Faith & Pestilence
By Inquisitor Ariel Abel
"True, a rotten, heathen bastard I might be. However, and I hate to be the one to break it to you sister, your Emperor doesn't give a damn whether any of us live or die! You can be the frakking Saint of the Emperor's gratitude and I guarantee I'll still outlive you!"
-Balasz Mulder, self-proclaimed 'rotten, heathen bastard'
As repulsive as the above may initially come off as, Balasz's tactless means of conveying his point have always been effective if a bit abrasive and I often found myself agreeing with that one in particular, especially in my later years. Even I, as any Kriegan or Emperor-fearing citizen, was irked when he barked out those words. As a Commissar, I thought I knew what the threats to the Imperium were or could at least recite them by name. But after prat-falling into the ranks of the Holy Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition, I gradually discovered that the galaxy was an even far more unforgiving and ruthless place to exist in. The Inquisition showed me that there was a whole new realm of dangers that could cause even the most stalwart soldier to loosen their bowels in an instant. But contrary to what I might have implied, it was faith that saw me through many of the dangers I encountered during my service as an Inquisitor. While I never expected an invisible force to come down and smite my enemies, I knew that it was my faith that fuelled my stubbornness. And I have found that so long as the spirit remained unconquered, victory was possible.
I think what Balasz really meant when he spouted his blasphemy was that praying for salvation won't do any good unless you are willing to pick up your sword and save yourself. All too often in my travels I found civilians cowering in their homes, praying to the Emperor for deliverance. At first I sort of pitied them in their defencelessness but over time I found myself getting annoyed by it. There is an old saying that "Hope in neither a sound strategy nor a Principle of War." So no, I don't expect civilians to become instant soldiers but the haste in which people throw up their arms in surrender has often made me wonder how the Imperium has managed to survive for so long.
The answer, of course, was through the hard labour and sacrifice of those with the courage to stand against the darkness - from the Imperial Guard to the Adeptus Astartes to the Holy Orders of the Inquisition. Ironically, Balasz was probably as far from the symbol of courage and valour as one could get without being executed for heresy. But his instincts and resourcefulness when it came to staying alive were top notch. I simply made sure he was always being threatened by the very things that I needed eliminated or threaten to kill him myself. However, after a while he knew that the threat was implicit with all my orders. Having a career criminal on your payroll had its perks – they knew the best routes through the undercities; they had connections that wouldn't run away the moment you approached them; and they were always willing to turn on their former comrades for a little extra jingle in their pockets.
However, there was the downside, as exemplified by my opening remarks, in that they didn't necessarily play nice with others on your own side. In the case I had presented, Balasz was in a heated argument with Sister Devi, a member of the Adepta Sororitas. She, like most non-militant members of the Adepta Sororitas, was quick to turn to prayer when situations grew dire and it had been grating on Balasz's nerves all night.
As to be expected, Sister Devi did not take too kindly to his remarks. "The day that the Emperor's providence allows a cretin like you to outlive a servant of the sisterhood is the day that I renounce my faith!" she snapped back, not taking account to the fact that dead people tend not to renounce anything other than their mortality.
"I've still got ammo, we could make today that day," Balasz replied.
"Would you two just knock it off!" shouted Yarit 'Spike' Heilmit, my long-time aide and companion. He had been leaning against the door and was arguably one of the only things keeping it from busting off its hinges but from his tone I could tell that even that fact wouldn't stop him from marching across the dimly lit room and clubbing the two of them into silence. "Hate to be a drag Inquisitor but unless you've got another brilliant strategy tucked away somewhere that you haven't shown us, we're going to be in a bit of a bind in about two minutes."
It was always a bad sign when Spike's usual upbeat optimism began to run dry. However, only a madman would be able to deny that we were in a very dire situation. "Only a fool lets his faith falter in the hour of darkness for it is when all is pitch black does the candle shine its brightest!" espoused our accompanying madman of a priest. The priest was the only person in our little cabal who wasn't ready to hang up their hat and call it a life but I got the impression he didn't quite fully grasp how bad things were.
"Trooper, what's our status?" I called out to a nearby Kriegan soldier.
"Well…Lemares, Heinrich, Goeritz, Volk and Gustav are all dead. And we're all down to our last power cells. Overall, it leaves much to be desired," he replied. Despite the grim report, his tone remained level but that was to be expected from a Kriegan. Even though he was prepared to face death in service to the Emperor, I was certain that even this situation was not what he had in mind or intended.
"And the rest of you?" I called out to the others.
"Outta shells and my laspistol is dead," Heilmit answered between the echoes of the pounding upon our door.
"Use mine then, there should still be a few shots left in it," I said as I handed him my hotshot laspistol.
Balasz, now sitting quietly in the corner, had his revolver open and was spinning the chamber idly as he replied, "One stinking bullet left. I think I'm going to save that as a last resort if nobody has any objections." And I, having handed out all my guns, was not in a much better situation either. I still had my sword to rely upon and it had been making short work of our adversaries since the trouble began but after a whole day of swinging, fatigue had set in. Adrenaline would see me through the initial foray but I couldn't keep fighting for much longer.
The situation was grim to say the least. We were trapped inside a building and surrounded on all sides by a horde of ravenous horrors ready to strip the flesh from our bones, exhausted from fighting and retreating, running low on ammo, even lower on morale, and we had to spend our last waking moments with a priest who wouldn't shut up about the virtues of Saint Marconius the Pious. I doubted that Saint Marconius was in a situation anywhere remotely close to ours. Perhaps if our enemies had been crazed munchkins we would have had some inspiration from the saint. But even then there was little chance espousing the benevolence of the Emperor's divine would suddenly make converts of our enemies. I found myself barely clinging to the ledge over a yawning pit of despair. For a moment, I wondered what would my legendary mentor, Commissar Cain, have done were he caught in my situation. Strange how even so long after we had served together, I still found myself looking back to him for advice. Many times in my career I found myself wishing he were present but that was rarely the case. Instead, all I had were my own wits and drive to survive – something I frequently worried would be lacking at the worst possible time. Trapped with only a handful of survivors, they all looked to me for answers and leadership and I did not know if I had any left to give.
However, I think I may have gotten a bit too far ahead of myself now. Our spectacularly disastrous outing to the planet of Cocytus began earlier that day at a time when our forecast for the future did not include possibilities of death and dismemberment. How I still yearn for the days of my youth when I could arise in the morning with a sense of hope for a better tomorrow. Lately I would just wake up and hope that I could get through the day without a half-dozen beings trying to end my life, each with unique and horrifically inventive ways in which to do it. Even then there are days where my expectations still seemed to be set far too high. Cynicism, as they say, was the smoke that rose from the ashes of your burnt-out dreams.
Cocytus was a small Imperial world located in the Pollo sub-sector. There was nothing particularly note-worthy about the planet – it was a partially settled Imperial world, a modest population of about four billion inhabitants, and it enjoyed a year-round temperate environment. It was a touch on the dry and windy side but an otherwise stable ecosystem. I don't believe I could describe it as any more average unless there were literally two-and-a-half children per household. It exported a variety of industrial goods and pharmaceuticals as well as hosting large grox-herding ranges. Perhaps it had some exemplary feature that set it apart from other Imperial planets but if there were any I couldn't find it. Granted, I spent a bulk of my time planet-side fighting for my life so my sightseeing opportunities were limited.
It started out like most days with me laying half-awake in my bed, alone and trying desperately to resist the urge to punch a lasbolt through the optics of my personal servitor, which had been programmed to ensure that I got up in a timely fashion. Nothing said 'wakey-wakey' like a cold, metal mechadendrite snaking across your back, which only occurred when I was stubborn in getting up (and since life as an Inquisitor was just as hectic was life was in the Commissariat, I took every opportunity I could to rest).
