Penny

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

It is difficult to keep track of time when you are hanging by your wrists in a cell. There are techniques, counting heartbeats and the like, which can accomplish the task, but I have never mastered them. It seemed that I hung there for several hours at least. Once, a man in a welding mask and a gangers jacket came in and lowered me to the ground, enough that I could use what might laughably be considered, the facilities, before stringing me up. He reached out to grab my breast but a voice from beyond the lumen barked a short negative command and welding mask grunted and departed, restringing the network of razor wire as he went. I tried every trick I could think of to access my powers but it was useless. Whatever sigils they had used were more than effective at keeping me blunted.

After an indeterminant time the lumen dimmed and the wire was unbound with a rustle. A man in the robe of a Ministorum preacher, complete with a clerical tonsure entered the room. He was clean shaven and his face was harshly ascetic. He held a book of hours clasped before him and and wore a golden pomander around his neck, emitting a sweet and citrusy scent which I found unpleasant.

"I am Father Bertrand, do you have a name Child?" he asked in a gravely voice. I wont say an yImperial Priest was the last thing I expected to find here, but it was certainly way down on the list. If my nakedness or the sigils bothered him he was doing an excellent job of concealing the fact.

"Lara," I lied, "Lara Sternberg-Hauser." The Sternbergs and the Hausers were two middle ranking merchant combines who had recently made some marital alliances. The sort of people who could afford to pay ransoms but not the sort of people who could get a gen-flexed kill team dropped on you for messing with them. The priest compressed his sour mouth into a flat line, clearly not taking the information at face value.

"Can I have some clothes, please Father, these men have been staring at me and I'm scared," I blurted, partially because I knew that humanizing yourself in the eyes of a captor was always a good idea and partly because that was the sort of thing a scared Guilded Girl might blurt out. Truthfully a scared Guilded Girl would probably be bawling her eyes out but that seemed like a low reward play. The priest opened his mouth, clearly irritated at being interrupted, then closed it and made a curt gesture. The man in the welding mask entered a moment later and lowered me to the ground then wrapped a cloak around me, giving my bottom a squeeze as he did so. I yelped in pretended terror, earning the fellow a disapproving glance from the priest as he departed.

"And what were you doing so deep in the underhive child?" the priest asked sternly.

"I... I came to listen to the Pound, real twist music you know?" I blurted out, for all the world sounding like a juve caught with her hand in the joylik cabinet.

"And you dressed as a Charm Woman to do this?" the priest asked, his skepticism clear.

"It was the only way to get passed the gangers," I whined. The priest nodded, tapped his lip and then slapped me across the face hard enough to make stars flash before my eyes.

"And your psykanna gifts?" he asked, his tone hardly changed.

"What...what gifts," I asked, tears running down my face in a completely believable and authentic display of pain.

"Do not be tedious Lara, there are ways for us to tell these things," the priest continued. I shrank in on myself, pretending to be cowed.

"My mother, when she found out, she didn't want me to go on the Black Ships, thought it might be useful to have a... have a..." I stumbled.

"Have a witch in the family?" the priest asked. I nodded my head.

"You aren't going to... turn me over to the Inquisition are you?" I asked, my voice quavering with simulated terror. The priest tutted disapprovingly, though there was a slight flinch he didn't quite manage to conceal. He didn't like talk of the Inquisition, though that hardly made him unique among even loyal servants of the Imperium.

"Perhaps that is what I should do, but you needn't fear child, the Holy Work of the Emperor can find use even for one so wretched as you. The priest turned and nodded at the man in the welding mask.

"Let her down, we will take her," he told them with a curt nod.

"You ain't paid for 'er yet!" the man in the welding mask complained. The priest gave a tired sigh.

"You will be paid, as per our agreement," he replied "Or rather, the agreement of my superiors and yours, whom I doubt very much would appreciate your money grubbing." This was sufficient to end the argument and I was lead out of the cell and through a network of filthy tunnels. We entered a small room in which a half dozen tough looking gangers hulked. Four of them were obviously with the priest and were well equipped with what looked to be millitarum las rifles and an assortment of knives and autopistols. The other gangers were clearly with my captors and they quivered like dogs beset by larger rivals. The priest produced a black bag and pulled it over my head before leading me through the far door.

I tried to keep track of where we went, but it was no good. At times we walked, at other times we seemed to be in a vehicle. I think there was even a short stretch of what might have been rail travel, though I highly doubted any such system were working this deep in the bowels of Gravemire. As we reached the end of the journey it grew quiter and the air grew colder, taking on a taste of rust and old metal. The blindfold was removed with a tug and I found myself in a metal room with an ancient flak board desk on which sat an ordinary looking scroll. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed a massive hollow tube. Girders and gangways projected from the side like cillia and I realized we must be inside one of the massive ancient machines. I could see equipment being loaded into crates, though from this far away I couldn't tell its purpose.

"Sit and read child," the priest directed. I shall return slightly.

