On the next day, the 45th day since my recovery began, I awoke to find Penitent no longer sleeping next to me. She was, however, still nearby, praying as she often had. The wounds I had incurred by getting in contact with Luther seemed to have subsided, and I was more able than I was the previous day. I forced myself to sit up, and then I wrestled myself to a standing position of my own, albeit stumbling a bit. Me bothering to try standing made Penitent rise to aid me, but she noticed I was able to balance myself. She congratulated me, which I thanked her for, and then I asked her to find Okustin for me. She nodded and set off to do so. I turned to the coast, and more importantly, toward Abseradon. It was many dozens, perhaps hundreds of miles away. Nothing between me and it but the vast, unending ocean of Hestia Majoris. Somewhere in the city, four heretics were still searching for my remains. They would soon learn that I was far from dead. “And then I’ll come for you,” I muttered to myself. “And I won’t fail as you did.”
“Talking to yourself, sir?” Okustin asked from behind me.
I grinned and gingerly turned to face him. “Actually, no. Walk with me.”
“Are you up to that?”
“Don’t baby me, Interrogator, I have no time for it. Walk,” I scolded him, and gestured to my side. He smiled and nodded, stepping ahead. I stumbled to his side. “Have you made contact with the Navy?”
“I have, sir. I can get you into vox communication with Lord Captain Alejandro Batos, at your request,” Okustin reported. “He commands the Navy fleet stationed in this system.”
“Excellent work, Hans,” I smiled. “I think I will allow you to handle those communications, actually—get you some practice for that. The Lord Captain may take offense to speaking with what he will perceive as one of my junior officers, but if he does, remind him that your words are my own, and that should set him in line,” I explained.
“And what will I be asking of the Lord Captain?” Okustin asked.
“You will ask for him to park a vessel in geostat above Abseradon. Have him run whatever military exercises he needs to to justify it to Governor Merek, doesn’t matter to me. All that matters is that we get a ship up there,” I explained. “Then I want him to give us the codes for the planetary broadcast system of that ship. I have a few words I’d like to say to the city.”
“I bet you do,” Okustin chuckled. “I’ll make it happen, sir.”
“I know you will.”
“Is there anything else, sir?”
“You’ve been sparring with Mirena,” I started.
He blinked twice, then asked, “She told you?”
“She did not know I was conscious, but yes,” I nodded.
“If it’s a problem it will end,” Okustin offered.
“It isn’t. I wanted to thank you for it. For keeping you and her occupied, and from going mad. As I understand it, she’s been kicking your ass,” I suggested, smirking.
“I’m sure she likes to think so,” he smiled.
“I would like to spar with you too sometime. Not today, I am not up for that today,” I laughed. “But if you wouldn’t mind—”
“You want to get back in the groove. It’d be my honor, sir. Just tell me when,” Okustin agreed. I stopped walking then, and took another look at the city to our left. “We’ll give them hell, sir,” Okustin assured me, stopping in his stroll as well and following my gaze.
“Yes, we will. Okustin, I do not know the time or place, but Abseradon is going to turn into a warzone. Our warzone. We will win that fight, I’m sure of it. And when we do, if any of the heretics survive, I expect they will go into hiding. If that happens, I will be asking you to go offworld. To Quintus, to seek support from the others there. There’s too much heat to leave now; I imagine our foes are checking every transport that leaves the city. You can’t go now, and I wouldn’t ask you to miss the fight. But when it’s over—”
“I’ll be happy to, sir.” And then he laughed, adding, “This place reeks.”
Day 45 became day 55. Okustin and I began sparing on the 46th, and though he went easy on me at first, after just a few days I was able to compete with him again. From there it became less a matter of building muscle and strengthening bone, and more about remembering and honing skills and techniques. Okustin was a capable fighter himself; really, the only difference between us was that he was not a psyker. He did not need to be to make a fine Inquisitor in the future, though.
On the 55th day, I was satisfied with having sparred with him so, and left him to his duties. I was continuing to sleep outside, under the stars, and Penitent continued to sleep some distance away, to a loose interpretation of ‘by my side.’ In the mornings, I would find her praying, as ever. I mostly let her do so, until the day of the 56th morning. “Penitent,” I called to her then. She looked up at me, eager to serve. “You’re up.”
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“Up in what way, Cal?” she asked, standing to her feet.
I tossed both of my hands toward the Bird, and replied, “In the way in which you are a master duelist.” My power sword and Nemesis Falchion flew to me, each one landing in one of my hands. I tossed her the power sword, and she caught it deftly. “I know you’re more partial to the Eviscerator, but I don’t wish to practice with that yet.”
“Cal, it’s a little impertinent for your bodyguard to duel you,” she suggested.
“Think of it as…building up my self-defense for the future. Which it is. Does that make it slightly more acceptable?” I asked. “And don’t turn the sword on, let’s not go there just yet.”
“You think you’re up to this?” she asked.
“I’m really getting annoyed by everyone asking that,” I sighed.
She chuckled and shook her head before flourishing the power sword I had given her. “I don’t mean as a judgment of your strength, Cal. You’ve never fought me before. And I have a notable size advantage on you.”
