Arthur took one unsteady step. Then another. Then a third. Before his fourth step, he toppled over, landing on his side with a thump. He groaned and looked down at his patchwork astrosuit. Nothing but scuff marks and streaks of red, salt-rich dirt. No gouges that would expose his body to the cold, unforgiving non-atmosphere of Dead End. He looked back to the drop pod, the rickety deathtrap he had entrusted with his life still sparking at the exposed wires. At least choosing the ramshackle contraption for planetary entry was not the least of his poor choices across his life. In fact, it was not the least of his poor choices across the previous week. And day, for that matter.
“No regrets,” he groaned, renewing his silent vow of seeing his decision to the end, and looked up at the black skies above him. The stars were endless, up there. Multitudes upon multitudes upon multitudes. The best part was that, for thousands of them, he could find people living out their lives around them. They all had lives to live, things to do, dreams to fulfill.
And deaths to die.
Arthur stood once again, his legs both recovered from the shaky entry and the higher gravity of Dead End, and he finally took his first view of the place he was supposedly born. It was exactly as he had seen during his research. A planet-sized scrapyard. Spires of gnarled metal rose over the jagged brush like arms reaching to the heavens, with enough shards of titasteel scattered around to patch every damaged station within a hundred light years. Long stretches of barren dirt laid between thickets of metal jungles, haphazardly built at the whims of pure math and gravity. Nothing moved. Nothing but himself, and the unending stream of light bombarding the planet from the massive pulsar above him.
It was… peaceful. The worst place for a cradle and the best place for a tomb.
He turned to the station he had unconsciously begun to lean on. It looked like a Seeker design, with consecutive rings physically connected to a middle spike armed to the teeth with weapons. He looked to the next one and immediately pegged it as a Human Marine Corp station. Very few still emulated the old terran, dart-like designs-- most civilian stations followed the ring-around-the-middle design or the inlaid habitation segment design-- much less anyone with peaceful intentions, and the solar sail design was only something used by the poor, economical, or old fashioned. Not to mention the honestly gratuitous amount of electromagnetic cannons strapped to the tip and shaft of the dart.
He looked around and up, looking for descending pods. He found none above him, but a paranoid part of his mind told him to Pulse just to be safe. He followed his paranoia, drawing upon the power of his mind and sending it out, like a psychic form of echolocation. Nothing that could think could avoid it, and he doubted that his pursuers had any Espers to counteract his Pulse.
Contrary to his expectations, his Pulse bounced off of… something… someone… and came back, bumping into his mind irritatingly. He snapped his head to his right, directly at a massive gash in the habitation segment of the Marine station, and engaged the quantum radio, “I felt you! Come out or I’ll- I’ll cut your mind!” he shouted, sounding much more frightened than he really thought he should have been.
A staticy popping came from his helmet before the waves in quantum space were translated into sound, “Hey, hey. Calm down,” a woman’s voice said. Coinciding with her words, she stepped out of the shade of the station, hands raised, with a nonchalant pace. She wore an astrosuit that was utterly black, with no highlights or decorations that most put on their own. The thing that did pop out, however, was the large eye stamped into the left gauntlet of her astrosuit. “You’re a hard man to find, Arthur Wan,” she said.
Arthur himself barely heard her, eyes still fixed on the eye decal, “I’m… sorry for threatening you, Inquisitor. Please forgive my mistake,” he said, bowing his head. Internally, he was screaming bloody murder. His actions, threatening an Inquisitor in their Regalia, could and would have gotten him arrested for lifetimes. It was such a high offense that, if the Inquisitor wanted, they could kill the offender right then and there.
They were the only thing keeping madmen and fanatics from ending whole star systems, so it was an understandable privilege.
The mysterious Inquisitor, instead of blasting his head open with the very dangerous-looking beam gun on her belt, simply laughed and came closer, “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ve been threatened under far more incriminating circumstances,” she laughed as she reached him. She reached out and dragged a finger along the suit’s cerasteel surface, “Hrm. Pirate design, but not a bad one. You’d get blown straight through if you were an Inquisitor, though, but that’s why we get the best armor there is.” She turned and looked at the wide expanse of shattered titasteel and electronics that made up Dead End, unmoving, “This is where you were born, yes?” she asked, smiling through her untinted view glass.
“I was, ma’am,” he answered, stiff as a board.
