The planetary Governor was sweating profusely. He drank from a golden cup embellished with silver and red gems. He then remembered the reason why he had begun drinking non-stop from the last six years and smashed the glass in the wall.

That damned captain! That man destroyed one of his hive cities, abusing his authority and then disappeared in the Warp after stealing half his most trained troops!

Some of the glass shards hit one of his two personal bodyguards, but they didn’t pay attention to it, as they were used to this man’s lack of control once he began drinking.

A pair of staff maiden entered the room, cleaning the mess and preparing a new set of glasses and drinks for him.

After a few minutes of tense silence, he heard a soft knock on the door and made a gesture so that one of the guards opened the door and let the Ministorum investigator team enter.

An old man entered the room in a rather bland look. He seemed like a boring bureaucrat that spent most of his years writing and sending reports from and back different Ministorum departments. But he saw the sign on his chest and snapped out of his contempt. A cardinal?

This man was a high ranking ecclesiarchy member, and that Terra had dispatched such high ranking officer in just a few years only meant they took his report rather seriously.

What looked weird was the companion that entered with him. She was a female Arbites, with black full body armor, and her helmet. The only part of her body visible was the mouth, and it showed a displeased gesture.

“Are you the emissary from Terra?”

“Ah Governor, Yes, yes, I’m the Cardinal Rotan, and this is Lady Naya Taeghal, a Senior Arbitrator. It took us a while to reach here; the warp storms are quite a big deal lately.”

“Y-yes, they are.”

“So, you have reported the acts of a Spaceship captain as Rebellious and Heretical, right?”

“I did so, yes. That man, Aldaris, he-”

“Are you referring to Lord-Captain Aldaris, Governor?”

The planetary Governor gritted his teeth, not wanting to acknowledge that bastard’s rank.

“Yes… He ordered me to provide him troops, which I did, understanding that he might be on a mission that required an extra pair of hands, and-”

“But, it wasn’t approved by the Ministorum, did you have the right to make such a call?”

The planetary Governor opened and closed his mouth a few times, but the man in front of him continued talking, not giving him the time to respond.

“There are also many testimonies that corroborate that what you provided to the Lord-Captain were delinquents, gang members and rebels from that destroyed hive-city, is that right?”

The planetary Governor frowned, not expecting this man to know so much already. Hadn't he just arrived at this planet a day ago? What was going on?

Taking another sip to his glass, he felt the liquor calming his nerves.

“I needed my soldiers to fight off the rebellion on the Three Valley Hive City, but Alda- Ehem… Lord-Captain Aldaris, he didn't conform with the quality of the fighters provided. He ordered an Orbital Bombardment over the city as punishment, killing millions of innocents!!”

“Ahh, but wasn’t that city full of rebels that your troops had to fight? He might as well did you a favor, didn’t he?”

The planetary Governor’s face started to turn purple, and then put his most distinguished expression and responded to the man in front of him, an old and peaceful man in front of him. For a dog of the church, he looked humble and didn’t command much respect.

“He didn’t comply with the Imperial Law and killed millions of imperial citizens, may the Emperor protect their souls.”

“But, Governor, I have another doubt.”

“What is it now?! Can’t you finish this damn string of questions and go chase that man?!”

The old man slowly stood up, and the light in the room seemed to dim. The Governor turned left and right and saw his guards lying on the floor, with darts on their necks. The female Arbitrator had put them to sleep.

“W-what is the meaning of this?! Y-you are rebels!! Guards!!! HELP!”

“Shhh, don’t worry, Governor, we have some privacy now. So, you think Lord-Captain Aldaris should be killed for his actions?”

“W-what?! He is a monster! He destroyed a whole Hive city without blinking!”

“And how could he do that? Didn’t the shields on the city rise to protect it from the attack? I’m sure the ship took a few minutes to reposition itself before launching the bombardment.”

“T-that… I-I’m not sure, but the Tech-priest Enginseer will be able to answer that question.”

The old man stopped and turned, walking closer to the Governor, that was glued to the chair, unable to move. With each word, he felt his heartbeat rising and the sweat on his back growing.

“We have already interrogated him. He told us that you dismissed his calls for workforce and resources to repair the power stations lines.”

“B-but, ehem. I had to use every man and coin to fight the rebellion. The cities would be protected in case a fleet would attack from space.”

“Ah, yes. The city's shield was not ready to fend off an unexpected bombardment, and they would take nearly an hour to charge fully. You were irresponsible, Governor, allowing irreparable damage to happen the shields. You disregarded his advice and allowed this tragedy to occur in that city. Plus, you’ve not even put down this rebellion yet, allowing it to propagate like a virus through the whole planet.”

