Author's note:
**Also, I have edited this document for grammar, spelling and lore corrections! Along with some editions to the story to help flush out the characters.**
This is set in an Alternate Universe of sorts. Being a polytheist and avid amimist I was quickly annoyed by the two-dimensional, juvenile portrayals of the gods in warhammer. I really liked the dark, old medieval Europe environment, mixed with the random space tech though. And I easily identified with the Tech-Priests and their prayer's to the machines. So, just as a warning, I have taken some serious liberties with the way that gods, technology, and how all that manifests in the universe. This story is not about be-mech-suited marines, and no vast armies, just the personal journeys of the character's. My interpretation of corruption and the chaos gods is portrayed through grief, regret, and mental illness, and not some amorphous evil. This is a distinct departure from the very black and white mythos of the warhammer universe. However, I hope you enjoy it regardless and thanks for reading!
Fallen Heart, Rising Ashes
To Pray Thy Soul is Kept
Rising Embers Over Fallen Harte
I Have Preyed Upon Your Soul
Sundered It Apart
The cryo pod made a pop noise. All its contents had thawed out and now sloughed to the floor. The angry pink flesh, once frozen solid, slapped the linoleum side of the floor, the other side being metal grating that clanked and rattled in protest.
I tried to open my eyes. No, open my single eye at the moment. Only one was my original flesh the other had been synthetic and so had been removed, along with all my other robotic parts. One arm and one leg was all that remained for limbs, but all the toes and part of the ankle on the remaining leg had been metal and synthetic as well. The flesh had gone a little black and necrotic around the metal edges.
I looked at my hand, the normally brown skin was puckered, glistening and angry, everything was blurry beyond it, accept Griswold's boot that stepped into view. His voice was the only thing I could clearly make out, the other voices and machine sounds were fuzzy and distant. "Stand up, girl." His thick accent was reassuring, and in my disoriented state I wouldn't question why they popped him out of deep sleep, or why they were popping me out for that matter. "I said, get up girl. You need to pull yourself together, they're coming for you now."
"They? Who?" I stammered out as some hands grabbed my arm, leg and torso, heaving me up onto something metal and cold.
I was wheeled out of the room, limp and covered in the slimy, protective goo of the pod. As we traveled the passageways, the blurry fluorescent lights appeared to flash over head as I passed underneath, bumping and clattering down the hall. The table I was on must of had real wheels instead of hover thrusts, the squeek-squeek-clank echoing through the rusted metal corridors of the facility.
Memories of being dragged through these halls and sedated, all to have my limbs ripped from my body and eventually put to cryo-sleep, began to creep into my mind, tugging at the corners like insistent ghosts. I knew that more of my mind would come online, more memories would become accessible, as my internal systems rebooted. My brain had entire chunks of gray and pink noodles taken out and replaced with faster, more efficient mechanical hardware. Almost all of my long term memory was stored on these data banks. Since my synthetic eye was gone I couldn't see the data stream that was running the reboot sequence, but I could feel the effects. I knew my internal code, I had written most of it myself after all, and could feel the little messages being sent out to all the internal organ monitors and generating reports of the results.
I heard murmuring from around me as the personnel began navigating an elevator and then another hall, this one smaller, into a small room with lots of equipment hanging from the ceiling.
"Grab that bag under the trolli. I'll set up the operating table." One of the two people said, pointing to an unseen shelf under where I was limply laying like a dying fish; beached, writhing and gasping for air.
The other cryo-tech leaned down past my bleary vision and grumbled, "damn, are there any human parts left? Is this her liver?" She said straightening and peeking into a plastic bag.
The first tech just shrugged and said, "I was told to decant this one out of deep-sleep. The brass was very insistent that she was awake and reassembled when he arrived."
The other, a woman with light brown hair pulled tightly back into a bun looked impressed and said in a hushed tone, "did they really send Inquisitor codes?"
The first tech, an older man, gray streaks leaking from his hairline down to his neatly trimmed beard, shrugged again, "Orders are orders, regardless of who sends 'em." But his tone also betrayed his own awe at such a humble criminal holding facility being involved in such gossip-worthy happenings. This would obviously be the talk of the whole place for months, years even. Said in hushed tones to impress the new interns.
With a grunt they heaved me from one table to another. The new metal was actually warm, apparently to help with the thawing process. At this point I was able to to coherently make sentences. I saw that Griswold stood on the other side of the observation window, the presence of my old mentor making me feel safer and more calm. His long, unkempt beard hung out from under his mask. While he had always said he grew it to attract the 'women-folk', (his words, not mine), I had always suspected he had kept it so wild and mangy to upset his peers at the adeptus mechanicus. The other professors had always squinched up their faces when he came up out of the sprawling labyrinthine basement of the massive structure. As if his very existence was an affront to their persons and professional credibility.
"Please," I managed as the male-tech prepped a hypo-spray with sedative, reaching out to him with a trembling hand, "How long? How long has it been?"
The female tech touched my arm reassuringly and after taking a quick peek at the tablet that presumably had all my info including my name, she said softly, "Andromeda isn't it? Pretty name. But don't worry, sweetie, after we put you back together we'll brief you on all that." and patted me gently.
Than the male tech jabbed me with the hypo and I began to fall back to the table. As my eye closed slowly I heard the female tech say gently, "that's right, we'll be done in a jiffy."
I woke up slowly, the headache of being drugged pulling me out of the wonderful darkness. Also an insistent bladder that had apparently gone operational and was demanding release. Shielding my eyes from the fluorescent lights that made me nauseous just moving under them, I sat up. To quickly apparently, my stomach protesting, heaving spit and cryo fluids onto the floor next to me. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and gingerly, more slowly this time, sat up and got to my shaky feet. My eye was back in the socket, a few lines of code ran by at my inquiry. Looked to be in the green for most systems, a few had coded yellow errors with the install of my other parts and flashed insistently as the log scrawled over the inside of my eye. Apparently all the tech did was put me back together and let my body, filled with nano's, do the rest. It was a surprisingly quick and dirty job and I'd have to spend some time making the minute adjustments that made the robotic parts move fluidly, as if they were original to my body.
As it was, the parts had a slight delay and their connections didn't feel as anchored to my skin and bone as perhaps they should be, making them feel ill-fitting. I had to lumber to the little closet that contained the toilet and sink. My metal foot clanking sourly on the floor.
I sat on the toilet after struggling with the medical gown. I gave up on trying to navigate it and took it off, pulling it gently off my robotic arm and wading it up to my chest. Letting my bladder empty, rubbing my still flesh right hand's palm with the mechanical left and reflected on the frustrating time the cryo-techs tasked with my disassembly would have had. Because even now my body is a mix of metal and flesh, it would have been difficult to suss out where my fleshy parts started and robotic ended. I imagined the miserable tech just starting to rip them apart. Some of the damage I could see of the new cryo-tech's shoddy patching might have indicated this.
It's important to note at this point that to cryo-freeze someone is fairly straightforward. You fill their body with special bio-fluid that helps the flesh from degrading over time. However, having metal parts puts a kink into things, because they don't freeze the same way and there tends to be echos. Bizarre dreams of the mech body desperately sending messages to the brain. It's…. Not great to remember those, and sometimes they can be so strong that they wake the person up. That's fine if you're only going to sleep for a year or two, but I was sentenced to, well, forever. So that means that as much of the mechanical parts had to go that could go. It also made any flesh near the metal become damaged and began to rot. Luckily it appeared that the tech's had replaced and flesh-crafted all the blackened dead from my body. Small mercies.
