A Grim Love: Chapter 1

The tang of blood was thick in the air. Every time her mouth opened, she could taste it on her tongue, the sharp, coppery taste excluding all else. Incense hung heavy and low in the enclosed structure even though its arched roof hung countless dozens of metres above her head, while hooded priests of the Sacrament slowly swung their incense burners from side to side, standing at the edge of the raised platform as they sanctified the punishment that was to be meted out. Low murmurs sounded from every side, the dull mutters of a vast crowd hushed in anticipation. So large was the crowd and so thick the incense that she could see neither the far walls of the court nor the edge of the morass of humanity, so that it seemed that the human tide stretched on forever.

In the centre of the stage upon an elevated dais was the main attraction, the thing for which the crowds had flocked like crows to carrion. Bound to upright wooden stakes, three men hung limp and exhausted from their bonds, their will to resist having been long since crushed. It was from them that the taste of blood originated; the crusts of half-scabbed whip marks marred their lean bodies, charred patches of flesh marked the searing touch of the hot irons while blood dribbled down in tiny rivulets where cuts had not fully crusted over. Their spirits destroyed, they now hung there, motionless, waiting for their bodies to follow suit.

Inquisitress Loazna Yeowind turned away from the debased creatures hanging from the stakes, turning to face the flocks of the loyal, the bloodthirsty mob. She doubted they had come for the lesson, to witness the punishment of one who had broken the laws of the Empire of Mankind. No; they had come for the pain. The suffering. The death.

Regardless, these men were going to die.

Loazna walked to the edge of the platform, deep blue ceremonial cloak dragging along the ground, almost hiding the shaped synth-plate armour beneath that was as deep a red as her hair, interlocking plates that covered her whole body shifting as she moved. Her eyes wandered appreciatively over the few visible columns and mosaics that were visible in the dim light. This Inquisitorial Court was one of the largest in the world, build to accommodate thousands.

A perfect place for a show.

With a raised hand, she quieted the assembly, the dull roar of thunder receding to a mutter in the distance. The vibromic at her throat hummed as it activated, picking up the vibrations of her vocal cords and transmitting them to the metres tall speakers upon which the platform was suspended.

“Citizens of the Empire of Earth,” Loazna began, her voice echoing off the unseen walls in lost in the smoke, “Today the justice of the Everliving Imperator is served. Three men are before you. Some may recognise them as brothers; some as fathers; some as sons; some as friends.

“LIES!” she roared. “These men have lied to you! They live amongst you not as companions – they live among you as criminals most foul! Who could forget the Bread Heist of 2177, masterminded by these deviants? Tens of thousands were starved out of house and home so that men such as they could further their plots of anarchy! Or the bomb scare last year, throwing the city into disarray as tens of thousands fled the Imperator’s Cathedral, drawing down the weight of martial law upon us all. The crimes these men have perpetrated through their association with the Old World Order are enough to warrant the death penalty many times over, even without the dozens of charges of murder, extortion and deviancy they are guilty of.

“The days of this terrorist group are numbered. Even as I speak, plans are being drawn and preparations made to hunt them down and extinguish their threat to our prosperity once and for all. For the security of our lives, for the security of our children and for the security of the Imperator and His Empire, these men are sentenced to death!”

With that final shout, Loazna turned and slashed her hand sharply through the air, signalling the black-robed priest of the Sacrament standing next to the dais. Acknowledging the nod with a deep bow, he turned and pulled down on the lever next to him.

With a harsh roar interwoven with screams, fan-driven flames burst from the charred grate beneath the criminals, temperatures in the thousands of degrees incinerating them in a fiery conflagration that burned greedily long seconds after the men’s cries of pain had fallen silent. Even after their bodies were scorched beyond recognition, fingers of flame continued to lash them until their ashes were thrown high on the rising heat. With surgical precision the fires were cut out, the after-image the only memento of its presence, the subsequent silence eerie in its purity. Then, a cheer burst from the crowd; a bloodthirsty roar, the howls of a mob whose basest appetites have been sated. Without a backwards glance, Loazna descended the stairway at the back of the stage to the sounds of applause and the drumming of feet, down beneath the courtroom.

