IS-41 was on lockdown, but as evidenced from my journey to the Raft and my meeting with Mr. Zark, I had little interest in seeing things through with the activities there. I expected my Phaenonite target, if they had made it there by the time of the lockdown but had not yet left the world, to depart from IS-41 before my arrival, if I attempted such a thing. They would know, then, that I was on to them, though they would not grasp how. They would lay low for the evening, taking the opportunity to witness the billowing flames erupting from Coldbreed in the sky and delighting in the sight. They would try another spaceport in the morning. I knew all of this because, much as I may hate to admit it, they were like me—an Inquisitor. I have spent decades hunting the worst of our kind, but they were of our kind. We knew how to manage resources, bodies, people to accomplish necessary tasks. We knew how and when to show our hand. We knew how to hunt.
Most disastrously, we both knew moral ambiguity was not a major line to cross.
***
IS-38 was experiencing a clear skied but nevertheless stressful morning. The first surface-to-orbit launch of the day had been delayed due to fuel issues—somehow, tanker vehicle T6 had been misplaced. The launch did happen eventually, but it was delayed by more than an hour, which launch control knew would have rippling ramifications on the remainder of the day’s schedule. And sure enough, fuel management for launch two was still playing catch-up as the takeoff neared. However, launch control’s woes were only just beginning.
Shortly after an orbit-to-surface lander had arrived at IS-38, before its personnel even began to depart, a flurry of popping sounds echoed out from the main staging area of the facility, seeming like clicking by the time they arrived at launch control’s tower. Initially, launch control was not sure what they were hearing. Then security began screaming over the vox. “That lander, close it!” someone yelled, briefly freezing everyone in launch control from the sheer ambiguity of the request.
“Launch to security, please repeat your previous—”
“There’s shooting at Gate 17! Do not let those passengers disembark from their vehicle!” security roared back. “And suspend all pending launches and landings!”
“Launch to security, we don’t have the authority to decide—”
“By Russ’s sacrosanct taint, man! Damn your authority! Gate 17 is turning into an active warzone and you’re talking about—sergeant! Man down, man down, we need a medic!”
“Notify city tactical teams, we have an Outbreak-class event,” Overseer Jenzo Rica ordered a deckhand. “Can we get a view of what’s going on in there?”
“Yes, sir, pict screens seven through fifteen showing our sensorium scanners in Gate 17…now,” another deckhand reported. A number of picters flicked to a live feed of, as the security member reported, a warzone. Gasps emerged from agape mouths at the sight of the violence; no one in launch control was a soldier, it seemed.
“Have all active security personnel converge on 17, now!” Rica shouted before reaching for the voxcaster unit himself. “Launch Overseer to security, what’s your status?”
“I’m hit! We need backup! There’s a private army here and it’s fighting off gangs and mercs and we’re all caught in the crossfire!” the security member reported.
“Backup is on its way, ETA…,” Rica started, then shot a glare across the room to the first deckhand. He held up two fingers. “Two minutes. A-Tact has been notified. Can you hold your position, or safely seek medical attention?”
“I can try, launch.”
“Bless you. The Emperor protects,” Rica replied. There was no response. But as time went on, the shooting intensified, rather than diminishing. If this was a war, it had only just been started. But at last, a painstakingly-lengthy minute later, the revving engines of armored security teams whizzed past the launch control tower. Launch control watched on with momentary joy in the selfish thought that their nightmare might be about to end, but smiles soured at the sight of rocket munitions on the tarmac. One armored vehicle exploded and capsized in an instant, flying forward in bellowing flame before crashing against the side of Gate 18. Two more were driven away by gunfire and mortar shelling, the latter coming from what must have been the parking stations. Security, it seemed, would not be enough to help IS-38.
“Boss, look there,” a dour deckhand indicated, looking through an ocular auspex scanner toward Gate 16. He handed the auspex to Rica as the Overseer approached, where Rica then beheld what must have been the private army the security guard had referenced. They were moving as a pack onto the tarmac, shooting at unseen foes in the Gate itself. An armored vehicle then pulled up behind the private army, and it looked to Rica as though they were loading a single person into it. Mortar shells slammed into the tarmac all around the vehicle, impeding its path, but very distinctly not striking the vehicle itself. A few moments later, the vehicle spun off, streaking down the tarmac away from Gate 16.
