Fireblade stood with her hands clasped behind her, head swiveling one direction and then another. The view around her was most impressive, yes, in part because of how different it was from the last time she had visited this place so many years ago.
Fortified walls and gun-emplacements now filled every tenth-mannal of space between the fluted columns that filled the Webway. Tall scaffolding held aloft teams of gallen and one or two human psykers, inspecting the few cracked columns near their base of operations. A red-robed techpriest directed a squad of soroin as they muscled a ceramacrete-pouring hose into position to forge yet another bastion overlooking the outer walls.
The Teidar Teigo Niberadi who stood alongside Fireblade turned to her, one eyebrow raised. {You are impressed, Pallan?} Light both from the ever-present glow of the ancient Eldar constructions and the spot-lights installed more recently glinted off of the golden aquilae that perched above the Guard teidar's rank-tabs.
{Indeed so.} Fireblade confirmed. {This is already a fortress greater than any I have yet seen or imagined.} Including Alex's shared memories and stories, for that matter.
{Greater than any ever imagined by the daughters of Deinar, certainly.} the Praetorian confirmed, nodding to herself as her eyes drifted aside. {But only a pale shadow of the fortifications upon humanity's Terra. Even the portions we were allowed to see are incredible, the work of tens of thousands of years of labor.}
{We should hopefully not need quite so much defenses here as on that world.} Fireblade deadpanned. The ancient battles that had riven humanity's homeworld, even as shrouded in myth as the stories which Alex relayed had been, were most impressive… and terrifying. {Most of our foes which could threaten us with an invasion through this Webway would be repulsed by teams of those such as us.} She tilted her head towards first her fellow loroi and then the human warrior that stood at the Niberadi's side, plasma-pistol and sword hanging from the half-alien's belt as her purple eyes scanned the artificial horizon.
{Indeed so.} the older teidar echoed Fireblade's earlier message proudly. Then her thoughts and eyes darkened. {But we can never be too prepared.}
Fireblade only nodded, thoughts drifting to the many shared battle-reports and histories that had crossed her desk both as Alex's bonded mate and as an instructor at the teidar academy. Yet those were only relayed stories; the teidar at her side had been stationed on Terra for more than a decade and had seen many of those horrors first-hand.
Then again, alongside the human Custodians and these 'Sisters of Silence,' she had slain those foes.
A burst of sanzai echoed in from the distance, and both teidar stepped forwards to the thick-walled parapet. Out of the dimly-lit (by comparison) gloom of the distant Webway, a mixed patrol of warriors approached. Spotlights along the wall traversed to bathe them in bright light for identification.
Two golden-armored giants strode at the front, gun-spears held at the ready. Behind them, a quartet of soroin jogged to keep pace, while their leader poured her concentration into reporting the success of their mission to the sentries atop the gatehouse. The small formation's rear was watched by a teidar, eyes scanning behind them as she jogged backwards, one hand clasped in the grip of the human guardsman who guided her onwards.
Listening to the relayed mission report, Fireblade nodded in satisfaction. {The route between here and Terra remains accessible, then. That is most good to receive.} Her eyes played across the blackened scorch marks on the approaching warriors' armor, but only one of the soroin had a visible injury with her right arm held immobile in a sling across her chest by a field bandage.
A successful-enough mission, then. As many warriors had arrived here as had departed from Terra.
Fireblade drummed her fingers against the thigh-plate of her armor. It also meant that she no longer had an excuse to dally here, on this side of the Gate between Stone Watcher Citadel and its paired outpost in the Webway.
{I must depart, then.} Fireblade sent, as much to herself as to the teidar at her side. {I am most impressed with the work of your warriors in establishing this beachhead, and I will relay all that I have seen to Trader Jardin.} In whose name she had been officially sent here to inspect the fortifications, a favor for which she would certainly thank Alex.
After all, it meant that she had not been the Academy instructor assigned the duty to perform the initiation exams for this year's diral graduates. She knew that she would have been more than able to keep herself impartial in those exacting tests, as she knew that her daughter would expect. But it was important both for her personally and for the honor of their caste that there was not so much as a hint of any special treatment in this most unusual circumstance.
