0.3: Fellowship
The shuttle's passenger bay is redolent with the slick, greasy air of faded gilt and fear. There's a quiet murmur as the whine of the engines builds up, plasma thrusters spinning up in a great roar of fire and aging, arthritic restlessness. The fire and ambition of the youths beside you and scattered through the cabin, though, fails to match it. These are not the pick of the Mechanicus or even its middling soldiers, these are the dregs sent to die under the worn, gilt eye of the double-headed eagle. It brings back memories, not all of them good. You lean back a little on the hard seats, four-point harness keeping you in place while you half-doze and half-listen to the chatter among the nervous enginseers. The nervous enginseers made all the more nervous now that an obviously out-of-favor senior Magos has joined their number. One of them evidently thinks you're here to keep them in line. Some of them even seem to
believe that. Hah. You get better things to do even when on penance. There are whispers of intrigue, of fear and politics and of blood-spatters in the halls of the forge-world's mighty high above the clouds.
So it is that you acquire a bubble of privacy, the same shunning and reflexive fear of association at least giving you the space to sleep. The shuttle seems to have stabilized, the windowless compartment having ceased to rock and sway as though the Navy pilot was fighting turbulence, and now there's just a smooth cruise to high orbit and from there the shipyards. It'll take a few hours, especially for a Navy shuttle that has to hold its position while IFF is validated.
You settle in to sleep. Might as well use that privacy.
Your dreams are full of memories and stars and fire.
You're woken by a clanging sound and the rough accented voice that just about screams
Imperial Guard. When you open your eyes there's a ration pack on the empty seat next to you, and it's acting as a paperweight for a journal article's worth of paperwork all marked
DEPARTMENTO MUNITORUM.
As they say in the Guard - well, fuck.
"Magos," comes a timid voice - an
organic one, to your brief surprise before you remember how junior these people are. "They wanted weapons proficiencies, skillsets, personal details and so on. We told them you were on special assignment and they dropped that on the chair." The boy's eyes are wide and nervous. Does he really think you're going to what, shout at him? You can't touch him when he's in a Navy shuttle.
Mm. Well, might as well deal with it then. A nod at the boy, "My thanks. There's no need to let them into the business of the Cult Mechanicus. Those who need to know have been briefed." There's a sigh of relief from one of the other ones, a beefy one that looks as if he came from the scavenger-dumps around Lathe's industrial parks. The little cluster of five enginseers near you is about all that even looks in your direction, though - the other hundred-odd in the shuttle are very studiously peering at their paperwork or rations.
You shake your head and pick up the paperwork, carefully walling off memories of war and the brotherhood of students and soldiers that carried you far, farther than you had any right to be in the halls of whispers and politics and theological infighting. So very far from the Quest for Knowledge. Still, at least the paperwork is both easy and something you don't have to do. Especially since it asks for enlistment numbers, unit preferences and technicians' aptitudes. You half-giggle at the thought of having
that as a penance. You can't even picture the Eldest Judge shaping the syllables 'Imperial Guard', not with his biases. Not for a magos.
Thus, you do the sane, reasonable and rational thing with all of your half-awake mind, and you set the initial Munitorum forms on fire. Lucius would find it funny, and so would your students.
So what if the enginseers yelp a little? One of them glares at you as if to ask what the fuck you're thinking, and maybe this time you'll reply. The role of the Magos of the Mechanicus is to teach as much as to learn, after all. "This is an Imperial Navy shuttle," you tell the heavyset enginseer who seems to be intent on glaring at you, the beefy scavenger beside her trying to sink into his seat and avoid notice. "The fire-alarm systems will not go off for something as small as ashing some paper with a firestarter laser. And besides, do you really think I'm going to list my aptitudes and weapons proficiencies for some clerk in the Guard?"
She shakes her head. Well and so, then.
"What
are they teaching you these days?" Honestly. You might as well hear them out while you poke at what is probably a better-than-usual grade of Guard ration and therefore hopefully edible.
Alana grew better rations whispers the back of your mind, but you remind yourself that your senior student went Biologis and won't be caught dead near this sort of situation.
She's a better politician than you are, and she won't be caught dead near
you right now, comes the swiftly suppressed, treacherous thought.
The enginseers take a moment to whisper amongst themselves, and you notice with wry amusement that some of the other acolytes near the front have started discreetly trying to listen in. Finally their leader - not Beefy and not the heavyset, defiant one - clears his throat. It's the skinny one from earlier, the one you'd dismissed as quiet and self-effacing. He reminds you of Teblor, before he turned aside from the golden path. He says something about basic weapon drills, stubber and lasrifle practice, basic technicians' rites and theology. The sort of thing that'd work for an apprentice. For someone just barely in the halls of Mars.
You pause and take a second look at the shuttle.
The double-headed eagle staring down from above the doorways to the pilot's cabin gaze upon people younger than you were when you went to war. Patchy red robes, interfacing implants done with more speed and faith than skill, the twitchy nervousness of people who know they're unprepared. The shuttle stinks of faded gilt and fear, but it's the fear of children bearing the guilt of those who speak for their God.
Your God. "So," you tell the thin enginseer, his group leaning forwards a little and some of the ones up in front trying to listen in, "You were taught something similar to Guard basic. Weapons, specialist skills and the common lore of the Omnissiah. I will be blunt - I have seen war. I have seen battle. I have seen death."
