For someone with no psykanic ability, Zha knew what was going to transpire the moment she saw Silas’s limp body flop onto the deck of the Coldbreed. When, a few moments later, Bliss landed likewise—albeit with more vim and vigor—her horrifying certainty was vindicated. Subconsciously, and uncaringly, her mind traced the paths that Silas and Bliss’s body had taken and concluded they could only have been so-propelled by an augmetic with some reach. It therefore did not surprise her when Varnus walked himself onto the Coldbreed before collapsing outright as well.
No one followed. Which, given the final syllable of the name Bliss had shouted upon her appearance, also did not surprise Zha. With one final, long sigh accompanied by closed eyes, she knew everything that had happened, and that would happen, and that she needed to do. When her eyes opened, she looked to Captain Vakian—who by then was looking at her likewise—and mouthed a single word. Killing Ouranos is the only thing that matters here, my words echoed in her head, as Scayn’s often did in mine. “Out-think him,” Zha muttered aloud in response, unintentionally.
“Hm?” Galen grunted to her right, arms crossed. Zha shook her head dismissively.
Across the deck, meanwhile, Vakian gave Zha’s order. “This is a fleetwide broadcast from Captain Caleb Vakian. All vessels, you have had orders to prepare for Two-Stage Cyclonic Bombardment, on order of the Holy Ordos. Commence launch protocols, L-minus one million cycles, mark,” he said, addressing the fleet.
“Mark,” a servitor confirmed a short distance to Vakian’s right. A handful of other ‘mark’s came through the vox channel as well.
“By order of the Holy Ordos and decree of His Divinity, engage Exterminatus. Recall all fighters. All nonessential power couplings routed to defensive matrices. Hold fast. May the Emperor bless your aim. Ave Imperator!” Vakian ordered, and in the same motion that he terminated his vox communication, he grasped a servoskull embedded in his operating terminal and thumbed a keypad on its side.
As blast shields raised over the viewports of the deck, and as sirens blared in warning of the world-shattering missiles about to be launched into the void beyond, Galen again turned to Zha. “One million cycles?” he asked.
“About ninety minutes,” she said in a singular, pained hiss of breath. “If Blackgar can buy us that, then we shall have our victory today, howsoever terribly Pyrrhic in nature.”
“He’s stared down impossible odds before; he can still make it out of—” Galen suggested, but Zha cut him off. Was his hope genuine, or just trying to be supportive of his Inquisitor’s decision? She did not know, but Galen’s motives were the last thing on her mind.
“No, he can’t. The odds…are not survivable,” she shook her head. “That is the whole point of an Exterminatus.”
“What are those odds?” Galen asked. “For he and for Ouranos, do you think?”
“Blackgar will not leave until Ouranos is dead. And I believe there is no more precarious spot to be in in all the galaxy than to be Blackgar’s enemy. So, with confidence, I can assert Ouranos’s odds of survival to be 0%, unambiguous. This is not optimism—I believe our foe intends to die. The manner of how, and of when, is what we must deny them,” Zha explained, standing upright next to Galen for the first time in several dreadful hours. “But Cal’s survival…within ninety minutes, to find a foe that is as near omnipotent in its lair, and slay the beast, and find some means of departing from this hideous labyrinth? The odds of this are…infinitesimal. Nonzero, certainly, but…lower than I can put to words with any accuracy.”
Galen had no response, his suspicions put to verbal clarity with the definitive confidence of a savant. In his stead, Zha offered, “Let us join our allies in the medicae. There is nothing more for us upon this bridge today; once begun, the Exterminatus cannot be disengaged. Mirena is soon to arrive, and I suspect she will want my head,” Zha noted, and followed after the Silas/Bliss/Varnus trio as they were wheeled off the bridge. “She may be right to have it.”
L-962,960
***
Zha was not sure what she expected to occur once in the medicae proper. Actually, she thought to herself, that isn’t true. No, she knew exactly what she would find: an argument. And lo and behold…
“Hurry up already!” Bliss shouted at Castecael, who was re-stitching an abdomen torn in the process of struggling against an unconscious Techpriest.
“There is no accelerating medicine,” Castecael said, focused wholly on her work and not caring for her subject’s impatience. Then, under her breath she grumbled, “Something Cal never accepted for himself either.”
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Got somewhere to be?” Zha asked as she and Galen stepped deeper into the room of the injured and dying. Bliss looked to her, and Zha’s eyebrows furrowed. The savant was having no success pinning down which of Bliss’s two emotions—rage and sorrow—were currently dominant on her face.
“Yeah, the Finality. Start preparing another transport for—”
“No, Bliss,” Zha shook her head. Rage, then, flicked into dominance on Bliss’s face, but it faded over time.
“He needs me,” Bliss whimpered. That’s what she said. But Zha understood the more personal, unspoken truth to Bliss’s words: I need him.
The thought occurred to Zha that in an emotional time like this, logical arguments would hold less sway over powerful sentiments like sorrow. Even so, Zha, on a compulsion, began to point out the flaws in Bliss’s suggestion. “It would take too long to put you back aboard Ouranos’s vessel, and we both know the heretic would never allow you to rejoin Mr. Blackgar. You would die to the Exterminatus before ever managing to—”
“Trantos,” Galen interrupted her. She turned and looked to him, to which he shook his head. “Shut up.”
