We came to the forge world of Hephaestus IV in orbit around the Helios sub-system during the seventh standard month of 314.M41, as Imperial records will show.
The capital manufactorum, Forge Eight, was in the midst of the busiest section of its eternally-active fabrication cycle. It was at this time of the year that the nine other worlds in the Helios sub-system were supplied with their annual quota of machinery, weapons, tools and engines; after the orders were put in, the five hundred thousand or so servitors of Forge Eight had exactly two months to construct their share of equipment for nearly twenty billion people. As a result, the already polluted and unbreathable atmosphere of Hephaestus IV was flooded with several million metric tons of poisonous chemicals every day. The five centuries of near-constant pollution had resulted in a lingering acid cloud surrounding the higher tiers of the Forge.
The sun was constantly set in a morbid red twilight. I noted the similarity between it and the colour of the robes worn by Mechanicus Adepts
Forge Eight was nestled in a ten-kilometre-wide volcanic chasm on the surface of Hephaestus IV, smokestacks and factory bellows stretching as much as three kilometres into the sky. I had been told that the manufactorum went five times that down, until the environment became unsuitable to sustain life. That deep into the planet's shell, they used servitors and machines exclusively, without hands-on human supervision – and that only if the Technomagi could be called human at all.
Acidic smog lurked around the support pillars of the starport as the Malleus Maleficent lowered itself onto the landing pad, corroding the reinforced metal even as I watched through the rust-red vision of a respirator mask. Everything was red; the sky, the buildings, the ships, the people. As we had entered Sector 314, I had pulled on an internally cooled combat bodyglove and covered that with a sealed and armoured hazardous environment suit, but the smell worked its way through the Malleus' air vents and into my nostrils nevertheless. It was curious; I very rarely visit forge worlds, and the unique smell of burning fossil fuel and plasma exhaust mixed with obscure chemicals whose names contain upwards of eighteen syllables was something of an unpleasant experience.
The landing struts engaged with a groan of machinery and the forward hatch creaked open, letting in a ray of stunted light and foul air. Jack was with me at my side as we set foot on Hephaestus' adamantium surface, his hellgun carefully sheltered from the detrimental environment by a metalweave cloth. I couldn't see his face from behind the visor of his matt-black combat helmet, but I knew he hated the place as much as I did.
Upon our arrival, we were greeted by Fabricator-General Basque, as befitted planetary custom. He had been warned of my approach via astropathic hail, but he was not aware of my importance or my true status. I rarely worked through deception, no matter how mild, but it was necessary that our identity remain an official secret until we had contacted Cerise. Until now, I was merely an investigator from the Arbites on Helios Prime, arriving with a bodyguard.
Ligeia had prepared for me a data-slate containing the required etiquette and decorum to use when addressing a Fabricator-General. I'd left it on the table unread.
Basque was flanked by an eight-man squadron of heavy-set Praetorians, autoguns and flamers surgically fixed to the ends of their limbs and subdermal ceramite plate sewn into the skin of their chest. A lexmechanic hovered on repulsors lifts to his left, its electronic quill poised over a data-slate ready to record the minutes of our meeting for future reference. Basque himself was a six-century old Magos in his prime of technological enhancement; Ligeia had told me offhand that he had forty-eight percent of his flesh and internal organs replaced with bionic prosthetics. I had decided beforehand that I disliked him.
As Basque approached, regarding us with blank, lens-like eyes, I could sense Jack tensing behind me. I hoped he wouldn't try anything stupid. He could be impetuous sometimes.
A hovering cherub-servitor scanned us with an implanted auspex; whatever arbitrary standards Basque set for his visitors, we must have passed, because it beeped positive and flew back to its master's side. If it was looking for my weapons, it wouldn't find any; the outer hazard suit had been constructed specifically to stop sensors detecting any of the weapons I was carrying.
The conversation with the Fabricator-General was brief and rather terse. He bowed in obeisance amidst the hazed daylight. The air steamed with the trace amounts of chemical exhaust that bled from his many implants. I nodded and showed him my authorisation.
Basque had another of his pet cyborgs investigate the pass before waiving us through. He gave his regards and good wishes to our visit. I didn't respond, which must have irked him; not that I could really tell, since he didn't have much of a face to show emotion with.
