The Inquisition

[Lady_Canoness]

Hehe - well, Papewaio, for you I might just have to add a little something in before this story wraps itself up :lol:

 

Only around four or so parts left to go, but one of those could definately fit another chase scene :eek

[Lady_Canoness]

The last calm before the wrap-up begins, this is a time for further adding to characters in their later states.

 

*part 14*

 

She’d never really taken the time to properly admire the stars. Millions and millions of them, the tiny dots of light, the canvas of the universe, and surrounded by planets and gases and entire systems of their own… and the thought that each and every one of them could have some alien creature looking skyward towards her thinking the very same thing. It was easy to forget sometimes, lost in their own little existences as they were, how big space really is. Men would ply the stars, fighting their puny wars, and never realize how insignificant their lives were. She’d once been told as a student that Man could set foot on an undiscovered world every day of her life and there would still be countless more left to find.

It was relaxing just to think about it, though of course the pleasantly hearty shiraz couldn’t hurt either after the second glass.

Draining the last drops of the red wine from her glass, Godwyn set it back down on the midnight tablecloth and sank lower into her chair with an exhausted groan.

“You’re too young to be making sounds like that,” Columbo chuckled from across the table as he speared the last cut of his veal on his fork and offered the half-empty wine bottle to the Inquisitor. She cocked her eyebrows nonchalantly and pushed the glass forward. He poured, and she raised the glass in thanks before tilting more of the burgundy vintage between her pursed lips.

“I’m starting to feel old,” she commented mirthlessly, setting the glass back down and casting her eyes around the comforts of the seigneurie that were absent from her person.

Sitting his fork at the side of his cleaned plate, Columbo folded his hands across his stomach. “If you feel like that now,” the Ship Master remarked with a sly grin, “then image how you’ll feel when you’re my age.”

“By then, hopefully I’ll be dead.”

He sighed, and made a motion as if removing invisible spectacles from the ridge of his nose.

“I’ve seen a lot of things that weren’t honeydew and roses in my time, Cassandra,” he said, watching her with pensive eyes, “but if there is one thing my age has taught me, it is that talking about troubles does tend to make them less troubling…”

Godwyn met his eyes with a sideways glance. “You know I can’t go into details, Hercule,” she said.

“To the warp with the details!” he retorted, tossing the idea over his shoulder; “March them out the nearest airlock! I daresay that if a beautiful young woman should find herself in distress aboard my ship, I will do her the service of hearing about it!”

She took another sip from her wineglass, and exhaled loudly before beginning:

“I’m in the dark,” she admitted, “and I haven’t any idea about how I’m going to get myself out. All I do seems to send me around a series of blind corners, and I can’t see what is coming next.”

Columbo nodded understandingly.

“…and there’s more,” she said.

“In that case,” Columbo refilled his wineglass and snapped his fingers for another bottle, “we’d better brace our spirits for the worst of it, yes?”

 

When Godwyn had sent her report to Panacea with requests for full disclosure on the incident surrounding Inquisitor Felix, she had hoped that Inquisitor Roth’s reply would somehow clear the air around Trajan’s Deep – metaphorically speaking – and that she’d finally get something concrete with which she could work instead of chasing the coattails of rumours and suspicions. As she feared, however, the Lord Inquisitor’s response was cryptic and brief:

++Events have precipitated on Panacea. I need to speak with you at once, in person, and in private, concerning Pierce.++

Roth was becoming more and more cagey – enough to convince her that the search for Inquisitor Strassen was definitely intensifying both on her end and on Panacea. Though still he left her in the dark. It was infuriating and disheartening to say the least, and the more she fought, struggled, and risked her life and the lives of her crew, the more distant Roth seemed to become. Maybe Strassen was putting pressure on Roth while she was roaming far off the mark looking for him, but then wouldn’t it make more sense to include her in whatever Roth had determined?

She wouldn’t know the answer until she talked to him again, but so far the message she was receiving was clear: the Inquisition still thought of her as a student.

What was it that he could not tell her via astropathic correspondence? Why must he always summon her back to Panacea when the transit time alone was giving Strassen months to prepare?

 

“Typically when a business contact wishes to see me in person, it is for one of two reasons,” Columbo suggested thoughtfully, relaying his own experiences in the hope that they might clarify things for his young friend. “If a contact trusts me implicitly, he will never ask to see me in person, so it is safe to assume that if someone asks to meet in person that, for some reason or other, they do not trust me.”

“You’re saying that Lord Roth does not trust me?” Godwyn asked incredulously. “Even after he hand-picked me for this assignment?”

The Ship Master presented the palms of his hands in defence.

“I did not mean to infer that he would not trust you in a malicious way,” Columbo backtracked, “but as I mentioned before there are likely two reasons why he might not trust you: either he does not believe you can follow his instructions without further clarification; or he does not know how you will react to certain developments, and he wishes to be present to clear up any misunderstandings between you.

“It’s not a sign of disrespect,” he continued with a defusing gesture; “people just don’t know you well enough to gauge how you react.”

“You would expect a Lord Inquisitor would be quite good at that by now,” she commented, raising her wine back to her lips.

Columbo shrugged; “Could be that your assignment, whatever it is, demands extra precautions.”

Godwyn matched his shrug and would have been content to leave it at that, but Columbo persisted:

“Come now, before I make myself the fool and leave you stuck in the dark, tell me how you plan to get yourself out of this. Inquisitors are highly resourceful people, and what might seem like common knowledge to you are myths and legends to the rest of us. Surely there is someway you plan to set things right?”

Godwyn shifted herself into an upright position and folded her hands across her lap. “Are you prying, Hercule?” she asked pointedly.

He snorted contemptuously at the thought of it.

“My dear Godwyn,” he said, “do I look like an information broker to you? I assure you that my interest is merely amicable, and my intentions are those of an older man addressing a younger woman – not of a swindling rogue addressing an Inquisitor.”

She cracked a smile, though quickly hid it behind a more serious tone.

“Very well,” she nodded, “you’ve earned your questions.”

 

Aquinas studied the oubliette recordings with a frown on his face, but otherwise witnessed the interrogation of Inquisitor Felix without expression.

Godwyn watched in silence; her eyes flickering from the space marine to the holo-recordings and back. As soon as Meridian had berthed upon the Patroclus, and after cleaning herself up following the standard decontamination procedures, Godwyn had wasted no time sitting down the space marine Librarian to share with him everything she knew.

“Interesting,” Aquinas muttered his first constructive word since they began as the final recording concluded with Strassen executing the hapless Felix. He did not seem at all surprised by what he had witnessed, though, as Godwyn reminded herself, he was adept at concealing such things.

“So what do you make of it?” Godwyn posed, leaning forward where she sat on one of the common room’s leather sofas and looking across at the seated Librarian.

Aquinas did not answer immediately as he collected the data-slates and neatly stacked them on the small coffee table that sat between them, his eyes narrowed and his lips pursed. She waited patiently for him to begin.

“Before we analyze what we have seen,” he said softly, meeting the Inquisitor’s eyes and leaning forward so that their gazes were level, “we must analyze why we have seen it.”

She nodded for him to continue.

“Out of fifty-eight records, we are granted four. This is no coincidence; someone intended it to be that way.”

The Inquisitor arched an eyebrow; “So Strassen knew I would go to Trajan’s Deep. How?”

Aquinas spread the data-slates back across the table with a wave of his hand, his eyes piercing into each as he did so. “Inquisitor Roth believed the events of Trajan’s Deep to be significant in determining the disappearance of Inquisitor Strassen. The apparent actions of Inquisitor Strassen, or actions taken on his behalf, confirm the Lord Inquisitor’s suspicions to be correct: Strassen anticipated that we would go there as he too believes it to be significant in the investigation of his disappearance.”

Godwyn chewed thoughtfully on her lip; she hadn’t thought of it from that angle, but when Aquinas pointed it out it seemed ingenious.

“I imagine these four recordings were selected because they allow us to see the course of the interrogations without revealing anything substantive. Incriminating material was likely given a higher level of secrecy by whoever tampered with the records, and anything that could reveal Strassen’s goals were probably destroyed to prevent you from seeing them even in the unlikely event of obtaining higher clearance.”

“But if someone decided what I would see,” Godwyn cut in, tapping her fingers across her lips as she leaned her chin against the palm of her hand, “then they would have anticipated how I would react.”

Aquinas inclined his head, but made it clear that he did not fully agree. “Possible, but not to the degree which you suspect,” he replied coolly. “Uncovering this information could be expected to elicit the same response form anyone.”

“A return to the source…” Godwyn finished his train of thought and drew a nod of approval from the Librarian: what she had learned on Trajan’s Deep was only enough to send her back to Panacea with more questions.

“What would Strassen have to gain from this?” she made her thoughts known, but for the first time Aquinas had no answers for her.

“To predict his motives now would be as foolhardy as examining them all through a process of elimination, though I believe what he has revealed may play some part in why he revealed it.”

“What are your thoughts?” Godwyn pressed; “You’ve known him longer than I have.”

Again the Librarian nodded, and his piercing eyes were drawn to the data-slates arranged before him as he lightly touched each in turn with his armoured fingers.

“I believe that the content of the data granted to us relays three things that Strassen wished to impart upon you and not to anyone else: first, that, though allies, he and Pierce are not in cohesion; second, that parties other than himself and Pierce know of something hidden within the sector which only Inquisitor Felix was privy to the location of; and third, that he is still the man you remember him being.”

A shiver of what could have been dread passed down Inquisitor Godwyn’s spine.

Brother Aquinas was watching her most intently with his blue eyes.

How could her old mentor know? How could he have taken into account her every move and every thought?

“I don’t understand,” she responded to the Librarian’s questioning eyes with a startled shake of her head. “How do you know this? How does he?”

He blinked, and the look was gone.

Exhaling deeply through his nose, the space marine rose to his feet and slowly walked towards the view port at the far end of the common room.

“I have studied mysteries in the dark places of the galaxy for a long time,” Aquinas began, looking out at the stars, “but I can assure you that the minds of men hold secrets darker than any forgotten crypt or tainted place. Your mentor was a brilliant man, adept at maximizing the resources at his disposal, and more capable at reading probability and character than any human I have yet met. While I doubt that his foresight was so great as to conduct the interrogation of Inquisitor Felix knowing you would see it, it comes as no surprise that he is capable of manipulating what occurred to serve his advantage.”

Lost for words, Godwyn merely stared at the dull data-slates in amazement, before once again turning towards the Librarian as he continued to speak:

“As we first suspected, it is possible that Strassen wants you and only you to find him,” he paused, “… though more likely as an ally than as an adversary.”

“Impossible!” Godwyn jumped to her feet defiantly; “I would never turn my back on my duty for him! He can’t possibly think that I would!”

The Librarian slowly turned to face her, though he kept his features unreadable and his hands loosely behind his back. “It is good that you say that, though be mindful not to rely strictly on such resolve, as that too can be exploited.”

 

“The problem with covering every angle too tightly is that you can never adequately cover any of them.”

Godwyn narrowed her eyes at him, but Columbo was markedly looking away as he topped up his fourth glass of wine.

“What?”

His eyes flashed back up, as if just noticing that he’d said something contentious.

“Oh, its just a little something I’ve learned over my years as a tradesman,” he said apologetically, though his performance was too seasoned for Godwyn to able to determine whether it was genuine or not.

“Care to explain it then?”

He smiled. “Oh certainly,” he replied, and shifted his weight as if to make himself more comfortable. “You see, I’ve learned that trying to prepare myself for every possibility leaves me painfully unprepared to deal with the most probable possibilities.”

“Are you meaning to say that I am being negligent?”

“Oh no!” Columbo quickly altered his position; “No-no-no, not at all!”

He sat up in his chair, tapping the fingers of his left hand against his thumb in concentration as he did so. “What I mean to say is,” he crossed one leg over the other before fixing both hands on the arms of his chair, “that you mustn’t become flummoxed by every possible outcome.”

“If it is possible, then one must be prepared for it,” Godwyn replied coolly.

The Ship Master rolled his eyes. “Well yes,” he agreed, “but then again it is *possible* that I could strip off my clothes and begin accosting my furniture – ” that drew a smile, “ – but its not necessary that you have a contingency in store for that!”

“Oh I think I might…” she looked at him innocently, which prompted Columbo to throw his hands in the air in mock exasperation, though he had succeeded in lightening the mood.

“Regardless! You see my point?”

She agreed, though hid the smile in her wineglass.

A comfortable period of silence followed in which both the Ship Master and the Inquisitor admired the company of the other under the dome of stars as the ship’s stewards entered with the dessert course of crème gateau au chocolat. Entreating his guest to the delicate dessert, Columbo himself waited patiently with a soft smile as the servants departed.

“Savour the small pleasures,” he announced, lifting his own fork, “as the large ones are often too much to wrap your lips around.”

“Hear, hear!” she applauded between mouthfuls, and Columbo promptly stood up for a bow to the imaginary audience that occupied the empty furniture of the seigneurie.

“In all sincerity though, my dear,” he said as he sat himself back down, “you have shared with me quite a bit of misery. How about then a change of pacing? Tell me something good – something that lightens the otherwise dark duties of an Imperial agent.”

She set her fork down on the edge of her plate and wiped the chocolate from her lips with a laced serviette. “What’s this? My turn to be a motivational speaker?”

He chuckled in reply. “Indulge me.”

 

Two days out from Trajan’s Deep, and Captain Striker was well on the road to a full recovery. As they had feared, her arm had been badly mangled from her fall and the subsequent week of improper care, though the Emperor smiled upon her when the chief medical officer announced with some certainty that all the damage could be corrected through surgical procedures and likely be healed when they reached Panacea in two weeks time.

“Inquisitor… Cassandra… I want to thank you.” Victoria Striker, free from her surgery with her right arm and shoulder encased in a plaster cast, was sitting upright in bed in the quiet recovery ward of the Patroclus’ medical wing. Like the rest of Godwyn’s crew who had braved the jungles of Trajan’s Deep, her features were still slightly sunken with dark rings beneath her eyes, but it was good to see the soldier smiling and free from pain.

“You don’t need to thank me,” Godwyn returned the smile as she sat at the Captain’s bedside. “It’s what we do. We’re together in this.”