And so Fireblade had been 'assigned' to inspect the fortifications instead of the applicants, thanks to Alex's intervention. But her duty here had been completed, and had taken enough time to suffice for her other aims as well.
The Praetorian turned her face back to glance at Fireblade. And while neither Teidar's face moved so much as a muscle, wordless sanzai conveyed the Niberadi's knowing smirk. {I am glad to hear that, Pallan. The assistance of the specialists sent here by your mate has been most appreciated, and I ask that you convey the thanks of myself and Marshal Nero both.}
The human warrior standing off to one side turned her own head, eyes flicking between the two loroi. Fingers drummed against her sword-belt, and with a sharp nod she turned back to her observations of the ongoing work.
Her journey through the Gate was certainly much simpler than that confused first time. A set of stairs and a ramp now led down into the murky depths of liquid wraithbone. The most-strange sensation rose up around Fireblade as she descended, surrounded by liquid and yet not actually wet.
Her head dropped below the waterline, and by now she knew to feel for the slight shift in her gut as the gravity underfoot weakened slightly. She bobbed back upwards, climbing up a matching ramp and stairway into that particular chamber deep below Stone Watcher Citadel. The wraithbone flowed away behind her, not clinging to her armor as any 'normal' liquid would.
With a nod to the caste-sister standing guard on this side — moderately redundant given the fortifications now surrounding the opposite end of the Gate, but one could never be too secure — Fireblade stepped to one side to let the warriors waiting in line pass by. The traffic-flow indicator light for their direction switched from blue to green, and the procession of soroin and gallen marched past and into the wraithbone pool.
The corridors outside were likewise abuzz with labor teams, as ancient stonework was shifted aside and replaced with wide, modern thoroughfares. Rails were laid into the concrete underfoot, and it would not be long until heavy cargo vehicles could pass straight through between Deinar and the Webway.
And if the plans of two Emperors worked out, some day Terra and Deinar would be connected by a rapid transit system, two ancient cousin-worlds tied together as they had not been for hundreds of millennia.
She ascended the new, wide ramp leading upwards to the building above — it had taken Alex more than a year before he stopped quipping {Where's the elevator?} every time the two of them visited this place — her heartbeat quickening with every step. For as she drew closer to the level of the courtyards above, the crowded mind-signatures of senior teidar and young cadets alike grew more and more receivable.
She knew that her daughter would be among them; while Fireblade's duties had not allowed her to be present at the child's diral graduation a few days prior, Tempo had gone in her stead. The Mizol Torimor had relayed what a new warrior she had found there, much changed over the last two years. And the humming pride which had underlain Tempo's sanzai when describing the 'niece' whom she had given a year's worth of rapid training in the fundamentals of the mizol arts had been most obvious… and also most reassuring to Fireblade.
Fireblade had never held even the slightest doubt that her daughter's diral would pass their trials, yes, but it was one thing to believe — 'to have faith,' as Alex had put it — and another to know with certainty that her daughter now would wear the same armor as Fireblade herself.
And so she fought down the energy swirling anxiously in her gut, and by the time she marched out of the main doorway of the Citadel she did so as Instructor Fireblade. Arms crossed behind her back, each boot-step ringing out in a perfectly-timed beat against the ancient stones. Even the veteran teidar who stood guard by the door straightened up further at her passing.
Within the iron-hard defenses of her mind, Fireblade smiled. It was reassuring as always to see that the skills in inspiring discipline and no small amount of awe in junior warriors which she had learned in her years of service during the War still remained sharp.
Although the peaked cap which Alex had had procured and fitted for her was still perhaps a bit much.
The welcome harbor breeze whipped her hair to one side as she emerged onto the upper parapet, her eyes and mind gazing out over the cadets below. Silent and stern instructors stood watch over the multiple dirals of newly-minted warriors, keeping a wary eye on the cadets running through their first-day team exercises.
