Recount - Ahaudhr
12 Dec 2016Edgar Starwalker
Ahaudhr was a fairly dreary place at the best of times.Hardly anything of note.
Ahaudhr was just a place between other, more important places.
Balls of airless rock. A featureless gas giant. Endless plains of silent ice.
A wispy atmosphered moon. A single cookie-cutter settlement...
...Burning.
***
Black, sooty smoke had been billowing long enough that the thin skies had darkened into an oppressive haze, seeming to swell and distort the red dwarf star above.
What at first appeared to be sunspot blemishes upon Ahaudhr A soon enlarged and drew focus - a small fleet of ships rapidly approaching the surface - transporters, with some smaller escorts.
Imperial markings.
The ships made their landings where rubble allowed, spewing forth emergency workers pushing pallets of disaster relief supplies.
A smaller craft remained hovering overhead – a black Imperial Courier starkly contrasting with the clean whites of the relief vessels.
Black uniformed men and women brandishing side-arms and rifles moved fluidly to occupy a number of still-standing buildings. Survivors began to emerge from shelters, allowing themselves to be shepherded about by the imperial soldiers, and tended to by the medical staff.
Some of the soldiers had assembled a spiny looking metal contraption from parts taken from one of the hovering pallets. It had been positioned at the edge of a large crater in the middle of the town. The crater was smoldering, and had replaced the arcology that had sat in the same location a few hours before.
One of the officers activated the spiny metal device. It's parts began to spin and twist and immediately a pale blue glow enveloped the area. From the cockpit of the Courier still hovering above, the pilot could observe the blue energy field covering the entire settlement. As if on cue each one of the soldiers and aid workers about the town tapped an illuminated green panel at their chests. Their green lights blinked out, and they all returned to their tasks.
The pilot took a long and satisfying stretch of his back and arms before keying a button combination on the dash. His vessel began to fall smoothly to the ground, landing gear deploying. The pilot cracked his knuckles and rose from his seat.
Pointing up at the Courier as it blotted out the eerie light of the sky, an officer barked commands at nearby soldiers before they could scramble away, to attend to the Inquisitor's needs, and then proceeded to make a hasty exit of her own.
The ten men and women rushed into the clouds of steam that greeted the Courier's landing, lining up at each side of the access ramp which was now emerging from the rear of the ship. All of them locked their stares ahead, and seemed to gulp in unison as the airlock hissed open, bathing them in an orange light. They snapped to attention, saluting.
Sharp footsteps could be heard from within, becoming louder. An outline of a cloaked man appeared, turning out from the hatch & accompanied by more steam. Ferromagnetic heels rang out as they met the metal of the access ramp.
“Argyle isn't it, young man?”
One of the soldiers snapped even more to attention at the sound of his own name, and anxiously tried saluting again, his face suddenly pale.
“S-sir? I- uh, YESSIR!”, he couldn't breathe, why couldn't he breathe?
“Excellent. My name is Inquisitor Starwalker. Good to meet you! Ahh, at ease? Yes yes. All of you. At. Ease.”, The man's voice was clipped, but had an unusual warmth to it. The soldiers relaxed, but only ever so slightly.
“Argyle. Walk with me. The rest of you”, he looked at the others, flapping both hands as he turned to them: “Shoo!”
***
Private Argyle was not a short man by any means. Indeed, his family's patron had funded in utero gene-edits, which had guaranteed him desirable phenotypical traits such as tall stature; however he was now struggling to maintain pace with the decidedly shorter Inquisitor Starwalker, who was marching through the destruction of the broken settlement with the air of an excited tourist on a sightseeing visit, struggling to see everything in their very limited time.
“What a spot of bother, aye Argyle? A right spot of bother indeed”.
“Uh, y-yes Inquisi-”
“Do call me Edgar, Argyle, I'm not a man for heirs and graces, you know.”
“Uh, why y-yes, Inqui- uh, mister, um, Ed-”
“Good Lord, Argyle look over there! That is a second generation plasma injector assembly, and these buggers seem to have it rigged up to their power grid!” He snorted joyfully, “The sort of thing you read about in bloody adventure stories, from a hundred bloody years ago bah-ha-haa!”.
The Inquisitor was pointing at some sparking, half-melted mass of wire metal and ceramics whilst looking back at Private Argyle with a look of engrossed amusement.
“The, uh, Marshall is in this Type-7, E-Edgar, sir”, Argyle pointed to the bulky white mass looming ahead.
“The Marshall, Argyle?”, still amused, but somewhat puzzled now. Eyes squinting, “Are you new, Argyle?”
“New, Inquisitor?”
“Edgar.”
“New, Edgar?”
“Yes, new. As in, green. New to the profession, young man. The navy. Are you new?”.
