The Inquisition II

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

I have to compliment you on a great read. Of both parts, first class!

[Lady_Canoness]

Thanks guys! I do my best, and tell it like I would like to read it :)

 

I don't think I'll be handling the Blood Angels or Eldar any time soon (at least not in person) but anything can happen! The Inquisition III is already pretty scoped out with its good-guys and bad-guys already defined, but a lot can change in the writing, so we'll see what happens!

[Taranis]

Thanks guys! I do my best, and tell it like I would like to read it :D

 

I don't think I'll be handling the Blood Angels or Eldar any time soon (at least not in person) but anything can happen! The Inquisition III is already pretty scoped out with its good-guys and bad-guys already defined, but a lot can change in the writing, so we'll see what happens!

 

I didn't mean the entire chapter/race. Just some good guys to aid our heroes.

If you need BA names:

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...mp;hl=redemptor

You can use some or part of as inspiration for other participating characters.

[Lady_Canoness]

Here cometh part 16 - a part that I thoroughly enjoyed in my minds eye... and hopefully you will thoroughly enjoy in yours! How many parts are left? Probably 2.... though maybe 3 depending on how much more I need to get out.

 

So here it is!

 

_____________________________

 

*part 16*

 

 

A poet would call it the great breath of autumn air as a score by hundred men with eyes to the horizon watched for the breaking of the storm’s black rage.

A painter would dazzle canvas with the stern-browed men of lion eyes gazing out across the abyss towards the fortress walls so many miles away.

An admiral would call it subtlety.

A captain would call it bravery.

A trader would call it crazy.

Columbo? Well, he could call it desperation in the face of defeat, yet even so he could not account for the silence of his ship or the bravery of his crew as every soul aboard stood poised for his command as he waited upon a signal he could not anticipate.

It didn’t really make sense, but then what did when the Inquisition was involved?

There was little threat to the Master or his ship, but in a battle where victory was not determined by the last man standing there would be precious little room for error and not even the slightest lenience for mistakes to be made. This was a battle where the outcome rested on a man’s certainty, and where the slightest misplaced assumption could drop victory into defeat with none being any the wiser.

It could be that Godwyn was already dead, and that every move they made was already in vain. Or it could be that Nerf’s plan had proven reckless, and that the signal he waited for would never come. Or it could be that time was on his side, that the attack coordinates he had been given were correct, and that his gunnery crews had the full confidence of their officers. It could be that victory would yet be snatched from the jaws of defeat.

“Sir!” one of the bridge officers marched smartly up to the command platform and saluted the Ship Master. “Sir, our scanners read a failure on the port shielding of the Lord Decimus. Such a failure could only be the result of internal malfunctions, or possibly, sir, sabotage.”

Hercule Columbo turned to his First Officer. “Mister Brent,” he said to the man who stood to attention beside him, “what do you make of this development?”

“You’ll know it when you see it,” the First Officer quoted what the Catachan had said prior to Meridian’s departure as he wasted no time in responding; “I think this is exactly the kind of thing a commando would use to communicate, given his desired response, sir.”

Columbo nodded in agreement. “My thoughts exactly,” he said, and dismissed the bridge officer with a gesture of thanks. “Ready a firing solution for the starboard batteries.”

“Firing solution! Starboard Batteries!” Officer Brent barked onto the bridge as the ship started to hum to life beneath their feet as orders were issued and duly received.

“Forty in five-oh, sir!” the response came back to him from the bridge.

“Unacceptable!” Columbo replied, rejecting the firing solution that had been proposed. “Bring us a hard port and increase throttle on the retros to full!”

The bridge hastened to comply, and the Patroclus’ star-faring thrusters flared into life as she woke to full combat readiness amongst the slumbering vessels in the anchorage over Hogshead.

“Sir,” Brent warned him in a hushed tone, “it is my duty to remind you that firing on a ship at anchor breaks the oldest of the spacers’ codes of conduct.”

“Yes,” Columbo nodded solemnly, “I know.” He looked sideways at his First Officer; “it does me proud that you follow me in this, Michael, and should there be consequences I will face them for the wellbeing of my ship and crew.”

“Aye sir,” Brent smiled grimly, “we’re all in this now.”

“Fifty in one-thirteen, sir!” the call came up from the deck, and Columbo nodded his assent.

“All starboard guns to stand-by on my mark,” he ordered, watching from the bridge viewing ports as the unsuspecting Lord Decimus slowly passed across the Patroclus’ bow as she swung to port. Godwyn was on that ship – the ship he was about to order fired upon.

“Stand-by to fire!”

The seconds counted down. Gun crews would be labouring to haul the titanic shells into position as mechanics techno-savants made last minute checks to the working mechanisms.

“Steady…”

The Lord Decimus drifted into range at just over two thousand kilometres.

“Emperor preserve you, Inquisitor Godwyn,” Officer Brent whispered a prayer form the Ship Master’s side.

“Enemy in range!”

“Fire! Fire! Fire!”

The order echoed throughout the ship and the Patroclus’ right side exploded into a line of fire as monstrous guns hammered shell after shell into the void without relent. Unlike a vessel of the Imperial Navy, however, the Patroclus was a merchantman and did not carry the destructive potential to cripple an unshielded ship with a single salvo, but even so her shells carried across the meagre distance separating the two vessels and raked the Lord Decimus with fiery eruptions as her shells struck home.

 

Lee Normandy screamed in fear as he was thrown across the turbo-lift and smacked against the Catachan as the muscular commando tried to keep him upright.

“We’re gonna die!!! Good Emp’ror! WE’RE GONNA DIE!!!” the pilot was screaming, but Nerf struggled to hold him steady even as the still moving turbo-lift violently shook and shuddered around them as if being thrown down a mountain.

“We’ll be fine, Lee. We’re not gonna die!” Nerf tried to encourage him just before the next impact threw him off his feet as well and sent the pilot sprawling into the corner.

Maybe this hadn’t been such a hot idea.

Nerf quickly dismissed his doubt and got back to his feet as the deck continued to shake. He knew what he was doing, and he knew this was the only way to get Godwyn off the ship. It was a diversion, really: a big, powerful, and dangerous diversion. With their ship under fire, there was no way that the enemy would notice one Inquisitor and six... he checked his train of thought… five other people trying to get off the ship.

Lee was screaming and the lift shook around them as Nerf tried to stand. How long could the Patroclus keep up the bombardment? He had to find Godwyn before their time was up.

At some point the lift had stopped – it was impossible to tell when – but the doors opened on six black-armoured guards trying to brace themselves between the titanic shell impacts shaking the walls. A chorus of alarms was wailing, and none of them seemed to have noticed that the lift had opened or the pilot was digging his fingers into the floor-plating and holding on for dear life as he blubbered in fear.

Nerf didn’t give them the chance to notice, and, holding himself steady with one hand while the other braced his carbine tightly to his hip, gunned down all six with a continuous stray of bullets until the action clicked empty. Dropping the empty magazine to the floor with a clang, he reloaded his weapon just as another violent quake shook through the deck and slammed him hard into the wall.

The doors tried to close, but he scrambled to his feet and managed to block them with a forearm. Lee was still a mess, and the Catachan shook him hard by the shoulder.

“Get your sh*t in gear, Normandy!” he swore at the man, swatting him just as another impact sent him reeling back off his feet. “Get your ass back up and fighting!”

The pilot was sobbing now, and Nerf smacked him hard across the face before grabbing a handful of his flight jacket and dragging him out of the lift.

“Get the hell up!” the commando pushed him against the bulkhead wall as the lift doors closed behind him. “You get your sh*t together and get us the hell off this ship after we find Godwyn! GOT IT!?!”

Lee stammered something in response just as the deck lurched underneath them, though somehow both men maintained their balance.

“Listen!” Nerf got right up in his face, his own anger showing in response to the other man’s fear. “You’re either coming with me to save your boss, or you’re gonna sit here and die! Either way, I’m gonna f*cking forget that this ever happened! So follow me or don’t! I’m not sitting around here to die with you!!”

He shoved the former smuggler once more against the metal bulkhead for emphasis then turned around and stormed off. To his surprise, the pilot followed.

 

* *

 

Power armour: as a tool of war it was almost unrivalled.

Built on a powered plasteel frame and covered with an ablative coating of hardened ceramite, the armour was neigh invulnerable to small-arms fire yet was modular enough in its design to allow a full range of movement to its user with only minimal compromises in defence. With an average weight of five-hundred pounds evenly redistributed through its servo powered frame, however, the suit quickly became unwieldy and awkward for those untrained in its use, and much of the armour’s higher functions could only be learned through experience.

All Inquisitors were trained in the use of power armour, yet even so it was a rare commodity that few possessed, and fewer still employed, for while its level of protection was undeniable its lack of discretion was equally so. It was battle gear ill suited for the clandestine operations of the Inquisition where speed and subtlety were often of more value than brute force, and as such it was typically viewed as a collector’s item suited more to the fantasies of its owner than practical application.

Though when attempting an escape from a vessel under fire the armour truly came into its own.

 

A resounding boom quaked through the halls and threw von Draken violently off her feet and into the wall. Inquisitor Godwyn, her own balance unimpeded by the jarring motions of the ship around her, stomped back to the Witch Hunter’s side and pulled the other woman back to her feet. Gasping in pain as she gripped her wounded shoulder tightly between bloodstained fingers, Draken said nothing in the way of thanks but remained hunched over and leaning heavily against the metal of the bulkhead.

“Damn you, Godwyn…” the Witch Hunter managed to make herself heard over the wailing alarms between heaving breaths, “what in the Emperor’s name have you done!?!”

Instead of an answer, the Ordo Xenos Inquisitor gritted her teeth and seized her counterpart under the arm, pulling her down the hall as she stumbled to keep her feet under the bombardment.

It was the Patroclus firing on them – it had to be – but at the same time she knew that it would lose its firing solution soon enough and that it would be several minutes before it could fire again, in which time Inquisitor Brand and his men could regroup and fight back. As hard as it was, the bombardment was her only cover and she had to make the most of it.

The deck shook and pitched again, knocking Draken to her knees, but, encased in the captured power armour, Godwyn kept her feet and marched on regardless – her thunderous footfalls beating out the same desperate drumbeat she felt throbbing in her temple.

Ahead of them a gas vein burst and caught flame – sending a swirling inferno down the corridor and blocking their path as the Inquisitors hastily retreated before unbearable heat.

“You’re bringing the ship down around us!” von Draken cursed her as she sheltered her face from the heat of the flames while Godwyn pulled her clear.

“We’ll find another way!” the power armoured Inquisitor shouted back, and led them down a side corridor through ruptured vents of steam.

She was lost, she admitted it now, and, with the chaos swirling around them as the Lord Decimus bled freely, Godwyn was starting to have her doubts that she’d ever make it off the ship. But if she did, what then? Ducking through more hissing clouds of steam and supporting the weakening von Draken with both hands, Godwyn didn’t waste any time thinking about it – all she could afford to care about was here and now.

On the bright side the shelling had dispersed whatever resistance remained amongst Brand’s troops, and through the madness of the bombardment she saw no-one alive to resist them.

“That way!” Draken shouted from beside her, pointing down a poorly-lit passageway extending to their left; “We can get back that way!”

Godwyn didn’t argue, and with the harnessed might of the power armour surging through her legs she pressed on as the deck quaked underfoot.

Alarms wailed and the Lord Decimus started to crack under the punishment unleashed against her vulnerable side, but it took several moments of stillness for Godwyn to realize that the bombardment had ended.

“Come on!” she urged with Witch Hunter, “We’ve got to move!”

“Why has it stopped?” she asked, pulling away from Godwyn even though she couldn’t hope to move as fast on her own.

“She’s moved out of her firing arc,” Godwyn replied, speaking of the Patroclus as she lookedwarily at the ship around her and wondered how much more fire it could take. “It will be back soon enough. We have to go!”

Draken didn’t disagreed and hobbled after her as Godwyn broke into a thunderous run as she moved as quickly as the unfamiliar armour would allow down a sloping corridor into what seemed to be a large ante-chamber somewhere near the base of the super-structure.

“This is the right way,” the Witch Hunter groaned as she caught up to where Godwyn had paused by a rail overlooking an empty floor space. “If we find an unlocked lift, we should be able to ride it down to the hangar levels.”

“*Should*?” Godwyn gave her a questioning look before quickly glancing back out over the empty chamber to cover the three covered entryways that punctuated each entrance.

Tanya von Draken hissed in pain. “Unless your friend out there with the cannons has blasted them all into the warp and back!” she spat.

A fair chance at that, Godwyn figured – they’d just have to risk it.

Vaulting the rail, Godwyn dropped three metres to the deck below and landed on her feet with a loud thump while von Draken hobbled down the access ramps that extended to either side of the room. There was no telling what damage had been done by the Patroclus’ bombardment, but if they were lucky the internal damage would not be too severe, and whatever turbo-lifts remained on this deck would still be active.

At a run, Godwyn was halfway across the room when she caught movement with the corner of her eye emerging from the rightmost hatchway.

“Contact!” she yelled, pushing herself into a headlong sprint out of the open and hoping that the Witch Hunter could cover her as she heard the snap and whistle of the first few bullets whip by.

 

Von Draken, spotting the enemy movement a fraction of a second after Godwyn’s warning, instantly went for her revolver with her uninjured arm as her legs carried down the gangway.

A shot snapped by – coming so close that she could hear it slicing through the air.

She tried to stop and steady her aim, but something caught her foot and dropped her face first onto the deck where she landed with a crash and crumpled up against a supporting rail as her revolver skittered free from her hand.

 

Pushing her legs to their limits for speed, Godwyn slammed into the cover of the wall with enough force to dent the bulkhead platting as bullets pinged off the walls and her armour.

Drawing her heavy pistol, the Inquisitor returned fire with three shots in rapid succession – the strength of the armour reducing the recoil until it was almost negligible – and watched one trooper go down with two holes torn through the chest-piece of his carapace vest while another ducked back out of sight. Godwyn chased him with a bullet just to be sure.

A rattle of fire sparked off the wall beside her from an unseen attack somewhere else, and Godwyn leaned further out to answer – the meagre impacts of four small-calibre rounds striking her in the chest as the heavy pistol opened up again with an ear-splitting roar. She missed and the pistol clicked empty, forcing Godwyn back into cover as she ejected the blank magazine onto the deck as more suppressing fire whistled and banked off the metal around her.

Its ammunition spent, Godwyn holstered the heavy pistol at her hip and drew the machine pistol from where it was slung underneath her arm. Bullets continued to storm around her in sporadic bursts of fire, but Godwyn kept her cool and waited for it to break.

