by R. E. Graham
“Roger that inquisitor” responded the female operator. “Fighters inbound. T-minus ten.”
“Have the fighters stay to the South of the town. I will order when to strike” the inquisitor said as he grabbed his rifle and aimed it at the front windows. He fired multiple shots wildly through the glass. The men outside ducked for cover.
“Wilco inquisitor” the operator said before the line was cut.
Varius set his rifle down on the table and took a flare from his left thigh pocket. Using his right hand, he ignited the flare and tossed at the bar. He grabbed his rifle and then Lilly.
“Get in there and kill him!” shouted mayor White to his men. Several gunmen approached the front door while three others opened fired. Bullets tore through the windows and walls completely missing the pair inside.
The inquisitor limped further inside the inn as he searched for a backdoor. He found it at the end of a hallway next to the laundry room. After blasting the doorknob, he kicked the door outwards and once more poked his head out into potential danger. Voices could be heard coming up closely behind them as they entered the inn. The inquisitor limped as fast as he could down the alley.
As they entered the foyer of the inn, the new attackers noticed the fire as it began to spread.
“He probably went out the backdoor. You two follow him, I am going to get help to deal with this fire before the whole inn goes up in flames” said one of the men. The other two charged for the backdoor and found it open.
Varius stopped at the edge of the alley and checked for enemies. He could see the edge of the town and made for a tree line that lead up a hill. Turning around to check if anyone was following them he saw the two large columns of smoke reaching up into the sky. The fire must have found some good kindling somewhere in the inn because smoke began to billow out of the structure.
As they continued their escape, Varius realized his leg was bleeding badly from the injury. He stopped behind a fritzy tree. After placing his rifle on his back, he set Lilly down once more. He pulled out two black patches from the medkit on his belt and placed one on both the back and front of his leg to stop the bleeding.
Noticing Lilly staring at the growing trails of smoke he asked, “Are you okay?”
She kept staring at the glow of the fire back in the town. Varius leaned from behind the tree to see two men following them up the hill. He barely had time to grab Lilly and pull her back before they began opening fire. The bullets burst chunks of wood from the tree trunk.
“Lilly, run up the hill. Go now!” Varius shouted as he grabbed his rifle again and removed it from his back. It slid back into active mode and he fired three shots at the man in front. The attacker didn’t have a chance to do anything but die as all three pierced through his torso. The other dove to the sloped ground for cover.
Varius turned to look up the hill and didn’t see Lilly anywhere. He quickly looked around to only find her still standing right next to him.
“Lilly, run!”
Several more bullets hit around them.
“Gah!” the inquisitor grunted as he fired several more bolts at the other attacker. One shot hit the man in the head killing him before his mind comprehended the flash.
Varius groaned in pain as he lifted Lilly up again and made the arduous trip up the sloped terrain heading for a hill that was well outside the town but would give them a good vantage point below.
It seemed like an eternity before the inquisitor and the child finally made it to the top. They hadn’t been followed by anyone else, and Varius saw why when he turned back around. The fire had completely engulfed the inn and had now spread to two other buildings. He struggled to set Lilly down once more, this time though so he could use the scope of his rifle to see a magnified version of the town’s effort to fight the growing fire.
A team of firefighters fought valiantly to spray other nearby buildings with water so that they would also not burn while citizens brought in buckets of water to try and assist the first responders. Varius could see mayor White frantically ordering people about.
The inquisitor lowered his rifle and took a moment to think about the events that had unfolded. He looked at Lilly who was intently watching the fire blaze on with her one good eye. The orange-ish glow illuminated portions of her face even this far from the town in the dark. Her bruises were more obvious and jarring in the glow of the flames below. He shook his head in disgust and activated his comm system again.
“Inquisitor Varius to operator.”
“Go for operator” came back the familiar female voice.
“Tell the fighters to fire bomb the town. Burn it all down.”
“Roger that.”
