The Inquisition IV

[Lady_Canoness]

Welcome to the Inquisition IV!

 

This story continues the tale of Inquisitor Godwyn, and it follows the previous stories 'The Inquisition: A story of secrecy and intrigue', 'The Inquisition II: A story of truth, trials, and mystery', and 'The Inquisition III: A story of subterfuge and betrayal'. It is not necessary to read the other stories prior to this one, but you might just get a little more out of it if you do! All the other Inquisition stories can be found in the back pages of this forum.

 

As with my other works, I will strive to maintain a high standard of both writing, story-telling, and character development throughout the story. The Inquisition IV, like the other Inquisition stories, is meant to be a novel, and (if I am very lucky) might one day actually be published.

 

Note that I also publish complete parts at a time - no half-done works here! - so there may well be several weeks, if not longer, between updates.

 

I keep trying to take a break from this, but I never can :lol:

 

______________________________________

 

 

*Prologue*

 

 

 

“They say that one who seeks vengeance must first dig two graves.”

As he spoke, white smoke drifted lazily upwards to the ceiling from the tip of his simmering lho-stick, and his pouchy eyes squinted at her through the dim light as he sat with one leg crossed over the other. “They say that it kills the soul – rends it apart, and prevents old wounds from healing…”

He put the thin cigarette to his mouth and sucked on it – his lips smacking wetly when next he pulled it away and held the smoke inside his chest prior releasing it through his nostrils.

A solitary light-bulb hummed softly as its yellow light reflected off the bare tiles from where it was tucked away in the corner of the cell. The pungent smell of smoke filled the room.

Sitting across from her interrogator, Inquisitor Cassandra Godwyn rested her elbow on the left arm of her chair and kneaded her fingers across her brow.

“They say a lot of things,” she said with a spiritless sigh, “most of the time contradicting themselves and defying common sense while they say it.”

 

The fog had rolled in overnight and blanketed the city streets, forcing her in closer – something she had not anticipated – and her boots clattered against the cobble-stones as she dashed hurriedly through the early-morning mist. Her original plan would have placed her more than nine-hundred feet from her target with a roof-top view of the square, but the carpet of mist had made that impossible and cut her ranges down to a mere fraction of what she’d hoped for: one-hundred feet, and even that would be a stretch.

Godwyn reached the merchant’s depot off the square and barged her way inside. It wasn’t open for operations yet, but her metal hand ripped that handle clear from the door and she ran through – her other arm supporting the heavy sac she had over her back as her feet pounded up two flights of stairs.

 

The cell was dark and small and the sticky warm air coated the man’s skin in a glistening film. He looked at her almost like a fat-bellied toad watching a fly, waiting disinterestedly until the perfect moment when he’d gobble her up;

“Why do you think that way?” he flicked the lho-stick between his thick fingers. “Do you not trust in the wisdom of the scriptures?”

The Inquisitor let the question hang in the smoke-filled air between them without an answer.

“Well, Godwyn?”

The woman across from him kept her silence.

She was almost sixty years old, Cassandra Godwyn, though a steady regimen of juvinant drugs kept her body fit and firm like someone half her age, and while the soft-stomached toad-man talked of doctrines and dogma the Inquisitor felt herself slipping lower and lower down the path of not caring. His was the type of troglodyte specimen that usually inhabited the bowels of the Inquisitorial fortresses, whom spent every day in a sunless cell droning over the importance of words written centuries earlier for no-one’s satisfaction other than their own. This was the face of the mighty Imperial bureaucracy – an erroneous conglomeration of spineless men who spent their entire lives passing on the paper trail from a forgotten beginning to an unknown end.

It was just her misfortune to have been dropped in the middle of it. Why? Because they had something she needed.

“I am guided by my duty,” she told him. “He is a traitor, and traitors deserve only death. I’m sure your scriptures say that too.”

 

She could barely see the square below, but Godwyn thrust the window shutter open anyway and dropped the sac with a heavy clunk from her shoulder – pulling the Mk. IV predator rifle from its protective wrapping. Weighing more than fifty pounds when loaded, the predator anti-material rifle was a beast of a weapon designed to drop tough targets from up to two-thousand metres away. Using it at ranges under a hundred feet was overkill, but it had belonged to an old friend, and right now a little overkill would come in handy.

Snapping the bipod down into position, she hoisted the weapon onto the window ledge and manoeuvred the stock into the crutch of her shoulder. The scope caps flipped open and she scaled back the sights; her hand pulling back the bolt and working a single round into the chamber with a solid thud.

 

The toad-man blinked his heavy eyes and stubbed out the lho-stick in the tin tray on the arm of his chair, the narcotic’s paper remains joining those of its three predecessors. Not waiting for the air to clear, the man opposite her then reached into his inner pocket and retrieved a metal case, plucking a fifth lho-stick from inside and placing it between his lips. Godwyn watched him light it with a las-lighter – the same lighter she’d seen him use the previous four times – and leaned deeper into the squared metal frame of her chair as he exhaled a great gasp of white smoke.

The toad-man had never held a gun, let alone pulled a trigger, but somehow – in this world of paper and procedure – he had power.

“Do regret any of it, Godwyn?”

He’d sat here smoking in this dark little room likely more times than he could remember, yet he spoke as if he knew the woman he was speaking to. He did not. If he did, then he would know not to ask the question.

She glowered at him.

An Inquisitor’s life was regret.

To see the way, but be unable to walk it. To know the truth, but be unable to speak it. To see the galaxy, but be unable to save it.

That was regret.

The innocents she’d killed, the friends she’d failed, and the many faces that still haunted her dreams – some more vivid than others. That was regret. That was the answer he hadn’t earned.

“Only that I didn’t kill him,” she growled; “Only that he got away.”

 

Shapes were moving down below, shifting in and out through the mist across the square. The single-minded shuffle of indentured labourers on the procession to their shift posts mixed with the upright and purposeful stride of merchant entrepreneurs, while marching Arbites patrols shared the same ground as grovelling priests and pilgrims. The first sounds of the day were those of footsteps and work horns, closely followed by the chanting babble of the Imperial Creed echoing over the heads of those in the streets as the voices of the clerics were broadcast from loudspeakers high in the overhanging buildings above.

Alone and unnoticed in her window, Godwyn scanned the crowd below through the rifle’s sights. The crosshairs moved from person to person – a trigger’s pull away from ending a life – yet the Inquisitor held her fire. Her target was a traitor, and though through the mist all men looked alike this was no mere man she intended to kill today.

It was a space marine, one of the Imperium’s holiest warriors, an angel of death, a mystic, a mentor, and – at one point – a friend and an ally.

Orion Aquinas – librarian to the Raven Guard and veteran of the Deathwatch – was a traitor and a murder, yet there was no warrant for his death and no declaration of excommunication. For all intents and purposes he was still loyal, which made what Godwyn was about to do amount to treason. Looking down the scope, however, was not a question of right or wrong, or of innocence or guilt. It was revenge, and that made it personal.

The court of her conscience had long since convened, and she was now judge, jury, and executioner.

In the corner of her eye, a large shape appeared moving swiftly across the square through the fog. Instinctively she followed it, and the bipod shifted against the worn metal ledge as she swivelled the rifle onto her target.

He was moving quickly with long strides and no attempt at subtlety. Beside him, a smaller, weaker figure was being dragged along on its feet. The space marine likely suspected that she would be watching, but could not sense her presence – that was all the surprise she needed.

Moving the crosshairs slightly, she led her target by a few feet and counted her heart beats. She was ready, and her finger covered the trigger.

Two more steps… one more step…

She fired.

The gun roared – the weapon’s kick pounding backwards into her shoulder. Through the scope there was a shower of blood as the bullet hit home – throwing her target to the ground with a crash as his arm spun off at the shoulder.

Not waiting to confirm the kill, Godwyn worked the bolt – spinning a smoking shell casing to the floor and loading another round into the chamber.

