The Fate of Inquisitor Barratt

The Fate of Inquisitor Barratt

Barratt felt the blood welling from the wound in his right side.  He probed the gash with his left hand, wincing sharply when his fingertips found the ragged edge of the hole in his flesh.  He held his sticky fingers up to his face but it was too dark to see the blood as any more than a dark stain in the murky half light of the tunnel.  He tentatively assessed the damage and concluded it was indeed serious but not necessarily fatal.  More accurately, not necessarily fatal under the right circumstances but these circumstances were a long way from ideal.  He was alone in the dark, beneath an ignorant city, his retinue executed and his mind scarred.  As a psyker he was always aware of the Warp, pressing in, nudging at his psychic defences, a force to be used only in the direst need in his service of the Emperor.  Now he felt his guard was down and the things that crawled in the pit, the malevolent beings fabricated from Chaos itself knew it too.  They were not nudging now, but probing, they could smell his weakness, his fear, his soul and they wanted to devour it.  They were desperate to savour the very essence of him.

Barratt cursed his foolishness.  He had been so damned arrogant and in his arrogance he had brought this doom upon them all.  He had been convinced of his own ability to deal with any threat they might encounter.  Secure in his faith in his own psychic powers and his beloved Emperor. As an Inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus he had gathered a loyal and committed retinue to him.  Each valued for the elite skills they brought to his organisation, whether they be martial, intellectual or spiritual.  They had been acting upon intelligence carefully gathered and analysed at length.  They had scrutinised their information, each individual component meticulously parsed until a coherent whole had formed before them.  Convinced of the presence of a small conclave of Chaos worshipping cultists in Arbreth Secondus’ capitol city, Straad, Barratt had emerged from his fortified and psychically shielded manse set on the eradication of the coven.  Oh how we wished he were back there now.

Barratt heard movement behind him.  He spun on his heel, his soaked, tattered cloak twisting around his narrow frame. He fired his ancient bolt pistol wildly at the source of the sound.  The report of the weapon was staggeringly loud in the confines of the dank tunnel.  The volume such that Barratt involuntarily squeezed his eyes shut as sharp pain cut through his head.  As the echoes faded he watched a huge sewer rat skitter away into the darkness.  Mocking laughter danced off the wall of the tunnel grating on the meagre reserve of courage Barratt still clung to.  He forced himself to move, wiping filthy water from his face. His hand paused and pressed at his temple to massage away the steadily increasing pressure he could feel there.  Did the laughter come from without or within?  His mind ached terribly.  He felt a great weight building, a growing darkness behind his eyes.

He had brazenly led his retinue into the Imperial Chapel in Straad’s Merchant City Quarter.  His information had immediately been proven reliable.  Under interrogation the chaplain confessed membership to a sickening Khornate cult.  Exploration of the Chapel had revealed a charnel house in the ancient crypt where the deranged chaplain had dedicated himself to his true master, torturing and murdering numerous victims beneath the veil of respectability and piety.  Further to this Barratt’s intelligence had again proven entirely accurate when a concealed passage in the crypt was uncovered which gave access to a tunnel system leading into the antique sewers beneath the city.  Their sources indicated that the coven was based in a section of the disused sewer, centred on a large cavern that served as the focus for their organisation and unholy rites.

As he trudged through the ancient stone walled sewers, stumbling as his strength ebbed through blood loss and exhaustion, Barratt prayed fervently that he would be granted the opportunity to return to that cavern at the head of a full battle force of Grey Knights.  He wanted to see those bastards burn in the Emperor’s holy fire. Tears forced their way from the Inquisitor’s eyes as the images from the cavern sprung unbidden into his mind. 

They had proceeded through the tunnel system until arriving at the first sign of habitation on the outskirts of the cult’s domain.  They had slipped into defensive formation with practiced ease and continued, following a schematic obtained from the city’s Ordnance archive.  They had emerged into the cavern and into a scene more hellish than any Barratt had ever allowed himself to imagine.  The area had been carved from the very rock of the planet; large pillars at the extremities suspended a vaulted rock ceiling, arcing across a bear granite floor.  The room was vast, the edges lost in deep shadow.  In the centre a more modern altar stood atop a huge plinth skirted by metre high stone steps.  The room was lit by the soft orange glare of sodium mining lamps suspended from the pillars and placed upon poles around the base of the altar.  The ceiling above the altar was far darker than the rest, almost black. The reason for this was clear; human bones were stacked upon the stairs and the altar itself was piled high with human remains.  Remains which were alight, burning with an ungodly stench, the smoke rising to further stain the ceiling.