"Okay, I'm up! I'm up," I capitulated as I shook the mechadendrite off me and clambered out of bed. If I hadn't known for a fact that the damn thing didn't have an ounce of sentience, I would have suspected it took great pleasure in seeing me scramble out of bed like a cat out of a full bathtub. But the servitor's reaction to my awakening never varied regardless of how quickly or slowly I arose; it merely stared at me with its reflective, lifeless optics, which occasionally clicked and whirred as the lenses focused on my movements through the room.
"Good morning Miss Abel," the servitor spoke in its usual monotonous voice. Having been repurposed from the Ecclesiarch, it lacked the usual hard, metallic tone that most servitors had and instead possessed a slightly lyrical and softer tone. It was still unmistakably unnatural but at least the designers had enough foresight to put a lampshade on it. "The time is currently zero-eight-fifteen ship standard. We have arrived in the Pollo sub-sector and are currently on route to planet Cocytus. We will reach orbit within one standard hour. As per your instructions, the latest reports from the planet's Administratum have been uploaded onto your personal dataslate."
I was aware of most of what the servitor was saying; I had already picked up the aforementioned dataslate and was browsing through the latest reports even before it spoke. Unfortunately, that didn't take very long as there was little content or substance to them. Once again, locally-provided intelligence left me wanting. "Very well, fetch my usual breakfast and a pot of tanna please," I instructed as I headed for the shower.
"As you wish madam," the servitor chimed before pivoting on its motorized wheels and sped off to the mess hall. Despite the annoyances of its wake-up protocols, the perks of having a servitor far outweighed the problems. For starters I didn't have to feel guilty about sending it down to the mess hall at two in the morning for a midnight snack. And for my aide, Spike, it saved him from having to run up and down the ship on the dozens of tasks that came with being an Inquisitor. As he grew older, he came to appreciate the servitor's diligence more and more.
Despite having moved into a career beyond dataslate shuffling, I found a strange comfort in being able to sit down behind a desk and peruse a dataslate's contents. I milled over various reports and messages while I ate my breakfast and even though there were many things from the Commissariat that I missed, the cooking was not one of them. The mess staff aboard my ship, the Spirit of Ferrograd, may not have been master culinary artists but an Inquisitor's budget allowed for better provisions. I was just about finished my morning routine when somebody knocked on my door.
"Come in," I called out.
"Morning boss," said Spike as he waltzed into my quarters. "Ready for another beautiful day in service to the Emperor?"
"Tea first," I quipped and finished off the last of my tanna. It was strange how I still drank the stuff despite not having served alongside a Valhallan for over twenty years. When I first tried the stuff, I was just relieved to have something to drink in order to calm my nerves and the taste left me vowing to avoid it whenever possible. But serving alongside Commissar Cain left me often needing a drink to keep a clear mind and tanna was the only thing he ever seemed to have on hand. In a way, the nostalgia became a strange source of comfort when facing a chaotic galaxy – a source I turned to more frequently after I had cut back on my drinking habits. And likewise, Spike too had come to serve as a kind of emotional anchor for me, along with his plethora of other useful skills he had picked up in our years together. We had been working together for nearly twenty years, which at the time seemed like a long partnership but it was still relatively young when compared to our full tenure together. Despite his experiences, he had never let the cruelties of the galaxy dampen his spirits and he approached life with the Inquisition with the same enthusiasm as he did back in the Death Korps of Krieg. Granted he wasn't as headstrong as he used to be but even after almost a hundred years I still saw the same juvenile trooper that I met one rainy day on the streets of Magnus Viridis.
"Captain's about to put the parking breaks on," Spike reported. "But he says there's something he wants to talk to you about at your earliest convenience."
"Probably wants me to pick up some brandy while I'm out," I groaned as I grabbed my last piece of toast and headed out. Taking a page from Cain's teachings on leadership, I found keeping my crew happy paid off in the long run. Though dangerous, the better I made working on behalf of the Inquisition, the more they'll fight to keep me (and in turn their job perks) alive. Thank the Emperor most workers could be bought off with extra rum rations and the use of Cain's patented brand of discipline. As we headed to the bridge, Spike and I chatted over our usual course of ship business and staffing. Despite having retired from the military as a mere private, Spike had since become the de facto chief of staff for my merry band of Inquisitional servants. With the exception of the ship's crew, who were watched over by their captain, Spike kept a close eye on the people who worked for me – identifying potential problems as well as areas we needed to improve on. Every hired gun I've used had to be vetted by Spike first and he had high standards when it came to people entrusted with my safety.
"While we're on the planet, we really should look into finding at least five or six more guns to fill the void left from last months raid," he said while I munched on my toast. "And I don't need to remind you that we're still short on trained medical staff, psykers, and people are still asking for a new priest to replace O'Malley."
"Cause it's so easy to get good staff these days. It's not exactly an easy job to advertise. 'Come serve in Abel's Inquisitional retinue; maintain faith and morale as we pit ourselves against the most horrid nightmares made manifest. Long hours, meagre pay, no overtime, health, or dental plans, and the retirement plan is getting eaten by a kroot.'" I remarked half-heartedly. Ordering people to work for me was not how I wanted to run my operation. It was suitable when done on a temporary basis but I needed to fill those positions with permanent staff and I only wanted the willing and able.
"We could just send a request to the Ministorum for a priest," Spike suggested, to which I shot him a harsh glare.
"I'd rather make-out with a lictor." It was no mystery to anybody I served with that I was not a huge fan of the Adeptus Ministorum. The fact that I took every opportunity I could to give them the middle figure or deprive them of their ambitions likely earned me a few enemies amongst their ranks (and a few assassination attempts later on). "They've got their heads shoved so far up their asses that they don't even notice all the dangers that are closing in around them. The less I deal with them, the easier my job gets."
"Personal grievances with the Ministorum aside, the crew could really use somebody to help remind them of their faith," Spike argued politely. "And honestly, I think you could too."
"My faith is fine," I insisted, perhaps a bit too strongly. "My beef is with the idiots running the church, not the faith itself."
"Well some people might argue there's no difference. Don't forget they've got allies in the Inquisition too."
"Thanks mom," I said sarcastically as we stepped into a lift. "You worry too much."
"One of us has to."
There was a tense silence in the lift for a while. Spike had likely given up on changing my mind and I was busy finishing what was left of my toast. When I finally did have something to say, it was in response to one of his previous remarks. "What's wrong with my faith?" I inquired with a touch of hostility.
"When was the last time you gave thanks to the Emperor?" he asked plainly.
"I did that yesterday," I insisted.
"Winning at tarot does not count."
I let out a quiet groan and thankfully I did not need to put up with any further questioning from the morality police as our lift arrived at its destination and we stepped onto the bridge of the Ferrograd. I yearned for the days where I could slip in and out of rooms without even being noticed since on the Ferrograd I was the single-most recognized figure on the ship and I couldn't even step onto the bridge without a deckhand shouting 'Inquisitor on deck.' Despite the bellowed announcement of my arrival, few actually made any kind of motion to acknowledge my presence but only because I had long ago told them not to. I wasn't the captain and I'd rather they focus on their duties rather than my presence. The bridge of the Ferrograd was its usual bustle of activity, much to my satisfaction. Despite being on a non-Imperial warship, the crew had adjusted to their settings quite admirably and worked with an efficiency that would make one think they had been serving aboard it their whole lives. The ever-dutiful Captain Engelhart was sitting in his seat that overlooked a large holographic map of the star system. His dark eyes had turned to me the moment he heard the lift door open and he nodded curtly as I approached.
"Morning captain," I said in greeting as I leaned against the hololith table. "What seems to be the trouble?"