Amazingly, her target was on the move. Minus an arm and a great deal of blood, the space marine was ploughing through the chaos in the square below after the gunshot had shattered the calm of the morning routine. The person he was dragging had been dropped – now lost somewhere in the panicking crowd – and, leading her target, Godwyn fired again, though this time she missed – the lethal bullet pulping a bystander like an overripe fruit as it hit them in the chest.

She reloaded a second time, working the bolt and dropping another smoking shell onto the floor with a loud clink. Heart still, she peered back down the scope.

Behind her, Godwyn could hear someone pounding on the door of the room she was in. People were shouting. In the square below, the Arbites were reading their weapons and dashing towards her building.

Exhaling, Godwyn prepared for one last shot. She lined up the scope and squeezed the trigger a little too hard – a metal door-frame buckling as it redirected the bullet just as her target ducked through. He was gone.

 

Smoke trickled from between the man’s lips as he noted something down on his dataslate with a twitch of a finger. He grunted in satisfaction when it was done.

“What of the girl?” he asked with a dispassionate groan as he settled back in his seat; “Do you have misgivings about what occurred with her?”

The girl – she called her Spider.

“No,” Godwyn replied darkly, glaring at the man opposite her; “I stand by my decisions.”

 

Darkness had fallen by the time Godwyn reached the rundown hab complex where she’d left the girl three weeks earlier, and as the Inquisitor approached the crumbling façade she remembered vividly how difficult it had been for the teenager to accept that she was being turned loose. Of course it was feint, and Spider was merely bait used to lure Aquinas from hiding, but to the girl it had been real.

Godwyn entered the building and took the stairs two at a time until she reached the fourth floor. A light shone underneath Spider’s door, but no sound came from within and no-one answered when she knocked. Not waiting, she shouldered her way through.

Spider had cut her wrists, and when Godwyn found her she was unresponsive but alive, if only by the slimmest of margins.

“Stupid kid…” She slammed the door behind her, hauled Spider’s deadweight onto the ratty bed against the wall, and started stripping the sheets into crude bandages. She worked quickly to stop the slow bleeding from the girl’s pale arms, then rolled her onto her side and stabbed her buttocks with one of the adrenaline syringes she had taken to keeping with her. When that did nothing, she tossed it aside, pulled the cap off the second one with her teeth, and then stabbed it into her as well. Maybe she’d live, but she probably wouldn’t.

The older woman propped her up against the bare wall, and as the girl’s head drooped to one side she noticed a smear of tried blood crusted to the side of her face. It wasn’t her blood; it had belonged to Aquinas.

Was it guilt?

Godwyn took a deep breath and ran her hands through her blond hair, turning and surveying the one-room hovel that had been the girl’s prison. The prison Godwyn forced onto her. It had been a cruel ploy.

She sighed through her nostrils, her back to the dying teenager, and shook her head into the distance. What a waste. She might have well killed her.

“Thought I might have learned by now,” she told the only person who could hear the words.

 

“And?”

Godwyn glanced up. The toad-man was watching her – a look that might have been interest on his sagging features.

She frowned. “I am responsible for Spider,” she told him; “It was choice, and I made it.”

He didn’t like it, but it was obvious that he wasn’t about to make her change her mind. Somewhat begrudgingly, the lumpy man opposite her touched a few more fingers to his dataslate, and – giving one last deciding look in the Inquisitor’s direction – entered the only words that really matter onto the slate’s display screen:

 

++Impound order X:66-70224068 – RESCINDED++

++Primary access – GRANTED++

++Codex access – GRANTED++

++Password protection – RESCINDED++

++

++

++Confiscated property transferred to outprocessing wing D4++

++

++exalt the Emperor in all things. ave Imperialis++

+.

 

* * *

 

Godwyn walked from the elevator with a smile on her face just as the sun was rising over the clouds on the distant horizon, and as the door closed automatically behind her she basked in the golden glow of a new dawn’s light.

Further down the gallery, past where tech adepts were testing the atmospherics of a freshly mended window and past the few clericals loitering in the halls comparing notes, a lithe giant in a form-fitting body suit was waiting for the Inquisitor with her back resting on the glass. Sensing Godwyn approach, she smiled and gazed down at her with violet eyes.

“How did you know that outrpocessing was this way?” Godwyn asked with a grin once she was close enough. “I thought you’d be waiting downstairs.”

Long arms folded gently across her midriff and the sun dancing off her shoulders, Mercy shrugged, and swung her elegant neck back over her shoulder towards the window.

Outside, sitting securely on a wide landing pad, was a large orbital shuttle with a familiar silhouette. Godwyn felt her smile grow wider: she’d forgotten how much she missed it.

Mercy was still gazing at her when Godwyn looked away from the shuttle and back up in her direction.

“I suppose this means that we should be on our way?” she said, and the giant seemed to agree – it was a thought.

The Inquisitor couldn’t help but laugh. This was almost like a new beginning.

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

nice start, glad to see part IV, guess you really could not keep away, huh?

 

anyway, I am excited to see where this will go ;)

[Olis]

Nice prologue - sets the ball rolling. Sounds like this is going to be one hell of a man-hunt. :ermm:

[Dosjetka]

Gaaaah! I've got three stories to catch up reading now ;)

 

What a motivator! :angry:

 

Ludovic

[Aqui]

Gaaaah! I've got three stories to catch up reading now :huh:

 

What a motivator! ;)

 

Ludovic

 

Take your time, they're worth the effort ;)

 

I must admit, I was more than a little taken aback seeing Inq IV so soon (as in nearly dropping drink on keyboard and jaw hitting floor), especially after you said you wanted a little time off.

 

Definitely not complaining though! ;)

[Lady_Canoness]

I had intented to wait until April, actually, but then Greyall's picture hit me in the face and got me thinking about it all over again. I just couldn't help myself!

 

Glad to see everyone is looking forward to it :huh:

[Lady_Canoness]

A new beginning :D

 

This may prove to be my most ambitious story yet, though I suppose we shall see over time. Part 1 is largely setting the scene - the climat - for the story, and introducing just some of the new characters we will likely get to know throughout the story.

 

Enjoy!

 

__________________

 

*Part 1*

 

6 YEARS LATER

 

The afternoon rain was rolling in over the hills and down through the streets of Dale, drenching the bronze of the city’s walls, and sending sheets of water cascading down onto the heads of those below. It wasn’t unexpected, and it marked the beginning of the rain season that everyone had been anticipating for the past couple of weeks. In fact, they needed it, for water based generators were cheap and clean, and the flooding of the forests made the harvest of the floating wisp lichen very profitable for those types of people that were into that kind of thing. The continent spanning rains were also very useful mass agriculture in the highlands, and made for easier underwater mining in the low-lying flood-lands. That it rained for half a solar year on the continents made no difference to the people dwelling in the vast bronze cities, and life continued as normal. While the lakes and oceans evaporated on one side of the world, they reappeared on the other, making for a constant cycle of renewal and rebirth.

Such was how it had always been on the world of Acre, for even on a world that changed every day there were many things stayed the same.

 

*

 

Sheets of rain drummed down upon the slanted plate-glass windows of the Malcoln Manor with unremitting fury, yet even so it could not displace the raised voices within.

“I beseech the honourable Houses gathered today that this *is* a crisis requiring immediate action by everyone here!”

From where he sat comfortably in his cushioned armchair, Laerd Malcoln rolled his eyes and swapped a grin with the gentleman with the chair next to his: this was exactly the kind of scene he’d hoped to avoid while hosting the gathered noble Houses at his Laerdacre. Titus Owain wasn’t even a Laerd, yet here he was – a ‘minor’ noble – making demands of his betters and spoiling the afternoon with wild accusations and wilder theories.

“My brother’s son – his only son and heir – was abducted while on the sovereign grounds of the Owain Glennacre! My House is disgraced and dishonoured by this act of aggression, and I beseech every gentleman and lady here to share the outrage of my House in seeking out the perpetrator of this heinous crime!”

Malcoln was only half-listening, and most of his attention was taken up by drawing invisible lines on the arm of his chair with his finger. At least the wine was good, so the others couldn’t fault him for that even if Owain was somehow allowed to keep shouting throughout the rest of the day. There was noise coming from the windows. Had the rain finally started?

