Lies
Finally, Ricardo had all of the information that he needed from the girl. He doubted that the Sisters of Battle would want any of it, but he made several copies of the interrogation, just in case they demanded those. Some he would truly hand over if needed or destroy. Others would go to various places, some known, some not. Information was his most important weapon after all. He nodded as Kay gave a tiny sob.
"You are exhausted." Mary spoke up from the wall where she had stood for the least two hours. "When did you have decent sleep last?"
"Really?" Kay demanded, anger rising. "Now you try the soft approach?" She gave a gasp and her eyes slid shut of their own accord. "You…" She slumped back to the table as Mary's sedative worked its black magic.
"Technically, everything we just did was the soft approach." Ricardo shook his head as he stepped to the table, refastening the restraints for all the good they would do. "You didn't detect psyker energy when she unlocked the restraints and froze you in place, did you?" He asked Mary, who jerked, face shocked.
"How did you…?" Mary looked clear eyed for the moment her face thoughtful. "Never mind, You won't say. No. None of the scanners detected such energy."
"Her story makes a certain amount of sense." Ricardo mused as he attached a device to Kay's skull that would keep her asleep even if she fought off the drugs, unlikely as that was. "It is internally consistent and fairly believable."
"And?" Mary asked, unsure as to where this was going.
"And it is all lies." Ricardo shrugged. "The Sisters I contacted had never heard of an Aspirant Kay. And if they did detect an abhuman in their ranks? That one would die. Period." He sighed. "They keep their own secrets, but they will not turn from their faith without extreme measures. I have worked with enough Adeptas Sororitas to know that."
"So, are they are sending a team?" Mary asked. "Or was that just to throw her off balance?"
"They are." Ricardo's eyes narrowed as he looked from Mary to Kay and back. Was Kay panting? She was!
"What?" Mary demanded. Her eyes widened as Ricardo pulled a small device from a pouch and fear flew across her face. "What? No!"
Too late. He had pressed the button on it and she collapsed to the floor, moaning. She would have been screaming if she had that much control of her body.
"I warned you." Ricardo said mildly as Mary writhed in agony. The device he held was connected to a fairly nasty little thing embedded deep in her brain. One did not take chances with a being such as Mary. Not in the slightest. With her brain so messed up, it was hard to cause her pain and not have it revert to pleasure, but the Inquisition's medical specialists had managed. "You will not break this woman. She is the responsibility of the Sororitas and we are simply here to make sure she gets to them intact and coherent. I warned you what would happen if your lusts ever endangered me. You just did."
Calm, cool, matter of fact. No emotion at all. He could kill her with a further twitch of the button and from his expression? He would care about as much as stepping on a Nurgling.
"She… Is… Calmer..." Mary managed to grate out as her body betrayed her. He let up on the button and she lay on the floor, gasping. "I didn't warp her! I just sedated her!"
Ricardo glanced at Kay who was lying quietly now. His face was blank as he pocketed the device.
"Get up." The Inquisitor commanded. "We need to know how she get free and froze you. You will do a full noninvasive neurological workup. You will focus on the chemical and physical readings we have. You will peruse every recording we have of her brainwaves. You will make a full and uncensored copy ready for the Sororitas team when they arrive. And it goes without saying that you will not try to seduce this girl or any of the Sororitas. If you do, I will hand you over to them without a single qualm. They may just shoot you. Or they may get mean."
Ricardo actually shuddered. He had seen a few times when Sororitas had been upset by things. Such memories were horrific in the extreme. His own faith was strong, but compared to theirs? Entire worlds had been broken on the anvil of the Sister's fanatic devotion to the Emperor. He had personally seen entire citadels of heretics burned alive by squads of angry Sisters. But even that paled beside some of the other things they had done. Some to their enemies, some to erstwhile allies. Some to each other.
"I am not stupid!" Mary protested as she shot to her feet. "I need my fix." She begged and Ricardo sighed.
"Go." Ricardo snapped, patience fleeing. "This room will seal and a stasis field will activate was soon as we leave. There is no way she will get out of that." Mary bolted for the door, but paused when the Inquisitor spoke again. "I want that report by the end of shift."
"Yes, sir." Mary's subdued tone didn't fool him. She would push, it was who and what she was. But she also wouldn't quibble when he had a literal kill switch for her. Then she was gone.
Ricardo let one last glance travel over the slumbering girl before he too strode to the door. Just outside, he entreated the machine spirit of this part of the ship. It reacted as always and a whine heralded the activation of the stasis protocols. She wasn't going to escape those. Not a chance when she was outside of normal space and time. A beep from his wrist had him sighing. The other two members of his retinue wanted to talk. He looked from side to side, but no crew were in sight. A quick check of his scanners showed that Mace and Lornan were busy in the armory, probably tearing the pistol apart down to the molecular level. Doc was in the engineering spaces again, almost certainly swearing up a storm as he did when working. Mary was running towards her quarters, her need to satiate the addiction inside her brain overriding all else. The Captain…
"Inquisitor." Captain Mainwaring stepped into view, his face grave. "I got the message too. We need to keep our stories straight and as true as we can manage."
