by Sean Davies
The pilot brought the airship down to land on the large landing platform. It was a big black-floored square structure that was raised high above the ground. Designated spaces were marked with white circles and contained automatic refuelling and reloading mechanisms that activated upon docking. Most of the pads were empty, as Alice and her two other Inquisitor General counterparts had taken them for their joint mission. She wondered if they had experienced similar debacles in Industria and Tropica. Had they been exposed to the same kind of evil creatures that her troopers had?
Alice was immediately met by a squad of troopers who saluted and greeted her warmly. They would escort her to the tower, a formality for her rank, but she couldn’t help wondering if they’d soon be escorting her back to a cell after her audience. They took a large lift down to the ground and led her to a smart black car and troop truck. A driver took her on the short journey to the tower and the others followed in the truck. When they arrived, the troops followed her inside through the sliding glass double doors. Inquisition banners hung proudly, and staff saluted and greeted her warmly. She returned the salutes but couldn’t even bring herself to smile back. She wasn’t known as the chirpiest of people anyway.
She got in the elevator, which was mostly glass, and called for it to be opaque so she could be alone to collect her thoughts before the audience. She placed her hand on the touch screen interface and it chimed: ‘Alice Eve, Inquisitor General, top level security clearance confirmed, please select your desired floor’. She tapped the top floor and the elevator whizzed her up to the top of the tower.
The elevator slid open, and two heavily armoured and heavily armed Autocrat Guardians stood to attention in a small corridor either side of a set of metal double doors. There were other smaller metal doors that led to different rooms, but the Guardians were standing watch outside the Autocrat’s study that took up most of the top floor. Their heavy power armour and guns were jet black with elegant gold filigree around all of the seams and edges. They wore face-obscuring helms in the style of the ancient Imperian legionnaires with long red plumes, and they had the red and black World Banner hanging from their shoulder plates as cloaks.
“The Autocrat is expecting you Inquisitor General, you may enter.”
Alice nodded and stood by the metal doors as they slid open. They were almost as thick as blast doors.
The Autocrat, Edgar Aurelius II, sat behind a fine mahogany desk in the centre of the room. He was the spitting image of his father when he was middle-aged with his eye length blonde curtained hair, light blue eyes, stern strong face with a solid jaw, and warrior’s physique. He was dressed in a modern black suit but looked like he should’ve been packed in armour. Small square spectacles rested on his nose as he tapped away at a large computer screen placed on the desk. Around him were three floor-to-ceiling windows, and bookshelves and display cases lined the wall that Alice had entered through, along with a suit of white and gold power armour, a portrait of Edgar I in his prime, and an old silver war hammer that had been passed down through the Aurelius family line since ancient times. Apart from a few big plants, knee height tables, old mahogany chairs by the desk, and both Inquisition and World Banners, the rest of the room was rather Spartan.
He took his time and then looked up from what he was doing, peering over the top of his glasses. “Alice, it is good to see you. Please take a seat.”
“Thank you sir,” she said, trying to keep the nerves out of her voice. She took a seat and began to speak. “Sir, there is something I need to tell you but I’m not sure you’ll believe me at first...”
He cut her off midsentence. “You’ve seen them, haven’t you?”
She was stunned silent for a moment but finally managed to regain her composure. “Yes sir, I have prepared video clips on my HCD.”
The Autocrat took the HCD out of her hands and watched the videos that had been haunting her for days, calmly and without a hint of surprise. He just nodded along sadly. Towards the end of the clips he looked perplexed. “This puppet-thing,” he said, showing Alice, “that isn’t meant to be here.”
“Are any of those creatures meant to be here?” she asked shakily.
“Well no, but that thing is from a different dimension.”
Alice’s nerve finally broke and stood up. “How do you know all this? What are these wicked fiends, and what in the name of the Goddesses is going on?” She sat back down quickly, embarrassed that she had made a scene. “I’m sorry Sir, please forgive my outburst!”
The Autocrat took off his spectacles and cleaned them with a cloth. “It’s quite alright Alice, and please call me Edgar. Believe you me, I was quite shocked myself when I learned the truth. My father left me a video message in addition to his written will, but I was hasty to put the world right again and dispatched you all out to the three continents before I had listened to what he had to say.” Edgar shook his head sadly. “For years I thought my father weak and pathetic, to claim the world so gloriously and then leave it to grow wild and untamed. But the truth is those foul evil creatures killed my mother and threatened to kill me next unless he did so. Ironically, the same creatures, Supernaturals as they call themselves, helped my father take the world, but nonetheless their ruling body still had the audacity to harm my family. And now we won’t rest until they are all dead.”
Alice was stunned silly. “So your father knew all that time?”
“Yes. He wouldn’t act against them knowing that it might harm me, but he didn’t sit as idle as everyone thought. Firstly he made sure that we were all raised pure, just, and unyielding here on the isle, laying the foundation of our organisation that I then modelled on the witch hunters’ inquisition of old. Secondly, his actions helped turn this island into the technologically advanced masterpiece that it is today. All of this you already know, of course. What you don’t know, and what I didn’t until I watched my father’s message, was that he created an underground facility dedicated to gathering knowledge and defeating the Supernatural threat.”
