The Inquisition III

[Lady_Canoness]

My writing only on the weekends is really slowing things down, but here is part 12 all ready to go! How will this change things? Read and find out!

 

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*Part 12*

 

 

Three names, three weeks, and one answer.

If Leto and Zero meant anything then Godwyn did not find out what, but after three weeks of laying low, skirting the shadows, and listening in on the words that circulated through Erebus’ cold metal corridors one name stood out from the three.

Oberon.

It was a planet, but prior to proceeding on that information alone Aquinas asked that they uncover as much as they could station-side before chasing what could be little more than a false lead.

It took some time – all of three weeks in fact – but eventually they found what they were looking for.

The planet was relatively close-by, Nerf had discovered one eve while staking out a popular spacer dive, not more than six weeks away in a region known as the Nibelungen Rift. It was an un-Imperial region, populated by humans and xenos alike, with a total of six hospitable planets and numerous mineral-rich planetoids circling two stars in a slow orbit. Trade was said to be good, but clouds of gas, dust, and other debris made shipping difficult, and freighters that went there often would require dock-work at Erebus to repair the general wear and tear that came with traversing such a region. While this at first might seem to dissuade traders due to the costs of repair, nothing could be further from the truth, in fact, for piracy was almost non-existent, and – given that the ships at Erebus were the only vessels close to the Nibelungen – traders had to deal with very little in the way of competition.

At first report, Oberon seemed ideal, but Godwyn sound found reference to the planet within Slate’s cracked datafiles and, from his communiqués, determined that a brutal and prolonged war had risen between the backwater humans and the xenos on several worlds in the Nibelungen including Oberon. The causes of the conflict were unknown, as was the duration, but it had ground into a stalemate and no end was in sight. With neither side possessing the resources to claim orbital superiority, however, the theatres remained open for trade from Erebus and swallowed up everything the station had to offer while steams of refugees were all that trickled back. Men like Slate were many, and a handful of cartels dominate the trade of alien artefacts – either stolen or given freely – selling them to a commodity hungry Imperium in return for weapons of war that were then passed on to both sides of the conflict.

The demand for mercenaries was also high, and, for every refugee that docked on the station with vain hopes of building a new life, another poor sod would pick up a weapon and board the ships hoping to find his fortune in wealth and plunder on the battlefield. Thousands of men would depart every week to feed Oberon’s war machine, many would never return, and those that did often came back with less than what they’d departed with. It had been like that for months, Spider said once she and Mercy had returned from scouting out other areas of the station, but it didn’t stop people from going.

Hearing this, Godwyn went next with Nerf and together they sought out the mercenary companies, though in truth ‘company’ turned out to be too strong a word. The mercenaries, soldiers of fortune one and all, typically congregate in small camps around the lower-level docks and within spitting distance of brothels and spacer dives. Leaderless, they looked like armed vagrants nestling around oil-drum fires and swaggering up and down the litter strewn streets where they made their camps and flashing their guns to pass the time. Thugs, destitutes, low-lifes and fortune hunters, they were definitely not an army, and were likely to cause more harm then good in a war.

“Not the kind of people you want around you when the shells start falling,” Nerf said late one night-cycle as he and Godwyn sat at the counter of a deserted bar and listened the turn-tables slowly wind down in between the barman’s snores. “Men turn to mush when they’re scared :cussless, and then they’ll as likely shoot you as they will the enemy…”

Godwyn nodded in agreement as she swirled the dregs in the bottom of her bottle: men moved by greed were never good fighters.

Good fighters or not, however, there were lots of them. No one cared who they were, where they came from, or if and when they left. They were anonymous, and when they boarded the ships to take them to the warzones of Oberon they did so without passing through any checkpoints or paying any fees.

If there was one way to get off Erebus Station without anyone being any the wiser it was as a mercenary. So it was that as mercenaries Inquisitor Godwyn and her four companions left their hideout in the black factory districts and made their way into the mercenary camps, living in squalor for a few days before boarding a ship and departing Erebus Station for good in the company of fortune seekers and treasure hunters.

In a way, Godwyn thought, they were not so different from the rest of them.

 

* *

 

“Hey, Nerf, you gotta see this!”

Across the table the Catachan looked up and, at the girl’s insistence, stiffly turned on the bench to look over his shoulder following the direction of the girl’s fiendish stare. To the girl’s right, Aquinas was quietly watching as well.

Down at the other end of the mess, a chunky man with a pillow-like face stood up from his table and looked back towards the kitchen with sluggish eyes. Between his puffy cheeks and round chin, a pink tongue slid hungrily across his bubble lips as slowly he stooped to lift his meal tray from the table’s scratched surface.

Nerf glanced at Spider with a questioning look, but the excitement in her eyes told him that he was going to miss the best part. Quietly removed from their expressive conversation, Aquinas continued to watch from a discrete angle. Across from him and next to Godwyn, Mercy looked bored and dangled one of her utensils in what was left of her food.

The pillow-faced man, empty meal tray in his hands, lifted one leg out from under the table, pivoted, and then started to lift the other.

All counted, there were at least one hundred and fifty, dirty, smelly, and armed mercenaries crowded into the mess hall eating what was labelled as their breakfast meal. All of them were talking, belching, and striking metal forks and metal spoons against metal trays – the racket of humanity at its finest. In the middle of it all, Godwyn downed the silt remnants of instant caffeine from the bottom of a paper cup.

She too was now watching the pillow-faced man.

Unaware that four sets of eyes were now peeled to his back, the man stepped out from behind the bench of his table and was about to head back towards the meal line when his foot suddenly caught and he fell face first to the floor with a spectacular crash – drawing several hoots of laughter as numerous heads swivelled towards the source of the noise.

Spider was shaking with laughter and banged her fist against the table as she rocked back and forth between mad giggles.

Humiliated, the pillow-faced man slowly picked himself up off the floor and shuffled to the back of the food line. A starch bun sailed through the air towards him but missed – bouncing off a table instead.

Nerf was unimpressed. “You knew that was gonna happen?” he asked.

The girl nodded, a cocky grin still splayed across her face:

“Sometimes I see things before they happen,” she said, smug now that she was the center of attention. She quickly looked around, perhaps trying to see more, but Nerf wasn’t interested, likewise Aquinas returned to the small leather-bound book he had been reading prior to Spider’s interruption. Mercy continued to look bored, now prodding the less than inspiring lumps of bread she was supposed to be eating as her head rested on her hand.

It had been a long trip already, and it was only just beginning.

One week had passed since they’d departed Erebus Station, along with the newest meat for Oberon’s grinder, during which time it became starkly clear that restless, undisciplined mercenaries who ate the same slop three times a cycle in the same room with the same people before sh***ing it out in the same latrines would do anything to keep themselves from going mad with the monotony, and, with a company of over five thousand crowded into a freighter that could comfortably ferry only half that number, fights were to be expected, as was robbery, abuse and extortion. The strong would exploit the weak as they always did, and those caught in between would just do their best to stay out of the way. How they could ever form an effective fighting force was anyone’s guess, as was how the ship’s captain could expect to turn a profit in transporting fighters with nothing other than the clothes on their backs and the weapons on their shoulders. Whatever his motives, the ship master and his crew did their best to avoid their passengers and communicated only the most fundamental ‘need to know’ information: when food was ready, when cycles where about to change, and when parts of the ship were off-limits for reasons that were never disclosed. Other than that there was nothing: no order and no structure other than the bulkheads around them and the deck beneath their feet. It was as if they were expected to revert to nature’s law – anarchy – and find their own ways to pass the time.

It wasn’t what Godwyn would have chosen, but, so long as things didn’t get too far worse, she could abide it well enough.

Being lightly packed with weapons, a change of clothing, and a few personal effects, the Inquisitor and her companions didn’t have any problems keeping their things with them at all times – thereby overcoming the problem of thievery that was rampant aboard the ship – and had learned well enough to keep together and keep more-or-less moving to avoid confrontation.

Even so, the day cycles were pretty bad in the noisy and overcrowded corridors as they went around trying to find somewhere relatively quiet. The presence of Aquinas, Mercy, and Nerf deterred any trouble that might have otherwise come their way, yet even that made a marginal difference at best, and the light cycles were relegated to being periods of boredom and frustration highlighted by the very infrequent oasis of peace and quiet.

The night cycles, unsurprisingly, were little better, though eventually their lot improved when Spider started to develop a knack for finding places that were secluded enough to offer some privacy. When they got the chance Aquinas and the girl would then train, working on the young psyker’s innate abilities through meditation and careful tutelage. Godwyn knew better than to interrupt these sessions, but it made for a quiet journey. Nerf never spoke much when the librarian was around – instead disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling his already spotless weapons – while Mercy was mute as ever even though she stayed with the Inquisitor every passing minute. Truthfully, Godwyn appreciated the assassin’s constant presence, and enjoyed the certainty of knowing that at least one of her party was unmoved by their at times tenuous search.

“Godwyn,” the librarian set down the small book he had been reading as the Inquisitor looked up at him from her emptied meal tray, “there is someone I wish for you to meet. About your leg.”

Her leg.

More than four weeks had gone by since she and Nerf had been ambushed in the Argyle’s parlour and she had been stabbed in the knee by a syringe in the hands of a dead woman. Four weeks, and she had given up all hope of the wound ever healing by itself. Pain, thankfully, dulled over time, yet the damage to her leg was not in any way repaired. The skin was dark, blotched, and swollen, and she had lost much of the flexibility of the joint – forcing her to walk with a slow, awkward limp.

Her leg was crippling her.

“Why haven’t you told me about this sooner?” she asked with no danger of being overheard now that steady drone of conversation had returned to the mess.

“I had to be certain of the man’s quality,” Aquinas replied casually, placing both hands one on top of the other so that they covered his book, “but now I believe he may be of use to us.”

How Aquinas could be certain of anything when he never left their company was a mystery, but Godwyn assumed it had something to do with is otherworldly abilities.

“What does he do that can help us?”

“He is a herbalist.”

Next to Godwyn, Mercy suddenly gave the librarian a curious look, though neither the Inquisitor nor the librarian paid her any notice.

“A herbalist?” Godwyn repeated, wanting to be sure that she was hearing things right.

“Indeed,” Aquinas agreed with a slight nod, and then stood up from his seat at the table. “Now would be a good time to see him.”

 

* *

 

 

What a herbalist was doing on a freighter transporting low-rate thugs and mercenaries was the first question on Godwyn’s mind as Aquinas led them through the ship’s rusty iron guts, though when they arrived at their destination she quickly found that she had another one: how was it that a herbalist could have spacious living quarters all to himself when a ship-full of armed men were almost sleeping on top of one another?

Stooping under a crude wooden sign with the word Tweed painted on its surface in a sick shade of green, Aquinas stopped and lifted the latch on the corroded metal door and swung it inwards.

“This way,” he said turning to Godwyn before ducking through the door and holding it open for the others to follow.

Inside they were met with an insufferable heat that seemed to cling to their skin in the damp air and, mere seconds after the space marine closed the door behind them, Godwyn felt as if she were already drenched with sticky sweat. It irritated her knee as well as the grafts of skin that were fused to the metal connectors in her ear and right arm, and, to make things worse still, the air reeked of over-ripe vegetation that set her eyes to water and left an acid tang in her mouth. Behind her, Spider cringed and groaned while Mercy’s face bent into an unappreciative sneer, though Nerf, being the last in the room and leaning his shoulders against the stained back wall, didn’t show any signs of discomfort at all.

“What is this place?” Godwyn asked the space marine once he had stepped back to the fore of the group.

The room they were standing in wasn’t very big – maybe only able to fit another five or so people inside before becoming uncomfortably cramped – and had a couple of warped metal benches bolted the floor to each side of the entrance. It looked almost like a waiting room.

“A resource,” Aquinas replied, stepping past Godwyn towards an open doorway at the end of the waiting room and indicating that she should come with him. “It would be best if you and I were to see him alone,” he said, looking back over his shoulder even as the others were about to follow them, “prudence dictates that this man not be alarmed.”

Tilting her head in agreement, Godwyn proceeded alone with the librarian while Nerf, Spider, and Mercy stayed behind.

Through the doorway was a narrow corridor leading to their left that was lined with plastic sheeting hanging from the ceiling and walls and was beaded with trapped moisture. Just like the room behind them, the corridor was uncomfortably muggy, and the temperature of the sticky air only seemed to increase with every step they took. Aquinas, if he felt anything at all, said nothing, though Godwyn thought it likely that his advanced physiology inured him to drastic changes in air quality that otherwise left human beings panting for breath.

The room they entered next was different, much larger than the room they’d been in before, and, after the same clear plastic sheeting hanging from the ceiling and walls, Godwyn noticed that this room was filled with all sorts of plant-life. Clearly the source of the over-ripe stench they had first noticed upon entering, plants were arranged on the floor, tables, and on countertops around the room. Tendrils and creepers stretched every which way and had clearly been doing so for sometime – suggesting that, whoever this herbalist was, he was more permanent a resident aboard the ship than the rest of the mercenary company.

There was more to the room than plants, however, and as Godwyn followed the space marine inside she spotted jars of all different sizes filled with coloured liquids sitting like bulbous growths between the twisting coils of flora. Some of them were marked with peeling yellowed labels, and others still were filled with gangrenous contents barely visible through the murky fluids that had encrusted the glass. Sitting on a shelf was one such jar in which the Inquisitor could just make out what looked to be an withered human hand.

Skirting around the edges of the room to avoid a tangled knot of vile-looking suckers that were oozing a film onto the floor, they passed a section where the plastic had fallen away from the wall to reveal some of room’s otherwise covered machinery. Godwyn didn’t pay much attention to it as she walked by until several pieces of equipment caught her eye, and when she looked closer she recognized it as a grossing station complete with a fume hood, suction valves, and an inbuilt incinerator. Curious, Godwyn stopped for a moment and looked back at the tables she had seen aligned along the centre of the room – they too had much of the same features, as well as drainage sinks attached to the ends that had been plugged and filled with liquids.

They were walking through the ship’s morgue.

 

Aquinas was waiting at the centre of the room by time the Inquisitor caught up with him and inclined his head towards the far end where a meagre looking man with ratty brown hair dangling around his shoulders was hunched over a countertop and prodding at something in a dish with a long metal instrument. The man did not appear to notice that he was being watched.

Godwyn’s eyes narrowed: he looked like a wreck, though looks could be deceiving.

Bare-armed in an ill-fitting and sweat-stained tank top, the man’s skin had a mottled yellowish tinge to it and was stretched like rubber over tightened whip-cords of muscle in his scrawny arms while his damp-greasy hair hung in strings over his eyes until he flicked it back out of the way, and giving his visitors a good look at the side of his face. He wore think-lens magnifying spectacles on the end of a crooked hawkish nose that looked as if it had been broken on several different occasions, and his visible cheek was pitted and scarred like a broken moonscape – likely an acid burn, Godwyn thought, though the source of such marks could really be anyone’s guess.

The man snorted – a gurgling, phlegmy sound – and hocked a gob of dark spit onto the floor before wiping away a dribble on the back of his hand.

“That’s your herbalist?” she asked in a murmur.

Aquinas nodded, though he too remained staring at the man in the far end of the morgue.

“Looks will lie,” he said, and walked over to where the man was standing. Surprisingly, the herbalist did not look up until the librarian’s shadow fell over his work, but even then he seemed neither startled nor afraid and looked up at the giant with unfocused, squinting eyes:

“Speak up!” he snapped irritably, his visage rapidly transforming into a glare as his vision adjusted on the space marine; “And get the hell out of my light!”

