Sol + [Ch.4, 05/12/19]

[Qkhitai]

 

SOL

 

Terra has been won and the War of Unification is ended. For a thousand years, humanity had been trapped in its cradle, but now the fledging Imperium awakens to reclaim its birth right. Yet before those distant worlds of her forgotten empire might be returned to her bosom, before the true onset of what would become known as the Great Crusade, she would have to wage her very first starstrewn war. The denizens of Terra might now be as one, but those of the Sol System yet remain to be tamed.

 

 

[Qkhitai]

I

Myr Station, Dysnomia Orbit, 802.M30

 

Flecks of swirling astral dust slowly began to settle on the prefab floor as the airlock came to a close behind them. Shirin Khatan checked the hololithic display mounted on the wrist of her oatharmour: air, breathable, oxygen levels steady. She pulled her rebreather mask off and settled into a crouch, the three women with her mimicking her motion. Scanning the corridor ahead of her, she flicked off the safety switch on her electrolance and a shimmer of crackling blue energy erupted from its tip; the sound cut through the silence as she heard three more lances sizzle into life behind her. Without a glance back, she raised two fingers above her head and brought them down swiftly in a chopping motion.

 

The four of them began to move out, patiently stalking down the corridor, the azure glow of their weapon discharge lighting the way. In a hexagonal structure, the corridor – and indeed the entire structure – was of a design they had seen numerous times before: from the Beshkik Warrens to the Ghostmoon of Neith. The recently liberated Martians had dubbed the design something called a Standard Template Construct, and despite the glorious technologies she had seen and wielded since taking her oath to the Emperor, these old Dark Age structures – as basic as they were – still marvelled her. That this station, in silent orbit around so distant a moon, still existed after so many thousands of years… it was a true testament to the glory of humanity. A glory that they were now taking their first steps towards reclaiming.

 

They came to a halt at the first intersection, as the corridor split off in three directions. The team automatically fanned out to cover each approach, making sure there were no threats inbound as Shirin began to twist the dials on her wrist display, recalling a shimmering projection of the station schematics. Their objective was the astropathic relay, some thirteen levels down from their current position, and she made a quick count to double check the distance.

 

She heard the tapping of an armoured boot upon the metalmesh deck and she looked up to see Chiriyu trying to get her attention. Shifting her electro lance to her left hand, Shirin made a quick sign with her right: What? Chiriyu, her eyes bright and expectant, signed back quickly: This way. Northeast. Elevator.

 

Shirin almost rolled her eyes; as if she didn’t already know that? Chiriyu, the youngest member of the team, certainly had a penchant for being overeager. She was Panpacific, only taking her oaths after the liberation of East Terra and the Unification. She hadn’t been there when they had stormed the Sia Lo Pass, or when they had liberated the Nistrian Slumhives. She had never known what it was to bleed and die with her sisters; when orders were coming not from khatans like Shirin, but from the Emperor Himself, whose word dare not be assumed or ignored. Chiriyu was a still a child, coming of age in the new era of Imperium. She hadn’t been forged in the fire of those battles like the rest of them, and whilst she tried her patience at times, in a way Shirin still secretly envied her for that.

 

Wait, she signed back. Chiriyu raised an eyebrow briefly, before obeying, turning back to cover the passage before her. Shirin sighed and shut off the map projection, before fiddling with one of the transceiver switches on the inline of her collar. Static flooded the voxlink in her ear. She tapped a brief sequence into her vox bead and waited for the response. A few more seconds of static, before a voice finally hummed in her ear: “Reading you Auxiliary. This is Sergeant Kasakos. Entry secure. No opposition. We are moving on the hangar bay now. You have nine minutes to eliminate the relay.”

 

Shirin scowled. Those damn Astartes, ahead of schedule already; they were going to jeopardise the entire mission by setting such a pace. Yet there was nothing she could do now, and arguing with them would only waste more time. She tapped back a response to the other infiltration team, a binary sequence of hits and pauses: Message received. Moving out. The voxlink shut off without a reply, causing her to frown again. This new breed of soldier, she wasn’t used to them yet. At least their predecessors had been a bit more…human.