The room was deserted; the only sound the crackling of that unholy blaze in the centre of the vast room and the footsteps of the Inquisitor and his men.  The sight of the burning bodies had confounded Barratt.  He had been convinced they were rooting out a small coven, maybe thirty or forty strong, probably spoiled aristocrats looking for an extra unholy thrill.  But that assessment did not correlate with the astounding site before him.  The number of bodies on that altar...there were so many of them!  And then the sheer scale hit him like a hammer blow, all those skulls scattered through this colossal room.  This was too much for him and his small force.  He needed reinforcements, he needed help. 

His mouth had formed the word “Retreat” but never spoke it.  The cultists stepped out of the darkness at the edge of the cavern as one.  Their silence was threatening but their sheer numbers were terrifying.  Barratt had looked back towards the entrance they had used into that hellish room and saw there was no clear escape path as the cultists encircled them.  Still they said not a word, merely pressed forwards towards Barratt and his companions. They stopped in unison, a silent army staring at the Inquisitor’s force with clearly visible malice. Barratt was struck by how disturbingly normal they looked.  These were no robed cultists decorated in the sigils of their deity.  These were clerks, drivers, factory workers, lawyers.  These were the people who made up the very fabric of the city.  These people were ordinary, in all but one respect; each of them seemed to be barely controlling an inner rage they desperately wanted to unleash.

A path suddenly opened among the coven leading back towards the foul altar.  A cowled figure clad in ceremonial raiment strode through the suddenly opened space marching towards Barratt.  As the priest of the dark gods approached Barratt said a silent prayer to his own God Emperor and prepared to unleash a blast of pure psychic force hoping to create enough panic to enable an escape.  The priest continued on his path towards Barratt, his eyes locking onto those of the Inquisitor. The priest raised his right hand and slightly rotated his wrist.  Barratt felt lances of ice and waves of fire ram mercilessly through his mind.  He lost his grip on the psychic power he had prepared and desperately clung to sanity as the creatures of the warp hurled themselves against his savaged mind.  He came to himself, lying on his back looking up into the baleful stare of the Chaos Priest.  As he reached the Inquisitor the Priest threw back his hood to reveal his shaven head, stark, black tattoos running back from his temples to the base of his skull.

Recognition hit Barratt almost as painfully as the agonising power the priest had unleashed upon his mind.  The Priest looked him directly in the eyes, “Barratt you are a fool! You have become complacent in your dotage.  Did you really believe we were a handful of spoiled aristocrats?  Simpleton!  We are more than you could possibly conceive.  You are nothing. But the Blood God takes all skulls.  Be grateful you stupid little man for you shall finally achieve something purposeful with your pitiful life.”  With that he took a step back, pronounced “Kill them all!” and strode off contemptuously.

As the chaos worshippers howled and charged the Inquisitor’s loyal servants formed a protective circle around their stricken leader.  Their efforts served to allow Barratt a perfect view as they were quickly torn limb from limb by the blood crazed fanatics.  Their sacrifice did not prove entirely in vain however.  The few valuable seconds allowed Barratt to gather his senses and marshal what little remained of his psychic ability.  As the last of his companions fell he turned to look at the entrance and unleashed the final psychic blast of his long life.  The cultists between Barratt and the entrance were thrown to either side or ripped apart, clearing a pathway between him and the doorway  just ten metres away.  He had risen as an athlete and sprinted for the doorway.  As he ran through he could feel the cultists beating down his psychic barrier.  He grabbed a frag grenade from the belt at his waist and primed it on the run. A metre short of the doorway one of the blood-crazed lunatics lurched towards Barratt, finding the power to force one hand through the crumbling barrier and drive a wickedly curved blade deep into his side.  Barratt screamed and threw himself through the door way, dropping the grenade.  The detonation collapsed the doorway and hurled Barratt against the far wall exhausted, wounded and alone.