From the way he talked, it was instantly clear that the man was deaf, and as his gaze dropped back to his work Godwyn noticed that he’d lost his right ear, though, unlike the Inquisitor he’d not had the good fortune to have it replaced and a gnarled scabbed-over pit was all that was left of it on the side of his head. She glanced towards the space marine – doubtlessly he had seen it as well – as the giant calmly stepped to one side, removing his shadow from the man’s work.

“You are the herbalist of whom I have heard?” Aquinas asked in a flat tone that seemed to vanish amidst the surrounding flora.

The man stopped what he was doing, setting aside the metal instrument, and planted both hands firmly against the countertop. He did not look up, but it was obvious that he had heard.

Godwyn folded her arms across her chest impatiently as her knee continued to throb. He clearly wasn’t as deaf as he pretended to be.

The scarred man made another hocking sound and spat on the deck. “Who’s been talkin’?” he asked in a sly, drawling voice very dissimilar from his initial outburst.

“There is a service I wish you to perform for me.”

The man looked up at him with an incredulous sneer, his cracked lips parting to reveal dark and stained teeth, and shook his head in disbelief.

“Now hold on a f***ing minute,” he said, the slight tick in his voice revealing the annoyance he was trying hard to conceal, “these people you been talkin’ to, they care to mention that I like getting’ paid?”

Apparently unobserved, or just ignored, Godwyn continued to wait in silence. She was curious to see how this man – this herbalist – could stand his ground against a towering space marine without so much as flinching. Brilliance, madness, or a mind turned to mulch by narcotics could do strange things.

“You think yourself an artist, a master of your trade, someone worthy of more than the scum of this ship,” Aquinas mentioned in a soft hiss; “Is that not correct?”

Godwyn could not help but feel the glow of satisfaction grow in her chest as the man’s face sank. The librarian’s remark had struck with unerring accuracy and gutted the herbalist’s resolve with a single pass. Just like the lessons taught; strike the correct stone and an entire fortress may crumble.

“What do you want?” the man asked in a grumble, looking away.

“My companion has a predicament you may wish to investigate,” the librarian replied, causing the herbalist to look over in Godwyn’s direction for the first time. “It is worth your while to do so.”

“Yeah?” he asked in a confrontational tone, still looking at Godwyn, “well she ain’t my type.”

“Don’t be too quick to judge,” Godwyn replied matter-of-factly, and the man rolled his eyes. She didn’t know what exactly Aquinas thought a man who made drugs could do for her, but it was obvious that playing into his hand at this point when he was already resigned to help was better than antagonising him further.

Following their host’s lead, the Inquisitor and the space marine went after the herbalist through another plastic-draped doorway at the back of the morgue into a small operating theatre which, Godwyn was partially relieved to see, was not filled with more overgrown plants.

“Name’s Tweed, by the way,” the man said, flicking a couple of switches on the wall beside the doorway which powered up a series of bright lamps overtop the plastic draped operating slab.

“Cassandra” – “Orion,” they replied, and Tweed sighed and shook his head.

“Sure I’m f***ing pleased to meet you both,” he said.

 

They got to the centre slab and Tweed rested his palms expectantly against the plastic covered surface.

“Well?” he asked impatiently.

Godwyn glanced towards the space marine: this was his plan?

The space marine gave her a blank look in reply. It was.

“I’d like you to look at something,” Godwyn said in way of a preface and loosened the clasps of her boot before sitting on the side of the slab and hoisting her right up onto the surface and exposing her damaged knee.

Tweed straightened up and let out a long, low whistle.

“Well,” he murmured slowly in admiration without a hint of insincerity, “looks like you’ve done yourself quite a number…”

Her right knee was gnarled and discoloured, and the flesh around it had swollen to half again its natural size while taking on a dark, unhealthy tinge that seemed to be concentrated around several large boils and pockets of cysts that had sprouted up around the joint. It was ugly, painful, and worst of all it seemed to pulse of its own accord – like a second heart inside one of the boils was trying to force its ichors into the Inquisitor’s blood stream.

Bending over the slab for a closer look, Tweed placed his rough, sticky hands on the Inquisitor’s leg above and below the discolouration and turned it gently back and forth – though not gently enough not to send a twinge of pain shooting up her spine.

“Sorry,” he said somewhat distractedly. “How in the Emperor’s a**hole did this happen? And, more importantly… how are you still alive?”

He seemed to be talking to himself, then quickly released her leg and examined her bionic arm before signalling that she should turn her head so that he could take a look at her metal ear.

“Well, that explains that…” he murmured; “those bionics are what saved you.”

“How?” she asked.

“Bionic implants corrupt the bloodstream,” he replied with what could have been a little too much enthusiasm as he darted away from the slab to collect a tray of metal instruments that were sitting on a desk across the room. “Introduces metals that otherwise wouldn’t be found in the body. It’s a slow acting decay – slow enough that it can be controlled – but it also makes your blood more resistant to poisoning,” he indicated towards her knee before picking up a pair pointed metal tools and stooping towards her exposed flesh with an all-to-eager glint in his eye.

“Oh, by the way,” he said almost as an afterthought as he paused mere inches from her knee, “this will hurt.”

 

He cut the first cyst out of her knee with a scalpel and pair of tweezers. Godwyn had to chew on her coat’s leather sleeve to stop herself from screaming.

“Interesting…” Tweed held the excised kernel of twisted grey flesh up to his glasses and dabbed the dark blood off of it with a rough cloth. Interesting was not the word Godwyn would have picked, but that didn’t stop Tweed from plopping the removed cyst into a jar of murky liquid to add to his collection.

“Alright,” he said serenely,” lets get the rest of these out…”

 

It took forty minutes to get five more cysts out from where they had been burrowed around the Inquisitor’s knee, and by that point Aquinas was standing over Godwyn’s head and holding her down as her body heaved from the pain.

“Little poison pockets,” Tweed said with a grin, “the worst part is over.”

He dabbed at her open wounds with an antiseptic ointment that stung like insects burrowing through her flesh.

“What will you do next?” the librarian asked on the Inquisitor’s behalf.

“Next,” the scarred herbalist wiped his hands on a wet rag and tossed it across the room into a wash-basin, “I can drain those boils, then put her on a concoction of my own brand…”

 

The worst part was over, but Godwyn wasn’t awake to see it, having long since passed out from the pain.

When she awoke the lights were dimmed and she was alone. Sitting up on the slab, her mind still reeled from the agony, and she felt both sick to her stomach and confused. How long had she been out for?

Her leg was patched up with a roll of white bandages and the blood had been mostly mopped up. Her blood. She remembered that part.

“Awake now?”

She groaned – not as alone as she thought. She turned her sore eyes over to the corner of the herbalist’s operating room where the man himself was sitting legs crossed on a three-legged stool examining something closely under a magnifying lamp. A servo-skull she had not noticed before was bobbling overhead – its laser eye probe highlighting whatever he was holding.

“What did you do to me?” the Inquisitor asked, trying to straighten up a little farther but finding it too painful.

The man shrugged, but didn’t look her way. “Drained ya, filled the wounds with carosfoil to help ‘em heal, then patched you up.”

As simple as that? She felt like a thunderhammer had cracked her on the top of the skull.

“Do you have anything…?” she moved her metal hand as if putting an imaginary bottle to her lips and drinking.

Tweed smiled, “Yeah, I do,” and picked a small flask of dark liquid from a cupboard before walking over to the Inquisitor and passing it into her outstretched fingers.

She looked at it. “What is it?” she said, turning it around looking for a label.

“Nerve suppressant,” Tweed said with a toothy grin, “powerful stuff. My own special mix. Normally goes for a very high price…”

Smaller than the palm of her hand, the glass vial glinted innocently between her metal fingers. Deadlier things came in littler packages where a single drop could kill, but a tiny bottle of dark liquid? She flipped the cap caught a whiff of its scent – instantly recoiling as it smelled of rotten plants, and then grimacing in pain as the bandages shifted over her leg.

Tweed chuckled and went back to whatever he had been working on in the corner.

“Do you expect me to pay for this?” Godwyn asked, eyeing him and then the flask.

“No, no,” he waved the thought away, “you’ve already paid me more than enough…”

Passing the vial by her nose for another take, it didn’t smell so bad the second time, and, cautiously, she rested the tip against her lip, took a deep breath, and tilted it back – downing the bottle in one go and swallowing hard before she could so much as taste it.

Instantly she started to cough, sputter, and choke, but she kept it down, cleared her breath, and then fell back onto the slab – the flask dropping out of her loosening metal fingers and rolling to the edge before dropping off and smashing onto the floor. It was as if, suddenly, she was weightless. Free from pain – free from everything – it felt like being smothered in a wonderfully warm and soft bed, like the kind of thing she would have dreamt about as a child… she thought she was smiling, though in all truth she could not tell. She couldn’t feel her face.

“Works pretty good, dunnit?” Tweed walked back into view beside the slab, though his voice sounded as if he were underwater. “I could slice you open right now and you’d never know the difference.”

Godwyn just started at him. As numb as the drug made her feel, she knew well enough that he trying to trick her for his own amusement.

“Why don’t you then?” she asked, her own voice sounding dopy and sluggish in her ears, to which Tweed laughed in response:

“Because then you’d bleed out!” he said, walking back out of her field of vision, “and besides, an Imperial Inquisitor might just be the kind of friend I need right now.”

The bottom fell out of Godwyn’s stomach. That’s why he’d drugged her.

With difficulty, she rolled her head to one side so that she could at least see the man whom she was about to address.

“You went through my things.”

It was a statement – one that she had hoped would convey her sense of fury, but instead probably sounded as foolish and half-witted as anything else she might say right at that moment.

Tweed didn’t deny it.

“Man’s gotta live,” he said as if it were justification enough, “but don’t worry; I didn’t take anythin’, and I don’t wanna mess with ya. In fact, I have a proposition for you…”

The herbalist opened his mouth to speak, but then suddenly stopped. A tall, lithe shadow had entered the doorway and was glaring at him with violent eyes. Staring him down, Mercy then ignored the grubby man in the corner and went straight for the Inquisitor, greeting her with warmth and kindness much as if she had expected to never see her again.

Behind them, Tweed shook his head, spat on the floor, and slunk out of the operating room and back to the morgue.

Godwyn wouldn’t long for his company in the slightest.

 

* *

 

Every few minutes the girl would get up, creep to door, look both ways, and then sneak out quieter than a mouse never to return, until several minutes would pass and Spider’s mind would wander, at which point she’d blink, and the girl would be back to sneak away all over again. The girl looked a lot like her. The girl was her.

Sitting slouched against the wall with her hands resting in her lap, Spider looked away from the open door; still she could see her ghost-like doppelganger get up and leave the tiny room.

Discipline, Orion had told her, discipline holds the doors of the mind. Sometimes it was easy, like flipping a switch in her brain, but sometimes… the image of the girl got up and left again.

Spider closed her eyes – like that ever helped: eyelids didn’t stop her from seeing.

She was getting better at it though, and it in the past few weeks it had become easier to close things off while seeing what she wanted to more clearly. Not that any of it made any more sense than it used to.

Seeing things more clearly meant that she had a better perception of what was around her, however, and at times she felt as if her sight granted her a better understanding of those she travelled with.

Orion, the space marine; he was by far what she saw the most of, but every time he was watching her – always watching her – like she couldn’t do anything or go anywhere without a part of him knowing it. But he didn’t speak. He only watched. He let her speak for him. No questions, only answers – answers to questions she couldn’t even begin to ask. She’d look at him with eyes that didn’t belong to her, and she’d feel afraid. Afraid, cowed, helpless… but plotting her revenge. He was the master… for now… but he’d be challenged soon, and if he faltered then there would be no limit to the terror she’d face.

Sometimes, it was like his silent stare was the only thing holding back the storm.

She blinked. The girl got up and walked out of the room. Somewhere, Orion was watching.

Sitting with her back to the wall, Spider hugged her knees up to her chest and shivered: thinking about the space marine was starting to scare her.

The night cycle had started about an hour ago, but the man they’d gone to see had told them where they could find an empty part of the ship to stay in. It was dark here, quiet too, but she couldn’t sleep even though Orion had asked her to rest. She couldn’t sleep because she kept seeing herself get up and sneak out of the room she was in.

Again she closed her eyes.

Orion was somewhere with the Inquisitor.

She felt another shiver run through her skin: there was a person she knew to be wary of. Still waters ran deep, and ripples on the surface hid what was beneath. Was it fear she felt? Maybe. There was a lot in that woman Spider knew she could fear, but what really scared her were the things she didn’t know.

Shaking her mind clear, Spider got up with her doppelganger and followed the sneaking girl to the door. She looked both ways, then crept out of the room and into the corridor. It was dark, but the girl in front of her moved with a cool confidence as Spider followed with the same courage.

She never looked back, and never thought about where she was going: the tattooed girl she saw before eyes had already thought of everything.

Spider followed her mirror image around several twisting turns, stopping when she stopped, listening when she listened, and grinning in childish delight at her own cleverness when she saw herself do the same.

If Orion was watching her, he wasn’t stopping her.

She had no idea where she was – it was too dark to tell – but Spider could move quietly when she needed to, and, like an arachnid stalking her prey, the freedom found in not being seen made her feel warm inside – a warmth that said she could get away with absolutely anything. She was positively shivering in delight.

“Where are you going, kid?”

The Spider in front of her vanished in the blink of any eye and the air caught in her throat as she froze, petrified mid-step.

Across the room, the orange glow of a lit cigar reflected a pair of eyes watching her in the dark, and the rich odour of a Catachan cigar wafted up her nostrils. Allowing herself to breathe, Spider inwardly cursed herself: she should have been able to smell his being there before walking in on him. Still, of all the people that could have spotted her she was glad it was Nerf, and her momentary panic quickly subsided as she let herself relax and stuff her hands into her pockets before looking over to where she could just see the dark outline of the muscular commando.

“Hey,” she sounded more casual the she felt, “I didn’t see you there.”

The Catachan took another drag on his cigar as the teenager strolled over to where he looked to be sitting perched on table top with his feet planted firmly on a bench in front of him. Spider sat next to him up on the table and rested her elbows against her knees as she leaned forward and breathed deeply of the smoke that was hanging around them. This was the same man who had held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her, but at the same time she felt more comfortable around him than anyone else she’d ever met. He didn’t hide anything, and she was starting to feel as if she didn’t need to hide anything from him.

“Kid,” Nerf asked after she had sat down, “what are you doing?”

She couldn’t see his face, but he sounded annoyed.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I came to find you,” she lied defensively, and after a while added: “You got a problem with that?”

She probably wasn’t fooling him – she definitely wasn’t fooling herself – but Nerf didn’t tell her to leave or go back and get some sleep. He just sat there and took another drag on his cigar.

“Can I get one of those?” Spider asked after couple more moments of silence.

“You’re asking me for a favour?”

“Sure, why not?”

“You’re going to owe me a favour.”

She did her best to laugh; something told her that she’d like owing the Catachan a favour.

“Sure,” she said, “I’ll owe you a favour.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a long, rich smelling cigar for her to take, but, as soon as it passed from his hand to hers, she heard him clear his throat:

“I’m calling in my favour.”

Interested, she placed the cigar between her teeth. “Wha’ ish it?” she asked.

The Catachan held up a light, letting her ignite the tip of the massive cigar on the open flame.

“You need to smoke all of that,” he said, flicking the lighter closed again. “No-one wastes these.”

Spider was about to agree, but instead coughed up the smoke like her lungs were on fire. Nerf was probably grinning to himself in the dark.

“Yeah,” she finally wheezed, “I’ll do that,” then coughed again and spat on the floor. It took a few more drags – and at least ten minutes – before she was even close to getting used to it.