There's Always a Price: Sci Fi Bounty Hunters

"I wonder if it is a coincidence that all this crime is happening right where our guy is supposed to be?" Jocasta pondered as they made their way through the usual assortment of dockside dives, ship chandleries, strip clubs, and brothels towards the central lifts. Each lift was a massive tube that ran the length of the spire. Most of the lengths anyway, the very top and very bottom levels were not so easily accessed, requiring passage to private lifts and passing the local security, be it up spire guards in gleaming battledress or battle hardened street thugs who made their living taxing passage through stinking access shafts.

"Unlikely," Dirk grunted as the stepped past the spaceport security and into the large lift car. It rumbled down, stopping several times to take on and offload supplies and people. For the most part it seemed to be food going down from the dock levels above, or perhaps hydroponic farms and manufacturing plants above.

"Now reaching Fallorn Sector," a crackly voice announced as the lift stopped and the doors opened. The blast of noise was immediate and intense. Cheering voices and blaring music crashed in so hard that the dragonfly drones who had been peeking from Jocasta's jacket ducked back in momentary auditory shock. The wide boulevard before them was thronged with people in bright garments, singing and dancing. Street vendors were crammed against the boulevard walls hawking food and drink of all kinds. Performers danced and capered for the crowds, in some cases with accompanying pickpockets working their marks, though whether this was a plan or just a happy side effect Jocasta couldn't tell. Fireworks crashed off the walls and ricocheted off the high ceilings bursting close enough above the crowd to singe people.

"Some party," Jocasta remarked as her drones once again stuck their sensor encrusted heads from concealment. Dozens of carrots lit up marking weapons in various stages of concealment.

"I wonder what is going on..."

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

I followed Hadrian down into the gyrating mass of dancers. The smell of unswashed bodies and obscura was intense but I was able to keep a mental lock on the increasingly agitated minds of our targets. Lights flashed overhead in jarring asycrony with the Pound music blaring. A woman nearby followed my progess with huge golden eyes. A man wrapped from head to toe in chains cursed at me as I bumped into him, but Ortega shoved past him on the other side, deliberately clipping him with a hip to take his attention away. Our targets were approaching the end of a bar, behind which hundreds of bottles were racked up, lit by bright blue lights that gave the whole scene an underwater feel.

At the end of the bar was an open area where a cloaked figure sat in lonely splendor. Tough looking gangers covered from crown to toe in tatoos preserved their boss' sanctuary. They had las weaponary, modern but heavily used, nothing like the guilded show pieces we had seen on Havernos.

Hadrian and Ortega closed in, Hadrian sliding up to the bar close enough that he might be able to hear what was being said, Ortega taking a shot of what smelled like pure alcohol from a tray proffered by a mostly naked waitress. I slipped a little closer, probing gently with my mind to ascertain if there were any mental protections or wards on the conversation.

"Hey there," a voice said from behind me. I turned to see the golden eyed woman. She was wearing a diaphanous dress which seemed to hint at her figure without actually revealing anything. I wondered if it was an expensive synthetic, or merely an ingenious low hive expidient.

"Hello yourself," I replied as she reached out a hand and patted me on the hip. I opened my mouth to make some excuse that would end the interaction when I felt a slight itch at my hip. I looked down and saw a drop of blood on the fabric of my robes. I looked up and saw her twiddling a ring on her middle finger. I noticed there was a tiny needle protruding from it a second before I slumped into her arms and darkness closed over me.

Wakefulness came slowly. I was immediately aware of a cottony taste in my mouth and a buzzing in my head. I opened my eyes to find myself tied at the wrists with some kind of electrical cord. My arms ached from the way they had been tied over my head, secured to a beam. I was in a shallow alcove that had been closed off with a woven net of rusted razor wire. The improvised cell was coated with grime, but clear of any item larger than a pebble. Beyond the wire was a large dark space, obscured by the glare of a lumen hanging just beyond the cell. Rather belatedly I realized I was naked and glanced down. To my shock I discovered that arcane sigils had been painted onto my body with some kind of industrial paint.

"Runes of Warding," a feminine voice said from beyond the wire, I could just make out the gleam of golden eyes.

"Keeps you from using that beautiful brain of yours to do anything unfortunate," she expanded. I reached out for my gifts to ensnare her mind, but my grip on the Immaterium slid away like water on a pane of glass. The lumen flickered ever so slightly.

"Oh don't worry, we've sold brain jobs before. The Under Council pays good slate for 'em, believe you me."

There's Always a Price: Sci Fi Bounty Hunters

Cygi blinked into holographic existence beside Jocasta. The AI was standing in an old fashioned bath tub scrubbing herself with a wooden handled brush that artfuly avoided dislodging the strategically placed bubbles. Jocasta glanced at the main terminal read out to observe that Cygi was in the process of a system defrag.

“Oh look at that Shark Gunboat, isn’t it handsome?! I bet he has a huge di…”

“Cygi,” Jocasta chastened, following the AI’s outstretched arm to a squat powerful ship that rested on one of the cracked concrete pads. It looked weathered and was best by the trade mark rocket magazines which extended above a long ventral fin like giant eyes.