"Well we're about to pull into standard orbit madam," replied the Captain as he rose from his seat. The good captain was like most fly-boys turned ship commanders; calm in a crisis, daring in battle, and always thinking in three dimensions while the rest of us were struggling with two. Having a competent captain in charge of the ship took a huge weight off my shoulders since I couldn't tell the difference between a freighter and a floating iron tub, let alone command one. His oversight on the day-to-day operations meant I could focus on my primary duties as Inquisitor, which meant it was one less thing to worry about. He was a reliable and dedicated captain but once put on terra firma or outside the confines of a vessel, however, he had a tendency to become absent minded and he could barely hit anything that wasn't bigger than a starfighter. As such, I excused him from any Inquisitional duties off-ship. Why holovids always had the captain going planetside when he should be sending soldiers has always baffled to me. Verity always insisted that I 'thought too much' when we watched holovids.
"I'm sensing a 'but' coming along," I said as it didn't take a psyker to see where the Captain was going with this.
"But it's just the response from planet's stellar traffic network has been a bit troubling."
"How so? Nothing's happening," I said as I glanced to the holo-map. Normally if something was amiss there would be bright lights and loud beeps to accentuate it.
"That's the problem miss, there hasn't been any response at all," replied Engelhart as he rose from his seat. He directed my attention to the space surrounding the planet and its conspicuous absence of anything resembling a vessel. The only things we could detect in orbit around Cocytus were unmanned satellites. "We haven't had a patrol boat, a communication, or even an unmanned probe sent our way. We're well within their sensor range as there are standard Imperial perimeter sensors here and here. You'd think if somebody saw an unidentified, non-Imperial class warship returning to real space, there would be some kind of reaction. It's not like with your old ship where you could be mistaken for a simple merchant vessel - we are most definitely a warship. The giant lance battery on the prow is sort of a dead giveaway."
The Spirit of Ferrograd, unlike the armed freighter I used to ride around in, was a full-fledged warship operated by members of the Imperial Navy. It wasn't an Imperial vessel by design as I had acquired it after 'liberating' it from its renegade creators. Despite having a much larger budget and near-limitless access to information, I was still responsible for outfitting and supplying my own missions. It wasn't too bad once I got established but I started out, like most young Inquisitors, with the clothes on my back, hitch-hiking rides in the holds of whatever I could find that was going where I needed to be. Most of the equipment in my armory was acquired in a similar fashion. And despite its second-hand nature, it was in excellent condition now thanks to a team of tech-priests who spent hours repairing or re-sanctifying our 'repurposed' equipment. One of my greatest hauls came after busting a renegade sect of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Our tech-priests were quick to find any and all equipment that could be re-sanctified in order to appease the Omnissiah. By the end we had enough new weapons to replace all of our old, shitty lasguns and enough ammunition to supply an entire regiment in the midst of an Ork uprising.
And while liberating an entire warship would normally be useless to a lone Inquisitor, Captain Engelhart and his crew, having lost their cruiser to the renegades who built the Ferrograd, were more than happy to step in and take control. Rumour has it that Engelhart had the famous M18.12 Overture playing on loudspeakers on the bridge when he ordered all guns to bombard the renegades' main base. Suffice to say, it was the start of a wonderful working relationship, though imagine my surprise when I realized that the Captain and I had crossed paths in the past and I had completely failed to notice.
"Anything on the auspex?" I asked.
"Nothing out of the ordinary but as usual it's impossible to get an accurate scan of the cities – too many people packed tightly together in heavy rockrete buildings. Did the Administratum inform you of any disturbances happening on the planet?" Engelhart replied.
"They mentioned some trouble with rioting but nothing out of the ordinary and there was already a Guard regiment dispatched to deal with it. Maybe the Administratum told them we were coming," I postulated since I had exchanged a number of messages with the planet's Administratum office.
"Since when has the Administratum shown that kind of initiative and foresight?" Spike quipped.
"Good point," I sighed. Unfortunately, speculating from orbit wasn't going to yield any answers. "In any case, we should get down to the surface as soon as possible. Spike, go get Mulder up here, I need to speak with him."
As I mentioned before, Balasz Mulder was, by even his own admission, a rotten, heathen bastard. He was also a self-serving, hedonist and a borderline coward. In a firefight, the only thing you could count on him to do was find the most solid piece of cover and wait for the shooting to stop. What he had, however, was a whole transport load of valuable information. Before being…convinced of the virtues of working for the Inquisition, Balasz Mulder ran a massive smuggling operation that spanned across most of the segmentum. He had contacts and colleagues in most remote locations one could imagine and despite being a certifiable arsehole, he was the most widely travelled man in the entire ship. He can be rather antagonizing at times but I always kept him on a short leash and reminded him frequently of it. In the end, his skill set and expertise made his idiosyncrasies bearable…for me at least. Many of the ship's crew couldn't stand him with the exception of Verity but I couldn't understand what she saw in him. Captain Engelhart and I continued surveying the maps while we waited for Spike to return with Mulder. It took about twenty minutes before the man finally showed up – a delay that was likely attributed to Spike having to haul Mulder's arse out of bed (gauging by the five o'clock shadow he sported).
"For frak's sake, can't an old man get some sleep around here?" Mulder groaned as he groggily meandered over to the holographic projector. Despite appearing to be only middle-aged, Balasz was actually nearing his third century. This was, of course, thanks to juvenat treatments he acquired using his ill-gotten fortune. It was also how he managed to afford to frequently wear clothes that cost as much as the holo-projector he leaned against. "Hey, it's Cocytus. We're there already?" he asked rhetorically when he looked up at the holographic map.
I didn't waste any time with small talk, getting straight to the point, "What can you tell me about this place?"
Balasz shrugged indifferently as though my inquiry was barely worth the effort. "Worthless little shitball in a small pocket of stable space. It was useless as a relay point and the only market of any value was drugs and pharmaceuticals, and even then it was just barely profitable," he explained. "Didn't help that the idiot governor was one of those hard-ass puritan types – impossible to bribe, obsessed with cracking down on organized crime, appointed equally hard-ass officials and officers as well. Of course we had long since pulled the plug on any major export operations on the planet but that didn't stop him from seeing gremlins in every shadow. He was popular…stupid, but popular. He never really got rid of what crime was on the planet; he simply forced the criminals underground where it was at least out of sight of all the rich people." It sounded to me like the typical 'out of sight, out of mind' governor. They took a good idea and but only did a mediocre job at it. Unfortunately, mediocrity was just as good as the real thing except nobody noticed until it was too late. Like a bunker built with hollowed-out rockrete, it would look perfectly okay until an Ork knocked it over with a sneeze, at which point you're in shit creek without a paddle, a boat, or even a decent pair of boots.
"How's the law enforcement?" I continued.
"The Adeptus Arbites are mostly present in the upper levels of the city…you know, to keep the nobles feeing safe and secure. Of course all the trouble happens in the undercity and the local fuzz are totalitarians. They're quick to judge, quicker to take action, and prefer talking through their cudgels. If you annoy them, they might not stop and listen long enough for you to invoke your Inquisition status before caving your skull in. But you've probably already seen their patented brand of homicidal enthusiasm when you got the 'twenty questions' by the welcoming committee."
"Actually we haven't heard a word from the surface or anybody in orbit," Engelhart interjected.
It was the first time Balasz expression changed from his all-encompassing apathy, though only to raise an eyebrow in puzzlement. "That's not like them at all," Balasz remarked. "Hm, maybe the old windbag finally kicked off and somebody with some actual sense has taken over." If nothing else, I could always count on Balasz to offer his unique sense of perspective on virtually any subject, whether I asked for it or not. "Well, in that case then it's probably best if we slip in while the guard dogs are distracted. You know how your presence can get some people worked up."