“Don’t waste that,” he told her, and Spider nodded furiously:

“Yeah, I won’t. Can I ask you a question?”

The Catachan blew a plume of smoke into the air.

“You just did.”

“I mean a real question.”

“Go for it.”

She nodded to herself, well aware that he wouldn’t have seen it, and wetted her lips before taking a deep breath:

“What do you think about where we’re going?”

His head turned slightly in her direction. “The less I think about it, the more I like it.”

She tried to laugh. Not much of an answer; but Nerf wasn’t finished:

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that question?”

Again, Spider tried to laugh – though it ended up more like a cough – and said that she agreed with him on that finer point.

“Well,” he said, “I’m asking.”

“It’s… uuum…” she stumbled and stalled, not really sure where or how to start with him; “I… don’t really know. It’s confusing…”

She took another long drag on her cigar: cheap answer, she could almost hear him thinking it.

“Mostly I just see things about other people – ” that wasn’t exactly true either, “ – like the people we’re with.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“What kind of things?”

She chuckled, scratching her forehead where the spider-leg disappeared under a lock of grubby hair as she tried to come up with how she’d answer that question.

“Like Mercy,” she started, not yet knowing where she was going with it, “why doesn’t she ever talk?”

“If you want to ask about a person, you ask them yourself, got it?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I got it. So can I ask about you?”

The Catachan took his time in answering. “Yeah, I’m right here.”

“So how did you meet Mercy?”

She couldn’t see his face, but she could feel that the look he gave her was just plain dirty.

“Alright, you wanna know?” he said at last. “I was working for someone she was trying to kill. She failed, and I first saw her when they brought her in. They f***ed her up, a lot, but when someone finally did kill the guy I was working for, some brilliant human being decided to waste her. I didn’t like that, so they decided to waste both of us. They failed, and here we are. Happy?”

There were several things that jumped into Spider’s mind, but ‘happy’ wasn’t one of them. If anything, she was sorry.

“Kid,” Nerf got to his feet, “let me give you a piece of friendly advice: no matter what the space marine might tell you, there are some questions not worth asking, and some answers not worth knowing.”

He let her chew on that one for a while, then clamped his cigar between his teeth, picked up the rifle Spider had not noticed beside her on the table, and indicated that he was leaving.

“Enjoy the smoke,” he said, and walked from the room.

Spider stayed for a while, desperately keeping her promise to finish the entirety of the Catachan’s cigar. By the time she finished, the lights were already back on and she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. There were questions alright, but none so big as the questions she needed to ask herself.

[Aqui]

B)

 

I can actually relate to Godwyn's plight regarding her leg at the moment, as I had a cyst/tumour thing removed last week :( Not sure I'd have liked someone like Tweed operate on me though! :lol:

 

Story was worth the wait as always! ;)

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

Praise the Emperor! An update!

 

Very good, nice to see some more history of Nerf and Mercy, though whenever we get close to learning the truth, you shut the door on us suddenly and we always have more questions than answers!

 

Ahh well, a hallmark of good writing :)

[Lady_Canoness]

Very glad to hear it Brother-Sergeant!

 

More answers to your questions will be forthcoming, I swear it! But I'll just need to get around to writing them first ;)

 

As for your leg, Aquilanus, that just sounds downright unpleasant!

[Taranis]

a region known as the Nibelungen Rift.

Where did you find that name? It's the surname of a person from danish history. Ca. 1000 years old. :P

Fantastic chapter. This story is really going great.

The wait for updates/new chapters is no problem when they are so great in both length and content. I really like all our heroes development.

 

Something tells me we haven't seen the last of the dear herbalist. :)

[Lady_Canoness]

That name just so happened to be chosen on purpose, though not in the manner you might think (it was just a few links away from Oberon on wikipedia). I find the names of planets, people, and things will often have more of hook for the reader if they actually mean something - such as Mercy and Spider being named such as they are instead of Marley and Moe :lol:)

 

Glad you are liking where the characters are going! That means that what happens to them will be interesting indeed ;)

[Lady_Canoness]

Part 13 lands just before Christmas (it's a miracle!) and sees our party arrive on Oberon. What will happen once they reach the war-torn planet? Who will they meet? How long will they stay? Read and find out!

 

This part should come across as setting the scene for things to come, so hopefully it does!

 

___________________________________

 

*Part 13*

 

“The body is a remarkable thing…”

Tapping the needle with his index finger, Tweed then tipped the fluid contents into a petri dish, sealed it, labelled it, and set it aside.

“Very remarkable indeed…”

Smiling as to show all his yellowed teeth, he turned back to his patient and laid out the carefully diced carosfoil leaves in a little dish on the slab.

Her leg un-bandaged and exposed on the operating table, Inquisitor Godwyn felt no need to return the gesture. Almost a month had passed in their journey towards the war torn Oberon, and in that time the Inquisitor had only seen marginal improvement in her wound. Her leg was still stiff, cumbersome and awkward to move, and the scars left over from her infection and subsequent operation would likely never heal, leaving her with ruined and cratered flesh on her right leg which would require further surgery – this time from a reputable medicae – to repair.

“Right, ‘old on a sec; this might sting…”

Tweed pressed the tattered carosfoil leaves into the weeping wound where a cyst had been removed and quickly covered it up with a bandage. Blinking away the prickles of pain, Godwyn didn’t let the slightest breath of unease to pass her lips.

Her leg wouldn’t kill her, that was the good part, but aside from that Tweed had rendered very little favours. The man was scum; in no way better than the others crammed into the transport ship, and in many ways he was worse. ‘Herbalist’ was nothing more than a gentler name for ‘man-who-makes-narcotics-and-sells-them-on-false-pretences’. Dozens of the mercenaries aboard the vessel were now hopelessly addicted to the chemicals brewed by the man in his makeshift laboratory, and consequently the mortality rates due to overdose and violence were climbing at a steady rate. More than once, crazed addicts desperate for a release had tried to come after the drug-maker himself, though none ever survived the attempt, after which Tweed would set about his morbid practice of ‘recycling’ the victim of his chemicals to further increase his production. The fertilizer for his collection of flora had to come from somewhere, and the withered body-parts he kept in jars to await dissection were never as old as they seemed.

The worst, however, was how the scarred and twisted herbalist maintained the positive belief that he was helping, and that his debilitating chemicals were somehow comparable to true medicine.

Seeing him almost every day, Godwyn often had to listen to his sermons of righteousness as he changed her bandages and treated her wounds, but even so she was beginning to notice the detrimental effects of his drugs for herself, and it had been when she was alone with her lover that she discovered how dulled her nerves had become.

“Bodies are weak,” Tweed explained when Godwyn confronted him about it; “I,” he said with a grin, “do my part to make that better…”

Better or not, Godwyn was hardly in the position to hold him to account for his deeds while they were in transit and her leg depended on his care – something he was no doubt aware of.

“Okay, you’re all patched up,” he said, tying off the last bandage around her leg and stepping back from the operating slab to wash his hands. “Come back next cycle, and we’ll see just how you’re doing then…”

Covering the fresh bandages as she rolled down the leg of her pants, Godwyn slid her wounded limb off the slab and gently tried her weight against the deck. The bandages felt tighter than normal, but other than the slight increase in pressure there was no pain. At this point she’d stopped measuring for improvements and instead settled for her recovery as it was. There would be no going back.

“Thank you, Tweed,” she said coolly, watching him with his back to her as he cleaned his hands. He always smiled when she said that – a sick smile reflective of his perverse pleasure of knowing that somehow she needed him – and when he turned around the grin on his face split open his scarred cheeks almost from ear to ear.

“I enjoy what I do,” he said, his voice sounding like he was already envisioning what it would be like to slice her open and sample her organs, “but before you go, I have a proposition I would like to discuss…”

“I don’t make deals, Tweed,” the Inquisitor told him flatly, though at the same time folding her arms and indicating that she would at least listen to what he had to say.

The herbalist laughed softly to himself. “It’s not like that,” he said, “as a matter of fact, I was hoping to… take advantage… of your good will…”

Godwyn thought that unlikely, but she wasn’t going to stop him from saying what was on his mind. Someone willing to spill all they know, after all, is a rare treat for an Inquisitor.

“Your friend, the big guy, was right about me, you see…” Tweed began, referring to the space marine as he picked up a jar of gangrenous liquid and idly examined its contents before looking again at the Inquisitor. “I’m an artist more than a scientist, and your friend was right when he said that there is more for me then workin’ on the sad specimens that come and go on this ship… you understand?”

Of course she did, and Tweed wetted his lips before continuing. “I was hoping, that… you being an Inquisitor… you could find a use for my many talents and skills…”

“No.”

The disappointment dropped onto his face like a ripe tomato being dropped off a hive spire.

“Would you at least consider it?” he asked again, sounding almost desperate. “You know that I can be more than useful. I can do all sorts of things, and help you in so many ways!”

“My mission won’t allow me to bring someone who would slow me down.”

That took him some time to digest.

“Slow you down?” he sounded almost relieved. “Inquisitor, I assure you that I will not be a burden!”

Godwyn was sceptical: “You have enough jars here to fill a Leman Russ, not to mention that your plants don’t look like the type you can conceal in coat pocket. In short, if your only use to me is in a lab, I have no use for you.”

“I see…” and from the look on his face, it seemed to Godwyn that he was finally starting to understand. Energized, he pushed off from where he was leaning on a counter at the side of the room and went stand over the by the slab. “I do not intend to stay on this ship,” he said with finality, “so when you depart, I’ll set up somewhere nearby… somewhere you can find me when you come lookin’. Sound good to you?”

“If that is what you want,” Godwyn said in place of agreement.

Tweed nodded; “Yes… I think it is. For what it’s worth, thank you for listening, Inquisitor…”

 

* * *

 

It was another ten days of being cramped in the grimy ship’s hold before the captain’s voice came over the crackling intercom and told everyone on board the news they had been waiting six weeks to hear, and in doing so all the thoughts, hopes, and fears that had been bottled up to that point suddenly came out. Some of the men cheered and whooped, certain that fortune and riches were waiting for them mere hours away, while others were quieter, their faces grim, and stared off into their imagined futures hoping that it wouldn’t be snuffed out too quickly.

Welcomed or dreaded, arrival in orbit over Oberon spurred the ship’s company into action, and mere minutes after the announcement had been made the decks became a hive of activity as mercenaries of all stripes readied for disembarkation to the planet below. Everywhere there was running and shouting though the narrow corridors as men tried to locate comrades and equipment at a feverish pace the likes of which had not been seen since they’d left Erebus station behind, and the kind of excitement only seen when a long wait finally yielded to a hotly anticipated event.

Even so, it would not be until five hours after the announcement that the first transport shuttle would berth with the freighter, and when the airlock opened it would be with a mixture of confusion and dismay that the anxious mercenary company would learn that the one-and-only boat to the surface could only carry one-hundred passengers at a time and that her crew demanded extra ‘incentive’ in order to work quickly. One hundred men were chosen – each paying a premium to be the first to leave – and then the shuttle pulled away and slowly disappeared into the green ball that spread beneath them.

Over four-and-a-half thousand men watched it go.

It would take just under fifty return trips and another eight days to off-load every last man to Oberon’s surface.

Godwyn and her crew would be on trip number forty-four.

 

*

 

“Look it here! Look it here! More fa’gon wasters for the grinder!” one of the locals was clapping his hands together with a ghoulish grin as he watched the new arrivals take their first steps on Oberon’s soil. “Bet you wish you’d never come! Ha-hahaha! You’re not ready for the ruttin’ you’ll get here!”

The look on his face said he was drunk, and he wobbled on his feet as the hundred mercenaries trudged past him through the boot-worn mud towards…

“Nobody comes here without a reason!” he cackled, staggering on the spot even though no-one paid him any attention, “and yours is to die! A long and celebrated history of worm food, that’s what this is!”

They were in some kind of staging ground – that was the best way to describe it – a staging ground stretching out as far as the eye could see until the dark grey buildings of a far off city rose up along the mid-afternoon horizon.

Behind them, the shuttle cut her engines and the crew disembarked. A few of them shared a smoke and chatted lazily by the hull while making a point to ignore the people they’d just dropped off. One of them started to laugh. As a sound, it felt strangely out of place.

The drunkard continued to wobble, and, as a whole, the one-hundred new arrivals seemed lost for words. Standing near the back of the group, together with Aquinas and her companions, Godwyn felt that she understood why.

A massive encampment sprawled around them in every direction, and everywhere they looked makeshift shelters, haphazardly draped pennants, and dirt encrusted soldiers with dirt encrusted weapons. There was no order to it, no uniformity, just a raw mass of armed men living like rats in a scrap yard. At first guess, they were likely over a hundred-thousand strong, and there was noise to match.

Hundreds of voices were talking, shouting and laughing, and the discharge of weapons seemed so common that it could well have been like the singing of birds amidst of forest of humanity. It was droning, mind-numbing – the kind of noise that enveloped a person so completely that it almost passed beyond the scope of hearing as if it were part of the world itself, and it took several moments to realize that someone was actually talking to them:

“Do you think I do this just to hear myself talk?! Move you bunch of rut-suckin’ wasters! Move!”

An unkempt-looking man with five days growth on his face appeared before them as if trying to herd the new arrivals like livestock. He had a dirt stained pennant over one shoulder and a worn-out chainsword over the other, but other than that the man had no marks or equipment to separate him from any of the other mercs they’d seen around the camp.

“Think this is on gonna be easy? Think there are no rules around here? Wrong! Fa’gon wrong!”

A few of the mercenaries took exception to his approach, but he warned them off with the business end of his chainsword:

“Keep the f*ck back!” he shouted at them, “I don’t get a bonus for gutting you wasters!”

The wobbling drunk started to laugh, but the man with the pennant shoved him off as well, dropping him into the mud and lashing out with a few well aimed kicks and stomps.

Nerf raised an eyebrow and spat into the mud, but other than that no-one made a move as the loud-mouthed merc meted out some quick camp justice onto the defenceless drunk.

“Where do we need to go from here?” Godwyn asked Aquinas as they turned with the rest of the mercenaries and slowly trudged through the mud in the direction that they were being ushered now that their greeter had finished beating on the drunkard.

“Eventually we will need to make our way into the city,” the space marine mused in reply, “yet at this moment I think we should find out as much as we can about our surroundings.”

“You think the mirror could be nearby?”

Aquinas shook his head. “No, and staying in this camp will not aid us.”

Godwyn agreed, and was willing to follow the space marine’s lead until they could re-evaluate their position.

“You once said that space marines are not subtle,” the librarian commented, “that is to our advantage.”

She gave him a quizzical look, but the space marine didn’t look back.

“You!” Aquinas turned on the spot, summoning the chainsword-wielding mercenary with a cold stare; “Come here!”

Even without power armour a space marine dwarfs a human being by a wide margin, and the unflinching tone of command in the librarian’s hushed voice crushed whatever spirit of resistance the grubby mercenary might have ever possessed.

“Who is in charge of this camp, and where are they?” Aquinas questioned the man after he had done what he was told.

“I don’t…” the mercenary started to answer but suddenly stopped as he flinched and shut his eyes tightly in pain.

A shiver ran down the Inquisitor’s spine. Spider was grinning while Mercy watched the man like he was a mouldering hunk of flesh.

Eyes bright blue, Aquinas was staring deeply into the mercenary’s face. Both the chainsword and pennant dropped into the mud with a thump. Some of the mercenaries were starting to talk amongst themselves; others looked scared.

