Prologue
The study had been richly appointed, its owner spending a small fortune to make his private sanctum comfortable and pleasing to behold. It had been carefully paneled in light wood; real wood imported from off-world at great expense, and lit with soft overhead lights, a hearth on one side of the room. It had been carefully curated by its owner to be warm and inviting to all those he met with. It was somewhat less warm now with half a dozen corpses in it.
The gunfight had been brief, but furious. The owner of the estate had fled to the room with his five remaining bodyguards, the rest of his expensive security force having gone silent one team at a time in sequence with the distant bursts of gunfire echoing through the halls.
The long nalwood coffee table and plush sofa had been tossed on their sides and used as makeshift barricades by the defenders, all of them training their autopistols at the door, waiting to turn the entry into a murderous crossfire for whoever stormed in. They never got that chance.
In the span of two seconds, five heavy rounds punched straight through the wood of the door, each finding their mark perfectly in a guard's forehead. They all dropped, dead before they hit the floor, brains and blood spattering over the fine wood panelling.
At his desk at the end of the room, their employer desperately fumbled to load an antique revolver from the drawer, his hands shaking. It was a showpiece, something he had bought on a whim; he had never fired it. Despite his terror, the man had resolved not to be taken alive. Death was preferable to what they would do to him.
He flicked the cylinder of the weapon closed, raising it just as a heavy boot kicked in the study door with a crack of splintering wood. He raised the weapon to the figure in the doorway, and in his final act, pulled the trigger. The hammer snapped forward with a dull click, and nothing else. The man didn't have time to be confused before a sixth and final round tore through his skull.
=][=
"Clear." Harlon Nayl grunted, having swept the room for any hidden assailants or last-ditch traps, stowing his heavy pistol in a shoulder holster.
"Should I call the boss?" Kara asked from just behind him, the short-haired redhead casting a glance of distaste around the now blood spattered room.
"He knows, Kara." came a third voice from where Carl Thonius had picked his way across the room to the desk, pushing the corpse of its former owner to the floor with a dismissive shove.
It was brief, a mere instant, but Nayl could have sworn he saw Kara flinch at Carl's voice, before busying herself with checking the walls of the room for secret compartments or doors. Nayl frowned, glancing between the two.
Something had changed with them. The old Carl Thonius would have nearly fainted at the sight of the corpses, the backs of their heads blown out from the heavy rounds. He certainly wouldn't have helped spearhead this impromptu raid, probably too worried about messing up one of his million fancy outfits. Now though, there was no trace of the jumpy anxious young man Nayl remembered. This Carl had helped take down the rest of the manor's security force with cold precision, even now he rummaged through the drawers of the huge desk unfazed by the spatter of brains and skull fragments that now littered it, courtesy of the manor's owner.
If it had just been that Nayl would have been more than happy. It was about time the young man had shaped up to be less of a damn pansy. But there was something else, something different between Carl and Kara. Ever since the bloody events on Eustis Majoris a little over a month ago, Nayl had caught glimpses of something when Kara was around Carl, little things like her making excuses to leave the room whenever Carl showed up, or throwing worried glances at him during briefings. Almost like she was walking on eggshells around him.
It was so slight that Nayl sometimes thought he was imagining it. Kys had told him that he was one day when he had brought it up to her over lunch. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling…
"So far nothing here," Carl said, scanning through reams of documents and data-slates he had pulled out of the desk. "Import contracts, expense reports, business memos… all seems legitimate."
"What did you expect," Nayl asked, having plucked the revolver from its owner's cooling hands and examining it. "A list of all his crimes stamped with a giant 'I am a heretic' at the end?"
Even speckled with blood the revolver was a fine piece, plated in silver with intricate engravings running down the barrel. Checking the action though made Nayl snort.
"Firing pin's frigged." He muttered to himself more than anyone, using it as an excuse to ignore Carl's cold glare at him from across the desk. Once the younger man had gone red and flustered at the teasing of his compatriots, usually about his lack of physical fitness or field experience. Not anymore.
"Thing's never seen a maintenance check in its life." Nayl said in annoyance. He opened the cylinder and emptied it onto the desk, sending bullets clattering across the wood, before tossing the useless weapon over his shoulder.
"Got something." Kara said, causing Nayl and Carl to swivel their heads toward where she stood by the wall, just to the left of the empty hearth. "Pretty sure this is hollow." she rapped her knuckles against the wood for emphasis, producing a sound that was slightly off to all their ears. "It's pretty thick though. Too tough to kick down. And I don't see any switch to open it."