 

She didn’t have time to dwell on her allies’ poor mannerisms. She pulled up the chronometer on her wrist display and set a timer for nine minutes, the green shimmer of numbers beginning to count down before her. She tapped her foot quietly and her team turned to look at her, waiting for their orders. Move out, she signed, the fingers on her right hand contorting in fast, practiced motions, double time. Nine minutes to objective. None complained at the sudden change in timetable, and they quickly sprang into action. Chiriyu leapt up to take point, sprinting down the corridor to the northeast. Shirin fell in behind her, with the last two members of the team, Arenak and Dariga, taking up the rear. The four of them moved as one, feet falling in sequence as they covered each other’s blind spots with the arcs of their electrolances, scanning each turn off and junction as they sped through the labyrinthine station.

 

As they rounded a corner, a servitor rumbled into view. A twisted construct in filthy robes; skin stretched across whirring metals like a macabre doll. Blinking red eyelenses turned to look at them, and a gun barrel slowly protruded from the folds of its cloak. Chiriyu was ready for it, lifting her lance in both hands and squeezing down the trigger on the haft as she ran forward, shooting a bolt of energy down the corridor and into its chest. It staggered back, reeling from the impact, before Chiriyu was on it, vaulting through the air and spearing the tip of her lance through the metalflesh of its face. It crumpled to the floor, blood and bolts spilling from its wounds across the deck, and Chiriyu turned to flash them a mischievous smile. She might be young, Shirin admitted, but by the Emperor, she knew how to kill.

 

After two more corners, they finally reached the elevator shaft. Chiriyu and Arenak quickly spread out to cover the approaches with their lances, whilst Dariga began to wrench open the door. Shirin glanced down at her chronometer. Four minutes. They were really cutting it close; the sheer damned efficiency of the Astartes had accelerated their timetable to the point of nigh impossibility. Seventeen minutes, that had been the plan. They were to hit the astropathic relay and stop any message of the inbound Imperial fleet getting to Dysnomia. The Astartes were then to secure the hangar and prevent any of the Erisians from escaping. If the Astartes made their move too early, Shirin and her team wouldn’t be able to stop a transmission to the moon below and the Emperor’s plan would be ruined.

 

Eris. Eris was the target. The penultimate planet in the Sol System; the last territory to be conquered before they could move on Sedna and the void beyond, where the human empire was waiting to be reclaimed. But to take Eris, they needed its moon: Dysnomia. Dysnomia was to be their staging point for the planetary assault, but bristling with cannons and sub-orbital plates, it would be difficult to take if the Erisians were given time to prepare. It was Shirin’s task to ensure they did not get that time, which meant eliminating its orbital stations. Above Dysnomia the lights were going out, as the Emperor’s vanguard began to tighten the noose. Gold, Frank, Myr: the codenames given to the three listening outposts in Dysnomia’s outer orbit. They were all to fall silent within an hour of each other, providing the fleet with a window in which to stage its assault on the moon. The last station, Myr, was hers to neutralise. But if Shirin failed in her task, millions would die as a result. She knew her own life was on the line too: the Emperor was many things, but merciful He was not.

 

Dariga pried the elevator doors open and Shirin quickly unhooked a spool of wirerope from the backclasps of her oatharmour, checking the length with a quick calculation in her head. She moved into the entranceway of the shaft and looked down into its depths. It was dark, but she couldn’t make out an elevator carriage below; it should be a smooth rappel down, she hoped. Shirin glanced around the shaft, looking for a serviceable hook for her rope, but a sudden hissing, scraping sound from behind her caused her to jump. She turned back to see Dariga wedging her lance into the metal grating of the floor. Ever stern and austere, the dark skinned Dariga cast her a pointed look, before flashing a quick pair of signs: No time. A grim smile tugged at the corner of Shirin’s mouth and she moved to tie the end of the rope around the lance’s haft, as the electro tip began to fuse into the superheated deck metal. It was a shame to waste such a precious weapon, but sacrifices had to be made if they were to reach the relay in time. She made sure her knot was secure, before checking her chronometer once more. Two minutes. With a silent curse on her lips, she backed up a few steps, keeping a tight hold of the rope before sprinting forward and jumping down into the shaft.

