I believe I had perturbed Zha. That was understandable. But following my explanation of Cronos and my tasking of her to my/its demise, she proceeded to be a bit uneasy around me. When I had first known her, many ages ago, her step was light and eager. Later, as my Interrogator and then as an Inquisitor, she carried herself firmly and with stoic rigidity. But now, in my presence, she moved with care, paying great attention to her surroundings as though looking for some detail that was amiss, perhaps tainted by daemonic influence.
I can only assume that was my doing.
Regardless, when I called she answered, as ever dutiful and keen to serve the Imperium. Our task, as of late, was in brainstorming how to navigate the galaxy—or, more presently, our Sector—in the absence of the Emperor’s Light from the Astronomican, as that continued to be the state of the Empyrean from our Navigators’ perspectives. It had been three weeks since the Event, and still His Light had not returned to illuminate the darkness around us. Faith began to be strained, but faith was not faithful that turned its back on divinity at the first hint of quietude. If we were truly loyal to the Throne, we would remain so, whether the Throne could see us or not.
In any event, navigation. Zha and I knew, from Inquisitorial records, that some form of FTL travel was possible even in the cataclysm of Old Night. Alas, the records upon my ship were far sparser than the libraries found aboard the Dawnshadow. Only slight references could be discerned here or there to such times. Maps covered countless tables in a section of my vessel’s canteen which had been cordoned off to give us a place to work near enough to food and drink. For days, Zha and I worked tirelessly on trying to identify a means of travel through the Warp when the Warp was more turbulent than ever it had been in our lives. Eventually, we discerned that some form of cogitator-assisted travel was theoretically possible, but it would have been far too slow; just to reach the Dawnshadow, which was my intended destination, would take a month or two traveling by that means. Given the pressing nature of the situation at hand, ‘months’ was a nonviable timeframe.
“You should get some rest, Mr. Blackgar,” Zha said to me eventually, the first bit of non-strategic commentary said between us in days. “You’re beginning to look as though you need it. I can press on without you, and will inform you if I’ve found anything.”
“Appreciate it, Z—Ms. Trantos,” I answered, slipping up in our local vernacular for a moment, likely evidencing my own exhaustion. Zha noticed and lifted an eyebrow, even if not turning her gaze from a dataslate. “But no, I must remain on the task at hand. I will not find rest while it is unresolved.”
“In that, we are quite alike,” Zha replied, managing a weak grin. “You know, I once believed there was the possibility than you, too, were a savant like me; you evidence the occasional glimmer of extreme intellect.”
“The occasional glimmer of extreme intellect,” I repeated, chuckling. “That almost sounds insulting.”
“I’m sorry, it isn’t meant—”
“I know,” I added at once. “I know, Zha. Oh, shoot, right.”
At that, Zha finally looked up from her dataslate, resting it on the table between us, and looked to me with a warm, gentle smile. I had never known her to look away from her work, not when it was not done. We were close—albeit not nearly as much so as I was with some others in my retinue, of course—but rarely had that friendship ever manifested beyond formal cordiality. “Callant,” she started, still grinning, and my mind flicked to Bliss, who was—until then—the only one these days who used my full first name, and ever with a grin on her face. “I think you and I are old enough to embrace a bit of informality. We’re also old enough to speak frankly to one another, don’t you think?”
“I suppose.”
“Then I shall. You are not a savant, Callant. Close, at times, but not. In that regard, the fractional contribution you will make to this deductive process is not particularly high. I suspect productivity on this task to drop by merely 5.3% in your absence. This isn’t an insult; compared to many we know, I think they’d contribute much less than 5.3% were they in your state. Go rest, Callant,” she insisted. I was a bit bewildered by her curtness, if only because it came from Zha herself; Varnus, Bliss, Mirena, and certainly Lucene could be and had been upfront and direct with me as they saw fit, but never Zha or, for instance, Silas. Zha always moderated herself well. But the blunt, straight honesty from her was refreshing. I could not help but to grin. “What?” she asked in response to my smile.
