)

 

And your guess was correct - I was going for a Black Ship (though of course I never told either way)

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

I am also intrigued as to what our esteemed Librarian would want with a female Psyker...considering that geneseed doesnt work on females...

 

Or is he playing the system for his own agenda? Is this his betrayel?

 

Now youve got me all a-wondering whats-a-gonna-happin

 

Hallmarks of a good story, I am looking foward to reading the rest of it.

[Lady_Canoness]

You and me both Bohemond! There is just so much potential when starting a new work where nothing is set in stone!

 

*part 1*

 

*Four months later*

 

It was raining again, and for the second night in a row she lay awake in bed listening to the splash of water on the roof as the planet-wide irrigation kicked into life.

Plip-plat-plip-plat-plip-plat – it was like fingers drumming along the edge of a table; musical almost, with the deep bass of thunder rolling over the green hills and across the lake towards her. A pleasant sound, and just one of the many things she dwelled on during her long, restless nights.

Beside her, her lover rolled over under the sheets and stirred slightly with the steady breaths of deep sleep. Cassandra Godwyn was envious: she had the recipe for tranquility and peace, yet all she could think about was disquiet and turmoil.

Sitting up, she slid her feet over the edge of the bed onto the cool floor and bowed her head as she pushed her left hand through her shoulder length blond hair. Her right hand lay on the bedside table along-side a bottle of unopened sleeping capsules and an empty glass that smelled of brandy.

She sighed: a lot had changed in a few short months.

What happened on Penumbra was still fresh in her mind, and the cold steel of the bionic replacement for the stump of her right arm was a constant reminder of everything she’d lost there, though for all the horrors she’d faced fighting the Necrotyr it was what had happened afterwards that kept her awake at night, and what kept her here, sequestered on an agri-world, of all places.

Her lover’s long-fingered hand touched her gently on the arm and a warm smile invited her back to bed, but instead she got up and walked on stiff legs out the open door of her bedroom and into the lavatory across the hall. For what it was worth, the stump of her arm was starting to ache again as she stepped in the shower and turned on the water until the sound of water falling on her head drowned out the raindrops falling outside.

It was just over four months now since she’d left Penumbra and her right arm behind and returned to the Imperium to spread the word of Brand’s betrayal, but she’d quickly found out that the traitor had beaten her to it. Inquisitor Brand himself was nowhere to be found, of course, but the Mono-dominants – ever her enemies since she’d been tarred with the moniker of ‘kin-slayer’ twenty-five years ago – were already making up for his absence by spreading news of her betrayal and her corruption, and this time there was little evidence she could use in defence of her innocence once she discovered that the unlikely ally she had in Inquisitor von Draken had disappeared without a trace. Her few allies within the Thorians and the Amalathians – and they were few – advised caution as it seemed unlikely that her enemies would wait for a second trial to prosecute a killer of kin, and several of the more extremist Inquisitors could well attempt to take matters into their own hands. To that end her superiors within the Ordo Xenos had recommended that she go on sabbatical and effectively remove herself from the center of attention until the whole thing blew over. It was a suggesting that Inquisitor Godwyn would have normally ignored, had she been given the option – which she wasn’t. So instead of pursuing traitors, heretics, and the enemies of the Emperor, Godwyn was trapped in an isolated valley far from where she needed to be with nothing she could do aside from wait.

Groaning, the blonde Inquisitor sat down in the shower and let the cool water wash over her head and chest as she rested her back against the earthen tiles of the wall and closed her eyes. Nights were long, days were longer, and weeks seemed to take an eternity.

She was cast out – forced into a repose not of her choosing – and relieved of her mandate until a full year passed.

It was awful.

Oftentimes an Inquisitor would choose to go on sabbatical after a particularly taxing investigation, or perhaps when they felt it time to cultivate a new set of skills, yet from Godwyn’s understanding there were some Inquisitors who went mad from their idle time, or otherwise dulled the keen edge of their wits. The great Eisenhorn had apparently conversed with daemonhosts during his withdrawal from service, while in other existing cases Inquisitors partook in practices equally damning or detrimental with their free time – likely, Godwyn thought, because they, as she, found the silence unbearable. Time almost impossible to fill, and she would find herself falling between lapses of hedonism, sloth, and frantic pursuits of knowledge as easily as the swinging of a pendulum while she yearned for a release.

Sitting in the bottom of the shower, she opened her mouth and caught droplets of water on her tongue until she felt her backside begin to go numb from sitting too long.

The forced repose necessarily entailed an exile of sorts as well – no one, after all, sits in the far reaches of an agri-world by choice – though her closest companions had each proven exceptionally tenacious in their own ways and refused to leave the Inquisitor’s side.

Nerf, a Catachan and former Guard commando, had stood side-by-side with the Inquisitor as she fought the Necrotyr and announced that he wasn’t about to watch her beat back the aliens only to be taken down by the machinations of her own kind. He was a stoic, hard-working man with simple tastes and simple means, and while Godwyn abhorred being trapped on a quiet countryside of a far-flung world, Nerf seemed to actually enjoy it. Without a soul to be seen for a hundred miles over the rolling green hills and with a placid lake of deep blue waiting mere steps away from their hidden retreat, Nerf eased himself into the rustic life with a kind of quiet enthusiasm that was contagious when people were around him. A man of the moment, he was content to put his past behind him and keep his future ahead of him while he drank in the peace of his surroundings with a smile on his face.

Wherever Nerf went, Mercy was never far behind, and, when the Catachan had announced his intention to stay with Godwyn no matter what, it could be taken for granted that the giant yet striking assassin would be following silently in his footsteps. She wasn’t like Nerf, however, and seemed to be at a loss amongst the greenery far from civilization. During the day she would frequently vanish into the tamed wilderness surrounding the large property – sometimes for days at a time – but other times she would find Godwyn, or Godwyn would find her, and though one woman was mute there was a growing bond between the two. At first their contact was purely physical and was something that the willow killer appeared to relish and enjoy as almost a sort of game, but as days turned into weeks it became apparent that there much more behind Mercy’s alluring visage than the impulses she so often acted upon. Time and again Cassandra would talk to her – sometimes for hours – and even though the mute never answered she spent the night in Godwyn’s chambers with increasing frequency until slipping away anew with the dawn light.

 

*

 

Cassandra woke the following morning painfully cramped in the bottom of the shower with water still pouring onto her face. How long she’d been there she did not know, but when she eventually scrambled to her feat over the wet tiles and turned the water off she noticed that the rain had stopped and through a window she could just make out the morning songs of birds in the distance.

Dripping, she stepped out of the shower and leaned her one arm heavily against the counter. Hunched from the cramp in her back, the woman in the mirror did not look her best – in fact, she looked terrible. Her eyes were red with fatigue as she scowled at her reflection before tugging the tangle of hair from overtop the metal casing that replaced what used to be her left ear before it had been scorched by a plasma burn – a burn from the same gun that had likely taken the better part of her right arm off as well.

Clumsily, she dried herself with a towel hanging on a nearby rung – not easy to do with one hand – and walked barefoot back to her room over the warm, wood floors.

Mercy was still fast asleep when she returned, and was splayed across the entirety of the bed in a tangle of sheets. At least seven-and-a-half feet tall, her legs were hanging over the sides and a long arm was draped across where Cassandra would have been. The Inquisitor managed a smile, then sat down on the edge of the bed with a *fump*. Behind her, Mercy stirred, but did not wake.

Sliding her metal arm into place and securing it to her stump with a reassuring *click*, Cassandra crossed her room with the morning sun pouring through the windows and slipped into one of the light gowns she had taken to wearing around the retreat before leaving her room in silence and descending the short flight of stairs leading to the rest of the house.

She still hadn’t gotten used to how quiet it was during the days. After living aboard a starship for years on end, she had grown accustomed to the noise in the background almost as if it was a quality of the air itself, which left the current silence around her feeling like she was somehow suffocating. It was very still too and was mostly wood or stone with very little plastic or metal that did not hum, move, or do anything at all.

Altogether it felt very strange to her, but not as strange as finding someone else in the kitchen who wasn’t Nerf.

“Who are you?” the question sprang up in her tired mind the moment she set eyes upon the teenage girl who was currently standing in her kitchen and helping herself to her food left over from the night before.

If the girl was surprised by the woman with the wet hair standing in the doorway then she was much better at hiding it than the sleep deprived Inquisitor, though she froze with her arm half way to her mouth about to fill her face with some of the pulpy fruit she was carrying on a plate in front of her, and stared at Godwyn with a pair of cool blue eyes.

“I… um…”

Her focus stayed on the Inquisitor with something akin to recognition, but Godwyn didn’t recognize the girl at all. She looked about seventeen, give-or-take a year or two, wore long cargo pants that dragged their hems on the ground and a sleeveless, ribbed jacket most certainly not from an agri-farm worker. Tattoos of all shapes and sizes crawledthe length of herexposed skin up her arms and neck until they reached a very distinctive spider tattoo on the right side of her face. If Godwyn hadn’t been absolutely certain that she was standing in a house in the middle of nowhere, then she would have sworn that the teen had just rolled out from the underhive and was very likely a ganger looking for a free meal.

The girl with the spider on her face managed to drop the sopping fruit from her syrup stained fingers back onto the plate and mumbled something while pointing towards the open door behind her that led onto the patio, and Godwyn quickly noted that the flesh on her wrists looked raw – much like freshly healed wounds.

“I’m…aaah... with… with…”

She was bumbling around unsure of what to say and was on the verge of the Inquisitor’s weary nerves when the loud male voice answered from outside:

“She is here because of me.”

Godwyn glanced towards the door but couldn’t see anyone with her narrow view of the patio. The girl was looking at her somewhat expectantly, but Godwyn wasn’t quick to make a move. She was tired, but not too tired to mentally kick herself for not seeing this coming. She should have known that her enemies within the Inquisition could find her, and should have been more prepared than wearing a single, thin layer of clothing.

The tattooed girl was watching her still, however, and, oddly enough, didn’t seem nervous in the least. Either she was confident in her abilities or the abilities of the man outside, or she was woefully unprepared for what an Inquisitor could do.

“You,” Godwyn motioned towards her with her bionic hand, “out; and leave the food.”

The girl didn’t hesitate or argue, and put the plate down on the counter before walking almost casually out the door. Gathering the folds of her gown around herself, Godwyn followed the young woman onto the stone patio.

The stranger was sitting on a large rock facing the patio’s edge and had turned his gaze toward the lake, but even sitting down Godwyn could see that he was a giant of a man both broad and tall with hands larger than dinner plates and feet large enough to be double the size of an ordinary human’s. Sensing the Inquisitor approach, the stranger turned his huge, bald head and smiled familiarly when he set eyes upon her.

Doubting her eyes, Godwyn blinked several times as if to clear them: she hardly recognized the space marine without his armour.

“Aquinas?” she said, stunned to the point of wondering if this was all dream and she was really still asleep in the shower. “What are you doing here?”

“Inquisitor Godwyn,” the space marine librarian gave her an appraising look, “it is good to see you again.”

She had more questions than she knew right at that moment, but the librarian casually held up a hand to ask for her patience.

“Might we intrude upon your hospitality a little further?” he spoke on behalf of both he and the girl in his distinct serpentine manner as he indicated that they should go inside; “There is much we should discuss, yet my charge has not eaten for some time…”

 

 

Inquisitor Cassandra Godwyn and Brother Librarian Orion Aquinas of the Raven Guard had first met a quarter of a century earlier when, together with Godwyn’s agents, they had tracked down her former mentor and Aquinas’ long-time friend Inquisitor Isaac Strassen and uncovered the treason to which Godwyn owed her title of kin-slayer. At the time, Godwyn was young and inexperienced in the workings of the Imperium and her Order, and as such it was largely due to the space marine’s wisdom and skill that she succeeded as she did in the investigation that went on to define her career to date. As a space marine, however, Aquinas shared none of the responsibility or the eventual fallout of their actions which rested upon the Inquisitor’s shoulders alone., but, far from resenting the space marine, Godwyn respected him greatly and always thought highly of him in the few times that she had met him since. It was without reservations, therefore, that she quickly invited him and the girl with the tattoos inside with an eagerness to talk further.

“What is going on? Why are you here?” Godwyn asked, ushering the unarmoured space marine across the stone floor to a spacious sofa in the sitting room adjoining the kitchen while the girl lingered behind to retrieve the plate of food she’d been forced to abandon.

Dressed in a long blue overcoat and wearing a heavy set of hiking boots on his massive feet, the librarian graciously took the seat that was offered and made himself comfortable.

“I came to find you, Inquisitor,” he said softly, “because I need your help.”

“But how did you find me?” Godwyn pressed on, taking a seat opposite him and suddenly becoming very aware of how unprofessional she looked in her white, fair weather gown and unkempt hair.

“Spider is very talented in such things,” he said in way of an introduction as he indicated towards the mousey-haired teenager that currently had fruit juice dribbling down her chin.

Godwyn looked back at her. “Who is she?” she asked, though really she wanted to know what a girl with gang tattoos was doing with a member of the Adeptus Astartes.

“She is a psyker,” Aquinas replied simply, “and a talented one at that. To find a human with her abilities is rare. I have taken her as a protégé for the time being. I believe that with proper training she will prove quite useful.”

“Useful to the Raven Guard?” Godwyn turned back towards the space marine, but Aquinas’ expression remained flat.

“We shall see,” he said.

Getting the feeling that the librarian wouldn’t say much more about the girl while she was present, Godwyn quickly shifted her position and pressed him with another matter that had caught her eye:

“Why aren’t you wearing your armour?” she asked, now doubly curious as to why he wouldn’t done his psychic hood given the proximity of what was likely an unusual – and therefore dangerous – psychic.

Somewhat surprisingly he smiled as a prelude to his response.

“You once told me that space marines are not known for subtlety,” he said, referencing what was likely one of the first things she had ever said to him, “and you may take some measure of satisfaction in knowing that now I think you correct. It is prudent that I make myself as inconspicuous as possible when visiting an Inquisitor who has supposedly been forced into hiding.”

She folded her arms. “So you know what transpired then?”

He nodded slowly. “Correct,” he said, “and though you have my sympathies that such an unfortunate should claim you as its victim, I am not here to discuss that, as I am sure you have explored every possible angle of such an occurrence yourself.”

From anyone else Godwyn would have taken that as a thinly veiled criticism, but not from Aquinas – he seemed genuine in his assessment, and regardless she trusted him to speak his mind.

“So why are you here?” she asked, looking up just in time to notice the space marine’s eyes shift over her head towards the stairs leading up into the rest of the house. She turned: Mercy, standing at the top of the stairs and still clutching a bed-sheet around her naked form, was watching them intently, but just as Godwyn opened her mouth to speak she darted away again out of sight.

“Interesting company you keep,” the librarian commented, though once again without any trace of antagonism hidden in his words.

“She’s capable,” Godwyn replied defensively just in case, but Aquinas seemed to agree:

“You would not keep a mutant close otherwise,” he said with a slight nod.

She narrowed her eyes: mutant? She wanted to ask what he knew – or thought he knew – about the silent killer, but then again she was likely as tall as he was, and no naturally born human-being could react so quickly without extensive genetic modification.

“Be that as it may,” Aquinas continued, pulling Godwyn’s thoughts back to the present, “you asked why I was here, and I will answer that question as best I can.” He seemed to further settle himself into the sofa before speaking over the Inquisitor’s head to the girl still in the kitchen: “Spider, would you fetch me a glass of water?”

Not turning around, Godwyn kept her attention on the librarian as the girl brought him a fresh glass of clear liquid. He nodded in silent thanks, and motioned that she should be seated.

“The man is on his way back,” the teenager mentioned as an aside while she found a seat on the periphery of the room near the stairs, and Aquinas inclined his head to indicate that he understood.

Godwyn understood as well, though she nearly swallowed her tongue for forgetting that the Catachan wasn’t present.

As a routine, Nerf would often run for several miles along the lakeshore in the pre-dawn hours. Sometimes he would take his rifle – just in case he got the opportunity to bag something big that he could bring back with him. With Aquinas’ sudden appearance, however, the fact that an armed and expert marksman could be returning to find strangers where there shouldn’t be any had slipped Godwyn’s mind, and if he thought she was in danger then he wouldn’t wait act.

Sitting quietly as the Librarian sipped at his water, Godwyn leaned back comfortably in her chair, gently folded her legs, and did the best she could to look utterly relaxed and in control of the situation by trying to do something with her hair to get rid of the ‘slept in the shower’ look.