You remember the battlefields of a failed crusade, scattered about with the corpses of war-engines and the bodies of the slain. Smoke and choking, cloying decay hiding a pyre of dead futures. But that was not Maxima's war, that was [name]'s. You wince for a moment at the blankness that comes up, but you're used to it enough that your autoinjectors don't act. They don't need to. So you take another breath and continue, "You lot aren't ready. When they sent those of my cohort out we were older than you are now, better prepared than the average Guardsman. Lathe took care to make sure we stayed alive." You weren't one of them, and there's a stab of guilt at the relief you felt then - that war would be delayed for you at least.
"So what now then?" The heavyset girl is bitter, rightfully so. "We die? The Omnissiah does not intend
that, surely?"
Expectant eyes are on you, and you laugh hollowly. "No, that he hopefully does not. But I cannot teach you some great secret in just an hour before we dock. All I can say is this. The Guard are not a death sentence. Stick to your comrades, find out who is reliable in your unit, make sure you stay by your men to stay alive." Your gaze sweeps the lot of them, from the quiet one who took the fore initially to the beefy scavenger and the defiant enginseer at his side. "You are not prepared for it
as you are now. Your units will need you, and make sure that they know to keep you alive." With how young they are, they'll probably manage that.
You can't tell them much more, and all you can do is wonder why Lathe sends out its seed-corn for the harvest.
The yard-station's hangars are starkly empty, bare of the usual cohort of techpriests and assorted hangers-on that would otherwise be running maintenance on everything from freighter dropships to trans-orbital fighters. An aquila banner on one wall reminds you that this is, for now, a Navy installation until Lathe's tithe is paid. A Navy installation with watchful skitarii pacing its ramparts, at least. You can taste the buzz of skitarii vox-chat on the noosphere, the metallic emotionless tang of long-service highly-augmented void-troopers.
A polite Navy cadet greets the enginseer cohort, taking them in hand and out of the hangars - presumably to their transport ships. "[name]" comes the whisper from nearby at that moment, while you watch the acolytes leaving, making you twitch and look around to see the Interrogator. It makes sense, perhaps, that in this hangar with its loud but small Navy cohort and its long, bare spaces, nobody but an Inquisitor's second would be able to saunter in unremarked on. After all, nobody wants to notice the Interrogator and be noticed in turn.
"You are [name], yes?" You nod jerkily, the blur of static that was once your name now a jolting signal to your servos. For Maxima Zero-Three-Delta, [name] is a Name the likes of which is embedded into skitarius operant conditioning. It was
you, and it belongs to them now even as you wear its old skin flayed and rearranged into this caricature of what you were. "Excellent!" beams the Interrogator, "Now that we have you aboard, I think the team is assembled."
The corridors of the station are winding and long, a place studded with workshop doors and loading bays, with storage racks for everything from rations to weapons to firefighting equipment in their neat lockers. Even in the crowds on the yard-station and its workshop corridors though, you remain with your bubble of space - and this time you're not the cause.
Your destination is an unremarkable set of quarters for visiting ships' captains, spare and tidy and organized with the same stark, clear purpose as a Secutor's blade. "Welcome," says the Inquisitor as their second ushers you in, "Take a seat, Magos. We have much to discuss."
Choose one:
[]They are tall and thin, with kindly eyes: With worn robes of white and gold is he clad, and his eyes are sorrowful and kind in equal measure. The priest before you has the thick wrists of a swordsman and the scarring of a veteran, the gleam of warding-talismans occasionally peeking from folds in his robes like the eyes of the Emperor's cherubs. "I have been told you're familiar with the Imperial Guard, magos," says the priest in his robes so pure as he folds his hands that seem more suited for the sword. The man before you is a sorrowful executioner, a compassionate minister, a dutiful soldier and a virtuous son. The Inquisition in its Sunday best.
[]They are a curious and young, whipcord-lean and hungry: They have the light of discovery in their eyes, acid burns on their arms occasionally showing under the sleeves of a battered Guard-issue leather coat. There's a drive in their eyes that reminds you of when [name] was younger and you weren't Maxima Zero-Three-Delta. "You have fought alongside the Deathwatch before, magos?" says the Inquisitor as they toy with what seems to be a genestealer's talon. You can see a dissection kit on their shelf and an Eldar artifact of some form by its side. "That experience may be useful if things do not go as planned." You hope you won't need it at least, not with this one as your superior. A scientist, or at least a dabbler. A hungry curiosity, a burning ambition, tension and anticipation wound tight as a coiled spring. A calculating machine given flesh, a bloody arithmetic of lives and coin and knowledge all under the aquila's eye.
[]She seems unremarkable: She is dressed in gray, formal robes in a cut eerily similar to an Administratum scribe. She shows you the rosette for a moment before tucking it away, the weighty symbolism of her office turned tiresome social chore. This woman, you almost tell yourself, is
not a threat at all. It takes another moment to shake yourself. She smiles. When she shakes your hand and welcomes you aboard she is utterly normal. Utterly unremarkable. Perfectly polite. "There is, as ever, the Long War, Magos. Welcome aboard." She is bland, polite and most certainly not a threat. Behind her is a racked power-sword and suit of armor, for she is the Emperor's blade in the shadows and your instincts are almost certainly lying.
To be absolutely blunt, I barely write these days and quality is likely to have declined. Please be aware of that.