Striker nodded in silent agreement and her smile diminished somewhat as she looked at her hands in her lap. “I’d given up, though,” Striker continued, studying the movements of her fingers. “I didn’t see a way out, and I thought we were done for… I was done for.” Lips sealed and eyes heavy, she looked back up at the Inquisitor, who sat quiet and understanding at her side; “and if it wasn’t for you and Grant, I would be.”

“Grant is an exceptional individual,” Godwyn gave credit where she thought it due; “he never gave up on either of us. You’re lucky.”

The Captain was slightly taken aback by the suggestive remark and followed up curiously as to what the Inquisitor was referring.

“He’s a good man,” Godwyn alluded to conversations they’d shared earlier, “even if he doesn’t have huge muscles…”

Colour started to seep into the storm troopers cheeks to match her hair. “Did he tell you?” she asked with an unmasked grin.

“I figured it out for myself.” She left it at that, and Striker didn’t feel the need to press any further.

“Either way,” Striker said with a determined look, “we’re all in this together until the end.”

“Whenever and whatever that is, yes,” Godwyn agreed.

At that moment Grant appeared through the ward doorway, though he stopped when he saw the Inquisitor.

“Am I intruding?” he asked, voluntarily taking a step backwards and indicating that he could return at a later time.

Godwyn was quickly on her feet, however; “I was just about to take my leave, actually,” she announced, and bade the Commissar stay as she hastily retreated to leave the couple in each other’s company.

She was happy for them, though also envious for their fortune in finding each other. Love was a scarce commodity within the ranks of the Imperial service, and while she could always find partners to satisfy her lust, she knew that her chances at meaningful affection were few and fleeting. The closest she had ever felt to a man had been during her four years studying under Inquisitor Strassen, but then her apprenticeship had ended, and she now found herself alone; hunting the one man she thought she cared for.

There is the Emperor, and there is the Imperium, she recalled from the sermons of Sebastian Thor; All else is transitory, as ash in the wind.

 

The after-dinner rum had been flowing freely for several rounds when the Ship Master finally rose to his unsteady feet and wished the Inquisitor goodnight. It was late, likely into the small ours of the night cycle, and the servants had not appeared for what felt like hours.

Her head feeling heavy as her eyes half-heartedly dragged themselves across the room, Godwyn could almost see her melancholy fermenting in the bottom of her glass. Closing her eyes and wishing it would stop, she downed the last of the searing liquid in a single gulp and smacked her glass back down on the tablecloth as her head rolled back along her shoulders.

“Hercule,” she called, her voice rolling along the floor to stop him just as he was about to reach the doors from the seigneurie, “are you going to ask me to your chambers?”

Besotted though he was, the Ship Master froze in his tracks and slowly turned to see the young Inquisitor gazing at him, still slouched at the table.

“I hadn’t planned on it,” he replied airily. “Did you want me to?”

Godwyn’s head looped itself around her shoulders as her fingers idly pushed at the now empty glass. Eyes glazing over, she ran her tongue over her front teeth before convincingly shaking her head and leaning forward with her elbows on the table. “No.”

Columbo nodded quietly, and was about to let himself out of the seigneurie when, once again, he paused with his arm outstretched. With a change of heart, he walked back over to the dining table rested his hands on the back of his chair.

“It gets easier, you know,” he said, looking down as the Inquisitor’s face slowly tilted up to meet him.

“What does?” she asked in a tired voice with reddened, bleary eyes.

“All of it.”

When she didn’t respond, the Ship Master gave his tongue a resolved click, tapped his hands against the wooden frame of the antique chair, and strode again to the doors – pausing only when he crossed the threshold:

“Goodnight, Inquisitor Godwyn,” he said with a last look, and closed the doors behind him.

[Lady_Canoness]

*part 15*

 

Within moments of arrival at the Inquisitorial headquarters in the capital city of Cornice, Godwyn was admitted to see Lord Inquisitor Roth in the same humble office in which she had first met him, and upon entering saw that not much about it had changed. The threadbare couch and bookshelf were still to the right of the Lord Inquisitor’s modest wooden desk in the small room, and the stucco walls were bare save for a framed copy of the Inquisitorial Mandate that hung facing the Lord Inquisitor’s desk. The desk itself was piled high with stacks of loose parchment and data-slates, and behind it, his face gaunt with dark rings beneath his eyes, Lord Inquisitor Roth looked up as she opened the door.

“Inquisitor Godwyn,” he rose momentarily and quickly ushered the young Inquisitor to the same chair she had previously occupied on their first meeting.

“Lord Inquisitor,” she bowed her head in his direction and took the seat as offered. He smiled, but only briefly and with visible strain, before sitting back down and working some sense of order onto his desk as he shuffled through papers and moved the bulkier data-slates onto floor. Godwyn waited patiently without speaking. Whatever he was occupied with must have been affecting him greatly in order for it to show so clearly on his face. He looked tired, and an old-age she had previously not noticed was seeping through to the surface of his face.

“My apologies,” he said, moving the last of the data-slates to the floor and turning to address the Inquisitor, “as you can see, I had the audacity to think I could accomplish more than I did in the time it took for you to come from the spaceport to here.”

Godwyn assured him that it was perfectly understandable, but that did little to elevate his mood and he continued to speak like under duress.

“Your report of the orks on Trajan’s Deep is definitely appreciated by myself and others, and you may rest assured that the aliens will be dealt with swiftly and discretely,” he said, trying to smile weakly. “You know how much we like to keep things stable in this sector.”

Godwyn smiled in agreement. She understood perfectly well that the sector, and Panacea in particular, were very concerned in maintaining stability in the region, and that threats of any measure were often dealt with as swiftly as possible. Recent news from Tenantable suggested just this, as the new planetary governor had ended the rebellions in the industrial cities and promised a wide range of reforms with full Administratum support. Swift, and by all means subtle.

Roth continued – his pallid skin crinkling like dry paper beneath his brown hair as he spoke.

“The recordings of Inquisitor Felix’s interrogation are also quite troubling, though I understand that you were hampered by a lack of security clearance, is that so?”

“Yes, that was the case,” Godwyn replied, though she did not go into detail about Brother Aquinas’ suspicions. Just by looking at him she could tell that his reviewing of her report with her was mostly courtesy, and that she had half of his attention at best until he got on to what he wanted to talk about.

Bobbing his head in acknowledgement, he sighed deeply from behind sealed lips and leaned forward with his elbows on his desk.

“This information Inquisitor Strassen extracted from Inquisitor Felix before he killed her is of great concern to me, as is our decisive lack of insight into what that information might be.”

“Brother Aquinas is looking into the matter,” Godwyn said flatly, drawing a look of approval from her superior. Perhaps she had judged to quickly – tired though he appeared, she could tell that his interest was roused.

“Has his investigation yielded any results thus far?”

Before departing for the surface of Panacea, the Librarian had informed her that he was going to contact his brethren in the Deathwatch once they were planetside for reports of eldar activity in neighbouring sectors. Because of the late Inquisitor Felix’s expertise on the elusive alien race, Aquinas thought it possible that any secrets she withheld from the Inquisition could be in someway related to the xenos. He was not particularly confident in his chances of discovering such a secret through official channels, however, but he knew several of his brethren had worked with Felix in the past, and that through them he may be able to produce a lead that would otherwise go unnoticed.

“No,” Godwyn lied, remembering everything Lee Normandy had told her about not giving herself away when she told a lie, and hoping that her deception went unnoticed.

The Lord Inquisitor shrugged, and leaned back in his chair. “Regardless, see that he keeps on it. I will be very interested to see what he discovers.”

Godwyn said that she would, but quickly turned onto other matters. “You said you needed to see me, Lord Inquisitor, in private? Concerning Pierce?”

“Yes that is correct,” Roth crossed his arms over his chest and his mood darkened, though also she noted that his look of fatigue seemed to vanish almost instantaneously. “As I said when last we spoke, I have been watching him closely, and, as it turns out, he is here: on Panacea, in Cornice.”

“He’s here?!” Godwyn repeated in surprise. “Why is he here? What is he doing!?”

Roth waived her down with a tentative hand.

“One question at a time, Inquisitor,” he cautioned her, “but yes it is hardly what we expected.”

More than that, Godwyn thought; why would Strassen send Pierce here if he knew that she would be here also?

“I do not know why he is here, but he arrived little more than a month ago and recorded his presence with our headquarters – could be he did this to avoid suspicion, but I do not know for sure.”

Godwyn had an idea: if Pierce announced his arrival, then he didn’t know that she was onto him, and if he didn’t know it was because Strassen hadn’t told him.

“I have had him tailed since he landed, however, and I know that he spends most of his time in the Imperial Sectoral Archive researching what my agents believe to be mundane history, though needless to say I now think his research is far less routine than it would otherwise appear.”

“You think he is looking into whatever secret Felix held?” Godwyn asked.

Roth nodded insistently. “It would seem plausible,” he said, “given that Felix is recorded as saying ‘you can’t use them, there are none who can,’ that he is looking for any scrap of information that might tell him about ‘them’.”

“Then we move on Pierce!” Godwyn demanded forcefully. “Once we get to him, we can get right onto what they have planned!”

She was confident that this is what Strassen had anticipated. He would hand her Pierce, the man he did not trust, in hopes that Pierce would lead her to him, and perhaps in so doing get her to join him in whatever plan he carried out. Mentor and student reunited again. A mind he had trained and moulded – a mind he could trust. He wanted her, and she felt the tug of longing to be back with him, but it wouldn’t work out as he had planned. She would go to him once she had Pierce, and she would bring him back… one way or another.

And, as if it were a sign, Roth was supportive of her idea.

“Before you arrived, my contacts placed him in the Archive at this very moment, and I have not been alerted to him leaving. If you are quick, I think we could get him while he is still there.”

Godwyn keenly agreed.

“Speed and subtlety will be important as I don’t know if he has any eyes watching his back,” Roth continued, rising from his seat as Godwyn did the same, “so it would be best if we kept this as low-key as possible.”

“I have Striker with me outside,” Godwyn replied. “I think the two of us should be able to take him without being noticed.”

Roth frowned.

“Bold,” he said, though he still looked supportive. “I think that could work. It will take me at least half an hour to prepare, but I can have gunship support and a fire-team ready to deploy should you need it, though, as I said, quieter is better.”

“Quieter is better,” she agreed, knowing that a lot of boots on the ground could turn a simple snatch and grab into a logistical nightmare. “Striker and I will get there as soon as possible, and if we’re lucky we can get him without a struggle.”

 

* *

 

The motor carriage accelerated through the mid-day traffic on the capital city’s streets as they wound between the glowing white spires on a downwards quest towards the Archives and Inquisitor Pierce.

The Imperial Sectoral Archives were housed in a centuries-old stone building deep at the feet of Cornice’s towers in what used to be the original seat of planetary government before Panacea’s rise to glory. Now no longer in use by the government, the massive grey building, obscured in shadow behind her rising towers, had been repurposed to store the sector’s history well out of sight of the ever-progressing populace, and shared its locale with warehouses, sweat factories, and the other necessities of society that one preferred not to see. Employment was high and crime rates were low, but even so the people of the white towers avoided the seedier elements of the shadow city when they could, and it was said that no-one went down there unless on business, even if that business was trouble, and descending through the upper-level skyways, Godwyn knew that was exactly what they were looking for.

“You don’t think we’ll need the others?” Striker asked, referring to Grant and Lee who were waiting back at Meridian with no inkling of the Inquisitor’s plan.

Fair question – they were dealing with an Inquisitor after all – but Godwyn shook her head.

“Quick and quiet,” Godwyn answered, laying her heavy pistol across her lap and placing the three six-round magazines on the seat beside her before loading one of the mags and priming the chamber. “They won’t ask questions of an Inquisitor, but the more people we have the more chances of Pierce getting the drop on us.”

The motor carriage-slowed as it descended another off-ramp, and Striker glanced out the window before looking back at Godwyn and absentmindedly feeling the pistol strapped to her thigh. Neither of them were heavily armed or armoured with only their casual attire and pistols, and Striker was likely longing for her hellgun, but regardless they both understood the necessity for subtlety: there was no-knowing who could be watching.

“Right,” Godwyn holstered her pistol and the extra ammunition before tugging at her overcoat and smoothing out her clothes, “how do I look?”

Striker, dressed in plain black fatigues with a grey jacket and snug fitting cap, gave the Inquisitor a quick eyes-over and shrugged; “Like anyone else going about their business.”

Just what she had been hoping for. Her coat was unbuttoned with its collar up, and the dark clothing beneath gave no indication that she was anyone other than just an ordinary citizen. Most importantly, the Inquisitorial rosette was safely out of sight in her pocket.

Several minutes more and the motor carriage pulled up to the curb outside the Archives.

“Quick and quiet,” Godwyn said one last time, and, together with Striker, opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle.

 

The Imperial Sectoral Archive was built like a fortress. Dark, squat, and imposing, it was a stark contrast to the smooth white towers above and spoke of a time long ago when the atmosphere around Cornice, and likely the planet in general, was much bleaker and far less optimistic. Little wonder then that they hid it in the shadows of their more recent successes.

Outside of the motor carriage, the streets were bare with not a soul in sight and no signs of life other than the occasional vehicle parked in the shadows.

Godwyn snapped the door of the motor-carriage shut and heard its echo rebound around the quiet streets. Sounds seemed muted down here, under the bustling city above, but it didn’t take much to imagine how this place had once been teaming with activity.

The comm. unit buzzed in her ear, bringing her back round from her surroundings. “Godwyn here, go ahead.”

It was the voice of Lord Roth who answered with surprisingly little interference:

++Status report?++ he asked.

“I’m at the Archive now,” Godwyn replied, mounting the steps to the old building with Striker at her side.

++Good,++ Roth sounded relieved, and Godwyn signalled for Striker to stop short of the main doors as she waited for further instructions. The doors were large and windowless, and made of a dull brass that looked as if it could weather quite a barrage before buckling. Fortress indeed.

++You need to be careful in there, Godwyn,++ he tried to impress a sense of prudence upon her as he continued, ++I don’t have a fix on Pierce’s location within the Archives, and, if you should come across him without being prepared, he will likely try to escape. If he does, just give the word and I’ll have my team move to intercept.++

“Understood Lord Inquisitor.”

She could almost feel him nodding in relief on the other end of comm. upon hearing that they were of an understanding.

++One more thing, Inquisitor,++ he added, ++don’t forget that we need him alive.++

“Yes, I remember. Godwyn out.”