“I thought we had full control of Central Isle. How is it that we missed an underground facility?” Alice couldn’t believe how little she actually knew about the world around her.
“The computer network was made to look as if I was in full control, but my father’s video contained a code that gave me true access to everything. The secret facility is under this very building. I do find it embarrassing that we missed my father’s trusted men coming and going every day.”
Alice’s head was bursting with questions and she didn’t know what to ask first, so she just picked one. “Why didn’t you tell me about these Supernaturals until now?” She couldn’t help but wonder if her men would still be alive if they had been prepared.
Edgar sighed. “It was said that the witch hunters had powers and abilities that rivalled those of the Supernaturals. I had the childish notion that some of you would develop these same gifts and defeat the evil creatures with ease, but sadly I was very mistaken. It was only this morning that I discovered an extract of writing from the witch hunts written by a Supernatural, describing it from their perspective of the Shadow War. It appears that the gifted witch hunters were actually Mages with powers, anti-Supernatural abilities. The witch hunters discovered this and killed many of them in their sleep. Any witch hunter Mages that survived defected and joined the united Supernaturals known as the Trinity. The inquisition turned in on itself, fell to pieces, and the Supernaturals immerged victorious. My father has a library full of these books in the facility.”
She tried hard to focus on her duty. “What is our course of action in light of these developments?”
“Suffice to say we must be reliant on our technology to win the day, but I think it’s best if I give you the tour first,” he said as he rose from the desk. “Your clearance has been upped to the same as mine.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I told you, call me Edgar.”
“I will, sir. I mean Edgar, sir.”
He smiled as they walked together out of the room, and he told his guardians to stay put as they entered the elevator.
“Give it a try,” he told Alice.
She placed her hand on the interface and it chimed ‘Alice Eve, Inquisitor General, zero level security clearance confirmed, please select your desired floor’. A new basement level was displayed in red. Edgar gestured for her to press it and she did so. The elevator shot down through the building and entered the secret level.
They were in a corridor that was mostly bare concrete, lit by old yellowish lights like many air raid shelters and bunkers from the Great War era. Dated metal signs hung on the wall that made her feel like she had just stepped back in time. The pair walked along in silence until they came to the first in a long series of metal doors, and the Autocrat opened it revealing a large library filled with books ranging in size and age. A few elderly people plodded around gathering books and handing them to young Inquisitors, who were frantically entering data into blue holographic keyboards.
“This is the occult library I mentioned earlier. The old sages here used to work for my father and were tasked with gathering written information on the Supernatural’s world wherever they could find it. As you can see I have tasked a few Inquisitors with the arduous but necessary task of digitising the information into our database. I have also sent people out to continue gathering sources of knowledge. As the Supernatural’s confidence continues to grow, so too does their carelessness. I have been told that published materials are becoming easier and easier to find. This is where I learnt of the origin of the disgusting puppet beast that killed your men.”
Alice shuddered at the thought of that horrible golden grin. “You mentioned another dimension?”
“Yes. Apparently a few Supernaturals are known as ‘Book Wielders’, and they have the unique ability to cross into a strange magical dimension that contains a large amount of things that empower their kind. It is said to be populated with frightful reflections of us, like the puppet man. As for what he was doing in our world I cannot begin to fathom. It sends a shiver down my spine to be perfectly honest with you.”
She nodded in acknowledgement, trying to force her thoughts away from the strange notebook in her coat’s inner pocket. But she couldn’t be a Book Wielder; she wasn’t a Supernatural, she was a Goddess-fearing upright citizen like the rest of the Inquisition.
Edgar continued. “We also have evidence to suggest that many of the ingredients in the drugs that are becoming all too easy to acquire around the world originate from this strange dimension. We have a laboratory team dedicated to analysing samples of drugs and the effects of their ingredients but our equipment is having difficulty in the matter. Considering the level of our technology, I take it as proof that they are indeed of magical descent.”
Edgar led Alice further into the complex and showed her another room. This one was filled with surveillance equipment, wires, cables, and wireless transmitters in different stages of assembly. People were tinkering around with bits of high-tech equipment and doing complex coding on monitor screens.
“This is where we are developing our surveillance equipment. The end goal is to have a network of micro-cameras that we can install all around the world so that anything out of place, Supernatural related or otherwise, will be detected by us here on Central Isle and investigated immediately.”
“How will the data be transmitted over such great distances?” Alice asked.
Edgar waved his hand towards the wires and cables. “Plans are in place to lay high-speed cables across the ocean very soon. The cables will be heavily insulted and encased in thick tubes, and instead of computers being networked continentally there will be one big global network. It will be one worldwide network that we can control, monitor, and communicate over. No one will be able to hide or manipulate reports anymore because the data will be stored here over several secure storage arrays.”