"I've got an extra grenade." Nayl offered, reaching into his stormcoat. "Not like we haven't messed up this place enough already—"
"That won't be necessary Nayl." Came a voice, causing said man to freeze. The voice was a low metallic drone, emotionless, inflectionless, clearly artificial to any who heard it. The chair floated through the door, hovering on quietly humming anti-gravs. Most who saw it wouldn't think it was a chair, it looked more like a small floating tank, a black featureless armored wedge, with no sign of any occupant. Those who served him knew very well his identity though. All three of them straightened up in respect at the arrival of Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor.
=][=
Inside the room, Ravenor's chair slowly rotated from one side to the other, like a person would turn their head to survey a room. It was completely unnecessary for him; the sensors built into the chair let the inquisitor see all around him whenever he pleased. It was one of Ravenor's little affectations, as if to show his retinue that behind the adamantium shell of the chair, there was still a person there. Or at least something close to it.
Following Ravenor in were two other members of his retinue. The first was the tall, slender figure of Patience Kys, her piercing green eyes surveying the bloody work of the others. She had a pretty face, framed by raven-black hair, but all present knew that she was easily the deadliest of Ravenor's retinue in a close up fight.
The second figure that entered made Nayl raise an eyebrow in surprise, not having expected to see him. He was an unassuming man next to the rest of them, neither particularly tall or physically fit, dressed in a dark tailored suit rather than the combat gear of the rest of them. He was smoking an Iho-stick, as he always was, looking almost bored, even at the charnel house the study had become.
"Frauka?" Nayl addressed him. "Though you'd still be on babysitting duty back on the ship." The man in question puffed on his lho-stick and gave a laconic shrug, the motion briefly exposing the gleaming metal of the augmentic at the base of his skull.
"I decided to bring him as a precaution." said Ravenor, knowing that Frauka likely wouldn't explain it himself. "The others on the ship will watch Zael." His chair briefly twitched at the crumpled form of the manor's owner by the desk. In the brief time before he had died, he had considered going for the trigger to open the passage, but decided there was no point; it wasn't an escape route, only leading to a dead end. But he had thought about it. And that was all Ravenor had needed.
"The bookcase, second shelf, fourth from the right. The red one. If you would, Carl?" Ravenor said.
"Pulling a book as a switch? Seriously? How cliche can you get?" grumbled Nayl as Carl pulled the specified book out from the case. Nothing happened. "…uh, boss?"
"Check inside the front cover." instructed Ravenor. Carl opened the book and did so, his eyes lighting up in understanding as he saw what was inside.
"Ah. That's actually somewhat clever." the young man said, bringing the book back to the desk. He grabbed one of the dead owner's hands by the wrist and pressed it to the digital palm reader that had been hidden in the hollowed out cover. Across the room a section of the wall receded about a meter and then slid to the side, exposing a set of marble steps leading downward. At Ravenor's signal, Nayl and Kara drew their sidearms and entered the stairway, alert for any attack.
After a few tense moments a call of "Clear!" echoed back up, and the rest of the group followed them down. It was only a short distance downward, the room at the end set into what was probably just a chunk of foundation on any official blueprint. It was a long room, the carpeted center barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Along the sides of the room were a series of glass display cases, many emitting the telltale hum of active stasis fields, with one especially large display at the very end of the walkway, against the back wall. Each case had a large overhead lamp above it pointing directly downward, producing pools of light in the otherwise dimly lit hall.
It gave Ravenor the impression of a private art gallery, except the pieces being displayed were no simple paintings or sculptures. There were jagged ritual knives, still caked in dried blood like patches of dark rust. There were scrolls and sheets of vellum made from human skin, their surfaces covered in madly scrawled symbols and shapes that made no sense. Ravenor saw many old leather and hide bound books, recognizing the titles as texts that had long been sanctioned by the Inquisition and Ecclesiarchy. A privately curated collection of heresy.
"There." said Thonius, pointing to the back corner of the room where a cogitator bank sat, half recessed into the wall. "I'm guessing he keeps all the records on his less savory endeavors down here with his prizes."
"Check it." ordered Ravenor. Thonius had never been the most deadly of the retinue, but he more than made up for it with a knowledge of encryption and data-systems that rivaled some techpriests. If there was any clue to their greater quarry in the system, Carl would find it.
While Thonius went to connect to the system, the rest of Ravenor's people took up positions around the room. They were trained well in these matters. They knew to touch nothing, to not read or try to make sense of any writing they saw, and never to let their gazes linger on any symbols they saw for more than a heartbeat. They knew the potential ramifications.