“Of the myriad good and bad decisions I’ve made in my time, asking you to be my Interrogator all those years ago—and then to recommend you rise to an Inquisitor—is very likely the best call I’ll ever make for the Imperium as a whole,” I explained, and then released a laugh to myself. Zha did not join in the comedy, but did maintain her smile. “You’re right, of course. Alas, I am too damn stubborn. So no, I decline the opportunity of rest. I will remain here. However, if we are being frank with one another, might I test you with a question of my own?”
“Please,” she nodded, inviting the challenge.
“What is your assessment of Galen?” I asked her. The smile that had crept upon her face faded away to a moment of confusion, wondering why I was asking her about him.
But a challenge was a challenge, and Zha and I were familiar enough with one another not to bother asking ‘why’ of each other. “Like many of those you’ve recruited, I think he is an above-average—if not outright exceptional—specimen of his ilk. Clearly very talented, as you and I can attest to firsthand, if one even questioned his abilities despite his wartime decorations. I think…I think you do not use him to his fullest capacity.”
“Is that so?”
“Callant, he’s a Knight. And an impressively capable one. I think you could ask more of him,” she explained.
“Hmm, noted.”
“May I ask why you’re asking about Galen?”
“You may ask, but I will not answer,” I grinned. That got a grin out of her too. “Zha, I am trying to plan rather far ahead. As I’m sure you know, every Inquisitor wants to solve all the universe’s heresies. We can’t. I must endeavor, then, to at least have solved enough to better the Imperium to a point of improvement over when I entered it. When I leave…,” I started, and locked eyes with her. Indeed, a tremble was present in them, garnered from the thought of my absence. “When I leave, I will want things to be…manageable. Like many of you, Galen is too great an asset to be wasted in my hands alone.”
“Would he work with me?” Zha asked, immediately seeing through the murky waters of my machinations and identifying that I was trying to set them up as allies. My grin widened at her wit, as ever.
“I do not know. But I have to hope so. Hope for the future is in short supply amidst this suffocating darkness, so it must therefore be maintained wherever it is found,” I answered. From my response, Zha raised a hand to the dataslate she had earlier rested on the table between us, and her eyes began to dart around. I knew she had had an idea and was working through her theories, and I also knew not to interrupt that process. Instead, I continued looking on at her in awe and reverence, enjoying seeing my once-savant now-allied-Inquisitor tick. Eventually, her eyes settled upon me, then her dataslate. She then began pushing scriptures and maps around on our table, looking for something. “An idea?” I asked her at last.
“Suffocating darkness,” she answered. “It’s not just Old Night that can create such an experience. In fact, we see it all the time from our foes.”
“From the archenemy?” I suggested.
“No, the Xenos,” she replied, and then at last found the map she was looking for, standing up to spread it wide across our table. I rose to join her and looked down upon the map from the other side of it. I knew its layout at once; it was an etched battlemap of our latest recorded sightings of the Xenos the Imperium defeated in the First Tyrannic War. The Xenos rarely concerned me, as I leaned heavily into the workings of the Ordo Hereticus, so I did not know their names off the top of my head, but I knew enough about them to know where we were fighting them still. “These creatures project a psychic blackness all around them, right?”
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“Yeah, it makes reinforcing besieged worlds almost impossible,” I grumbled. “Is that supposed to help us in some way?”
“I believe it can,” Zha nodded, eager to explain herself. “The Warp is three-dimensional, even if those dimensions change in orientation and positioning randomly, and even if temporally speaking its allegiance to time is not defined. But we know that the Warp maps roughly onto the galaxy, if a bit beyond. We use the Light of the Throne to navigate through the Warp, but what if we could turn our attention to spots of emptiness instead to find our way? Surely, for Navigators that can peer into the Warp and discern its layout, they must be able to find such swaths of darkness, no?”
“Perhaps they can, but how would that help us?”