They carried on deeper into the facility. Alice was shown laboratories, research and development design rooms, think tanks discussing hypothetical tactics and weaponry, and a large room full of things the Autocrat hoped to launch into space once the space team succeeded called ‘satellites’ to orbit the planet, which had several tactical applications.
Next they proceeded down some concrete steps, the sound of mechanical assembly becoming louder as they went, and they entered into an underground factory. Technicians monitored automated assembly robots rapidly creating all sorts on an assembly line that carried on into another room. Some of it looked like armour and some of it looked like prosthetics, and around the long room were dust covered simple tracked robots and half assembled droids that looked like they belonged in an old black and white sci-fi movie. Without an explanation the Autocrat led her further in until they reached a blast door, which lead to a balcony overlooking a pitch black hangar space. He flicked a switch and the old fashioned yellowish lights came on overhead, one row at a time from the back of the hangar to the front, revealing a countless amount of armoured figures standing to attention.
“They’re not what I think they are, are they?” Alice asked gobsmacked.
“They are the future of the Inquisition. A way to replace the corrupt Military Peace Keepers entirely, protect the innocent, police the guilty, and decimate the Supernaturals. My father had dabbled in the idea of robotic warfare and we took it a step further. We call them ‘Autons’. They are incorruptible, unyielding, and armed to the teeth.”
Alice stared at the figures below in wonder. Like the Autocrats Guardians they wore armour in the style of ancient Imperia, but far less bulkier, probably to increase agility. They were white and silver in colour with nothing but black between the gaps. Each one was armed with a pair of long thin swords across their backs and a massive multi-purpose rifle in their gauntleted hands. She tried to peer beyond their visors to see what was under the helms but was unable to see clearly at her current height.
“The techs are having some trouble developing an operating system that flatters their physical abilities to the fullest, but we’ve already begun dispatching them to the three continents in secret, hidden away in sealed cargo containers. As soon as the wetware is completed we will have an army available to us.”
“Will General Wallace and Azalea be informed of all this?” she asked.
“Not at the moment. They have been experiencing similar difficulties to you, but they haven’t been exposed to blatant Supernatural activity as of yet. I want to keep a lid on this as much as possible. I want to lull the unnatural creatures into a false sense of security so when the time comes they strike first, exposing themselves, their abilities, and their tactics to us. Just like the data you have brought with you today, but more so. They won’t know just how prepared we have been until it’s too late for them.”
“How do you plan on getting them to expose themselves on such a large scale?”
“By hitting their gangs where it really hurts; their wallets, or their bank accounts to be precise.”
“And that would be where the global network comes into play,” Alice said appreciatively.
“Precisely, Alice. Once in place, we will be able to monitor every transaction that goes on around the world. Its times like this that I miss my father’s old economic advisor, Albert Tiberius, for the world’s economy is a complete mess due to the amount that crooked officials and these Supernatural gangs have exploited it. But once the cables are down we will have complete authority over it here.”
The world of economics baffled Alice. Central Isle and the Inquisition was technically a communistic structure. People just did what was required of them and they were rewarded with a place to live, good quality food, and access to recreational, health care, and gym facilities. But the people of Central Isle were good and godly people, and the Inquisition was made up of people like herself who dedicated themselves to duty above all else; the economic template wouldn’t function elsewhere with less civilised people.
/> The three continents were supposed to function like National Socialism, where the state of Imperia owned the majority share of everything within it and the money circulated round, keeping everything running like clockwork. The problem was the high up officials like the Councillors and Governors had an unlimited amount of funds, and total control of the records that went alongside them. With the gangs making a mint out of illegal activity, regardless of if they were human or Supernatural, the system had become a complete shambles.
However, she thought the system worked a lot better than the capitalist one that was in place before the Great War. The Industrian corporations, Imperian bankers, and the Tropican Trading Company were becoming more powerful than the three governments. If they had continued as they were to the present day, with the concepts such as compound interest and money lending running amuck, the financial situation around the world would be even more unstable and even harder to fix, and they’d probably be fighting against banks and corporations as well as Supernatural fiends.
“Once the cables are in place and the global network is ready to go live, we’ll make sure the knowledge is circulated. If those beasts want to continue living the high life they’ll have no choice but to expose themselves in earnest. Also, on a slightly different note, we shall also begin recruiting volunteers amongst the civilian population.”
“Do you think that’s wise, Edgar? I know you want to spread some information, but what if they divulge too much?”
“They’ll only function as a group of outside informants, not actual Inquisitors. They won’t be privy to all our information – only the basics. Maybe we’ll arm them if it comes to it, but mainly they will be our eyes and ears until the Autons and surveillance network are up and running.”
Alice was impressed. The plan sounded both risky and dangerous, but it was well thought out and was highly adaptable. One thing she’d learnt in her time was that nothing ever went fully to plan, no matter the time spent preparing, so being flexible and having other options open was always a must when it came to tactical forward planning.