“That will do, Glenn Owain,” Tyrn Konrad finally spoke up from the seat of honour where he acted as the Chair to the Houses, and Malcoln as well as several others of the gathered nobles founded themselves quickly nodding in agreement. “I said that will do, Owain.”

The disgruntled Glenn finally shut up and hid his embarrassment behind a hasty gulp of wine as the Tyrn of House Konrad rose slowly to his feet. He was a large man, old too, and had hawkish features that gave his bald head an almost permanent glare that he used to silence all of the assembled nobles in the room. He had come in from the far east of Acre where his Tyrnacre was now starting to enter the planet’s dry season, yet even this far west the House of Konrad was well known and could draw on much in the way of influence. Looking on him now, the Laerd of House Malcoln didn’t want to do anything that would draw the large man’s attention, and casually watched his wine in order to avoid eye contact.

“The concerns of Glenn Owain are not without merit.”

S**t – Malcoln felt himself sliding lower in his seat. His bum was starting to go numb from all this sitting, and if the Tyrn of Konrad was going to start where Owain left off, then Malcoln might as well cancel the rest of his afternoon plans.

Glowering over at him, the hawk-like eyes of Konrad seemed to know his thoughts, and the host quickly engaged himself in more drinking – signalling an attendant for more wine and pastries.

Konrad continued; “More people than the nephew of Glenn Owain have disappeared under troubling circumstances,” he said, peering around the assembled nobles, “and I know that some within this room of have seen members of their own households disappear as well, yet today they hold their tongues.”

Malcoln bowed his head: this wasn’t going anywhere good.

“Yet that is not the only problem we must address, and I dare say that it pales in comparison to the real reason we are all here today.”

He referred, of course, to the plague of refugees that were swarming to Acre like locusts from the nearby worlds in the Ultima Sector. There had been several worlds in that sector that had risen up in revolt against the Emperor, or so they were told, and now everyone who could scrape together enough pay for transit off-world was doing so before the iron fist of the Imperium came crashing down upon whoever was left. Acre was the nearest neighbouring world for many of these refugees, and therefore anyone who could not afford a farther passage went there.

Once planetside, however, the reception waiting for these newcomers was mixed.

Some of the city-states welcomed the new source of cheap labour, but others found the tide of refugees to be overwhelming and were quick to ostracize the off-worlders in whatever way possible.

The refugees brought their own problems as well, and disease, strife, and lawlessness seemed to follow them wherever they went. Murders increased as a result and kidnappings were becoming more common, and in one week the planetary Arbites reported more incidents of civil unrest necessitating urban pacification than had previously occurred in one year.

The same unrest that had ignited three worlds in the Ultima Sector now threatened to engulf Acre as well.

“It is as it seems,” Tyrn Konrad reported, “and even my Tyrnacre has suffered as a result. It is this which must consume our efforts for today.”

“What of the Governor?” someone asked, and several people looked between the speaker and the Chair, nodding their heads in agreement: what of the Governor? Could he not close the ports to the human tides of desperation and misery?

Konrad cleared his throat; “The refugees have brought their bureaucrats with them, and Governor Caligula is held powerless. It is upon we,” he motioned to the room at large, “the ancient and noble Houses of Acre, to decided what must be done.”

Once Konrad had finished and sat back down, the man next to him asked for permission to speak.

“The Chair recognizes the Tyrn of House Styme,” Konrad nodded in his direction, and, with a gesture of thanks, the noble from Styme rose from his seat.

Laerd Malcoln did not know this Tyrn from Styme personally, and leaned forward intently to hear him speak. The House of Styme hailed from Acre’s northern regions in the mountains – a place where few people ever travelled – where little prospered and the wilderness largely remained untamed. That an ancient and noble House could exist in such a place was remarkable, but more remarkable still was the Styme legacy. From what Malcoln had heard from his father and the House Patriarch, the nobles of Styme were recluses and rarely had any dealings with anyone outside their Tyrnacre. Their lands were relatively barren and hostile to life compared to the rest of Acre, and there had been a time when the other nobles thought that the line of Styme had become extinct as no members of its House had been seen for generations. Such would still be the case had not it been for the last meeting of the noble houses when a brother and sister, both young and full of vigour, appeared at the manor gates and announced themselves as being of the House of Styme and bearing the noble crest. Naturally, the nobles had been curious, and when pressed the young man from Styme told them that the House Patriarch had finally passed away and that it had been his backward policies of isolationism that had kept the House silent for so long. House Styme, he promised, would help build Acre’s future. Malcoln didn’t know how much of the Tyrn’s story he believed, but the youth seemed earnest, and the nobles seemed to accept him into the fold with open arms.

Standing now, Tyrn Styme bowed his head respectfully to the gathered nobles and gently cleared his throat. The youth had a handsome face and deep piercing eyes, and though completely bald he held his lean frame with elegance and poise. When he spoke, he spoke well:

“My lords and ladies of the ancient and honourable Houses of Acre,” he began in a warm, clear voice, “I hear the troubles of your Houses, and it is my wish that Styme be willing and able to help in whatever means able to us. As an outsider, with no experience in the problems of which you speak, might I suggest that my words will perhaps mark a clarity not obscured by grief, and that I offer a resolution to your pain? Might I suggest that that which plagues you are both of the same origin? That those who prey upon the loved ones of your Houses might be one and the same as those that squat in your streets? That a resolution for one will be a resolution for the other? Would it be wrong of me to suggest that these off-worlders, knowing nothing of our ways, are bringing misery upon us born of ignorance?”

There was a general round of applause as many nobles agreed with the newcomer’s words, and Malcoln found himself joining in. Yet there was one who was not persuaded so easily, and, when the Tyrn of Styme had seated himself, Tyrn Konrad motioned that she should speak:

“The Chair recognizes Lady Godwyn.”

Cramming a crab cake into his mouth, Laerd Malcoln watched as Elisabeth Godwyn rose to her feet.

She was tall for a woman – taller than most men – and beautiful despite her advanced years, and though her hair was silver and her skin creased around her eyes there was a youthful energy in the way she held herself which whispered that she was not a woman to be lightly taken – and with good reason: the Laerdacre House of Godwyn had suffered over her lifetime. The House Patriarch had passed away before his time, and the Laerd – Lady Godwyn’s own husband – had died suddenly soon afterwards without having made proper preparations to choose his heir even though he had three sons and one daughter. To make matters worse for the house, it was said that Lady Godwyn had then given birth to a second daughter – one of disputed parentage – and that this birth had irrevocably fractured the Godwyn House, leaving the House council divided as to who should assume the title of Laerd. It was rumoured that many noble Houses of equal or lesser standing to the House of Godwyn had then tried to take over the Laerdacre by honourless means, though as a testament to their failure Lady Elisabeth Godwyn still reigned over the Laerd-less House.

For all the calamities and whispers of scandal that had surrounded the Godwyn House for decades past, however, the assembled nobles could not help but respect Lady Godwyn for her tenacity and strength of character that carried her onwards, and as she spoke everyone listened.

“I do not dare to think for even a moment that the suggestion of House Styme will solve our ailments,” she announced, drawing whispers of surprise and concern from some gathered around the room, “in fact, I think such a thought shall only worsen the affliction. Evil begets evil, after all, and the more we spurn these people the more they will turn their ire against us.”

A murmur of conversation worked itself around the circle of nobles, and one amongst them – a chunky man from the Laerd House of Bruce with thick brown hair and whiskered jowls – rose to oppose her.

“I will understand if that seems like wisdom to you, Lady Godwyn,” he said in a deep, throaty voice, “yet for those of us whose Houses yet have something to lose – ” several nobles jeered in agreement “ – I think your words of so-called wisdom will see us sink further into the mire. He who does not struggle against the water drowns in it. Make no mistake: these people are the water and are threatening to drown us.”

Many nobles appeared to agree.

“And do you recall what violence brings?” Godwyn challenged him. “How soon do you think it will be before fighting erupts in our streets if we follow that course? Where do you think you will be when the mailed fist of the Imperium comes crashing down on our heads for the blood we have wrongly spilt?”

