I heard the pigeon knocking on my window a few hours before sunrise. It
knocked seven times, and then it paused. That was the signal. There was
work to be done.

A man in my line of work does not keep his employers waiting. I dressed
and armed myself as quickly as I could, and then I made my way to the
Center for the Distribution of Textiles. I went into the CDT through the
servant's entrance. There was no sense in letting anybody who mattered
see me go in. Nobody ever increased his life expectancy by taking
unnecessary risks.

Director Two was waiting for me with his pigeon perched on his shoulder.
Somebody who was feeling generous would say that he looked like he had a
flair for the dramatic. An honest man would say that he looked like an
idiot. He was a little old lucidian in a big black coat with his whole
face hidden behind a mask. If I hadn't known about his talent for
torture, I would have thought he was harmless.

He spoke as soon as I closed the door. "Krekak," he said to me, "you
have been assigned a field mission."

No pleasantries, no niceties, and no small talk. Not even a hint of
friendliness in his voice. Pure business. It was almost pleasant enough
to make up for his terrible coat.

"The Celestine Inquisition has taken one Thugani Zhaugo into custody. He
has skills which we desire. You are to rescue him from captivity and
return him to Hallifax."

He handed me a dossier and I flipped through it. I was to retrieve an
illithoid psion, an experimenter who had developed new techniques.
Apparently he had been captured by the Kephera during an attempt to
escape from the Illithoid Prison, and they had sold him to the
Inquisition. No doubt the inquisitors hoped to learn his secrets before
they put him to the sword.

"Full armory access is authorized. Lethal force is authorized. Full
operational discretion is authorized. Dismissed."

That was the moment I realized that this was going to be an important
mission. Lethal force was authorized on nearly every mission, but full
access to the armory was another matter entirely. That sort of thing
could get very expensive very quickly, so the directors were disinclined
to authorize it lightly.

I took full advantage of the authorization. I started with a dozen
demolition charges, the most potent the Institute could design. I took a
full set of harmonic stimulants, too. They were agonizing injections,
but they could easily be the difference between success and death. Of
course, no operative would leave the city without his void blasters. I
took a Mark Two and a Mark Three so that I could be prepared to
obliterate the state's enemies under any conceivable circumstances.

The quartermaster gave me a dirty look as I left the armory. I had
enough demolition charges to destroy a large village, and he doubtlessly
thought that was excessive. I tried to ignore him. Better an annoyed
quartermaster than a failed mission.

 

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

I was in Celest within a day. The journey was easy enough. There was no
trouble on the road, and the guards at the city gates took their bribes
to avoid searching my possessions without any argument. The trouble was
not in getting to the city, but rather in what I had to do once I got
there.

Our spies had neglected to give me any information about where my target
was being detained. I knew the locations of a few inquisitorial safe houses,
but searching even one of them thoroughly would have been certain to
reveal my presence to the Inquisition. I had to be certain that any such
search would prove fruitful before it could be performed.

I arranged a discreet meeting with one of my contacts, a priest whose
vices exceeded his virtues. Vlane Elitine was his name, and he was eager
to meet with me. I brought him his favorite things as gifts: cheap wine
and weighted dice.

As it happens, intoxicated priests are poor judges of probability. He
was deeply in my debt within a few hours. I likely could have managed it
even if I had used fair dice, but one should never take unnecessary
risks. After all, it isn't cheating unless one is playing against
another Hallifaxian.

Vlane could not pay his debts in gold. That was only to be expected,
given that he had also been unable to pay his tithes to the Celestine
Church for several years. I graciously offered to forgive his debt in
return for a few trifling pieces of information. I told him that it was
a matter of pure curiosity, and that I only wanted to know the
truthfulness of a piece of gossip I had heard in a ballroom. I even
insinuated that I only truly wanted to know so that I could use the
information to impress a lady.

At first, he was reluctant to tell me what I needed to know.
Understandably so, given that I was technically asking him to commit
treason. I simply poured him more wine and waited. Alcohol is a
marvelous tool for making terrible ideas seem to be excellent, and thus
after his second bottle he was quite willing to tell me everything that
I wanted to know.

He informed me that my target was being held in a small warehouse near
the city's docks, and that he had been imprisoned there for two days. I
thanked him for the information and then I left him in peace. His value
as a future source of information more than compensated for the small
risk that he would admit to answering my questions, given that he would
almost certainly be executed shortly after his confession. As such, I
felt obliged to refrain from killing him.

----------

I made my way over to the warehouse as soon as the sun set. It was a
little building with two floors, half a dozen windows, and a single
door. Inconvenient. Going in through the door was out of the question.
If there's a faster way to commit suicide than walking through the front
door of an inquisitorial facility, I don't know what it is. That left me
with a simple choice. I could go in through a window, or I could make a
new entrance with my demolition charges.

In the interest of not bringing the entire inquisition down on my head I
opted to use a window. I scaled the warehouse's wall to get up to a
second-story window, broke the glass, and slipped into the building. I
found myself on a catwalk looking down over a single room full of
crates. I couldn't see the illithoid that I was looking for, but I could
see a single guard. The inquisitorial seal was engraved on his armor,
but he looked younger than most inquisitors. He was probably a novice,
assigned to guard duty to spare his superiors the tedium of the task.

