III
Tersus lazily rolled the coin between his fingers, glancing up occasionally to make it look as though he were listening intently. The foppish liaison officer continued to drone on about the target of this particular snipe hunt. Tersus didn't much care about any particular heretic's backstory; he just waited for Sergeant Murcheson to tell them where the target was, then Tersus got down to business.
DeClerq, in response to something LeVeigh had said, punched her in the arm, which knocked LeVeigh into Tersus, causing the coin to drop to the ground.
"Watch it, twiddletits!" DeClerq exploded, guffawing. With his exceptionally long face and oversized ears, he resembled nothing so much as a braying ass.
Tersus waved off a brief apology from LeVeigh, who was trying her best to ignore DeClerq.
Murcheson gave them all a stern look, but you could see in his eyes that part of him wished he could be goofing off with them, too. As soon as he looked away, LeVeigh sharply elbowed DeClerq in the gut. His guffaws ended abruptly with a whoosh of expelled air.
"Enough!" Murcheson said, attempting finality. But his round boys' camp face made it difficult to take him seriously.
Tersus carefully removed another coin from a pocket and began rolling it over his knuckles again, but now he paid more attention, since eyes continued to glance his direction.
"I won't share any of Kenek's heretical jeremiads," said the young man who was most likely being psychically controlled by the dark curls surrounding his head, "but suffice it to say, you should use noise dampening aural equipment if a boarding situation does develop. Intra-squad communications should be fine."
"Understood," Murcheson said.
Tersus noticed that Dorlan was watching the coin's path along his knuckles, the portly drunk's eyes fighting full closure. Tersus smiled and reversed the motion, which made Dorlan shudder and look around, shocked awake for a moment. Before long he was staring again, breathing becoming occluded enough to be noticed.
Nagay, seated beside him, surreptitiously elbowed him, eliciting a grunt and cough from the larger man. Nagay's Asiatic face showed disgust, but that was just his normal expression, so it meant nothing, really.
The captain of the ship spoke, explaining what different amenities the ship offered, what areas were off limits … the usual. Sensing the meeting was coming to a close, Tersus pocketed the coin and rolled his shoulders.
"Any questions?" the captain asked. DeClerq looked like he was about to make some base joke, but a warning glare from Murcheson made him give a desultory, silent head shake in response.
One by one, they exited the briefing room and returned to the barracks.
Captain Garamonde's ship, the presumptuously named Rex Experiores Spatiorum, ruggedly continued its pursuit through the warp. Garamonde watched copies of Kenek's sermons or rants or whatever they were, often taking notes of questions that were raised in order to ask Whit about them. Often Whit met with other officers on the ship, but none more so than Garamonde himself.
They had both met with Sergeant Murcheson and his squad of Adeptus Arbites. Garamonde left the tactics of storming Kenek's ship up to Murcheson. He was not a ground pounder, nor did he presume to tell the good sergeant how to conduct his men. His main interactions with them was to make sure they had room to keep themselves in fighting shape.
He gave a half-hearted grin as he thought about the meeting. Rufys would lay odds Tersus was the sniper of the bunch. But neither the squad of Arbites nor his mostly mechanical crew was the passenger most distinct in his mind. No, his mind was plagued with images of a dark-haired specialist. Foolishness. Unforgivable foolish musings of a man past his prime.
Yet still his mind returned to those eyes, so intense when talking about something that excited him. Garamonde longed to be something that brought that intensity to Whit's eyes.
Nagay sat up in his bunk on his elbows, restless. Dorlan's massive snores from below did not help with this twitchy feeling.
Nagay moved so he was sitting up for the most part, grabbing his knife from its hiding place along the side of his mattress. He'd learned to trust his gut, to believe any random uneasiness, as unexplainable as it might be.
He had a brief moment of vertigo, fearing he would fall, which was odd. It was a feeling that he'd never felt before. Rather than upset, he felt more … intrigued. His eyes narrowed and he gripped his knife tighter.
He realized that the vertigo hadn't entirely passed. But it wasn't because he thought he would fall; part of him believed he was already on the ground. Suddenly a vision - memory? - of going to his haunches and driving his knife into Dorlan's chin, all the way up to his brain pan, intruded. Silencing the large man brought blessed silence. The worthless drunk brute added nothing to their squad, anyway.
The snores cut off with a snerk as Dorlan tried for one final breath, but was incapable of it because his jaw was pinned closed.
Nagay nearly did fall, then, he was so disorientated and unable to tell whether this version of himself was dreaming of that other version, or vice versa. He looked at his knife, and for a moment he was certain there was fresh blood and viscera on it. He moved to clean it, but was distracted by the sudden chill he felt. The walls of the bunk had visible frost on them. It hadn't been cold a moment ago.
Nagay shuddered, and beneath him the loud snores began again. Nagay sat there, listening to his heartbeat, clutching the unused dagger, too terrified to move.
After a few moments, warmth returned to the room. Nagay was certain something had passed by, some terrible, inscrutable force, and only by the grace of the Emperor had he been spared.
It was a long while before he was able to return to sleep that night.
Garamonde found himself pondering at night, searching for a good play on words to evoke that wry smile from Whit the next day that would showcase those pronounced cheekbones. Rufys would curse his idiocy and toss in his meager bedchamber far past when he should've been asleep. Though if he did think of an apt bon mot, he made sure to note it on a datapad before sleep claimed him.
Rufys couldn't be sure, but he thought Whit picked up on his subtle cues and seemed not unresponsive. Perhaps after this venture …
It was futile, but inevitably Garamonde's mind kept returning to the possibility, a fly buzzing around a corpse without actually alighting.
