Bliss’s footfalls may not have been silent, but they were obscured behind the heavy punching of my power armor-driven stomping. I imagined she could have better hidden her presence, given her background, but in my shadow such efforts were not necessary. Instinctively, now and again I turned my head to check that she was indeed following me. She always was, and soon came to give me a knowing grin and wink whenever I reaffirmed her continued presence. Our journey did not take the form of a sprint, but it was hasty and hurried. Energy was conserved for dire possibilities, but our urgency was ever maintained. Approximately 55km in size, the Dawnshadow would take some time to navigate through its cathedrals and labyrinthine halls, even for those of us who knew where we were going.
I wanted to talk to Bliss along the way, but had no idea what to say to her. Keeping the morale of my operatives up was one of many compulsive needs I had maintained from my commissarial days, but Bliss’s morale seemed ever in good spirits. I would not have described her as being carefree, exactly, but the weight of war seemed less of a burden on her shoulders than it was for many others, my own included. That in mind, I eventually decided to probe for something that was not about war: “How’s Emile?” I asked her after a time as we emerged from one cathedral into a municipal crossing. The Starfort was as unto a city.
“That’s the first thing you come up with for small talk?” Bliss laughed. “Really?”
“Never mind, then,” I snorted and rolled my eyes, Bliss evidently having known I was combing through my head for something to talk about.
“My sister is fine, thank you for asking,” Bliss replied, still grinning, as ever. “Emile does not have a mind for tactics, as you and Caliman do, which is not to say she doesn’t understand them, but rather that she does not get as invested in them as you. Much of the day’s efforts disinterested her,” she explained.
“She’s content to trust that others can defend the Starfort?”
“As am I,” Bliss confirmed with a wink, referencing her trust of me. “In that regard, it seems more pertinent to us to defend those others in question.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Anytime.”
“Access hatch. It goes…yeah, it will go to Engineering, eventually. Should be quicker,” I explained, stopping in my stride and pulling Bliss aside to look at a utilities panel.
“It will also path through sewer pressure control,” she noted, studying the map before us.
“Afraid of a bit of stench?” I asked with a grin.
Bliss turned to me with an unimpressed expression on her face, then punched the access hatch open. “After you, Inquisitor,” she suggested with a grin, stepping aside to let me enter the narrow passageway first.
“You’re an Inquisitor too, last I checked,” I reminded her, but stepped inside nevertheless. There was a lot less light in the access tunnels, which was not a problem for me, given the sensorium on my power armor’s helmet. I imagined Bliss was used to a bit of shade, too, and indeed, she followed in my footsteps, closing the access hatch behind us. “You good back there?”
“I think you’re downwind of me,” she chuckled in reply.
“Yeah, you’re fine,” I muttered before striding forth, my friendly Callidus Assassin-turned-Inquisitor in tow. Indeed, the access tunnels provided a quicker route for us than the winding corridors we had come from would have managed. That only meant that it was not long before the first whiffs of the Dawnshadow’s sewage system began to hit us, which prompted the first sound of physical discomfort I had ever heard from Bliss. I myself lifted a breathing apparatus up from my power armor’s collar shielding, then turned back to my compatriot. “I’d put the laspistol down, if I were you.”
“Probably wise,” she winced, sheathing her weapon and freeing her hands to pinch her nose. Then, speaking with a more nasal tone, added, “Don’t suppose you have another breather?”
“Just the one, sorry. I made this same mistake once on Hestia Majoris. I make it a habit not to repeat my mistakes,” I shrugged, then trudged onward. Bliss followed suit, making due.
Eventually, as the innards of the Dawnshadow intensified, Bliss revolted, “Eugh, this smells worse than I do after a round of Gleece!”
“I didn’t need to know that,” I shook my head. I then turned back to her again, thinking about her comment more. “Really?” She nodded. “Shame.”
“Shame?”
“Gleece is my favorite drink,” I told her.