Mere moments after it began, however, Aquinas released the man and looked away – the mercenary falling to the ground like a tortured animal – then stepped over him and indicated that Godwyn and the others should follow him as he quickly marched back the way they had come in the direction of the distant city.

“If you wanted to draw attention to yourself, then I think you succeeded,” Godwyn said darkly, jogging to catch up with the swift moving space marine; “what did he know?”

“Nothing,” Aquinas replied tersely, “though he confirmed several of my suspicions about this camp.”

“What are those?”

“That we will not find any help here for a reason, and that our true objectives lie to the south.”

He explained further as they walked through the camp towards the city, and the more ground they covered the more the Inquisitor came to see what it was exactly that Aquinas meant: the camp was a disaster in more ways that one, and the further they went the more reasons she saw for why.

Sitting like a lesion upon the landscape, the mercenary camp was squatting on the outskirts of Drumwell – a south-lying city that was closest to the ‘front-lines’ – and had done so for the better part of three years. It had started well enough as a staging ground for soldiers fighting secessionist rebels and their alien allies in a war that was only a matter of months old, but, following a successful guerrilla campaign of sabotage and raider parties, the war became ugly, and what had started as something clear-cut and decisive grew into a battle filled with confusion, miscommunication, and abject failure until individual companies no-longer knew where they were going or who they were fighting. Suddenly the front-lines had vanished and had been replaced by a limitless battle zone riddle with units in complete isolation from one another, where the only ‘safe-havens’ were places that had yet to be attacked.

Through all this the camp at Drumwell had grown to be the largest known encampment of soldiers and armaments, and as such was the only place on Oberon’s surface where a contracted pilot could make runs into orbit with only a fraction of a chance of being attacked. As the camp swelled, however, the city suffered, and the mercenary scum camped on the city stoop drove out all but the most tenacious (or desperate) urbanites until Drumwell embraced what was essentially martial law in an attempt to keep the city free from mercenaries run amok. To some extent the plan worked and the undesirables, most off-worlders, were kept at bay, though at the cost of turning the city itself into a veritable fortress where all privileges were suspended, movements were restricted and scrutinized, and where even a minor infraction could draw capital charges. If the city officials had wanted to dislodge ever-growing mercenary population, however, they failed, and, though their laws kept the majority of the camp’s inhabitants from the city streets, they also saw the camp become a permanent settlement. The directionless soldiers having nowhere to go and no-one to command them set up ramshackle buildings from scrap wood and corrugated metal, and built a system of duckboards over the mud-clogged pathways. The camp grew like a living organism, and, as more men came, the smoke of more and more campfires could be seen rising like a shadow over the city.

Without any leadership, the men divided themselves into bands depending on when and where they came from, and would often form little groups of like-minded people who needed others to survive. The bands varied greatly in size and equipment, with the oldest of the camp’s residents often making up the largest and best equipped band. Size and armaments meant nothing when it came to fighting, however, because each band was equally leaderless and isolated in the actual war effort. Units in the field had no contact with each other, and had no intelligence aside from what their own scouts could determine. Bunkers and emplacements were often occupied by units who had no knowledge as to what lay around them and were as likely to fire upon friend as they were foe – if they fired at all – while aerial units (of which there were few) were notorious for firing on anything that the pilot didn’t personally recognize as being friendly.

Oberon was at war – of that there was no doubt – but who was fighting, who would win, and who would hear about it when it happened was anyone’s guess.

 

It was almost nightfall when the Inquisitor neared the city gates with the Librarian and their three companions, but they weren’t out of the camp yet, and standing in the orange glow of several burning trash fires were eight armed and armoured mercenaries standing around a makeshift chain-link gate that was protected with razorwire and weathered concrete barricades. It didn’t look like much – mostly just scrap and rubble that had been piled up to make something defensive – and the mercenaries guarding it wore piecemeal uniforms like the rest, but as Godwyn and her team approached they seemed to stir into action. One of them, a tall man with long braided hair wearing dirty remnants of carapace armour, stepped forward:

“Ho there!” he called in a deep voice, holding up an open palm in their direction as he shifted the heavy stubber he was carrying onto his shoulder so that the weapon’s partially spooled belt of ammunition dangled at his side; “You’ll stop before you go any further.”

The mercenaries behind him looked on in silence, and it quickly became clear to Godwyn by the serious looks on their faces that this was no trivial thing they were doing. At her signal, her companions came to a stop several feet from the mercenaries. Standing at the Inquisitor’s side, Aquinas eyed the men irritably.

“Why do you want to leave the camp?” the mercenary with the braided hair asked once everyone was still.

“I’d know to whom I am speaking first,” Godwyn replied. One of the mercs standing by the chain-link gate laughed, and several of the others exchanged knowing glances. In the background, the ambient noise of the camp seemed to grow.

“Name’s Jack,” the braided mercenary replied, then added with a nod; “thank you for asking, cred. Now I’m going to repeat my question: why do you want to leave the camp?”

“We are looking to go south,” Godwyn answered truthfully, folding her arms over her chest; her leg was starting bother her after several hours of walking through the muddy camp.

“You are?” Jack acted surprised, and a pitying smile crossed his lips as some of the others laughed again. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Your curiosity is sure to do you credit,” Aquinas cut in, drawing Jack’s eyes to him as well as the glance of several others, “yet your delaying us will not.”

The space marine’s words were cold as usual, but at eight strong the mercenaries likely thought themselves capable of handling one unarmoured giant. Of course they were wrong.

A few of them laughed and jeered at the space marine, though fortunately Jack kept his composure, even though it was unlikely he knew what he was addressing.

“That’s fair, cred,” he said softly as if speaking to a child. “We won’t stand in your way if you want to go to the city. But I gotta warn you that we’re just here to do you a favour: we’ll ask you nice to turn back, but the boys up at the city gate will shoot you and leave you to rot on the roadside.” He shrugged: “just our way of doing a favour.”

Apparently this was some kind of running joke between Jack’s friends as again the mercenaries started to laugh.

“You will let us through?” Godwyn asked, making sure that she held the dialogue to course just in case the armed men at the gate were looking for an excuse to start something.

“Sure I will,” Jack replied, swinging the heavy stubber off his shoulder and back into his hands with a thud and jingle of brass casings, “but what good will it do you? It’s a lot safer here, trust me… better company too.”

Some of the mercs sniggered and tapped knuckles in some sort of celebratory gesture. Behind her Godwyn could hear Nerf mutter something under his breath.

“All I need is a way south,” the Inquisitor repeated herself, “and, from what I have seen, there is nothing in this camp that will help me in that regard.”

“That’s because the only thing you’ll find south of here is a shallow grave,” the mercenary told her, “trust me on that one. No one wants to go down there; not even you.”

He looked honest, but Godwyn wasn’t buying it and neither was Nerf;

“Spare the ‘guardian angel’ bulls*** and get out of the way,” Nerf grumbled from behind her. “Try again on someone greener.”

A few of the mercs gave him dirty looks, and even Spider raised her eyebrows in his direction, but the Catachan wasn’t about to be cowed by some wannabe-warriors – his stance said as much. Jack, however, didn’t seem to notice:

“Little soldier boy,” he scoffed taking a few steps towards Nerf even though the Catachan likely had him beat by twenty pounds or more, “what’s wrong? Got something to prove?”

The commando wouldn’t be baited and didn’t give Jack the satisfaction of an answer.

“I’ll be going south regardless,” Godwyn got in front of the mercenary before he was in range for Nerf to hurt him. “If you have anything else to say, say it, otherwise let us pass.”

The smug grin on Jack’s face said that he didn’t think they stood a chance, but at the same time that he wasn’t about to screw them:

“Yeah, I’ve got something you might need,” he said, turning and slowly walking back to where his friends waited by the gate in the trash fire’s orange glow, “and I’m not going to ask you for anything in return, either…

Intrigued, Mercy cocked her graceful features to one side and gazed down at the men around the gate with curious eyes.

“There’s a man you should meet,” Jack continued. “Princeton, the last of Justice’s company; him and his men are some of the only mercs who stay in the city, and, from what I hear, he’s been trying to get enough people to go south for some time now. He’s a real trip, and he’s as likely to mess ya as is to pump ya, if you know what I mean…”

“I’m not sure that I do,” Godwyn replied, but judging by the likes of Jack’s company she could assume that it was something suitably crude. “You are certain that this man is in the city?”

The mercenary in the dirty carapace armour nodded twice:

“A lot of stuff is between me and my personal gods, but this is between me and you: you’ll find Princeton in the city. Like I said, him and his guys are in there.” Placing the stock of his stubber on the ground, Jack leaned against his gun and gave the two men and three women in front of him a long look.

“Can’t say what kind of audience you’ll get with him though,” he said, waiving them past as his friends parted the rickety chain-linked gate, “but I’ll wager he’s the man you want…”

 

At the end of a broken road, the city of Drumwell rose before them like a slumbering colossus aglow in the sun’s fading light. A giant of rockcrete and plasteel, it sat like a fortress atop the muddy, dead earth and glowered down at the people beneath its menacing, age-beaten defence towers and stared with the flickering light from countless windows hidden in its weathered hide.

A steep curtain wall dotted with guard towers and gun nests surrounded the city, and along the ramparts men could be seen patrolling back and forth before the oncoming gloom. Like the city itself, the wall was weathered and old with the scars of long-ago battles still marking its surface. Some were too deep to repair, and spoke of colossal force being thrown against the city of Drumwell, but by the looks of it the wall had never failed – the marks of battle remaining as a grim reminder of what the city had overcome.

Placed in the centre of the wall, with towers and emplacements built up to either side, was a gate. Small, it was likely one of many, but being the gate closest to the mercenary camp it was well guarded, and no fewer than six gun-barrels swivelled round as the shapes of five people drew near. Flood-lights flicked on, voices were raised, and targeting beams made their mark…

“You’re certain we need to go south?” Godwyn squinted through the glaring light towards the space marine that walked beside her.

“Completely,” Aquinas replied, himself painted by at least two red marks on his barrel chest that followed his every step from the walls high above.

“Good to know,” Nerf quipped in from behind them where he and Mercy brought up the rear, “at least we’ll die doing something important if they decided to open up…”

 

The guns from overhead did not open up, however, and though it took some time, as well as plenty of gentle persuasion, Godwyn, Aquinas, Spider, Nerf, and Mercy were admitted through the gates of Drumwell and into the city. The conditions of their stay were simple: step one toe out of line and be sent to the dungeons; step two toes out of line and be put in the ground. What had happened to incur wrath of the city’s masters was never made clear, but there were plenty of reminders as to the penalty should one become forgetful:

 

Do NOT argue with authorities.

Do NOT trespass.

Do NOT run.

Walk only on designated streets.

Enter only designated buildings at designated times.

Display your priority badge at all times.

Failure to abide by city rulings will be reason for seizure and arrest.

 

The posters were everywhere on walls and even hanging in the streets, and the few people that did walk at night did so alone with their heads down.

What Jack had said about the camp being safer was clearly true, and twice Godwyn and her companions were stopped by patrols demanding to see the priority badges they had been issued at the gate.

“Can we just get off the streets?” Spider asked once the second patrol had departed following another spot interrogation. She was getting anxious as the guards had been asking her a lot of questions and giving her trouble for the answers she gave. Anyone who was different was labelled as suspicious, and it did not help that, out of the five of them, two were giants and one was covered in tattoos.

“Stay calm,” Nerf did his best to reassure her, “we’ll get through this soon.”

At the time, the Catachan’s words might have sounded hollow, but they rang true soon enough as, together, Godwyn and the others finally arrived at the residence allotted to them for the duration of their stay.

“This Princeton guy,” Nerf asked the Inquisitor once they’d gotten settled in the sparsely furnished apartment hab and taken stock of their immediate surroundings, “how are we going to find him?”

Sitting on one of the bunks in their spacious quarters – a design likely made for middle-class comfort prior to the mass exodus of the populace due to the war – Cassandra Godwyn slipped off her boots and tried to massage some feeling into the twisted flesh of her right leg. From the latrine opposite her came the sound of running water as Spider washed the dirt from her hair in the basin.

“We’ll need to start looking tomorrow,” Godwyn told him as his own glance stole towards where the teenage psyker was visible before the mirror, “in every way we can.”

Nerf grunted in response: “Guess we’ll have to see tomorrow, then” he said; “Either way, I don’t like this city…”

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

another excellent update, and on Christmas day for us New Zealanders! yay! A great pressie :P

 

I really feel this piece captures the atmosphere of Oberon, which is good. Like all your work, well written and captivating.

[Lady_Canoness]

I'm just getting started with Oberon itself, and have large plans for things to come. Hopefully it will be to everyone's liking - or at least strike the right cords ;)

[Lady_Canoness]

With the amount of time I've had off recently, I've been able to churn out part 14 in double quick time!

 

Take a look!

__________________

 

*Part 14*

 

Godwyn woke the next morning to the sound of shouting.

At first inclination the blonde Inquisitor thought she had overslept, and swung her bare feet to the freezing metal floor before hurrying on tip-toes from her bedroom into the apartment’s common area. The faintest glow of predawn light pierced the wide-paned window and cast spectral shadows throughout high-ceilinged room, and, blinking the fatigue from her eyes, Godwyn realized that it was still very early – likely a mere handful of hours since she’d shut her eyes in the first place – and that not a soul stirred in the dark apartment.

Yet still she could hear sound of shouting voices coming from outside the window.

She yawned, rubbed her eyes, and scrunched her toes against the cold floor. The figure sitting in the shadows by the window turned in her direction with pale, ice-like eyes. Godwyn wasn’t surprised to see him: Aquinas never slept.

“What’s going on?” she whispered, hugging both her stump and her arm close to her chest for warmth in the cold morning air.

“A witch hunt,” Aquinas replied quietly, turning back to the window so that Godwyn could follow his eyes down into the street several stories below.

It was quite dark outside and the streets were almost black save for the few beams of light from lamps and the orange glow of several smoking braziers, yet even so the Inquisitor could see the commotion of what looked like a sea of people clustered on the road. There was no flow in the crowd below – no direction – and many voices were raised in cacophony shouts only partially dulled by the double panes of glass that separated them.

“They started to gather eighteen minutes ago, and since have been growing steadily,” the space marine librarian told her in little more than a whisper as her eyes traced up and down the street. “They believe they have found a traitor, a rebel spy; the guards are arresting him right now, and are about to bring both he and his family into the streets.”

Godwyn caught his eye. “Is he really a spy?” she asked, knowing that Aquinas would know the answer.

“He is no spy,” the space marine replied flatly: “he is different, and that is all that is needed. He and those with him will suffer for that.”

They watched in silence from the window as down in the street a door opened and the same guards that they had seen the day before appeared, dragging a figure who was kicking and struggling between them. More guards appeared behind them, dragging more people into the street.

From this distance it was impossible to tell man from woman, but not adult from child.

“Yes,” Aquinas noticed what Godwyn herself had seen, “even the children.”

The throng of people in the street below started to heave and roil, and no sooner were the guards out the door than parts split from the masses and rushed the prisoners. The guards tried half-heartedly to hold them back, but no shots were fired, and Godwyn witnessed the mob drag the prisoners fighting into their midst where the sea of people swelled over and around them. The guards, like the Inquisitor and space marine who remained unseen in the darkness above, could do naught but watch.

“What do you see?” Godwyn asked him in a dry voice, knowing that her companion’s sharpened perceptions would be able to see everything as it unfolded.

“It is as if rabid dogs set upon lambs,” he replied tonelessly. “It will soon be over, but in the most basic, inhumane of ways.”

