You took another glance down the street, toward where Galene had looked when the shots rang out. He was probably right that you arriving would be disruptive, but it felt like a dereliction of your duties not to at least take a look, and gather what information you could.
"I believe you, but it won't be an Enforcer going, it will be a representative of the Imperial Inquisition," you said sternly, beginning to walk. "To be clear; we are not going to a pick a fight. I just want to find out what happened."
"I… of course, but if I can ask… why?" Galane asked, falling in beside you, clearly reluctant to put his needler away. "It's just the usual dust-up."
"It's my job. You, in theory, enforce. I interrogate, and I have many questions."
Your guards fell in around you in perfect lockstep; the Catachans privately thought of it as
kid-watching, the protective cordone they'd form around anyone vulnerable who needed to leave the wire. Even with the street clearing, people somehow finding other places to be, it was noticeable now how the crowds parted around their purposeful movement and half-raised lasguns.
"You mentioned the names and a dispute over a Saint, but few details. What, specifically, is the point of contention between the Luminars and Sanctifiers?" you asked, making conversation as you pushed to the corner. The man shrugged.
"They'll say it's some doctrinal dispute, and mean it, but the reality is…" He paused, thinking how to phrase it. "If I can be clear, Miss Interrogator, they've been locked in this hold for fifteen hundred years with each other. T-these are not rational people you can talk to, they're… petty little fanatics and grudge-holders who can't let anything go. They kill one of ours, we kill one of theirs, on and on forever. Pointless."
"Surely they realise that," Cass ventured, and the man snorted back laughter. The wall of Catachans between him and the city was seeming to boost his confidence, and with it his disdain.
"Don't let the pretty lights fool you. Sure, they're decent metalworkers and tech-wrights, but under that these people are savages. This is how they've always been."
Yeah. You'd heard that before.
You rounded the corner just in time to see a small crowd moving in the opposite direction. You couldn't see clearly, there were so many people around them, but you got the impression that they were carrying at least two people. In the street proper, a handful of stragglers still raced down the sides of the hall, swerving to avoid the scene of the shooting itself, a pockmarked wall and two blood stains. A silver, engraved snub revolver lay discarded on the floor, alongside the bloody remains of a shirt and several… pieces.
At the end of the 'road', if the small junction could be called such a thing, there stood two people in black clothing with rifles looking on dispassionately, their faces hidden behind blue masks. You could see little detail about them, and they moved off almost as soon as you approached. The street was soon silent and empty.
The Catachans took up position farther down the hall, and you approached the scene slowly, looking it over. The direction of the shots were not in doubt from the tears in the walls where rounds had skipped off, and their target was the first, smaller bloodstain, closer to where the shooters had been. The second, larger one, which marred the steel plates of the walls and floor with smeared blood and pieces, was farther down the hall.
The place felt heavy, weighed down by fresh anguish and despair. Hot with anger. You stood back as Cass approached closer, tracing one of the fresh silver lines with her finger to the larger bloodstain. She winced.
"Hmm?"
"Ricochet, it's why you never stick to the walls in a city or ship, lead will skip all the way down farther than you think. Look, the corrugation gives us perfect trails, see?" She paused as she got closer, then sighed. "Dahl, stay over there. Keep your distance."
"Why?" you asked, though you respected it. She indicated to one of the grooves in the wall, and traced it
downward.
"Those are pieces of somebody's skull, but whoever was shooting was already aiming low and hit lower."
And she had a feeling it wasn't just somebody bending down. Fuck. There were always kids, Praxis said it over and over to convey the seriousness and risk of taking violent action, but it still always hurt.
You turned away and approached the pistol. You stepped, as best you could, around the blood, but it was already smeared by the efforts of the crowd, distributed in the thin film of prints from hands reached out to steady people, or stains transferred from bloodied clothing. It was impossible not to get it on your delicate shoes. Flecks dotted the weapon.
Gingerly, you removed your glove and reached out. Your fingers closed around the handle of the revolver, and its most recent and hottest memories surfaced forcefully, the last time fingers had closed around it. It was being drawn in a hurry, in haste, with anger and fear, and you saw out the barrel one of those blue-masked men, looming ahead. You saw them as the wielder had seen, not dressed in black but encased in midnight, their masks grinning, horrible demonic visages. They won't get away with it. I can't let them get away with it.
