Chapter 238: The Inquisitor (Patreon)

The strike team continued their descent into the subterranean depths. With the servos of their power armour amplifying every stride, they covered ground at a speed that would seem inhuman to any unaugmented observer. Within minutes they had reached nearly a kilometre below the surface.

The terrain here grew stranger with each step. Twisting corridors and sharp angles gave the impression of a labyrinth.

Grot’s power armour emitted a scanning pulse, mapping the surrounding passageways and projecting a three-dimensional schematic across his visor display. Only then did he realise the truth: they were standing inside the fire-control nexus of a massive weapons array.

The labyrinth was not natural. It was built into the processor of a vast machine, the pathways and chambers forming patterns like the circuits of some incomprehensible device.

The squad pressed forward, boots clanging against steel. Without warning, a shot cracked from around a distant corner. The warriors immediately pressed themselves against the bulkhead, weapons raised.

Both the Standard Praetorian Pattern and the more ornate Thunderborn-forged armour deployed augur scans.

Data scrolled across their displays, life signs, armour signatures, weapon identifications. The system’s compared it to the tactical database and returned its verdict:

“Positive ident,” voxed Grey. “One Inquisitor, female designation. Eighteen Adeptus Astartes. Loyalist. Hostiles: approximately fifty Astartes, designate Traitoris Extremis.”

Grot’s heart sank. “An Inquisitor? Here?” He had expected resistance, but the presence of the Holy Ordos beneath this satellite was beyond his predictions.

The only explanation was that she had infiltrated this place long before, hiding in the dark, only to be flushed out once the traitors had dug deep into the complex.

“Throne damn the Inquisition,” Grot spat, teeth grinding. “Kill them all and be done with it.”

Grey shook his head. “No. We aid them.”

Relations between the Inquisition and the Talon Sector had always been strained. Still, Grey judged this battle an opportunity to ease that tension. Moreover, he doubted the Inquisitor had simply ‘been here’ all along. The Celestial Engine’s monitoring systems, corrupted or otherwise, would not have missed a living presence.

“You are Thunderborn,” Grot sighed, bitter but resigned. “Your word is command. Very well. We go.”

Grey surged from cover, activating the temporal accelerator, bullet time. The world around him stretched and slowed, what others would see as a blur of motion, he experienced as clarity.

Rounding the corner, he beheld the scene:

Eighteen Astartes in ancient, unfamiliar marks of armor stood in defensive formation, shielding a female figure in the garb of the Inquisition. They fired disciplined volleys down the corridor at their enemies, fifty Chaos Space Marines, their corrupted plate daubed with profane sigils, their weapons spitting death.

The Inquisitor herself fired a one-handed crossbow-pistol, of archaic but unmistakably sanctified design. She slipped bolts between the gaps in her protectors’ pauldrons, each sanctified quarrel streaked toward the foe, leaving faint trails of light as they cut through the dimness, detonating upon impact with bursts of searing purity.

Grey moved. He wove through a storm of bolter shells and arcing quarrels, closing the distance with impossible speed. Before the bullet time ended, five traitor Astartes fell, throats opened, armour split, lives extinguished.

To outside eyes, it was instantaneous. A shadow flashed into the melee, and suddenly five Chaos Marines lay dead.

“Concentrated fire!” the traitors roared, their vox-voices guttural with warp corruption. Bolter rounds screamed toward Grey, but his activated gravity shield deflected every impact.

He planted a beacon upon the ground. A tear opened in reality itself, and from the rift emerged Grot and his warriors, storming into the traitors’ rear.

“Lute smash big ones!” the ogryn bellowed, ploughing through the corrupted Astartes with sheer brute force, scattering their formation like toys.

The Loyalist Astartes and the Inquisitor pressed forward, joining the sudden shift in momentum.

Moments later, the last Chaos Marine toppled, a sanctified bolt piercing his helm.

The battlefield fell silent, save for the crackle of cooling bolters and the hiss of auto-senses recalibrating.

The Inquisitor strode over to a fallen traitor, planting the heel of her high, armoured boot upon his skull. She bent low, yanking the quarrel free from his cranium, then turned to face Grey.

Her weapons were peculiar: a slender rapier and that compact crossbow-pistol, both humming faintly with power fields. Fragile in appearance, yet capable of piercing even ceramite plate.

“Identify yourselves,” she commanded, voice edged with steel.

“Talons, First Legion,” Grey answered curtly, offering nothing more.

The woman frowned, levelling her crossbow-pistol at his helm. “Talons Astra Militaris? I have never heard of such a regiment. You will tell me where I am, and why I am here. By the authority of the Holy Ordos, I command it.”

Grey’s brow furrowed. She truly didn’t know where she was? Why, then, was she aboard the Celestial Engine at all? And how could an Inquisitor of her calibre be ignorant of the Talon Sector?

“You are upon a celestial engine, near Cadia,” Grey replied after a pause. “How you came here is unknown. The Talons are not Imperial Guard. We are the armies of the Talon Sector, autonomous.”

The Inquisitor’s expression chilled at once. “Not under the Astra Militarum?” Her finger tightened on the trigger of her crossbow-pistol.

Behind her, the Astartes raised their bolters, weapons aimed squarely at Grey’s squad.

“No aim at Lute’s commander!” the ogryn roared, stomping forward in fury.

“Stand down!” Grot barked, dragging the massive warrior back by his pauldron. His voice carried the sharp edge of command, but his eyes betrayed the tension in the air. If it came to a firefight now, Lute would die first.

The Inquisitor studied them closely, the ogryn in modified power armour, the impossible teleportation manoeuvre she had just witnessed, the heretekal technology they wielded. To her eyes, everything about these warriors stank of heresy.

“Lower your weapon,” Grey said coldly, his hand brushing the gravity-scepter at his side. “I have no wish to slay an Inquisitor. But if I must, then none will ever know you died here.”

The threat hung heavy in the stale air.

The Inquisitor’s memory replayed the image of Grey carving through traitors in an eyeblink. Death would come swiftly, and none would know. After a heartbeat’s hesitation, she holstered her crossbow-pistol and sheathed her blade.

“…I thought you were the enemy," she admitted coldly. “But… we did not arrive by choice. One moment we were elsewhere. The next, we awoke here.”

Her Astartes guardians nodded, equally confused. One stepped forward, voice strained with desperate hope. “Tell me, has Terra been saved?”

Grey did not trust her words, but chose not to confront her yet. There were too many variables.

“Your questions are not the most pressing, Inquisitor. For now… may I know your name?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. Her voice was low, precise, unwavering:

“Greyfax. Inquisitor Katarinya Greyfax, Ordo Hereticus.”