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IN THE END, I was haunted by the frightening creature from the rock fields for weeks. As the Counter Riposte powered away from Menza Theta and plunged into dense warp, the lanky, hair-sprouting shape still lurked at the corner of my consciousness, never moving but always watching me with its strange, eyeless perception.

I even began to see hints of it in my closest allies. Lottie’s familiar, vigilant crouch echoed that of the creature, as did her empty glare. Terezkova’s long-limbed paleness conjured the image again as she was folded delicately into her blister. Even Tellis’ dark, wiry beard brought the scene creeping back into my mind. Each time I shuddered reflexively, losing my grip of conversation and activity and becoming ever more detached and vacant, to the point where I became conscious of an unhelpful paranoia suffusing my views and decisions. I wondered if I might have been going mad.

In response, I did the only thing I knew would help. Withdrawing to my library, I immersed myself in research; pouring over books of science and history in search of an explanation but still incapable of shaking the feeling that something grey and unfriendly sat just over my shoulder. Frequently I would emerge from the room to find that the corridors of the ship had blackened in imitation of a stellar night and that I had forgotten to eat for thirty or forty hours, at which point weariness would catch up with me and I would be drawn back to my quarters to engage in the restless, disquieting but unfortunately obligatory practice of sleep.

I studied everything even remotely connected with the matters at hand. Almanacs of botany and zoology from the southern sectors were devoured as quickly as political logs and royal charters from planets beyond the limits of the Astronomicon. Every word of my lamented Master’s collection became an object of particular interest as I read and cross-referenced everything with everything else, often in the most intellectually tenuous of ways.

My approach was undisciplined and frantic, but I did gradually come into contact with certain nodules of helpful data here and there; mostly half-mentioned names and the occasional little congruence between the travels of otherwise unconnected individuals. One book on the legality of extra-stellar asteroid mining emphasised a case of heretical gene-tampering which set an Inquisitorial precedent, and so the list of things I had to do was increased further still, but I reasoned that it could wait until my business in Eta Carinae was concluded.

ON ONE MORNING (although it may have been an afternoon), I turned the corner near the double doors to my library and despaired to see Tarne waiting there. The Priest had continued to recover in the past months, and now looked far closer to the broad, strong man I had known in my youth. He now stood with thick arms folded over a barrel-chest and regarded me from a fleshy, blunt-featured face with particularly dark, wild eyes. I approached, vainly hoping that I would be able to talk the Priest out of the way and resume my study of a worn paper-book entitled ‘Uncommon Aquatic Phenotypes of the Sabbat Worlds’.

The book was blandly written; the work of some bureaucrat eager for extra funds, by most accounts to contribute to a formidable flux addiction, but it contained accounts of numerous creatures not covered elsewhere in my collection, including a select number of quasi-daemonic lifeforms not generally discussed in Imperial scholarly circles. One such creature had drawn my attention the night before; a type of hagfish described as being short, stocky and capable of secreting an oil with numbing properties. According to this tome, its only known habitat is the gastric ulcers suffered by some enormous marine… thing which I had yet to properly cross-reference.

‘You look tired.’ Tarne said gravely as I closed. I knew it was true, and I felt greasy and unwashed after my unsatisfactory few hours of sleep, but the book’s rough leather spine tightened in my grip as though pressing me to give it yet more exercise. Tarne threw an accusatory glance at the book.

‘Have you been to see Chainbers?’ the Priest asked. Guilt knotted in my throat, for in the two weeks since our departure from Menza Theta, I had not once visited my gunman.

‘You should,’ Tarne continued, not needing an answer, ‘he has asked for you.’ With which the Priest smoothly, slowly turned away and, arms still folded, left me to waver on the Library’s threshold. I stood for a long while.

Realistically, I should not have been so conflicted, but in my paranoia and fatigue my wits had become sluggish. It was a matter of at least a quarter of an hour before I put the book down by the library door and made for the infirmary.