“A huge director control computer,” Cygi finished before flickering into the uniform a Union admiral complete with swagger stick. Apparently this was for the purpose of performing an inspection of the other ship because data began to flow into Jocasta’s implants, as a courtesy she projected it holographically on one of the screens. Records logged it as the X-21, owner unknown, home port unknown, which was far from helpful. Jocasta mentally shrugged whoever the ship belonged to was welcome to their business as far as she was concerned.

“The port authority is attempting to enter my systems!” Cygi gasped, suddenly wearing the overly innocent garb of a pin up girl, complete with rogued cheeks which she was fanning furiously.

“Let them into one of the fakes, just to make them feel superior,” Jocasta directed. Cygi snapped a salute, now wearing a leather flying cap dating to the time before space flight.

“Yes Ma’am!” she barked and then vanished to her own amusements. Dirk made an articulate grunt. The Dragonfly had been designed for a crew of a dozen and was far too much for Jocasta to handle alone. The solution had been to turn the signals intelligence AI loose. Partially because a decryption module was not supposed to run a ship, and partially because the only model it had was Jocasta, Cygi was a little erratic.

“Anything to worry about?” Dirk asked without much interest.

“All good in the fume hood,” Jocasta replied. She picked up her jacket, a white synthetic leather piece with cheerful green and gold checkered panels and pulled it on. Now that she was reasonably certain Dirk wasn’t going to try to kill her, she left her capacitor pistol behind, tucking an elegant little beamer into a holster sewn into the inside. Several little dragonfly drones zipped from various perches around the bridge, disappearing up sleeves, into pockets and in one case, settling into her hair to pretend to be jewelry.

“Shall we take a walk?” she asked sweetly.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

The boundary between hive and underhive was a fluid one. The deeper one moved into the bowels of Gravemire the greater the dilapidation became. Ortega believed that the underhive began where the Magistratum no longer maintained order, but an arbiter of his rank was far beyond such day to day concerns. As we moved lower we passed beyond places a patrolman could safely walk the streets. In these liminal spaces Sanctioners lurked in fortified bastions, making deals with local gangers to maintain the peace and striking out only to maintain the balance of power in their favor. These areas were marked with burned out ground cars and improvised barricades. Below this area, the true underhive began.

I had elected to dress in the dark cloak of a charm woman. Part prostitute, part herbalist, part soothsayer, it was one of the few roles that allowed a woman to move in the underhive with relative safety, as well as explaining the presence of two physically imposing men. I had agreed to wear a prosthetic belly which simulated the late stages of pregnancy which gave us a place to stash equipment and a reason to turn away prospective johns. My right arm was the only flesh bare to the eye, and it had been covered with a temporary tattoo that gave the impression of scales.

As we stepped out of the elevator I tossed a few low denomination slates and a carb bar to the gangers who longued by the portal. The extracted similar tribute from others passing down from the higher levels on whatever business they had. My pose as a charm woman made this kind of transit believable as the profession was tolerated, at least unofficially, for several levels above the underhive proper. One of the gangers, a bald man whose scalp was entirely covered with overlapping gaudy tattoos, tried to reach out and touch my belly. Ortega swatted his arm away, to the laughter of his companions.

It took us nearly an hour to reach out first goal. The Wheel Market had once been a section of raised roadway. Now the burned out ground cars formed the basis of market stalls, their rusted metal caked with flaking paint in a variety of gaudy colors. Ribbons of grubby fabric linked stalls in makeshift awnings that fluttered in the intermittent breeze created by the air reclaimers. The ancient pilings that supported the place had also been painted with surprisingly artful designs, the the areas low enough to be easily reached were defaced by gang tags, and bullet holes marred the ferrocrete columns where paint cants couldn’t reach. A miasma of greasy smoke hung over the place from the cooking of unidentifiable meat over fires of what might have been hexamite but might also have been trash. Hawkers cried the merits of their wares, fried carb string, sauteed sump rat, and joylik whose diversion from poison would probably take a Magos Chemistrae to find.

I frequently glanced at Hadrian. Like Selenica, I had grave reservations about him being on this mission so soon after his surgery. He had pointed out that Clara, while a formidable fighter, didn’t have the experience in subterfuge that he did, and that Lazarus was too obviously augmented to blend into such a tech poor environment as the underhive. Odds were very good he would have wound up sacrificed to the Machines within minutes of entering. Ortega had been good enough to spread the word that Hadrian had died during his surgery, hopefully giving our unseen opponents the notion that they were safe for the moment.

We wandered among the stalls for some hours, letting ourselves be seen and making such small purchases as were appropriate to a charm woman. I kept my psychic senses open, but it was impossible to pick up clear thoughts amidst the bustle of stinking, ragged, humanity. After an hour or so, we made our play. I approached they stall of a man selling what passed for electronics. The vendor was a skeletal man, worn looking and completely hairless. The malformation of his face and body, the legacy of stripped augmetics, declared louder than his filthy red robe that he had once been a Priest of Mars.

