Archives of the Friendquisition

by Inquisipony Stallius

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

The Glücksritter may have been a small airship compared to other cargo carriers, but it was an ancient one. As much an heirloom as an aircraft, it had seen service under the command of countless generations of Rogue Traders. And being at one time among the premier merchantmen of the esteemed Ver Kaufer Trade Fleet, it was well-maintained despite its age.

The interior of the captain’s quarters was a match for any vessel in terms of opulence, save perhaps those of an Admiral of the Equestrian Navy. The walls were paneled and trimmed with exotic hardwoods, giving the room a warm, inviting atmosphere. Several bookshelves stood floor to ceiling, stacked with rare volumes on a variety of subjects. Fine tapestries and oil paintings adorned the walls, and a modest fireplace crackled quietly off to one side, adding its flickering light to the decor. One could easily believe that they were standing in the study of a noblepony’s manor house, rather than on a ship.

In one corner, Feuervogel perched on a bejeweled roost engraved with his name in flowery script. He preened himself lazily, occasionally plucking a worn feather from his plumage, which would ignite and burn to nothing before it even touched the floor.

A large, oak desk stood in the center of the room, a stack of parchments and data-scrolls scattered on top of it. There were cargo manifests, accounting ledgers, regional charts and the like, all haphazardly piled on one another. An ink jar and a few quills lay at the ready, under the watchful gaze of a glass bunny-shaped paperweight and a small, marble bust of an old, bearded captain.

Several increasingly loud footsteps preceded a knock on the heavy wooden door.

“Come in,” called the pony sitting at the desk in a tall-backed chair, facing away from the door.

Sniffles entered, only barely fitting through the normal pony-sized frame. He came to a halt a couple paces before the desk, and snorted sharply. It still wasn’t enough to keep the slime on his nose from dripping onto the plush carpeting. The spot where it landed hissed and smoked.

“Do try not to damage our accommodations too badly, if you can help it,” the seated pony said without even turning around. “We are only borrowing them, after all.”

“Of course,” Sniffles replied. He wiped his nose on his power armor.

A book on the shelf, titled the Bestiaria Prohibitae, began to radiate a twinkling blue light, and it gently floated off the shelf over to the desk. “It’s a shame Tier couldn’t have been more useful. He has fairly good taste in proscribed texts.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sniffles chuckled, “Last I saw of him, he was getting along with his new friends quite swimmingly.”

Somewhere belowdecks, a loud, heavy clang reverberated up through the bulkheads. For a moment, the whole ship vibrated like a tuning fork. Feuervogel squawked his displeasure.

“Is everything prepared?” the other pony asked, when the noise subsided.

“The Children of Applemattox are all in their shelters, in expectation of another Grabber raid.”

“And our associates?”

“I was just about to complete our transaction with them,” said Sniffles. “Once I return, we can depart.”

“Excellent. Make sure you get what we came here for. This is a very critical juncture for us, and I don’t want any mistakes.”

The screech and groan of twisting metal rang beneath their hooves. Several crew-ponies ran past the doorway, yelling and hauling firefighting gear.

Sniffles ignored them, and snorted back his runny nose once again. “Don’t worry, my friend. I don’t foresee any complications whatsoever.” He turned to leave.

“What about the Inquisipony?” the other said, stopping the Traitor Marine in his tracks.

“He… got away…” Sniffles wasn’t particularly upset to deliver the report, but he did sound a little disappointed. “I had him cornered in one of the shelters, but the unicorn with him managed to teleport them all away.”

“Did she?” the pony mused. His grin bared his needle-sharp fangs. “Splendid! I must admit, I was beginning to worry that these Equestrian lapdogs would be the usual crew of flunkies. I can’t wait to see what they’re truly capable of. Keep an eye out for them. We’ll be seeing them again very soon. Most assuredly.”

Sniffles bowed, and turned back to the door.

An explosion rocked the Glücksritter, sending dozens of books tumbling off the shelves. The entire ship filled with a bellow of primal, unbridled rage. Feuervogel hid his head under a wing, and Sniffles winced. The glass paperweight rattled off the desk and shattered into pieces. Echoes of the roar lingered in the corridors of the ship like a vengeful spirit, for far longer than seemed natural.

“Sniffles,” the seated pony called after the Marine, “why don’t you bring Brass Bit with you. He’s getting a little stir-crazy down there in the hold.”

---

“Come on,” Caballus whispered urgently. He dashed ahead to the next bend in the tunnel, taking point. There was a weak light around the corner, suggesting that they might finally have reached the end. The unintelligible shouts seemed to recede from them, until there was a loud clang, and it was quiet again

Roughshod pushed ahead of the others and took up a position right next to the Inquisipony. Hairtrigger and Mystic limped behind them as quickly as they could. Both were panting from exertion by the time they had caught up.

