The cryo facility opened to a small temple to Holy Terra and the Throne some distance from where the Heretek had left the Eversor to deal with us. Many balconies lined the walls, and the entrance to this temple from the cryo facility took the form of a mezzanine below said-balconies, which circled around the room before leading to some stairs to the ‘ground’ floor of the temple. It was there that the three heretics had gathered to discuss their next steps, away from me and my Agents. “Even if the Eversor succeeds in killing Blackgar, it is unlikely we will be able to easily acquire or dispatch Merek again. The loyalist Inquisitor’s retinue has proven elusive in his absence already,” Gale Ryke lamented. “And we have not heard back from the Vindicare since they voxxed in that they were being pursued. Our ability to exert pressure on Abseradon is waning, Espirov. Where are we with production?”
“Production has delayed for the last two days, Ryke, while the three of you egotistical flesh heaps worked on drawing Blackgar out of hiding,” the Heretek—Espirov—replied. “The resources and manpower to stage this lure has cost our mutual friend greatly, which in turn has cost me greatly. We are behind where we should be by now.”
“It had to be done,” the third heretic, whose name I did not then know, shrugged. “Blackgar needed to be pulled from the shadows as soon as possible.”
“I do not disagree with your assessment, Silver,” Espirov admitted. “But we are without unlimited resources. With Blackgar dead, even if his retinue remains, I am confident production can resume at operative levels.”
“How? Merek knows too much. And as you pointed out, our mutual friend has lost a lot of manpower today and in his failed attempt to crush Blackgar to death. Merek will be able to offer guidance to our other sites, and we may not be able to defend them as we have,” Ryke said, still flustered.
“We do not have enough of the product to take Abseradon, but we do have enough to defend what exists,” Espirov suggested. “The current results would suffice against our enemies’ known forces, should they come to our facilities.”
“And what of the giant warship now hovering overhead, which is no doubt in contact with Blackgar’s retinue?” the third heretic—‘Silver’—asked.
“When it comes to matters that concern the sky and above, our friend assures me there is little to worry about,” Espirov replied. “The warship is of no consequence. It will not fire onto Abseradon without an Inquisitor’s orders, and with Blackgar dead, that will not happen. Yes, it may make some things…more tedious. But tedium is a pestilence we are capable of suffering and surviving,” Espirov explained, and walked past the other two heretics toward the exit of the temple.
“You’re sure of that?” Ryke asked as Espirov began to leave. But the Heretek turned around to face his ally in response.
“I am. As you should—” Espirov began, but slowly tilted his head back to look up at the mezzanine that overlooked their trio.
“Please, continue,” I shrugged, gesturing to invite them to carry on their discussion.
None of them said anything to reply to me. The two Phaenonites looked up at me in disdainful disgust, while Espirov’s Xenos-skull stared at me, emotionless.
“Or don’t,” I shrugged again, and strolled to my left toward the stairwell that led to their floor. As I did so, I again drew my Bolt Pistol and my power sword. Ryke and the other Phaenonite—Silver, whose full name I had by then deduced from my own background knowledge of known and wanted Inquisition traitors: Foxon Silverman—drew power swords as well, while the Heretek—Espirov—backed away.
“You two, you know we have a contingency, but it is only that,” Espirov warned his allies.
“Yes, yes, cogbrain, we know your contingency,” Silverman replied while he and Ryke shielded the Heretek from me as I finished my descent toward them. “This is Inquisition business anyhow. Leave us.”
“You are without your lady friend, Blackgar,” Ryke noted.
“An astute observation,” I nodded. In the meantime, Espirov took his leave of the three Inquisitors in the room. Yes, I wanted him greatly at the time. But I could not merely ignore the other two heretics shielding his escape. “I left her to dance with one of his,” I replied, nodding toward Silverman.
“Then you have left her to die. And when she does, you know he’ll march right back to us and end you, if we haven’t done so by then,” Silverman chided me.
“You lot continue to grossly underestimate me and mine,” I frowned, insulted.
“We know what she is. And we know what you are. We like our odds,” Ryke shrugged.
“Yeah, you seemed to like them enough when you dumped me in that flesh pit for your little test. How’d that turn out?”
“Seems to have cost you an arm,” Ryke suggested.
“Fair enough. Say, out of curiosity,” I started, but had little interest in continuing the conversation, and instead shot at Silverman. The bolt caught him square in the gut, but where I expected it to blow him apart, it instead merely knocked him back a few steps. That served as a grim, if nondescript, reminder of what exactly I was up against. Phaenonites were not merely traitors to the Imperium, the Throne, and the Inquisition—no, they were true heretics, embracing the realm of the arch-enemy upon their very forms and armaments, if not necessarily aligning with the arch-enemy in cause. So as Silverman stumbled back from my shot, his cloak waved aside, revealing mauled flesh stitched together with warpstuff and crude daemon metals. Silverman’s very existence was one of heresy, and I expected no different from Ryke, who dashed for me after I shot Silverman away.