Zha sat with that response for a moment, she not the least bit offended by Galen’s comment, and then nodded in agreement. “Right.” She then stepped aside for the time being, excusing herself from a scene which she had not contributed positively to. Instead, she took up a position next to Silas, who, while conscious, could not presently speak. An oxygen mask was affixed to his face, and a collar hid his neck from view, keeping it stable. Zha put one of her hands in his. Silas squeezed. Tightly. His cheeks were already wettened before Zha had reached him. As ever, she did not need to be psychic to know that the Scion plagued himself with thoughts of his own failure.
“We’re killing him,” Bliss muttered after settling from Zha’s words.
“We’re killing Ouranos,” Zha corrected.
That time, it was Castecael’s turn, and the group’s medicae looked up to stare at my protégé. “This is wrong, Zha. You have to know that.”
“I do,” Zha agreed. “But it’s the least-wrong option available to us. He knows that too.”
It was then that Zha heard a familiar cadence of footsteps beyond the medicae. She stepped away from Silas to intercept their eventual entry. For Zha, the question was not whether Mirena would try to hit her, but with which arm. This was a question she still could not discern an answer to when Mirena finally entered the room, though Zha did note the furious bloodlust in Mirena’s eyes. When Mirena reared her augmetic back, Zha wasted only one moment of thought on wondering whether she should try to deflect the blow or otherwise dodge it, but swiftly deduced that it was too late to do so. Instead, as the flesh-and-metal fist careened ahead, Zha made more comprehensive notes to herself about the competency with which the attack was thrown out; clearly, Mirena had been making good on centuries of training. The final analytical thought to flick through Zha’s head before impact was, Well, isn’t this a bit of self-indulgent masochism?
Following the strike, Zha hit the floor with a splash of blood and spittle, and Mirena was restrained by Galen, Castecael, and the medicae staff. Silas was not fit to hold Mirena back even if he wanted to, and Bliss showed no signs of wanting to. “How could you!” Mirena shrieked, reaching out with tooth and claw for Zha, who was still dazed from the former’s blow. “How could you do this to him?”
“It’s what he wanted,” Zha answered, maintaining relative composure despite the chaos around her.
“You two!” Galen barked to a pair of guardsmen that joined the fray in holding Mirena back. “Take her to the brig, pronto!”
“Belay that order,” Zha commanded, still on the ground, and in the process created a moment of calm within the tumult. Even Mirena hesitated to continue her fury toward Zha, though for the time being was still interdicted by Galen and Castecael. Despite her better judgment, Zha rose to her feet amid the moment of peace, and stumbled to maintain her balance in the process. “Our war has not ended just because Callant Blackgar is dying,” Zha declared, and Mirena’s fists re-curled themselves at once. “Our battles yet continue. He knows this. And he also knows we are at our weakest when alone. Give him the dignity of choosing his own end. Give Lucene that same dignity likewise. And when we kill every enemy mankind shall know henceforth, let us kill in memory of them.”
“A rousing speech,” Bliss said dryly. “You should learn to make those before a fight, not after one, unless you intend to eat another fist-sandwich.”
Zha paid her no mind. Instead, her eyes were locked with Mirena’s. Bloodlust still filled the eyes of the latter, while blood literally began to leak into those of the former. Yet what Mirena said next bludgeoned her far more terribly than any fist could have managed. “They loved you like a daughter, Trantos,” Mirena hissed. “And you’re killing them. They’re your family, more than they are of anyone else here, and you’re killing them.”
As a bloody tear fell from Zha’s left eye, she braced battered teeth between busted lips and answered, “Don’t mistake me or them for an agent of the archenemy, Law, because that’s who I’m killing today. They understand that no amount of collateral is too great for that, that the ends always justify the means, as do I. Chaos cannot win. And I will never allow it to, just as Callant and Lucene wouldn’t. And if by some miracle either of them completes the mission and manage to return to us before I’ve struck my blow, trust, Law, that none of you will be even a shred as happy as I will be.”
Zha then paused a moment to consider the possibility of the impossibility she had just described. After that moment, she added, “And if by that same miracle we see them again, take note of this rage you feel now, and channel it into your loyalty to them, as they are deserving of your best, whereas Chaos can only hold a candle to us in our worst.” She then turned to Bliss. “There’s your speech,” she said, and in the next blink fell sideways against Silas’s medicae unit, fighting to retain consciousness. Castecael abandoned Mirena, then subdued, to tend to the Inquisitor, who, according to the Inquisitor’s own insistence, was suddenly and inexplicably concussed. None of my Agents, Zha would later claim, were responsible for that.
Mirena, meanwhile, ceased resisting against Galen’s grasp, and when his arms dropped away from her, she fell to her knees and wept. Silas could do nothing but silently watch as the team his brother had built crumpled apart before his eyes, and Bliss interpreted the scene as being a product of her own failure, guilt-ridden.
L-740,738