Shutting off the comm. link, she nodded to the storm trooper: they were going in.

 

Behind the double doors, the Archive was an impressive old building lovingly maintained in its historic splendour by a dedicated staff of archivists and clericals who tended to the over five-million files shelved in the six stories of the old government building. Ancient chandeliers hung from vaulted ceilings in their hundreds throughout the Archive and cast a soft yellow glow down along the wood-panelled walls and creaking hardwood floors, while perfectly preserved wooden columns intermingled between rows upon rows of towering shelves. Dedicated reading rooms and sitting areas dotted the floor plan of every level in spaces that would have once been the offices of planetary officials and bureaucrats, and ancient pieces of art or monuments from the old city were on display in open areas, turning what would have been a bone-yard of musty records on any other planet into a museum of local history on Panacea. Visitors – if there ever were any – could literally lose themselves in the past, and spend hours browsing through materials the likes of which they would find nowhere else.

Godwyn and her bodyguard did not have hours, though the man they were looking for they would not find anywhere else.

Pushing through the front doors, the clerical behind the front desk opened his mouth to address her, but upon seeing the badge of office Godwyn held in her hand, quickly shut it again and looked at his feet. Moving out behind her, Captain Striker quickly secured the empty lobby and waited by one of the swinging doors that sat to the left behind the front desk.

“I’m looking for someone,” Godwyn announced as she pocketed her rosette and advanced on the reception desk where the old clerical was still focusing on his feet.

“I don’t know anything,” he immediately replied. Scared stiff, Godwyn thought it likely that he hadn’t even listened to her question, but merely answered by impulse. She was wasting her time.

“Lock the doors and get under the desk,” she ordered, and he nodded hastily at his feet. “No one leaves this building, understood?”

He nodded again and quickly darted to the doors as soon as Godwyn turned away from him. From the corner of her eyes, Striker watched the clerical do as he was told.

Wordlessly dismissing the frightened man, Godwyn approached the storm trooper as she waited by the door.

“Ready?” she asked.

Of course she was.

“Quick and quiet,” Godwyn reminded her bodyguard as much as herself. “We don’t pull our guns unless we need to. Let’s find this man.”

 

As they entered the Archive through the lobby doors, they found it close to being deserted, and not so much as a breath disturbed the silence between the shelves and left their steady footfalls over the creaking floor to sound like the marching of armies. Occasionally, while searching each room in turn, they would catch a glimpse of robed clericals drifting like ghosts down aisles of paper work, but vanishing without a sound whenever one of the women tried to tail them.

At length, they secured the first floor and then the second with no sign of Pierce or anyone else other than the oddly quiet archivists.

Godwyn found it maddening, and when she and Striker entered the number III staircase en route to the third floor, it took all she could muster to stop herself from shouting.

“What do you think?” Godwyn asked in a voice that sounded uncomfortably loud as they walked up the creaking wooden stairs under the watchful eyes untitled portraits.

“It’s too quiet,” Striker replied in almost a whisper; “I don’t like it.”

Inquisitor Godwyn could not have agreed more. This place was too calm for how anxious she felt inside – like it was somehow trying to smother her spirit with its deafening silence. Worse still, Godwyn was certain that Pierce would hear them from several rooms away whereas he could remain completely undetectable so long as he didn’t move. She had half a mind to call in Roth’s fire-team already and damn quick and quiet to the Warp.

They were somewhere near the center of the third floor when Striker suddenly stopped outside a closed door hissed to catch Godwyn’s attention.

Through there – she motioned with her head as Godwyn, hardly daring to breathe, crept closer. Was she certain?

The sound of a faint, clearing cough came through the thin wooden door. They looked at each other – this had to be it.

‘Follow me’, Godwyn mouthed, and, with her hand slowly turning the knob, eased the door open with a faint creak.

The room beyond the door was large and lined two rows of tables arranged horizontally away from them towards the gaping mouth of a large, black fireplace that sat in the middle of a wall lined with glass display cabinets that extended around the circumference of the room, and as Godwyn stepped inside she quickly counted three other exits leading from the room in different directions. More important than all these, however, and stealing her attention away from the decorations in the reading room, was the single figure sitting with his back to them at the table farthest from their door. From behind, she could tell that he was past his prime with a round head of thinning grey hair, a thick neck, and curved but broad shoulders underneath a plain black coat. Without even seeing his face, Godwyn recognized him as the man she’d seen before on a grainy screen while she witnessed the interrogation of Inquisitor Felix. He did not turn around when he heard them enter, however, and merely continued to look between the various papers and texts he had arranged before him on the table.

Godwyn cleared her throat, and slid her hand underneath her coat to grab the heavy pistol she had holstered at her breast. Striker, she noticed, had her weapon already drawn and held it stiffly at her side.

“Inquisitor Pierce, I presume?” She knew who the man was – a monster – but asked anyway to hear him try and deny it.

The man sat up straighter in his chair and placed both his hands palm down on the table, his papers forgotten.

“I am he,” the puffed-up, superior voice she remembered from the recording answered her.

He did not turn around to see who addressed him.

“And that makes you Inquisitor Godwyn, does it not? I wondered when you would get here.”

What did he say?

Striker’s arm was up in a heartbeat, but Pierce was faster. Knocking his chair aside, the senior Inquisitor dove sideways between the tables with a machine pistol spewing in his hand even as the storm trooper traced him with a rain of bullets. Glass shattering overhead as Pierce’s fire tore into the display cabinets, Godwyn threw herself flat behind the nearest table with her heavy pistol in her hand as Striker leapt bodily over it and rolled clear of the razor edged shower while blasting shot after shot into the walls behind Pierce as the rogue Inquisitor made a mad dash for the nearest door. Godwyn got one shot off from the ground that splintered a table leg mere moments behind her fleeing quarry as he ducked through the door with his hands shielding his head.

“Are you alright? Are you hit?” Striker jumped back over the table as Godwyn got to her feet – shards of glass clattering off her overcoat and falling from her hair as she stood up.

“I’m fine,” she answered – only a few stinging lacerations – “get after him!”

Crunching the glass shards beneath their feet, they pounded over to the door where Pierce had made good his escape – knocking chairs and tables askew in their haste.

Striker reached the open door first, approached it carefully from the side, and ducked out to take a quick peek before dodging back in anticipation of any return fire.

“Staircase,” she announced quickly to the Inquisitor beside her, “looks clear. I’m going in.”

Hearing footsteps thundering into the stairs above them, Striker dashed into the staircase with her pistol pointing upwards and Godwyn following close behind to cover her.

Up above, a door slammed.

“Two stories up! Move, move, move!” Striker bolted up the stairs two at a time with her arms pumping wildly as Godwyn stormed after her to the fifth floor landing.

Holding her breath in her throat, Godwyn slammed into the wall opposite Striker to either side of the fifth-floor door – both with guns braced as the storm trooper reached for the door handle and held up three fingers on her rock-steady pistol hand. One by one she dropped them back down: three – two – one –

With a tug she opened the door and Godwyn aimed through with her pistol extended.

Fire from the machine pistol screamed at her from across the fifth floor reading room as Pierce held the opposite door. Bullets punched into the walls and through the open doorframe into the staircase as Godwyn leapt back out of sight and Striker returned fire blindly with her pistol until it clicked empty.

Leaning out a second time, Godwyn’s hand-cannon roared and blew a chunk out of the opposite door just as Pierce abandoned his position.

Dropping the spent mag onto the floor, Striker was still reloading as Godwyn dashed through the empty reading room with her heavy pistol held at the ready in both hands and hugged the wall to the side of the inner door. Striker caught up with her quickly – her eyes ablaze with adrenaline.

Not waiting for the word, Godwyn peered around the corner into the adjoining room: shelves, lots of them – they were back into the archives proper. Blinded on one side by the open door, Godwyn made to push it full open, but was thrown back immediately as the snapping retort of the machine pistol heralded a storm of small-calibre bullets punching holes through the door from Pierce’s covering position.

Waiting for a break in the fire, Striker rolled head over heels through the doorway and skidded behind the nearest stack of shelves, leaning out and snapping off sideways shots in the direction of their assailant.

Still in the reading room, Godwyn was checking her body for blood when the comm. link buzzed in her ear between bursts of pistol fire from outside the mangled door.

++Godwyn, I’ve got reports of weapons fire from inside the Archive. What is going on in there?++ Roth demanded.

“Pierce knew we were coming,” Godwyn explained, trying to keep her voice steady enough to talk to her superior. “He’s armed, on the run, and I could really use some fire support!”

Roth took a few moments to confer with the gunship crew.

++Understood, Inquisitor,++ he answered back, ++stay on him. We’re inbound in four minutes.++

Outside of the reading room, Pierce was on the move through the stacks with Striker following cautiously behind. Firing corridors between the stacked shelves were likely to prove narrow and deadly.

Following her bodyguard, the shooting had stopped, and between ragged breaths all Godwyn could hear were the rhythmic clumping sounds of boots on wood. Ahead of her, Striker would reach the end of stack, stop short with her back against it, peek every-which-way, and then duck in between another row of parchment-crammed shelves. Somewhere up ahead she could hear Pierce’s boots doing the exact same thing.

“Out there,” Striker hissed, cocking her head around the corner as she came up upon the end of another stack. Carefully, Godwyn peered around the corner for just long enough see what it was Striker had spotted. She ducked back. The storm trooper said nothing.

Down past the ends of several stacks was a large double door.

Godwyn peered around the corner again – she could hear the footsteps moving.

Striker skidded over to the stack across the way with Godwyn covering her just as Pierce’s head popped into view several stacks down.

Godwyn’s powerful heavy pistol roared twice – the first shot shredding through a stack of shelved parchment and forcing Pierce back out of sight while the second punched a fist-sized hole through the door.

Striker’s side arm opened up in small snapping bursts as the storm trooper sent bullets hurtling through the stacks.

Pinned down, Pierce had completely disappeared from view as Godwyn and Striker continued to hurl bullets at his hiding place. It was then, through the fusillade, that Godwyn heard the footsteps.

She looked over at Striker – he’s moving.

But Pierce wasn’t.

Hearing a pause in their fire, bullets screamed down towards them as the rogue Inquisitor broke cover and held down the trigger of his madly bucking machine pistol. Godwyn dropped back away from the screaming bullets as snow-drifts of torn paper filled the air following the machine pistol’s fury and Striker quickly flattened herself along the floor with her hands clasped over her head.

His gun running dry, Pierce dumped the empty mag onto the floor and kicked open the double doors – disappearing around a corner and out of sight just as Godwyn’s gun cannoned another high-calibre bullet through the door closing behind him.

Striker was up and after him in a flash, and Godwyn followed just seconds behind her – the young Inquisitor ejecting and pocketing the empty magazine and loading a fresh six-round clip into the stock of her pistol.

++Godwyn, are you still there? I need a status update.++ Roth’s voice buzzed in her ear – the sound of gunship engines loud in the background.

Gulping down a breath of air to steady her nerves, Godwyn slowed down to a fast walk and hit the comm. stud in her ear: “We’re still with him on the fifth floor,” she replied, her voice sounding much calmer than she felt.

++Understood. Be there in two minutes.++

“Two minutes,” she repeated to Striker – two minutes until reinforcements came over the hill. Her hands were starting to ache from gripping her pistol so tightly, and she could feel strands of her hair sticking to the sweat on her forehead. Two minutes was going to be a long time.

They braved the double door together – clear left – clear right – and Striker took point snaking down the right-hand corridor after Pierce as Godwyn covered her advance from behind. Reaching the end of the hallway and checking to both sides, the storm trooper held up her left hand and moved it back and forth in knifing motion – move up.

Whether he knew it or not, Pierce had just led his pursuers into a dead end.

Behind the main foyer on the fifth floor, which had been converted into stacks once the Imperial Sectoral Archive took over the building, had been the offices of Planetary Commerce and had been retained as office space by the archivists. Now as then, the offices were a labyrinth of near identical doors and long corridors, though, more importantly still, there was only one way in or out.

Pierce was waiting for them, however.

Wood splintered and broke as bullets ripped into the side-panelling and scattered wide as Striker pulled away from the edge to avoid getting hit. Caught in a right-angled corner, Striker waved the Inquisitor back as she recoiled as yet more fire shredded into the antique wooden walls.

Pierce had them at a momentary disadvantage and he knew it. With superior position and a high rate fire, the rogue Inquisitor could keep them suppressed at the far end of the hall without them being able to get a shot off without him shooting first. Firing in irregular bursts, bullets periodically chewed into the corridor as the storm trooper and Inquisitor Godwyn held their positions down the hall.

“Don’t look,” Striker warned as two more bullets thudded into the wall opposite them.

Godwyn didn’t need to be told twice and waited safely away from the corner. Lord Roth could be no more than a minute away, and if Pierce wanted to spend that minute holding them off at the far end of a corridor, then Godwyn was prepared to wait him out. He would run out of bullets or the fire-team would arrive: either way she’d get him today.

“Remember,” Striker whispered, glancing her green eyes towards the Inquisitor as a grin crept onto her sweat-lined face, “mess with their minds.”

Without a sound, they waited as the bursts of fire grew less frequent and then stopped altogether. Still they didn’t budge, until, counting down on five fingers, Striker and Godwyn stepped out into the hall as one with guns raised and ready.

But no gunfire rose to meet them and no footsteps either.

“How the…?” Godwyn heard Striker mutter from beside her as she looked down the sights of her gun to the end of the hall. Godwyn didn’t believe it either.

Pierce was nowhere to be seen, but instead there were two hooded clericals standing frozen in shock in the middle of the hall with gunshot wounds riddling their robes.

“Down!” Godwyn ordered the clericals out of her way; “Now!”

She walked towards them; gun outstretched, but her eyes on the open door at the end of the hall. Obviously terrified, the robed men did not respond, but staggered slightly on their feet. With all the holes in their robes it was amazing that they were standing at all.

Striker advanced behind her along the torn-up wall – her aim shifting between the clericals and the open door.

With only a handful of steps separating them, the nearest of the clericals seemed to take notice of the Inquisitor and hobbled about awkwardly on his bare feet as Godwyn reached out, grabbed the clerical by the hood, and tugged it away from his face.

The reprimand on her tongue died in her mouth as her jaw hung open and her eyes grew wide.

The thing behind the pacifier helm looked back.

At the far end of the hall and out the open door, a single word was spoken.