"Lying to Sororitas tends to piss them off." Ricardo nodded and he moved to the proper place.
"You would know that better than many." The Captain said mildly. Ricardo glared at him, but the Captain just shook his head. "What you did was a very bad idea."
"It got the job done and the Canoness herself said it was all good." Ricardo said with just a touch of heat as the Captain moved close enough. A section of the floor opened underneath them and the hidden lift lowered them swiftly to another level, one that was not on any official plans. "It is not like they haven't done the same to people in the past."
"Not to one of their own Sister Superiors in public." The Captain shuddered. "Humiliating her that way may have been effective, but geez, boss. There were better ways."
"She was wrong!" Ricardo snapped, ire rising. "She was ignoring the true threat because I was just a man."
"And?" The Captain asked reasonably. Ricardo deflated.
"And I was angry with her. I let my emotions override my common sense." Ricardo admitted. "A mistake. One my superiors spoke quite harshly to me about."
Even now, the rage that his boss had shown shook the Inquisitor. One did not get called on the carpet by a Lord Inquisitor for small things. That hadn't been small. Humiliating the overbearing woman in front of four regiments of Imperial Guard in addition to the company of Sisters present had not been subtle in any way. The only thing that had saved his hide was that it had been effective. The Genestealer cult that the Sister Superior had been ignoring in the need to find and punish heretic humans had been dealt with before it could cause more havoc. She had dismissed his evidence out of hand, mostly in a need to show her superiority to any mere male. Making her kneel in the guts of a dead Genestealer had been over the top, he knew that then and he knew that now. But to this day, in the deepest, darkest parts of his mind, he treasured the look on Sister Superior Sara Wrick's face when he had shown up with the 'imaginary' carcass and tossed it at her feet just as she had finished her sermon. Part of him had expected her to shoot him, Inquisitor or no. She hadn't and the cult had been dealt with along with other subversive elements as only the Sisters and Inquisition working together could. Then he had been unceremoniously shipped off to another sector and another branch of the Inquisition, not something that happened often.
He was lucky to be alive, he knew that. He also knew that the Sisters had long memories.
The lift stopped in a dark hallway and he stayed where he was while automated IFF protocols queried his implants. If any came back wrong or garbled, he wouldn't live for more than few seconds. After an eternity of maybe ten seconds, the lights of the hall started activating. The mismatched pair, the flamboyant pirate and the grim Inquisitor, started walking as the hall lit up in front of them. It wasn't long walk until they reached an armored door that would take a multimelta several minutes to pierce. Ricardo laid a hand on a barely visible panel on one side of the door as Mainwaring did the same on the other side. Something passed from Ricardo into the machinery. He wasn't sure what it was scanning, but he did know several weapons were aimed at him. For some things, there was simply no overkill.
"Greetings, Inquisitor Ricardo, Captain Mainwaring." As always, the melodious female voice sounded wrong to the human, but he ignored his mental quivers as the door hissed and jerked its way to opening, As old as the ship was? This place was the oldest part of it.
The room behind the door was far smaller than one would expect. It wasn't much larger than the two thrones that sat within it. 'Throne' was really the only proper word. As always, it took ever ounce of Ricardo's self control not to draw his pistol and fire at the form that sat on the left. The female was beautiful in a distinctly alien way. Her obsidian skin was marred by the many cybernetics that had been attached to her when she had first been enslaved by the builders of the ship uncounted centuries ago. She would never age and never die as long as the ship endured. That she felt pain when it was damaged was immaterial. She had been unrepentant when captured and enslaved by the Inquisition. Elesinial of the Dark Eldar was unrepentant now. If she ever broke free of her bonds, the humans on this ship could measure their lives in seconds if they were lucky. If not? Their agony would last years.
Also as always, the figure on the right was the one that spoke. The Dark Elder knew better than to push Ricardo too far. As painful as Mary had found his ire to be? He could do far worse to the enslaved Dark Eldar and she knew it.
"That woman is far more than she seems." Djerek wasn't human either. Ricardo wasn't sure what race the being was, but he was short, stout and his beard reached the floor. "We detected several hacking attempts trying to breach the room's firewalls. Very sophisticated, very hard to detect or counter. The elf here took that as personal affront and savaged the things.."
"She hacked the room defenses." Ricardo said softly. Both slaves to the ship nodded to him. "Oh shit."
"Yeah, 'oh shit' indeed. I am surprised you are still alive." Djerek agreed. "She has no augmentation. No psyker powers that we can detect. That means it is something that we haven't seen before."
