The Inquisition chooses. Who guides, who follows; who lives, who learns, who dies. Who will leave their world behind to bleed and suffer in distant lands, only to return and burn it to ashes.
Very few wish to be chosen. Very few are given a choice.
These five certainly weren't.
Two have worked for their master for many years-- one since adolescence, one as long as he can remember and probably much longer than that. Three have been selected to replace three before them, unlucky souls lost two months ago in the acid-choked substrata of Hive Ossat. A setback, yes, but Inquisitor Ran Il-Rayyah, ever-pragmatic, counts the mission a success.
There is, after all, no shortage of replacements.
And so two have waited, career killers idling away the days with practice and paperwork and slow recovery from burned lungs, while three were located, contacted, and informed in no uncertain terms that their lives were no longer their own.
The ships took them away.
Now they and their new partners stand in an upper spire of the sector capital, a city a continent wide, home to thirty billion individuals who hardly matter and, at the moment, perhaps eight who do. Ran Il-Rayyah is one of them. These five are not.
Yet.
They were brought here by a wheeled servitor, mindless reminder of one possible price for failure, and told to wait: their master would arrive shortly.
The Inquisitorial spire is circular, windowless, baroque in styling, almost blindingly bright: Ossat is a dark world, and such powerful lights are an affectation few are granted. Power is for the forges, not for comfort. The lights are set in alcoves near the ceiling, directed at mirrors which bounce the beams from wall to wall, illuminating columns of dust flecks and elaborate panels etched with images of local saints: El-Aan, Unir, Marea. All are yellow-robed, barefoot, skull-faced, empty sockets blank and staring.
In the center of the room is a wooden table, low and plain. An arcane device marked with blinking green lights hangs from the ceiling directly over it, humming faintly and emitting occasional gouts of steam. The air is heavy and thick with rust and cinnamon incense.
None of the five, save the original two, have met before this moment.
(Posting here first as an example of how this will work)
ReplyDeleteZeta glances about, Mechanicus hood pulled low but doing little to block the light-- no matter which way she looks, one mirror or another seems to be bouncing it directly into her eyes. She settles for squinting with her flesh eye and dimming the filters on her bionic one.
To the others she looks pretty much like any other member of the Cult-- a humanoid figure shrouded in the rust-red of Mars, an assortment of hoses spilling from beneath her hood and snaking into a boxy tank strapped across her back. One hand whirs as its fingers clench, and one eye glows an unnatural orange. A heavy mechanical limb tipped with industrial clamps and pincers is folded over her shoulder, hydraulics hissing. That she's female is impossible to determine, as the astonishing number of wires, boxes, lights, tubes, vials, bones, and geared devices hanging from her belt and strapped to her chest tend to obscure any telling features.
The other four are interesting, in their own way-- one has a bionic eye similar to her own, though somewhat better-made-- but she hasn't come all this way to look at people. They can keep. Now, that machine hanging over the table...
[I'd like to roll Tech-Use to figure out what that thing is]
On cursory inspection, she has absolutely no idea. It's a big hanging metal.... thing... with incredibly complicated ornamentation and what look like power cables wrapped around its mounting. Someone does seem to take very good care of it, at least.
ReplyDeleteAsmodai looks up from the daily prayer he was reading and surveys the group of acolytes around him. Three he doesn't know and one he does. The acolyte he does know is Solomon, the only other survivor of the ill-fated expedition to root out heresy in the lower parts of the hive. There had been five of them; Solomon had been lucky enough to be dragged out of the acid choked room first. The second man Asmodai had dragged out, however, wasn't as lucky. During an emergency lung transplant his knife had broken off inside the man's vital organs, and the poor cleric had died moments later.
ReplyDeleteHe looks at the tech priest. It seems to be examining the construct over the table. "Like that holo-projector? It was maintained by the old Enginseer before he was eaten alive by tyranids on the last mission."
"Tyranids," she repeats, vox doubtful.
ReplyDeleteShe examines the man-- tall, lean, grey, an old gunslinger with an older yet well-polished rifle slung over his shoulder-- and then deliberately shifts her gaze elsewhere.
Not at the soldier-- not at those slitted eyes--
A point just to the left of the holo-projector will do. Close enough for her to continue admiring it (most revered and ancient machine-spirit) but far enough away that she might be looking at one of the saints.
"He must have been very skilled..."
Tzarine fidgeted as the two spoke, fingers drumming against her right thigh. That they had struck up conversation first together told her that they were familiar with one another; but whether their words were custom or not, she couldn't tell. She had heard set phrases and the like were used here in conversation, and traitors of their usage were punished, but little had been done to educate her on what properness was. She figured for now that silence was best.
ReplyDeleteAnd what to say anyway, to anyone? She had hardly been able to look at her new companions -- their very flesh gave whirring, hissing noises, protesting life, and their silhouettes (examined, unwillingly, from the mirrors) were rife with straight lines and inorganic anglegs. In the mirrors too she noticed the two speaking to have eyes that glowed, and her heart clenched. They both had eyes of ore and electricity. Was this some common characteristic amongst the people here? Were these two siblings? They looked unalike, but how could she tell? For all she knew, those related by blood were similar not in appearances of flesh, but rather in commonalities of mineral and metal appendage.
Holo-projector, one said. Tzarine gazed at it, bewildered and unnerved. The fingers drumming against her thigh moved faster -- Thap thap thap.