Flight of the Aquila

3. Thorns

“What!?”

“Listen, Deacis.” Inquisitor Verelius said patiently, as if to a child. “We’ve got people on all the leads we’ve got and until Lepton breaks the prisoner, we stuck here. Besides, it’ll be better than just sitting around here, waiting for something to happen,”

“Still, you can’t seriously mean I’m supposed to baby-sit some fucking psyker until the Black Ships come get her?”

“No,” the Inquisitor said, trying to remind himself why he’d taken on Lupus Deacis, “what I’m ordering you to, is to identify a psyker, ensure her cooperation and help the PDFs get her properly restrained until the Black Ships get there.”

“But we already know who the psyker is. Can’t the Arbites do it?”

“The Arbites are over a weeks horseback from here and use of technology is severely restrained on this planet. For us, it’d be a day or two worth of effort and by the time you get back, we’ll have a lead for you to follow.”

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

“I’ve instructed the servants to prepare you a horse.”

Deacis grumbled something incomprehensible as he strode out of the richly furnished room. The Inquisitor smiled and leaned back in his chair; Mechanicus-implants whirring and whining as the only sign of his incredible age and the scars and mutilations of hundreds of battles. Sometimes he missed the days of being on the front lines with a bolter in his hands, destroying aliens, traitor-legions and quelling uprisings and rebellions. Now, his work was of a more academic nature than it used to be; following up on leads, investigating, cooperating with other agencies, infiltrating organisations and then end it in a quick, surgical strike. Sometimes he considered requisitioning a whole chapter of Astartes and sweep across fringe-worlds. Plain and simple.

But, as a man who had ordered Exterminatus on dozens of worlds in his lifetime, he knew nothing was that simple. He had seen innocent lives needlessly trampled by the needs of the Inquisition – of the Imperium itself – and heard the screams of civilians as they realize the ships at high-orbital anchor aren’t simply re-supplying, but preparing to launch an all-out orbital strike.

Out the panorama-window – he’d recently had it replaced with military-grade protective glass – he could see a sullen, young acolyte travelling on horseback towards the nearby village Godd’s Hope. Sighing, as he twirled his amasec in a crystal glass, he felt a pang of envy, that he’d never feel so young and inexperienced again.

***

Lupus adjusted himself in the saddle; unused to the feeling of the muscles working to drive him forward. Animals were strange, he thought. Stranger yet, though, were planets such as these where animals had been imported from Terra itself to serve such a basic purpose as overland travel.

Of course, Lupus had always thought of overland travel in a different sense. He’d grown up on the Imperial Frigate Righteousness and it was no more than a few weeks ago he had stepped foot on an actual planet.

This planet.

Staaqui.

For a voidborn he was quite unusual in being able to pass for a ‘normal’ human, even if he was a bit lanky and his gait revealed his upbringing, walking in the fashion of those used to adjusting their footing to minute changes in gravity at a moments notice. Of course, if it had only been that, he probably would’ve worked in the communications-array his ancestors had manned for the last eight generations. However whenever he’d been instructed to assist an over-worked Astropath – a duty consisting mostly of bringing them what they asked for; food, drink, dataslates et cetera – the Astropath in question found it extremely difficult to decipher the remainder of a message.

The first few times, no one questioned it.

After that people started to joke about it, calling him a astro-jinx.

Then, a clever, travelling Inquisitor needed to send a message from the ship and when the Inquisitor – of minor psychic ability himself – encountered Lupus he marvelled. The Inquisitor was called Verelius. He’d told Lupus what he was.

Lupus was a blank; an untouchable.

An anti-psyker.

The Inquisitor had explained to him, that most normal people had a faint connection to the Empyrean – the Warp – and that psykers had a stronger connection than most, allowing them to draw upon the Empyrean to change the world around them. As an untouchable he lacked even a faint connection to the warp, protecting him not only from psykers and daemonhosts but lacking a basic common trait with the rest of humanity. While most unskilled people couldn’t explain exactly why they disliked him, everyone instinctively did.

In a way that made him appreciate the gift so much more; the people who worked with him, fought beside him and tried to make friends with him still had the instinct to loathe him, but overcame it.

No one ever faked a friendship with him.

It was simply too hard.

The small collection of houses in the distance were growing, becoming distinct from one-another and he picked out a large church in the centre of town, a mosaic-window forming the well-known image of a Golden Throne. The house he was looking for would be south of that central building he remembered.