 

The world span around her as she fell, and she tried to measure her descent, counting the closed doorways on each floor as they flew past her. One…two…five…eight…ten…thirteen. She came to a stop with a jolt, her stomach lurching as the wirerope finally pulled taut. Thirteen floors. She had measured it perfectly. Shirin hung suspended in the elevator shaft, dangling precariously over a dark abyss below, suddenly conscious of her tenuous grip on the rope. Her left hand still gripped her electrolance, and she cursed herself for not engaging the safety before taking the leap. Her weapon rippled with lethal blue energy, more than enough to sever a limb if she had spun out of control. Still, she was unhurt, and she wasn’t going to fail now.

 

As the rest of her team began to abseil down the shaft above her, Shirin raised her lance and aimed it at the closed doors opposite her. Beyond them was the astropathic relay, the beating core of the outpost station. There was no time for stealth or finesse, she had to bring them down immediately. With her thumb, she flicked the power setting on the haft of her lance to maximum, and brought up her legs to brace herself against the side of the shaft. Steadying herself, she pressed down on the trigger and fired.

 

The door to the relay was blown off of its hinges in an instant, the metal searing in two and ricocheting off into the room beyond. Heat washed over her and she felt her face burn in the backdraught. With a grunt of effort, Shirin activated the power boosters in the soles of her boots and pushed off with her feet, sending her swinging backwards and away. She readied herself as she swung away from the sizzling abscess she had just punched in the shaft, hoping her team above were holding on tightly. Her armoured feet landed on the heavy metal of the opposite wall, and she pushed off again, letting go of the rope and using the momentum to propel herself into the room beyond.

 

She flew through the air and landed on the deck with a crash, scattering dust and wreckage with her impact. Pulling herself up, she found the relay in chaos and it took her a moment to make sense of her new surroundings. The room was roughly circular, with various consoles and terminals spiralling concentrically into the centre, where foul symbols were daubed in blood around a rotting pit. Dozens of ragged Erisian soldiers and technicians were reeling from the blast, picking themselves off the floor and reaching for their weapons; foul mutankin all, scabs and scales lined twisted limbs, snakelike tongues slithered out of fanged maws and poxxed flesh wreathed beneath their filthy robes. But they weren’t her concern just yet. Instinctively, desperately, her eyes darted down to the chronometer on her wrist. Three…two…one…zero: the hololith chronometer finally flickered out of life before her. Nine minutes had elapsed. She stood there for a second, staring at it blankly, before allowing herself a grin. She had made it. The Erisians in the relay about her were already brandishing their weapons, ready to repel the intruder, but no message would be leaving Myr Station now. She caught sight of a hooded astropath on his knees, retching and vomiting on the deck, and her grin grew all the wider. No, no message would be leaving now, for the silent sisters of the Emperor had arrived.

 

[Brother Lunkhead]

Greetings Qkhitai,

 

There's no dialogue in this story..... what gives?? …….. just kidding  

 

I must say, that is a very fine piece of work. You really nailed the Silent Sisterhood down as well as the spec ops aspects of the story. Your descriptive writing is well balanced and easy to read. Developing good character interaction without dialogue isn't easy either. You did a great job with that too

 

Just one tiny error

 

 

Shirin khatan checked the hololithic display mounted on the wrist of her oatharmour: air, breathable, oxygen levels steady.

 

"Khatan" should be capitalized 

 

Excellent work Hope to see more from you soon.

[Qkhitai]

Greetings Qkhitai,

 

There's no dialogue in this story..... what gives?? …….. just kidding  

 

I must say, that is a very fine piece of work. You really nailed the Silent Sisterhood down as well as the spec ops aspects of the story. Your descriptive writing is well balanced and easy to read. Developing good character interaction without dialogue isn't easy either. You did a great job with that too

 

Just one tiny error

 

 

Shirin khatan checked the hololithic display mounted on the wrist of her oatharmour: air, breathable, oxygen levels steady.

 

"Khatan" should be capitalized 

 

Excellent work Hope to see more from you soon.

 

Hey, thanks! 

