Lady Inquisitor Annabeth Chase
Location: Ultima Segmentum, Ghoul Stars, High Anchor over Aluria Prime, Luna Class Cruiser Faithful Companion
Annabeth Chase
The center of the interrogation chamber was claimed by the Governor. The walls and floor were covered in spotlessly clean white tiles, allowing the room to be hosed down after use.
Lord Governor Theodor Alesh was strapped down onto a surgical table, his body already covered in a handful of bleeding gashes and lacerations. Countless medical probes were glued to the man's body, displaying his vital singes on a number of monitoring screens. IV lines disappeared into the skin at the bend of his arms, allowing her chief medicae, Dr. Will Solace, to keep her victim both alive and if possible awake with the help of medications. Assisting him were two sisters of the Orders Hospitaller. A Servo-skull was making slow orbits around the table, documenting the interrogation with a camera sunk into its left eye socket.
Two Inquisitorial interrogation specialists performed the other part of the medication. One was a young man, the second a middle-aged woman, both wore black body gloves. They were her experts in administering directed pain in the pursuit of answers.
At her left stood the sister Thalia flanked by two of her Celestinians who were posted to guard the prisoner. All three women glared down at their prisoner with righteous disdain. They were all clad in their black power armor and armed with blades and bolters.
At her right hovered a second Servo-skull with a printer and parchment role implanted in the place of its lower jaw, documenting every spoken word on parchment.
The Inquisitor herself sat in a dark corner of the interrogation room on a ruggedly old chair. One of her legs was neatly folded across her lap and a datapad lay on her thigh.
She was ignoring the man's desperate pleading for the agony to stop. The begging for her to grant the Emperor's mercy. She also ignored the pained looks Dr. Solace kept shooting towards her. Annabeth knew that every time she required Will to take part in these interrogations some part of him died along with their charge. He was a good and gentle soul, and privately she both respected and liked the doctor. He was a healer at heart and hated causing pain or at least helping facilitate the prolonged torment of another human. Yet she forced him to do it anyway. There was no point dragging more people into her schemes, more people that she might have to liquidate if the need arose or that would perish with her if she was found wanting. For better or worse, Dr. Will Solace was as lost as she was. Annabeth was certain that one day she would face a reckoning of her own and she doubted she would be judged favorable. All she could hope for was to be able to say she had tried her very best.
After making a note on her pad Annabeth signed deeply and rose to her feet and approached the table so that the whimpering man could see his face.
"Please Inquisitor, I beg of you. I know nothing more," he squealed, tears running down her cheeks. Years ago these interrogations had followed her into her nightmares and she had barely been able to meet her victim's eyes. Now all they received was a cold, unsympathetic, emotionless mask.
"What was the name of the heretic that introduced you to the cult?" she asked again quietly.
"I already told you, I don't know!" the man cried.
"So, you just let a man you don't know invite you to a merry gathering to fuck little girls?" Thalia cut in incredulously. "Slowly torment them to death on an Altar consecrated to the ruinous powers?"
The man visibly shrank back from Thalia's imposing presence but his eyes quickly flickered back to Annabeth in pure terror.
"I swear, I didn't know!"
"Lord Governor Alesh," Annabeth began patiently. "You are a smart man, I find your assurance of ignorance very hard to believe. But perhaps we can help your memories along."
Her eyes flickered over to her two attendants who nodded and began to prepare the thumbscrews. As his thumb was strapped into the vice the heartrate monitor once again sped up. Alesh's screams turned into a high pitched high-pitched once until the bone snapped and his eyes rolled up and he once again lost consciousness.
"Keep him awake," Annabeth ordered sharply.
Looking deathly pail, Will administered a stimulant to the prisoner, and a few moments later focus returned to the man's eyes as his deathing screams echoed through the room.
"I do not wish to speak out of turn, Inquisitor. But I don't think he knows anymore," Will quietly begged her as he passed.
"Please, grant me mercy. I beg you," Alesh cried. "Just kill me!"
"Hurting you brings me no pleasure, but I fear you will have to wait for death a bit longer. Have you been able to recall the name of the man who introduced you or the cult leaders?"
"No," Alesh cried. "I swear by the Emperor, I know nothing more!"
"Then perhaps my questions must become more penetrative," she mused.
Just then someone knocked on the interrogation chambers' heavy metal doors.
"Yes?" she asked.
The door was opened and one of the ship's arms men who had been posted outside poked his head in. "A messenger from the Captain," he reported.
"Let him in," Annabeth replied, asking herself why the good captain was so resistant to simply using Vox casters or the ship's internal communications system rather than sending out some poor errand boy.
A young officer cadet came walking in at a brisk pace and turned pale when he saw what was happening.
"What can I do for you, Cadet Remton?" she asked, recognizing the man from the bridge.
"Captain Destinel respectfully invites you for dinner in forty-five minutes," the officer reported nervously, keeping his gaze averted from the tormented man. "Lord Perseus is invited as well."
"The good Captain does realize I am in the middle of something," she asked.
An invitation to dinner could be mean many things, everything ranging from a simple social gathering among colleagues to an important private discussion the captain wished to keep off the logbook.
"He does, yet asks you to join him regardless in half an hour," he reported, his voice skating slightly. To whether he was disturbed by what had just walked in on, or was simply terrified of her she could not tell.
"Tell him I'll be there," Annabeth replied. The cadet nodded, saluted smartly, and almost fled the interrogation room.