She closed her eyes in disgust and walked quietly from the window. The queasy feeling she felt in her gut wasn’t for the innocents being murdered outside her window, but for herself. Empathy was the luxury of the ignorant, and knowing that made her feel diminished as a human being.

“We are no safer than they are,” Aquinas said now that she had left the window.

“We’re trained,” Godwyn replied quietly without looking at him. “We are prepared.”

“Preparedness does not make us safe. We cannot stay overlong in one place. Soon the city’s overlords may well turn their mob against us.”

“Then we find Princeton,” she said, walking back to her room to fetch her boots; “We find him and go south.”

 

 

The sun’s red rays were just poking over the horizon when Godwyn set foot in the streets an hour later. Of the commotion that had taken place earlier that morning there was no sign, and, together with Nerf and Mercy, the Inquisitor quickly went on her way deeper into the city of Drumwell in search of the man called Princeton.

The first few hours passed without finding anything, for though most of the population had fled to other cities the empty shell of what was once a thriving metropolis still remained, and long, concrete boulevards that had once teamed with people were now empty save for a few souls. Centres of industry and worker residences were now vacant (or hiding fugitives and squatters) and finding any concentration of people anywhere was almost impossible outside of the administrative section – somewhere Godwyn was sure to avoid after seeing the amount patrols in the immediate area.

It was almost noon with the cold sun reaching its zenith when they came across a public house – the sign above the door reading ‘the Copperhead’ – down an otherwise deserted alley. To Godwyn’s relief, it wasn’t closed.

“Come on in! Come on in!” the man behind the counter greeted them warmly, keenly eyeing both their faces and the priority badges pinned to their coats as he ushered them through the door. “A targ of a day outside, in’it?”

Overflowing with generosity, the barman showed his three guests over to a booth tucked to the side of the small room, and gladly took their orders for a hot meal and something to drink before ducking back around the counter and calling genially to someone in the kitchens. On one side of the booth, Nerf and Godwyn watched him discretely as he bustled about, while Mercy – taking up the entirety of the other side with her long legs folded across the seat – took in the pub’s nostalgically quaint trappings with curious, wide eyes.

The pub wasn’t at all big – maybe enough seats for forty people in total – and was decorated with wood, giving it a cosy feeling that did not fit at all with the metal and rockcrete of the surrounding city. If Godwyn had to guess, she would have said that this place was probably of great sentimental value to its owner, and that it was that – not good business – that kept him here when most of the city had emptied. Looking around, there were three other patrons sitting at other tables and booths. All of them were alone, and their drunken slouching – as well as knowing the bartender by name – suggested they had nowhere else to be. Not the best of sights. When the food arrived it was delicious, however, and, together with the drink, spoke volumes of a man having the time to perfect his art.

After a few compliments, they got to speaking with their host about the city, its past, and what he saw for its future. Turns out he had owned his establishment for sixteen years and was dearly attached to it, much as Godwyn had expected, and that his opinions of Drumwell’s current situation were both plentiful and informative. Eventually, Godwyn asked the question she really wanted answered.

“Princeton?” the man seemed surprised that she should bring him up. “Can’t say I know the man himself, but I know of him, see? Fair to say most of the city does.”

With some encouragement the bartender then gladly told them all he knew: Princeton’s reputation, the reputation of his men, how long he had been in the city, and, most importantly, where he made his base of operations. It turned out that it was all considered public knowledge, and that Princeton’s presence went hardly unnoticed. His company, they were told, was about fifty strong and, unlike the other mercenary companies in the city, wore distinct uniforms and silver armour. Apparently he and his company had been positioned inside a decommissioned rail hub on the outskirts of the city since early in the war, and at one point had been part of a larger mercenary army under the command of a leader called Justice. What happened to Justice and where the army was now was unknown, but Princeton had been around since before Drumwell’s trouble began, and it was said that he may have even played a hand in the making of a martial state.

All of this their host divulged without hesitation over the course of their meal much as if it were idle gossip, which gave Godwyn the impression that he hadn’t the slightest realization that his city was still in a state of war.

“War?!” he said in a light-hearted chuckle; “What war!? All I’ve seen of a war are the fighters who say we’re in one!”

 

*

 

In one time in its history, before relations with the south had soured to the point of rebellion, Drumwell had been a major thoroughfare for trade moving north. Numerous roads, rail-lines, and pipelines snaked through the city, and industries relied upon the siphoning of wealth from the men and materials that passed through there. When the trade slowed, therefore, so too did the local economy – driving thousands from the city as industries disgorged legions of unnecessary workers – and, when trade stopped, the city came to a standstill. Processing plants closed, industrial administration buildings were shuttered up, and once vital transport hubs were all but abandoned – the retreating industrialists stripping them bare for every last drop of value, and leaving empty buildings in their wake.

The arrival of the mercenaries and the implementation of martial law was simply the last nail in Drumwell’s coffin.

 

*

 

The man named Princeton had made his camp in an abandoned rail yard that lay to the east of the city in a once heavily industrialized zone that had since been reduced to a mausoleum of decaying buildings. Fitting for a man who wanted to keep the casual interloper at arm’s length, the way inwards towards the base had been turned into a labyrinth of dead ends and narrow alleyways – perfect killzones, Nerf noted, if ever the base came under attack – that took hours to navigate even with Mercy’s expert agility and the Catachan’s knack for finding hidden passages, and when they did reach the rail hub, the reception was no better:

Undeclared intruders will be shot on sight, a warning spray painted onto a defaced billboard declared, and a combat-issue helmet with a ragged bullet-hole through the forehead was perched nearby for emphasis.

“Friendly people,” Nerf commented with a note of sarcasm, picking up the helmet in one hand and running his fingers around the bullet-hole. “Solid round. Messy. Looks like Princeton and his gang are up for some serious business.”

He tossed the helmet to Mercy, though she avoided it like rotten meat and let it clatter to the ground before looking at Nerf as if he’d just insulted her.

The Catachan shrugged, turning to Godwyn; “I wouldn’t want to walk in on these guys unannounced, Cass,” he said in an honest tone. “This Princeton and his boys are probably a lot tougher than the mercs squatting outside the city.”

The Inquisitor agreed, and, careful not the walk further than the billboard, stood in the middle of the road a good sixty meters from the train yard’s main structure and raised her voice to a shout:

“Hello!” she called, hearing herself echo off the nearby buildings.

Her answer came a few seconds later with a flash and crack as a las-round exploded the pavement at her feet.

Instinctively Nerf dropped down and rolled behind the billboard, while Mercy darted backwards into the cover of a nearby building and promptly vanished in the shadows. Godwyn, however, remained standing in the middle of the road, not flinching from where she stood.

The shot had come from the upper levels of the main building, but Godwyn didn’t see the shooter until a man in what looked like silver body armour appeared in one of the broken windows on the top floor.

“We have this area marked,” he called down in a strong, accented voice, “tell your men to come out of hiding, or you will be fired upon! You have five seconds to comply!”

The man in the window started to count as Godwyn calmly asked her companions to stand beside her in the open. The shooter had just reached three when Nerf and Mercy reappeared by Godwyn’s side.

Keeping his voice low so that only she could hear, Nerf swore bitterly. “Cadians,” he said, “they’re bloody Cadians.”

“Then you know they won’t miss if we give them a reason to shoot…” Godwyn mumbled back, receiving an acknowledging grunt in return.

“State your name and your purpose!” the man in the window called to them. Curt and to the point – just like one would expect from a career soldier.

“My name is Cassandra Godwyn,” the Inquisitor replied, looking at the only Cadian she could see even though she was sure that there were more watching; “I seek an audience with your commanding officer!”

“To what end?”

Godwyn shook her head. “I will discuss that only with your commanding officer!”

Standing in the window, the Cadian was silent for a few moments. Godwyn couldn’t tell if he was conferring with someone or not.

“Lay down your weapons and stay where you are!” he said at last; “Someone will come down to collect you!”

Having passed along his message, the man in the window stepped down and disappeared from view. Godwyn drew her heavy pistol – the same pistol she had wielded since her mentor had given it to her on the day he died – and, weighing it in her hand as she looked up at the empty window, placed it gently on the ground at her feet. Beside her, Nerf swung his auto-carbine off his shoulder, cleared the breach, and set his prized gun on the pavement along side his pistol and combat knife. His anti-materiel rifle had been left back at the apartment as it was much too large and obvious a weapon to be carried around all day.

“You too, Mercy,” Godwyn instructed the assassin, who was reluctantly parting with her singing sword and neuro-gauntlet. It felt… strange to see all of their weapons just lying there, almost as if they were forfeiting long-time allies and beloved friends against their will.

“Nothing like a Cadian telling you to put your gun down to make you want to pick it back up,” Nerf mutter with a dry sarcasm. He was looking ahead at the building before them: it was big, grey, and had seen better decades, and, without the Cadian at the window, looked just as unoccupied as everything else.

“You can tell they’re Cadians just by listening?” Godwyn asked in a whisper, just in case anyone could hear them.

“I didn’t only ever fight in jungles, boss,” the Catachan command replied quietly. “Their shouting leaves an impression more than most. Something you can remember.”

“What kind of an impression?”

Eyes forward, he grinned. “That they are a little too fond of what they are shouting about.”

She was still thinking about what he meant when the front doors to the building opened in front of them and three soldiers came out. Each wore an identical uniform of drab combat fatigues and silver body armour on their chest and shoulders, as well as a black beret balanced to one side of the head. Godwyn looked at each of them as they approached, trying to determine if one of them was the man she’d spoken too. All three carried similar pattern lasguns and their features had a harshness to them the likes of which Godwyn hadn’t seen before. If these men weren’t Cadians, then Godwyn could certainly forgive Nerf for mistaking them as such.

Two of the men held back once they were within speaking distance, but a third – the middle man – kept walking until he was no more than five feet from Godwyn, at which point he stopped. Making no sudden movements, the man then removed his beret – revealing a head of grey stubble – and loosed the clasp on his holstered pistol.

Beside her Nerf glowered at the older man like a caged animal. The Cadian spared him a glance, but ultimately kept his focus on the Inquisitor.

“Mrs. Godwyn,” he said looking her square in the eye, “I am going to ask you again to what purpose you are here. This time I am asking you as a man with a gun.”

His laspistol was up in dueller’s stance with a single well-practiced motion.

A hiss of hatred escaped Mercy’s lips, but Godwyn kept her cool.

“I want to go south,” Godwyn replied plainly, keeping her eyes on the man in front of her and not the pistol that was levelled at her neck. “I was told that a man named Princeton would be the one to talk to.”

The man said nothing in response, but he lowered his pistol as neatly as when he’d drawn it with no more emotion than if he’d been asking Godwyn to shake hands.

“You and your companions will come with us,” he said in the same accent that Nerf had picked up on. “You will be under guard, but your weapons will be returned to you upon your departure. If you will abide by these terms, I will pass on your request to my commanding officer. If not, take your weapons and go.”

“I can abide by those terms,” Godwyn agreed in good faith, though she wondered if the Cadians might see fit to treat her in a similar fashion.

The man she took to be in charge nodded and made a brief hand signal to the soldiers behind him, tough neither seemed to move as a result. “Follow me,” he said, and turning on his heel walked back to the building at brisk pace.

 

Once inside they were immediately joined by two more soldiers – another pair of grim faced Cadians armed with lasrifles – though the further they went into the base the less necessary having a guard seemed.

Like the approach towards the train hub, the interior of the hub itself had been heavily altered by the garrisoned troopers. Walls were reinforced, doors were filled in, and braces were in place to harden the structure in case of bombardment. The cleverest defensive measure was also the most subtle, however, and only when they passed through several rooms did Godwyn notice how every section of the building had only one accessible entrance and exit, forcing any potential attacker to storm one room at a time with almost no room to manoeuvre. Who they expected to be defending against was never made clear, but the soldiers inside did not lack in preparedness or discipline, and everywhere there were Cadians manning posts, furnishing weapons, or otherwise shoring up the defences of their already fortified position.

“You and you will wait here,” the grey haired Cadian pointed to Nerf and Mercy as they reached a broad staircase somewhere after the ninth room likely near the centre of the building. “Mrs. Godwyn, you will follow me.”

 

*

 

Hate was a powerful word.

Nerf didn’t hate Cadians – there was nothing they’d done for him to hate – he just didn’t have any reasons to like them. They, like every other warrior culture, had arrogance about them, and worshipped their long tradition of bloodshed.

Catachans were likely just as arrogant, he figured, but it was different. Catachans had to fight for survival every day against the death world they called home, and it just so happened that kind of attitude worked out pretty darn well when it came to raising a Guard regiment. Catachans were famed throughout the Imperium for their survival skills, their grit, and their physical fortitude – a fame that was well earned when it came to fighting on the most dangerous worlds imaginable.

What were Cadians famed for?

Nerf had heard that their home world was front and centre in the line for repelling chaos battlefleets, and that Cadians were darned famous for fighting to the last man and producing disciplined soldiers, but so what?

Sitting on a dilapidated old couch facing the bottom of the stairs Nerf must have been glaring something fierce, as Mercy came over quietly and sat cross-legged beside him; placing a long fingered hand delicately on his arm. He smiled at her, and her beautiful face returned the gesture:

She wasn’t worried.

The two armed guards in the room with them didn’t seem to pay them any attention, and continued to stand with weapons in hand several feet away.

Sinking deeper into the couch, Nerf felt himself relax as the smile stayed on his face. Laughing softly through his nose, the Catachan let out a sigh; she was right, and knowing that made all the thoughts of Cadians evaporate from off his brow. Closing her violet eyes Mercy slowly turned her face away, until he could only see her profile, and let out a deep breath. Somehow, looking on her from that angle reminded Nerf of when he’d first seen her. The smile sank from his features.

That was not a good memory, and not one he revisited with any liking.

He’d found her in a service vent on a frigate with eight needles in her flesh – each one fired at close range from some kind of exotic weapon. She’d been dragged there for sure, and first Nerf thought she was dead, but on his boss’ instruction he had pulled her out of the vent and carried her limp body to the ship’s medical bay: something he’d regret for a long time after.

Mercy was different – he could tell that just by looking at her. She was tall – well over seven feet – strong, and beautiful like nothing he’d ever seen. Her curves were maddening in just the right way, and the grace of her movements only intensified the appeal of her long, sinuous body. Yet despite that there was something strange about her; something that he couldn’t put a name to that made him keep his distance.

She was naked when they tortured her. Maybe that was what had put her off limits in his eyes.

They had tortured her for a long time…

After weeks in the chair, hooked up to all sorts of machines, they’d broken her. And though Nerf had no way of knowing what she spilled, they must have opened her entirely, for they questioned her ceaselessly. The next time Nerf saw her, her eyes had faded, her skin had turned grey, and she sat ruined in that damned steel framed chair. Nerf could never forgive them for that.

Why?

It was a question he often asked himself. He’d seen lots of dead people in his life, and had witnessed lots of tragedies, and for all the sh*t he’d seen, the one person he felt sorry for was a freak of an assassin? Maybe it was because when he saw her in that chair he really saw himself.

She was a hunter, like he was.

She was a killer, like he was.

She had been used, like he had.

She was alone… like he was.

They would have likely kept her forever, but then his boss got killed and they decided that they didn’t need her anymore. She would be liquidated.

It was at that point when Nerf made a choice, and from then on he shared her fate.

Sitting beside him on the couch, Mercy opened her eyes and gave him a curious look:

A piece for your thoughts?

Nerf just chuckled and shook his head. It was behind him now: let it stay there.