“I’d be happy to share a round with you, but I’d have to force you to endure the aftermath with me,” she offered with a grin.
“That’s almost tempting. You allergic or something?” I asked. Sour though the subject matter may have been, it was still something unrelated to the horrors of war, which meant it could be useful for grounding my fellow Agent and keeping her morale up. Again, those old habits of mine.
“Allergic is not the word I’d use.”
“Then what word would you use?”
“Err, damaged by polymorphine? It’s generally responsible for everything awkward or broken in me,” she answered.
“And just how much is broken in you?” I wondered aloud.
“Well gee, Callant, that is almost as impolite as this smell,” she laughed. “If it’s not a vital organ, chances are it’s damaged. And even then, I do remember telling you I had collapsed a lung, though they did repair that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For your candor or the state of my insides?” she asked.
I turned to her once more and shrugged. “Both?”
“Well, you can make your candor up to me by treating me to a round of your Gleece,” she suggested with a laugh.
“Should I invite Jack?” I offered, joining her laugh in response to what I assumed was a hypothetical proposition. Then again, with Bliss, I was not so certain.
“I’m surprised you remember his name after so many years. That’s cool of you,” she mused. “You can invite him, but he’s all too aware of how my body reacts after drinking—and Gleece is the…err…dirtiest. Metaphorically. Don’t imagine he’d be too interested in going through that again. You’ll learn,” she said with a wink.
“I really can’t tell if you’re being serious.”
“Of course I’m being serious! First you flaunt your breather in front of me, then you insult me! I have to get even with you somehow!” Bliss insisted. “Plus, I mean, a drink with the boss? There’s literally a line for that.”
“Is there?”
“Yeah, it goes Lucene, Mirena, me, apparently,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Castecael is probably ahead of you, too,” I noted.
“You have the hots for Castecael?”
“No, but she enjoys drinking with me,” I admitted.
“Adding insult to internal injury,” Bliss sighed. “You’re incorrigible.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said, smiling to myself out of her view. I then glanced to her once more. “I already promised Mirena I’d take a vacation with her, should we live to see Mortoc dead. If you really want a round of drinks with me, I think I could fit that in before we depart.”
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“Well now I want two rounds, one for each insult,” she returned.
“I can keep insulting you, if you’re into that,” I offered.
“Up to you, Callant. How much of me do you think you could take?” she warned, stepping closer to me and winking once again.
“Admittedly, I doubt I could handle you much at all.”
“How very insightful. We’re getting close, by the way; I can hear the thumping of familiar engines,” she told me.
“Familiar? Come here often?” I wondered, to which she winced, hard. She had slipped up in her sentence, and it took me only a moment to discern why and how. “You stash your Assassinorum equipment around this area, don’t you?” I asked, laughing.
In response, she stepped directly up to me and planted a knee against my crotch, armored in ceramite though it was. “Tell a soul and I will have to disappoint Lucene,” she hissed, grabbing my collar with both hands, despite the stench she allowed to waft to her nose in the process.
“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” I laughed, then gave her a wink of my own. “Your secret is safe with me. But you’re buying the drinks.”
***
When we emptied into the open halls again, Bliss left my side for a moment to ‘get her things.’ I knew, then, what that meant, and she was obviously no longer hiding her equipment from me. She may need it were we to run into any traitor Astartes. I pressed on without her, taking my breather off to recharge its oxygen supply and conserve my armor’s power reserves. One did not need to venture far into Engineering to begin to hear the sounds of broken men—moaning, crying, and general panic that echoed through halls filled with hissing steam. It was not entirely unlike my encounter with the Maletek Stalker some years back, albeit much more intense—both the sound and presence of the steam as well as the cries of anguish deep within.
I pushed ahead.
