Archives of the Friendquisition

by Inquisipony Stallius

Chapter 29

Chapter 29

Mystic turned the page with the slightest wave of her horn. Another chapter down. On to the next.

The unicorn gave another silent prayer to the Princess for a new book to read; otherwise the days lying in bed waiting for her leg to heal would have been unbearable. And while she usually took her time to carefully study old, dusty history tomes, giving them the laborious scrutiny they deserved, this one she found nearly impossible to put down. She’d only been reading Tactica Equestrialis since she’d found it in her bag, but already she was halfway done.

The thought brought Mystic a pang of guilt to go with the burning itch in her mending leg. Caballus would be so disappointed if he found out she took the book from Tier’s ship against his orders. She could still hardly believe it herself. In all their years together, she had never disobeyed him like this before. Her memories aboard the Glücksritter were still a little hazy, but one of them was of Mystic giving in to her temptation and quickly swiping the book while Caballus’s back was turned.

And she was glad she did. It felt like an eternity since the last time Caballus had refreshed her reading list. Besides, it wasn’t like there was anything wrong with the book itself. It was just your run-of-the-mill historical volume, replete with accounts and anecdotes, facts and figures, all pertaining to the Equestrian tradition of war.

Just as she was about to start the chapter about the Rabbat Towns Crusade, Mystic heard somepony coming. She hastily levitated the book away, and stuffed it in her bag across the room. The twinkling lights faded the second Fyzzix opened the door.

“Good morning,” he said with the same metal smile as every day, riveted to his face-grille.

Mystic pretended to have just awoken. “Uh, hey Fyz.”

The Meq-priest set down a box and opened it to reveal a number of medical instruments. “Just here to perform a quick checkup.”

“Oh… that’s not necessary,” the unicorn said, eyeing the array of drills and needles in the container. It almost looked like the Meq-priest had mistaken his medicae kit for a toolbox. Or his torture gear. “I’m feeling much better.”

“Indeed you are,” he replied, examining her leg in a way that gave Mystic the eerie feeling he was looking at her leg through the bandages and skin. “Your recovery is coming along even more quickly than I projected. By tomorrow, you will even be allowed to leave your bed.” His mechadendrite lifted a particularly nasty-looking servo-scalpel, with a tiny buzz-saw blade attachment. It revved up with a screech.

Mystic’s eyes bulged. “No! Really! I-I’m fine. See?” She lifted the leg in question to show how strong it was, but only succeeded in flinching from a jolt of pain. Adrenaline set her heart racing.

“Just hold still,” Fyzzix said in a voice blithely devoid of any bedside manner. The blade came down, and time seemed to slow. The whirring took on the eerie rhythm of the witch’s sobbing, and Mystic felt echoes of the searing agony from the ice piercing her leg. In the spinning saw, she saw the shadow’s eyes again, flashing across the polished metal. The unicorn gave a strangled eep!

Fyzzix cocked his head. It had taken her years to learn, but with no real face left, and a voice synthesizer that sometimes lacked inflection, Mystic often had only his body language to read. And right now he was puzzled. “Is something wrong?”

The unicorn looked down. “Uh… no. I guess.” The servo-scalpel had only cut the gauze wrapped around her wounded leg.

“With the swelling going down, it is time to tighten your bandages,” Fyzzix said with a shrug.

Fyzzix would never hurt you, Mystic chided to herself, and you’ve never been afraid of a little knife before. Pull yourself together.

With his mechadendrite helping, the Meq-priest was making short work of the monotonous task of unwrapping old bandages and rewrapping new ones. Despite enjoying her book alone, and despite the panic attack she just suffered, Mystic found herself hoping Fyzzix might stay and visit for a while. It had been lonely with everypony else out in the city, and though Fyzzix had stayed at the hotel too, he was spending all his time in his own room, tinkering with the last surviving piece of the Glücksritter.

“So… how are you coming with the nav-stack?”

Fyzzix, who had appeared to be redressing the wound on autopilot, snapped out of his thoughts. “Oh… I was just thinking about it, actually. It’s… complicated.”

She heard the words, but they made no sense to Mystic. “Complicated” was something that happened to normal ponies. Not Fyzzix, who could override an obstinate security spirit with a single whispered prayer. Who could predict where a heretic assassin was likely to strike, and then pick her out, through her disguise, of a crowd of five thousand. Who had once calculated the right instant to throw a pie straight up, in a stiff crosswind, to intercept the path of a fleeing smuggler’s speeding air-wagon. And if he had ever broken a sweat, Mystic hadn’t seen it. As far as she had been concerned, “complicated” wasn’t in the vocabulary of someone as brilliant as Fyzzix.

