“Like moths to a flame,” I muttered as I took the bridge, joined by most of the crew that I had just been meeting with. Only Varnus and his techpriests did not follow, instead doing as I had ordered and seeing to the sanctification and dissemination of the arms we intended to give to our allies. “These petulant gnats are far from our focus,” I growled, grimacing out the viewport at the end of the command bridge. The Heralds of the Cataclysm had returned, the Thousand Sons Warband we had encountered earlier. It felt like I had been here before, seeing a larger enemy fleet appear after their inferior attack was quashed some days prior. First the Shatter Corps, now another Warband of another Legion. If I needed to crush them to get to Ouranos, Throne Almighty, I would.
“Where are all of you coming from?” Mirena wondered, making note of the fact that a number of us had arrived together from our clandestine meeting. “And should I get out there, do you think, Cal?”
“Yes, I think it best you do,” I admitted before confirming to Captain Vakian to scramble our fighters. “Never any shame in spending a day killing heretics, regardless of their shape or size,” I grumbled to myself, crossing my arms in front of me after Mirena had left. I then looked back to Vakian. “Do we have a channel open with the Dawnshadow or its supporting fleet?” I asked.
“We do, Inquisitor. Linking it to your vox now. Use it as needed,” Vakian reported. I thanked him, but returned to scowling toward the blue warpfire beyond my vessel. The Dawnshadow was not alone when we had found it, but its accompanying fleet was not as large as it had been during the Battles of Quintus fought against the Shatter Corps. Just as well; even now, the Thousand Sons forces seemed more like a heavy skirmish force meant to match mine than one intended for a prolonged conflict, as Mortoc had fielded. Alas, the raw military might of the Iron Warriors was easily definable at a glance; the same could not be said of the Thousand Sons, whose strength came from the Warp, and was therefore the very definition of unpredictable.
“And what of your infantry, Cal?” Silas asked from some distance behind me. I glanced to him and allowed myself a small smirk as well, though it was short-lived. ‘Your infantry,’ as though that was all they were to me. But yes, Silas was referring to himself and my Scions, as well as the Sisters under my command—and possibly also the Red Hunters. None of them had much need to join me on the bridge as they had, but Silas knew from the initial battle reports with this enemy that this foe was not prone to using Boarding Torpedoes as the Shatter Corps had been. How, then, could such ‘infantry’ be of use in a naval battle?
“Spread through the ship as you would regardless; we may not be boarded, but this foe may violate our security of self all the same with their vile witchcraft. Ensure the halls of this vessel remain firmly under our control and do not descend into rebellion,” I commanded, and with a nod, the Scions and Sisters—including Lucene—departed from the bridge. The Red Hunters did not, instead remaining as monolithic slabs of crimson at the rear end of the room. I eyed them for a moment, and believe Santinus Astal looked me over as well, but I could not discern whether he was looking for orders from me. It was not my place to tell him or his brothers what to do; I believe I reminded him of that when I looked away, letting them decide their own duty.
With much of my forces disseminated throughout the ship, only the pair of my fellow Inquisitors remained, we three doomed to the banalities of oversight. I think the role of leadership irked Bliss almost as much as it bothered me; we were both crafted for combat and action, but, in being Inquisitors, were also too important to waste on such a triviality in the grand scheme of things. Zha, however, for all her formidable combative ability, never seemed to mind any role she ever found herself in. I envied her that, as I once had her smiles of old.
While I crossed my arms in contempt of the Thousand Sons before us, and while Bliss raised her left arm to rub my backside encouragingly, Zha asked a pointed question of me. “Does Cronos have an opinion of them?”
“Of who? Those Thousand Sons?” I asked, and she nodded. “I do not care much to learn the opinions of the daemonic, and I would recommend you not concern yourself with them either.”
“I understand your disapproval,” Zha admitted with a shrug. “But we have already observed the infighting of Chaos. Mortoc, for instance, had chained a World Eater to torment, as you observed and reported,” she suggested. “If Cronos knows of these foes and holds them in contempt as we do, it may be able to provide us with some insight against them.”
“A very radical thought,” Bliss cautioned her, to which I nodded in agreement, even though I understood where Zha was coming from. The enemy of my enemy may not have been my friend, but they could still be useful. And I had already ‘used’ Cronos once before, in learning the name of another daemon to better banish it and save Mirena.
“Even if Cronos does oppose these `Sons, any insight or recommendation it could give us should be acted on only with the utmost caution,” I asserted. “I imagine the daemon would much prefer to see us all destroyed in totality, rather than only one or the other.”
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You could just ask, Cronos suggested.
I do not wish to, I thought back.
You are much too fun to waste on them, if it is any consolation, Blackgar.
With a heavy sigh, I shook my head, and then revealed, “It seems likely Cronos does not hold these Thousand Sons in high regard. But I will not entertain any ‘insights’ it might be inclined to offer.”
Pity.