“No one is proposing a war on these people!” Malcoln cut in with an incredulous laugh – a sound that was soon echoed by others around the room. “All we need is a way to settle these refugees somewhere outside of our lands. Somewhere they can do whatever it is they do…”

“And what lands are not ours?” Godwyn retorted. “Every wood, every hill, and every crevice in the earth is part of our lands! Or do you suggest that we forfeit from our Laerdacres, our Tyrnacres, and our Glennacres so that these off-worlders can make a home on the land that has belonged to our Houses for generations?”

“I certainly won’t!” Glenn Owain stood up from his seat with a shout, causing Malcoln to bury his head in his hands with a groan of exasperation.

Soon everyone was speaking out of turn and voices grew louder and louder. The attendants of House Malcoln made themselves scarce as wine mixed with moods to fuel the heated argument about what should be done.

“Enough!” Tyrn Konrad finally rose to his feet and glared at the assembly of nobles. “Enough!”

The sound of the rain hammering against the windows was suddenly more noticeable as every noble around the circle fell silent and took their seats, leaving the Tyrn of House Konrad the only one standing.

“Disorder in this room will not put an end to disorder in our lands,” he scolded them. “I motion that this meeting be put to recess, and that we reconvene over supper with the House Malcoln as our gracious hosts when we are prepared discuss this matter with the severity that it deserves.”

The motion swiftly passed, and Laerd Malcoln was the last in his seat as he shook his head over his ruined plans for the afternoon.

 

* *

 

Elisabeth Godwyn did not wait around to attend dinner at the Malcolm Manor, and as soon as she had exchanged the necessary gutless pleasantries with the other nobles she hastened from the manor to the expansive courtyard to where her private shuttle was waiting. The noble Houses, curse them all, were old and decrepit, and were too mired in ancient traditions and House politics to realize that Acre needed to evolve with the Imperium they were a part of. Wars came and went, schools of thought rose and fell, and new worlds and new discoveries were constantly being made, yet the ruling Houses of Acre were as ancient as they were backwards, and their constant posturing over who-owned-what got in the way of real progress. Godwyn had half hoped that the re-emergence of Styme might make a difference and that their isolation might have somehow enlightened them, but of course it hadn’t – Styme was just as ready as the rest to jump back into the thick of it.

Shaking her head in indignation, Lady Godwyn strode from the shelter of the manor-house into the rain-filled courtyard and brushed away the house attendants that tried to follow her with a rain-shield. She had lived on Acre all her life – Emperor be damned if she was going to let a little rain stop her from leaving!

Fergus, her pilot, saw her approaching through the cockpit window, and opened the shuttle’s side hatch to meet her.

“Everything well, my Lady?” he called to her, offering his hand as she stepped aboard, squinting through the rain and holding her thick shawl about her shoulders.

“Well enough that we depart,” she answered, thanking him as he closed the hatch behind her and helped her with the rain-drenched shawl. “Where is your sister, Matilda?”

The pilot grinned; “In your cabin, my Lady,” he replied. “I believe she is reading the text on Macharius that you leant her.”

Godwyn smiled; “Good boy,” she patted his arm; “I do so enjoy the company of reasonable people.”

Once again, Fergus grinned – her words to him likely little more than affectionate pleasantries – but to Elisabeth the words rang true. Fergus and his sister Matilda were her only grandchildren, the son and daughter of her youngest son, and as such they represented the future of the Godwyn blood-line – a future not yet tainted by the politics of this old world. They were young still, and to Elisabeth that meant there was hope. A hope that would one day see them leave Acre and its nobles behind. No true Godwyn children had yet managed that. The three sons and one daughter of her late husband had all become embroiled with the House at too early an age… and her other daughter?

Her other daughter had been born a child of love, and as such had no legitimate ties to the House. She had been sent away in her teenage years, and that was the last Elisabeth knew of her – a bitter irony that the name of Godwyn would leave Acre upon one who was not recognized to bear it; the same bitter irony that kept Elisabeth awake some nights wondering what had become of her.

 

It was four hours of flight from the city-state of Dale in the Malcoln Laerdacre before the shuttle finally touched down at the Godwyn estate half a continent away. It was raining here also and the sky had darkened with the onset of night, yet the flood-lights were on and illuminating the landing pad on the upper tower of the Godwyn spire, and when the side hatch opened House attendants dashed through the falling water to shelter the nobles with rain-shields. The House chamberlain, Reginald, was there also in his sweeping black robes that were hemmed with white fur.

“My lady,” he said, bowing underneath her rain-shield as the throng of attendees followed the bustling nobles from the high landing pad into the bronze spire, “all preparations have been arranged for your arrival as usual.”

Their feet splashing through the puddles that gathered between them and the open doors inviting them inside, Lady Godwyn nodded her thanks to the chamberlain. “I am grateful,” she said, raising her voice over the water and their splashing footfalls, “but you do not attend us yourself unless something out of the ordinary has occurred. Pray tell me what has happened?”

“It is indeed as you say,” Reginald acknowledged, bobbing his head so that his pointed black goatee stabbed up and down like a bird’s beak. “A visitor has come to see you, my Lady. She demands an audience.”

“No-one makes demands of Lady Godwyn in her own lands,” she corrected him.

The chamberlain apologized but remained insistent; “My lady, she bore this seal.”

The man handed something to Elisabeth Godwyn that was small and warm from the heat of his hand – the strength with which Reginald had been clutching it keeping the cold at bay – though when she looked at it she felt her blood freeze, and the procession of attendants had to halt abruptly as Lady Godwyn stopped dead in her tracks. It was an Imperial seal of simple design yet sinister connotation, and as she looked down upon it the leering skull embossed upon the capital letter ‘I’ looked back up at her.

The Inquisition.

“I shall see her at once,” Godwyn instructed her chamberlain, “lead the way.”

 

The Inquisitor was waiting in the dawn room when Lady Godwyn arrived and closed the door gently behind her. She had given the chamberlain the strictest orders that they were not to be disturbed and he obeyed to the letter – there would be no intrusions – and as she went further into the dark room the only sound was that of the rain on the window sill, and the only light was the sparkling of the city beyond.

The Inquisitor stood at the window looking out on the city lights with her back to the Lady and made no sign of having noticed her arrival.

Godwyn waited. She knew little of the Inquisition or their shadowy agents, though she knew enough to be certain that they never went anywhere without a reason for being there. That an Inquisitor had chosen her House was an ill omen, as was it that she had chosen to wait for Godwyn in a room that only ever saw the morning’s light.

“Please be seated, Lady Godwyn,” the Inquisitor said from the window without looking around, but the noble lady did not obey, and remained standing by the closed door.

“How may the House of Godwyn be of service to you, Inquisitor?” she asked instead.

The Imperial agent did not answer at once.

From where she stood, Elisabeth Godwyn could see the by the woman’s outline that she wore a long storm coat, and that she held her hands loosely behind her back – one of which was a bionic of polished steel. Her hair was long and blond but had been fastened into a tight ponytail behind her head so that it was pulled away from her ears, and even in the dim light the elderly woman could see that the one on the left had been replaced by something bulky and metallic.

“Information,” the Inquisitor replied, and turned around so that the Lady could see her face, “but first I will ask that you sit.”

Again, however, Godwyn found herself unable to do so. Her throat tightened almost immediately, and she had to blink several times to convince herself that this was not some elaborate trick.

The Inquisitor motioned to one of the nearby chairs with her human hand, and Lady Godwyn finally sat as she was bid. Only then did find the power to speak.

“Did you think that I would not recognize my own daughter?” she said in a whisper, closing her eyes as tears leaked down her cheeks.

Cassandra Godwyn dipped her head only slightly in acknowledgment; “Mother.”

Elisabeth wiped the tears away with a finger and sniffled as her emotions fought to overcome her. A smile crept onto her face, and she felt her heart leap with joy when next she opened her eyes. “Cassandra…” she said, “I had not dreamed to hope that this day would ever come…”

She made to rise from her chair and step towards her daughter, but the Inquisitor’s expression remained cold. “I am not here for pleasure,” she warned the older woman, “that you are my mother makes no difference. The name we share is a coincidence, nothing more.”

