Part 8
Who was this woman? What had possessed her to come up, alone, to attempt to talk with the fleet? What kind of naïveté could bring someone to believe such a course of action could have any result other than death?
Silas looked back at her, out of the corner of his eye. Her eyes burned with defiance, and she visibly tensed under his gaze. Her long hair, bound into a waist-length braid, was in disarray, strands floating free from their bindings.
"Adept Heldengraf," he said. The Techpriest holding her looked up. "You can release the heretic. She is unarmed, and I am not. You may join the others in preparation for the landing."
"That is not logical, Princeps," said Heldengraf. "I calculate a nineteen point seven percent chance that the heretic could overpower you alone. With my continued presence, that chance drops to only three point two percent. If she remains bound, it drops further, to zero point zero one percent."
Silas watched her as she became aware of what he was saying. Possibilities danced through her eyes, and then she sagged faintly, feigning defeat. He had to admire her spirit, and sheer force of will to continue to entertain hopes of success in such a situation.
"There are too many unknown factors to rely on logic alone, Adept. You are dismissed. I will detain the heretic just as easily alone as I would with your presence."
Heldengraf's mechadendrites uncurled from around the woman's arms, and the Techpriest stepped reluctantly past her. His glowing optic augmetics rotated to focus on Silas. "Very well, Princeps. I shall assist the others in the preparations for landings."
He saw the woman's eyes widen again, but, just as before, it lasted only an instant before she composed herself. He would never have caught it if he hadn't been watching for it. She was definitely more than a simple heretic.
"Very well, Adept," he said. Heldengraf walked stiffly from the access corridor, pausing momentarily to activate a sliding door with the interface modules on his mechadendrites. He stepped through and was gone.
Silas turned to the woman. She was standing where she had been left, rubbing her arms surreptitiously where the mechadendrites had restrained her. Her sharp eyes were fixed to his own.
"Come with me," he said, and turned away. He walked down the corridor without looking back. He knew she would follow. Where else did she have to go? Sure enough, after he had gone a few paces, he heard the soft sounds of her tread on the metal floor of the corridor, following him.
He could almost feel her eyes on him as he walked. By rights, he should be behind her, but somehow, he knew that this woman would not run. And if she did, it was a long, straight corridor, and he had the only gun. She wouldn't get far, and she knew it.
He stopped in front of a large, rectangular outline in the wall. He raised his hand to the center of the outline, and a soft red light played over his palm. It read the electoos implanted below his skin, and the rectangular section of wall slid apart with a hiss. He stepped inside. She followed.
Into his chambers, not the torture room.
He crossed the room to the cogitator, and tapped a raised switch, sealing the room. He looked at the woman. She was standing just inside the door, looking far calmer than she had to feel. And a good deal less confused, as well.
"What is your name? I recall you said something to Heldengraf in the docking bay, but I confess, it eludes me."
She looked taken aback at his manner, and visibly composed herself before replying. "I am Relena Peacecraft, former Queen of the World Nation. Why… where have you brought me?"
He gestured to the small table against the back wall. "Take a seat, Relena. You may be a heretic in the eyes of the Omnissiah and the God-Emperor, but you seem to be one of the more reasonable ones. I'd like to talk to you, before you are taken to the torture chamber." And I still have the only gun, he almost added, but stopped himself. She didn't need the reminder.
She swallowed slightly, and sat.. "Ask. If you are going to torture me anyway, I may as well just tell you now, and save myself the trouble. And the pain. How could you condone such cruelty?"
He blinked. Cruelty? "The enemies of the Emperor deserve only death," he said, quoting from the Scriptorius Munitorum. "They – and you – have forsaken His light, and His protection. You have chosen to stand against Humanity's salvation, and for that, nothing is too harsh. Leniency is the first step on the road to destruction."
She drew back. "How- how could you be so cold? How can anyone be so cruel to other people, over a simple disagreement? Because they do not choose the same leader as you, you kill them?"
"Yes," he said, simply. What kind of delusions had possessed this woman? "The God-Emperor is humanity's salvation, and those who stand against His work are heretics and deserve only death. They would see the Imperium stagnate into ruin, beset on all sides by our enemies, ripped asunder for the Dark Gods to feast upon the remains. How can you even suggest leniency towards that?"
She looked horrified for a moment, and then composed herself slightly. "What is this Imperium that you speak of?" she asked.