“One spot of darkness may not, especially if the Warp tossed it around their view. But multiple spots, such as those generated by Kraken and Kronos—forgive the similarity in nomenclature—could be used to triangulate our position relative to them. And if Navigators knew our position relative to these enemy fleets by looking upon their shadows, they’d be able to discern our position relative to the rest of the galaxy, enabling Warp travel again,” Zha elaborated. “It would take some cogitatorial realignment and consultation with the Machine Spirits supporting our Navigators’ equipment,” she added.
“I do not like the idea of relying upon our enemies’ existences to fight our battles,” I grumbled, studying the map before me. Indeed, I placed the known tendrils of Kraken and Kronos some distance apart from one another, and indeed, they—and other fleet incursions—could be used to triangulate a point in space and in the Warp, if they presented themselves as such. “But while our enemies do exist, perhaps there is some value in using them against each other,” I decided, and finally looked up to Zha, who was waiting for my approval. “Can you and Varnus get the equipment primed for an operation such as this?”
“Yes, Mr. Blackgar, I believe we can,” she confirmed, regressing back to heightened formality.
“Do so. Tomorrow—you need as much rest as I do, Ms. Trantos. Starting tomorrow, you have every resource in our fleet at your disposal. Get this done,” I ordered her.
“I shall, and thank you, Mr. Blackgar, for the offer of respite. I hope you will find it as well. But we will need the approval of our Navigators in this endeavor, and they will need to know what we are asking them to look for,” Zha reminded me.
“Leave them to me. I will get them to comply or break them upon my Rosette.”
***
Saede Osman looked, despite his age and genetic background as a Navigator, surprisingly akin to a normal human. His skin coloration may have vanished, but that could have been confused with a slightly-more extreme example of Pyrran descent like my own. His Warp Eye was obscured behind a crown of cybernetics, so it, too, did nothing to suggest any abnormality about Saede’s existence at a glance. Indeed, the only hint of mutation one could find was the slenderness and furriness of his hands, being more akin to those of a beast than a man.
This was, of course, if one did not hold a conversation with Saede, in which circumstance one might discern his forked tongue and fanged teeth, not unlike a viper. “Absolutely not, Inquisitor. What you suggest is preposterous.”
“What I suggest is what is required of you,” I insisted, and then glanced behind me to Zha, who nodded. Zha stood as part of a quartet of herself, Varnus, Lucene, and Captain Vakian. “If I believed there were an alternative—”
“There is an alternative. It is waiting,” Saede suggested.
“Waiting?”
“Waiting. Or do you not believe in the Emperor’s ability to shine through this accursed darkness?” he asked, testing me even further.
Saede’s head cocked to the side as I glowered at him with my one functioning eye. We had, until then, been keeping some distance between us. I closed that distance considerably in my reply. “Once, Osman, I will warn you not to question the depths of my beliefs. The crowd of those that have done so hence count themselves amongst the ranks of the dead. You do not wish to join them.”
“Nor do I wish to look upon the blackness you have asked of me,” Saede returned, shifting in a moment of discomfort within the throne-like seating through which he manifested his abilities and directed starships through the bowels of hell. It was to this device that the cybernetics upon his crown were connected.
“And why is that?”
“Have you ever faced these Xenos, Inquisitor?” he asked me.
“I have not,” I admitted.
“Have you ever looked upon their presence in the Warp?” I shook my head again. “Well I have.”
“Excellent, then you know how,” I interjected. Saede’s two, unmutated eyes narrowed into a squint of tested patience.
“It is a darkness, this thing these Xenos emit, that hungers. To look upon it is to suffer a gnawing upon one’s mind and soul. It is something that cannot be endured for long,” Saede explained.
“Or what?”
“Or what, what?”
I sighed. “What will happen if you must endure this gnawing for long?”
“I mustn’t,” Saede deflected, which was itself an immediate obstruction of Inquisitorial operations, but I moved past it as the task at hand was more pressing than any politicking.
“Humor me.”