The weapon discharged high, aim thrown off by panic. The return fire was not. The revolver had dropped, and a dozen people had seen it and, wary of the masked men, had left it. Its owner had been pulled away.
The memories swirled away into a haze of the deeper history, of shots fired in practice and anger, of its creation just a hundred metres away and a century past, in a workshop that was now a nursery. Gingerly, you handed it to one of the Catachans.
"Galane, which ones are the ones in blue masks?" you asked.
"The Saint's Own Martyrs Platoon, the biggest Luminar militia, at least thirty of them. They answer directly to the clerics. As I said, some Sanctifier juvie with a snub pistol got stupid and got smeared by the SOMP," he said. "It's usually what happens."
"Do the Sanctifier militia fight back?" you asked, and he shrugged.
"Sometimes. Hasn't happened in a while, but things have been tense."
Lost in thought, you traced the splatter of blood down the hall, thinking. If random kids were trying to jump the other side's military in such a stupid way, that was usually the result of the leadership not taking action on their own. There could be a lot of reasons for that.
You stopped in front of a door, an ancient pressure door reappropriated from some other part of the vessel, set into a thin steel wall that ironically wouldn't hold an atmosphere. It was marked with the triple diamonds of a medicae facility, and you realised with a start there was a crowd here, staring at you. They'd fallen silent on seeing you, and you'd been so lost in the hollow feeling clinging to the blood that you'd not noticed them parting before you. You'd gone maybe thirty metres, turned two corners, and it felt like a different world.
To your left, Private Holis stepped ahead, her hand on the flamer hanging around her neck. People, angry, teary-eyed people, eyes fixed on you. No, not on you, on the symbol pinned below your collar. It was awe.
Gingerly, you pulled your glove back on and worked the latch of the door. It opened stiffly, creaking on the hinges. Behind it was a simple waiting room in sterile white and green, lined with a haphazard mix of chairs. There was a young woman behind a desk, talking to an older woman you imagined may be a nurse. Another man, his face covered with a black balaclava, yellow chequered headband, and a pair of mirrored goggles. He was wearing what looked like a sort of truncated yellow habit over a set of light grey fatigues, with a solid webbing vest and a truly ancient looking lasgun, and he briefly pulled it closer before realising how many soldiers you had behind you.
"I am Dahlia Hussain, Interrogator of the Imperial Inquisition," you introduced yourself. "Here in connection to the recent shooting. The victims were brought here?"
The young woman nodded, her mouth hanging open in reverent terror.
"Good. You aren't in trouble, but I have questions for-"
The young man apparently found some kind of nerve, or perhaps was simply overcome with a moment of pure idiocy, because he attempted to stand up quickly, his hand on his weapon. Instantly, a dozen weapons snapped up, and you winced at the noise your entire entourage screamed for him to drop the weapon. The lasgun hit the floor and he tripped over a chair attempting to back up, his hands held high.
Cass stepped forward and kicked the lasgun back across the floor; a sharp pain went through your leg as it bounced off your toes.
"Names and trade,
now," she ordered, the slam of her footfalls punctuating the question.
The man made sounds which were very much not any sort of answer, closer to a sob than anything. Cass pushed him roughly into a chair and indicated a Catachan forward, who began searching his vest, then she looked to the nurse. The woman immediately fell to her knees, eye fixed on the floor, and dragged the younger woman with her.
"Udele ai'Emberway, My Lady!" she replied. "Senior nurse! This is Nova ai'Steelpath, she is the medicae clerk and book-manager."
"You can stand up," you said. Nobody stood.
"And he?" Cass asked, indicating toward the man. She shook her head, but one glance at you told Cass she was lying, using the mask as an excuse. Cass gave a signal to Corporal Arnan, who roughly pulled the mask from his face to reveal a man maybe in his late teens, pale and red-haired, his face stained with tears.
"... Calien d'Aquapon, he's a member of the Popular Crusade Youth Division," the woman said.
And an idiot, she thought, so loudly you could hear it from here. "He's here in case the Luminars come to finish the boy off."
And a fat lot of good he would have done.
"Let him go, Corporal," you said, indicating to move him toward the desk, and you started thinking about what to ask.
---
You have a medicae clerk, a militiaman, and a nurse to ask questions of, a pretty good group for getting answers. You can also ask them to bring anyone else who might be relevant.
What do you ask? This is a plan vote, and we can make this interview several updates, so do not worry about getting everything all at once.