 

*

 

Princeton made her wait for his audience, but a quarter century of experience in the Emperor’s Holy Inquisition made it so that even as she stood under guard outside his door Godwyn felt as if she had already met the man, and all that remained was a formal introduction. Much could be told about men by how they influenced their surroundings, and if he were indeed the commanding officer of the Cadians Godwyn had seen, then it was likely that he had influenced his surrounds quite a bit.

The first indication was his guards. Men always reflect the one who leads them, or in some cases the lack thereof, and wherever good men were found there was doubtlessly a good leader behind them. From what Godwyn had seen, Princeton’s men were disciplined, drilled, and precise. They held a sense of purpose and duty while most of the city had abandoned it, though more importantly they maintained a common bond with one another through their leader. Uniforms were identical, yet not over embellish or spotlessly clean – meaning that Princeton himself had both discipline and passion, yet was not one to suffer hubris. Weapons were clean and in good order, but differed from trooper to trooper – meaning that the commander respected the individual preferences of his subordinates, and valued creative efficiency over blind doctrine.

After the guards Godwyn looked to the base itself, for if it was true that Princeton had occupied this building for close to three years then he must have had a reason behind his staying here, and how he maintained his principal command would likely reflect his personal values and priorities. The first thing she noticed is that it was well organized and clean. Weapons were stowed and posts were manned. Every room had a function and a purpose. Nothing was found to be out of place or carelessly cast aside. At the same time, however, the building was in obvious disrepair – likely leftover from the previous occupants – and had not been refurbished other than the defensive measures she had noted earlier on the way in. Princeton was therefore likely a man of simple means – very well organized, but Spartan in nature and lacking finesse – though in his defence he had little in the way of material resources, and if the war was as stagnant as she had been told he would likely be forced to make do with much less than was desired. Either way he could prioritize, set objectives, and complete them: exactly what Godwyn would expect from a good officer.

The largest question, however – and likely his greatest detractor in the Inquisitor’s eyes – was what a Cadian officer, along with Cadian troops who were obviously dedicated and loyal, was doing outside of Imperial space as a soldier for hire? Quality mercenaries were notoriously choosy of their work, but if that was the case, then why would a unit of Cadians be camping in the middle of a do-nothing war? It couldn’t be for the money, it couldn’t be fore the glory, and it certainly couldn’t be for the Imperium that they were no longer in. So why were they here?

She was turning the question over in her mind when the door to Princeton’s office opened, and a woman who looked to be in her early thirties stepped out.

“Mrs. Godwyn?” she asked, looking directly at the Inquisitor. Like the others, she was dressed in drab fatigues with silver armour, and had a beret carefully poised over tightly pulled blond hair. Her face, though fair, had the same grimness to it as she had seen on the men.

“Yes,” Godwyn answered with an unassuming smile. The Cadian motioned for her to come forward:

“Major Princeton will see you now.”

 

The man called Princeton was sitting behind his desk when she came in. He did not get up, and did not speak until Godwyn had been introduced:

“Cassandra Godwyn to see you, sir,” the woman Godwyn had entered with announced once the door was closed and the Inquisitor stood in the centre of the high-ceilinged room. His attention lingered on her for a few moments more before turning to his subordinate;

“Thank you, lieutenant. You may retire.”

The lieutenant saluted, then turned sharply and marched from the room. Major Princeton remained seated.

A man likely around Godwyn’s age, Princeton shared many of the same features she had seen in his subordinates. His face was hard, his eyes determined, and his brow deepened with the severity of his command. Like his troops, the major wore undecorated fatigues, though he forwent wearing armour or a beret, and a close-shaven military haircut succeeded in hiding the worst of his receding hair line. Behind his desk was a large, circular window which Godwyn could see overlooked the defunct train yards, while to his left and right hung two banners: one the easily distinguishable mark of a Cadian regiment, though noticeably lacking numerical designation, while the other was a company banner Godwyn did not recognize. Aside from the banners, however, the office was largely undecorated, and sparsely furnished.

“You wanted to see me,” Princeton stated in a hard, clear voice. “You can start by telling me who you are and why you came here.”

“My name is Cassandra Godwyn. I’m a trader,” she told him, keeping her voice casually measured so that she didn’t come across as challenging him. “I came to find you when I head you were the man who could help me go south.”

Princeton’s gaze never shifted. “And who told you this?”

“A mercenary,” she said. “I think his name was Jack.”

The major stood up from behind his desk and came around to stand beside it. He didn’t appear rushed or aggressive, but assertive – a reminder to this newcomer who’s office she was standing in. He wasn’t a tall man but was well built, and his soldier’s posture made his presence in the room seem larger.

“So you’re a trader,” he said plainly, though his voice maintained what sounded like its natural hard tone. “With what outfit?”

Removing her metal hand from behind her back where she had been holding it, Godwyn dipped her fingers into her coat and extracted Slate’s necklace with the four-fingered emblem from her pocket. Tossing it to the Major, he caught it in one hand before holding it up to his eyes and studying it between his fingers.

“I keep my business open,” she said in way of an explanation as the Cadian’s hard features left no inclination of what went on inside his head, “and mostly I go wherever the work takes me.”

Without comment, Princeton tossed the necklace back to her and walked around back behind his desk.

“Why are you wishing to go south when you know there is a war going on?”

Godwyn had anticipated the question ‘why?’ would crop up sooner or later and had decided that she would answer by keeping her eyes on the prize. A trader, after all, would only want one thing.

“Opportunity, Major,” she answered confidently. “There are sure to be items in the south that would fetch high prices on the open market. High enough to pay the fees of a small army, I am sure.”

His already hard face amplified the condescension that comment netted her, but Godwyn pretended not to notice.

“You came here to buy me?”

“No,” she shook her head with a smile, “I came here to do business.”

Princeton grunted in disgust and turned his back on her, walking instead to the window and starting out over the train yard. Godwyn stayed where she was, waiting.

“My men are Cadians,” Princeton announced; “They cannot be bought or enlisted, so you can take your business elsewhere.”

“Are you sure we can’t come to an agreement?” Godwyn said delicately.

He turned and seemed to study her from across the room.

“How big is your crew?” he asked after several moments.

“Five including myself,” Godwyn replied, “all experienced and highly specialized operators in their fields.”

Princeton considered this. “What you heard is correct,” he then said, “and my men and I are going south, though no-one rides for free, and I don’t travel with anyone who can’t handle themselves. If you want to come with us, then you’ve got to earn you place. You can’t join my unit, but in a time of war I’m not about to turn away auxiliaries who prove able.”

“And what role does an auxiliary have under your command?” Godwyn asked, careful not to sound too eager and just sceptical enough so that he’d have to persuade her.

“Everyone contributes,” the Cadian Major replied, “and everyone able fights. You live with us, but you aren’t one of us.”

“Fee?”

“The spoils of war. Whatever you kill, you can claim. My men will only ever take their due.”

Interested, Godwyn nodded her head in approval. “Okay,” she said agreeably, “what can I do to prove myself?”

“Normally an auxiliary will use whatever skills they have at their disposal to compliment my men,” he said, “though in your case I have something else in mind.”

Godwyn raised an eyebrow, but Major Princeton had said all he intended to.

“Lieutenant Hope!” he called towards the door, and in an instant the same woman who had brought her in reappeared through the door and snapped to attention. “We have someone here who wants to join us. Brief her on what we discussed.”

[Taranis]

Excellent story which keeps getting better. I am really looking forward to the rest of the story. You really catch the detail and atmosphere nicely. :devil:

 

Happy new year and thank-you. :(

[Lady_Canoness]

It's always a pleasure, Taranis.

 

It will soon be a full year since I started work on the Inquisition, the one-off story that quickly rose into the three stories I've got going now, and keeping that in mind I would like to thank everyone who has posted on any of my works. The greatest reward any author can have is when someone takes the time to say "I like what you did there, and reading this is enjoyable for me."

 

In all honesty, its the positive feedback that encourages me to try new things and new angles in my work, and keeps me sitting down for many hours over almost a year now to keep writing. Not to mention how this improves the prospects of Inquisition IV :D

[Papewaio]

Inquisition IV? Oooh... :D

[Lady_Canoness]

Inquisition IV? Oooh... ;)

 

Indeed.

A list of likely characters, timeline, plot, and style are already in the works.

Though once again work won't start on it until Inquisition III is done, and that is..... about 5 or 6 parts away :tu:

[Aqui]

It's taken far too long to get around to reading this, but as ever, it was worth it <_<

[Lady_Canoness]

*Part 15*

 

Off through the new day’s mist she ran. The tall green grass brushed against her legs and the soft cool ground was moist between her toes. Before her were trees – the chill wind rustling leaves as spring, untested legs carried her forward in great leaping strides that pushed the cold sting of air against her neck and face until her eyes wept.

Her heart raced and her lungs burned. All alone her ears were filled with the sound of her own breathing. She was compelled to keep going.

Reaching the stream, she stopped and fell to her knees on its bank as the water went silently by. In the clear grey water she saw her reflection; her mousey, unkempt hair tattered by the cold wind and streaked with sweat while her skin prickled under the black spider tattoo caressing the side of her face. A shiver ran instinctively down her spine, and she quickly looked back over her shoulder to see if she had been followed.

Of course, there was nothing; only the trees that moved and shook in the predawn gloom.

She looked back at her reflection. It smiled at her, then reached up and stroked her brow in an ice-like current in the shape of a hand.

“Don’t be afraid…” the voice bubbled up from the depths, but Spider turned tail and ran, fleeing through the trees from a nameless horror. She ran until she saw flames, and the voice pursued her until the inferno raged around her and the only path that appeared before her was the one she ran. The one she knew the end to.

“You cannot hide from me…” the voice told her from the fire, though whether she ran to or from it she never could tell. She just needed to keep running until she saw its face – saw it consume her.

 

*

 

“I had the same dream again…”

Sitting beside the window with the small leather-bound book in his hands, Aquinas did not look up.

“Recall what I have told you,” he said, turning the page.

Sweat beading on her face, Spider swallowed the lump in her throat and looked down at her feet. Her toes were cold and red against the floor, but she hadn’t been running, and she hadn’t been chased.

“It doesn’t mean anything, and when my mind is stronger I will be able to control myself better,” she repeated, paraphrasing what the librarian had told her countless times before.

“Indeed,” he nodded, briefly glancing in her direction. “Get some rest. You will need it.”

Her head hung low, Spider did what she was told and, still shivering, went back to her cot in the apartment where her eyes stayed open for some time in the blackness. She didn’t want to sleep again, but more frightening than any dream was the feeling in her stomach that told her she was being lied to.

 

* * *

 

Princeton had covered every angle of his planned incursion south into rebel territory, but at the eleventh hour part of his plan had fallen through, and now threatened to delay his departure indefinitely.

“These are the schematics for the T-41b High-Capacity-Carrier,” Lieutenant Hope explained, unfurling a large sheet of parchment across the wide surface of an oak table that had seen better decades; “It has all necessary features required to support a light infantry unit for long ranging tours in the field, and would be an ideal base of operations as we go south.”

Nodding slowly in time with the Lieutenant’s words, Godwyn glanced at the diagrams with only marginal interest. They were standing in an upper floor room that had been converted into an operations command and control centre, and had been for the past half-hour, as the Lieutenant methodically explained every intricate detail she deemed relevant about the T-41.

“Here and here,” she pointed to a section on the schematics for Godwyn to look at, “are dedicated passenger quarters, while here and here,” she pointed to two other spots that looked more or less identical on the ink-treated parchment, “are fully compartmentalized storage areas with full drainage and lighting, making them ideal for field adaptations.”

It soon became clear that her studies of the T-41 bordered on obsession.

“I’m no mechanic,” Godwyn said once Hope was done talking, “what does any of this have to do with me?”

The Lieutenant gave her a hard look – granted, every look from a Cadian ended up being hard. “You need to know this,” she said, leaning forward over the table so that their faces were only a few inches apart, “because it is imperative that you know what you’re after.”

Every bit the trader, Godwyn cocked an eyebrow “You mean I have to find this?” she asked, stabbing a finger onto the parchment.

“No,” the other woman replied, “we’ve already found one in serviceable condition and were in the process of acquiring it from this man – ,” she placed a dataslate on top the schematics and slid it over to Godwyn, “ – one Uscar Salbot, when the deal for the T-41 as well as several light outriders fell through. We are in the process of reacquiring the T-41, but the Major is prepared to enlist you as an auxiliary should you manage to do this for us.”

“Why did the deal fall through?” Godwyn had to ask, though she made sure to do so casually.

“The man wants more than we are able to offer,” the Cadian informed her. “We’re hoping that you’ll be able to get him to come back around.”

“And if I can’t?”

Hope’s disposition only got harder: “Then you’ll find yourself back in the city with the rest of the lowlifes who can’t step up and get the job done.”

The Inquisitor proffered a light-hearted smile, but the more they talked the clearer it became that Lieutenant Hope would not tolerate the idea of failure - something Godwyn was quick to note as she made sure to carefully court that exact notion. It was a not a ploy without risk, but minimizing the perceived odds of succeeding would make any success of Godwyn’s that much greater – something that could come to her advantage when dealing with Princeton.

The Inquisitor could not afford to get ahead of herself, however, as recovering the T-41 Carrier would no doubt require both subtlety and a deft-touch – otherwise the hard-head Cadians would not need her assistance. They had already tried the direct route, which failed, and were now investigating other alternatives – one of which was Godwyn. They had made it clear that the direct application of armed force in seizing the Carrier would be out of the question, leaving the only alternative, as it appeared to the Inquisitor, being to affect some kind of change with Salbot himself and make him more willing to part with it – which meant getting much closer to him than the other side of a bargaining table. Requiring of subtlety indeed, and something Godwyn would not want to rush, which turned out to be another problem: the Cadians wanted the T-41b in their possession with a week.

“What are you thinking?” Nerf asked once she had returned to her companions downstairs where they were to spend the night in a small room made available to them.

“I don’t know yet,” the Inquisitor replied, leaning back across one of the folding mattresses they’d been given and resting her head against the peeling paper wall as she twirled the dataslate containing the Cadians’ intel between her hands. “But,” she glanced over to where Mercy looked to be sound asleep on another bunk, “I think I’ll need her help…”

 

It was mid-morning the next day when Godwyn returned with Nerf and Mercy to the apartment in Drumwell, by which time the Inquisitor had worked out a plan of action she was willing to put up to the task of recovering the T-41. It was a simple plan, and relied on exploiting hierarchy of Salbot’s failing business to get what she wanted.

“How do you know that will work?” Nerf asked as Godwyn sat with he and the Librarian to go over the details of her plan.

By the window with a steaming cup of weak tea in his hand, Aquinas answered the question himself. “The city is failing,” he said, putting the cup to his lips and taking a careful sip, “any business remaining here that cannot move its inventory is sure to be failing as well.”

Godwyn nodded that she had sensed the same thing, though that in and of itself was not enough to accomplish her goal, as it was well known that the man standing at the top of the pyramid was the last to feel it hit the ground. Salbot’s business was a family business, however, and – according to the Cadians’ information – had a long history over several generations, meaning that there would be more stakeholders to the success of his company than Salbot himself; the most notable being his nephew and heir, a man by the name of Ernest Salbot. The heir would be the one she would approach and do dealings with, for, if he could be persuaded that his uncle’s actions were detrimental to what would be his inherited fortune, she could then remove Uscar Salbot from the picture and let the heir do what he thought best.

“Bold,” Nerf said with a thoughtful nod; “I like it.”

“There is more to it than that,” Godwyn explained, catching the eyes of Aquinas and then Mercy as she entered the room and perched herself on the back of stained sofa. “Our actions in this have to be above suspicion. The junior Salbot cannot be allowed to doubt that our intentions are anything other than completely honourable.”