The arco-flagellants started to shriek and wail in pain as the trigger word pumped their bodies full of lethal combat enhancers and turned what Godwyn had thought to be wounded clericals into frenzied killing machines.

Arco-flagellation, a terrible punishment reserved for the most heinous of crimes against the Imperial Ecclesiarchy, turned a condemned prisoner into a nigh-unstoppable killing machine that felt no fear and no pain, and was implanted with a vicious array of close-combat weaponry. Typically, arco-flagellants were kept in a semi-comatose state by an arcane piece of technology called a pacifier helm that inhibited all but their most basic of motor skills. Every arco-flagellant was psycho-conditioned to respond to a trigger word, however, that, once spoken, would deactivate the pacifier helm and prompt the injection of numerous combat stimulants directly into the flagellant’s nervous system that served to not only drive the condemned into a berserk rage and attack anything nearby, but also doom it to an excruciating death that would last several minutes. Godwyn had never before seen an arco-flagellant activated, but even so she had heard enough to know that it was not something one wanted to be around.

Striker shot the nearest arco-flagellant in the head, but when the thing continued to wail and thrash as its combat arms tore themselves free from the clerical’s robe, she shot it repeatedly until its brain painted the wall and it lay in a twitching heap on the ground.

The second one was gaining momentum and with a single bounding step had almost closed the distance with Captain Striker when Godwyn caught it in the upper chest with a single shot and sent it off balance into the wall. Far from dead, the flagellant was still wailing and was getting back to its feet when Striker emptied the rest of her magazine into its skull and Godwyn shot it two more times just to make sure that the convulsing heap of bloodied flesh stayed dead.

Giving it not a moment’s thought, the storm trooper captain stepped over the quasi-human heaps and took cover by the door as she loaded her last pistol magazine and primed the chamber.

“He had to be close by to issue that trigger word,” Godwyn followed her bodyguard up to the door. Her legs were starting to feel weak, and her hands jittery – that had been too close.

Striker peered through the open door and signalled the all clear. The door opened to a large important-looking office with a notably high ceiling and heavy curtains drawn over windows at the far end behind the desk. The walls were bare, however, and judging by the look of it the room was well maintained but not in use.

Godwyn was at a loss – there was no way in or out of the office other then the door they had just entered. She walked across the room behind the desk and opened the curtains to look out the window; only a few meters down, sections of the Archive roof were close enough to be accessible.

She cursed violently and threw the curtains closed in a cloud of dust – all Pierce had to do was break a window and he was as good as gone!

Several paces behind her in the middle of the office, Striker was carefully scanning the room with her eyes, and Godwyn was about to join her when she heard Roth’s voice crackle in her ear:

++We’re on the ground floor now, Godwyn. What is your status?++

What should she tell him? That she’d lost him? That he’d likely escaped onto the roof? She didn’t know if any answer was good enough to give him, but just as she was about to open her mouth, Striker noticed something in the middle of the wall to their left and quickly crept over to it with the Inquisitor’s eyes following her.

++Godwyn?++

Striker gave her a reassuring look: a door, disguised and hidden in the wall, but a door none the less.

“I’m in a large fifth floor office off the stacks with Captain Striker,” Godwyn replied, knowing that if Pierce was through that door he could likely hear her. “It looks like Pierce might have given us the slip, though. I’m going to need some help finding him, I think.”

++Understood. We’ll be up promptly. Out.++

Godwyn closed the comm. link – by the door, Striker nodded; he had to be in there.

“Okay,” Godwyn said aloud, moving slowly foot-over-foot, with her gun braced as she approached the door, “I think we should meet up with Inquisitor Roth downstairs…”

Striker’s hand moved to the door’s handle and carefully took hold of it one finger at a time.

“…could be he knows where Pierce would *go*.”

Striker forced the door and they burst into what looked like an antiquated private chapel complete with a small number wooden pews and a sacramental altar, yet there was no sign of Pierce save for glass fragments littering the floor under a shattered window pane. He’d escaped.

Godwyn swore loudly. She’d lost it – she’d screwed it up! Her biggest chance yet to find out what Strassen was up to, and she’d lost it. Slamming the stock of her gun against the window sill, she cursed again. Pierce could be anywhere in a city like this, and even with only a few minutes head-start he would already be beyond her reach.

Behind her, Striker removed her cap and wiped it against her brow with one hand while she weighed the pistol in the other.

“I think,” she began, but stopped short as a spray of her scarlet blood painted the wall behind her.

Leaping up from behind the altar, Pierce’s machine pistol was spitting madly across the chapel as Godwyn dove for cover behind the pews.

Victoria Striker, however, was still standing.

With a dull thud her side-arm dropped to the floor, and, from where she lay, Godwyn watched in horror as the storm trooper captain slowly collapsed to her knees and doubled over. Her eyes bulging as her hand gripped her throat to cover the spurting blood, Striker then crumpled sideways to the floor where she lay – her eyes wide and pleading – as her life blood bubbled up through her mouth and streamed from in between her fingers.

The machine pistol’s bullets still screamed overhead, but Godwyn couldn’t hear them – all she could hear was a voice scream Victoria’s name. A woman’s voice. Her voice.

She didn’t know if the storm trooper could hear her – she didn’t know if she could hear anything anymore – but as her red-haired head touched the ground, Godwyn could hear everything.

A bullet bit off a chunk of the pew right next to her ear, and Godwyn flung herself back down onto the chapel floor before firing blindly back over at the altar with her pistol. One shot – then two more – she scrambled across the room as low as she could to get closer to Striker: Victoria wasn’t moving.

Pierce was up again and shooting – blasting more holes through the pew she was hiding behind – but Godwyn had to reload; her last magazine of six shots. She heard a break in the fire and aimed over the pew – blasting an ornamental candlestick in half as Pierce quickly dropped himself flat behind the altar.

F*ck him. Shifting her aim, she squeezed the trigger twice more and started putting wholes through the altar – aiming for where she thought he’d be.

The machine pistol popped back up to fire blindly from behind cover, but another shot sent it scrambling back.

Two shots left.

The gunfire was deafening in the small confines of the chapel.

She blew another fist-sized hole through the front of the altar.

One shot left.

“Godwyn! Godwyn!”

At the head of ten armoured shock troopers and carrying a heavy shotgun, Lord Inquisitor Roth charged into the office outside of the chapel and directed his men to cover as the gunfight roared in the adjacent room.

“In here!” Godwyn called, expending her last bullet to keep Pierce’s head down. “Striker’s been hit!”

Directing two of his men forward into the chapel to recover the Captain, Lord Roth charged in after them and threw himself down beside Godwyn.

Pierce, knowing he was cornered, stopped firing.

“Well done, Godwyn! Well done!” the Lord Inquisitor congratulated her, hardly able to keep the excitement from his face as he squeezed her shoulder tightly.

She thought she would have felt more elated, knowing that Pierce was in their hands, but instead Godwyn just felt cold. She glanced back at Striker as the Lord Inquisitor continued to clap her on the back; his men were starting to bring her out, but she wasn’t moving, and her eyes were empty.

“Inquisitor Roth? Is that you?” Pierce’s called over the altar, and Godwyn took some satisfaction in noting the absence of a swagger in his voice.

“Inquisitor Pierce, it is over now,” Roth called back, “you can come with me.”

“He can what?!” Godwyn spun around, but when she met the Lord Inquisitor’s eyes she saw that the excitement was gone, and that a new look had taken its place when he looked at her: regret.

“I’m sorry, Godwyn,” he said, but before she could form the words for a reply she felt a sharp pinch on her neck, and looking down she saw the needle.

Her stomach tightened and her spine tingled, and as the needle came out she felt her fingers open and her prized pistol fall with a thump to the floor.

Why? The words formed on her lips but no breath escaped them as her legs turned to jelly beneath her, and her back was no longer strong enough to support her own weight.

Why? Roth gently caught her head behind the neck and lowered her slowly down to the floor as her strength vanished and her mind swam.

Why? She looked up into his eyes as the world grew darker with hers, but she couldn’t find an answer in them.

“I am sorry it has to be like this,” he said, then stood up and addressed someone she could no longer see.

“Take this one to my personal transport and take the other to Angel of Mercy… see if you can keep her alive...”

Other voices said other things she could no longer understand until everything faded from her mind, and she knew only darkness.

 

 

-----------------

 

Plot twist anyone? I'd definately like to hear some responses to this.

Is it heating up like I said it would? Are things starting to come together now that Roth has shown his hand? Is the story maintaining the quality you expected? I would be much obliged if you would let me know!

 

-L_C

[Ice warrior]

Excellent, Brilliant... actually i am out of words. ;)

Since I have finally managed to read the fallen saint and catch up with this story, I finally have some time to add something.

 

In truth this story is addicting and fun to read.

You have kept good balance with the amount of talking and killing, balance which seems to be underrated by BL :teehee:

 

Actually only downside is the way how you display the main-character. She seems to be quite newbie for an inquisitor, and the task at hand seems quite hard for any inquisitor.

In addition Godwyn's personality seems to be more like school girl who works as a part-time detective, rather than cold and calculative inquisitor who does not want to show his weaknesses to anyone.(for example lack of knowledge)

 

Furthermore, gadgets that the Godwyn carries seems to be quite poor for task at hand. Hand-crafted bolt pistol is not the best weapon to apprehend a man, since u can't hit the guy with gun of that calibre, if u want to keep him alive.

 

keep up the good work!

 

-IC-

[Lady_Canoness]

Ice Warrior, first of all, thanks for reading! I am very pleased that the Inquisition is shaping up to your expectations!

Though you do make some excellent points about Godwyn - points I will definately work to remedy going forward.

 

In this work (the Inquisition) I've really tried to make her seem like she's new at all this, and have been trying to strike a balance between an average Imperial citizen and a full blown Inquisitor. Excellent note on her personalilty, however - I likely made her seem *too* new at this. How would you say that this is revealed? In your opinion, could this be changed without gutting the story? If possible, I'll try to change that in a later revision.

 

As for the gadgets, I am of the opinion that Inquisitors have no 'standard issue' kit, and typically pick up things as they go along (armour was a start) though in future works including Godwyn, she will have more nifty things.

 

At this late point in the story, I am really taking suggestiongs and comments into account for work on a sequel ;)

 

-L_C

[Ice warrior]

Excellent note on her personalilty, however - I likely made her seem *too* new at this. How would you say that this is revealed?

 

Revealed? Hmm... Firstly it seems that Godwyn does not make her own decisions/ conclusions, and if she does, she seeks approval for them, either from Roth or from her team mates.(mainly Aquinas)(really non-inquisitoric way of handling things.)(there is a difference to be a inquisitive and inquisitor)

( It is as if a conscript gets promoted to regiment general before his first battle and the only way to do something is to ask question from all around you. :D )

 

She seems to be a person who nods her head in approving matter and says " Well done Watson. I think there is nothing more for me to do, so take a zip of brandy and head to bead. "

 

Secondly she doesn't keep secrets, which is quite odd for an inquisitor.

 

I think that you can make her more like an inquisitor, by making her more secretive.

Now as Roth's side is revealed, you could make her(Godwyn) more cautious (cold & calculative) what to reveal to her team(or to anyone on that matter), since there is no way to make sure who is under Roth's payroll.

Furthermore, Now, since Striker is wounded and Roth has switched sides the reality of the life(Imperium) might hit Godwyn and change way she act in the future.

 

Still, it is important to make sure that your inquisitor has a personality of her on. Even if all inquisitors are brainwashed detectives/executioners/prosecutors... It still does not mean that their minds work, as if they were clones.

 

-IC-

[Lady_Canoness]

Good points, Ice Warrior, and yes indeed I will make Roth's true colours have a significant mark as the Imperium is revealed to no longer be largely black and white with obvious shades of grey (part 16, which I am working on, should work on illustrating this).

 

With a sequel already in the conceptual stages, I will work with your points while reforming characters!

[Dinks]

I have just copied this entire story so far into a word doc to read later, i can't wait!

[Lady_Canoness]

I do hope you enjoy it, Dinks - because it is a BEAST on Word!

[Lady_Canoness]

Hot off the press comes part 16 of the Inquisition.

 

*BE WARNED* Some sections of this part may be uncomfortable to readers as it depicts what torments befall Godwyn at the hands of her captors in some detail. No gore or vulgarity, but some readers may find it uncomfortable/disturbing.

 

*THAT BEING SAID* This part also advances the plot in a significant way, and answers questions readers may have found themselves asking.

 

So here it is!

 

*part 16*

 

At first there was light. No meaning, no reason – no shape or substance – just light. She could see Something.

Then came sound. A plain, white noise that encompassed all and was so total that it was either deafening or just on the edge of hearing.

After came thought – consciousness – enough to put it all together.

A long strand of drool hung from her open mouth and was pooling itself into her lap. She blinked. Her eyes stung as if on fire. She closed her mouth and her tongue cut her drooling saliva off at the source.

Memories. Where was she?

She remembered Pierce, and Striker falling. She remembered Strassen… even though he hadn’t been there. And she remembered Roth – yes, Roth; the man who had betrayed her.

She blinked again, and heard her own breath escaping from her lungs in the form of a long, undulating groan. A rough pain extended from her lower back up her spine and into her neck. Straightening up, she felt unparalleled relief as her tight muscles finally relaxed and she rested against something welcomingly cold and straight.

Her eyes slowly adjusting to her mind, and she started to see things more clearly. Her body was sitting beneath her in a large metal chair wearing the white frocked blouse she wore next to her skin, as well as her familiar dark trousers. She could even see her fingers start to move against the flat metal armrests.

She suddenly felt the urge to rub her eyes, but found that she could not: her arms – as well as her legs – were bound fast to the chair with tight steel braces that ran the length of her forearms and shins.

She swallowed. Her mind fumbled behind her eyes as everything started to make sense.

He’d stabbed her with a needle, she remembered, and she’d fallen unconscious.

She tried to move her limbs, but to no avail – the steel held fast.

Panic rising in her throat, Godwyn quickly turned her head from side to side atop her sore neck – frantically looking for something familiar. White walls, white ceiling, tile floor, and a large welded steel door – not the familiarity she was looking for. She was a prisoner, and this was an interrogation cell.

In what could have been seconds or hours, the latch on the door was engaged with a resounding clunk, and the door swung inwards on greased hinges. Two men – one short and broad, and the other of a more average build – stepped into the room, followed by a hovering servo-skull that trailed loose cabling behind it like the remnants of its spinal cord. Both men were dressed in long storm coats, and each had an Inquisitorial rosette attached to their person.