"Don't remind me," I muttered. In my travels, I always found it best to keep my Inquisitional nature a closely guarded secret. People had a tendency to become anxious when they knew an Inquisitor was snooping around. Often times the guilty party would take the initiative if they caught word of an Inquisitor on the planet, at which point they'd usually flee like a scared juvie. In some occasions they'd try to assassinate the Inquisitor, which never accomplished anything other than pissing the Inquisitor off…or on rare occasions it drew attention to guilty parties the Inquisitor wasn't even aware existed (which happened to me on at least four occasions). From personal experience I can attest that few things infuriate an Inquisitor more than trying to blow them up when they've stopped on a planet to simply pick up provisions and take a short rest. "I'll take a small team and go down to the planet in the Aquila lander. We'll try to draw as little attention to ourselves as possible for the time being."
"Not taking the Zweihander this time? Oh, Celeste will be so disappointed," Captain Engelhart sighed.
"You can tell her to have the afternoon off," I said as I gave Spike a pat on the shoulder. "Spike here will be the chauffeur."
"I'm guessing you'll want me to tag along too?" Balasz said unenthusiastically.
"Of course – wouldn't be the same without you," I said teasingly as I motioned for him and Spike to follow along. "We'll call if we need anything Captain. Try not to get sucked into a warp storm while we're gone."
"As long as Necrons don't show up again I think we'll be fine," Engelhart replied, surprisingly light-heartedly on a subject that at the time was a complete 'arms flailing like a seizure' panic inducing. He even laughed about the time Cain and I rescued him from Orks and we almost got killed about a half-dozen times.
Since Balasz looked like he was barely ready to face the mess hall, let alone the unknown, I told him and Spike to take thirty minutes in order to get prepped before meeting in the hangar. It also gave me time to dress more appropriately. One thing I frequently missed from my days in the Commissariat was the simple fact that I could get changed in the dark. The only times I ever needed to wear something different was when the situation called for more formal attire. Other than that it was greatcoat and peaked cap day in and day out. I still had my commissarial garbs for the rare occasions when posing as a Commissar suited my mission but other than that it mostly gathered dust, waiting for moments when I would take it out if only to remember my younger, more carefree days (relatively speaking). As an Inquisitor, I obviously had free-reign with respect to my wardrobe but more often than naught I found myself drawn to the humble greatcoat, if only for the feelings of nostalgic that it brought me. Plus, a greatcoat offered the room necessary to conceal weapons and tools. As well it kept my carapace chest plate from being too visible. Despite being an Inquisitor, I had yet to gain access to better armour but my tech-priests assured me they were working on something befitting a person of my position. Until then I had to settle with my standard operating procedure of not getting shot. After grabbing my coat, my weapon belt, which consisted of two pistols and my sword, and a cup of recaf, I headed out to rendezvous with my colleagues. As I expected, Spike was waiting by the lift for me, wearing his usual Death Korps coat and carapace armour and with his trusty shotgun slung over one shoulder.
"Hopefully Mr. Mulder will not keep us waiting too long," I remarked as I called for the lift.
"If he starts running late just give him a little reminder," Spike replied, referring to the short leash I kept him on. A leash which included a small remote-controlled, shock generator.
When the lift doors opened I was halfway to stepping inside when we both realized somebody was standing in the lift doorway. I didn't notice the person at first since it was one of the only members of the ship that was actually shorter than me. Standing in the doorway, staring up at us with bright grey eyes and flashing her sickeningly sweet grin, was my daughter, Verity. "Can I come?" she immediately asked, having already deduced our purpose from our attire alone.
"Verity, dear…I think you're still a bit too young to accompanying us," I said in an attempt to let her down gently.
"But you promised!" she whined. "You said I could start helping you out on your missions and I was helpful the last time I went with you."
"That was a fluke and you shouldn't have been there to begin with," I replied, quickly losing any attempt at being kind and gentle with my answer. "Plain and simple – you're not ready yet."
"I've been on this ship for over a year now…I can help! I won't get in the way, I promise," Verity continued to argue as though my words or authority had absolutely no meaning to her. I could order around an entire company of Space Marines and yet I still had troubling at times keeping control of my own daughter. "Spike said I was ready!"
At that revelation I immediately cast a sideways glance to my aide, who was already quickly trying to keep any blame from landing on his lap. "It was target practice," he insisted, hands raised into a defensive posture. "I was just trying to be nice."
I let out a slight groan as I tried to figure out a new plan. Despite the fact that I could easily push her aside, Verity seemed intent on barring my path until I acquiesced. Verity did speak the truth in the end but I was still uneasy about the idea of letting her join in on official Inquisition business. I turned to Spike, as he was the only other person on the ship who had spent as much time with Verity as me but wasn't biased by obvious maternal instincts. "Do you think she's ready?" I asked. Verity's eyes lit up at the sound of possible victory.
While Spike didn't immediately say yes or no, he did give a slight shrug of uncertainty. "Well, she has gotten better with a pistol. She can hit the targets consistently now at a decent range. And she has been doing well in her studies. This mission probably won't be too difficult so I don't see why not. She was right about the ship thing – she has been cooped up here for a long time. It might be good for her to start seeing the world again. Plus, if things get too hairy we can just call for a pick-up or leave her in the lander." It was hard to argue with Spike on the subject since he had been doing a better job of keeping watch of her studies and training than I had. So with a defeated sigh, I finally nodded in agreement, to which Verity cheered in delight and hugged us both.
"But you're not getting a gun," I said sternly.
"Fine…" Verity murmured. I had to put my foot down somewhere before I lost any semblance of authority in front of the others, not that Verity didn't have a knack for doing that already. Raising a child was definitely not an easy task, even when considering all the assistance from Spike and that Verity was a very special child (and not the 'needed to monitored around paperclips' kind of special). Unfortunately, having Verity along gave me yet another thing to worry about. As an Inquisitor, people were supposed to be thought of as tools or comrades – becoming emotionally attached to one's retinue could be problematic. However, I was fed the same 'wisdom' when I became a commissar and I became quite attached to some of the soldiers I served with. I think my years with Corporal Watz taught me how to connect with people without compromising my integrity. But Verity was different. Could I separate the mother from the Inquisitor? I did not know and that thought haunted me continually. "So what are we doing?" she asked as we shuffled back into the lift.
"An unknown space-faring object crashed into the planet's surface a while back. The team sent to investigate the impact crater were never heard from again, nor were any subsequent teams sent to investigate the disappearances. Now an entire encampment has gone off the grid. Unrelated rioting has got the arbites, local law, militia, and guard regiments tied up…so I figured I'd take a look into things personally."
"Interesting," Verity said with a quick nod. Like me, she had an insatiable curiosity. She was drawn to the unknown just because it is there. It was fortunate that she was associated with one of the few professions that curiosity was rewarded with something other than an early grave. "Any leads?"
Alas, I shook my head. "We're pretty much going in blind. We'll take a look at the impact sight, the encampment, and the surrounding areas to see if we can find anything that might point us in the right direction. It could be nothing like a crashed raider ship and its surviving crew are just picking off isolated targets or it could be something worse; it could have been a lictor spore, which means we'll be up to our necks in nids by the end of the month." Every Inquisitor had stories of mission they had undertaken to investigate psychic phenomenon or unexplained disappearances or possible xeno sights or heretical cults only to find it's a bunch of juvies with too much imagination and free time on their hands. Not every investigation led to planet-wide conspiracies or ancient prophecies or heretical cults trying to resurrect long-dead masters. For every Inquisitor that frolicked around the galaxy like some holo-vid action hero, there were a hundred other Inquisitors that poured over archival data, monitored suspects as they went about their daily routine, or asked a laundry list of questions to an interrogation detainee. But even if ninety-five percent of your cases turned out to be duds, you had to approach each investigation with the same degree of consideration and methodical examination. All it took was one careless oversight and a planet could wind up engulfed in a Chaos uprising.