CHAINBERS LOOKED AWFUL. His flesh was white and clammy, and in the weeks of invalid coma he had grown thin and loose. His eyes and mouth and nose were all crusted with dried excretions and his hair had grown, showing his partial baldness. His was clearly a semi-natural condition; the body’s desperate reaction to something other and alien. My first thought had been that he had contracted some foreign jungle disease on Gimokodan which had incubated and only manifested at the far-off Scholem on Menza Theta, but when he told me his story, this rational theory was thrown into doubt.

I entered the Riposte’s small Medicae ward, nodding a greeting to Asa Grespen, a smallish, thinnish man and our resident Physic, and stepped quickly into the bay in which Chainbers lay supine. I was struck by the smell in that room; not just the medicinal scent that normally suffused the Riposte’s clinic, but something sickly, acrid and altogether wrong.

‘It was him, Inquisitor.’ Chainbers said with weak urgency when I entered, ‘Just like Calverna.’

‘I know, Gordon.’ I said, taking a seat, ‘I saw it on the day we left.’

‘Why would he be on Menza?’ Chainbers asked. I had an idea, but had to think for a moment before explaining it.

‘I’m not sure he was.’ I began, keeping my voice low and calm so as not to distress the man, ‘I think the creature you came across on your exercise was something a bit more natural. The Imperial mining companies employ many outlandish techniques to quarry minerals from bare rock, but Poldark Resources is an old corporation; so ancient, in fact, that some of its techniques date back into Old Night.’ Chainbers closed his gummy, irritated eyes and looked as though he wanted to rub them but couldn’t raise his hands, I leaned forward with a sterile cloth and washed the irritated tear ducts for him, pulling off flakes of dried muck and strings of sticky mucus. Chainbers looked cleaner happier once it was done.

‘It was an engineered creature,’ I said, ‘a mining organism, the kind that was released onto the moon when it was first settled. That’s what created the rock formations; swarms of those things let loose on the landscape to dig up and pulverise the ores so they can be collected by machine later.’

‘It moved like the daemon.’ Chainbers managed between ragged breaths.

‘Yes,’ I nodded, ‘Matas, damn its soul, must have been to Menza and seen the creatures, and based its false visage on them so it could play with us.’

‘We have to find him and kill him.’ Chainbers’ voice was suddenly much stronger. A louder, low growl that came from deep in his chest, as though he were summoning unplumbed reserves. I stood and lay a hand on the man’s shoulder, finding his flesh unnervingly cold.

‘We will, Gordon.’ I said, ‘But first I need you to become stronger, so we’re ready when the time comes. Focus on that.’ Chainbers nodded weakly and sank into the bed. I left him to sleep and went to find Tellis in the practice cages.

WHILE I WAS changing for my session with Tellis, a gentle knock came on my chamber door. Pulling on a simple black shirt, I answered it and balked to see the towering, bluish form of Terezkova waiting there. The Navigator’s intricate curls of ink glistened on her long skull, backlit by the lumen strip behind her. I had opened the door expecting someone of my own height or slightly taller, and had to abruptly incline my head to look upon the angular, beautiful features of the astral waif.

‘My Lady!’ I said excitedly, ‘This is a surprise.’ I had neither heard nor felt the ship disengaging from the warp, nor had I been formally notified. I reasoned that we must have reached our first scheduled stop while I had been sleeping. The Navigator looked far too healthy to have only just emerged from her blister on the bridge.

‘I fear I’ve become accustomed to seeing you outside my chamber, Ingram.’ she began, fixing me with her dark, star-laced glare. Terezkova held up a book, whose spine read ‘Uncommon Aquatic Phenotypes of the Sabbat Worlds’. ‘Does this explain your absence?’ she said with something that resembled spite. I wavered for a moment before I could give an answer.

‘My time has been occupied, Annushka.’ I said frankly, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be there.’

‘Your study of fish and crustacean and anemone was more precious to you.’ The lady seemed unusually hard-faced, and almost looked as if she might cry. I felt an involuntary frown twist my face.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Have you abandoned your wits, your duty and morals?’ Terezkova was spitting now, her lips twisted in incredulous disgust at some wrong-doing.

