My colleagues wanted to know how my drink with Scayn was. They got all they needed to know from the look I gave Silas as I told him I wanted him and his unit battle-ready in sixty seconds at a moment’s notice. Silas assured me that would happen. His assurance did little to assuage my dread.
I thought of little else for the next three days. Mirena tried to cheer me up now and again, or otherwise tried to get me to talk, to no success. “Fine, brood,” she shrugged, giving up after the third day. That at least got a grin from me, if only for a moment.
During the later-afternoon of the fourth day, during my continual brooding, I heard from Zha for the first time in weeks. “All done!” she suddenly exclaimed, and wore her ever-enviable grin as she hopped across the hab to stand before me. “Mr. Blackgar, sir, I have absorbed all the data as presented, and am ready to answer any questions you have. Ask away,” she told me, bringing some measure of happiness to our dreary abode.
“Thank you, Ms. Trantos,” I nodded to her, then heaved out a heavy sigh as I tried to change gears. As hard a task for me, then, as it would have been for her. “Give me a report on Abseradon’s tithe. Is it off the mark from what they owe?”
“It is, sir,” she confirmed, nodding.
“By how much?”
“They appear to be tithing 0.032% too many personnel,” she reported.
I nodded, doing some quick math in my head, then frowned. “Wait, too many?”
“Yes, sir—their population reports suggest they have been giving more bodies to the Imperial Guard than they are required to. A few thousand more. 15,048 more, on average for the last eighteen years, to be precise,” she replied.
“And what about their resource provision?”
“They are off on that, too, sir. They are providing 0.94% less biomass to the Imperium than they ought to be, based on what they are producing,” she answered, still smiling.
“Where is it going?” I muttered to myself.
“I am afraid that was not in the data, sir,” Zha frowned.
I chuckled. “I know, Ms. Trantos, the question was not for you. You mentioned the tithe was off for the last eighteen years. Before that?”
“Nominal.”
“Perfectly so?”
“Within rounding error, yes, for the past three millennia,” she confirmed.
“And the biomass?”
“Identical temporal configuration of irregularities, sir,” she replied.
“Say, Ms. Trantos, your population data wouldn’t happen to include rates of missing persons, would it?” I asked.
“It does indeed, sir,” she nodded.
“Has there been an uptick in missing persons on Abseradon over the last eighteen years?” I asked her.
“Adjusting for natural population growth?” she sought to clarify. I nodded. She thought about it for a moment, doing unknowably complex calculations with unfathomably large values in her head. “I believe so, sir. Reports of missing persons seem to be rising from year to year per capita, peaking in the last reported year,” she described.
“Where are they going?” I asked myself, then immediately, as Zha opened her mouth, clarified, “Not for you to answer.” She smiled and nodded. Whatever Scayn was on to, I was convinced my path was leading me to his. I think he had just discovered as such himself, which is why he called for the meeting, knowing I would stumble upon what he had. I would, regrettably, need to get answers out of him, by force if necessary. “Silas, ready your team. Nonlethal operation,” I told him.
“Right away, sir,” he nodded, and left the room from behind me. I turned back to Zha.
“Ms. Trantos, are there any other production irregularities over the last eighteen years, besides the biomass?” I asked her.
“There are!” she exclaimed happily. “Though they are fractionally less significant.”
“Enumerate them for me,” I requested.
Zha opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by Okustin, who called to me from across the room. “Sir, something you need to know,” he demanded.
Urgent as it sounded, I was a little annoyed my question had been denied an answer. I turned to him, mildly irate, and chastised him, “In the middle of a debriefing, Interrogator.” He shook his head slowly. “What is it?”
“Arbites vox chatter,” he started, holding up his amplifier. “Habblock 9 was hit by gang warfare. Mass casualties.”
I shot to my feet, blood suddenly on fire. “Silas!”
“Sir!” he called from elsewhere in the hab.
“Lethal! Sixty seconds!” I turned to the rest of the hab. “Everyone up! We’re moving out. You have sixty to prepare.” I looked to Okustin. “It wasn’t a gang.”
“I know, sir.”
“Bring your laspistol.”
***
The carnage was immediately atrocious. Arbites Officers were trying to keep thousands of onlookers at bay, barely hanging on for their lives. Those that had been inside the `block were trying to cower behind medicae vehicles to puke. My group pushed through the crowd with relative ease—an Inquisitorial Rosette over your head will do that. +Aside.+ I told the first officer I came upon at the line between order and chaos, speaking into his head while holding the Rosette before his face. He flushed white as ceramite, and practically jumped to his left.
