Primoday, Gobert 5th 067.M42
I thought the end of my life would feel more like… Something. Anything would be welcome right now. I just feel empty. Maybe this is how it ends. Not everyone can go out with a bang, it just all fades to nothing.
Maddy went out somewhere in the night, without telling anyone where she was going. I'm pretty sure that she thought I at least was asleep, but who are we kidding. I don't sleep these days. Not well, anyway.
Part of me considered following her, seeing what she was up to. But I'm not an assassin. I'm not built to follow people. She would have caught me before I could even have gotten an idea of where she was going. I worried, wondered what she was up to, if she was getting herself in danger. But she can survive it. She lived a dangerous life before she met me, and I've seen her fight. I know she can handle herself. I shouldn't worry.
I ended up dozing off again, drifting and trying to get back to sleep on and off. I don't know exactly when she got back. I didn't hear the hab door open at all. Though that might have been what woke me from my doze. I was dreaming about something monstrous and bloated, lurking in the shadows and reaching for me with claws that flashed silver just before they sank into me. The same dream I've been having every time I've tried to sleep for about a week now. What little sleep I'm getting isn't restful, I'm waking up feeling more and more melancholy every day. I just wanted this to be over, one way or another.
I could hear her and Nate talking when I woke up again, it was somewhere around first bell, maybe six or just after. Their voices were pitched low on the other side of the door, I could recognise the tones but not the individual words. She sounded upset by something. Mad? Sad? It was hard to tell without knowing exactly what she was saying. I wondered if I should have gone out there and interrupted but I suspected if it was something I needed to know, that I'd be told in time. If it wasn't, then… Inquisition. They're built on secrets and they're so very good at not telling you anything that they think you're not required to know.
Turns out I wasn't wrong. After we'd all had breakfast, Maddy asked me to go for a walk with her. I nearly refused. What would she do if I didn't? But I could see it in her eyes, something haunted and pained. I still think she's beautiful, the most beautiful woman I've ever known. And her pain makes my heart clench. So I agreed, we took a walk. She took my hand as we walked, and for a few moments I was able to forget everything. My exhaustion. My fear. The knowledge that there is a ticking chron counting down the seconds to the destruction of my world. For a few moments I was Scribe-Adept Rewalt Mason again, taking my girlfriend Transcript-Adept Madalene Kader for a walk. Maybe we'd go and get some noodles. Perhaps go and watch a scrumball match.
Perhaps flee the planet while an orbital bombardment levelled the cities and settlements to dust.
She took me to one of the small public parks a little way from our hab. It wasn't much, a few trees adapted to grow in the biolumen glow of a hive, a scrubby patch of moss-grass and a bench. But at least it wasn't the hab. At least it was somewhere outside, where we were away from the rest of the group, and I wasn't hemmed in by four plain ferrocrete walls painted dingy beige.
We sat in silence for a while, watching other citizens go about their duties. A very few seemed to have nowhere in particular to go, just seemed to be watching. The rest all had somewhere to be. Ferrying scrolls and data-slates around, carrying boxes and items and goods. Leading trains of servitors hauling wheeled carts of merchandise. There was even the odd servo-skull or three, zipping along on pre-programmed missions, occasionally pausing and scanning someone with their optic before heading off again. All oblivious to the doom that surrounded them from above and below.
It took me some time as we sat there to realise that Maddy was crying as she watched the people going past, silent tears running down her cheeks as we observed them. I asked her if she was crying for them and she admitted that she was sad for them, but she wasn't crying for them in particular. Something in the way she said it, the way she looked at me when she said it made my heart hurt and my breath freeze.
She told me where she went in the night. She went to find my family, to see if there was any way we could save them. Kel could have falsified documents, Nate could have pulled authority to get them off world. But she said it was too late, said they were already gone. The cult had gotten them.
I didn't want to believe her. She'd lied to me about who she was, why she was here. Who was to say that this wasn't a lie too?
I think that I hurt her.
She reminded me about Arlean. We knew the cult had her. We knew that she'd gotten in touch with my family. She said to me that she knew how important my family was to me. How much I wanted to save them. She said that she loved my family. Though she'd lied about who she was, she'd never lied about how she felt about me, how she felt about meeting Mum and Dad and Mei. She told me about finding the evidence that… something… had happened to Noodles, showed me the little feathery toy that she'd bought for her, she'd picked it up when she went there to see what could be salvaged.
Arlean's gone. Mum, Dad and Mei are gone. Cordell is off-world again. The only one left is Lizzy. We can't reach her, she's a servant of the Machine God now. We can't just go and remove her from their service. Even the Inquisition doesn't have reach like that. Apart from her, I have nothing left, and even she is lost to me.
Maddy said that orbital bombardment is not something that happens immediately, it takes time to arrange. And the Mechanicus may have time and ability to remove themselves from the world, they are often the most aware of the movement of ships in orbit, and the first to recognise when a strike is coming.
I tried to find it in me to care any more, but I just… don't. Scour it in the Emperor's name and leave the foul Xeno to choke on the ashes.