‘Annushka, what have I done to offend you?’

‘That girl!’ she snapped, throwing the book violently against my chest despite her thin arm and the weight of the thing, ‘You savage, she was the one!’

‘I know.’

‘And you sent her the wrong way,’ the Navigator thundered, ‘into the mouth of death and loss.’

‘She requires the insight,’ I said with a tone of warning in my voice, ‘and I will not tolerate this fresh tone, Annuska.’

The slap caught me off-guard. It struck me with loud transgression, vocal in its violence and indignation, a bang which echoed in the hallway. As the stinging receded from my cheek and became just a ringing in my ear, I thought to strike the woman back, and my blow would not have been open-handed. Before my hand could move, though, Terezkova was on me like a tigress.

‘No, you cruel wretch. You will not raise your hand to me! Not if you ever want to crawl back into that ethical void that spawned you.’ I knew I could not afford to hit the precious creature, though my fist shook to do so. Pushing me back into my quarters, Terezkova seized me by the jaw with her long, bony fingers. As she bore down on me I thought the ornately tattooed eye amid her forehead might manifest and kill me at once, but instead her real eyes fixed me with their black fire, the twin moons were dark and gleamed with the depths of her rage. ‘Do you know what happens on the Black Ships, Ingram?’ Meeting her gaze now, with fire of my own. I gently cast away her hand with a wave of my own and straightened, still child-like before the towering presence of the Navigator’s raw psychic power.

‘Lady,’ I began, my voice low and heavy with the memory, ‘I know the utter darkness that seeps into one’s mind. I have felt the bitter ice that makes the breath mist, the skin prickle and the wits slow. I know the air’s bloody tang, the drifts of shit and fear that assault the senses. I’ve heard distinctive clatter of the doors and the screams of men starving, of women raped and children eaten alive by their desperate peers.’ The echo of my voice took on something of that same sound and I shivered to recall such a time. ‘I still see the blank masks and the white coats of the guards. I see them in my dreams; in which I walk noisily along a gantry above a pit of moaning, anguished flesh, and pass by such a frightening figure, rendered in green by the machine-eyes I see it through. The thing’s smooth face gives me a sinister look and only when it has passed do I realise that the face is also my own and that I share equally its terrible guilt.’ Terezkova’s expression changed, but not for the better. She had glistening tears in her dark eyes now.
‘You cannot make me doubt my memory, Navigator.’ I said, ‘Fixate on the purgatory those sorry souls suffer and the horrors our Imperium forces upon its most vulnerable citizens, and which I have now subjected that poor girl to, but please spare a thought for those who must live on in perpetuity knowing that they have been directly responsible for such things.’

‘Are there so few horrors in the universe, Ingram, that you must inflict and excuse your own?’ Terezkova said with narrow, glimmering eyes and a shake of her head.

‘There are horrors and yet other horrors, my illustrious Lady. In the last two years I have met and killed Inquisitors who are broken by the horrors they’ve known. The fear and the sorrow and the cold hatred burn into the very soul of a man and alter it, changing it from a tool of the righteous into a weapon of Chaos.’

‘It isn’t about you, Ingram.’ the Lady whispered, turning away, ‘Not this time.’ She evidently intended that to be the last word.

‘No.’ I said, catching the navigator by the elbow and frightened at once that I might snap her bones, ‘It’s about every person in service to the Ordos. It might be about the entire Inquisition for all I know. If we can’t be sure our Inquisitors are emotionally resilient then we invite doom upon the Imperium.’ Terezkova wavered.

‘That does not justify…’

‘I am not in the business of justice!’ I insisted, ‘If true justice even existed then I would not be here. This is about preservation, Annushka. I expected you of all people to understand what I’m up against, and if I am to continue the work of my forebears, then any person I bring into the fold must be incorruptible, imperturbable and, to a great extent, unjust.’

‘And this is the method you chose to temper her.’ the Navigator said, shrinking back visibly.