Elisabeth gathered her strength and stiffened her lip. A coincidence indeed – she should have known that her estranged daughter wouldn’t have returned just to see her after more than fifty years, especially now that she wore the mantle of the dreaded Inquisition. But, coincidence though it was, at least she got see her again.

“Of course,” she said to her daughter, consoling herself that there would be a time and place for a proper reunion, “how can this House be of service?”

Cassandra started to walk in a stiff, uneven gait – though it was a detail only a mother would see – and picked something up off one of the side tables with her metal fingers – instantly sending yet another pang through the older woman’s gut as she imagined what could have caused such pain to her child. The Inquisitor seemed to know her thoughts, however, and, watching the older woman’s face, put the object back down and hid her metal limb once again behind her back.

“What are the nobles doing to address the growing number of missing persons on Acre?” she asked.

The question caught Lady Elisabeth unprepared. “What do you mean?”

“There are four-hundred and six reported cases of people who have disappeared planet-wide in the past ten days,” the Inquisitor informed her flatly, “forty-seven have ties to one or more noble Houses. All four-hundred and six are said to have gone missing at some point between dusk and dawn, and all of them vanished without a trace that the local Abrites were able to find. What are the nobles doing about this?”

Elisabeth could do nothing but shrug. “They – they are doing nothing. The only thing that concerns them is the growing number of refugees in the streets. They think the two might be related.”

“Might be related?” the younger Godwyn echoed her mother. “You are telling me that they don’t really care?”

“The nobles have not changed.”

“You’re one of them.”

Lady Elisabeth shook her head. “The House of Godwyn has not changed either. You were only a girl at the time, but the House is still in turmoil.”

“That was more than fifty years ago…” the Inquisitor sounded disgusted.

“Feuds within families last for centuries,” Lady Godwyn replied. “I fear that the House of Godwyn will fall before the time of your siblings has passed.”

The look Cassandra gave her mother was cold: “No, it will be much sooner than that.”

“What do you mean?” the old woman asked, needing to know. “What have you heard?”

Her daughter would not answer her directly, though there could be no doubting the veracity of her words. “The Imperium is watching Acre,” she said, “and after what is unfolding in the Ultima Sector it will come down hard on this world if anything should prove misplaced.”

“But why?” the noble lady asked.

“Don’t ask why,” the Inquisitor warned her, “just know that Imperium will break the back of Acre should the nobles fail to right themselves and solve their problems before the Imperium makes itself involved.”

“But you are already here. What does it mean if the Inquisition is on Acre?”

The Inquisitor turned away – her coat swishing at her heels – and went back to the window overlooking the twinkling lights of the city below. “It means that Acre is being judged,” she said, “and that every man, woman, and child on this world will suffer the consequences. If ever there was a time to tell your nobles what is at stake, then that time is now.”

 

* *

 

Inquisitor Cassandra Godwyn did not leave the Godwyn estate until she had secured a promise from Lady Elisabeth to host the nobles and their entourages at a banquet at her estate in one week’s time. It wasn’t much, but it was a start, and, having only arrived planetside less than two days earlier, a start was what she needed.

Descending upon the last elevator into the garages at the base of the spire, Godwyn walked alone through the artificially lit caverns until she found the motorcar exactly where she’d left it. Sleek and black with an all leather interior, it was a luxury model that she’d commandeered from the local Arbites office, meaning that it came complete with tactical displays, a reinforced chassis, and a cadet chauffer who was waiting for her outside the vehicle. He was young but professional, and snapped to attention and saluted as soon as he saw her approach.

“The penthouse,” she said, the one word referring to where she’d made her base of operations, and waved him away as he went to open the door for her. With another salute, he dove inside the car and started the engine. Godwyn thought his name was Tanner, but she wasn’t sure.

Opening the back door to the car, she ducked inside and closed it with a crisp clunk of metal on metal. It was only then, after she’d already sunk into the firm leather of the back seat, that she noticed that she wasn’t the only one inside the car.

Another woman was sitting beside her.

Through the compartment window, she could see the chauffer’s eyes looking back at her in the rear-view mirror, though he quickly looked away when their eyes met.

“Good to see you, Cassandra Godwyn,” the woman beside her said with a slight lisp. The woman’s face was lean and pale with angular cheeks and dark eyes set underneath neatly braided jet-black hair. Around her shoulders was a high collared Inverness coat adorned with silver buttons and trappings, and her Inquisitor’s rosette hung around her neck upon a loose chain. The other Inquisitor looked almost exactly like Godwyn remembered her, save for where her jaw-bone had been replaced with a highly glossed bionic alternative.

“It’s good to see you too, Tanya,” Godwyn said with a faint smile, “it’s good to see you too…”

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

very nice, enjoyed it. nice to see more of the past of Cassandra.

 

Something I noticed:

"The continent spanning rains were also very useful mass agriculture in the highlands, and made for easier underwater mining in the low-lying flood-lands."

 

should read: "The continent spanning rains were also very useful for mass agriculture in the highlands, and made for easier underwater mining in the low-lying flood-lands."

[Aqui]

When I first started reading this I thought it was going to be a flashback, perhaps revealing a snippet of Godwyn's past. As wrong as I was, it's a good start. Going back home in the 41st Millennium never is easy, especially if you're an Inquisitor ;)

 

The coldness displayed by Godwyn is a good touch. After all the things she's gone through, it wouldn't really ring true if her demeanor was happy and light...

 

Doesn't surprise me that Tanya (forget her second name :S ) would return either ;)

[Olis]

Very enjoyable first part, LC. Plenty of opportunities provided by it for later. :P

[Lady_Canoness]

Thanks gents!

 

Glad you like what you are seeing so far, and there is only more on its way!

[Papewaio]

So von Draken is friendly with Godwyn? Interesting. . .

 

Who's in her team now, apart from Mercy? Nerf and Spider will be hard acts to follow.

[Lady_Canoness]

Who's in her team now, apart from Mercy? Nerf and Spider will be hard acts to follow.

 

Nerf's shoes will be hard to fill, though who said anything about Spider's shoes needing filling? ;)

[Taranis]

Oh part IV so soon. Thank you very much!

 

Great start. I really like the description of her home planet. :sweat:

 

This opens up for yet more secrets of Cassandras past to be revealed. I'm greatly looking forward to meeting old and new characters in a race to save the future of both her family and a world. :unsure:

[Lady_Canoness]

Thanks Taranis :huh:

 

As I mentioned before, this is shaping up to be my most ambitious work yet (and its also taking its sweet time) so we'll see where it all goes!

[Lady_Canoness]

Hi Gents, just a little update:

 

Part 2 will be landing likely next weekend. I know lots of you have been waiting (patiently too). Truth be told, real life has ramped up quite a bit with moving, working, and getting a foot through the door with the military. I have not stopped writing, however, and part 2 is about 2/3 done, though it is taking longer than before.

 

Hopefully the wait will be worth it!

[Olis]

I'll be looking forward to it. :P

[Aqui]

Truth be told, real life has ramped up quite a bit

 

I hear you on that! :D

 

I can wait a little longer ^_^

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

sounds good, though I got excited again today when I saw new posts :P

 

Take your time, though, I may be looking forward to it, and my eagerness increases each day, but I have faith that what you deliver will be your usual amazing quality :P

[Taranis]

sounds good, though I got excited again today when I saw new posts :(

 

Take your time, though, I may be looking forward to it, and my eagerness increases each day, but I have faith that what you deliver will be your usual amazing quality :P

 

+1

 

:P

[Lady_Canoness]

*Part 2*

 

Inquisitor Tanya von Draken started to laugh – a strange hacking noise made all the more uncomfortable by the undulating of her prosthetic jaw – and the upper half of her face twisted upwards in a smile.

“What is it, Godwyn?” she asked; “Surprised to see me?”

Surprised? Not really.