Annabeth sighed in disappointment. "Well, we will have to continue this another time. Sabine, I think it is time we proceed to level six and give our prisoner some time to think about his actions. Apply neuro blockers. Doctor, patch our guest up and make sure he stays stable. I am not finished with them."
Neuro blockers, as she called them, referred to a cocktail of drugs that would provide a high degree of sensory deprivation. It could sever the brain's ability to control the body while also cutting it off from all sensory input. It was a state that if wished could be maintained for days, even weeks or months in which the victim was trapped in complete darkness with only his or her mind for company. Over the next few hours Annabeth would also order the administering of psychedelic drugs to induce horrific hallucinations.
Ignoring Alesh's groveling for mercy Annabeth left the room with her datapad in hand and found Thalia following him. "Do you think he is hiding anything," she asked once the door was sadly closed behind him.
"I do not know," she admitted. "He didn't respond to threats against his children, then he is a cruel man. In a day or two, we will return to a level five interrogation and I will employ some psychic tricks on him. If he doesn't come up with any useful information we will bump it up to the ninth level of interrogation. Should he survive that and bring us any useful information, I will grant him the emperor's mercy. If not I will allow the torture to continue as long as possible."
"Serves that piece of shit right," Thalia grunted.
Annabeth passed upon any comments on Thalia's foul mouth. For a woman of faith, she could make a drunken sailor blush.
"How is Percy doing, you've been spending a lot more time with him than I have," Annabeth said softly.
Thalia gave her a long look and then smiled sadly. "As far as Astartes go, he fine. It is strange though..." Thalia replied. "As much as he changed I still the little cousin I loved and gave a hard time when we were kids."
Annabeth returned the sad smile and after a few minutes, they finally reached the birth spaces secluded for the use of her retinue. After checking in with her people she took a quick shower, dressed in clean clothes she hurried to the Captain's stateroom only to find that she was the last to arrive.
Both Perseus and the Captian were already standing on the stateroom, the captain dressed in his uniform, the space marine clad in his armor.
"Ah, lady Inquisitor. Thank you for joining me at such short notice," the captain greeted her.
"What could possibly be so important to call me away from an interrogation?" Annabeth demanded, though Perseus's presence already suggested that this was more than merrily a social gathering. One did not break an Astartes from his routine for a mere social gathering.
"The Faithful Companion's Auger Arrays have detected three contacts emerging from the Warp at the outer system and holding position," the captain announced grimly and dimmed the lights with a wave of his hand.
A moment later the holographic projector concealed in the table came to life and displayed a representation of the system reaching out approximately forty AUs in all directions from the sun with all starships and other stellar objects shown off along with their trajectories, relative velocities, composition, and other data like tonnage and so on.
The three contacts, shown off as orange circles were at the far side of the sun.
"How are we picking them up this far away?" Annabeth asked, mildly impressed.
"We aren't, our sensors picked up the radiation spikes from translation, judging by the telemetry we estimate three frigates-sized vessels. During that time frame of about four minutes no other ships jumped in and out of the system," he explained and waved a remote, opening a window in the hologram with a sensor readout, portrayed only as a squiggly line showing off background radiation levels. The line jumped up marginally three times within a few seconds before going back to normal.
"We are also not picking up any drive emissions, which would suggest that they are rigging for silent running. This could be a scout force of the arch-enemy," the captain explained gravely. "Bearing in mind that we have more than five hours of time dilation at this range, perhaps we should recall the Battlefleet? They are still in the process of breaking orbit and could be back on station within a few hours."
Perseus frowned and placed his heavy war helmet on the table. "It might as well be smugglers or scavengers, waiting for the battlefleet to depart to avoid undue scrutiny. Besides, if we recall the battlefleet or attempt to bring it to bear those three contacts would have a few days to jump out or bring in reinforcements, by which time our fleets assets will be out of position."
"I concur," Annabeth explained. "Have the Master of Detection keep his eyes on them. If those ships light off their main drives, I want to know about it. In the meantime do not break routine," Annabeth decided. "We have a rendezvous planned with Inquisitor Castellan, and I would be sorry to miss it."
The captain bowed. "By your command, my lady. Again, I apologize for wasting your time."
Annabeth cracked a smile. "You haven't, Lord Captain. Call upon me if anything spikes your attention in the future. Anything else I should be apprised of?"
"Well, we are almost finished embarking on the twelfth Olympian Infantry, only four more companies to go," he continued. "They should be ready in about six hours."
Annabeth nodded slowly. "I understand. Captain, can you forward a request to the Commissariat for me? I would like a file on all guardsmen that had contact with cultists and in what manner they had that contact. Perhaps they can help us tie the Governor up in a neat bow. I prefer to have my i's dotted and t's crossed on any death warrants I sign."
"It will be done, my lady."
Truth be told it wasn't his job, and Annabeth knew that. But the more distance there was between her and the people that worked under her, the less predictable she became. It was easier to get what she wanted when others saw her as part of this clandestine faceless entity that was the inquisition seeing as she lacked some of the sheer physical presence of some of her peers.
"In the meantime, we hold routine, nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps you can search a few of the merchant ships coming in and out of the system. If those three contacts are fleet scouts they were be gathering signals intelligence. If it appears we are hassling the merchant marine they will have no reason to assume we might be on to them."
Well, I hope you enjoy yourselves. Do leave a review.
Henry Locker over and out.