‘Yes.’ I said at last, ‘I will callously force that girl to endure all of the worst horrors the Imperium can conceive, the very cruellest of holy rituals and the most horrible of psychic contrivances. And when or if she comes back to me I will make a decision; to pronounce her fit for Inquisitorial service and admit her onto the ship, or call her broken, insane or worse and kill her on the spot.’ The Lady relaxed her arm and I let go, spotting with shame that I had left a dark, bruised thumbprint.

‘When we were immersed, I looked back and saw the ship.’ Terezkova was actively weeping now, her haughty bearing suddenly slipped, ‘I saw her fear and despair as a bright eddy in our wake. She hates you, Ingram. She will not serve.’

‘Good. I hope she does hate me,’ I said with resignation, ‘for that might be the thing that allows her to weather what lies ahead. As for her service; that is my decision to make, not yours and not hers.’

‘If that is your burden of your rank,’ the Lady said, beginning to regain her composure, but still holding my stare with her own, ‘if that is what you must do, then you are worthy of neither my respect nor my rage.’

‘YOU SEEM THIN, Inquisitor.’ Tellis said, whirling his staff about himself with easy dexterity, ‘I do hope your reclusion has not atrophied your skill as it has your limbs.’ It was true. My body felt loose and untoned, and it itched and prickled about me as I instructed it in warm-up moves that had become unfamiliar. Frustrated, I shook off encumbering lethargy and flexed away from the despondency which had crept into me in the prior weeks of inactivity.

Tellis and I began to circle, and I made sure that I dictated the pace. Tellis switched hands to compensate.

‘You are slow, as well, sir.’ the warrior said with a frown. His stance once again seemed an air-tight fortress.

‘Call it ‘deliberate’.’ I replied, twisting my staff in time with the rhythm of my steps. I had opted for a shorter weapon this time, reducing my reach, but allowing me a quicker arm and an off-hand with which to catch and deflect and punch as I pleased, though trying to block with the weapon would end in broken wrists.

Tellis was on me in an instant, opening with a sweep which I dodged back from, then another, lower attack which sang through the air as I leapt over it. I directed the momentum of my landing into a curling strike against the warrior’s lowermost ribs, but he had twisted away in time and I then found myself dodging a counter meant for my neck. Tellis was pulling no punches.

‘Deliberate it is.’ he said as he re-entered his stance. I smiled, feeling the strength returning to my limbs, and played a faster sequence of twirls with my staff. Tellis and I resumed our respectful circling, keeping a good three metres between us, which favoured Tellis’s weapon, and his sheer size.

A change in the warrior’s stance alerted me to his intent, as I had gradually learnt on Menza Theta that Tellis’ movements would more often than not indicate the exact opposite of what he really had in mind. He lunged, using the motion to partially throw is staff forward, he then caught the weapon by its very tip and swung it in a long, brutal arc. I was surprised and fell into a hasty dodge. Rolling under the whooshing weapon, I spotted a minute opening in the attack, but it was too late to exploit it by that point. I rolled away and back onto my feet, shivering with adrenaline and heady awareness.

‘You have improved, Inquisitor.’ Tellis said with a grin, ‘You must lend me the book you’ve been reading.’

Now I darted in, springing away from the early strike and ducking inside Tellis’ guard. He tried to pirouette away but the extra reach afforded by my staff allowed me to knock out his left knee before I threw a quick punch to traumatise his femoral nerve. He fell onto the knee with a cry and I made the most of it, twisting around behind him and cracking the tip of my staff into the external oblique muscle on his right side. Tellis lashed out and I barely dodged the strike, the tip of his staff just glancing the back of my calf but breaking the skin painfully.

In a tense moment, I watched Tellis try to stand. All the muscle of his left leg was in spasm and it was clearly painful for him. He shakily rose a few inches, but the leg collapsed again and the warrior gasped and laughed with the pain as I have seen no-one else do. He knew that the duel was over, and dropped his staff to massage his leg back into action.

‘Well done, Inquisitor,’ he said, breathlessly, ‘that one’s yours.’