The clang of the steel trapdoor closing behind Loazna cut off the roaring waves of crowd hysteria as cleanly as a guillotine. Bass rumbles still vibrated through the concrete walls, the muffled sounds a constant tremor on the lowest edge of hearing. It was down here, she thought, beneath the showy theatrics, that the real work of the Knightly Order of the Inquisition was carried out.

The foot of the stairs were shrouded in a duality of quivering shadows and light cast from sputtering fluorescent lights. One such shadow detached itself from the rest and fell into step with Loazna as alighted on the bottom, its spindly form bowed over in subservience. With dutiful obedience, the shadow didn’t say a word.

“Have the crew ready to leave in one hour,” she commanded, wasting no timeon formalities with the common-bred savant.. “Keep preparations low-key, though; I want our departure to be a surprise.”

“It will be done, Inquisitress,” the savant named Armelius replied clinically, already scribbling down notes on a datapad that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. “Is there anything else you require of me?”

“No, that will do for now. You may go.”

With a clinical bow, Armelius disappeared in the same was he had arrived, looking to Loazna as though he had turned edgeways and slipped between one fluorescent flicker and the next. She accepted the usefulness of commoners such as he with grudging reluctance; they were exceedingly efficient at organisation and number-crunching, but with it came such a distant nature that at times Loazna thought they were nothing more than automatons.

It was only a short walk to the training rooms, her footsteps tapping out a familiar path on the poured concrete floors. Despite the sparse floor that spoke of practicality over aesthetics, Loazna knew that the underground facility had been designed for appearances just as much as the court above. The flickering lights, the twisting corridors, the identical steel doorways dotted one after the other – it was all built to intimidate. Many prisoners brought down for interrogation had been on the brink of cracking even before they were thrown into their cells, the walls padded with thin, white foam soundproofing exactly like the hallways outside.

The training room door was as featureless like all the others; bare steel recessed slightly into the wall, with a palm-sized button where the handle would normally be. Tapping it lightly, the door slid sideways out of sight with a faint whisk, letting her walk into the large training room. Rather than concrete, the floor was covered in pale blue matting to protect bare feet and falling combatants. Every sort of training equipment imaginable had been carried into this place for the use of the Inquisition; a small gym with weights and pulleys brooded in the far corner, their skeletal frames glinting next to a firing range complete with a steel weapons cabinet – thumbcoded shut, of course.

Dropping the ceremonial blue cape in an ungainly heap in the corner, Loazna strode to the melee weapons rack a few metres further in and plucked a combat knife from the rack, its edge and point dulled for training. Making her way to the centre of an empty practice mat, she began to bounce lightly on the balls of her feet, the not inconsiderable weight of her carapace armour accounted for through long hours of training. Within moments, she was slashing at shadowy opponents, imagined foes armed with anything from an antiquated assault rifle to a wooden board with a nail in it. She didn’t like following the prescribed knife katas; they had always seemed far too rigid, too far removed from practicality for her liking. She had already worked up a light sweat by the time she heard the door swish open again behind her.

The slow, measured tap of dress shoes sounded strangely deadened in the soundproofed room, reverberating a split second shorter than would normally be expected. With a quiet sigh, Loazna finished a vicious reverse-hand slash against an imaginary lanky-haired terrorist before dropping back down off the balls of her feet without turning around.

She was content to wait him out.

“Bravo,” the man said after a moment, clapping his hands twice quietly. "As one performer to another, that was very well done."

"I'm glad you think so, Tolemark," Loazna replied coolly, turning around to face the source of the sonorous masculine voice behind her. Dressed in his usual impeccable blue and white uniform - a sentimental tribute to his days in the Empire Navy - with his matching short hair-cut, Tolemark came to a halt smoothly, hand steadying the sabre at his hip so as to stop it from bumping against his thigh.

A smile flitted across his face. "You're looking good."

She just sighed quietly. "What do you want?"

"I know you've found Ionah," Tolemark replied, all seriousness now. "I think it would be for the best if you shared his location with me, so that we can apprehend him together."