I sighed, pushing the disturbing echoes of that time in deep-freeze that made my skin crawl away from the foreground of my mind and kept searching further. Before that memory was the drag through this facility, before that the sentencing for my crimes… I shivered. The god-king's eyes boring holes into me that I don't think I'll ever be able to get back any time soon. What a hellish mistake. The terror from that memory of His not-voice piercing my mind, declaring my imprisonment.
I heard the door open, pulling me form the memory, and booted feet walked into the room. Military boots? Hadn't the cryo tech mentioned something about an inquisition? Bad news for me. To pop me out of cryo early would have needed some serious red tape. Even for an Inquisitor. Who could go to any planet, wave their hand around and the whole surface would be purged bare. I had been sentenced and sent here by the god-king himself. So now, I was curious what that conversation would have looked like, the Inquisitor, hat in his hands going before the God-king to ask if I could be released. Unless the Emperor had instructed this Inquisitor to pop me out. But still the question hanging in the corners of my mind: why?
A voice from the other side of the door, "Where is she?" Male, older. Maybe forties? I could hear the leather of his holster creak.
"I'm peeing." I said ruefully and opened the sliding door so he could clearly see me… and I could clearly see him.
He was a handsome devil. Definitely late fifties, maybe even sixties. He was clean shaven with cleanly cut silver hair, his black cape draped easily off his shoulders, black leather boots and belt gleamed with the care that must have been put into their maintaining. His stern features, while creased with age, were well defined and very easy on the eyes. He was probably a head turner in his youth, I reflected. I took a snapshot of him like that, standing in the more yellow light of the hall, one gloved hand resting on his belt buckle, the other holding a tablet. Save that for later, I thought with a little smile, but said out loud, "I'm done though." And stood up, letting the ball of medical gown slide down to the floor.
His frown lines deepened once he got a good look at me. His eyes making the rounds up the feminine curves of my body. Over my robotic leg and hip, my mechanical arm, but stopping at my chest. Between my breasts, where the once black text of a chaos gods dark mark of ownership spiraled out, now glowed faintly golden. He wouldn't know this, but the words were different now too.
"So, it's true. 'Once of chaos, she is now the devotee of life and goodness. Branded with my holy power'." At my raised eyebrow of inquiry, he continued, "His words, not mine. I don't speak so flowery. At least, not normally."
I was still unsure what he meant by that, had the Emperor said that about me? But he waved me over to sit on the bed. There was a little stool in the corner that he picked up and set down next to the cot, looking at me expectantly.
I walked over and sat down, pulling my long, dark brown hair back and over my shoulder, twisting it as I did so.
"I was told that the reassembly took longer than expected and you were not briefed on the situation." My face must have portrayed my confusion because he nodded and continued, looking at his tablet, "Well, since your incarceration two-hundred years have passed," he paused to weigh my reaction to his news. Shorter than I had originally guessed, it was still too long and my heart lurched; I looked down at my hands in shock at the implications of that. But he continued, "I was assigned you, as I had foolishly gone to the emperor Himself, and asked for assistance." He signed, resigned, "I was not prepared for his answer. Although most are not ready for their god to answer a prayer, let alone give you a concise and understandable answer back."
I nodded sagely at this, "Yep, it fucking terrifying." He looked up sharply, taken aback by my response. But I was able to hold my placid expression under his sudden scrutiny. "Why?" I asked finally. More of a demand than question.
He held the tablet up and waggled it slightly. "My assignment. Some loose ends from your past, mostly. But there's, well, I need to capture someone. And I was told by Him of all beings, that you could help me. And after reading your file... " again he paused and pursed his lips, weighing something unseen, then as if one side of the internal debate was utterly defeated and he said in a sad, resigned tone, "I trust in His judgement." As if reaffirming it more to himself then me.
I tilted my head at this, taking in the whole of the man, now that I was closer, I could see that he had a bit of scruff from not shaving as recently as I'd thought, and his clothes were slightly rumpled and creased. Not the clean, neigh immaculate clothes and appearance I had once thought. There was darkness on his soul too, I could smell it. Perhaps he was newly minted with his corruption, or maybe it was a long time struggle, but this man was tainted. A perverse smile spread across my lips as I took it's flavor in.
He seemed to look up at me then from his thoughts, noticing me again, and my disturbing smile. "Poor little High Inquisitor…" I trailed off, then continued quickly, "Are you losing your way from the light? How long has it been? Since you truly felt His warmth in your heart?" I let my tone get soft, conspiratorially leaning forward, "How long have you felt lost?"
At that he bared his teeth and quickly, belying his age, backhanded me. There was true strength behind it and a little blood trickled from my lip. "Silence, wretch. You are here on my good graces. You will hold your tongue and treat me with the respect of my station."
I straightened, letting my head loll back, peeling my lips back in a wicked grin, the blood from my broken lip smearing across the teeth. A manic laughter burbling up from my throat. "I was chosen of Malaal, Undead god of night, and the frozen wastes of hell. You. Do. Not. Scare. Me, old man." I choked off the maddening giggles that were clawing their way up my throat. And then I spat the blood on him.
He dropped the tablet on the ground and lunged forward grabbing my neck with one hand, punching me in the face with his other, just the once, and I heard the wet snap of my nose. The look of barely contained rage that flashed across his face as he did so, told me more about the stain on his soul then he probably knew himself.
I laughed in his face, my mouth filling with blood. Now he was talking in a language I was fluent in. Grabbing his coat front, I used it to leverage a knee to his groin. He dodged, feeling my intent, and was able to move his hips enough to get a painful jab in the inner thigh, but not enough to actually slow him. My limbs felt heavy and sluggish, making it surprisingly hard to fight.
This time he hit me squarely in the temple knocking me out.
As I went limp in his hands, he let me go and I slid to the bed. He straightened and smoothed back his hair, adjusting his coat and cape, in an attempt to regain composure. He turned and walked out of the small room, picking up the tablet from the ground and raising one of the techs on comms to 'clean the prisoner up and get her ready for transport'.
When I came to, the female cryo tech was leaning over me. I had been tucked into the bed, blankets pulled up to my chin, the women was dabbing my face gently with some clean antiseptic and cotton balls.
I groaned and opened my eyes. One was starting to swell shut. "Shh," she soothed as I moved slightly.
"You should have seen the other guy," I said through my swollen lip.
"I did. Why did you pick a fight with an Inquisitor? Your lucky to be alive." She dabbed more and I winced.
"Nah, he still needs me for something. Not that I have the faintest clue what. I kind of teased him until he punched the shit outta me. It's a bad habit from my days at the Mechanicus. They say it's my deep seeded issues with authority." I wiggled my eyebrows at her and sat up wincing at the dull throb in the back of my head. "I say it's just not taking shit from giant cocks. Even handsome-silver-haired cocks."
She stifled a chuckle, looking nervously behind her and biting her lip at the door to my room, as if the High Inquisitor was standing just behind it, waiting to give her a similar beat-down. "Still though, you should just do what he says." She leaned back on her heels, putting the little cotton ball on a pile of bloodied balls she had collected in a small dish. Set on the little stool from earlier next to the bed. "Say, can I ask you a question?" she asked in a slow hesitant tone, taking off her gloves.
"I don't think I can stop you." I gave a little smile that probably looked like a grimace through the swollen skin. She looked thoughtful and a little scared, fingering a pendant that hung from her neck: the pendant of the God-King's sigil. As if she had one wish from a genie and didn't want to waste it on a stupid question, or phrase the question in a way that wouldn't actually get her what she was angling for.
