Lord Inquisitor Igan Caliman passed away at the outset of the campaign our Inquisitorial Battlefleet launched against the Shatter Corps. He survived the initial shock of Warp Translation as the Dawnshadow was tugged into the Warp, but succumbed to his wounds during the shock of emerging from the Warp at our first destination. There was no time for a great service for him, as had been given for the thousands en masse following the Battles for Quintus. No, instead, Caliman perished amidst immediate combat, we having succeeded in following the fleet that had attacked Quintus. Caliman died surrounded by his immediate retinue, and even they, once seeing to his body, forced themselves into the fray once more, Agents of the Emperor still. I would not know of them, nor of Caliman’s fate, until after that battle was won. The thought occurred to me to take any of them under my wing that wanted to join me, but, ultimately, I did not, for two reasons. One, Lord van der Skar beat me to the punch in that regard. Two, it dawned on me that I had already inherited those operatives—or perhaps it should be the singular operative—that Caliman had intended for me, in Bliss.
While not without further losses on our side of things, the remainder of the Shatter Corps initial attack fleet perished in a whimper of futility. That battle was, however, far from the end of our crusade; indeed, it was merely the beginning. Our war across the stars, lengthy and costly though it was, carried on from one world to the next, battleground after battleground, theater after theater. Radagen III to Carillian, and further still. The Shatter Corps had, for their part, established a competent foothold on the edge of Ixaniad. The success of our modest, fractional Battlefleet was due, largely, to the fact that they had overextended, and the rest of their voidships were elsewhere in Ixaniad, trying to conquer new territory. They would not know we were blasting out their flanks until they were, inevitably, forced into a retreat elsewhere, only to find that they did not have the strongholds and citadels they had raised in their wakes that they thought they did.
And they were strongholds and citadels, all raised upon these conquered lands. It was not my goal to blow apart world after world, nor did I have the armament for such destruction. So, instead, we besieged each world, slowly but surely crippling, exhausting, and pounding the traitorous occupants of these worlds into oblivion. I suppose, on this note of pace, I should speak on the passage of time thus far in this war, as it is unlike my other accounts of my prior operations. Where I had spent some months in Abseradon and perhaps a year to close out the Phaenonite affair once my Agents were found on Amnes Minoris, it had already been a year of this war against the Shatter Corps when Lord Caliman passed away. The months, of which there were many of unpleasantly great lengths, carried on from there. Warp Translation, while unmistakably fast for the purposes of interstellar travel, was not instantaneous—at least, not usually. Likewise, it took weeks yet to reclaim each lost world from the tyrannical grip of the enemy. Indeed, raw destruction may have been a quicker route, but again, that was not my pursuit.
Twenty months after I had first fled New Cealis at the onset of this war, I finally staged my return. What was once a prime border world of the Imperial Faith had been reduced to a treacherous forward operating base for the Shatter Corps to manage the logistics of their invasion. It was, for that reason, heavily defended, more so than other individual worlds we had retaken on our journey. At Lucene’s insistence, coupled with the wisdom of strategy, my vessel hung back in this engagement, as it had in many others, for it—along with much of my fleet—was made for longer-range engagements rather than being shoved down the enemies’ throats as I had endeavored in the Second Battle of Quintus. To this end, my vessel did not sustain much damage, and I likewise did not sustain much injury beyond the personal strain of watching my allies bleed on my behalf.
On that note…
“Incoming secured voxcast for you, Inquisitor, from the bridge of the Pristine,” Captain Vakian told me amidst a flurry of other commands to his subordinates. In truth, I hesitated. In one breath, I hesitated in sorrowful remembrance of when Xavier had reached out to me from the Lord Orthus. It had been many months since then, but the words we had then shared with one another were far too few to last me the remainder of my life. In the next breath, I hesitated because it occurred to me that I did not have any of the Hestian gang aboard the Pristine, so I was wondering who may have been reaching out to me, specifically; fleet coordination was carried out by and between helmsmen and Captains.
