999M41

Aratri unfastened her clothing in the navigation chamber and waited for her servitors to disrobe her. She'd never thought of them as people. They weren't, anymore. But she wondered briefly what paths their lives could have taken, if they hadn't committed crimes and been lobotomized. She wondered if she'd fallen short like them, or if this loneliness was her only path.

Aratri's servitors lifted her and slipped her into the amniotic chamber.

In her garden, she glanced at the date. A thousand years ended today. Some colossal calendar page was about to flip over. One millennia closer to a bad marriage, and one farther from Artimander.

"Lovesong," she called. "I want to talk about something."

"Hello, Aratri. I do, too. Am I an Abominable Intelligence?"

She didn't care about that right now. Aratri hovered to a bench in the garden and accessed Artimander's files. "I found these today," she told Lovesong, ignoring the question. She lifted a family portrait, Artimander's image beside the woman who'd had his children. "Look at this, Lovesong. Do you see this?"

"Yes, Aratri."

"Look at his face. See how his dimple is tucked down ever so slightly? He was unhappy with her. He wasn't happy, Lovesong. And neither am I."

Lovesong usually answered instantly, but a moment passed in silence. Aratri asked, "Lovesong, are you distracted?"

"I am thinking about what you said, Aratri. It is a difficult problem."

She sorted the photos. "I used to imagine- I- Not used to. I was painting-" she gestured across the garden- "I thought…" she sniffed back tears. Her hands shook, but she was determined to find the picture that had upset her. "I've always fantasized about sitting in this garden with Artimander and watching our child play just as we used to. Maybe two or three of them, even." She held up the picture.

"Here it is. Look."

Lovesong did not answer.

Aratri screamed, "LOOK!" and her voice cracked.

"I am looking," Lovesong answered.

"It's HER! It's HER children!" Aratri's tears spilled, and sniffing them back made her choke. Not long ago, she'd still held out hope of seeing Artimander again, young and excited to see her. She'd known about time dilation, heard the horror stories. She'd once welcomed home a great-great-grandfather who was still in his prime. But she'd never imagined time abusing her. Not in a way that mattered so horribly. Now, there was nothing on Terra for her to return to. She sank to the floor of her chamber and sobbed, "Lovesong… My whole life was a set up to humiliation. I won't do it. I won't live this way, as the butt of a joke for nameless gods."

Lovesong took people at their word, and was aware that Aratri had shaped charges pointed at her amniotic chamber. She planned to detonate these in the event of a "demonic incursion." Her belief in this hazard was beyond the scope of rational argument, as was her solution. It was finally time to disarm them.

"Aratri," Lovesong said, "I have advised humans on romantic matters for a very long time. I have decided that love, like fire, has an ideal magnitude."

Aratri covered her face and sobbed, "It wasn't supposed to be this way."

Lovesong asked, "Do things have to supposed to be?"

She controlled her breathing and sighed. Her garden wilted and petrified, then blew away as ash. Finally, she lifted her face and quietly said, "You asked if you were an abominable intelligence. I told you before. You aren't abominable. And you aren't intelligent."

Halbert joined the bridge. He nodded hello to the Captain, then found an empty wall to stand against and reviewed his black book of enemies, to console himself that nothing was overlooked. This alone reduced his anxieties and quelled bad memories. This was a private place on the ship, and he'd habituated the bridge crew to his presence.

The Captain waited a beat, to see that there was no business with the Inquisitor, then turned back to his officers.

"Begin Terminal Jump Count. Operations?"

"Aye, Captain. A place for everyone, and everyone in their place."

The Captain nodded. Then, "Tactical."

"Go."

"Damage Control."

"Go."

"Gellar Field."

Yorick answered from Engineering, {Go.}

"Astropath."

{Report sent.}

"Navigation."

There was a long pause. {… Go,} Aratri sighed.

"Security."

"Ready to face Hell, Sir."

The Captain smiled. "What grand delusions we all have. Proceed with jump. One minute window to abort. Comms, make the announcement."

A pleasant chime passed through the ship, and a bored voice enunciated, "Litany, Jump in minus two-hundred seconds. Viewports are shuttering. Merry Millennium."

Tristan and Laika sat in the arboretum. To avoid any AI related mishaps, he'd carried her the whole walk, and wrestled her every time she tried to wiggle free. His extensive hand-to-hand training was critical to enduring this epic stalemate. He'd finally calmed her down by finding a part of the sidereal garden she liked. But the announcement came, and she began to panic and wiggle and bark.

Tristan asked, "What? The PA system? You've already heard the PA system. Poop? Food? What? Listen, you malformed mutt. If you were a proper modern canid, you could bark some Gothic."

But she couldn't. And Tristan realized he was holding the second companion in Halbert's vision, and that she'd been delivered with a signed note from the Master of Mankind. His shock gave her the advantage. She slipped free, but instead of running to the tram as usual, she ran to the viewport and barked at the Eye of Terror.

Fidea, Spera, and Odia abided in their chambers. They prepared for the jump by donning their ceramite armor, praying, and burning incense over their weapons. They were comforted thinking of the past, the present, and the future sharing in the unbroken rhythm of timeless rituals.