“What can I do for you sister?” he asked in a voice that rasped with years of lho smoke.

“I have tech to sell,” I told him, and then reached into my pocket to produce a small black box. His eyes widened briefly as he saw it, before narrowing with shrewd avarice. It a vox thief that Hadrian had been carrying when he had been shot. The unit was high grade, unmistakably ordo equipment to anyone who knew what they were looking at.

“Ten slate,” the vendor said dismissively. I scoffed and made to tuck the vox thief away.

“A hundred!” he whispered with sudden desperation. His eyes cut around, fearful that the other vendors, mostly selling machine parts and minor tech, might catch wind of what was going on.

“A thousand,” I replied, and held up a finger to forestall a counter offer, “if you haggle further it will be ten thousand.” His malformed mouth worked for a moment and then he reached into his robe, rummaging around for several seconds before clandestinely slipping a pouch of slate chips across to me. I opened it slightly with one finger, then nodded to Hadrian, who scooped it up and tucked it away in some hidden pocket. I slid the vox thief across to the vendor who all but ripped it out of my hands.

“A pleasure doing business with you.”

It took less time than I had imagined. We rented rooms on the top story of a cheap flop house which catered to transients. The proprietress, a sour faced woman with a lazy eye, warned me against practicing my business, making allusions to this and that gang which needed to be cut in to anything that made slate. I nodded my agreement and we retired to our rooms.

The gangers probably thought they were being stealthy as they crept down the hall towards the room we had rented. There were six of them, each carrying heavy powder and shot pistols and a variety of knives and clubs. The reached our door and one of them produced a small hand drill with a large circular cutting bit. It cut through the cheap flak-board like gelatin, emitting a stream of dust as it did so. The ganger behind him had produced a small drink can, packed with phosphorus and other combustibles, which he shoved through the hole, a sparking fuse sputtering as it did so. There was a crash and flash of light and then the gangers kicked the door from its hinges and rushed into the room after their improvised flash bang. The room was empty, just three filthy palettes with no sign of habitation beyond a few empty food pails and cups of recaf. It took them a surprisingly long time to accept this, a process that involved considerable shouting. No one came to investigate the shouting or the explosion. It was that kind of place.

“You are sure you can follow them?” Ortega asked when the gangers finally agreed we weren’t there and headed out. I nodded. I had plenty of time to identify their minds. We were watching from the empty room across the hall, using data slates and some simple but effective picters strategically pressed into the walls. The fiber optic transmission lines were passive so even a sophisticated sweep might have missed them, not that there was much chance of that in a place where the ambient level of tech rose above 'sharp stick' only by degrees.

“Yes,” I told him, “now we just have to hope they lead us back to whoever hired them.” That was a pretty good bet, the vox thief, in addition to the audio of the assassination attempt on Hadrian, had been cunningly updated by Lazarus to contain snippets of other conversations that hinted at what we knew of the conspiracy. The Under Council was the logical market for the information the tech priest had no doubt gathered, and they would certainly want to know how a charm woman came to possess it.

“Let’s go,” Hadrian said, adjusting the hang of his weapon beneath his clothing.

“We don’t want them getting too far ahead.”

There's Always a Price: Sci Fi Bounty Hunters

Phyraelon Deadstar. Jocasta was sckeptial that such a person even existed. It was common enough for urban ledgends to be bandied about to give weight and meanance to the actions of other men. Still if there were half a million credits to be had, she supposed she didn't mind who she was allegedly working for.

"Alright, I think I can probably keep my eyes open for this Vol, and if I happen to see him, make sure he has an appropriate accident."

Bohemond cleared his throat, casting a look between the two bounty hunters.

"It should not be subtle, my employer requires that his displeasure be obvious," the agent explained. Jocasta reached out and wrapped a fist on Dirks armor, the blow ringing musically from the augmented steel.

"Well you have come to the right place," Jocasta snickered.

_____

"It makes a girl whistful for the radioactive wastelands," Jocasta observed as the Dragonfly coasted in towards the Prime Spire of Tarsus. The land beyond the spire was dull, brown, and apparently lifeless. In fact a single celled algae grew over nearly every exposed surface, rendering it slimy and slick. The wealth of Tarsus, such as it was, was in mineral seams and geothermal vents which extended far below the surface of the spires. As these seams were empied out they were converted into part of the spire, spreading below the surface like the mycellia of great fungus.

"Why can't you ever take me anywhere nice?" she complained.

"I took you to a resort paradise and, according to you, you single handledly shot your way out of it," Dirk replied. Jocasta shrugged demonstratively.

"Well, I didn't even get a chance to wear a bathing suit," she complained.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

"You are appologising to me?" Ortega asked. We were sitting across from each other in the Administratum annex. Ortega had been returned his weapons and equipment though he hadn't yet been permitted to leave. Two Caledonians stood by the door, leaning on heavy power glaives. I wondered, if it came down to it, if they would be able to defeat an armed and armored Ortega. Not that it would matter, a mental intrustion was like a chink in a suit of armor. As strong as the Arbites mental training was, now I had gotten in once, I could do it again. I sensed that Ortega knew it too and it wasn't disposing him well towards me.