Godwyn proffered her hand and Draken took it gladly.

Tanya von Draken was Ordo Hereticus, a witch hunter, and she and Godwyn had first met almost a decade prior on the night world of Penumbra. They began as rivals, but quickly became allies once the treachery of Inquisitor Brand had been revealed. Each had been responsible for saving the other’s life more than once, though Godwyn wouldn’t go so far as calling them friends.

“I didn’t expect to see you again,” Draken confessed when she released the other Inquisitor’s hand and leaned back in her seat as the motorcar started to move, “least of all visiting your mother. I thought for sure this time that the rumours were true.”

Godwyn looked out her side window as the rain-drenched streets of the lower city whizzed by. “Don’t believe everything you hear,” she said. “We both know that.”

Rumours had followed Godwyn since before her induction into the Inquisition when she had first been branded as her mother’s lovechild, and upon entering the Ordos things only got worse. She had been manipulated, used, and framed as a kin-slayer before she’d even reached forty years of age, after which she’d been forced out of active service by the machinations of traitors within the Inquisition’s very ranks. That she was still alive and had not yet succumbed to the factionalism within the Inquisition was likely a surprise to many observers, including von Draken, yet to Godwyn herself it was just part of who she had become.

“So it would seem,” the witch hunter agreed, “though what you are doing here is a mystery to me. I was supposed to be on this world alone.”

“I thought you said it was good to see me?”

“It is, but I still didn’t expect to find you here.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here either,” Godwyn changed the subject. “If anything, I would have expected you to still be going after Brand.”

“I already found him,” Tanya von Draken told her matter-of-factly, “and, as you may have heard, he has been branded Traitoris Extremis.”

“I also heard that he is still alive.”

The witch hunter nodded, not facing the Inquisitor who was looking in her direction. “He did,” she admitted curtly. “I caught up to him on Pavonis, but he had more allies than I expected, and he managed to slip away through an avenue I had thought secure. Two days later, I was ambushed by his men. They shot me in the head and left me for dead,” she glared at Godwyn, tapping her metal jaw with a finger, “though unfortunately for me they didn’t do a good job at it.”

Godwyn could relate. “It could be worse,” she said with a shrug.

Draken nodded quickly; apparently grateful that the other woman seemed to understand. “Duty comes first,” she said, shifting her jaw back and forth, “which is why I’ll return to my previous question: what are you doing on this world, Cassandra?”

That she used her first name was supposed to impress upon Godwyn the urgency of the question: the witch hunter was doing her a favour by asking as friend, and if she delayed much longer the simple niceties would wear off.

“A contact spotted a one-armed giant on this world,” Godwyn reported. “Two days later he went dark – off the grid entirely – I haven’t heard anything from him since. He isn’t the only one either. More people have gone missing, so I came to find out why.”

Von Draken folded her arms across her chest. “This has to do with the space marine you are hunting, correct?”

Godwyn nodded.

“Your accusations of heresy are not widely accepted, you know that? You will make enemies if you continue on your current path.”

Cassandra Godwyn cast a sideways glance towards the witch hunter; “Will one of those enemies be you?”

Draken’s response did not lean either way. “I trust you,” she said, “but I wasn’t there when you claim that this space marine turned on you. The evidence isn’t in your favour.”

“I don’t need evidence,” the other Inquisitor replied, turning back towards the window as the motorcar rumbled silently beneath them. “I intend to find out if these disappearances are connected, and if he is behind them.”

Likely sensing that no more good would come from discussing it, von Draken let the matter drop, and for a time they were silent.

“You could assist me,” she said after several minutes had passed, “and in doing so you might be able to further your own investigation.”

Godwyn gave her a curious look; “How?”

Opening the intercom between the front and the rear compartment, the witch hunter gave the chauffer new instructions, and the motorcar turned off its original course down a street Godwyn did not recognize.

“I’ll show you,” Draken said, and sat back in her seat with her eyes cast forward.

 

The street they followed took them away from the city core and further into the outlying districts. Here the buildings were closer together, and hab units were stacked one on top of the other until they reached up into the night sky and the rain falling from their angled walls washed down into the streets like waterfalls. This portion of the city was primarily used for housing the seasonal labourers that followed the rains around the world, and as such it was cramped with workers living almost elbow to elbow in the most basic of shelters. Most were miners, woodsmen, or workers for the water rigs – all adherent’s to the nomadic creed – and what they saved from the spartan accommodations of cities around Acre was more than made up for by the ample wages and bonuses of the work: a miner could work ten years following the rains and then live the next ten without having to work at all.

The people outside the motorcar’s windows as they drove further were nomads of a different sort, however, and through tinted glass Godwyn could see for herself what the nobles had been talking about only hours earlier:

Dark shapes huddled in doors and alleyways to avoid the rain. Gaunt-faced men stood staring into the night as the falling water washed the colour from their features and a nameless fear-haunted their eyes while desperate women crouched beside wailing children and consoled them with hollow promises. The dejected young cursed the hapless old, and people of all ages sought answers to wordless questions.

How had it happened? How had their fortunes fallen so far and so profoundly?

Such was the nature of Imperial cruelty – a cruelty that cared not for the plight of the innocent or the injustices born upon those who were blameless. These were the many faces of misery; of families torn from their homes by a war they did not ask for; of refugees whose pleas for salvation went unheard. They were desperate for hope – desperate for help – and every head that turned as the black arbites motorcar rumbled by prayed that inside would be an answer, but felt their hearts sink when the vehicle didn’t stop or even slow down.

Godwyn had seen it all before across more than a dozen worlds. The Imperium did not care for these people, nor did it care for what befell them. Whether they lived or died was of no issue – unless they needed a bullet to put them down.

Such was the nature of Imperial mercy – there were always more people.

“What is it you want to show me?” Godwyn asked as the car slowed momentarily at a fortified arbites checkpoint before picking up speed again as it was waved through.

Draken glanced in the other Inquisitor’s direction and saw that she was watching her through the darkness. “Revolt has thrown the Ultima sector into turmoil,” she said, the metal of her jaw catching the light as she face forward again, “it is not as wide spread as first feared, but like any cancer it is insidious, and there is evidence of its reach spanning greater distance and time than expected.”

“Its origin?” Godwyn asked, but the Witch Hunter shook her head:

“Unknown,” she said. “We don’t know where it started, but we are finding traces of it on numerous worlds.

“What kind of traces?”

Tanya von Draken directed the motorcar to pull over in front of a small chapel built into the hab complex. Numerous arbites guards in distinct white plate were posted outside, as were several other figures in dark unmarked carapace armour.

“I’ll show you,” she said, and opened the cab door and stepped out into the rain.

Godwyn followed her from around the other side of the vehicle; “Wait here,” she told the cadet chauffer, and closed the door before splashing after Draken through the gathering puddles in the street. None of the guards stood in their way as they went up to the chapel doors, and after entering a passcode the witch hunter led the other Inquisitor through.

Inside the chapel it was dark and gloomy, much like it was out in streets, and trickles of water dripped from the ceiling as the rain found its way inside and pooled on the stone floor. By the looks of things the chapel had been repurposed. The pews had been uprooted and stacked along the walls, and numerous artefacts and other treasures had been covered with protective drapes while packing crates, floor cables, and other electronic equipment took their places on the chapel floor. Black armoured guards were here also, though they were outnumbered by servitors and clerical staff who bustled back and forth with heads bowed in whispered conversations. Draken had been here before, and marched through the chapel without saying a word to anyone until she reached the back of the chancel and nodded to a lone clergyman who was stationed there beside a door and reading from a small book.

“Emperor’s blessing upon you, Inquisitor,” he said in a faint, airy voice as he looked up at the witch hunter. His eyes were dilated and bloodshot from straining to read in the dark, but his face was content as if the Inquisitors were a welcomed sight.

“Same to you, priest,” von Draken answered with a second curt nod. “Open the door.”

The priest showed no deference in his response, but smiled gently and was slow to extract a bronze keep from the pocket of his habit and fumbled it into the slot, turning it and opening the door with a click. He smiled again when it was done, and went back to reading his book.