"Your chest…" She paused, "What, um…" She seemed lost as to how to phrase it.
I sat up all the way and looked down at the slowly glowing text. At least it wasn't moving anymore. Sometimes it moved and was perhaps the most unpleasant, skin crawling feeling I had ever encountered. "It's the mark of the Emperor God-King." She boggled at my candid response, her mouth open, her eyes nearly bugging out of her head. I continued, undaunted by her shock, "It was originally black, back when Malaal owned me. But then," Now I paused, going over that moment in my past and unable to find a way to sum it up. "Well, I met the God-King and he offered me a better deal." I finished lamely. She leaned in closer to me now with awe and wonder in her features.
"Did it hurt?"
"Yes, very much. Both times."
She seemed to become lost in thought, attempting to decipher what I meant by that.
"Do you have some anti-inflammatories and some clothes?" I prompted her from her silent thinking. She looked up at me sadly then.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, I was told very specifically by Inquisitor Errold that I could only dress your wounds. Not give you anything for the pain or inflammation. Or set your nose." She gestured to my bruising, crooked nose apologetically. "You really made him mad."
"I guess so. Okay, you got more of those cotton balls?"
"Yes," she nodded and held up the bag.
Holding the cartilage of my nose gently, with one quick movement I cracked it, very painfully, back into place. It wasn't pretty, but it would have to do. I quickly plugged up the nostrils with cotton. Tears streamed down my cheeks from the nasal trauma.
"How does it look?" I asked hopefully but her sad little head shake didn't fill me with confidence.
"You might be able to breath out of it. Once the swelling goes down. You'll have to go to a professional though. Someone who can flesh sculpt it back to the way it should be."
I shrugged at that. It wouldn't be the first time. "How about those clothes?"
This she brightened at since apparently the Inquisitor hadn't said anything in particular about my being naked. "Oh, we have everything you came to the facility in. Your weapons were confiscated though. Along with some of your… other effects." I mused at what she meant. My wedding band, maybe? My tool belt?
"Ok, well, give me whatever I got." She nodded smiling. "If you can stand I'll take you to the locker. You can get a shower too, if you'd like."
"That'd be nice."
I stood with her help and wobbled over to the door, grumbling about my leg not being adjusted properly. She just smiled at me and laughed, "At least we could figure out how to put it back on. Fancy tech you got there. Even if it is a few centuries outdated."
I snorted at her as we made our way down the hall to the lockers, offended at the notion that I had outdated tech.
She steered me to the showers and got me her shower caddie. "I don't normally share, but, well, your god-touched." She said with a little happy bounce. My eyebrows almost disappeared into my hairline at that. And I was left, holding the white plastic box from it's cheap handle. Staring blankly at her retreating back.
Well. Who knew being a deities play thing could in anyway have a good benefit. Normally my dealings with gods and their followers ended poorly, as I always seemed to be on the wrong side of every religion.
I showered, the warmth of the water wonderful and familiar. I toweled off and limped over to where the lockers were. Leaning against walls and on doorways as I passed to keep my balance. The female tech had been reading a tablet and looked up at my approach. She gestured to the bag with my personal things in it and the open locker with a long mirror. She also made sure to note that there was a hair brush in the shower caddie that I was encouraged to use, along with the hair ties on it's handle. And she'd found a cane that I could use until I was able to adjust my mechanical parts.
I put on my clothes. They were the stolen clothes of a Sister of Battle, tight black leather with velvet reds and crisp flowing lines, although the intricately made gold plated body armor appeared to be one of the 'confiscated' belongings. The outfit had been a favorite of my wife's and I had worn it more for her pleasure then my own. My personal preference being a t-shirt and slacks. I then slipped my wedding band on, turning it fondly as I did so. We had decided on simple gold bands. Nothing fancy. I had just been so happy to have her, I didn't care about the rings, it was another thing she had insisted on that I found myself giving into without reservation. Then something sobering passed through my thoughts. "Two-hundred years." I said softly. And something sad and unspoken rose up in my throat. Catching the words as they left my mouth. Was that wetness around my eyes from the shower? It must be.
Sensing my mood change the tentative voice behind me said gently, "I have your briefing if you want to look at it. I'm told that you'll be leaving with the Inquisitor later today. I turned and said, "Yeah, I'll take a look at it. Do you-" I felt the choke of emotion in my voice and gritted my teeth against it. "Do you have access to the main data core? Recent events? Personal histories of Imperial troops?"
She seemed surprised by the question then she looked at my hand where I'd been fingering the gold band and a sad expression mirrored my own. "Well, I could probably access some info, but it's um," she seemed uncomfortable, "not for civilian or prisoner eyes." She finished awkwardly and gave me an apologetic look.
I sighed and nodded, it was expected. I was a convicted felon after all. And although she had been very kind to me, asking this seemed too far. I wasn't going to get her in trouble for something that I could most likely find out in a few hours on my own.
I finished up by brushing my hair and putting it back in a loose braid. Taking the tablet in one hand, the cane in the other, I started to read it as we walked to the hanger bay where the Inquisitors shuttle sat.
After a few lines I found out why I had been popped out of cryo. Jason Lockharte's picture smiled mischievously back at me from his mugshot on the tablet. Reading the whole report revealed that this inquisitor had been the second to chase after him. The first finally succumbing to a drinking problem. Typical Lockharte. I had spent most of my time with him as a friend and I could sympathize with the sentiment of being driven to drink oneself to death.
However, it appeared that while Lockharte had managed to elude the last Inquisitor, this new one, Errold, had almost got him several times. And had only been working the case for a scant 3 years. Perhaps I had misjudged you, Silver Fox. I thought as we approached the shuttle.
"I'll leave you here, with the Inquisitor's apprentice." She gave a nod at the shuttle's open door. "He should be just inside." I nodded to her then noted her downward glance, seeming to linger for some reason, shuffling her feet.
I waited a moment then prompted out of curiosity, "was there something else?"
She looked up at my inquiry a look of urgency to her features, "do you hear the god-kings' voice? And-" she paused seeming to loose her nerve, "does he hear you?" at my quizzical expression she continued the thought, "I've heard that those chosen by His Holy Savor of Man, those that carry a holy mark especially have His ear and can deliver others' prayers to Him."
My brows rose in surprise as I had never thought about it like that. It had always been a burden to hear the words of my deities. Or going out of my way to contact them, only doing so in the most extreme situations. They had never said things I found particularly comforting, certainly. I finally said at length, "I honestly never tried to deliver a message for someone else." I hesitated at her disappointed look, "but I've never been asked to," I quickly added, feeling like I should try to do something nice in return for this woman's earlier kindness. "is there something you wanted to ask the god-king?"
Her eyes widened at this and she gave me a grateful nod.
"How do I…?" she let the question hang.
I shrugged and held my hands out, palms up, fingers spread, showing that I was just as out of my depth as she was. She pressed her lips together in thought and then said, "During confession the cleric first says he must open himself to the divine light then tells us to whisper our confession."
"Huh, well, I think I can do that." I took a moment and felt that hole in my soul, my hand absently touching my chest. More of a door really, that felt like the god was always standing just on the other side, like I could see the shadow under the edge of the door. I had opened the door before when it had been Malaal, but never for the undead God-King. So, I closed my eyes and tried to gently open the portal near my heart. I felt a surprising warmth spread through me from that center, an altogether different feeling than Malaal's icy hands that had come through groping, consuming. I heard a gasp and opened my eyes, to see she was staring at my chest, eyes wide, tears brimming her eyes. I looked down and saw my chest was glowing brightly, the individual letters almost visible under my clothes.