"I have been directed to do so," I admitted. Ortega snorted.

"You will forgive me for feeling that is less than sincere," the Arbite responded.

"I will," I agreed. Our eyes locked over the table for long moments, then Ortega nodded, his posture softening ever so slightly. I suspect that Arbites were rendered constituionally unable to relax as mere mortals understood it.

"We are taught to trust not to trust, I suppose I shouldn't complain too much when you don't trust me," he admitted.

"I followed up on your suspcions," he said after a moment. "One of our tech priests has gone missing."

"How did you know about those suspicions?" I asked. He shrugged his shoulders, the slightest tick at the corner of his mouth betraying the fact that he was pleased to have gotten ahead of me.

"I had the advantage of knowing that I wasn't a traitor, that assassin had to come from somewhere," Ortega responded with a touch of acid. I nodded and touched my vox bead but before I could speak the door opened. Lazarus and Hadrian entered, the Skitarii pushing the wheel chair. I turned and offered a slight bow and Ortega stiffened to something approaching a millitary brace.

"My Lord," I said formally. Hadrian nodded to me.

"Be seated," Hadrian directed and Ortega and I took seats at oppisite sides of the long table. Clara entered from another entrance dressed in an armored body glove. She glanced between Hadrian and I, looking uncomfortable. It was a shame that she had to watch what I had done, I wondered if I had irreperabley damaged our relationship. I had needed a chevalier to carry a weapon.

"The time has come to to put our cards on the table. Emmaline?" Hadrian directed. I stood up.

"We came here in pursuit of a heretical cult operating on the feral world of Havenos," I explained, ommiting to mention the Inquisitorial connection. If Hadrian wanted to drop that bomb, I would leave it to him.

"We determined they were sourcing materials from here and... well you saw what happened when we followed up that lead. They sent an assassin to close the loop so we know they are aware of us. We have since learned that his name was Jogar Carden, working for a group called the Under Council."

Ortega sat forward, his investigative insticts banishing his discomfort with the situation.

"How did you learn this," Ortega asked, frowning at the sudden tense silence which fell over the assembled group.

"We have means," I said after a moment, causing Ortega to blink in confusion. He glanced around the room of closed faces then shrugged, a tectonic motion in his armor.

"I have heard of Carden, he is... was, a pro with dozens of confirmed kills," Ortega admitted, "I suspect that if he wasn't working on the fly you wouldn't have taken him down, pskyer tricks or no."

"And the Under Council?" Hadrian pressed.

"I've heard rumors," Ortega admitted, "they operate deep in the underhive, far beyond the reach of local enforcers. Control of the lower areas of the hive is almost entirely in hands of gangers and worse. You would need an Astartes squad to shoot your way in."

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

I've had a great deal of practice at concealing my emotions but even so I only marginally managed to keep the cocktail of anger, hurt, and shame. I was tired and worn out, I'd felt the terror of seeing Hadrian laying in his own blood, I'd worked psykannanic forces stronger and darker than anything I had ever touched, it was fair to say I didn't have a whole lot left in me.

"Fine," I aquieased unable to keep the fires of anger kindled.

"I need more than that," Hadrian pressed. I threw my hands up in defeat. It seemed bitterly unfair but there was no way out so I did the only thing I could. I straightened my back and stepped back from Hadrian.

"My Lord Inquisitor," I said formally, "I accept your censure, and I will not repeat my actions." Despite my best efforts, each word had a slight bite to the back end of it. I knew this made me seem petulant but I couldn't help myself.

"I was able to extract some information from the witness," I continued my voice clinicaly detached. Hadrian hadn't asked for it, being more concerned with how it was obtained but I had paid the price to obtain it and I couldn't let it go unused because of its source.

"Can it even be trusted?" Hadrian asked, sounding weary. I nodded my head. The ritual I had used compelled the shade to speak truly, though they could force an querant burn up time asking the question three times. A practitioner could only hold the shade while the salt burned. If the flames reached the center of the circle before the ritual was terminated, the practitioner would be 'opened to the beyond', a vauge section of the text which filled me with dread. I wondered if Jogar Carden had been hoping for that result with his talk of salvation.

"The assassin's name was Jogar Carden," I told him. "I don't know how helpful that will be, he may not have used his true name while he was working."

"He was working for something he called the Under Council."

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

I closed the door to the office with a click and threw my arms around Hadrian so happy to see him alive and functional. He yelped in pain and I flinched back, blushing scarlet at having forgotten that he had been shot only hours earlier. The office was one of a senior scribe, empty save for a large desk with neatly organized paper baskets and a large passage written on the wall: A moment wasted is a moment stolen from the Emperor. Cheery as always. I cleared my throat and toyed with a stray strand of hair, reluctant to admit what I had done, then I squared my shoulders and summarized.