We left the landing cross, flanked by two Praetorians, ostensibly for our protection.
Cerise Vance awaited us; the Fabricator-General had provided her with a transport, a rust-red anti-grav with the Mechanicus symbol emblazoned on the cabin door. She waved and I nodded in acknowledgement.
As I approached, I could see the worried look on her face. I suspected bad news.
'Weiss is here,' she said, and confirmed my every suspicion.
'The Magos tell me he arrived a week ago. He was asking for repairs; his ship had been damaged.' I knew that. I was the one who'd damaged it. Jack had fired three Hellfire missiles into his engines; I could recall the white-blue flare as the starboard plasma drives exploded.
The speeder carried us away from the landing cross and we left the hammer-like shape of the gunship behind in a cloud of chemical smog. We rode with the two Praetorians inside a sealed cabin lit only by the soft amber glow of the control panel. Jack was checking his rifle, wiping the barrel and the battery cartridge to remove any residue from its brief contact with Hephaestus IV's acidic air. Hellguns were notoriously temperamental weapons, and his care was well justified.
One of the Praetorians silently handed Cerise a data- slate. She glanced at it only for a second before handing it to me. I realised I still had my respirator on; I took it off in order to read clearly. Jack didn't look up during the voyage. He still wore his combat armour, having opted to stay covered up. I didn't entirely blame him. The heat inside the speeder cabin was unbearable, so an internally cooled carapace suit would be a blessing.
We banked a hard left, driving far above the recommended speed limit. There were precious few other vehicles travelling in the airways, mostly large-scale transports carrying machinery and replacement servitors from factory to factory. I caught a glimpse of one of the servitors as we passed. I shuddered involuntarily before returning my attention to the data-slate.
'The repairs were done in two days, but he stayed. Never told the Dockmaster why, but his clearance made them forget any questions they might have had. That's why I thought foul play.' The speeder swerved and zipped through the labyrinth of smoke-stacks and pounding generators, only narrowly escaping a collision with a huge construction machine.
'There was no contact from his shuttle during his stay?' I asked her. The slate told me it had left orbit two days beforehand, without Weiss.
'It just left,' she said, shrugging. The speeder nose-dived straight down for several seconds, spearing through several clouds of chemical fog before righting itself and continuing. 'A decoy, most likely. Weiss must have a backup transport off-world.'
I didn't ask any further questions, simply returning my attention to the slate for the remainder of the trip. It was only a handful of minutes later that the speeder ground to a halt outside a squat, square manufactorum. The area was conspicuously absent of servitors, or of any movement at all. I noticed the absence of background noise. The manufactorum's energy generator was inactive.
'MC-three-fourteen, western quadrant,' intoned the Praetorian through one of a series of voxponders. I handed it the slate and stood. The hatch slid open and we disembarked, pulling respirators and visors back on. The smog was causing vision problems, obfuscating anything more than a few metres ahead
MC-three-fourteen was a considerably large construction line in the western side of Forge Eight. It produced, I had been told, servitors – exactly twelve hundred and twenty-two every week. It was a vital manufactorum for the quadrant, replacing destroyed or worn-out servitors with newly-lobotomised criminals and ready-made shell bodies born in the Forge's cloning vats. The fact that its industrial units were silent did not bode well.
We approached the seven-story edifice, the rusted platform creaking beneath our weight.
I halted. 'Where are the building's Adepts?'
'They would be inside, monitoring the assembly line,' replied a Praetorian, the same one who had given me the data-slate. Jack glanced at me and shook his head. Cerise slid a hand into her coat.
'Knowing I approach?' I said suspiciously. 'I was told the Fabricator had ordered them to meet us.'
'I will check,' hummed the second Praetorian, raising a fused autogun and activating a thermal targeting system in its left eye. 'Wait here,' it informed us. It strode into the fog, armoured joints whirring.
We found it several minutes later, surveying the manufactorum's terrace. There were corpses strewn all around; mostly servitors, but I picked out rust-red robes amongst the bodies. The oil and pseudo-blood from their wounds seeped through the iron grille and dripped down to the levels below
I remember, to this very day, the Praetorian's expression as it turned to us. There was none. A human would have expressed horror, fear, or perhaps anger; the Skitarri elite merely turned and said in a voice like lead, 'Who did this?' There was nothing human there, I realised. Just a machine.
