Questions
"And again, Mary..." Ricardo said with a glare. "No experimentation. Do it and I will shoot you with something that won't make you happy."
He wasn't entirely satisfied with this setup. There was a lot of equipment that he could have wished for that was simply too bulky, too fragile or too irreplaceable to be allowed out of highly secure facilities. The medicae facility on the ship was adequate for most needs, but for more in depth services one was supposed to go to a full on medical facility. This was not something that could be taken to a regular medical facility, for any number of reasons.
"I heard you the first time." Mary replied a bit absently as she worked. "I do not want the Sororitas angry with me. So while I need another fix, I can do without long enough to get some answers." She sniffed a bit derisively as she fiddled with a scanner. "Although my methods are faster."
Ricardo did not reply even though that was true. Mary was a wiz when it came to brain chemistry. If he wanted a mind broken, the subject only able to count past ten with his or her shoes off? Then she was the one to call. But the last thing he wanted to do was break this unknown woman's mind. For one thing, he needed answers to the questions she posed. For another? The other Sororitas might object and that might get very messy. They had no scruples about relating their disapproval in most situations. The Inquisition at least tried to be a bit circumspect at times. The Sisters of Battle didn't care.
Hence a degree of caution that was rare for Ricardo and his team. Most of the time, they just did things, got the job done and left. Collateral damage was for scribes and bureaucrats. Ricardo was all about results.
He watched closely as Mary finished the hookups and started up the machinery. The mystery woman was restrained on the table as was normal, but there the similarities ended. This time, there were no interrogation tools laid out nearby. There was no machinery attached to her skull to allow for direct ripping of information out of it. There was no psyker ready to sift the mind for truths and falsehoods alike. The last psyker Ricardo had on his team had perished on the last mission. They had succeeded in finding and destroying a heretical cult of pain-pleasure seekers, but the cost had been dear. There had been an ambush. Grishal had been caught out of cover by the pair of Traitor Space Marines running the cult and torn to pieces in front of the team. Those scum had paid for their affronts to the Emperor, but Grishal was going to be hard to replace. Psykers were rare. Primaris psykers even more so. Primaris psykers that were both loyal and able to withstand the rigors of working with the Inquisition? Almost impossible to find quickly. They did exist, but it would take time to find one. Ricardo had put in a request as soon as he and his battered team had returned to the ship but he knew it would be a while.
"This is odd." Mary's bemused voice pulled Ricardo out of his momentary reverie. Ricardo glanced a sharply at her and she shook her head. "I don't know what Sororitas use for augmentation..." She broke off as Ricardo coughed. "Do you?"
"You don't want to know." Ricardo's quiet voice had Mary stiffening.
She stared at him and then bent back to her tasks, face grim. He stepped forward and perused the readouts. He was no medic or trained Biologus, but he had learned quite a bit over the years. The woman had no augmentation. None. He stared at the screen, perplexed. How the hell? Even the lowest menial in the darkest, drabbest manufactorum in the worst of places had some augmentation. Even if it was simply a tracking and punishment chip, they had something. He didn't know everything the Sororitas had, but he knew they augmented their Sisters fairly thoroughly. The way he knew that was something he would never divulge to anyone. Safer for everyone.
"Did the facility take out her augmentation?" Ricardo asked after a moment's thought. That could be done with difficulty, but that medical facility had both the personnel and the equipment to do just that. Now as to why they would do so? He had no idea.
"No." If anything, Mary seemed even more perplexed. "I am not showing signs of her ever being augmented. No neural shunts. No skeletal reinforcement. No muscular additions. No nothing." Disbelief warred with disgust at such a thought. A human without any augmentation was simply meat. Prey for any number of horrors. No Sororitas would be out and about in such a condition. Not a chance.
"That makes no sense." Ricardo said slowly. "She was praying to the Emperor and..." He paused, thinking hard. "The scar on her cheek. Is it what I think?"
"There was definitely an older scar there." Mary was totally focused on her instruments. "I cannot tell what it was with any certainty. It might have been a fleur-de-lys. It might have been something else."
"Okay. Then we proceed as planned." Ricardo nodded as the doctor moved to stand by one wall. "Monitor only."
Mary nodded. They had 'discussed' things fairly thoroughly when Mary had been brought aboard. When she had recovered from injuries resulting from that discussion, they had discussed things again. Eventually, she had learned that crossing Ricardo was a bad idea. Ricardo nodded to her and she hit a control. In moments the woman on the table groaned her way to consciousness.
"Good morning." Ricardo said with a nod to his 'guest. "My name is Ricardo Illusmar. You know what I am." He saw her try her bonds, but he wasn't worried. The woman was held in place by restraints that an Adeptes Astartes would have difficulty breaking. Ricardo nodded to her again as her mouth set in a grim line and she closed her eyes. She couldn't shake her head, but her denial was clear. "This can go several ways, my dear." Ricardo kept his voice friendly and calm. "Most of those will be very unpleasant for you. I am going to say something and you are not going to believe me, but it is true nonetheless: I do not want to hurt you."
