Despite being a scent I had known for nearly 60 Terran years by then, the smell of Lucene doffing her power armor caught me ever off-guard. Most power armor was vacuum sealed, and hers and mine were no exceptions. I rarely wore mine save for combat training scenarios—conducted with her—whereas she donned it daily and, at times, for great lengths of time. As a result, the body odor built up within her power armor achieved a degree of foulness that utterly betrayed the beauty of its owner. This was not a thing exclusive to her; as I understood it, the Astartes achieved results of even greater revulsion in doffing armor which they had worn for weeks at a time. Thankfully, I had only ever met with the representatives of the Chapters in full-armor.
Regardless of the fate that befell my nose as she revealed herself to me, I as ever failed to pry my eyes away from the sight of her. After disarming herself of her power armor, she mounted her Bolter on the wall near to the rack that held said-armor. She then lifted her Eviscerator into the air and carried it with her near to our bed, which I was laying in and had been, until her scent had wafted to me, thinking about the day. As she neared, my eyes fell upon the Eviscerator, at which I reflected on the fact that it was once mine. The Chain weapon she had possessed in Hestia Majoris as Penitent had been surrendered to her Order upon her return for judgment. When she eventually found her way back to me decades later, I let her take my blade instead, for it suited her better on the battlefield. I had grown to prefer my power sword and Nemesis falchion, Drepane.
Not long after inheriting my blade, she had carved a quartet of letters onto its backside, near to a purity seal: ‘CB, LF.’ Our initials. My eyes focused on our carved initials that evening while they were within my view, but eventually she lifted the blade over us both and mounted it on the wall behind our bed. I sat up in bed to greet her, and patted an area for her to sit next to me. She, however, had other things on her mind, and instead sat upon my lap and embraced me for an immediate kiss. Now more intimately near to the rancid scent emanating from her, I was at first repelled, which she accounted for, and simply chased her lips after mine. But, in a moment, we found unity together, and I embraced her in return, odiousness and all.
We had been together like this for nearly 60 Terran years, and married for 30, Inquisitor and Sister Superior. They were, without question, the best years of my life. I did not shirk on my responsibilities as Inquisitor in that time, mind you; frequent consultations with Ordo Hereticus operatives on Quintus and organizing my network of Agents to conduct a shadow-war on the Phaenonites both required a great bit of effort. But, if it needs to be said, yes, Lucene and I had found time for ourselves as well. In the course of that time, we had even had two children—a son and a daughter. Both were given unto the Schola Progenium after a few years. Most human cultures raised their children into adulthood, but at the forefront of Imperial conquest, there was no time nor resources for that. Instead, the Progenium would raise them into heroes of the Imperium of their own, never knowing us or being compelled to follow in our direct footsteps. Distancing ourselves from them also denied the archenemy a weakness to wield against us. It had been our fate, as children, as it was now that for our children.
After a few moments of locking lips with her, I asked, “Have I grown soft, Lucene?”
“It doesn’t feel like it,” she grinned.
“Not what I meant,” I chuckled.
“I know what you meant,” she replied, and leaned in to peck my lips again. Afterward, she sat straight upon my waist, placing her hands on my shoulders as she towered over me. “I don’t think so. Why do you?”
“I spared the Severan Dominate kid,” I shrugged.
“And acquired a performative asset in the process,” she suggested. “You said you were absolute in your destruction of Issik, right?”
“Save for his skillset, yes,” I nodded in confirmation.
“Then I don’t see the problem. Psychologically, the Severan Dominate kid is dead, and Jack Harr is left in his flesh. Seems like a win-win to me. Do you think otherwise?” she asked.
I shrugged again. “Bodies are resources. Harr’s body was once a resource of the enemy. Now we’ve taken it for ourselves. But a more direct approach would have been to simply destroy it altogether.”
“The direct approach is the very thing your superiors have warned you against, following our journey on Hestia Majoris,” she reminded me.
“Always a mind to win an argument,” I sighed, smiling.
“Ah, it’s just a mind that wins, period,” she laughed.
“You would have made a fine Inquisitor,” I nodded, a compliment I had given her dozens, if not hundreds of times by then.
“The title matters little. The service to the Throne is everything, which you know better than most,” she replied before changing the subject. “How have the others managed?”
“The deconstruction of Heirene seems to have gone without hitch,” I suggested.
“Ah, and that reminds me, I wanted to say you fought well, in that regard,” she told me, after which she leaned over me and went in for another kiss.
“93.3% effectively, as I understand it,” I shrugged.
“Varnus and his numbers obscure the end result. You won, and bare-handed at that.”
“Mostly bare-handed.”
“The point, Cal, is that I have been doing an excellent job with your training,” she smiled, pecking my lips once more and pressing her body against mine more directly.
“Yes, that much is very true,” I agreed. “I think you need a shower, Lucy,” I admitted then, brought to wincing from her body odor.
“We’ll get there. There’ll be a time for that after a bit of fun first,” she replied, pecking my lips yet again, but then backed away to again rest upon my lap. “Everyone else?”