 

Yes, dialogue - or a lack thereof - is certainly an interesting aspect of writing a story centred around the Sisters of Silence. A fun challenge though, so hopefully it pays off! I've been working on the story for a while, so I have quite a few chapters written already; I might update this once a week, just do pace things out neatly and not flood the forum!

 

And good catch! I actually never know about capitalising these kinds of titles, I've seen both before, but you're probably right - I will amend it now!

[Qkhitai]

II

Myr Station, Dysnomia Orbit, 802.M30

 

Shirin’s electrolance no longer fizzed with energy; she had drained all the power when she had blown open the door. There was no time to change the power pack, but the archaic weapon was still a formidable force in the hands of one who knew how to wield it. Hand wrought in the forges of Tengrytagh, the Heavenly Mountain, the electrolance was ten feet in length: a powerpack was mounted towards the end of the haft, with wiring spiralling up towards a pronged energy emitter at the head. But each lance was unique, customised by the sister who bore it. Some favoured a speartip with a hooked tail, others modelled theirs on the Panpacific Gundo or Boeotian Sarisa. But among all the lances, those wielded by the khatans, the leaders of their sisterhood, were the most exquisite and lethal of them all. Shirin’s lance was inlaid with gold, gilding the electrowiring and erupting into an intricate dragon’s head at the tip. From the dragon’s maw sprouted an obsidian trident, its triple prongs honed to the finest points. At its tail was a single golden spike, sharpened from a Custodian vambrace she had received after the siege of Aksu. The lance was named Xushbei Ajdaho – the Fragrant Dragon –, and with it she had smote down thousands of the Emperor’s enemies across Terra and the Sol System. It was time now to add to its tally.

 

Taking Xushbei Ajdaho in both hands, she raised it above her head, as three of the Erisian mutantkin charged her, thunderclubs and chainglaives in hand. She spun the lance in her hands before bringing it down in a diagonal slash, cleaving the first mutant from shoulder to hip. He fell to the deck in two pieces, as Shirin turned, switching the lance in her hands and bringing it swinging back across the chest of the second attacker. She kicked out at the third, activating her power armoured boots to send him sprawling. With a swift pirouette, she raised the weapon and threw it, spearing the mutant through the chest.

 

A burst of gunfire shot past her, as the rest of the guards in the relay began to open fire. She ducked down and rolled forward across the deck, retrieving her lance as she rose and slamming into cover behind one of the terminals ringing the relay. More shots rang overhead, before an electric blue energy lit up the room. Shirin heard the twisted screams of the deformed Erisians as they burned; her sisters had arrived. Chiriyu and Arenak burst into the chamber, bolts of energy firing from their own electrolances, mowing down the relay’s inhabitants. Dariga followed close behind, two ornate combat knifes in her hands as she erupted into a whirlwind among the survivors, unleashing upon them a mesmerising Urshian bladedance that cleaved limbs and severed arteries with devastating precision. Shirin leapt up to join her, Xushbei Ajdaho roaring silently in her hands as she cut down two more Erisians trying to rush her.

 

The defenders of the relay were falling fast, but a gaggle of mutants had taken cover on the far side of the room, marshalled by a hulking brute with two gangrenous heads and a rusted cleaver nearly twice her size. She raised a hand and signed to her team: Dariga, with me. Chiriyu, Arenak, cover us. Dariga leapt to her side, as the other two sisters began to bombard the group at range. Shirin ducked a volley of fire from the Erisians and vaulted the foul pit at the centre of the room before charging into the last of the defenders. She took the head off of one tentacled foe with Xushbei Ajdaho’s trident, before spearing another in the eye with its spiked tail. At her side, Dariga punctured one in the neck, before slashing low and taking the leg of another off at the knee.

