The quarantine team shuffled out of the room with heads bowed, psi-stifling cowls worn over sterisuits and grim silence in their wake as they left Deep Red Void alone with Doctor Svarinet for a few moments before the brass made their entrance.
The Anthroid magus, now acting captain of the Jade Huntress with the deaths of his commanding officers confirmed, stood beside the spiniform pillar of nacreous crystal that had become of the ship's chief science officer, branching growths of her extending like fingers of frost across the floor and ceiling of what had been the light carrier's mages' sanctum, ceiling tiles, flood lamps, and cables alike swallowed into the gently humming mass.
He placed his hand upon the vague suggestion of her petrified shoulder, gently so as not to chip the nacre spines with her mechanical fingers.
“Are you afraid, Doctor?"
The Anthroid kept his tone even, kept his opaque casting visor over his faceplate's luminescent emotive display, but he knew she knew that he was afraid, more afraid than he had been of the Veil-spawned terror that had begun this ordeal.
Deep Red Void wasn't certain the good doctor could still communicate in language, so perhaps she simply read the intent behind his speech and bypassed its context entirely, but when the reply washed over his consciousness, he understood it well enough.
A dreamlike visualization of the Huntress, seen from the external, sliced open by ship-breakers, armored figures interrogating Deep Red Void in a dim cell, her crystalline body smashed to pieces in a sterile lab, surrounded by figures identical to the quarantine team, a flood of images and constructed quasi-memories, terrible and stark but tinged with a black humor that suggested to Deep Red Void that she was at least doubtful of such extremity coming to pass.
The good doctor, after all, had not changed so much that she didn't also need to keep kindled a little faith, though whether it was in herself, the gods, the Imperium, or perhaps even in him, he was yet unsure.
"We did the right thing, Doctor. Whatever they say, whatever comes next, that any of the Huntress's crew sees their loved ones again is because of you."
He saw, in his mind's eye, the image of a shining silver service metal, hung from her stone-blossoming skull with a heavy sense of secondhand irony, his own words at the cusp of the ritual echoing back at him.
"Never say never, Doctor."
He heard the door seals begin to unlatch again and he pulled away from the good doctor, positioning himself at attention between the door and her, with the unspoken understanding of what that might mean.
Three figures entered, the largest finding it necessary to duck to make it under the door arch, no honor guard nor faces the Magus did not recognize among them.
There was the Lord Warmaster, Hexan Enver, in his regal and towering Atlas data-plate with its collar of ever-burning truthbearer fur, a worn look on the goliath crow's countenance as he took in the scene, towering over the magus and looking past him towards the good doctor in all her crystalline glory.
At his right hand, the chief scientific officer of the Warfleet Celestial, an orchid mantis in custom Tethys-Plate with a mint cloak of synthsilk fastened to its pauldrons, Lord Seeker Ixiltec, the only one of three with whom the anthroid had personally spoken, who offered a silent, sympathetic look to Deep Red Void.
At the Warmaster's left was a similarly hulking figure, though lesser in stature, face hidden behind an eyeless helmet but no less identifiable for it, clad in ornate Atlas-plate emblazoned with the symbology and occult ornamentation of the Blindwatch, The Empress's personal antlers-and-sword mark in silver upon the upper facet of his helm, one who could be none other Master Asenti of the Spire Liaison.
The Anthroid saluted, coiled-spring tension in his chassis as his etheric gaze shifted behind his visor between the three figures who would decide the fates of the good doctor and the magus both.
The Anthroid magus, now acting captain of the Jade Huntress with the deaths of his commanding officers confirmed, stood beside the spiniform pillar of nacreous crystal that had become of the ship's chief science officer, branching growths of her extending like fingers of frost across the floor and ceiling of what had been the light carrier's mages' sanctum, ceiling tiles, flood lamps, and cables alike swallowed into the gently humming mass.
He placed his hand upon the vague suggestion of her petrified shoulder, gently so as not to chip the nacre spines with her mechanical fingers.
“Are you afraid, Doctor?"
The Anthroid kept his tone even, kept his opaque casting visor over his faceplate's luminescent emotive display, but he knew she knew that he was afraid, more afraid than he had been of the Veil-spawned terror that had begun this ordeal.
Deep Red Void wasn't certain the good doctor could still communicate in language, so perhaps she simply read the intent behind his speech and bypassed its context entirely, but when the reply washed over his consciousness, he understood it well enough.
A dreamlike visualization of the Huntress, seen from the external, sliced open by ship-breakers, armored figures interrogating Deep Red Void in a dim cell, her crystalline body smashed to pieces in a sterile lab, surrounded by figures identical to the quarantine team, a flood of images and constructed quasi-memories, terrible and stark but tinged with a black humor that suggested to Deep Red Void that she was at least doubtful of such extremity coming to pass.
The good doctor, after all, had not changed so much that she didn't also need to keep kindled a little faith, though whether it was in herself, the gods, the Imperium, or perhaps even in him, he was yet unsure.
"We did the right thing, Doctor. Whatever they say, whatever comes next, that any of the Huntress's crew sees their loved ones again is because of you."
He saw, in his mind's eye, the image of a shining silver service metal, hung from her stone-blossoming skull with a heavy sense of secondhand irony, his own words at the cusp of the ritual echoing back at him.
"Never say never, Doctor."
He heard the door seals begin to unlatch again and he pulled away from the good doctor, positioning himself at attention between the door and her, with the unspoken understanding of what that might mean.
Three figures entered, the largest finding it necessary to duck to make it under the door arch, no honor guard nor faces the Magus did not recognize among them.
There was the Lord Warmaster, Hexan Enver, in his regal and towering Atlas data-plate with its collar of ever-burning truthbearer fur, a worn look on the goliath crow's countenance as he took in the scene, towering over the magus and looking past him towards the good doctor in all her crystalline glory.
At his right hand, the chief scientific officer of the Warfleet Celestial, an orchid mantis in custom Tethys-Plate with a mint cloak of synthsilk fastened to its pauldrons, Lord Seeker Ixiltec, the only one of three with whom the anthroid had personally spoken, who offered a silent, sympathetic look to Deep Red Void.
At the Warmaster's left was a similarly hulking figure, though lesser in stature, face hidden behind an eyeless helmet but no less identifiable for it, clad in ornate Atlas-plate emblazoned with the symbology and occult ornamentation of the Blindwatch, The Empress's personal antlers-and-sword mark in silver upon the upper facet of his helm, one who could be none other Master Asenti of the Spire Liaison.
The Anthroid saluted, coiled-spring tension in his chassis as his etheric gaze shifted behind his visor between the three figures who would decide the fates of the good doctor and the magus both.
❤1
The Warmaster glanced down at the armored esper at his left, who nodded shallowly, then spoke, his voice clear and commanding without being raised or harsh.
"Soldier, I want your statement, first and foremost, followed by Doctor Svarinet's, if she's still able. Start where it began."
"Something went wrong during the last subspace translation, and we drew the attention of an entity or entities which I believe to have originated from Veilspace."
The Blindwatch mystic spoke up, his voice as course as alluvial gravel through his helmet's vox.
"Describe the assailants, magus."
"Difficult. They struck from shadows, dissolved in light, and killed with wounds that defy causal explanation. The attacks began slowly, at first, but as it began to damage the Huntress's systems they spread and intensified, cutting us off from contacting the rest of the fleet. By the time the marines had begun to take up their rifles, command had completely broken down, and it was all Doctor Svarinet and I could do to carry out our ritual."
"Tell me, how did you two alone manage to isolate yourselves from such an adversary?"
"Fortunate intuition on the part of Doctor Svarinet and quick action on my part. I channeled as bright of a light spell as I could manage until we could set up static defenses in the form of flood lamps from the sanctums’ supply room."
"What led you to decide on the ritual you carried out?"
"Desperation. I understood the threat to be paraphysical in nature, and absent other options, we converged upon making use of the xenomineral graft already present in the good doctor’s hand, being evidently derived of a highly psionic species."
Master Asenti took a step forward, ritual charms and occult ornamentation jangling against the plating of his heavy rig.
"This.. xenomineral, you say it was implanted in the doctor? Who gave approval to that decision?"
At last, Ixiltec spoke, half-raising one of their raptorial forelimbs.
"I did, Master Asenti. Doctor Svarinet understood the risks to her well-being but believed live cultivation of the tissue would help us to better understand the Cygnian xeno-ecology."
"The risk to the doctor does not interest me, Ixiletc, it is the risk she might pose."
Deep Red Void raised his own voice to interject between the two officers.
"Doctor Svarinet neither posed nor poses a risk to anyone in this Imperium. It is because of her that we are able to even discuss what transpired here."
The Warmaster held out an armored palm to silence the room.
"At ease, soldier. I only want to establish the facts, and it is beyond dispute that what you two did saved the Jade Huntress."
Master Asenti turned his helmet to face the magus head-on, a crawling pressure writhing over the Anthroid's chassis, through the joints of his metallic skin.
"Describe the ritual, magus."
“It was a fifth-order circle, eight-pointed, drawn with copperized paint and altered to invoke The Dream as its causal agent, owing to the psionic properties of the graft.”
“It is traditional to use prime-numbered circles and simple gestalt invocations for psi-rituals, Magus. Cultural occultism is not sanctioned for military use.”
Deep Red Void caught a glimpse of the good doctor’s earlier vision of the interrogation cell with its sterisuited figures replaced by the stone-hearted Blindwatch Cultist, anxiety layered beneath the fearful recitation. She was afraid of him, and not without reason.
The magus forced himself to keep his emotions from his voice.
“That is the case, Master Asenti, but seeing as we were actively losing comrades with every additional moment spent on inaction, I chose a design and a causal mechanism with which I have intimate familiarity instead of wasting further minutes and lives transcribing unfamiliar-but-sanctioned methods.”
“I see.”
The accusation rolled off the simple statement, and Deep Red Void briefly searched the faces of the Lord Warmaster and Lord Seeker for some refutation of their comrade, finding an iron mask over the emotions of the former and the same apologetic cast on the latter.
"Soldier, I want your statement, first and foremost, followed by Doctor Svarinet's, if she's still able. Start where it began."
"Something went wrong during the last subspace translation, and we drew the attention of an entity or entities which I believe to have originated from Veilspace."
The Blindwatch mystic spoke up, his voice as course as alluvial gravel through his helmet's vox.
"Describe the assailants, magus."
"Difficult. They struck from shadows, dissolved in light, and killed with wounds that defy causal explanation. The attacks began slowly, at first, but as it began to damage the Huntress's systems they spread and intensified, cutting us off from contacting the rest of the fleet. By the time the marines had begun to take up their rifles, command had completely broken down, and it was all Doctor Svarinet and I could do to carry out our ritual."
"Tell me, how did you two alone manage to isolate yourselves from such an adversary?"
"Fortunate intuition on the part of Doctor Svarinet and quick action on my part. I channeled as bright of a light spell as I could manage until we could set up static defenses in the form of flood lamps from the sanctums’ supply room."
"What led you to decide on the ritual you carried out?"
"Desperation. I understood the threat to be paraphysical in nature, and absent other options, we converged upon making use of the xenomineral graft already present in the good doctor’s hand, being evidently derived of a highly psionic species."
Master Asenti took a step forward, ritual charms and occult ornamentation jangling against the plating of his heavy rig.
"This.. xenomineral, you say it was implanted in the doctor? Who gave approval to that decision?"
At last, Ixiltec spoke, half-raising one of their raptorial forelimbs.
"I did, Master Asenti. Doctor Svarinet understood the risks to her well-being but believed live cultivation of the tissue would help us to better understand the Cygnian xeno-ecology."
"The risk to the doctor does not interest me, Ixiletc, it is the risk she might pose."
Deep Red Void raised his own voice to interject between the two officers.
"Doctor Svarinet neither posed nor poses a risk to anyone in this Imperium. It is because of her that we are able to even discuss what transpired here."
The Warmaster held out an armored palm to silence the room.
"At ease, soldier. I only want to establish the facts, and it is beyond dispute that what you two did saved the Jade Huntress."
Master Asenti turned his helmet to face the magus head-on, a crawling pressure writhing over the Anthroid's chassis, through the joints of his metallic skin.
"Describe the ritual, magus."
“It was a fifth-order circle, eight-pointed, drawn with copperized paint and altered to invoke The Dream as its causal agent, owing to the psionic properties of the graft.”
“It is traditional to use prime-numbered circles and simple gestalt invocations for psi-rituals, Magus. Cultural occultism is not sanctioned for military use.”
Deep Red Void caught a glimpse of the good doctor’s earlier vision of the interrogation cell with its sterisuited figures replaced by the stone-hearted Blindwatch Cultist, anxiety layered beneath the fearful recitation. She was afraid of him, and not without reason.
The magus forced himself to keep his emotions from his voice.
“That is the case, Master Asenti, but seeing as we were actively losing comrades with every additional moment spent on inaction, I chose a design and a causal mechanism with which I have intimate familiarity instead of wasting further minutes and lives transcribing unfamiliar-but-sanctioned methods.”
“I see.”
The accusation rolled off the simple statement, and Deep Red Void briefly searched the faces of the Lord Warmaster and Lord Seeker for some refutation of their comrade, finding an iron mask over the emotions of the former and the same apologetic cast on the latter.
❤1
“Have you any further questions concerning the ritual, or may I continue?”
The Lord Warmaster spoke up, his voice betraying no intent, his eyes cast over the Anthroid’s shoulder.
“Just one. The present state of Doctor Svarinet, was that a known quantity at the outset of the ritual?”
“In as much anything could be known under such circumstances, it was.”
“How?”
Deep Red Void turned to the Lord Seeker, who had once again fallen quiet, watching with their antennae gently bobbing.
"Lord Seeker, you understand better than I the nature of the good doctor’s condition. If you would deign to fill in what I cannot?"
To his gratitude, Ixiltec took the reins of the conversation for a moment, allowing Deep Red Void to steady himself.
“The xenomineral, it was determined to be psycho-symbiotic in nature during early tests with standard homonculi cultures. Transformation of the sort currently displayed was always inevitable as the mineral fed on and transmuted the latent psionic Resonance produced by Doctor Svarinet. My understanding is that their ritual simply accelerated this process by way of glutting the graft on the borrowed potential of the Anthroid’s shared Dreaming.”
The Warmaster spoke up again, his gaze still fixed on the frozen visage behind Deep Red Void.
“What happened afterwards, soldier?”
“I must admit, I am still piecing that together myself. The lights were destroyed by the electromagnetic pulse generated by energizing the ritual circle, shortly after which a light without source purged the ship of the unnatural shadows, and I recovered myself to find Doctor Svarinet in her present condition.”
“At which point, your ship began to broadcast distress calls, which brings us up to eight hours before the present time. Is that correct?”
“It is, Lord Warmaster.”
“What transpired in the intervening hours?”
Pacing charnel-halls, friends and comrades butchered, the mechanical viscera of the ship soaked in the organic viscera of its crew.
The Good Doctor exerting her will where she could, however she could, to keep things from descending further.
He’d been forced to turn off his chemesthetic sensors to work, to separate the living from the dead, the salvageable from the ruined.
“I assisted with the efforts to recover what systems on the Huntress could still be recovered, tended to what wounded I could, and surveyed the damages until such time as your quarantine staff informed me that I had to remain in this room until further notice.”
“Do you believe your exposure to Doctor Svarinet has compromised the integrity of your mind or memories?”
The disassembly-table, the anthroid magus and the good doctor alike stripped down to their component parts upon the steel, treated each like the other, like a contaminated mass.
There was nothing beneath this vision, no tinge of gallows humor left to be drawn from this line of questioning.
Deep Red Void shook off the vision.
“I do not.”
“Asenti?”
“I cannot detect obvious tampering, but that does not rule out more sophisticated methods or ordinary manipulation.”
“Setting aside traditional coercion, is it realistic for someone without previous training to develop such methods on the fly?”
“It is not likely, Warmaster, but there is much we still cannot know regarding the xenomineral and its host.”
Deep Red Void took a step forward, towards the Blindwatch officer, no longer able to conceal his desperate frustration.
He could swear he saw the air begin to twist around the cultist’s ornate helm as he spoke his piece.
“This paranoia is absurd, Lord Warmaster. Doctor Svarinet did not become an enemy of the Imperium because of a stone and a change in countenance. Her service record and her actions should speak for themselves, as should mine, for that matter. Regardless of what she is now, regardless of my procedural deviation under extremity, we are both still soldiers, still loyal. Our enemies are still waiting for us on the other side of the Gap, and they will make no distinction between us when the time comes to wager our lives against them.”
The Lord Warmaster spoke up, his voice betraying no intent, his eyes cast over the Anthroid’s shoulder.
“Just one. The present state of Doctor Svarinet, was that a known quantity at the outset of the ritual?”
“In as much anything could be known under such circumstances, it was.”
“How?”
Deep Red Void turned to the Lord Seeker, who had once again fallen quiet, watching with their antennae gently bobbing.
"Lord Seeker, you understand better than I the nature of the good doctor’s condition. If you would deign to fill in what I cannot?"
To his gratitude, Ixiltec took the reins of the conversation for a moment, allowing Deep Red Void to steady himself.
“The xenomineral, it was determined to be psycho-symbiotic in nature during early tests with standard homonculi cultures. Transformation of the sort currently displayed was always inevitable as the mineral fed on and transmuted the latent psionic Resonance produced by Doctor Svarinet. My understanding is that their ritual simply accelerated this process by way of glutting the graft on the borrowed potential of the Anthroid’s shared Dreaming.”
The Warmaster spoke up again, his gaze still fixed on the frozen visage behind Deep Red Void.
“What happened afterwards, soldier?”
“I must admit, I am still piecing that together myself. The lights were destroyed by the electromagnetic pulse generated by energizing the ritual circle, shortly after which a light without source purged the ship of the unnatural shadows, and I recovered myself to find Doctor Svarinet in her present condition.”
“At which point, your ship began to broadcast distress calls, which brings us up to eight hours before the present time. Is that correct?”
“It is, Lord Warmaster.”
“What transpired in the intervening hours?”
Pacing charnel-halls, friends and comrades butchered, the mechanical viscera of the ship soaked in the organic viscera of its crew.
The Good Doctor exerting her will where she could, however she could, to keep things from descending further.
He’d been forced to turn off his chemesthetic sensors to work, to separate the living from the dead, the salvageable from the ruined.
“I assisted with the efforts to recover what systems on the Huntress could still be recovered, tended to what wounded I could, and surveyed the damages until such time as your quarantine staff informed me that I had to remain in this room until further notice.”
“Do you believe your exposure to Doctor Svarinet has compromised the integrity of your mind or memories?”
The disassembly-table, the anthroid magus and the good doctor alike stripped down to their component parts upon the steel, treated each like the other, like a contaminated mass.
There was nothing beneath this vision, no tinge of gallows humor left to be drawn from this line of questioning.
Deep Red Void shook off the vision.
“I do not.”
“Asenti?”
“I cannot detect obvious tampering, but that does not rule out more sophisticated methods or ordinary manipulation.”
“Setting aside traditional coercion, is it realistic for someone without previous training to develop such methods on the fly?”
“It is not likely, Warmaster, but there is much we still cannot know regarding the xenomineral and its host.”
Deep Red Void took a step forward, towards the Blindwatch officer, no longer able to conceal his desperate frustration.
He could swear he saw the air begin to twist around the cultist’s ornate helm as he spoke his piece.
“This paranoia is absurd, Lord Warmaster. Doctor Svarinet did not become an enemy of the Imperium because of a stone and a change in countenance. Her service record and her actions should speak for themselves, as should mine, for that matter. Regardless of what she is now, regardless of my procedural deviation under extremity, we are both still soldiers, still loyal. Our enemies are still waiting for us on the other side of the Gap, and they will make no distinction between us when the time comes to wager our lives against them.”
❤1
Master Asenti began to speak, but it was the Lord Seeker Ixiltec who cut him off this time, their raptorial forelimbs crossed over their chestplate.
“I am inclined to agree with the Huntress’s captain, Master Asenti, Lord Enver. Doctor Svarinet is one of mine, and while her scientific approach was often heterodox, she has never given me a reason to suspect her of disloyalty.”
The Lord Warmaster let their words hang in tension as he considered them, before he at last turned to the eyeless esper.
“Asenti?”
“I have made my position plain, Lord Warmaster.”
“So you have. Magus, what would you propose I do? You scarcely have the crew to continue flying, let alone the Legionaries and the staff to provide boarding support to your Legion. Of those which yet live, I have it on good authority that a majority are presently in the process of being discharged from service as casualties. “
Orion, on the far side of the Cygnian Gap, the Jade Huntress in her place among the war host of the 122nd Legion, her guns hot and her sight cast over all, Deep Red Void at her helm with the pearlescent rime of the good doctor spread behind him, naked pride beneath the sights laid before the magus.
“Second me the willing surplus from those ships which still have them, and the supplies to make the Huntress whole. We may not be able to host legionaries, but we can still lend our guns and our eyes to the fleet. Let us prove our loyalty, Lord Warmaster.”
“If I may, Lord Enver?”
“Go On, Ixiltec.”
“I have a proposal of my own, if Doctor Svarinet and Deep Red Void are amenable. The Doctor is conscious and stable, yes?”
“She is, Lord seeker.”
“Do you speak for her?”
Deep Red Void glanced over his shoulder, to be met with a wordless reassurance.
“Her telepathy is non-linguistic at present.”
“Well, if she is capable and willing, I believe I could arrange for her to be directly interfaced with the Huntress, that she might be able to use her present condition to the fleet’s advantage by augmenting our auspex network with her psionic perception, in the fashion of certain specialists employed by the Throne.“
Master Asenti shook his helmet, growling through its vox.
“Whatever she is now, she’s not Watchtower.“
The Lord Warmaster and the Lord Seeker both glanced sharply at the Esper for just a moment, before continuing without comment.
“Be that as it may, Master Asenti, there is potential here I would hate to see wasted.”
Deep Red Void felt Doctor Svarinet’s assent wash over him in a palpable sense of secondhand relief and a vision of waves propagating across dark water from a skeletal radio mast with a single pearly eye at its zenith.
“If the Lord Warmaster is willing, Doctor Svarinet and I agree to take part in your experiment.”
The Warmaster reached out a titanic armored gauntlet for the anthroid magus to shake, a gesture more disorienting than the esper’s probing or the good doctor’s visions.
“I will leave the specifics to the three of you. Asenti, I wish to have a word with you on the Bulwark.”
With that, the Warmaster and Master Asenti departed, whisked away by the subtle spacial incisions of subspace channels.
Deep Red Void would have breathed a sigh of a relief, had he been organic.
As it was, he simply turned to the Lord Seeker and offered them a quiet thanks, his sentiment echoed by the crystalline psion at his back.
“I am inclined to agree with the Huntress’s captain, Master Asenti, Lord Enver. Doctor Svarinet is one of mine, and while her scientific approach was often heterodox, she has never given me a reason to suspect her of disloyalty.”
The Lord Warmaster let their words hang in tension as he considered them, before he at last turned to the eyeless esper.
“Asenti?”
“I have made my position plain, Lord Warmaster.”
“So you have. Magus, what would you propose I do? You scarcely have the crew to continue flying, let alone the Legionaries and the staff to provide boarding support to your Legion. Of those which yet live, I have it on good authority that a majority are presently in the process of being discharged from service as casualties. “
Orion, on the far side of the Cygnian Gap, the Jade Huntress in her place among the war host of the 122nd Legion, her guns hot and her sight cast over all, Deep Red Void at her helm with the pearlescent rime of the good doctor spread behind him, naked pride beneath the sights laid before the magus.
“Second me the willing surplus from those ships which still have them, and the supplies to make the Huntress whole. We may not be able to host legionaries, but we can still lend our guns and our eyes to the fleet. Let us prove our loyalty, Lord Warmaster.”
“If I may, Lord Enver?”
“Go On, Ixiltec.”
“I have a proposal of my own, if Doctor Svarinet and Deep Red Void are amenable. The Doctor is conscious and stable, yes?”
“She is, Lord seeker.”
“Do you speak for her?”
Deep Red Void glanced over his shoulder, to be met with a wordless reassurance.
“Her telepathy is non-linguistic at present.”
“Well, if she is capable and willing, I believe I could arrange for her to be directly interfaced with the Huntress, that she might be able to use her present condition to the fleet’s advantage by augmenting our auspex network with her psionic perception, in the fashion of certain specialists employed by the Throne.“
Master Asenti shook his helmet, growling through its vox.
“Whatever she is now, she’s not Watchtower.“
The Lord Warmaster and the Lord Seeker both glanced sharply at the Esper for just a moment, before continuing without comment.
“Be that as it may, Master Asenti, there is potential here I would hate to see wasted.”
Deep Red Void felt Doctor Svarinet’s assent wash over him in a palpable sense of secondhand relief and a vision of waves propagating across dark water from a skeletal radio mast with a single pearly eye at its zenith.
“If the Lord Warmaster is willing, Doctor Svarinet and I agree to take part in your experiment.”
The Warmaster reached out a titanic armored gauntlet for the anthroid magus to shake, a gesture more disorienting than the esper’s probing or the good doctor’s visions.
“I will leave the specifics to the three of you. Asenti, I wish to have a word with you on the Bulwark.”
With that, the Warmaster and Master Asenti departed, whisked away by the subtle spacial incisions of subspace channels.
Deep Red Void would have breathed a sigh of a relief, had he been organic.
As it was, he simply turned to the Lord Seeker and offered them a quiet thanks, his sentiment echoed by the crystalline psion at his back.
❤1
“How far do you think you could take it?”
A scouting ship, by the standards of the Scourging Pact, a few kilometers of stone-skinned biomechanical construction, vaguely reminiscent of a dragonfly with wings clipped and legs twisted together into riblike protrusions.
It was no match for Feasts-Upon-The-Stars, in armament or in speed, and Howl had watched with sickly fascination as the undead forgeship descended upon its lesser kindred and struck it with talons of adamantine bone hundreds of meters long, piercing its fragile Coil Shields to allow Moira to board it, alone.
What happened next, the vampire still struggled to comprehend, as the living ship seemed to convulse, then went still, its flailing guns and flickering shields snuffed out in an instant by a flare of resonance that he could feel from the bridge, though comprehension of it eluded him.
Moira returned without a drop of blood on her silken veils, and bid her ship to do as its name implied.
The remains were still digesting in its devouring womb, two hundred meters below the converted surgical theater that served as the necromancer’s dining hall.
“You will have to be more specific.”
Breakfast was, as it had been for several days, attended only by the vampire, the undead, and Moira herself, Belladonna’s fitful sleep having offset her waking hours from that of her comrades.
Her silent servants prepared coffee from real soil-grown grounds, bartered for at no small expense on the Black Docks, in fine gilded serving-ware raided from a Sol United galleon, bubbling wine served alongside fine dried and cured delicacies procured from the same, accompanied by the more practical fare of fresh bread, prepared from her larder’s reserves of staple ingredients by the hands of Imperial cooks whose preserved bodies and subsumed souls still carried on their essential function well past the point where she had evicted their minds from the equation.
Moira watched as the vampiric wasp met her gaze over the wineglass in his upper-left claw, staring as if it should have been obvious to her.
It was, but she wanted him to say it.
“What you did, on the other ship. I don’t know what to call that kind of psi-craft, never seen anything like it.”
Moira smiled and flashed her fangs, the cobra reclining against the back of her couch, twirling her vaporizer pen in her fingers.
She hadn’t expected the scouting ship and when she was awoken by her beloved to handle it she had not even the time to paint herself in her regalia before she donned her veils and made for the bridge, compensating for her exhaustion with the sweet synthetic pharmacopoeia inside of her pen.
She had found the vampire there before her, watching in silence through the windows, his attention fixed away from her entrance.
Her beloved had prepared their prey for her, its teeth pierced through the scouting cruiser’s etheric carapace to give the butcher access to the meat beneath.
Feasts-Upon-The-Stars had fixed its gaze upon her and caved space inwards around her with a whisper of its oceanic will.
The subspace channel swallowed her from her bridge and disgorged her out into theirs, a scene of chaos, mutant bodies fused into neural control harnesses, a captain three meters tall and composed from the stolen flesh of a dozen exodites barking orders in the gutter-tongue of the Pact.
All their eyes were on her in an instant, but it was insufficient to save them as her fingers met the cheek of some lesser officer at his station.
The cruelest expression of her psychic science, inspired by the death magic of the United and her research as a Watcher into the psionic weapons of the late empires of the High Exodites.
A killing wave, the propagation of negation using its very victims as repeaters for the resonant instruction, a complex theorem to deliver a simple command, flesh-to-flesh, soul-to-soul, cell-to-cell.
Cease.
Malachite-green, scented like menthol and tasting like ash, it flowed down from the ordered throne of her conciousness into her caressing palm, then leapt from her scales into his fur-shorn skin.
A scouting ship, by the standards of the Scourging Pact, a few kilometers of stone-skinned biomechanical construction, vaguely reminiscent of a dragonfly with wings clipped and legs twisted together into riblike protrusions.
It was no match for Feasts-Upon-The-Stars, in armament or in speed, and Howl had watched with sickly fascination as the undead forgeship descended upon its lesser kindred and struck it with talons of adamantine bone hundreds of meters long, piercing its fragile Coil Shields to allow Moira to board it, alone.
What happened next, the vampire still struggled to comprehend, as the living ship seemed to convulse, then went still, its flailing guns and flickering shields snuffed out in an instant by a flare of resonance that he could feel from the bridge, though comprehension of it eluded him.
Moira returned without a drop of blood on her silken veils, and bid her ship to do as its name implied.
The remains were still digesting in its devouring womb, two hundred meters below the converted surgical theater that served as the necromancer’s dining hall.
“You will have to be more specific.”
Breakfast was, as it had been for several days, attended only by the vampire, the undead, and Moira herself, Belladonna’s fitful sleep having offset her waking hours from that of her comrades.
Her silent servants prepared coffee from real soil-grown grounds, bartered for at no small expense on the Black Docks, in fine gilded serving-ware raided from a Sol United galleon, bubbling wine served alongside fine dried and cured delicacies procured from the same, accompanied by the more practical fare of fresh bread, prepared from her larder’s reserves of staple ingredients by the hands of Imperial cooks whose preserved bodies and subsumed souls still carried on their essential function well past the point where she had evicted their minds from the equation.
Moira watched as the vampiric wasp met her gaze over the wineglass in his upper-left claw, staring as if it should have been obvious to her.
It was, but she wanted him to say it.
“What you did, on the other ship. I don’t know what to call that kind of psi-craft, never seen anything like it.”
Moira smiled and flashed her fangs, the cobra reclining against the back of her couch, twirling her vaporizer pen in her fingers.
She hadn’t expected the scouting ship and when she was awoken by her beloved to handle it she had not even the time to paint herself in her regalia before she donned her veils and made for the bridge, compensating for her exhaustion with the sweet synthetic pharmacopoeia inside of her pen.
She had found the vampire there before her, watching in silence through the windows, his attention fixed away from her entrance.
Her beloved had prepared their prey for her, its teeth pierced through the scouting cruiser’s etheric carapace to give the butcher access to the meat beneath.
Feasts-Upon-The-Stars had fixed its gaze upon her and caved space inwards around her with a whisper of its oceanic will.
The subspace channel swallowed her from her bridge and disgorged her out into theirs, a scene of chaos, mutant bodies fused into neural control harnesses, a captain three meters tall and composed from the stolen flesh of a dozen exodites barking orders in the gutter-tongue of the Pact.
All their eyes were on her in an instant, but it was insufficient to save them as her fingers met the cheek of some lesser officer at his station.
The cruelest expression of her psychic science, inspired by the death magic of the United and her research as a Watcher into the psionic weapons of the late empires of the High Exodites.
A killing wave, the propagation of negation using its very victims as repeaters for the resonant instruction, a complex theorem to deliver a simple command, flesh-to-flesh, soul-to-soul, cell-to-cell.
Cease.
Malachite-green, scented like menthol and tasting like ash, it flowed down from the ordered throne of her conciousness into her caressing palm, then leapt from her scales into his fur-shorn skin.
❤1
A spasm in his chest, down his spine, pupils gone wide and then narrow, a final burbling gasp and a stiffening seizure that gave way momentarily to a slackened slump, a cascade failure of biology that rang outwards from his collapsing soul into and along the living ship itself.
It was trivial to maintain once it began, self-sustained on the energies of those it swept up, only requiring her to will that it continued and a source of living matter to consume.
All around her, repeating in every soldier and system with a neurological framework complex enough to receive and repeat the instruction, a cascading crescendo of cascade failures.
Moira smiled beneath her veils as the spasm wracked through the vessel entire, wave after wave of deadly resonance bathed through her sovereign tissues, bracing-cold and bitter until at last the waves ebbed and she relinquished her command over the silence that remained in her wake.
It was over almost as soon as it began, and with a whisper to her beloved, she was back in its embrace, and it had a fresh kill to consume.
Moira could feel it savoring the new materials still, as she reclined upon her own coiled lower body and drew in a deep hit from the vaporizer, letting the chem-sweetened cloud billow out with her voice, satisfaction dripping from each syllable.
“Provided sufficient materials and insufficient resistance, I could take it as far as I should like. It’s optimized for killing living ships, but I see no reason why I couldn’t silence a conventional warship with some trivial experimentation. Once I have that in hand, the only limit is the sterility of open void. “
Howl didn’t blink, she wasn’t even wholly certain that he could, but he sat upright and in stunned silence, stock-still save for the twitch of an antennae.
Moira spread fine venison confit from a cheerfully labeled glass pot on a thick slice of fresh bread, still warm from the salvaged ovens of the galley-deck below, the nameless bodies of its staff in the peripheral awareness of her Weave as they cleaned the dishes used in preparing the morning meal.
She bit into it, rich fat and iron-heavy red meat rendered into a thick paste on the slightly-sour bread, the unmistakable scent of real game raised in real woodlands, rarer than any precious metal or glittering stone in the depths of the Black and in these days of nuclear alchemy, a luxury intended only for the uppermost caste of the Sol United.
“You really must try this, Imperial. “
Howl shook his head, unwilling, it seemed, to let the topic rest and enjoy the breakfast she had provided for herself and her guests, something between awe and fear in his softly buzzing voice.
“You could kill a planet.”
Moira rolled her shoulders in a shrug and took a sip from her wine before returning to the fray, a sweet, fizzy white plum vintage that was perhaps too heavy for breakfast, on examination.
“Plenty of things can kill planets. Your Empress is infamous for having done it with discarded warship reactors, the Sol United have their spell-engines and plagues, almost all of Pact war doctrine is principally concerned with the deaths of worlds. Even among the Invicta, every major House has a few world-killers stashed away in our darkest vaults for a rainy day. What difference does it make that I could theoretically do so?”