'Stay back,' rasped Jack, his first words since landing. He flicked the amber "Ready" rune on his hellgun and the cords connecting the weapon to the power-pack on his waist hummed. Cerise pulled out her laspistol and did likewise.
I drew my sword, igniting it. It sizzled in the polluted air, the mildly combustible vapours surrounding it with a corona of blue-white flame.
The southern entrance was wide open. Amber light flooded from the doorway.
'Jack, take these two to the western exit. Cut him off. Cerise, with me.' Jack saluted, a remnant from his military training, and then wasted no time getting to the exit. The Praetorians followed.
I glanced at Cerise. 'Vance, you can sit this out if you want. We may need someone with the gunship. I have no idea what to expect in there.'
She gave me a long, slow look and shrugged her shoulders as if to say, who cares
'If we go out today, we go in a bang, right?' she said. 'No more playing around. We get him today.
I nodded slowly. We entered, Cerise checking alcoves and corners with her sidearm. The eerie stillness inside made it all the more sinister. A dragon's belly.
The first attack came at us not three steps into the building, from above us. Two construction servitors, their craniums opened and their cogitators clearly tampered with, leapt from a railing ten metres above.
Cerise snapped off a shot with her laspistol, the superheated beam burning into one's shoulder and neatly severing the limb. I whirled, sword in hand; two economical strokes and they lay decapitated on the floor. One staggered for several steps like a senseless drunk before collapsing, its body unwilling to accept the absence of its head.
'Aim for the head. They won't die to anything else,' I warned her. She nodded.
The passageway opened up, led to the main construction line. Servitors lay dead or ignored all along, lying against inactive cogitators and inert plasma engines. A stunted cleaning drone crossed our path. It deftly avoided the corpses, cleaning up the blood and oil. It was the only action it was programmed to do.
We came across the body of a young Adept, only partially augmented. His face, still human, stared in shock. I bent down and examined the wound. Plasma torch.
We reached a crossroads. Without consulting each other – we didn't need to – Cerise slid soundlessly to the left and I went right.
The passageway was small and cramped. Oil and chemicals dripped from the roof and sizzled on the armoured sections of my bodyglove. I mentally recalled the data-slate; there had been a map.
The second of Weiss' drones came at me from the east. I twisted and cut through his neck before he got close.
The next one came from the west. Then another. And another, from the north.
My blade entered through one's ribcage. A sideways heave made it exit violently, cleaving open the drone's torso like a gutted fish. I used the momentum to decapitate a second. The crackling disruption field made short work of what protection their near-total mechanical implants gave them.
I whirled and blurred, and they died.
Their bodies clashed to the ground, writhing in simulated agony. The steel pins holding one's jaw shut snapped apart and it opened its mouth to let out a strangled, wordless scream; it had no tongue.
With a burst of noise and a clash of pistons, the engines around me came alive. I was momentarily disorientated by the sudden overload of sound. A plasma drive to my left whined into life and began pulsing methodically, like a heartbeat. Cogitators whirred and machinery began to grind, sending sparks spitting across the metal walkway. Too fast!
A lance of fear shot through me. I was not experienced with the inside workings of a forge, but the data-slate had told me enough about this factory's workings. The Hephaestus IV manufactorums each had individual, self-sufficient and internally housed power reactors. That allowed each construction line to continue functioning regardless of a city-wide blanket power loss. The reactors were designed to run for months at a time. They weren't constructed to stop and start at will.
I suspected that Weiss had just activated the forge's primary and secondary reactors. The dangerously temperamental machinery was being reactivated after an unscheduled slumber, and it was doing so hastily, without the maintenance servitors to oversee the process.
Engines containing enough volatile plasma and chemicals to wipe out a decent-sized habitation block were being activated in haste, and without safety measures. The whole factory was rapidly becoming a giant explosive.
That is another reason why I do not like forge worlds.
A set of doors to either side of me opened and servitors poured through, shrieking without tongues or voices. I blurred and cut into their ranks. A spinning chain-blade missed my face by an inch. In two swings I severed its owner's hand, and then its head.
The vox-bead in my ear crackled with static. 'Holtz!'