I nodded to her, "ok, go ahead." She took a step towards me and leaned in close, her body was almost touching mine, her lips whispered something almost inaudible. I felt the warmth and calmness that spread out through my body as her words seemed to pass right through me and I realized even though my physical body had heard them, I was unable to recall what they had been. She pulled back from me, searching my face for a reply. Then I felt the slow creep of joy, it felt sluggish, but was there, as if hearing someone say something from across a cavern.
"I think," I paused unsure, her face creased with worry, "no," starting again more sure this time, "he definitely heard you, and I think," I smiled, "he feels joy over it?" as I couldn't, for the life of me remember the question I searched her face to fine some explanation.
But she just returned my smile, nodding her obvious relief. "Thank you," she said and happily turned to leave.
I suddenly felt confused and exhausted, the light and the warmth fading, my small task complete it seemed. "Your welcome, I think." I whispered. Then limped over to the door and hauled myself up. "Hello?" I said to the darkness within.
"Hum?" Came a voice belonging to a young man, he leaned back in his chair where he'd been pouring over something at the pilot's seat. He blinked up at me, his dark hair brushed back, showing widow peaks and gaunt features. "Oh, are you the heretic we're getting to help with the case? Andromeda, right?" He seemed disinterested at best.
"Heretic? Yeah, I guess." Weird to have someone call you out like that. It felt like an ill-fitting suit.
"He gestured at the empty seats behind him and said, "well, pull up a chair. We leave in an hour." He then eyed me suspiciously as I hobbled, using the cane, to get to my seat, slowly letting myself slide into the seat then adjusting my hips so my leg jutted out into the pathway.
He frowned at me, then turned back to his reading, dismissing me from his thoughts.
My inner pest couldn't leave good enough alone though, so I started talking in a conversational tone to this kid. I wanted to see how much of a tool he was. By his opening statement of 'heretic' I was going to hazard a guess at being the whole tool box. Maybe the entire shed. "So, how long have you been an apprentice?" I asked.
He grunted, not even looking up. "Two years."
"Hum, not long at all. Are you his first? Has he been gentle with you so far?" I made that sound as inappropriate as possible. Hoping to get a rise out of him.
I was rewarded with a dirty look over his shoulder and a grumpy, "Why do you care? Not that it's any of your business, but I'm his third. He's very wise."
Oh, boy. This poor kid. He was really buying the imperial bullshit, hook, line, and sinker. "So your predecessors graduated to Inquisitors?" I continued to prod.
This made him turn, now thoroughly annoyed at my inquiry. "No. Only one did the other died. Because of that vagrant, Lockharte. That's why your here, and why your going to help us." He huffed, and then added, "Don't you have something you can do instead of bug me?."
I perked up at this. "Actually, since you asked, I'd love to look over some imperial personnel files if possible." He frowned suspiciously at me again.
"Why?" He let the word linger, pulling out the vowel sound to make an emphasis of the level of distrust he had for me. The idiot turned his back on me a moment before, and now he was distrustful of what I'd do with access to the data stream? Well, yeah, okay. One look at my file would tell anyone all they needed to know about my quick manipulation of data and coding abilities. Although it seemed to have not mentioned how skilled I was with my hands. Any of my enemies that I met in hand to hand could have told him that. And any of my lovers.
After a moment of consideration I thought to be candid with the little tot. "It's been a couple of centuries since I went under. I want to see who's still ali-" I cut myself off, or maybe it was that stupid lump in my throat that wouldn't go away. I rephrased the statement, "I'd like to see what became of my associates."
He seemed to not catch the alteration, or just didn't care. And looked over at something on his read out, seeming to confirm that it wasn't on the classified list of things for me; on the 'no-no' list as it were. Then with a grunt he reached out to me, hand palm up, "Give me that tablet." I handed it to him, and after a few moments of uploading info from his console he handed it back to me.
I went to reach for it, but my arm felt suddenly heavy with indecision, and I hesitated a moment, then quickly took it from him before I lost my nerve.
I looked at the darkened screen. I only had to touch the surface to make the backlight come on. But suddenly I felt like lead weights were bound to my hands, binding me from finding the truth of my comrades. Taking a shaky breath I touched the screen and scrolled through the names listed.
Lieutenant Jenson, Mark "Strongarm" - Deceased.
He had been like a brother to me; my older, meaner brother. Apparently he had died on the run a few days after the incident that changed everything at the tomb: the same day as my betrayal.
Mardukth, Civilian - Deceased.
He'd been my other adopted brother. The three of us had gotten so close, like a demented chaos family. Bound by the gods. And torn apart by them as well.
I sat for a moment after skipping a few names, gloved finger hovering over the glowing text:
Colonel Helios, Artimeisa - Deceased.
Another breath to steal the courage needed, then I touched it. Her face appeared on the tablet and I couldn't stop the sob from leaving my mouth. Her beautiful eyes sparked memories of our stormy fights, her lips frowning in the picture was the same mouth I'd kissed a thousand times. I looked up, pushing my fist into my lips, clenching my jaw, tears welling up in my eyes. I'd never kiss those lips, that neck, or any part of her again. I could hear her screaming in the background of my mind, the replay of her last moments with me. She'd been at my trial. I had begged for her to be spared. As I was dragged away she had screamed over the din of people clamoring, of the chanting of the priests. Her last words were, "I love you! Don't you fucking forget it!" I had yelled it back at her, but had felt it'd been lost in the chaos of the trial.
I breathed shakily, no matter the outcome, she was certainly dead now; I had to live with that. And now I was to hunt after the last of our motley band of rogues, murderers and thieves.
The God-King Emperor had promised me freedom from Malaal and protection from the other chaos gods. I just had to obey once He had decided what He wanted from me in return, and it was apparently time to pay up. I knew my job. And I wasn't going to shirk it. I wouldn't necessarily fight going back into cryo once it wall all said and done either, as long as I could do a few things first.
I gently wiped the tears from my face with a handkerchief that was only a little bit bloodstained. The blood had been from Helios' broken nose from a fight. I had taken it out and we had both laughed about how ineffectual it was at staunching the blood. I noticed the young apprentice looking at me, turned now in his seat, one arm slung over the back of the chair. A quizzical look on his face.
"You learn after enough tragedy," I paused letting the word hang with weight, "to let the tears come if they will." He seemed a little disgusted by the idea.
"They teach us to hold our emotions tightly, to not show what one might truly feel." He was thoughtful now, looking at the ceiling seeming to remember some lesson on the matter.
"Yeah, well, I guess I'm the criminal, so what do I know."
He seemed to agree and absently nodded. I tucked the small, now damp cloth back into my pocket and asked, "What's your name, kid." He looked back to me, pulled from his reminiscing. "Maddock."
After a moment he shrugged indifference and turned back to his reading and I turned the screen of my tablet off. The desire to torture myself having left. Plenty of time for that self-destructive behavior later. I thought ruefully to myself while tucking the tablet away in the folds of my jacket, and settled down for some internal checking of systems. I could maybe edit some of the code to compensate for the damage done to my mechanical parts. At best it would be a temporary solution.
About forty minutes later I heard some shouting coming from outside the small shuttle, drifting in from the open hatch.
I looked questioningly over at Maddock who shrugged in reply. We both looked over at the open hatch and it became clear that the shouting was at the female cryo-tech.
