Part 2

Quarantine measures

Chapter 7

* * *

"What do you want?" Fidus asked, not even trying to hide his tired irritation. He was going to spend his last hours before the trip down in silence and reflection. Not conversations with his worst foe and most loyal unfriend.

"Where is the deference to age and position, my boy?" Inquisitor Schmettau responded with caustic politeness and fake participation. For his part, he made no effort to disguise his jubilation.

"The Inquisitor should be addressed as 'You,'" Essen Pale, Kalkroit Schmettau's apprentice, and protégé, towering over the patron's shoulder, remarked in a bored tone. "This is obvious if only from the difference in years."

"Yeah," said Kryptman with a smirk. "So what do you want?"

Normally, the Squad was recruited from the convict holds and the ships of the Ecclesiarchy (and evil tongues said that there was little difference), but for Kryptman, because of his unique situation, an exception was made. He arrived in the Ice Port system as an ordinary passenger, on a passenger liner with certain comforts. Which, however, he would soon have to lose.

"Wine, sir," the servitor in his carefully tailored livery handed a small tray, topped with a single glass, with unusual elegance for a machine.

Fidus took his glass and took a big sip, looking through the uninvited guests.

The cabin was rather compact, but cleverly furnished and decorated, so that it seemed much larger than it was. There was a lot of red, velvet, and a mirrored wall that doubled the visible volume. Kryptman Jr. sat in a spectacular armchair with his leg over his head and seemed out of place in such surroundings. His stiff, stern face, his simple novice robe, and his freshly shaved head did not harmonize well with the graceful lines of the decor, implying decadence and gloss.

The guests did not see fit to sit down, or rather, the inquisitor preferred to stand, and so his protégé stood on his feet. Schmettau, as usual, looked the least like a man who had devoted more than a hundred years to the Inquisition, and about a third of his own body. Not fat, however, he was stout, with a noticeable paunch and slightly disheveled hair, looking out at the world with a kind, slightly helpless gaze behind the lenses of his most ordinary spectacles. Kalkroit could have been mistaken for a writer of children's stories about the lives and good deeds of His faithful servants. Such men are much loved by women of age and by children, feeling in them faithfulness, sincere kindness, and thoroughness.

He was handsome and stern, except that his face was a little too wide and his eyes were too close together. This gave him the uncomfortable feeling that he was always squinting at his companion. He wore a long dandy cloak of elaborately tanned leather, without a flap of concealed armor, almost to his heels. Dressed like that, Essen Palais looked more like a ceremonial commissar, lacking only a scarlet sash and a cap on the bend of the hand. Evil tongues said that Pale was not clever, and, to call things by their proper names, a little stupid. However, all - and critics, and well-wishers - converged on the fact that Essen is very performant, efficient, and meticulous, the main thing is to let him off the chain in the right direction. And Schmettau's intellect was enough for both.

Master and apprentice were as different as heaven and earth, as the slums of Necromunda and the shining spires of Ultramar, but they had one thing in common: looks. Kalkroit's slightly blinded eyes and Essen's deep-set pupils looked at Fidus with the same expression of mild contempt and confident triumph.

"What do I want..." Schmettau looked up as if expecting to find the answer in the pink-red orchid ceiling. He ran his fingers over his chin with a look of deep thought. "Ah, that's what!"

He raised his index finger considerably, calling for attention and concentration.

"I want to enjoy every second of it. I want to gloat and rejoice in your misfortunes. I want to revel in every minute of my triumph. Simple and understandable human desires."

"Good," Fidus shook his head as he took another sip. "You'll have to do without the wine, then."

The servitor froze by the chair, deaf and indifferent to anything but his master's orders. He trembled a little at the word "wine" and a moment later reverted to a half-living statue.

"Nice, nice, nice," Kalkroit clapped his hands in time with the "nice". "No, I'd like some wine, too, but it's better this way. Seeing you try to bark back pathetically and ridiculously is much nicer."

"Still settling scores with a dead man," Fidus shook his shaved head again. "I'd say that's silly. But such a remark implies some sort of morality, the ability to distinguish between what's decent and what's inferior. It's not about you."