 

Crawling on her stomach, Tanya von Draken winced with pain as a bullet skinned her backside and ricocheted wild. Caught with sparse cover and no gun, the Witch Hunter could only hope that Godwyn drew more fire as she slowly crawled towards where her revolver lay only a few feet out of her reach…

 

Catching a break in the fire, Godwyn leaned around the corner and sprayed a slew of bullets to where she knew the enemy troopers were hiding. Bullets rattled off the deck and the walls as she hit nothing, but, biding her time, she rang two off a trooper’s helmet as he poked his head back around – stunning him slightly as he momentarily lost his balance and fell to the deck.

 

Wriggling forward over the last few inches, Draken finally felt her fingers close around the cold barrel of her revolver as she quickly snatched it up and drew it towards her prone form. She still had several soul-seeking bullets in her pocket, she guessed, momentarily letting go of the large handgun as she rifled through her coat with her good arm, and if she could reload it before she got herself killed then it might still make a difference.

Cupping the bullets in her hand, she dumped them out onto the deck beside her and started to count them out and separate them with her fingers as she grimaced from the pain in her shoulder and the sting of fresh blood across the surface of her buttocks.

More fire sang overhead and she instinctively curled up and covered her face.

Still alive.

She almost had the bullets counted but –

A yelp of pain escaped her lips as agony cut into her chest and spread through her torso like wildfire as she tried to breathe. Her good arm flailed in panic and knocked away the bullets she had been counting.

 

Godwyn was making little headway as the second magazine from her machine pistol ran dry. Holstering it, she winced as rebounding bullet flew past her bare head, and drew her plasma pistol from where she’d fastened it at the small of her back. The pistol charged up with a whine and its chamber glowed blue in response to the Inquisitor’s touch.

Bullets continued to whiz by as she waited chance.

 

She’d been shot – she could feel the numbing pain lower down in her stomach. Groping with her one good hand, Tanya felt around the cold steel of her breastplate with carefully probing fingers as her eyes stared at the rafters. Scared to breath, she tried to keep calm as she gently pushed against her own flesh.

Nothing… nothing… no – a sharp intake of breath brought water to her eyes. She’d found it. Her clothes were sticky and sodden with spilled blood, and as she peeled back the stained fabric she managed a glimpse of an oozing red hole in her flesh just above her belt line not an inch below her armour.

Blinking the water out of her eyes, she gritted her teeth and pressed down on the wound – a laboured moan pushing its way out of her nostrils as the pain set in. Gut shot… she was going to bleed to death…

 

The plasma pistol flared in her hand and fired a beam of searing light across the chamber – the follow silence coming from the enemy’s shelter confirming that she’d scored a lethal hit. One more enemy to deal with, or so she thought, when all of a sudden the bucking retort of another weapon quickly made its presence felt. Turning to catch a glimpse of this new arrival, Godwyn spied Nerf emerging from the corridor she’d just cleared with Lee Normandy following behind him. Both were firing on the last known position of her enemy, and when they stopped she saw them lower their weapons and look her way.

A grim nod from the Catachan followed by a smile confided in her that it was over, and, abandoning his cover, the burly commando jogged out to meet her.

“Good to see you in one piece, Inquisitor,” he said with a quick nodded as he looked her up and down before his eyes rested on her face. “Looks like you’re handling things okay,” he said, likely referring to her newly acquired power armour.

Godwyn indicated over to where Lee was still hanging back in a covering position. “Where are the others?” she asked. “Are you two alone?”

“No,” Nerf shook his head, his dark eyes darting quickly to the ground before finding hers again; “Mercy’s with ‘em.”

“Good,” Godwyn nodded, and motioned that he should come with her back to where Lee was skittishly waiting. “Do we have a way off this ship?” It made sense that if Lee was here that Meridian would be as well, but Godwyn needed to be certain.

“Yea,” Nerf replied, clapping the pilot on the shoulder when they got up to him, “we’re just waiting for you to get on it.”

Very good news, Godwyn nodded appreciatively as the andrenaline high from the battle started to ebb somewhat now that she’d found the Catachan.

“Hold up a minute,” Nerf was looking over his shoulder just as they were about to leave, “did you come with someone?”

“Yes, I – ” Godwyn spun on the spot expecting to see von Draken following in her footsteps, but caught her tongue when she saw no-one there.

“Wait here,” she instructed the Catachan as she dashed back into the ante-chamber.

Nerf looked sideway at Lee. “Wait here,” he said, and ran after Godwyn.

Lee Normandy looked after them blankly, his mouth opening and closing without any words coming out. “‘s fine,” he said eventually, and continued to cover both ways down the hall.

 

Draken was almost white when they found her with a pool of blood flowing away in rivulets from where she lay.

“Oh sh*t…” Nerf muttered from behind her as the Inquisitor knelt beside the fallen Witch Hunter. “Boss, she is messed up…”

Seeing Godwyn watching over her, Tanya’s breathing grew ragged as her eyes rolled in her head. “Cassandra…” she hissed between blood-streaked teeth. She coughed. Her eyes looked angry. “Cassandra… don’t let me die like this!”

“End her,” Nerf said softly, “put her out of her misery.”

Godwyn said nothing as she looked on in silence.

With her one good hand, Tanya von Draken grabbed at the paudron of Godwyn’s armour:

“Please…” she said in low growl, “don’t let me die this way!”

Behind her, Nerf shifted on his feet and watched over Godwyn’s back.

“I’m not leaving you to die like this,” Godwyn told her, gently removing the Witch Hunter’s hand from her armour before turning to Nerf. “Get her onto the Meridian,” she said. “Keep her alive.”

A snarl rose in von Draken’s throat but quickly turned into a gibbering squeal of pain as Nerf obeyed his orders and hauled the wounded Inquisitor onto his shoulders – her blood quickly painting his fatigues a dark crimson.

“What about you, boss?” he said when he noticed Godwyn standing there and not following him.

“I’m going to find Brand,” she said.

He looked at her as if she was insane. “Godwyn,” he said slowly, “the Patroclus is coming around for another pass… we can’t stay here much longer.”

“You heard me,” the Inquisitor replied. “If I’m not back in twenty minutes, then leave without me.”

“F*ck that!” he shouted, sounding genuinely angry as she turned and dashed away. “I’ll come back to find you!” he hollered after her. “I’m not leaving you behind!”

If Godwyn heard him, she gave no sign.

 

* *

 

It had been a couple minutes since the shelling had stopped, but even so Alexander felt as if his legs were made of jelly. His breath coming in short gasps, the Interrogator wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and steadied his grip on his autogun. Walking beside him, the battle sister gave period checks over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t being followed.

A shiver ran down his spine. He told himself it was the rush of battle and the constant fear of an instant, painful death that had hounded him since they boarded this ship, but a cold knot in his gut was telling him otherwise. Even Mercy seemed to notice it, as she was moving with much more caution now that she had before.

Alexander checked his surroundings. The power must be failing as all the lights were flickering on and off, creating shadows were moments before there were none. It was hard to get his bearings, but even so this placed looked familiar.

“Are we going in circles?” he asked, knowing that the only person who could answer him wouldn’t know.

“No,” Brianna answered; the haste of her response meaning that she didn’t know one way or the other.

“Mercy?” he asked, hoping upon hope that now she’d choose to talk, but even if she could speak the assassin said nothing, and simply carried on at her unnervingly hesitant pace.

The farther they went, the darker it became, and not simply because of the faulty lights. It felt like there were fewer lights here on purpose – as if no one ever came down this way.

“Do you feel that?” he asked.

“Feel what?” Brianna said from beside him.

“It’s getting colder. And darker…”

She scowled at him; “You’re imagining things.”

Alexander held his tongue. He didn’t think so.

He tried to relax his mind – to draw upon the inner reserves of focus necessary to see through the warp – but the nervous tension in his system kept him from doing so. It felt like a warning, telling him that something would go very, very wrong if he tried it.

He held his tongue, focusing his attention instead on the here and now, and followed the assassin in silence. The feeling did not abate.

 

Minutes crawled by with Mercy leading them deeper and deeper into the dark areas of the ship until suddenly, in the middle of a large shadow-filled room, she stopped and dropped into a low crouch – her violet eyes fixated on something only she could see in the dark.

Without thought, Alexander and the battle sister quickly dropped into covering positions. Against what? They did not know.

Several moments passed, and Mercy did not move a muscle. She looked frozen, paralyzed, utterly transfixed with whatever she saw in the darkness.

“What in the warp is she looking at!?” Alexander hissed to the sister as she crouched nearby in a concealing shadow.

Brianna didn’t answer, but her eyes flicked from Mercy to the wall beyond as she wrestled within the limits of her own vision.

But then they saw it – emerging out of the shadows as if it were one with the darkness, a giant form walked towards them in the spectral half-light of the chamber.

Impossible. Alexander stared without blinking. Impossible.

Mercy slowly rose up and stood at the exact same height of the new arrival.

They were identical.

The second assassin’s face was hidden in shadow, but the lithe curves of the giant woman mirrored that of Mercy, and her movements seemed to echo the ethereal grace for which Godwyn’s mute killer had so long been admired.

Alexander’s mind started to race: maybe they knew each other? were born of the same mother? were sisters? had the same father? what if she was Mercy’s mother? or daughter? What would they do? Had Mercy known she was here? Did she bring them to her?

The soft clink of Mercy’s claws sliding into place over her fingers seemed to answer all his questions at once: they didn’t know each other, and now they were going to kill one another.

Beside him, Brianna’s breathing was getting laboured and her gun started to shake as her mind made sense of what was going on. Alexander placed his hand overtop of her rifle, and gently eased it down.

“Don’t,” he hissed, “this is her fight.”

At first the sister looked at him like he was madman, though gradually a dawning look of understanding crept over her features and she nodded slowly: they’d only get in the way.

Mercy’s mirror image drew two curved swords from over her shoulders – their blades whistling menacingly through the air – and gently sank into a crouch with her two swords poised on either side. Mercy watched her, but didn’t move in the slightest.

When the battle was joined all similarity disappeared.

With a banshee’s war-cry the sword-wielding killer sprung through the air and closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye, but Mercy reacted like quick silver and flowed around her attacker like water retreating from the shore before suddenly crashing back like a wave and putting the singing swords on the defensive with a storm of rapidly flowing strikes with her claws. Parrying and dodging, the shadow assassin hissed in harmony with her blades until her movements became an almost constant sound between the clink of metal and the silent resolve of her opponent. The speed and agility of the killers defied sight as they twisted and wove around each other in a flawless dance of death.

Mercy moved like liquid as she flowed past and around killing strikes with uncanny ease before lashing back with precision that seemed effortless and natural, while her hissing opponent acted with quick, pronounced motions in every flash of a parry or strike as her swords sang around her.

They fought with the entirety of their beings, and Alexander suddenly spied a breach in the harmony of battle when the sword-wielding killer’s knee jumped upwards and caught Mercy in the stomach. The size and power of the women was likely enough to crack a man’s ribcage with such a strike, but Mercy rolled off the blow and leapt clear of the melee to recuperate in the fraction of a second before her mirror image was back against her.

The signing blades and delicate clink of metal against metal did no justice in portraying the brutality of the raging conflict as the fighters twisted and lashed around each other intent on death, and for Brianna and Alexander there was no inkling of how the battle would end as both held their breath while watching the dizzying yet utterly lethal spectacle unfolding before them.

A signing sword suddenly swept low, and a silent scream of pain that bit the air escaped from Mercy’s lips as a spurt of scarlet blood flashed across the deck and she staggered backwards with a razor-thin wound traced across her thigh.

The killer paused and watched the wounded assassin with eyes of glittering silver and a bloodied blade held aloft in her hand. She spun the sword through the air – spreading Mercy’s red blood along its length – and the sword sang a different tune: lower, more deadly.

She sprang again and attacked in a blur of sound and steel, but despite her wound Mercy fought her off until the onlookers heard a counter-attack that their eyes could not see. A yelp of pain, the clash of steel, and grunt of flesh striking flesh.

Mercy hobbled backwards as the other assassin stumbled away with a hand pressed over a profusely bleeding wrist. A blade sang again, but this time from Mercy as she flourished a captured sword in both hands and pointed its blood-soaked edge towards her enemy.

Blinking off the pain in her silver eyes, the face of the other assassin twisted in anger. A sound echoed through the room which at first seemed like the resonance of yet another weapon, though it was only afterwards that Alexander caught the words on the killer’s tongue:

“Walk with death!” the silver-eyed assassin cursed and dove at Mercy. The silent assassin leapt to meet her and steel clashed as the blades sang through the air in a blur of motion that lasted for all but an instant until the killers became still.

A sword clattered to the ground, followed by the arm that carried it.

Reversing her grip on the blade, Mercy carefully stepped away from the silver-eyed assassin and let her sink to the deck.

Bright blood spurted from where she’d been cleaved from collarbone to waist, and shaved bone glistened pearly white in the dim light: Faith collapsed without a sound – her glassy eyes wide as they stared into the emptiness of her future. It was like she’d never lived at all.

Cautiously, as if the dead woman might rise again at any moment, Mercy crept closer to the killer’s still corpse and knelt by her head. Reverently, she turned its face and stared into the fading silver pupils. A warm tear rolled down her cheek, but she didn’t blink it away.

“Mercy…?” Alexander walked up beside her – his movements were graceless, imperfect.

She held up a hand to warn him away, and the young man kept his distance.

It was like looking at a dead animal… not a person… a majestic, dead animal. A predator brought low.

A shudder ran through the deck, quickly followed by another; the bombardment was starting again.

“Come on!” Brianna shouted, her voice carrying around the darkness of the room, “We have to get out of here!”

The battle sister turned and started to dash back the way they had come and, after some hesitation, the Interrogator followed her.

Mercy came last, and, remembering to pick up the assassin’s sword, gave her one last look before leaving the corpse to the dark.

 

* *

 

The command terminals would shake and vibrate to the touch while her alarms would continue to screech non-stop, but other than that the bridge of the Lord Decimus was empty and quiet when Inquisitor Godwyn arrived in the lift. Her crew had abandoned their posts and made no effort to fight back as if resigned to their fate, and only the dead guards von Draken had killed earlier remained to defend the vaulted chamber. Brand would still be here however, unless, of course, he had already made good his escape by means unknown to the Inquisitor.

Sweeping the room, Godwyn dashed up to the top of the bridge to the side where she had seen the traitor Inquisitor escape. There on the floor she found a strange circular device with three outer rings attached to a variety of spinning arms that rotated around a center aperture. Had she not seen what it had done when Brand escaped, Godwyn would never have guessed what it could be even when she saw the rings in motion. The center aperture was closed, however, and she didn’t doubt that she needed it open in order for it to work.