Description
IN THE END, I was haunted by the frightening creature from the rock fields for weeks. As the Counter Riposte powered away from Menza Theta and plunged into dense warp, the lanky, hair-sprouting shape still lurked at the corner of my consciousness, never moving but always watching me with its strange, eyeless perception.

I even began to see hints of it in my closest allies. Lottie’s familiar, vigilant crouch echoed that of the creature, as did her empty glare. Terezkova’s long-limbed paleness conjured the image again as she was folded delicately into her blister. Even Tellis’ dark, wiry beard brought the scene creeping back into my mind. Each time I shuddered reflexively, losing my grip of conversation and activity and becoming ever more detached and vacant, to the point where I became conscious of an unhelpful paranoia suffusing my views and decisions. I wondered if I might have been going mad.

In response, I did the only thing I knew would help. Withdrawing to my library, I immersed myself in research; pouring over books of science and history in search of an explanation but still incapable of shaking the feeling that something grey and unfriendly sat just over my shoulder. Frequently I would emerge from the room to find that the corridors of the ship had blackened in imitation of a stellar night and that I had forgotten to eat for thirty or forty hours, at which point weariness would catch up with me and I would be drawn back to my quarters to engage in the restless, disquieting but unfortunately obligatory practice of sleep.

I studied everything even remotely connected with the matters at hand. Almanacs of botany and zoology from the southern sectors were devoured as quickly as political logs and royal charters from planets beyond the limits of the Astronomicon. Every word of my lamented Master’s collection became an object of particular interest as I read and cross-referenced everything with everything else, often in the most intellectually tenuous of ways.

My approach was undisciplined and frantic, but I did gradually come into contact with certain nodules of helpful data here and there; mostly half-mentioned names and the occasional little congruence between the travels of otherwise unconnected individuals. One book on the legality of extra-stellar asteroid mining emphasised a case of heretical gene-tampering which set an Inquisitorial precedent, and so the list of things I had to do was increased further still, but I reasoned that it could wait until my business in Eta Carinae was concluded.

ON ONE MORNING (although it may have been an afternoon), I turned the corner near the double doors to my library and despaired to see Tarne waiting there. The Priest had continued to recover in the past months, and now looked far closer to the broad, strong man I had known in my youth. He now stood with thick arms folded over a barrel-chest and regarded me from a fleshy, blunt-featured face with particularly dark, wild eyes. I approached, vainly hoping that I would be able to talk the Priest out of the way and resume my study of a worn paper-book entitled ‘Uncommon Aquatic Phenotypes of the Sabbat Worlds’.

The book was blandly written; the work of some bureaucrat eager for extra funds, by most accounts to contribute to a formidable flux addiction, but it contained accounts of numerous creatures not covered elsewhere in my collection, including a select number of quasi-daemonic lifeforms not generally discussed in Imperial scholarly circles. One such creature had drawn my attention the night before; a type of hagfish described as being short, stocky and capable of secreting an oil with numbing properties. According to this tome, its only known habitat is the gastric ulcers suffered by some enormous marine… thing which I had yet to properly cross-reference.

‘You look tired.’ Tarne said gravely as I closed. I knew it was true, and I felt greasy and unwashed after my unsatisfactory few hours of sleep, but the book’s rough leather spine tightened in my grip as though pressing me to give it yet more exercise. Tarne threw an accusatory glance at the book.

‘Have you been to see Chainbers?’ the Priest asked. Guilt knotted in my throat, for in the two weeks since our departure from Menza Theta, I had not once visited my gunman.

‘You should,’ Tarne continued, not needing an answer, ‘he has asked for you.’ With which the Priest smoothly, slowly turned away and, arms still folded, left me to waver on the Library’s threshold. I stood for a long while.

Realistically, I should not have been so conflicted, but in my paranoia and fatigue my wits had become sluggish. It was a matter of at least a quarter of an hour before I put the book down by the library door and made for the infirmary.