"Oh, yes, that's right, my boy. I am, I am settling an old score."

Schmettau drew a rectangle with his fingers as if he were alluding to a check or other debt obligation.

The kind writer of children's tales hid for a moment, like a folding toy in a magician's sleeve. In his place, with a heavy-handed grin, a completely different man, a werewolf, who had shed his mask of the do-gooder, grinned grimly. A few seconds and the kindly bespectacled man was back, spreading his arms with disarming good-naturedness.

"Your father was a very bad man."

The new leather on Essen's cloak creaked. The Inquisitor's apprentice was smiling, too, but without much emotion, like a mannequin or a very well-made servitor. He was bored; the commander's old scores were of no interest to Pale, but position obliged.

"Don't speak ill of my father," Fidus clenched his glass tighter, feeling the stabbing pain building in his long-healed and repaired ribs. Emotions brought the mortal flesh to mind the wounds of the past.

"What will you do?" Kalkroit asked sympathetically. "Will you throw me out? Or will you call me to order? Me, the inquisitor? You, who are now just a minor purificator?"

"No. I will confine myself to stating the obvious fact," Fidus, with a careless (at least he hoped so) movement of his hand, ordered the servitor to approach and placed a glass with a couple of drops of unfinished wine on the tray.

"Kalkroit Schmettau, you are pathetic and miserable. You couldn't get back at father, and now you're trying to take pity out on son. That only humiliates you, not me. For as low as you have thrown me down, we both know..."

Fidus leaned forward slightly, locking his fingers together.

"...That all this is a convulsion of powerlessness. You will never match the true servant of God the Emperor Kryptman, inquisitor, thinker, and hero. You know it, I know it. Live with this knowledge from now on."

"Babble, Fidus, babble," Essen entered the conversation, tilting his head back with his short and carefully arranged hair. Apparently, to look at Kryptmann a little more from above, with even more superiority. But then Schmettau indicated sparing applause. Essen stopped smiling and fell silent as if in an instant he became speechless.

"That was good," Schmettau said seriously, clapping his chubby hands one last time. "Really good. No matter how I felt about him, I have to admit, Kryptman Sr. had undeniable virtues. And among other things, he knew how to hold a punch. Even when all seemed lost... or was actually lost. At times like that, boy, you are like your father."

"Always at your service," Fidus indicated a buffoonish half bow.

"But I don't care what you think about it or what verbal ostracism you subject me to," the inquisitor continued as evenly, with benevolent irony. "It's a pity, of course, that my colleague and comrade-in-arms have long been scattered in ashes and become part of the universal carbon exchange. But I will still rejoice to see his son suffer."

"What's the point?" Fidus asked sardonically.

"In satisfaction," said Schmettau very seriously. "In compensation. In balancing the scales. He and I were companions, brothers. Each of the two of us had to stand more than once between a comrade and death, but we did not hesitate. Schmettau and Kryptman, it sounded proud and frightening. Frightening to heretics, of course."

"Kryptman and Schmettau, that's more accurate," Fidus quipped, leaning back.

"As you wish," the inquisitor brushed it aside. "We knew how little empty queueing meant in our brotherhood. Until your father betrayed me."

"Father didn't betray anyone," Fidus cut him off.

"He betrayed me," Schmettau repeated, stressing the word "me," his eyes clouded and the corners of his lips lowered as if he were plunged back into old memories, unpleasant and extremely painful.

"I devoted everything to our work, even a part of myself."

Kalkroit extended his palms forward, quite lifelike in appearance, imperfect as the hands of a man of age should be. Only completely devoid of the hairs and spots natural to naturally born flesh.

"And he betrayed everything that bound us together. He denied all our duties. He abandoned me at the most important moment, on the threshold of my greatest triumph."

"Father had obligations," Fidus honestly tried to be cool and dispassionate, but it was not going well. The Kalkroit apprentice watched Kryptman silently, and in Essen's narrow-set eyes one could see a sincere, malicious superiority.