Upon waking Barratt had determined to make his way back through the sewers the only way he knew and head back to the chapel.  He was aware of the faint sounds of the pursuit he knew had to come.  He could hear the echoes of the warp-tainted bastards spreading out through the tunnels through other exits from that hideous cavern.  He knew they couldn’t allow him to live. Not now he knew how far the rot had spread on Arbreth V.  He felt a scratching, a tugging at his mind.  The priest was using the warp to find him, tracking the signature of his scarred mind.  It wouldn’t be long until they encircled him and cut off his only avenue of escape.  He frantically tapped the vox-caster on his left wrist.  He entered the Ordo’s emergency channel code. Nothing.  He had to get higher, out of this damned place, before he had any hope of making contact.

The inquisitor shook his head to clear his thoughts and instantly regretted it.  The pressure, the pain, was building, digging deep into his psyche.  His vision was failing.  The corners of his eyes were becoming clouded by pulsing lights.  He went on as best he could pressing one hand against the slick tunnel wall for support.  He listened to the sounds of pursuit coming closer even as he pushed his exhausted body onwards as quickly as he could bear.

He stumbled along in the darkness grazing his hands on the walls.  Every step agony as the blood continued to flow from the wound in his side.  His head was a shrieking maelstrom of noise and pain. He muttered semi-coherent prayers to the Emperor begging for strength, for deliverance, for vengeance.  Tears smeared the blood and filth on his face as he thought of the men he had lost in that abominable place.  Good, loyal servants of the Emperor all.  Now gone, torn to bloody pieces, their souls consecrated to Khorne himself.  Barratt swore they would be avenged.  There would come such a reckoning for this atrocity.

As the pain grew too much and the last reserves of his strength deserted him he lurched around a corner and saw the doorway that led into the Imperial Chapel’s crypt.  He was beyond the capacity for feeling joy but something akin lit his soul.  He gritted his teeth and summoned the last of his energies to drag his battered body towards the light spilling from the doorway ahead.

Ten metres to go and he could hear them behind him.  Eight metres and he could see them out of the corners of his eyes. Six metres and they were grabbing him.  Four metres and he fell, dragged down by their grasping hands, his fingers desperately clawing towards the light.

“Enough!” A voice declaimed in the darkness.  As before the coven parted to allow their priest to approach the trembling Inquisitor. “Aah dear, dear Barratt. You really are surprisingly resilient for a tattered relic.”

“Kill me.” The words were a breathless plea.  The pain in Barratt’s mind was too much, his strength gone, he could bear no more.  The Warp was a howling cacophony smothering his thoughts.

“Oh you will die, fret not.  You will make a fine sacrifice to the Blood God, such a loyal servant of your pitiful Emperor.  Take comfort that you shall not die alone.  Many more shall follow before we are through.”

“I’ve seen your hell-hole.  You are nothing new.  The Ordo Malleus shall crush you and your coven!”

“Our coven?” The priest laughed coldly. “My dear Barratt this isn’t about this tiny city or even this planet.” In the shadows of the tunnel the priest’s eyes looked off into the distance, lost in his own reverie.  Suddenly they came back into sharp focus “We are going to birth a God!  We shall bring the daemon Marakk G'harr into the material universe. Oh there shall be such slaughter! Khorne himself shall smile upon us.”

“You’re insane!  The psychic energy that would require... You don’t have the power.”

“Oh you are quite right Inquisitor.  The birth of a Greater Daemon takes a sacrifice of some enormity, blood-letting on a colossal scale.  But we do not have to do it ourselves.  Once the correct prayers are spoken, we can consecrate an entire planet and then we can let your Imperial might do it for us.  All it takes is one...little...spore.”  The priest looked into Barratt’s eyes as his words sunk in and smiled.

“Kill him!”

The cultists fell upon the Inquisitor’s defenceless body as though charged with unholy power.  Hands grabbed at him, fists pounded, feet kicked and finally blades sunk into his flesh.  Barratt welcomed the end, the peace.  He barely felt the blows that crushed his body as his soul departed.
The priest stepped into the bloody mess and ripped the Inquisitor’s head free from his snapped neck.  He held the foul trophy aloft and led his devoted followers in a brutal chant.

“Blood for the Blood God!”

As the frenzy abated the crowd dispersed and two cultists grabbed a foot each to remove Barratt’s mangled corpse.  As they dragged his remains away leaving a bloody trail behind, both arms extended back towards the doorway the Inquisitor had striven so desperately to reach.  A small red flashing diode on his wrist changed to green.  In the suddenly quiet tunnel came a faint buzz and a click.

“...essage received.”