CHAINBERS LOOKED AWFUL. His flesh was white and clammy, and in the weeks of invalid coma he had grown thin and loose. His eyes and mouth and nose were all crusted with dried excretions and his hair had grown, showing his partial baldness. His was clearly a semi-natural condition; the body’s desperate reaction to something other and alien. My first thought had been that he had contracted some foreign jungle disease on Gimokodan which had incubated and only manifested at the far-off Scholem on Menza Theta, but when he told me his story, this rational theory was thrown into doubt.

I entered the Riposte’s small Medicae ward, nodding a greeting to Asa Grespen, a smallish, thinnish man and our resident Physic, and stepped quickly into the bay in which Chainbers lay supine. I was struck by the smell in that room; not just the medicinal scent that normally suffused the Riposte’s clinic, but something sickly, acrid and altogether wrong.

‘It was him, Inquisitor.’ Chainbers said with weak urgency when I entered, ‘Just like Calverna.’

‘I know, Gordon.’ I said, taking a seat, ‘I saw it on the day we left.’

‘Why would he be on Menza?’ Chainbers asked. I had an idea, but had to think for a moment before explaining it.

‘I’m not sure he was.’ I began, keeping my voice low and calm so as not to distress the man, ‘I think the creature you came across on your exercise was something a bit more natural. The Imperial mining companies employ many outlandish techniques to quarry minerals from bare rock, but Poldark Resources is an old corporation; so ancient, in fact, that some of its techniques date back into Old Night.’ Chainbers closed his gummy, irritated eyes and looked as though he wanted to rub them but couldn’t raise his hands, I leaned forward with a sterile cloth and washed the irritated tear ducts for him, pulling off flakes of dried muck and strings of sticky mucus. Chainbers looked cleaner happier once it was done.

‘It was an engineered creature,’ I said, ‘a mining organism, the kind that was released onto the moon when it was first settled. That’s what created the rock formations; swarms of those things let loose on the landscape to dig up and pulverise the ores so they can be collected by machine later.’

‘It moved like the daemon.’ Chainbers managed between ragged breaths.

‘Yes,’ I nodded, ‘Matas, damn its soul, must have been to Menza and seen the creatures, and based its false visage on them so it could play with us.’

‘We have to find him and kill him.’ Chainbers’ voice was suddenly much stronger. A louder, low growl that came from deep in his chest, as though he were summoning unplumbed reserves. I stood and lay a hand on the man’s shoulder, finding his flesh unnervingly cold.

‘We will, Gordon.’ I said, ‘But first I need you to become stronger, so we’re ready when the time comes. Focus on that.’ Chainbers nodded weakly and sank into the bed. I left him to sleep and went to find Tellis in the practice cages.

WHILE I WAS changing for my session with Tellis, a gentle knock came on my chamber door. Pulling on a simple black shirt, I answered it and balked to see the towering, bluish form of Terezkova waiting there. The Navigator’s intricate curls of ink glistened on her long skull, backlit by the lumen strip behind her. I had opened the door expecting someone of my own height or slightly taller, and had to abruptly incline my head to look upon the angular, beautiful features of the astral waif.

‘My Lady!’ I said excitedly, ‘This is a surprise.’ I had neither heard nor felt the ship disengaging from the warp, nor had I been formally notified. I reasoned that we must have reached our first scheduled stop while I had been sleeping. The Navigator looked far too healthy to have only just emerged from her blister on the bridge.

‘I fear I’ve become accustomed to seeing you outside my chamber, Ingram.’ she began, fixing me with her dark, star-laced glare. Terezkova held up a book, whose spine read ‘Uncommon Aquatic Phenotypes of the Sabbat Worlds’. ‘Does this explain your absence?’ she said with something that resembled spite. I wavered for a moment before I could give an answer.

‘My time has been occupied, Annushka.’ I said frankly, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be there.’

‘Your study of fish and crustacean and anemone was more precious to you.’ The lady seemed unusually hard-faced, and almost looked as if she might cry. I felt an involuntary frown twist my face.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Have you abandoned your wits, your duty and morals?’ Terezkova was spitting now, her lips twisted in incredulous disgust at some wrong-doing.