By pure coincidence, the first figure I saw was an ordinary human, clad in black carapace armor, with his helmet off—and lost somewhere, I imagine—revealing his sandy hair. I suppose it would have been wrong to call Silas ordinary, in retrospect. He was covered in blood, and I did not know if it was his. A chainsword revved in his right hand, his back to me as I neared. It, too, was drenched in viscous crimson. My footfalls, heavy though they were, must have reminded him of our foe, and he turned in a hurry to face me when I got near to him. Panic was rampant on a bloodstained face, and though he rose the chainsword into the steam before getting a good picture of me, he did not attack. The weapon lowered as he understood who I was.
“Cal,” Silas said softly.
“Silas.”
“Whose is this?” he asked, holding the chainsword out.
“I don’t recognize the weapon,” I shook my head. “Are you OK?” I asked, stepping nearer to him.
“Not the weapon, the blood. Whose is this?” he repeated. “There was so much of it, I’m afraid I’ve lost track of whose was whose.”
“Give me the weapon, Silas,” I urged him, now within range of being cut in half by it, but not near enough to take it from him.
“Am I dead?”
“No, Silas, you’re not. Give me the weapon, please,” I insisted.
“There was so much…I’ve never seen so much,” he murmured. By then I had closed the distance between us enough to shoot a hand forth and yank the chainsword out of his grip. He had no physical reaction to my hurried movement, and though his eyes followed the blade as I tossed it behind me and as it clattered on the ground, he remained otherwise stationary before me. “Sir?”
“Silas?”
“Is it over?”
“It is,” I nodded eagerly and insistently, trying to give him some small hope or glimmer of happiness, though in truth I did not then know if any Iron Warriors—or their Lost and the Damned—remained on the Dawnshadow.
“Oh.”
At that I lurched forward and embraced him in a hug, thinking about but not knowing what he had seen or had to do today. What I, and my enemies, had thrust upon him and so many others. He did not return the hug, his body still stoic and unresponsive. I wanted to reach inside his mind and take away the pain, but I worried I might only do more harm than good. I knew not what monsters brewed within his strained thoughts, and did not wish to prod at them.
“Silas, I think you should sit down and get some rest. Can you do that for me, please?” I asked, pulling myself off him.
“I think so, sir,” he nodded softly. “I’ve never fought…something like them. I’m tired.”
“I know, Silas, I know. Here, take a seat here,” I said, helping him to the ground. He did not resist me; I do not think he had the strength to if he wanted.
“Do you remember Okustin?” he asked me when he was situated, which caught me out of the blue, making me back away slowly as I rose to my feet over him.
“I do, Silas, yes,” I said.
“He was…slower than them. And they had such…terrible armor,” Silas panted, then thrust his hands over his eyes suddenly. “Oh, I mustn’t look at their armor. Vile portents, debased symbols, the lot of it.”
It was then that I reached into his head, knowing better what to look for. And indeed, I found the painful imagery of our foe, seductively memorable as it was. I took that from Silas, removing it from his memory entirely. He was too important to be haunted by such things. And when I had done so, when I had purged the enemy from my faithful Scion’s mind, I also forced his mind to slumber, giving him some very much deserved rest.
I then voxxed Silas’s location to Castecael, but warned her the area may still have been hot. She had no hesitation about taking a security detail with her. I did not wish to leave Silas alone, but I did not sense much danger in his immediate vicinity, and I still had more allies to find. I was also confident that Silas himself would not pose a danger to anyone else, as he was unlikely to awaken from the rest I had helped him into. These slight affirmations in mind, I again set off into the mechanical depths of our Starfort.
I passed a number of operatives and soldiers in the many steamy tunnels, then. The thought occurred to me that Silas had wandered quite a bit or, perhaps, the scene of battle had stretched far and wide. The latter seemed more likely. In any case, some of the operatives were mine, albeit not those that directly reported to me, but those that answered to Silas or Luther or even Varnus—damaged Skitarii appeared here and there, scrounging for scraps with which to repair themselves. I could not help them in that regard.
