In the past
The shrieking discharge of the enemy's weapons grew every closer and the return fire was growing increasingly sporadic. The last few characters of the message were entered and she hit the transmit key as the door to the small broadcast room was torn from its hinges. She brought her pistol up in shaking hands, put one shot through the memory bank of the codifier unit, then fired off on full auto sending the first figure to enter the room staggering back. Two more entered before she could reload and the first was slowly getting to its feet.
"What did you think you would achieve?" The voice whispered in her ear, quiet and full of threat. She span, the figure had appeared behind her as though it had materialised through the wall. It took the gun from her unresisting fingers and stared intently at the vox console.
"We're blocking all of your transmissions. No one will hear you." Long fingers caressed the keys, the message log was destroyed but the transmission coordinates were entered on a separate piece of equipment that controlled the aerial's orientation. "Hmm... clever we were not blocking that direction. But there is nothing in orbit so who did you think you were sending to?"
The woman shook her head and tried to run, but the guards at the door simply blocked her passage, defiantly she ran her wrists over the blades of their weapons. Rychek stared down as her breathing grew shallow then faded altogether. He watched a moment longer before whimpering from elsewhere in the building caught his attention. There were survivors. He nodded to his guards who turned and left the room. He looked at the dead woman. A small talisman on a chain around her neck had fallen free, a small skull atop a stylised letter I. As weapons fire sounded Rychek walked towards the sounds of screaming. Mysteries could wait, there was work to be done.
Present Day
Demands to attend the planetary governor were rare, even for a senior Arbites. Marshal Sodor surreptitiously checked her appearance as she walked down the mirrored corridor to the governor's office. She had decided against switching to formal dress, the governor had always respected competence over ceremony and the carapace armour, polished to a matt sheen for the occasion gave her an intimidating appearance. She carried the helm under one arm, given the number of gene taggers, iris scanners and visual inspections there was no point replacing it until she left. The subtle gold trims now gleamed and she made a mental note to have them dulled again before she went back out on the streets. The contrast between the bulky and brutal armour and her rather more delicate features annoyed her. She looked young. A few more lines and grey hairs would give her some additional gravitas.
A low cough brought her attention back to her surroundings. Two large and heavily armed guards stood either side of the office door with a small fussy looking man standing primly between them. One of the guards gave a slight nod, recognising the Marshal from a previous visit.
"Marshal. Prompt as always." the governor's aide looked with distaste at the bolt pistol and shock maul that hung from Kryn's belt. "Are you expecting the meeting to go badly?"
"Travis." She bit down the temptation to needle the pompous little fool. "Lost a man yesterday, as soon as this is over I will be heading out to exact justice."
The aide shrugged. "We're just waiting on the other guest. You may have to change your priorities when he arrives."
Before Kryn could get any more detail the sound of footsteps drew her attention, five figures were approaching. The guards at the door shifted, hands drifting towards triggers, postures becoming more alert. Two stormtroopers in battered forest camouflage carapace led the way, hellguns pointing at the ceiling but obviously powered for use. Bringing up the rear was a shorter figure in off-world half armour, not as tall as the stormtroopers but stockier. His hands rested on a mismatched pair of pistols at his waist and he was using the mirrors constantly to watch for anyone lurking behind. Habit made Kryn check the armed men first, noting hidden blades, back up stub guns and what looked suspiciously like some sort of shield emitter on the torso armour of the shorter soldier. As soon as she had the basic rundown her attention was dragged to the central figure. He would have been tall even without the powered armour he wore. With it he was a touch over two metres. The armour was plain black, a crimson robe trailing from one shoulder. A golden starburst haloed the head and seemed incongruously decorative set against the austerity of the rest of the suit. He walked with a staff that looked like age blackened wood topped with a silver skull, but the rhythmic tapping it made on the cold marble of the floor suggested it was some sort of metal. The face was arrogant, cruel and powerful and flicker of witchlight sparked from the eyes and glimmered in the sockets of the staff skull.
The fifth member of the party appeared almost an afterthought and was drifting down the corridor, examining the busts of previous governor's and official portraits with keen curiosity utterly unmerited by the pedestrian works on display. She paused a moment apparently realising she had fallen behind and scuttled after the others.
A guard stepped forward.
"I'll need your identification and you will need to surrender your weapons."
The stormtroopers had their weapons aimed before the echo of the command had died away. The tall figure looked thunderous but simply gestured and the shortest guard came to the front palms up holding a small rosette. Travis warily walked to meet him and placed the rosette on his data slate. The stylised letter "I" surmounted by skull that flared in red left the identity of the visitors in no doubt.
"My name is Tarik I will deal with all security arrangements for this inquisitorial visit. I commend the devotion to duty and the protection you give your master. You will now move out of the way and drop your ridiculous demands. The Lord Ulrich goes where he pleases, with who he pleases carrying whatever weapons he pleases."
"No, no that really won't do." Travis began to bluster. Kryn stepped back keeping her hands well away from her weapons.
The light around Ulrich's eyes brightened momentarily and the sunburst on his armour flickered. He tapped his staff once on the floor. The guards' weapons spun out of their hands and the guards themselves were flung bodily into the walls and pinned there by unseen force. The thick armoured doors flew open and smashed against the wall behind. Travis was standing alone and isolated before them as the inquisitorial party advanced.