Caballus edged forward, hugging the wall and peeking around the corner. A long hallway lay beyond. He looked back at Roughshod, and the two nodded to one another. They both drew pies and stealthily crossed the threshold.

Caballus scanned the hall in an instant. Left. Right. Up. All clear.

The corridor was empty of dog-monsters, but the ponies kept their guard while they advanced. At irregular intervals, large gems protruded from the walls, which gave off a cold, pale light, not quite like any magic the ponies had ever encountered before. At the far end stood a rusty, heavy-looking door, and in between, the hallway resembled a prison block. Numerous cells were cut deep into the rock and covered with iron-barred hatches.

Roughshod cautiously approached the first cell. The dim gem-lights penetrated only just beyond the bars, so he shined his luminator inside.

“Sweet Throne of Canterlot!” he gasped.

Caballus appeared beside him, as did Hairtrigger and Mystic a moment later. They too turned their lights to see what was inside. Huddled against the far wall of the cell were three shapes. At a glance, they could have been mistaken for some kind of wretched animals being held in captivity. Cuts, bruises and scrapes covered their entire skins. They were dirty, mangy, and looked dangerously malnourished. But when the trio saw their quivering, terrified faces, there was no question: they were ponies.

Caballus walked to the next nearest cells, and found more of the same. Some still had rags of clothing, while others barely had any fur left at all. Each was pale, skeletal, and looked too weak to stand. The stench was horrendous.

Roughshod called to them. “Hang on. We’ll get you guys out of here.” He found the lock on the door and began trying to force it open. But rather than greet him as a savior, the imprisoned ponies began to shriek and moan.

Hairtrigger stopped him with a hoof on his shoulder. “Look big guy, I’m thinking we should let them be. They’re makin’ an awful racket.”

Roughshod looked at the pegasus like he was crazy. “What? No! We can’t just leave these ponies in this zoonos-infested hell-hole. Just look at ‘em, for Celestia’s sake!” He turned around and bucked at the bars with all his strength. Each loud strike bent them a little further, and drove the prisoners into even greater fits of panic.

“Hey,” Hairtrigger hissed,” we can’t afford to go letting every damn Grabber in these caves know we’re here just to haul these ponies around. We’ve got problems aplenty on our saddles without picking up any more.”

“Oh, don’t give me those horse-apples,” Roughshod snapped. “We can help them. I know we’ll find a way.” The stallion turned to Caballus. “What do you say, boss?”

The Inquisipony answered Roughshod with sympathetic eyes, but also a shake of his head. “The mission comes first, Shod. You know that. I don’t like it any more than you do, but we don’t have the resources to rescue them right now. It won’t matter if we break them all out if we’re captured in the process. The best way to help them is to get out of here as fast as we can, and hope they’re still here when we return with reinforcements.”

Roughshod’s frustration started to cool, if only slightly. They were all making sense to him, but that still didn’t make him feel any better about it. “I… I just hate leaving ponies behind,” he said, hanging his head.

“You know what’s at stake,” Caballus said grimly. “If we fail, the Deep-Grabbers and the Children will have free rein to cause even more harm than they already have. If it were you in there, you would tell us to go without you.”

The brown pony considered the thought, and finally relented. He managed a half-hearted smile. “Yeah, I would. And you’d do it, too.”

Caballus smirked back at him. “For you… I might have to mull it over.”

The team made their way down the hall, passing dozens of darkened hollows, each holding at least a few unfortunate prisoners. Caballus and Hairtrigger kept their eyes on the exit, hoping that nothing came through the door, but prepared if something did. Mystic just tried to look anywhere else, avoiding the anxious, pleading eyes that followed them as they walked by.

But Roughshod looked. He shined his light into every single miserable pen. Maybe he couldn’t save them, but damn it if he didn’t look somepony in the eye when he had to abandon them. They deserved that much, at least.

As they approached the broad iron door at the end, he found a pony in the last cell staring back at him. They had all stared of course, but this one didn’t hide in the back like the others, didn’t have the same look of feral desperation. This prisoner simply sat there by the bars, a tired, bitter look in his eyes.

Roughshod paused to give him a second look. Yellow coat, sky blue mane, thick mustache…

“Tier?”

The rest of the group perked up, and when they followed Roughshod’s dumbfounded gaze, they recognized him too.

“I was expecting to see you again, Inquisipony,” said Tier Ver Kaufer, “only I thought zat it would be when you were thrown in here with me.” Even in filthy cage, the Rogue Trader talked with the lofty air of a nobleborn.