 

As Shirin cut down another mutant, the two-headed beast suddenly charged her from the left, bringing his mighty cleaver down one handed towards her. She spun to dodge the blow, raising her lance up to slash at its stomach. But the mutant was fast, faster than its giant frame would belie, and it blocked the blow with the haft of its weapon. Shirin gasped as her ornate trident failed to cut through, before quickly recollecting herself and jumping back to reposition. The beast lunged at her again, the rusted cleaver aimed at her head. She danced aside, her nimble frame carrying her out of the arc of its swing, but the mutant turned with her, raising its weapon in a backslash. She parried with Xushbei Ajdaho, the rusted metal clanging off its gilded haft. She kicked out, slamming against the giant’s thigh, but her power armoured boot barely moved it. It grunted and swiped at her with a scaled paw. Talons scratched across her face and her vision swam as she was forced back once more.

 

The beast roared with one its heads; massive, bulbous eyes leering down at her in a feral visage. It’s other head, childlike and rosy cheeked, giggling manically at her. She fought back revulsion as she looked up at the giant, and she spun the lance in her hands, readying it for another bout. The beast lurched towards her and she thrust her lance forward with one hand, but it shifted its weight to one side to dodge the blow. As she retracted the lance, it lowered its heads and rolled its body back around and into her path, bringing the cleaver slicing toward her neck. She tilted her head to the side, letting the blade pass over her cheek, dripping rust and ichor onto her face. The childlike head suddenly gasped, eyes wide and frightful, as Shirin brought the tail of Xushbei Ajdaho across its body, opening up its stomach and sending rotten intestines spilling to the floor.

 

It staggered, the child head now wailing in pain, but the beast steadied itself. It swiped at her again with one hand, whilst the other had dropped its cleaver, trying to scoop its insides back up off the floor. Shirin dodged the blow and jumped up onto its hulking arm, decapitating the feral head to silence its defiant roars. It tumbled to the deck, its abhorrent visage frozen forever in the same impotent rage shared by so many others who thought they could stand in the way of humanity’s progress. The child head was still bawling as she took it off in the reverse slash.

 

Shirin dropped back down to the deck to find the battle all but finished. Dariga had just emerged victorious from a duel against two multiarmed opponents, whilst Arenak was moving through the bodies, executing the survivors. Shirin scanned the room for Chiriyu. The girl was crouched over the hooded astropath, who had somehow survived the fight, trying in vain to claw his way back to the pit at the centre of the relay. Chiriyu had severed his tendons and she was crouched over him, watching him try to squirm away. Shirin looked on, bemused, but also a little disgusted at her sister’s actions. The astropath finally gave up trying to escape, and turned to face his torturer. “How?” he bleated, his voice thin and reedy, barely cutting above the sounds of battle still ringing in their ears. “How have you done this to me?”

 

He was clutching at his head, wraithlike hands clawing at his temples. Chiriyu smiled down at him wickedly, eyes wide and alive. She lent down and grabbed his collar, bringing his eyeless face to within an inch of her own. “Witches. Must. Burn,” she whispered.

 

In an instant, Shirin was across the room. She raised her leg and thundered a kick towards her sister, slamming an armoured boot into her face. She heard Chiriyu’s jaw crack as she flew across the relay, landing in a heap in the foul pit at the room’s centre. Dariga and Arenak watched on silently, their eyes cold. Shirin brought down Xushbei Ajdaho, spearing the astropath in the gut and ending his suffering, before she strode over to the crumpled frame of Chiriyu. The girl looked up at her, bloodied and defiant, her brows furrowed as she bristled at her khatan’s actions. Shirin held her gaze, before raising her hands across her chest in the sign of the aquilla. This motion, not strictly part of their sign language, carried a thousand meanings, but then and there, it only meant one thing: Oath. Chiriyu stared back, before her eyes finally softened. She bowed her head and returned the sign.

 

Satisfied, Shirin turned her back on her sister, her anger slowly draining as she tapped a rhythm into her voxbead. Relay secure. No survivors. A hiss of static, before the voice of Kasakos rang back in her ear: “Received, Auxiliary. We have the hangar and we’re conducting our sweep of the station. Leave someone to guard the relay, then sweep the lower floors. Rendezvous for extraction at the hangar when you are done.”