The only one not working or on guard was Frauka, who lazily puffed smoke and followed Ravnor's chair down the room, occasionally stopping to tap out some ashes onto the expensive carpet. He might as well have been taking a stroll in a park for all he seemed to care. Frauka was competent enough with a gun, but that wasn't the reason he was an integral part of Ravenor's team. He had far more useful applications.
"Fancy collection." said Frauka. "You think he came down here stared at them, felt all proud of himself?"
"Many like him do." replied Ravenor absently, his focus on the large end-case that seemed to be the centerpiece of the collection. "Most aren't even true believers, they just enjoy the thrill of flaunting Imperial authority. Until it catches up with them at least." Inside the case on a velvet cushion was a beaten and scuffed boltgun, its bulk far larger than any ordinary man could easily carry, let alone wield effectively. An engraved placard was attached to the front of the case, claiming the piece to be a weapon that had been wielded by one of the Arch-Traitor's sons in the great heresy, so many millennia ago. A dangerous and valuable item, if it was authentic. There were thousands upon thousands of fake relics floating around the black market, grifters and con-men taking advantage of the obscurity of their business to make a quick bit of coin by selling dressed-up hunks of metal to people who didn't know any better.
"I'm through the security." announced Thonius, fingers tapping away at a keyboard and monitor that had folded out from the cogitators's casing. "Looking for shipping and travel logs now."
"Pull everything on the data-bank." said Ravenor, swinging his chair around. "We'll cross-reference it with our records back on the ship." Most Inquisitors would have been pleased with the seizure of such a cache of artifacts, and the elimination of a senior executive in a trading guild smuggling illicit cargo on the side. Ravenor was not, and he doubted his team was satisfied either. This had never been the objective, merely a possible lead in a bigger hunt.
Their true quarry was a man that was far more dangerous than some trader who bought illicit artifacts as a hobby. He was a man that had escaped them a month before on Eustis Majoris, and the one responsible for the anarchy and civil war that still engulfed that world. He had also been directly responsible for the deaths of several members of Ravenor's retinue in the past, something that they all sought vengeance for. They had been chasing him ever since, and had received intelligence that he had possibly been smuggled on a trade ship under a false identity. A trade ship under the authority of the man now dead upstairs, suspected by the Inquisition of smuggling artifacts, materials, and personnel for a number of cults in the sub-sector.
The evidence had been thin, even by Inquisitorial standards, and any deeper investigation had been displaced by more pressing matters, until it had come into Ravenor's sights.
Ravenor turned to leave, confident that his team had everything well in hand, when something caught his sight. Not from his eyes, burnt from his skull so many decades ago, or his chair's pict-sensors wired into his nervous system as replacements. He saw it in his mind, a spark of light in the otherwise psychic darkness of the room. He stopped abruptly, almost sending the following Frauka crashing into him, and snapped to his right.
He found himself facing one of the display cases, this one with no sign of a stasis field, which contained a dark metal sphere. It was heavily damaged, a good third of it cracked and missing, the rest of the surface was covered in flowing designs in the metal, smooth, like ripples in a puddle. The metal of the sphere seemed wrong to Ravenor's digital eyes, the light from the overhead lamp appearing to twist and flow through the patterns on its surface rather than reflect like it should.
The case had its own placard on the front, but it was little help, only saying that it was an unknown xeno artifact recovered about a century ago from a world Ravenor didn't recognize; meaning it was nowhere in this sub-sector or any of its direct neighbors.
"Frauka, be ready." Ravenor ordered, gaze still intently on the case and the item inside. Frauka raised an eyebrow, looking uncomprehendingly at what to him seemed to just be a hunk of metal.
"Trouble?" he asked, taking one last pull from his lho-stick before dropping it to the floor carelessly.
"Could be. Or it could just be an idle curiosity. Be ready anyway." Frauka nodded in acknowledgement, pausing to stamp out the smoldering butt of his lho-stick before raising a hand to the augmentic at his neck, waiting for Ravenor's signal.
Steeling his mind, Ravenor reached out with his otherworldly senses, looking for any trace of the power he had glimpsed. The reaction was almost instantaneous. No sooner had his power brushed the object than the ruined orb sparked to life, emerald strands of energy crackling around it like little bolts of lighting. The sudden light and noise shocked the inquisitor's retinue into action, and in the space of two seconds every figure in the room had drawn their weapons at the sudden event, save for Frauka who still stood ready with his hand at his neck.