After nearing the Habblock proper, I called out to the dozens, if not hundreds, of officers around me, using my vox to blast the message out of Okustin’s amp. “WHO IS THE OFFICER IN CHARGE?” I asked, and then held my Rosette higher for all to see. Or, I tried to. A gurney wheeled by, ignoring me entirely, while carrying the top half of Malkyle to a medicae vehicle, and my arm slipped down a bit. +NOW.+ I sent the message to everyone.
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“That’s me, sir, Captain Trelos,” a local Arbites replied, stepping up to me. He was visibly shaken, and I do not believe it was from my presence alone. “How can we assist you, Inquisitor?”
“Put every body back where you found it. And get me to 11B. How many casualties, officer?” I instructed of him.
“H-how many?” he stammered, but began leading us through the swarm of police.
“Throne, man! How many!” I roared.
“A-all of them, sir,” he weakly replied, and then reached for a sizable vox unit on his torso. “Put the bodies back, men.”
“The bodies back? What does that even mean?” came a garbled reply.
“Frigging do it, sergeant!” the Captain shouted back.
“What do you mean by all of them, Captain?” I asked him.
“A-all. I-I mean…everyone’s dead, Inquisitor. The whole `block. N-no survivors. There were thousands, tens of thousands that lived here…dead,” the Captain replied, choking on his own words. “Oh, Throne,” he wavered, and then hunched over and threw up.
“Castecael, see to the Captain,” I ordered her, and stomped by the feeble officer. “Stay with her, Czevia. Everyone else on me, weapons front.” The rest of my group followed in my footsteps, weapons out and ready to flatten anything that got in our way.
The smell of death in Habblock 9 overpowered any other pungent order in the city. To say that the Habblock’s walkways and catwalks were rivers of blood would have been an understatement. Every body part and human organ imaginable was strewn out across miles’ worth of the dense Hive residency. Were the location not of sentimental value to me, I would have been concerned for Penitent, who waded through it all in bare feet while we marched on in bloodied boots. But there was nothing on my mind but depthless rage. I had seen daemons rip men to shreds, Orks reduce regiments of Guardsmen to paste.
I had never seen anything like the Abseradon Massacre, as it would later be known. And neither had any world within a hundred light-years of here, either.
The road to 11B was paved in blood and sinew. I almost didn’t want to enter the hab upon arriving at it. But I knew I had to. I stepped inside, and found a dozen local Arbites officers picking through my once-friends. A short distance across the room, Scayn laid upon his face. Even if not for the odd wound on the back of his head, he’d have drowned from the depth of the blood-puddle he was resting in.
+EVERYONE OUT.+ I commanded, and no Arbites in the room was capable of withstanding my will. They silently raced past me, abandoning what they had been working on without objection, my psykanic command obliterating whatever prior orders they had received.
“Cal, I am so, so sorry,” Mirena whimpered from behind me, putting a hand on my shoulder, as did Penitent. I couldn’t bring myself to reply. I was staring at Scayn, unable to tear my eyes from him.
“Vaigg, see to the door. No one gets in, unless it’s Castecael and Czevia,” I ordered him. I rarely gave him direct orders, and never had I addressed him by his last name.
“Understood, sir,” he nodded and left as instructed.
“We’ll nail the bastards that did this to the friggin’ wall, sir,” Silas declared solemnly.
“The girl was his neighbor,” I muttered.
“What was that, sir?”
“Val Eracian was his neighbor,” I repeated, louder. Even Silas Hager’s weapon fell a bit toward the ground, then. “I am of half a mind to declare Exterminatus here and now. More than half a mind. But the Inquisition would have my head for doing so to a Hive City, and so soon after Thantalus,” I grumbled. I then strolled deeper into the hab, kneeling down in the blood next to my former mentor. “I must break your heart, sir. I owe you a drink. Whoever did this, my friend, I will deny them the sky. Your sky. Rest well, Thaddeus Scayn,” I whimpered, and then said a solemn prayer to the Throne, though this scene was far too vile for the Throne to look upon. I then weakly rose to my feet, and while still staring at my mentor, asked, “Trantos, how many people lived here?”
I had never heard her stumble before, as she did then. “I-I think…I mean…thirty…33,109, sir,” she reported.