“Well, only a handful of the soldiers we pried from the Houses on Skardak’s Reach proved viable recruits. I think we’re walking away with twenty or so, returning perhaps a hundred to the Houses themselves,” I explained.
“I’m sure they’ll hardly notice the difference,” she grumbled, rolling her eyes. “I’m mostly asking about Zha, Cal,” she insisted.
“Oh. Her interrogation has gone well. I think, by the end, both Gronheims had wet themselves and passed out in fear of her. A good a sign as any. The Regulator—Kanius is his name—that I had had watch her was very impressed. I think he likes her,” I answered.
“Does she like him?”
“I don’t have any idea what Zha likes, save for having something to work on,” I smirked. “I’ll keep Kanius around though. Maybe put him in Intel, or Comms. Could use more Arbites to establish contacts with agencies on unknown worlds,” I explained. “But, right, Zha. As she understands it, the flects are coming in from Calixis—much like everything else, it seems. They’re moving large volumes into Amnes Minoris. They’re being processed there, but the Gronheims don’t know what they’re being used for. A flect is a drug, a psychoactive agent, touched by the depravities of the Warp itself. The possibilities of what individuals with resources as themselves could do with such a material are worrying. Create a Warp Storm? Change the currents of interstellar travel? I don’t know, and neither does Zha. But they’re also collecting something from Pariahs. Something anti-Warp. Zha said Prareus called the Pariah-stuff Prima Materia,” I started.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“First Matter,” Lucene understood.
“Correct. I want to know what Heirene knows. I want to know what he’d call a flect after it had been processed. I am worried, Lucy, not of the end they have foretold awaits me on Amnes Minoris. I am worried that there is something sinister the likes of which you and I have gone far too long failing to comprehend about this whole operation. They’re doing something. It’s something Prareus thinks can be used to kill me, but that wasn’t the original intent. And what Ryke and Silverman were doing on Hestia Majoris was somehow related. Whatever they’re up to, it is a work that has spanned decades—if not more—and several worlds across at least two Sectors—ours and Calixis. And it is that worry, about that unknown, that makes me feel I have grown soft.”
“Whatever they are up to, Cal, you and I will burn away in the Throne’s wrath,” she assured me. “You need not worry of that.”
“Perhaps. Either way, I think my time lurking between the stars is at an end. I need to have my boots on the ground more. I need a more intimate understanding of what they’re up to. I regret not being on Canicus,” I sighed.
“Zha’s report and your own interrogation of Prareus was insufficient?” she frowned, surprised and curious.
“No, but I would have wanted to have seen the Pariahs for myself,” I shrugged.
“I think you would have found that quite an uncomfortable experience,” she chuckled.
I nodded and allowed myself to join her laughter, noting the irony of my suggestion. Pariahs and Psykers such as myself do not mix. “Yes, quite likely. But an insightful one. Comfort is rarely becoming of war.”
“Well, it’s a good thing our victory today has paused the war tonight,” she smiled, and then leaned forward to embrace me once more. My evening melted away with her, and while not bearing witness to the end I had foreseen with Mirena many decades ago, I did see a vision that had been haunting me since my relationship with Lucene began: a simple wooden house on a great, green open field. I knew not what it meant, nor what planet it was on. But ever did the Warp put the image in my head when my mind was at its most emotionally exposed.
***
The light hissing of water was the first thing I noticed in the following morning. The scent of vacuum-sealed flesh was nowhere to be found. Lucene was in the shower. Our quarters were not as spacious or luxurious as I had heard some Inquisitors chose to indulge, but they sufficed for the purposes of maintaining our privacy, which was more than can be said of the average abode on a voidship. The shower, too, was not very powerful and consisted primarily of recycled water, but it was also precisely as capable as we needed it to be.
With my eyes still unopened and Lucene still in the shower, I reached out with my mind to feel around the Coldbreed, my personal voidship. It had been quite some time since I had gathered the whole of my surviving original retinue in one place; I wanted to know how they were doing and what they were up to. And even though it had been many years since I had felt the psychic-flicker of their presence, I still recognized the whole lot of them at once among a crowd of thousands of other bodies on my vessel. Silas was a few rooms away from us, ever wanting to be near to me to respond to any emergency. He was still bruised from head to toe from his interrogation at the hands of the Arbites, but he did not show signs of being slowed from that bruising; he was cleaning his equipment and sharpening his blades.
Zha was further into the ship, up bright and early to discuss something with Massino Varnus. I could have listened in more closely to their conversation but chose not to; if they had something important for me, they would give it in due time. I did discern that they were discussing the topic of Heirene’s augmetics, though. If I had one regret about turning Zha Trantos into an Inquisitor, it was that it had flattened her step; where once my savant had carried herself with a bit of an excited hop from step-to-step when she had something to work on, now the Inquisitor marched about like the rest of us.