She did not turn to him, simply continuing, “You were born on this planet, but your parents did not want you. They were not heartless, but they had a mission to fulfill. One that took their lives, unfortunately. But, that was after they made their way to Maylay Prime, yes? You never learned about any of this before your parents were already dead, so you never really grew up thinking about them. In fact, you disliked them for a while.
“But, that is not very important,” the Inquisitor said, “What is important, however, is that you grew up on Maylay Prime as an orphan. The governor of the planet is still one of the leading champions of orphans’ development in the whole League, so you were never left wanting for much. You grew up, knowing the love of caretakers and fellow orphans, until you first entered schooling. There, you found your true passion, did you not?”
He nodded mutely and quickly, not interrupting the Inquisitor’s speech, “You fell in love with engineering. Electrical engineering, in fact. You were the top student in the subject, not just in your school sector, but across the whole continent. You also dabbled with other subjects, like computer science and mechanical engineering, but none kept your interest as much as electronics and their creation.
“From there, your schooling was filled with achievements. You created a new application for dual electromagnetic resonance in multiple fields, which was your greatest achievement. Shortly followed by small improvements on the quantum radio that are still the talk of that little field of study. Quite impressive for a student under twenty, but that is far from the interesting bit.
“You picked up a side hobby, at twenty years and three months, after getting a bit burnt out from your field of choice, and that hobby was amatuer journalism. Funny, isn’t it? That is why you’re here. That’s the turning point. From there, you became quite good at your second craft, going on a sabbatical three weeks ago to focus on your journalism for a while some other projects got finished.
“Then, you stumbled into the Invader’s mothership, so to say. How is it that, while doing some research on an astrodock, you somehow stumbled upon a forbidden research laboratory? How is it that, while you have never had any real training or practice in it, you infiltrated the forbidden research laboratory filled with expert pirates with training in preventing exactly that? How is it that, while being under constant threat of being discovered, you stole the entirety of their research and reported it to The Inquisition? How is it that, despite being shot at with no training whatsoever, you were able to steal an entire station and navigate it to this star system without anyone noticing before you were already gone?” she asked, waiting for a moment, “I’m waiting, Arthur.”
He jolted, snapping his head up to meet the amused gaze of the Inquisitor through her visor. Finally able to really see her facial features, he noticed that the blonde haired, brown eyed woman was quite beautiful. He stopped himself from going any further. There was a reason why Inquisition women were called black widows, mostly by people with death wishes, and he would rather not be ‘eaten,’ as it were, “I… was lucky,” he said lamely. There was no way he could say anything else. He could have, but not even the threat of an Inquisitor would bring him to divulge that.
He looked at her amused face and, judging by her similarly amused smile, he had made the wrong choice, “That’s punishable by death, right there,” she laughed, slapping him on the back, “But I understand. Not many would admit to being an Obake, would they?”
He stumbled back a step, utterly and completely stunned, “How… How do you know that? I never… I never told anyone… Not the caretakers, not the other kids, certainly not the AI’s, and I barely used it before now…”
The smile she gave him could have killed a man through sheer desire, but all he saw was her eyes, sharp with utter gleeful amusement, “It’s not that hard. Psychoanalysis, behavioral pattern mapping, logical deductions, and old archives were all that was needed. Of course, you also made a bit of a mistake with your… infiltration. But that’s not too important. Do you want to know something? Ninety eight percent of Obakes have personal identity issues. It’s the price they pay, after all, for being able to become anyone, at any time. Do you know how most deal with it? Barely able to remember their true self? They shun their Obake side.
“Others don’t have to deal with it.” She began to stalk around him, like a spider wrapping up her prey, “Oni don’t have to deal with such issues. Kamaitachi don’t have to deal with it. Janissaires have far too long to sort through such issues to worry about them. Espers… well, you should know how Espers fare, considering that you are quite the psychic duelist. So, let me repeat this again: how is it that, despite everything that was against you, you still pulled through and did the impossible?”
Arthur grit his teeth and looked the Inquisitor in the eyes. She knew how he did it. She knew exactly how he sold the pirates out, “Fine… I am an Obake.”
“I knew that,” she said, smiling, “What about the sneaking in? Whose identity did you steal?”
He looked at her, “...The warlord’s slave. A Vikshe girl, something like seventeen,” he ground out, “Then it was some elite guard-- I knocked him out and dragged him into a closet.”
“And what did you do to the slave girl?” she asked, then gasped “You didn’t kill her, did you?”