Oblivious to the Inquisitor’s discrete fidgeting, Aquinas set down his glass just as Nerf appeared on the patio outside the sitting room windows and let himself into the kitchen. His face red and glistening with sweat, the Catachan stood in the entrance to the sitting room with the mk. IV anti-materiel rifle slung loosely over his shoulder while he grasped the weapon’s strap firmly in both hands. Having seen the new arrivals from outside, he paused for a moment and took a better look at both of them.

Godwyn swivelled in her seat to glance over her shoulder in his direction.

OK? his features did the talking as he looked at the Inquisitor for instructions.

OK. she answered him with a very slight nod.

The Catachan grinned. “I always like meeting new people,” he said, stepping forward with an outstretched hand which Aquinas surprisingly accepted without restraint as he introduced himself and the girl he called Spider; Nerf waved to the kid – she grimaced back.

“Please, join us,” Godwyn invited him, and, unslinging the rifle from his shoulders, her agent found himself a place to sit near the windows that faced Spider across the room.

Fair haired, clean shaven, and good natured, the muscular Catachan had been with Godwyn for close to three years – long enough for her to tell when he was or was not comfortable in a room: this was one of the latter situations. Hiding it well, he sat down quietly with his rifle beside him and let the conversation resume as he’d never interrupted in the first place.

Arching his fingers after Nerf sat down and stopped moving, Aquinas studied Godwyn’s features with an impassive look.

“I need your help, Godwyn,” reiterated the space marine, “and it is for that reason I came to find you.”

“In what capacity?” she asked.

As a sign of respect, the librarian inclined his head in a slight toward the Inquisitor as he spoke: “Naturally, in any way that is available to you,” he said, but Godwyn already had her doubts of how useful she could be.

“You realize that my being here is specifically because I have no choice in the matter, right?” she told him. “It’s the least I can do to help myself!”

It was true: Meridian had been impounded until further notice, and the Patroclus had sailed without her under the instructions not to return for at least a year. Other than the people with her in the house, and a footlocker worth of her possessions, Inquisitor Godwyn had been denied everything until her ‘betters’ thought it time for her to return into active service.

Aquinas did not seem at all surprised by this revelation, however.

“I do realize that, yes,” he said in his slow, serpentine voice that made him sound even more mystical than he already did, “yet you misjudge your own importance in what I have in mind.”

“And just what is that exactly?” she asked him, resting her head on her hand though still watching the space marine intently.

He paused and pursed his lips – blue eyes flickering between the floor at her feet and her face as he breathed in through his nose.

“I have no need of men, machines, or might of arms,” he explained, “for otherwise you would be right: a space marine has access to all such things. What I need is subtlety, wit, and someone whose actions I can trust…” he paused, then gave her a purposeful look: “Would that be you?” he asked.

Godwyn took her time in responding, but could feel that the other people in the room were watching her.

“You’d choose me over your brothers? Over Inquisitors with less of a troublesome record? Why?”

A thin smile creased the edges of the librarian’s lips: of the others in the room he was the only one who knew with certainty what the Inquisitor’s answer would be.

“My brothers are masters at war,” he explained, choosing to indulge her need for hearing herself praised, “though I do not intend to wage war. I need someone who is willing to seek out the crack in the fortress wall instead of smashing the wall aside, so to speak. As for the rest of your kind? I do not trust them as I do you. That is reason enough without descending into triviality.”

The librarian leaned forward on the sofa so that his elbows rested on his massive knees as the furniture groaned beneath him:

“However, the real question is whether or not you would accept slipping out from under the thumb of your superiors in order to aid me?”

“Yes,” the Inquisitor agreed almost immediately, “I would.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Aquinas replied, though his voice sounded as emotionless and flat as ever, and stood up as if in preparation to leave.

Godwyn wasn’t ready to let him go, however, and quickly stopped him with another question:

“You still haven’t told me what you need my help for,” she reminded him, but Aquinas shook his head in response.

“That is something that requires the justice of time to properly explain,” he said, walking slowly to the windows and gazing out over the lake beyond.

“We have time,” Godwyn retorted – all she’d had for the past four months was time.

“Actually,” the librarian corrected her, “we have less time than you might think. It would be better if you prepared yourselves to leave first, and ask me that question again once you are ready.”

“Why?”

His back to the Inquisitor, Aquinas’ brow lowered as he stared at the tamed nature on the other side of the glass. “Because as of this moment time will always be against us…”

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

Ooo,suspense... I like it!

 

Very nice build up, and we learn more about Mercy, I always thought it was the modifications in the temples that turned her that way.

[Azekai]

WHOOHOO NERF LIVES!!!1

 

Sorry, had to get that out. Also, what happened to Lee? Did I miss something?

[Lady_Canoness]

Nerf IS alive!! And so is Lee, though - like Meridian - he did not follow Godwyn into her forced exile. It was briefly touched upon, though never actually set in stone.

 

And Mercy? Well, there is still alot we have to find out about her, like why she doesn't speak even when Nerf claims she can...

[Lady_Canoness]

*part 2*

 

“What’s the deal, boss? Who are these people?” Nerf asked as he followed the Inquisitor to her room and closed the door behind him.

“He’s an old friend,” Godwyn replied, wrenching open the footlocker she kept under her bed and rummaging through it to find something suitable to change into, “though I don’t know who girl is.”

“Uh-huh,” the former commando nodded to himself before politely turning his back as Godwyn slipped out of her gown and gracelessly cast it aside. “So what are they doing here?”

“Nerf, what is it that is bothering you?” she asked him, pulling on a pair of dark trousers over her undergarments before fishing for a decently pressed blouse to match.

Arms folded across his broad chest, Nerf glanced her way from where he’d been distractedly studying the curtains while she was getting changed.

“I dunno,” he said with a shrug as he rubbed his thumb over his chin; “probably something to do with strangers dropping in and asking for favours before telling you what’s really going on…”

Buttoning up her shirt, she let him talk without interrupting.

“It’s like an ork asking you to pull his finger,” he continued; “whatever happens next is bound to be bad.”

She didn’t smile at his joke, but raised a questioning eyebrow in his direction while she tried to do something with her hair to get it out of the ‘I just woke up’ look.

“I’ve worked with Aquinas before,” Godwyn tried to convince her agent, “and I know he is trustworthy. You’ve got to believe me that – ow!” Some of her hair had been caught in the joints of her bionic fingers and was now tugging painfully on her scalp. Sometimes Mercy helped her cope with the finer cosmetic points of life now that she had only one hand, but not this time as the red-haired assassin – and the top sheet of Godwyn’s bed – had disappeared after Aquinas’ arrival.

“I’ve worked with other Inquisitors too, but this just doesn’t sit right, Cass,” Nerf explained; “I wouldn’t even trust my friends if they turned up like that. You being here was supposed to be a secret, but he just walks in anyway? Sorry, but this just feels too convenient.”

“Listen,” Godwyn finally managed to free her metal hand and promptly gave up trying to rearrange her hair into anything half decent; “Aquinas is an old friend of mine and we go back a long way. I trust him, and he’s never lied to me in the past, so I don’t think he’s hiding anything from me now.”

In two and a half steps she was at the door and already had her hand on the handle to open it when Nerf asked: “You’re not just going along because you want to get outta here, are you Cass?”

It was like flipping a switch. “Yes I want to get out of here!” she snapped back at him, “I never wanted to be here in the first place! If I had a choice, the last place I would be is here! But don’t go thinking that I’m throwing it all to the Warp just because of it, because that’s not f*cking true!”

Godwyn slammed the door on her way out and left Nerf shaking his head in silence.

 

*

 

She found the space marine sitting with the girl outside on the patio. He was explaining something to her in a hushed voice and cupped his hand mid air as if holding an imaginary orb between his fingers. Nodding occasionally, the girl with the spider tattoo on her face looked between the librarian and his hand with rapt attention. Hearing the Inquisitor approach, however, Brother Aquinas ceased his explanations and turned his venerable features in her direction; dismissing the young girl with a considerate gesture as he did so. “Wait for me by the lakeshore,” he said to her softly, much like a mentor to his student, “and keep in mind what I have said.”

Looking from the librarian to the Inquisitor and back, the girl called Spider nodded twice before pushing herself up from where she had been sitting cross-legged by the giant’s feet and disappeared casually down the pathway through the green in the direction of the lake.

“You have questions?” he asked once the girl was out of sight.

Godwyn indicated that she did, stopping before the space marine and folding her arms.

“Then I am listening,” he said, with a shallow inclination of his head. “Ask me what you will.”

Frowning, the Inquisitor’s eyes traced over the hills in the distance before returning to meet the librarian’s own, unassuming gaze.

“Level with me,” she asked; “Why are you really here?! I think you owe me that much!”

The indignation was clear in her voice and she tried to keep it balanced, but Aquinas remained unmoved and regarded the Inquisitor with the same flat expression she recalled from all their previous conversations.

“I apologize for the abruptness of my arrival and the lack of forthrightness with which you were addressed, yet if I am going to answer questions to your satisfaction then I should first explain to you how I come to you with the company I do,” he replied, “for you are no doubt intrigued as to how it is that space marine should find himself in with such a person.”

“That’s part of it,” she agreed with a nod.

“As it should be,” he continued, “for I daresay that there an untold number of psychics in the universe that I would not choose for companions.”

“So what is so special about this one?”

He presented the palm of his hand as if asking her to wait as he gathered his thoughts prior to continuing:

“The term of ‘psyker’ does little justice in the way of a description, for though it is true that her mutation manifests in psionics and the ability to draw upon and manipulate the warp, her gifts in particular are of a different and all together more unusual sort.”

“How do you mean?” Godwyn asked.

“She has a remarkable and innate gift for precognition,” Aquinas explained softly, “meaning that she can see things with the potential to occur before they occur.”

He paused, waiting to see if Godwyn understood. She did.

“This usually manifests in dreams – either dormant or waking – and is not something she can yet control or understand.”

“So she doesn’t have control of what she can see, but she could learn to?”

The librarian nodded. “Precisely,” he said, and, noticing Godwyn’s expression, then added; “a valuable talent, no?”

Valuable was putting it lightly. Accurate and reliable precognition would be invaluable in the right hands, Godwyn imagined, but also extremely dangerous in the wrong ones.

“So what do you intend to do with her?” she asked.

“I will train her to hone her abilities,” he answered flatly, as it were the only answer to be given, “though for the time being her powers are already proving themselves valuable.”

Godwyn narrowed her eyes: “In what way?”

The librarian smiled thinly. “I found you, did I not?” he said.

She smiled but didn’t believe that was all. She told him as much.

“Indeed you are correct,” he confessed in a soft hiss, “for I have found a means by which I can manipulate her dreaming state to focus on what it is I wish her to. I manipulated her subconscious into dreaming about you, for example, which is why it may have seemed that she recognized you though in truth she had never before set eyes upon you in her life.”

“Yes,” Godwyn nodded, remembering how the girl had looked at her as if remembering something when she first found her in the kitchen.

“Indeed,” the librarian resumed. “Many other things can be found in her dreams as well, though there is one in particular that causes me to require your aid.”

She waited for him to say more, but instead he rose to his feet. “Will you walk with me?” he asked, and side-by-side they walked along a garden path that led up and around behind the property towards the gently sloping hills that rested at the feet of the mountains.

“So what is it that you found?” she asked, now that they had left the patio behind and were climbing gently upwards through the luscious trees.

Aquinas did not answer right away and waited until they were some ways away from the house before he spoke.

“Are you familiar with the fall of the eldar?” he asked once they had travelled a sufficient distance not to be casually overheard.

Godwyn nodded and said that she was. By no means an expert, she had very little experience with eldar race and had yet to confront the aliens in person even though she had come across their trail once or twice before. From what she understood, theirs was a culturally advanced race who had once ruled the galaxy at the behest of a pantheon of heathen gods. Yet for their technology and supposed superiority, the eldar soul was irrevocably flawed and fell to the predations the warp in one cataclysmic event that the survivors of the eldar race appropriately called ‘the fall’. When, or if, this fall actually occurred was a mystery lost in time, but, just as the mystery of the Necrotyr turned into truth, such things could not be discounted just because no-one alive knew any better.

“What does the fall of the eldar have to do with either of us?” the Inquisitor asked, wondering how the librarian could connect both of them to a myth of an alien species.

“The eldar exist in a closer relationship to the warp than any human,” Aquinas explained at length, “and the technologies that allow them to answer the questions we cannot even conceive are the same technologies that allowed them to master the stars with more than flesh and steel.” He paused to see that she was following him. “I have studied the eldar extensively and have come to understand several truths about them that no item or interrogation can ever reveal: they are a vile and duplicitous race worthy of extinction, yet those that survived the fall of their race did so because they are the most tenacious species in existence, and are consummate at surviving when reason dictates that they should have disappeared millennia ago.”

“So how are we involved?” Godwyn asked again.

“We are involved because, between the two of us, we now have access to a means that used to be exclusive to the eldar.”

She gave him a sceptical look and frowned. “The girl?” she asked doubtfully; “Are you comparing her to the eldar seers?”

“Spider has potential, but I would not credit her such, no,” Aquinas replied with a slight shake of his head. “She does, however, enable us to find something that would be.”

“What?”

Slowing his pace as they walked gently up the trail through the trees, Aquinas folded his arms behind his back and exhaled deeply through his nose.

“Eldar mythology states that before the fall a council of seven seers foresaw their imminent doom using the Seven Mirrors of Isha and warned their kin of the coming calamity,” he began. “Those that listened fled on the first of the craftworlds. Those that did not were destroyed utterly – consumed, as it were, by the birth of a god born from their own corruption. From there on myth continues with the labours of the craftworld eldar to survive their extinction, yet no mention was made as to what happened to the seers or the Seven Mirrors of Isha. Eldar culture being at one with its history, I found the absence of the Mirrors to be odd. I investigated further.”

To the side of the trail their were wild flowers in bloom between the thinning trees – beautiful, radiant, and red – and Godwyn watched these as they passed, listening closely to the space marine’s words as she did so.

“It took years,” he continued, “though by chance I discovered the reason for the Mirrors’ absence from history, for it was said that, after the fall, the Mirrors of Isha could show the eldar nothing other than the eventual doom that awaited their entire race. And so it was that the eldar hid the mirrors away in ancient burial grounds where their seers would be free their influence.”

“Why?” Godwyn asked. “What do the mirrors do?”

Aquinas frowned. “I cannot be certain,” he confessed, “but the heathen god Isha was supposedly their deity of fertility and life, and one would think that her mirrors showed life – a way forward – though all the eldar could see within them was their eventual decline and the death of a doomed race.”

“So they hid them?”

“They did.”

The Inquisitor chewed at the side of her lip: staring at the nature around her, she could see where this was going, but needed to hear it from Aquinas’ own lips to understand where it would end.

“You’ve located one of these mirrors?” she wondered aloud.

Again, the space marine inclined his large, bald head. “With Spider’s help, I have indeed been put onto its trail.”

She noticed at that point that the fatigue she’d felt earlier that morning had suddenly vanished – melted away by the magnitude of what the librarian had told her. A xeno artefact of undeniable importance had been found, and now she was being asked to help retrieve it.

It was too good an opportunity to pass up.

If the Mirror still worked – if it had not been destroyed by either the eldar or the erosion of time – it could be one of the most influential discoveries in the Ordos. Careers were made on less, not to mention the insight into the eldar threat that could provide, or the good that could come of it if it were mastered and understood.

“Or the harm that could be wrought if it should fall into the wrong hands.”

She nearly jumped as the librarian spoke, and, when she caught his eye, noticed the knowing look that resided there.

Her thoughts had been so open – so unguarded – that he likely knew everything and more without having heard her say so much as a word. Relaxing her mind, she let him see a little further; if only for proof that she had nothing to hide.

“You said earlier that time is against us,” she reminded him of that morning when they’d spoke in the sitting room. “Who else knows about this?”

“I do not know who,” he said coolly, “nor do I know how many, but I can assure you we have not the luxury of being the only ones to know about the Mirrors.”

“Eldar?”

“It is likely that they know, yes,” Aquinas concurred with a considerate nod, “though it is unlikely that they are the only ones who know either.”