I deflected one blow, then another, from Ryke before catching his blade against the ground with my own, whereupon I then launched a foot into his gut and kicked him away. Realizing that my power sword was the lesser of the weapons available to me at the time, I then tossed it at Ryke as he stumbled back, though he easily deflected it aside. In the meantime, Silverman had righted himself and tossed his own sword-wielding arm toward me. Though there was a great distance between us, his arm stretched unnaturally so, no doubt mechanized and warped by his knowledge of the occult, and he would have skewered me on his blade had I not drawn and engaged my Nemesis Falchion, which seemed to slow his actions down. Not significantly, mind you, but enough for me to survive and sidestep his elongated arm. In the process of that sidestepping, I took two shots at Ryke, one of which missed outright, but the other caught him in the shoulder. Likewise, he was not significantly deterred.
Ryke was a bit more wounded, however, when I willed my mind to grip the power sword out of the air, Ryke having deflected it skyward after my initial toss. The weapon screamed down and clipped his left ear off before sinking into the ground at his feet. While Ryke recoiled in pain, I turned my attention to the other heretic, and with one of his arms still extended, I rushed for Silverman, shooting him in my advance. It continued to prove only as effective as to be a nuisance, but a nuisance was more than nothing. When I had emptied the clip of my Bolt Pistol, I tossed the emptied weapon at Ryke, if only to distract him further, while willing the power sword at his feet back to my grasp instead.
At the moment that I reached Silverman, his arm had returned to a normal length, but it was of only moderate defense for him against my two swords. He proved, on his own, incapable of keeping up with the former Commissar of the 8th Honeblades, even despite the daemonic augmetic engines fused into his body. Though the Vindicare may have pulled the trigger, I knew Silverman was Ordo Sicarius, so I knew he was Scayn’s killer in the end. And the fury I unleashed upon him, knowing that, was relentless to the extreme. I may not have been able to kill him outright by the time Ryke finally recomposed himself and aided his ally, but I had landed a dozen nicks and gashes upon the heretical traitor-Inquisitor by then all the same. And for a being such as he, mangled by the Warp, a cut from a Nemesis weapon surely stung indeed.
When Ryke reached me, rather than slicing at me with his power sword he instead thrust his arms down upon me, not even with clenched fists. I inferred that there were mysteries beneath his robes I ought not let him reveal, so I briefly relented from Silverman to catch his arms against my own two blades at my back, and indeed, maletek razors sliced through his robes against my weapons, hissing against my armaments. Silverman mistook my turning my attention to Ryke as an opportunity to strike at me, which I replied to merely by thrusting my weapons forward again, pushing Ryke’s bladed maletek arms off me in the process, and then slashed down upon Silverman’s advance. In doing so, I cut two wide gashes into Silverman’s upper torso, making him recoil away from me and let me better turn my attention to Ryke.
As I dueled against Ryke, who was admittedly better suited for such a task than Silverman was, I willed a magazine of Bolt ammunition from my bandolier and launched it across the temple. It landed near my Bolt Pistol, which had itself scattered away from my earlier toss. I then willed a reload of the weapon from beyond my grasp, and telekinetically raised the weapon upon Silverman, who was still recovering from the gashes torn into his front. It turns out dumping a magazine of Bolt ammunition into something, even if augmented by the Warp, could prove at least moderately effective, and I seemed to be pushing Silverman onto his last legs whilst keeping up pace with Ryke in our duel.
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Silverman made a sort of growling noise behind me after I had unloaded the full clip into him, which made me reason I should probably turn my attention back to him for a time. So I willed my Bolt Pistol to fly across the room and into Ryke’s face, bashing him away from me, whilst turning around to face Silverman. As I did so, I sliced Drepane over the electrified edge of my power sword, letting the lightning catch upon the psychic energies of the Nemesis weapon. I then whipped it out away from me toward Silverman, and, fueled by my own psyker abilities, it exploded forth in a wall of electrified death that likely would have vaporized the heretic had it caught him squarely. It did, ultimately, obliterate the wall of the temple behind him, but he very literally leapt aside, his hands now as claws. He jumped from his former position to the banister of the mezzanine where I had stood where I greeted the heretics earlier, and then pounced again from there for me in a blur. But in as comparable a blur, I responded.