“One of yours?” Godwyn noted once they’d passed through the door and closed it behind them, entering into a small corridor at the end of which stood another closed door with a key-panel access hastily wired onto it.

“No,” von Draken replied, tapping an eight-digit sequence into the panel and unlocking the door with a pressurize click. “He’s a local and spends most of his time snorting obscura. We keep him around because he doesn’t get in the way and he’s popular with the refugees. He keeps them calm, which makes my job easier.”

The door opened, and they pass through into a small room hidden at the back of the chapel. It looked empty.

“How so?” Godwyn asked, wondering what the witch hunter could be hiding back here in what appeared to be a bare room.

“That’s what I’m going to show you.”

Inquisitor von Draken walked up to the back wall and looked at its rough stone surface; then – to Godwyn’s surprise – she walked right through it. She could hear the witch hunter’s footsteps on the other side, though they sounded far off – just as they should through an actual stone wall. The Inquisitor narrowed her eyes: it was an impressive trick, good enough to fool even her, though she was careful not to let it show.

Tanya von Draken was waiting for her on the other side with a smug look on her face. “A neat little trick,” she said, drawing Godwyn’s attention towards a pair of bulky-looking projectors that were placed to either side just behind the fake wall. “They can produce a holographic image of just about anything given that you know how to employ them, and a little extra modification can produce the desired echo inhibitors as well. It even fooled you.”

The witch hunter was playing her – trying to nurse the old rivalry that she apparently thought still existed between them – though Godwyn knew better than to take her bate. It was a childish, tiresome game.

“We didn’t come here to see those.”

Draken wiped the smile from her face and was serious once again. “No,” she agreed, “we didn’t.”

The room behind the fake wall looked like an operating theatre borrowed from a biologist’s lab. Drop-sheets covered the stone floor and high-intensity lights had been strung from the ceiling, though between the two and in the middle of the chamber were three operating slabs, each of which was attended by masked figures in sullied surgical gowns.

Draken glanced over in Godwyn’s direction as she walked further into the room, but the Inquisitor’s attention was quickly drawn from the operating tables to the large glass tubes that had been lined along the back wall and were connected to various humming machines by thick cables and hissing valves. The tubes were not empty, and in each floated a naked human being; their bodies cut open in different sections and their entrails exposed and floating beside them. Some had lost limbs, others were missing chunks of meat from their torsos, and one or two carcases were without their reproductive organs.

“That is close enough, Cassandra,” Draken said from behind her.

The white-gowned surgeons didn’t look up from their work as she spoke. They were working on more humans and dark red blood coated their gloved hands. Inured to the sight of dead people, Godwyn’s only thought was the sanitation of their work – or the lack thereof.

“What is this?” she asked the woman with the polished metal jaw who watched her from where she stood by the fake wall. “I assume that there is more to it than curiosity.”

Judging by how Draken kept her distance from the operating tables, curiosity was likely the last thing motivating the witch hunter.

“What you see is heresy of the worst kind,” von Draken replied, inclining her head towards the tubes that Godwyn had now turned her back on. “These people harbour a festering taint that cannot be easily excised.”

Mutation: the fall of Man from his purest form into something wicked and vile. There could be no grace from it, no rest because of it, and no leniency towards it. The mutant was as hated as the alien, the witch, and the heretic. Or so it was written.

Godwyn turned to take a closer look at the specimens floating in the tubes: male and female, young and old, but each as flawed as the last. It was a gruesome task to be sure.

“The mutations I have seen so far on this world mirror those cropping up in the Ultima sector,” Inquisitor von Draken explained, still keeping her distance from where the scalpel-wielding surgeons went about their ghastly work. “The mutations occur internally with few external indicators, and affect the nervous system, digestive tract, and reproductive organs. Extreme cases affect the brain as well.”

“And what are these mutations?” Godwyn asked.

“Kernels of hard tissues filled with black ichors that leak into the mutant’s system. They experience pain at first, then nausea and dizziness, but the problems start when they feel compulsions do things. They develop difficulties communicating, and some times become thoughtlessly violent.”

“Is that it?”

Draken gave her a dissatisfied look and folded her arms. “It never is,” she said, “but that’s all we know for certain. It appears to be hereditary.”

Godwyn nodded in response. The tubes in front of her held a man, then a woman… a child; she was looking at a family. “Are they all off-world cases?” she asked.

“So far, yes,” Draken replied. “My agents have been pulling mutants from refugee camps all across this world.”

“How many in total?”

“As of yesterday, three-hundred and seven.”

Inquisitor Godwyn shook her head. The number was low considering thousands of refugees had already arrived on Acre, but there would be more, and that meant more families would be hanging suspended in tubes. All things considered, it was a low price to pay.

“I would like a sample to take with me,” Godwyn announced, turning and walking from the operating theatre with Draken.

“I already have a biologis ship in orbit looking into it,” the witch hunter denied her as they walked through the wall and back through the chapel’s doors to where the priest was squinting over his prayer book: he did not look up.

“Even so,” Godwyn lowered her voice now that they were back amongst the quiet bustle of the chapel proper, “if you want my assistance, then you’ll need to pass some favours my way.”

Tanya von Draken was shorter than the blonde Inquisitor, though not by much, and as her eyes flicked up towards the other woman’s face she scowled – her metal jaw making the grimace even uglier on her gaunt face. “You’ll get a sample,” she conceded, “but your findings return to me.”

“I can live with that,” Godwyn agreed, and held out her human hand – her left – for the witch hunter to shake. Draken took it briefly – discretely – and when they were done hastened to return to the motorcar outside in the rain-filled street.

“What else do you want from me?” Godwyn asked, ducking inside and closing the door after her as the vehicle stirred to life and pulled away from the well-guarded chapel.

“I want an ear on the nobles,” Draken replied, folding her arms and leaning back into the seat as the motor accelerated beneath them; “I want to know what they are doing and what they are thinking. Elisabeth Godwyn – she is your mother, is she not?”

“She is.”

“Good, then you can report all your findings to me.”

“Concerning what?”

“Concerning everything.”

Godwyn frowned. “What do I get in return?”

“You can have access to my resources and agents.”

“Which are?” Godwyn asked.

The witch hunter smirked, and withdrew a dataslate from the inner breast pocket of her overcoat. She passed it to her counterpart without so much as a word. Godwyn activated it with a flick of her finger.

It was a list of assets, scores in number, which must have represented the extent of von Draken’s reach on Acre. It was detailed but not entirely inclusive, and would require time to examine – more time than Godwyn currently had available.

She switched it off after little more than a cursory glance. “My Interrogator will be arriving on Acre within a matter of days,” Godwyn explained, pocketing the dataslate when Draken did not object; “I will leave this for her to examine.”

The witch hunter nodded twice then signalled for the chauffer to stop the car. “Don’t wait too long,” she said, her voice a confident drawl as the single lip on top of her metal jaw curved upwards in what was an ugly excuse for a grin. She opened the door once the motor car had stopped and stepped outside. Almost immediately a second nearly identical black vehicle pulled up beside her.

“Stay in contact,” she said, and stepped inside the newly arrived vehicle – the car pulling off scant seconds later.

Impassive, Godwyn watched her go. “To the penthouse, Tanner,” she instructed the cadet chauffer once the other Inquisitor’s car had pulled out of sight down the rain-choked road.

“Yes ma’am.” The motorcar rumbled smoothly back into motion and turned inwards towards the heart of the city.

 

* *

 

As a boy he had imagined all sorts of things. Most boys did. He’d dream of far off planets, merciless aliens, and daring and courageous heroes – one of which would always be him. Saving the Imperium was such a simple thing when you were a child; it only got harder when you grew up.

Looking at his reflection on one of the glass display screens arrayed across the desk in front of him, Maxwell Constantine couldn’t help but feel the eyes of a boy looking upon the face of a man – a boy still wanting to play hero, and a man doing his best to fill the part. Young, handsome, a fresh faced man with golden hair and a trimmed moustache was what looked back at him, but a valiant soldier was what he saw – a soldier who grew up willing to do whatever it took to save the universe.