The past few days this preoccupation with "perhaps" and "possibly" had gotten so bad that Rufys would find himself lost in thought, playing out what-if scenarios to a ridiculous degree. Not just mindless daydreams of physicality, but actual, entire lives played out when he needed to be focusing on something meaningful.
It had finally led up to this, tonight, with Garamonde standing before Whit's door, hesitating. He could tell, before actually turning in for bed, that it was going to be another bad night, another tour of possible futures. Rather than continue to be plagued by this avalanche of potentialities, Garamonde decided to face the problem head on. At worst, rebuff and mild humiliation. At least it would wipe the infuriating infatuation from his inflamed mind.
Garamonde touched the chime at Whit's door. He could bypass the courtesy security, of course, but it would be impolite.
There was a muffled mumble of acknowledgement, then an interminable wait wherein Rufys was tempted to leave no less than three times. Instead, he stood and readjusted his belt, part of his full dress uniform - he'd put it on, thinking it might make him seem more handsome, but now simply felt like a relic put out to sea. Just as he started to shuffle away, chagrined and embarrassed, the door cycled open, and there stood Whit, his hair only slightly more mussed than normal and his eyes focusing.
Rufys-
-reached out to touch the falling curls of that hair, twining a finger in one of the longest curls at Whit's side. He smiled and felt the years and wrinkles fade away from his own face, wondering-
-coughed nervously and looked down at the floor. "I, uh …" he started, then floundered, realizing he didn't know where to go next. He stared pleadingly into Whit's eyes, hoping for-
-started crying, and he didn't even know why. "This ship is so lonely," he sobbed, while-
-GRABBED WHIT BY THE BACK OF THE HAIR, AND SHOVED THEIR LIPS TOGETHER, OPENING WHIT'S SHOCKED MOUTH WITH HIS TONGUE. HE MOVED INTO WHIT'S QUARTERS, CLOSING THE DOOR BEHIND-
-staggered, feeling the weight of all these other Garamondes, felt them as real as he felt himself. Whit's eyes strained to focus, looking at him. Somehow Garamonde knew Whit was experiencing the same thing as he was. They stared helplessly at each other, unsure how to break free from this kaleidoscopic reality.
Rufys grabbed onto the edge of the cabin doorway for balance, fighting to maintain his sense of self. But the cascading realities kept flowing, some ebbing and flowing to more solidity than even the ground before him.
Whit managed to mutter an, "Oh. Oh, my" before running for the wash closet.
While the real - is it real? Or are we just echoes? - Whit was sick, Garamonde turned slowly from the room, hoping that getting distance from Whit would help him recover. Hardly a rousing success when it came to seduction. Also a failure when it came to anything, really. Garamonde staggered down the hallway, while-
-Whit laughed, a boyish laugh, as he delivered the steaming cup of caf to Rufys. "Rufys," he commented. "It's going to be tough taking that seriously in-
-bed? Honestly? Why, Captain, you must be twenty years older than I am. And, truth be told, I haven't-
-been held like this since I was a child, Rufys thought, as he felt Whit's smaller arms encircle him and pat his back. As ridiculous and imbalanced as it was, he still took comfort in-
-THE SHEER PHYSICALITY OF WHIT'S TOUCH. RUFYS EXPLORED THE INDENT OF WHIT'S BONY HIP, GRABBING THE FLESH AS WHIT'S LIPS WEAVED-
-the door closed behind him. Rufys grabbed at his head, trying to hold his existence into one manifestation. He gave an animal growl of frustration, a cry of pain like a wounded creature left to die in the snow.
Before him, the air began to coalesce, and the air grew suddenly cold. Rufys looked up as, in the corridor not six feet in front of him, a foul being vomited itself into existence, a putrescent muck oozing forth from nothingness to puddle into the air. Its disgusting, globular body dripped acidic pus, which hissed when it hit the metal railing beneath it.
The thing flexed its spidery limbs and cackled.
"Weak flesh puppet," it hissed. "The Changer sees all versions of you! You are-"
Its horrible voice cut off as Garamonde reached-
-down and drew-
-his saber, raising-
-it above his head then-
-SWINGING IT DOWN-
-and sliced through the creature's-
-right legs-
-left legs-
-torso-
-HEAD-
-body, screaming as he did so.
There was a hideous noise from the daemon, making a twisted harmony with his own shout. Every instance of Garamonde, every possible version, swung and chopped at the creature, tearing into it before it could speak enough to hypnotize him into a soporific state of weakness.
The warp-spawned thing, expecting a weakened opponent, with barely a foothold in realspace, cried out and gurgled, unable to defend itself as Rufys continued to hack it apart, piece by offensive piece. Chunks of bleeding, oozing meat rained down onto the floor, acid bubbling around the bits and eating into the decking.
Rufys felt the other realities synchronize before him, like watching trees rush by on a maglev train as the train slows down, the blur turning into recognizable shapes. There was only one here, only one now, and it consisted of nothing but him, his ship, and this vision of horror being torn apart in front of him.
He staggered away as the vile thing's chunks of meat fish flopped on the ground before him. His arms quivering, Rufys slid his saber back into its scabbard before falling to the ground on his hands and knees, shaking, rasps of harsh breath escaping his lungs.
He felt close to vomiting, but brought himself under control, slowly. He felt a presence before him, and a hand on the nape of his neck. He cried out, terrified, but heard Whit whispering, hushing him, cradling his head like a child, and Rufys laid his head against Whit's chest, sobbing as defenselessly as an infant.
Whit stroked his hair, rocking with him, down on his knees so that they were equal height.
"Hush," Whit whispered. "Hush. You're alive. You're alive."
They were the most wonderful, terrifying words Rufys Garamonde could imagine.