Gently, she tapped it with her foot.

Nothing.

Trying to imitate Brand, she made to step on the device with both feet, and in the literal blink of an eye the aperture opened with the blinding light of a sun and she felt herself become weightlessly borne aloft as the column of golden light slowly pushed her up towards the ceiling where a previously hidden hatch waited open for her.

Taking its time, the golden light carried her there, and when the bridge had completely vanished beneath her so too did the light, and she was set down gently on her feet in a very different place. If this was still part of the ship, then she had never seen anything like it before.

The deck and walls had vanished behind a lattice of crystalline veins which crisscrossed all around her without order or purposed while a gently pulsing blue light emanated from within their spindly cords which set the hair on the back of her neck on edge. Beyond the glowing web she could see bright and beautiful stars of every colour imaginable all around her as if she stood within the heart of space itself, and beneath her feet there was no ship while around her the air was silent. Of whence she came there was no sign.

Nor was their any sign of Inquisitor Brand.

Her glowing plasma pistol held in front of her in both hands, Godwyn cautiously placed one foot in front of the other and took care to watch over her shoulders as she carefully advanced through the glowing web. What it was she did not know, but it seemed to somehow stretch into spiralling capillaries before her eyes as if it were responding to her feet or perhaps even to her desire to move.

It couldn’t be real – it had to be a trick – no Imperial technology could create this.

She found her eyes being inadvertently drawn from her pistol’s sights to the glowing crystals around her as they twinkled and shone in the starlight.

What if she was hallucinating?

Suddenly nervous, she spun on the spot.

How would she get back? Could she get back? Was it possible?

Fool, Godwyn swallowed the accumulating spit in her throat; why hadn’t she guessed that this would be a trap?

Inquisitor Brand had come this way, but if he had, then where was he? Why could she see no sign of his passing?

“Kin Slayer.”

Inquisitor Godwyn spun to her right and shot the speaker through head without thinking, yet standing in the emptiness of the void beyond the glowing crystals Inquisitor Brand did not die. She fired again – the searing beam of plasma blinding her eyes as flashed from the barrel – but the bolt did nothing and passed through the man’s head as if he were naught but smoke. Reluctantly, she lowered the weapon.

“Where are you?” she asked the traitor’s ghost.

“Far from here,” Brand’s voice boomed in reply. “Did you imagine that I would risk all in a singular duel to the death against a professed killer of kin?”

The Inquisitor glared at the traitor’s reflection but shook her head. “No,” she said. “I didn’t think you could flee.”

“This is not flight!” he shouted back at her, his voice seeming to come from the crystalline web itself. “I am driven by necessity, and even had you died by the Witch Hunter’s hand I would still depart.”

“Why?” Godwyn demanded.

“Because I am not friends with the enemy of my enemy,” the ghost replied, its white eyes bulging as the traitor’s nostrils flared with irritation, “and I am no fool nor madman to deal with the Alien and believe myself free!”

“Run all you want, then,” Godwyn spurned him, “you will pay for your treason in the end.”

Brand’s eyes narrowed to slits and his features grew dark. “I am no betrayer,” he bellowed, “and if you were half the Inquisitor you claim to be then you would realize that!”

“It feels like betrayal to me,” Godwyn replied coolly, “and your own delusions to the contrary make no difference.”

The image of Brand glared at her in silence, but she didn’t flinch under its withering gaze.

“Once I held credence to beliefs as you do,” he replied in a stern yet measured tone, “and over time I learned the folly of such things.”

“Not more lunatic ramblings,” Godwyn scoffed to his face, but Brand continued – his voice taut with anger:

“This planet will be plunged into a warp storm that engulfs the region and blocks all passage to the Ghoul Stars. I take measures to prevent it – you; to encourage it.”

Godwyn’s heart skipped a beat and she swallowed hard. “What do you mean?”

“Who now is the traitor?” Brand asked mirthlessly. He could be lying, but there was no satisfaction in his voice. He was serious.

“What the hell do you mean!?” she shouted at him, angry now.

“Only one civilization has ever come close to mastery over the universe, Godwyn, only one…” he cautioned her, “and with that power came the power to best the warp as well.”

Desperation mounting within her, Godwyn tried to laugh:

“What? And you think the Necrotyr can somehow be bent to your will?” she shook her head as if amazed at his gullibility. “You’re insane if you think you can rule them!”

“To rule is not my intention,” the dark-skinned figure corrected her; “I know full well that man cannot contest the implacable will of a Star God. My intention is to turn them loose.”

Godwyn’s pistol was raised defiantly in an instant – even though she knew that she could not kill the shadow – and a victorious smile crept onto the black man’s face.

“In one standard month the Necrotyr will have killed every last man, woman, and child on the surface of Penumbra,” Brand explained, “though thanks to you and Ms. von Draken it may yet happen sooner.”

“You’re sacrificing the world’s entire planet to the Alien!?!” Godwyn exclaimed in disbelief.

Brand nodded: “It is necessary.”

“IT IS INSANE!”

He slowly shook his head. “Wrong: insanity is to struggle against what cannot be undone.”

The look of horror on her face must have been easily visible, for the smile faded from Brand’s lips as he told her the harsh, unforgiving truth.

“The cull of Penumbra’s population has already begun,” he said, “and I have released the slumbering Lord of the Necrotyr from his stasis. The alien will do that which comes naturally to it.”

Dumbfounded, Godwyn could only shake her head. “This is madness…” she mumbled in disbelief, “utter insanity…”

Brand’s face once again darkened. “This world has forever belonged to the Necrotyr as a defence against the warp. It is they who moved it beyond the light of any star; it is they who made it possible to live upon the surface; and it is they who will stop the warp from becoming reality. What defence to we have against the predations of the immaterium? How can we prevent the foul denizens of chaos from stalking our very thoughts? We cannot, and you know this!” He jabbed an accusing finger in her direction. “So right are you that you will not defend the Imperium by any means? That you will not turn the Alien against the Daemon while trucing with neither? It is by the likes of me that the Imperium survives, and at the hands of your ilk that it dies. You are the traitor! Not I!”

But Godwyn denied the treasonous Inquisitor; “No, I don’t believe you. This madness has to stop.”

Brand was silent – momentarily considering his options, or so it seemed – then gave Godwyn a curious, sideways glance.

“Do you know why I summoned you here?” he asked. “It is because I needed someone to sow a masquerade of illusion over the planet to disguise the truth. Siccing the Witch Hunter on you was a way of igniting the anarchy into war, and keeping both you and she distracted with each other’s motives. In time you would have come to realize the xeno threat and warned the Imperium to contain the Necrotyr, though by that time the warp storm would have already been averted.” He paused; “Can you see now the genius of my plan?”

Godwyn didn’t answer, but stared at him unblinking behind the sights of her plasma pistol.

In a way, it was brilliant – the kind of thing that would have been used as an example in the academies: an example for how the Inquisition could go too far.

“You’re delusional!” she spat at him. “I won’t standby and watch this happen!”

The dark skinned Inquisitor glared at her. “So be it,” he said with finality, “return to your ship and see if you can reverse the inevitable.”

His ghost turned as if to leave and seemed to walk into the stars, fading from view as it went.

“I’ll find you!” she shouted after him.

“I rather doubt that…” was his only reply.

[Lady_Canoness]

Part 17 is the last breath before the storm and gives me the chance to really try and draw out the human attachment to the characters. Throughout my works, I try to make them as human (or inhuman, in some cases) as possible, so that you the reader might feel more attached to a character as a person instead of a word that generates more mildly awesome words.

This part of the story explores that element of character building in more depth and does so in a different light to other parts of the story (namely the 'impending doom' light :D)

 

That being said, I tried my hand at some very personal scenes in this part. Did it work? You tell me.

 

*part 17*

 

It was on the behest of dire portents that the shuttle Meridian returned to the Patroclus just shy of an hour after she had departed and docked as the merchantman broke off the engagement with the Lord Decimus, leaving her adrift and in flames. The attack had been swift and telling, all things considered, yet even so the anchorage was in an uproar as ships of every stripe struggled to break free of the chaos and make for open space. Her boarding party returned to her, the Patroclus was one of them, but she didn’t follow the afterburn of the fleeing ships for long and soon changed her heading back towards the dark planet at Godwyn’s instruction.

The Inquisitor herself waited in the upper galleries, and it was in those decadent halls that she watched as the order around her unravelled into anarchy because of what she and two others like her had done. Three people – three – was all it took to doom a world.

There was a brief glow in the darkness as somewhere, many thousands of miles off the Patroclus’s port-bow, as two ships collided with one another in an attemtp to escape and sent a huge fireball spiralling into the void. The light reflected in the Inquisitor’s eyes as several hundred souls were snuffed out in an instant.

Three people…

She didn’t consider herself a murderer of innocents, or someone who saw the necessity of protecting others through the all consuming flames of righteous fire. True, she had killed and was no stranger to seeing innocent men and women suffer for the demands of her duty, but she was no monster either. Her role as an Inquisitor was to safeguard the Imperium by protecting its people against that which they could not protect themselves. Letting people die because she couldn’t be bothered to protect them was counter-productive at the least, and heresy punishable by death at most. Men like Brand would pay for their choices in this life or the next, and if she had anything to do with it then their reckoning would come sooner rather then later. Kin Slayer: it suited her fine if it meant that she wiped scum like that from the face of existence.

Hearing the soft footsteps of someone approaching over the carpet, she turned to see the Ship Master coming to join her. She gave him a quick look and then turned back to the dark vista beyond; she didn’t really want to talk to him at the moment. Fortunately Columbo didn’t force her to, and stood with the power armoured Inquisitor looking silently out the window at the tiny lights of the ships behind them.

The silence couldn’t last forever though, and it was Hercule Columbo who disturbed it first.

“I’m sorry about Sudulus, Cassandra,” he said quietly, looking briefly her way but turning to gaze back into the darkness when she didn’t look back. “He was a good fellow.”

For a time Cassandra said nothing. Sudulus had always been there – he’d always cared – from the beginning of her career to what now looked like the end. She hadn’t even been there when he died, and she hadn’t learned about it until she’d noticed that he was missing.

She blinked, and felt a watery tear start to build in her eye.

How many heroes died alone and forgotten? It wasn’t fair, but then again what was? The breaths she took now would likely be among her last. It was a dark, unforgiving galaxy with no peace and no respite, and where the only sense of right or wrong existed inside a person’s head.

“How is Inquisitor von Draken?” Godwyn suddenly asked, eager to change the subject.

“She is undergoing surgery right now, I think,” Columbo replied. “The medical officer and chief surgeon told me that they think she will pull through. My best resources are dedicated to seeing that she does.”

“Good,” Godwyn nodded, “good…”

Columbo looked again at Godwyn, but still her eyes were fixed beyond the glass of the gallery promenade.

“Cassandra…” he began slowly, but she wasn’t in the mood to answer him.

“Meet me in the briefing room,” she said, turning sharply on her heel and stomping away from the Ship Master. “I want to speak with you as well as my team. There is much to be done…”

He would have said something in response, something to give her time to breath at least, but by the time his eyes caught up with her she was already rapidly striding away, and all he could do was nod in silence.

 

The briefing room aboard the Patroclus was to the aft of the bridge and often served as a conference room for Columbo’s bridge officers while plotting challenging warp-jumps. A small chamber hardly keeping to the regal standards of the rest of the ship, there wasn’t much to it other than a large chart table with a built-in holo-projector and a dozen rotating chairs bolted to the floor around its circumference, while modest decorations and artwork to accompany a life-time of space-faring decorated the walls beside it. The room was used regularly by the ship’s officers, and it was often said that it was not large enough to accommodate everyone who wished attend, yet when the last of Godwyn’s team entered only five chairs were filled, though both the Inquisitor and the Ship Mater remained standing.

From Godwyn’s team, Alexander, Lee, Nerf, and Brianna were present, though Mercy had once again disappeared, while Columbo had brought his First Officer Michael Brent.

The room was nervously silent as they waited for the Inquisitor to tell them what would happen next, and everyone aside from Godwyn seemed intent on avoiding each other’s eyes lest they find confirmation for their fears. Nerf was slouched back in his chair resting one hand on the table and the other on his thigh as his eyes traced up and down the polished wood. Brianna was sitting next to Alexander and was still wearing her pieced together armour and was carrying her weapons just in case, while Lee sat separate from them all at the far end of the table and stared morosely at the stylized painting of a ship that hung against the wall to his left. Columbo and Brent looked professional but by no means well as both men could guess what waited in their future. Godwyn, still clad in the battle-scarred power armour from the Lord Decimus, waited in silence with arms crossed as she warred with her own thoughts.

Should they go? Should they stay? It wasn’t really a question, and her decision had been made. All that remained was for her to accept it. There could be no alternative.

“Listen to me,” she broke the silence of the room even though the sense of uncertainty still lingered, “as we are gathered here, the Necrotyr threat his starting to wage war on the planet below us.”

There were a few muttered exclamations and prayers, but no one wavered as their attention stayed fixed on the woman standing at the head of the table.

“The nearest Imperial battle fleet is two months away at the Malthusian ship yards,” she continued, her voice strong with the certainty of her duty, “but if left unchecked the Necrotyr will massacre the population of this world and Emperor knows what else long before reinforcements arrive.”

She did not mention the possibility of an alternative, or that perhaps the traitor who had done this could have been right in his intentions. There could be no room for compromise or half measures, and no room for doubt. To ask the people with her in this chamber – on this ship – to do as she directed them, there could be no questioning the rightness and necessity of their cause. Analysis, she recalled, was the luxury of hindsight.

“We can’t hope to kill them all, but we can stall them – deal them a blow from which they will not recover – and with luck there will still be a battle to fight when the battle fleet gets here.” She leaned forward and rested both hands on the table. “A surgical strike,” she said, “aimed at the heart of the enemy. If we win today, then this world can still be saved.”

From the side of the table, Nerf raised his hand. Godwyn indicated that he should speak his mind.

“What’s the target?” he asked, and Godwyn looked purposefully at Brent.

Clearing his throat, the First Officer rose to his feet. “Our sensors have picked up a localized power surge at the coordinates of the anomaly you found in the Sticks,” he reported. “It started to grow exponentially after we began our assault on the Lord Decimus, and still discernable even from this range.”

“Do we know what it is?” Alexander asked.

Nerf shrugged: it didn’t matter to him. “We blow it up,” he said flatly.