Lord Inquisitor Roth and Inquisitor Pierce had come to see her.

“Godwyn, I believe you deserve an explanation,” Lord Roth said as if consoling a subordinate as he approached her with measured steps while the servo-skull hung at his back and Inquisitor Pierce took a position further back to the right of the door. “Doubtlessly you think I have betrayed you, and I would like an opportunity to explain my actions – not because I have to, but because I think you deserve to hear them.”

Godwyn had nothing to say to him, but if her visage could speak it would be disparaging his ancestry.

“You’re wasting your breath, Vance,” Pierce quipped from behind him in a voice that suggested he was jostling a long-time friend. “She doesn’t want to hear you.”

Roth held up a hand to ask for patience, but Godwyn cut in abruptly:

“Vance? So you’re on a first name basis with the ‘rogue Inquisitor’?” Godwyn spat at him vehemently. “You’re nothing but gutter-scum, ‘Lord’. A common traitor just like him! I can’t believe I trusted you!”

Pierce was chuckling at her outburst, but Roth looked genuinely dismayed.

“This is no betrayal,” Roth said slowly.

“Really? Maybe you should sit in the chair and see if you still think that!”

Pierce clapped his hands, though Roth shook his head;

“Fiery and beautiful to boot!” Pierce said with a jovial grin as if watching a spectacle. “I can see why old Isaac was so taken by her.”

Roth ignored him; his attention still directed at Godwyn.

“Cassandra…”

“Don’t talk like you know me!”

“Shut up and listen!” Roth reared furiously, suddenly pulling himself up and becoming more foreboding a presence so that even Pierce dropped the smile from his face and was silent.

“Everything I have done is in the name of duty!” he snapped, though his wrath was quickly brought back into check. “I did not betray you, Godwyn: I used you – I used you because I needed to get to Strassen.”

“You had me looking for my mentor already. You expect me to believe that this has anything to do with that?” she challenged him, though by the very tone of his voice she could tell that it was unlikely that the Lord Inquisitor was lying to her now.

“There is more to this than you know – much more,” Roth corrected her, but Pierce was shaking his head again:

“I still protest your notion that she needs to know this,” he said as if repeating an argument he and Roth had endured numerous times.

“My reasoning stands,” Roth turned to end the discussion with the other Inquisitor; “she needs to know because Strassen needs to know that she knows.”

Pierce conceded in favour of the Lord Inquisitor and allowed Roth to continue uninterrupted.

With a heavy sigh, Lord Roth looked Godwyn in the eye and began:

“You were never meant to find Inquisitor Strassen,” Roth told her; “he is far too brilliant a man for anyone – even one who knew him like you did – to find unless he wishes it, and we are fairly certain that he does not.”

“Then why did you send me after him?” Godwyn demanded through gritted teeth.

“Be silent and I will tell you,” he said – the servo-skull hovering closely over his shoulder with its eyes fixed on Godwyn.

“As you learned when first looking into the disappearance of your mentor, Isaac Strassen was dismayed with the state of the Imperium and the sector in particular. The corrupting power of greed, indifference, and apathy was everywhere, and he believed that it weakens the Imperium of Man as a whole and makes it vulnerable to the predations of enemies that would see us destroyed. He sought a way to make it right, and in that, he, Pierce and I, and several other Inquisitors shared a common goal.”

At the back of the room, Pierce’s eyes were focused on the floor at Roth’s feet, and his face looked lost in memory.

“We knew, however, that Imperial law was against us – that Inquisitors, governors, clerics, and countless others stood in our way – and would fight us tooth and nail to prevent we few of like mind from changing the Imperium for the good of all.

“We would not be stopped, however, and chose Panacea and this sector – a sector which prides itself as being an example of stability for others to follow – to be the center of our efforts: if we could be successful here, then the rest of the Imperium would turn much easier. None-the-less, with only a handful of Inquisitors, there was little we could hope to achieve, and we would need the equivalent of a miracle to help us strike key points from which change could be made. Tenantable, as you saw, was one of those points. The governor you threw from power was the culmination of the change we sought to bring on that world. That one world is hardly enough, however, and long before we began there, we were looking for a way to better achieve our ends.”

He paused, rubbing his fingers along his chin as he paced momentarily back and forth before Godwyn to gather his thoughts.

“That is where Inquisitor Felix came into the picture,” he continued; “her study into the eldar had revealed ancient ruins of the eldar webway in this sector, and would have provided us with a flawless means to carry out change across the sector with no danger of exposing ourselves or our intentions. To that end we captured Inquisitor Felix, and Pierce, Strassen, myself and one other Inquisitor took her to Trajan’s Deep to find out everything she knew.”

Godwyn looked at him in wide-eyed disbelief of what she was hearing, but Roth assured her that everything was true.

“Yes, Godwyn,” he added; “I was at Trajan’s deep, and it was on my word that the records there were altered.

“It was on Trajan’s Deep, however, that Strassen had a change of heart. Perhaps he thought we were too hard on Felix, but on that last day of interrogation – the day you saw on the records – he took the information we needed from Felix, killed her, and kept it for himself. And, by the time we discovered what he had really done, he had already made good his escape and went into hiding where no-one could find him.”

Pierce said something Godwyn did not catch, but Roth agreed with a sombre nod of his head.

“That, Inquisitor Godwyn, is how we came to you. Raiding Strassen’s holdings that he had abandoned in his flight, we found what looked like a last testament that he meant for you to hear one day. Taking it, we altered the testament to better suit our needs, and sent for you to come and claim it, with the idea of sending you on a mission to find your mentor. Fortunately for us, you accepted without question.

“What you have done since then, is expose yourself to what we are fighting for. You have seen the corruption, and you have seen what ends we will go to. You are now one of us, and an important piece of the bargain in our efforts to make Strassen return to us what he stole.”

Grinning malevolently, Pierce came forward until he stood next to Roth, and Godwyn had a sinking feeling about what would come next.

“And Striker? And my team? Were they just part of the deal too?” she demanded, looking furiously from one to the other even as her stomach started to churn inside her.

It was Roth who answered, though he was slowly retreating to the back of the chamber and leaving Godwyn to face Pierce and the hovering servo-skull.

“As far as your team are concerned, you have been killed in action trying to apprehend a dangerous felon in the same battle that critically wounded Captain Striker. She has been moved to intensive care at Angel of Mercy, and your team has been disbanded.”

“Bullsh*t!” Godwyn screamed after him, her eyes avoiding Pierce who was getting uncomfortably close to where she was trapped against the steel chair. “Aquinas won’t leave me! My team won’t let this happen!”

“I’m afraid they will,” Roth answered, now standing beside the cell door. “Brother Aquinas has been reassigned, and knows nothing of your true fate.”

Breathing heavily through her teeth and with no more words to hurl at the traitor Lord Inquisitor, Godwyn looked up at Pierce, who wore an unnerving smile on his face as he looked down at her body with hungry eyes.

“Touch me,” she threatened, her voice quaking with rage, “and I swear to the Emperor above that I will murder you slowly!”

Pierce looked at her sweetly, and started to casually unbutton his coat.

“See this servo-skull?” he said, gently folding his coat and setting it down on the floor. Godwyn’s eyes glanced up at the floating skull – its red eyes blinked back.

“It has been recording everything since we entered this room, and will continued to do so.” He leaned forward so that their faces were level. “Everything I do to you will be duplicated and sent to your dear mentor as added incentive for him to cooperate with us.”

Godwyn was quaking in both fear and anger – something which seemed to only further excite Pierce. “He’ll never see it!” she spat, her voice fracturing. “Whatever you do to me, it won’t work!”

Pierce considered her words with a look of nostalgia on his face. “Even if he doesn’t,” he said, running his fingers along the side of her cringing face, “someone as pretty as you will make a very nice addition to my collection.”

She spat in his glib face, but Pierce didn’t even wipe it off – he just continued to smile innocently like a cherub.

“Vance! PLEASE!” Godwyn started to beg. “Don’t let him do it!” But Roth did not listen to her pleas; merely shaking his head into his hand.

“Quite the fiery one indeed,” Pierce chuckled. “I would imagine that Isaac had quite a bit of fun tussling with you.” His hand cupped the swelling of her left breast and squeezed it hard. Godwyn lunged at him with her head, but Pierce dodged back, letting her go and laughing softly to himself.

“My, my – you and I will have great fun together…”

At the back of the room, Roth finally caved: “Dear Throne, Pierce! Do I *have* to hear this?”

“Very well…” Pierce agreed disappointedly, and straightened himself back up. Godwyn’s chest was heaving like a bellows, and her eyes darted furiously between her captors.

She was still looking at Roth, however, when Pierce spun on the spot and smashed her across the face with the back of his hand.

Reeling as her head banged against the back of the chair, lights seemed to flash before her eyes as Godwyn slipped back into unconsciousness and the world became black.

 

* *

 

Part of him knew that this day would come, but that didn’t make him any more prepared for it.

Standing in the cramped quarters of Godwyn’s cabin aboard Meridian, Sudulus dabbed at his puffy, watering eyes with a neckerchief and blew his nose. No, he wasn’t ready for this – he turned and left her cabin alone, and walked with small steps back through the empty shuttle to the main hold.

Grant and Lee had gone to Angel of Mercy to see Striker and to try and find out about the Inquisitor’s death and the whereabouts of her body, but Sudulus hadn’t heard anything from them yet, and Aquinas… well he didn’t know where the space marine was either, but he doubted that he could be of any help now.

Dead.

The little man sat at table and held his head in his hands. He remembered Godwyn sitting here with the rest of her crew; he remembered her voice; he remembered her face.

Dead.

He started to cry all over again, and stuck the neckerchief back under his eyes.

They had been so surprised when they heard. Lee had been goading the Commissar into a game of Blind-Man’s Bluff while the officer was busy shining the pommel of his sword, and Sudulus had just returned from the port-side quarter-master while wondering what was taking Godwyn and Striker so long.

And that had been when it happened. When the missive came through from one of the Lord Inquisitor’s acolytes: that something had gone horribly wrong and that Victoria was in critical condition and that Godwyn was… dead.

Grant and Lee had left almost immediately, but Sudulus couldn’t go with them – he wasn’t ready to believe that she was already gone. Thirty-two and dead already.

What would happen, he wondered, now that she was gone? Where would her crew end up? Where would he end up?

She had never spoken about a final will and testament – if Inquisitors were allowed to have such things – or how she wanted to be remembered, if at all.

Maybe he would seek transit back to the Patroclus and see if Columbo had any place for him on his ship, or maybe that would leave his wounds open so that they would never close. Maybe he could return to Tenantable – to see if he could work for the good of the people there. Whatever he would do, he could not stay on this world or on this ship. They were tainted to him now.

He was still wallowing in his grief when Aquinas strode through the main hold like he was on a mission without so much as saying a word.

“Aquinas? Aquinas!” Sudulus called after him as he ducked into the starboard cabins without so much as turning to look at the savant who was getting up from the table to follow him.

The Librarian ducked into his cabin and retrieved something Sudulus could not see, but when he turned around in the cramped quarters, he gave the savant a hard look of disapproval.

“I take it you have heard about the Inquisitor?” he asked in a tone that bordered on reprimanding.

“I – I can hardly believe it…” Sudulus managed to reply with tears still rolling down his face and his jaw bobbing up and down several times too many.

“Good,” Aquinas nodded, and motioned for the little man to step aside as he marched back into the main hold, “you should never believe everything you are told.”

“Do – do – do you mean she’s… it’s not true?” Sudulus babbled after him as the Librarian was already on his way out of the main hold to the lower deck of the vessel.

“I do not believe she is dead, no,” Aquinas replied, looking back over his shoulder at the bewildered savant, “and I will need your help in finding her.”

The space marine disappeared from sight as he made to exit the shuttle, but Sudulus was stuck standing in a stunned silence.

“Standing there is not how you will be assisting me,” Aquinas called up from the lower deck, and Sudulus, giving his head a shake before drying his eyes, quickly scurried after the Librarian.

 

* *

 

 

Godwyn awoke staring at the ceiling of a cell with a throbbing pain in her head and the tangy taste of blood in her mouth. For several moments she did nothing aside from listen to the sound of her own breathing – slow, deep breaths that confirmed she was still alive… even if that was all she could hope for.

Stripping her naked, they had dumped her onto the cold floor of a tiny cell with no comfort and no dignity, and Godwyn was left alone to try and piece herself back together. Her lips were cracked and caked with dried blood, and sore bruises marred her body and stabbed her with pain as she gradually dragged her unresponsive form off the floor and curled into the corner farthest from the door. She’d been beat, though she didn’t know by who or how many times, and hot tears rolled down her cheeks and onto her reddened chest as she tentatively placed her hand between her own legs and felt herself recoil at the sudden pain she found there. She hurt all over her being, both bodily and spiritually, and felt as if her own skin was growing too tight for her to bear.

It wasn’t right, how this was happening to her, yet it was happening to her anyway, at the hands of what were supposed to be good upstanding men – men to whom lives were entrusted, how easily now they took that all away.

She shivered, and withdrew her hand from herself – instead wrapping her arms tightly around her legs and waiting for it to come to an end. It could not be that her misery would last forever.

Eyes were watching her from a slit in the door – cold and merciless, feeding off her suffering – but she did not look at them, and hid her feelings away in the corner so all they could see was a battered woman sitting cold and alone with her knees to her chest. The eyes did not move, but stayed peering into whatever privacy she tried to keep for herself.

After what seemed like hours (though in reality it may have been no more than a handful of minutes) with the eyes still watching her, Godwyn, using the wall for support, struggled to stand and walked barefoot with her body uncovered in full view of the eyes up to the door. When she stopped, she was face to face with her silent tormentor, and her eyes of pale blue looked back out through the door.

“Who is the animal now?” she derided them frigidly.

The servo-skull couldn’t answer, but its baleful red eyes continued to watch her.

 

Pierce returned two more times to molest her, and each time she struggled to fight him off, though ultimately she failed. He brought with him a shock-maul, and though he only menaced her with it at first, he showed no restraint and landed savage blows against her chest, back, and limbs. He was not kind, he was not gentle, and not a single human word would pass his lips from the moment he entered to the time he left after ravaging her senseless body.