Varius and Lilly watched as the town continued to burn for several more moments before the roar of the approaching aircraft could be heard. The four fighters flew overhead and dropped several bombs on Alachua and her citizens. Tremendous bright fireballs exploded throughout the town. Each fire bomb was filled with a sticky liquid gel that would explode and splash the liquid gel on everything nearby. The explosion would cause the gel to simultaneously ignite as it spread in the affected area creating an intense and extremely difficult to extinguish fire.
Even from this far away from town Varius could hear the screams of the citizens who survived the initial explosions but now were either trapped by or covered with flames.
Looking down, Varius noticed Lilly was holding his left hand, and that his daughter’s bracelet had slid out from under his sleeve. The heart shaped charm reflected the glow of the fire.
For a moment he wondered if this was symbolic for anything but instead shook his head. He looked up in time to see that the fighters were swinging around to make another pass and drop more bombs on the town. The two continued to watch as the next wave of bright fireballs ignited and consumed what remained of Alachua in flames.
Chapter 6
Cycle: 412 Month: 7 Rotation: 5
Prefecture: Core
Planet: Foundation
Location: Headquarters for Bureau of Central Intelligence
Inquisitor Varius’ boots echoed off the walls of the hallway as he approached the large blast doors of the center of the Bureau of Central Intelligence’s secure internal structure. A small black sphere rested above the doors. Without a sound, a thin blue line of light emanated and scanned the inquisitor up and down before the thick layered set of doors slid open.
While only inquisitors should have access this deep into the BCI compound, leadership from long ago felt it best to take extreme cautions. The bureau understood it made many enemies across the Corre Republic in administering justice.
As the doors slid open, a handsome female inquisitor dressed in the traditional black uniform of the bureau’s HQ greeted him. “Inquisitor Varius, welcome back from Assembly. Director Seneca would like to speak with you in his office.”
Varius nodded and headed down a hallway to his right.
On the shuttle down to Foundation’s surface, Varius had securely transmitted his detailed report on the crimes in Alachua. He was unsure of how he was going to explain the incident with the inn keeper and his eyes, he hated not having solid facts about the strange occurrence.
The Inquisitor wouldn’t admit it even to himself, but the thought of those black unblinking eyes still bothered him deep down. He shook his head to clear his thoughts.
Two other inquisitors nodded to Varius as they passed him heading the opposite direction.
Inquisitor Varius stopped in front of the metal door of the Director and knocked. The door whooshed open quietly.
Director Deetrich Seneca stood cross-armed near a holoscreen along the left side of the room. While he was not a particularly tall man, he gave off a very intimidating presence. The sparse gray hair that peppered his otherwise dark black hair helped to accentuate his appearance.
He motioned with his left hand to the black leather chair in front of his desk. “Please be seated Inquisitor.” While most of HQ’s staff would wear the dre
ssed down version of the inquisitor uniform, Seneca had always elected to wear the full armored version. It was small, but it was a gesture, but it was one of many that Varius admired about the man.
As Varius took his seat the Director walked around the desk and sat down.
“I read through your report Damien, I agree with your judgement entirely in dealing with the situation in Alachua.”
“Thank you, sir,” Varius said as he got situated.
The Director’s face turned somber. “I am…sorry to hear about Inquisitor Kopen.”
The Inquisitor stiffened. “Kopen was a skilled and capable recruit, he would have made the bureau proud.”
“Aye. You and I both know that the assignments my office receives are difficult, it is only unfortunate that we didn’t have better intel before Kopen went in search of the girl.”
Varius didn’t respond. He just kept eye contact with his commanding officer. Seneca nodded soberly. “I would understand if you needed some leave Damien…”
“No thank you sir. I remain ready for whatever you assign me. The loss of Kopen will not affect my work.”
“I do need to ask you about the whole incident with the black eyes. There wasn’t much in your report.”
There it was. Varius inhaled deeply then breathed out slowly. “I’m sorry sir that my report was sparse on details. I honestly don’t know what happened. It was as if…”
“…he was possessed by something else” Seneca said coldly.
The Inquisitor looked at him strangely, but the other man waved his hand. “That’s a discussion for another time.”