As anticipated, we were forced to wait in the hangar bay for several minutes for the last of us, Balasz, to finally catch up. When he arrived he was dolled up as usual, wearing a tailored suit with a fedora to match, his hair neatly combed back, and his face now cleanly shaven. He struck a handsome figure but that was simply another part of his criminal routine as the charismatic businessman. "Oh good, we get to have a family outing," Balasz said sarcastically when he noticed Verity accompanying us. "Should I grab my pict-caster and pack some lunches before we go?"
"Get in the lander," I said straight-faced.
"Of course, your majesty," he replied.
"Come on Bally," Verity said as she tugged on Balasz's arm. For whatever reason, he seemed to let her get away with using a diminutive petname. Perhaps it was because he wasn't entirely a bastard and had a soft spot for children…or it was because he was a bastard and was just buttering her up in order to get something from her later. Considering he was a shameless womanizer and would have tried something once she was older but I knew that wouldn't be the case. We both were crystal clear in the understanding that I would drop him in a heartbeat.
"Remind me again why I'm getting dragged along on this mess?" Balasz muttered.
"Because you always leave contacts on any planet you've had business with in order to keep an eye on things," I answered smugly. "And you just so happen to have a contact in the city nearest to the encampment that we're landing at. I figure if something underhanded is afoot, you'll be the first to hear about it."
"Well I see somebody's been going through my little black book again," he replied, referring to his contact directory listing, which literally had thousands upon thousands of names and locations. Part of what made Balasz so difficult to track and apprehend for the Inquisition had been the sheer enormity of his information network. He had contacts on planets who were the grandchildren of his original informants he had, centuries ago, left behind. His network, at its peak, dwarfed that of most Inquisitors. He often relied on low-level scribes, city workers, local law enforcement, shipyard workers, and even vagrants. He kept people on his payroll that were in positions to see everything that happened and yet remained almost completely invisible – overlooked by the higher echelons of society. It is a tactic that I utilized in my years as an Inquisitor with excellent results.
"It's like a directory for scumbags. I'm not sure where I would be without it," I said in mocking praise of Balasz's contributions to the team. Though it could be a useful asset to other Inquisitors, his little black book was a closely guarded resource of mine. If the wrong Inquisitor got his hands on the book, it would turn from an information network into a hit list. Balasz might have loathed the life of servitude I forced upon him but if any other Inquisitor had caught him, he would've been dead or worse. I gave him an ultimatum – surrender all assets and work for me, or be handed over for Inquisitional processing. As Cain would describe it, he chose probable death over certain death.
"This is going to be a damn waste of time…" he muttered bitterly under his breath.
I wish I could better describe the atmosphere on Cocytus when our Aquila lander touched down but after having visited hundreds of different worlds, they sort of blur together. Some worlds are more memorable than others but Cocytus was a planet I would soon rather forget. When we stepped out of the lander, the landscape was relatively bleak and barren, prompting Balasz to comment, "Well, this place was a shithole when I left it. And as you can all see, nothing has changed."
The encampment we were to investigate was located amongst the rocky foothills a fair distance outside the city of Ne'ere. I remember it being very rocky as Spike had to circle above for several minutes before finding a clearing large enough to set down in. It was a sunny afternoon, dusty, and quite windy, which stuck to my member because Verity had been wearing my old crimson sash around her face to help keep the dust out.
"Come on, the encampment is a couple of clicks that way," I instructed as our group got moving.
"For the love…I'm getting frakking dust everywhere!" Balasz complained as he brushed some dust from his collar for the third time since stepping off the lander. Amongst his other qualities, Balasz was a world class complainer.
Spike went on point, staying several meters ahead of us as we trekked through the rocky wastelands. Our journey would have gone faster had Verity not stopped to examine every little lizard and 'funny-looking plant' we came across. While I usually tried not to stymie her curiosity, there were times when it did slow things down. "Verity, put that back, you're not keeping it," I said when I noticed she was carrying some sort of desert reptile in her hand. She was disappointed like any child would be but obediently set it back down on a rock. Thankfully, though, her curiosity meant there was no shortage of enthusiasm once we spotted our destination in the distance. Verity likely would have raced over to it had Spike not stopped her from getting past him.
"Easy there little missy, we don't know what's over there," he warned her as he pushed her behind him. "Could be bad guys for all we know."
"If there we bad guys, they wouldn't have stayed put in an area that is defensibly exposed. Given the lack of water or agricultural equipment seen on our fly-over, it is highly improbable that this encampment is self-sufficient. So if we were dealing with people they would have moved to a more populated area for more targets or to a more remote location for better concealment," Verity promptly answered. She always was the logical one of our lot. And she did have a strong point – there was little in terms of defensible walls or even watchtowers. And since the surrounding hills gave any attackers ample cover to make an approach, no experienced fighter in their right mind would have set up shop there. However, this was assuming the guilty party had intelligent people in it.
"Still, Spike's right," Balasz said. "Why…there could be snakes in there or something."
"Don't joke about that," Spike quickly snapped back.
"I'm just saying it's possible," Balasz continued, "after all, we are in a bit of a desert and snakes do live in desert-like environments. I'm sure Verity would agree with me."
"We are in an environment that appears suitable for snake-like creatures to inhabit," Verity said as though answering was undesired but also unavoidable. In a way, she did always have a compulsion to respond to any question she knew the answer to.
"Please don't help him Verity."
"I'm sorry," she whimpered.
In any retinue, there were bound to be moments of friction and it was always up to the Inquisitor to smooth out the wrinkles. "That's enough you guys," I quickly interjected. "Balasz – shut up. Spike – man up. And sweetie, you did nothing wrong so you don't need to be sorry." And in an instant, Balasz fell silent, Spike continued to lead the way, and Verity smiled back to me. At times, fixing a problem was as simple as saying the right few words. Now if only more of my problems could have been solved that way, I would have been able to avoid a lot of grief in my life.
The encampment itself appeared undamaged at a casual glance. It had the usual assortment of pre-fab, snap-together hab shelters and work units arranged in a circular pattern around a large, central portable work lab. The set-up was standard issue for most Imperial expeditions; easy to produce, easier to assemble, and could almost entirely on the back of a couple of flatbed trucks or a single transport ship. Back when I was a commissar such units were highly sought after by regiments as they made excellent command centers that could be moved about with ease. I ordered the team to split, save for Verity who I told to remain close to me. Spike went to explore the surrounding area and Balasz began searching through the hab units. Meanwhile, Verity and I went inside the main work lab.
"What have we got here," I muttered as we stepped inside. The large, open-space room was filled with workbenches, scanners, computer lecterns, and various mechanical equipment. The center had a large examining table with small bits of rock and metal scattered across it. Judging by the broken ceiling-mounted equipment, scattered hand tools, the scorch markings on the wall, and the red stains on the floor we were looking at the epicentre of something disastrous. "Verity, take a scan."
"On it," she agreed. Her grey eyes began to glow a dull blue as her augmetics began analyzing the scene before her. Did I forget to mention that Verity served as my main data analyst? Indeed, beneath the sweet, childish visage was enough augmetics to make a tech-priest bust a bolt. She stared at the central table for a while before sweeping her gaze out to the rest of the room. "I am detecting a large amount of non-native particulates on the table as well as across the room. They do not appear to be naturally occurring either," she reported after a brief scan. She walked up to the central table and took a closer at it, which meant she was taking an even more thorough scan of what was before her. "A composition of various metallic particulates and organic matter. It is difficult to identify individual components due to the level of erosion and decay."
"It did crash from outer space," I replied.
"Negative. While some fragments do contain heavy heavy thermal scarring, these samples are also heavily decayed from oxidization and exposure."
"Okay, so it's old metal that's crashed from space," I concluded. "It was probably a ship then. Any chance of identifying what kind of ship it could've been."
"Can you identify a mountain from a pebble?" she asked rhetorically, displaying the Abel family's keen sense of sarcasm. "Whatever crashed was extremely old and extremely decayed. If it was a ship, it would likely have been adrift with this level of structural decay."