‘Annushka, what have I done to offend you?’

‘That girl!’ she snapped, throwing the book violently against my chest despite her thin arm and the weight of the thing, ‘You savage, she was the one!’

‘I know.’

‘And you sent her the wrong way,’ the Navigator thundered, ‘into the mouth of death and loss.’

‘She requires the insight,’ I said with a tone of warning in my voice, ‘and I will not tolerate this fresh tone, Annuska.’

The slap caught me off-guard. It struck me with loud transgression, vocal in its violence and indignation, a bang which echoed in the hallway. As the stinging receded from my cheek and became just a ringing in my ear, I thought to strike the woman back, and my blow would not have been open-handed. Before my hand could move, though, Terezkova was on me like a tigress.

‘No, you cruel wretch. You will not raise your hand to me! Not if you ever want to crawl back into that ethical void that spawned you.’ I knew I could not afford to hit the precious creature, though my fist shook to do so. Pushing me back into my quarters, Terezkova seized me by the jaw with her long, bony fingers. As she bore down on me I thought the ornately tattooed eye amid her forehead might manifest and kill me at once, but instead her real eyes fixed me with their black fire, the twin moons were dark and gleamed with the depths of her rage. ‘Do you know what happens on the Black Ships, Ingram?’ Meeting her gaze now, with fire of my own. I gently cast away her hand with a wave of my own and straightened, still child-like before the towering presence of the Navigator’s raw psychic power.

‘Lady,’ I began, my voice low and heavy with the memory, ‘I know the utter darkness that seeps into one’s mind. I have felt the bitter ice that makes the breath mist, the skin prickle and the wits slow. I know the air’s bloody tang, the drifts of shit and fear that assault the senses. I’ve heard distinctive clatter of the doors and the screams of men starving, of women raped and children eaten alive by their desperate peers.’ The echo of my voice took on something of that same sound and I shivered to recall such a time. ‘I still see the blank masks and the white coats of the guards. I see them in my dreams; in which I walk noisily along a gantry above a pit of moaning, anguished flesh, and pass by such a frightening figure, rendered in green by the machine-eyes I see it through. The thing’s smooth face gives me a sinister look and only when it has passed do I realise that the face is also my own and that I share equally its terrible guilt.’ Terezkova’s expression changed, but not for the better. She had glistening tears in her dark eyes now.
‘You cannot make me doubt my memory, Navigator.’ I said, ‘Fixate on the purgatory those sorry souls suffer and the horrors our Imperium forces upon its most vulnerable citizens, and which I have now subjected that poor girl to, but please spare a thought for those who must live on in perpetuity knowing that they have been directly responsible for such things.’

‘Are there so few horrors in the universe, Ingram, that you must inflict and excuse your own?’ Terezkova said with narrow, glimmering eyes and a shake of her head.

‘There are horrors and yet other horrors, my illustrious Lady. In the last two years I have met and killed Inquisitors who are broken by the horrors they’ve known. The fear and the sorrow and the cold hatred burn into the very soul of a man and alter it, changing it from a tool of the righteous into a weapon of Chaos.’

‘It isn’t about you, Ingram.’ the Lady whispered, turning away, ‘Not this time.’ She evidently intended that to be the last word.

‘No.’ I said, catching the navigator by the elbow and frightened at once that I might snap her bones, ‘It’s about every person in service to the Ordos. It might be about the entire Inquisition for all I know. If we can’t be sure our Inquisitors are emotionally resilient then we invite doom upon the Imperium.’ Terezkova wavered.

‘That does not justify…’

‘I am not in the business of justice!’ I insisted, ‘If true justice even existed then I would not be here. This is about preservation, Annushka. I expected you of all people to understand what I’m up against, and if I am to continue the work of my forebears, then any person I bring into the fold must be incorruptible, imperturbable and, to a great extent, unjust.’

‘And this is the method you chose to temper her.’ the Navigator said, shrinking back visibly.