A soft noise of disbelief came from the other before she controlled herself. Ricardo shrugged. He hadn't expected an immediate surrender to reality. She wasn't the type.
"Let me lay out what little I know." Ricardo said quietly as Mary watched her screens. "You infiltrated that medical facility for reasons unknown. You were armed. With no conceit intended, I am fairly conversant with weapons and your weapon is not one that I am familiar with. You are trained in resisting interrogations..." He paused and scoffed. "At least crude ones like the medical people did." He shook his head. "I mean, really? Truth serums? Hot irons? How barbaric."
The woman did not react and Ricardo smiled at her. It was not a nice smile.
"We have far better techniques for discovering truths." The Inquisitor said quietly. The woman still did not react and he continued. "But… We come to a problem point. You are an assassin. That is the only datum that fits the facts. Only an assassin would have had the means and the motive to sneak into a secure facility with a weapon such as this." He held up the bolt pistol he had gotten from the facility and her eyes twitched. She was watching him. Good. Again, he shook his head. "Now, to clarify, I don't have a problem with assassins as long as they are not targeting me. You were not. You were trying to escape, nothing more. Or..." He paused. "Would you have shot me or yourself?"
"Does it matter?" The woman asked, her tone ice cold. "Do what you will, Inquisitor. You will anyway."
Ricardo just looked at her, but inside, he was jumping for joy. They had done it. She was calm. Well, calmer. Mary was truly a wizard when it came to brain chemistry. The woman was awake, aware and responding. Just what Ricardo had wanted. Now, he just had to keep her talking. Something he was very good at.
"Probably." Ricardo said with a shrug. "That said, do I need to be rude about it? Name and rank." Mary did something where she stood and the woman on the table seemed to wilt a little.
"No." The woman replied even as a screen flared to life over her head. They couldn't directly access her mind without a psyker or a much more invasive and damaging process, but Mary knew all kinds of interesting cheats. Chemical markers were not as clear as psyker visions, but they were also far easier to read even though the skull and left no traces. A word appeared on the screen. No, a name. 'Kay'.
"Kay." Ricardo said softly. The woman on the table froze in place and then started thrashing in her bonds. "Now, now." He chided her gently. "Don't do that. We don't that pretty little body marred before your sisters arrive to collect you."
Bingo. Ricardo fought back a smile as the woman on the table went totally still.
"What?" The woman -Kay?- asked slowly.
"Come on, my dear." Ricardo sounded bored now. "Carrying a bolt pistol. Praying to the Emperor. Mark on your face. You really expect me to believe you are a scribe?" He snorted. "Nurse, yeah, you pulled that off. Where did you get your medical training?" A word appeared on the screen over her head. It was not a word he knew so he keyed for a translation. It turned out to be an insult in an extremely obscure form of Gothic that it took a moment for his onboard database to translate. Once it did, Ricardo actually laughed out loud. "Damn, woman. That is a good one. I will have to remember that one. Schweinhund." He repeated.
Her face was scrunched up and her mouth set in a grim line as words flowed across the screen endlessly. Her heart rate and blood pressure were spiking as well. That had to be intentional.
"So, either you are a Sororitas or you are pretending to be one." Ricardo spoke again, more to keep her mind occupied on him instead of what Mary was doing than to hear himself speak. "You either accomplished your mission or you did not. You are not of the Ordos that I am part of, nor are you affiliated with the Officio Assassinorum. Trust me, if you were, we would know."
He knew all of those signs of course. He personally had never been targeted by an Imperial assassin, but he knew of four Inquisitors who had been. None had survived. It was never spoken of openly, but the Inquisition did not trust anyone, so they had all kinds of data on the various assassin temples. This Kay could be a Callidus assassin even now, but it was a vanishingly small chance. There was no residue of Polymorphine in her system. She certainly wasn't an Eversor or Culexus. There were far too few bodies in her wake for that to be the case. Nor a Vindicare. No. In that case, she wouldn't have been seen, let alone caught.
"So." Ricardo allowed himself a grim smile. "That leaves you as a member of the Sororitas. But an odd one. If you were a Sister Militant, you would have augmentation. Or..." He paused as the woman laughed scornfully. "Yes?"
"You have no idea what you are playing with, Inquisitor." The woman said firmly. "You will pray for death before it comes and it will not be a quick or merciful one."
"More than likely." Ricardo allowed. The woman's eyes shot open and he smiled at her, a full, real smile for the first time. "Come, my dear. Do you really think I am really that clueless about my eventual fate?" Mary was staring at him as the woman on the table did the same. "I will fight the enemies of the Imperium until my final breath. It is what I do. But I am a realist as well. I am no Adeptes Astartes, and not even they are immortal."