Approaching a clearing on the pathway, they stopped, and Aquinas turned to look at the Inquisitor directly:

“You understand, therefore, that I cannot do this with an army at my back,” he said, “and that a deft touch is required to retrieve the Mirror before those who may wish to misuse or destroy it.”

“Yes,” Godwyn agreed, “I understand.”

“Good,” the space marine approved. “Do you have any other questions before I recommend that we depart?”

She did: “Where is it?” she asked.

Aquinas gave her a flat look. “If I knew that, then I would not be here.”

“And how will we find it?”

“By looking.”

The space marine made to turn back down the pathway, and, though Godwyn could think of more questions she wished answered, she decided to hold onto them and followed her friend back to the house.

[Papewaio]

Eldar, eh? Starting to work through the races, I see. Good stuff, especially that mirror idea.

 

On another note, YAY! Aquinas is back!

[Taranis]

Eldar! This will be another great story I'm sure. A wish come true, perhaps. :P

Also the other opposition will be exiting to learn about.

It's again catching and gives something to look forward to.

Please don't ever stop. ;)

[Lady_Canoness]

It is a pleasure guys ;) I really do enjoy writing for such an awesome audience!

 

I'm working on part 3 and hopefully should have it up within a day or two. While the Inquisition II was more static in that it focused very narrowly on one planet, the Inquisition III will once again introduce the freedom of movement used in the first story.

Also, I wanna know, how is Godwyn doing? I recieved lots of good info to go on from part I, but not too much from part II. Does she read well? Being the author, I get caught up in it a little to much to be objective

[Papewaio]

She came across a lot differently in II, much more hard-bitten and willing to accept sacrifice. But she still managed to keep that core of duty and a slight innocence about her, so I think she's doing great! Can't wait to see how she develops in III!

[Taranis]

Godwyn in part III: so far she's clearly bored to death about being "unemployed" and as, Nerf commented, desperate for change. Very fitting her position and situation. I hope that when she gets back "to work" she will be more her driven self.

Part II she was the embodyment of a dedicated lawenforcer who carried out her duty regardles of price. Part III she shows some general traits also shown by the Eldar race prior to The Fall?

[Lady_Canoness]

Part 3 of the Inquisition III is up, and things are starting to get in motion as we learn more about the characters and just what it is they are doing.

 

*part 3*

 

Returning from the foothills, they made preparations to leave immediately. Aquinas and the girl had arrived on a tread-hauler lifted from the nearest grain depot over five-hundred kilometres away, but had been forced to leave it when the terrain got too rough and cover the rest of the distance into the valley on foot. Thus the first leg of their journey getting out was a six hour slog on foot through the countryside.

It wasn’t bad, and for Godwyn the fresh air and cool breeze was particularly invigorating as the feeling of actually doing something freed her mind from the wallowing melancholy and selfish slovenliness that had proven so agonizing over the first few months of her imprisonment. She felt like she could enjoy things again – nature, people – things that had felt so grey over the past months were finally renewed for her in full, vibrant colour.

Mercy appeared more lively as well, and provided ample conversation for the Inquisitor (with Godwyn doing all the talking) as they followed the space marine’s lead.

Nerf, on the other hand, was unusually quiet, and, with his rifle over one shoulder and his pack over another, the Catachan kept his eyes peeled on the giant and the girl that walked at his side.

“Nerf, what’s wrong?” Godwyn asked him a hushed tone after they’d been walking for close to five hours and the former commando still hadn’t loosened up.

Nerf glanced at her sideways, then set his eyes back on the form of Aquinas that towered twenty paces ahead of them.

“Cass, I don’t like this,” he said. “I’ve been through enough to know when something doesn’t feel right, and this doesn’t feel right one bit.”

She let out a groan of disappointment. Godwyn had tried explaining to her agent why it was Aquinas had come, but for all her effort the Catachan continued to put more faith in his instincts than her words.

“You have to trust me, Nerf,” she tried to persuade him.

He looked at her again. “I do trust you,” he said, “but I know what my gut tells me,” he thumped a fist into his solid abdominals for emphasis, “and that is that we are headin’ for trouble.”

“My duty is trouble,” Godwyn reminded him somewhat bitterly, but he shook his head.

“Killing people ain’t no trouble,” he said slowly; “trouble is when they start killing yours.”

“Aquinas has served longer than either of us have been alive,” she told him heatedly. “He knows more about war than your gut!”

The Catachan gave her a hard yet appreciative look but didn’t say anything in return.

Seeing that he got the message, the Inquisitor picked up the pace and left him behind.

 

*

 

The group travelled light and fast, and on the cusp of the sixth hour they came across the bulky shape of the dumped tread-hauler sitting quietly in the shade of a circle of trees like some kind of metal heard-beast.

Built big and broad with two wide treads running all forty-four feet of their length, tread-haulers were metal workhorses on agri-worlds all across the Imperium and filled the vital role of long-distance hauling for everything from grains to livestock to heavy equipment. Rugged and dependable, the machines ran for months without maintenance, and could last for a week or more without emptying the massive fuel tank welded to its undercarriage. For all its uses, however, the tread-hauler was about as manoeuvrable as a barge and couldn’t handle anything tougher than a dirt road, which was why Aquinas had been forced to abandon it when the going got even a little rough.

“Quite a big piece of machinery,” Godwyn noted aloud as she walked past the vehicle’s bunker-like cab and thumped its metal flank with the flat of her hand as she followed Aquinas to its aft end. “How did you manage to get hold of one?”

The space marine looked over his shoulder to where Spider had clambered up the vehicle and opened the cab door. Godwyn followed his gaze and noticed that the girl had an assortment of tools dangling from a leather strap she kept inside her jacket and was busily working away at something with emphatic twists of her tattooed arms.

“The locals do not expect people to take their machines,” the space marine noted, using a grab-bar to help himself up onto the vehicle’s broad fenders and worked his way along to a larger compartment behind the cab. “Commandeering this vehicle was simple.”

Nine feet off the ground, Spider sunk into the leather bound driver’s seat with a familiar nonchalance and gave the simplistic controls a quick once-over before diving beneath the steering mechanisms and making a quick few adjustments to the ignition sequences, and within a few short seconds, the tread-hauler roared to life with all twelve cylinders of its engine.

Opening the passenger-side door, Nerf hauled himself into the cab with a grunt and set his rifle down on the wide dash. Sinking into the comfortable passenger seat, he closed the door behind him and exhaled loudly before propping his boot on the cover and turning to find the girl in the driver’s seat staring at him like he had something vulgar written on his face.

He stared at her and she stared back at him until finally the Catachan spoke up.

“You driving?” he asked.

“Something wrong with that?” she shot back, clearly challenging him.

The Catachan’s face broke into a grin, but he quickly got his hand up and turned away so she didn’t see. The kid was probably seventeen or eighteen, but had enough tattoos to make it clear that she was trying to prove something. Godwyn had said that she was with the space marine – didn’t say why – but then again any kid would feel pretty big about themselves walking around with a seven-foot super-soldier.

“Nope, nothing wrong,” he said, turning back towards her with a straight face.

She seemed to relax a little and dropped her defensiveness, though she kept looking at him for a few seconds – eyeing him up. Eventually she smiled, and Nerf smiled back: a little smile, but a smile all the same. Cute kid, the commando thought to himself as she put the tread-hauler into gear and the vehicle started to rumble and shake beneath them, maybe she’d even be able to learn a thing or two.

 

Night had fallen several hours earlier and the rain was coming down hard when the tread-hauler pulled through the front gates of the grain depot and splashed through water-filled potholes before coming to a stop and cutting power in the center of the compound.

Sitting in the passenger compartment behind the cab with Mercy and Aquinas, Godwyn peered out of the rain-spattered passenger window across the waterlogged yard toward the dimly lit prefab silos and grain elevators. Agri-worlds, as a point of practice, had minimal working populations and made extensive use of servitor labour. At night-time, however, after the irrigation towers had released a day’s worth of water vapour into the air, operations typically ceased and the likelihood of finding anyone at a remote grain-depot was rare.

The cab doors clicked open and slammed shut as the hauler’s five passengers disembarked into puddles that soaked their shoes and splashed up around their ankles as they walked.

Spider, seemingly acting on no-one’s instructions other than her own, clicked on a lamp pack and dashed off through the downpour into the darkness.

“Where’s she going?” Nerf called out, watching the bobbing circle of light grow fainter through the rain until it couldn’t be seen at all.

Aquinas didn’t seem bothered, however, nor should he be, thought Godwyn: on a planet of maybe a few thousand people, keeping track one psyker in a grain depot after dark would likely be as difficult for the librarian as finding his own nose.

“There is a monorail terminus nearby that can connect us to the nearest port-city,” Aquinas explained casually. “I have asked that Spider prepare it for our immediate departure.”

The Catachan cast a cautionary glance over his shoulder towards the ghostly outlines of the depot buildings visible through the rain, but, close by his side, Mercy looked positively placid. Godwyn knew from experience that the assassin could see perfectly in the dark and possessed an uncanny knack for knowing when someone was nearby. That she sensed nothing now was reassuring as they followed Aquinas across wide-open ground in the direction Spider had gone.

Getting out of the rain, they sheltered under a covered platform overlooking a walled in rail-yard where numerous monorail lines connected to one another in a crisscrossing network of steel underneath the looming forms of silent cargo-cranes. Likely busy during the day, the yard was dead at night, and numerous aging railcars sat rusting under the rain in preparation to move out the next day.

Head and shoulders above everyone aside from the shadowy assassin, Aquinas stood with arms crossed and stared out at the rain with an unreadable expression on his statue-like features. Spider hadn’t returned yet, but the librarian said nothing as he waited.

Watching him out of the corner of her eye, Godwyn felt what a tingle at the back of her skull that made her eye-sockets itch. She blinked a few times and scratched the back of her wet scalp before Aquinas again caught her eye and another shiver ran down her spine. After being so long without the presence of a powerful psyker, she had forgotten just what it felt like to be around one. James Alexander, her former student, Emperor rest him, had been nothing like that. Could he have been had he survived? She didn’t even know if she could guess. The minds of psykers were so far beyond her own that she couldn’t even begin to understand what they could or could not do. James had been skilled at feeling the passage of others through the warp, but had that been it? Could he have developed the psychic fortitude that she had witnessed before from the space marine? It seemed doubtful, but stranger things had happened. And what about the girl, Spider? With those tattoos and the unkempt look of her hair she was no sanctioned adept, and, if that were case, where did Aquinas find her? Untrained and unshackled, she could be extremely dangerous to everyone around her, yet the librarian let her willingly out of his sight? He above all people knew the dangers a psyker posed, yet he acted here without precautions.

Waiting silently in the dark, a creeping feeling was starting to seep into Godwyn’s mind: Nerf wasn’t wrong; something felt amiss.

She had resolved to press Aquinas further about it when the opportunity arose when Spider reappeared out of the rain and said something only the space marine could hear.

“Our train is ready,” Aquinas announced with the girl at his side. “We depart immediately. Leave nothing behind; this will take a few days.”

 

* *

 

The space marine was right and it took take three wearisome days to get to the nearest port city, though when they arrived Godwyn saw that the title ‘city’ was inappropriate in the extreme. Having initially been delivered essentially into the middle of nowhere by shuttle when she’d first arrived on the planet with her two companions, Godwyn had not seen the world for what it was – or wasn’t – and had yet to appreciate just how desolate the breadbaskets of the Imperium could really be. On another world the motley assortment of buildings and towers would rank little higher than an outpost, but as the monorail came screeching to a halt just as the sun began to slip behind the horizon, the five passengers who disembarked from the train were accosted by an angry sounding little clerk the moment they set foot on solid ground.

“What in the Emperor’s name do you think you’re doing here at this time, eh!?” he shouted, brandishing an angry fist as he ran towards them with a pair of cargo servitors following awkwardly behind him on loudly clanking caterpillar platforms. “We’re not supposed to have anything from section B-IV until next week!”

Scratching the stubble that was starting to sprout up on his chin, Nerf cast a confused glance at the Inquisitor. He was tired and needed a shower, though more than anything he needed several moments of peace and quiet without someone yapping at him – and he wasn’t the only one.

“Take it back! Take it back!” the clerk ran past them, swearing and cursing at the train and completely failing to notice the unusual and bedraggled nature of its passengers. “I haven’t got the man-power to unload this lot before nightfall!”

Aquinas, the only one not worse for wear after three days in a clanking cargo train started to walk calmly after the rampaging yard-overseer.

“Wait for me by the gates,” he instructed them as he followed the yelling man, “I shall be along shortly.”

They didn’t hang around to see how the librarian dealt with the infuriated clerk, and fortunately Spider appeared to know the way as she led them across platforms, over rail-lines, and in between storehouses until they reached the gate. There was no-one around and a solitary guard shack stood empty, so they waited patiently in the dwindling light until Aquinas reappeared, quite alone, and walked out of the train-yard into the empty streets beyond.

It wasn’t much of a city – mostly administration buildings and metal shops clustered around the vast serried formations of circular landing pads that made up the space port – and with the night quickly approaching the streets were completely dead. Godwyn had to admire it, however, because, unlike most Imperial cities or outposts, there didn’t seem to be any grimy underbelly to the city around them. No squatters, no garbage gathering in the streets, no graffiti on the walls either. Everything here had a purpose and, though basic, it all seemed to work.

“We should find an accommodation for the night,” Aquinas announced as soon as they entered a hab-block street where there at least appeared to be some signs of the people who lived there. “I shall leave it up to you,” he looked at Godwyn, “to arrange for transportation off world come tomorrow.”

“Where to?” she asked.

“Off this planet to start,” he replied flatly. “The rest will come clearer with time.”

It wasn’t a particularly reassuring plan, but then again Godwyn didn’t really care. They had a goal and she was out of that house: one way or another things would get better, and a good night’s sleep would be a welcome beginning.

They found an empty hab-lodging just as the rain started to fall, and, after Spider deftly picked the lock with no trouble at all, they were admitted into a modest apartment with two bedrooms, a bathroom, sitting room, and kitchenette. Whoever lived there regularly hadn’t been home for a few days and would likely be away for a few more, Aquinas hypothesized, and as she looked around Godwyn took the spartan nature of the décor in the hab to mean that they were likely invading the privacy of a farm worker who hadn’t the time or energy to decorate his or her home. Regardless, the accommodations were alright, and the weary travellers were quick to settle in for the night before looking for a means off-world the following morning. Godwyn and Mercy took one room while Nerf took the other, Aquinas elected to remain awake, and Spider found a place to curl up on the tired-looking couch in the sitting room.

Worn out from the travel and already sleep-deprived from her restless nights in exile, Godwyn was able to enjoy a much deserved dreamless sleep in a stranger’s bed knowing that when she awoke she would be active in the Emperor’s service once again.

 

They got an early start the following morning, and, while Aquinas sat with Spider attempting to coax a clear destination out of her dreams, Godwyn went with Nerf and Mercy to find a way off-world.

Puddles still lingered in the streets from the night before as they discretely left the hab and found their way onto a nearly deserted side-street away from the minimal vehicle traffic and pedestrians of the main roads. There they split up: Mercy – dressed casually in a flowing beige evening coat – heading into the streets to keep an eye on any traders that passed by, while Godwyn took Nerf and headed towards the port to look into the shipping manifests. As could be expected, however, the manifests were vague to the point of being useless and typically displayed nothing more than cargo tonnage, departure dates, and destinations of travel.

“So,” Nerf began after they left the dock registrar’s office with little more than a few ship’s names that would be departing within the week, “we’re looking for a ship to take us somewhere we don’t know about to find something we don’t even know exits.”

He’d been like this for the past several days – complaining, but in his own special way. He didn’t talk about his thoughts or try and explain himself, but instead he’d comment – sounding perfectly genuine – on whatever they were doing that he didn’t approve of, and Godwyn was starting to get sick of it.

“Nerf, I’ve told you what is going on, and that is all that can be said about it.”

She wasn’t looking for a confrontation, and likely neither was he, but after they’d departed the space port and were back on the street Godwyn had a feeling that was exactly where they were headed.

“Look, Cass, you gotta know tha – ”

“Nerf, do you trust me?”

She rounded on him so fast that he stopped in his tracks, his hands froze in the middle of articulating, and his jaw loosened.

“Don’t think about it, Nerf!” she grabbed him by the biceps, her voice a vicious whisper; “Just answer me! Do you trust me?”

He was about half a head taller than she was and had at least one-hundred-and-fifty pounds on her in raw muscle, but the look he gave her said that he wasn’t here to fight.