Rica followed its path for a time, through the auspex, before another deckhand spoke up. “Hey, isn’t that T6?”
“Come again?” Rica asked, pulling his face out of the auspex.
“Tanker T6, our missing fuel truck from launch one. It’s driving toward—” the deckhand began, but did not need to finish his sentence. It was abundantly clear what T6 was driving for: the armored vehicle that had just secured what must have been the private army’s VIP. Launch control watched in awe as T6 sped across the tarmac before smashing into the armored vehicle, catching the latter on its front grill and plowing it through the brick wall of Gate 12 in a crushing display of violence.
***
I had to shoulder-check my door to get out of the tanker; the driver’s compartment was totally wrecked and it was a blessing, albeit a calculated one, that I had not been crushed. Eventually, after a few attempts, I managed to shove my way out of the truck, falling to dusty, brick-covered ground. I landed, hard, on my front, and may have broken a rib atop a chunk of plascrete. I groaned in pain as I pushed myself off the ground, then spit blood onto where my face had just laid. I heard grunting and moaning not unlike my own from the armored vehicle I had just rammed, and at that knew I needed to move. My augmetic hand flattened the plascrete terrain and bricks within its grasp as I shot to my feet, raising my combat shotgun and moving my augmetic grip to its pump.
The driver of the vehicle fell out from his seat in much the same fashion as I had, though as he rose to his feet I blew a hole through his torso, back to front. It was then, finally, that I had spotted my quarry: the female Phaenonite I had been pursuing for days now. Unfortunately, I was not the only one to have found her. “There she is! Hey, that’s our mark, muffet!” shouted the apparent leader of a group of my own mercenaries, barging into the rubble of the Gate I had shattered. I admit, ‘muffet’ was a new one for me—must be local to Aerialon. Regardless, I froze them in place with my mind before blowing them to bits one by one with my shotgun, then turned my attention back to the Phaenonite.
She had stumbled some good distance away, but was not yet beyond my range, and I shot her in the back as I had her driver. She was launched further from me still, though where everyone else’s body had splattered from my shotgun, she remained in one piece. Warpcraft and all that. I then thought to scan her armored vehicle for other signs of life, and indeed, some of her guards remained in the corpse of the car they had been using. I ended their lives with my mind, crushing their bodies from within a crushed vehicle, while striding forth toward the Phaenonite. She began to stand to her feet from my first blast so I shot her again as I neared, again launching her a bit away from me.
While she landed on her front from that hit, she turned onto her backside as I neared, and asked, “Is this what your peace looks like, Blackgar? A spaceport covered in crimson?”
“This is the path to peace, paved over the skulls of traitors,” I replied, levying my shotgun at her face, though it was not my intent to decapitate her. “You got a name?”
“Our intel suggested you usually figure that out on your own,” she sneered.
“You are well informed. And I could, if I wanted. But while we’re talking, I’d rather talk,” I shrugged, then primed my shotgun with another pump. “Don’t have to if you don’t want to, though.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“Amelia Fae, Ordo Xenos,” she replied.
“Excommunicate Traitoris, I might add,” I smirked. “And you sure seem to have taken a liking to those Xenos.”
“Yes, I suppose I have,” she grinned, and whipped an arm out from under her backside, wielding a familiarly stygian object that my mind could not detect. I saw it for but a moment, but did not need to know its form or function to know it was a weapon of Xenos origin. Whatever it was, I smacked it aside, out from her grip, with the barrel of my shotgun before unloading a shell into her gut, crushing her against the plascrete floor.
“You really think I’m that slow?” I sighed, panting.
“No, but it was worth a shot,” she grunted, not much affected by common weaponry; few of the Phaenonites I had captured had been, many had perished to my mind. “Tell me this, Blackgar: how do you plan to get me out of here? You want me alive. You took Prareus alive on Canicus, you took Heirene alive on Skardak. I assume the trend persists, so how do you intend to do it, hm? There’s a few dozen mercs a couple Gates away, and even if you can convince them you hired them, I still have half an army on site.”
“Yeah, what happened to the other half?” I asked with a grin. I then backed away from her. “Get up.”
She started to, but my orders were immediately dashed by the mechanized shouting of a force I did not yet expect to be there. “On the ground, now! Drop the weapon!” an Arbites officer yelled at us both.