"What can you tell me of the organic material? I'm assuming most of this stuff is blood."
"Correct and much of it is old – several days at the very least. However, on the table there are also high levels of organic material consisting of several dozen enzymes, decayed lymphocytes, leukocytes, proteins, collagens, erythrocytes, and plasma."
"Which makes it?"
"Pus…bile…various body fluids. Something dead and decaying was on this table."
"Human?"
"I cannot say for certain. There is too much contamination from the blood to isolate a DNA sample." Her eyes faded back to grey and she let out a defeated sigh. "I'm sorry but there is nothing more I can determine from this."
I could see that she was a little disappointed in her inability to come to a definitive answer so I quickly gave her a reassuring pat on the back. "You did good dear," I told her, which succeeded in lifting her spirits. I took look at the scene again in hopes I could piece something together from what I could see and what Verity had told me. "Okay…so something artificial definitely crashed on the planet. Whatever inside it was dead but…something else wasn't. So what attacked the people here? And where did the bodies go?" While I stood and pondered, Verity went back to scanning the room, albeit the old-fashioned way as she looked through cabinets and drawers looking for clues. I was beginning to think I might have had Tyranids to deal with – possibly a small brood nest that was aboard a freighter. It wasn't uncommon for Tyranids to lay dormant in old husks drifting through space until it crashed onto a planet, awakening its passengers. But the scene looked too clean for Tyranids; there should have been huge blood splatters and maybe some leftover bits and pieces of the expedition team. Even Tyranids did not pick a place completely clean.
That was when I heard a shriek coming from Verity's direction. I whisked my head towards the source and saw Verity on her backside with a body slumped across the floor a few feet in front of her. It had fallen out of the storage closet that she had just opened and judging by the complete lack of motion, it was very, very dead. I could not make out any features at first because the body was dressed head-to-toe in a plastic environmental suit – the kind typical used to clean contaminated areas during epidemics. The workers must have been worried about bio-hazards from whatever they brought in.
"Are you okay?" I asked as I helped Verity back to her feet.
"It just…startled me that's all," she explained. I had long since gotten used to dead bodies falling out of strange places but this was only Verity's second time off the ship as a member of a mission so she wasn't yet desensitized. I let my daughter collect her thoughts while I examined the body. After flipping it over, I saw no visible signs of injuries or damage to the environmental suit. In fact, its controlled airflow had hindered any decay so the corpse was well preserved. The expression on the man's face was pained and exhausted.
"Can your scanner determine a cause of death?" I asked.
"Negative," she answered after a brief scan. "The suit's integrity is intact. We would need to perform a more in-depth autopsy to determine how he died. However, I would postulate that he likely died of dehydration if he were inside the closet." I glanced up for a moment and saw Verity was examining the closet the body had fallen out of. "The door does not appear to be able to open from the inside. I think he became trapped in there."
"Forced in there or hid in there?" I asked.
"There does not appear to be any sign that he attempted to escape."
That, unfortunately, was not a good sign. A man trapped in a closet would normally try to claw or kick or punch his way out; unless, of course, something far worse on the other side of the door. "So something scared him so bad that he decided dying in a closet was a better alternative," I said aloud as I finished my examination of the body. There was no bruising on his knuckles or damage to his fingertips, which further supported our original assessment. I did, however, notice an empty pistol holster on his leg.
But before I could say anything, Verity spoke up. "I have a question," she said as she set her gaze onto the rest of the room. "If these were recovery workers…you know, tech-priests, diggers, machinists, and whatnot, why are there lasgun markings on the walls and ceiling?"
"That's a good question Verity. Who goes to work in a lab packing weapons?" It was entirely possible that the people here knew what they were working with was dangerous but continued on anyways. It wasn't unheard of, especially considering how isolated we were. And with the troubles related to the rioting, it was possible that the workers took their security into their own hands. Nothing in the camp's layout suggested they were expecting an external threat so why were there guns in the lab? "I don't like this at all," I said with a sigh.
After taking another look around the lab, Balasz's voice buzzed into my comm-bead. "Hey fearless leader, there's something here you should probably see," he reported. He relayed his coordinates and I headed over there with Verity. Balasz directed me to one of the hab-units; its door was already wide open so I strolled on in.
As we entered, I pointed out the condition of the doors to Verity. They were covered in dents, the painted insignias scratched off (other doors had intact markings and insignias), and they had stress fractures along their hinges. What was bizarre, though, was that these were all on the inside of the door and not the outside. "Well that's not the least bit foreboding," I remarked as we headed inside. The interior had a basic layout – a main hallway connecting several quarters and bathrooms, and ending in a common room at the far end. At brief glance, though, most of the furniture had been moved out of the rooms save for the beds and some small tables. It did not appear as though the building had been used as living quarters but I was not sure what it had been used until I reached the common room where Balasz had been waiting for me. A number of cots had been arranged in the room, or had once been as the room now looked as though a pack of drunken Ogryns had stormed through it, and discarded packages bore medical tags. Balasz stood amidst the mess in one of the few blood-free spots, staring at a dataslate. "Find anything?"
"No liquor, smokes, or cash but I did find the medic's log," he answered. "It goes back a few months but nothing out of the ordinary until a few weeks ago. Most of this shit is in doctor-ese but looks like there were a lot of workers suddenly falling ill in a very short time span. Reports are pretty short…probably too overworked to keep a detailed account." He handed over the dataslate for me to peruse but it didn't take long for me to realize that I wasn't going to get much useful information out of it. The reports on the separate cases were very short: names, symptoms, vitals, treatments, possible diagnoses, and times of death. There were random blurbs that were mostly speculative but it didn't take the medic long to notice all the patients had identical symptoms. The last entry noted a quarantine but it did not say much more as the report stopped mid-sentence.
"Looks like he got interrupted," I commented as I noticed a sizable dent on the corner of the dataslate. It appeared as though the dataslate had been dropped.
"Looks like whatever they picked out of that crater wasn't very good for their health," Balasz replied. "Should I be like…getting a mask or something?" A valid concern but I got the impression that it wasn't going to make much difference at this point. There were no bodies and whatever caused this seemed to have vanished long ago. Nonetheless, I had Verity check the air for any signs of contamination or pathogens. She said she didn't detect anything out of the ordinary but she warned us that her auspex wasn't designed for that level of precision so it was possible that she simply wasn't capable of detecting anything in the air. We sifted around for more clues but we only found similar signs of struggle as we had back in the lab.
"Not a single body though," I sighed.
"Well, the houseplant's dead. Does that count?" Balasz said sarcastically.
"I'll be sure to begin an autopsy immediately," I replied, meeting his sarcasm with my own.
After about an hour of fruitless searching, we met up with a parched and dust-covered Spike in the center of camp. I brought him up to date on our findings inside the camp before he reported his findings on the area around the camp. "Impact crater looked fairly normal…well, as normal as an impact crater can be," Spike explained at first. "Workers did a thorough job extracting all the fragments of whatever crashed…save for this." He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a chunk of metal – it was dark, jagged, and encrusted with rust and corrosion. He handed the metal chunk over to Verity, who quickly started to examine the piece.
"It's composition appears similar to the particulates found in the lab. I am able to identify significant levels of ceramite, plasteel, adamantium, silica, copper, and various iron alloys," Verity said moments later. "Hmm…I'm also detecting engravings beneath the corrosion as well as corroded circuitry on the inner surface."
"But does that tell us anything new?" Spike asked, trying not to sound harsh despite his demand.
"It tells us there was a mechanical component to what they recovered; something that required a degree of sophisticated technology to function," she explained.
"Any hope of being a bit more specific?" I inquired.
Unfortunately, this time Verity had a shrug for an answer. "Indeterminate. It could be from a number of things – a servitor, heavy machinery, a sentinel…something very hi-tech to say the least."