“So this here is the Rogue Trader?” Hairtrigger said, unimpressed. “He don’t look so tough.”

“Without his phoenix, he’s not,” Roughshod replied.

“So what are you here to do, Inquisipony?” Tier asked. “Vill you break me out of zis dungeon just to drag me to your own? I imagine it would actually be an improvement.” The disheveled merchant appeared as though he wished to laugh at his own joke, but lacking the strength, he just moaned instead.

“How about we skip a few steps and I just interrogate you right here?” said Caballus, impatiently.

“And if I cooperate, will you help me?”

“We’ll see,” was all the answer Caballus was willing to give. He wasn’t about to start making deals with traitorous lowlifes. It would set a bad precedent. “How did you get here?”

“Ze same way everypony gets here: My leg is broken. I cannot work.”

“Ponies that can’t work are no good,” Hairtrigger muttered, recalling the words involuntarily.

Tier nodded. “So you’ve met zem, have you? Ze ‘Unterhunde?’”

Ignoring his question, Caballus continued with his own. “How were you captured?”

“After I fled from you,” he said accusingly, “Sniffles claimed I had failed ze Children by leading you to zem. Zose who fail ze Children, or who resist zem, no longer receive zeir ‘protection’ from ze Unterhunde.”

“The gangsters out behind the bar,” Mystic interrupted from over by the door, “the ones I… the ones that attacked us, they were more afraid of ‘botching the job’ than they were of my magic. And they were terrified of magic.”

“And Sniffles mentioned that they threw ‘unbelievers’ into a hole in the ground,” Caballus said. “I bet it was a hole that led straight to the Grabbers.”

Roughshod grabbed the scruff of Tier’s tattered uniform through the bars. “What work do the Deep-Grabbers make you do?”

The battered pony shuddered. “Zey send us into ze gem mines. Some are forced to pick at ze rock with zeir bare hooves. Others must haul cartfuls of gems ten times zeir own size. Everypony is starved und beaten, until zey eventually break. Zen zey are brought here, to ze torture pens.”

He gestured with his eyes back down the hallway. “You’ve had a proper look around already, so I think you are familiar with zeir… handiwork.”

“Well, you don’t seem much worse for wear,” Hairtrigger sneered.

“I’ve only just been here a few days. I think. It’s getting harder to tell. Ze lucky ones die in ze mines. Ve weren’t so fortunate, so we must wait—perhaps weeks—for madness und death to finally claim us. Ze Unterhunde prefer to… get ze most out of zeir victims,” he said coldly.

Tier gave the orange pegasus a once-over before addressing Caballus again. “I don’t remember zis one. Is he new?”

“Indeed,” Caballus said. “He’s an Arbitrotter I met here in Applemattox who’s been tracking your activities for some time.”

“And now that I’ve finally got you cornered,” said Hairtrigger, taking over the interrogation for a moment, “I can find out why the Grabbers seem to be hitched to you like a horse-drawn carriage.”

Tier sighed. “At ze behest of ze Children, I would mark out ze homesteads und outposts zat had ze strongest, healthiest und most defenseless residents for ze Unterhunde to raid.”

“Why you low down, dirty…” Hairtrigger seethed. “You… you just sold out unsuspecting pony folks to these zoonos freaks! To be worked and tortured to death in a sunless hole! How could you even sleep at night?”

“Atop a mountain of gemstones” Tier mocked. “You can’t accuse me of being corrupt und zen act surprised when I do… unscrupulous zings. I am a Rogue Trader whose business is animals, und I know zat any creature can be bought for ze right price. Zeese… uncouth settlers are hardly better zan beasts zemselves, und ze price zey fetch is quite good.”

Roughshod had to release Tier just to keep Hairtrigger from assaulting the yellow pony through the prison bars.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Mystic said. “The Children have been protecting Applemattox from the Deep-Grabbers. Why would they ask Tier to work for them?”

“It’s a lie,” said Caballus as he pieced it together. “They create a threat by bribing the Grabbers with easy targets, and then convert the entire town to the cult by pretending to keep them safe.”

“I told you,” Tier chuckled with some effort, “Zeese Applemattox ponies are morons. Sniffles convinces zem to dig ‘shelters’ to hide in, und zey scurry und hide at ze slightest rumor of danger. Zen, when I point ze Unterhunde elsewhere for prey, zey sing his praises.”

“If a pony’s faith in the Princess and his fellows is lost,” Caballus said, “the Great Darkness will cloud his mind with fear and doubt.” He leveled a scornful glare at Tier. “Or greed. I need names, places, plans, everything you know about the Children of Liberation. Then we’ll see what your cooperation buys you.”