“There have been considerable modifications made to the nav-stack’s data storage matrix,” he continued, oblivious to her concern, “and it seems like all of them were put in place to prevent me from accessing it. Someone has affixed several dynamorphic encrypto-trons right to the info-port.” A sigh rushed through his respirator unit.

“Is that… bad?”

“Imagine you are trying to open a safe, and the combination is written on a puzzle, but every time you try to put the puzzle together, five griffins fly in, scribble five parts of five new combinations on the pieces, and flip the table over.”

Despite herself, Mystic giggled at the visual. Fyzzix did too, to her relief, though his laugh was as mechanical as his smile, and just as cold.

“The worst part is, they can’t agree on a primary key. I could anticipate them if they were working together against my decryptor, but each one is fighting the others as much as they’re fighting me. The scrapcode alone is maddening. And I can’t remove any of them without potentially doing irreparable harm to the data within.”

Having finished with the bandages, the two of them sat in silence for a little while.

Mystic broke it. “But you’re going to figure it out, right?” she asked him, hopeful.

He met her eyes with his binocular implants. “I don’t know.”

“What?” Again Mystic didn’t believe her ears. Fyzzix couldn’t not know something. Fyzzix knew everything. No matter the topic, it seemed the he always had something to say about it, some estimate or prediction.

“I don’t know,” he repeated. “Every time I feel like I’m closer to the answer than ever before, it’s pulled a little further away. Whoever did this wanted to make sure that whatever is stored in that nav-stack, we can’t find out about it. And that’s all the more reason I must keep trying.”

To Mystic, that meant Fyzzix would be in his room while she sat in hers. Alone. With her book. She glanced toward her bag across the room, another pang of guilt twisting in her stomach.

“Hey… uh Fyzzix,” she asked.

He again snapped out of his brief lapse into cogitation. “Yes?”

“What if… say, hypothetically…” The words caught for a second, but she forced them out. “What would Caballus do if somepony close to him did… something they weren’t supposed to?”

For a long moment, the only evidence that Fyzzix hadn’t frozen in place was the quiet wheeze of his augmetic respirator. When he returned to life, he spoke slower than before. “That is a little too vague to give a confident estimate. Was there perhaps some… anecdote he related to you, that may have motivated this question?”

It wasn’t the response Mystic was expecting. “Oh. No. I was just wondering… for example, if it were me. What if I did something that he said I shouldn’t. What if he said it was heresy?”

“You would like to know how he would resolve a conflict between his Friendquisitional duties and a close interpersonal relationship?” If Fyzzix had any inkling of what was really on her mind, Mystic couldn’t tell.

She nodded.

“It’s... complicated.”

It took Mystic a moment to process the answer. “Oh.”

“Caballus is an Inquisipony,” said Fyzzix, elaborating. “He is tasked by the Holy Ordos to find any and all threats to the purity and strength of Equestia, and purge them, root and stem. Any heresy, no matter how small or accidental or well-meaning, may be allowed to escape his wrath. It is a task he has devoted his entire life to, and one to which he is naturally suited, indeed even destined.”

Inside, Mystic’s heart sank.

“However,” continued the Meq-priest, “I served with Lord Banehoof for many decades before he took Caballus in. There were other Interrogators before him, many of whom are now Inquisiponies in their own right, and many of them have performed great deeds in the service of the Friendquisition. But when Banehoof finally granted Caballus the Rosette, the Lord asked me to join this particular student. He told me that this one was different, that Caballus had not just the strength of his will, of his conviction, but he had something else that few others in the Ordos possess.”

“What was it?” Mystic asked, rapt from the story. Caballus talked about his life before she met him almost as little as she talked about hers.

“Compassion, he told me. What the Friendquisition would normally consider a weakness, Banehoof counted among Caballus’s strengths. The judgment of other Inquisiponies finds not only the guilty, but many around them who are guilty only by association. Caballus’s way is different. He seeks the source of the corruption to stop it before it spreads any further. It is the only form of mercy he is allowed to show, but he still seeks to show it, when he can.”

“Mercy?” Mystic had spent years watching Caballus work, and it certainly didn’t look like mercy to her.

“Indeed. He will still remove all trace of the taint that he finds, wherever it hides, but far more will be spared from the pyre than in a more traditional pogrom. When an Inquisipony calls upon the Astrotes or the Guard to cleanse a city, it is like removing a cancer with a cleaver: amputation is the most frequent outcome. Caballus endeavors to cut it out with a scalpel. With you and me and Roughshod and Hairtrigger. We are the precise instrument that separates the healthy from the corrupt.”