“My private line, please, Captain Vakian,” I assented after those moments of thought, stepping forward and out of a tight group of myself, Lucene, Zha, and Varnus. As ever, Bliss was present as well, but kept her distance so as to keep an eye on everything. After a few steps and Vakian’s go-ahead for me to speak to whomever was asking for me, I said, “Command-1 to Pristine bridge, come in, Pristine.”
“It’s been a long time, Blackgar,” returned a voice I did not immediately recognize. An Inquisitor’s paranoia may have suggested the phrase was spoken tauntingly, but I sensed no malice in its tone. “Some decades at least. And here we are again, with you being the only one I’ve spoken to for the better part of a century.”
“I’m afraid I’ll need more to go on, who am I speaking to?” I returned, still more clueless than I liked.
“Ah! Of course, my manners! Stealth-1-1, sir, Jack Harr. But...that’s not entirely accurate, is it?” Harr suggested.
“Issik,” I muttered, and was met with musing assent on the other end of the vox. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“By your hand—or head, rather—no less. I think, perhaps, I was born again of Harr’s dreams. Something tucked away in his subconscious hidden from your attempt at removing me. Regardless of how I’m still here, I am, and have been for some time. But that is not why I contact you now,” he clarified.
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“Then what is?”
A pained breath followed. Wherever Jack Harr—or Vilk Issik, it seemed—was, he was injured in some capacity. Not enough to hamper his speaking, but enough to impose discomfort. “You, Inquisitor, have given me, through the lens of Jack Harr, a life of dreams. She is exactly that, after all—the stuff of a man’s dreams, and with such a fitting name to boot. The faithful fool I have spawned of—once a spawn of my own—may have denied himself the timelessness many of you bear, but it seems that choice is not to matter, in the end. Not for either of me, at least. The Pristine’s reactor has ruptured. By now we have all suffered a lethal dose of radiation. Even if you were to send life boats over, this vessel and its crew are lost. I, then, offer you a choice, Inquisitor.”
“Issik, I...I’m very sorry. It’s not a pleasant way to go, that,” I acknowledged, once more feeling the same sort of powerless dread I had felt in my discussion with Xavier, if to a lesser extent as I was not as close with Harr/Issik.
“So I’m told. Ergo my offering of choice. I’ll be blunt, so as not to mince words. With my life forfeit, I am—and we of the Pristine are—willing to die continuing to fight this fight as we have been, until the lights go out, either aboard this vessel or in my head. That’s one option. The other...well you want this world, yes? But I cannot imagine you want the stronghold of the traitorkin to remain on it once you have it, nor that you could consider the world taken while it yet stands. To die within the flames of as Holy and Consecrated a vessel such as this, as it snuffs out the darkness of a world below, I believe is an ending Jack Harr would welcome. And I imagine it is far less torturous an end than this poisoning of ours.”
“It would be quicker, yes, much more so,” I agreed, biting my lip afterward. “I cannot tell you how to die, Issik, only what to die for. You and the crew of the Pristine should make your own choices, something that will satisfy your duty to the Emperor.”
“Oh, you and Harr are so annoyingly faithful at times,” Issik drawled. Indeed, he was not faithful or loyal like his alter-ego, but he was useful all the same. “Do you not have the spine, as Commissar or Inquisitor, to define the nature of my death, Blackgar?”
A more single-minded Commissar or Inquisitor may have grilled the traitorous alter-ego of Harr’s for such a comment, but I knew he was only trying to get me to kill him. I was speaking to a dead man, and he was only asking me which enemies he should take with him. “The fortress below, then. It’s priority one. The morale shock alone would win this battle for us, to say nothing of the firepower and logistical strength it would deny the enemy.”