I did, however, find a familiar glimmer of sanctity amidst the battle-scarred depths of the Dawnshadow. “Penitent again, are we?” I asked Lucene as I neared. She was hunched up against a wall, sitting with her Eviscerator embedded in the ground between her legs. Her head, missing its helmet, was tilted forward against her chainsword’s hilt.
“My Sisters are gone,” she muttered.
I paused and blinked once, hard, then nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” she nodded, and then looked up to me with water in her eyes. I knelt down to hug her, but found that she did not return the gesture. My face must have evidenced my confusion as I pulled away from her, but she clarified the situation while wearing a weak grin. “Power charge of my suit damaged. I’m rather trapped in place. Took all my strength just to position myself like this, that I may pray.”
I nodded in understanding. Her power armor, like mine, must have weighed hundreds of pounds. More than mine, likely, on account of her greater size. Without power for our suits’ actuators, they may as well have been tombs.
“Remember Abseradon?” she asked me then.
“In more ways than one, today,” I sighed, referring to the scent of the Dawnshadow’s bowels which Lucene got to dodge.
“Remember when you carried me home after my battle with that explosive bastard?”
“I don’t imagine I’ll quite manage to do so with your current armoring, I’m afraid,” I admitted.
“Nor would I ask you to. But the thought is amusing nevertheless,” Lucene said, managing a laugh that could have been mistaken for a cough.
I opened my mouth to tell her that we would find some equipment to get her out of there, but a third person entered our conversation. “I’ll carry her out,” Bliss suggested, appearing out of the steam and mist behind me. Lucene’s eyes went wide, having not seen a Callidus Assassin in proper clothing before. I assume my eyes widened too, for I had also never witnessed such attire in action. I recalled that Jack Harr, in his memories of Canicus, once remarked that Bliss was at her most profoundly beautiful when in her intimidating bodyglove, at the time that her betrayal of his unit was first revealed. I had seen her in that bodyglove, and indeed, she was both intimidating and beautiful as Jack had described. But in the synskin of the Callidus Temple, Bliss’s beauty peaked anew. “Try not to ogle too much, you two,” she added with a laugh, stepping nearer to us both.
“You’re…,” I started, but needed to take a moment to focus.
“I’m…?”
“You’re not strong enough to carry her out of here,” I managed.
“Am I not?” Bliss asked, planting her hands on her hips. I imagine she must have frowned, but her face was obscured behind a mask. That was, perhaps, the one betrayal of her beauty in this attire; her face was far more gorgeous than that of the Callidus Temple. “Unless you think you need me elsewhere, Callant,” she offered, suggesting I may want her assistance in tackling any stray traitor Astartes that may have remained aboard the Dawnshadow.
“There are no more of those…things,” Lucene clarified. “But Varnus was further in. I believe he was trying to…tinker with their corpses. They had such profane cybernetics. You should pursue him, Cal.”
“I intend to,” I assured her, then turned to Bliss, who was now to my side. “Are you serious about her?”
“Of course!” Bliss chuckled, then reached down and tossed her arms underneath Lucene before hoisting a power armor-clad woman half a meter her taller into the air, Eviscerator and all. Lucene was as shocked as I was, and voiced as much with an audible gasp. Bliss, meanwhile, seemed to hold Lucene without much effort. “The synskin augments the strength a bit,” she offered.
“A bit?” Lucene and I quoted.
“So you’re aware, I just rolled my eyes. We can speak more of how awesome I am later. For now, am I taking her to Castecael?” Bliss asked.
“Well Castecael is coming here,” I began.
“And I am in no great need of medicae attention,” Lucene suggested.
“That’s Sister-speak for saying that yes, she does need medicae aid,” I clarified. “Take her to the infirmary, yes. They’ll get her armor open and check her out. Thank you, both of you, for your service today,” I told them.
“Thank you, Cal,” Lucene replied, while Bliss answered that she had enjoyed our stroll. The latter then carried the former off out of the scene of the battle, while I pressed on ahead into the misty unknown. I had an admech to find, and, possibly, save from his own curiosities.