“Yeah, I trust you,” he said truthfully, and Godwyn let him go.

“Good,” she said, taking a step back, “then you already know there is nothing else to it.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I know.”

 

They spent the next couple hours walking around the streets trying to get a feel for where they were. A city of a few thousand people at most, it quickly became apparent that most of the idle-traffic in the streets was from off-worlders, and that there were several venues within the city where regular space-farers tended to go, all of which could be found within a few back-streets tucked away from the industrial centers. Mostly small bars and common-houses with cramped street-markets in between, the speakeasy districts of the agri-world didn’t differ that much from the straight edged and purposeful mantra upheld by the rest of the city, and as Godwyn walked comfortably through the light crowds in the narrow streets she could tell that she would be hard pressed to find anything illicit here. Best then to do a little digging.

The first place they went into was literally a hole in the wall with a total of six stools serviced by modestly stocked bar and a simple-looking barman. Godwyn ordered a couple drinks as she and Catachan sat down and, turning to face the street, chatted mindlessly for a little bit about the weather. It was basic stuff and they mostly talked in snippets, but it was enough to get a good view of the street, and, better yet, of the people in it.

They stayed for another round – the Inquisitor starting to feel a little more relaxed and flipping down a few coins when they were done – before taking their light-hearted conversation a little ways further down the road to a larger venue with more people. Stepping inside, they meandered through tables up to the bar and sat at the counter where they were sure to be in full view of everyone. The atmosphere in the place was at ease and comfortable – not the energized sting that she was used to associating with off-worlder bars – and there were quite a number of tables carrying amiable conversations instead drunken bawling, several of which were flourishing with fast moving card games.

Ordering a couple more drinks for herself and the former commando, she tilted her head in the Catachan’s direction.

“Take off your jacket,” she whispered, and, not in a rush, he obeyed; exposing the long-bladed knife and pistol at his belt, but more importantly showing off his muscular arms. It wasn’t be enough to draw attention to them or arouse suspicion, but it was enough to make sure that they were seen – something that could be very important when trying to find someone who would let them jump ship.

A few more drinks came and went with Godwyn holding her own quite adamantly even when the heavy Catachan was starting to slow down, but they made sure to keep the conversation both casual and moving, as well as including whoever might be sitting next to them, before it was time to go and Godwyn slapped down another few coins as they got up to leave.

“That was good,” Nerf burped, pulling on his jacket and straightening out his collar as the door closed behind them. It was the middle of the day.

“Did you see a tail?” Godwyn asked, keeping close to him as they walked coolly back through the tight street markets in the opposite direction from where they had first come.

“Nope. Different people all the time.”

That was good, Godwyn thought to herself. She did not expect there to be a look-out for her on the planet making sure that she didn’t leave, but then again it never hurt to be cautious when dealing with the Inquisition.

“Did you see the card players as well?”

He gave her a sideways glance; “Yeah, I saw ‘em. Why?”

“Because,” she said with a sly grin, “that’s how we’ll find our pass off-world.”

“You sure?”

“Trust me.”

They were just about back into the industrial areas of the city when she caught the movement of an extra-ordinarily tall woman to her right, and turned to see Mercy approaching them at a casual jaunt with a pleasant look on her face.

“Did you know where we were?” Godwyn asked her with a delicate smile as she dropped in beside them. Mercy seemed to indicate that she did, and maybe (if Godwyn was reading her right) that she had found the same place.

She nodded her appreciation, and, as they carried on back to the hab-blocks, she only hoped that Aquinas had found something as well.

When they returned, however, they found that the space marine had left a small note for them in the sitting room:

 

“I have gone to the Administratum archives. Meet me there.”

 

The note was not signed, but Aquinas’ elaborately curving handwriting was easily distinguishable.

“I’ll stay here,” Nerf offered, sitting himself down on the couch and kicking his boots off to rest his feet; “I’ll let him know what we found in case you miss him…”

That wasn’t the real reason he wanted to stay and both he and Godwyn knew it, though the Inquisitor agreed to leave her agent behind and went ahead to find the librarian with Mercy.

 

Locating the Administratum archives took some work, as did gaining access since Godwyn had resolved not to make her identity as an Inquisitor known, yet with Mercy’s help she was soon inside the cathedral-like archives and walking ahead of the assassin as quietly as she could between shelves and shelves of records that rose above her like the jagged faces of towering cliffs. That so much would be stored upon an agri-world was at first surprising, but, catching a glimpse of the tags beneath each of the shelves, she noticed that each was a record of growth and yield likely studied ad nauseam by administratum clerks before being carefully filed and promptly forgotten. What Aquinas was hoping to find here she had no idea: there had to be something more to the archives than agriculture, but what?

She was left wondering for several more minutes until she found the space marine hunched over a lectern in a small alcove and quietly scrutinizing what looked like a weathered old scroll of parchment as two red-eyed servo-skulls bobbled silently overhead. Sensing her approach, he looked up, casually resealing the scroll and putting it aside as he did so, and gave her an appreciative look in greeting.

“I see you came to the archives by indirect means. Well done,” he said, referring to the servo skulls that hovered over his shoulders and kept a watchful on what records he accessed.

“They sic you with servo-skulls?” Godwyn noted with distaste; “How very deliberate.”

“Indeed,” the librarian commented dryly, “though I would keep your distance lest they learn of you undocumented arrival.” he opened another scroll and quickly spread it across the lectern before him – it was only then that Godwyn noticed that he’d accumulated a small collection of equally dusty scrolls and had pilled them beside him on a wooden chair.

“You said I should meet you here. Is this why?” she asked, nodding towards the piled parchment.

“In as many words, yes,” he replied, closely studying whatever it was he had just unrolled as he spoke, “for I was able to discern a location in our search, though I have yet to find it. Unless, perhaps, you know of Erebus Station?”

He looked over in her direction in anticipation of an answer, though in truth the Inquisitor had never so much as heard the name ‘Erebus Station’, let alone know where it was.

“I thought as much,” Aquinas concluded before she had the chance to speak. “It is a deep space station, and not the sort of place I would choose to frequent, but alas it seems as if our road will take us there.”

He went back to his study, but something he’d said stuck out in Godwyn’s mind:

“An eldar artefact doesn’t end up on a space station by chance. Someone must have taken it there.”

The librarian nodded as if such a thought had already occurred to him. “Which is why,” he explained in a low whisper as his sharp, blue eyes traced across the parchment before him, “we need to find where this station is as well as a vessel to take us there.”

A slight breath of disappointment slipped past his lips as another scroll proved useless and he resealed it before picking again from the pile.

“There are more astronomical charts to be located within the archives,” he noted. “I would suggest you start your search there.”

 

*

 

Nerf remained sitting on the couch staring at the wall for several minutes after Godwyn and Mercy left, and, funnily enough, he didn’t even notice that he was staring until he heard a heavy sigh coming from within his own chest. Sometimes it just happened like that.

He wasn’t much of a drinker anymore, so maybe the alcohol had something to do with it, but, if anything, the drink wasn’t the problem; it just made the symptoms clearer.

He sighed again before unceremoniously scratching his crotch and fishing one of his few remaining Catachan cigars from his coat pocket and lighting it up until the grey smoke was wafting upwards in front of his eyes.

Damn. He was still staring at the wall.

Back home they called it ‘jungle eyes’ – the kind of thing where a guy just zones out until all he sees is the movement. Mostly it happened to the veterans, the old men – the guys who had seen stuff.

Sitting on the couch with his shoes off, Nerf found himself now smiling at the wall: what did any of that mean anyway? Growing up on Catachan, every kid saw ‘stuff’ before they were old enough to learn their letters, and even more so when they were with the Guard.

He’d killed an ork once by pulling its intestines out of its body until it Emperor-damn bled to death. That had been one of the messier ones.

He’d seen ambushes where they’d had to pull what was left of their guys out of the trees.

Then there were the ones that made your skin crawl like that time he’d come across a command bunker were every guy inside, including the officer in charge of it all, had been hung up by their necks in neat little lines in the mess. He hadn’t slept so well after that.

Then there were the funny ones like the time he’d bagged a guy as he was taking a dump from four hundred yards with his rifle. He didn’t chuckle at the time, but afterwards he knew that had just been bad luck.

Then there were the ones with the Inquisition.

Flicking the ash from his cigar, Nerf raised it back to his rough lips and puffed on the rich smelling smoke for a while.

Cass wasn’t the first Inquisitor he’d been under, but he did hope that she’d be his last. Doing things when the Inquisition was involved always seemed a little different. More important – definitely more meaningful – but at the same time it didn’t always feel as clean as it did with the Guard. He wasn’t no sage – and he was the first to admit it – but he knew that there were now some people who were dead because of him who shouldn’t be…

He blew out a long plume of smoke as he remembered the faces and what it had felt like to kill them: people who didn’t know he was their enemy until their blood was already spilt.

He tapped the cigar again.

And then there was Mercy…

Across the sitting room, there was a loud *thump* behind the washroom door. Instinctively Nerf’s knife was in his hand, and in a flash his back was up against the wall as he edged nearer to the door, quietly just like his training had taught him to do.

Another noise came from the bathroom – something was definitely in there. Resting the flat of his palm across the door’s scuffed, wood surface, Nerf gently closed his hand into a fist and positioned it right beside the handle, slowly bringing it up… slowly… slowly…

Another noise.

With a *bang* he forced the door open and was in the room in a split-second – the same amount of time it took for him to realize who was in there.

Cowering by the sink, Spider let out a small yelp and held up her arms to vainly try and shield her head as the Catachan barged in over top of her.

“What is…?” he started to ask, but the sight of red blood quickly caught his eye: blood in the sink, blood on the floor, blood on the girl. The skin on her wrists was deeply cut and the blood from her wounds flowed in streaks of crimson over the ink embedded in her arms.

“Please…” she whimpered, trembling and shrinking away from the powerfully built soldier. There were tears in her eyes. “Please…”

Taking a deep breath, he sheathed the knife. Surveying the carnage, he crouched down near where the girl was curled against the wall.

“What happened?”

Bloodied with red hand-marks smudged across the spider on her face, the girl held his gaze with hurt, anguish filled eyes.

“You – you can’t tell anyone…” she moaned, and wiped a trickle of water from her cheek with a blood-smeared finger. “Promise t-that you won’t tell anyone…”

“I don’t make promises,” Nerf said gruffly. “Give me your arms.”

The girl seemed reluctant at first, but the pain likely weakened her resolve as the Catachan took both her wrists gently in his hands before ripping his handkerchief in two and firmly tying it in thick folds over her wounds. She didn’t say anything as he patched her up and cleaned the blood off of her face and arms, nor did she resist as he marched her out of the bathroom and forcibly sat her down on the couch.

“Why the hell are you doing this?!” he demanded, picking up his cigar from where he’d discarded it on the floor and giving it a well deserved puff before clamping it in between his teeth and glaring furiously at the girl. “Like I don’t have enough sh*t on my mind without you trying to off yourself! What in the Emperor’s ivory assh*le is the matter with you!?”

Sitting with her bound wrists in her lap and a sullen look on her face, the girl with the spider tattoo didn’t say anything – all she did stared across the room at where the undecorated walls meet the metal floors.

“Well!?” he felt the urge to slap her had across the face, to break her of her wallowing self-pity and bring her around to what was really happening. “What is it!?”

Slowly, she shook her head:

“You wouldn’t understand even if I told you…”

[Lady_Canoness]

Initial character development continues in part 4 as we are introduced to our cast in greater detail. The emphasis on character in the Inquisition III will likely be greater and much more focused than in my previous two works, though that definitely does NOT mean that I'll be skimping on action!

 

Part 4, here it is hot off the press for your viewing pleasure. And, as a side note, the Inquisition III has already logged 30+ pages and 18,000+ words - and I'm just getting started!

 

:lol:

 

*part 4*

 

Five hours of research in the Administratum archives, four rounds of liquor, three hands of blind-man’s bluff, two suggestive comments and one lump-sum payment later, Cassandra Godwyn had forfeited both her time, money, and good taste, but – more importantly – had managed to secure transport off-world to Erebus Station for both her team and the space marine. It had not been easy, yet her hard work made the results seem that much better. She was leaving – leaving this prison – and managing to put one foot in front of the other on her way to proving a great boon to the Imperium and salvaging her career in the process. Even so, however, there was no room for unconditional elation, for the road as she saw it would likely be very long, and, if Aquinas was right, the more time they took the more difficult their task became to locate the Mirror of Isha before others who were doubtlessly on its trail as well.

Time was not on their side, and for the moment it was also playing heavily against them.

Erebus Station, they had discovered, was three sectors away, and would take a minimum of two months to reach – six weeks of which would likely be spent in warp transit. Ironic, she thought, that she’d escaped being caged in the wilderness of an agri-world only to be freely caged again in the bowels of a dank, dark freighter.

The station itself, Godwyn had heard, was a frontier hub on the edge of civilized Imperial space before entering a plethora of quasi-Imperial resource worlds with a variety of human and alien power struggles localized in the area. As far as proper annexation was concerned, however, the crass collection of worlds beyond Erebus Station ranked very low in terms of Imperial Interest and were gauged as being non-existent as a threat to Imperial hegemony, for while the populations of both human and alien worlds were armed neither had shown the economic staying power or resource management to muster even a single warship. Dogma be damned; so far as Godwyn was concerned, this was a perfect example of where Imperial ideology was thoroughly trounced by bureaucracy: humans and aliens were taking each others lives, and the leviathan of the Imperium could not be bothered to step in to what it deemed a minor squabble. Truth be told, it was more profitable to collect resources through trade with both than build the infrastructure to take harvesting of resources into Imperial hands.

All this Godwyn gleaned without so much as having set eyes on the station, for it seemed that Erebus was well known to merchantmen hauling crude resources through the space lanes. It was a rough place, the ones who actually docked there told her after a few drinks, but not a bad place: the Imperial Creed was alive and well, even if the Imperial Law was often mistaken for the ‘optional Imperial suggestion’, and bribery and wit drew more water than honesty and process. Still, it was something to strive for, and, after a two day headway out of system on the merchantman ‘Bronze Back’ with another week ahead of them until they reached a stable warp point, Godwyn was already starting to loath their warm, dark quarters inside the rust-bellied beast.

With almost three decades of service under her belt, Godwyn had seen numerous space ships during her time, but billeted in the bilge compartments of Bronze Back was definitely a lower standard of travel than what she was used to. Bronze Back was a bulk freighter; a big, cumbersome vessel used to haul loads of unprocessed resources to the nearest refinery world – something like a bovine in space. It wasn’t pretty, it didn’t have a big crew, and was so slow that it travelled in conveys much like a heard.

Glamorous it was not.

Despite this, however, the Bronze Back was not without its perks, and for Godwyn and her crew this came in the way of space and privacy. A ship of immense size easily seven kilometres long, the Bronze Back offered generous quarters in the belly of the ship of at least a square kilometre in size, and contained two-dozen rooms or more that were unused, empty, and free for their use, though the price for space and privacy came at smell, the poor lighting, and the generally oppressive humidity. Fortunately, they managed to settle in without too many problems (aside from Aquinas having to duck everywhere he went) and hunkered down for a long journey.

Yet in any form of space travel it was the waiting that got to most people, and Godwyn had found out long ago that the best way to combat boredom was by spending time with one’s crew and by honing both mind and body for the tasks that lay ahead.

 

“There is a question you wish to ask me,” Aquinas noted on the last day cycle aboard the Bronze Back before the ship’s scheduled transition the immaterium. “What is it?”

Sitting with him as she finished her lunchtime rations she’d brought back from the ship’s canteen – lumps of soggy meat drenched in an atrociously salty sauce over a piece of bread, Godwyn choked down the last few morsels of her meal before setting down the empty foil-tray and looking for something on which to wipe her hands, though failing that she quickly deferred to her cargo pants.

Aquinas watched her without emotion. The space marine’s heightened physical condition did not require that he eat regularly – giving him the enviable ability to turn down what passed for meals on the ship when they dropped too low beneath the ‘edible’ bar.

Coughing to clear her throat of the salt, Cassandra Godwyn quickly nodded and reached for the pre-packaged water capsule and drank deeply: it, at least, was consistently palatable. Downing the capsule, she sucked it dry through the drinking nozzle before setting it next to the meal tray and nodding again as if the librarian may have somehow missed the first one.