"You mean that." The woman sounded shocked. Ricardo nodded. "That is..." She paused and sighed deeply. "Inquisitor, please do not call the Sororitas. It will cause far more problems than you can imagine."
"How so?" Ricardo backed up a step as the restraints surrounding the woman clicked open and she sat up! Impossible! She couldn't have…Mary was reaching for a control to sound an alarm when her body froze in place.
"My name is Kay. Aspirant Kay. I am abhuman." The woman said sadly. "An abomination before the Emperor. My immortal soul is dust and I will never see his light."
"You are a psyker." Ricardo had both of his weapons in hand now for all the good they might do him. Both bolts and plasma had failed against psykers in the past. He hadn't thought to bring blessed ammo in here! "Why didn't you use your abilities on me before?"
"You are an Inquisitor, a servant of the Emperor." Kay was still quiet, calm. "While I may not agree with all of what the Imperium does, I serve the Emperor and you speak with his voice. I would have shot myself. I thought only to hide, to run and hide. But that is not who I am. I am a daughter of the Emperor and I cannot live like this."
"You fled the Sororitas." Ricardo said slowly, his aim still true. The woman did not move to defend herself. Indeed she seemed to want him to fire. Maybe she did?
"No. I was discovered to be abhuman during my final trials for joining the militant arms. Unknowingly, I lashed out with my mind and grievously injured a sister. My sisters were justifiably upset. I was being remanded to a Black Ship." Kay said sadly. "The transport I and my escort were traveling on to meet the Black Ship was attacked by xenos corsairs. My escort was killed but I survived. I am not sure how."
"And the pistol?" Ricardo did not take his eyes from the woman in front of him. Mutant. Whatever she was.
"Sister Superior Nina had that on her body when I crawled out of the wreckage the xenos left." Kay's face was torn with remembered grief. "She was hard, but fair. Her faith was like adamantium. I wanted to be like her and I am not. I am not brave. I am skilled with cogitators, but no more. This horror that lurks within me must be expunged. Shoot, Inquisitor!"
"I have more questions." Ricardo was unsure about this. "How did you wind up at the medical facility?"
"There were other survivors." Kay said quietly. "They sent a distress call. The facility sent a rescue ship and by the time it had arrived, I had managed to cobble together an identity. I had basic medical training and I learn fast. Most of the facility is fairly secure, but their personnel department is not. With access to that office, fabricating an identity was fairly easy. That is all of your questions answered, no? Who I am, where I came from and why?"
"That was all of the questions I had at the time, yes." Ricardo took a chance and holstered his plasma pistol. "I have a lot more now." Kay slumped a bit and nodded. "Release Mary."
"Yes, sir." Kay sat on the table as Mary gasped and jerked towards the alarm, only to to have Ricardo stop her with a shake of his head.
"Inquisitor!" Mary protested, retreating as far from Kay as she could. "This thing must be purged." Kay nodded, her hands folded and her mouth moving in silent prayers.
"The Emperor moves in mysterious ways." Ricardo said softly as he kept his eyes on Kay. "You are far better controlled than most new psykers I have seen. Sororitas training?"
"I don't know." Kay admitted. "I don't feel what other sisters said the touch of the Emperor felt like. But I fear the darkness inside me. I am but mortal, Inquisitor. I cannot control such horror. No one can. Inquisitor, please?" She begged.
"The merciful thing to do would be to put a bolt round through your head." Ricardo ordinarily would have done just that by now. These were not ordinary circumstances. "I have seen far too many rogue psykers to know otherwise. But..." He sighed. "You have been asleep for over a day. I did contact the nearest convent." Kay gasped and Ricardo nodded. "They are sending a delegation to collect you."
"To kill me." Kay said weakly.
"Quite probably." Ricardo slowly lowered his pistol and then holstered it. "They told me to and I quote 'take care of her until we get there and get answers if you can. Gently.'." Kay slumped so far it seemed she was in danger of falling off the table. "I know better than to anger them, Kay. Your life or death is their prerogative. Not mine."
"But, you are an Inquisitor!" Kay begged.
"And I know my limits." Ricardo shrugged as she shook her head. "Don't." He warned as she gathered herself. He drew his bolt pistol again and loaded a different magazine, shockers like what he had used on Mary before. "I will stun you again if I have to. They likely won't get angry about that, but they might. We can control you until they get here using drugs and other means, but I have zero leeway on this. You will be alive until they get here."
"And then?" Kay lay back, tears falling as she fought for control.
"That is in the Emperor's hands, Kay." Ricardo said with a sigh. He did not holster his weapon. "Okay. Take it from the beginning and this time, we will record everything for the delegation. Who are you, where are you from and how did you get into the medical facility with a bolt pistol?"
Not that everything wasn't recorded anyway, but this time, he was being ultra formal.
Such rarely hurt when dealing with fanatics and the things they were fanatic about.