"Oh? And why would I want to do that?" Loazna asked scathingly. "So you can let him slip through our fingers again like you did Alexis?”

“I was not about to let one of the highest-ranking members of the Order be put to death without proper procedure,” he replied, visibly sighing as she raised old grievances.

“Even when the savants had calculated his probability of rescue to be high?”

“Procedure is the only thing standing between us and them, Loazna. Without procedure we are terrorists, killing indiscriminately, no different from them.”

“Bah,” Loazna exclaimed angrily, slashing her hand through the air. “The difference between the Order and the Inquisition isn’t their methods, it’s their purpose! We try to maintain discipline and stability, while they try to tear it down in pursuit of their nostalgic fantasies.”

“The ends justify the means do they, Loazna?” asked Tolemark with a shake of his head.

“You’re damn right they do, and you’re deluding yourself if you think otherwise. There’s not enough time to police a planet of fifteen billion people and give everyone the attention they are entitled to.”

“We can always dream,” Tolemark replied quietly with his gaze firmly on her, earning himself a derisive laugh from Loazna. His eyes tightened around the corners in anger momentarily before he stalked over to the weapons rack. Untying the sash around his waist he let his sword drop to the ground before drawing one of the blunted weapons from the rack.

“I don’t like to imagine I’ve wasted my time coming here, so how do you feel about a brief sparring match?” Tolemark asked coolly.

Flipping the knife in her hand so the blade faced downwards, she shrugged nonchalantly.

“Why not.”

They circled each other, more a formality than any attempt to gauge the other’s weakness; they had trained so many times in the past that they already knew roughly how the battle would go.

Tolemark took the initiative, breaking his circling strike to slash sideways with his weapon’s longer reach. As expected, Loazna darted backwards so the blade whistled through empty air. Lightning-fast, Tolemark reversed the swing to strike again, only to fall short as Loazna retreated once more. Patiently, Loazna watched as Tolemark’s wrist twisted familiarly as the sword spun behind his shoulder in preparation for an overhand strike. Bracing against her backwards momentum, Loazna sprung forwards into Tolemark’s preparation. Surprised, he barely had time to spin out of the way of her thrust, but was left open to a brutal blow with her other hand, spinning from behind into his ribcage.

Loazna flipped the knife around in her hand again as he caught his balance, taunting him with a victorious grin.

“Reminds me of old times,” she quipped. Tolemark’s abruptly clenched jaw suggested he hadn’t forgotten either; their training sessions had always been a competition, and one which Loazna tended to come out on top more often than not. With a determined expression Tolemark came forwards with another swing, both hands on the weapon this time.

Ducking quickly, Loazna barely managed to avoid being knocked out by deflecting his blade away with her armoured forearm. Tolemark raised both arms high to slash downwards on Loazna, still crouching after her duck. With a bone-jarring impact, Loazna stood up and slammed her forearms into Tolemark’s forearms as he was about to swing, pressing herself close to make it harder for him to attack. Though he winced with the impact, Tolemark didn’t stop pressing down, trying to force his way through her resistance. Muscles straining beneath her armour, Loazna didn’t give an inch.

“Reminds me of old times,” Tolemark remarked, glancing down at how close their bodies were. Loazna almost let her arms drop as she took a half step backwards automatically; she knew he wasn’t talking about their old training.

Taking advantage of her sudden shock, Tolemark slid forwards and swept his leg behind Loazna. With a strong push he knocked her off balance, causing them both to topple to the ground hard, Tolemark dropping the sword in favour of pinning her arms against the mat as they landed. The weapon hit the padding with a dull thud.

“Get off me,” Loazna growled into the silence before Tolemark could insinuate anything further. He didn’t move for a moment, but just studied her face intently with a strange look in his eyes.

“Get. Off. Me.”

Slowly, Tolemark leant backwards, easing off the pressure on her arms as he stood up, victory curving the corner of his mouth. Stiffly, Loazna got to her feet and stalked over to the weapons rack. Ramming the knife into its sheath, she snatched up her cloak and stalked out of the room without saying another word.