(The Inquisitor does Inquisition things in this chapter. You have your warning)
The bowels of the Inquisitorius' slice of heaven in the Imperial Palace were colder than I felt they had any right to be. Maybe we were on a budget due to our currently collapsing empire or the credit pinchers in the Ministry of the Budget were feeling more vindictive than usual. Who knows?
Life continues on despite any minor inconveniences, a saying that seemed to equally apply to galactic politics where things continued to get worse for the I felt that it was professionally insulting that despite my rather publicized efforts warlords continued to rip away at the Empire.
Zsinj, Ardus Kaine and Teradoc the Other had successfully torn away the northern Outer Rim and large parts of the Mid Rim in Teradoc's case into three great interstellar fiefdoms. On the other side of the galaxy reports continued to come in that Sander Delvardus' Eriadu Authority was gaining ground, his territories bulging outwards from the fortress world of Eriadu with deliberate carefulness. More recent reports from the south informed that local moffs based at the tail end of the Corellian Trade Spine and the Corellian Run respectively had taken the chance to aim for greater heights.
The new warlord on the Run had reports of above average competency, a few intelligence reports and the sole threat dossier I had scrounged up said that Par Lankin had once been a contemporary of the infamous defector Airen Cracken in earlier times. The one over on the Trade Spine had barely a footprint in the various assessments and reports of Imperial Intelligence, so I took him to be a non-factor that the wider galaxy would quickly sort out now that the security blanket of the unified Empire had been ripped away.
The Empire continued to break down and the New Republic was beginning to loom on the horizon as the very vague reports of the rebels fighting mysterious fleets had dropped off in the Imperial Intelligence networks in the past few days. Looks like the dinosaurs and cro-magnon whatevers from the Unknown Regions had been kicked back.
The signs that the galactic war would soon be reignited were there for me to read and yet despite the portents screaming at me that I should be with my ship and my fleet, ready to take advantage of the situation to increase my power and prestige in the upcoming fighting, I was stuck on Imperial Center; doing the bidding of the Grand Inquisitor so I didn't wake up to a lightsaber stabbing me in the night.
The beeping of the lift informed myself and my companion that we were at our destination. Speaking of who might be doing the stabbing in the night, my companion for the past week was my gendered opposite: the Ninth Sister. She had been the one who intervened during my fight that first day and Yiaso must have found the details amusing enough that he had paired us up together for the various tasks and missions he had been handing out like candy on life day.
The doors swished open and the two of us stepped out in unison into the hexagonal corridor. A menial dressed in black bowed to us and handed over two datapads, one for each of us.
"My lord, my lady." He greeted us. "The prisoners are prepared for your attention."
Then he bowed again and stepped backwards back into the alcove he had previously been in, eyes never leaving the ground. The servants of the Inquisitorius were well trained.
I paged through the report on the datapad. Subjects one and two were run of the mill trash, disposable assets who got pinched in counterraid. They'd have a few minor contacts who arranged the job. Maybe useful is the Grand Inquisitor wanted to suborn the network for his own uses.
Probably not, if I had the right read on Yiaso's overall strategy in the shadow war we were waging.
Now Subject Three had some very interesting potential, if the right type of force was applied. I looked over at the unwelcome companion I had been saddled with.
"I'll take the woman, you can have the other two."
Her red visor quickly looked up to stare at mine. "Why would I allow that?"
I smiled behind my own helmet. "Because, this one requires an artisan to break, not a mining droid."
She visibly bristled at that. Once again I had to appreciate the detail that had gone into crafting the helmets of us Numbered. There was enough differentiation between the versions for the two sexes that I could tell without looking at the rest of her that I could tell her to be a woman. And if you were familiar enough with the helmets then you could also tell what emotions they were feeling.
"Then I should take that prisoner. I have more experience with these than you."
I snorted in amusement. "No, you do not. I will take the officer, you will go beat on the expendables. That is what will happen."
We had reached the interrogation cells. To emphasize my point, I pointed at the cell that I could sense contained the unimportant first two subjects. The Ninth Sister still seemed recalcitrant. I prodded her one final time to get my way.
"Unless you want my report to the Grand Inquisitor to have some very unflattering words about your conduct towards a task he assigned to the both of us, you should get to work." She didn't respond but she still entered the cell all the same.
Moments later, I heard the noise of flesh meeting metal and groans of pain. An interesting design feature, which I guessed would allow the guards to intervene if the prisoner escaped their binds. There were no guards present for this interrogation, two Inquisitors needed no assistance to manhandle the normals.
