“Blue Squadron, report,” Zha’s voice crackled over vox. Hope had not left her tone, though desperation had begun to enter it.

“1st Blue Squadron, negative signs of life.”

“2nd Blue Squadron, negative signs of life.”

“3rd Blue Squadron, negative signs of life.”

“Gold Squadron, report,” Zha moved on, though the aftermath of a sigh was readily apparent in her voice. Silence followed. “Gold Squadron?”

“Negative,” Mirena answered without further idents given, and jammed her vox communicator back into its port with a hint of fury. The negatives continued after her response all the same. Then, to herself, she whispered, “Where are you, you bastard? And where are you, Cal?” With no answer being given, she then pitched her Fury downward, underneath an archway formed of a rusted amalgam of twisted metals, keeping her fightercraft near enough to The Finality that her deep-penetrating auspex scanners could view as far into the Hulk’s hull as possible.

It had been hours since I had left her side, hours since she had seen my boarding torpedoes puncture the Space Hulk, hours since she had known me to be alive. She, likewise, had flown around this vast and terrible voidcraft for hours in turn, and was even beginning to recognize landmarks, of a sort, among its exterior. Yet still, despite the stagnant nature of The Finality’s hull, its innards kept signs of life ever-elusive, likely ever-changing as Ouranos had described.

Damn you, Cal. Damn all this to hell, she thought to herself. Never again do you get to put yourself in the field without me at your side. You had damn well better live so I can smack some sense into you for once. Her thoughts were interrupted, minutes later, when Zha initiated another round of reports from the many squadrons of fighters sweeping up and down The Finality.

Negative.

***

Castecael had set up a triaging station on the bridge of the Coldbreed, where bodies—corpses and mangled survivors alike—were beginning to appear, teleported through some terrible witchcraft unto the vessel they once called home. All survivors required greater medicae equipment than could be provided on the bridge, but first aid and emergency services were provided with immediacy as Castecael navigated through the wounds of the fallen.

Zha and Galen, meanwhile, had nothing more to do than merely watch.

“Is there nothing more than this?” Galen asked her, arms crossed and one foot tapping impatiently. The pale Pyrran did his best to keep his cool, but even so, it was plainly evident that he was on the verge of snapping.

The same could be said of Zha. “I don’t know,” she answered, voice flat and defeated, confessing to a weakness that she would not share over vox.

“Aren’t you a savant? Isn’t knowing your whole thing?” Galen grumbled.

“And so is he, this Throne-damned heretic, or so we are to believe,” Zha replied. “To out-think a savant that has had hundreds if not thousands of years to plan for this day? You wanna try, Knight?”

“No. I’m sorry,” he said.

“So am I,” Zha nodded, then thumbed a button on the panel before her and leaned in. “Violet Squadron, report.” As the reports followed, Galen mouthed every ‘negative’ that was given, and Zha could not help but close her eyes and hang her head lower and lower. “Damn The Dawnshadow,” Zha muttered when the reports concluded. “Damn it all. Were it up to me, there would be ten-thousand Scions on that blasted Hulk, three thousand Sisters of Battle, and ten squads of Marines. Damn the politics and the neutrality, I would prefer to see Ouranos drowned out in lasfire and buried in Bolts. Maybe we’d all die. But at least we’d know that the bastard would too, instead of the ambiguity from this slow and bloody sacrifice Callant leads. But such does faith demand.”

“Hmm?” Galen grunted.

“Faith. Faith in the unknown and unknowable. Faith beyond my abilities, beyond Ouranos’s. Faith that the righteous of the Throne Above can steel themselves to victory and live to tell about it,” Zha explained. “We owe them our faith, if we can give them nothing else.”

“Well they have mine, if only because doubt is something I have never entertained, nor is Blackgar one to ever have instilled doubt otherwise,” Galen answered. “Still, there is much more faith one can wield behind a Volcano Lance than without. I should be there.”

“Yes, you should be. As should I. That much I know for certain,” Zha said, then shook her head in exasperation. “Callant lives his days with his mind set on the bigger picture, on the Eternal War, on winning the next battle. We will win it for him, he knows that. But what good is it for if we lose this one? Why should we not put our all into every fight, big or small, and triumph together, all as one or none at all?”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Well said,” Galen agreed, then reached down to tap Zha’s shoulder. “Another one,” he noted, getting Zha to look up again. Another survivor had appeared on the bridge of the Coldbreed, though this one looked barely wounded at all. They were, however, frantic and panicked, likely spared moments before a horrible demise. They, this Scion, pushed away from Castecael and reached onto their waist to brandish a knife between he and his attempted healers. “Hey!” Galen barked, and rushed over to the scene to offer some muscle for Castecael to wield. “You’re safe now, Scion, stand down!”

“Safe? Nowhere is safe, not from those things! You could be them for all I know, this could be another trick, another room, another falsehood,” the Scion defended, flustered and traumatized. “They looked human, at first, just like you. And then the claws, and the fangs…”

Galen turned around toward Zha, who had also risen to the commotion. “Have any idea what this kid experienced in there?”

“It was no daemon, not like the others we saw, it was alive, it bled, as humans do, but-but-but—” the mania continued.