He never saw me coming. I couldn't think of a reason to search through
the entire warehouse on my own when I could simply convince an
inquisitor to tell me everything that I wanted to know. I jumped down on
him from above. The landing would have hurt if he handn't broken my fall
for me. I shoved my hand in his mouth to stop him from screaming. He bit
me. That was a mistake on his part. The only thing a man can accomplish
by biting a lucidian is breaking his own teeth, as that poor inquisitor
learned.

I put my arm around his neck and squeezed until he passed out, and then
I set him up with a gag and some restraints. He woke up half an hour
later to see me standing over him with a void blaster in my hand. He
looked terrified.

It was time for his interrogation. I broke a few of his fingers, and
then I asked him where his prisoner was hiding. I warned him that if he
called for help he would be made to regret it, and then I removed his
gag. He didn't say so much as a word, so I broke the rest of his fingers
while explaining what I would do next if he did not comply.

He broke. He told me that the prisoner had been moved onto a ship
earlier that day so he could be interrogated at length in a secure
environment. He seemed to be telling the truth. At the very least, he
didn't change his story when I asked him again. It was the best lead
that I was going to have.

I could not afford to leave a witness. My blaster ensured his permanent
silence, and a convenient crate ensured that his remains would not be
found for at least a few hours. Then I went back out the window and
climbed down to the dock below. I had a long swim ahead of me.

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

There are two ways to board a hostile ship for an operative who is
starting from the water. He can climb the sides of the ship and haul
himself on to the deck, but there's no way to escape detection for
someone who does that. The other option is to blast a hole in the hull
and sneak inside the lower decks. That's still risky, but there's a
chance of avoiding detection.

I chose the second option. A void blaster easily has enough power to put
a hole in a ship, and they're quiet. I made my entrance near the
waterline and crawled on board the ship. I found myself in an empty
room. There was only a single door, and I walked over to it and listened
carefully. I could hear voices on the other side.

Hostile contact was inevitable. I attached a demolition charge to the
door, activated it, and stood back with my primary blaster at the ready.
The power of the void obliterated the door and I rushed through it.
There were two merian sitting at a table with a meal in front of them.
The first died before he knew that anything was happening. The second
had time turn and look upon me before I ended his pathetic existance.

My target was not in the room. Nor was he in the next room which I
attacked, or the room after that. I found him in the fourth room,
strapped to a table with an inquisitor standing over him. I took off the
inquisitor's head with a shot from my blaster, and then I examined the
man I had gone to such great lengths to find.

He was unconscious, and both of his legs were mutilated. The inquisitor
was evidently a poor torturer, to have had to mutilate his subject so
thoroughly. The illithoid's condition was an inconvenience. I had hoped
to swim away from the ship with him, but that was clearly impossible. I
would have to find a lifeboat for him, and that meant fighting my way to
the top of the ship.

I slung the unconscious illithoid onto my back and tied him in place. He
was heavy, and I could scarcely move under his weight, but I couldn't
leave him behind to be killed by any inquisitors who wanted to keep him
from me. There was only one option. It was a miserable one, but I had no:
choice in the matter.

I took a deep breath and injected my harmonic stimulants. The powdered
gemstones tore at my veins, and I choked back a scream as I muttered the
activation ritual. The pain stopped, and I felt their power in my limbs.
Suddenly I was fast, and strong, and the weight I was carrying seemed to
vanish. I drew my secondary void blaster, and with one blaster in each
hand I burst into the next room.

I rushed from room to room in a mad dash towards the ship's deck. Where
I met opposition, I made corpses. Where I could not find a door, I
breached the walls. One merian screamed and raised the alarm before I
could kill him, but that no longer concerned me. I had already lost any
hope of a discreet escape, so the alarm meant nothing.

My blasters put too many holes in the ship's hull, and it started to
take on water. The ship started to tilt as I finally reached the deck.
It would not be long before the ship sank.

I identified five sailors on the deck, along with the captain at the
helm and a mage standing in the crow's nest. The mage had to die if I
was going to make my escape by sea. The others had to die so that I
could avoid leaving witnesses.

I took up the optimal firing position for the situation before engaging
the foe. My long blaster was extended upwards engage the primary target,
while my short blaster was held outward to engage the maximum number of
secondary targets. I crouched down to to minimize my exposure to hostile
bombardment, both magical and mundane. I squeezed the triggers of both
of my blasters, and I began to bring death to my enemies.

The mage raised a psionic force field to defend himself, but the sailors
were not so fortunate. They perished one after the other, leaving only
the captain and his mage on the deck with me.

The captain had nearly reached me as I turned my blaster on him. He
ducked out of the way as I fired and swung his sword at me in response.
I twisted out of the way, dodging the blow, and raised my blaster to the
captain's face. I took the shot, and I removed the threat.

That left only the mage. He could keep me at bay for as long as he liked
with his force field unless I closed the distance between us. I began to
climb the rigging as he rained his magic down on me. I turned and
twisted away from his assault as best I could, but I could not entirely
avoid his assault. I bore the pain as best I could until I reached the
crow's nest and engaged my foe.

He slapped the barrel of my blaster away and shoved me away. I clung to
the mast as he shoved me again, and I struggled to keep my footing. He
was in a superior position, but I had technology on my side. I tossed a
demolition charge into the crow's nest and allowed myself to fall down
into the rigging. There was a moment of silence, and then the crow's
nest vanished as the charge did its deadly work.

That settled the matter. I dragged myself over to a lifeboat and dropped
the illithoid in it. I climbed in after him and cut the rope, and I
began to row towards Hallifax as the ship slowly sank behind me. It
would be a long journey back, but at least my mission was accomplished
and I was still in one piece.