Chrono Inquisitor (Gods Be Damned) (46 page)

Once I’d received all my body mods, it had been time for the funerals of Julius Beit, Shepard Cook (even though he’d technically died decades beforehand, but that was top secret,) and Samsara
Matsuzaki, as well as all the other security personnel who’d been killed.

The Inquisitors and Horsemen were honored in an even bigger ceremony in Dallas.

Lillian received no ceremony, and was simply incinerated. President Collins wasn’t happy that her cousin, Inquisitor Noble, was dead, so when she presented me with the Silver Star, making me an honorary Ranger, she made sure it pricked my skin.

Because I’d been incapacitated, Nora had taken care of all the details for the funerals. She did however communicate with Frank to make sure that I would be able to attend.

I’d thought about having Kali block my emotions, but decided it wouldn’t honor those who had died.

It had been a beautiful service.

A week later, after having settled all of Sam’s affairs, Alvarez and I finally got to go over the plan for dealing with Van Horne and the Celestial in control.

When I retrieved Paxton, I had to deal with Ranger-son’s deputies, Blayze and Fausett. Blayze didn’t seem to like me. Fausett seemed undecided.

“Hey
pahtnah,” Paxton said upon seeing me.

I wasn’t in the mood. “We aren’t partners anymore, not that we ever really were.”

“You have no idea how sorry I am about what happened.”

I exploded on him. “Everyone keeps telling me how fucking sorry they are. I don’t want to hear another apology for as long as I live. You’re lucky I didn’t leave your ass to rot in that cell forever.”

“You won’t hear any more apologies from me, but we need to talk.”

“You can keep your mouth shut the entire ride back.”

“Just hear what I have to say, and then I won’t say another word if you don’t want me to. I promise.”

“Spit it,” I said, but then I remembered that he had a propensity to actually spit, so I added. “Words only.”

“All right.” He held up his hands. He started to speak, then stopped.

“I’m losing my patience,” I said.

“Don’t hurt me, okay?” he pleaded.

“Just fucking say it.”

“All right, all right. I was a plant. Van Horne framed that guy you came to town to investigate. Anyway, he had several of us stationed around the city. I happened to be the guy sitting at the diner you walked into on that morning. You already know that lawyer works for Van Horne, well, he was sent in to get you irritated. You’re pretty damn predictable, anyone ever tell you that? Anyway, I was instructed on how to gain your trust. Look, I was just doing what I was told. Van Horne threatened my family.”

I grabbed him by the shirt and with my newly added strength, was able to lift him off the ground one handed.

“Why were you planted?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

“Why did your buddies attack us on the way out of town?”

“They were following us to make sure I was successful. When your vehicles went
schizo and we ejected, they thought something went wrong. They figured I’d been found out or turned on them.”

“Some nice friends you run with.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It was during the shootout in the desert when I decided to turn on them. They were trying to kill me. You have to believe me. I’ve been on your side ever since.”

“Why’d you take Beit’s watch?”

“I know it was stupid of me. You said you’d help me if I helped you with the case, but then the guy ended up dead. I was afraid you’d blame me. I saw the guy’s watch just sitting on the table so I took it. I was planning to pawn it to go back to Pueblo.”

“Why would you go back there after you had turned on Van Horne?”

“Because of my family.”

“You’re still lying to me Thrass,” I said. “I know you were sent here to meet with Beit, to give him a message. What was that message?”

“I didn’t think it mattered, the guy died and like I said, I wasn’t going to work for Van Horne anymore. I was told to tell Mr. Beit that everything was in place for his departure, and then I was supposed to get some information from him and take it back to Van Horne.”

“What information?”

“I don’t know. I got to that room and he was already dead.”

“Do you know where Beit was going? You said everything was ready for his departure.”

“Beit and some chick were defecting to Colorado. I guess he wasn’t allowed to leave Texas because of the knowledge he had in regards to the new capital they were building.”

“Who was the chick?”

“I’m not sure. I was just supposed to meet with Beit.”

“You have no idea who?”

“I overheard Van Horne say a name. Kaitlin, or some shit like that.”

“Lillian?”

“Maybe. I was too far away. Even my CerA couldn’t get an accurate recording. That’s it, that’s everything. I’ve told you all I know.”

Alvarez had already informed me of Paxton and his role. It seemed Paxton really had turned on Van Horne.

“All right,” I said. “If I am going to help you, you need to be completely honest from here on out. Am I understood?”

“I’ll do whatever you want, just help me get my family back.”

“You know Van Horne isn’t going to be too happy that you turned on him.”

“At least with you helping me, I might stand a chance of seeing my son again.”

“Then it looks like we’re going back to Pueblo.”

Later, I stood on the edge of the Quest hotel roof, looking out over the resort grounds as I flexed my new augmented fingers, and switched from scythes extended, to encased, then back again. I practiced the mental mechanism that switched out the various vials of my preferred drugs, now stored in my wrist.

I smiled with complete satisfaction.

My new hand was going to make my job so much easier. The ability to inject someone in an instant without them even knowing it, and not having to wear the tell-tale gloves anymore.