Right now, the Governor was truly scared. This old man knew more than it seemed, but the level of accuracy and the amount of information he collected put the noble in real problems.

“Wh-wh-who are you?! How do you know all that!?”

The old man’s smile died out, and the light in his eyes turned dark and cold. He moved the bony hand through his clothes and took a sigil. It showed a capital letter 'I' with a skull in the middle.

“T-tha-that's an Inquisitorial Rosette? Y-you’re an Inquisitor?”

The Governor tried to stand but failed. He fell to the ground, pissing himself as a little kid, and started to cry, crawling backwards until he felt something behind him. It was the woman that came with this old man. Her mouth was showing a seriously displeased expression, just as cold as the Inquisitors.

“Indeed, I am. And you, Governor… You’re an utter failure. You have proven that the faith put upon you exceeded your ability to fulfill your duty.”

The fear in the eyes of the man on the floor only increased as he noticed his body was slowly turning rigid, and he was slowly paralyzed. He fell on the ground with a loud thump and saw how the old man signaled a few things, and the woman took everything they needed.

Afterward, they left the room, leaving the Governor paralyzed and crying, yet unable to scream for help. All he could hear, though, was a high pitch that was beeping faster each passing minute.

After the old Inquisitor and his helper entered their vessel and left the palatine palace, an explosion took place on one of the central spires.

The female Arbitres cracked her neck and turned slowly to look at the Inquisitor.

“Don’t look at me like that. It was probably the rebels…”

She swallowed her anger and made a mental annotation on another possible law broken by this man, on a long list of wrong deeds. One day, she would make him pay for each one of them.

The palace turned into a frenzy, trying to locate the ones responsible. A few hours later, several documents and reports were presented to the local population, about how the rebels had infiltrated and killed the Planetary Governor and his family, even the young royal princess wasn’t spared.

The whole world was shocked by the event, and several ships with Guardsmen descended upon the world the next day together with several hundred Arbitres and ecclesiarchy members, who started to pacify the world quickly and put down the rebels, now that they had lost the populations support. It was a bloody and ruthless campaign.

In just a few weeks, the whole planet was right on track, praising the emperor and ready to work and serve the imperium once again. The rebels and their families, executed, burned, or forced into slavery.

-------------------

Back on their main ship, the Inquisitor and the Arbitres woman were looking at some documents over a table. She was standing near the door, still with her black clothes and armor.

“Are you still mad about that Governor? I just accelerated the process and gave your department a solid reason to put down this rebellion without turning it into a civil war.”

She looked away, angered, yet half convinced by the logical reasoning he used.

“So, what do you think, Naya?”

The woman looked silently at him and tilted her head.

The Inquisitor pointed towards several reports and testimonies about how the captain of the Battlecruiser acted in a hurry and an extremely decisive way. She then shook her head slowly, disapproving of such actions, and moved her head towards the window.

The old Inquisitor turned and looked at a weird line on the starry sky. It was a purple, red, and twisted scar that traversed the cosmos. That was the Cicatrix.

“Right, he’s not an idiot. If he used such drastic measures, it means he was in a hurry, do we know where he left?”

She sighed and nodded and pointed at a region of space on the map. It made no sense to either of them. Who would directly jump right into the Cicatrix? And why?

“Interesting… that is also from where the encrypted message came from. But, from that point onwards, there is only the Cicatrix. Why would he abandon his mission to investigate Ziaphoria? He has taken huge risks to get an opportunity to go there.”

The answers pointed towards the message. It was that transmission that sparked everything.

He then used an advanced servitor from the old Governor and waited for several hours so it could decipher the message, but all it managed to get was the first part.

“Research lab… Pri-8’s Moon? Do we know that place?”

She then made a series of fast hand symbols. 'Sand, water, death.'

“Oh, right! Wasn't it the weird planet that was turning into a desert? We left some Mechanicus priests taking care of it. But, this message seems old, very old. Hmmm, M39, or M40? Interesting.”

The Inquisitor looked at the data and frowned, was it possible for a message to travel the whole galaxy through the Cicatrix Maledictum? It was a corridor after all. Despite how counterintuitive it looked, the message was there, an old encrypted message from the other side of the galaxy.

“Go search for the planetary Logis. We need to decipher this message. If he can’t decode it, we might need to visit an old friend from Mars to lend me a hand.”

It looks like he would have to pay a visit to that world way earlier than he expected.