The Valkyrie touched down in the cavernous landing hall with a heavy thud and a hiss of atmosphere as the rear hatch began to descend. Their flight had been given priority landing and they were at the far end of the hangar. As soon as the ramp was down the Astarties were on their feet and were disembarking with the Genator. Jhon pressed the release button on his harness to follow them, but it didn't unlock. The Armsmen stayed seated around them and he saw that Mesarine made no attempt to stand either. He looked out of the rear of the craft to see the Astarties disappearing out of the hanager with the Tech Priest. As the hatch closed another opened on a side wall and a squad of troopers marched in and took position around the Valkyrie. At first they looked like Adeptus Arbites, clad in heavy carapace armour with a mixture of wide caliber shotguns and bolters. But that wasn't right, Arbites weren't stationed on starships, that was the role of Armsmen. Also, these men weren't wearing standard Arbites armour. In place of the gleaming red and yellow, they wore matt black with crimson edging.
It was only when John caught a glimpse of the rosettes stamped onto their pauldrons did his breath catch in his throat; they were inquisitorial stormtroopers. He hadn't even known that the Inquisition had been part of the fleet. Even though he was loyal - everyone knew that their attention was something to be avoided, something to be feared. The only one of the troopers without a full face helmet stepped forwards. He seemed to be their Sargent and carried some sort of carbine, along with a brutal shock maul. Pointing at them both his voice sounded as if he was crunching rocks "you are both bound over by the Emperor's Holy Inquisition. You will be taken from this place for questioning and interrogation." Without any further word or ceremony, the troopers marched up the ramp and placed manacles on both him and Mesarine.
Neither of them objected, they knew never to resist the Inquisition. When Mesarine removed her mask he could see that her eyes were sunken into her skull and her dark brown hair had fallen out of the tight bun at the back of her head. It now fell lankly over her face. They were matched across the hanger, into a turbo lift and apparently down hundreds of decks through the ship. They emerged onto a deck that Jhon hadn't seen before, not that he had been able to explore much of the vast ship, beyond their barracks and training deck.
That deck was cramped and dark. Jhon watched as the leader of the storm troopers entered a series of long codes and gave DNA samples to progress through a series of very high security access hatches. Eventually both of them reached a nondescript door. Mesarine was held back while one of the troopers shoved him through the door and sat him down at a bare metal chair, across from a simple desk. The trooper closed the door behind him, leaving the manacles on but not making any other attempt to secure him to the chair or the floor.
He didn't know how long he had been waiting there when the door behind him opened. It felt as though the temperature of the room dropped by a few degrees as a shadow passed over him and a figure took the other seat at the desk. He was a small man with a thin frame but Jhon could see under his cloak that he was young and incredibly fit. He had a haughty bearing like some of the Naval officers that he had met on board the ship. Clearly a noble born on some grand Imperial world. The man reached up with his elegant hands and took down the hood of his cloak. His right eye and half of his jaw had been replaced with very high end augmetics, a cluster of lenses giving him a slightly insectoid look.
The man stared at Jhon over the table for a long while. Occasionally his bionic lenses whirred and clicked but he said nothing. Eventually he opened his mouth and spoke in a very cultured but thin voice. His augmetic jaw gave a slight slur to his words where he wasn't properly able to shape his mouth. "You should be proud of yourself Trooper Dvoral. From the report that my Acolytes bring me you did exceedingly well to survive the incursion." He brought his head up, apparently to show the Inquisitorial rosette pinned at his neck. "I want you to tell me what happened, in your own words?." Jhon didn't understand, was this an interrogation?
"No, this isn't strictly speaking an Interrogation Trooper." The Inquisitor said, unnervingly answering the question that he had only asked in his head. "If I had wanted to force information from your mouth then I would have simply handed you over to my Interrogator. He is incredibly skilled in the extractive arts - a very promising pupil indeed. No, you are here because you have learned something that should have been kept from your reach; for your own protection and the protection of the Imperium." The Inquisitor smiled, in a way that seemed to suggest that he was trying to be reassuring but which only seemed to make him seem more sinister. He had left a deliberate pause.
"Lord…" Jhon's voice stuttered and failed him, he just needed to sleep, needed to eat something. He tried again. "Lord, I am a loyal servant of the Throne. My Company was ordered to complete a Priority One extraction of an Alpha Level Imperial asset from the capital city." The Inquisitor nodded along, Jhon continued "We were ambushed at the landing zone Lord. The enemy were apparently able to track our flight and attacked us from prepared underground tunnels.
We lost The Commander at this point and Churgeion Prime Mesarine took charge of the mission." "Ah, I'm aware of Mesarine Trooper. You survived together did you not?", stated the Inquisitor, steepling his long fingers. "That's correct my Lord, Churgeion Prime Mesarine led our mission into the Alcazar; we were harrassed by cultists and mutants the whole way through the city." "What do you believe those cultists worshipped Trooper?" The Inquisitor leaned forwards slightly at this point, if he was surprised by the news he didn't show it.