Tossing the weapon aside, I replied, “I am Inquisitor Callant Blackgar, and—” And I found Fae was saying what I was in unison. She winked to me, the two of us raising our hands over our heads as the Arbites officers approached, flanked by city tactical teams. I had been taken by Arbites before. It had cost me an arm. I was not much looking forward to repeating the journey, but I did not see much of an option in the presence of a treacherous Inquisitor, who knew the same tricks I did.
While one Callant Blackgar may have been able to boss the Arbites around—even with the stunt I pulled in shutting down IS-41 the day prior—two Callant Blackgars complicated things. Both of us were put under arrest. I did not blame them for that response, as they still needed to secure a spaceport all the same and did not have the time to deal with our squabbling. Unfortunately, this only meant that our day of violence would be even further from ending.
***
Fae and I were placed into separate armored prisoner vehicles, as it seemed to the arresting officers that we would otherwise try to kill each other if carried in the same transport. A fair deduction, all in all. These vehicles were lower to the ground and featured more and heavier plating on their frames than the carriage I had crushed with a fuel tanker. On the interior, a grated panel separated the prisoners—myself or Fae—from their drivers. This unfortunately meant that the prisoners and drivers could communicate with each other, which I immediately knew to be extremely dangerous. To an Inquisitor, especially a traitor Inquisitor, words were weapons as potent as any other.
“Did you see his arm?” asked one of my drivers to his copilot as they both ducked into the vehicle.
“Yeah, where the hell do you get something like that?” his copilot replied, glancing back at me through the grate between us. I stared at him, emotionless, busy reading thoughts he did not know he had.
“Inquisition?” the first driver—David, as I gleamed from the head of his partner (Chris)—suggested.
“Maybe. But one of them has to be lying, right?” Chris shrugged. Our vehicle began to move, Fae’s transport being driven behind ours.
“I guess. Did you see her…whatever the hell was on her body?” David asked.
“Speak of her form no further, and forget what you’ve witnessed,” I warned him. “She is no sight for faithful servants of the Throne.”
David, driving, looked to Chris and shrugged. Chris looked back to me. “How’d you get the arm?”
“By losing the first one,” I grunted.
“Alright, wise ass, how’d that happen?”
“By making the same mistake I’m making now,” I sighed. His face gestured for me to elaborate. “Complying out of humility.”
“If you’re an Inquisitor, where’s your Rosette? Aren’t they all supposed to have one?” David asked without taking his eyes off the road. Chris nodded in agreement.
“That’s not for you to know,” I shook my head. “Officers, maintain course. I need a moment,” I instructed of them, and closed my eyes. I felt their ambient confusion, but Chris looked away from me and relative silence returned, obscured only by a Machine Spirit’s roaring engine and the thumping of wheels on ill-paved terrain. My mind moved a few meters behind our vehicle, into Fae’s, and began to poke and prod at her. I discovered, immediately, that she was a psyker too. Not as powerful of one as I, and ultimately she may not have even known she possessed such gifts. Or she was withholding them from me intentionally, to spring a trap later on. Regardless, her mind fought against my own without her attention being given to the task, and I did not want that to change—I did not want her to know I was trying to move about her mind. I did, however, discern the conversations occurring within her vehicle. “The officers in the vehicle behind us,” I began, addressing David and Chris. “How well do you know them?”
“For as long as they’ve been on the service, which has not been long. A couple years, perhaps,” David shrugged.
“Could you defend yourselves against them?” I asked.
“Ha! Gavin is a tiny little shit. Couldn’t hurt a fly if he tried,” Chris barked.
“Rephrase: would you defend yourselves against them?”
“Not sure I like this line of questioning, ‘Inquisitor.’ Might just tell you to shut up,” David replied.
“Do they have families?” I asked. Silence. “Do you?”
“Alright, yeah, let’s go back to not talking with one another,” David growled.
“One of your prisoners is an Inquisitor, right? Then what’s the other one?” I asked them both. They exchanged a worried glance with each other. “In the realm of truth, I am the Inquisitor, and the creature behind us is feeding lies to her drivers. She is a mutant psyker, and she knows their names. She knows details about their families. She is threatening them to kill you both, and then to kill me. In the realm of lies, I am not an Inquisitor. I may have asked about your families’ possible existence, yes, but I have not threatened them, and I do not intend to. So in which realm are we, gentlemen?”
