By Order of His Most Holy Majesty The God Emperor of Terra
Sequestered Inquisitorial Dossiers Authorized Persons Only
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984M41
Planet Castobel
To Inquistor Lord MoredecaiI will not lie to you, I wept. For a few, precious moments, I let my feelings overtake my body. Inquisitor Kronus had been a mentor to me for the better part of a decade, and more importantly, he was my friend. Cradling his form in my hands, he looked different than he had in life. More fragile, more unsure. A far cry from the man who had banished great daemons and solved crises that decided the fate of worlds. That force of will and conviction and brilliance was laid low by a stray bullet from a low-life cultist. I was aggrieved for some time after the incident. However, my grief had not softened me to a mewling mess, nor had my tears clouded my vision. Behind my sorrow, a great wrath began to grip me and burn hot in my breast. I lay Inquisitor Kronus's body onto the rusted steel of the corridor and took up my weapons.
The sigil of the Imperial Inquisition was upon my coat as I ran after the cur.
The HAB levels of Hive Hessex were kilometers upon kilometers of air and waste recycling plants stacked upon vats where precious pastes and adhesives were made for the ten billion loyal souls of the city that dwelt above and below. Beneath the trillions of tonnes of steel and bodies, the men and women of the lower hive were an industrious and simple folk, where their faith in the emperor was what kept them going in such hazardous conditions. Unfortunately, they had little guidance when it came to how their faith was practiced, and such things could easily give way to heresy. The perfect place for a cult to fester.
I saw a glimpse of Hykophan's silhouette disappearing into a doorway a dozen meters ahead, visible from the harsh incandescent lights that littered the rusted steel of the hall. I heard a scream ahead from the very doorway and turned the corner. Instead of running in, I dived into a roll. Hardly a fecund maneuver, but it saved my life. Two shells hit the door above my curled form, denting the iron. One shell ricocheted and struck one of the steam lines, super heated gas spewing out in a white cloud. I stopped my roll more or less by design, if one could call it calculated to hit a sturdy desk to grant myself a prone position from which to return fire. I fired three shots at the fleeing figure, who seemed to always elude my full view. I felt I missed every shot, but once I surged to my feet and moved to follow, there was blood on the wall. In the corner, two day-laborers cowered.
Vaguely I realized I had received a gash from somewhere on my temple, the blood wet and cooling in the refurbished oxygen of the room. My faculties remained in tact so I paid it little mind and continued my pursuit. My wounds would heal in time.
I was going to make sure Hykophan's did not.
The next hall fed into a water reprocessing facility. Half of the first room was open water, leading into a greater tank of murk that was to be recycled. Before the man-made river mouth was a ladder, Hykophan's footsteps were just disappearing from the long climb up. He ascended and stopped, firing down into the room I had entered. We exchanged shots, bullets and sparks flying as we traded fire in the gloom. The tell-tail click of en empty firearm echoed, followed by Hykophan's curse. In my haste, I did not conserve my ammunition and shot at the figure above, my last two slugs wasted as he ducked behind the iron lip of the floor. His audible footsteps carried him further into the plant and away from retribution. I wasted no time, ascending the ladder as quickly as I could and sprinted after him, shoving myself through a swiftly closing door, bursting into the great chamber of the facility. We stood on the grating of a walkway over the facility's main work area. Men in hazmat suits removed sludge and worked machines that sloshed the dark, putrefying liquid into a another, cleaner area to be redistributed. A few looked up, their faces blank behind the dim glass on the front of their suits.
Hykophan popped the clip into his slug-thrower and aimed, he had the deftness and poise of a practiced gun fighter. Inquisitor Kronus and I had quite the dossier on the scoundrel's career. He had been a decorated infantry officer on Badab, when he was taken in by Chaos and the cults perpetrated by Lufgt Huron. Had I not been so full of rage, I would have considered myself dead. Luckily, I was too uncaring to let that stop me. By the grace of the God-Emperor, Hykophan's cool demeanor was shaken by what I imagined was an unyielding look of vengeance on my face. Many a man can be shot by autogun or lasgun and still kill the shooter in their dying breath. It was likely this fear that caused him to hit my shoulder rather than my heart. He didn't have time to make his next shot.