There was indeed something she wanted to ask him, though until now he an the girl, Spider, had been almost inseparable, and it was hard to get either of them alone. Godwyn had been trying, though not forcibly, to speak to Aquinas alone for the better part of the week since the Bronze Back had weighed anchor and departed, but until now she had never had the chance.

“Yes,” she said, meeting the librarian’s piercing blue eyes that seemed to maintain their radiance in spite of the gloom around them, “there is something I walked to talk to you about.”

He blinked; he was listening.

“It’s Spider,” she said cautiously, knowing the space marine would likely have thought that he’d explained the matter fully; “there are a few things about her I want clarified.”

He nodded slightly; considerately. “Ask your questions,” he said.

She didn’t have much to go on – gut feelings more than anything, though often that was enough for an Inquisitor – as neither member of her team had mentioned anything about the girl aside from treating her with the suspicion often reserved for strangers. Mercy kept her distance, watching Spider much like a feline watching a canine from afar, while Nerf seemed to be warming to having the girl around – unlike Aquinas who he still kept a watchful eye on. There was no proof of the girl having done anything, in fact, neither good nor ill, and most of her time seemed to be preoccupied by the librarian’s lessons, her own fascination with all things mechanical, or otherwise sticking to Aquinas like a proverbial shadow.

“Is she safe?” Godwyn asked, deliberately deciding upon an ambiguous word to try and coax out an answer.

“She is,” Aquinas replied flatly.

“How do you know that?”

The librarian’s brow seemed to lower in irritation. “I know it because I watch her,” he said. “She is of no risk to us, nor us to her.”

“I would rest more comfortably knowing how you can be so certain of that,” she continued.

“I am certain you would. Know then that her powers a minimal on her own, and that it is only with my aid that she can exert enough control for her powers to manifest. Should I withdraw my aid, her abilities would diminish to the point again her being a girl with vivid nightmares. No more.”

The librarian appeared to think his answer satisfactory, so Godwyn moved on:

“How is it that you found her anyway? You make an unusual pair.”

Sitting on an empty packing crate – the universal substitute for chairs for the duration of their sojourn on the Bronze Back ever since they discovered a cache of them buried in their area – the space marine placed the palms of his hands on his knees and gave her a longsighted look.

“Do not mistake appearances, Godwyn,” he cautioned her, “for they have very little semblance on reality, though, if you wish know, it was the Witch Hunters who found her, not I. I merely collected her from one of the Inquisition’s Black Ships.”

“Black Ships carry dangerous people,” Godwyn countered.

“Indeed,” Aquinas agreed, then added; “they once carried me.”

That he would divulge something so personal caught Godwyn by surprise, but then she saw the beginnings of a smile creep onto the edges of his face.

“I would posit that your decision to act independently from the wishes of your Ordos has made you understandably cautious and apprehensive towards elements unfamiliar to you,” he explained in a composed tone as a means of reassurance. “I would ask that you speak to Spider herself if you wish to know more, though. She is deserving of that favour in the least.”

“You think that I’m interested in how she came to be here because of something I’m doing?” Godwyn asked, both defensive and surprised that the librarian would suggest such a thing.

“You have concerns,” Aquinas noted flatly. “Speaking to her will do more to alleviate those concerns than speaking to me.”

 

They talked for a while longer, though not about the girl, and it was about another hour or so before the space marine announced that he had some preparations to make before they entered the immaterium and Godwyn took her leave as to not disturb him.

Commonly called the warp, or the Sea of Souls, the immaterium was thought to be an alternate planar dimension of roiling madness that existed as a sort of mirror image to the material world – though, truth be told, no-one really knew for sure, for all rules and sciences thought to be absolute truths in the material realm were little more than fantasies in the warp. Psykers were the only beings capable of knowing the warp for what it was, but even so this knowledge was often little more than mere glimpses of what was sure to be a larger phenomena – much like skimming the surface of a pond enough to know that it was wet. Yet for all that was unknown about the warp, there were some truths to it concrete enough to form the basis of sciences and technologies; the most useful of which was the ability to enter the warp and expedite communication and travel, and it was by this means that a voyage that would have otherwise taken decades could be undertaken in a matter of months.

Proven technologies or no, however, entering into the warp was not without its dangers, and it was not unheard of for entire convoys of ships vanish without a trace never to be heard from again. Leaving material space was also incredibly taxing on the individual psyche, and it was not uncommon for people to develop a form ‘warp-sickness’ that could manifest in such ways ranging from headaches and nightmares to diarrhea and vomiting even while aboard a well-shielded ship, though most would eventually adapt and overcome their sickness with time. Psykers, however, were said to suffer much, much worse.

‘Like suffocating under the weight of your own mind,’ James Alexander, a late student who had studied under her, once said. ‘Like a horrific dream pulled over your eyes so that even when you wake you cannot escape it.’

With these thoughts in mind, Godwyn went to seek out the tattooed psyker after leaving Aquinas in expectation that she too would soon be bracing herself for what lay ahead. With more than two-dozen rooms to check though, finding the teenager was not easy, and, after looking in all the usual spots, she took to prying hatches open at random, though she was met with no more success than before.

Just as she was about to give up, however, the Inquisitor heard an unusual clinking noise coming from a crawlspace hidden in the bulkhead and, stooping for a better view, saw Spider’s white ink-covered arms working methodically on something as she lay flat on her back in the maintenance shaft.

“Spider!” Godwyn called from the outside as she wasn’t about to crawl in after her; “What are you doing down there?”

The girl was quite a ways in, but, when she heard her name, Spider stopped what she was doing and started to slowly crawl back out by pushing herself along her back.

Obviously not claustrophobic, Godwyn noted as she watched the teenager wriggle her way slowly but surely back into the corridor until her head, shoulders, arms, and waist were free. Standing, the Inquisitor offered her a hand and helped pull Spider the rest of the way and to her feet.

“Thanks,” the girl said once she was out and started swatting the dust from her pants and sleeveless shirt.

Godwyn said that she was welcome, then asked again what it was she was doing down there.

“The lights,” Spider noted, as if it were the most obvious answer she could give, “I wanted to see if I could get them working again. Thought it might be faulty wiring.”

The Inquisitor gave her a curious look, but Spider merely shrugged before trying to slip away:

“Orion probably wants to see me. I should get back to him.”

She tried to leave, but Godwyn wasn’t about to let the teenager escape that quickly.

“I’ll walk with you,” the older woman said, slowing her with a gesture from her human hand. “Aquinas is still a little busy, so I don’t think he’ll mind that you’re somewhat late.”

The girl seemed to agree, but Godwyn could tell that she was nervous, and as they walked she noticed again what looked like freshly healed skin on her wrists.

“We haven’t really talked before,” the Inquisitor started things slowly in order to avoid scaring her off. “I wanted to see how you’re doing. You must be fairly new to this.”

Spider shrugged again, deflecting the question. “I’m okay,” she said, “takes a little getting used to, but I can handle it.”

A ‘little’ getting used to it would hardly be enough, Godwyn thought, but she nodded along and decided to change to subject to try and keep the girl talking.

“You’re a mechanic?”

“A little,” she frowned, “I just pick up stuff from time to time. Besides, Orion says it’s good to keep busy with different things.”

That she called the space marine by his first name seemed odd to the Inquisitor and hinted at a familiarity that was altogether surprising.

“Did he say why?”

The girl shrugged nonchalantly; “A broader look at things is better than a narrow look.” The way she said it was as if it meant nothing to her, yet the words themselves were a poor disguise for how well her memory clung to the lesson. She worshiped him, Godwyn figured, though, interestingly enough, Aquinas had taught her the same thing when they had first met.

“You’re an Inquisitor, aren’t you?” the girl asked, changing the subject. She already knew the answer, Godwyn was certain, but she was curious about it, and from her perspective Spider was asking because she wanted an excuse to know as much about Godwyn as Godwyn wanted to know about her.

“That’s right,” Godwyn replied, careful to keep her tone passive as to invite the girl’s continued questioning.

Spider nodded – she had definitely known that already – and then looked towards Godwyn’s right hand.

“How did you lose your arm?” she asked.

The Inquisitor smiled inwardly, knowing now that she could build a rapport through her injury, and raised her mechanical right hand higher into the light before tugging back the sleeve of her over-shirt to reveal the full extent of her bionic for the girl’s inspection while moving each of her metal digits. Spider was instantly hooked, and stared at the gleaming metal with wide-eyed fascination.

“I lost it fighting aliens,” Godwyn explained, covering her arm again to steal back the girl’s attention, “though I don’t remember how exactly.”

“How you lost it?”

Godwyn nodded, and, though she tried to hide it, Spider was undoubtedly enamoured with the thought of xenos. Funny that, how the ignorance of humanity romanticized the killing of aliens.

“Have you ever seen a xenos?” Godwyn asked, though she was fairly certain that the girl had not.

Spider shook her head. “I grew up in a hive,” she said, “but I don’t know what it was called.”

“Underhive?”

The girl nodded again.

“And your ink?”

“Clan stuff,” she said, “but I don’t know much about it.”

Godwyn had a feeling that there was more to it than that, though Spider wasn’t wishing to talk about it: fair enough – a sense of trust was still along way off, though for the time being talking would be enough.

“Where did you grow up?”

Taken aback, Godwyn looked at her: she hadn’t expected that. Talking about her past wasn’t something she avoided – other than the obvious material about her work with the Inquisition – but it came as a surprise as few people ever asked.

“I was raised on an estate on the world of Acre,” she explained truthfully, choosing to hold nothing back. “My mother was a noblewoman, and I lived with her until I was fourteen.”

The girl looked at her almost in revulsion; “You’re a noble?” she asked in a voice that said she had likely never heard anything good about the upper-class of Imperial society, though in Cassandra Godwyn’s case it wasn’t actually true.

“Not really,” she explained with a small smile. “My father wasn’t my mother’s husband at the time, so I was never considered to be of noble blood.”

There was no knowing if that meant anything at all to Spider as blood-lines and titles were likely as foreign as daylight to a native of the underhive, but the girl seemed to understand that it was something meaningful all the same.

“Sounds like a nice life,” she said.

It was, and, when compared to ninety-nine percent of the people in the Imperium, Godwyn’s upbringing had been a charmed one. In one day, a child like Godwyn would have experienced more wealth than a child like Spider would experience in a lifetime. Imperial society accepted that without question, yet in truth it was a sad reality that saw gifted individuals like this girl ground into dust due to the misfortune of their birth.

“It was,” the Inquisitor agreed, “though we’re all in it together now.”

 

Spider didn’t know much about what they were doing or what it was she had seen. “I see faces and people moving, and things,” she explained when Godwyn asked her.

Knowledge was a privilege, as Godwyn had learned a long time ago; people were driven to act, not to know, and it became clearer the longer they were aboard the Bronze Back that faith was all that really motivated them and carried them forward: Aquinas’ faith in Spider and his own interpretations of her dreams; Godwyn’s faith in Aquinas and that he was not mistaken, and that her choice to flee her exile was the right one; her team’s faith that she would lead them clearly and truly towards a goal that was worth the risk to their lives; and faith in the Emperor, the Imperium, and their duty held sacrosanct.

Knowing, in one way or the other, had nothing to do with it, and doubly so when Godwyn woke the second night of their transit in the immaterium with a terrible bout of warp-sickness and a raging fever.

Drenched in sweat, she shivered uncontrollably as her guts rumbled and churned inside her like a living thing. She’d been having nightmares again, dreaming of when she was captured by the rogue Inquisitors Pierce and Roth.

Sitting up, she wrapped her arm tightly around her knees and tried to stop her world from spinning as she clamped her eyes tight shut and gritted her teeth as her sweat-caked lips folded into a pained snarl. It was terrible.

She’d been sick before in the warp and endured, though the warm, stuffy air of the Bronze Back seemed to amplify her discomfort tenfold from the times previous, and with a loud, bubbling gurgle she felt her bowels turn to liquid and burn inside her. She needed to get up. Now.

Stumbling off of her cot, Godwyn knocked her bionic arm onto the deck and lost it in the darkness and she half-ran-half-fell to the hatchway and yanked it open before falling into the hall and dragging herself on hand and knees back into a run for the lavatories just as the bile rose in her throat. She made it in time – though barely – banged open the door of the nearest stall, and lunged for the toilet as she vomited up what felt like fire all over the filth stained bowl until her back arched and her neck cramped and she felt like dying. How much of it hit the bowl and how much of it hit the deck she did not know, but, when she at last gasped for breath, she sank over the toilet and her face fell in her own sickness until she coughed up more bile and retched yet again.

Trembling uncontrollably, her whole body ached and her skin prickled against the air as her shivering breaths blew bubbles through the film of slime that covered her mouth and chin. Summoning the energy to open her eyes, she pulled her vomit streaked hair from her face long enough to see herself twisted and sprawled on the floor of the lavatory with her clothes, the deck, the porcelain bowl, and the walls all covered with the hot and sticky contents of her stomach. The stricken Inquisitor saw just enough of it to heave up more of the fluids, missing the bowl entirely, and splatter muck onto the deck.

It felt like someone was trying to pull her inside-out through her mouth by grabbing a hold of her tongue.

Her strength gone, her arm wavered as Godwyn struggled against her own weight to hold onto her deathlike embrace of the toilet-bowl – the only thing that was keeping her upright – though before she could fall she felt another’s arms wrap tightly around her chest and haul her up, shivering, until her own feet skidded for purchase through the mess.

“Help…” the words bubbled out of her sick mouth as strings of vile liquid pulsed over her lips and dribbled down her chin. “Help…”

Her rescuer didn’t respond, but walked her past the line of empty stalls into the shower alcove and turned on the water until Godwyn felt a cool relief washing across her aching face.

“…thank you…” she croaked, her voice hoarse.

Her chest stabbed with pain and her limbs felt exhausted, but her clothing slowly soaked through to cool her stifling flesh and she felt her breathing become regular as her body became lax in her rescuer’s arm. Softly, she could feel fingers delicately wiping the filth from her face while her mind continued to reel.

“Rest gently,” a beautiful voice told her as it sailed through the air like wind over water, “you are at peace…”

Peace – the thought was all Godwyn needed to close her eyes and let her head sink back against her saviour’s chest. She would need a lot of that in the months ahead.

The long-fingered hand stroked her brow and the beautiful voice held her close, but Godwyn wouldn’t remember any of it when next she awoke back on her cot with weeks yet remaining on their passage through the warp.

[Azekai]

Good stuff. One minor quibble-

Coughing to clear her throat of the salt, Cassandra Godwyn quickly nodded and reached for the pre-packaged water capsule and drank deeply: it, at least, was consistently palpable.

 

Perhaps you mean palatable instead?

[Lady_Canoness]

Noted and fixed.

 

Thanks for catching the one that slipped the net :)

[Lady_Canoness]

Part 5 is now hot off the press! Whythre, please do keep your eyes peeled in case I missed something again :lol:

 

As for content, I am quite pleased with how this turned out, and I think the movement and scale in the following scenes is well displayed. Do you agree? We shall see.

 

__________________________________

 

*part 5*

 

After two months and six days in the darkness of the abyss, the Bronze Back broke from convoy and made full-thrust for Erebus Station where she set anchor three days later at the outer marker before sending a shuttle with five passengers plus crew the rest of the way.

From a distance, Erebus looked like a humongous sap-cone coloured a mottled grey against the black satin sky attended to by droves of swarming ships darting in and out of her many spire towers and dark chasms like insects spreading the seeds of her growth. Eleven million people called the station home – easily matching a small Imperial hive for size – and more than fifty-thousands ships passed through her anchorage in a solar year. Like a city, she had nine districts, each ruled by a governing house or clique which enforced their own laws based on territory, and jockeyed for position against one another through tariffs, trade embargoes, and the occasional street battle. For every fifty people there was estimated to be one automobile, ten gallons of fresh water, thirty-six living accommodations meeting the minimum of Imperial standard, and one-hundred-and-four firearms. The ratio of men to women was figured at a noticeable two-point-four-two to one, and it was suggested that up to twenty-four percent of the population was under the age of Imperial majority, though, surprisingly, the poverty-rate was lower than the Imperial average at only eighteen percent of the population living beneath expected earnings.

