Jack Harr awoke the next day within his closet-like room to the blaring sound of sirens and a slightly-garbled automated messaging system roaring out over the ship’s vox. ‘Attention all crew: Warp Translation imminent. Gellar Field engaging momentarily. Astropathic services have been disengaged. Please submit to your local Cult Mechanicus Priest for protective rites. Report any anomalous disturbances to Deck Terminus. The Emperor protects. Attention all crew: Warp Translation imminent…’
There was, then, a knock on the door of his room. “It’s me,” Carmichael called to him. Harr rose from his bed to answer her, finding her in garments somehow more provocative than any he had yet seen her in: a black, sleeveless, cropped top and a dark red skirt that barely reached her knees. Her hair had been tied behind her head more cleanly than on the grounds of Canicus. “Morning. Didn’t think we’d be leaving so soon for another op, but you should get a bite to eat before we do. Have you ever Translated before?”
“No, I haven’t,” Harr shook his head. At that, Carmichael grabbed one of his hands and pulled him from his room, closing the door behind them. “Where are you taking me?” he asked with a yawn, still waking up despite the continuing vox sirens.
“Breakfast,” she replied, grinning. “It’s not much, but it’ll be better than Corpse-starch, and you’ll want a filled stomach for Translation.”
“Again, never done it before, but I rather assumed an empty stomach would better keep from getting sick from such a journey,” Harr suggested.
“Sickness is a far better outcome than the alternative,” Carmichael shook her head.
“What alternative?”
“Being possessed or otherwise psychically destroyed because your will weakened from your own hunger. Now come on,” she insisted, pulling him along at a brisker pace. That jutted him into a greater waking state.
“Does that happen often?” Harr asked in a squeak.
“No, but the possibility exists. The Gellar Field should hold. But in the case that it doesn’t, you’ll need a strong will, and for that you’ll want a filled stomach,” Carmichael explained. “Down this hall.” She led him through a maze of dimly lit corridors throughout the Echoshroud before the pair finally arrived at a mess hall. “Sit,” she told him, and all but forced him to such a position at a steel table. Harr put his head in his hands and yawned, wanting to fall asleep again, while in the meantime Carmichael left to procure him some food. The journey from his room to the mess hall was as a blur, and he recalled no distinguishing features about any twist or turn Carmichael had dragged him through. He would need to ask her for a second such dragging when he was more awake.
Harr’s ears caught a whisper of a familiar voice, but he was too out of sorts to place the name. “That’s him.”
A gruff and thick voice followed, both having originated from Harr’s left. “Ah, so you’re the new guy, eh? The Whiteshield?” Harr pulled his face from his hands and saw the owner of the second voice. A larger man, with a rounder stomach, than any he had yet encountered aboard the Echoshroud stood over him. The man was dressed in black fatigues that bore the Inquisitorial ‘I’ which seemed to stalk Harr around as of late. Behind him stood Enos, in desert camo more befitting of the terrain of Canicus, though it was that very terrain the Echoshroud would soon be departing from. Other Guardsmen stood behind the pair, though they were more casually dressed, including a diminutive fellow who stood upon a steel table adjacent to Harr’s.
Harr nodded to the large man.
“Hosku and Enos tell some big tales of you fighting shoulder to shoulder with `em at the Manticore last night. Name’s Elraad,” the man said, extending a hand toward Harr. Harr took it, and was promptly shaken into a vastly more awakened state. “Professionally, I’m also Strike-1-4, Sergeant of the crew you were partially introduced to yesterday.”
“Jack Harr. Pleased to meet you. It was an honor fighting alongside them. Hosku and Enos…what about Lexam?” Harr asked.
“Oxygen deprivation from exasperated exposure within the sandstorm. Didn’t make it,” Elraad explained.
“Oh, frig,” Harr frowned, cold sweat forming at once. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”
“It happens, kid,” Enos piped up from behind Elraad. Elraad nodded.