In a way, he had not changed from the dreaming boy he had been long ago.

“Constantine,” he murmured to his reflection, and even now he felt a swell of pride.

Constantine was the third son of a navy man, and as such he had enlisted the day he turned eighteen. Logistics was his trade – his art – and he had served on two frigates and one cruiser over a career that had spanned all of fifteen years. Fifteen years of service – fifteen years of not being the hero he’d dreamed of being.

It wasn’t that bad, he’d consoled himself, his was a valuable task – one suited for… for – his heart always sank at the thought – some clerk playing around in a uniform.

His father had been a sub-commander of the battle-cruiser Vigilant Sword, a man of distinction, yet the son? The son spent most of his time in an office processing requisition orders and complaining about his caffeine being burnt. It was good position, one that paid well and kept him close to the action, but it wasn’t his dream – it wasn’t what he wanted.

Perhaps it was a twist of fate then that he’d found this – or rather this had found him.

The Inquisition.

He’d hardly got the chance to get used to his first ground-side posting when suddenly he was scooped up and taken under the wing of an Imperial Inquisitor. Her name was Inquisitor Godwyn, and now he was part of her team. He had no rank, no personnel number, and no uniform; just unlimited resources and a mandate to do whatever he pleased. It was amazing.

Acre was his first time off planet with an Inquisitorial outfit and already he found it better and more fulfilling than fifteen years of the Imperial Navy combined. He was still doing logistics, but this time he ran his own operations without procedure or doctrine dictating his every move. He reported to one person and one person alone, and that person wielded almost unlimited power.

It had been intimidating at first – working for an Imperial Inquisitor – but as he got over his initial trepidations he couldn’t help but feel that this was what he had wanted all his life; that this was what the boy had dreamed of. The work was hard and the consequences were unthinkable, but the rewards were grand, and the lifestyle?

Constantine kicked his feet up unto the desk and slunk back in his armchair.

He could get used to the lifestyle.

Sinking his shoulders deeper into the chair’s padding, he looked down onto the large open floor of the sparring room where once again the twins were going at it. Of course they weren’t actual twins, so far as he could tell, nor was the living room they’d taken over an actual sparring gymnasium, but they – like he – were in the service of the Inquisitor… and they did look pretty similar.

The sound of steel ringing against steel echoed upwards to where he sat further up in the penthouse, as did gasps of exertion as the twins battled with unbridled fury for what must have been the third straight hour. Both women were giants – taller than any person he’d ever seen – and were as intensely athletic as anyone could ever hope to be. They were lithe with gently curving bodies (the kind that kept single men awake at night) yet also impossibly quick and deft of touch. Fighting seemed to be all they ever did, and in that they were incredibly skilled.

One was called Mercy – she was the more spirited and playful of the two, it seemed – and she had a funny way of silently appearing in places where one least expected to see her, such as perched on top of a cabinet. Funnier still was that she was mute, and even though Constantine had known her for almost two months now he had yet to hear her utter a single word. Words were not her strength, but combat clearly was, and she fought wearing only a form-fitting body suit with a curved-blade sword in one hand and a needle-fingered gauntlet on the other. She was a killer, of that Constantine had no doubt, and the look in her large violet eyes made him glad that she was on his side.

The other’s name was Zero, and like her twin she unnervingly tall, though, other than her love of battle, the two were remarkably different in their ways. For starters, Zero actually spoke, and she was pleasant enough to talk to even though she was quiet in her own way. Her eyes were beautiful honey colour and her hair – unlike Mercy’s which was a flaming red – was platinum almost like freshly churned buttermilk. Sparring with her twin, Zero wore armour of fitted silver on the left side of her body as well as a featureless silver mask over her face, and, whereas Mercy’s suit was tight-fitting and dark, Zero’s was of a crimson colour and flowed around her waist and shoulders. Her weapon of choice was a single silver-bladed sword with a straight edge that was easily four feet in length and turned into a blur when she wielded it in both hands.

When they fought Mercy was the faster of the two and she flowed like water through the air. Zero was not easily beaten, however, and she moved swiftly and purposefully with her hand resting on the hilt of her sword – waiting until the last minute before drawing the weapon in a flash of light.

They’d duel ceaselessly – like it came as natural as breathing – and more often then not Constantine would be drawn to watch them with enraptured fascination. It was thrilling and invigorating, filling him with an awe of both life and death as the women practiced their killers art. More than once he thought of them as dancers on a stage with blades as their partners where each leap and pirouette was rehearsed to the point of being utterly flawless to the untrained eye. Every move had a purpose and every blow could have been lethal. The word ‘duelling’ hardly explained their actions, and ‘fighting’ was far too clumsy. ‘Art’ was more fitting, yet even so Constantine thought that ‘expression’ was the best word to use – subtle enough to hint a deeper meaning behind their movements, yet so pronounced that it carried their actions beyond mere ‘violence’.

Poetry, he reasoned, smoothing his moustache between thumb and forefinger; poetry in motion – the celebration of the human form.

“Mister Constantine!”

Wrenched from his daydreams, the young man nearly jumped out of his seat as someone spoke his name from somewhere close-by over his shoulder. He stood quickly, smoothing his navy pants with both hands as he did so, and turned to see the pale blue eyes of Inquisitor Godwyn staring directly into his.

He swallowed involuntarily.

“Madam,” he kept his voice from rising to high as he felt his cheeks turn red, “I’m sorry, I did not see you there.” He should have – if he’d been paying attention he would have – and the look on the Inquisitor’s face only served to remind him of that. She was not a cruel woman, but a hard one. Doubtlessly she had seen things that no ordinary human being should, and had done things that would keep any lesser person awake at night. It would take an extraordinary force of will to do the things she had done and live as she did – a will that Constantine knew that he himself did not possess. He respected her for that, as well as much more.

Now she nodded; a simple tilt of the head – her way of telling him to be at ease – and extracted something from inside her coat. It was a dataslate. She activated it and placed it in his hands.

“I would like you to set up secure channels for liaison with these assets,” the Inquisitor told him, answering the question that he did not have the time to ask as she walked casually past him to better watch the twins as they duelled, “and while you’re at it, see if you can’t assess their operational capacities as well.”

“Of course, madam,” Constantine responded, quickly skimming through the information on the slate but stopping when he noticed something odd. “These are Inquisitorial units?”

“Yes,” Godwyn didn’t face him – Mercy and Zero were still battling furiously in the room below. “Another Inquisitor is on this world and she has considerably more resources at her disposal.”

He nodded; “Understood, madam.”

“But Constantine,” she glanced over her shoulder at him, “don’t divulge anything without my expressed permission.”

He nodded again; “Of course madam,” and turned to excuse himself now that he had something to do.

“One more thing,” she stopped him.

“Madam?”

Once again, the Inquisitor appeared to be watching the duelling giants. “Tell the others to come back,” she said. “There is work to be done.”

She was referring to the rest of her team, and for a third time Maxwell Constantine found himself nodding in response: “Right away, madam.”

[Aqui]

I wasn't expecting Zero to join the group, and Maxwell Constantine seems...interesting. Just need someone who likes guns :D

[Lady_Canoness]

Likes guns, eh?

 

Well there are still 4 more people waiting to make an entrance onto the team. I bet one of them knows a thing or two about shooting :D

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

Im hoping Constantine does not die....he seems like a decent guy, the kind you do not meet often (I hope he does not turn out to be a jerk, what would that say for my charachter analysis hehe)

 

A nice update, It was worth the wait Lady_Canoness, well worth the wait. :D The plot thickens! Mutation, now, Chaos or....stealer????

[Lady_Canoness]

Im hoping Constantine does not die....he seems like a decent guy, the kind you do not meet often (I hope he does not turn out to be a jerk, what would that say for my charachter analysis hehe)

 

Only part 2 and we're already hearing calls of 'don't kill this guy!!!'?? :lol: We've still got a long way to go before characters start dying - like still having to meet fully half the cast!

 

Constantine has a bright future in terms of development, so we'll see where the story takes him :lol: