There may have been ample seating available in the voxstation, as chairs matched a semicircle of terminals of various vox channels, but Mirena still chose the side of my lap for her seating arrangement. At first, in fairness, she had chosen the arm of the chair I had taken, but she slid sideways onto me after I tossed my augmetic around her waist. Perhaps that was for the best; the heating systems of Firestation Ariadne were struggling in the absence of the techpriests to sanctify and maintain them. The preservation of body heat was slowly but surely becoming more valuable.
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Mirena asked after having otherwise sat in silence as I poked and prodded at a voxterminal without much progress.
“Some idea,” I shrugged. “Not much of one.”
“Does the solves-everything-by-himself Inquisitor want a hand?” she offered.
I raised one arm forward, inviting Mirena to take a stab at establishing a vox connection. As she leaned in, I asked, “Do I solve everything by myself?”
“Well you got us through The Atticus and killed that fallen angel all by yourself. I wasn’t of much use in either capacity,” Mirena suggested.
“And yet you pulled me from the wreckage and stitched me back together,” I said, taking to giving her a backrub. “You’re also responsible for making our time here far more pleasant than I would manage alone.”
“Ever the flirt with you,” Mirena noted with a quiet chuckle. “Dawnshadow? Coldbreed bridge? Or fleetwide?” she asked, querying my desired point of contact.
I thought about it for a moment. Before answering, I knew the Dawnshadow was likely out. It should have been tugged away from Quintus shortly after Mirena and I departed for our vacation. I knew their intended destination for our Inquisitorial Starfort, but Quintus itself had been compromised after being besieged by the Iron Warriors. So that was out. But my fleet had instructions to remain here. In theory, our friends should have been close. The only real question, then, was whether there could have been anyone else listening for a voxcast in the system. And given the events of the last 48 hours, I think anything may have been possible. “Coldbreed,” I answered after sifting through my thoughts. “Just the bridge of Coldbreed.”
“Gotcha. Communication will be one-way, so you’re aware. This terminal doesn’t seem to have a means of receiving replies, and frankly I am not sure which of the others would,” she warned me. I nodded. That would have to do. “Out of curiosity, did you take Hans in because of his proficiency with vox equipment?”
“It wasn’t the only reason,” I replied, grinning. “Hans Okustin was an excellent find in many respects all those years ago. But yes, I have never found myself very capable when it comes to handling most technologies which we survive by. So it helped his chances with me, certainly. I valued his technical affinity then, as I value yours and Varnus’s now. Well, at this moment, certainly yours more than anyone else’s.”
“Well, because I’m so valuable to you,” Mirena started, then sat up and leaned back against my front, turning to face me. “You’re set up and ready to broadcast.” She then leaned in and pecked my lips. “Let’s get out of here,” she smiled afterward.
“Stole the words from my mouth,” I muttered, grinning, and then pulled our chair closer to the voxstation. “Which do I press?” Mirena pointed to a black, padded button on the central console of the terminal. “Alright. Here goes,” I nodded, then cleared my throat and leaned in nearer to the vox input. “Command-1 to Cold, Command-1 to Cold, we are grounded and requesting aid and exfil. Located at Fire Ariadne. We cannot receive instruction. I repeat, we are grounded at Fire Ariadne and requesting aid and exfil, over.”
“And be quick about it, damnit,” Mirena chimed in, ignoring any pretense of talking in code, and not for lack of knowhow. I couldn’t help but grin, and released the vox for the time being as I sat back, pulling Mirena back with me. She threw an arm over my shoulders and snuggled up against me, then asked, “Now what?”
“Now we wait. I plan to stay here and repeat that message—my part of it, anyway—every few minutes. Actually, I’ll probably need some water eventually,” I said, raising my eyebrows in realization.
Mirena giggled to herself, then leaned in near to me and whispered, “Here.” She then put her lips to mine and continued from where we had left off earlier in the morning, climbing over me and holding me tight. Her spontaneous compulsion lasted only a few minutes, which was the only unusual part of our sudden kissing, after which Mirena lifted wetted, drooling lips over mine before licking her mouth over. “Better?”
“Not worse,” I admitted.
She giggled again, patted my chest twice, then rose off me and stood to her feet, stretching her arms over her head. “I’ll find you something to drink. Been meaning to stretch my legs anyway.”
“Be careful,” I warned her prematurely, after which she moved over to the table of vox terminals near us and slid her signature laspistol into her grasp, which she then waved around to demonstrate she had it in mind. “I’ll keep an eye on you.”
“I’m sure you will,” she winked. “I’m quite certain you find it difficult to move me out of your gaze, as most would.”
“You’re starting to sound like Carmichael,” I warned her.
“I’m not sure that’s a bad thing,” she shrugged, then walked back to me and patted my shoulder before kissing the crown of my head. “Back soon, Cal.”
***
After her run-in with Rannek, Mirena was dreading returning to the canteen, even though the Iron Warrior was without his head and the lights were now operational. But it was her dread that moved her so; a special, invaluable quality of my Agent, she possessed the psychological need to face her fears head-on, cutting them off at the source. I wondered if that was something taught by the Navis Imperialis, or if it was just a unique quality of Mirena. I suspected the latter; I had known all too many cowards in the Navy.
When she arrived at the canteen, the first thing Mirena did was affirm what she already knew: that Rannek’s corpse was lying in the far corner of the room, motionless, as ever it had been since the day prior. She nodded to herself, heaved a deep sigh in and out, and then released a shiver. Was it her fear that chilled her, then, or the room temperature? She suspected the latter, noting the frost buildup upon Rannek’s body and elsewhere in the room. Quintus was too damnably cold for her liking.
Mirena moved across the canteen to the serving counter, behind which she filled a foam cup of water for me, then decided that she herself wanted something with a bit more oomph and, more importantly, warmth for herself. Coffee was the first thing that came to mind, and while she was certain that Firestation Ariadne never had any amazing blend, she did manage to find some instabrew powder left behind in the evacuation. Her eyes flicked to Rannek. Still headless, still motionless, still across the room. She shivered again, then began her brew.
You’d think insta-something would brew a little quicker, she thought to herself a few moments later, but soon enough she found herself in possession of a warm cup of coffee which she was sure tasted absolutely mediocre. Its warmth instilled her with improved confidence, yet still she found herself shivering as she left, laspistol holstered along her waist as she carried the two drinks out of the canteen. It was from that confidence that she chose not to glance to Rannek another time on her way, or so she thought.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
But in reality, she did not look at Rannek’s corpse because it was not there.
Having been staring down at the coffee and water in her hands, the first thing Mirena noticed upon exiting into the halls of Firestation Ariadne was her own breath. It was cold enough, suddenly, to be visible amidst the steam given off by the coffee in her grasp. As the lights flickered through the hall, Mirena’s periphery then caught a shadow to her right. She glanced to see what it was, and dropped both drinks to her feet at once. That any of the hot coffee splashed onto her feet probably saved her life, as the sudden burning thereof gave her the motivation to kick her legs up and away from the splash of coffee. She stumbled back from the spill, then broke into a sprint back into the canteen, behind the counter, through a door to the pantry at the back.
Rannek, headless though he was, crashed through the far wall of the canteen shoulder-first, and barreled toward her. The serving counter was no obstacle for the body of a Space Marine, especially not one twitching and leaking from the grasp of the Warp. As Rannek crashed through the back wall of the canteen into the pantry, Mirena dove back into the hallway through a rear exit of the room, moving horizontally to Rannek’s momentum. She screamed for help, for me, for the Throne. The only answer she received was the low, thudding footsteps that barreled toward her before slamming through another wall into the halls behind her, plascrete flying everywhere while sparks flung through the debris of failing lightwork.
Twenty minutes. It had taken her twenty minutes to reach the canteen from the voxstation, at a leisurely pace. Damn our hubris, the thought flicked through her head. Why was Imperial architecture so massive? Bigger was not better when you were running for your life. Could she take those twenty down to ten? Five, in a full-sprint? She did not know. Could she even last that long, get that far from an Astartes on her tail? From the daemon within the Astartes? She did not know. But she had to try. She slid around any corner she could, letting Rannek’s body crash through walls of plascrete due the difference in agility between them. She did not imagine it would help her lose her tail, but it would have sufficed for buying her time, crucial and limited as it was.
Ice.
There was ice in the halls now. Was it always there? It must have been; ice did not just appear so suddenly, right? Unless daemonic or psychic presence could chill the areas around—Throne! she thought to herself. How could I be so stupid? Quintus was cold, but not flash-freeze levels of cold. None of that mattered, not as one of her feet slid ahead of the other from an already-uneasy pace, unbalanced for its briskness. As Mirena tumbled through the air, the last thought to flick through her head was not of her self-described failings, not of me, and not of the Throne. It was of Castecael. The goodbyes they had shared before our vacation were, in that moment, not properly sufficient for Mirena.
And then she hit the ground, hard, and tumbled head over heel as her haste slowed to a standstill. Body aching from the fall, she nevertheless shot a hand to her waist and drew her laspistol, firing wild at the headless foe that had pursued her. None of her shots connected, all going wide from panic and pain. Not until the shadow of the beast fell over her did she finally manage to strike the Iron Warrior’s armor, creating a small, harmless singe that faded away just as soon as it appeared.
Guess that’s that, then, she thought to herself, closing her eyes.
***
+What is its name?+ I demanded, running through the halls, Drepane already primed.