"I believed Arbiter Ortega might have been involved in signaling the assassin who shot you," I began, tackling the easier of the two matters first, if kidnapping an Arbites officer could truly be described as 'easier'.

"I uhh... conducted a psychic interrogation," I admitted.

"He screamed a lot," Clara added unhelpfully and I shot her a sideways glance.

"There won't be any permanent damage," I said, a touch defensively. Ortega had certainly been trained on how to resist interrogation, I had sampled some of those memories and he was no more damaged than any other servant of the Emperor by my mental rummaging.

"He didn't call the assassin, but I think someone may have had access to the vox net he was using to contact the authorities, I asked Lazarus to run it down," I explained. Hadrian looked somewhat troubled but he didn't interject.

"Then I interrogated the other witness to the shooting," I rushed on, hoping against hope that I wasn't going to have to make a full accounting.

"Other witness?" Hadrian asked, arching an eyebrow at the closed expression which stole over Clara's face. "What other witness?"

"The shooter," I explained, "I...uh disabled him after he shot you." Hadrian's face was confused and skeptical.

"Lazarus said he was dead," Hadrian prodded. I licked my dry lips, trying to find an artful way to evade this line of inquiry. Clara apparently felt no such compunction.

"Oh he was dead all right, but that didn't stop her from asking questions. Just ordered his corpse to sit up and spill the ploin juice," she said, plowing remorselessly forward.

"I would hardly say I 'just ordered' him to do it," I added crossly, reflecting on the colossal effort it had taken. Clara rolled her eyes.

"Really not sure lingering on the creepy-ass sigils, nude bathing, and applying a dead guy as makeup are going to improve the take away here sister," Clara retorted.

"You... raised someone from the dead?!" Hadrian demanded. I crossed my arms beneath my breasts hugging my storm coat tight.

"Well technically I only called his spirit back to answer some questions," I admitted.

"Technically is doing A LOT of work in that sentence," Clara opined.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

“He is innocent,” I declared, blinking away the taste of blood from a Drill Abbots blow to the stomach in the courtyard of a world I had never seen. The Arbite was chained to an interrogation chair, a bolus of psychoactive nicosapine feeding into his jugular via an intravenous catheter. He had been stripped naked for the interogation and his scared body was a mass of coiled muscles. He let out an explosive breath that hazed the air with spittle before stumbling forward with a metallic clatter of restraints. Sweat dripped from the point of his nose, falling to splatter onto the dusty cobble stones. His lips moved in a Litany of Abjuration, banishing the Xenos, the Mutant, and the Psyker with a special emphasis on the last.

“Frak you…” Ortega muttered his tongue and mouth swollen from where he had bitten them. That had been careless, next time I’d have to remember to use a bit. I stood up, my skin chilled to ice from the prolonged mental intrusion into Ortega’s mind. He was hardened and trained, but it hadn’t taken Selenica long to remove the implanted blockers from beneath his scapula. Blood oozed from the dressings she had applied, inadequate to the trashing struggle he had pointlessly put up.

Clara leaned against the wall, hand casually on the butt of her heavy Hecutor 40. She was projecting an aura of dangerous calm but in my current psykically active state I could sense the unease that came with holding a member of the Adeptus Arbites. In theory our Inquisitorial status gave us every right to do as we pleased, but she was painfully aware that if Hadrian died our conditional status might be revoked and we could be in a world of trouble.

“You could.. have… just asked me,” Ortega mumbled. I turned to regard him, aware that in my leather storm coat, high boots, and severe hair I looked more the Inquistor than Hadrian did most of the time. My stomach churned at the thought of him. We hadn’t heard anything since he had gone into surgery.

“Yes but we couldn’t have trusted you,” I told him. The fact that an assassin had been on site so quickly and had known that Hadrian was an Inquisitor was troubling and Ortega had been the only one outside the team working his vox unit.

“Shall I release him?” Clara asked, her tone wary having seen me mental violate a member of the Lex Imperialis elite. Realistically she or Lazarus should be in charge, I was the newest member of the warband. I doubted it was the fact that I was Hadrian’s bedmate that had led them to defer to me. Rather I was in charge because I had acted as though I was and I appeared to have a plan. As so often in life, acting as though something were true made it so.

“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “Get a medicae, someone other than Selenica to see to his wounds and get him a sedative. He is going to crash pretty hard in a few minutes.” The mental intrusion I had conducted was extremely taxing and the load of drugs I had used to make it possible were going to be an unpleasant companion for Ortega for the next few days. I blinked my eyes, trying to separate his memories from my own. It wasn’t going to do me any favors either.

“Hadrian is going to make it,” Lazarus said from the interrogation room door. “He will need an augmetic kidney. I have already arranged for an appropriate unit.” I felt the icy hand in my guts unclench at his words and uttered a silent prayer of thanks to the God Emperor that I didn’t technically believe in. There was a touching hint of human emotion in Lazarus’s words, his care for Hadrian as evident from that slight slip as it was from his careful selection of augmetic kidney.