“A Genestealer, I suspect,” Zha sighed, and shook her head. “Wouldn’t expect you or anyone else to have heard of them, least of all a Scion. Allegedly not uncommon aboard Hulks, though who can say whether there has been a great enough sample size to make that claim,” Zha said and shrugged. “Hey, Scion—Blackgar alive in there?”

The knife pointed Zha’s way until Galen got in front of it, arms crossed, after which the Scion nodded. “He…yes, he is. Was. Is. But the numbers, our numbers…we’re dwindling fast. One of the Angels has fallen. It’s so dark in there, so, so dark,” the Scion answered, and seemed for a moment to be giving up the aggression to his surroundings. Unfortunately, as the horror of The Finality set in upon the Scion, that aggression turned inward, and the knife pointed toward his own chest. Galen was upon the Scion before its edge pierced his armor, smacking the knife aside and tackling the Scion—then weak of will—to the ground. Castecael and her attendants rushed in to assist, at last securing the Scion and applying much-needed aid.

Galen returned to Zha’s side when Castecael had successfully brought the Scion under her care. “You’ve saved a boy’s life,” Zha noted.

“Blackgar did it first,” Galen brushed it off. “And nothing I can do here will save our Inquisitor.”

“No,” Zha acknowledged, shaking her head and returning to her terminal. “No, it won’t. Violet Squadron, report.”

Negative.

Time rolled on. Minutes, hours more. No further survivors, nor corpses, emerged onto the deck of the Coldbreed. Nothing, a void, an abyss. They were the longest hours of Zha Trantos’s life, and she had lost her own homeworld already. The silence stirred in her a hatred so pure its simmering managed to stir Galen and get him to shy away from her, in time. How many variations of the scenario was she running through her head? Not even she could tell you—wasting mental effort to keep track of such trivialities could cost the lives of the ones she loved. But as the hours marched on, my savant considered every iota that could be conceived of pertaining to naval combat, from the expected lifetimes of our fleet’s shields to the thermal output of our forward batteries on full blast to the kinetic yield of a fleet’s worth of bombers, to suicide runs, piloted by servitors, from single fighters to entire capital ships plunged into the side of The Finality.

Not a thing could guarantee Ouranos’s demise nor my rescue. Yet still, Zha thought on, unwilling to accept an impossible situation, unwilling to believe that a solution could not be found. In the latter hours of her processing, she could hear it—Ouranos’s voice, laughing over the voxcaster in the war room we had once shared together, taunting her, haunting her, ever beyond her means to reach out and rip out his vocal cords. And oh, how she wanted to.

Instead, all she got was nothing. And nothing was all she felt she could do with it.

She was my greatest success, and she knew it.

And yet she was nothing in the face of Ouranos’s might and planning. She felt small and insignificant. Because she was, we all were. This was the arena of gods, and we were but their chosen pawns. And no one particularly liked being a pawn except, it seemed, for Ouranos, who had already arrived at this conclusion and embraced it with open arms. So, she decided, must she. And from the nothing emerged a something.

“Contact!” shouted Captain Vakian across the bridge from Zha and Galen. “We have one unidentified vessel emerging from Warp Translation opposite The Finality from us!”

“Show me,” Zha commanded, leaving her terminal to step up to a sensorium display. Galen joined her as the vessel was rendered in shades of dim green light before them.

“Imperial origin,” Galen asserted, to which Zha nodded. “Where have they come from? And why are they here now? Benediction?”

“No,” Zha shook her head, a subtle but warm smile spreading across her lips. “The brilliance of Callant Blackgar, unwilling, as ever, to fight fairly, for there is no honor in defeat. Hail them!” she shouted to Captain Vakian.

“You know who they are, I take it?” Galen suggested. Again, Zha nodded.

“I summoned them here, at his behest. If there is benediction at play, it is that they were willing to employ the very same means of travel we did to get here,” Zha said, then sighed. “Now let us hope they are equally willing to come to our—his—aid.”

“They are not Wolves, are they?” Galen asked, worried.

“No, their fangs and claws cut far deeper into the daemonic than mere wolves would,” Zha answered. “Mayhap they might make even Ouranos quiver in fear, as they ought.”

“Vessel identified as Vengeance Unrelenting, but these callsigns…I do not recognize them,” Captain Vakian reported. “They have accepted your hailing; patching you through, Inquisitor.”

Zha reached for and pushed a button on the side of the sensorium display, making the vision of the newly-arrived vessel shift into the heavily-armored mug of the vessel’s owner, adorned with countless Purity Seals and sacred regalia. “Most merciful Emperor,” Galen muttered quietly, falling to his knees and committing himself to a silent prayer.

“This is Inquisitor Trantos aboard the Coldbreed to any and all Grey Knights aboard the Vengeance Unrelenting. Thank you for answering our call despite this dire and horrid nightmare we find ourselves sharing. I am afraid I cannot waste time with standard pleasantries, as a great and villainous foe separates us, and the Inquisition seeks your aid in vanquishing this servant of the archenemy. Will you rise to your calling, and answer?”

“This is Brother-Captain Mezentius of the Vengeance Unrelenting. Inquisitor Blackgar is aboard that profane vessel, is he not?” the Grey Knight Terminator asked of Zha. Zha’s subtle smile widened, her hatred of Ouranos fueling her rekindled hope for my rescue.