“Yeah, don’t sweat it, kid. Lexam was a good man, who died serving the—Throne! Carmichael, put some clothes on!” Elraad shouted as Carmichael returned. She placed a plate of food in front of Harr before sitting atop a table adjacent to Harr’s on his right, crossing her legs and leaning back upon hands outstretched. “What, the temptress is waiting on a Whiteshield, now?”
“Temptress? That’s a good one,” Carmichael grinned. Then, to Harr, said, “I see you’ve met the other jarheads. Jack, Elraad,” she introduced them.
“We had already gotten further than that,” Elraad growled. “Surely you have something better to do than bothering us.”
“Surely you have something better to do than bothering Jack Harr,” Carmichael returned.
“Is anyone really bothering anyone?” Harr asked, turning all eyes on him for a moment. It did not last. When the staredown resumed between the two parties, Harr turned to his newly-acquired breakfast. A Grox-burger, complete with Belly-Churn cheese and even bread! Far better and more nutritious than Corpse-starch.
Elraad pointed a flattened hand toward Carmichael before gesturing to Harr’s breakfast, which the Whiteshield was already filling his mouth with. “He’s my recruit, Elraad, not yours. Too late to sway him now,” Carmichael shook her head.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“In that case, welcome to the 9th, but be careful with that one, kid; she plays rougher than she lets on,” Elraad warned Harr, taking a seat at the table to Harr’s left. The entourage of Guardsmen silently, orderly followed suit, save for the shorter man still standing upon the table, who hopped off said-table in pursuit of his own breakfast.
“And don’t let his size fool you, Jack; Elraad is a lot softer than he looks,” Carmichael replied with a chuckle.
“Were you two once a—” Harr started, but was met with a snorting, mutual ‘No!’ from both Elraad and Carmichael.
“He wishes!” Carmichael added, now in a fit of laughter.
“No, Carmichael, I really don’t,” Elraad shook his head. “She used me as her boyfriend to put up a cover for an operation. I have since defined clearer limits with Strike-1 and Tactical-1 insofar as working with Stealth operatives goes. That thing next to you that calls herself a lady is anything but. Never drop your guard around her, lest she dig her talons into you.”
Harr looked to Carmichael, as though expecting a witty response. She shrugged and shook her head. “No, he’s right,” she admitted. “Throne, Jack, you know that better than anyone here,” she offered.
“Oh yeah? What’d the siren do to this poor kid then, eh?” Elraad asked.
“Incinerated his former squadron before his very eyes after using him as my cover to put that fate in motion,” Carmichael explained with a casual shrug.
“Throne, woman, have you no limits?” Elraad shouted, aghast.
“I like to think not.”
The group sat in silence for a few moments. Harr had stopped eating. Carmichael realized that she may have downplayed her actions a hair too much in Harr’s vicinity, and so sat in contemplative silence beside her own ego. All of this silence was broken, however, with the metal clang! of the shorter man dropping his plate of food onto a table to Harr’s left before taking up residence atop it once more. “Things got solemn while I was gone,” the man noted.
“Carmichael has a habit of managing that,” Elraad sighed.
“True, but at least she has great tits,” the man replied.
“I’m right here,” she frowned, but blushed all the same.
“I know.”
Elraad shook his head for a moment, then rose from his table to sit next to Harr. “Tell me about your squadmates,” Elraad requested of Harr.
Harr shook his head. “Frankly, sir, I’d rather not. I know the point of it, your request. Maybe some other time,” he replied.
Elraad made a low musing sound, then said, “I had known Lexam for nine years. Apparently that’s not a long time in the Inquisition, but it is for us Guardsman, eh? Even so, once you hit the Inquisition, the battles…the accolades…they all sorta blend together. A Veteran of a dozen battles is merely that—a singular statistic in a sea of Billions of Veterans of dozens of battles. I couldn’t tell you Lexam’s pre-Inquisitorial history—I knew it once, but time is not kind to similar stories. But in the Inquisition, he stood out as a fine soldier. Welcome to the Inquisition, lad. Your service here will do your former squadmates proud.”
Harr opened his mouth to speak, but the short man who had just sat down with his breakfast jumped into the conversation first. “Or they’ll realize you’re as expendable as all the rest of us to the Inquisitor,” he interjected dryly.