"He appreciated you and your friendship," Fidus continued. "I know that all too well. Because..." the young man's voice trembled a little. "Even family was a step below for him. Schmettau, you've been my curse, in a way, all my life. A paragon and a standard against which my father compared me daily, hourly. But his duty to the Emperor and Humanity he considered above your ambition. So you may as well give the dead man and me, as well as the Golden Throne."

"Oh, no, kiddo," Kalkroit snapped his jaws like a real mutant ogre, stepping out of his well-fed goody-goody persona again. "Not my ambition!"

The Inquisitor's face twisted into an angry grimace. He stepped forward quickly - too quickly for the average man of years and a couple of dozen extra pounds - and loomed over the seated Kryptman. Fidus seemed to have succeeded, after all, in uncovering old sores. Essen Palais tensed slightly, ready to defend his patron if necessary.

"A Case!" Schmettau growled, shaking his weighty, not at all elderly fist at Kryptman's nose. "We had a Case that Ordo had been working on for almost a quarter of a century. A cult that had its tentacles in two Sectors. Billions in wasted thrones. Dozens of agents are dead. A quarter-century of painstaking, deadly work! Twice as much as you, unworthy, carry the inquisitor's badge! And all this he abandoned! Left me behind, taking with him the entire technical team and the strike force! No explanation, no warning, because he has once again seen horrible, deadly xenos! What is this if not betrayal? Our friendship, our duty, our Orde, our God?!"

Kalkroit had calmed down as suddenly as he had flamed with rage. But it was clear that the deeds of bygone years were not forgotten, had been numbered, and were like embers that were carefully stoked and fueled, not allowed to subside. Fidus put his hands on the armrests, squeezing the warm wood.

"It's sad."

"What?" Kalkroit pulled back the flaps of his uniform, adjusted the cuffs of his white shirt. Now only the crimson stains on his cheeks testified to the recent fit of anger.

"I'm sorry," Fidus repeated. "Schmettau, you're taking revenge on a ghost in your imagination. You won't hurt him, you won't make him suffer. And you won't be able to admit his mistakes... that didn't happen."

"No, kid, you're not sorry," said Kalkroit grimly, whose voice had no irony or good-natured superiority in it, only malicious triumph. "You have no idea what a successful case is. Accordingly, you have no idea what it means to be betrayed on the doorstep of triumph."

Kryptman shuddered, gripping the armrests tighter.

"Yes," Kalkroit grinned coldly and cruelly. "A loser in his father's shadow. You're right, I can't get my hands on the ghost of Kryptman Sr. I can't make him suffer as I did. But I have you. The dead don't care, but justice is for the living, and I am alive. And I long for vengeance."

"Go to your demons, you crazy old man," Fidus waved his hand wearily. "I have other things to worry about. You can feast on your poison somewhere else."

"I am an inquisitor," Kalkroit grinned. "I can be wherever I see fit. You're just a novice of the Purificatum these days. And I have my doubts about your piety. After all, the main motive for a man to volunteer for the Order is to cleanse himself of sins. So in the meantime..." Schmettau paused dramatically. "I'll stay here. Look after you, so to speak. Support my fellow man in his difficult service. I thought you'd have to be cornered for years to come, but you've done it yourself. Truly, whoever the Emperor wishes to punish, he strips off his mind."

He turned, preparing to leave. Essen took a precautionary step to the side, opening the way for his mentor. One step away from the hatch, steel, but lined with real wood and decorated like a normal door, Kalkroit froze and turned a half-turn.

"You will die here, Kryptman," the old inquisitor said very quietly, with genuine hatred. "You will die in obscurity and misery. Along with the girl, you didn't help then and won't help now. And when that happens, then I will finally consider that Kryptman Sr. has paid me for everything. And the old debts will be closed."

"You'll have to wait a long time, you old bastard," Fidus grinned, deciding to drop the politeness, too. "We survived on Ballistic, and we'll survive here."

The servitor moved restlessly, sensing his master's unconventional behavior, but unable to determine his desires.

"I am patient, I have waited a long time," returned the inquisitor's wicked grin. "And I'm willing to wait a little longer."