‘Yes.’ I said at last, ‘I will callously force that girl to endure all of the worst horrors the Imperium can conceive, the very cruellest of holy rituals and the most horrible of psychic contrivances. And when or if she comes back to me I will make a decision; to pronounce her fit for Inquisitorial service and admit her onto the ship, or call her broken, insane or worse and kill her on the spot.’ The Lady relaxed her arm and I let go, spotting with shame that I had left a dark, bruised thumbprint.

‘When we were immersed, I looked back and saw the ship.’ Terezkova was actively weeping now, her haughty bearing suddenly slipped, ‘I saw her fear and despair as a bright eddy in our wake. She hates you, Ingram. She will not serve.’

‘Good. I hope she does hate me,’ I said with resignation, ‘for that might be the thing that allows her to weather what lies ahead. As for her service; that is my decision to make, not yours and not hers.’

‘If that is your burden of your rank,’ the Lady said, beginning to regain her composure, but still holding my stare with her own, ‘if that is what you must do, then you are worthy of neither my respect nor my rage.’

‘YOU SEEM THIN, Inquisitor.’ Tellis said, whirling his staff about himself with easy dexterity, ‘I do hope your reclusion has not atrophied your skill as it has your limbs.’ It was true. My body felt loose and untoned, and it itched and prickled about me as I instructed it in warm-up moves that had become unfamiliar. Frustrated, I shook off encumbering lethargy and flexed away from the despondency which had crept into me in the prior weeks of inactivity.

Tellis and I began to circle, and I made sure that I dictated the pace. Tellis switched hands to compensate.

‘You are slow, as well, sir.’ the warrior said with a frown. His stance once again seemed an air-tight fortress.

‘Call it ‘deliberate’.’ I replied, twisting my staff in time with the rhythm of my steps. I had opted for a shorter weapon this time, reducing my reach, but allowing me a quicker arm and an off-hand with which to catch and deflect and punch as I pleased, though trying to block with the weapon would end in broken wrists.

Tellis was on me in an instant, opening with a sweep which I dodged back from, then another, lower attack which sang through the air as I leapt over it. I directed the momentum of my landing into a curling strike against the warrior’s lowermost ribs, but he had twisted away in time and I then found myself dodging a counter meant for my neck. Tellis was pulling no punches.

‘Deliberate it is.’ he said as he re-entered his stance. I smiled, feeling the strength returning to my limbs, and played a faster sequence of twirls with my staff. Tellis and I resumed our respectful circling, keeping a good three metres between us, which favoured Tellis’s weapon, and his sheer size.

A change in the warrior’s stance alerted me to his intent, as I had gradually learnt on Menza Theta that Tellis’ movements would more often than not indicate the exact opposite of what he really had in mind. He lunged, using the motion to partially throw is staff forward, he then caught the weapon by its very tip and swung it in a long, brutal arc. I was surprised and fell into a hasty dodge. Rolling under the whooshing weapon, I spotted a minute opening in the attack, but it was too late to exploit it by that point. I rolled away and back onto my feet, shivering with adrenaline and heady awareness.

‘You have improved, Inquisitor.’ Tellis said with a grin, ‘You must lend me the book you’ve been reading.’

Now I darted in, springing away from the early strike and ducking inside Tellis’ guard. He tried to pirouette away but the extra reach afforded by my staff allowed me to knock out his left knee before I threw a quick punch to traumatise his femoral nerve. He fell onto the knee with a cry and I made the most of it, twisting around behind him and cracking the tip of my staff into the external oblique muscle on his right side. Tellis lashed out and I barely dodged the strike, the tip of his staff just glancing the back of my calf but breaking the skin painfully.

In a tense moment, I watched Tellis try to stand. All the muscle of his left leg was in spasm and it was clearly painful for him. He shakily rose a few inches, but the leg collapsed again and the warrior gasped and laughed with the pain as I have seen no-one else do. He knew that the duel was over, and dropped his staff to massage his leg back into action.

‘Well done, Inquisitor,’ he said, breathlessly, ‘that one’s yours.’