"Or something that was buried for the good of the Imperium." Ricardo said softly. "We have to turn her over to the Sororitas."
"Who will kill her." Mainwaring said mildly.
"That may not be a bad thing and she was begging for it. But… that is sort of expected of a novice in such a situation. You were monitoring." Ricardo said after a moment. "Was anything she said true?"
"She is very good at hiding her true self." The Dark Elder sounded almost appreciative of such skill. Her voice was silk and steel mixed, promising all kinds of things to the listener. Ricardo ignored that. Mainwaring likewise. "The name she gave ran true to my senses. The rest? Truth and falsehood mixed."
"Figured as much." Ricardo mused. "Will the stasis field hold her?"
"It should." Djerek sounded unsure, a first in Ricardo's experience. His devoted area was the day to day operation of the ship and he was excellent with such. Being hooked directly to the ship was both a wonderful thing and a terrible one. Ricardo didn't know whether to be amazed or appalled that the builders of the ship had used xenos for such. Maybe both? "She hadn't breached any of the firewalls before you sedated her. We may not be able to hold her if she gets out of that room." He warned.
"We can jettison the pod." Mainwaring offered. Ricardo glanced at him and the Captain shrugged. "Yes, I know open space will kill her. Just giving options."
"Killing her is an option, but one we will not entertain unless we have no other choice." Ricardo said firmly. "We will keep several copies of the records we make. Keep them secure." Both slaves nodded. "That said, the ship's safety takes priority."
"That woman stirs a memory." Elesinial sounded unsure for a moment. "There is something about her that worries me greatly."
"Only one thing?" Ricardo's sarcasm was wasted on the Dark Elder. She was focused on something that only she could see.
"There is a feeling of… of..." To his amazement, she screamed! She jerked in her chair, despite the many things that held her in place. "No! No!" All three of the males stared at her in shock as she fought her restraints. Finally, the controls placed inside her won and she sank back to her chair, panting. When she spoke again, it was subdued. "I feel a gaze upon us. A gaze both dark and bright. We are in grave danger. All of us."
"More than the Sororitas?" Ricardo asked, carefully. This Dark Elder served as the ship's navigator. She was incredible at maneuvering the small vessel through shifts in the Immaterium that would tear far larger and stouter vessels apart. Her psychic abilities were shackled to the ship, but that didn't make them any less formidable. If she ever got loose, it would take a Culexus assassin to bring her down and even that might not work. She was no farseer, but this wasn't the first time for visions by a long shot.
"The Sororitas are a threat, yes." Elesinial said quickly. "But they are not even close the gravest. They would simply kill us all. You know there are worse threats. I can feel Slaanesh seeking my mind!" She screamed again. "The Infinity circuits are failing!"
"No, they are not!" Djerek said with a growl. "Focus yourself, ya pansy elf! She hacked ya!"
Both Ricardo and the Captain stood still. They had no way to interfere in whatever was happening. Not a pleasant feeling. At all.
"No." Elesinial relaxed a bit. "She is in stasis. She did not. That did not come from her." Was that fear on the Dark Eldar's face now? "No. He comes!"
She jerked in her chair and then slumped, her eyes rolling back in her head. Ricardo stared from her to Djerek who seemed at a loss for words.
"Is the ship secure?" Ricardo demanded.
"Yes." The alien slave said softly. "I have never seen her terrified before."
"She is effectively immortal in that thing and she is hidden from all who might harm her as long as the ship endures. I wasn't aware she could be terrified." Mainwaring admitted. "I am not sure I like this."
"I know I don't." Ricardo sighed. "The Sororitas are bad enough. We hand the girl over to them and we can get on with our missions. We have to wait for them and then hopefully Elesinial will be awake before we need to jump. Otherwise, with the surges, we will be delayed again."
"Provided of course, they believe us when we tell them what we know." Mainwaring said heavily.
"Captain, we are the Inquisition." Ricardo said mildly as he turned to go. "Of course, they won't believe us. That said, we do what we are told and we can get to Charkov just a little behind schedule. Another ship has been sent to investigate the distress call since we were delayed."
"Lots to do." Mainwaring replied as he nodded to Djerek, eyed the unconscious Dark Eldar and then turned to go.
"The Inquisition's work is never done."
Somewhere in the Warp
"The Caligari sector?" The incredulous male voice demanded. "What the hell was she doing in Caligari?"
"You know as much as we do." Another male voice answered, this one deeper, more resonant. "We will make best speed for there. Orders?"
"Let's try and keep it quiet if we can. The Inquisition is already involved." The first man said sourly. A snarl replied and he continued. "Good news is, so are the Sisters."
"I never thought that would be considered 'good news'." The other said with a grunt. "But you can trust the Daughters to do what they think is right."
"Come hell or high water, yeah." The first man laughed.
"And even a tide will make way for an angry Sororitas if it has any sense at all."