"I didn't understand why they would do it Lord, but they seemed to be worshipping a Genestealer. I understand now that they exercise control through their warp powers - I suppose I should feel pity for the Imperial citizens who had fallen under their control." The Inquisitor glared at him "It is a testament that you feel that way Trooper, would that it were so simple. It is true that the Genestealer exercises a level of psychic control. But in my observance, that control only truly takes root where there is a level of discontentment in the population to begin with and where their forcible mutation and cross-breeding is accepted or tolerated."
You mean to say that this has happened before Lord?" Jhon asked, surprised and sickened. "Oh yes Trooper and what is worse is that it is happening with increasing regularity. The Genestealer, we know now, is the vanguard organism of the greater Hive Fleets that you will have been briefed upon. The Tyranid send them out among the stars and when they land upon an inhabited world they begin to spread their foul seed like a virus. They co-opt and convert susceptible populations, insidiously growing the sort of cults that you just encountered. What's worse is that we are seeing this trend increase across the most densely populated worlds of this Segmentum, each one in the path of Hive Fleet Kraken"
Jhon was astonished that the sort of horror he had just witnessed was being multiplied across more Imperial worlds. How was it that the Tyranid were able to exercise such sickeningly devious forms of infiltration? They were simply mindless bugs weren't they; only organised by that crude psychic intelligence that could be disrupted by shooting the biggest bio-monsters?
He was exhausted, the mental diversion had caused him to lose focus on the situation. "Trooper, do I still have your attention?!" the Inquisitor asked without anger, more like a stern parent, or a Drill Abbot. "Of, of course my Lord" Jhon snapped back to attention. The Inquisitor looked at him sternly and continued, "the broader issues of the Genestealer menace are not my concern today Trooper. Instead my concern is with you and in particular, with anything that you may have learned during your unfortunate mission?" He left the question hanging in the air. Jhon stammered again.
"Churgeion Prime Mesarine led us through the city and we made entry into the Governor's Palace, known locally as the Alcazar. When we got inside we witnessed what appeared to be the Governor Maastricht voluntarily sacrificing himself to an Alpha Genestealer. We couldn't believe what we were seeing, but I guess now that he'd also become part of this cult?" "That's correct Trooper, it's not the first time that we've seen Imperial nobility succumbing to this 'condition'. From my understanding the death of Governor Maastricht is not a huge loss to the Imperium. Trooper this detail is not what interests me. I want you to tell me about the Graian Magos Genator who travelled back with you, how did you meet him and what did you learn? You see, I believe that there is more to his activity simply being in the wrong place during a Genestealer incursion?"
John let everything go; the secret orders, Adept 87Quark, the secret room in the bowels of the palace. "The Genator wanted to bring us on side" John explained to the Inquisitor "They made some sort of calculation; the Tech Priests. They determined that we would fight harder if we knew why is was important to keep the Genator alive." The Inquisitor sat down and stared directly into John's eyes "Go on Trooper…" "Well Lord, the Genator showed us a captured Genestealer that he had been studying, he explained that the Mechanicus had brought the Genestealers to the planet in order to study them. They said that they wanted to reproduce their mind control effect, to see if they could recreate something called the Laurels of Command." The Inquisitor raised his one remaining eyebrow, "Be careful Trooper, that knowledge is restricted and you should take care to forget any mention that you have heard of such a device and do not repeat it to anyone outside of His Holy Inquisition."
Jhon's hypno-conditioning kicked in, he continued "The Genator made it clear to us that one of the Genestealers, one of his research subjects, had escaped into the palace and that he had been studying how it had converted its occupants. He told us that he had lied to fleet command in order to secure our regiment for the extraction mission." The Inquisitor's face was stern "You are aware of the severity of that accusation, Trooper?"
John nodded, the Inquisitor thought for a moment and continued "The Mechanicus is a most favoured ally of the Imperium but they are not above the Emperor's Justice. Can I ask why you did not execute the Genator on the spot for Treason and Xenos Heresy?" He paused and added as an afterthought "You would have been justified within the Lex Imperialis."
Jhon felt chastised "Forgive us Lord, we took the view that it would better for the Genator's work not to have been in vain and for some good to come to the Imperium from all that had happened on this world. I thought that was what my vision showed me, Lord; that the Emperor approved of our decision."
The Inquisitor cut him off. "You had a vision Trooper?"
Jhon backtracked, careful not to make any doctrinal errors. "I cannot be sure it was a vision Lord, I was exhausted and running on combat Stimms. But Lord, when we're at our lowest point, I opened my eyes and found that I was back in the Chapel at my Schola. The one I would visit to make devotionals as a child. I was looking at the chapel window, it was a great stained glass image of the Emperor and a blinding light was shining from behind it. All I felt was an overwhelming sense of peace and wellbeing." Jhon was becoming lost in the memory again.
He tried to remain focused "I don't know what it was, but it made me fight harder and it gave me hope that we would be rescued, it renewed my faith." The Inquisitor considered this for a long while, criticising Jhon with his dead, mechanical eye; the augmetic twitched and whirred as it's arcane systems did their work. "You are correct, we cannot be sure whether that was a vision or not. It may be possible that it was simply a hallucinogenic side effect of Stimm overdose. What matters Trooper is that I believe you had the faith in the Emperor to sustain such an experience."