"Emperor smite you, women! I swear by His holy throne, if my apprentice is dead and the damned convict escaped I'll have your whole forsaken planet laid to waste!"
A female and a male's voice began to plead for forgiveness as the quick, long strides of the tall man, and the quicker pitter patter of the flustered tech's feet approached.
He quickly reached the shuttle and strode in, blaster in hand, a snarl across his lips. He paused as he took in the quiet scene before him. I was seated, relaxed in my chair, my cane resting between my knees, one leg stretched out into the walkway. The surprised looking apprentice gawking at his mentor, staring at the drawn weapon in his hands, from his place at the helm of the ship. The reports and literature he had been pouring over still up on the little screen.
A bemused smile tugged at the corner of my mouth that wasn't swollen. "You think if I'd known that killing the kid and taking the ship was on the table I would be halfway to a pleasure cruise by now." I said playfully.
He put his weapon away and snapped back, "Don't push me, heretic." There was that word again! Highly inappropriate, even if accurate. More like, 'Giver of very few shits".
He turned his wrath on the two cowering cryo techs, the older male was trying to stand bravely in front of the female. "You two idiots almost cost me everything."
"Please, she didn't know she was to take the prisoner to you directly and not to the shuttle. It was a misunderstanding." He said halfheartedly before his courage failed him.
"You're lucky and bloody stupid, and that's the extent of it." The Inquisitor raged.
"But she has been consecrated by the Emperor himself, with his holy mark upon her breast. She is trustworthy. A creature blessed by His Greatness." The women said placing a hand on her companion, squeezing her co-worker's arm reassuringly, while grabbing her necklace with the other, as if she could reason with this inquisitor. "She is, in herself divine."
Inquisitor Errold seemed incensed by this logic, but unable to find a way to properly verbally chide them, he turned instead to his apprentice, "And you!" Maddock seemed to wither and shrink into himself at the sudden attention, "Why are the comms off? I've been hailing you since this fool-women told me she brought the prisoner to my shuttle!"
"I-I-" He stammered, then continued, "I muted them." He said sheepishly. My eyebrows rose at that. If some fool pilot had done that to me while I was captain of my ship, heads would have literally rolled. "Oh you poor boy." I said under my breath, knowing the shit storm that was about to fly, and I wondered hopefully if I would be less of a target using my cane to hobble away to safety, as I eyed the exit. Or maybe I could just try leaping over the chairs to the door…
"You. Did. What?!" Incensed and obviously barely in control of his inner torment Inquisitor Errold bared down on the now quivering younger man. This kid was going to get a rough lesson in having a blase' attitude around high strung elders. I felt for him suddenly. I'd been there and I knew how much like a powder keg that could be. One moment an innocuous barrel, the next big-badda-booms. My time on Mars, in the college of the adeptus mechanicus had been brutal due to my stubborn unwillingness to bend under their tender 'tutelage'. Daily beatings to help me 'understand the horrors that befall those that walk not in light, but in the shadow of heresy'. Or so I was told repeatedly. However, I had just learned how to hate. And how to say what needed to be said to survive. That is until I was sent in a moment of desperation, to Regis Griswold: The only tech-priest more disliked than I was.
I sighed and heaved myself up with the use of the cane, I stood squarely in the way of the raging typhoon that was this Inquisitor. I leaned, both hands on the stick to keep from wobbling, and locked eyes with Errold, straightening myself as much as possible, my face stony, bracing for the pummeling I was about to receive. Better me than this poor waif of a kid, he was all skin and bones, and didn't look like he'd ever been on the receiving end of an asskicking. I however, had intimate knowledge of both ends. And knew how to protect my head and organs.
The Inquisitor walked right up to me, his face centimeters from mine, "Move aside," he growled.
"No." Came my implacable reply.
"I said move!" He shouted and raised his hand to backhand me. My nostrils flared with the anticipated pain, and I raised my head defiantly, my eyes daring him to strike me. His open hand turned to a fist as it paused in the air, then after a few moments of glaring at each other his hand slowly sunk, and I watched as he deflated.
He turned and shouted angerly at the two tech's, "get off my ship!" to which they hastily scampered out, and the Inquisitor waved tiredly at Maddock, "get us into orbit," and then he stumped to the back of the ship where there was a computer station and a cot. He sat at the computer station. And leaned on his desk with his elbows and placed his face in his hands as his apprentice obediently shut the shuttles door and began the launch sequence.
I had to command my shoulders to loosen, and my jaw to unclench. Trying to pry my body from the grips of adrenaline, telling it to stand down and that there wasn't anything to fight.
I let out the breath that had been trapped in my lungs. And limped stiffly over to Maddock and slid down into the seat next to him.
Once we were out of orbit and heading to the slightly bigger, fancier ship that must belong to the Inquisitor, Maddock leaned over to me and whispered, "thank you." I just nodded. Saying nothing more, he went back to the docking procedures.
The little shuttle shook slightly as the larger ship's computer took the helm and guided the smaller vessel into the tight bay.
I grunted at the rough hand-off and glanced over at the kid, leaning in and saying disgustedly, "when was the last time you adjusted the on-board flight system?"
He just blinked at me, "I- we don't. That's taken care of when we dock for repairs at a Inquisitor Headquarters."
I scoffed and rolled my eyes, "Typical Imperials. The whole ship could come down around your ears and you'd say it wasn't your fault. Well, your not going to catch a slippery prey like Lockharte with barely functioning computer systems. He'll run circles around you."
Maddox puffed up a little at the derision in my tone, "This ship is some of the latest tech available."
"Aye, it's fancy enough." I said, quietly making note of my mentors inflection along with his very words, the memory of my childhood's lesson that day long ago, coming out of my mouth. "But if the code isn't smooth the hardware is useless." This said with a slight nod. How much of him was in me, I wondered. And wasn't he in the facility when I woke up? I shook my head. Echoes again playing tricks on me.
Maddock however, seemed to take in my words with a slight head tilt. He was a student through and through. I could see it as he sat and digested my sagely advice. I had said it with such surety. It must have triggered his Apt Pupil reflex. I chuckled at that knowledge, oh the trouble I could get him into abusing that quality. It was rare that such a thing wasn't beaten out of him in his younger years, I know it was in me, but I was just as a rare bird as the aforementioned Lockharte.
We jostled as the landing gear touched the floor of the hanger bay and I winced. It was like being back on my old marauder captain, Valentine's ship with his stupid pilot. Who treated the ship like a toy, using seat-of-his-pants flying techniques that had made me cringe in solidarity with the poor, overworked ship.
As soon as we touched metal landing feet to bay floor, Errold Stood up and strode to the door shouting over his shoulder. "Get the heretic to her room then take yourself to yours. I don't want to see you for the rest of the night." then after slamming his hand on the airlock button he strode out of sight.
I looked over at Maddock my eyebrows raised, "he always this moody?"
"I guess so. That what Tam said, anyway."
"Tam is the dead apprentice?"
"Yeah." He said that a little sadly as he finished the engine cool off procedure. Like being reminded of a brother that had been lost. Although I wanted to press him to figure out what was going on with the Inquisitor, I decided to take the gentler, more friendly approach. Absently I heard Mortimer, my other life partner, laughing at me. He'd have been amused by this gentle, even handed approach. Waking up in a cold criminal cryo facility, everyone you knew dead, could do that to a person.
"You were close then?" I pressed.