“Then so it shall be. I ask three things of you, then, Inquisitor. The first is that I would like to speak with my wife—his wife. She and I have not spoken before, and she is owed this, I think. The second thing I ask of you, Inquisitor, is to take care of her. I do not necessarily mean sexually, though she is an insatiable force to be reckoned with in bed, but see to it that she lives a life meaningful and fulfilling to her. Her smiles hide a darkness the likes of which I imagine only you have laid eyes upon before, as is your remit. Jack Harr, in his naivete, never could comprehend or recognize the presence of that darkness, but I can see the dim shadows repressed by the overpowering brightness of her ego. When that ego falters, she may waver. Be there for her when she does,” Issik explained.
“I’ll see to both such requests, Issik,” I assured him. “Your third?”
Issik sighed, paused, and then let loose a pained laugh. “I don’t have a frigging clue who I’m dying against, Inquisitor. I’m fighting your battle and Throne-willing I’m winning it for you. I’m dying in your battle, for you, but I don’t have any clue who’s killing me. It’s not right. I think you know it’s not right. Your Inquisition hides in secrecy, and its soldiers are told only where to point their firearms and when to shoot. Those of us that bleed for you like this deserve better. We deserve to know the name of the enemy that puts us down, that we may curse them in the afterlife. We deserve to know what it’s all for.”
“Yes, you do,” I agreed, solemnly. The Inquisition may disagree. The Commissariat may disagree. And any fresh-blooded newly-decorated Commissar may disagree. But anyone who has watched men die for their cause for a living knows better. “His name is Valeran Mortoc. He is an enemy of all Ixaniad, and all Mankind.”
“Well then,” he answered. “For all Mankind, you find this piece of shit Valeran and you rip his throat out, Inquisitor. That’s my third request.”
“And it is one I am willing to die to fulfill, as you have,” I replied. “Shall I give you to your wife?”
“Yes, please. Inquisitor Blackgar...you are not like the others of your kind, those that I once called foe. You are better than they are. You are human,” he told me.
“And I pray that humanity of mine is enough to see this damnable war through,” I replied. “Thank you, Vilk Issik. You have served me well. And the Throne, too, much as it may irk you to have done so.”
“Oh, had we the time for debate, I’d point out that I’ve always wanted to serve the Throne, just not in your Imperium, and not with such zealotry. There are layers to us traitors, you see. We are not all so hateful of everything as your Inquisition believes,” Issik snarked. “My wife?”
“Yes, right away,” I agreed, and then removed my vox bud from my ear while waving Bliss over to me.
“Callant?” she asked as she neared. I said nothing, and instead extended my hand toward her, the vox bud in its palm. She looked at it, then back to me, and then back to it before taking it and putting it into one of her own ears. “This is Bliss Carmichael, who am I speaking to?” she began, and I stepped away from her to give her some space. As the ensuing conversation unfolded, Bliss revealed a full spectrum of emotions, from surprise to disbelief to anger, as she spoke with Vilk Issik for the first time. Then again into disbelief and a sense of groundlessness as Issik’s/Harr’s fate was revealed to her.
In time, and in sorrow, she moved to the frontal viewport of the bridge, where she and I beheld the Pristine make its plunge into New Cealis’s atmosphere. She stayed on the line with Issik for the entirety of its journey, for the remainder of his life. She was in tears the whole time. I had never seen her or any of my retinue so broken before. No, rage had consumed us in times of loss. No doubt rage would find purchase in her eventually, too, but her immediate reaction was of sorrow. Only when the line went dead, and Vilk Issik vanished into a fireball on the planet’s surface, did she spend a fractional moment to try to compose herself of her anguish. But that was futile, and her sadness consumed her despite her efforts, forcing her from the bridge without another word spoken to me or anyone else.
But, as Issik and I knew, nuclear interplanetary suicide was a damned decisive way of ending a battle. Ground forces belonging to the enemy vanished into the very inferno that had claimed Bliss’s husband, and the space theater fell before our voidweapons in the ensuing disarray.
New Cealis was won. But the losses were steadily mounting for us all.