Alexander looked as if he could argue the point, but his mentor held up a hand for silence:

“Whatever it is, it is tied to the Necrotyr threat,” she said. “We destroy it at all costs.”

Nerf looked satisfied, but Alexander looked uneasy. Standing a little ways beside her, Columbo spoke up to be heard:

“And what would you have me do, Inquisitor?” he asked.

Godwyn met the old man’s eyes as he looked to her. It was a funny feeling really; here, a rogue trader with no love for the wars of others, offering both himself and his ship into her service. He was no warrior, this was not his place, but his bravery was commendable regardless of who he was.

“Get us as close as you can to the target,” she asked him, “then withdraw to a safe distance and contact the Malthusian fleet using my clearance codes.”

The Ship Master nodded that he understood and said nothing more, leaving the Inquisitor to say a last few words to her team.

She sighed heavily. “I’m not going to lie to you,” she said, “we’re in this position because another Inquisitor decided to put us here. He is not in danger, and we are. The Necrotyr are an ancient race beyond comprehension, and whatever rumours you have heard about them are probably true…”

Everyone was still, and every eye watched her unblinkingly as if holding on to her every word.

“Their technology is something we don’t understand, and when they fight they are said to be almost unkillable. The enemies we face today will be the deadliest opponents we will ever meet. We’ll be no match for them in a fight, but if we pick our battles and work together then we can get through this.”

She looked each and every one of them in the eye and saw that not a one was wavering. They knew now what had to be done, and that they alone were the ones who could do it.

“Lee,” Godwyn turned to her pilot, and he straightened up in his chair, “you’ll be running us to and from the target,” she explained. “Keep a low profile and be ready to collect us the moment we give the word. Understand?”

He nodded and looked at the table. “Yes,” was all he said.

“Everyone else is coming with me,” she continued. “Bring as much equipment as you can carry and hold nothing back.”

A round of acknowledgements went around the table.

“Walk in the Emperor’s light and you shall know no fear,” Brianna intoned making the sign of the Aquila over her chest and prompting several others to do likewise.

“No fear…” Nerf muttered grimly, his head bowed.

“We’ll be in position over the target in approximately six hours and a half hours,” Brent informed the Inquisitor. She nodded and indicated that her team was dismissed:

“Rest,” she told them. “Do what you will. We’ll meet again at Meridian in six hours.”

 

* *

 

Her team disbanded and went their separate ways from the briefing room while Columbo and his First Officer returned to the command deck of the bridge. Godwyn, wanting to be alone, wandered for a time through the ship drinking in what could be her last few hours of life – all their lives. She’d faced death many times before, and been afraid for her life more times than she could count, but this time it felt different. There was no adrenaline in her blood, no fire in her heart that spurred her on… no, this felt colder somehow, like walking willingly into the lion’s den because she knew that she’d live to regret the alternative. Yes, if she retreated now she had no doubt that she would survive, but what good could come of it? Sudulus and Illias would have died for nothing if she fled.

She bowed her head.

And they still would if she failed.

Yet she had a duty to uphold – a higher calling to which she must strive – otherwise who was she? After what she had done and the things she had seen, duty was what held her together. Duty was what let her rest every night when her nightmares started. Duty was who she was.

Eventually she found her way back to her cabin and the empty common room. She did not linger, but went straight into her room and shut the door. Everything seemed so quiet now, so small and insignificant in this room she had called her own for twenty-five years. In a way, it was her cell.

Standing at the porthole and staring out over the void, the Inquisitor began the laborious process of stripping off the power armour and setting it aside piece by heavy piece. The clothing underneath was stifling, and the warm metal of the Icon of the Just pressed against her chest. She thought about having a shower, but after several moments of indecision ended up sitting on the edge of her four-post bed with her head in her hands.

She tried praying. It wasn’t something she did very often. Unlike many of the Inquisition, she thought of the God Emperor as an all-powerful regent instead of some metaphysical deity-figure which could hear the prayers of every man, woman, and child in his realm. People drew strength from the certainty of the Emperor’s rule, she thought, not his guiding hand. Unsurprisingly, praying didn’t work.

A couple minutes had passed when Godwyn heard a light knock on her door, followed by Nerf’s voice: “Boss, you in there?” he said quietly.

She looked up and felt herself starting to breathe easier.

“Come in,” she said, and the door slid quietly open as the muscular commando stepped inside. Godwyn realized she must look terrible when the Catachan paused for a split second with his mouth half-open in speech. Her face was still bruised, her clothes were sweat-streaked and messy, and she hadn’t a clue what her hair was doing. Not pretty, but the Catachan recovered okay.

“How’re you doing?” she asked him, not getting up but at least dropping her hands away from her face so that they rested between her legs.

He shrugged his big shoulders and squatted down on his haunches a couple of paces from where she sat. “All things considered, I could be better, I guess,” he said. “How’re you?”

“I’m ready,” she lied, but he may not have caught it as he glanced away.

“Kinda feels like a suicide run, dunnit?” he said, staring out the porthole before looking back into her face.

Now Godwyn shrugged – a tired, beaten shrug. “You don’t think we’ll make it?” she asked quietly, looking at the floor between her booted feet.

“We might,” he said softly, “but I don’t like our chances. Still, we gotta do what we gotta do, right?”

“Right.”

They left it at that for a time with neither one saying a word, but when the sound of breathing got too much for her, Godwyn had another question that was burning her up:

“What happens if we fail?” she asked.

He chewed his lip thoughtfully as he met her blue eyes with his own deep, hazel stare. “We won’t know about it,” he answered honestly. “Won’t feel one way or the other if this thing goes down.

“And that’s good enough for you?”

He chuckled softly. “I don’t ask for much, so I get by okay…”

She nodded: she felt she knew what he meant, and she liked it.

Another period of silence prevailed as Godwyn went back to staring at the carpet.

Eventually Nerf got up:

“I should go see the others,” he said, and turned to leave.

“Nerf, wait…” she stopped him just as he reached the door and he turned around, a slightly questioning look on his face.

Her heart was starting to throb in her chest, and she felt her hands turn hot. She looked up and met his eyes: “Stay here with me,” she asked him. “Please.”

He waited for a second, but the look on his face said that he understood. Turning away from the door he walked back over to where she sat on the edge of the bed and dropped back into a crouch so that he looked into her face. He was close now, close enough that she could see the dirt of fighting that clung to his features, but he didn’t press her. Slowly, he looked down and took her rough hands gently into his own and seemed to study the marks on them that had accumulated over the years. For a killer, he was surprisingly delicate, and not for an instant did her hands try to slip away.

She moved first as the Inquisitor leaned inwards and kissed him as her lips sought out his. He didn’t resist and went with her gently as she guided his hand around her waist to the flat of her back while the rest of her body pressed closer and invited him overtop of her. Soon his shirt was off and he carried her further with him onto the bed where they lay alone, together where no-one else could see.

 

* *

 

The galleries were practically deserted when Alexander went there after leaving the briefing room. Strange, he thought, that such an obvious place could be so empty. He walked along for a bit, staring out into the darkness, before he found a cushioned bench facing the high-paned windows and sat himself down.

So this was it, it came to him; this was what it felt like to have just a few hours left. Strange that he felt calm – he thought he’d be shaking by now. Perhaps the certainty of things made it easier. Whenever he’d thought about his death before (and he’d thought about it many times since the earliest lessons of the academies) he’d always imagined how he would be stoic, dying as a martyr, a hero, for the Imperial Creed. Then he’d entered his first fire-fight with Godwyn and he’d felt as if his heart would explode.

Despite the situation, he smiled: looking back on things, it couldn’t have gone much smoother. This was what he was here for after all, and if there wasn’t the chance of dying in the Emperor’s service, then what kind of service was it? Death was a part of life, and without it there would be no meaning.

James Alexander nodded into the blackness: there was a certain type of peace in knowing that.

Movement further down the gallery caught his attention and he turned to see Brianna walking towards him. She was both armoured and armed.

The young man swallowed the lump in his throat, and tried to will back the peaceful feeling he’d been enjoying not a moment before.

He hoped that maybe she’d walk by – ignore him – but she didn’t, and instead sat down beside him on the bench with an audible clunk of metal rubbing against metal. He pretended not to notice. What could she want from him now?

The sister unfastened the chainsword from across her back and set it down on the carpeted floor, and followed it with her pistol and rifle, and then a few grenades. The Interrogator watched all this – he’d left his guns in his cabin – but still did not speak.

“I’m sorry,” she said all of a sudden, and Alexander, startled, had to stop himself from copying her with a question. The situation called for him to say something smart, though naturally he didn’t:

“uum… what?” he said, then quickly added; “for. What for?”

He didn’t look at her, and she didn’t answer right away, but the young Interrogator could slowly feel his comfort level drop back to normal. As long as she didn’t start accusing him again he should be okay.

“When I was in the Order, my superiors always said that I was too brash and quick to judge,” she said in way of answering. Alexander quickly glanced at the woman beside him, but she was looking straight ahead into the void. “I don’t understand who you are, and I don’t like your… disorder, but you are a loyal servant of the Emperor and good human being. I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge you.”

Alexander nodded quietly. He didn’t hate her, in fact he thought he liked her, but at the same time he was guilty of misunderstanding the sister just as much as she was guilty of misunderstanding him.

“The first person I ever killed was a cleric who stole from the Cathedral of Saint Augusta,” Brianna continued. “I was so certain of his wrong-doing that I executed him without thought. What I did was right by the scriptures, but the high ecclesiarches condemned me on the basis of temporal laws.”

She paused as if remembering everything that had happened behind the words she now spoke.

“I resented them!” a flame of anger grew in her voice. “Who were they to disobey the Word of the Emperor and His saints!?”

Listening quietly, Alexander held his tongue and let the sister continue.

“They wished to punish me and my sisters allowed it!” she continued, leaning forward and running her gauntleted hands through her short, platinum hair. “So I chose the path of the Penitent Sinner instead of yield to them, and in doing so I thought I would change. I thought I’d understand more of the Imperium if I travelled with your mentor.”

Now she looked at Alexander and her voice dropped back to normal. “But instead I continue to misstep my place.”

“Do you think you understand it better now?” the young Interrogator asked, feeling that he should say something now that the sister had fallen silent.

She shook her head. “No,” she said, “but I hope that in time I will.”

James folded his arms over his chest as he felt a seed of unease suddenly started to grown in his gut. The sister’s talking to him – confiding in him even – unnerved him. He didn’t really want to know who she was, at least not now. In hours they could both be dead, and the last thing he wanted to do was to get to know Brianna better. Part of him wished that she still hated him.

“Can you forgive me?” she asked, pulling his mind back to the present instead of losing himself in the blackness of space.

He started to think about the question, but then suddenly checked his memory: what was he thinking?

“Yes,” he said, “of course I can.”

She thanked him, and stood to go. “The Emperor provides for the faithful,” she said looking into the void. “Hope is the gift of martyrs.”

 

* *

 

The wound was healed, but still she picked at it. Picked at it because… because there was nothing else to it. The blade that had lifted her flesh, the one who had wielded it… no that was not for her to decide.

Hiding amidst the noise and shadows of the engineering deck, Mercy fingered the scabbed laceration that lay across her thigh as her eyes stared manically towards the service ramp twenty paces away from her in the light where the crew sometimes walked.

The pain of her wound was starting to dull but she didn’t want it to. She needed something – anything – to distract her from the visions she saw behind her violet eyes. The other one… she had been like her, like a twin.

Tears began to leak unbidden from her eyes, and soon the leak became a stream. Alone, she sat and cried in silence.

What did it mean to kill your equal?

The act of the kill had always come to her naturally, like an extension of her consciousness, and it was what she enjoyed. It was something quick, subtle, something she could perfect and do again and again and again until the warmth of the blood was all she felt. But no longer.

What was it like to watch yourself die?

The other had died like everything else: she’d cut it, it bled, and it died. There was no stopping it, no finesse to it, no notion that she had killed a superior being. It just died.

Mercy bit her lip until she tasted blood, and still the tears flowed.

It could have been her. The other could have lifted her flesh and spilled her organs on the ground – she could see it happening, feel her intestines writhe and uncoil as they fell helplessly through her hands.

She could have died.

Nothing had come close to killing her like that before. There had been times… yes, but it had not been the same. No-one had ever matched her with blades… until now.

She should revel it, enjoy the kill of a skilled opponent even more so than any other, but when it was like fighting herself…? No. The thought sickened her. She wanted to take back the killing blow. She wanted to never have set eyes upon one who looked like her.

How old was she?

Mercy didn’t remember. She never thought it mattered. So much of her memories revolved around the heights of passion – either in love or death – and everything else seemed grey. Eating, sleeping, being around others… a blur, or at least they were now.

Nerf had been there when it all changed. He was the first person Mercy really remembered from her past. There had been people before, yes, she could see faces and hear sounds, and she could taste the blood – always more blood… But then there had been that one man – a mere animal – she had been tasked to kill, and he had tricked her. Through trickery he had captured and caged her like trophy beast, and she’d almost died… That she remembered well.

But before that…?

Had there been others? Others like her?

Mercy didn’t know. She couldn’t remember.

There had been light. And sound. And blood – always more blood.

But she couldn’t remember.

Gripping the other’s sword tightly in her hands, Mercy squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to remember.

 

* *

 

Whenever Lee needed to be alone there was always one place he could go where everyone would look for him yet no-one would bother him, and when he got there he found that Meridian was once again quiet and empty. Mounting her, he proceeded to the cockpit and quietly sat himself in his spot at her controls. Here was his home, the place he felt best, the place he where he was him, that guy the pilot, Lee Normandy.

He’d collected a lot of ‘stuff’ over the years with Meridian, and most of it he kept here: a poster of Wes Mervin, the best street racer from back home in the hive; a braid of hair he’d collected from some girl way back when and held on to for luck ever since; a deck of cards that smelled of amnsec; something of Godwyn’s she didn’t realize was missing yet (he kept it well hidden just in case); and, of course, the nude sculpt he’d picked up in hogshead. Sudulus had hated that sculpt, he remember with a smile, though secretly he’d probably just been waiting to get his mechanical little paws on it. Not that he’d get the chance now.

The smile faded from the pilot’s face as he sat in his chair. Sudulus had asked about most of this stuff, and the two of them had swapped quite a few stories in their time. Their time. Funny to think it was over. That probably happens to people when you’ve spent that last quarter century traveling with someone day in and day out. You just get used to seeing them around…

He shook his head and pinched his nose. He still couldn’t believe the little man was actually gone. No more blind man’s bluff, no more playful arguing about each other’s habits, no more nothing. He was gone. Dead and gone.

Sudulus would probably scold him from dwelling on it.