All carefully orchestrated to strike the optimum mix between playing the dirals against each other, and forcing them to cooperate. These girls had spent the last two years scrabbling in the preserved wilds of Deinar, from snow-capped mountain peaks to sun-baked deserts, depending on nothing but one another's support… but they were all now to be teidar together. The identical stark-white rank tabs which glinted under the afternoon sun were a testament to that, without even yet the individually-fitted amplifiers that would be assembled for them over the next few transits.
Fireblade first confirmed that the routines running below were going as planned, before she allowed her senses to search out a particular signature. Out of row after row of identical uniforms and shaven scalps, it fell to her sanzai senses to identify her daughter. Emerald eyes narrowed as they fell upon one particular cadet, currently attempting — and largely failing, as expected of one on her first day of proper caste training — to perform a push-up without the use of her arms.
Careful to keep her observations passive rather than receivable, Fireblade ran her senses over the mind of the bald warrior below. It seemed… similar to the child she remembered, yes, but at the same time different. There were hard edges of experience where before had been only malleable curiosity, as well as a framework of rigid discipline underlying the young cadet.
Secure in the privacy of her distant observation spot from atop the battlements, Fireblade allowed her proud smile to break free onto her face.
Far below, the chil— the warrior's concentration slipped for a moment, and she fell face-first onto the trimmed grass of the exercise field. Fireblade quickly double-checked that her own emotions had not leaked out onto broadcast sanzai, even as one corner of her smile quirked into a knowing smirk. Her own nose had tasted the Academy grass more than a few times all those years ago, before she had managed to wrestle her temperamental powers under what control she could muster.
But before the nearby instructor could whip her head around towards the fallen cadet, the young warrior had telekinetically shoved her way off of the ground in an instant.
Nodding, Fireblade checked her suit chronometer. She had a quarter-cycle of time until her duties would call her away.
Until then, she would watch.
Later that evening, Fireblade stood under the dim lights of the otherwise-empty armory. One hand traced over the variety of unloaded weapons still propped on their display benches, where they had sat during the initial familiarization course earlier in the day. Fireblade had stood in the back behind the crowd of wide-eyed cadets as their two instructors walked the young warriors through the basics of operating the sort of higher-grade weapons that even warrior-creche children would not have seen.
It had been a most… interesting lesson. Not because of the weapons — Fireblade's disdain for such equipment had yielded many years ago to the wisdom of learning how to use them all the same — but because of the instructors. The Teidar Ragan who walked the warriors through the loroi weapons on display was a familiar sight, both to Fireblade and the students… but the blue-uniformed human guardsman who stood at her side was most certainly not.
Golden tassels had danced against his shoulders as he crisply demonstrated the operation of each boxy human weapon, and to their credit each of the cadets had kept her attention on the weapons more than the half-alien who hefted them. It perhaps helped that the iron-hard eyes that glinted from underneath the sharp black brim of his peaked cap were very much unlike that of a true male.
And unlike Alex, too, for that matter. Fireblade was certainly glad that that had not been the face which she woke up next to most mornings, for all that the Major was indeed a warrior without parallel.
Shaking her head to banish the memory of the human's cold eyes — one utterly pitiless, the other merely a glowing-red mechanical replacement — she made to place the 'meltagun' back in its cradle.
And paused, as a flicker of presence echoed against her mind.
Setting the weapon down quietly, Fireblade shrouded her mind as best she could and stepped back into the shadows within the half-lit room. She was no mizol to create a proper lotai, but Tempo's frequent visits to the House Jardin compound had not seen her teaching only the children there…
By Fireblade's count, there were a half-dozen signatures approaching the armory from the corridor outside. She could faintly detect the buzzing of most-private sanzai between them, too muddled for her to properly intercept.
The armory door hissed open.
She was most certain that she had locked it behind her.
Safely out of sight behind a rack of disassembled blasters, Fireblade very carefully leaned against the wall, crossing her arms as she focused on the mind-signatures now filing into the room with padded steps.
Cadets.