Director Seneca opened the top drawer of his desk and slid a tan colored envelope across the table to Varius. “I have a new mission for you Damien, if you’re up for it.”
Varius sat up straighter at the sight of the black insignia of an ouroboros printed on a foil sticker to seal the envelope. The text in the center of the insignia read, “Classified”. The only time the BCI used actual paper was when a mission was too secretive to allow digital files to be kept in the database. Being an inquisitor granted you access to all sorts of classified content. If it was this secretive, it meant it was something very big.
Varius reached out to grab the envelope just before Seneca held up his hand to stop him.
“Understand Inquisitor, this assignment is…different” the older man said as he sat back in his chair.
Damien’s left eyebrow raised. “Sir?”
“I’m not going to say anything else unless you are confident you want this assignment. Just know, this may be more than you are accustomed to.”
Without a second thought Varius picked up the envelope and ripped it open. He was surprised to find only a single sheet of paper inside. As he slid the lone sheet out his eyes began to scan over it. He looked up at his commanding officer with confusion.
Director Seneca stood up from his chair and walked over to a waist high cabinet. He opened one of the old wooden doors and pulled out a small glass and a bottle of alcohol. Turning back to the Inquisitor he gestured if he wanted a glass of his own. Varius waved away the offer from the Director.
“Damien, I am going to be very frank with you on this one” the Director said as he poured a small amount of the brown liquid into his glass. “I don’t know if this lead is one hundred percent solid. What is confirmed is that an uprising on Eden went south when a local regiment of Peace Keepers were dispatched to the capital. We had an informant involved that last reported the transaction of arms the terrorists were going to use were sold by a man who went by “The Shadow Man”.”
Varius scanned the paper again but remained confused. “I’m sorry sir, but I don’t understand why this is classified. Seems like an arms deal to terrorists that was thankfully stopped in time.”
“There is more to this than is immediately apparent” Seneca said as he sat back down in his chair. He took a sip from his glass. “In your report you mentioned a strange symbol on a crate in the cellar of the inn and in the slaughterhouse. That same symbol has been in reports from various other Inquisitors on multiple other Republic worlds the last several cycles. I remember seeing it only a handful of times, but I do remember it clearly. So, on a hunch, I had our intelligence division scour through trillions of data cubes and mysteriously nothing turned up. Not even in our own database.”
Inquisitor Varius’ face turned very serious. “Sir, do you mean someone tampered with bureau files?”
The Director nodded before taking another sip of his drink.
“I thought that deleting BCI data was impossible?” Varius asked as the weight of the situation sunk in.
Seneca set his glass down on the desk, leaned forward and steepled his fingers. “Damien, this is a very problematic predicament. I have reason to believe someone in the bureau is involved in whatever is going on to cover up Eden, Assembly, and other worlds. This is much bigger than smuggling some illegal weapons around the Republic. I need you to go to Eden, investigate what really happened with those rebel terrorists and get to the bottom of this.”
Varius stood up from his chair and looked the Director intently in the eyes. “I will not fail sir.”
“I need you to understand though Inquisitor, that you are alone on this mission. I cannot provide you with any assistance with this while you are on Eden. No one will know your assignment and I can’t even begin to brief you on what to prepare for. This may reveal much more than either of us want to know.”
“We have to know the truth sir” Varius said steely.
“Then go knowing you are fulfilling your purpose for the greater good” the Director said.
“For the greater good!”
Note from the author: Rick Graham
I want to take a quick moment to thank you for taking the time to read this compilation of short stories. For cycles I have wanted to explore the Revelations universe but was unsure of how to go about it. In 2017 I figured that if I didn’t just go for it, then I never would. I don’t want to find myself on my deathbed and feel regret for never going for my dream. But I cannot create this universe without thanking those who support it and to also extend a welcome to you if you are new to the stories of Revelations.
If you would like to learn more about other stories, products or just join an awesome growing community of fellow fans then consider checking out any of the links below.
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Thank you again, and I look forward to us creating Revelations into something we can all enjoy together!
Rick Graham
Revelations Creator & Lead Author