Its name? Are you asking for my help, Blackgar?
+I’m asking you for a name, cretin.+
And yet you won’t even use mine. I thought we were closer than that. What makes you think I even know its name?
+I assume all you foul spawn know each other,+ I answered, darting around a corner and pressing a hand to the far wall around it in the process. I may not have crashed through that wall as Rannek would have, but I was far from as lithe as Mirena could be.
How very reductive. If I give you its name—assuming I know it—what do I get in return?
+I’m not bartering with you, daemon.+
You better start if you want her to live.
That’s how it starts. A little glimpse, a tiny favor. That is how Chaos takes its hold on the weak of will. Give it an inch, and it will claim the galaxy. No, the predations of the beyond demanded to be fought at every turn, for every last bit of land in all the cosmos. “No single man or woman is worth the Imperium,” van der Skar’s words echoed in my mind. Mirena was not worth the Imperium. She wasn’t. I knew that. So why did I still want the name of the daemon that was pursuing her? It was the doubt, I recognized even then. The doubt that the price of a name could be so great, that it could grant Cronos some power or greater hold over me. Mirena’s life? For what? What was her life worth, then, if not even a name?
+What do you want?+ I asked. At the time, I had thought I just wanted to hear Cronos out. Perhaps something could be gleamed from the expression of its desires that I did not already know, something I could use against it.
Lasfire in the distance. Mirena was making a last-ditch effort against her assailant. Even against an unpossessed Iron Warrior, a laspistol would not have saved her. And against a daemon in an Iron suit of cybernetic flesh, she may as well have been unarmed.
You already know what I want. I want you to live, Cronos answered me. Indeed, not much to gleam from that. In the not-so-distant future, you may find yourself making an impossible choice. I want you to live. To choose life. I will not be alone in this desire; there will be others who mistake life for being less harmless than death.
+Harmless to who, me or you?+ I asked, gritting my teeth as I rounded one final corner, red light flaring across my view.
Will we live to find out? it asked in reply, and added a chuckle of its own to boot.
+The name,+ I demanded, Drepane whirring, seething, thirsting for the taste of mankind’s enemies from my augmetic grasp. Rannek was in view, standing over Mirena. She had slipped, fallen. As I had in my duel with Valeran Mortoc, I focused my mind on myself, enhancing my physical abilities to reach them faster. I also tugged Mirena a bit closer to me, though more to pull her out from Rannek’s immediate clutches.
Its name, Cronos started, then made a noise that to me sounded like a low growling, but I believe it was just a musing. Before I even had the name, Drepane sunk into Rannek’s torso, front-to-back this time. Dim-yellow pus oozed out of the wound I had cut in his chest yesterday, and the cauterized gash across his neck that had severed his head from his shoulders had opened, congealing anew as the daemon writhed inside the Astartes’s body. Is Gangrustrol, a vile, putrid thing that I would not mind seeing eradicated.
“Oh Merciful Emperor, drive out the presence of the Enemy! Cast it out! Burn, Gangrustrol, in my rage and be incinerated in the Light of the God-Emperor!” I roared, thrusting my birth-hand forward and unleashing the sum total of my remaining psykana upon the daemon. It was a greater show of force from me than ever I had managed before, and Rannek’s body—cybernetics included—evaporated on the spot. The halls beyond exploded outward, too, crushed under a wall of psychic force. A translucent, green, pestilent thing remained, thrust away from me by a few yards. In the Low Gothic, one may think of it as a spirit. But I had more choice words for it, as suddenly exhausted as I may have been. “I am Callant Blackgar, abomination, and you are nothing before my wrath, and we are nothing before the Throne. Thy kind, Diabolus, finds no purchase here, and I declare thee Excommunicate! Imperator Vult!”
“The Throne you swear to, mortal,” Gangrustrol hissed, attempting to remain corporeal before me. It was failing. “Is weaker than you think, especially now.”
“Were it so, I would not have the strength to end you, daemon, and yet,” I started, and then thrust Drepane forward this time, stabbing at the ghastly daemon ahead. The blade made no connection, but that was not my intent; another wave of my psykana screamed forth from Drepane’s tip, and further eviscerated the scene ahead in psychic lightning, even if it replaced my view with dancing lights. I remained standing only long enough to see Gangrustrol vaporized before my eye, after which I fell to my knees, dropped Drepane, and then collapsed forward onto my hands.
I was probably about to fall into a slump on the ground, but was pulled to my feet—only barely—in Mirena’s grasp, after which she fell onto me and began to cry over my shoulder once more. I did not have the strength to hold her, but she seemed able enough to keep us upright. I rested myself against her, dazed and weary, and had merely the strength with which to gently hug her which she cried out her fears over me. Rannek, and his vile possessor, were no more.
Alas, this Inquisitor did not solve it all by himself.