The wasp sat his glass down on the table and leaned forward, his lower pair of arms crossed over one another while the elbows of his upper pair rested on the table, chitinous claws steepled together as he looked Moira in the eyes.
“All of those methods require preparation, infrastructure, staging. They can be interrupted or intercepted, defended against. Whatever that was, it seemed like all it needed was you, and I can think of maybe seven or eight planets in all of realspace that can reliably prevent a single determined person from gaining access to their surface.”
The serpent gestured dismissively with her wineglass, beginning to grow annoyed with the vampire for spoiling the meal.
“And what need would I have to kill a planet? Be reasonable.”
It was trivial to maintain once it began, self-sustained on the energies of those it swept up, only requiring her to will that it continued and a source of living matter to consume.
All around her, repeating in every soldier and system with a neurological framework complex enough to receive and repeat the instruction, a cascading crescendo of cascade failures.
Moira smiled beneath her veils as the spasm wracked through the vessel entire, wave after wave of deadly resonance bathed through her sovereign tissues, bracing-cold and bitter until at last the waves ebbed and she relinquished her command over the silence that remained in her wake.
It was over almost as soon as it began, and with a whisper to her beloved, she was back in its embrace, and it had a fresh kill to consume.
Moira could feel it savoring the new materials still, as she reclined upon her own coiled lower body and drew in a deep hit from the vaporizer, letting the chem-sweetened cloud billow out with her voice, satisfaction dripping from each syllable.
“Provided sufficient materials and insufficient resistance, I could take it as far as I should like. It’s optimized for killing living ships, but I see no reason why I couldn’t silence a conventional warship with some trivial experimentation. Once I have that in hand, the only limit is the sterility of open void. “
Howl didn’t blink, she wasn’t even wholly certain that he could, but he sat upright and in stunned silence, stock-still save for the twitch of an antennae.
Moira spread fine venison confit from a cheerfully labeled glass pot on a thick slice of fresh bread, still warm from the salvaged ovens of the galley-deck below, the nameless bodies of its staff in the peripheral awareness of her Weave as they cleaned the dishes used in preparing the morning meal.
She bit into it, rich fat and iron-heavy red meat rendered into a thick paste on the slightly-sour bread, the unmistakable scent of real game raised in real woodlands, rarer than any precious metal or glittering stone in the depths of the Black and in these days of nuclear alchemy, a luxury intended only for the uppermost caste of the Sol United.
“You really must try this, Imperial. “
Howl shook his head, unwilling, it seemed, to let the topic rest and enjoy the breakfast she had provided for herself and her guests, something between awe and fear in his softly buzzing voice.
“You could kill a planet.”
Moira rolled her shoulders in a shrug and took a sip from her wine before returning to the fray, a sweet, fizzy white plum vintage that was perhaps too heavy for breakfast, on examination.
“Plenty of things can kill planets. Your Empress is infamous for having done it with discarded warship reactors, the Sol United have their spell-engines and plagues, almost all of Pact war doctrine is principally concerned with the deaths of worlds. Even among the Invicta, every major House has a few world-killers stashed away in our darkest vaults for a rainy day. What difference does it make that I could theoretically do so?”
The wasp sat his glass down on the table and leaned forward, his lower pair of arms crossed over one another while the elbows of his upper pair rested on the table, chitinous claws steepled together as he looked Moira in the eyes.
“All of those methods require preparation, infrastructure, staging. They can be interrupted or intercepted, defended against. Whatever that was, it seemed like all it needed was you, and I can think of maybe seven or eight planets in all of realspace that can reliably prevent a single determined person from gaining access to their surface.”
The serpent gestured dismissively with her wineglass, beginning to grow annoyed with the vampire for spoiling the meal.
“And what need would I have to kill a planet? Be reasonable.”
“What of your disciples among the Invicta?”
Moira couldn’t help but laugh at that, at the sheer absurdity of the idea that she would give away her last and best secret to the vultures whom she allowed to imitate her art.
“I know for certain the Grey Witches cannot, even if necessity demanded it of them.”
“And how is that?”
It was the cobra’s turn to lean over the table and adopt the serious tone of the wasp, her gilt eyes boring into the dark compound rubies of the man across the table.
“What I did on that ship is something that exactly three extant intelligent beings are aware of and of that number you are, presently, the third.”
“Is that meant to be a threat?”
“It is a simple statement of facts, just as it is a simple fact that it would be best for everyone if the three of us kept that secret between ourselves.”
“You’re not at all worried about me knowing it?”
Moira let herself relax once more, trading her wine glass for a silver-inlaid cup of fresh coffee, rich, lightly perfumed with cinnamon and anise and diluted to a drinkable temperature by reconstituted rice-milk.
She took a long sip, and followed it with another bite of her now-cold bread and venison.
“I am not given to believe that a remedial pyrokinetic could usefully describe, let alone reproduce, my technique from an observation made almost a kilometer distant. So no, Imperial, you knowing of it does not worry me, provided you keep the secret.”
Howl looked momentarily as if he wanted to press the point, but seemed to think better of it and moved to retrieve his own cup from the silent attendant at the table, before he paused yet again.
“What of Nyko?”
“Belladonna slept through it, and I have no intention of informing her when she wakes.”
The wasp nodded, and at last settled into his own morning repast, piling honeyed quince and thinly-sliced smoked hock onto his own slices of bread.
Moira alternated between the various delicacies before her and sips of coffee and wine, interspersed occasionally with another maintenance-hit from her pen, until Howl spoke up again, his gaze cast somewhere over the serpent’s shoulder.
“I worry for her.”
Moira swirled the stilling wine in her glass, watching Howl over the rim of the flute from her reclined position.
“That so?”
“I can’t say I’ve ever seen her at her best, but hell, she doesn’t look much better than she did after Erissian, and she was damn near dead after Mercury got his hand on her.”