She could have pressed in upon their minds enough to tell who exactly they were, but that would give away her position. Yet now that they were inside the same room as she, even their poorly-trained attempts to shield their own signatures and sanzai from her could not stop her from receiving their sendings.
{They aren't… volatile or anything, right?}
A quiet clink of metal. {These ones aren't. The plasma gun in the corner is, but it looks like the instructors have the charge tanks for them locked away somewhere else.} More rustling, the cloth of a cadet's uniform. {And here's the charge-pack for the lasgun. You saw how it goes in? Tilt forwards, rock back.}
{I saw the demonstration. They do look… most different from ours, don't they?}
A third mind added {The weapons, or the male?}
{Both.} answered the first two simultaneously.
More clicks of metal echoed dully through the room, as cadets helped themselves to weapons which they were not supposed to be handling until tomorrow's range exercises. One of the young warriors asked the one who appeared to be their leader {You are certain that the range is to remain unused at this hour? That we won't be overheard?}
{Lasguns aren't any louder than blasters, and these ones are training models. Their power selector goes down a notch; you don't even need hearing protection.}
Fireblade frowned. This cadet-leader seemed to be unusually familiar with human weapons. And there were very few places where such a young future-teidar could have gained such knowledge…
Chief among them, the creche which had spent a year largely at the Jardin compound.
{That is good to receive. And what about—}
{Put the boltgun back, Eclipse. That one would wake up the entire Citadel.} their leader's tone immediately switched from 'informative' to 'commanding.'
{Assuming the instructors aren't waiting for us inside the range. Are you sure they actually sleep at all?} at least one of the cadets seemed unfazed by the authoritative ring of their leader's sending.
{We'll be fine. They've got their hands full dealing with that brawl back in the barracks. And for the record, I had nothing to do with that.}
{'Right.'} one of the other warriors sent teasingly, amidst the sound of another lasgun charge-pack being locked into place. {That girl's mattress could have started smoking by itself, no help required.}
{Oh, for—} More cloth rustled. {Here, look for yourself. The seii still has our final sharpening-marks from five days ago, no scrape-signs since then. And unless you think I've suddenly figured out thermokinesis since we were tested this morning, that's all I've got. Besides, the floors in the barracks are all sandstone: no sparks.}
{Well, you'd know.}
{Yes I do. Now, you're all ready?}
A wave of muffled affirmations.
{Good. Then into the range with you, and nobody pulls a trigger until I've shown you how the sights work. They're physical, not holographic, and that takes a bit of learning. I don't want you leaving marks on the walls for the instructors to ask about tomorrow morning.}
{Later this morning.} one of the other girls corrected. The doorway leading from the armory into the small adjacent range — meant for testing rebuilt weapons more than training, but it would comfortably fit six used to each other's close company — hissed open. Padded feet tapped against the flooring. The door slid closed.
And Fireblade let out a breath, thoughts battling against each other within her mind. The cadets were here in violation of several rules — starting with curfew, and rising up to unauthorized handling of a weapon without an instructor's presence — and that was cause enough for her to cite them and issue the appropriate reprimands.
Yet it seemed that they had not broken the Academy rules for spurious reasons. No sneaking into another barracks to settle a score via dishonorable ambush rather than open confrontation, no purloining food from the communal stores, and no — as in one memorable example from just a few years prior — climbing the outer Citadel walls to telekinetically hurl small stones at passing vehicle traffic.
It seemed that they were here to train. An admirable goal, and one that perhaps warranted a slight bending of the rules. After all, Fireblade was an instructor... and she was in the room when they readied their weapons.
She grimaced to herself as she stepped out of her hiding place. It was also true that the young warrior who had led her fellow cadets here seemed to be one most familiar with human weapons… and also appeared to be the leader of the girls' diral. Tempo hadn't mentioned if Fireblade's daughter had worn the diral-seii at her graduation…
And Fireblade was not entirely certain right now if she wanted that to be the case or not.