He’d known Godwyn for just as long, but, when he thought about it, it wasn’t really the same thing. She was the boss, not his pal. Sure, when she was younger and not as serious all the time he’d try and have a go at her now and then, though she was always too sober to fall for it… even when she’d been drinking… but now she was the boss, and that was that.

Sudulus was different; he new his place in the world and never tried to change it.

Lee got up with a heavy sigh and stretched his legs up and down the length of the hold. Sometimes he’d do that to work out the stress, and sometimes it even worked. Not this time. He couldn’t stop thinking about Sudulus, but he couldn’t really start thinking about him either because he kept thinking about what was happening around him. Less than six hours now, he figured: six hours until they might all be dead. Godwyn, Mercy, him… the lot of them.

Liking his lips, he marched over to the ship-board galley at the end of the hold and made himself a quick cup of caffeine: it might be the last time he got to do that. He took a sip of the steaming liquid, but then shook his head. He was staring at the floor, but in his mind’s eye he was really staring at himself.

This was crazy. He was going to die today.

Lee shivered and tried to shake the feeling – it never helped to think like that – but at the same time he had that sinking feeling that came with years of experience as a smuggler. The same feeling that had warned him not to fly before.

He took a long drag on his caffeine and then patted down his pockets for a lho-stick, forgetting that he’d quit smoking over ten years earlier. This wasn’t going good.

He started to wander again through the shuttle, popping into cabins and just generally trying to remember every minute of the time he’d spent onboard. People came to mind – generally when they were laughing – and it made it a little easier, though thinking of where they were now didn’t do him too many favours: most of them were in the ground, so far as he knew, though occasionally there was a bright story here or there. Last he’d heard Vicky had had a baby, so maybe it was worth it after all.

He swilled the remainder of the caffeine around his cup.

If Godwyn survived, and he did too, maybe she’d let him retire... he rubbed his chin thoughtfully: no, that wouldn’t do. It was more like would he let him retire? The man he knew in the mirror was way too attached to Meridian, and, as long as he was, he had job to do that beat out just about everything else.

“A’ight girl,” he downed his caffeine and slapped Meridian’s bulkhead, “we’ve got s’me biz’ness t’ attend to.”

 

* *

 

For twenty-five years Godwyn had not slept with a man.

There had been sex, base lusts she carried out with unassuming men who she never saw or spoke to again and varied from city to city and planet to planet, but that had been all. They never knew her real name, what she did, or where she was from. One day she might be a local business-woman out for a good-time on the town, and another as a trader who was spending a single night ashore, and her choice in partners might be just as varied. Sometimes there was dinner, drinking, and fancy dress, while other times she was lucky if she got a room away from other prostitutes. Though as a rule she never slept with them, and never, ever invited them to her own bed.

With Nerf, however, she had broken both her rules.

Lying on her side, her eyes fluttered open and, blinking away the pleasant fatigue, traced around the room. Clothing was strewn about from when they’d stripped and cast it aside from where they now lay only partially covered by the tangle of sheets.

His hand rested gently on her hip and she could feel his slow, hot breath against her back, so calm now that he was sleeping, though with his touch she could still feel the man’s primal strength from when he’d pulled against her with his hands and his breathing became ragged and his body hard.

She softly stroked her fingers over his hand and felt him twitch. That was over now.

Godwyn looked back at him over her shoulder and saw the Catachan asleep in her bed. Gently she moved his hand off her body and slid to the bed’s edge. With a groan, she heard him waken behind her, then felt the bed shift under his weight as he slid up beside her, and together they sat in silence on the bed’s edge.

Eventually his hand crept up her back and rubbed against her neck, and as a longing sigh of breath escaped her lungs he kissed her, before standing up and starting to pull on his clothes.

“I wish we had more time,” she said softly, watching him as he dressed.

Nerf pulled his shirt over his head and then turned towards her – that same understanding look in his eye.

“Me too,” he said. “Me too…”

 

__________________________

 

As a closing note, the next part will the the last part of Inquisition II (other than a short epilogue) and I can tell you right now that not everyone will survive the encounter with the Necrons. Who will make it out? Who won't? Any guesses? :)

[Taranis]

I'm afraid my guess is mercy and our stoic nerf. And perhaps brianna. Any who disappears will be missed and remembered.

I hope part I I I comes quickly after curtain fall of part I I ! :huh:

[Aqui]

I have no idea as to whom survives. However, I did like the bit regarding Mercy - what drives her and that she has as many chinks in her mental armour (if not more) as everyone else.

[Azekai]

I too enjoyed the scene with Mercy alone- up until now she has been very distant from everyone, including the reader. Nice to get inside her head and see what she's feeling.

 

As for who dies . . . five bucks says Nerf.

Which would be sad. :C

[Papewaio]

Hmm. . . I have a feeling that Lee and the Meridian will go down together. I very much hope Alexander doesn't go yet, he seems like quite a complex character that hasn't had his detail mapped out yet.

[Lady_Canoness]

Some good guesses, and I like to see that no character other than Godwyn is firmly in the 'makes it' camp. I'm also glad that Mercy was well served in this last part. As you can imagine, the Inquisition's rendition of her can be quite tricky, and I've never worked with a mute character before :)

 

Just for you Taranis, I'll likely begin work on Inquisition III a week or two after finishing up Inquisition II. The time lapse between the two will also be significantly reduced from the twenty-five year gap between I & II.

[Taranis]

Just for you Taranis, I'll likely begin work on Inquisition III a week or two after finishing up Inquisition II. The time lapse between the two will also be significantly reduced from the twenty-five year gap between I & II.

Well, part III wouldn't be the same without our superstar. I'm already wondering and looking forward to who the next technical wizard might be and what he might be capable of. Perhaps a duo aka R2D2 and C3PO just in the flesh version (or partly flesh?)

[Lady_Canoness]

The next tech-wizard is going to be coming out of left field and is not what people are likely to expect (and no, it is not a tech-marine, so don't go there).

 

But in the spirit of teasing, a familiar face will be returning for part III ;)

[Aqui]

The next tech-wizard is going to be coming out of left field and is not what people are likely to expect (and no, it is not a tech-marine, so don't go there).

 

But in the spirit of teasing, a familiar face will be returning for part III ;)

 

I forget his name, but wouldn't happen to be that Space Marine by any chance? ;)

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

Ooo, he was awesome, and I think he and alexander would either get on well or be at odds with each other, being psykers and all...

[Azekai]

Techie outta left field, eh? Not a monkey, is it? :blink:

[Lady_Canoness]

I can assure you that there will be NO monkeys in these books!

[Incus]

You have just stolen two hours of time that I had dedicated solely to finishing my rhino. And I don't feel cheated in the slightest! Fantastic work, so gripping. I think this is the stuff I'd actually pay to read, in book form. A very talented author!

 

The only slight negative for me is that I thought you'd finished when I started reading. Now I have to wait to find out what happens! :tu:

[Lady_Canoness]

You have just stolen two hours of time that I had dedicated solely to finishing my rhino. And I don't feel cheated in the slightest! Fantastic work, so gripping. I think this is the stuff I'd actually pay to read, in book form. A very talented author!

 

The only slight negative for me is that I thought you'd finished when I started reading. Now I have to wait to find out what happens! :tu:

 

Incus I am so pleased! More than pleased - I am honoured! And for everyone reading I will do my best to finish the Inquisition II over the next few days!

 

Truth be told, however, I actually have submitted the Inquisition to the Black Library (under the title Godwyn's Inquisition) for consideration and hope to hear back from them over the next coming weeks.

Maybe - just maybe - you'll see these in book form after all ;)

[Lady_Canoness]

And so it is that for your reading pleasure I give you now the last part of the Inquisition II: Part 18.

 

In this part characters die, though more importantly characters also live. This is the single larges chapter of both stories, and boast a length of 18 pages in word format. Does it do the story justice? Is it all that is needed before a quick sign off the epilogue? I think it is. Do you? We will see.

 

Part 18

 

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

 

*part 18*

 

 

The hours ticked by in silence on the Patroclus’ bridge as the merchant vessel drew closer to its target destination. The crew was silent or spoke in whispers, no orders were shouted from the command deck, and even the cogitator banks and display terminals seemed still by comparison until, just before the six hour mark, one of the bridge officers approached the First Officer and whispered something quietly in his ear. He nodded, and, turning sharply towards the aft-ward end of the bridge, marched up to the Ship Master’s command throne and bowed his head for permission to report.

“We’re nearing the target coordinates, sir,” he said, and the Ship Master responded with a grim nod of acknowledgment.

“Sound the alarm for action stations,” the old man instructed him, and the First Officer saluted in response.

“It shall be done, sir…”

 

+“Attention on deck! Attention on deck! All crew report to action stations!”+

Across the length and breadth of the ship eight hundred souls stormed into position to stand at order until the sound of their feet rumbled like a titanic drum rolling down the lines of battle, yet even so there was one who walked with every footfall ringing like the crash of a thousand spears breaking in war across the deck and silenced everything in her advance until, clad in the heavy, black power armour, Inquisitor Godwyn stepped into the hangar where her team had assembled.

+“I repeat: all crew report to action stations! This is not a drill! This is not a drill!”+

Alexander stood closest to the hatchway and greeted his mentor as she entered, exchanging a few words of readiness before falling in behind her as she proceeded to Meridian. As they did so the intercom fell silent before the voice of Columbo, the venerable Ship Master, spoke up to address his crew:

+“In time we may be tested, so stand now in readiness to make battle…”+

Nerf, dressed in his drab fatigues with a coil of rope across his chest and carrying both his autocarbine and the long barrelled mk. IV over his shoulder, grinned and nodded as Godwyn stopped before him and placed an armoured hand on his upper arm.

“We’ll see each other again on the other side,” he said.

+“Remember that duty is the greatest test of loyalty to both the Emperor and the Imperium…”+

Brianna wrapped a string of prayer beads around her gauntlets and made the sign of the Aquila across her chest while repeating the litanies of devotion under her breath.

+“That in our lives the call of duty must be answered…”+

Lee cracked his knuckles and took several deep, calming breaths as he hopped nervously from foot to foot. As she passed, Godwyn clapped him encouragingly on the shoulder.

+“And that it is only in death that duty ends…”+

Standing by the shuttle’s starboard hatch, Mercy waited until everyone else had entered the vessel before ducking inside herself.

+“It is an honour to serve with you now,”+ Columbo concluded, +“and I know that you will make me proud.”+

Her pilot stationed at the helm, Meridian engaged her engines and slowly rose from the deck as the hangar doors opened before her and let the shuttle slip into space.

 

The approach was quiet, but dropping through the darkness Godwyn watched with her apprentice from the nest as the boards lit up with massive energy spikes on all read-out displays, veritably blinding her craft on its way down. The thought that they were flying into something that flooded her ship’s sensors to the point of futility troubled her greatly, but was nothing compared to when Lee called her up to the cockpit.

They had a visual.

She entered the cockpit and was standing at her pilot’s shoulder when he turned around in his seat and asked permission to turn back before it was too late. Her mouth opened to dismiss his request out-of-hand, but the words died in her lungs and her jaw hung open as her mind caught up with what her eyes were seeing through the cockpit glass. Where before there had been nothing save the black wasteland of the sticks, there now stood a colossal pyramid of black stone rearing out of the earth before them that bathed the surrounding earth and sky in a luminescent green glow as what looked like waves of energy rippled and coruscated across its surface. It was colossal, gigantic, likely as large a small hive, and it only seemed to grow ever larger out of the black ground. It was likely miles away – just cresting over the horizon – but even so she could feel a tingle in the back of her throat where the mounting dread struggled to leak out.

It took her several moments to realize that Lee was talking again.

“I said,” he repeated himself, “tha’ I c’n turn us ‘roun’ now n’ maybe, maybe get us ou’ safely…”

Turning to him, she must have looked fierce, and Lee shrunk away without her having so much as said a word.

“No,” Godwyn answered him with a shake of her head even though she could feel her chest tighten underneath her armour. “There is no turning back.”

She leaned back through the cockpit hatchway and into the nest where Alexander was still watching the readout displays. He must have caught the look on his mentor’s face, however, as he quickly stopped what he was doing and looked at her with a curious glint in his eyes.

“Tell the Patroclus…” she began, swallowing to keep her voice calm. “Tell the Patroclus to withdraw immediately and warn the Imperial Fleet.”

Judging by her appearance, Alexander knew not to question the Inquisitor and obeyed immediately, though even so he reported a great deal of interference and that it was difficult to get the message through.

“But they acknowledged?” she asked him.

“Yes,” he said, clearly nervous, “they acknowledged.”

Turning back to the cockpit, Godwyn found that Lee was watching her. There were tears in his eyes. “‘S crazy, boss…” he said in little more than a whisper, “… this ‘s Emp’ror’ damned insane…”

Knowing that something was wrong, Alexander wouldn’t be kept from the cockpit and joined them after several minutes, by which point the pyramid had swollen to be just about the only thing they could see.

Staggering, the young man braced himself against the cockpit interior and said aloud a prayer of deliverance while averting his eyes. Godwyn, on the other hand, found that she could not divert them.

Look not upon the alien, she recalled the scriptures in her studies as having said, but as looking upon the face of her foe she found it utterly compelling.

“How in the God Emperor’s name did we not know that was there!?” Alexander demanded, still shielding his eyes from the artefact of the Necrotyr.

“We did,” his mentor replied quietly, “but it was underground… we had no way of knowing what we were really looking at.”

The young man swore – loudly – but what Godwyn really wanted to know was how one man, Inquisitor or not, had managed to pull such a thing off. As an incursion it was massive – well beyond the scale she had anticipated – and to have done such a thing in almost utter secrecy? She cursed Brand’s name under her breath. He would be punished for this.

“What is that?!” Alexander drew her attention away from the pyramid as he leaned up against the cockpit glass and peered down towards the ground. It was difficult to discern, but at first it looked like the light was reflecting along the ground, though upon closer inspection it turned out to be…

“Impossible!” he nearly shouted, and quickly turned from the view-port as Lee strained to see what he had seen. “No! It cannot be!”

But it was. Infantry – thousands upon thousands of infantry – a carpet of metal bodies reflecting in the green light of the pyramid as rank upon rank of alien warriors flowed like a gleaming sea across the landscape.

“O’ Emp’ror…” Lee whimpered, sinking back into his seat and momentarily losing track of his heading so that the shuttle tilted dangerously to one side and sent everyone scrambling to keep their balance

“Listen! Both of you!” Godwyn snapped, suddenly angry at both men in the cockpit. “How many new horrors do you have to see until you realize the threat of which we face?! None of us will survive this if you can’t take control of your fear!”