 

Shirin resisted the urge to tell him that she did in fact already know the plan - and that he was a bit of an eshak -, settling instead with: Conducting our sweep now. The vox went dead in her ear again, as usual, and she sighed, turning back to her team. Dariga and Arenak were both eyeing Chiriyu with displeasure and Shirin got their attention with a snap of her fingers; Arenak at least had the sense to look somewhat abashed, but Dariga, raised in the bitter ashwastes of Ursh, was not so easily settled. Forget it, Shirin signed to them, safe to use both hands in a more fluid cant now that the battle was over. Chiriyu, hold the relay, make sure they don’t try to send word to the moon. Dariga, Arenak, move out. We sweep five floors each, then rendezvous at the hangar. I want it done in thirty minutes, we’re not letting the Astartes outdo us. Arenak smiled at that, eager to show her worth. Dariga was obviously still incensed at her sister, but she bowed, and the pair of them made for the elevator shaft.

 

As she turned to follow them, Shirin wondered if she should say something to Chiriyu, but she thought better of it. The girl would learn, in time. If she didn’t, well, then there were other methods. As she stalked out of the room, she suddenly felt the emptiness in her mouth again for the first time in years, and a dark part of mind wondered if maybe the reason she had gotten so angry wasn’t because of Chiryu’s offense, but because she herself couldn’t speak, even if she wanted to.

 

[Qkhitai]

III

Myr Station, Dysnomia Orbit, 802.M30

 

Shirin strode across the hangar towards the waiting Astartes. There were ten of them in all, clad in the black trimmed ivory of the XVI Legion. In her experience, the sixteenth were a terse, arrogant lot; too haughty by half. She had fought alongside them at the Azov Depression where they had been honourable allies, but they seemed to be changing with every passing day. Four years ago, the legion had led the successful spearhead against the Luna Geneclades in the first campaigns beyond Terra and now they were fast becoming known as the ‘Emperor’s Wolves’; a moniker that seemed to have gone to their heads somewhat. Personally, Shirin didn’t think the name would stick, but since earning that plaudit they had become increasingly insufferable. Today had been the last straw for her.

 

She approached who she assumed to be Kasakos; the Astartes was wearing a wolfpelt cape, with discernibly more tribal markings on his armour than the others. The towering giant turned as she approached and she moved to stand before him, back straight and eyes narrowed. His giant, power armoured frame dwarfed her small figure, but she stared up at him resolutely nonetheless, ignoring the strain it was putting on her neck.

 

“Auxillary,” he greeted her from the voxgrille of his helmet. She tapped the side of her head in reply, looking at him pointedly. It was a few moments before he seemed to understand, then he finally raised his hands and undid the sealing clamps at his collar, removing his helm with a hiss of steam. Below was a chiselled, patrician face; a high regal nose between deepset brown eyes, a perfectly angled jaw, and a mop of careless blonde hair. The only blight upon his features was an ugly scar, running from his forehead down to his lips. Otherwise, Shirin had to admit he was quite handsome.

 

She still slapped him though.

 

It had been tough to reach that high, but she had, and she suppressed a grin as she saw the imprint of her armoured gauntlet on his cheek. The other legionnaires in his squad were drawing their weapons, but she paid them no heed, launching into a furious tirade: Whaat you think you doing sky soldier? We haave plaan! Seventeen minutes! You beyond humaan, us no fortunaate! You put our life in daanger becaause you waant show off. You EMPEROR new faavourite pet, but no daare think thaat you better thaan us! Do thaat agaain, I gut you with speaar!

 

Kasakos stared down at her blankly; the other legionnaires hesitated, seemingly not sure what was going on. Shirin hoped he had understood what she signed. Communicating with Astartes was…difficult. Binary code they could decipher relatively easily when she tapped it over the vox, but binary was an unwieldy and, truth be told, very drawn out language to try and sign in person. She didn’t know the battlecants of the sixteenth legion, nor did she assume that they understood any of the sign languages she and her sisters employed. The Emperor had decreed that Gothic was to be the universal language of the empire, and by this point most people were beginning to master it, even if native languages could still often be overheard across the Sol system. But unfortunately, there wasn’t yet a standardised, universal system for signing Gothic, which meant face-to-face interactions with Astartes – and well, just about anyone – could actually become quite difficult sometimes.