“We’re in the realm of shut the frig up and let us do our jobs!” Chris shouted back.
“Your jobs,” and lives, I thought, “are inconsequential to mine. I cannot allow that woman behind us to see success today.”
“Well, both of you are arrested and cuffed, so I don’t think success is in the cards for either of you friggers today,” David shot back. “Cops don’t kill cops, you son of a bitch.”
“Brace for pit maneuver in four seconds,” I commanded, bracing myself in the backseat of the vehicle. David’s eyes flicked to his mirrors, but by then it was too late; the engine block of Fae’s transport tapped against the weightless rear end of mine, and we spun out of control in an instant. With our circular momentum, we raced into a nearby lane separator of the speedway we were on, and from there our vehicle went airborne. When we landed, we did so on the roof of our vehicle, our forward momentum carrying us further still as the armor plating screeched against the plascrete speedway. Fae’s transport, meanwhile, burned rubber to a stop a short distance ahead of us.
I was a bit dizzy, and knew I was bleeding—whatever wound I had received in landing on some bricks at IS-38 had been exacerbated then. But I could hear the doors open for the drivers of Fae’s vehicle, and I could hear the footsteps approach. I could hear the autopistols be primed. I could sense the malice, uncertain and fearful though it was. I knew I could not, however, simply kill our encroaching assailants—that would not do. So, instead, I stepped beyond myself.
Two feet stepped up to the driver’s side of our vehicle, in front of David, who was still strapped to his seat. Chris, meanwhile, managed to undo his strappings and fell to the grounded roof of our transport, shattered glass and steel digging into his shoulderblades. The feet near David tensed up, their owner beginning to bend down to look inside our vehicle, but before they did so, David moved like lightning, snapping his autopistol out his crushed window and disintegrating the ankles that stood just beyond. His would-be murderer fell to the ground in screaming agony, though that ended just as quickly as David drilled lead between his eyes.
Chris, meanwhile, spun out of the vehicle as his respective assailant neared, kicking away their autopistol in the process. Chris fought in hand-to-hand combat against his foe, then, despite what should have been a heavy disadvantage from his injuries. However, he moved with zealous fury and unnatural speed, and the advanced Pyrran fighting style he employed utterly overwhelmed the corrupted officer. Chris drew his own autopistol, then, and gunned the beaten and battered officer down before they could reach for their weapon across the speedway. Chris and David, now both out of the vehicle, then turned their attention to me, moving in fluid harmony to safely dislodge me from the transport and move me over to Fae’s.
When they neared, David kept his weapon trained on Fae, who was visibly disappointed her ploy had not succeeded. They gestured for her to move aside in the backseat, where they then strapped me in next to her before taking their own positions up front. Then, finally, I stopped waring them both.
“What in the, oh, Throne, that burns,” Chris groaned, hands to his head.
David, meanwhile, was taking it even worse. “What did you do? What did you make us do? Cops don’t kill cops, cops don’t kill cops, what did we do?”
“I saved your lives. Drive,” I panted, also out of breath.
“You said she was a psyker!” Chris shouted, waving his gun at both of us.
“Indeed,” I nodded, glancing to her for a moment as she rolled her eyes, then I looked back to Chris. “But I never said I wasn’t. Drive.”
“You see the monster he makes of those he touches?” Fae tried. “You’d do the Throne a favor to shoot him here.”
“Save the ammunition; I’ll halt it if you try. Drive,” I repeated for the third time.
“Chris, muzzle them both. Her because he was right, him because…he was right,” David sighed, still coming to grips with his new reality. “We’ll let the Arbites have them. I don’t think we…Throne, my hands are shaking bad.”
“It will pass,” I assured him, nodding to Chris as he moved to muzzle me and Fae. I do not think he was waiting for my permission. Panicked silence followed for the remainder of our journey. Eventually, after two hours on the roads, we arrived at the central police station of the city, a veritable fortress in all but name. There, we were unloaded from the vehicle at gunpoint, and before even stepping inside the building, my augmetic arm was removed from me. They wanted to try to remove some of Fae’s augmetics too, but found they did not possess the tools for such a task, to no surprise. The last thing I saw before being loaded into the vast, plascrete police fortress was the sight of the Coldbreed in the sky. While no longer billowing explosions of flame, to say it was smoldering would have been an understatement.