With a wild swing of my force staff, I struck the gun from his hand before he could pull the trigger twice. To his credit, he let it go without a fuss and opened his arms to wrestle the force staff out of my hands. However, I had momentum, and I did not plan to strike him again with my staff when he could defend himself. I tackled him to the ground, the two of us cursing and clawing. Once I grabbed his throat, I broke his nose with my first punch, and shattered his cheek with my second. He gripped and pushed against me futilely, but I pummeled him aside. Gripping his face, I hammered my forehead into his. It dazed him, and so I punched him once more for good measure, before taking to my feet and grabbing the force staff I had relieved myself of.
"In the name of the God-Emperor and his most Holy Inquisition, by the sacred oaths you have sworn to the Astra Militarum, and for killing my dearest friend, I, Hadrian Drakos of the Ordo Malleus, name you heretic... and sentence you to death."
He would not have the strength to flee as I reloaded my gun, but I did not do so. Whether I hadn't the frame of mind or I wanted to feel it, I cannot recall. I simply know that I took the force staff of Inquisitor Kronus, a weapon of exponential psychic energy, made for the sole purpose of slaying daemons and rogue psykers, and I did what felt natural.
I beat him to death with it.
5 Years Later...
989M41
Planet Tallarn
To Inquistor Lord MoredecaiTallarn was an old world, having survived two great chaos incursions and the touch of the hubristic eldar, God-Emperor curse them. The invasion of the accursed Iron Warriors had transformed its verdant landscape into a desolate wasteland of sand dunes and inhospitable mountains. Some in the more puritanical groupings of the Ordo Hereticus and my own Malleus deemed it a planet warped by Chaos, but I was not of that school of thought. The Tallarn Desert Raiders were amongst the finest and most loyal members of the Imperium, and though the world perhaps held tombs dedicated to the dark gods, it was not unlike how any hive world had cults of ruin within its depths. I would not condemn such a valuable world so recklessly, but as with most rumors, there was perhaps a kernel of truth hidden within.
My contacts had led me to the planet to find a daemon-sorcerer, known as Bahometus. My trusted aide Lazarus and I commissioned a merchant ship from an old friend, Urien of Catoc. It was a refurbished military vessel, roughly the same proportions and size as a carrack-hauler, two kilometers long and fit for a sizeable crew with room for hundreds of soldiers (or hundreds of tonnes of freight), so guests were not out of the question. At times I felt my job had purged me of my prior social skills, save for when I had to put on a suitably extraneous front when delving into subterfuge. Lazarus was my most trusted friend, a previous Skitarii Ranger who had been bludgeoned into scrap metal by an ork warboss and would have been discarded if not for my mentor Kronus, who paid for the repairs to his body and utilized his impressive strength, endurance, and calculating skills in the pursuit of the daemon rather than the xenos. I appreciated him immensely, but when he was not speaking in binary or relaying information, he was a curt and dour fellow. Urien, on the other hand, was a strange case. Born on a feudal world, he had been captured by space-faring slavers at a young age, believing he was to be carried off to his world's version of hell. Such belief gave him the strength and tenacity to escape and, through various mishaps, become the apprentice of a notable shipmaster, Philandus. Rising through the ranks, he had accumulated his own ship by what I thought to be a miracle. Urien can still only barely speak gothic, and what he does speak is in his rough dialect that sounds to be a cross between Fenrisian and Tanithian. Sometimes, I still think he maintains he is in the limbo of the after-life, but he has ever been trustworthy, and willing to undertake the most dangerous of missions.
The details on my trip to Dasra and my subsequent delving into the Tomb of Garugamesh are in the records previously granted to your care. I believe you asked me of how I met a certain remarkable woman, if one could call her such.
Bahometus had regrettably escaped the Tomb, but with the help of the Tallarn and two members of the Red Scorpion Adeptus Astartes, his cult on the world of Tallarn was scattered and broken. I was in hot pursuit of three cultists fleeing the scene, all on a rough desert transport ground vehicle. I knew they were not merely running just to run. They had a place they were attempting to make before we overtook them. They drove in a deliberate direction, and the dust that billowed skyward made it impossible for us to lose them as long as we kept pace.