"Little man, we are the Inquisition. Confirming our identity is a sensible precaution in these paranoid times. But now we are here. Now you know who we are. You will obey. Immediately. Unquestioningly." Each word punctuated by a tap of the staff that sounded like the tolling of a dreadful bell. "We are the right hand of the Emperor. We are His voice. We are His vengeance. To impede us in any way is to aid the dark powers and condemn yourself as a heretic. Do you know what we do to heretics?"
Travis was now grey in colour and appeared to have wet himself. He may have shaken his head, but given how badly he was trembling it was hard to be sure.
The staff hit the ground one last time and burst into blue flames.
"We burn them." It was delivered quietly, precisely and somehow was all the more dire a threat because of it. Travis suddenly rose in the air and with the barest flick of Ulrich's staff was sent flying through the open doors to land in a crumpled heap against the desk of the Planetary Governor.
Ulrich strode after him, the two stormtroopers taking up positions on the door as the original guards dropped stunned to the floor.
Tarik turned and bowed politely to Kryn as if nothing had happened.
"Marshal Sodor?" He asked.
She nodded.
"Please – this concerns you too." And he gestured towards the Governor's office. "Hammond, Davies see that we are not disturbed. Oh and when the guards wake up send them to get checked out by the med bay. Don't stick the boot in, they didn't choose their superiors." A slight grin suggesting he knew the men were far too professional to resort to such crude vengeance, though not necessarily too professional to give it serious consideration. "Sal, shall we?"
Kryn was amused to see just how discomforted the governor was. Officially he was a tiny cog in the vast Imperium answerable to many people and organisations. But in practical terms as most of those people were months of warp travel away and never chose to put in an appearance it had been years since he faced a superior authority. His occasional meetings with his counterpart on Tetran II were infrequent and as neither he nor the Martian appointed Fabricator General fully recognised each other's authority and they maintained a polite diplomatic fiction of equality while both privately considered themselves to be the superior. The Governor still sat in his chair looking startled, grey hair above a dark, lined face that usually managed to portray steadfast resolve. Currently it just emphasised the whites around his eyes and the rictus grin as he fought for presence of mind. The Marshal moved to the side of the desk and stood to attention where she could observe both sides of the dialogue and waited to see what would happen.
"Governor White." Ulrich marched to the desk and stood before the crumpled heap of the Governor's aide. Tarik moved a chair behind him and the psyker sat, chair groaning under the weight of the powered armour. He sat back and crossed his legs, using the unfortunate Travis as a footstool. "When an Inquisitor demands an audience, the expectation is for fawning deference and an immediate desire to get them in as fast as possible in order to get them to go away again as fast as possible. Instead there has been a chain of increasingly officious security checks and finally a demand for weapons. You do not demand anything from the Inquisition. Your time out here may have led you to forget this fact. I trust you now remember."
"I'm sure my guards were just following protocol Inquisitor...?"
"Lord Ulrich T'Cheris Alloest Fane. But Sir will be adequate. I expect the protocols to be amended so any future inquisitor will simply present their credentials, once, and then receive immediate obedience. In case it has escaped your notice the Eye of Terror is now more of a chasm with half the Imperium on the wrong side of it. Daemons haunt a thousand worlds and panic driven insurrection threatens ten times as many. Each Inquisitor has a thousand plots that require their immediate attention or something horrible will happen. And we are in the position of having to chose which of those are the least horrible and letting them fester while we go prevent the even more terrible things. Every minute I am here is a minute I am not in a hundred other places that need my help. I will not waste a single second on bureaucracy, or territorial squabbles. The Inquisition is here. We have ultimate authority until or unless the Emperor Himself steps off his throne to say otherwise in which case I will be too busy praising His name to care about the demotion. Clear?"
Though thrown, the Governor had not survived years of the Imperium's lethal politics by being stupid or slow on the uptake. He blinked once, then nodded quickly.
"Understood, what help can I provide and what do I need to know?"
"To know, little other than I would not be here if it was not important. My ship will need clearance to fly where it will and take orbit around any of the pillars or planets. I understand this is normally difficult permission to gain. It will not be for us. I will need an audience with the Fabricator General. The Marshal will be reporting directly to Tarik for the duration of our stay."
"I am mid-case." Kryn protested.
"Have you failed to train any of your men to basic competence in the time you have been here? Do they immediately fall apart without you holding their hand?" Ulrich did not even look around.
Kryn gritted her teeth. "I merely ask for permission to communicate with them to ensure continuity of the investigation."
Now he turned and a spark glittered in Ulrich's eye. "Granted. You will then liaise with Tarik. He will detail our requirements." He swung himself upright eliciting a small groan from the unfortunate Travis.
"Thank you for your time Governor."
"Can you at least give me some idea of what this is about?"
"Sal: System population data and estimates."
"Current population from last census of main planetary bodies and current best estimate of off planet residency 26,500,000,000 accuracy plus minus 1%, error mainly in the off-world portion of the population. Projected population based on length of planetary inhabitation, average birth rate and available resource 35 billion plus, minus 5%."
"Somehow you seem to have mislaid around 10 billion people. I would like to know where they went."