Claws or hands or anything else, the pair of them fell to the ground long before Silverman did, his forearms being sliced cleanly off as soon as he reached me. And in the same momentum of the strike that did Silverman in, I sliced open Ryke’s front with Drepane, opening his chest and face in the process, and claiming one of his eyes. The two of them hit the ground almost at the same time, both screaming in agony. I impaled Ryke with Drepane to keep him still while I turned my attention to Silverman, standing over Scayn’s killer.
+FOXON SILVERMAN.+ I roared at him, planting a foot on his shivering head as he bled out. I believe I spoke aloud, too, but my own inner monologue as well as the voice that appeared in Silverman’s head were both deafening. +YOU ARE EXCOMMUNICATE TRAITORIS, AND I DECLARE YOU EXTREMIS DIABOLUS. BEFORE I SEND YOU TO YOUR DAMNATION, I NEED TO KNOW: WHO GAVE THE ORDER TO KILL THADDEUS SCAYN?+
“Who do you think, you frigging loyalist twat?” Silverman spat out, convulsing from my mental assault as much as from the blood loss induced from his missing arms. “Scayn was far from the first, but he was just as insignificant as all the others.”
With that, two skulls—mine and that of Gale Ryke—exploded in psychic agony. Foxon Silverman, however, just simply exploded, his body rupturing in every direction in a great splash of crimson as I crushed him to the bottom of a crater three feet in depth and thrice that across. I had never unleashed such raw fury from my mind before, and I pray to the Throne that I never find myself doing so again. It was physically painful for me to do so, and as revolting to the stomach then as it is now to think about, to say nothing of the red gore I had inadvertently drenched myself with from head to toe. After panting for a few moments to barely begin to collect my thoughts, I stumbled out of the crater I had made and returned to Ryke.
“Gale Ryke,” I started, still panting, and needed a moment to collect my breath.
“We could have done such wonders for mankind,” Ryke lamented, even then believing in his cause—even with a Nemesis weapon in his gut. “The stagnant empire of yours could have ended and made way for progress.”
“You are Excommunicate Traitoris, and I declare you Extremis Diabolus,” I continued.
“Frig your declaration! What is it for, Callant, hm? What does mankind get out of my death? We could have given them so much more,” he protested.
“You could have given them wonders indeed,” I agreed. “But instead you chose to give them death and pain. And death and pain are all you’re owed in turn. But I will spare you the pain, heretic, if you comply and tell me what I need to know. If you resist, your body will break far more slowly than Silverman’s did.”
Ryke looked at me and hissed, both out of hatred and of agony, but all the same, asked, “What could you possibly want to know, scum?”
“The Heretek—Espirov—full name?” I asked.
“Holicar Espirov, Dark Mechanicum. Formerly a Genetor,” Ryke replied.
“Your mutual friend, the Vostroyan—name?”
“Don’t know it. Espirov does, though. And before you ask, I don’t know where the Vostroyan is located, either. We call him Rogue because…well, I shouldn’t need to explain that one to you by this point,” Ryke elaborated. The walls of the temple began to crack around us. Ryke assumed it was from the damage of my electric attack against Silverman.
“How did your group come together? Espirov hinted at having a superior—did they arrange your meeting?”
“If you’d believe it, our meeting was one of chance,” Ryke answered with a shrug. “Yes, Espirov has a superior. Who doesn’t, eh? You do, I do, I guess Rogue doesn’t I suppose,” he added, laughing. “I do not know the name of Espirov’s superior. But I do know they were very interested in the Astartes program, and provided the once-Genetor with what they needed to know to get him going on this operation. As for my superior—I mean, I could give you a name, but it wouldn’t do you any good. Inquisitorial cells are no different for you as they are for me. Compartmentalization has its uses.”
“Do you have operations beyond Hestia Majoris?”
“Me personally? No.”
“And your aligned cells?”
Ryke smirked. “Of course, Blackgar. I’m offended by the stupidity of that question.”
“Where?”
“Compartmentalization.”
“You don’t know?”
He shook his head, and around that time noticed that blood was beginning to drip out of the cracks in the walls of the temple. “What’s going on?”
“I’m asking the questions, heretic. On Abseradon, how many factories does your group own? Not counting the one Vostroya brought down on me.”
“Eight more, that I know of.”
“The noble houses seemed oddly vacant on our arrival today. Do you happen to know anything about that?”
“We relocated them, yes. Espirov seemed eager to experiment on less flimsy flesh, as well as to salvage their augmetics,” Ryke confirmed.
“How long have you been conducting your operation in Abseradon?”