“A wise approach,” the space marine nodded his approval, “though your assets will have to be deployed with no margin for error.”

“I know,” Godwyn agreed; “and that is why we are all here.”

 

* * *

 

It had been raining for the better part of two days with no sign of letting up. Puddles were starting to form lakes in the middle of the road and water fell in sheets from rooftops and over-flowing gutters into waterlogged alleyways. It was so wet that the air itself seemed to carry a dampness to it that clung to the skin, and all sense of warmth was carried away into the water that sloshed around underfoot. In some places this kind of rain might have been beautiful to behold, maybe, or from a certain point of view, but in the heart of Drumwell where the grey buildings stood tall and cramped together like a dead forest of rockcrete the rain only made things more dismal as if all of the city’s warmth and hope had sunken through the cracks in the ground.

Soaked through to the bone, Nerf hated.

Wrapped in a soaking coat with his hair plastered to his head, the Catachan had been in the rain for one day already as forward reconnaissance for the Inquisitor and the others. It was his job to get a feel for the lay of the land, get a count of how many patrols were about, sample the foot traffic in the area, and scout out reliable ways in and out of Salbot’s building. It wasn’t hard. The rain had driven just about everyone out of the streets, and even the patrols were huddled around their checkpoints and seldom ventured out into the street. Salbot’s building also wasn’t that hard a find, and thanks to business sinking faster than a drowning ork there were practically no people on hand to stop him as he poked around. Numerous doors were unwatched, and the rooftops looked just as open.

Huddling under a ledge to keep the rain off his shoulders, the big man blew on his hands and stamped his soaking feet as water dripped off his nose. Mercy should be showing up soon, and when she did this entire thing could get started.

 

*

 

The water made for a slippery grip but wasn’t enough to slow her down as Mercy vaulted the chain-link fence and dropped into a covered alleyway behind the Salbot building. Her feet landed in about an inch of water, making a loud splash that echoed off the close walls. The sound of her wading forward was likely enough to wake the dead. Not that anyone was listening. She’d made sure of that.

She’d been told to get inside the target’s building. No problem. The people who lived in this wreck of a city were too busy scurrying about trying to improve their miserable lots in life to notice things that she’d notice. They were easy prey. Too distracted to notice the hunter in their midst.

Not carrying her weapons was a strange feeling though – one that left her feeling dangerously exposed, naked even. She shivered excitedly at the thought of it and couldn’t resist the smile that crept onto her face as she moved forward: that would make it more thrilling. Her mistress had demanded that she lie in wait for her target throughout the day and strike at nightfall. It had to look like an accident. No lacerations, no physical evidence of the deed, and no extra bodies. One kill – that was all she was permitted. Mercy liked it when her mistress held her back like that. She was still deciding how to do it though – which way her victim might be killed that would please her. It was a difficult decision, but one she looked forward to making.

Coming to the end of the alley, she spied Nerf across the street. He didn’t see her, but she saw him. It warmed her heart.

Backtracking, she found a boarded up window not far from the alley’s exit and opened it with a swift blow. She was through in no time at all.

 

*

 

The rain only seemed to get worse as they drove through the depths of the stormy city, and the constant thud of rainwater on the car’s canopy and windshield was a grim reminder of what it was like outside of the silver automobile’s heated interior. The car had been Spider’s choice – something she’d found abandoned in the basement storage of their apartment building and hotwired to life – and she sat silently in the passenger’s seat with her foot on the dash. Beside her, Inquisitor Godwyn was in the driver’s seat, while Aquinas took the entirety of back seat for himself where he was still a little cramped. Getting the car had been his idea for how Spider could be involved, seeing as she had no formal training that would help them with Salbot, and though Godwyn had at first been sceptical of the girl’s involvement she was now glad not to be on foot as the rain got worse.

“More checkpoints,” Godwyn noted, slowing the car as she looked down a side street to where more guards were standing about trying to stay warm; “Looks like we walk from here.”

Spider looked between the Inquisitor and the space marine attentively. She, after all, would be staying in the car where it was nice and warm, and would not be setting foot outside.

From the back seat, Aquinas peered out the window to his left at the checkpoint halfway down the street. Frowning slightly, he agreed.

Posing as Godwyn’s bodyguard, the space marine librarian would accompany her when she met with the younger Ernest Salbot and render assistance as was required in the event of their subject being resistant to persuasion. It wouldn’t be difficult and it was highly unlikely that anyone would recognize an astartes without his trademark armour, yet Aquinas advised caution as it would be all too easy to make a terminal mistake that would prevent them from completing their objective.

“Stay mobile,” Godwyn told the girl as she stepped out of the car with Aquinas and Spider took her place in the driver’s seat; “we’ll call you when we need you.”

“Roger that,” the tattooed teenager chorused back, closing the door after the Inquisitor and slowly rolling off with a wave of her hand.

Not waiting for the car to disappear down the road and with the rain wetting her brow, Godwyn dashed off the street to the sidewalk with Aquinas following closely after her splashing footsteps. They were in the administrative heart of the city, the only part supposedly left unaffected by the madness of war, though it was here that the mailed fist that enclosed Drumwell was strongest. The city rulers would keep urban life as regular and uninterrupted as possible, even if it took the barrel of a gun to do it. All the coercive might they could muster was not enough to stem the downpour of rain, however, and the streets were deserted here just like everywhere, leaving the grim-faced guards manning check points as the only people to greet the trader and her bodyguard as they came towards them. Drenched by the rain, the checkpoint guards were less interested in stopping strangers than they were staying dry, and after a few ill-tempered questions and a superficial glance at their priority cards Godwyn and the space marine were waved on their way.

Salbot’s offices weren’t far from where they’d left Spider, and, walking up the sidewalk towards the rust-coloured six-story building that leaned over the end of the street, they spotted Nerf sheltering in an overhung alleyway. Seeing them, the Catachan looked both ways down the deserted street before quickly marching towards them through the ankle-deep puddles and pelting rain.

“That’s the place alright,” Nerf swung his head towards the rust-coloured building, almost shouting to make himself heard. “Upper floors look like living space with whatever offices they got below it. Not a lot of action though. Whole city looks dead. You can walk in the front door and not meet anyone for a while.”

Looking ahead, Godwyn nodded to show that she understood. “You’ve done well, Nerf,” she told him. “Go back to the apartment and clean yourself up. We’ll meet you there once we’re finished.”

He left without a word. Aquinas watched him go.

“Our man is inside?” Godwyn asked the librarian.

The rain dripping down his face, the bald giant gazed up at the building ahead of them. Like everything else in the city, it might once have been considered beautiful in decades past, though under the storm-filled sky it looked dilapidated, defeated, and ancient.

“It is not empty,” he said, “though we shall have see for ourselves who we will find therein.”

As Nerf had reported, the doors into the rust-coloured building at the end of the street were unbarred, and as they stood dripping in the entrance not a soul came to challenge them. It was dark and quiet with the only noise being that of the downpour outside and the water dripping from their coats.

The Inquisitor took the first few steps inside – painfully aware of how loud her footfalls sounded in the empty corridor.

“Hello?” she called out.

Nothing.

Aquinas slowly rolled his head until his eyes were turned up to the ceiling: whatever he saw he did not share.

“Upstairs,” he said with a quiet certainty, and led the way up the scuffed steps of the grand staircase that stood deserted at the end of the hall.

Keeping to her adopted role Godwyn made sure to dawdle behind her handler, taking every opportunity probe her surroundings.

“Quite the place before they let it go,” she said with false interest, knowing that the librarian wouldn’t bother replying to her impromptu assessments as she stuck her metal fingers into a sizeable hole in the wall plaster and pulled a chunk loose, crushing it in her hand. Moisture had gotten the better of the place, and the plaster walls and ceilings were blistered and stained as a result. The air was damp and cold in the building’s airy halls, and mould clung to windows like the rust that chewed at their frames.

It was not until they reached the third floor that they were challenged, and even then it was by a reed-thin man with a gaunt face and sunken eyes who wore the robes of a senior cleric.

“Who are you?” he asked in a shallow voice too soft to echo in the empty landing where he found them at the top of a third flight of stairs.

Dashing the last few steps to the top, Godwyn intercepted the cleric with a courteous bow – a slight gesture which he returned after a befuddled pause. “My name is Godwyn,” she told him, “I’m here to see Ernest Salbot.”

“Oh,” the man replied, keeping his mouth open to breathe, “I see. Will you wait here a moment, please?”

He didn’t ask if they had an appointment, nor did he ask if they were expected. He didn’t even ask if they were armed. The mouth-breathing cleric turned his back and shuffled away, not bothering to look if the strangers were waiting or not. Presumably he was going to find the younger Salbot, though at his pace Godwyn wouldn’t be surprised if she were able to find him faster on her own even if it meant searching every room.

“The other people in this building,” she said to Aquinas, whispering over her shoulder to be certain that they would not be overheard as they waited at the top of the stairs, “can you find them?”

The space marine gave her a knowing look. “I already have,” he said.

 

*

 

“Hey!” The silver car rolled up beside him and the driver’s side window was lowered. “You want a ride?”

Soaked to the extent that walking ankle deep in puddles was a welcome relief from the soggy socks that chafed around his toes, Nerf looked at the young woman’s face with a blank expression. He couldn’t get any wetter.

“Sure,” he said, and spider tattoo shifted as the girl’s face opened in a toothy smile. She opened the door for him, and Nerf didn’t hesitate to throw himself into the back seat. Inside the car it was warm and dry – it even smelled okay – and as soon as the door clunked shut behind him he struggled to pull off his drenched coat as he sunk into the cushioned back seat.

The car started up again and rolled away from the curb. Spider’s eyes were watching him in the sloppily hung dashboard mirror. “You okay?” she asked.

Nerf finished untangling the coat from around his arm and tossed it into a wet heap on the floor, after which he quickly ducked down and started to pull at his boots with fingers numbed from the cold.

In the driver’s seat, Spider took her eyes off the road – it was deserted anyway – and swivelled around to look back at her passenger. Her gaze darting up and down his powerful form, she chewed on her lip just as his first boot popped off and a long elastic sock soon followed with a wet *fwap*.

“Do you… umm… need any help?” she asked, curious, but also a little hopeful.

“No,” Nerf looked up, causing her look to turn guiltily back to the road.

The second boot followed the first with a grunt of satisfaction. Shifting in her seat, Spider couldn’t keep her eyes off the man in the mirror, and she had to bite her lower lip between her teeth to keep the smile off her face. If she was lucky the shirt would come off next. Focusing on the road was becoming more and more difficult.

Both his feet finally freed from their watery prisons, the Catachan let out a long sigh of relief and shifted his weight sideways until he was sitting lengthwise along the comfortable back seat. Closing his eyes, he ran his hands through his short-cropped hair until it formed neat little spikes that stood straight up on his scalp.

Unable to help herself, Spider turned back around in her seat. In her mind’s eye she could see herself comically ordering Nerf to take his shirt off, but instead she fumbled something that sounded like: “So… where do you want to go… big guy?”

The last couple of words sounded so out of place in her own ears that the snort of humour from the Catachan didn’t surprise her, though her own burst of awkwardly loud laughter certainly did – and sp did the silence that followed it.

“Just take us back to the apartment,” he said.

Mortified – and feeling like her ears had been replaced by bright red signal flares – Spider spun forward and focused one-hundred-and-ten percent on the still deserted road. “Yeah. Right. Okay,” she said a little too quickly, and started to swear at herself inside her own head as soon as she heard Nerf yawn behind her. Why did it feel so hot all of a sudden? She glanced at the heater dials. It was cranked all the way – would he notice if she turned it down?

The car gently curved around a turn in the road as they made their way back to the apartment building.

Leaned so far forward over the wheel that she could probably touch it with her tongue, Spider sincerely hoped that she could remember the way back. Normally she was really good at that type of thing, but right now all of her mental faculties seemed to be dancing around at the back of her head trying to dream up something even remotely engaging to say to the man behind her. Emperor above, she was even thinking about how she could try and make something good out of the weather! Maybe she should just be honest with him – honest with herself – just say what she wanted. She rolled her eyes at her own stupidity: and why didn’t she just jump him in the back while she was thinking like that?

“Hey kid.”

“Yeah?” she asked, almost breathless as she spun around.

Arms folded across his chest, Nerf was looking right at her. She was certain that he could hear her heart booming somewhere around her throat.

“Don’t worry it,” he said with a relaxing smile, “everything’ll work itself out.”

Confused, she grinned back at him and tried to laugh. “Yeah!” she said, and then turned forward again before she could make herself look any more like an idiot. What was he talking about anyway? What was she worrying about? About him? Did he know? Could he tell?!

“Hey Nerf?”

“Uh-huh?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat; maybe she was starting to calm down. She still had no idea what she was saying.

“Thanks.”

“Uh-huh.”

[Taranis]

Another great addition. Excellent description of a dying city in a warzone. It will be fun seeing how Spiders interest in Nerf might blossom.

I must admit to looking forward to the soldiers and "auxiliaries" taking to the field.

 

I have read your "A Knights Tale" and proceeded to reading Silent Requiem's "The Way Of The Waterwarrior". Very interesting reading. I have read 4 pages of the 14 and am starting to think about doing it with BA.

 

I really look forward to the IV story. My only worry now is who will be lost. Spider is the obvious choice, but also Nerf could be at risk. To be honest I would rather se Aquinas permanently out than Nerf. I know Aquinas isn't as much a member than an employer. I miss a technological expert and a "legal" psyker. They are not as much missed in this story as much of it has been in low tech environments and the guest stars are more or less competent psykers. :lol:

 

Thanks for writing. :angry:

[Lady_Canoness]

My pleasure Taranis!

 

I also quite like hearing your thoughts about who will be lost. You are correct in that this story won't be bloodless (and is about to get waaaay more bloody ;)) Hopefully who dies and how will not be something that can easily be guessed.

 

Water warrior thinking makes the game a whole lot better in my opinion.

[Lady_Canoness]

*part 16*

 

With the space marine’s help finding their man was easy.

The heir to the failing Salbot corporate dynasty, Uscar Salbot’s nephew Ernest spent most of his days parked in an armchair before a roaring fireplace in an office still reeking of the booze he’d in which drowned himself the night before. Stacks of parchment were strewn everywhere, dataslates were piled haphazardly on the floor, shelves once stuffed with books were bare – their contents lying wherever their owner dropped them – and the accolades of once promising career had been stripped from the walls and were now jumbled between the empty liquor bottles on the floor. He’d turned the lights off – maybe he thought it was more dramatic that way – and kept the curtains drawn to stop the heat escaping from the fire. Keeping the office warm meant he could forgo wearing shoes or socks, and the darkness probably meant that his scruffiness was less noticeable. As first impressions went, however, it was a weak one.

“Who’re you?!” he said in a bleary-eyed response to whoever opened the door to his office with a tortured squeak.

Godwyn stepped inside, making as little noise as possible, and was followed by Aquinas ducking in after her. As they had discussed, the space marine stayed to the periphery of the room.

“Ernest Salbot, I presume?” the Inquisitor asked, tentatively approaching the man in the armchair like a trader looking to make a humble first impression. The female voice startled him, as did the attractive features of the interloper who intruded upon his misery.

“What? Who are you!?” he said, pulling back in his chair trying to hide the fact that he was still drunk and had likely been wearing the same smelly clothes for the past three-or-four days.

“My name is Godwyn, Cassandra Godwyn,” she told him with a soft, coaxing smile. She didn’t move any closer to the man and stayed at a generous distance. It was best not to intrude any further, or get in range of his body-odour.