Broken on the floor, Godwyn found her only thoughts being those of death as she slipped in an out of consciousness while the servo-skull looked on.

It had to end. It would end.

 

At some point the door of her cell clunked open again and she heard the rush of booted feet sweep over the floor towards her. In anticipation of Pierce’s savage attack, she tried to rise up in defiance, but a suffocating blackness quickly overwhelmed her as a bag was pulled over her head and a she was grabbed by more than two hands and lifted from the floor. She struggled and kicked, but the grips of her attackers were vice-like and firm, and she heard their boots scraping over the ground in quick succession as they bore her away to some new torment. Muffled words she heard also, quick and angular like bursts of static, as she was dumped unceremoniously to the ground and strong hands bound her wrists and ankles before lifting her up once again and carrying her off.

A harsh fabric was pushed against her skin, more voices, and a door was slammed. The feet were moving faster now, and her body was pulled and tugged as the owners of the hands sped up to carry her away.

More voices – louder now – but she still couldn’t catch what they were saying. She heard another door open, and Godwyn felt herself tossed onto a cushioned seat before an engine fired up and vibrations shook up her body as a the vehicle she was in started to move.

The blackness suddenly disappeared as the bag was pulled off of her head, and she started to sputter involuntarily as her eyes darted around madly trying to adjust to the partial twilight of her new surroundings.

“Be calm, you are safe now,” she heard a familiar voice say from above her as the vehicle sped through the night streets of Cornice.

[Aqui]

I figured that something like that was going to happen when I saw the warning for Chapter 16, and I think you dealt with it quite well. Never an easy subject to write about without either going too far or "trivialising" it. I'm a fast reader, and it still took me a fair time getting through all of it! Looking forward to Chapter 17 :)

[Lady_Canoness]

Thanks Aquilanus!

 

You are quite right that beat is all too easy to over-blow or trivialize in writing as it is (thankfully) something that most people have only experienced through media, and it is hard to write about something that one can't grasp.

However, I am very glad that you are enjoying the story thusfar, and it is good to know that part 16 did not throw the entire thing off balance!

 

-L_C

[hushrong]

Started to read your work and must say it is very enjoyable! Hopefully after a few thousand more words I will be all caught up!

[Lady_Canoness]

Thanks Hushrong - the whole deal is 84k words long at the moment, so you've likely got a lot to cover, but I'm glad you and others are liking what you are seeing!

[Lady_Canoness]

Part 17 arrives, meaning that part 18, followed by an epiologue, will be the conclusion of the Inquisition. You will see the end coming, and hopefully it will sign off the story of young Inquisitor Godwyn on a fitting note.

 

Until then, however, here is part 17, where we finally meet that man this story has revolved around.

 

*part 17*

 

“Isaac?” The question popped from her hoarse throat like a bubble breaking from the surface of water, but no answer was forthcoming from the back of the motor carriage as it moved swiftly through the dark city streets.

“Lie still and rest,” the voice assuaged her from beyond her sight, and what felt like a quilted blanket was laid over her so that it gently covered her eyes with its soft fabric. “There will be time to talk later, I promise you.”

Godwyn struggled helplessly against the blanket, but with her hands bound behind her back and her ankles similarly tied, her struggles were like those of an infant wrestling in the folds of its crib, and ultimately she was unsuccessful. The quilt was warm, however, and soft against her sore flesh, and, though her heart still raced within her chest, Godwyn slowly let her beaten body rest. The closeness and warmth of the quilt comforted her from the cold openness of the cell, and the movements of the vehicle underneath the young Inquisitor calmed her into a sense of safety where Pierce could no longer find her.

For the moment, she felt safe – as if the worst was over – and was rocked into a dreamless half-slumber as hours quietly drifted by outside the carriage windows.

 

The wilderness of Panacea was unbowed in its splendour as countless thousands of hectares of untamed viridian forests and emerald grasslands stretched as far north as the eye could see beyond the city limits of Cornice. The wilds were uniform in majesty save for the select smattering of skyscraping mining towers and astronomic arrays, and handful of other intrusions made by man. Few roads cut across this pristine landscape, though hidden away far from the white city towers were the luxurious lodges and retreats of the privileged, as well as numerous hideaways that catered to the urban appetite for pampered adventure. Yet despite the adventurous spirits of those who dwelt in the capital city’s ivory spires, there was much of the wilderness that was unexplored by the pampered adventurers, where no roads went other than those one made for oneself, and it was often said that an entire civilization could be living unseen under that alluring viridian canopy. There was no substance to these tales, however, and few ever took them for more than they actually were – stories of idle fancy – though there was no denying that one could vanish into the forests of green and live without leaving a trace… or at least not a trace anyone could find.

In short, they said, it was the perfect escape – the perfect way to get away from it all – and how one could hide under the city’s very nose.

 

Godwyn must have drifted off into a deep sleep under the quilted blanket, for when she next opened her eyes, she was no longer in the back of a moving motor carriage, but tucked under the white sheets of a warm bed with her limbs unbound and wearing a night-gown that was not her own.

“I took the liberty of making you more comfortable. I hope I was not overstepping my bounds.”

Godwyn sat up quickly in bed and propped herself on aching elbows upon hearing the same familiar voice she had heard earlier in the dark vehicle, though now it spoke to her in what looked like the modest interior of a one-room log cabin. The walls were of bare wood and undecorated save for the most Spartan of accessories, and several glass paned windows admitted light onto a worn wooden floor garnished by a single patterned rug. Her bed was nestled against the wall with a wardrobe standing next to the head, and a large trunk resting at the foot. There were cobwebs in the corners of the arched ceiling. Across the room, opposite from where Godwyn lay, was a small kitchen illuminated by a solitary glow-globe, though next to the kitchen was a large iron-work stove that warmed the air to a most pleasant temperature.

Sitting on a three-legged stool facing the stove, though looking over his shoulder towards the Inquisitor, was the owner of the voice she had heard. It was the man as she remembered him; wavy pepper-grey hair sitting atop an aristocratic old face with gaunt cheeks and deep, penetrating eyes.

Inquisitor Isaac Strassen sat before her in the flesh.

“Isaac…?” the name escaped as a breath on the air.

The venerable Inquisitor nodded slowly.

“Yes, Inquisitor Godwyn, it is I.”

A light of warmth, longing, and relief grew in her eyes upon seeing the man she admired most, though quickly her sense caught up with her, and the light grew dark with suspicion and distrust.

She retreated back from him, drawing herself up defensively against the wall.

“What have you done? Why am I here!?” she demanded, her eyes raking his old face with accusations.

Her old mentor made no move to defend himself against her doubts, but slowly turned his body to face her with his weathered old hands resting on his knees. “I have done what I should have done before. You are safe here, Godwyn.”

She shook her head fiercely and swallowed hard – her gaze darting around the cabin interior as the old man sat patiently on the three legged stool in the center of the room. “Why should I trust you? How can I know you aren’t lying to me like the others? Like Roth? You’re like all the rest!”

“Godwyn, I…”

“DON’T LIE TO ME!” she screamed at him, her chest rising and falling in a rage at the man who sat calmly before her. “I don’t know who you are! Don’t talk to me like you know me! I.. I…” hot tears of frustration, pain, and anger started to flood from her eyes, “I.. can’t trust you… I can’t let you!”

She wept into her hands as she pulled her knees tight up to her chest with her hair falling around her shoulder. Isaac Strassen waited patiently by, his eyes never wavering from looking upon his former student in concern, but his lips never parting to speak words that could not comfort her.

“Just… just leave me alone! I want to be alone!” she wailed through her hands as her body shook beneath her.

“You were alone in that cell,” Strassen said calmly. “You don’t want to be alone now.”

Godwyn did not answer, nor did she make any indication of having heard him as she buried her face beneath her arms, though when Strassen rose to his feet and ladled soup he had prepared on the stovetop into a wooden bowl she looked up, and accepted it without a word when he offered.

“You don’t know what they did to me,” she managed after several moments of silence in which Strassen sat back down facing his former student, and Godwyn began to relax as the warm broth entered her famished stomach.

In silence, Strassen made no comment to the contrary, though in the depths of his eyes she could see a mirror of her pain.

“What they did to you will not recur with me,” he stated softly, though there was no warmth or tenderness in his words – nothing that might get too close too soon.

Her red eyes watering, Godwyn studied his old face; she wanted nothing more than to believe him, but who he was – who she was – was irrevocably tarnished.

“How can I trust you anymore?” she asked him in little more than a desperate whisper.

His face held no answer, and she knew that none of his words could ever mend what had been broken in her.

“In three days time I will return to Cornice to right the wrong I allowed to happen,” he told her; “if, on that day, you wish to accompany me, I will not stop you.”

 

* *

 

At the time, Godwyn did not ask why he wished to wait three days to go back. She was finding it hard to think how she would feel three hours later, let alone three days, and everything she had come to expect as certain was starting to prove otherwise as her life seemed to unravelled around her.

Roth’s betrayal and Pierce’s savagery plagued her thoughts, as did her own helplessness before their perversion of duty. She needed to clean her mind as well as her body, to make herself whole again, to restore the balance of right and wrong in her mind, though the more she thought about it and reasoned around it the more she found herself lost in the morass of it all. She wanted to scream – to tear at herself with her hands and nails – to force it all back into place – to have everything make sense, but in frustration and anger she found nothing but a continuation of her torment.

The feeling of Pierce’s sweaty hands clutching her body still shivered over her skin whenever her clothing brushed against her, his hot breath was on every gust of wind that she felt against her neck of face, and the force of his body pressing against her shook up through her legs whenever she walked.

Many times she would trudge through the woods that surrounded Strassen’s retreat in hopes that walking beneath the living trees could help her forget what had happened between those unfeeling metal walls, or make her way through the meadows to the nearby lakeshore and submerge herself beneath the cool clear waters until she started too feel as if her body could forget the pain Pierce had inflicted and that her skin could once again be her own. It felt as if it helped – helped her feel like herself again.

Isaac, while she did this, would remain at a comfortable distance. Never getting too close, but not leaving her to guess where he was, and never trying to guide her on a path she could only set for herself.

He’d made himself a life here, in the wilds of Panacea, and though she never asked when or why he had made his forest home, when she looked at him she could tell that he had found a measure of peace that could not otherwise be found by people like them. By Inquisitors.

His cabin was as small on the outside as it was on the inside, and afforded no luxuries in technology greater than the single glow-globe he had installed over his kitchen. He grew his own vegetables in a lovingly cared for garden, crafted his own furniture that he arranged outside atop of a small cobbled patio, and even split the wood for his stove with a straight-edge axe.

He lived here anonymously, and when she looked upon him she did not see the mentor she had admired, nor the man she felt closest to, but instead she saw him for what he was: an old man who had found a small measure of peace in an otherwise unforgiving galaxy.

“Make no mistake,” he told her on the second night of her stay as they sat outside around a crackling fire-pit after the sun had retreated from the sky and the stars twinkled above them in their millions, “I am no Inquisitor. I have forfeited that privileged.”

Cassandra Godwyn, wrapped in a blanket with her blond hair tumbling around her shoulders, watched the reflections of the firelight dance across the wrinkles of his face. She said nothing to her old mentor, but could see even now that his mind was heavy, and that he had something he wished for her to hear.

“I believed that my actions would bring good to the Imperium, and that as an Inquisitor I would safeguard Men against the horrors of the galaxy. That my sacrifices would save the lives of billions.” He looked across at her and smiled faintly as she sat huddled by the fire. “The curse of age, however, is hindsight, and it took too long to see that I had wrought more ill than good.”

“Is it true, what they told me? About Inquisitor Felix?” she asked, and Strassen nodded, closing his weary old eyes and facing back to the flames.

“Why did you do it?” Godwyn needed to know.

Strassen breathed deeply, and answered her with his eyes still closed. “I know regret,” he said, “and the devils I saw in others blinded me from the devil looking out of the mirror. I have become so accustomed to seeing men as heretics and heretics as men, that I had forgotten that I too am a man.”

“You are no heretic.”

“No,” he shook his head reflectively, “perhaps not. My actions are much more damning because I saw the justice of my deeds. I set the trap for Inquisitor Felix to be captured. I loosed the likes of Pierce and Roth upon her. I killed her when the pain became too much to bear. All of this I did willingly and without coercion, and it was too late when I realized the horror which I had sown. If ever their plan was to succeed – a plan I helped create – I fear that the sector would rot from its heart outwards regardless of their seemingly noble goals.”

“And yet you sit here and do nothing?” the scathing words erupted from between her lips before she could withhold them. Strassen did not seek to deny her, however, and answered her question as if it were just and deserving of an answer.

“I deny them their greatest asset,” he replied with no ounce of hubris in his voice, “I deny them me and the information they hold. Fool that I am, I thought it would be enough to deal the deathblow to their schemes before they had truly begun to put them into motion… though when I saw that they had brought you into their fold, I knew that I had not done enough.”

For a time they left it at that, and both master and student sat in quiet contemplation underneath the stars watching the crackling fire while the sounds of the night-time forest surrounded them.

“How did you find me?” she asked eventually, though she did not meet her mentor’s eyes when she spoke.

Strassen let the question stand between them in the firelight and frowned. It was only when he felt her eyes upon him that he answered.

“I have more eyes and ears across the sector than Roth or his minions could ever know,” he said, “and though it took time to find you, I knew that I could not let what happened to Felix happen to you.”

“But why didn’t you try to contact me? To warn me about what was happening?” she longed to know as spectres of her earlier confusion and misunderstandings crept back into her mind with questions she had left unanswered.

“I thought it too dangerous,” he said apologetically.

“Too dangerous?” Godwyn repeated quietly, before her face contorted into a scream: “I was beat!”

The wave of her fury washed over him, but the venerable Inquisitor would not be stirred; “And had I warned you, do you think either of our fates would have been any better?”

He shook his head slowly from side to side as her momentary flame of anger subsided: “No, we would have been ruined. As soon as you were brought into this, there could be only one course of action. It was not a perfect plan, and it has not left you unscarred, but believe me Godwyn, for it is salvageable, and I can right the wrongs that I allowed to occur.”

It wasn’t enough, she shook her head at the ground as she leaned her face into her hands – it never would be – but he was right: she would have only lost more if he had told her sooner. It had to be this way, even if she suffered because of it.

“I want to go with you tomorrow when you confront them,” she said at last. “I want my vengeance.”