I touched the bundle of fine black aeien silk that was affixed to my belt to confirm that it was still there, even though I had done that a few times before leaving my quarters. It was an expensive investment, the tools that were ensconced in this bundle and it would be a shame to lose them just in time for this demonstration of my non-combat talents to the Grand Inquisitor.
The two weeks between my arrival and now hadn't been filled with indolence and debauchery unfortunately. I'd been busy dodging efforts and attacks designed to cripply my ascent in the Grand Inquisitor's favor since the duel I had fought under his gaze. Tools going missing at a critical moment would be the most benign sabotage attempt so far.
But they were safe and it was time to get down to business.
I walked into the cell, my entrance heralded by the swish-swoosh of the rapid opening and closing of the door. Only my code cylinder would unlock and open it again from this side. I expanded my awareness in the Force and concentrated on the woman in the center of the room (small with no features and illuminated only with a light mounted directly in the middle of the ceiling), her arms restrained to the plain durasteel table with shock binders.
She was of average looks. Black hair, brown eyes. In good shape but again, nothing that would draw eyes to her in a crowd.
A textbook intelligence officer if there ever was one.
She was looking at me and her gaze was a hawkish one. No doubt she was analyzing and profiling my appearance for reasons only a spook would care about. And was that mental shielding I felt? It was. Someone had been put through specialized training then. Good, very good. I hated when they snapped too quickly.
The room was dead silent.
I walked over to the table and loomed over the entrapped officer. She was silent and defiance radiated off her in waves to my Force senses.
I broke the unnatural quiet by taking off my helmet and placing it firmly on the durasteel table. The clang it made reverberated off the cell walls and then I used a neat trick learned at the Citadel, twisting just right with the Force made the noise keep getting louder and louder until it sounded like we were right beneath a starship's engines.
I held the noise in place and the second the officer made the beginning of a wince, I ruthlessly crushed the noise back into silence. Now the loudest sound in the room was our breathing.
The officer's eyes had much more caution in them than before.
I smiled down at her and began the game.
"Hello there. Do you want to tell me your name?"
Silence.
"Very well then." I used the Force to slide my helmet to the left edge of the table and then took the black silk bundle off my belt and gently laid it on the gray metal. Swiftly I untied the knot of the red silk ribbon that had bound the bundle together. Then the bundle, ever so gently, unrolled completely and its contents revealed to the harsh white light above.
A vast array of instruments glistened under that industrial white light. Knives, scalpels, tweezers, saws, jeweler's spot welders, medical instruments. All of them in perfect order, not a speck of dust or rust on any of them. All the blades were honed to a fine monomolecular edge which had required hours on the workbench to achieve.
The officer continued to uphold her mask of indifference and her shields remained strong. I was curious how long she would last. I placed the datapad down, facing her so that she could see her own dossier on the screen.
"Now that my cards are on the table so to speak. Let's go over this once more for posterity." I said. "We caught you snooping around in manufactured uniforms in places you shouldn't have been able to access. Our menials already know what you were trying to get into and how you got as far as you did, so I'm not here about that."
She was silent.
"But you already knew that. Undoubtedly you were hoping to sacrifice the nerf herders in the other room in order for you to make your escape. A solid plan in any other place, against any other foe. But alas, matters did not go according to plan and here you are."
I smiled as I wagged a finger at her in mock chastisement. "So my superiors want something out of you, which you already know of course. Who, what, when, where and why. All that type of stuff. Not everyday that a break-in happens to the Inquisitorius."
"When it was discovered that you'd been given such training as to be able to shield yourself? Well lets just say that my master is very eager to know everything inside your head. So once more: where were you going to take the information after you secured it?"
She said nothing. In response, I picked up a micro-welder and turned it on. A tiny speck of flame ignited at the end.
"Still nothing?" She dared to feel defiant at my show. Well that won't just do.
I lowered the micro-welder and the officer writhed against her bonds as I held the flame to her forearm. After the third degree burn was nice and deep, I turned off the micro-welder and returned it to its place in my repertoire.
"Who was going to receive this information?"
She felt the pain, but was managing it. I then picked up five flat sticks, tapered at the end like a flathead screwdriver, and slowly pushed them under the fingernails on her left hand. Not even a noise. I repeated the process with the right hand and gave her a taste of the electro-prod for good measure.
Nothing.
"Impressive." I told her. "It's been a year or two since I last got to work on someone with your degree of training. I must say that you're a credit to the program that trained you."
"Unfortunately that means you are going to be in a great amount of pain for the rest of our time together." I smiled genially at her. "I hope the pride is worth it."
Then I got to work. Scalpels sliced her flesh and tweezers held her nerves. Wire was stitched into the gaps between her finger bones and varying types of heat and cold were pressed to bare flesh and open wounds at random.