Alexander was turning pale, but, resting his hands on his knees, he managed to look his mentor in the eye and apologize. Lee, however, had gone beyond words and simply flew the shuttle in complete silence.

“Get back to the nest and find somewhere we can be set down as far away from the warriors as possible,” the Inquisitor instructed the young man. “Use sonic imaging to get a layout of the terrain below us.”

The Interrogator obeyed without question and seemed all too happy to be given a task that stole his attention away from the Necrotyr as he darted from the cockpit. Godwyn, on the other hand, remained to watch over her pilot, and put a hand on his shoulder when she noticed that he had started to quake.

“Just fly the ship, Lee,” she tried to calm him, “that is all I’m going to ask of you…”

 

 

Lee took them on a wide pass of the pyramid as Alexander scanned the ground for a possible landing zone near the alien artefact but came up with nothing. The closest he could get them was to a jutting rock-face that seemed to be the remnants of the crust pushed aside by the monolith’s emergence about a half-mile from the pyramid. Re-entering the cockpit, he gave Lee the coordinates and stayed in the cockpit with the pilot and his mentor as Meridian closed in on her final approach. Alexander had turned as white as a sheet and stopped talking, but he refused to leave, as if seeing the alien with his eyes was better than imagining worse horrors in his mind.

“Can you sense them?” his mentor asked him in a whisper. He nodded. It would only get worse.

“Tha’s ‘s close ‘s I c’n get ya!” Lee called as he cut the aft thrusters and brought Meridian into a close hover over a shadow filled clearing a couple hundred paces in diameter.

In the lower hold, Nerf threw the side hatch wide open and fastened his equipment in preparation to drop into the darkness.

“What if we’ve been detected?” Alexander shouted as he and the Inquisitor joined the rest of the team in the belly shuttle. Godwyn gave him a sideways look: she didn’t need to say anything to tell him the price of failure – he’d seen everything he needed on the way in to be able to answer that question himself.

Standing in the open hatchway with the hot backwash of the shuttle’s thrusters blowing around them, Nerf was the first to jump, followed quickly by Godwyn and the rest of the team. The terrain was rough, and the glow of the monolith made it difficult to see, but they managed to touch the ground without incident and stayed low while Meridian engaged her thrusters and rapidly took off into the darkness. Whether or not they’d see her or her pilot again was anyone’s guess.

Groping her way through the spectral lighting emanating from the pyramid, Godwyn regrouped her team as best she could while staying covered in the broken ground from the Necron edifice.

“You hear that?” Nerf asked from beside her as he looked up at the mountainous stone structure that loomed over them less than a mile in the distance.

Her face picked out in the ghostly green light, Godwyn said that she did, though she could not be sure if it was so much as hearing as it was feeling. Something in the stone was shaking – humming even – and charging the air around it with a sensation on the edge of sound that seemed to vibrate her teeth and rattle her skull. It didn’t hurt, but it was uncomfortable, and, like everything else about the black stone structure, utterly alien.

“Where do we go from here?” Alexander asked, sounding short of breath as he hugged his autogun close to his chest and tried to squeeze himself deeper into the shadows of the overhanging rocks.

In truth it would be hard to tell. The terrain was exceptionally rough amidst the broken crust and seemed to form a labyrinth of gulleys, crevices, and other narrow pathways snaking through the earth towards the pyramid. Any end could be dead, and any number of alien horrors could lurk in the unnatural darkness that enveloped them.

“Mercy!” Godwyn called in a low hiss that she was sure the assassin would hear. “Can you lead us forward?”

Virtually invisible in the darkness, the giant assassin slunk closer until her heart-shaped face caught the emerald glow of the pyramid and nodded once before vanishing into the darkness once again.

“Follow me,” Nerf instructed, adjusting the mk. IV anti-materiel rifle over his shoulder before taking a knee and checking that Godwyn and the others were behind him. “I can follow her trail.”

The assassin moved like a shadow in the night but somehow the Catachan commando kept on her as she ducked and wove through the darkness towards the pyramid. She was moving quickly and oftentimes Nerf had to jog to keep the distance from growing too great between them, yet they never doubled back and the alien monolith only grew even larger before until it seemed to take over the sky. Snaps of jade lightning flickered across its surface and the vibrating hum grew with every step until the very ground beneath their appeared to quiver before it. Whatever power possessed the alien construct would be colossal, but if it was possible to stop it they had try… or die in the attempt.

When they got closer still to the pyramid’s wall, Nerf waved them back into hiding as a monstrous metal spider listed silently by several meters overhead. The same fiends they had battled before, the alien monstrosities grew in number the closer they moved towards the monolith, but thankfully did not seem aware to their presence, though each time one passed overhead Godwyn could feel the air burning her lungs in terror as the arachnid’s glazed, amber eyes seemed to drift over their hiding spots as if mere chance alone was what kept them from being discovered and gruesomely dispatched by the spider’s vicious claws. So far fortune appeared to favour them, however, and every time the spiders passed them by Nerf would wave them up once more and continue to lead them through the shadow-choked crags until at last they caught up with Mercy on the edge of an entirely new obstacle.

“Well that just complicates things…” Nerf said resting his hands on his hips and looking ahead now that they’d reached where Mercy sat on a loosened boulder. Watching him with her violet eyes, the assassin seemed to agree: this would not be easy.

The wall of the monolith was now clearly visible no more than thirty yards away, but they were separated from it by a massive chasm formed from when the ground had collapsed around the pyramid’s base, and as they stood on the edge of the precipice there looked to be no way around.

Loosing a lamp-pack from the utility belt she’d fastened around the waist of her power armour, Inquisitor Godwyn took a knee near the cliff’s edge and shone the beam of light as far down into the chasm as it would go without seeing the bottom. Hundred and fifty feet or more, she reckoned.

Nerf uncoiled the rope from around his body and leaned his heavy mk. IV to the side.

“I’ve got the most experience doing this kind of thing,” he clarified, knowing that some people might try to stop him as he handed the one end of the rope to the power armoured Inquisitor and fastened the other end around his torso. “I’ll let you know what I find.”

He moved to the edge in preparation to go over and unfastened his lamp pack.

“Emperor watch over you,” Brianna said as the others wished him luck, and, after Godwyn had coiled the rope around her forearm and braced her legs, the Catachan went over the edge and disappeared from view. Mercy looked longingly at the place where he’d vanished from.

Everything was silent for several minutes as Alexander and Brianna hugged cover on the look out for more spiders while Mercy moved over to help the Inquisitor on the rope. It was still heavy and moving steadily: a good sign.

+“That’s it, I’ve reached the bottom,”+ Nerf’s voice crackled in their ears and they collectively sighed in relief. +“I’ve tied it off down here. Do the same up there and we can all come down.”+

“Is there a way in?” Godwyn asked, not wanting make the Catachan climb back up over one-hundred feet of rope.

+“Think so,”+ he said. +“At least, there is a big cave that doesn’t look natural.”+

Taking a deep breath, Alexander wiped his hand over the sweat on his forehead and sat down on a rock. Brianna checked on him, but he said he was alright.

“Understood,” Godwyn replied, “we’re on our way.”

“Do we need a rear-guard?” the exiled sister asked, approaching her near the edge, but Godwyn shook her head. They were going together.

 

Mercy went first and descended the rope with no difficulty – Nerf calling back after a minute to confirm she was safe.

Brianna went second, and though the added weight of her plate armour made her descent trickier she made it down all the same, leaving just Alexander and his mentor waiting at the top.

“Inquisitor…” he said his voice somewhat laboured from either the stress of the approach or the psychic echoes of the Necrotyr, “I must admit that I have a bad feeling about this… I didn’t want to say so earlier and risk compromising the others.”

“There is no other way than down,” she responded, shouldering Nerf’s mk. IV and indicating that her apprentice should take position at the rope.

“I don’t mean that,” he replied, stepping up to the line but not grasping it. “I don’t think we can stop the Necrotyr, Inquisitor.”

The same thought had been pestering the back of Godwyn’s mind also, though she had been purposefully ignoring it. She was committed now, and doubt would serve no-one.

“There is a chance at failure in everything a person does,” she told him quietly, further tightening the mk. IV around her armoured torso, “but if we let that stop us, then we’ll never achieve anything at all.”

The young man accepted her response with a quiet nod and apologized for despairing. Quickly, he grasped the rope and was over the edge in no time.

Godwyn waited in silence as the rope wiggled and shook until Nerf confirmed that he was down safely. Her turn.

Wrapping both hands around the rope, she started backwards towards the edge with the line running between her legs. She’d done this before on practice runs during in training hall, but never before while wearing power armour and with an anti-materiel rifle on her back. She took several deep breaths; take your time, take it slow, and you’ll get down okay, she told herself. There wasn’t much slack in the rope and as soon as she put one foot over the edge and wrapped the rope around her shin Godwyn could feel the extra weight. Tightening her grip, she leaned back, and, with one last hesitation, hopped over the ledge.

The roped zipped between her hands at terrific speed as she started to fall, but somehow she kept her hands and her legs wrapped around the guideline as she felt herself pick up speed as wind rushed past her ears.

She was going too fast, and – armour or not – she’d break if she hit the ground at this speed. Instinctively her fists closed and her legs wrapped around each-other as tightly as they could and abruptly she slowed, though still moving too fast to stop.

+“You’re doing fine,”+ Nerf told her at some point during her descent. +“Just past halfway.”+

She tried to slow herself even further, hoping for a gentle landing, but just as she thought she was getting the hang of it the ground hit her with a resounding *bang* and she tumbled over onto her back like a ton of iron.

“Whoa there!” Nerf and the others quickly surrounded her and the commando tried to help her up, though he quickly found that he couldn’t budge the powered armour as he lost his footing instead.

The rock had cracked where she landed, but the armour was more-or-less undamaged, and, other than a sudden light-headedness and a sore lower back, Godwyn was fine and picked herself up without difficulty. Unfastening the rifle from her back and returning it to its owner, the Inquisitor dusted herself off and asked for a status report.

So far as Nerf could tell, the chasm went on for some ways in either direction, though to their right he had discovered what he thought was an entrance tunnel of some sort that entered the pyramid from underground.

“Is it possible that this will take us to the same place as last time?” Alexander wondered aloud as the started to move out.

Once again taking the lead behind Mercy, Nerf shrugged. “That’s what I thought you’d be able to tell me,” he said.

 

Unlike on Penumbra’s surface, the emerald glow of the monolith didn’t penetrate the darkness in the depths of the chasm, neither did the vibrating hum that Godwyn had noticed earlier, but a dry rattle of wind swept around them in the depths and moaned against the rocks much like the dying sounds of a living being, which combined with the near total darkness to give the sense that something was aware of them beyond the limits their lamp-packs allowed them to see.

“There it is,” Nerf pointed out, shining his light on a black rectangle cut into the face of the rock; “that has to be our way in.”

Godwyn stepped into the opening and shone her light down a long black-stone corridor that seemed identical to the material they had remarked when they had entered the Necrotyr crypt previously, and sure enough emitted the same humming sound just on the verge of hearing.

“We may have found it,” Godwyn agreed. Mercy was nowhere to be seen down the long corridor and was likely further ahead, she guessed, so with Nerf on point they followed the beams of their lamp packs further into the alien structure and left the blackness of the chasm behind them.

The light had long since moved on when a creature grotesquely hunched and mangled hobbled in after them, followed by something altogether more deadly.

 

Godwyn took the lead as they pushed deeper into the depths of the pyramid. The air was stale further on and carried upon it the weight of centuries – as if no living creature had passed this way for eons or more – and while she walked with her plasma pistol drawn before her, the Ordo Xenos Inquisitor found herself wondering how Inquisitor Brand had managed such a feat.

Was it possible?

Did it matter?

She knew that in truth it did not – either she would die, or she would succeed: knowing why made no difference.

After several minutes of following the same corridor, their route took an abrupt turn upwards into a narrow corridor flanked by what Godwyn guessed were rows of sealed vaults.

She raised her fist and signalled a stop. This place felt very different.

Energy seemed to hum through the walls and made them a nauseating shade of green around the edges of the slab covered vaults, while the vaults themselves were decorated with an array of alien hieroglyphs and metallic skull emblems.

“What do you suppose those are?” Nerf asked, pulling his rifle off his shoulder and unfastening the long-range scope as he gazed up and down the ominous-looking seals.

“Something we shouldn’t be touching,” Godwyn replied frankly, and quickly jogged down the corridor in between the leering skulls on the vaults. Her team quickly followed their Inquisitor’s thunderous footsteps – Brianna murmuring a prayer of protection as she ran – and put the vault behind them as they passed into another featureless corridor.

Where they were was anyone’s guess, and Godwyn found it odd that they had not yet caught up with Mercy, but regardless they pressed on down the only route available until:

“Sand?” Alexander asked in confusion, as if disbelieving his eyes. “Sand? Here!?”

Brianna and Nerf looked equally surprised to have found a large, columned chamber inundated with golden sand after trekking though single corridors of black stone, yet Godwyn’s eyes narrowed and her pistol remained drawn and ready. In her experience, alien artefacts were often mysterious or downright bizarre, though she had found that it made them no less dangerous.

“Don’t move,” Godwyn warned them, and, though looking perplexed, her team obeyed and took up covering positions in the narrow corridor as Godwyn slowly paced towards the chamber opening.

“The sand hasn’t been disturbed,” she noted as she drew nearer and the beam of her lamp-pack illuminated more and more of the golden grains; “Mercy didn’t come this way.”

Nerf’s eyes narrowed. “We didn’t miss anything,” he said. “This is the only way she could have come!”

Shining her light into the chamber proper, Godwyn didn’t respond.

It was a large room – large enough that she couldn’t see any walls through the darkness between the columns, though when she looked up the flat ceiling was well within sight.

What was this place?

From a human perspective, sand made no sense, but to the ancient Necrotyr…? It had to somehow; otherwise there was no explaining sand inside an otherwise immaculate construct.

“Nerf,” Godwyn called the Catachan up to where she stood at the edge of the chamber, “cover me,” and she took one step forward. Instantly, her armoured greave sank up to its shin.

“Don’t fall down,” Nerf warned her, panning the anti-materiel rifle across her blind side. He was being completely serious: the sand was so loose that her armoured body would likely sink right under.

“Alien ruins are often trapped,” she told him in response, glancing over her shoulder and momentarily meeting the commando’s eyes, “this could be one of them.”

She could tell by looking at him that he didn’t like it, but then again he knew there was no other option.