Isaac Strassen’s withered old head nodded in the orange glow of the flames. “And you shall have it,” he said. “On my soul, you shall have it.”

 

---------

 

Questions and comments are always welcome, and constructive ideas will likely find themselves worked into a sequel.

 

-L_C

[Lady_Canoness]

*part 18*

 

A cold mist had descended in the early morning of the third day and blanketed the ground in sparkling dew when a black tinted motor carriage slowly drove up the winding dirt road through the trees and stopped in the small clearing of around Strassen’s cabin.

From where she stood waiting with a single booted foot resting on one of the hand crafted chairs, Godwyn watched from the other side of the vegetable garden as two men disembarked from the vehicle, and, with the dull echo of slamming doors reverberating around the silent trees, approached Strassen as he waited at the edge of the small clearing facing away from her with his hands held expectantly behind his back. The men were unassumingly dressed in drab, insulated coats, and had hard weather-beaten looking faces that shifted and strained as they spoke with quick tongues to her mentor. Strassen would occasionally nod or say a few words back, but most of the conversation was one-sided and escaped into the still forest despite Godwyn’s best attempt to catch on to what they were saying. She didn’t need to hear their words to tell that the men were uneasy, however – one even seemed outright nervous – and eventually the more animated of the two broke off the conversation and entered the cabin.

She would not see him come back out.

The other man said a few more words to Strassen, appeared to come to an agreement, and walked back to the motor carriage – leaning heavily on the vehicle’s engine covering when he got there.

Isaac turned and waved her over. It was time to go.

 

The motor carriage bounced and shuddered as it slowly trundled down the winding dirt road away from Strassen’s retreat, and the silence inside the vehicle matched the hush of the surrounding forest as the first spears of morning sunlight slid silently through the gloom. They had been driving for just under an hour, Godwyn reckoned, but a word had yet to be spoken.

The driver, sitting alone in the front seat after his comrade had disappeared into the cabin and not remerged, watched the road in a muted silence over his whitened knuckles. Occasionally, Godwyn would see his eyes dart into the surrounding trees as she watched him discreetly in the rear-view mirror, but so far as she knew he never saw anything in the wild underbrush.

Looking, but not seeing.

The forest outside the window looked cold and damp as her eyes passed over it. The driver was nervous; perhaps even scared. What was he expecting to see?

Beside her on the cushioned back seat, Isaac’s attention was focused ahead through the forward window on the road, and she could just see the slight movements in his eyes as he looked everywhere other than out the side windows.

Reaching across the gap in the seat that separated them, Godwyn placed a gloved hand gently on his forearm and he smiled, resting his other hand on top of hers without looking.

The night before, Isaac had provided her with new clothing to replace what she had lost in captivity. A fitted armour-weave greatcoat as well as appropriate boots, gloves, and clothing, Strassen had also bequeathed upon her items of a more personal nature.

“There is only one Inquisitor in this room,” he had said as he pinned his Inquisitor’s rosette to her collar, “and I am not she.”

He had also given her his heavy pistol – the twin to the gun she had carried by her side for the past ten years, but was now lost along with the rest of her possessions that had been stripped from her – and the reassuring weight of the firearm now rested in a shoulder holster underneath the coal-black surface of her new coat.

Tears of happiness had seeped from his eyes as he gave her these things, and at the time he said it because he could finally look her in the eye knowing that there were no secrets that held him back. Godwyn accepted his heartfelt words gladly, though as she looked upon the wizened man she could not help but feel that there was another reason – a reason she could not bring herself to utter.

If Strassen had sensed anything with his otherworldly talents, however, he said nothing, and they continued on in silence until the black motor-carriage emerged from the thick forest trees and the capital spires of Cornice loomed above them.

 

A new day had dawned on Cornice.

Radiant sunlight sparkling off its white towers and illuminating its many skyways and streets, a population of millions rose in service of their planet and Emperor, and set the wheels of progress into motion to bring prosperity to their homes and glory to their planet.

From the window of the motor carriage, Godwyn watched as they passed by people along the roadsides: thousands of them, walking every which way alone or in pairs as they went about their daily lives. Entrepreneurs, clerks, shop-keepers, labourers, guardsmen – men who worked, men who thought, men who served, men who did none of those – some who walked fast, some more slowly, and others still who sat and stared at the sky as the city moved around them.

Theses were the People, she reminded herself as she watched them from her window, the ordinary people – the common man – the life blood of the Imperium. These people who didn’t know her, didn’t see her, and would never know if she lived or died: these were the people she and countless others fought to protect every day – the many for whom the few were be sacrificed.

“Do not wonder if you serve them or if they serve you,” Strassen said softly as his mind skimmed the surface of her thoughts even as he continued to look straight ahead. “For in truth it is neither,” he smiled somewhat airily; “The Emperor’s Will binds us to our fellow Men. Serve Him first, and in doing so you will serve them, and they you.”

The motor carriage drove on in silence through the bustling city streets until Strassen asked the driver to pull over to the curb not ten minutes later and promptly dismissed him.

Godwyn glanced questioningly across at her former mentor as the driver got out of the carriage and snapped the door shut behind him – the brief hubbub of noise that flowed into the cab as the door was opened vanishing as he closed it behind him and dissolved into the crowd.

“Why did we stop?” she asked. They were nowhere near the Imperial offices; in fact, she had no idea where they were when she looked at the buildings that rose around them outside.

Her old mentor exhaled deeply and looked distractedly out the window where a street performer had set up further down the curb and was beginning to juggle all sorts of sharp metal objects over his head. Godwyn ignored him even as Strassen continued to watch with a look of anticipation crossing onto his face.

“Everything will soon be in place,” he said with a tone of certainty that was not reflected by his features. He nodded to himself and quickly dropped his eyes from the juggler before glancing back up at the quietly waiting young woman.

The juggler was starting to attract a small crowd of onlookers, though they could still see him clearly from the carriage.

“Before we go, Godwyn, there are some things I would like to tell you,” he said at length. She shifted anxiously on the back seat of the carriage. There were too many people close-by, and the nervous tightening in her chest only served to make her feel even more like a target. Didn’t he know that they were horribly exposed on the street?

The juggler glanced over in their direction, though Strassen was preoccupied with words.

“I want you to know that of all my students, I think you are the most promising,” Strassen continued slowly, “not because of unique skills or affinities, but because I think you are a genuinely good person; something which the Inquisition is sorely lacking. I honour you for this.”

At any other time, Godwyn would have been moved beyond words, but the more she looked at the people passing by, the more she became certain that they were in danger.

“Isaac, is this the right time?” she asked testily as she glanced back over at the juggler who was now parading his routine up and down the sidewalk so that he was closer than he had been before.

“Yes. It is,” he replied bluntly. “Do you think I would place you danger like this?”

Godwyn tried to answer, but her mind was torn between watching the shifty street and her unmoving mentor.

Strassen seemed to understand her angst, but continued to assure her that there was no danger. “You have to trust me,” he said.

Godwyn steadied her nerves and eliminated all distractions from her mind as she had been trained to do, making Strassen her sole focus… and then the juggler walked right past the window behind him – dragging her eyes away with his brightly coloured clothes as he tossed the numerous bladed instruments high above his head.

“Godwyn…”

Her eyes darted back to the old man’s face.

“Lastly, I wanted to give you this,” he tucked his hand into the breast pocket of his coat and produced a small bundle of wrapped cloth, which he held for her to take. It was small, no bigger than the palm of his open hand, but when she picked it up she found it heavier than she expected and unwrapped the cloth around it with tentative figures as her old mentor looked on with an expectant smile on his face. Inside was a medallion made of burnished gold that depicted an ascendant eagle superimposed upon an embossed templar cross, and in whose talons was clenched a downwards pointing sword.

Eyes growing in wonder, she held in her hand the –

“Icon of the Just,” Strassen finished her thought with a warm smile.

Opening her mouth, she looked up at the old man in disbelief though it was a few seconds before any words came out:

“Y-you can’t give me this!” she protested in a whisper as she looked back and forth between her mentor and the Icon, but Strassen only chuckled softly in response.

“I can and I am,” he said, closing her fingers around the medallion and gently pushing towards her. “Emperor as my witness, I believe that you will prove worthy of it.”

Speechless, she bowed her head and reverently wrapped the medallion back into its cloth covering before tucking it safely into the inside breast pocket of her armour-weave coat.

When she looked back up, Isaac was no longer facing her and was once again looking out the window distractedly.

“Well now…” he mused aloud, “let’s see what this juggler can do…” He was chuckling to himself as he watched the street performer as if he had completely forgotten why they were there and that Godwyn was beside him, and she was about to say something when, suddenly, he pointed.

Her gaze followed his finger.

The street performer had finished his act and was bowing to the small gathering of applauding onlookers. Smiling and nodding, he placed his dangerous looking items onto the ground one at a time until all that remained in his hand was a single copper spearhead, and, after waving it around, thrust it skyward with an outstretched arm.

“And there is our signal,” Strassen nodded towards the juggler. “Now we can go.”

 

Boots on the pavement, the two Inquisitors stepped from the carriage and merged seamlessly into the passing foot-traffic without a head being turned in their direction. Buttoning his coat as he walked briskly along in time with the crowd, Strassen said nothing of where they were going and had Godwyn following him in an effort to keep herself from getting lost.

Unknown to Godwyn, they had stopped in Cornice’s financial district – the beating heart of Panacea’s planetary trade – and one of the most populated areas during the day. The sheer amount of people on the streets was suffocating as the press of bodies made maintaining one’s personal space nigh impossible, but, keeping her eyes locked on her mentor’s back, Godwyn navigated the crowd as best she could and followed him as he crossed the street at the base of a white skyscraper.

“This is the place,” he said, leading her off the skyway and through the glass doors into the tower.

“You’re certain of this?”

“Absolutely.”

Side by side they stepped out of the commotion on the street and into the tower’s mid-level foyer. Already twenty stories off the ground, the expansive entrance chamber was cool and quiet as the Inquisitors passed between rows of colossal columns that soared sixty feet high to touch the vaulted ceiling above as they made their way to the elevators.

“Where are they?” Godwyn asked as Isaac summoned the lift.

Strassen turned idly towards her – his calm to her disquiet – and looked back and forth across the foyer’s sparsely populated marble floors.

“On the top floor of this tower there is a restaurant,” he explained quietly to Godwyn’s questioning features; “that is where they are.”

“They are sure to be guarded,” Godwyn muttered in reply and her face darkening, but Strassen only smiled innocently.

“My people have made sure we have an opening,” he reassured her as the lift arrived with an automated chime and the doors parted.

“After you,” he waved her inside.

 

They waited in silence in the back of the elevator as the lift carried them and a host of talkative Panaceans sixty-four floors to the topmost level of the tower onto the elaborate terrace of the rooftop bistro.

Her stomach already somersaulting somewhere right beneath her throat, Godwyn looked to her mentor for a guarantee that they were in the right place as the others in the elevator filed out of the lift without breaking the stride of their conversation.

“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered to her with a warm face, as he followed the oblivious patrons from the lift, “everything will go as planned.”

Swallowing a deep breath, she went with him as he discretely slipped past the small queue of patrons waiting to be seated and stepped into the brilliant sunshine of the restaurant’s rooftop patio. There were at least one hundred tables, most of which were occupied, and several ornamental fountains and gardens. The gentle burbling of dozens of conversations sounded like water running down a creek, and it was with mounting angst that Godwyn realized that they were wasting precious seconds in the open without having any eyes on their targets. The gun under her coat felt heavy and her hands started to ache: this was taking too long.

“Over there,” Strassen murmured, directing Godwyn’s attention to a table farther across the patio and close to the banister with a view overlooking the city. Her eyes followed, and sure enough she saw them sitting unassumingly amidst the other diners like vipers hidden between reeds. Roth and Pierce – traitors, villains, fiends – the sight of them made her face grow tight with anger and set her blood boil.

Her right hand darted to the gun hidden by her chest, but Strassen shot her a warning look.

“You know what they did to me!” she snarled through gritted teeth as if challenging him to contradict her. “They die today!”

Her eyes filled with both anger and pain, Strassen did not deny her but urged caution:

“Wait for the opportune moment,” he calmed the flames in her eyes as she drew the gun slowly from its holster and held it low by her side. “Let the guilty know who comes for them.”

She looked at him with quizzical impatience, but he nodded slowly: they would do this his way.

“Imperial Inquisition!” she bellowed, pulling the rosette from her coat and thrusting it into the air as she trampled the murmuring conversations of the diners with a voice that brokered no dissent. “Everyone out! Leave – now!”

Like a flock of sheep hounded by wolves, the patrons fell away their tables with bleats of surprise and confusion as they fled for the exits, leaving behind them two men who remained seated amidst the abandoned tables.

Their meal interrupted, Roth was the first to stand, and wiping his mouth with a serviette, looked at the figures across the patio with an unreadable expression on his face.

Pierce remained seated, though his glowering features were far more readable as he leered resentfully at the newcomers.

“Isaac,” Roth spoke up, placing his napkin back down on the table beside his unfinished lunch, “I should have guessed that you were the one who plucked Godwyn out from under our noses. Regardless, it’s good to see that our efforts weren’t completely wasted and that we managed to draw you out after all.”

Godwyn’s gun was up in a flash, but Roth raised the palms of his hands to show he was unarmed and did not move from where he stood.

From beside her, Isaac Strassen cleared his throat. “I had hoped that my leaving would have served as indication that our plans ought not continue,” the venerable Inquisitor answered as he took several ambling steps forward with his hands held lightly behind his back, though he was careful not to obstruct the younger Inquisitor’s shot. “You must have realized that we went too far.”

“What I realized, Inquisitor Strassen,” Roth replied, slowly lowering his hands as his eyes lingered momentarily on Godwyn, “is that great sacrifices must be made for great good to be achieved. Leave your feelings out of it, Isaac. You’re getting hung up on the means instead of the end.”

“It is that type of reasoning that has caused such evils to occur before,” Strassen shook his head wearily, “and it is because of that flawed reasoning that I cannot abide your continued efforts towards this misguided goal. If I cannot stop you with my withdrawal, then you leave me little else in the way of choice.”

Roth laughed dryly, though Pierce continued to glare angrily at Strassen from where he sat.

“So this is it?” Roth mocked; “This is where you turn traitor and get your runt to shoot me? I had hoped you’d come to talk, Isaac, instead of coming to die.”