"Well that narrows it down a little bit at least," I muttered while I contemplated possible implications.
"I also found some disturbed graves," Spike informed us. "They were shallow…recently dug. And for some reasons the bodies had been removed."
"Better watch out then, the dead are rising," Balasz said mockingly and sounding a bit frustrated at the overall situation. "We're wasting our time here Abel. Textbook case of shoot n' loot: the recovery crew found something valuable, some thugs demanded it to be handed over, thugs shoot a few workers to show they're serious, workers get serious and fight them off, security gets beefed up, and then the thugs return with extra firepower and shoot everything up. The prize is taken along with anything of value. You don't need to be a damn Inquisitor to see that nothing special happened here. Call the local fuzz and get them to deal with it."
Though I took Balasz's words with some consideration, Spike did not appreciate the disrespectful tone that he had spoken with. Spike was among the many voices that protested my decision to bring Balasz onto the team and he, like most others, took whatever opportunity they could to take a shot at the man. "If these were thugs, why would all the bodies be gone? Why would the teams sent to investigate go missing?" Spike asked with a hint of hostility.
"Are you that ignorant? It's because there's always a decent black market for body parts," Balasz replied defensively. "You have any idea how much script I could make selling your dead arse to a morally-scrupulous tech-priest? It's cheaper to build servitors using recycled parts. As for the teams sent later…you sit tight, prepare an ambush, and wait for the investigators to show up. Then, boom, more swag and scraps."
"What makes you so certain of this?"
"Because that's how I used to handle it," he said without even a hint of remorse or hesitation. It was as if he was discussing his morning routine. "Bodies leave trails, ransom is risky, and prisoners take up resources. It's safer and more profitable to sell the bodies for scrap. It was standard operating procedure with my people. Why do you think nobody ever found any bodies with me?"
"You sick son of a-!"
The situation had quickly deteriorated but I was able to put myself between the two before fists started swinging. "That's enough! Calm down Spike," I shouted as I pushed Spike away just as he was about to lunge for Balasz. It was extremely tempting to have allowed Spike to act on his disgust as Balasz's words left an equally unpleasant taste in my mouth as well. I could only ever guess at the degree of depravity that went through his mind. I never once doubted that if I had known the full extent of his crimes, I would have shot him the first time we met. Unfortunately, he was a man of many secrets and he was very, very good at keeping them. I could never figure out how I managed to get so much out of it in our time together since threats of torture usually didn't bother him. Perhaps a part of him enjoyed the work but I had trouble picturing anybody that could enjoy running for their lives from Necrons.
It took a few moments but eventually Spike settled down though he was still visibly angry. "This man has committed a thousand atrocities against the Emperor and Imperium. He should be burnt at the stake and have his charred remains paraded through town as an example, not given Inquisitional clearance."
"Right…because I so enjoy my life as an Inquisitional lapdog like you," Balasz snapped back. "Or maybe it has something to do with the bomb she had planted in my frakking brain!" The brain-implanted bomb was part of that short leash I had mentioned earlier and while an effective means of control, it was not the only tool I had to maintain discipline with my often-unruly subordinate.
"Service to the Inquisition is one of the highest honours a citizen can be bestowed," Spike retorted. Personally, my years in service to the Inquisition before becoming one felt like anything but an honour. However, my overall impression of those years was likely skewed thanks to the blinding pain and sheer trouser-staining horror that I endured in the process. Plus Spike was die-hard Kriegan loyalist so even taking a shit in the Emperor's name would have been seen as a great honour. I should have held a similar opinion but in hindsight, perhaps I was not as good of a Kriegan as I had thought myself to be.
"I don't give a shit about your arse-backwards, childish notion of honour and-"
"Okay, everybody shut up right now!" I loudly interrupted once more. "Next person to open their yap will lose their teeth. Got it?"
"Can I still talk?" Verity peeped up cautiously.
"Yes, you may still talk Verity. These two, however, aren't allowed to say anything unless it's important." Unfortunately, my decision didn't ease tensions very much since all it did was force the pair to resort to non-verbal gestures to express their enmity with each other. I didn't care so long as I didn't have to continue listening to them. It never ceased to amaze me how juvenile some men could remain. At least it gave me some silence so I could think over our options. "While Mr. Mulder may be correct in his assessment, we're not leaving until I've confirmed it. More importantly, I want to account for what was stolen."
"Perhaps Mr. Mulder's contact will be able to direct us to black market traders. It is unlikely the amount of…human salvage Mr. Mulder suggested would go unnoticed," Verity suggested. "However, if what was stolen was indeed salvage, then it may prove exceedingly difficult to trace without confirmation of what it had originally been."
"I've got a hunch unfortunately," I murmured a bit reluctantly. Inquisitors rarely had the luxury of blissful ignorance and when it came to bad feelings, the worse it was, the more likely I was right about it. "Pop quiz people, what's old, putrid, covered in adamantium and ceramite, and was recently driven off in this sector?"
Spike was the first to clue in although it took a few seconds for him to remember the broadcast report that he had originally brought to my attention. He let out a frustrated groan and buried his face into the palm of his hand. "Oh for the Emperor's sake, don't tell me we have to deal with one of those."
"I seriously hope I'm wrong on this," I agreed. "I hate plague marines."
"But what would anybody want with the remains of a plague marine? What you described sounds absolutely revolting," Verity commented after I had given her a lengthy discussion as to what plague marines were exactly. To my fellow Inquisitors who have never encountered one, be grateful for they are as difficult as they are malodorous. Their putrefied aura made Jurgen (aide to Commissar Cain and arguably the filthiest soldier in the Imperial Guard) seem like a pleasant spring breeze. Their bloated frames devoured bullets and laser fire as though they were caba nuts, making it difficult to put down one, let alone a whole line of them. I prayed to the Emperor that if it were a plague marine that crashed down on the planet's surface, that it was well and truly dead. There wasn't enough fire power between the four of us to even put a dent in the thing, let alone stop it for good.
"Study maybe…or just to strip the armour for salvage," I replied, trying to keep a level head despite how insane it was for me to be tracking down a Chaos marine. I sat in the back of the Aquila lander with Verity, trying desperately to think of alternatives that could explain all the evidence. However, the closer our vessel got to the city, the more the notion of a plague marine seemed to fit. If I had a plague marine carcass sitting on my laboratory table, I would have had a gun at my side at all times as well. Normal Astartes were capable of surviving severe injuries in a comatose state – I imagined a marine touched by the Dark God of Decay would be even more resilient to incapacitation. Despite the Ultramarines succeeding in pushing out a warband of Death Guard marines from the sector a few months back, it was possible for some to have persisted in the sector. It could even have been adrift in space since the last battle and only awoken now that it was on a habitable planet. If that were the case, then it needed to be stopped before it attracted more attention to the planet. I tried to remain optimistic but it wasn't a luxury I could afford – I had to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, or at least as prepared as one could get when the worst-case scenario was 'full-blown Chaos uprising.'
"You two are worrying too much," Balasz commented from the far side of the lander. He was lighting up a lho stick as was his common practice when he's stressed. Despite his complacent attitude, I could tell that he was concerned about the prospect of Chaos marines as the rest of us were. He hated fighting in general but he tolerated it when he knew he could backstab his way to victory. You couldn't backstab a plague marine with a ten-foot lance coated in burning holy oil.