The extent of the findings was due largely to Erebus Station being the sole trade port large enough to accommodate both legitimate and black-market goods in ample supply, and with a vast quantity of buyers and sellers arriving daily from all across the neighbouring sectors the flow of traffic and money had never been faster. With so many people coming and going, it was not difficult to book passage to or from the station either, and hardly anyone remained long unless it was within their interest to do so. Bribery, extortion, and smuggling were high, no price was too steep, and there was no limit to the distance money could travel.

If a rare alien artefact was here, it could work its way through five sets of hands in an hour and be off the station in an afternoon, though if there was one thing that didn’t come cheap at Erebus it was time. Time was always at a premium.

 

* *

 

The port’s designation BX:T – 00897 had been stencilled in red, peeling paint over the door separating the outer docks from processing checkpoint. It was garish and unsightly, but in a cavernous chamber filled to bursting with queues upon queues of recent arrivals waiting to get into Erebus, the painted digits were the only thing to look at other than the drab metal walls and the dismal faces of the other sots in line.

This was the ‘access-level’ receiving area for sector designation BX, dock T, and whatever other numbers followed. It was filled to the brim with people wanting to ‘access’ Erebus Station on a ‘low-priority level’ – meaning they didn’t have the disposable funds necessary to bribe their way into ‘priority processing’ where wealthy merchants, high-rollers, and connected frequenters of the station breezed in and out as they pleased.

“Name,” a podgy, toad-like guard dressed in a maroon house uniform asked from behind an unkempt desk as a stocky pair of his cronies admitted another bedraggled looking traveller through the iron barred gate one at a time. The traveller would stumble forward – legs weary after standing in line for endless hours – and stutter something to the guard which would be jotted down with a judging glare

“Present your assets.”

The traveller would then sheepishly empty his pockets and whatever bags he carried with him onto the desk and a clerk would half-heartedly poke through it with a stylus, and all the while the toad-like guard would leer up from his seat at the poor unfortunate as if to ask is this it?. Sometimes it wasn’t, and the cronies would loose something hidden, and often private, for the guard’s careful and painstakingly slow inspection as the gibbering traveller tried desperately to explain himself. If he was lucky he’d get it back, but if he was unlucky, and the item was suitably valuable, it would be confiscated, a file would be generated, and the owner would be told of its safe return *after* he cleared through processing on his way off the station.

His ten minutes of humiliation and intimidation then being up, the sod’s belongings would be turned over to him in a heap, and he’d be ushered out of the processing checkpoint and into the streets where the thugs didn’t wear uniforms, and where they wouldn’t bother to lie to him about returning his possessions when he left. And then the gate would open, and it would be another poor, weary soul’s turn to learn the hard lesson about the benefits of ‘priority processing’.

Godwyn had seen enough of it before and it sickened her, yet here she was, going on hour number five, waiting for her turn to be educated about why she should have paid for ‘priority processing’.

“Next.”

Ahead of her in the line, Aquinas brought Spider through the gate with him and dwarfed the toad-man so completely that the later was entirely hidden from view behind the space marine’s broad back. Dressed in the same dark blue coat in which he’d come to see Godwyn more then two month’s prior to waiting in line, he stood completely still for three minutes after the gate had closed behind him and not once were any of his belongings declared, nor were any questions asked. Eventually, he stooped over the guard’s desk, plucked the stylus from the clerk’s hand, and wrote something of his own beyond where Godwyn could see it before moving around the desk and out the exit with Spider walking closely before him.

“N-next.” The haughty tone of boredom was gone from the toad’s voice this time, she noticed.

Her human hand clutching her Inquisitorial Rosette in her pocket, Godwyn stepped forward with Nerf and Mercy on her flanks and barged past the uniformed cronies without waiting form them to object. The toad looked at her as if he fully expected his day to get worse.

“N-name?” he asked, screwing up his face like he was asking permission for something he really shouldn’t be.

“Go to hell,” Godwyn told him, planting both hands firmly on his desk so that he jumped back a little and tried to rise up.

“Now just you wait – !” he started, trying to regain some control as the clerk and his cronies stood around dumbly waiting for instructions.

“Shut up and listen!” she slapped her badge of office down on the desk where only he could see it. He seemed to recoil and shuddered at the sight of the Inquisitorial mark.

“Oh f*** me!” he blurted.

Behind her, with the ominous lump of his anti-materiel rifle slung in its satchel over his shoulder, a smug grin crossed Nerf’s face – he liked where this was going.

“You know what this is?” she asked him severely.

“Yeah!” he replied quickly, trying to look her in the eye and regain some sort of professionalism. “So, what do you want?!”

“The record stays blank,” Godwyn pointed at the stack of forms haphazardly on the desk.

“Yeah!” he blurted, still not willing to come any nearer to the desk as if afraid that she might bite him. “F***! I got it!”

“Good.” She scooped her badge back into her pocket and briskly followed the direction Aquinas had gone with the girl through several doors and past another lightly manned checkpoint until she, Mercy, and Nerf exited onto a roughly hewn metal street crammed with people.

Outside the docks was where Erebus really began, though the uncouth splendour of the ‘access-level’ greeting was not far off the mark for the rest of the station: those who could did, and those who couldn’t – or didn’t know any better – had to take what was coming to them.

Stepping through the gate from dock BX:T – 00897 only reinforced this hard-learned lesson as rising to greet the new low-priority arrivals was an instant maze of entrapment eager to separate those fools who had not lost everything to the maroon-coated guards of whatever else they might have left. Flophouses, dice-halls, seedy bars, and strip joints had sprang up in the spaces between decks and deluged the new arrivals with neon signs and crude slogans that snatched the eyes from graffiti streaked walls and festering garbage piles while the sounds crashing through every hall deafened the ears with the noise of humanity. Past the bright colours and electrics, however, the soul of the Imperium still remained, and every so often there would be a crudely erected shrine to the Imperial Cult braced in a corner and tended by candles and rosary beads, while habited clerics slumped through the streets with braziers of incense and words of piety that coaxed the miserable and the downtrodden out from between the crevices of society.

Dressed casually with his weapons well concealed underneath his coat, Aquinas waited with the girl not far from the port gates and caught Godwyn’s eye to call her over through the milling crowds.

“Trouble with the guards?” he asked once Godwyn, Mercy, and Nerf had joined him underneath a humming neon sign at the side of street where they were out of the way of the passers-by.

“I forced my way through after you and I wasn’t exactly subtle,” Godwyn admitted in way of explanation, eyeing the people on the road as some of the newer arrivals stopped to stare at the flashing signs overhead.

“You were detected?” he asked.

She nodded – knowing that he was talking about her identity as an Inquisitor – and though she was not happy with blowing her cover so early on, she realized that she had little choice, and that flashing her badge here under her terms was better than being found out when she least anticipated it.

“I did what was necessary,” she told him, but Aquinas shook his head:

“You were uncharacteristically reckless,” he rebuked her, “and we may yet suffer for it.”

“What do you mean?” she demanded, but the librarian needn’t answer: a group of rough-looking men dressed in maroon jackets had just appeared from a side street and seemed to be fanning out in their general direction.

“I am afraid we have made a mark for ourselves,” Aquinas sounded mildly disappointed as well as irritated. “We should go, and quickly. We’re not in good enough position to start anything now.”

“We should split up,” Nerf suggested, but the Librarian disagreed.

“Out of the question,” he said, and then looked to Spider: “Where can we go from here?”

The girl closed her eyes and relaxed her features in an attempt to focus and Godwyn felt a miniscule tug on the nape of her neck as the warp shifted around them.

“There is an alley to our left!” Spider exclaimed, suddenly out of breath; “We can go through there and they won’t see us.”

“Excellent,” the Librarian nodded approvingly, “We go.”

Mercy taking the lead, the five moved down the street at a walking pace until they found Spider’s laneway and quickly ducked inside without being seen.

The alleys on this part of the station that wound behind the numerous bawdy-houses and rundown joints were uncomfortably narrow and littered with garbage and debris – all of which could make for excellent hiding – but at Spider’s instruction they kept going through the poorly lit back corridors after the shadowy assassin until, after several minutes of following a series of twists and turns, they finally piled out onto a quiet street in an altogether gloomier part of the station. A few hooded people lingered in the shadows of the road and watched quietly as the new arrivals emerged, but nothing in the way of sound carried towards them, and the background din of the streets they’d just left seemed to be at least several blocks away.

Following behind the others, Nerf checked over his shoulders up and down the lamp-lit street. “Where are we?” he asked in a whisper, but no-one really knew what to tell him.

If Godwyn had to guess, she’d say that they’d strayed into on of the shadier areas on this level of the station, and, discretely looking at the buildings that rose around them up to the ceiling on either side, she could already make out several things that bordered on disturbing. Gibbets fastened with glittering chimes and filled with shrunken remains dangled from street posts, while strange talismans of cloth and bone hung in doorways that were painted with unsettling markings. Everything seemed older here, hunched and derelict, and when she looked at the people that waited by the wayside she could see the glint of their beady eyes staring back at her from under heaps of ragged clothing. It was evident that no-one passed through here without a good reason, and the sooner they departed the better.

She wasn’t the only one to think that either, and up-ahead Aquinas had a firm grip of Spider’s arm and was marching her rapidly down the middle of the rough, metal street. Something festered here, Godwyn thought as she quickened her pace to keep up; something alien and unholy, though no-one spoke of it until they were safely back under the electric hum of neon lights in the more populated slum-sector off the docks.

“What was that place?” Spider asked once they had stopped to regroup at the side of the road and quickly scanned the area to see that there were no maroon jackets mingling the noisy crowd.

Crossing her arms, Godwyn looked from Spider to Aquinas and noticed that the space marine looked particularly harsh.

“Those weren’t humans, were they?” she asked him, and he quickly shook his head.

“No,” he said vehemently, “they were not.”

Mercy and Nerf, who at first had only appeared to be half-listening as they watched over the heads of the people passing by, suddenly appeared more alert and their faces darkened appropriately.

“I had heard that Erebus Station did trade with xenos,” Godwyn commented with a grim frown now that the reason for their earlier unease was in the open, “though I didn’t think they’d actually have any on board.”

“I was of similar belief,” Aquinas agreed, still looking grimly into his mind’s eye as if momentarily attempting to reason how it was that the local authorities could tolerate such an obvious transgression, though soon the moment passed and the darkness seemed to lift from his features. “We cannot be distracted, however,” he said. “Our purpose is greater than the persecution of the alien.”

Indeed it was, and, without catching a glimpse of any maroon-uniformed pursuers, the five merged seamlessly into the bulk of the crowd that shifted and groaned under the neon lights.

 

“We have to secure a base of operations on this station,” Aquinas told to the Inquisitor after they had gone some ways and the crowds were starting to thin.

Godwyn agreed without reservation. “Preferably somewhere without so much traffic,” she said.

It was hard to say what the rest of the station would be like compared they were now. There were storefronts and buildings of every kind between the station’s metal bulkheads, and people of all stripes walked this way and that holding conversations in a multitude of different dialects. Fast-moving street-vehicles sped along the wider streets in large numbers, while at the roadside red-robed tech enginseers worked on repairing a trubo-lift that extended between decks, and glowing data-terminals were indented into the walls next to run-down street-vendor stalls.

Seeing one such terminal unoccupied with no-one squatting nearby, Spider darted off towards it and, catching they eyes of both the Inquisitor and the librarian, Nerf went after her while the others waited nearby.

“Your pilot, Mr. Normandy, would be an asset in our current situation,” Aquinas mentioned as they stood idly by the edge of traffic and absent-mindedly browsed a grubby street-vendor’s mishmash of wares.

Godwyn tilted her head thoughtfully to one side. Lee Normandy was now her longest serving agent and had been with her since her earliest days as an Interrogator. An ex-smuggler and ace pilot, Lee thrived in the Imperial underbelly and knew his way around a slum better than anyone Godwyn had ever met, yet, in spite of his obvious skill, Lee was not a seasoned fighter capable of burying the things he saw and did in the Inquisitor’s service like Nerf or Mercy could. He was just a common man, and when Godwyn had asked too much of him he had finally broken. For weeks after fighting the Necrotyr and doing battle with the forces of the rogue Inquisitor Brand, Lee had been a shadow of his former self. Jumping at shadows, being incapable of laughter, a devolving into shaking fits without reason, Lee had walked away when Meridian was impounded by Godwyn’s superiors with the promise that he’d watch the ship and keep her running. That was it. That was all Godwyn knew of her agent’s whereabouts.

“He stayed with my ship when they took it from me,” Godwyn told the librarian flatly – the memories of that time being so awash with her own emotion that she couldn’t recall feeling anything when her pilot left. “He made his choice.”

Aquinas remained impassive and unreadable. “As must we all,” he said in a soft hiss.

 

Why the girl had hopped off to look at some data-terminal was beyond Nerf, but what wasn’t beyond him was knowing how many things could go wrong when someone split off from the group.

“C’mon kid, what are you doing?” he asked, stepping up beside her and leaning on the wall while casting a few careful glances around to watch their backs.

Spider already had her tools out from underneath her jacket and had popped back the keypad to make a few adjustments to the circuitry as her eyes flew in time with her hands at cracking the console.

“Spider…” the Catachan murmured irritably when she didn’t answer. Sooner or later, someone was going to notice what she was doing.

“What?” she shot back. “I’m just checking…”

There was a soft *click* followed by a whistling *pop* as the blank terminal screen suddenly jumped into life.

“Ha!” the girl smiled to herself, “I got this!”

Nerf didn’t care – she was wasting their time and –

“Hey!”

Nerf’s attention swung towards the large gangly man who was stomping towards them out of the crowd at the same time as he was shouting.

“Hey!” he said again, coming towards Spider but apparently not noticing Nerf. “What the f*** are you doing to my console!?”

The guy had a heavy black beard with long hair that got in his eyes, and his walk was stiff enough to look awkward as if he had some kind of injury. He was tall too – with at least half a head on Nerf – and looked pretty strong for a non-Catachan, though his clothing suggested that he was a nobody, probably crazy, and likely violent: this was exactly what Nerf had wanted to avoid.

People weren’t looking yet, but they would if the belligerent got any louder.

Nerf quickly stepped in his way. “Whoa buddy,” he said, holding out his hands to try and calm the man down while he was still several feet away. “Just take it easy.”

The man didn’t listen and, flicking his dark hair from his face, pointed a threatening finger at the startled teenager. “You better f***ing run, you b*tch! I’m gonna hurt you!”

Now people were starting to watch.

Still ignoring the Catachan in his way and focusing solely on Spider, the shouting man tried to side-step the ex-commando when Nerf dropped him to the deck with a hard crack across the jaw. Falling like a sack of bricks, the man went down with a thud and rang his head across the metal. The litany of swear-words stopped abruptly, and for a split second everything seemed to go quiet. Then some people laughed, others started talking amongst one-another, though most simply looked at the fallen man before looking at Nerf and resuming whatever it was they had been doing before the commotion began.

Standing over him, Nerf stooped and rested a finger across the man’s throat. He held it there for a couple seconds, and then, with his covered rifle still over his shoulders, he stood back up and walked over to where the teenager was still standing breathlessly.

“Was it worth it?” he asked with a contemptuous look in his eyes.

The girl looked past him to where the bearded man was still lying in the street: his eyes open and staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Her face said that she’d seen death before, but that she hadn’t seen enough of it yet to be completely numb.

Shaking his head, the Catachan scoffed as he walked away to find the others.

Abandoning the terminal she’d activated, the tattooed girl quickly followed after him as the streets returned to normal around the dead man.

 

* * *

 

The size of a small hive, Erebus Station had over three-hundred decks arranged in concentric rings around a di-fusion plasma core that were each connected to one another by thousands of turbo-lifts, access shafts, and venting ducts. The station itself had once been a centre for industry, though the factory spaces and smelters had rapidly evolved into bustling trade centres with every inch of leftover space being turned over to storage so that empty factory floors were now teaming with packing crates, shipping containers, and flat upon flat of raw materials. Such was the chaotic nature of Erebus, however, and that many such store-rooms switched hands multiple times, were denied to their owners, or were simply forgotten, that literally millions of Imperial Crowns worth of material was locked away and effectively ignored by the large trading powers on the station – left instead to be picked at by scavengers, looters, and those desperate to turn a trade. Like rats, the empty stock-houses were also infested with squatters and petty criminals, and though various street gangs would often try to rest control of certain areas to exploit its residents, there were still swaths of ancient factory space that was as of yet unclaimed.