“Jethro!” Elraad barked at him.
“What? Better it hits him sooner rather than later, no?” the man—Jethro—shrugged. “Look, kid—do you know what I am?”
“I have some idea,” Harr nodded. A Ratling. A mutie. Harr had served with some in the Guard, but had not seen a single sign of mutants in Prareus’s service.
“And do you know anything about our commander, the Inquisitor?” Jethro asked. Harr shook his head. “Well here’s some info for ya’: He, and we by extension, operate as part of Ordo Hereticus. Or-do Hair-et-ic-us. Heretic hunters. Most stringent of the bunch. You know what Imperial doctrine thinks of the likes of me? I’m autocannon fodder. And if you’re here on my level, you’re autocannon fodder. Accept it while you can, or be thrown out to pasture later.”
“That’s not true,” Carmichael whispered, barely audible. She had hung her head low since having flaunted her ego, and lowered it further during Jethro’s speech, but had continued to hold the rest of her body as provocatively as she had been.
Harr looked to Elraad for a response, but the Sergeant’s face had stiffened and looked at Carmichael with the slightest hint of genuine scorn. Jethro, however, said what Harr read from Elraad’s face: “Ain’t it?”
“No,” Carmichael declared, and hopped off the table to stand. She began to cross her arms, hesitating a moment in a debate over whether to cross them under her chest to lift and push her chest outward, or over her chest to keep it from distracting those before her. She chose over. “A million souls die in our Imperium every second. Each and every one is a tragedy, and each and every one, be they faithful and valorous, are guided to the afterlife by our Great and Beneficent Emperor. Your lives matter to the Imperium. Your Inquisitor knows this. And if you serve him with faith and valor, he will visit the Imperium’s fury upon our foes to maintain your active service. I understand the pain of Lexam’s loss, and I know for some of you that pain may have dulled as it has been one of many. But I will not hear the Ordo besmirched, nor I will decline to stand to our Inquisitor’s defense. Shame on those among you that fail to join me.”
Harr noted, then, that this was the first glimpse of the real Carmichael—rather, the real Kyle—that he had ever seen. Though the vision of her figure spoke only in hushed whispers, the tone of her voice revealed volumes about her true nature. She had rebuked the group with defiant but suppressed rage. She possessed a capacity for solemnity well in excess of anything that Bliss Carmichael had ever evidenced, even in the heat of battle at the Manticore. Dwelling beneath her fair skin and shapely curves waited a truer warrior than any in the mess hall that called themselves a Guardsman. And, most notably to Harr, her wizened yet dogmatic tone hinted that she was far older than her youthful appearance let on.
“Decent speech,” Jethro admitted with his mouth full of his own Grox burger. “Forgive me if I still have my doubts about my worth to the Inquisition.”
“I shall not. Doubt is the avenue to weakness, and if you are weak, you are correct—your worth to the Inquisition is middling,” Carmichael shot back. “Jack, what say you?”
“I…,” Harr stammered, still stuck in mild reverence of Carmichael’s character. “I suppose I concur with your assessment of doubt, but blind faith is a road to corruption, as I very nearly demonstrated.”
“And do you think you are mere fodder for the Inquisition?”
Harr thought on it for a moment. That pause gave Carmichael some worry. And while not disastrous, his response, ultimately, did not reaffirm her spirits. “I don’t know what I am. Probationary, right?”
“No one is on probation to later become fodder, Jack,” she replied with a soft smile.
“I suppose that’s fair,” Harr admitted. “I suppose, then, I am what I always have been—a young, impressionably-naïve aspirant in service to the Throne.”
“And that’s all you need to be,” Carmichael declared, taking a seat to Harr’s right—Elraad still sat to his left—and throwing an arm over his shoulders just in time for a shudder to pulse through the whole of the Echoshroud.
‘Attention all crew: Gellar Field engaged. Warp Translation engaging now. Report any anomalous activity to Deck Terminus. Your faith is your shield. The Emperor protects.’