Mystic had never thought about it like that. She had seen the kind of power an Inquisipony could wield at Applemattox, and the form his judgment could take. If Caballus had wanted, the fleet, the Guardsponies and the Fluttermanders all might have been at his command. But if he had been in command, would he have given the same order?

“But do not worry,” Fyzzix said, noticing her introspective frown. “I am 99.0 percent confident that Caballus would order confectionatus only when no other option is available.”

Mystic wanted to ask about the other one percent, but she already had a different question, and it had already taken her a while to get to it. “But what if it were just one of us? What if one of my… you know, episodes got out of control, or I did something… bad? Do you think he would have any mercy for me?”

The Tech-pegasus paused again, the gears in his head—metaphorical… as far as she knew—churning out an answer. An answer that Mystic knew would be his honest estimation. Roughshod might have had doubts that had made him hesitate to tell her, but Fyzzix wouldn’t lie to her, Mystic was sure. “Knowledge is sacred to every Meq-priest,” he had once said, “and once he obtains it, he shares it with those who would use it for good. If any good is served by lying to a friend, I have yet to observe it.”

Fyzzix turned his head slightly, as though he was listening to something. Then he looked her in the eye, with his metal smile and what Mystic though was a trace of sadness in his artificial voice.

“I don’t know.”

Behind him, there was a knock on the door. Fyzzix answered it, let the cleaning mare in, and returned to his room.

---

“Not bad,” said Hairtrigger as he set down the mug on the table, his muzzle sporting a frothy mustache. “Might be the best damn cider I ever drank.”

Roughshod was enjoying a mug of the same brew. And though he would never betray the light, sour drink of his home town, he had to admit, if only to himself, that this dark Pferdian concoction might be better. A little. Maybe. Which would make sense, since this one mug was twice as expensive as an entire cask of the best stuff they made back home. “It’s alright,” he said.

If he were honest though, Roughshod wasn’t entirely comfortable with sitting around, drinking fine ciders in an exclusive downtown nightclub-lounge, listening to classy music. Meister had been quite generous to them, but it was a double-edged sword. Luxury like this was great for morale in the short term, but before too long they would go soft, Princess forbid. He’d rather be back on the Majesty, kicking some oats, or keeping his pie-throw sharp. And even though he couldn’t hear what his boss was talking about, he could tell there were places Caballus would rather be too.

The Inquisipony was seated in the VIP section of the club, at a table tucked away in the wall to the left of the main stage. He shifted uneasily under Meister Ver Kaufer’s stern stare. A serving mare came by with their drinks, but the Plutarch never even picked up his cup.

Caballus sipped his in silence for a minute, before setting it down. “I’ll make no excuses for what happened at the Diamantaire.”

“I should hope not,” replied Meister, “because it was inexcusable.” He spoke softly, but Caballus felt a simmering anger beneath it that unnerved him more than any yelling or show of rage would have. It was no small feat to get under an Inquisipony’s skin, and this stallion managed to do it with just his glare. It was like training under Banehoof all over again…

“I suspected a cult was at work, and in order to flush it out, I needed allies who couldn’t possibly be involved with it,” said Caballus. “I turned to the Battle Fillies because they were visiting from out of town. All I had to do was mention heresy, and they jumped at the chance to find it. And thanks to them, I have my proof.”

“Forty six.”

Caballus blinked. “I’m sorry?”

Meister’s muzzle was tight. “Forty six. That’s how many ponies burned for you to bring me this…” he looked down to the table with disgust, “scrap of paper.”

“I… I’m sorry. I never meant for that to happen.” Though it was the truth, it was harder for Caballus to say it than most of the lies. “Once the Sororitrots were off the leash… there was no reining them in.”

“What are they even doing here?” Meister said, rhetorically. “I visited the Basilica, and the Pferdian cardinal told me that they arrived totally unannounced, claiming to be on pilgrimage. Most pilgrims in this sector follow the path of the MacIntarian Crusade, but these Fillies came straight to Pferdian and skipped every other station.”

The Plutarch leaned back in his chair, a grim scowl on his face. “They’re hiding something. The longer this investigation goes on, the more I get the feeling I’m being used. Greater forces are at work here. I smell the hoof of the Friendquisition meddling in my city.”

It was all Caballus could do to stop himself from doing a spit-take from his mug, merely choking on his cider until Meister continued. “You took the news rather well, actually. I’m sorry, Swift. I apologize for getting you involved. If heresy truly has taken root in Pferdian, it’s my responsibility. But if there is an Inquisipony skulking about, no doubt he knows you’re working for me. If that’s the case, our success or failure will be shared.”