I heard a flurry of shots down a corridor to my left. Cerise was in trouble. A servitor tried to impale me on the end of an industrial drill. I slid to one side to evade it. Then I cut the drill in two and elbowed the drone in its slackened face hard enough to dent its skull.
'Holtz! Holtz!' More shots. She only had a laspistol with her. Foolish, foolish man; should never have let her go on her own.
I wheeled and cut. The servitors were numb to pain, mindless and without fear; their limbs were strong, but I was stronger. The power sword was a masterpiece, gifted to me by my mentor on my initiation to the rank of Inquisitor, along with a pair of antique bolt pistols. The blade was shorter and thicker than most, the handle lengthened to allow it be used two-handed; it was a forceful, impolite weapon. I appreciated those qualities.
Five more servitors hobbled out of the left entrance. I made three brutal swings and made corpses out of them. The air stank of blood and oil.
'Holtz!' Cerise's voice was weak. That was what I would remember most; how weak her voice sounded. Like she was far, far away.
I turned and ran. I splashed heavily through a corridor slick with oil and chemicals. Two las-shots; a strangled cry echoed from further down, mirrored by its twin over the vox-bead.
I found Cerise face down near a cogitator engine, blood spreading outwards in a dark, oily pool beneath her. Her attackers were dead or gone. Her weapon lay on the grilled floor, the firing rune beeping red to indicate an empty battery. Her eyes were staring at nothing; blank, like the eyes of the dead Magos. Empty.
There is one quality which defines an Inquisitor; detachment. It is a saddening thing to realise, but it must be so. A person in my line of work must treat death as if it was waiting in the wings, patiently attending its cue. I had initially brought Cerise on as a bodyguard. A sobering fact about bodyguards is that they usually die before you do. If they don't, they aren't doing their job very well.
We are taught that it is important not to see your companions as friends. The moment you do, you begin to fear their loss, and fear has no place in an Inquisitor's heart. You are an Inquisitor; lesser men are nothing but tools to you. So we are taught.
Six years ago, on the distant penal colony of Van Teichmann's World, I met a woman named Cerise Vance. She saved my life, and in return I gave hers another chance, serving Mankind in the greatest way possible. I keep only a handful of followers. Her addition was worthwhile, influential, but we had never truly connected. Empathy is not something that comes naturally to me. But once, two years beforehand, she was captured whilst infiltrating a Chaos cult. I still remember the expression of relief on her face after Jack's demolition charges blew the door to her cell. It is one of my happier memories.
She had become less than that now. Now, she was a lesson in detachment. I must do with her what I did with Gregor, with Elienne, with Thulmann, with my decades-dead family. I must forget her.
I stared at her body for a long moment.
What was she? A friend?
I do not have friends.
I keyed in the transmission codes to open a vox channel with Jack. As I waited for the static to produce a response, I deactivated and sheathed my power sword, then looked at the room. It was dominated by a large, complicated logic-engine, humming away without interference. Red warning lights glared in several places, complicated machine-script spreading over the screens.
Cerise had found the central control room. This must have been where Weiss had activated the engines. I had no way to shut it off – the complexities of the logic engine were beyond me. It was clear that as long as this cogitator was active, the reactor was active. And as long as the reactor was active -
My thoughts were interrupted by a scream of tortured metal, and it seemed that the entire building shook and swayed. The background pulse was speeding up; as I'd feared, the plasma reactor was rapidly reaching an unstable state.
Then it occurred to me that there is always a way to shut things off. I recalled that Cerise had a pair of tube charges amongst her equipment.
I took one and left the other on her lap, keying the activation code and pressing the timer. Then I left the room and made sure the door was shut behind me.
There was a hiss of static and the affirmative beep that indicated the channel was open and Jack was waiting. Weiss would be monitoring our communication – the man could do it without any equipment, just via the machinery in his head.
'Black Soldier, come in. Black Soldier, come in. Hammer summons.' I stepped into a shadowed alcove and began counting the seconds.
'Black Soldier reporting. Status?' Was that gunfire behind his voice? I could hear the systematic pumping of an auto weapon of some kind. Jack had run into trouble, it seemed.
'Immediate withdrawal. Iron Man has rigged the generators. They're going to detonate. Situation is critical, and we have to act fast. Confirm status.