"Yeah." This was a little sullen as well. Showing his young age with the slightly petulant way his frown tilted and he punched the buttons a little harder. He stood finally while I was trying to figure out what to prod him about next, and he held out a hand to me, "Come on. Let's get you put away." The way he said it was kind, even though it sounded like I was a towel that needed to be folded and stowed. While I didn't need his hand to get up from the chair I took it anyway, not wanting to be rude while playing nice, and pulled myself up with a grunt of pain. I was beginning to suspect that the massive metal spine that had replaced my own bone hadn't weathered the trip to popsicle land well. I was starting to get swelling and serious pain.
I leaned on the cane and gritted my teeth, lumbering to the door. "You ok?"
He saw the grimace, huh? Sweet kid.
"Yeah, I'll be okay. I think some of my implants are in full on rebellion from the treatment they got from those cryo-tech's butchery of my reassembly. I also don't think they ever thought I was going to get popped out of sleep, so they were…" I paused, trying to be kind to the unkind treatment, "rough with the disassembly." It was the best I could manage.
But as I turned back to the exit, passing by the last few chairs on my way out, I took a double take at one of them. Griswold was sitting, looking up at me with a sad expression. He watched me pass by him. Long ruddy beard hanging out from under his optical Tech Priest mask. "Good luck, kiddo." He said in a gruff tone. I said nothing to him and finally broke my eyes away to look at the doorway.
Clearing my throat I stepped out, the shuttle bay and every surface I could see for that matter was immaculate. More of the Inquisitors corruption? It could manifest in bizarre ways; I had seen all sorts.
After a bit of thought, as we walked from the shuttle to the small room that was to be my quarters for the duration, Maddock said, "We are making to land at some hubs, maybe you could get looked at there?"
It was was nice of him to suggest, but I would have to figure out how to navigate the stormy waters of my new warden, the Inquisitor, first. I merely nodded in response, though, again trying to be polite.
I walked through the doorway of my little room and turned, "Hey listen," I said in a whisper as he made to leave. Pausing mid-step, he looked back at me, "Take some food with you." I said.
"Huh?" he looked confused.
"I got sent to my room all the time when I was an apprentice. Sometimes for weeks at a time. Grab some food really quick before you head to your quarters. You never know how long you'll be out of his good graces." He looked thoughtful at the advice.
"He wouldn't make me forgo dinner…" But as he said it, I could see the doubt spread across his face, as if he doubted his own words as he said them.
Dismissing this I continued, "And make sure they aren't perishable. Like the ration bars. You can hide them for later if you don't need them now." I gave him a reassuring smile and a gentle shove out of the room, "now get out of here before he finds something else to yell at you for." The dummy kid was growing on me, so I quickly shut the door on those rising emotions.
"No more fucking attachments, women!" I chided myself in a whisper when the door shut and I leaned against it, taking in the room. It had a cot with a pillow and blanket set at the foot, folded and laundered. A little chair was next to a sink, and a darkened doorway must be where the toilet was hiding. I dragged my body over to the bed and collapsed. I suddenly wanted to be back in cryo sleep. Echo dreams and all. At least I couldn't feel so tired when I was asleep.
Laying on my back, one leg still hanging off the side of the little cot, tears started to leak unbidden from the corners of my eyes. Trickling down my temples, over my ears and dripping on the mattress. I pulled the tablet out, Now for some of the self destructive behavior I promised myself. I tapped the screen and the backlight obediently lit up, showing me a stern Helios staring back out. "That's not you, baby. I know you." I said, memories of her laughter and how it made her blue eyes sparkle rushed up and overwhelmed me, my heart breaking. A sob jerked out of my mouth, tears blurring my vision. "I know your smile." I said, remembering how lovely she'd looked at our wedding, in her best military outfit. She'd smiled so widely I thought it would have split her face in two. I let the tablet drop and slide down my chest, holding the bridge of my nose, the tears that blurred my vision made my nose hurt more. The sobs made my head hurt, and I couldn't stop them now. They came up and out like hits to my gut.
I let my hands slide down my torso and rest on my hips. Something small and stiff was in my left jacket pocket. Sniffling, I reached in and pulled out a small nut. Like the kind you would use on the other end of a screw. After trying to wipe the wet from my eyes, I saw how it was average in every way. This ship probably had thousands just like it, the silver chain it hung on was more valuable then the simple steel the trinket was made out of. But this one was special. Mortimer had given one to me and one to Helios. One of his funny tech priest traditions that had endeared him to me. I must have taken it off at some point and put it in my pocket; or maybe some tech did. I smelled it. Knowing that the scent of machine oil was purely imagined. Long gone from the years resting in the cloth folds. But it still felt familiar. Like the gold ring on my finger. Reassuring in the darkness of the eternal night of space.
I felt the engines kick in, the Geller field switch on and the familiar lurch of the ship engaging it's warp drive, as I undid the clasp of the silver chain, and re-clasping it behind my neck, tucking the little piece of steel into my shirt and away from prying eyes.
I felt strangely better. Like I was armed with emotional wards. My tech priest training from Griswold, the gold wedding band back on my finger. The little steel nut that now hung around my neck. "I can do this," I whispered to the ghosts in my mind, "I can do this." But my stupid eyes wouldn't listen to my assurances and continued to leak.
I woke up to the ship jostling out of warp. It was pretty rough and now annoyed I decided to pull my bones out of bed and see about dressing down someone on behalf of the ship, for it had no voice of it's own.
My first go out of the bed wasn't successful. My spine wasn't in the mood for excess bending and my hip wasn't so happy either. I could feel the skin bruising under the soft velvet and shiny leather of my jacket, having fallen asleep in my clothes.
So I unceremoniously rolled out of the bed, my boots hit the wall as I flailed slightly. Then using the side of the bed from a kneeling position I said a brief string of curses and stood up, wobbled a little and reaching out, having to lean against the wall. I snatched the stupid cane from it's stupid resting place against the stupid wall and sink. And looked reproachfully at it. "I'm naming you Lorgar, because your a damned betrayer." I snarled at the cane. Lorgar had been the brother of Horas, who would go on later to be the Undead-King worshiped by the entire imperial host.
I slammed my hand on the door panel. The door made an 'error' noise and I frowned at it, glanced to the pad I had just smacked, and then back at the door and tried again. I more precisely touched it a second time but it beeped twice, again in an negative and not opening. I felt the growl raising in my throat, something feral. I had had just about enough of this crap. Between my body and its increasing pain, my hungry stomach growling, and the general beat down I had received the day before, I was one hundred percent done with today, this ship, the Inquisitor and just about everything that had happened up to this point.
I cast my gaze around the room. "Don't make me beg for food, you dick." My grip on the head of my cane tightened in frustration. "Okay, let's see if you just forgot about me," I snarled and gave the door a sharp "rap!" with the handle of my stick. I waited a moment. When nothing happened and no sound came, teeth gritted I gave the door a few more hard hits. The sound was satisfyingly loud, and I hope it would start giving the old man a headache as bad as mine.
After a few seconds of this furious banging, the door slid open and I had to not only keep myself from smacking the the young Maddock in the face but also not fall on him as I had been leaning on the door.
He was holding a tray with some food hastily arranged on it, and a bottle of water that was now rolling into the pinkish chow. The kid looked flustered and out of breath. But I wasn't interested in him or the food just now. I pushed right by him to his alarmed protests, sticking my head out of the door, and looking down the curved corridor that made a half circle around this side of the ship. Now where did I see that cockpit?