“No… it’s alright.” Caballus said. He could hardly believe what he had just heard. Meister had just deduced, correctly, that there was an Inquisipony manipulating him… and apologized to the Inquisipony who was manipulating him. One of the Princess’s little gifts, he supposed. “We’re in this together now. And now the only way to stay the Friendquisition’s wrath, if they really are here, is to resolve this before they decide it’s necessary to intervene more… directly.”

“Yes,” said Meister, “Inquisipony or no, the stakes are higher than ever. That’s what I asked you here to talk about, Swift. I’ve invested a lot of trust in you, and yesterday that trust was shaken. I’ll need additional assurances that my support is bearing fruit.”

Caballus raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”

“I’ll be assigning a liaison, to monitor your progress and report it back to me.”

“Who?” Caballus asked.

Meister’s sour expression finally broke into the slightest of barely-there smiles. “You’ll see.”

A tiny shiver ran down Caballus’s spine, and he suddenly realized why his friends had such distaste for his own use of the phrase. Sensing that the Plutarch was done with him, Caballus excused himself and rejoined his friends at their table. The lights had dimmed and the band was wrapping up the current song.

“How’d it go?” asked Roughshod.

Hairtrigger smirked. “Getch’er flank chewed out?”

“Essentially… yes,” Caballus said grudgingly. “He wants to attach somepony to our operations, to keep an eye on us.”

“Almost like he doesn’t trust us,” Hairtrigger said. “Hurts a fellah’s feelings.”

Roughshod was less amused. “I’m not convinced he ever trusted us at all,” he said, and then he took another gulp of cider. “If it was him galloping around with Sera, burning ponies in the streets, I certainly wouldn’t trust him.”

Caballus ignored him. “This liaison is going to make remaining covert a nightmare.” The Inquisipony found it ironic: by doubting the usefulness of Swift Corsair, Meister was making Caballus start to count the cost of keeping the Plutarch involved at all. “We’ll see how it goes. If he causes problems, our partnership with Meister may be at an end. Hopefully we can break this case open before… before…”

Following his distracted gaze, Hairtrigger and Roughshod looked toward the stage. The band started a sumptuous lounge tune, and the curtains had drawn back to reveal the next act.

Velour.

Meister’s wife paraded around the stage in a little black slip of a dress, as radiant and captivating as ever. She was singing in Perdian, so Caballus couldn’t understand her, but from her voice and the sultry grins she was casting into the crowd, it must have been a bawdy song.

It took a force of will to tear his gaze away from her to glance over at Meister. The stallion had a confident smile, apparently at ease with the entire club ogling his wife. Caballus looked around his own table, and found his friends staring intently as well. Roughshod had a conflicted look, almost like a scowl was trying to form on his muzzle. Hairtrigger was downright enraptured.

He returned his attention to the stage, and to his surprise, Velour was staring directly at him. Even though she was standing in bright limelight, even though the rest of the club was dark, and even though their table was near the back, he was positive that she was looking directly at him as she sang. Her eye, that deep pool of rose and violet, grew to become his entire world. It was as though he was falling into it, getting lost…

“Enjoying the performance?”

All three of them were startled out of their collective daze. Roughshod had his hoof halfway to a pie holstered in his jacket before Caballus stopped him. Behind them was Snidely.

“Representative Remarque, I presume?”

The crimson stallion inclined his head politely. “And you must be the famous Rogue Trader, Captain Swift Corsair. I’ve heard so much about you already; it’s a pleasure to actually meet you.” He extended a hoof.

Caballus shook it, showing none of the hesitation he felt. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not thrilled about being the topic of conversation across Pferdian.”

Snidely dismissed the notion with a wave of his hoof. “No need to be concerned, my dear captain. Quite the contrary, in fact; your… exploits here in Pferdian have won you the thanks of a great many of us who think our fair city is in need of some… shaking up.”

“You make it sound like I’m trying to overthrow the Plutarch. I can assure you I’m not.”

“Of course not, Captain. Perish the thought,” said Snidely with a smile. “But this city has stagnated under Meister, and many of the factions are dissatisfied with his rule. Change is coming to Pferdian, and your actions, whether you intended them to or not, are giving form to that change. I would caution you not to secure your fortunes so closely to those of the Plutarch. It would be a shame if you found yourself tethered to a sinking ship.”

The glorified spokespony was really starting to test Caballus’s patience. “If you’re hoping I’ll turn coat on Meister over the complaints of a few disgruntled nobles, you insult my loyalty. He is the lawful Governor-Mayor recognized by Equestria, an honorable and pious stallion, and he has treated me fairly and honestly as a fellow Rogue Trader.”