“Quiet!” Mystic whispered sharply. She had her ear up to the large door. “Something’s coming!”

In an instant, Roughshod was beside her, listening for himself. “She’s right. Two contacts approaching.” Outside the door, a pair of crude voices barked and cackled, slowly growing louder.

Tier paled. “What? Zey can’t be back already,” he muttered frantically, “It’s too soon! Ze last one must have died too quickly. I’m next! You have to help me!”

Caballus said nothing, only drawing a pie and covering the door beside Hairtrigger who was doing the same. Mystic and Roughshod took up positions on either side of the door, and everypony held their breath.

The door swung open, and two gangly, spiny-armored Grabbers walked through. They had hardly stepped over the threshold when they stopped and saw two ponies in the middle of the hallway. Their confusion only registered for a second before the ambush was sprung.

Roughshod leapt on the first Grabber, locking it in a chokehold. The second felt the shard-thrower in its hands suddenly yanked away, and its chest enveloped in a sparkling green glow. Mystic’s magic slammed it into the bars of the nearest cell hard enough to bend them inward, and the last thing it saw when the stars cleared from its sight was the barrel of its own levitating weapon.

Despite Roughshod’s firm grip, he hadn’t counted on the Grabber’s freakishly long arms, which managed to reach back and snag his armor. In a flash, Roughshod was on his back, the Grabber holding a diamond blade to his throat.

Caballus’s arm tensed. He didn’t have a clean shot, not with Roughshod being held as a shield. The Grabber grinned maliciously at the Inquisipony’s hesitation, and then threw its head back in a bestial howl. But both of them were equally surprised when a high-velocity cupcake cut the noise short by filling the Grabber’s open jaws with sugary death. Hairtrigger lowered his empty slingshot.

Echoes of the howl gradually died in the depths of the tunnels beyond the door, one by one, until all was silent again. Even the sniveling prisoners held their breath. After a long moment, Caballus finally exhaled.

No sooner did he relax, than a chorus of howls answered back from the depths.

“Time to leave,” said Caballus.

The others hastily agreed and gathered at the door.

“What? No! You can’t leave me!” Tier cried. The last shreds of his haughty attitude were finally unraveling. Being abandoned again so soon after a hope of escape had appeared was just too much for him to take. “I… I’ll tell you whatever you want to know! Just don’t leave me here!”

“No time,” Hairtrigger said with a hint of satisfaction, and he was right. The sound of slavering zoonos approaching could already be heard in the distance.

Tears welled in Tier’s eyes. He beat on the bars of his cell futilely, before ending up in a sobbing heap. “Please… please!”

A feeling flickered in Caballus’s heart in that moment. Sympathy? No, he thought. Traitors didn’t deserve sympathy. Pity, then. Not a pity for Tier, but a pity that anypony could fall so far from Celestia’s light. A pity that he had seen it happen before, to better ponies than Tier, and that he would undoubtedly see it again.

As fitting as it would have been to leave the Rogue Trader to the same fate he had doomed so many others to, Caballus couldn’t risk it. Tier hadn’t given away much, but it wouldn’t take much more torture for the Deep-Grabbers to find out what the Inquisipony had learned from him. And if word got back to the Children that he had figured out their little scheme, it would make life as difficult above ground as below it.

There was only one way to prevent that in the few seconds he had, and it didn’t involve breaking Tier out of his cell. His hoof crept toward his saddlebag as he contemplated it.

Tier’s eyes followed it, and as he realized what it meant, rather than protest, he gave Caballus an approving nod.

“Tier Ver Kaufer,” the Inquisipony finally announced, “you are guilty of treason against Equestria, the Princess, and all of Ponykind. There can be no forgiveness for such a crime, and only one punishment for such a criminal.”

The sentence was a formality, one Caballus had scarcely any time for, but he wanted it to be clear he wasn’t doing Tier a favor. Even if he was. Caballus held up a pie above the prisoner’s head.

“If you ever have ze chance,” Tier said, “could you just tell my Father zat I’m sorry I didn’t return his ship to him myself.”

“Perhaps I will,” Caballus replied, and he carried out the sentence.

Comments

[The_Master]

Hmmmm, Brass bit wouldn't be your equivelant of a Juggernaut of khorne would he?

[BenRG]

Suffer not the heretic to live, again. Oh, I get Caballus's reasoning but there is something about his iron-clad self-righteousness that reminds you again that 'good guys' is a relative term in Warhammer 40K.

1646079
Some kind of Juggernaut, Yes; that sounds about right.