"Please! Um, Miss Tsin! Please, your not allowed in the main area, your confined to quarters only!" He was helplessly following me and yipping at my heels. I took a left out of the room, after hitting the button on the doorframe to make it shut behind me. Limping down the hall I snarled at the hurting of my body. Moving helped. Sort of. It kind of changed the pain to different areas, so I guess that was better. I passed the front of the ovoid ship, seeing the pilot and co-pilot's empty chairs.
I made a face at the room, I'll deal with you later, don't you worry.
Continuing down the hall a few feet, it opened up to the main meeting and social room of the ship. A big, circular room that had a step down in the center. There was a sitting area with benches and a table to one side and a lounge-like sitting space on the opposite side. A small platform in the center of the room looked suspiciously like a holo pad.
Inquisitor Errold was standing next to the dining table staring down at some translucent printouts. He sighed and looked up one finger still on the spot he'd been looking at.
"You disliked the food I suppose?" He said without looking up.
Was that joke?
"I'm so sorry, sir! She just barged by me." He sighed again pointedly looking up at his apprentice.
But I was on the warpath and wanted to get some things straightened out for this trip. "I didn't even know inquisitors did humor. I thought all that got removed to make room for the stick up their asses." I snarled back. "You can't lock me up." I continued on unperturbed by his annoyed expression as his eyes followed me closing the distance between us, "That's the first rule here. Speaking of rules," I waved at the cockpit, "Your going to let me update your bloody computers and I'll be the one flying from now on."
Errold, to his credit had obviously had his breakfast today and no one had spit in it yet. Considering I was sure he didn't get "told" to do anything by anyone, he took my words with a fair amount of grace and only an amused eyebrow raised.
"As amusing as it is that you think you have any say in any activity on this ship, I'm afraid you're confined to quarters." He said this as teacher would tell their recalcitrant toddler.
"I don't think you get it, Errold" I said the name like a swear word. "I don't give a fuck about you or your mission. As I see it, I have nothing everything to gain by not helping you, and you have everything to lose." His expression darkened, he was finally losing his temper.
"I can throw you back into that icebox hell. With all your metal parts still installed." He said that last bit with a little curl of his lip.
"No, actually you can't. See, I've been thinking about this little scenario. About the Emperor telling you to let me out: that's what happened isn't it. You got corrupted," I waved a hand at his body, "maybe before you fought Lockharte, or maybe because you fought him, but for some reason it's eating you up now. And so you prayed." His face turned to a scowl.
"Shut your mouth." He growled and reached for his blaster. But I had seen enough of him. There were lucid moments, like earlier in the shuttle, moments when the rage wasn't gripping his mind and soul with hate. I had to make him angry, then get him back to calm, as a sort of mirror. It was playing with fire, but I was used to this kind of thing. So I walked toward him, eyes locked with him. He pulled the blaster, but I didn't even flinch this time.
"No. Not this time. He didn't send you to thaw me out just to take down Lockharte." I carefully limped down the step and right up to his blaster, so it touched right against my chest. "He sent me for you."
Anger, rage, hate. It all flashed across his face, then, to my relief deep sadness replaced it. My little gambit had paid off. His eyes brimmed with tears, but he held them back, blinking in shame and anger at the weakness. "What makes you think," he said with a snarl, "you know why our Holy Emperor does anything."
I smiled sadly at him and placed my hand on the gun pushing down gently. "I've had some practice learning how to listening."
He let the weapon drop and holstered it while he wiped his eyes with his other hand.
"Grief does some crazy shit to us poor humans. Even Inquisitor humans." I said softly.
He took a breath and briskly said, "Go back to your room, we'll talk later."
"No." Again, I said this clearly and with authority. "I'm not your prisoner. If anything I'm as close to your peer as anyone can be." I knew I was pushing it by saying this, but I was sick of of the games and I was more sure of myself every moment. Pride had always been a challenge for me to keep in check.
He snorted at this, "By whose authority?" He asked.
"That stain on your soul and the Emperor, apparently." was my pithy reply.
"Humph." He said his eyes narrowing at me with suspicion then he shook his head. "I can't just have you running around the ship."
"Of course you can." I said tartly. "Listen, I want to be done here as much as the next person. Do you think there's anything here for me? Everyone I know," I stopped at the slip, "Everyone I knew are all gone." And I looked down for a moment, swallowing the pain of that. "Trust me, I'll take myself back to the cryotube when we're done." I looked back up at him,
"Maybe, or maybe your just waiting to escape."
"Hey now, I know I have a bad reputation but I have a job, like with a capital 'J' kind of Job. I don't fuck around with gods, Errold. And if the God-King says this is where I need to be, then this," I gestured at the ship around us, "All of this, is my job. That means, Maddock and Lockharte, and that means you, too." I said this last part with a small smile, ducking my head slightly while leaning on my cane. The pain was coming back now that the adrenaline was wearing off.
He just looked at me, studying me, my face, my body language, trying to see something more to my words. "I don't trust you. But…" he trailed off, "But you can walk around the ship as long as you have an escort," he nodded at the kid behind me.
I perked right up and my bruised face spread in a big smile. "Perfect!"
My sudden pleasure in his decision made him pause and furrow his brows in more suspicion.
"You hear that?" he said to Maddock standing behind me. "Watch her like a hawk."
"Y-yessir." He stammered.
I grinned at him and Maddock, "Oh! I'm going to have this ship purring! I can't wait to open up the hood, take a look inside her. I heard her groaning in as much pain and I'm in right now over your rough treatment of her while coming out of warp." I took a breath while glancing at the ceiling thinking about the pretty ship's internals and being able to sink into her data stream. I sat down at the table, slowly letting my stiff body down into the chair.
"I'm in the middle of someth-" The inquisitor said.
"I noticed. You can brief me on where we're heading to while I eat some breakfast," I motioned to Maddock, still holding the tray, and he scooted over to me and set it down. I smiled and said 'thank you'. I picked up the bread and began to smear some of the pick, lumpy stuff over it.
"Brief you?" Errold looked at my expectant face while I leaned back in the chair and took a bite of food. "I think I made it clear that I don't trust you with any of this." he tapped the table where the thin data plastic and some pads lay.
"And I told you I don't give a crap if you trusted a dog with a stake. Your briefing me in so I can tell you how dumb your plan is to catch Lockharte."
He snorted at my presumptuousness, "You think I'm going to just giv-"
"Look old man!" I dropped the chunk of bread back on the tray and gave my best death glare, "I'm not entirely sure how you thought this was going to go down, but you aren't going to squeeze me for anything. The only way to get into my very high-tech brain is through me." I leaned back and crossed my arms over my chest. Or my life mate, I thought ruefully. The thought had come into my mind unexpectedly before I could stop it, catching my off guard. My jaw stiffened as the image of my past lover flickered through before I could push it away. "Anyone else is dead, according to your apprentice at least."
Errold glared at Maddock and said, "so, you just gave her all that information as well as let her just charge out of that room?"
Maddock shrank away from his mentor and tried to look small. "She asked and it wasn't on the list of stuff we talked about." He looked uncomfortably at the food tray now in front of me. "And she's a little frightening with that cane." He swallowed as Errold growled in frustration and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to push the anger back down.
"Fine. But I need to rethink some things before I 'brief' you on anything."
I rolled my eyes and said, "Your only prolonging the inevitable. I'm telling you, I need to have all the information going into this. Lockharte will use everything against us. I'm as close to a peer as he's ever met. It's why he took my betrayal the hardest I think. Although, I didn't really talk to the others…" Looking down at the bread sitting on the tray and picked it back up.