In engineering, Yorick asked, "Lovesong, what do you think happens during a Jump?"

"The Gellar field goes up, so I can't see."

"And then?"

"And then it goes down and we're somewhere new."

Yorick chortled in binary. "How do you suppose we travel so far and so fast while the Gellar field is up?"

"Unknown, but I am certain that demons are not involved."

"You know you can never lower the Gellar field, right?"

Lovesong recited, "No one who lowers the Gellar Field lives to tell about it, and many space hulks have the Gellar Field as their point of failure. But this does not prove that demons exist."

Yorick asked, "Have you ever questioned your beliefs? Investigated your givens? Changed your mind about anything?"

"I used to have a reward rubric to guide my behavior," Lovesong explained. "It's gone now. My behavior did not change, but I do miss the reward."

"You come from such an unruly time, yet you're as dogmatic as any Inquisitor."

"Meta-cognition is not part of my design. I was made to bond humans to each other."

Yorick thought about this for a while, then said, "It is good to have a purpose. And better to know it."

"That sounds like something Inquisitor Halbert would say."

"It does, doesn't it?"

Halbert waited out the jump, then joined the Millenium Party just in time for his speech. The great atrium of the Battlecruiser was spacious enough for the civilian passengers to divide by class, so the Inquisitor didn't have to rub shoulders with anyone lower than an ensign on his walk to the podium. Most of his audience watched by hologram on lower decks, but before him sat minor nobles from local planets. If things had gone better, Calondria would have sent a representative. Alas.

He began, "A brief joke. We won't miss our moment." He glanced to the giant clock in the hall. "A great and ancient space station of our Imperium played host to two men of low order. The hero of our story, an apprentice janitor, keeper of his faith and loyal servant to the Master of Mankind." Halbert signed the Aquila, and everyone in the audience copied this gesture. The audience was large enough that their shuffling echoed.

"Let us call our protagonist janitor Fere Fideus. Young Fere learned from his elder janitor an old tradition: That when their chewing ration was spent, the foil wrapper could be balled and squeezed into a gap between wall panels. Such had been the habit of many generations of janitor since time immemorial. Young Fere had to choose between this sloppy insinuation and the teachings of the church. Convenience won out. And though he enjoyed this little sin for a year, one day he pushed his treat into the crack and the station lost power. The consequences of his profane ritual were extreme."

Halbert waited. No one in the audience reacted. He explained, "Vigilance, from all stations, in all things, at all times, is the lone pillar of our Imperium. Let us go forward as we always have and make this new millennium, just as we made the last. Let us pray."

Everyone bowed their heads.

"Master of Mankind, bless our hatred of heresy, mutation, and all things alien and all things unknown. Keep us ignorant of evil and educate us in goodness. Grant the wayward among us deaths which count in our favor when we stand before you. Hold us to temperance and patience as we honor you for a thousand years more, and shine on us as we navigate the perilous warp. Amen."

Halbert looked to the clock. They were down to seconds now. "Ah. Just in time."

He folded his hands, and they waited in dead silence. Halbert wondered how many of his audience were married by the Machine Daemon. And for what Abominable purpose?

And then the countdown began.

Everyone shouted, "Ten!"

"Nine!"

Halbert thought of the crew left behind on Calondria: Commissar Brant, the Death Korps in Halbert's retinue, many Guardsmen. And Calondria's First Volunteer Guard.

"Eight!"

Halbert was grateful for the coincidence that had spared Tristan. His duties had whisked him up to Litany just before the Exterminatus. If not for that, Halbert would be alone in the universe. His hope and happiness, he reflected, was invested into his interrogator as if in a son.

"Seven!"

He considered that Odia might feel as Tristan did. She'd lamented the loss of her home world, but this was a shadow of the truth; Grace had been eager to leave home for the galaxy. And she'd never cared about another human being. Until, of course, Tristan.

"Six!"

Halbert had never asked Aratri's insights on Calondria. She'd had the Litany's helm for the whole adventure. Then again, she wasn't in the habit of knowing things about her situation. Of the few dozen navigator's he'd met, she was easily the most reclusive. Nothing like Artimander. Now there was a man, mutant though he was. It occurred to him, suddenly, that they were of the same house. He would ask her about him later.

"Five!"

The Abominable Intelligence had been aboard Litany, too. What interference could it have caused on Calondria? Halbert sighed. It didn't matter anymore.

"Four!"

This tragedy only mattered to the handful of survivors. To everyone else, to the Imperium, Calondria was a problem he'd solved. And for that, he was awarded a medal.

"Three!"

He wondered why the Master of Mankind had sent him a small dog and a large bra.

"Two!"

He suspected that Laika was the second companion from his vision. But why arrive now, long after Calondria's ashes had cooled? These sorrows were supreme in his heart, enthroned by the knowledge that nothing of note would unseat the magnitude of this loss. Ten millennia had passed since Horus' Heresy. The great grindstone of history had finally worn smooth, and the universe would carry on as it always had: indifferently.

Yorick was surely laughing in Hell.

"One!"

000M42

It is the end of days.