Placing her feet carefully heel-to-toe to avoid any sound, Fireblade made her way across the armory. The window that opened out onto the range was normal glass rather than a one-way design, but with the bright lights that now illuminated the armory compared to the shadowy darkness of the armory, it would work well enough for her purposes.
Stepping up near the window, Fireblade redoubled her efforts at hiding her mind-signature. The cadets taking their places on the firing line seemed too distracted to sense her presence not ten mannal behind them, but she still wished to observe for a while before revealing herself.
Five young future-teidar stood with their lasguns on the bench in front of them, all eyes on their leader as she walked them through the shot. {—ith that it's now set for single-shot, at training intensity. The front sight is fixed, that's this little post here; but someone's dialed the rear-sight out to maximum. Let's fix that.}
{It's a bright-weapon; why does its scope — its sight — have a range dial?} the warrior nearest her asked.
{Precision. Metal sights can't generate their own image to account for height-over-emitter, so to place the shot exactly where you aim it has to be adjusted for range.}
{Is such extreme precision truly necessary for a handheld weapon? It seems unlikely that it would be used against foes more than a few hundred mannal distant.}
{It's a lasgun. For many of the foes out there, you need to put your shots on a particular part of your target. An eye-slit, or a gap between armor, or something like that.}
Fireblade nodded; evidently this diral-leader had been paying good attention to the descriptions of the Imperium's foes given to the new warriors. Which only made the Pallan have to work harder to suppress the instinct to reach out to this cadet's mind to confirm if she was who Fireblade thought her to be.
{This range only goes out to twenty mannal, so we use the lowest-range setting. And with a crisp pull…} a muted crack echoed through from the range. On the loroi-oid silhouette down at the other end of the narrow-but-long room, a neat little hole had appeared.
A full hand's-width to the left of the target's head.
{Now,} their leader sent, setting her weapon down and turning to her friends, {none of us are going back to bed until each of you shoots better than I can. The good news is, that's not too great of a challenge. Get to it, and if you have questions just ping me.}
Fireblade took a step back deeper into the shadows, as the cadet leader moved to pace back-and-forth behind her comrades as they took turns with their own shots. It was a most admirable display of initiative for the young warriors…
And Fireblade had glimpsed the face of the diral-leader as she had stood from her spot at the bench. It was leaner and sharper than the child's visage that she had last seen, but it was unmistakably her daughter.
The range flared intermittently with light, and Fireblade shifted her weight from one foot to the other as time rolled by. Within a quarter-cycle, it slowly became obvious which of the five would have to hope that her psychokinesis would compensate for the weapons-talent which she evidently did not hold.
Again, a situation that Fireblade well remembered from her own Academy days. But in the new, yet-more-violent galaxy in which the loroi now found themselves, even strong teidar could not be lax enough to allow their psychokinesis to cover for any deficiencies in other fields of the warrior's art. Fireblade's hands rose to the shelf at her side, pulling what she needed from the readied equipment there.
All the while, she received her daughter's cajoling sendings to the other cadets. {Good grouping, Silvercharm. Can't wait to see the look on the instructor's face tomorrow when you pull shots like that from an 'unfamiliar' weapon!} She turned away from that warrior and the quartet of burn-marks low on the target's torso, and to the last cadet in the line. {Eclipse, you're still pulling your shots to the side. They're consistent, at least, just off-target. Keep focusing on a straight-backwards squeeze, and we'll show the other girls that the Lost Dirtkickers is the diral with the best markswomen of the year!}
Fireblade quirked one corner of her lip. It was a charming effort that the young warriors were putting in, but the fact that they were still most inexperienced was beginning to show. She tapped one finger against the control panel for the door, overriding its motors and manually sliding it open without a sound.
Stepping through, she waited until the warrior in question lined up her next shot before barking forcefully {Cadet Eclipse! You have placed the stock of your weapon against your shoulder bone rather than in the pocket to its right. Correct this!}
Five loroi whirled to stare up at her, wide-eyed. But to their credit, this came amidst a clicking chorus of weapon safeties being re-engaged… and Eclipse herself merely adjusted her weapon, tucking it in closer to her head. A heartbeat later, and a crack echoed out to punch a faintly-glowing hole only a finger-width above the target's scalp.