Kalkroit inhaled, exhaled, and his face returned to its former mask of benevolence and light fatigue. The apprentice stood between his mentor and Kryptman, as if protecting him from a possible attack.

"Cheers, young colleague," Schmettau indicated a short and shallow bow. "I will follow your career at Adepto Purificatum with great attention."

* * *

"Go to ass, Fidus." Olga repeat.

"If you believe what they say about the Order, I'm already somewhere near there," answered a familiar voice. The girl did not recognize it at first, because the inquisitor spoke softly, and the tone had changed. After all, Olga hardly ever heard Fidus speak normally, only in agony or fits of pain.

"Then go ahead."

"I can't. My place is next to you. And I'm coming in," Fidus warned.

Olga protested, but the tarpaulin curtain was already sliding aside, creaking with its brass rings.

"Hey, don't mess around," The Wretched Man demanded without much pressure, but very firmly, turning down the volume of the radio. "There was one here, disturbing the peace and bothering our girl."

"I won't," Kryp promised on the doorstep. "I'm quiet. It's just that we know each other. A reunion of old friends."

"WoW!" The old man marveled. "I've never even heard of acquaintances being in the same company. Especially in the same vehicle. Tell me about it later!"

"I will," Fidus promised neutrally. "And hello again."

Olga looked at Kryp critically for a long time, assessing the changes. The shaved head grew short stubble, just like Olga's, only darker in color. The inquisitor wore the same overalls as the other inmates, with a winged white DNA spiral in a red diamond on the left side of his chest - the emblem of the Squad.

Behind the inquisitor towered either a servitor or a mechanicum, Olga was already confused and did not know how to distinguish between them. Probably a servitor, not bad-looking, by the way. Almost like a human, only mummified, partially encased in an exoskeleton armor. Behind the living dead man's back, there were two heat pipes sticking out, and a shotgun with a short and thick barrel hung from his chest. No, with a whole bunch of barrels. It was a weapon she had never seen before.

"Is that...?" Olga pointed her finger at the zombie, trying not to let it shake. "What?"

"This is Luct," Fidus answered. "My father's companion. He served faithfully in life, and he wanted to remain faithful to the Emperor's work in death. He serves me now."

"He wasn't with you," Olga frowned.

"This is the household servant and librarian," Fidus explained patiently. He was still standing behind the low threshold, making no attempt to step further. "But he can fight well. I decided to take him with me."

"A full complement of the crew!" exclaimed someone's voice in the cockpit, it seemed Smoker, "And with more than enough. When has it ever been?"

"We're going to die," Savlar said more sullenly and more quietly. "It's no good... The damn hen is bad luck for us..."

He and Smoker started arguing about the nature of bad luck, but the girl was no longer listening.

"What do you want?" she repeated, and after a second's pause, she couldn't resist another question, one that contained an ill-concealed, desperate hope. "Are you... after me?"

Fidus stepped inside, pulled up the tarpaulin, warding off the rest of the carriage. He sat opposite Olga, folded his hands in his lap, emphasizing the friendliness of his intentions.

"Partially."

"How's that? - Olga was startled, then she correlated Fidus's presence here, his appearance as a recruit, and the meaning of the word 'partially'. "Yeah... It seems that you're not taking me away from here in a blue helicopter..."

Kryp shook his head, seemingly saddened by the frustration in the girl's eyes and voice.

"Whatever your 'heji-cop-tur' is, I don't have it. And I can't take you away."

"So what the fuck are you doing here?"

Olga strained all her gothic knowledge to make the question sound as harsh and insulting as possible. She seemed to hit the target.

"Ol-ga," Kryp pronounced her name on the first try, but in two breaths. "What I want to tell you..."

"Some bullshit, indeed," Olga stung again.

"First of all, I'm sorry."

Something like "Well, of course!" was begging on her tongue, but the girl just waved her hand with wistful hopelessness.

"Listen, Kryp... why don't you fuck off? The vigil's about to start. And night terrors. I don't have time for you."

"I'm sorry," Kryp repeated insistently. "I promised, and I didn't."