“No! I would never!” he shouted, glaring at her, “I disabled her slave chip, spoofed the signal, and stowed her away in the habitation section’s station bay!”
She backed off a little, still circling him like a predator, “Oh? Then you didn’t have your way with her? A lot of men would do quite a lot to get with a Vikshe.”
“What the hell is wrong with you!?” Arthur shouted, “I would never do something like that!”
She smiled, stepping forwards and pushing him against the station’s hull with her mere presence. The woman was smaller than him-- he was over six feet tall, so she was likely just under five foot ten inches-- so it likely looked comedic. At least until any unwitting onlookers saw the Inquisitor’s Eye Regalia, “That’s a lot of passion, there. Do you think I was serious?” she asked, laughing.
Arthur’s mind blanked for a long moment, “...Excuse me?” he asked dumbly. He was almost certain he was about to be killed for whatever reason-- even when, thinking back, she was actually just teasing him.
“I asked if you thought I was serious,” she repeated, “Because I wasn’t. Serious, that is.” She pulled back, sauntering over to the steep cliff that gave such a beautiful view of Dead End, “I know you didn’t do anything untowards to that girl. I know you only morphed into her because she was the only identity you could get your hands on at the time. I know you did your best to hide the fact that you’re an Obake. Bad luck on that one, by the way. That little mistake from earlier? That was the camera in the station bay. It caught you transforming into her.”
He paused, mind running through the encounter again, “Oh…I didn’t see it.”
“I know,” she giggled, “Now then, I’ve had enough of scaring you. Onto business,” she said, plopping herself down at the cliff’s edge, “You see, the human branch of the Inquisition is… ill-staffed… to deal with the idiocy of our species. Across the entire league, we humans have the highest number of dumbasses who decide to play with things that are far too big for just them or far too dangerous for anyone. Can you name anything that falls into those categories? It’s just a little game of mine, so don’t take it too seriously.”
Arthur gave a small nod, grimacing as he tried to remember anything that was banned and forbidden by the Technology Regulation Committee, “Well… I know that large-scale psychic research is banned. There are also the limitations on biomachines-”
“Except for the Cileriens,” the Inquisitor cut in.
He nodded, “Yes, of course, apart from the Cileriens. There are also bans on altering the composition of stars, bans on weapons built to destroy planets, and… biomechanical alterations made for war.”
“We are the exception for that last one, though. It’s quite nice, not having to be sidelined just because you lost your arm. Or at least that’s what some other combat-focused Inquisitors tell me. Anything else?” she asked.
He thought for a moment, “...Temporal manipulation?” he asked.
“An old hold-over until the conceptual science behind it was understood. Temporal manipulation…” she giggled, leaning back, “That whole field was disproven hundreds of years ago.”
He shrunk back a bit at her bravado, “Well, I certainly didn’t know that,” he said.
“I know, I know. It’s a secret. Madman’s bait, we call it. If anyone is stupid enough to find something to mess with on the list of things we told them not to mess with, then leaving time travel gives a chance for them to mess with something that never works out,” she explained.
Arthur gave a confused look, “Wouldn’t it just cause more people to commit crimes, then? If people knew it was impossible, then wouldn’t fewer people try it?”
“Wishful thinking,” the Inquisitor replied, “Only the desperate, the stupid, or the egomaniacle commit crimes and disobeying the TRC is usually only done by the latter. Though, some poor bastards are desperate to bring back a loved one or something stupid like that, so they go into psychic research to remake their Minds or whatever. Telling people that time travel is impossible would attract the egomaniacs who think themselves above our own research. It causes problems, like people making black holes in their labs or similarly idiotic incidents.”
Arthur nodded slowly, “I see…”
“But, that’s a conversation for later,” she said, “What is for now, though are a few questions. Why do you think I’ve been playing with you, retelling your life story and teasing you? Why was I, an Inquisitor Assassin, sent to find an electrical engineer who is a bit popular? Well, the first one is easy; I always research anyone I go after.”
Arthur barely kept himself from shivering, “So… You’re here to kill me?”
“No!” she laughed, “There are a lot of reasons I am sent after people. Protection, information gathering, stuff like that. Sometimes, I like to unwind, hence my toying with you. But one of those things is recruitment and, you know what? You’ve been selected to join the Inquisition. The reasons are numerous, but they include your interest in investigation, your background in the sciences, and your immaculate criminal record. The fact that you’re an Obake makes you even more of an attractive hire, and your stunt back in orbit of Maylay Prime is just proving your capabilities even more.”