Understanding that I had just been in contact with the daemon, Bliss took to rubbing my back more firmly. Her grasp felt not unlike Lucene’s; both were capable of keeping me grounded in reality, which I appreciated. At around this time, our aggressors had entered into our optimal firing range, and we theirs, and so our mutual hatred of one another was marked with the shaking of our vessel from the firing and receiving of lance batteries, ours a seething red and theirs a profane blue. One could only imagine what blasphemous changes they had made to their once-holy weaponry as to diffract the color so, but one would be wiser not to think of it much at all.
Instead, my thoughts drifted to the nature of the conversation I had just had with my fellow Inquisitors, bringing me to admit to Zha, “You worry me.” She looked to me, mildly pained by my comment, but maintained her composure. She said nothing aloud in response, but her gaze said enough; she wanted an explanation. I provided further: “You come from a world once doomed to be a daemon world, were it not for my intervention. I could overlook that, as you were competently cleared for Inquisitorial conduct in the months after. But you expressed a weakness in loss after Hestia Majoris, as well as a rage on Canicus, and further a curiosity on Arctoros 5, within Absalom’s accursed Warp-fortress. These are things the daemonic can prey upon. And now I ask so much of you. Am I wrong to worry?”
“No, I suppose your fears are not unfounded,” she said with a shrug, and then looked forward again, back toward the vibrant blue flames of the Thousand Sons. “And indeed, you may be right to worry. But you charged me with defeating and destroying Cronos. I cannot accomplish such a task with my hands tied. If you want me to outsmart the daemon, I will need to understand it and its thinking. And yes, that comprehension may corrupt, ruin, and kill me. That is a sacrifice I am willing to make to kill Cronos. Are you?”
“I think, as many do, that I am already corrupted, and destined for ruination and death,” I answered.
“But are you willing to sacrifice me?” she asked again, clarifying her initial question.
I looked to her, to the now-centuries-old Inquisitor that had once been my young, amicable savant, and found that I had no answer. And that was an answer enough. She knew it, and winced when I looked away. I wanted her to be too valuable to waste on Cronos, but I knew better, because Lord van der Skar had once forced me to know and be better. ‘No single man or woman is worth the Imperium.’ If her life, and mine, were the cost to defeat Cronos, then that cost must be paid, reluctant though I was to pay it.
I thought, then, to ask of Cronos for the information she sought. If I was already forfeit, then I may as well give her a fighting chance to best the daemon, even if forcing her to begin her own test of will; a test I was failing. But, perhaps for the best, I never got the chance to even think such thoughts to Cronos. Instead, all attention and focus was given to a new, and very large, Warp translation tunnel that awed into reality. It was not like the vast, unblinking eyes of the Thousand Sons, and instead appeared as though the blackness of space folded in upon itself to some deeper, emptier, more horrific darkness, and for its sheer scale in size, that horror was immense indeed. This all occurred far beyond the enemy fleet of the Thousand Sons, and despite the distance involved, still made the many vessels of the traitor warband seem insignificantly small in comparison.
I looked upon the self-collapsing horror beyond for a few moments, enraptured in awful wonder, before understanding what was about to emerge from this Warp Translation. I had already seen it once before, though I could not then place a name to the vessel I expected to witness a second time. And sure enough, when empty space had had enough of its own destruction, it reasserted itself into fractured reality, fragments of nothingness coalescing to create a terrible something, more specifically a Space Hulk, the very one that I had seen before, in the Warp.
Before anyone, in my fleet or within the traitor warband, could do anything to respond to the Space Hulk’s sudden forcible-entry upon reality, the titanic vessel opened fire, and in seconds obliterated the entirety of the Thousand Sons fleet. An immediate show of total supremacy, intending to—and succeeding at least for me—to intimidate any Inquisitorial survivors into submission. As a dozen traitor warships erupted into black and blue flame and careened aimlessly against the dark space beyond, Captain Vakian had the strength to report to me, “A-Anomalous vessel identified as the Space Hulk Finality, Inquisitor; it’s hailing us!”
“Put him through,” I murmured, and when nothing followed, realized that my initial reply was given far too quietly. “Put him through,” I repeated, louder that time, that Captain Vakian could hear me.
“Him?” Vakian wondered aloud, but obliged, and accepted the hailing call of The Finality.
“Ouranos,” I answered, as much to reply to Vakian as to greet our new, and perhaps final, opponent that loomed before us.
“Inquisitor Blackgar,” he replied, an audible smile revealed in the speaking of my name despite lips unseen. “It has been some time.”
“We just spoke moments ago,” I suggested.
“Ah, is that so? Well, moments for you were weeks for me. The Warp is a fickle thing, as you now know firsthand. In any case, it is time you and I speak face to face. Care to hop aboard? If you wish to make things simple, leave those forces of your behind and just bring your Sister of exceptional height,” he suggested, referring to Lucene, who he had long professed to be the end of.
“You are undeserving of such simplicity,” I shook my head, seething.
“Good. I was hoping for that. It’ll be war, then. War is such fun; let it be war. Shall we discuss rules of engagement?”