Argyle could see now that one of Edgar Starwalker's eyes was cybernetic; artfully designed to appear organic to the casual observer, but on closer inspection (such as that now afforded to Argyle, as the Inquisitor leaned in to peer at his face), revealed to be artificial. The “white” of the eyeball was a milky looking marble, embossed with faint golden lines patterned like a technological spider's web; the iris was an iridescent chequerboard of metallic blues, greens, and silvers; and the pupil, impossible, nanomaterial-black, was punctuated by two tiny cyan lights, gently blinking in series.
“Well?”
Argyle jolted himself away from the hypnotic eye. Edgar continued to grin widely.
“No sir, Edgar, sir. I've seen more action than this before. Proper wars in deep space! More than just a random terrorist bombing, like this here, sir”.
“I see. Well, since you seem to know your stuff, I'll let you in on a little secret”, the Inquisitor leaned in even further, and Argyle suddenly felt rather uncomfortable as he could feel the man's breath on his neck, his lips edging close to his ears to whisper something.
“None of these officer types have the faintest fucking clue what's going on here, Argyle-”.
Just as the Private felt his face begin to flush with embarrassment there was a sudden blinding white light and a dull thud, as he was thrown through the air. Numerous military-grade implants sprung to life, protecting organs and shutting down senses in order to preserve them.
A secondary explosion? An attack? What is this?!
:blackness:
***
…
:blackness:
…
Beep... beep... beep... beep...
Argyle couldn't feel anything, but he was awake. He was thinking, so he must be. He didn't feel like he was dreaming, anyway.
Since he couldn't move or feel or really sense anything at all, he figured his implants must have overridden his primary motor and feedback functions to allow the field medics to fix him up.
Beep... beep... beep... beep...
Yes, the beeping, that was that then. He couldn't hear the beeps exactly, not with his ears anyway. Rather he was being fed a limited sense-input by his military implants, basically a sort of virtual lifeline – letting him know he was still alive and undergoing some sort of treatment.
Once he was ready he could mentally “interact” with the beeps, which would command the implants to relinquish administrator control over his motor and sensory functions, essentially waking him back up.
The prospect of giving over control of his own motor & sensory functions to, well, anyone else had initially concerned him a great deal. However the prospect of having to endure limbs being blown off and then grown back from stemseed, with only chemical analgesics to get through it, as portrayed in numerous gory orientation holos, was enough to convince him otherwise. And he sure was thankful now that he had submitted to the procedure: for all he knew all that was left of him now was some brain and a scrap of spinal cord...
No, no, wait:
Beep... beep... beep... beep...
Four beeps. Four meant he was healed and ready to wake back up at any time he wanted. He must be in one piece, and basically undamaged then.. But.. That wasn't right..
Protocol was for the medics to externally disengage implant-override mode in any patients with non-life threatening injuries. No one should hear four beeps out in the field, since they should have been woken up already.. So what was going on?
In his mind, Argyle interacted with the beeping, reaching for the right feeling to... almost... There!
“-ight to do this!”, a raised voice, the sound was almost deafening!
Argyle had engaged a partial restoration of his senses, his hearing only. He didn't recognise the speaking voice, but it sounded strained, as if speaking in pain.
“It's- -cough- -It's, incomprehensible!” the voice spluttered, gasping for air?
“My friend, my dear friend, calm yourself please, in your weakened state you may cause yourself further injury,”
That voice! It's the Inquisitor! Edgar Starwalker – thought Argyle, also now surmising that he was in the ICU of the field hospital they had set up for the settlement.
“-cough- Calm myself? -cough- Calm myself?! You swine, after what you've done? You tell me to -cough-” a fit of coughing and spluttering interjected the voice of the injured man.
“I have done nothing, I assure you Davin. In fact, it was the Chapterhouse that offered you personal assur-”
“Your people tried to blackmail me!”
“Nonsense Davin! Absolute nonsense! We simply wished to ensure that you could never be embarrassed by those horrible and completely unfounded accusations, involving all that unpleasantness with the poor young slave girl. And in an election year, too, it could have been ever so damaging, no?”
“Monster! Where's the nurse? Nurse! -cough- Get this, this thing out of here! Nurse!”.
“Come now Davin, we're old friends, don't be like that”. Argyle could hear something else, like metal scraping, but he couldn't place it.
“In any case Davin, you should be happy! Your supporters in the election campaign didn't seem to care about the, ah, impropriety with the slave girl, poor thing that she was”, Edgar's voice sounded exactly the same as when he had been laughing about the plasma injector, jovial and booming, completely at odds with the struggling voice of 'Davin'.
“Th-that's right, Starwalker,” he spat the name, “The people of Ahaudhr voted overwhelmingly to support my -cough- manifesto,”
“Oh yes they did!” Argyle could hear the smile across Edgar's face.
“Un- un- -cough- unprecedented -cough- voter -cough- turnout!” the strange metal sound again, and a quiet humming, barely audible. What is that sound? Thought Argyle, puzzled.