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He stepped back, stunned, at the news. He had never even considered the possibility that he would be selected to join the Inquisition. Everyone knew of them and respected them, but they were also terrifying to most people. A glimpse of the Inquisitor’s Regalia was enough to put everyone on edge. It was not that they were known for being scary themselves, but it was that if an Inquisitor wore their armor, then there was something big afoot. Something most people would not like to be around. He tore his conscious mind from its thinking and looked the Inquisitor in the eyes, “Why… Why me? You said all of that stuff there, but there are so many people who are better in my field. I know geniuses in electric engineering and I know masters in investigation, so why me?”
“Because,” the Inquisitor said with a small hint of annoyance in her usually amused voice, “You are everything in one package, not to mention you’re an Esper, you’re an Obake, and you’ve already had experience in the field. Of which, I give tens across the board save for the exit strategy; if you’re in a situation where you need to run and can’t just bomb the place from orbit, then running to an isolated star system is only a good idea when you set up a trap there. Still, quite good for a rookie.”
He felt his face blush, but he suppressed it-- if he was already compromised as an Obake then he would take full advantage of his ancestral genetic modifications, “Thank you very much,” he said, trying to reinstate his confidence. Dealing with an Inquisitor was one of the things that very few looked forward to, but he needed to stop acting like a scared rabbit and be confident. That was what he told himself, anyway.
“See? You’re a natural, standing up for yourself in front of an Inquisitor!” she laughed, slapping him on the back again, “So, do you accept your invitation to the Inquisition?” she asked, holding out a hand.
He reached for it, about to agree to it, when another crackle-pop of a quantum radio joining their conversation burst in their helmets, a voice cutting into the conversation, “Sorry, Inquisitor, but that brat’s got some business to finish,” said the deep, rumbly voice. They both turned, Arthur filled with surprise, to look at the newcomer. He was in an astrosuit, lined with expensive flourishes, but he was short and wide, with four fingers and very trunk-like feet. What little Arthur could see through the newcomer’s astrosuit helmet suggested that the being before him was a Meytvani, a species of squat creatures with high density muscles, three eyes, bone plates on their heads, and an almost guarantee that they were good fighters, “So, you thought you could run out here and get away, did you? Or is it that you’re planning on fighting us here?”
“What does it matter now?” Arthur asked, relaxing a bit, “You’ve found me. Great job. It’s almost as if I wasn’t trying to sneak away and just trying to get out of there as soon as possible.” He Pulsed for a moment and tensed, ready.
The Meytvani grit his teeth, “Shut up, brat! You think I’m stupid or something!? ‘Cause there isn’t anything more idiotic than messing with the sector-feared pirate warlord right in front of you! Remember it well, kid, ‘cause you’re about to be killed by Yeyimat’s crew. Little Miss Inquisitor, would you mind leaving us to this? Maybe you could grow a brain and realize that what you’re looking at right here is way better Inquisitor material than this changeling college grad,” he remarked, pulling a heavy beam pistol from his suit’s belt and aiming it at Arthur.
Almost instantly, everything around him was alive. Scores of pirates erupted from the thicket of titasteel around them and purple lasers cut through the vacuum around them. Arthur, however, threw himself to the side before any of the pirates even appeared. The beams of light cut over him and scorched the surface of the titasteel hull behind him.
Arthur retaliated instantly, suppressing the pirates around him with a squeeze of his Mind. It was, generally, a poor idea to directly attack another being’s Mind with psychic abilities. Among the other moral ramifications of utterly destroying a person’s mind, attacking directly could lead to a massive increase in pain tolerance. A much better option for subduing an opponent was to restrict the flow of information between the metaphysical ‘Mind’ and the body. It slowed the enemy, made their body less their own, and could even knock them out if it lasted long enough.
Just as Arthur managed to suppress the pirates, a purple laser cut into his suit’s cerasteel chest armor, cutting a deep groove and heating up the interior to an uncomfortable degree. He stumbled back, clutching his chest and feeling around to make sure his suit was still intact. Everything felt in order, so he looked back up at the pirates. In his panic, he failed to keep them suppressed, and they were silently surrounding him, all the while keeping their guns pointed at him. He looked around and failed to find a trace of the Inquisitor he had almost joined, her matte black armor nowhere to be found.