Moira cast her mind through and across her False Weave momentarily, towards the side chamber in which Nyko had made her nest with spare bedding and ritual incense from Moira’s own supplies, protective sigils painted on bare osteolith and makeshift talisman hung from tar-stuck wires around the slumbering form of the grey-scaled, rust-maned occultist.
She was clad in the serpent’s secondhand gossamer wraps, curled around her black blade, bundled up in the burgundy leather of the duster she’d worn for nearly three decades, sleeping as she often did in the days after a wayfinding ritual.
“The Director’s been through worse in the time I’ve known her. What would worry me, if I were to allow myself worry, is what happens when we catch up to her prey.”
Howl buzzed softly and lowered both his antennae and his voice.
“I half-expect that Six’ll get to him first, save us all the trouble.”
“Well, if she doesn’t, we’re left assaulting a demigod’s royal fleet with a single battleship and whatever plan Belladonna has devised.”
“Why’d you agree to this, if you’re that uncertain?”
The necropsioness drew in a deep breath and sighed.
“I swore an oath, once upon a time, and it is among the few I still care about keeping.”
“With the Watchers, I take it?”
“The very same, Imperial. That does make a certain favor I want to ask of you a little awkward, given the history between your nation and both of the organizations to which I owe my loyalty.”
The vampire looked up at her and tilted his head.
“Hm?”
Moira took her time choosing her words, watching the subtle expressions of the Wasp as she spoke.
Moira couldn’t help but laugh at that, at the sheer absurdity of the idea that she would give away her last and best secret to the vultures whom she allowed to imitate her art.
“I know for certain the Grey Witches cannot, even if necessity demanded it of them.”
“And how is that?”
It was the cobra’s turn to lean over the table and adopt the serious tone of the wasp, her gilt eyes boring into the dark compound rubies of the man across the table.
“What I did on that ship is something that exactly three extant intelligent beings are aware of and of that number you are, presently, the third.”
“Is that meant to be a threat?”
“It is a simple statement of facts, just as it is a simple fact that it would be best for everyone if the three of us kept that secret between ourselves.”
“You’re not at all worried about me knowing it?”
Moira let herself relax once more, trading her wine glass for a silver-inlaid cup of fresh coffee, rich, lightly perfumed with cinnamon and anise and diluted to a drinkable temperature by reconstituted rice-milk.
She took a long sip, and followed it with another bite of her now-cold bread and venison.
“I am not given to believe that a remedial pyrokinetic could usefully describe, let alone reproduce, my technique from an observation made almost a kilometer distant. So no, Imperial, you knowing of it does not worry me, provided you keep the secret.”
Howl looked momentarily as if he wanted to press the point, but seemed to think better of it and moved to retrieve his own cup from the silent attendant at the table, before he paused yet again.
“What of Nyko?”
“Belladonna slept through it, and I have no intention of informing her when she wakes.”
The wasp nodded, and at last settled into his own morning repast, piling honeyed quince and thinly-sliced smoked hock onto his own slices of bread.
Moira alternated between the various delicacies before her and sips of coffee and wine, interspersed occasionally with another maintenance-hit from her pen, until Howl spoke up again, his gaze cast somewhere over the serpent’s shoulder.
“I worry for her.”
Moira swirled the stilling wine in her glass, watching Howl over the rim of the flute from her reclined position.
“That so?”
“I can’t say I’ve ever seen her at her best, but hell, she doesn’t look much better than she did after Erissian, and she was damn near dead after Mercury got his hand on her.”
Moira cast her mind through and across her False Weave momentarily, towards the side chamber in which Nyko had made her nest with spare bedding and ritual incense from Moira’s own supplies, protective sigils painted on bare osteolith and makeshift talisman hung from tar-stuck wires around the slumbering form of the grey-scaled, rust-maned occultist.
She was clad in the serpent’s secondhand gossamer wraps, curled around her black blade, bundled up in the burgundy leather of the duster she’d worn for nearly three decades, sleeping as she often did in the days after a wayfinding ritual.
“The Director’s been through worse in the time I’ve known her. What would worry me, if I were to allow myself worry, is what happens when we catch up to her prey.”
Howl buzzed softly and lowered both his antennae and his voice.
“I half-expect that Six’ll get to him first, save us all the trouble.”
“Well, if she doesn’t, we’re left assaulting a demigod’s royal fleet with a single battleship and whatever plan Belladonna has devised.”
“Why’d you agree to this, if you’re that uncertain?”
The necropsioness drew in a deep breath and sighed.
“I swore an oath, once upon a time, and it is among the few I still care about keeping.”
“With the Watchers, I take it?”
“The very same, Imperial. That does make a certain favor I want to ask of you a little awkward, given the history between your nation and both of the organizations to which I owe my loyalty.”
The vampire looked up at her and tilted his head.
“Hm?”
Moira took her time choosing her words, watching the subtle expressions of the Wasp as she spoke.
“I know you must have some way of getting in contact with the Throne, even out here. I expect you’ll have been reporting back already, one way or another.”
Howl, to her slight surprise, simply nodded, gesturing with his upper-right claw for her to continue.
“I want you to start relaying coordinates to them, if you can. If we fail, or it looks like things aren’t going the Director’s way with whatever plan she has in mind, I want to know that there will be an Imperial fleet to clean up the mess. “
The Thronewatch agent’s next nod was slower, more shallow, and with conspiratorial glance, he lowered his voice and leaned over the table to look the Watcher of the Veil in the eyes.
“..I might have some fresh intelligence to share with you, if you can keep another secret between the three of us.”
Howl, to her slight surprise, simply nodded, gesturing with his upper-right claw for her to continue.
“I want you to start relaying coordinates to them, if you can. If we fail, or it looks like things aren’t going the Director’s way with whatever plan she has in mind, I want to know that there will be an Imperial fleet to clean up the mess. “
The Thronewatch agent’s next nod was slower, more shallow, and with conspiratorial glance, he lowered his voice and leaned over the table to look the Watcher of the Veil in the eyes.
“..I might have some fresh intelligence to share with you, if you can keep another secret between the three of us.”