The flight back to the nearby city of Ne'ere was relatively brief but it was an uneasy flight. The more I had to explain to Verity what we could be dealing with, the more uneasy I felt. Obviously I could not let it show, as Inquisitors are supposed to be fearless, exceptional human beings, but fear was something even an Inquisitor had to deal with. Perhaps I would have felt less fear if I had earth-shaking psychic powers, a suit of master-crafted Terminator armour, and a blessed daemonhammer at my disposal. The best I had was a phase sword, which would have done me little good if I caught a bolter round before I got within range of a plague marine (assuming the stench didn't put me down first). I was probably the most nervous person on the vessel since if I proved to be correct, I would be the one expected to confront the monstrosity. I fully expected Balasz to run and hide if a plague marine showed up and while Spike would be more than willing to confront an agent of Chaos, he was woefully unequipped to do so. And Verity…well, I couldn't expect her to do much if any kind of trouble started. Despite her usefulness, I was regretting my decision to bring her along now that the scope of the potential danger was known. But with that regret came further conflict because I also knew that she had already proven an invaluable addition to the team. As an Inquisitor I should seek whatever options best served the Emperor but as her mother I didn't want to put her anywhere where there might be gunfire. Despite everything that told me otherwise, Verity was important to me. I always worried that my job would one day force me to make a decision between her and the greater good…and more importantly, I worried that I would choose her. I worried that I would put the life of one person above the Emperor and if I did that, how I would be able to look at myself as a Kriegan or an Inquisitor any more? It was tempting to order Spike to take the lander back to the Ferrograd just so I could unload Verity and pick up more firepower but time was of the essence and I did not want to be stuck alone with Balasz.
"We've reached the city Miss Abel," came Spike's voice from the cockpit. "Lots of smoke coming from the city. I think the rioting might have gotten worse."
"Then land us someplace secluded. I don't want our ride getting hijacked by some looters," I instructed.
Like most Imperial cities, Ne'ere was built layer upon layer upon layer, each one more decrepit than the one above. Since the vast majority of criminals lived in the lowest levels, Spike had to take the lander into the undercity, where 'secluded' could only be considered in a relative sense. The safest bet was to find the highest point in the undercity, which in our case was a landing pad for a public transit hub. Good thing being an Inquisitor meant I could park inside the Governor's bedroom and he'd have to accept it. Stepping outside the lander, the change in air quality hit me like the Emperor's mailed fist. No longer was there was warm, dry, and breezy air but a cloud of humidity, pollution, and stagnant air. I was somewhat grateful for having one artificial lung so each breath only left a burning sensation in one half of my chest. Spike and Balasz had no qualms with the air quality, having been long used to breathing in unfriendly fumes but poor Verity had a coughing fit when she stepped out of the lander.
"You think we should, you know…leave her with the lander?" Spike suggested.
I thought about it for a moment and while it was tempting, I was disinclined to leave a child alone with a lander in the heart of an undercity. For the time being, she was safer someplace I could see her. A service elevator took us to ground level, where the streets were crowded with filth, beggars, criminals, and degenerates. It was a cesspool of human life and a place of so much wasted potential…or at least it should have been.
"Where is everybody?" Verity commented as we stepped out into the city streets.
"Maybe there's a curfew," I postulated as I looked to the distance. The sun was setting in the horizon and it would be nightfall soon. It wasn't uncommon for curfews to be maintained during times of crisis but if there was a curfew, where were the people enforcing it? A planet could not be that orderly that a curfew call was respected whole-heartedly by the populace – there wouldn't be any rioting if there was that much respect for law and order. As one would expect, the lack of crowded city streets made me uneasy. "Let's hurry along. I don't want to be in this city longer than I have to."
"We could always just go back to the ship," Balasz remarked, prompting me to shove him to the front of the group.
"Just take us to your contact," I ordered impatiently. Thankfully, it was not a long trek – we cut through a few alleys, walked a few blocks, and eventually came to a stop outside a seemingly innocuous steel door upon a featureless rockrete wall. At first I wondered how Balasz knew this was the right location as there appeared to be no identifying marks of any kind. However, out of curiosity I adjusted the spectral sensitivity on my bionic eye and I noticed that the door had been tagged with a radioisotope and the door was giving off a very faint energy signature. It was clever – distinct enough to pinpoint when you knew what to look for but would become lost in the background during a broad sensor sweep.
"Wait here, seeing all you guys at once might spook him," Balasz advised before knocking on the door. Normally, I insist that somebody accompanied Balasz at all times, especially when off the ship, but when it came to dealing with his contacts, I gave him a bit more freedom. His service to the Inquisition was a tightly guarded secret, which was necessary in order to keep his information network from collapsing. It always brought a smile to my face when I thought of the thousands of informants and spies who worked for the Inquisition but were completely oblivious to the fact. "Come on, open up you old fart," Balasz muttered as he pounded on the door again. There was no answer. "Fine, I'll just let myself in then." Even though there was absolutely nobody else on the street aside from us, Balasz briefly looked to his surroundings before kneeling down and pulling out a lockpick kit. In less than ten seconds, he had the door unlocked and was heading inside.
"This doesn't make a lick of sense," I muttered while we waited outside. "This place should be crawling with people."
"The rioting could be forcing people underground," Spike suggested, although it was in a tone that suggested he didn't quite believe that reason either. "Let's just hope this doesn't take long. I don't want to be stuck out here after dark."
"Hey look, there's somebody over there," Verity suddenly spoke up, tugging on my sleeve and pointing off to something in the distance.
"Finally, some human contact," I said with relief. I doubt I would get much information but at least I could find out why the streets seemed to be as deserted as the cantina during 'chef's surprise' night. I told the others to wait while I headed over to speak with the civilian. I was surprised that I hadn't spotted him sooner but he was standing part-way in a darkened alley so he was only just barely visible. "Excuse me, sir," I called out but, strangely enough, got no response. "Um, I said excuse me, sir!" I repeated, more loudly that time. I heard a muffled groan coming from the man but no audible words or even a sign of acknowledgement. He just continued leaning up against the wall. Now I was no stranger to be being ignored (it was practically my life's story) but it wasn't as if he could have confused me as speaking to somebody else – we were the only people in the area! "Great, I think he's drunk," I groaned as I stepped closer. If he had been drinking, I couldn't smell the liquor through an overpowering aura of body odour, which briefly made me think that Cain and Jurgen were suddenly going to pop up. "Hey, arsehole!" I said loudly as I stood beside the man and waved my hand in front of his face. He did appear to be ill but that wasn't uncommon for people in the undercity – what I could see of his face was pale and sickly, his features sunken and shallow as though malnourished, and a blank gaze in his eye. Finally I got a reaction but not the reaction I had expected. Granted, I don't think anybody expects to be suddenly bitten by a random bloke on the street. "Wh-Hey!" I yelped as his teeth clamped down on my hand. Civilian or not, reflexes kicked in and I quickly punched the man in the head. As I pulled free, the man swung towards me with outstretched arms. Instinctively, I grabbed his leading arm and used his momentum to slam him face first into the wall behind me then wrenched his arm behind his back.
"Is everything okay?" Spike called out from down the road.
"I'm fine," I shouted back. "Listen you arsehole, I'm really not in the mood to put up with any kind of groxshit so you better start profusely apologizing or I'm breaking both your kneecaps." While being an Inquisitor was obviously a hazardous profession, one rarely expected the average Imperial citizen to try and bite you. I've had a few kroots and genestealers attempt as such but never a human. Okay, there was that one time with the cannibals but they didn't try to do it through a leather glove.
"Uh, mother?" Verity interjected and happened to be standing just a few feet away from me.
"Not now sweetie, the grown-ups are having a disagreement," I replied before putting a bit more weight into the man's back as he struggled to try and free himself.
"But he's…uh, not alive…"
"Come again?" In the haste of beating off the man who bit me, I did not get a very good look at him. Taking a glance at his face I saw that he barely had one – in fact, it appeared as though half his face had been chewed off. His face should have been leaking like a keg during happy hour but there was barely any. "What in the warp?" I muttered. I didn't have much time to contemplate what was before me because a gunshot suddenly rang out from the building that was Balasz had entered.
And that was when everything started to go downhill.