'Pinned down in the lower corridor. Iron Man is swamping us. The Praetorians are taking a beating. Is Firelight with you?'
'Firelight is deceased.
A pause. 'Hammer, we have slight static interference. Confirm fatality.'
'Confirmed.'
'Recommend point assault! Pattern arrowhead!'
'Denied. Execute pattern hexenhammer. Westward hook. Confirm.
'Pattern hexenhammer confirmed, sir. Black Soldier out. The Emperor protects.'
'Hammer out. The Emperor protects.
Jack had his orders. He'd taken Vance's death as badly as I'd expected. I hoped it wouldn't influence his performance. Vengeance is an admirable thing, but not when uncontrolled.
I'd do the rest myself. I drew my bolt pistols from their oiled holsters at my waist. I had trained and trained for hours in the cargo hold of the Malleus Maleficent, firing until my wrist was sore from the recoil. I could now draw and kill a man in less than a second. It was a talent I sometimes wish I did not have.
The boltguns were themselves antiques, having been used and maintained by my Lord Inquisitor Rhinehart for two centuries beforehand. The construction was, I'm told, not standard; it packed a ten-round slide clip that slid into the grip of the weapon, rather than a thirty-round sickle magazine. I had eight more clips behind my belt. More than enough.
I pressed my back against the wall and braced myself.
'Fifty-seven…fifty-eight…fifty-nine…sixty.'
There was a ripping, tearing explosion as the tube charge in the control room detonated, destroying the central logic engine, the generator controls, most of the hallway, and all that remained of Cerise Vance. The steady thrum-thrum of the reactor slowed to a trickle, and then stopped entirely. All was quiet. For now.
She always told me she wanted to go out with a bang.
Everything you will read here is true.
Death is one of the things one must become accustomed to in service to the Imperium. Treachery is another. Hard decisions that most men have to make once a lifetime have to be made every day. Things must be given up, sacrifices must be made. A million men must die every day for that glorious ideal that is the Imperium.
But you've heard all this before.
Let me tell you a truth. My name is Samuel Christian Holtz. I am an Inquisitor; I have been for seventeen of my thirty-nine years. I have no living relatives. I have no bionic implants, have never lost a limb and possess no physical mutations. You may have noticed that I prefer the honesty of the sword over technomancy and psyker tricks. Indeed, the last of those is eternally beyond me. I am what you would call a Monodominant. I have been called uncompromising, ruthless, and occasionally cruel. This opinion does not disturb me. I was raised to be like this. It disturbs others instead.
A few are not repulsed. Vance, for one, had an unnatural fascination with my work and my manner. Jack has, I believe, never truly cared what others think of my methods. My savant does not pay enough attention to the physical world and rarely sees me in the field.
I have no friends and few companions. You will have noted that I prefer to remain detached. I have always found it difficult to connect to other people, although I never had trouble understanding them. People find me unsettling. There is a story to that.
I distrust machinery. I distrust psykers. I distrust the motives of other Inquisitors, the servants of other Inquisitors, the methods of other Inquisitors, and other Inquisitors in general. I don't even trust myself sometimes.
I am of slightly below-average height, stocky and sturdily built. My eyes are dark, my hair is darker and cut short. This means nothing. My parents died when I was five. This too means nothing.
I am determined, resolute, and untouchable in more ways than one. This is what matters. That and the fact that I have a weapon in my hand and a murderer to kill.
I have a truth to tell you. Would you like to hear it?
A/N: M'okay. First try at a realistic Inquisitor story. First-person, which seems to have worked well enough in the past. I've only ever tried a multi-chapter story in third-person; doing an entire epic from a single point of view should be challenging.
More than partially inspired by Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn trilogy, the reading of which is akin to an enema of liquid joy and should be canonised as religious literature. Go read it now. Now. Now, I tell you, or I shall come to your house and remove your spleen.
There's going to be some soliloquys, a lot of internal wrangling, and a fair amount of action. And some romance down the track, just because that's something you should always have. Reviews will be most wonderfully appreciated. Criticism will be accepted with open arms and a joyously masochistic grin. Feel free to point out silly spelling and grammatical errors, I'll only feel mildly stupid and embarrassed. And please, please give me some feedback because I don't get enough of it.