“All the better to face a new opponent. And you may find you need that size against me, Penitent,” I smiled. “Any ground rules, or things you want me not to do?”
“No blood drawn from either blade. Don’t mess with my head. Everything else is fine with me, Cal, but I still don’t think you know what you’re asking for,” she warned me.
“Assumptions assumptions. Come on, Sister, show me how unprepared I am,” I commanded her, levying my falchion toward her. She smiled, nodded, and then flourished her weapon again before darting for me. She was not as fast as the puppet-Astartes I had killed, but she was still a blur, a ribbon of red that wove through the air at a monstrous pace. I caught her blade against my own, but was forced back one step, then a second, her strength driving me away. But after the second step, I dug my feet in and held my ground, pressing back against the titan before me. “Is that all?” I grunted. She smiled back, an excited, eager spirit inside her.
No, she proved, that was far from all. She slammed into me, knocking me back further still, before gracefully darting to my side and striking again with monstrous force. Again, I blocked, but that was all I had time for. She possessed such a capacity for intensity that as the mere man that I was, I could not mount an attack of my own. Six times I blocked her strikes, then finally she darted away to try a different approach. That afforded me the time to try something new myself. I thrust my bladed arm forward, sending the weapon straight toward her, propelled by the lightning of my mind. She dove aside with her usual grace, dodging with ease, and made to strike my defenseless being from my right side. But my blade had not been carelessly tossed away, and instead hung in the air just past where she had been. I willed it back just in time to defend against her next strike, and from her surprise of my ability to do so, knock her into a backpedal and levy a strike of my own.
She blocked that herself, of course, pressing back against my advance. Lightning thundered from between us, evaporating a nearby patch of grass. A wide grin had spread across her lips, a joy greater than any I had seen from her before. She may have even been laughing, though I would not have heard it over the crackling of my mind’s presence on my falchion. So caught up in her elation, I was, that I afforded her a precious millisecond to back away, which she used to spin on one bare foot and kick my sword from my hands. Her feet then swapped roles, and she planted a foot into my chest before kicking me into the ground, smashing me onto my backside. With a foot still pressed against my torso, she lowered her sword to my neck, then nodded to me. “Satisfied?” she asked.
“Not at all. Another round?” I asked, and willed my weapon back to me.
“If you have it in you,” she agreed, smiling.
In further opposition to the peaceful nights I had spent with Mirena, Penitent and I spent our mornings thereafter dueling. The Honeblade Warhawks were so-named because they had been, for several millennia, masters behind the swords that every soldier carried, the -hawk part suggesting that they had the swiftness and lethality to put those swords to their best use. And as their Commissar, I, aside from having leadership and tactical prowess, was meant to be an example even to them. But even so, I was never a match for Penitent. In the days that followed, I never once found myself in a position of ‘victory’ against her. She thoroughly, undebatably bested me in every regard. I relished every loss.
So, too, did my crew. Word spread fast that the Inquisitor and the Penitent were spending their mornings dueling, and it became a ritual unto itself to watch. Penitent may not have been a match for a true Astartes, necessarily, but I can say with the utmost confidence that I had never fought—and hopefully will never fight—an opponent greater than her. While I never raised my psyker abilities to invade her mind and assault her there, I did use everything else in my arsenal against her. I would shatter the ground on which we spent our nights and vaporize swaths of green from the coasts, and despite the mass destruction I, as a Gamma-grade psyker, could commit to, none of it mattered. Penitent was simply of another scale of capability altogether, and it was not close.
We dueled and dueled until the dreaded 66th day, the day Zha had predicted the discovery of my survival would occur. It came and went without event. But on the 67th, we were called upon to wage our great and terrible holy war against the heretic, as soon as we awoke. Before I even got a chance to greet Penitent in the morning, Okustin was nearby, holding a pict-recorder in his hands. “Sir, you need to see this. I think it’s fair to say Zha was right, and that they know,” he told me, with no time for a good morning. I took the picter from him.
“Is this live?” I asked, taken away by the gall of what I was looking at.
“It is, sir,” Okustin nodded.
“Looks a bit like a trap, no?” I asked, a touch of eager anticipation on my voice. Okustin laughed and nodded. “Want to help me spring it?”
“It’d be a pleasure, sir,” he nodded.
“Do we have our ship over the city?” Okustin nodded again. “Good. Tell everyone to gear up, and tell Mirena to get the Bird ready. We’ll have to have Luther on the bird—make sure Mirena recognizes that. We can’t leave him here—can’t spare the bodies to defend him, and we’ll need Castecael for on-field medicae support,” I explained.
“Understood, sir,” he nodded, and began heading back to the Bird.
“We’re going back, Cal?” Penitent asked to confirm with me.
“We are. The heretic summons us. I have looked forward to this for weeks, now,” I said.
“As have I,” she nodded in agreement, placing a hand on my shoulders.
I looked back at the picter in my hands, then threw it into the water out of disgust. On its screen was a live-recording of the central structure of Abseradon, upon which a great big ‘I’ with a skull in the center was carved out in raging purple flames—a defiled symbol of the Inquisition. In one of the skull’s eyes a corpse was hung, a Rosette nailed to his chest.
It was Scayn.