She took another step – her second greave sinking to the middle of her shin. The sand was so deep and soft beneath her feet that it soon became like wading through water as each step sent a spray of sand ahead of her until she had taken six steps and left sunken footprints behind her, yet still she could find no reason behind it.

Careful to keep her balance, she turned to speak to Nerf just in time to see his eyes suddenly widen and his face contort into a yell as the anti-material rifle in his hands twisted rapidly in her direction.

“Down! Get down!”

Falling sideways, she landed with a spray of sand just as the cannon-like retort of the mk. IV ripped the room in half with a deafening bang followed almost instantly by the ring of metal striking metal at high velocity.

Something not five feet away crashed back into the sand and sent tiny particles of rock and dust flying in all directions as Nerf quickly dropped to a knee and worked the bolt and reload.

Floundering on her back in the sand, it took Godwyn several moments to collect her wits, but as the small arms of her team opened up she could clearly see the twisted figures that were rising rapidly from the soft ground. Ghoulish creations of metal, the beasts resembled a twisted skeleton in form, all hunched and decrepit, yet despite their apparent frailty they were devilishly quick to pull themselves from the sand and possessed viciously long claws in the place of fingers.

Raising her plasma pistol, Godwyn shot the nearest one through the chest – a nova of blue fire erupting across its ribcage as it sank back to the ground without so much as a sound. There were more, however, and sand cascaded from their metal bodies as they rose into view.

The mk. IV roared again in Nerf’s hands and staggered him back as he tried to control the recoil and reload as quickly as he could. Another necron fell, but there were at least eight more that he could see and who knew what else lingering in the darkness beyond their lights.

“Godwyn!” he yelled, throwing his heavy rifle aside and pumping out fire with his autocarbine. “Get back! Get back!”

Getting to her feet, the Inquisitor sighted her pistol one of the fiends that had broken into hobbling run towards her team, but just as she squeezed the trigger she was hit violently from behind and the plasma bolt seared wide off its mark as she fell face first back into the sand. Desperately, she tried to get up, but something heavy slammed into her back and pinned her down – sand filling her mouth and nose. Struggling she rolled and kicked to free herself as savage blows glanced against her armour.

She was shouting, her blood was screaming, and she heard something else roaring as the blows suddenly stopped and she dug herself free of the sand to see Sister Brianna ramming her chainsword two-handed down through the alien’s neck and chest. Sparks were flying and the screech of metal grinding metal was enough to deafen an ork as the alien flailed wildly while the sword cut through its coiled internals, but Brianna did not abate and wrenched the sword free and let the metal monster drop into a heap.

“Praise the Emperor!” she yelled, “And strike down His foes!”

Godwyn shot another flailing skeleton – the plasma bolt cutting it in two – and struggled to her feet as she and the sister fought back-to-back. Sand had gotten into the joints of her armour but she kept shooting, while behind her the sister twisted and lunged as another alien got within range of her howling sword.

Still at the chamber entrance, Nerf’s autocarbine clicked dry and he quickly chucked the spent magazine for a fresh one in his webbing while Alexander blazed away from behind him.

“They’re not dying!” the Interrogator screamed, pumping twenty rounds into the nearest necron only to have it rise again onto its feet. Nerf wasn’t blind, he could see what was happening, but in his experience nothing was unkillable.

Quickly, the Catachan snatched a high explosive grenade from his webbing and loosed the pin before throwing it as hard as he could towards where he saw more necrons pulling themselves from the ground.

“Fire in the hole!” he yelled, and the grenade detonated with a loud thump that threw sand and metallic body-parts in all directions.

It didn’t seem to work, and even aliens that had been blown in half by the explosion were still moving towards them. Nerf readied another grenade, but Alexander found himself starting to edge backwards away from the fighting as if his subconscious had already determined that the battle was lost even as he continued to fire.

“Nerf!” he shouted; “Ner – !” he stumbled against something behind him and spun around to look into the leering green eyes of the necron that had crept up behind them. Words failed as he gasped for breath, but all he could see were the soulless pits of the alien staring back at him. This was it.

He tried to raise his gun, but the alien was faster and the weapon was knocked from his grip and he stumbled backwards trying to keep his balance, but as he fell he heard a strange singing hum whistle through the air like music from a memory.

He blinked and the alien’s head was struck from its shoulders as Mercy appeared behind it to cut the fiend down with a single blow. Then, like lightning, she was past him and joined the fray in the chamber beyond.

Recovering from the momentary shock of the assassin’s timely arrival, Alexander stooped to retrieve his fallen weapon. Nearby the necron’s severed head stared at him with empty, dead eyes. He kicked it away down the hall for good measure.

A second grenade went off with a thump and chunks of shrapnel pinged off Godwyn’s armour and ricocheted wildly through the air. Unfazed, she kept firing as the sister continued to swing the roaring chainsword at the enemies encircling them.

“I’ll kill you all!” she screamed, cutting through the neck joint of a mechanical monstrosity even as the claws of her enemy dug deep gouges into her plate armour.

“I’ll – I’ll…” the sister was panting now and her arms were sluggish with fatigue from hefting the heavy blade, but even so she managed to step into a downward swing and sever the arm of an alien before bashing its head with the pommel of her sword. The thing didn’t die, however, and she yelped in pain as razor edge talons bit deeply into her left arm and painted the sand below with a splash of red blood.

Sensing the sister weaken, Godwyn spun on one foot and shot the alien in the face with a blast of plasma just as Brianna lost her footing and fell with a resounding crash into the sand.

“Get up!” Godwyn yelled at her, grabbing her under the arm and trying to haul the sister to her feet as she covered her with the plasma pistol. “Get up! There are still enemies to fight!”

Movement to her left caught the Inquisitor’s eye, but as she spun her weapon around she saw the shadowy form of Mercy outlined in her sights. The assassin froze, and, making no sudden movements, slowly rose upright and held her weapons in plain view. What was left of the aliens was scattered throughout the disturbed sand in twisted and smouldering heaps, though some of the more recognizable appendages still moved with sparks of life.

At her feet, the battle sister groaned and slowly picked herself up off the ground. “I can endure this,” she said, wiping the sand from her sweat-streaked face; “I will press on.”

Blood seeped in a slow trickle from between the folds of her armour and she held her wounded arm lightly against her side, but her face did not hold a trace of self-pity and was determined to carry on.

Godwyn accepted this with a silent nod.

“Let’s keep moving,” Nerf trudged into the sand with his anti-materiel rifle gripped tightly in his arms. “I don’t want more of these bastards finding out where we are…”

Alexander, following closely behind the Catachan, nodded in silent agreement with wide, fearful eyes. Fighting the alien face to face was never easy the first time, but with more battles he would eventually become stronger for of it.

“Right,” Godwyn ejected the nearly spent plasma cell from her pistol and fitted a new cartridge into place, “we go forward. Mercy, stay with us this time.”

The assassin did not seem at all surprised or offended by the Inquisitor’s request – if anything she only seemed to more grim with her mood subdued as Godwyn pressed on towards the far side of the sand-filled chamber.

 

If there was any alarm raised over the battle in the depths of the pyramid there was no indication of any organized resistance as Godwyn and her team pressed onwards through the darkness of the tomb. Along dark passageways, through chambers decorated with glowing runes and alien icons, and skirting around bizarre alien artefacts that seemed to pulse like a beating heart, they encountered no alien presence aside from the giant spider-like constructs that floated ponderously across the ceilings high overhead as if entirely oblivious to the humans beneath them. The lack of a visible enemy to fight did not unburden her team of their angst, however, and she felt them only growing more and more tense and nervous the further they got. No-one spoke – they hardly dared to breathe – as every sense rested on the knife’s edge and jumped at shadows in expectation of a sudden and deadly attack by the silent enemy.

Yet none came.

The fear was starting to compound in her mind when Godwynled her team through a black archway and down a flight of wide stairs into a massive chamber in which stood three towering obelisks that seemed to be the source of the sub-aural humming that she’d noticed since their arrival at the pyramid wall.

“I think this is our target…” Nerf whispered – the first time anyone had spoken in what felt like hours – but Godwyn didn’t think so.

The vibrations in the air seemed louder here – more intense – true, and the obelisks appeared to be the source, but something about this place told her that stopping the noise was not what they wanted to do.

The commando was already unpacking the det-charges from their packs when the Inquisitor held out a hand to stop him and shook her head. He didn’t argue, but his nerves were on edge and he wanted to leave this place regardless.

Carefully, lest they trigger some sort of hidden defences, Godwyn and her team snuck along the periphery of the chamber as far away from the obelisks as possible until they reached another set of stairs that led upwards and away from the chamber.

Around here the air seemed to be growing cooler and a chill rand down her spine that told the Inquisitor that they were nearing where they needed to be, but this certainty was not comforting. Her gut told her that something was approaching, and the fear nestled in the back of her mind grew exponentially as it fed off her doubt.

Several paces behind her, following in the wake of the bulky Catachan, Alexander dabbed at a cold sweat that gathered on the back of his neck and began to shiver uncontrollably.

Sensing something was wrong, the battle sister placed a steadying hand on his shoulder:

“Courage,” she whispered, “the Emperor will not abandon His faithful in their hour of need.”

The Interrogator was not comforted, however. “I can feel it inside me,” he whispered back, though well aware that all could hear him. It was the same feeling he’d felt multiple times before on this world – the feeling he had learned to contain and to fight – but now it seemed more pronounced, more alive – much less like a passing memory, much more like an encroaching reality. “The untouchables,” he said, “they are close…”

Still leading them onwards with her glowing pistol drawn and ready, Godwyn turned to her left as the pathway split before them, and there, not fifty feet away, before any of her companions, Godwyn saw Alexander’s dread made manifest.

Human in form, but easily standing upright over nine feet tall and as broad as two men, stood three towering figures made of gleaming metal. Their shoulders were broad and straight, their limbs long and strong, and on motionless face were set three eyes – two burning brightly with green witch-fire while a third eyes rested closed in the middle of their foreheads. The beings did not move in the slightest as Godwyn appeared, but in each powerful hand was held a massive spear with a long, bladed end at which crackled a coil of green lightning that hissed and snapped controlled by some unknown means.

Rounding the corner behind the Inquisitor, Nerf instantly froze in his tracks. Alexander followed him until he too stopped dead. Brianna was next, but seeing the enemy she bared her teeth and carried forward. Mercy was last, saw the enemy, and ducked back around the corner the way they had come.

In perfect unison, the giant necrons gripped their weapons in both hands and presented them at waist height. What happened next would be scarred into Godwyn’s memory forever after.

Like a breaking storm, bolts of lightning leapt from the alien’s weapons and scattered down the hall, scorching everything they touched.

Snapping into action, Nerf threw himself behind the Inquisitor’s armoured form as she ducked and shielded her head from the dancing blasts of energy that scored over her metal body, and Alexander tripped in his attempt to flee and ended up throwing himself flat on the floor as the lightning seared overhead, yet Brianna did not so much as waver in her stride.

Screaming in defiance as the lightning burned into her, the sister drew her chainsword and broke into a sprint down the corridor towards the alien giants even as the energy burned through the flesh of her face and melted streaks into her armour.

Firing blind, Godwyn blasted the arm from one of the aliens and dropped its spear to the floor – silencing a third of the deathly barrage.

Momentum carrying her forward, Brianna brought her sword up in both hands high over her head as she closed the last few feet between her and the enemy. Lightning danced along her screaming figure and her roaring sword in ferocious bursts, but with the weapon raised she brought it down with terrific force to mete judgement upon the alien.

But her blow found no purchase as the center-most anecron parried the blow off the shaft of its spear with contemptuous ease. The second buried its weapon deep into the sister’s guts – silencing her howls of rage as the lightning core consumed the flesh off her body in a horrific display of power. Retracting its weapon, the first alien then cut the burning husk of the sister clean in two with a single stroke.

Watching from the end of the corridor now that the tempest had abated, Godwyn was frozen in terror at the sister’s demise.

Nerf’s rifle roared by her bionic ear, but the bullet that would have killed an ork boss glanced off the necron’s chest and sent it sumbling backwards several feet. Soon, however, it regained its balance and joined the other as it marched forward with broad, purposeful strides. The third, whose arm had been shot cleanly off by Godwyn’s pistol, picked up its spear and followed after its fellows – casually crushing Brianna’s burnt remains underfoot as it came.

The Inquisitor stood as if in a trance – incapable of thought or movement as the aliens marched steadily closer. It was only Nerf’s yelling in her ear that finally broke the spell and together they ran back down the corridor, away from the implacable aliens.

They ran without thought or hesitation as quickly as their legs could carry them, but after several panicked moments Godwyn realized that neither Alexander nor Mercy was in front of them, and that she recognized nothing about the corridors in which she ran.

 

* *

 

Alexander didn’t stop running until he tripped and fell down the stairs in the room with the humming obelisks, picked himself up, ran between the obelisks themselves, and dashed up the stairs on the opposite side of the chamber. Only then, with his lungs burning in his chest and his mind reeling in his head, did he stop. Spittle was flowing freely from between his lips, and he sank to his knees in utter fear and helplessness.

No more – no more! He wanted nothing to do with aliens, darkness, good and evil, psychics, untouchables – anything! He wanted it to end – all of it! There was nothing left that could make up for this – nothing in all of life that could fill the gaping hole of dread that penetrated his very being. Let them keep their aliens and their duty – let it be their doom! He would have nothing more from them or their Emperor! He would have nothing more about any of it!

Somewhere in his flight he had dropped his rifle, but with great haste he drew the pistol he kept holstered at his side and stuck it up under his chin – tears rolled from his eyes as he screamed at himself to pull the trigger. But he couldn’t. He could hear heavy footsteps approaching him.

It sounded like Godwyn – like the person he’d called his mentor. Fuelled by fear he brandished his weapon and made to shoot her…

But it wasn’t Godwyn.

Towering over him was the form of a single necron pariah, and as he looked up at it with thoughtless eyes, it looked back down with nothing but malice burning deeply within its sockets.

The Interrogator wanted to cry as he dropped the pistol, but even that was too much as the third eye upon the pariah’s head opened and Alexander saw the truth. The galaxy would die, the warp would die, and all life would be snuffed out to fill the insatiable hunger of gods too old and too terrible to imagine. The Emperor could not stop them. His armies could not stop them. What had now begun would never be over until all beings that lived were put to death.

In darkness, Alexander wallowed in utter despair for all life in the galaxy until the deathless necron raised its spear in both hands over the young man’s head and he knew no more.

 

* *

 

“Where are we going!? Where are we going!?” Godwyn ran after the Catachan as quickly as her armour would let her. He didn’t know – she didn’t know – they were just running blind to a bid to flee from death. Rounding a corner, however, they both skidded to a stop.