Did this woman know nothing of the galaxy outside her own system? "The Imperium of Man is the largest and most powerful realm in the galaxy. Over a million inhabited worlds fall under its auspices. Countless trillions of loyal servants of the Emperor populate the stars. In His divine mercy, the God-Emperor watches over all from the Golden Throne of Terra, as he has done for the past ten millennia."
"Ten thousand years…" she whispered. "Ten thousand years of cruelty. Why have the people not risen up against this Emperor, this tyrant? Why has he not been stopped?"
Silas fought to contain the shock and anger at the heretic's denouncement of the God-Emperor. He wanted, right then, to shoot her on the spot, but somehow, from somewhere, he found the strength of will to restrain himself.
"You will never utter such filth again, heretic," he grated. "The God-Emperor of Humanity is mankind's rightful master, our one chance for life amidst a galaxy of death. We are beset on all sides by alien horrors too numerous to count, attacked from without by the daemonic minions of Chaos, from within by heretics and traitors, and yet you, who face no conflict but that of your own manufacture, you dare to criticise? It is only by coincidence of our shared ancestry that your planet survives still, Relena Peacecraft, and that is a fact you had best remember."
The colour had drained from her face, but she remained sat resolutely where she was. "I apologise," she managed to say. "I did not realise the situation."
He fought his way to calmness. Calm. The cool security of logic. Decisions made on emotions were flawed decisions. "Now you do," he said heavily. "How can you be so ignorant? What naïveté possesses your culture, to think you are alone and safe in the stars? How can you survive without good, honest hatred to sustain you?"
"We survive," she said, "because, until now, we have been alone in the stars. It is not naïve to desire peace, Silas Xanax, whatever you may believe. If more people looked for peace, then your Imperium's problems would disappear, instead of festering for ten millennia."
"If more people looked for peace we would be consumed by our enemies," he countered. "The Imperium is fragile, on the brink of destruction. It is only through the sacrifice of thousands each day that we re able to survive. And yet you would cheapen their sacrifice by denouncing all that they fight for?"
She shook her head. "No. Not what they fight for. Only that it is necessary that they fight in the first place. Diplomacy can surmount more obstacles than conflict can. Peace can solve problems, war can only create them."
"And you would attempt diplomacy with the foes of mankind? You would attempt to hold peace talks with the mindless hordes of the Tyranids, with the mechanical legions of the Necrons? You would negotiate with the Orks? You would attempt compromise?"
"I don't know of these aliens," she said. "But surely war is not the only answer? Surely compromise is preferable to the deaths of thousands?"
"And what would you know, Relena Peacecraft? What have you had to give up?"
"My nation," she said. "The Sanc Kingdom was subsumed into the World Nation when I became Queen. Now, we attempt to halt the White Fang's attacks from space. Attempted," she added. "Now you have arrived, everything has changed."
"One nation? In the darkness of the Horus Heresy, the entire galaxy was torn asunder. It has taken ten thousand years, and still we have not regained what we lost. The Golden Age of humanity, when the God-Emperor walked amongst mortals, and the Primarchs strode at his side, is lost to us, and all for a moment of laxity, for our lenience. The greatest of the Primarchs was turned by the foul powers of the warp, and became the Arch-Heretic, the Betrayer, and it took the sacrifice of the Emperor's mortal shell to stop him. The entire Imperium burned, Relena Peacecraft. It tore itself apart, and that shall never be allowed to happen again. One tiny country is nothing to what we have lost. A few million lives, if that, compared to trillions dead, and trillions fallen."
She looked taken aback by his vehemence. "Again," she said quietly. "I am sorry. Your Imperium is vastly different to my own experiences. But why have you come here? What has driven you to take note of us?"
Silas closed his eyes. This woman was testing him. "'There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival'," he quoted. "'Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush'." He looked into her eyes. "Which will you be, Relena Peacecraft? An ally or an enemy?"
She was testing him, and yet… There was something about her. A presence, a force behind her words, that struck him. Her words were heretical, yes, but he thought that she herself could be made to see the truth.
She didn't answer for a moment, and then finally said, "I cannot answer that. I am no longer Queen. I cannot speak for the World Nation, nor for the White Fang."
There it was again. Queen. An archaic title, but those were usually the ones with the most support from the citizenry. Maybe she could be put to more uses than could be found on the torture slab.
"You were Queen?" he probed. "What age are you?"
"I am eighteen," she said. "And I was a true Queen, not a puppet like you must suspect. I built the World Nation into what it is today." She faltered. "And now you have arrived and torn it down."