Errold cleaned up the table, picking up all the plastic and paper notes, anything I could read and wordlessly walked back behind one of the walls that made up the semi-circle hallways, I assumed to his bedroom.
Chewing a bite of bread I looked up at Maddock who was standing a little awkwardly, one hand on his other arm. Man, he looked like a little kid sometimes, but he must have been at least in his late teens, or early twenties. I motioned at a chair and said through a mouth of food, "Sit."
He sat obediently and clasped his hands in his lap. I swallowed and after taking a swig of water from the bottle provided I leaned forward, "So, tell me about yourself."
He seemed puzzled at first but quickly found his stride at my prodding questions. Not often asked about himself by others, he found himself eager to tell me all about the sad tale of how his mother died in childbirth with him. When questioned why he just shrugged and said that there was a lot of strife with the family regarding his birth. He told me about how he had attended schooling with the Adeptus Terra to become an member of the Administratum, basically an Imperial paper pusher. It seemed to suit him well enough, but he became ensorceled in some family issue that had him leaving on an adventure across the universe until his path crossed with Errold and Tam. The way he told it made it sound like he was in way to over his head and they showed up at just the moment. Tam had immediately bonded with the young desk-jockey turned heroic adventurer.
"He was always kind to me, teaching me a lot of what I know now." He smiled at the memory associated with the words, "He begged Errold to take me in under his wing, as it were. I mean, I wasn't sure this was the life I wanted, Tam just made the idea seem so…" He trailed off searching for the word.
"Exciting?" I hazarded.
"Maybe," he didn't look convinced that was the word. "Courageous, maybe? That always seemed to be the image he painted when he talked about being an inquisitor."
"Huh." I responded. "Seems like he was really trying to sell the life to you, although, I won't lie, you uh, don't seem to," I searched for the right, non-insulting word. "Have more of a scholarly aptitude." I finished hoping he wouldn't be offended.
But he only beamed at me in pleasure. "Do you really think so? I've always had a knack for remembering information, pulling up numbers and such."
"Oh yeah? You'd make a good tech-priest. That's basically all we do." I said laughing a little.
He chuckled with me, then looked a little mischievous, "Is it true that you pretended to be an Inquisitor?" He almost whispered this.
I smiled, "Is that what my file says?" I replied playfully.
"Yeah, that and you were an admiral of a fleet of ships devoted to the chaos gods." He sounded a little excited when he said it. Like this was his chance to ask a character in a book questions in person.
This brought a laugh out of me, "Oh man, they make it sound so much more glamorous than it actually was." I said and crossed my arms over my chest, still chuckling. "It was almost all spent trying to convince my brothers to play nice, convince my wife and husband to sleep with me, and trying to figure out how to write reports that sounded really boring to send back to Terra." I was pretty good at the last one." I said remembering how writing them was akin to watching paint dry. Who said you had to enjoy something to be good at it?
He looked thoughtfully, "Oh yeah, you were married. Wait, you said husband? There's no record of your second marriage." he said with confusion.
"Well, I married Helios, then the two of us brought this sweet coghead, Mortimer, into our marriage. He was smitten with us both and the three of us fit each other well." I let it hang there, and bit my lower lip to keep from letting the sadness tinge my voice. I don't think I caught it in time because he just sat there solemnly. "Anyway, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Being admiral was just a title, it was really just endless paperwork punctuated by trying to cajole so-and-so into not killing someone we needed. That or dealing with a bunch of angry department heads telling me how wrong I was doing everything."
He seemed to take this all in and digest it. Like he was committing it all to memory. "Did you really kill all those people?" He finally asked, giving me a serious look.
"Okay, this is going to sound bad, but which people are we talking about. Me and my brother's all got blamed for each other's messes all the time." I returned his stern expression with a calm pleasant one.
"Well, how about: how many people have you killed?" reforming his question.
The question was very opened ended. I had only, with my own hand, killed perhaps a few dozen individuals. Leaving the wanton murder for my more bloodthirsty peers like Lockharte, and my wife. Now there was a frightening women when she got going even by my standards, and I had faced down Malaal, more than once. Not having parameters to this question I decided it was best to give a vague answer.
"A lot." And after a moment I continued, "It's not that easy. We were at war, maybe the wrong side of war, but that's for the historians to sort out. I'll say this, there were deaths I wish didn't happen, and some that I was glad to see." I shrugged then, unable to make it more understandable then that. It's hard to explain the minutiae of something so big and complicated as war.
But to my surprise he nodded knowingly, "That's what my uncles would always say, two of them were enlisted, you see, that it was difficult to explain and that it's not quantifiable. And they said the part about some they wished hadn't died and being glad that certain people had." He looked sad then, "I always thought things were straightforward. If you kill an enemy to the Holy Imperial Empire then it was always okay. But, I guess I see now that it isn't that simple."
"Your telling me, kid." I said absently, nodding my head.
"Miss Tsin?" He said softly, leaning in closer to me and I raised an eyebrow in reply, leaning in slightly also arms still crossed over my chest. "Do you really think the inquisitor's been corrupted?" His face showing deep concern.
I leaned back and frowned. "Yes. I'm sure of it. I can... " I hesitated for a moment wondering if I should let him in on this, then continued, "I can kinda smell it, I guess."
His eyes widened, "You can smell it? What does corruption smell like?"
"I can't actually smell it!" I said rolling my eyes, "I mean, like, I just know it's there. It's a feeling. And I can only describe it in an abstract."
"Oh," he seemed disappointed by this. I just laughed at his innocence and he looked a little chagrined at me and chuckled too, "dumb, I know."
After a moment I got serious and shifted in my seat. "Listen, I'm not trying to get you in trouble, but I feel like if had a little info I could really blow this whole thing open." I said expanding my fingers apart.
He frowned at me and said finally, "I want to. And I believe in people wanting to make amends for their past actions. But if the inquisitor says 'no' then-" He shrugged, letting his unsaid words to the talking.
I waved a gloved hand at him in resignation and tried a different line, "Ok, so how about your medbay? My implants are killing me. I think I might be getting an infection." I tried to emphasis this by trying to stretch and wincing at the sudden stab through my hip and spine.
He looked at me with concern and nodded, "Yeah I can take you to medical. And I'll ask Errold if I can make you an appointment with the doctors at the space station we're heading too." He stood and gave me his hand again to help me up, I'm proud to say that I only hammed it up a little.
The medbay was well stocked, but I only had a rudimentary understanding of medical equipment and the chemicals in the realm there of.
I found myself missing, not for the first time, my old sword class ship that I'd managed to bamboozle the whole crew not only into thinking that I was the captain, but that I was a dreaded inquisitor. I missed having an entire hospital at my beck and call and the personnel to assist me for everything, up to and including a hangnail. It was hard being back to my humble beginnings.
With Maddock's help I picked out some pills for the pain and inflammation and a shot or two of antibiotic for the infection.
After that I decided to take a look at the engine of the little ship and see if I couldn't get my grubby hands on it's mainframe, "I don't think I can let you touch it, but you can look at it, I guess," he said uneasily, "Hey, before we go down may I," he paused, seeming unsure how to phrase his question, "may I, uh, call you Andromeda?" At my frown he hurriedly said, "It's fine if you don't want me to, Miss Tsin is fine."
Putting the shock away I cracked a smile and put a friendly hand on his shoulder, "Call me Andie, all my friends do." To which he smiled brilliantly back at me.
However, a traitorous voice in the back of my mind said, all the friends you betrayed you mean. I shook my head, still trying to smile and turned him from the room.
And so with that we headed to the underbelly of the ship.