Solid black stone blocked their path. Dead end.

Cursing, Nerf worked the bolt of his rifle with sweaty hands and dropped to a knee; aiming the mk. IV’s long barrel towards the first thing that turned that corner. Rushing in her panic, Godwyn drew her heavy pistol and aimed it in one hand and the plasma pistol in the other in the same direction as Nerf.

“What are we doing!?” she asked him; “What are we doing!?”

“We’re dying, that’s what!” Nerf snapped back, struggling to keep the rifle steady.

The first necron rounded the corner and Nerf shot it point blank – blowing it sideways off its feet, but otherwise doing no significant damage. Quickly, he worked to bolt to load a second round into the chamber.

The second necron followed the first and Godwyn fired on it with both pistols one shot after the other. A blast of plasma ignited its chest with blue flame – a heavy bullet pinged harmlessly off its shoulder – a bolt of white hot plasma skinned its torso while a heavy shell whizzed wide – a blast of plasma took off its head while a third bullet clunked uselessly against its stomach.

Headless, the giant alien sank to its knees and finally died.

The first necron was getting back up, but the mk. IV knocked it down again before Nerf had to eject a blank magazine with a stream of expletives.

Godwyn, however, saw her chance and sprinted the short distance to the other nercron’s corpse and pried its humongous spear from its grasp. Unwieldy in the extreme, Nerf quickly saw her plan and helped her as both he and the Inquisitor lifted the spear and rammed it home through the staggered necron again and again and again until there was no longer any question about it being dead.

Panting for breath, they dropped the weapon and stood in silence as they stared in stunned disbelief at what had just happened. Eventually, Nerf went back and finished reloading his rifle, and Godwyn watched him over her shoulder from where they had just killed the necron.

“Are you ready?” he eventually asked, his rifle in his arms as he walked slowly back to where she stood.

“To finish this? Yes,” she replied without hesitation. She felt hollow – empty almost – like being on the verge of disbelieving what her eyes told her must be true. She felt winded.

“The others,” he said, “they’re dead.” The way he said it hit her like a weight to the gut, but at this point she felt nothing. Just emptiness. Their living or dying made no difference to her now. “It’s just us…”

“We can make it,” she said, though from the sound of her voice she didn’t know if even she believed the words anymore.

Nerf shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter, does it?” he said. “One way or another it ends today, but if we’re gonna make it, we better start making it already.”

It took her a while to get going, but after Nerf stepped past her she followed him deeper and deeper into the dark.

 

* *

 

Alone in the blackness, Mercy waited in silence with a hunter’s patience. Her prey was powerful, but it had its weaknesses. All else was unimportant.

She could hear the heavy footsteps – those long, ponderous strides that brought it in closer, but it was still a ways yet.

She waited with sword drawn.

It came closer still until eventually it turned the corner, stopped, and looked exactly where she hid. Right away she knew the game was up and sprang clear moments before the alien’s spear connected against wall where she had been concealed with a burst of lightning and rolled under the reverse blow that went whistling overhead.

Closing the distance, the necron was deadly at range but vulnerable up close as it lost an arm, yet even so Mercy had to be quick on her feet as the giant alien could kill her with one strike.

Dancing aside from a killing blow, she slashed at it with her singing sword – the weapon barely making a mark – before she dodged another reverse strike and tried to slip behind the metal monstrosity. The alien dwarfed even her for size and its one-armed attacks were clumsy and slow, but despite its injury the thing was tireless and could not be mislead or confused. Her best efforts to outflank it were met with failure.

The spear lashed out again in an awkward thrust easily exploited as Mercy brought her blade low along its flank – a killing move which would open the intestines of any mortal creature, but which was denied by Necrotyr metal and left hardly a mark on the necron’s side. Again she tried two repeat blows before pirouetting clear of another clumsily aimed strike and slashing at the thing’s neck, though no blood or flesh coated the necron and it turned aside the blows without notice as Mercy rolled clear from any retaliation before launching yet another attack. This time the alien was ready for her, however, and attempt to feign its strike, though the lithe assassin easily read its motions and flitted aside before ramming the blade two handed into its chest with a sharp whistle. The weapon stuck and the creature falter but did not die, again it lunged, and Mercy danced aside weaponless.

Sensing that its attacker was disarmed, the alien levelled its spear and tried to blast at the shadowy killer with bolts of lightning which she keenly evaded – if only just – through flowing like water around the otherwise lethal attacks.

In an act of desperation, Mercy slid the claws on her neuro-gauntlets into place and lunged upwards towards the alien’s face – driving her bladed fingers towards its eyes. Stumbling slightly beneath her attack, the necron eventually shook her lose, though not before she had dislodged the sword from its chest and somersaulted backwards out of range as the bladed spear swished through the space she had occupied scant moments before.

It swung again – she dropped flat under the weapon – and again – the assassin flipped carefully aside as the alien came on. Finally it raised the weapon high over its head in and brought it down in a great, long-reaching arc down atop of the assassin as she waited until the very last moment before quickly darting to one side, and then the other – drawing the necron’s baleful gaze with her – before uncoiling her body and driving forward with all her might as she stuck the sword deep into the alien’s eye socket until the blade protruded out the other end of its metal skull.

For a brief moment nothing happened: it stood tall, then stumbled – watching the long-limbed assassin as she cautiously retreated out of range in case her attempt had failed...

Slowly, it put one foot forward – Mercy skittering back only slightly – then the spear dropped from its single hand and clattered across the floor, and the necron sank to a knee – then two knees – and finally fell forward onto its chest and moved no more though its dead eye lingered on Mercy.

Around her everything was dark and silent. No noise, no life, no movement.

Slowly, she lowered herself to a crouch and then to all fours – watching the mechanical corpse as she crept forward and pulled free her sword.

The alien was dead. It had its weaknesses.

 

* *

 

There was no relief to be had between them when Godwyn and Nerf entered what was for once a familiar chamber within the pyramid.

The Inquisitor stopped first, then the Catachan slowly took his place beside her.

“Well,” he said without enthusiasm, “I think this is it.”

Godwyn could do nothing aside from agree. After dispatching the statuesque necron warriors, Godwyn and Nerf had stumbled alone through the darkness down more corridors than was countable until finally chance put them into the room where it had all begun, and now where it would all end. The massive chamber that defied all sense of size stretched out before them for what was likely to be miles, and high above on the ceiling they could once again see the concentrically aligned rings revolving around a singular point that was mirrored on the floor below with three prongs reaching down towards the three pylons that reached up. The only difference this time was that the pylons and prongs were now moving opposite to one another in slow, twisting circles, and that between them there was a singular beam of energy binding the two together.

“There is our target,” Godwyn pointed out, “set the charges and then we can go.”

The commando exhaled deeply through his nostrils and furrowed his brow before giving a single, grim nod to mark his approval. “Okay,” he said darkly, “let’s do this.”

Setting off at a jog, the pair ran the circumference of the first circular trench cut into the floor until they found the long declination which led inwards to the center of the chamber. It was likely a mile long, but they didn’t waste any time and looked nowhere but at their destination as they ran on worn our legs.

At the second ring, Godwyn noticed between gasping breaths that the stasis fields were gone and that the serried ranks of warriors she’d seen last time had vanished – likely to the surface. She paid it no heed, however: it no longer mattered. She was here, they weren’t, and the longer she dawdled the more people would die across Penumbra. She redoubled her efforts, and poured all of her energy into moving her two legs forwards step by clunking step until saliva drenched her chin and sweat stung her eyes.

She didn’t count how long it took to reach the center of the chamber – she didn’t really care anymore anyway – but when she arrived she managed to hold her head high between gasping breaths and looked upon what would the defining point in Penumbra’s history as the planet’s fate hung within the balance.

If she destroyed it, the Necrotyr would be dealt a savage blow and be left vulnerable to a counter attack by the Imperial Fleet.

If she preserved it, the planet would be scoured of life, yet perhaps Brand’s prediction would come to pass and a warp storm of terrible magnitude would be averted.

Steadying her breathing, she closed her eyes and felt the prickle of the alien energies playing across the pores of her skin. Her choice had already been made. Not that instant, not that day, not even when Brand had revealed to her what he had done. It had been made the moment she’d donned the badge of the Inquisition; the moment she’d accepted the Icon of the Just from her mentor’s hand; the moment that she’d killed three Inquisitors from treason and had now sworn to make it four; the moment she’d vowed to defend mankind against all evils from within, without, and beyond.

She opened her eyes and saw not a decision to be made, but a duty to be carried out. Suffer not the Alien to live.

“Nerf,” she turned to her agent as he caught his breath not more than a few steps away, “set the charges and blow this place to hell.”

The Catachan wasted no time rigging the explosive and setting the timers to blow, and when it was done he and the Inquisitor surveyed the work before turning to leave.

They hadn’t gotten very far, however, when a storm of footfalls came rushing from behind and Nerf cried out in alarm. Turning, her plasma pistol drawn, the Inquisitor came face to face with a towering alien – a servant of the Necrotyr swathed in a cloak of darkness and carrying bladed staff that entombed the light of blackened stars.

Unflinching, Godwyn squeezed the trigger.

 

*

 

Of what happened next she could not be sure. There was light and there was pain, after which everything became numb. She did not know what happened for certain.

It could be that the power of the necron lord was too much for her and the he struck her down before Nerf triggered the detonation and nearly vaporised them all.

It could be that the plasma pistol she held in her hands became unstable after she gunned down the alien monster and the resulting overload caused her to lose consciousness.

Or it could be that the power of the Emperor himself guarded her from harm and smote back the alien fiend back into the abyss…

Of what really happened she could not be sure.

She remembered falling, then lights and sounds and feelings, like wind on her face. Then a voice – a gentle, soothing voice like the angel of mercy saying over and over again the words that would haunt her dreams forevermore…

Don’t die, Cassandra, don’t die…

She lost sense of it all in those violet eyes, but somehow they carried her out. Somehow they brought her home. Somehow she survived.

 

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

 

And there it is!

 

Comments, feedback, and general responses and reactions are always very welcome! Please, don't withold whatever you wish to say!

 

The Epilogue, and The Inquisition III, will be forthcoming!

 

Yours as always, ;)

 

L_C

[Lady_Canoness]

*Epilogue*

 

A month-and-a-half had passed when the Patroclus docked gracefully at the Malthusian ship yards for a two day sojourn and some well earned rest before carrying onward in her journey to the core-ward sectors of the Imperium. The delay was slight – mostly just enough time for the relief of the crew – though in actuality it symbolized the parting of ways between two foes turned friends, and long after the gangway airlock had turned silent once the crew disembarked there remained a solitary figure dressed in flowing black coat who sat quietly on a nearby bench and turned a modest itinerary over and over in her hands. No one was around to bother her and she waited in silence with glacial eyes staring into nowhere until a nearby hatchway hissed open and she rose to greet a second woman who had emerged.

The new arrival approached, stopping within two feet of the woman in the black coat, and after a pause proffered an open left hand. Hesitantly, Tanya von Draken took it in her own and shook with her fellow Inquisitor, though her eyes lingered on the truncated sleeve where the woman’s right hand should have been. Cassandra Godwyn smiled, however, and indicated that she should walk with her as they passed down the gangway towards the space station air-lock.

“You’re sure about leaving?” Godwyn asked her. “You are welcome on the Patroclus, you know.”

A dry chuckle escaped the Witch Hunter’s lips. “Perhaps,” she said, folding her hands behind her back, “but I’ve made my decision, and it is that I should go. No good will come from my staying here.”

Godwyn didn’t argue, and walked in silence with her one arm dangling awkwardly by her side, while the other – a stump ending abruptly at the elbow – tried to sway back and forth as if nothing had changed.

Reaching the air-lock at the far end of the passageway, von Draken stopped outside the reinforced outer door as Godwyn did the same.

“Duty calls us our separate ways, Godwyn,” the Witch Hunter said with finality, “but even so, I’m glad we had the chance to work together even for a short time.”

“Me too,” Godwyn agreed, and, with nothing more to say to one another, Godwyn turned her back and walked back to the Patroclus while Draken dialled the entry code for the airlock door.

“See you around the Imperium sometime,” she said as they parted ways, and Godwyn paused for one last look back.

“Yes,” she said, “definitely.”

[Taranis]

Oh and it ends. Oh no. Still a great story. A bit quick in the final 2 posts. A chapter more with action and difficulties would have been nice. I'm looking forward to part III and expected great things. Replacing both Alexander and Sudulus will be difficult. Especially Sudulus was a amazing and unique character.

My guess for new "old" characters coming back nominate our Commissary. ^_^

Any news about the premier of part III?

[Lady_Canoness]

As all things must, The Inquisition II is over... though I must admit that I had a blast with it, and that I am very pleased how Alexander and Sudulus left their marks!

 

Inquisition III is just over the horizon at the moment and should be dropping with its prologue just at the end of the week.

A few things I will say right away, however:

-Inquisition III will hopefully be a darker, grittier story with more focus on human relations in 40k.

-Inquisition III will further develope Godwyn as a character with her own flaws and strengths.

-Nerf and Mercy will be in this story and you can expect to learn a lot more about them. There will also be new characters introduced.

-The time gap between Inquisition I and Inquisition II was 25 years - this time Inquisition III follows almost right after Inquisition II.

-Inquisition III is not intended to be the last Inquisition story, so in all likelihood there will be an Inquisition IV.

 

Other than that, most things about number III are still up in the air!

[Papewaio]

*applause*

 

Very nice. I like the ending very much, even if it raises more questions than it presents answers. I thought the general description of the Necron tomb was a little vague however - but it did add to the overall feel of dread. It also strikes me as odd that they faced that little resistance from a tomb so large.

 

Inquisition III can only be good, and if I may be so bold, may I ask if von Draken will be in it?

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

I enjoyed this story as much as the last and I have high hopes and expectatiosn for the next one!

 

Keep up the good work, though I have to say I was disappointed that Alexander died, I quite liked him.

[Lady_Canoness]

The necron tomb was a challenge - mainly because I couldn't easily justify anyone aside from space marines cutting a swathe through necrons :) As for von Draken, I haven't made plans to include her in number III, but at the same time I kept her alive on purpose, so expect to see her somewhere at some point in time.

 

Alexander, unfortunately, was pretty much doomed from the get-go when I decided that I wanted to use pariahs (necron untouchables) As a psyker, he had little chance of survival, though I am pleased to hear that you liked him, and hearing that you liked him gives me hope when creating other characters who fit into a similar sort of niche.

 

The prologue for Inquisition III will likely surface tomorrow in a new thread.