He blinked at her furiously, wiping his hands over the puffy lines in his face as his bare feet leapt to stay away from the floor they had been so comfortably acquainted with just moments before.

“What – what – what do you want?!” he asked, sounding irritable, impatient, and very much like the injured party.

The Inquisitor gave him as much space as she could. At the back of the room, looking every bit the bodyguard, Aquinas didn’t so much as blink in Salbot’s direction – his expressionless face remaining forward at all times.

“I was hoping we could talk,” Godwyn continued softly, carefully making sure that she wasn’t standing on anything, “though if it suits you better I could come back at some other time…”

“No, no – no please!” the Inquisitor’s tone had worked the way she hoped it would when Ernest Salbot sprung out of his chair like a wobbly jack-in-the-box and tried to look at least somewhat like a welcoming host. “No please,” he said again, brushing the hair from his face and teetering over his strewn belongings towards his guest with the accidental dexterity only a drunk could manage, “please stay. How can I be of service to you, miss…?”

“Godwyn,” Godwyn repeated herself kindly, not looking the least put off.

“Right!” he said; “Godwyn! Miss Godwyn, of course! How can I be of service to you… miss Godwyn?” He smiled and tried to laugh at his own folly. Wanting to calm him but not wanting to indulge him, Godwyn refrained from laughing, looked him in the eye, and let the few seconds of awkward silence hang in the air. Ernest managed to wipe the smile from his face. He was fidgeting with his fingers.

“May we talk business?” Godwyn posed, inclining her head towards Salbot’s messy desk sitting beyond the armchair in front of the fire. The man looked at it as if he’d forgotten its very existence.

“But yes, of course!” he said, jumping into action across his mess around beside his desk and opening the curtains there with a great wave of his arms. Picking her way through the piles of strewn papers and books, Godwyn followed him at a slower pace.

He was taller than she was and younger too, though admittedly the juvenant drugs that Godwyn took kept her physical body in its prime. He had long lanky arms and a high waist, which in turn made his chest seem small in comparison beneath the hawkish crook in his nose and the greasy black hair that hung in thick strings atop his long face. Not what Godwyn would consider attractive, but then again her frequent acquaintances with Mercy and Nerf had her spoiled for choice.

“Godwyn, are you injured?” from behind his desk he was point at her leg, his mouth slightly open in expectation of an answer. He’d spotted her limp – something so minor that she’d almost forgotten about it. He was sharp for a drunk, something she’d have to look out for.

“I’m fine,” she smiled, “just something you pick up in life, I’m sure. Thank you for asking.”

He obliged her with a courteous bow and bade her sit in the chair opposite his desk before he himself was seated. Still in his badly wrinkled undershirt, he linked his fingers overtop the cluttered work surface and tried to look as stately as possible.

“What would you like to discuss?” he asked. From four feet she could smell the alcohol on his breath. It reminded her of how parched she’d been for the past months. The man still smiling at her from across his desk, the Inquisitor felt a small twinge in the nape of her neck. The expression on her host’s face seemed to stutter. “Might I offer you a drink?” he asked suddenly, already halfway out of his seat.

Godwyn accepted. She had a feeling this was the space marine’s influence.

“I am of the opinion that a good drink is the best way to start any discussion,” Salbot announced, unscrewing a large bottle of amber liquid that was already two-thirds empty. He was pouring two glasses. Returning to his desk, he offered one to Godwyn. “Well now, what would you like to talk about.”

Godwyn put the glass to her lips and tasted stiff liquor unlike any she had tested to date. It was strong, very potent flavour, but not bad either. Crossing her legs, she rested her glass on her lap and graciously refused when her host offered her a lho-stick from a silver-plated case.

“My clients are in the market for purchasing some military hardware in your possession,” Godwyn began. Lighting up his own lho-stick, Ernest Salbot nodded along between puffs of grey smoke. Like every other businessman on a war torn planet, he had more than likely stockpiled his share of arms and armaments over the past three years. “In this case I am looking specifically at T-41b High-Capacity-Carrier as well as a couple outriders. I am told that you have both.”

“You’re working with Princeton and his lot, right?” Ernest mumbled past the stick in his lips, not missing a beat before taking another drag and flicking it over an ashtray at the side of his desk. “Nothing can be done. That deal was already turned down.”

“I’m here to ask you to reconsider.”

At this the younger Salbot laughed dryly. “It’s not up to me!” he said as if he were telling a bad joke. “My uncle is the one in charge of that, and he says no way.”

The Inquisitor made a show of looking around the messy office. “And it would appear you disagree.”

Leaning forward with his elbows on his desk and looking bitter, the man across from her snorted; “What gave that away?”

“You do not think highly of him?” A twinge in her neck told her that Aquinas was at work.

Salbot’s face sank. “Old man’s ruined me,” he mumbled, sticking the smouldering lho-stick back into his mouth and trying to drink at the same time – an attempt that saw him dribble down his chin. “He’s so pig-headed that he thinks he can wait out the war. Batten down the hatches, cut all the costs, and horde his assets until people come flocking back to Drumwell. City’s dead, don’t you see that!? I mean, look who we’ve got camped outside our walls. Think they’ll ever go away?”

Godwyn frowned, at least pretending to share her host’s disappointment. “Have you tried reasoning with him?”

“Think he’ll listen to me!?” Ernest half-shouted, tears were starting to form in his eyes. “He’s too old and stuck in his ways… If he’d listen we’d have left with the rest of the market… now even that is too late.”

“He won’t sell because the offer is below the T-41’s value?”

Ernest nodded glumly. “Yes…”

“Yet he fails to notice this is all the market will bear?”

Ernest nodded again. “Yes!”

“And what does he intend to do with it when Princeton’s offer is retracted? Is he going to live on it? Grow food on it? Try to make a profit selling it for parts?” Another jolt ran down her neck.

“I don’t know!” Ernest seized his head in both hands – spilling his drink all over his desk. “Princeton’s the only one with any money! He’s the only one who can buy it! We sell that thing and we leave this city ahead. We don’t sell it and we only lose more anyway! There aren’t any buyers left in this part of the world! We’re all f****d!”

Godwyn downed her drink and placed the glass on a clear corner of Ernest’s desk. “If your uncle is unreasonable, then I’ll make the deal with you,” Godwyn said firmly, trying to be heard through the man’s hapless sobs as his face dropped lower and lower towards the puddle of alcohol that was soaking into the papers on his desk. “You can cut your uncle out of it.”

Drunk and depressed, Ernest wasn’t in any state to resist. He blathered something nonsensical that the Inquisitor ignored.

“Mr. Salbot, if your uncle is jeopardizing the business through negligence, then you should consider it your responsibility to take over.” Behind her, Godwyn could feel the space marine’s close attention to the man opposite her behind the desk. If Ernest could be manipulated just a little further they would soon have what they came for.

“Alright, alright,” Salbot seemed to calm down somewhat, enough so that he could once again look the woman across from him in the eye. “How about we meet again in two days… I’ll…” he looked as if he was still trying to convince himself of what he was about to say, “I’ll talk to my uncle – make him see what he’s doing. We need to sell, and Princeton is the only buyer. He has to see that…”

“Very well,” Godwyn stood up and bowed courteously in Ernest’s direction though the younger man looked lost in his own thoughts and barely registered it; “I’ll see you in two days time. Best of luck.”

 

*

 

Mercy was watching from the shadows of a sixth-story window when Godwyn and the space marine walked out into the street and didn’t look back. She smiled. It was time to go to work.

 

*

 

Uscar Salbot fancied himself as a survivor.

Six generations of his family had done business under the Salbot name in Drumewll and had survived recessions, depressions, illness, and intrigue with both their business and pride intact.

He was born a survivor.

Personally, he had overcome the tragic deaths of his wife and sister more than thirty years ago, weathered a storm of competition that tried to stamp out his business through taxes, tariffs, and more under-handed means, and was in the process of waiting out what could be a long war.

He was raised a survivor.

It was in his history, it was in his blood, it was in his very being. But it wasn’t easy. No one would help him, and no one would catch him if he fell. Everyone tried to take a piece on the way to the top – their pound of flesh. He owed them nothing, and every day he remembered that.

This was their war. They; the people who were out to get him, to step over him on their own way to the top – this was their doing.

Sitting at his dinning table, alone in a hall of memories, Uscar Salbot raised a glass of red wine to his lips and drank deeply as his scowling eyes glared accusingly at the emptiness of their doing: they who had betrayed him.

This was often how he found himself now, alone, dining for one with his cook the only other person to enter into that hall that counted a dozen empty seats.

Surviving was a lonely affair.

Uscar was a big man, powerful, and always had been. Even stooped by age he stood over six feet tall, and was still as broad in the shoulder as any man half his age. He was a hard man and his joints moved slowly – slowest of all being the muscles in a frowning face that never smiled. His eyesight was going and so was his bladder, but Uscar didn’t know himself as frail.

After supper he would walk the perimeter of his sixth-floor penthouse. The battlements, he called them; the scene of his constant battle against the world.

He was losing.

The battlements were dark, cold, and quiet. Cutting back was how he defended himself. Staff were expendable – a way of slowing their advance. Heat and light were luxuries also, and luxuries could be ill afforded when the battle went ill.

He walked alone through the spectral darkness wrapped in his rich fur coat. Behind him he thought he heard a door close, but when he turned there was nothing. Probably his cook. Sound carried when you were alone.

Shadows clung to the walls, and in his fading eyesight his mind tried to rick him into seeing them move – almost as if someone were there. He dismissed it as fantasy.

In the main hall there was a grand window overlooking the city at the top of the stairs. It was a window he always kept open. Six generations of his family had looked out over Drumwell from that window, and on his tour of the battlements he did so as well – standing close enough so that his breath fogged the glass and he could feel the cold of the rain outside. Rain on an empty city. So many dark windows. Their war had already claimed many casualties.

Behind him there were footsteps.

“Uncle!”

The old Salbot turned from his window. His nephew stood at the bottom of the stairs, his young face looking up through the dim light towards the old man.

“Uncle, I must speak with you!”

He was a boy, his sister’s only child, but he lacked the stomach of a true Salbot. Uscar barely tolerated him.

Stepping slowly with his hands held behind the small of his rigid back, the old man walked to the top of the stairs as fast his joints would carry him. The boy was looking up at him earnestly, brushing the hair from his face with a flick of his fingers. One foot went down, and the other stepped up to follow it. From the corner of his eye, Uscar saw a shadow move. His foot caught mid-air. Instinctively he lurched forward, his eyes bulging in his skull as something thumped him forcefully on the back – propelling him over the staircase.

The last thing he saw was his nephew’s face contorting in alarm as he plunged down the stairs.

The last thing he heard was the young man calling his name as he fell.

The last thing he felt was his neck snapping at the bottom of thirty-four stairs.

Damn them and their war.

 

*

 

Godwyn was still awake when Mercy slipped back into their apartment in the middle of the night. She was cold and wet to the touch, but the Inquisitor didn’t have to ask if the job was done. The killer was excited – thrilled even – something that only occurred when she had completed a difficult task.

They held each other and kissed, the animal appetite that killed being just as insatiable for love.

 

*

 

The teenage Spider was awake and sat with her knees hugged up against the small swellings of her breasts long after Godwyn and her lover had drifted to sleep. She stared into darkness not seeing anything, not thinking, but wide-eyed and drenched in cold sweat from what she knew was a nameless fear. If she slept she’d dream, and if she dreamed she’d see it again. The forest in the pre-dawn mist, the fire; she’d hear the voice.

It wasn’t right to be afraid of what was in one’s head, she knew that, but at the same time it was impossible to break the fear in her mind.

During the day it was better. She could think of other things – she could think of Nerf – but in truth it was all a sad fantasy and would never work. How could she live during the day when the night was so frightening?

She’d always lived in the dark, but it hadn’t always been that way. Fear, it seemed, became a part of her. She grew used to it – made it normal – and lived inside it until something new came along. It had been like that in the hive, in her cell, and now with Orion. With his help she got better with it, could turn away from it, and felt like her mind was slowly becoming her own.

But then there were the dreams, and they were the kind she knew were real: she knew they would have to come to pass.

In the forest she was afraid, running from something she could not see until the fire came. The flames would swirl around her and she would hear the voice – that’s normally when she’d wake up, but this time it felt different. The voice would tell her things, things she didn’t understand or make sense of, about Orion and the others. The words themselves were hollow and more or less meaningless, but it wasn’t that which frightened her. It was how the voice spoke the words. It felt like the speaker was on the verge of her perception waiting just beyond the fire, and when it spoke it sounded salacious – as if eagerly waiting for something it knew would happen. It was this that frightened her the most: things she didn’t know about had a way of being bad.

A sudden movement caught her eye as someone entered into the darkness of her room. For a faint moment her heart stopped at the thought that the shadow might belong to the voice from the fire, though when it spoke it was with Orion’s soft hiss of a voice:

“It is nearly dawn. You should get some rest while you can.”

“I… I can’t,” the girl replied reluctantly. “I keep dreaming… I try to stop, but I can’t!”

The space marine didn’t seem to move from where he stood. “It is confronting fear that makes you stronger. You must be prepared to overcome your fears when the time comes.”

She shook her head in the dark. “What is it?” she asked into her knees. “What does it mean?”

“Meaning is found with time and practice. It is not something that I can give you.”

“Then what can you give me!?”

Aquinas was quiet for time, up to the point that Spider was no longer sure if he was actually still there and had to strain her eyes in the darkness to see him.

“When a time comes that there is an end between us, I will give you answers,” he said. “That is all I can promise.”

“Answers to what?” Spider asked, but Aquinas had already gone. Alone again the dark, she could hear Nerf’s voice inside her head: questions not worth asking, and answers not worth knowing.

She would not sleep before the sun rose.

[Aqui]

I'm surprised you haven't submitted something to the Black Library, as I know I'd like to see Inquisitor Godwyn in print ;)

[Lady_Canoness]

Actually, I have!

 

Though it seems like I'll have to keep on trying and trying and trying - getting through might take as much luck as skill :lol:

[Lady_Canoness]

Just a little question that's been niggling in the back of my mind (and is the same question I had around this time in Inquisition II) Who do you think is not going to make it out this time?

 

We're marching towards the twilight stages of the story, and I've already let it be known that a person (or people) will be killed or otherwise incapacitated. What I want to know is - who do you think it will be? How will it happen?

The victim(s) have already been marked, but I'm really curious to hear your take on it :yes:

 

Inquisition I saw Striker catch a bullet in a bad way. Inquisition II saw full-on half of Godwyn's team die. So what will happen in III? You tell me - if its really good, I might just used it ;)

[Taranis]

It's a much smaller group this time and Godwyn is needed for part IV...

My guess would be Spider dying and Mercy getting hurt in more than one way. poor girls? :)

[Aqui]

My take on this. No one dies. The story runs that it would seem that everyone has perished, and that everyone thinks the others have died. They carry on as best as they can until a chance encounter brings them closer together again.

 

Either that, or a fundamental difference of opinion from one or more party results in everyone going their own way. Or so it would seem. With the unseen enemy(ies) thinking that the threat they pose has ended, each team member works alone or pairs, making their way to different places, as if they are trying to distance themselves from previous events.

 

Until such time the things they do bear fruit, and the net is ready to close on the enemy :)

 

In either case I think the split would be:

 

Nerf and Spider

Aquinas

Mercy

Godwyn

 

Time will tell..... ;)

[Lady_Canoness]

That's a really cool idea Aquilanus - and it could totally fit into how I'm writing! Could it be that you really don't want any of the characters to end up dead this time around? (Death has a nasty way of permanently removing them from stories, after all)

 

Any favourites for who shouldn't die?