“Is he awake?” I asked urgently, Ortega and the interrogation momentarily forgotten.

“Unconscious, Selenica is looking after him now, she say it will be several hours before he wakes,” Lazarus said. I nodded saddened that he wasn’t awake for me to speak too but also obscurely glad. This whole mess was my fault and I needed to take steps to repair the damage.

“I need to go to the Hotel Imperial,” I declared, “Clara stay here with Lazarus and…”

“Whoa, whoa,” Clara interjected holding up her palms before her.

“You might have big Rosette energy right now Emm, but no one is going anywhere alone while we have snipers shooting at people,” she declared. The set of her jaw told me that arguing wasn’t going to do me much good.

“Fine,” I replied, holding up my palms in surrender, “Come with me. Lazarus and Selenica will stay with Hadrian.”

“I think we should consider bringing Lucius down from the Caledonia,” Clara said, “we have too many moving parts already and we don’t know what we are dealing with.”

“No, his mind is still too unstable, if we put him in the middle of all these people there is a good chance his rage is going to overpower him,” I told her.

“Hotel Imperial has plenty of security, as does this building,” I explained.

“What are you going to do at the Hotel?” Lazarus asked.

“I need you to look into Ortega’s vox equipment,” I told Lazarus, deftly avoiding the question. “He noticed a slight staticy hiss that he put down to interference, but I’m not so sure.” Ortega himself might be just what he appeared to be, but I still wasn’t willing to give up on the idea that he had a role in what had transpired, even if it was unwitting.

“My Lady,” a diffident Administratum Drone said from the doorway. I looked up at him, noting that he was doing his very best to look at nothing and no one in the room. He was at least imaginative enough to be scared when Ordo operatives started working over an Arbite in his holding cell.

“Your air car has arrived.”

___

“I don’t like this Emmaline,” Clara said as I touched an ivory on the biblioquary. Inside the shimmering void shield, the articulated finger bones of a priest turned a page of the ancient manuscript. The Biblioquary resembled a lectern save that the book inside was completely enclosed in void shielding and the wood was inlaid with devotional verses in tarnished silver. Such devices were used for the handling of questionable books, those suspected of having a malign influence, but which for one reason or another, the Inquisition deemed worthy of study. This volume was from Hadrian’s library aboard the Caledonia and I had made some study of it during the months following the Baphometus affair. Hadrian had introduced such works to me slowly and usually under his supervision. The Journal of Saint Theresa of Availa wasn’t the most precious work he had shown me, but it was one that had captured my attention. According to the legend Theresa had been the head librarian of the Tyrarch of Vestebos, and he been ordered by that Tyrant to compile all the arcane lore in the famous Libracate Obscurus of that world ahead of the advancing Imperial crusade under Warmaster Siscus. According to the story, Theresa had pretended to comply, only to burn herself along with the books to prevent the Tyrarch from taking his blasphemous knowledge with him when he fled. The truth was somewhat more complicated. Ninety nine volumes were said to exist, scattered in secret libraries and private collections. The Inquisition had to date acquired six, usually when someone began reproducing and distributing them. This volume was one such reproduction, something Hadrian’s old master had acquired after participating in a purge. The books themselves had no numbers, though Inqusitor Kronos tersely identified it as ‘the seventh astral volume’ without further context.

“I know that you don’t Clara,” I said, fighting down the urge to raise my voice.

“But Hadrian is counting on us, the cult here already knows that it has been exposed. It is either going to shut down, or it is going to blow up. Both of those things are bad for us and for the Imperium. The only chance we have is to move quickly, and if you have a better option Id love to hear it.” Despite my best efforts my tone became somewhat hectoring. My worry about Hadrian, my own sense of failure, and the effort of reading the book were all wearing on me. As was my trepidation about what I was about to attempt.

“I don’t…. I just feel like maybe we are going a little too far,” she admitted. The fear in her voice nearly made me give the whole thing away. Clara wasn’t afraid to die, but she was afraid that what I proposed to do was worse than being cut down in a gunfight.

“You don’t have to stay if you…” I began, but she cut me off, laying a calloused hand over mine.

“If you are going to do it lets just get it over with,” she said.

_____

The Hotel Imperial catered to aristocrats. That meant that it had seen its share of strange revels. The decadence of the Imperial aristocracy was such that nearly any excess could be imagined and excused. I suspect that if the Gravemire staff had seen what was going on in the ballroom of the floor we had booked even that tolerance might not have been enough. In the center of the great marble dancefloor lay the assassin, his body covered in a thick viscous cocoon of oil which spread slowly across the white marble like the stain of corruption. Around him in an intricate and expanding spiral pattern hundreds of kilos of rocksalt had been poured out, weaving its way through a series of complicated interconnections to the very edges of the dance floor where they terminated at the bases of thick votive candles, each of which had been used at a funeral. The doorways and windows were laced with intricate latices of prayer ribbon, tied together with sprigs of sage and strands of my hair. Tribesmen from the Caledonia stood flanking each doorway, their eyes bound with blindfolds of sable velvet, each holding a silvered mace in one hand and a bronze saltzer in the other. Each man had been washed in salt water and had his heart and lips marked with sacred oils. Incense burned in a dozen places, filling the air with cloying perfume.