Yeyimat stepped forward, holding his pistol at his side, “So, the little finder bitch abandoned you, huh?” he laughed, “To think, you sided with those guys instead of just leaving well enough alone. What did you think you would get out of it? Wealth? Fame? Or are you just so fucking morally upright?” He took another step forward, “I don’t like your types. You always think so highly of yourselves.” He took another step forward, “You think you’re so good that you can survive anything if you’re doing it for the right reason. You’re weak.” He took a final step forward, standing just an arm’s length away, “And the galaxy eats up the weak and feeds the strong. Like it or not, I’m the future. I’m a damn god-”
Arthur put almost everything he had into Yeyimat’s mind. In spite of his qualms, he ripped and tore until nothing but shredded tatters remained. The pirate warlord seized up, his body suddenly realizing that the being it housed was no longer there, and the newly created corpse swayed. Arthur lunged for the gun, ripping it from the gaudy atstrosuit’s hand and firing it at the closest pirate. The Ukalan pirate, tall and lithe with green photosynthetic hair over its face, fell like a bag of bricks. The others had the good sense to bring their arms to bear, lowering them to let their warlord say his spiel, when a concentrated volley of metal fragments tore through them. Arthur looked up and saw it. It was an Inquisition dropship, a flat disc-like craft with two wide barrels-- likely electromagnetic flak cannons based on the destruction.
Atop the sub-vacuum craft, the Inquisitor stood with her arms crossed. She leapt from the craft, landing onto the ground with a little bounce to kill her momentum, “Nice move there,” she praised, “I didn’t know you were a strong enough Esper to put someone in a body bag with the snap of a finger. Were you always that strong?”
Arthur breathed a labored sigh, dropping Yeyimat’s corpse to the ground, “It was the adrenaline. He broke the most important rule when dealing with Espers or Lightspeakers or Tytikas or whatever.”
“Never let a psychic live long enough to tear your mind apart. That’s the rule,” the Inquisitor said with a laugh, “What’s the second rule, then?” she asked with a smile.
He paused for a moment, “Never let them have drugs. Like adrenaline,” he replied sardonically, “So… is your offer still available?”
The Inquisitor, for the first time since he met her, gave him a nervous look, barely visible in her visor, “I get that you may not want to, not after just surviving an encounter with, admittedly, the worst pirate warlord to exist in three hundred years. You may want to simply go back to your life as an engineer, but we need people like you. I said it before and I’ll say it again: we humans like to break the rules. I would have thought that the trait would die out over the last millennium, but that’s not how life works. We need more people to make sure someone isn’t making black holes out of stars. So, do you accept?” she asked, her confidence still somewhat diminished.
“I’ll do it,” he immediately replied.
The Inquisitor, again for the first time, appeared stunned, “Really? Normally these types of situations end with me going home empty handed,” she remarked, her pep almost entirely renewed, “Civis get spooked by fighting and killing. The popular conception of us is…”
“Fighters and killers,” Arthur answered.
“That, yeah. But that’s not all we’re about. The Assault and Assassination Units are only half of what we are. There are also the Investigative and Archivist Units, which is about sixty percent of our numbers. Of course, I’m inviting you to the Investigative Unit, which would put your talents to the greatest use,” she explained, gesturing to the dropship, “Come on, now. We’ve got a lot to do now that you’re a Trainee. At least your training won’t take very long, what with your field experience.”
The disc-shaped dropship descended until it hovered a few feet above the ground, with the back of the three foot tall disk opening into a small crawl space, smooth and white with a few low power lights to provide a relaxed environment. Fitting into the space was somewhat difficult, especially with his stolen astrosuit getting in his way-- it was by no means bulky, quite the opposite in fact, but it was nonetheless new to him.
Once both he and the Inquisitor crammed themselves into the dropship, he felt the telltale inertia that was rising into space while within a highly protected capsule. It felt somewhat like going from resting to sixty miles an hour in a split second and he was never one for needless excitement. He did, however, tolerate it, and soon gravity gave way to weightlessness. “So, why did you feel the need to get the attention of those lunatics?” the Inquisitor asked.
Arthur turned to the Inquisitor and thought about the question, letting his floating body go where the countless infinitesimally small forces affecting his body bade him to, “Oh… I… don’t know. It felt like the right thing to do. They were breaking rulings put in place to prevent a lot of people from dying and… it felt like the right thing to do? I guess I would have felt guilty if I ignored it.”