I also had micro darts installed that allowed me to shoot my concoctions up to twenty yards away.

“How’s it feel, little brother?” Sigmund, the new Victory asked, coming up behind me with Adham/Famine and Alvarez/War in tow.

Standing side by side, I was an inch taller than him. I turned my head towards Victory and looked him up and down. “Who you calling little?” I said with a smile.

Victory extended his shins until he was standing four inches taller and was looking down on me. “Like I said.”

“I see you actually went and adopted wearing green,”
War said. “Though much darker than your predecessor.”

Since my vault had taken a beating during all the battles, I decided it was time to upgrade it. I’d found the original design in Sam’s files and had a new one built, but with some slight modifications based on years of use. Thanks to ever advancing technology, the armor was upgraded, and the fabric was now self-healing as well.

“I wasn’t going to at first, but after some consideration I felt I owed it to him for saving my life.”

“You look good,” Victory said.

“Yeah, like a Robin Hood,” added War.

“I don’t wear that type of hat, so don’t get any ideas,” I said, holding up my middle finger, scythe extended.

We all laughed

I turned back around just in time to see the sun dip below the horizon.

“You all ready to give the Devil his due?”

The End of Book 1

Thank you for reading

Chrono Inquisitor:

A Gods Be Damned Novel

Keep your eyes and mind at the ready for

Death Comes Knocking:

A Gods Be Damned Sequel

Shinigami
– “death god/god of death” or “death spirit” – A psychopomp in Japanese folklore that makes sure people die at the appointed time and guides the spirit to the afterlife to be judged. In an over-simplification of things, they are essentially a Japanese version of the Grim Reaper. As opposed to the conventional belief of a single Grim Reaper, there are many Shinigami. They are a rather recent invention to Japanese culture.

Psychopomp
– “guide of souls” – They take various forms throughout the different myths and legends of the world. Their role is to escort the dead to the afterlife. They can be animals, spirits, angles, even deities.

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Agnomen
– “to name” – In the Roman naming convention, a nickname of a person.

Praenomen
– “forename or first name” – A personal name chosen by the parents of a Roman child. It is the equivalent of a given name today.

Nomen
– “name” It is the second name and is shared amongst the family clan, or gens, which was used to claim descent from a common ancestor. This was more or less originally a family name, or surname. There were only so many acceptable
praenomina
to choose from, so this sometimes resulted in men from the same gens having the same name. This resulted in the use of third names to distinguish individuals, such as; a
cognomen
and later an
agnomen.

Cognomen
– The third name. It began as a nickname based on a physical or personal trait in order to distinguish individuals who shared first and second names. Over time the
cognomen
took on the role of a surname and was passed down from father to son in order to distinguish a family from a gens.

Gens
– A group of people who are all descendants of a single individual.

Note:
this is an over-simplification of the Roman naming system and it changed over the course of the empire. By the end of the Republican era, a male aristocrat generally had at least three names known as a
tria nomina
, consisting of; a
praenomen,
a
nomen,
and a
cognomen
are referred to as the
tria nomina
.

Example: Michael Jeffrey “Air” Jordan – the NBA star.

(praenomen = Michael, nomen = Jeffrey*, agnomen = Air, cognomen = Jordan)

* Jeffrey would not technically be a
nomen since it isn’t shared amongst all his family.

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Mnemosyne
– (nee-moz-uh-nee) “memory” – Greek goddess/titaness of memory. Daughter of Uranus and Gaia. Mother of the muses who were fathered by Zeus over nine consecutive nights. Origin of the word mnemonic.

Mnemosyne – the tech. The collective name for the hundreds of millions of
nanobots (mytes), specifically called Mnemosyne-mytes or M-mytes for short, inside a person’s brain. Occasionally referred to as
The Spider
, due to the initial brain scans which looked like hundreds of overlapping spiderwebs. Created by Dr. Kishnan Chandrasekhar, the first person to find a way to get mytes to penetrate the blood brain barrier. Originally created to study and record a person’s dreams. Later adapted to record a person’s memory perfectly.

Due to original fears at the time of their creation, they were designed to only record what occurred inside a host’s brain. Memories
were uploaded to a person’s Arkhive, an Aether based secure storage overseen and organized by a person’s CerA.

Now decades later, fears have abated, which has led to the creation and pending release of Huginn & Muninn, a Mnemosyne upgrade which allows the M
-mytes to take an active role in order to share thoughts and memories.

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Black hats
– In old black and white Westerns, the hero used to wear a white hat and the villain wore a black hat. The term black hat has come to signify any villain. In the world of computer hacking, black hat has come to mean a hacker who illegally hacks a system for personal gain or malicious intent. There are different colored hat hackers, such as; white hat, grey hat, blue hat.
 

A white hat hacker usually works for a corporation to test their own system and to improve upon it.

A grey hat hacker will usually hack a system and then notify the administrator of the breach and offer to correct it for a fee.

A blue hat hacker is in between a white and grey hat. They are us
ually a third party hired to test a system’s security

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Eeyoric
– someone who is generally pessimistic, depressed, gloomy, and not fun to be around. Someone who embodies the personality of the character Eeyore from the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A.A. Milne.

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