 

*

 

With a series of clattering rattles, the old hand-cranked lift descended through an opening in the deck onto a shadow-filled factory floor and touched down with a loud *bang*. Had anyone been listening, they would now most certainly be aware of their arrival, but as Aquinas pulled back the dust-coated gate on the safety cage with a spine tingling screech, Godwyn had already seen enough to tell her that no one had passed this way in a long time. Back-up lighting shone faintly from the beams in the ceiling, and the dust-caked machine gantries were still roped off with lumpy, grease-streaked warning signs. A little ways in across the factory floor, the overseer’s office still had a ‘Closed until further notice’ poster on the door.

“Nice hole,” Nerf commented gloomily as he strained in the minimal lighting to see into the dark recesses on the floor. A few paces behind him, however, Spider looked perfectly content as if it reminded her wherever she called home.

“It will suffice as a base of operations,” Aquinas commented with a satisfied nod, and on that note Godwyn spread her team out to secure any alternate entrances and get a general feel for where they were.

One way or another, it needed to be defendable, and – if possible – they would need someway they could slip out the back in case anyone tried to bottle them in or tail their movements. Who it would be who did that, Godwyn did not know, but she had a sinking feeling that the Inquisition would have learned of her disappearance from her temporary prison, and if anyone came looking they would likely be able to trace her here. Some people might call that being paranoid, but Godwyn wasn’t just some person – as an Inquisitor, she’d tracked down enemies of the Imperium that hid their traces better than she did. The tracks of a tread-hauler could be easily followed even after nightly rainfall, and after that it would not take much in the way of questioning to find out who she travelled with and where she went. If they could track her to Erebus Station, she would have to be certain that they would not find her unprepared.

“Cass?”

Godwyn blinked out of her thoughts as she heard Nerf say her name.

He looked at her with a curious expression. “Did you hear what I said?”

Blinking again, she wetted her dried lips and stood up from where she had been examining a rusted-up trapdoor in between two machines.

“Sorry,” she admitted, “I was just thinking about things.”

He seemed to understand but filled her in on what he’d found all the same.

It turned out that they were in luck, and Nerf had found two more lifts further back in the factory. He hadn’t checked on where they went, but, with Spider’s help, he’d got them working all the same. There were also several side-rooms including a lavatory that could double as living space.

“As things go,” he explained as he walked her through the side-rooms and back onto the factory floor, “this place should be pretty easy to hunker-down in. We don’t have a lot of ammo yet, but give it time and we can hold this place pretty damn well against a conventional attack.”

“Unconventional?” Godwyn asked after a paused.

The Catachan shrugged. “Then we’re f***ed,” he said.

 

They settled in and quickly established a procedural routine of sorts for their new base of operations including guard postings, living quarters, and alternating channels for a set of old vox-units they’d discovered in the overseer’s office. With very limited resources, they had also quickly determined what sort of equipment they’d need to succeed in their goal.

“We need some method of rapid transportation,” Godwyn told them as they gathered around a table in the only well lit room in their new base – the overseer’s office – “preferably a small, quick vehicle.”

“I could get one of those,” Nerf volunteered, resting his forearms on the paint-chipped metal surface of the table and glancing around at the others in the room in case they voiced objections.

Sitting at the table, Godwyn and Spider were silent, while Aquinas, standing in the doorway, nodded in approval, and Mercy looked bored from where she’d perched on an old filing cabinet.

“We’ll also need more mundane provisions,” Godwyn continued once that had been decided. “Food, water, weapons – things like that.”

For a moment the room was silent as nobody volunteered.

“Fine,” Nerf said at last with a sigh; “I guess I can work on that too once I get a vehicle.”

No-one disagreed with that either, at which point Aquinas cleared his throat to speak.

“More importantly we need information,” he said softly, though the shadow-filled factory was so quiet that nobody had any trouble hearing him, “and in that we can all contribute. Eyes, ears,” he looked around the room though his gaze lingered on Mercy. “If the Mirror is here, then there will be those who know of its whereabouts.”

He was silent for some time as he let his words sink in. There was little room for failure, and all but nothing in the way of second chances.

“Alright then,” Godwyn slapped her hands against the table top as she stood – her bionic making a loud *clang* “Let’s get started.”

 

*

 

Nerf had too much on his mind to hang around in the overseer’s office once the Inquisitor had said the word ‘go’. He wasn’t going to wait and see what the others did. He had a job, and he was going to do it – what he thought about it didn’t matter.

Heading back to the room in the factory where he’d stowed his rifle and the other stuff he brought with him when they’d left their retreat on the agri-world, the Catachan started to pull things out of his pack with a little more vigour than usual as he tossed the contents around him.

Extra clothing – unimportant. A small medpack – unimportant. Catachan fighting blade – very important; he quickly attached the sheath to his belt. Cigars – another thing he’d been taking. Snub pistol with two mags…?

He weighed the pistol in one hand and the ammunition in another before loading one magazine and stuffing it inside his jacket. The rest of the stuff he pushed into a heap with his boot so that it was near to his lovingly maintained rifle. He paused for a moment and looked at it – just looked at it. That was him, just a pile of stuff in a dark room. It was all he really had.

Turning on the spot, he pivoted on his heel and walked right into Spider as she was coming through the door and nearly knocked her to the floor.

“Whoa! Watch where you’re going kid!” he said probably louder than he should have, catching her by the shoulder’s so she didn’t get knocked over.

Instinctively, the girl squirmed and struggled free of his grasp as Nerf let her go, before looking at him with stung and accusatory eyes.

“What are you doing here?” he asked as she backed away.

The girl twisted the long bangs of her unkempt hair around a finger and flicked it out of her face – fully revealing the lurking spider tattoo that decorated her young features.

“I came to say sorry,” she said, not really meeting his eyes.

He frowned, unsympathetic. “What for?”

“For making you kill that guy,” she said hesitantly with both hands in her pockets as she walked past the Catachan and tentatively poked at a dent in the wall with the toe of her boot. “I… should have listened.”

Standing by the doorway where she’d left him, the commando glowered at her back. “People die,” he said flatly; “You’ll get used to it.”

She wouldn’t look at him, and she didn’t seem to hear him either – she just kept poking at the wall with her boot.

Behind her, the Catachan started to fume. Here they were on a space station filled with scum and villainy, and she was feeling sorry for herself because some low-life was dead!? The very thought of it was aggravating, and he was just about to tell her as much when the girl started talking again.

“How?” she asked; “How do you get used to it?”

Nerf stifled a groan of exasperation and leaned his shoulder into the door-frame. “You just kill enough of them,” he said.

“How many?”

He couldn’t believe he was having this pointless conversation. “Enough,” he said. “You’ll know when it happens because you’ll stop caring.”

“Stop caring about what?”

“Everything.”

She turned and looked at him over an ink-lined shoulder, and his hard eyes were met with those of a hurt teenager. Maybe he’d given her too much credit when he first met her. The ink had fooled him. She was a kid; a kid who grew up the hard way, but still a kid… and if that psyker business was as much as Cass said it was, then this kid had her own mountain of problems to deal with.

His chest heaved with a long, tired sigh, and Nerf pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and fore-finger.

“Not everything,” he said honestly, “but you gotta be careful, and really hold-on to what you care about. ‘Cause when you kill a man you kill a part of yourself along with him…” he chewed on his lip before continuing, “…and sooner or later you realize that there’s no part of you left alive…”

Now she was listening, really listening, and, just as he thought he could see some words forming in her throat, a sudden shadow fell over the room.

For someone so big, the space marine was unnervingly silent.

Bowing his head into the chamber, Aquinas first looked at Spider and then at Nerf, though without a trace of anything in his eyes.

“Come,” he beckoned to the teenager once he’d passed his silent judgment, “it is time.”

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

very nice, your writing gets better and better. I really can see character progression of nerf and Cass. She, especially, has hanged a lot since the first story, she seems harder now, more reckless maybe?

 

Oh, wheres Mercy gone? She keeps disappearing and reappearing, I always forget where shes meant to be!!

 

All in all, a great update, keep up the good work! :(

[Lady_Canoness]

Thanks Brother Sergeant! Always glad to hear that things go well :devil:

 

Mercy's disappearing and reappearing goes well with her being silent in every meaning of the word, and also adds to the character's mystery. Ideally, Mercy's motives will always remain unclear :rolleyes: It is my hope that this does not diminish her in any way, and throughout Inquisition III there will be several scenes in which we get to see her in a much clearer light. :blush:

[Lady_Canoness]

It has been a long week (and writing over a long week is always tough, it seems) but today I got time to put the finishing touches on part 6, so here it is hot-off-the-presses!

 

Fancy that, we also meet a new character - we'll see what you make of them!

 

_______________________________

 

*part 6*

 

Godwyn was the first to leave and quickly rode the lift to the upper levels of the station to get a better sense for what they were up against. Nerf soon followed her out of the dark factory with Mercy going with him to find whatever provisions they could to bring back. Leaving Spider alone with the space marine and a growing sense of anxiety as the teenager tried to brace herself for what she knew was coming.

“I’ve been working on emptying my mind, just like you taught me,” she said, her voice echoing after the footsteps the space marine as she followed Aquinas through the shadows and through several bunk chambers she had not yet explored. “I’m also trying to look at things differently, and think more about ideas than actual things.”

Ahead of her, the librarian’s humongous form ducked through a narrow doorway without looking back and stepped aside for the girl to enter behind him.

“You are nervous,” he instructed her softly. “Control your emotions.”

It was true; in fact, nervous didn’t begin to explain how she felt – she was terrified.

Growing up, her nightmares had always terrified her.

In the beginning people tried to help, but despite their efforts she continued to see terrible, terrible things. Things that would often come to pass. Fearing that the girl’s dreams were somehow the cause of the misfortunes that befell them, her family and community ostracized her and cast her away from the only home she had ever known.

Young, alone, and afraid of closing her eyes lest her dreams consume her whole, she dwelt in the dark, unforgiving depths of the underhive for a week on her own, and it was like that that the Spider Gang found her. Knowing from her dreams that she was something other than ordinary, the Spiders took her in and made her one of their own; raising her to the position of apprentice for one of their shamanistic spirit healers. It was they who gave her the ink, and it was under the tutelage of a heathen priest that she first learned to gain some measure of control over what she saw, though even that was not destined to last.

The Adeptus Arbites arrived in the underhive that had been her world at the behest of the Ordo Hereticus and massacred all who resisted in the Spider Gang, and it was only by chance that the girl avoided the slaughter and was taken alive by an Inquisitor who did not realize the potential of the youth. For the next three years she was imprisoned upon one of the colossal Black Ships and carried unknowingly through the furthest reaches of the Imperium on the Inquisition’s never ending search for the Mutant.

It was on the cusp of her fourth year of imprisonment, with her execution looming just weeks away, that the space marine walked into her cell and everything changed. For the first time she confronted the possibility that perhaps her dreams were not a curse, but a gift.

Orion Aquinas did not banish her dreams, however; he invited them. He gave her neither potions nor serums, nor did he speak in strange tongues to invite the spirits into her soul. All he asked for was patience, confidence, and the strength to face one’s fears. With him, she did not hide from her dreams – she stared into their full, terrifying heart and did not shut her eyes. And for all this his only tools were mind, body, and blood.

Aquinas had already drawn the circle on the floor when she walked past him into a small bunkroom, and, with his leave, she stepped carefully over the circumference and sat cross-legged in the middle.

The circle was drawn with some kind of powder, she remembered – a crushed crystal or something like that – that the space marine said helped focus the energies around them. She didn’t understand it, but she was learning. In time, he promised, everything would be clear.

As he had done every time before, Aquinas then uncorked a small phial of similar glittering powder and sprinkled it sparingly around the inside of the circle.

Spider didn’t know what that was either, but she kept calm and took steady, deep breaths just like he’d taught her and ignored the churning ball of fear that rumbled in her chest.

“Control your emotions,” he said again, somewhere behind her as she heard the delicate *plink* of the phial being resealed.

She closed her eyes and let her thoughts drift away as her attention turned inward through the pit of her body and down to the cool, metal floor on the other side of her cargo-pants. It was delicate balance, like placing a stone on her nose, as her mind lingered in the ether between thought and awareness while being wholly separated from both. If she thought about it, it would change. If she didn’t think about it, it would change. An empty mind was like a balanced blade.

“You are thinking too much,” Aquinas’ voice slipped into the space between her ears; “Let it go…”

Her mouth drifted open as a shallow breath gently pushed over a motionless tongue and her muscles fell slack until it was only a perfection balance that held her body upright. Somewhere in the transition between being asleep and awake, the girl slipped into a trance, and as Aquinas sat before her – dwarfing her tiny frame with his enormous stature – he could tell that she was almost ready.

She had progressed much since he had first encountered her, and with his aide she was beginning to master the mind that had ruled her for so long. She did not understand but she had the will to try, and sometimes trying was all it took. Soon she would be free.

Spider felt nothing as he dragged a silver-bladed knife across her wrists and parted the ink-stained skin to reveal red, flowing blood.

Now she was ready.

The space marine leaned forward until his face was almost at hers and closed his eyes at the very moment when the first droplet of her life’s essence fell onto the floor.

Suddenly, like a spring of water pouring to fill a parched river-bed, a swell of colour, smell, and sound whirled into the girl’s mind with terrific force.

Show me the mirror! Aquinas demanded, but it was like yelling into a gale, and nothing emerged from the flood of energy that poured around him.

You have led me here, not to be deceived! I know what I seek!

The power of his mind pulled at the swirling tides around him, and with great strength parted the raging torrents of raw emotions and feelings to drag images from their depths. Faces – places – things that he instinctively knew yet had never before set eyes upon – and a name, a single, unavoidable, undeniable name.

His roar of psychic rage billowed stronger than any storm of the mind until a terrific jolt tore them apart and knocked the girl flat onto her back and across the floor. The circle was broken.

Sweating, with his breath coming in gasps, Aquinas rose laboriously to his feet and walked slowly over to where the unconscious girl lay discarded on the floor.

“I will yet know,” he said, wiping a hand across his brow, “regardless of how you try to stop me…”

 

* *

 

Nerf had always considered himself a practical man. He didn’t fuss for details or sweat the small stuff. If something worked he’d use it, and if it didn’t he’d fix it. He always checked it before her wrecked it, and either he liked something or he didn’t. That was how he considered himself, though the truth of the matter was that the fruit of reality usually fell far from the tree of considerations, and then something would usually eat the fruit and everything would just get more complicated.

Strolling casually side-by-side with Mercy along the side of a busy street somewhere on a market level of Erebus Station, Nerf didn’t need to remind himself how much he hated complications. He followed his orders, shot things before they shot him, and got creative when it came to getting his job done – that was it; that was what kept him alive. He wasn’t meant to be thinking about strange teenagers with a death wish, space marines that weren’t killing things, and an Inquisitor who wasn’t reading the writing on the wall.

Now he’d been sent out here to steal a car, and he still didn’t really know why. How would that help them find something other than trouble?

“Maybe I should talk to her,” he said mostly to himself, though when he glanced in her direction Mercy seemed to be listening with at least some interest as she watched the people around them like a cat eyeing mice.

He’d been pretty good at talking to her too – that was until he’d started sleeping with her, after which point everything seemed to slide down-hill. Complicated.

Beside him, the assassin gave a coy, knowing smile:

“You got it easy,” the Catachan grumbled; “you don’t even talk.”

The killer’s smile broadened – that seemed to be the idea.

 

They walked for a few more minutes – Nerf doing all the anecdotal talking in a one-sided conversation – until after another turn or two along the twisting road the former commando finally spotted what they’d been looking for: sitting in an dimly-lit lot between two bulkheads were several automobiles like the ones they’d seen roaring along the upper streets when they were finding their way inwards from the docks.

Nodding to the assassin, the two of them worked their way through the foot-traffic towards the lot. No-one was looking so far as they could tell, and even as they stopped to take a closer look at one or two of the vehicles the people in the nearby streets continued to pass them by without a second glance.

“Waddaya think?” the Catachan asked. Mercy seemed to shrug – why was he asking her?

