Hello everyone! This is the start of something, though I'm unsure right now as to what. Please enjoy!
"This is the HHV Sunder requesting permission to dock." Cullen flipped the input switch to his radio off as he waited for a response, taking the time to rise from the seat of his cruiser and retrieve his helm. While the atmosphere on the station was almost an exact match to his native world of Thedas, he did not wish for anyone to see his face.
He led a double life, you see; one as Cullen Rutherford, the unwavering Chantry military general, and another as Vigil, a secret operative of a new order appropriately titled the Inquisition. Although the idea of the Inquisition was one that drew back hundreds of years as a peacekeeping force, the resurgence of unrest among the populace of Cullen's homeworld had made its rebirth inevitable. Divine Victoria, his boss, had seen the need for it, though she had been very careful about outright acknowledging the operation's presence. So it was that the general found himself split between two high intensity jobs with few people he could trust and fewer resources. Scribe, or Scribbles, as he'd come to fondly refer to her, had demanded he take leave from his daytime duties to begin pulling favors from the modern elite as a result of their lack of funding. She'd made it very clear that he was to have success on this visit, and that he was to be polite lest she blow him out of the airlock at their next meeting.
A blip from his dash caught his attention as the dark tint of his visor came down over his eyes to obscure his face. With a flick of his wrist, he pressed a button on his comm to listen to the message, pleased that the recording confirmed his docking request.
"Please report to terminal C, bridge 4. Welcome to Amaranthe Station," the chipper voice stated on the other end of the comm. Surely it was far too late in day to sound so pleasant. Perhaps they force fed their engineers gratuitous amounts of coffee to keep them agreeable, he thought. Grumbling to himself, he realized he was going to have to withhold his surly attitude the very moment his boots left the comforting titanium hull of his ship.
Returning to his chair, Cullen buckled himself in and gently applied the thrusters to maneuver his cruiser through the oblong-shaped opening to the spaceport. In little time he'd managed to dock and submit to a search of his vessel, during which time Scribble's contact had come to retrieve him. With one final look at his beloved cruiser, ensuring all was in order, Cullen locked his hands behind his back. He was likely betraying his military background, he knew, following the contact through the terminal and up into myriad of office spaces above the port proper.
Dressed in all black Cullen cut a striking figure against the pristine steel of the long hallway, dwarfing the man who led him along at a rather sedate pace.
"Are you the man I will be speaking with, or is that your boss?" Cullen asked, muffled by the breather in his suit which issued forth an odd, almost bi-tonal representation of his voice.
"My employer will be speaking with you," the man replied, clutching a datapad to his chest. He seemed almost nervous, Cullen thought, looking curved in on himself. Briefly, the beginnings of unease began to send a prickle of doubt at the back of his neck.
A loud thump from an office next to him gave him pause as he stopped in his tracks, arms coming round to his sides. The man before him jumped in surprise, but quickly masked his reaction, and then began to try and hurry Cullen along. He was far too rushed for Cullen's liking. Something was up.
"Is everything alright?" he asked, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the office.
"Oh, yes, I'm sure everything is alright. Just some faulty plumbing, I assure you."
Cullen was not assured.
He was about to press his luck, ignoring Scribble's pleas for diplomacy when the door leading to the office that had caught his attention burst open and a figure darted out into the hallway and straight into him.
Cullen was momentarily caught off balance by the impact, reaching up to the person's shoulders to steady both them and himself when he noticed even more people pouring from the room.
"Hand over the girl," one of the men grunted, shifting his weight so that the insignia of the Templar Order was visible. The glaring white sword flashed beneath the industrial lighting like a tiny star, almost a warning in and of itself.
Cullen glanced down at the woman who had run into him, noting how battered and bruised she seemed to be. That alone raised his blood pressure. What would Templars want with her, and why, in Andraste's name, would they have to beat her? At the attention drawn to her, the slight thing wiggled free of his grasp, seeming to slip beneath his arm and press herself behind his back as if he could shield her from whatever these men wanted to do to her.
"Please," she whispered against his back, so quiet that he had to strain his hearing just to make the plea out. "These men are holding me for ransom. My family is wealthy. If you take me to them, I swear to you that you'll be rewarded."
The small shrew of a man who had been leading him, in the breath of the moment he and the woman locked eyes, fled, and Cullen realized he was about to make a rather pivotal decision - and seriously piss off Scribbles. Although if this woman was the daughter of nobility, perhaps that might garner and even greater advantage than the deal he was here to make anyway. Regardless of the fiscal value of saving this woman, whoever she was, Cullen truly doubted that these Templar's intentions were good. Beyond that, as one of the heads of the Order, it was his duty to see that all beneath his command engaged in appropriate, civil behaviors, whether in or out of uniform.