Fireblade nodded at the improvement, however incomplete, before turning her gaze from one warrior to the next. All stood from their positions and snapped to attention-rest, eyes fixed on an invisible point above Fireblade's head. {Pallan-instructor!} her daughter sent quickly, {I take full responsibility for this excursion. I and I alone decided that my diral-sisters required training in advance of scheduled—}
{Training which it seems is indeed necessary.} Fireblade interrupted, careful to keep her face as impassive and unreadable as her deadpan sanzai. She raised the blaster-pistol in her hand, and put two shots through the center target downrange. Just below center-of-mass. Pitching her sanzai to shove at the minds of each of the juniors in front of her, she sent {You will each remain here and practice until either you can best my accuracy, or the time for your morning exercises arrives.}
The second-day physical exercises which were already designed explicitly to push cadets past their point of exhaustion. The exercises that would be downright agony to push through without any sleep the previous night.
It seemed an appropriate punishment for the rules which the cadets had broken.
Six sets of eyes darted to the target that Fireblade had marked. Then returned to her, slightly wider. Yet {Acknowledged, Pallan-instructor!} rang out from six minds without hesitation.
But Fireblade wasn't done. Meeting her daughter's gaze, she sent {A leader must exceed her subordinates to be worthy of her post. You in particular will remain here until you can place four successive shots within a finger-width of the target's center.} A feat which was beyond Fireblade's own ability to replicate easily, even after the training in weapons-use that she had diligently pursued these last few years as an instructor. {Is this understood, cadet…?}
Her daughter braced even more fully to attention and identified herself formally as {Soroin Paset Sabatbeshri, Pallan-instructor!}
Fireblade's eyes narrowed, but the name her daughter used prompted no humorous or questioning echoes from the other future-teidar. Careful to shield her sanzai from the others in the room, she sent privately {'Sparkdagger', still?} One eyebrow rose microscopically.
But her child did not so much as flinch. {As the third one to carry my diral's seii, I maintained that honor and duty by being the one most reliable at starting a fire via its use.}
A simple explanation for how the rest of the diral granted her such a name… but Fireblade could sense more complex thoughts lurking underneath Sparkdagger's sanzai. Pride and satisfaction.
Fireblade pressed in upon her daughter's mind, and after a moment was allowed in. A rapid flicker of memories flowed past her, of a child spending many cycles of her sorely-wanted sleep cycles before leaving for her diral instead practicing with a held rock and a knife borrowed from the kitchens. Heavy eyelids driven back by a fierce determination for one so young.
Emerald eyes narrowed, and an answering flicker came from the soft-green eyes of her daughter. The child had sought out that name, had plottedto earn it.
{I may no longer be permitted to speak aloud to my father should I meet him again, but I wished to ensure that he would know that I cherish the childhood he gave me.} Sparkdagger sent, the very same determination and defiance echoing throughout her sanzai.
A childhood of opportunities which the girl had clearly put to good use. Fireblade took a step back from the firing-line, and returned the blaster-pistol to her hip. Crossing her arms, she sent a wordless burst of understanding to her daughter before addressing the room at large {Resume your practice, cadets.} She let the use of the informal term 'cadet' rather than the formal Soroin Paset rank held by these warriors not yet rated as Teidar express her qualified approval of their determination and initiative.
The five others immediately turned their attention from pretending not to be doing their best to intercept the private sanzai between mother and daughter, and returned their focus to the weapons in their hands. As the intermittent crackle of lasfire resumed, Fireblade blinked away the tiredness encroaching upon her own mind.
She would no more look forwards to taking up her own duties later that morning without sleep than these young warriors would, but a day or two of lethargy would be more than worth it.
Her eyes lingered on her daughter, the girl alternating between tightening her own shot groupings and giving what advice she could to her fellow cadets.
Fireblade nodded to herself. This was indeed worth it.