Wedged in the corner and looking to be ignored by everyone on the road, the lot was accumulating garbage around the edges and there were numerous blackened tread-marks on the worn metal deck, yet the vehicles inside weren’t half bad. Nerf wasn’t an expert on automobiles by any stretch, but he could pick out a few that were heavier than the others, and he had his eye on one that looked like it would be fastest of the lot:

Sitting farthest from the road and out of the already dim light was a low-lying four-seater with a cylindrical, black body, and a powerful looking engine mounted at the rear. A steely-grey frame extending beyond the body to support four humongous wheels hinted that the vehicle wasn’t a template construction, and – for all intents and purposes – could possibly be unique on the station. Whether it was or whether it wasn’t didn’t bother the Catachan, however: for him there was only one problem; how did he start it? The doors were locked, and the slit windows on either side of the body were narrow enough that he couldn’t tell if breaking them was worth risking the attention.

Grumbling, the Catachan stepped back from the vehicle – Mercy watching him as he did so with a curious look in her eyes. He wasn’t giving up, but patience prevails where might fails, and Nerf knew how to be patient.

Signalling for Mercy to keep close, the Catachan sat down behind one of the larger vehicles and waited.

He waited for a long time.

Three hours passed.

He didn’t lose patience or focus, and, in the dwindling minutes of the fourth hour when someone finally arrived, Nerf sprang into action.

Footsteps across the metal signalled someone coming towards them, and, while Mercy vanished around the side of another parked automobile, Nerf straightened his clothes and donned his least threatening air.

“Well met,” he said with a disarming smile as the newcomer walked past his hiding place on their way to the slick, black bodied vehicle. “That yours?”

The footsteps belonged to a woman, and though she wasn’t very tall she had a hard look about her and reached instinctively for something at her hip the moment she set eyes upon him.

“Whoa there,” Nerf held back, stopping mid-stride and presenting his empty palms while his smile remained in place, “no harm meant.”

It was then that he noticed that she had a maroon coloured jacket draped over one shoulder and a serious looking set of metal tools hanging in a belt that was slung over the other.

“Who are you?” she asked, her eyes narrowing but her hand slowly starting to drift away from whatever was under her jacket.

Nerf didn’t let up, and he continued to beam as if he were the friendliest man on the station.

“Name’s Nerf,” he said, taking a step forward and extending a large hand for her to shake.

She scowled at him – the rough-looking piercings in her eyebrows dropping a little lower on her face – though eventually she seemed to warm to the smiling man and hesitantly fitted a callused hand into his.

Big mistake.

With a twist of the wrist, he pulled her off balance before ploughing his knee hard into her abdomen with the force of cannon. The woman crumpled in his arms like a marionette and gasped like a fish out of water, but Nerf let her down gently, careful not to cause a disturbance in the nearby street. Eyes bulging as her mouth opened and closed without sound, the woman was helpless to resist as he casually checked her pockets and rifled through her coat. She had a gun at her belt, which he removed, and a pocket-book crammed with paper money in her back pocket – he took that too. It took him a few more seconds to notice the chain around her neck. She was starting to squirm, but her feeble attempts at flailing didn’t stop him from opening her shirt and pulling free the bundle of activation wands that dangled between her breasts on the chain.

Strolling out of the shadows, Mercy gave the gasping woman a disinterested look before Nerf tossed her the wands.

“See if any of those work,” he asked her as she caught them with a swipe of her long-fingered hand before he dragged the crumpled woman behind one of the nearby vehicles, and, on second thought, bound her hands behind her back with her own belt.

The assassin tried the wands one after the other and eventually found one that did the trick. Opening the side door, she banged on the roof – time to go.

A few faces were turned in his direction as the Catachan dashed across the lot and slid into the driver’s seat but no one seemed to have any inclination to interfere. Typical.

Touching the ignition, the engine roared to life but with a careful hand Nerf gently lowered it to a rumbling purr as ex-commando eased the black speedster onto the road. With Mercy reclining beside him the passenger seat, the Catachan couldn’t keep a smile from his face; it had been all too easy, and this was a nice ride.

The smile only grew as they picked up speed to make their getaway.

 

* *

 

Miles away from where her agents were twisting and turning through the streets to lose any potential tail, and separated by over a dozen decks, there were no vehicles where Godwyn looked down the streets, nor were there crowds of the poor or the desperate. In Erebus Station, as with every human settlement, the rich and the powerful did their best to forget the unwashed masses that crawled around their feet.

Standing on a well lit street-corner as trace wisps of smoke drifted up from the lho-stick between her fingers, Inquisitor Godwyn waited in unperturbed silence as she planned her next move.

Dressed in the finest clothing she had managed to take with her from exile, Godwyn looked the picture of a wealthy merchant trader. A rich blue overcoat with a sported high collar, ornamental golden buttons, and hems that were carefully embroidered with gold lace hung perfectly from her lean frame down to just below her knees, while highly polished jackboots were visible on her feet, a white cravat around her neck, and a black leather glove covered the metal of her right hand. That it had been a trader who selected the outfit for her was also a great help, even if the gentleman had never expected it to be worn as a disguise – a disguise had already proven its worth.

Entering the lair of the rich and powerful when there was nothing but lint in one’s pocket was not easy, but looking the part was half the battle – the other half being possession of the courage and self-assurance needed to walk past checkpoint guards without batting an eyelash. She’d done it of course, but not because she like the company.

She’d risked being ousted and humiliated because wealth and power were used by the Imperial elite to purchase one thing: information. Everything from trade routs, to resource exploitation, to the political manoeuvring in the game of intrigue, those with money and influence would know everything worth knowing, including where she might find a rare and mythical xenos artefact.

How though would she purchase information when she had nothing with which to purchase it?

Raising the lho-stick to her lips and taking a last drag on the nerve-calming smoke, Godwyn pitched the thin cigarillo to the deck and ground it under the heel of her boot.

Money wasn’t the only medium for acquisition on this station. Though before she could buy she needed to find someone who would sell, and where else to look than where money was already changing hands?

Just down the street from her was a hive of activity with people passing around a haughty looking establishment with red-painted wooden doors. The name ‘Imperial Rose’ was wrought in luminescent glass above the threshold, and as Godwyn had been watching many men entered while very few came back out. With a name like that it was probably a gentlemen’s club or a gambling hall, but either way she had to find out.

Pulling her coat around her, she strode purposefully down the side-walk before crossing the middle of the street. It was time to move.

 

The Imperial Rose had done everything it could to forget that it sat within the rusting hull of a vast, smoke-belching space station filled to the brim with stench of humanity, and likewise it did everything it could to pass on its forgetfulness of its surroundings to everyone who passed through its doors.

The first thing Godwyn noticed was the smell.

Recycled air upon a space ship was usually better than most Imperial worlds, though larger, slower vessels typically turned stale and dry once their filtrations systems lost their initial vibrance, and space stations were often worse as air circulation was more often restricted, slow, and unimaginative. The Imperial Rose, however, broke the mould so entirely that for a moment Godwyn thought that she was back on the agri-world breathing in the moist mountain air. It was cool and scented, and, as the Inquisitor stepped over the threshold into the lavishly decorated foyer, she really could imagine that she’d just stepped off an open air road on a paradise world like Panacea or Acre.

Terran roses grew around cast iron trestles on the walls so that their petals carpeted the rustic stone floor, while a marble fountain gurgled quietly in the centre of chamber underneath a shaded ceiling that helped deaden the echoes of her feet as she walked. As beautiful as it was, no-one lingered in the foyer, and as Godwyn passed the fountain she was greeted by the solitary figure of a servitor that had been elegantly crafted from silver plate and wreathed with fresh roses to give it the semblance of a youthful maiden at one with her garden.

“Greetings, noble mistress,” the servitor hailed her with an airy female voice as she approached. “May I be of service to you, noble mistress?”

“No, thank you,” Godwyn replied to the lobotomized servile creature as it shuffled dumbly on hidden feet in an effort to keep its silver features politely facing the Inquisitor as she walked by.

“May I guide you to your table, noble mistress?” it asked meekly, now that the human woman was now completely past it and proceeding to the iron-framed glass doors that led from the foyer into what Godwyn suspected would be the lounge.

“No, thank you,” Godwyn said again, looking over her shoulder at the servitor where its ocular receptors blinked out from behind its silver mask. “I’m here to meet someone.”

“As you wish, noble mistress,” it said. “Welcome to the Imperial Rose.”

Past the entrance hall, the Rose shed is rustic demeanour to become something beautiful, and as Godwyn parted the glass doors she was met with a spacious room finished in equal parts metal and mahogany, in which the charming notes of a piano could just be heard over the murmur of conversations circulating the two tiers of the oval shaped lounge. Servitors, much like the one which had greeted Godwyn at the onset, drifted between tables with a lifeless grace while catering to the desires of the Rose’s clientele, while a great many men with choice beverages in hand idled around the card tables or placed bets on the throw of craps.

With nothing with which to gamble, the Inquisitor turned her back on the game tables and found a place to sit by herself not far from the pianist at the centre of the room. She ordered one drink from a nearby servitor and lit another lho-stick as she casually leaned back in her seat and took in the atmosphere around her.

On a station where men outnumbered women almost three-to-one, Godwyn had little doubt that her sitting alone would garner some attention, and the moment that she finished her drink a second, almost identical beverage appeared before her.

“Who is this from?” she asked the servitor who delivered it, resting her hands in her lap and not touching the fresh glass.

“The noble master sends his highest regards,” the servitor intoned in a sweet, girlish voice as it indicated to a table a small ways across the room.

The Inquisitor glanced over her shoulder with an air of indifference: sitting with two other pompously dressed men, a bullish trader with a thick head and wide shoulders inclined his head in her direction. She gave him a considerate look, sucking back on the lho-stick before letting the smoke creep from the hole in her lips.

“Send it back,” she instructed the servitor. “Tell him to stick his ‘highest regard’ someplace else…”

The man’s face flushed as Godwyn’s message was delivered, and with a few quick words to his companions, the bullish trader briskly stood up from his table and left through the far doors, leaving the servitor to totter awkwardly about with a single glass on its tray.

Crossing one leg over the other and leaning her shoulder further into the plush cushioning of her chair, Cassandra raised the glowing cigarillo back to her lips and released a heavy sigh: that had got her some attention, and the male of the species that inhabited the Rose would relish a challenge.

A second drink soon appeared at her table. It was lighter this time, more colourful – more feminine. Again, she made no move towards it, and glanced over towards the suitor: an older man this time, be-speckled with a full beard and warm smile, bowed steeply in her direction. Still smiling, he bowed again when she sent it back.

Now there was more attention: it was starting to become a game. The other women in the room, of which there were few and whom were displayed as the trophies of their companion’s conquests, looked away in distaste.

The third drink was brought by the suitor himself, a young buck likely in his early thirties, but handsome though he was the blond Inquisitor said nothing behind the smoke of a lho-stick and dismissed him with a glance.

Above all things, men with money and power desire recognition over their peers, and, on a station where the female sex was in short supply, the traders were driven to compete with one another for what they saw as another prize: to them, the thought of laying a female trader who was clearly alone and available was a tempting offer, and one well worth pursuing while they had nothing else on their minds. Cassandra Godwyn wasn’t about to let herself be bought so easily, however, for the information she wanted about the mirror would not be easy to get. Xenos artefacts were extremely dangerous items to handle and carried with them an automatic death sentence if were found by Imperial authorities. Whoever knew about a trade of artefacts would therefore not be bought sex, and would require an altogether different sort of persuasion if Godwyn wanted to find anything at all. Subtlety would be the key.

“M’lady Godwyn? Is it indeed you?”

Godwyn had been rebuking suitors’ advances for over an hour and had been working through her second lho-stick when an older man with a trim goatee and a crop of curled white hair approached her from around pianist’s stand and bowed politely while awaiting her invitation.

Not expecting to be addressed by her name, the Inquisitor did not reply and suppressed her surprised through leisurely drawing on the lho-stick clasped the index and middle fingers of her gloved right hand.

Dapper despite his apparent age, the man waited patiently for her approval with twinkle in his features that seemed to indicate familiarity. Exactly how old he was was impossible to tell as he wore his age well, and though he was neither tall nor well built he had a presence of composure that spoke of experience, confidence, and an exquisite sense of refinement. Everything about him was measured – likely so that his impression came across exactly as intended – and, though it could be a flawlessly executed trick of the mind, Godwyn did get the impression that she knew this man, or at least had met him one or two times before.

“Deroi?” she guessed after a waft of smoke. “Jacobime Deroi?”

The older man inclined his head respectfully as a way of saying that she was right in her guess. “Duroi,” he corrected her amiably, “Jaquobime Duroi. Prithee it gladdens me that I am not so easily forgotten by a lady so fair. May I sit?”

Acquiescing to his request, she waved him to the seat opposite from her, and, with a bow of thanks, he straightened the tails of his bright, red coat and sat himself down across from the Inquisitor. Around the chamber, several other men who had been discretely watching for the first signs of this latest suitor’s rejection promptly averted their eyes and shuffled about looking for new distractions in disappointment. Godwyn ignored them, as did the man now sitting at her table, and as she smoked he ordered two more drinks: for her a three-finger brandy over ice, and for him a finger of amnsec cut with tonic.

Their glasses touched with a *clink* and instantly, like the breaking of a spell, the Inquisitor remembered exactly who the man was and how she met him.

“Pray tell me, my dear lady,” he began once both glasses were back on the table and the pianist had picked up a new piece after a round of applause, “just how is old Columbo doing these days? I must confess that had not expected to be seeing the two of you apart.”

He referred to Hercule Columbo, of course; rogue trader, master of the merchantman Patroclus, and Godwyn’s friend and confidant for the past three decades. Duroi and Columbo had been partners before Godwyn’s time and were still fast friends even though they rarely met, and it was at one such happy reunion aboard Columbo’s ship that Godwyn and Jaquobime Duroi had been introduced. Such an introduction, however, did not include revealing the Inquisitor’s identity; so, for all the man sitting across the table knew, Godwyn was a trader and protégé of his old friend.

“I have to admit that I’m also surprised to find you here,” Godwyn replied light-heartedly, “this is hardly the place I would expect to find a dealer of fine art.”

Duroi smiled and passed his glass between his hands in a playful manner. “Luck can change,” he said with a teasing wink, “though you are proof, I think, that beauty can be found in the darkest of places.”

Remembering how flirtatious he had been when last she saw him, Godwyn played him with a return of his smile. “Luck can change,” she agreed softly, “but I wouldn’t rely on it that much.”

“Indeed,” he acceded, drawing a lho-stick from inside his own jacket and placing it between his teeth before fishing for a light that Godwyn was quick to provide, “thank you… though it must be luck that brings you here even when the Patroclus is not. Pray tell me how it is that my friend, dear Hercule, has left the side of such a beautiful woman in a place like this?”

His comments earned him a girlish smile, though in reality Godwyn was inwardly beaming at her good fortune. Duroi was clever, crafty, and an extremely talented trader (though he hinted that he was talented at many other things too.) Finding him here was a stroke of pure luck, as the odds of him knowing everything worth knowing that passed through Erebus Station were quite favourable. The challenge, however, was getting him to relinquish whatever information he did have, though the Inquisitor had an inkling that he’d be more open to persuasion from a ‘friend’.

“It is a long story, Jaquobime,” she teased him, “and, knowing your love for detail, that will greatly increase the time it takes to tell…”

“Indulge me, please,” he pleaded with a smile, “I have much time yet aboard the station, and, should you ask it of me, I can always make more…”

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

I really do enjoy your work, I find myself coming here when I am bored of my trawling online documents for evidence, facts and quotes and looking, hoping that you have updated your story.

 

Its very gripping. I think I read Inquisition I in one sitting...

 

About the newcomer: Im not sure I like him, I have a friend kinda like him who really annoys me over his women, haha, but this guy is worse. I think if I met him in reality Id not get along with him. But apart from him grating my character personally, I think hes a very nice contrast to Hercule who is a decent guy, and hes a contrast to all your other characters as well. He makes a change, whether its refreshing or repugnant, well, lets find out shall we??

 

My fav character you have developed so far is the Commissar, hes my type of Commissar. Too often people have a negative opinion and show Commissar's negatively, I like the positive light you put on him. He was a really decent chap and Id like to see more Commissar's like him!

[Lady_Canoness]

Haha - considering that the Inquisition I is about the size of a standard Black Library novel, that is quite the feat! I am very glad to hear that the characters are well done and keep the you coming back for more, so if you have any questions about any of them, the thought that went into them, or their design, don't hesitate to ask either here on in PM - I'll answer in a non-spoilerific way!

 

As for Duroi, we'll figure out his angle sooner or later, just like Godwyn has him more or less figured now. Truth be told, I thought up the character as I was getting out of the shower - could be that he was tarred from the start!