When Snidely tisked at his words, Caballus had to glance over to Roughshod, to make sure his friend didn’t lose his temper. “Oh come now, Captain Corsair. You cannot be that naïve. Meister is many things, but he is not the Lord Solar reincarnate as you may believe him to be. If you turned your own investigative talents on Meister instead of his enemies, you’d see his own coat isn’t so spotless.”

“What are you talking about?” said Caballus.

“You’ve no doubt heard of Magosus Uhrwerk. After all, I introduced him personally to all your friends at the Macsnacht banquet. Before you arrived in town, they enjoyed a very close working relationship. The rumor is, and I have it on very good authority, that Uhrwerk was working on some very… questionable projects at Meister’s behest.” Snidely leaned in and lowered his voice. “Projects that might even draw the gaze of the Eye that Sleepeth Not…”

Caballus betrayed nothing of his concern over Snidely’s colloquial reference to the Friendquisition. Citizens sometimes used the Holy Ordos as a bogeyman to scare or impress one another, though never very loudly; a careless accusation of heresy, even one that was ultimately untrue, could result in both parties disappearing without a trace. As an Inquisipony, it was always reassuring to hear his profession commanding the fear and respect that was part of its very function, but Caballus couldn’t help but think that this threat was even.

“I would take care with my next words, Representative Remarque,” he said. “Speculation can easily stray into sedition, and if I’ve learned anything about Pferdian during my stay here, it’s that the wrong ears are everywhere.”

“Then I’ll say nothing more,” Snidely replied, “and let you judge with your own eyes.”

Fluidly producing a business card, Snidely jotted down something, and slid it across the table to Caballus. When the crimson stallion stood up from their table, Caballus realized, with a twinge of disappointment, that Velour’s performance had concluded while they talked, and she was nowhere to be seen. Hairtrigger’s face displayed a similar sentiment, though Roughshod’s eyes had never left Snidely.

Before he turned away, Snidely smiled again, his pearly teeth gleaming in the low light of the club. “Good hunting, Captain Corsair.”

Roughshod gestured his muzzle toward the card. “What is it, boss?”

Caballus picked up the card, which bore a set of coordinates in the city. “A new lead. Let’s get going.”

Comments

[Cyreni]

Three chapters in, no comments read, and all I could do was try to draw connections between MLP races and WH40K factions. I see that a number of these are wrong now, but these were my initial thoughts.

Ponies, undeniably the Imperium.
Changelings, Tyranids. There's no other way.
Diamond Dogs, orks. I see this isn't correct from the comments, but I had different ideas regarding the Eldar.
Discord/Nightmare, Chaos.

This is where I did a bit of thinking.

Who would the Eldar/Dark Eldar be? Zebras? Crystal ponies? Both seem like decent candidates in my opinion.
The Tau? I could see Gryphons filling this role, backed up with their Minotaur mercenaries.
Necrons? I ended up taking a Diaries of a Madman approach and had them as ancient human machines. Or it could be Crystal ponies as well, I guess.

But, these are all initial thoughts and nothing much else.

And now I have made my own headcanon for crossovers. Crap.

[Inquisipony Stallius]

2942235
You're certainly entitled to your own headcanon. I just hope it doesn't disappoint you too much when mine happens to disagree with it.

For the races, organizations and individuals that I have correlated to one another, I have my reasonings as to why they match up. But if they're not directly involved in the story, I won't usually mention them one way or another. Either because there's no need, or because I haven't thought about it.

[The_Master]

*Blows dust off story*

Whew, been awhile hasn't it stallius? Things are getting interesting so I expect another update soon!

[Inquisipony Stallius]

2948402
An Inquisipony expects the unexpected.

Sorry to leave you guys hanging for so long. Life stuff popped up to drain my time as it is wont to do, and other creative projects drained the willpower needed to sit down and make any progress on this fic. But I did think about it, and all you guys, fairly often, if that's any consolation. I can't promise that I'll be back to updating more frequently, but I'll try. Maybe I got a little momentum with this chapter.

[The_Master]

2949216 Well you always have my support my lord. Just ask roadpony the loud how tenacious of a fan I can be at times.

No seriously, go pay him a visit and ask about me. I look forward to the reactions exchanged.

[BenRG]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: There is something up with Mystic and I'm wondering if anypony will realise what it is before it's too late.

In some ways, Snidely was right. 'Stagnation' (which is a disaffected person's word for 'stability') has been affecting Pferdian and, I suspect, it is why the Cultists have been able to extend their tentacles there. When the Powers That Be have been around for a long time, those held down will start doing stupid things in an attempt to make progress with their plans. Stupid things like giving shelter and aid to traitors who, frankly, couldn't be trusted as far as they could be spat.