For the Third and the Thirteenth, the euphoria of Luna's conquest passed quickly. It was a great victory, but the first of many, so it was said. The Third had its primarch found, even if he was still only a child, and they looked forth to the day when he would lead them; for the Thirteenth Luna had been a first blooding, and though they would remember it well, they too felt it only as a beginning.
But the Sixteenth had been the point of the assault. Severian had not been there, the same as most of his cadre - scouts who had not yet completed their implantation process - but every one of them had heard the tales. The Sixteenth Legion had made the Selenar kneel in seven hours, with an unrelenting storm of savage slaughter. Luna had been spared the carnage of the Unification Wars, while the madmen that had tortured Imperial emissaries had paid for it with their lives.
A year on, the pride of taking Luna still burned brightly in Severian's brothers. The Luna Wolves, they referred to the Sixteenth as, more and more often. An informal name, but one that no one seemed to object to, within the Legion or outside it.
A year of training, and preparation, and the final stages of implantation. And now Severian stood a full Astarte of the Sixteenth Legion, and looked to the stars, and wondered when they'd finally get there.
He felt a hand clap him on the shoulder, but the smell had already told him who it was.
"Yujavriel," he said without turning. "So they have released you?"
"A minor wound, nothing more," his friend said. "Though, you know, I feared the Selenar were apt to take their revenge."
"They are compliant," Severian said, turning to face the other Astarte. Yujavriel was Cthonian where Severian was Terran, yet they looked uncannily alike, in their severe features. Yujavriel was the more talkative of the pair, but not by so much as to be an annoyance. "I would hope they are loyal as well."
"A matter for the Emperor and Legion Master," Yujavriel said.
"Indeed," Severian agreed. "Though it might have become one for us had the gene-cults betrayed us."
Yujavriel smiled and sat down on the roof, alongside Severian. There was not much visible in the sky above Terra, even in this darkened region. Dume's Panpacific Empire had lost this patch of ground days ago, enough time to put out the fires but not enough to restore power. The front had moved onwards, to be carried on mostly by the auxilia. The enemy was reeling, though, in any case. And after, only the Yndonesic Bloc would pose a true challenge. Isolated enclaves of resistance were still scattered across Terra, but Captain Verid had told them that he expected the Unification Wars to end within two or three years.
"Unity," Severian mused. "It is almost here. We are almost ready to walk among those stars... Of course, looking forward too much will that will get us killed before we have that chance."
"Ever the pessimist," Yujavriel said, shaking his head.
"You were the one that worried during Luna!"
"I was not worried," Yujavriel said. "But I doubted, yes. I have learned my lesson."
"The Selenar were human," said a third voice, walking up to them. Severian wasn't the closest friend of Mopaddal's, but he was thankful for the ale the Cthonian was often ready to share, and for the wild stories he told, which derived from his wanderings in the orbitals and conversations with spacers. "There are worse things among the stars."
"Xenos," Yujavriel said. "You believe the stories?"
"They're consistent enough," Mopaddal answered. "There be monsters out there, things a great deal worse than the Selenar."
Severian grunted doubtfully.
"Why do you think we were made?" Mopaddal asked. "The auxilia could've handled Luna alone."
"Not as easily," Yujavriel pointed out.
Mopaddal ignored him. "Mirror-beasts and mind-drinkers and a whole lot of brutes. I've heard talk of green fungi going around with axes."
"Fungi?" Severian asked dubiously. Mopaddal's tales were interesting, but often fanciful. Severian didn't doubt the galaxy was full of horrors, but he doubted it was quite so full of threats as the rumors said. It was always easy to paint leviathans at the edges of a map, without explaining why they hadn't devoured everything already.
"Well, that one might have been a fiction," Mopaddal admitted. "Anyhow, I'm not here for all that. We're getting our assignments tomorrow, to squad and company."
"And wing," Severian muttered.
"No, not to wings," Mopaddal said.
"What?"
"The Hexagrammaton is being phased out, Severian," Yujavriel reminded him. "At least outside the First Legion."
"Ah. Of course." He felt a little foolish for forgetting that. "Outside the First? Oh, I take it the First is too proud of its heritage to let the past go, of course."
The chuckles from Yujavriel and Mopaddal told him he was entirely correct.
"To the stars!" Mopaddal yelled, raising his cup in that direction. "One more campaign, brothers. One more campaign, and we will begin."
And Severian let out a toothy grin, because at that very moment a smoke cloud drifted southwards, and among the field of sparks there was revealed a great gray crescent.
"We've already begun," he said, and howled in exultation.