Anger flaring, Godwyn didn’t wait for another word and pulled the trigger on Inquisitor Roth only to be denied as a blinding flash of light disintegrated the bullet mere inches from his flesh. Overturning the table with a crash that sent food flying, Pierce pulled his machine pistol and ripped a long burst at the Inquisitors as he dove for cover.

Turning faster than thought, Strassen flung his former student backwards off her feet with a blast of psychic might and sent her bowling through abandoned furniture and skidding to a stop behind the cover of a concrete fountain as bullets sliced murderously through the air. Dazed but unhurt, she scrambled up off her back into better cover close behind the fountain just in time to hear Roth shouting orders to Pierce as the other man swore loudly:

“Finish her off, damn you! Don’t let her get away!”

The shooting had stopped, but Strassen was still out in the open. She yelled at him to get down, but he didn’t seem to hear her as he slowly turned in her direction on unstable feet. Their eyes met, and a loving smile spread across his creased old face, though it quickly vanished – drained along with the blood that gushed from the seven bullet holes torn in his chest.

Crying out in anguish as he crumpled to the ground, Godwyn hugged the low cover as Pierce sprayed more fire over her head.

“Kill her! Kill her!” Roth was shouting, but Godwyn found it hard to hear him – there was a roaring in her ears that seemed only to amplify the magnitude Strassen’s death, but as it grew louder she looked up just in time to see the bulky frame of Meridian rearing up over the side of the building with Lee Normandy grinning madly in the cockpit and Brother Aquinas crouching with Commissar Grant in the open hatchway of the lower deck.

Having spotted them, Roth was already sprinting across the patio to the far railing, though Pierce was turning to raise his weapon against Meridian’s crew.

Seeing her chance, Godwyn broke cover with her pistol raised in her outstretched arm and squeezed the trigger. With a roar the gun cannoned backwards in her hand as a single high-calibre bullet blasted across the open rooftop on a trail of fire and struck the hated Inquisitor Pierce just above the ear – disappearing inside his head for a fraction an instant before blowing through his brain and erupting from the other side of his head in a shower of gore that split his skull into shattered fragments and scattered them across the ground in a mess of pink and red. The headless body, as if surprised at its own death, flailed as it fell to the ground with a final thud – the machine pistol clattering from its dead fingers across the ground.

The gun smoking in her hand and the sound of Meridian’s engines screaming in her ears, Godwyn got up from behind the fountain and walked over to the body where she looked upon it with a grim satisfaction.

He was dead. The man who had beat her was dead – killed by her hand – though not before he’d killed Strassen. Screaming a curse, she shot him twice through the chest to sate her anger.

“Godwyn!” she heard Grant calling her name and looked up to see him in the Meridian’s side hatch and pointing to something behind her.

Roth.

She spun on her heels, but the Inquisitor Lord was nowhere to be seen. He’d made good his escape.

Grant was calling her name again, and as she turned he waved her madly towards the shuttle. Roth had gone over the side of the building, but he wasn’t out of her reach yet. Holstering her gun, she broke into a run; sprinting towards the tower’s edge as fast as she could as Grant and Aquinas urged her on and Lee brought the shuttle to hover as close in as he dared.

You can make it – you can make it!

Arms pumping, she leapt, planted one foot on the banister and propelled herself into the air – stretching out towards the arms of her teammates that were so close… but so far. Air rushed up against her face as she started to fall, but just on the very edge of hope she felt armoured fingers close around her wrist as Aquinas leaned out to catch her mid air and pulled her up into Grant’s waiting arms and onto her shuttle.

“We’ve got her!” Grant shouted up into the main hold from the lower deck as they hauled her to safety, and she saw the hem of Sudulus’ robes disappear from sight as he dashed into the cockpit to tell Lee.

Godwyn had never felt so relieved as to see their faces now and know that she was back with her squad, but with the pounding of her heart she also knew that Roth could not be allowed to escape.

“How did you find me?” she shouted to Grant over the roar of engines as Lee banked the Meridian to bring her around to the other side of the tower.

His eyes squinted against the rushing air and his storm-coat flapping wildly around him, the Commissar pointed to the space marine, but as Godwyn turned to him Aquinas merely nodded in response.

The city streets turning far below them, Lee pulled the shuttle round just in time to see Roth flying for the rooftop of a nearby tower using some anti-gravitational device on his person.

“Faster! We’ve got to get him!” she shouted, and from his braced position in the hatchway Grant readied his machinegun – hammering out a slew rounds as the Lord Inquisitor’s feet touched down on the tower and started to run.

“It is no use,” Aquinas said, somehow managing to make himself heard over the sound of the engines. “You will have to get closer to overcome whatever force-shielding he has.”

Grant ceased fire and cleared the hatchway as they passed overtop of the tower roof. “We can keep him from escaping,” Grant shouted as Lee brought Meridian low enough for a safe jump down.

Godwyn nodded and drew the heavy pistol Strassen had given her.

“The Emperor protects, Inquisitor,” Grant said, clapping her on the back. It was the last thing she heard before her boots hit solid ground and she rolled to her feet on the roof of the tower as Meridian lifted off to assume a covering position.

Unlike the rooftop restaurant, the tower Roth had fled to was topped by a narrow spire with no safety rails, and the numerous venting stacks and antenna arrays that shot skyward made for treacherous footing and a long drop to one’s death should a single step be misplaced.

Braving the perils, Godwyn rushed forward towards the nearest stack in a low run with her pistol braced in both hands. As dangerous as the footing was, the top of the tower provided Roth with ample cover to use in his escape, and, if he found a service-hatch before Godwyn found him, she was certain that he’d be beyond her reach in no time. She would have to make haste.

With a death-drop to one side with barely a meter of space to between her and the edge, Godwyn slid with her back to the wall around the outside of the tower as she looked every-which-way for a sign of the Lord Inquisitor. Thankfully she had never been afraid of heights, and as she reached the corner of the wall she jumped a small gap and found purchase between two stacks. If Roth was looking for a way to escape, then he likely would be trying to get to the base of the main spire, which meant climbing up through the numerous arrays and over into a narrow service passage hidden at the foot of the spire.

Keeping her pistol drawn, she wound her way through nests of delicate arrays and past corroded metal stacks until at last she found a small service ladder that led up and over a blind edge to the service passage. Placing a hand on the first rung of the ladder, Godwyn paused – Roth would have gone this way, most likely, but if he had decided to wait for an ambush this would be the ideal spot.

She looked around over her shoulders: there was no other way forward. It was a chance she would have to take.

Holstering her pistol, Godwyn hauled herself to the top of the ladder and peered over the lip.

Nothing.

There was the service hatch, but it looked as if it was firmly closed. It could be that she’d found a shorter way to the center spire, or Roth had otherwise been delayed, but she doubted it.

Hopping over the lip, she jumped the few feet down into the passage and landed on all fours with a slight thump, but just as she was about to get up she saw a pair of boots step out from behind a corner directly in front of her.

“Godwyn.”

Still crouched, she looked up into the glowing barrel of a plasma pistol aimed directly at her face with the eyes of Lord Inquisitor Roth staring at her down the weapon’s sights.

Her hand darted instinctively for the holstered pistol, but the time it took her arm to reach into her coat was more than enough for the Lord Inquisitor’s finger to pull a trigger.

The plasma pistol fired with an ear-splitting screech and the light of a sun blinded her eyes as she felt the left side of her head burn as if branded by molten metal, and…

And nothing.

She was still alive.

The pistol charged up for a second shot, but this time Godwyn was faster. Her gun was up in second, and with a roar like a cannon Roth was blasted backwards off his feet as the high-calibre slug thudded into his chest at point-blank range with the force of a shot-cannon.

Stunned, nearly deaf, and with a screaming pain consuming the left-side of her head, Godwyn got numbly to her feet and dragged her boots over the metal flooring of the service passage until she stood over the Lord Inquisitor.

Flat on his back but still alive, Roth was coughing up blood when he saw Godwyn’s shadow fall over him and the gaping black barrel of the heavy pistol level itself at his face.

“How…?” he croaked as Godwyn kicked at the plasma pistol from his grasping fingers with a sweep of her foot.

Her head felt like it was about to split in two, but even over the pain she could feel the Icon of the Just burning inside her breast pocket.

Blood gurgling up through his mouth with each struggle for breath, Roth bared his teeth and spat a gob of blood at his executioner:

“You don’t know what you’re doing!” he snarled vehemently.

Looking away from his face, Godwyn turned her gaze skyward. Up above her the sky was clear and brilliantly blue in the mid-day sun, and beyond wisps of violet cloud she could imagine closing her eyes and seeing the depths of space as if she were back aboard the Patroclus looking out into the beauty of the void. Somewhere out there were millions of worlds inhabited by billions of souls who lived out their lives in countless different ways. She’d never know the tiniest fraction of these people or see the planets on which they lived, but even in a galaxy so vast she knew that the light of the Immortal Emperor never faded, and that she could live for a thousand years and still know her duty before the Golden Throne.

They were bound by the Emperor’s Will, and through serving Him did they serve each other.

“Yes,” she answered to the sky above, “I do.”

And pulled the trigger.

[Lady_Canoness]

*Epilogue*

 

“It is the failing of many Inquisitors to study the enemy but not themselves.”

-Inquisitor Cassandra Godwyn

 

Though this story ends when Inquisitor Godwyn pulled the trigger to kill Lord Inquisitor Roth, the story of the Inquisition is never truly finished, for it is only through vigilance, sacrifice, and the boundless determination of the righteous that His realm is kept safe from the enemy within, without, and beyond.

 

* *

Hercule Columbo, though no longer under the orders of the late Lord Inquisitor Roth, remained close friends with Inquisitor Godwyn and was more than happy to provide her with a home-base aboard the Patroclus as her duties carried her between the stars. As always their relationship was amiable, and would remain so throughout the years they spent together regardless of where they were going or how long it took to get there. In a life that always changes, the Patroclus and her Master would stay the same and provide the solid backbone that every successful Inquisitor needs.

 

Captain Victoria Striker would never fully recover from the wound she suffered in the Archive at the hands of Inquisitor Pierce, and though her spirit remained unabashed she would never again see active combat. Retiring from Godwyn’s service, she was granted a position as a combat instructor at the Schola Progenium. She and Godwyn would remain friends, however, and though years would often pass without seeing or hearing from one another, neither of them would ever forget the times in which they served together.

 

Commissar Markus Grant also retired from Godwyn’s service, and with her aid was granted a commission with the Panacean PDF so that he could remain close to Captain Striker for the remainder of his career. The love between Striker and Grant only ever grew stronger, and eventually they married and he fathered her first and only child, a girl, who they named Cassandra in memory of their friend who brought them together.

 

Lee Normandy, forever tied to Meridian, would remain with Inquisitor Godwyn for years to come, and through thick and thin would conduct himself with the same boundless enthusiasm he always had from flaunting rules and enjoying the little things of life. He would still tell everyone he met that his career was over, though in time he realized that in fact it had just begun.

 

Sudulus would also remain faithfully by Inquisitor Godwyn’s side and carry on the vital task of learning as much as he could and relaying it in as much detail as was possible. Life in the service of the Inquisition is hard, however, and he like many others will have his share of burdens over the years to come. Regardless, the little man was forever faithful and was as much a part of Godwyn’s retinue as the Inquisitor herself.

 

Brother Librarian Orion Aquinas, after learning the fate of his long-time friend and seeing that the treasons of Roth and Pierce would never be fulfilled, held his duty to Inquisitor Godwyn to be complete, and withdrew from her service to return to the Deathwatch and eventually his original chapter – the Raven Guard. They would meet again on several occasions throughout her career, however, and each time they worked together would be a learning experience for the Inquisitor as the Librarian’s wisdom proved time and time again to be beyond question. The space marine had many years ahead of him yet, and time would see him become powerful indeed.

 

As for Inquisitor Cassandra Godwyn, well, her story is not yet over, even though this particular tale has come to an end.

 

-----------------------

 

So ends the Inquisition. I hope you have enjoyed the read, and I look forward to reading your comments!

[hushrong]

the whole deal is 84k words long at the moment

 

THAT...is a lot of words!

 

Been reading some other things here and there but got up to part 6 and I am still thoroughly enjoying it.

 

I've only read one other piece involving the Inquisition, that and your work are making soften up to the organization.

[Ice warrior]

brilliant!

It is nice to see that you managed to tie all the lose end and make a proper closure.

Although, after chapter 17 I knew already what is going to happen.

 

I am eagerly waiting for next story, hopefully we will see it someday.

 

-IC-

[Aqui]

I liked the story a lot. I could imagine what was happening, which is always difficult to convey without having to go into too much detail.

 

I'll be keeping an eye out for the next one :eek (hint ^_^ )

[Papewaio]

Thanks very much for brainstorming that. I liked The Inquisition hugely, not the least reason of which it showed a softer side to that organisation with Godwyn.

 

Echo of Aquilanus; I most certainly am hoping for a sequel.

[Lady_Canoness]

Thanks for the good replies gents! It was very satisfying for me to write a story from start to finish for such an appreciative audience!

 

Work has begun on a sequel, and it will likely be appearing in a week or so.

 

I haven't given it a title yet (I was thinking Inquisition II might do for now) but I'm trying to take everything I've learned from the first one to heart to further improve upon the sequel and give an even better story. The biggest concern (or so it seemed) was Godwyn herself being too young and inexperienced, so I've taken the liberty to write the next part of her story further on in her career instead of picking up right where the first one left off. Hopefully the transition will be a smooth one.

 

Expect to see a host of new characters to serve alongside Godwyn, Lee, and Sudulus some years after the events of the first book.

And, as a little tease, if you've read the entirety of my Fallen Saint thread on the Inquisition forums (my first work in 40k fiction) you might recognize some familiar faces :tu:

[antique_nova]

I really enjoyed this, i neglected it for a while due to me trying to concentrating on work until now. You learn your mistakes well, your work has taken on its own style one that only be spell checked and be given personal comments i feel - although an author's skill is never complete ;). Again, well done.

 

thanks

antique_nova

[Lady_Canoness]

Thank you Nova! I am so pleased to hear that you enjoyed the story :D

 

I have many plans for the Inquisition, and the possibilities for further stories are, well, a lot!

 

-L_C

[antique_nova]

It seems that the canadians are blessed with story telling ;). Long live Bioware! :).