As the rest of the outfit purged the Tomb of whatever heretics were still within, as well as any traps that remained, I and seven rough riders rode their sturdy, genetically modified mounts in pursuit. With us, keeping up through impressive augmentations, was the remaining Red Scorpion Battle-Brother known as Bacchus, and Lazarus armed with his patented Transuranic Arquebus, who could not quite match our speed but would have little trouble making it to the destination through his infinite endurance.
The trail itself led us into a catacomb not unlike the norm of Tallarn, where many folk lived underground near aquifers to escape the intense heat of the surface. The yawning maw of the tunnel breathed air that was far cooler, something I could feel on the very small section of my face that wasn't swathed in cloth. I felt a presence as we arrived, a...strange psychic presence. It was more powerful than my own strength, but malleable and unrefined. They must have had a sorcerer, I believed. We dismounted hurriedly and entered, the Tallarns armed with laspistols and sabers, my fitting similar save for my autogun. There was only one grand door, made from a sturdy slab of wood. Such things were rare and expensive on the world.
Such subtleties was lost or a non-issue to Battle-Brother Bacchus, who, at my command, kicked the door apart as if it were so much kindling. Hookah smoke and the smell of varying collections of bodily fluids escaped the battered door. Evidently they had been prepared for us, as an anti-personnel mine detonated once Bacchus set foot within. The desert raiders and I ducked, but Bacchus was undeterred save for some burns on his Mark VIII Power Armor. Lasbolts and bullets struck the Astartes, but he suitably waded through it and unleashed his bolter. A normal autogun or lasgun was intimidating when wielded by one unfamiliar to the smell and intense noise, but it was a mouse compared to the bolter's elephant. I don't believe I had ever heard something so ferociously loud, and the reverberations of the gun hit me three paces behind the statuesque astartes. Blood and limbs flew, four men dead before they knew what hit them.
Suddenly a
thing leaped from the smoke. A chaos mutant, horribly warped and tainted by chaos magic, grappling with Bacchus as a pink appendage from its chest cavity wrapped about the astartes like a constrictor. Bacchus gripped the limbs of the former-man and slammed it against the wall. I had no doubt Bacchus had it under control, but it distracted him for the moment, and so we advanced within.
Past the foyer, we could see a large central chamber filled with cushions and spiced drinks, with dead men and lurking forms that fired lasguns at us. A few archways fed into different rooms, screams and wails of ecstasy touched our ears as we cut our way through. Al-Adun cut the head off a cultist with his saber, firing into the maw of a woman-thing that had charged him, causing it to recoil in pain and give off a horrific cry. One Tallern was shot through the knee, buckling him as a turned-heretic of Tallarn ran him through with a pole of an unknown flag, likely stolen from Dasra. Naked women shouted and screamed in unconstrained fright, running away into different rooms or hiding under cushions like frightened dogs. One valiant Tallarn shot an approaching ne-er-do-well in the head, only to find his face eyeless and mouthless. A pink appendage, much like the one that bit at Bacchus, enveloped the Tallarn's own head and drowned his screams out as it consumed him.
I batted aside a strike from a chair wielding heretic, hoping to bludgeon me across the head. He didn't get the chance for a second swing, my saber opening his belly and spilling his entrails onto the floor. Kicking his body aside, I fired into the cultist that fed upon the fallen Tallarn, sticking him with five shots until it fell into the murk of the carpet. My next three shots were one hit kills, blowing out chests and brains as I methodically exterminated the filth. My psychic senses tingled, drawing my gun downwards to finish what I thought was the muted presence of whatever sorcerer lurked here. My finger had already pulled the trigger halfway when I noticed I did not aim at a cultist or mutant or even a man.
Under a large pillow, poking her head out at me were the big eyes of a woman. A slim, voluptuous woman, but a woman nonetheless, unmarred by mutation or corruption as far as I could tell. I blinked, pondering if this was some warp-inspired trick. Whatever sorcerer lay within here had to be misleading me, but I focused entirely on the woman and realized it was naught but her. There was no sorcerer here. It was just her.
I lowered my gun.
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