She giggled a bit, turning to tap at a screen on her side of the short, narrow space, “Oh, so you’re one of the honor bounds. We don’t get your types very often. Not really, anyway.”
“Honor bound?” he asked.
“What it says on the tin,” she answered, “They feel a moral or honoral obligation to enforce the TRC’s rulings. There are others, the ones who find this work the best fit for them, the ones who simply enjoy being left alone to work, and the ones who enjoy ridding the galaxy of madmen also have sizable groups within the Inquisition. Honor bounds like you are just the nosy types.”
Giving her a sour expression, he shook his head, “That feels like a very rude dig at the people who prefer to not ignore threats to others’ safety,” he said.
“Heh,” she chuckled, “You’re getting quite a big head. Training’ll deflate your ego soon enough, kid. Just you wait. But for the dig? Maybe. Unless you couldn’t tell, I’m the type who enjoys remodeling the skulls of egomaniacal scientists. I prefer open air designs, personally.” She pressed a few more buttons on the screen and the top of the space suddenly became transparent.
Arthur was still filled with emotion every time he saw the majesty of outer space. The planet below them had become small enough that he could see the entire surface without shifting his neck. He gazed upon Dead End, eyes scanning the red surface marred by patches of scrap yards and other constructs left unsalvaged for one reason or another. There was no green, no large area of odd color, or anything that countered the impression that the world was a massive, cosmic tomb littered with the bones of the discarded creations of a civilization with considerations far above a single planet.
He barely held in a sigh, remembering that the planet was where he was born. Supposedly. He looked back to the puslar and glared at it for a few moments. Whatever the window in front of him was, it ensured that he could actually see the star, and what he saw was exactly what he expected. It was a blue star, spouting masses of plasma into space and invisibly emitting beams of high strength radiation into the cosmos. He hardly needed to wonder why most considered the planet to be a tomb with such a vitriolic star hanging above it.
“That’s my station,” the Inquisitor said, pointing to something orbiting Dead End. Directing his gaze, Arthur took in the small station. It was, to his eyes, a civilian design rather than a military design. The spinning habitation segment, the thick ring rotating around the central pillar, was as thick as the central pillar was tall, which left little room for any weapons. Arthur scoured his memories and recalled that the habitation segment of stations such as those usually rotated around the center via any method available, be it magnetism, ion thrusters, or whatever other method a station designer fancied. It was far from his best field, though, so he .
The dropship banked up, obscuring the station and propelling itself towards their destination. As Arthur sat there, the Inquisitor turned to him from her corner of the crawl space, “So, do you want to know my name?” she asked.
He nodded, “If you don’t mind,” he said.
“I don’t. My name is Maya Penen, Assassin of the Inquisition. I already know your name, profession, and pretty much everything else about you, so no need to introduce yourself.” Arthur internally winced, but Maya definitely noticed, judging by her smile with a slightly more intense hint of amusement than she normally had, “Don’t be like that, kid. I have standards; I’m not a psycho stalker or anything like that.”
He did not bother trying to hold in the resulting grimace, “That was not my problem with you knowing everything about me. Also, why was that the first thing you thought of?” he asked.
“You’d be surprised,” Maya replied, “Inquisitors have unfettered access to League census records, family trees, personality matrices, travel records, and purchase history.” She paused for a moment, thinking about something.
As she thought, Arthur realized that something was missing on the list of documents, “What about tax records?” he asked.
“Don’t even try to go there. We do not mess with the TMB’s tax department. The rest of Parliament is fine to root around in, but not them. Never mess with the ones dealing with your taxes. Never,” she sternly said, “But, anyway. While we don’t have access to tax records for obvious reasons, an Inquisitor could easily become a stalker. Luckily, most Inquisitors don’t have the personalities for obsessing over a single person, but some do fake their personality matrices.”
A sudden thump shook the dropship, followed by a resounding click, “We are here, Inquisitor Penen,” A synthetic, androgenous voice said. Arthur jumped and looked around, only to see an AI’s waveform on the screen Maya was tapping earlier. Arthur and Maya were suddenly thrown to the wall behind them, the Assassin landing on her feet in a crouch while Arthur’s spine paid the price for his inability to predict the artificial centrifugal gravity. “I apologize for not informing the Initiate sooner.”
“It’s fine, De3. You have to teach some people the hard way. Especially about taxes,” she mumbled, “So, how’s it been while we were down there? Anything break?”