“I don’t believe I will, Inquisitor. As I said, what you ask is preposterous. At best. At worst, it is heretical. I will not comply with requests on this matter, and if you wish to remain in good standing with my House, you will not press this issue further,” he denied me. I took one long, deep breath in, closing my eye, and hissed my breath out as I closed the gap between us in full. Then standing up to him directly, I opened my gaze into as clear a glare as I could manage. “You do not intimidate me, Inquisitor. The Nobilite—”
“—Is not the Inquisition. You are a resource. Your House is a resource. And we are at war; any resources the Inquisition deems it requires to wage that war will be surrendered to us. You will comply not merely with my questions, but you will consent to my demands, or I will end you where you sit and find someone who will do as I ask. If you believe in the Divine Might of the Emperor, then you believe in my ability to be a more terrifying enemy to have than any Xenos that might befoul your gaze. Test my patience further, Osman, and when I have finished forcing you into submission, I will walk you to your House and they will beg me to remove your head on their doorstep rather than punish them for your transgressions. What will happen if you look upon the Xenos’s shadow for too long?”
Saede stared at me for a moment, then, though the absence of his reply made that moment feel like an eternity. I had at last struck fear into his eyes. But, as evidenced from his immediate response, evidently not enough. “The Nobilite will hear of these threats, Inquisitor,” he warned me, trying to maintain his cool in cover of a slight quiver that had entered his voice.
One more deep breath, though this time my glare did not falter from his gaze. In the next instant, he found his head clutched between hands bionic and human, and at once released his own psykana. But he did not direct it against me, uncertainty clouding his focus. To disagree with and deny an Inquisitor was one thing. To attack an Inquisitor, particularly one that had not been sanctioned by his peers, was another. So he did not attack me, but did make his psykana known to me, pressing against my mind with it and enveloping me in the hostile embrace of his own. Frost began to creep upon the walls, not unlike as it had within Firestation Ariadne. “And how will they know, Saede Osman, if we are unable to tell them, as we are now?” I growled, then squeezed at his head slightly more tightly. “Begin to answer my questions, Osman, or your skull will accompany your heart inside your chest. What are the risks, to yourself and beyond, of looking upon the Xenos?”
Oh, he was fearful of me then. Not because I had threatened him so, not because of my grasp on his head, not because I was an Inquisitor. But because he had been trying to get inside my head, and had never so much as scratched the surface of my mind. His psykana, tailored and specialized for moving voidships about, paled in comparison to mine, and mine had been trained for the express purpose of destroying my enemies and upholding the rule of the Inquisition. Yes, he could enshroud me with the will of his mind, but he could do only that. He did not possess the means to harm me, not physically nor mentally. But I possessed every opportunity and means to eviscerate him, and it was mercy alone that I had not done so yet.
“There…there could be mental deterioration, resulting in loss of faculty operation,” Saede answered at last. “I would not rule out the possibility that they might be able to gaze back, and if they did, I could not say what that might imply.”
“In battle, we risk limb and life. And life is the only currency that matters in the Emperor’s Court. You will look upon this darkness, at risk to yourself, that you might serve the Throne in this time of need. You will do this, not because I ask you to or threaten your well-being should you disobey; but you will do this because you must do this, for the survival and sanctity of our God-Emperor, Holy be His name,” I demanded of him, and then at last released him from my grasp. I stepped away as well, being met with the invisible force of his psykana as I did so, but it dissipated as we backed off from one another.
Saede continued to glare at me, but his breath had strained. While he recovered in his throne, he said little outright, but his eyes said plenty. They spoke of submission and compliance, but also that any threat he had made my way—of burning my relationship with the Navis Nobilite, for instance—was still in play, if we survived this endeavor. I nodded to him, willing to trade that relationship for a journey home to the Dawnshadow. “Fine,” he hissed at last. “Fine, Inquisitor Blackgar, fine. Your Agents may adjust my devices as needed to this task. But there will be a reckoning for this.”
“There will be a reckoning,” I agreed, turning from him as Varnus and Zha began to move in to configure the cogitators and apparatus of his throne. I, meanwhile, joined Lucene by her side and gave Captain Vakian my approval to disseminate this resolution to the rest of my fleet. “Of that, I have little doubt. But it will not be for this.”