I entered from the southern door. It was actually slightly to the south east but such specifics matter less than the intention in such proceedings. I was naked save for a long golden chain which had been wound seven times around my body. I had been bathed as the men and anointed with oils. I had the crematorium ashes of a man I had killed on my eyelids, in this case provided by the unfortunate cultist who had been ripped apart by the servitors. I paused as I entered, allowing the blindfolded tribesman time to close the entrance with the prayer ribbon and herbs. Clara walked beside me. She was dressed in an armored body glove and held a pistol in one hand and sword in the other. She looked more than a little uncomfortable but did not complain, the time for such objections come and gone. I knelt down and lifted a small silver gong and striker from the ground. I struck the gong and then began to chant, walking forward at a measured pace. Each time a verse ended I struck another peel from the gong, my feet traveling the path of the spiral marked out in salt. The candle flames guttered and lowered as I moved forward, though they never quite extinguished. Clara followed in my wake, silent and uneasy. All around us the shadows darkened, seeming almost to move and coil as the struggled against the feeble light of of the candles.

It took perhaps ten minutes to reach the center of the spiral. By then I was glowing with a faint witchlight that seemed to cling to me like steam on a cold day. The oily corpse lay on the marble, a black void against the white stone. The autorifle lay beside him, surrounded by its own ring of salt. I stopped in place and raised my hands, the sudden cessation in my low chant ringing like a bell around the vast ballroom. I closed my eyes and focused my will, reaching out with both hands as I struggled with the currents of the Immaterium.

“Awake!” I commanded in a thundering voice. Every candle flame in the room suddenly flared to the size of a grapefruit. Wax spattered in all directions, splashing several of the tribesman. They remained stoically silent as instructed, their feral world origin serving me far better than would a similar group from less superstitious beginnings. The candle flames flared in weird asynchrony for a few seconds and then the salt touching them caught fire, beginning to slowly burn inwards, tracing the spiral in fire like a trail of slow burning gun powder.

The oily corpse sat up, eyelids flying open to reveal wide and horrified blue eyes. The corpse thing screamed and threw itself at me. I was ready for it and managed to avoid flinching by a massive effort of will. The body struck an invisible barrier and recoiled collapsing to the floor and beginning to sob. The droplets of oil continued, spattering my naked body with loathesome slick splotches of filth.

“What is your name?” I asked the weeping corpse. The corpse sobbed and hacked, bringing up lungfuls of the oil which had drowned it in great sprays.

“You have murdered me!” It raged, “you have damned me!”

“You have damned yourself. What is your name?” I demanded mercilessly. It scrambled to its feet and lunged, crashing once more into the invisible barrier.

“You will join me in the flames for this blasphemy witch! She Who Thirsts will suck the marrow from your living bones for eternity, She will…

“What is your name?! Thrice I ask and done!” I thundered.

“Jogar Carden!” the corpse screamed, the words ripped unwillingly from its throat.

“Emmaline,” Clara said in a low urgent voice, “the flames.” The fire was almost halfway around the spiral now, burning inward like a Saint Catherine’s wheel on Ascension day. I didn’t respond to Clara, I didn’t dare take my attention from the dead man. Sweat was running down my brow from the effort I was expending, mixing with the oil droplets to run down my clammy body.

“Who sent you to kill Hadrian Drakos?” I demanded. The corpse screamed though more in desperation than anger.

“You can’t let me go back, you can’t let me go back to the torment,” he pleaded.

“Who sent you to kill Hadrian Drakos?” I repeated.

“Please, you cant let them have me, for the Emperor Sake…”

“Who sent…”

“The Under Council!” the corpse shrieked, unwilling to be compelled a second time.

“Where can I find them?” I demanded.

“Emmaline,” Clara repeated her voice trembling as the fire seemed to accelerate towards us, a trick of the spiral more than a real effect but no less frightening for that.

“Save me and I will tell you, save me and I will…”

Time was very short now, the binding would only last as long as the salt burned. There was nothing I could do for this heretic, nothing I could offer him, not even oblivion.

“Where can I find them, I need to know before the flames…” The crack of the autogun was deafening in the acoustic space of the ballroom. The corpse flew backwards, spraying a great gout of oil from an exit wound in the back of its now ruined head. I sagged to my knees as Clara lowered the oily autogun, its barrel still smoking. The light had returned to normal, less than a foot of unburned salt between the center of the spiral and the smoking ruin of the binding spell.

“Is it over?” Clara asked, though from the tone she already knew the answer. I sagged to the floor, toppling over to lay on the oily floor. I felt stained, but not from anything as common as machine lubricant.

“It is over.”