“A landslide! Despite all your dirty tricks and scaremongering, Ahaudhr has finally, resoundingly voted to leave the Empire, once and for all!” Davin's voice seemed to raise, seemed to break though the pain triumphantly.
“Even if you manage to kill me, the rest of my cabinet will ensure the popular mandate is carried forward. Even if you destroy my entire party, the other factions in the system have pledged to respect the will of the vote -cough cough-” his voice broke into a fit of wheezing.
“The Empire has had it here, and there's nothing any of you, not even your stinking Inquisition, can do to change that!”
zzzZZZZZEEEP!
What was that!?
The humming that had followed from the metallic scraping sound had suddenly buzzed loudly, and then had completely silenced.
“Oh Davin, you silly bean. All that 'Empire is nasty' stuff, it's all in your head!” Edgar's voice was as soft and benevolent as ever,
“And it's really just a crying shame, you know? All we've ever wanted was to help your people, help them stay safe, prosperous. There are some really very bad people out there, and without the Empire to help you.. well, look at what happens when we're not around!”
“You vote to leave, and that's smashing, it really is – totally fine with all the local patrons – of course they're a teensy bit upset – but really nothing to fret over!”
Argyle noticed that Davin's breathing, his coughing and spluttering, had changed somehow.
“And so of course it's only natural that those wonderful boys and girls in Imperial Security are redeployed, since, you know, you want the Empire out and all that..” Edgar sighed, “But then, that did put you in this pickle didn't it?” Starwalker's voice trailed off.
“I've got some terrible news, old boy. I'm really sorry.” he really did sound sad.
“The explosion that you were caught up in, the technicians seem to think it was that old plasma injector you had running. Catastrophic feedback loop, they said. Could've happened at any time, they said. Huge bloody mushroom cloud. Took out the entire government complex, all of it. The whole thing. Gone. Whoosh!” Argyle could hear the air move, as if Edgar was miming out the whooshing sound.
“That's the tricky thing you see, Davin me old mucker. Everyone was inside – your Cabinet, the leadership of all the other political factions in Ahaudhr, the entire civil service, all were there celebrating your, err, election victory.” Edgar paused,
“They're all gone, Davin.”
“All...? A- a- -cough cough cough-” Davin's voice petered out and relapsed into uncontrollable coughing.
“But don't worry!” Edgar's voice was jovial again.
“They might have killed you- I mean your plans for an independent Ahaudhr, but I promise that when the Chapterhouse's administrators arrive to take over tomorrow, they will be extremely sympathetic to the loudly stated political wishes of your, erm, remaining people.”
Argyle could hear now that Davin's coughing fit had not stopped, but had just become progressively quieter, shallower. He could hear the suffering man's breathing, in between coughs, becoming slower and slower, the coughs becoming one extended rasp.
“Oh, I say Davin, you are looking terribly under the weather.. Let me call that nurse for you..”
Argyle flipped the switch in his mind, and felt a rushing sensation as physical awareness and motor functions jolted awake.
Argyle's visual field snapped into focus, eyes swivelling to look over at the source of the conversation he had been listening to, squinting to make out shapes and colours.
Inquisitor Edgar Starwalker, a grin from ear to ear and cloaked in red and black Chapterhouse robes, loomed over the bed of a large prone man rigged up to various life sustaining units. Argyle thought he saw Starwalker put something in a pocket, or perhaps sheathed something into that scabbard hanging from his belt?
“Argyle?!” Edgar's eyes locked onto his own.
“Wonderful, wonderful stuff! So glad you're OK! I was frightfully worried about you, after that injector exploded when we were walking by!”
Argyle looked confused.
“Inquisi- Edgar, the injector exploded? But, I thought it was the injector exploding that destroyed the arcology in the.. first.. place..?”
“Did I say that? Hmm. Well..” Edgar suddenly looked deadly serious, and turned back to look at Davin.
“Ahh, unfortunately it looks like my good friend Davin here has given up the ghost. Damn bloody shame” Edgar went quiet for a moment. “Hmm, but yes I did say it was the injector that went ka-boom, didn't I?”
There was a long pause as Edgar and Argyle stared at each other.
Finally Edgar laughed, winking his cybernetic eye at Argyle as he pulled him up out of the medical bed, and patted him on the shoulder:
“You're a smart one, aren't you Argyle?”
“S-sir?” Argyle looked over at the expired body of the man called Davin.
“Sh-should'nt you call for the nurse?”
“The nurse? Ahh, the nurse! Yes of course, how absent-minded of me!” Edgar took Argyll by the arm, striding out of the hospital tent at pace.
“NURSE!" he bellowed, "I need a nurse here, immediately! My good friend has just woken up and needs a bloody good drink down his neck, ha-ha!”
***