In Ravenor's witch-sight it was even more troubling, the orb suddenly burning with bright psychic energy, like a miniature sun, barely contained. He could the orb pulling at the space around, as if tearing at reality itself. Ravenor's heart skipped a beat as he realized that it was horrifyingly familiar to when he had felt sorcerers and psykers attempt to open a path to the warp. If this thing had the power to open a rift to the immaterium right in this room, they were all as good as dead. Or much, much worse.
"Frauka," Ravenor said, his flat mechanical voice conveying none of the desperate urgency he felt. "Now!" He didn't need to be told twice, flicking the control at his neck.
Ravenor abruptly felt his psychic awareness of the room snap off, like a switch had been flipped to leave him in darkness. He felt the oppressive weight of Frauka's power settle over the room, the air itself seeming to go still and dead. The suited man was a null, or as they were sometimes known, a blank. His very person was a psychic dead zone, and with his implanted limiter turned off, it was free suck the power from the area around him. Normal humans found it uncomfortable and disconcerting to be around nulls, feeling a sense of utter wrongness that permeated reality around them. To a psyker like Ravenor their presence was physically painful, like a piece of his mind had been cut off from the rest of him.
He winced in sympathy as out of the side of his vision he saw Paitence's features tighten in pain at the null-field's sudden existence. Still, it was better than the alternative at this point. It seemed to bring the strange artifact under control, the power crackling around it dimming to only a few impotent sparks as it was suddenly smothered by the null-field. The retinue had barely enough time to breathe a sigh of relief before that changed.
Power suddenly erupted from the relic, all of its surfaces glowing with emerald light. The glass of the display case around it shattered in a wave of pressure, space around it twisting and distorting. Ravenor couldn't understand it. Overcoming a null field was theoretically possible, but the amount of power it took to do so was astronomical. Power that the cracked orb seemed to be pulling out of nowhere.
Ravenor tried to order his retinue to run, to get away from the rift this thing was creating, but he didn't have time to get the words out before one last massive pulse of energy tore from the orb, and everything went white.
=][=
Ravenor came back to awareness slowly, groggy and unfocused. His chair pulsed damage and medical warnings at him, circulating waves of drugs through his system to keep him from falling back into unconsciousness.
As soon as he woke he knew he was somewhere else. Everything around him was obscured by swirling smoke and mist. It shifted and spun, even though there wasn't the slightest hint of a breeze. Frauka was gone, as were all of his companions as far as he could tell, and his null-field had gone with him. Ravenor's psychic senses were restored, and for once that didn't reassure him. Even without trying to reach out intentionally, he could feel the world shifting and flowing around him, remolding itself like clay. If there was some kind of purpose or direction to it, Ravenor couldn't find it.
Something flared in the distance, both visually and psychically to Ravenor. A bright green light, a beacon in the mist. Ravenor could just barely make out a figure in front of the light, humanoid, vaguely feminine.
He hesitated. A point of light in the distant murk was a perfect trap, like a deep-sea predator luring in its prey with a glowing antenna. But simply turning and rushing into the swirling darkness was no more appealing.
The decision was made for him a moment later. Ravenor could suddenly feel presences swirling around him, circling and grabbing at him with formless ethereal limbs. They were not human in the slightest. They were like whatever this realm was, shifting, indistinct, abstract, as if their very beings were changing moment to moment. Bound into the swirling entities, Ravenor could feel something else, Something distinctly like hunger.
The creatures grew bolder, pressing closer and closer to the strange new intruder into their realm. Ghostly claws and limbs grabbed at Ravenor's chair, carving grooves into the armored exterior as they tried to get a proper grip. There was little doubt in its occupants mind that if he stayed here, the creatures would rip the chair apart, and then probably him with it.
Still uneven and shaken, Ravenor gathered all the power he could and hurled it outward, desperately pressing for any space he could get. The struggle that ensued was just as much mental as physical, the wraiths clawing at his mental defenses, looking for any weakness to exploit. Ravenor was skilled at defending himself with his psyker powers, but he knew that he couldn't keep this up for long.
Seeing no other option, Ravenor rushed towards the light, holding back the press of ethereal attackers all the while. As he closed in, he saw that there was no woman in front of it, but rather she was the light, a glowing form of pure energy.
Ravenor could feel his mental stamina flagging, the fury of his attackers only growing more and more ferocious as their prey tried to escape. Despite all the stimulants his chair could pump into his ruined body, he felt the darkness of unconsciousness begin to take him again. The last thing he saw was a glowing hand reaching out to him.
=][=
Author's note: Originally this story was posted on SpaceBattles under the title "Inquisitorial Mandate". I wanted to continue this story, but I've fallen out of using the site, so I figured I might as well try it here.