“Does it matter?”
“Ryke,” I pressed.
“A little over two decades now. Things started very subtle; we didn’t even need Merek initially. But as successes mounted, our surety fueled our ambition. I suppose that’s what caught your eye, in the end,” he replied. At that point, the cracks in the walls ruptured, and a torrent of blood began to pour out into the temple. “Great Gods, what’s happening?” Ryke exclaimed.
“You resisted my questioning.”
“No I didn’t, I’ve answered everything you’ve—”
“No. Your mind has rationalized the little bits you’ve given me into the form of this discussion, but you have resisted me greatly. And so the cost on your being has been great in turn. You now have critical levels of internal hemorrhaging. I suppose your mind is rationalizing your suffering to the state of the world around us, as you once knew it,” I explained. “I do not believe the four of you met by chance. Who instigated your meeting?”
“It was purely happenstance, Blackgar!” Ryke repeated. The ceiling of the temple collapsed around us, and blood began to rain down upon us both. “Kill me already, please.”
“Who instigated your meeting?”
“No one,” he insisted. I felt it then. The presence of the Warp. Something behind me, a Third member of our discussion, birthed within the vast blood collapsing in upon the temple. I did not get the sense that they were the one I was asking about; rather, this Third was something of Ryke’s own background, his own treacherous, heretical path. I dared not turn to face it myself; I had no desire to know the heresies Ryke knew. So, instead, still within his own head, I picked Ryke’s feeble mental existence up and tossed him behind me to the something, and cut the psychic connection I had with the heretic immediately thereafter.
It took me a few moments to come to and sit up, as I was not only physically exhausted, but psychically traumatized from the interrogation. What had emerged within Ryke’s mind had clawed at my own as I left, but thankfully the material world around me was without its presence. Behind me was the bloody crater I had created. In front of me was a pile of dust in the shape of a man. “Told you you’d be dust,” I muttered to the particulate remains of Gale Ryke, and then gingerly stood to my feet and collected my things. My knees were weak, but I found myself capable of carrying myself and my belongings. I left the way I had entered, up the—now damaged—mezzanine to return to Penitent, and to assist her with the Eversor if I could. I was in no physical or mental shape to pursue Espirov, and the Heretek likely had far too much of a lead on me anyways.
Upon arriving back in the cryo chamber, I found the entire scene utterly devastated. Every coolant column had been blown asunder, in many places the floor had been torn open, and cool liquid was sloshed across the metal ground. The Eversor’s legs were some distance away from the door I entered from. The top half of his body was nowhere to be found, though I surmised that a gaping, scorched hole in the ground near his legs was likely where it wound up before the volatile chemicals in his form ignited from the shock of his death.
A few feet from the door stood a very bloodied Penitent, her Eviscerator planted in the ground with her hands upon it. “Throne, Cal, are you alright?” she asked softly, voice quivering.
“Am I alright?” I asked, and then it dawned on me that I was still covered in Silverman. “Oh. This isn’t mine. Are you alright, Penitent?”
“I will be fine, Cal. Just need a rest,” she nodded gently. I approached her and found her shivering, and not merely from the coolant about her feet, though that likely did not help either. The Eversor’s poisons and toxins would have killed her outright had she been injected with any of them, so there was the slight blessing that she had not suffered such a fate, but even so it was abundantly obvious that she had suffered several wounds all the same. The full extent of those wounds was less clear.
I held a hand out to her.
She shook her head. “I do not think that is wise, Cal.”
“Take my hand, Penitent.”
“Your own stance does not look steady, Cal.”
“Take my hand.”
“Mine isn’t either.”
+Take my hand. That’s an order.+ I commanded. With some reluctance, Penitent obeyed, and gingerly lifted a palm from the hilt of her Eviscerator. She slowly moved the wavering hand near to mine, but never quite reached it before collapsing forward upon me. I half expected as such, and caught her as best I could, but even so, my own weakness coupled with her size made me fall to my knees in turn. “Silence lifted,” I grunted into my vox as I buckled under Penitent’s weight. “Need EVAC and medicae support, Floor 500.”
“We’re…on 492, Cal,” Penitent weakly reminded me.
“Wilco, Command, en route for EVAC,” Mirena replied over vox.
“No exfil point here, Sister,” I replied to Penitent.
“Don’t do this to yourself, Cal. Leave me,” she pleaded of me.
+Shut up, Lucene.+ I replied, accidentally calling her by her first name, and forced myself to my feet, hoisting her full weight upon my shoulders. If not for the augmetic arm, I think I may have broken myself altogether in trying to lift her. I suppose that was a blessing of its own, in a way.