Luther and Xavier were getting breakfast and coffee together. It pleased me to see their friendship withstand the tests of time and distance. Trauma, like that sustained on Thantalus and Hestia Majoris, will do that, I suppose. Of the many varied units I possessed in my direct command, theirs operated with undoubtedly the best congruency, despite the fact that Psykers and Guardsmen were not necessarily the easiest pairing; less so, likewise, for the nulls under Xavier’s command. But Luther and Xavier made their joint operations work, and work well at that. Presently, they were discussing the 20-odd new recruits under Luther’s wing, and how Xavier would need a new Psyker or two to match. They planned to bring it up with me; we would see—recruiting Psykers was a far more perilous and involved task than Guardsmen.
Castecael was in the corridors near to Luther and Xavier’s mess hall, having already eaten her fill of breakfast. I sensed that she had eaten with them for a time but excused herself in needing to get somewhere. My shadow war against the Phaenonites had busied her in the process of immunizing the expansion of my operation to the perils of deep space and unknown worlds. My more recent open conflict with the enemy would busy her further, and she knew it. But it was worthy work in service to the Throne, which made her happy; bureaucracy remained the bane of her tolerance, and I provided her with as much autonomy as she needed to perform her duties, which she did admirably and capably as ever. I did not trouble her mind with the weight of my own and let her navigate my ship to where she needed to go.
That, then, left her partner of far more years than Lucene and I had shared: Mirena Law. I found her in our training station, where she was sparring with, of all people, Iblis Kyle. To my knowledge, the two had not known each other previously, but they seemed to be getting along well enough to fight—Mirena only fought people she liked, despite having claimed the opposite in regards to Hans Okustin, my former Interrogator. Having said that, she never asked me for a fight, nor Lucene. I did not know why that was. Regardless, Mirena had served me well over the years, but as time had gone on, I have begun to sense a sort of longing from her. I have not pried into what for, though I have worried she has felt trapped in my service, faced with imprisonment or punishment of death should she behave as she did with me under a different banner in the wider Imperium. That was just my own fear, though; whatever she longed for, I would let her tell me as she willed it.
“You can’t still be sleeping, can you?” Lucene asked me suddenly. I finally pried my eyes open, and viewed a toweled Lucene towering over me, her hair frayed in thin, wet clumps. Upon seeing me open my waking face, she laughed, “Ah! And here I thought I might have finally bested you in bed.” She then crawled over me to sit at my side, raising her legs over and onto my abdomen.
“Not quite yet, my dear,” I smiled, caressing her thighs. “Good morning.”
“Good morning, Cal. Did you sleep well?”
“Mostly. Had the dream again; the cabin,” I told her.
“A sure sign that you’re becoming an old man,” she replied, unable to repress her laughter despite having made the joke dozens of times already. “I do wonder how retirement would suit you.”
“I can’t imagine it would serve me very well,” I admitted. “And I always figured my retirement would manifest as that of a rogue trader, further providing Sigird the means to haunt me. But I don’t imagine the Imperium would allow me to stop merely due to age.”
“That’s probably a good thing; I never want to stop with you,” she chuckled, patting my chest. “Speaking of which, what is our agenda for today? Besides interrogating the latest Phaenonite captive?”
“I believe it starts with answering the door for our upcoming guest,” I answered.
“Oh, should I clothe, then?” Lucene asked, sitting upright and robbing me of the means to continue massaging her thighs.
“Up to you. It’s only Castecael, and she has seen you in far less than a towel before,” I shrugged, but sat up as well. “I, however, should probably find pants.”
“Hung them on our Eviscerator, dearest,” she replied, rising to her feet and leaving the room. I looked up and sure enough spotted the basics of my attire upon what was once my weapon; Lucene insisted on calling it ‘our’ weapon, though it was firmly hers to wield. Regardless, I stood to my feet and began dressing myself. I was just beginning to don a shirt when the buzzer of our door rang.
“Enter,” I called to who I already knew to be Castecael, despite not then having laid eyes on her. “Good morning, Castecael,” I nodded to her while sitting on the edge of my bed and slinging the shirt overhead.
“Good morning, Cal. I haven’t interrupted you two, have I?” she asked. I smiled and shook my head. “Great. Could I possibly ask a favor of you?”
“You can certainly ask,” I nodded, rising to my feet and pulling my jacket off the back of a nearby hanger. Castecael hesitated in her response, trying to find the right words, and only managed her request by the time I had finished buttoning my coat up. I certainly could have scanned her mind for what was troubling her, but I figured life would get pretty lonely if I never gave my comrades room to speak.
“Could I ask you to speak with Mirena, sir? She’s…well, you should hear her position from her. But I think she’s obsessed with physically bettering herself so as to serve on the field with you more often. I worry about her, physically and mentally, Cal,” Castecael explained. “I worry she thinks she isn’t good enough to serve you, and is pushing herself further than she should.”
“If she wasn’t good enough to serve me, she wouldn’t be serving me,” I sighed.
“Yes, I told her as much myself,” Castecael grinned, though the grin was short lived.
“I’ll speak with her, yes. Anything else I can help with? How are the new recruits?”
“They’re already inoculated for traveling through the void with us. And no, that’s all, thank you, Cal,” Castecael replied, smiling warmly.