He'd need to be sly about this, though. He was severely outnumbered, and without a gun he would have to rely only on his Templar abilities which would give him dead away. He didn't need to be identified as a Templar by Templars. That would only complicate matters. Flexing his fingers a moment, Cullen shrugged his shoulders in reply to the knight seeming to be the one in charge, and stepped out from in front of the woman who stared, mouth agape, at his supposed refusal of her offer.
"Take her if you want. I've no business with you," Cullen said. He kept has palms facing outward in a gesture of acceptance, indicating that he was not a threat.
"Heheh, smart man!" The knight laughed, letting down his guard to come forward and apprehend the strange woman who looked between Cullen and the Templar with wide, panicked eyes. Certain now that Cullen was not a threat, four others filtered out behind their leader. Just as Cullen had suspected, they all gathered around the large man as he clamped one meaty palm around the woman's upper arm, and that was when Cullen struck.
All together in a group, it was simple enough to subject the overconfident men to the full force of a Holy Smite. As he unleashed the ability, knocking down his opponents and rending their focus in two, he snatched the woman and ran for his ship.
Also caught in the blast the strange woman stumbled after him, remaining upright only by the force of his grip on her arm. Cullen suspected that this also was due in no small part to the beating the Templars had given her. He stopped only a moment, long enough to catch her around the knees and sling her over his shoulder as he cut a beeline for the terminal that led to his ship.
A call rang up behind him, and he knew that at least one of the men had roused himself enough to pursue him. Feet pounding a harsh staccato against the gangway, Cullen hit the autopilot setting from his comm device. The sound of Sunder's drive revving just ahead was that of stark relief, and in no time at all he'd hopped the small gap between his ship and the gangway, turning sharply around to yank the door close manually. Another tap to his comm ensured that the door was secured, and with only a small measure of guilt, he dropped the woman into the co-pilot seat like a sack of grain and began to ready the vessel for departure.
Cullen had just forced the docking magnets to release his cruiser when his dash lit up, and the image of a man, or at least Cullen thought it was a man, loomed in front of him. The shape of his face was human enough, but his skin was scarred and stretched thin over his skull creating a gaunt, haunting sort of look not made any softer by the red crystals jutting out of his face.
"Hand over the defect and I will not kill you," the thing said.
Cullen snorted. Down to business then. "You the contact who was about ready to screw me?"
"I will make this very plain, Vigil. The girl, in exchange for your life and the Inquisition's success."
The hair on the back of Cullen's neck rose at the man's words. He was supposed to have been nameless for this exchange. Had Scribe let his codename slip? No, that wasn't like her. This man - this thing knew far too much. He quickly glanced over to the woman, noting that she was still reeling from the Smite, blood trickling slowly from a cut just above her brow.
Stifling the quick, hot flash of anger at the actions of those rogue Templars, Cullen quickly assessed his gauges; his fuel was at 80%, more than enough to flee into Empire space if need be. His engine was warm now, and the light drive was primed. Gently, almost lovingly, his fingers flexed over his throttle, and though the strange man couldn't see his face, Cullen's lips quirked up into a smile.
"No can do! Thank you for the offer, but it appears you just don't have what I need."
"You should think about what you are doing, Vigil - what forces you are toying with!"
"Not interested!" He called back calmly, and pulled away from the dock then, quickly. Once he was safely away from the terminal he shoved the throttle forward. The Sunder lurched, violating about fifteen different speed laws as it barreled out of the spaceport and into the star-spattered blackness of Fereldan space. Wishing to take no chance that he might be pursued out into the system, his thumb flicked open the cap over the button on his throttle that engaged the light drive and pressed firmly. The on board computer spoke up overhead, alerting him to remain seated as the drive began to hum beneath his feet. Cullen closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat, counting down with the computer until he felt the entire ship shudder around him as it careened through space with a high pitched roar.
His dash was dark when the light jump was over, and Cullen was pleased to note, as he brought up his navigation system, that the jump had effectively landed him within Empire controlled space. As his vessel gently coasted through the Frostback System, he straightened himself in his seat and stretched, turning his head to regard the battered woman beside him. She was asleep now, likely had been since he'd dropped her there. Without a doubt he knew she wasn't a mage from her reaction to his Smite. That also begged the question as to what those Templars wanted from her. If she was not an apostate, what was their interest in her and why were they so far from any conflict zone he'd been made aware of? As far as the Mage-Templar war was concerned, those men were in the middle of nowhere.
Leaning forward, Cullen engaged an exterior scan of his vessel and surrounding space. There was no one about from his computer's estimation, which gave him a good deal of time to think about how he was going to break this news to not only Scribbles, who was likely to neuter him at the nearest opportunity and then launch him into space without a suit, but Victoria as well.
Cullen went to scrub his hands over his face, realizing with a tired sigh that he still wore his helm, and would not be able to remove it in this woman's presence.
"This is just getting better and better."