The name of the suspected psyker was Rhia Thorns. Their contact had observed numerous psychic phenomena over the course of the last few months and carefully noted people present and their reactions, eventually arriving at the pattern that the girl was the only one present at all of the occurrences. As far as Lupus understood the man was a friend of the Inquisitor, though how close he didn’t care to guess. The guy ran a tavern of some sort according to the Inquisitor, a seedy, filthy place, where people came to drink themselves into a stupor, not to talk and reminisce.

‘Of course,’ Lupus thought, ‘a place where no one bothers to listen in on conversations is a place for heretics to meet… too bad for them, that one man keeps his ear to the ground.’

Now, here it was; Godd’s Hope.

The houses were built in the traditional Staaqui-fashion, which stemmed from a pre-Heresy age. This planet, Lupus knew, had been cut off from the Imperium since the 29th millennium due to massive warp storms. It was less concrete when the warp storm around the planet had ceased, but the planet had been re-integrated into the Imperium only two centuries ago. The population remained largely in ignorance of the true matter of things, marvelling when the ‘dragons’ came on the last day of their calendar to collect their Imperial tithe.

The ‘dragons’ unfortunately, were nothing more than transport ships, but explaining to these people something as simple as that had proven futile. The royal families had been enlightened as to the true matter of things, but even the nobility were kept in the dark. Down here, technology was considered magical and – depending on a persons reputation – either marked you a saint or a daemon.

He gave the reins of his horse to a stable, who held out his hand expectantly. Lupus had on purpose chosen to wear his old communications-uniform, marked with the symbol of the Imperial Guard, marking him an off-worlder and as such the boy didn’t bother talking in his archaic dialect of Low Gothic, which still permeated a large part of the society here. Hopefully, within a few more centuries, they’d have taught these people to speak as one ought to.

He knew that the village was small, holdning probably no more than 500 souls, but the idea of searching one-fourth of those based on the Inquisitors directions weren’t what he had planned. No, the keep at the edge of town – probably impressive by the standards of the Staaqui – seemed appropriate. There might even be a member of the Administratum, who could pull out the datafile he needed to find the address of this rogue psyker.

Or, at least, he could probably get a glass of amasec while some servant ran through town looking for her.

Either way, it was a sure win.

“I’m afraid the Governor is busy. You’ll have to come back later,” a pompous bear of a man, dressed in a rich, red uniform. Clearly, the man had spent a lot of time learning how to formulate such a long sentence, Lupus thought, seeing a distinct lack of intelligence in the eyes of the man.

Producing a small item from his pocket, he held his badge of office – his Inquisitorial rosette – in front of the man, who paled considerably. “O-of course, sir. If I’d known… I… I’ll just go tell the Governor.”

“You will do no such thing.” Lupus stated, causing the imbecile to freeze. “You will remain here and make sure that the Governor and I are not interrupted. You are not to leave your post until I give you permission to do so. Is that understood?”

The guard nodded eagerly even as he stood attention, though his posture would’ve been a disgrace to the Imperial Guard. He had better inform someone that the PDFs of this planet had an intolerably low discipline.

Lupus stepped into the office of the Governor, who was obviously extremely busy, his reading glasses on and a book entitled ‘Adepta Sororitas Sleep-Over’ with a rather suggestive picture on the front, though Lupus did rather recall quite a few less bare spots on the well-known uniform.. The old, white-haired Governor hadn’t heard the door open and continued reading as Lupus crossed the distance to the desk.

“Yes? What is it?” he asked, moderately annoyed when he noticed the young man standing in front of his desk.

“Not to disturb your ‘matters of state,’ Governor, but I represent the Inquisition and hope for your cooperation in a simple matter.”

The Governor paled. “W-w-what can I possibly help you with?”

The courteous behaviour was clearly faked and if Lupus dug a little below the surface he had no doubt, he’d find that the Governor had been skimming off the top, but that didn’t matter for the moment. In fact, a slightly greedy politician was a more useful tool than a fanatical zealot; the corrupt heard things the pure would never.

“Don’t worry, Governor. You’re not the reason I’ve come today,” he said, eliciting a slight twitch from the Governor, who was becoming more scared with the second. Lupus took a seat unbidden and poured himself a glass of the Governor’s amasec – a local blend, he realized – and leaned back, silent.

“T-then what?” The governor burst out after a few seconds silence.