“They killed 33,108, just because of what one person knew,” I told my group. “They couldn’t risk that anyone in the whole `block may have heard even a fragment of information Scayn uttered.” I then looked to them. “We are ten people. Ten. We are dealing with a force that killed three thousand for every one of us. If you wish to turn away from this, I can’t blame you, nor will I censure you. I wish to leave, even,” I muttered then, and looked back at Scayn.
“No one is going anywhere, Cal,” Mirena shook her head. “If you’re here, we’re here.”
I paused for a moment, then looked back to them. “Then to the friggin’ wall,” I said, agreeing with Silas. “Hager, here,” I ordered him. He obliged, looking upon Scayn while he made the short journey across the hab. “Trantos, Okustin, start looking around. See what you can learn. Gradshi, Law, Penitent, secure the hab. Hager,” I started, turning to him. “Entry wound.”
“Looks like a las shot, sir. An odd one, though,” Silas replied, referring to the seared flesh on the back of Scayn’s head.
“Sure,” I muttered.
“Do you recognize the lasrifle pattern?” he asked me.
“It’s not a las shot,” I replied. “Help me get him up,” I told him, and together we knelt into the blood and lifted Scayn to a sitting position. The same sort of seared flesh contorted his face as an exit wound.
“That’s not a las shot,” Silas agreed, shaking his head. “And where did it come—” he started, but I gestured to the back wall behind Scayn. The rockcrete wall was warped in a small area, appearing melted. “Advanced energy weapon?” he suggested.
“No,” I shook my head, and reluctantly abandoned Scayn’s body for the time being. “Follow me.” Silas did so. As I strolled through the hab, I pointed to a wall opposite Scayn, at an angle from where we found him. The rockcrete was again warped and melted in a small circle, forming a slight spiral pattern. A bit of distance through the hab, on the other side of that wall along the same angle, another warping. And another opposite that wall, at the edge of 11B. I telekinetically crushed an exit for us along our path, that we could continue our journey. Some officers got in our way, clearly upset that I had commanded them out of Scayn’s hab. +DON’T.+ I warned them, and they backed off, whether they wanted to or not.
Some distance away from 11B, at 13C, we found another rockcrete warping along the same path. I again crushed an entrance into the hab, where we found more bloodshed. We trudged onward, until after crushing another wall and tossing it aside, adjacent to another warping, our path ended—the hab exited out to open air. “You know what this is, sir?”
“Monitron,” I told Silas. He nodded, and I began typing to him while standing at his side, overlooking the city from the hab’s view. {Vindicare Assassin. Exitus Rifle shot, Turbo-Penetrator Round. Molecular structure fused at extreme velocity.}
{You once told me the Vindicare answered to the Inquisition.}
{The Ordo Sicarius, yes, and the Senatorum Imperialis.}
{What are we dealing with, sir?}
“Something new,” I replied aloud. “Or very old. You don’t share this with anyone, not even Okustin. It is too dangerous to know. Should an Inquisitor probe your mind, you will let yourself die before revealing what I just told you.”
“Unquestionably, sir,” he nodded. “Where to from here?”
“Zha,” I answered, and together Silas and I strode back to 11B, where I then approached my savant. “What do you know?”
“Lasrifles, autocannons, heavier armaments I am unfamiliar with. Explosives. Chain and Power weapons. Signs of chemical and biological weaponry. This was human-performed,” Zha reported, confidence returning to her voice.
“I’ve regrettably come to the same conclusion,” Okustin agreed.
“Mirena, fetch Castecael, Czevia, and the Captain. Tell him to bring me a cogitator,” I told her. She nodded and left the scene. “Penitent,” I started, calling her to me. She neared, and put a hand on my shoulder encouragingly. “Thank you. I will be asking the impossible of you in this.”
“I will answer,” she assured me.
“I may…it is not beyond the realm of possibility that I need to interrogate those of your order. How does that sit with you?”
“Cal, I have sworn myself to you. If that is what you need to do, I will force my Sisters into the chair before you,” she replied.
I nodded, smiling. “Thank you. All of you, thank you. It is going to get hard from here.” Dangerous. “The most regrettable part of my job is needing to put good men and women in harm’s way to do it. I cannot guarantee your survival, or even a merciful end.”
“Didn’t you ask this already, sir?” Okustin shook his head, crossing his arms. “We’re not going anywhere.”
“And I shall ask the Throne that you not come to regret that decision, Hans.”