The cargo bay door opened with a snapping hiss, and a hazy fog of decontaminant vapor pooled around Akai's kness as he strode into the darkness. The pod, positioned upright upon it's engine core and held in place with micron tractor beams, shimmered in the middle of the vast cargo container. The interior was dark, foggy, and utterly silent; aside from the salvaged pod the container was bare, and lined entirely in mirrored gold plating, despite it's outwardly inexpensive appearance. Sealing the door behind him, Akai bio-locked the console and disabled the sercuity feed, by rerouting the powerflow through the cameras he was able to quickly turn the inside of the container into a primed EMP bomb.
Theoretically, the three thousand-odd cameras that were installed could produce a "dynamic EMP" burst, which utilized the container's harmonics to exponentially increase the electrostatic charge and wave-count; by timing the detonations, the resultant EMP wave would be capable of frying virtually any unprotected tech, effectively functioning as a pod-killer. The pod was stationed at the very epicenter of where each one of the three thousand miniature EMP waves will harmonize, which would leave only a worthless collection of slag and biomass in it's wake; the running lights were still glowing a healthy green, despite the serious damage to the pod's engine and structure.
But as Akai began walking up toward the suspended pod, he finally noticed what had been bothering him since he stepped into the container. The pod's hatch open, and a figure lay sprawled out on the golden floor, not moving. Instinct took over, and as he rushed over to the dying capsuleer Akai's mind reviewed the Ministry's combat protocol regarding the revival of HVTs, while downloading the schematics of capsuleer physiology from a proxy server run out of a Khanid University library. But as he was finally able to see through the decontaminant, Akai was brought to a skidding halt as he recognized who it was he had taken prisoner; none other than his former pupil and freed slave, Rhavin Kha'siere, dressed in the stiff-necked black trenchcoat of an Imperial Inquisitor, the Maleficarus sigil emblazoned on his chestplate.
Almost five years ago, Akai had been chosen from among the Kingdom's special forces squadron, the notorious Black Angels, for promotion to capsuleer status. While his combat record was exemplary, he was a known follower of the religious dissident Kho Saan, and his family had always been vocal about secession from the Empire; as such, the news came as a shock to him and to his squadmates. Most of them had been classmates of his since childhood at the Caldari-sponored Academy on Irmalin's Royal Navy Testing Facility; and had grown up as brothers, away from the families that gave them up for King and Kingdom. But suddenly, the Ministry of Internal Order was demanding his presence in the Akhragan system at the Ministry's Logistic Support station, orbiting Akhragan VIII's fifth moon. One year later, Akai graduated from the Emperor Family Academy in Amarr Prime with full honors, and immediately recieved standing orders to report again to Akhragan, this time for assignment to the newly formed Imperial Inquisition. For almost four years he hunted down the heretics, blasphemers, and freedom fighters from within; able to operate independent of Imperial law and religious doctrine, the Inquisition were highly effective at burning out what Lord Victor once called the "cancerous rot in the pure Heart of God."
Akai was first assigned to Inquisitor Barishena in the Komaa system, a short-haired, short-tempered, and drop-dead gorgeous Ni-Kunni rumored to be the bastard daughter of a very prominent Hierarch. Despite the rumors and her fiery temper, she was one of the best Inquisitors around, with over two thousand confirmed heretical terrorist cells destroyed. Realizing his potential, she assigned him to her command staff, and began training him as her protege.
Working for Inquisitor Barishena, Akai quickly rose through the ranks, eventually becoming a full Inquisitor of the Ordos Maleficarus, an elite Order dedicated to the eradication of Heresy within the Empire. Known more commonly as the Witch's Hammer or the Witch-Hammer, the Ordos Maleficarus maintained informants in almost every sector of the Empire, regardless of station, and in conjunction with the Empyrean Inquisitors are able to tactically infiltrate and assassinate anyone in the Empire, save the Empress herself.
But then he met Rhavin, starved and alone amidst a ravaged housing complex used by Matari freedom fighters and Amarrian heretics. Huddled against the corpses of what looked like his parents, the boy was on the verge of death yet a fire of defiance still shone from his eyes. Unable to leave the child to his fate, Akai was forced to confront his own immortality for the first time. His faith could not justify such destruction wrought in the name of God, when those upon who judgement fell more often than not were simply divergent in their faith, rather than being truly heretical. Taking the child as a slave, Akai began teaching him everything he knew about religion, the Empire, the Kingdom; eventually Akai used his high-level clearance to obtain supposedly destroyed Matari religious texts from the vaults of the Ministry, in order to teach Rhavin about his own people. In the Khanid way, Rhavin was a slave only in debt, and once he had worked his debt off (his debt being derived simply from association with a known heretical terrorist cell) he would be freed upon payment. While there are harsher forms of slavery within the Kingdom, this form of debt slavery is much more common, and profitable, as well as slightly more humanitarian. Despite his nominally dissident religious belief that slavery is a sin, the only way Akai could secure Rhavin's safety was to take him as a slave.
Rhavin was his first slave, his brightest pupil and protege; but he was more than just that, as Akai eventually came to see him as his own son. But that was before Amamake.
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