A charismatic ruler at that, then. One loved by the people, it seemed. Perhaps she could be valuable. If news of her death reached the planet, she could be a martyr, a rallying point in the coming conflict. If she remained alive, she could be a method of control. The idea had merits.
"We have been too long," he said, unsealing the door. "We must go."
She stood, and took a step towards him. "Why? Are you in such a rush to begin your torture?" Her face was grim, determined. She would never go along without causing a disturbance.
"No. You will be far more valuable alive and… undamaged." He walked into his bedchamber, and grabbed a long, black robe from its stand. He threw it to her. "Here. Put this on, and you won't be recognised if we encounter any Techpriests."
She shrugged it onto her shoulders, and pulled up the baggy hood. It hid her face in deep shadow, and shrouded her form. "Who are the Techpriests?" she asked.
He walked out of his room, making sure she followed, and then sealed the door again. He set off down the corridor, back the way they had come. "They are the servants of the Omnissiah, the Machine God, the Deus Mechanicus. They construct and minister to the machines of the fleet."
"You mean they worship a machine?" she asked as she followed him.
"No. They worship knowledge itself. The Omnissiah is the source of all knowledge, and the source of all power."
"I see." Silas highly doubted that. "Where are we going?"
"The holding bay."
"But we just came from there." She sounded confused.
"Not that holding bay. The main bay."
He reached the doors to the docking bay that she had entered through. Just before them, on the right, was an access transporter. He offered his palm again, and it activated after reading his sub-dermal electoos. The doors slid open, and he and Relena stepped inside.
The transporter took them to the center of the ship in barely three seconds. It was neither smooth nor quiet, but it was fast. And in a ship, speed was all that mattered. The doors opened again, and they stepped out, beside the great doors to the main hold.
He entered, and was almost swept from his feet by swarming servitors and Techpriests. The surface deployment was imminent, and frantic last-minute preparations were being made. He forced a path through the doors, and then Relena saw it.
Standing in the center of the old like some behemoth of legend, Mors Mortis was an awe-inspiring sight. The solid black of its carapace seemed to drain the light from the chamber, and the polished brass trim shone brightly in stark contrast. Its skull-masked face stared death down into the thronging servitors below.
He heard Relena gasp in horror and shock, and glanced back at her. She was staring up at the Titan, eyes wide, mouth open. Her hood had fallen back, exposing her face. He reached back and pulled it up. There was no danger from the servitors, or course, but any of the techpriests could have a log of her appearance from Heldengraf's initial scan of her upon arrival.
"What is that?" she breathed.
"That," he said, "is Mors Mortis. It is a Warlord Titan of the Legio Gryphonicus. It is me."
"You?" she asked. "How can that be possible?"
"I control Mors Mortis not through the crude manual mechanisms of lesser machines, but through a mind-impulse link. We are melded; I become it and it becomes me." He began to push his way through the servitors, noticing that Relena avoided looking at them.
She stayed silent as they moved, knowing without Silas having to tell her that to speak would be to reveal her identity to all in earshot. Eventually, they managed to reach Mors Mortis' foot. Silas offered his hand again, and a doorway in the side of one huge toe opened up.
They walked inside, into barely-lit dimness. The Titan was functioning on reserve power, excess stored from the last mission, now used to power emergency lights and essential systems. It would be the same until the landing, when the huge plasma reactor at its heart would activate and flood the God-Machine with energy.
Silas stepped up to a cogitator station built into the wall inside. He activated it with a press of a button. He leaned close. "Identify: Princeps Silas Xanax. Access to the command throne. Activate transporter."
The cogitator hummed as it analysed his voice patterns, and a narrow door slid open to Silas' right. He and Relena stepped inside, and, with the same speed as on the Honourblade, it rocketed them to the Titan's head.
When they stepped out of the transporter, the command area was well-lit. The Titan's systems had shunted power from other areas to provide power for the princeps. He walked over to the bulkhead to his left, and pried open a panel on its surface.
"This is storage for spare ammunition," he said to Relena. It is empty now. Hide n there. Mors Mortis will detect you, and will not shut down the oxygen generators while you are there."
She just looked at him. "I am to hide in a storage compartment?"
"Would you prefer torture?" Silas ground his teeth. "Get in. If you are found, you will be killed. I am risking my life now, and you must not be found before landing."
She got in.
He shut the panel. "Do not come out until I call you. Landing will begin in…" he checked his chrono. "…forty-six minutes. Do not come out."