“Nothing to be concerned about, Ma’am,” they replied as Arthur slid down the wall and onto the transparent roof, “The pulsar’s magnetic field has scrambled both communications and navigation, but we will be able to realign it to UNET upon leaving the magnetic influence.”
The floor, or rather roof, suddenly popped open and a ladder descended into the space. Maya made her way over to the ladder and climbed up into the station, Arthur following soon after. The room he climbed into was a sparsely decorated kitchen-dining room-living space area with a table, stove top, couch, and all-purpose terminal in front of the couch.
Maya pulled her helmet off, letting her blonde hair spill down her astrosuit, and began pulling parts of her suit off. Arthur was entirely inexperienced in using an astrosuit, and did not have a single clue how to disassemble the patchwork astrosuit he procured from the pirates.
“If you are having trouble, I may be of assistance,” the AI said in his helmet. He jumped slightly, which was not missed by Maya, based on how she chuckled while pulling her boots off. “Please do not be startled. I will assist you. The first step is to disengage the helmet’s multiple safety locks. Seeing that this is a civilian model altered for use in piracy, there should be a physical switch near your temple.” Arthur pressed blindly until he found the little button laid into the helmet, pushing it in, “Wonderful. Next, twist the helmet counterclockwise approximately twenty two point five degrees. Then, push the helmet down a half inch. Finally, twist the helmet approximately forty five degrees clockwise. This should detach your helmet from the main suit of the body.”
Arthur followed the instructions, eventually pulling his helmet off with a hiss and taking a deep breath of non-compressed air. De3 then taught him how to remove his astrosuit, which was much different from Maya’s. His was not a number of separate parts, but was instead a single suit. The difference required him to open the back of the suit and to climb out of it. Once he found the many, many safety locks to ensure the suit’s integrity, he was able to climb out without further trouble. He was secretly thankful that he found the thing mostly secured when he was escaping; he would have died on Dead End if it was even a little compromised. q
“Those suits are always such a hassle,” Maya commented from the couch as he tentatively stepped out of the suit, “You should’ve chosen an undersuit-armor style instead of a power armor style.”
Arthur hung his head in defeat, “I was preoccupied at the time. I also did not see a single undersuit around. All that was there was this thing,” he said, gesturing to the still-whole astrosuit.
“Well, we can change that in… five years? Once you pass training, anyway,” she laughed, “Oh, don’t worry. I was joking. You’ll get through it before three years, tops. You’re overqualified for your engineering background, you’ve got a bit of investigation experience under your belt, and you killed a few people. You’re already through half of the classes.”
Arthur looked around for a place to sit and, finding nowhere but the couch and the dining table, pulled a chair from the latter and sat down, “Will there really be so many classes?” he asked.
“Oh, they’ll run you ragged. You’ll get through it. You were the choice of some high-ranking Inquisitor, after all, so someone’s got faith in you,” Maya answered.
The news was not what Arthur was expecting, and as such he was stunned into silence for a few seconds. When he finally got his bearings back, he gave Maya a questioning look, “Who thinks I would be a good Inquisitor? And someone ‘high up?’ That sounds suspicious…” he murmured.
“Well, maybe, but if you’re saying that then you’ve at least got a few ounces of sponge up there devoted to caution. That’s another good sign. My advice, though, is that you don’t turn that caution against your fellow Inquisitors,” Maya suggested, “It’s not only very rude, but also leads to people not trusting each other. And in this line of work, mistrust gets you killed when a joint mission comes up. I’d invite you to hang out for a while, but I think you need some sleep. The worm drive won’t be ready for… How long, De3?”
“Eight hours, Inquisitor Penen. A blind jump in the vague direction of the Inquisition Home astrodock will take up to an hour. Once our navigation and UNET connection is online, I estimate a twenty hour travel time to astrodock Fortress Gamma,” they explained.
“Thanks, De3. It’s such a nice AI,” Maya said to Arthur, “Anyway, we’ve got a long time to wait, so clean up and get some rest. It’ll probably be the last time you get any real rest in the next lifetime. De3, get him situated, please.”
Arthur followed De3’s directions and found himself in a small, blank, utilitarian bunk room with a bed, end table, and desk. The AI assured him that they would obtain all of his personal property before he began his training and left him to get some sleep. As Arthur fell asleep, he thought about what his life would be like as an Inquisitor. He knew that it would definitely be more eventful than doing studies, day in and day out. He fell asleep with a smile, happy with his choice.