“I…” Lupus started and looked around the room, noting the expensive, high-quality furniture and the extensive collection of books – how many of them were ‘serious reading,’ Lupus thought to ask – “have come for a file.”

“Yes?”

“Rhia Thorns. From the city here; Godd’s Hope. Southern part of the city. Could you get it for me? Now.”

The Governor pulled a string behind him and Lupus almost threw himself to the side, expecting a crude trap to be sprung. Instead, a bell rang and a wispy-haired woman hurried in, pen and paper in hand. “Yes, milord?”

“A file on a Rhia Thorns, Godd’s Hope. Now. Quickly, woman!” The Governor yelled, trying to reassert his authority somehow. The woman scurried out.

“Am I permitted to ask why you’re looking for this woman, Inquisitor?”

Lupus didn’t flinch, despite having just moved several ranks up the Inquisitorial hierarchy in an instant. “You may. We have reason to believe that miss Thorns is a psyker, to be taken into custody for evaluation and processing, so that she may serve Him better.”

“The Emperor protects.” The Governor said, making the sign of the Aquila, apparently confused by the explanation of what he’d just been told.

“Either way, once we’ve taken her into custody, she is unlikely to ever return. That’s all you need to know.”

Rhia Thorns lived on Marketstreet 7.

Or rather, she lived with her parents at Marketstreet 7.

One thing the Inquisitor had neglected to mention to him was that Rhia Thorns was a six-year old girl born to a pair of parents who were solid pillars of the community. How was he going to tell a man and a woman who spent their days collecting herbs to help ease pain and quell diseases, that the Emperor’s Will was that their daughter be taken away by strangers, subjected to psychic torture to find her limit and evaluated?

That their daughter would likely never see middle age?

That she’d either end up losing her mind or destroying herself in the backlash of her powers?

***

Knock knock. Eli looked up from his soup at the door and looked apologetically at his wife.

It was his own fault, really. He always offered to help people when he could and so everyone they knew were constantly pestering him about something. He’d have to tell them to go away.

He opened the door and peered out.

The man before him was dressed in a brownish uniform, marked with the Holy Aquila of the Imperium, and the symbol of the dragons. But the Tithing wasn’t until another eight months… what did this man want?

“Yes?”

“Mr. Thorns?”

“That’s me,” he replied somewhat uncertainly

“I am a member of the God-Emperor of Terra’s Inquisition on assignment. May I come inside?”

Warily, Eli let him in. What in the name of all that was holy was the Inquisition doing in his home? He certainly wasn’t a witch or a traitor.

“Mr. Thorns? Are you familiar with a Rhia Thorns?”

“Yes?” Eli answered warily, “she’s my daughter. Just in the next room, sir.”

“I have grounds to suspect her of possessing psychic abilities, based on reports from our operatives in the area.” The man sounded confident, businesslike.

“A psyker? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

”She possesses special abilities, allowing her to manipulate the dimension we know as the Empyrean – the Warp – and is to be taken to the Black Ships.”

“But, but… she’s my daughter!” Eli hadn’t understood it all, but someone taking away Rhia from him and Arkadia wasn’t something he’d willingly allow.

“I am well aware. I’ll still have to take her.”

“How’ll she be treated?”

A shrug. “Like all psykers, I suppose”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“Plenty of food, nice locales, training to master ones gift”

“Are you one of these… psykers?”

“Not quite, I’m afraid.”

“How long will she be gone?”

“I won’t make any promises I can’t keep. Once she’s finished her training she’ll be allowed to travel again.”

“And how long does that training typically take?”

“Anywhere between 3 and 30 years. People respond very differently to this kind of training.”


It had become late. By the time Lupus had managed to convince the father that he had no choice but to cooperate and had Lupus’ word that she wouldn’t be unnecessarily harmed (Lupus suspected they had a different definition of ‘unnecessarily,’ though) he’d agreed to let him leave with the girl.

Of course, now that night had fallen, it was too late to travel back to the villa and he was offered a bed to sleep in. Later, he realized that the bed had in fact been the parents’ bed and that they’d slept on the floor of their daughters room. The tiny house he was in consisted of a small entrance, a living room, a bathroom and Rhia’s room.

They cooked dinner in the living room. Slept in the living room. Ate in the living room. Entertained guests in the living room. Gathered around the fireplace in the living room. All that, so that Rhia could have her own room.

His heart pained a moment for tearing apart such a lovely family.

The Imperium could use more Thorns.