In the Squad, swearing was strictly discouraged, but the girl thought the moment was worthy of a strong word. But she hesitated to translate the phrase '***** *****' adequately, and Kryp spoke again:

"I can't go back in time. But I can try to fix what I've done. As much as I can."

"And how do you intend to do that?"

"In-person," Kryp said with morbid seriousness, looking intently at Olga.

The servitor stood motionless and hummed a little with a motor in his belly under the armor.

"What?"

Spoiler : [MEDIA=youtube]TOpQoh7hXL8[/MEDIA]

"I've talked to... different people. I was looking for an opportunity to dispute your enrollment here."

"So?"

"It's impossible. Unless one performs an incredible deed."

"It's a Marvelous Deed. I know."

"So you have to serve the whole ter... all the obedience. Or to do something meaningful, heroic."

"Kryp, you fool, I'll die first," Olga said quietly and sadly. From the Priest's lectures she had already imagined what inquisitors did, and how dangerous even an ordinary dispute, let alone an insult, could become. But somehow it seemed to her that Crip wasn't really an inquisitor anymore. Or maybe not an inquisitor at all.

"Yes," Fidus agreed simply and uncomplicatedly. "It's possible, too."

"Damn it," Olga gritted her teeth.

"And the smartest of the interlocutors then said - if you want her to survive, don't look for excuses and cunning ways, just go, guard her, be willing to trade your life and health for her safety."

"And what did you do?" Olga stared at Fidus incomprehensibly.

"Came to guard," Kryp shrugged his broad shoulders.

"Came... to guard."

Olga hunched over, bowing her head low, hiding her hands between her knees. Crip said something else, but the girl would not listen. Fidus finally realized that the words were going to waste and shut up. Olga, for her part, noticed that the flow of words had ended, and looked at the inquisitor again. She blinked frequently, but her remarkably bright cornflower-colored eyes remained dry. At least, they seemed that way.

"Leave me alone," she said muffled, but quite distinctly.

"Olga."

"Kryp," the girl half-closed her eyes, clenched her knees even tighter as if trying to warm her frozen, twig-thin fingers. "Have you come to soothe a guilty conscience?"

Fidus thought about it and answered honestly: "Yes. I guess so."

He thought about it some more and then added it:

"And also to do a good, worthy thing."

"So what's in it for me?"

"I don't get it..."

"And he warned, he said," Olga muttered under her breath.

"What are you talking about?" Fidus got suspicious.

"He said no one needed it, no one would appreciate it," the girl whispered. "No one would thank me. And punish me for things I don't even understand. He... was... right..."

"What do you mean?" Fidus repeated harshly, demandingly.

"I need to get out of here," Olga looked him in the eye. "Before all these witches and xenos kill me here. Somehow I have to make a new life for myself. Find myself... somehow. But you can't help me with that, can you? You got demoted?"

"No!" Fidus straightened up sharply. "I am the Inquisitor! It's just that..."

"Just you can do nothing for me."

Her voice was no longer a question, but a statement, sad and desperate.

"You can't do anything, Kryp. You can't do anything but join the Squad and make a nice speech about how pompous and brave you are."

Fidus bit his lip and suddenly thought how much the thin yellow-headed girl looked like Schmettau now. Two completely different people, united by only one thing - they did not respect Inquisitor Kryptman for a penny. And they didn't believe in him, not even by a poppy seed. It was just that Kalkroit expressed it with pleasure, enjoying triumph, and Olga with quiet hopelessness.

"Ol-ga."

Kryp raised his hand timidly, but the girl was already standing up, wearing a mask of detached, indifferent restraint.

"It was a pleasure to meet you again, Mr. Kryptman. Welcome to our glorious wagon. Now I have a business to attend to."

Already from the corridor, glancing at the electronic zombie with a multi-barreled gun, Olga added with grim determination, already quite loudly:

"If you ever come in here again without asking, you'll get punched in the face."

"This one can!" confirmed one of the troopers, seemed Smoker, and laughed loudly.

Olga threw her head back with haughty pride so that her nose was pointing almost to the ceiling, and went down to the tank and her cylinders. She really wanted to be alone with herself and away from Kryp.

* * *