A hellish torment to be under. Similar methods had been used on me during my training and I had in turn mastered the art of pain on my fellows. The Inquisitorius were real believers in hands-on learning experiences. It was in similar cells to this one that I had discovered my own talent for the art of torture, and my time hunting in the Western Reaches had allowed me to refine my own personal style beyond structured sessions on the rack.
That was why I had this subject under my care and the Ninth Sister was busy pummeling the scrubs in the next room. Everyone contextualized and developed their own ways of getting information out of a sentient and those who decided to not focus on the artistry of it were only serviceable for minor subjects.
Not me, I was good at this. Heh, still a strange statement to make about myself.
After the random part of the session ended and the officer's mask and shields remained firm, I moved onto the structured part of tonight's entertainment.
So out came the buzzsaws and butcher knives and away went her skin and fat, revealing glistening red meat to the air it was never meant to see. Salt was sprinkled on skinned forearms to make the nerves pop before the tweezers came back to hold them open. Then I kept going up.
And all the while I was talking to her. Explaining to her just what I was doing and what I was going to do next. Let her marinate in the understanding, the dreadful realization that I wasn't going to stop.
That was my personal touch. My entire ethos to this art was to cause pain.
"Now high minded moralists will tell you that torture is a failed method of interrogation." I lectured my captive audience as I worked on her elbows. "People will say anything to make the pain stop. It's inherently unreliable. They'll die before telling you anything. It's cruel and unusual, they'll tell the ignorant masses."
"We both know that's only the case if you don't know what information you're looking for. Torture someone and demand they tell you what they know and you'll get lies. Instead you're supposed to ask them for what you know they have and apply pressure until you get the specific bit you want and nothing else." I shook my head at how this art had been fouled by dabblers and quacks.
"Course, some would say my approach to you is the wrong approach. You're going to overload eventually and I'll never get the specifics out of you after that." I smirked. A fingernail popped from the flame being held to it. "Idiots, I want everything out of you and I'm going to wring that mind dry in the end. But first we need to get rid of those pesky shields someone taught you to make."
I paused and took off my cape, folding it and placing it over my helmet. Not a drop of blood had gotten on my hands this entire time. Then it was back to the grind.
"Handy to avoid errant mind reading but a rather large detriment in this situation." I paused to retrieve a smaller scalpel. "Because shields are always mental, so anything that affects your mind will run up against them. Like waves hitting a wall. Such as pain in this case."
She understood now.
"There you go." I nodded at her expression of understanding. "I'm going to map you out with pain, undermine your foundation in its entirety so that when I knock the walls down, they're not coming back up. Nothing hidden from me, no secret holdfasts of codes. Everything you've ever seen or read or heard, will be completely available to me."
"The best part is just how economical this is for me. Little to no mental expenditure on my end. I could go through a hundred like you in a day and still be able to fight a mental duel." I boasted. She was afraid but she also knew that she was doomed from the start. Maybe that would allow her some peace before the end. She hadn't lost to an opponent, rather she had fallen victim to a natural catastrophe like an earthquake or tsunami. What could anyone hope to do against that?
Soon afterwards, she broke open and I was in. And what a motherlode I had unearthed.
Trusted Imperial Intelligence agent, part of the Directorate Division. Codes, codewords, ongoing operations on Imperial center.
Project Ambition. The machinations of an entire bureau of hand selected agents all reporting to one individual.
Isard. The scope and complexity of it was almost beyond my ability to understand, but it was intoxicating to know that this agent had known.
I smiled at the end, not even seeing the twitching wreck on the other side of the table. What a choice individual we had snagged. Idley I called in the medical droids to take the Directorate agent off to the medbay, after collecting and cleaning my implements of course. Yiaso might have further use for her.
I had a report to write. Imperial Center really was different from what I was used to in the Inquisitorius. We couldn't go too far in our efforts against each other. We needed to preserve our overall strength.
Here though? Everyone was playing for keeps with the pot being nothing more than an entire galaxy. Winner takes all if the New Republic or a rival didn't kill them all first.
Three hours after submitting my report to Yiaso directly, he had myself and the Ninth Sister out on a hunt.
Isard had made the mistake of setting up a few bases in places that she shouldn't have. Tried to steal data she shouldn't have. Tried to bomb his favorite recaf supplier and other slights that showed a profound lack of proper fear for the Imperial Inquisition and Yiaso was going to send her a planet wide reminder as a result of this display of pride.
One does not simply fuck with the Inquisitorius.
A/N: Well that was fun to write. Andorak's adventures on Coruscant continue apace and the wider political moves of the year begin to kick off in earnest. What will the Inquisitorius do in response?