 

So she had used Samsatian, the language of one of the sixteenth legion’s recruiting districts. She had picked up a rudimentary understanding of Samsatian sign during the campaigns in the Caucasus Wastes and the Azov Depression, where it was a local language among the substeppe peoples that comprised half the legion’s intake. She had been fortunate to spend a few weeks in a siege line with one legionnaire she very much did get along with, a young boy named Iacton, who had helped provide her with a foundation in the language. The rest she had learnt behind the lines, working with civilians and orphans who had lost their hearing to the constant artillery barrages.

 

Still, she was nowhere near fluent in the language, which different greatly from the cants she was used to using with her sisters. Samsatian sign had a strange rhythmic movement of the arms on certain words which she found tough to mimic, and her grammar and vocabulary could both use work; there were certain words she didn’t know how to translate accurately, so she had just tried her best. But it wasn’t the most sophisticated language either, so she was quite confident that she had managed to get the gist of her message across.

 

At least, she had been confident. The blank look on Kasakos’ face was beginning to worry her. But before she could sign anything else, another Astartes stepped forward to stand with them. Greetings, mute maiden, he signed back, nodding to her respectfully. You sign Samsatian well.

 

She raised an eyebrow, the compliment ringing hollow. You no need sign. I heaar, understaand.

 

The other Astartes shook his head quickly. Wait, please, he signed back, the movements still somehow fluid and precise despite his bulky power armour. Pack leader Kasakos cannot sign, he does not understand your words. I will relay them. Perhaps more politely.

 

Shirin nodded, although politeness wasn’t exactly what she had been aiming for. Thaank you, she replied, still somewhat irritable.

 

But he will not apologise, the Astartes continued, expressing his regret with a bow of the head. So I wish to take this opportunity to apologise on his behalf. We are still learning the limits of our new forms, it is easy to forget mortals cannot – he paused for a moment, as if searching for a phrase – ride alongside us.

 

She nodded again, somewhat bemused by his choice of metaphor, but signing her thanks with a bit more authenticity this time. But before she could do anything else, the stern voice of Kasakos cut across the hangar: “Enough of this. Xarthan, what does this woman want?”

 

Xarthan, the other Astartes, removed his helm to reveal an olive-skinned face beneath a sea of black curled hair. “She wishes to express her disappointment that we did not stick to the agreed timetable. She says it nearly jeopardised our mission.”

 

He left out the threats, she wasn’t happy about that. But otherwise, it was still a somewhat accurate translation of what she had signed. Certainly much more polite. Kasakos seemed to concur. “Really?” he asked disbelievingly, looking her up and down. “She seemed much more…animated, when she was signing it.” She could concede that much; the part about running him through with the spear had turned into something of a mime by the end.

 

“That’s roughly what she said,” Xarthan replied diplomatically, not looking either of them in the eye.

 

Kasakos snorted in disbelief, but didn’t press the issue. “Listen Auxiliary,” he said, turning to stare her down, “there is no longer room for weakness and error in the ranks of the Emperor’s armies: we purged that at Ararat. We are the Emperor’s Wolves, we were first onto Luna, and so too shall we forever be first to our catch our prey. We shall be the first to the hunt, and we shall be the first to find our father. It appears you have not the skill to hunt with us, so best you don’t get in our way from now on.”

 

Shirin held his gaze for a long moment, before she turned to leave. There was nothing more to say to such an arrogant man. Aside from the part about fathers that she hadn’t understood, the rest merely confirmed her long held suspicions about the conceit of the sixteenth legion. Yet as she was about to leave, she turned to sign one last thing to him. My naame S-h-i-r-i-n, she signed, spelling out her name in the Samsatian alphabet. Not auxiliaary.

 

[Qkhitai]

IV

Pride of Albia, Dysnomia Orbit, 802.M30

 

It was difficult to imagine the war playing out beneath her, as Shirin gazed down at Dysnomia from the viewing gantry of the frigate. The cold, grey moon was a shadow before her, as they turned away from Sol’s light. Imperial ships, ranging from light scuttle craft to massive dreadnoughts, moved like ocean waves, advancing and retreating in rhythmic patterns as more men and munitions were thrown into the fight below. But up here, high above in the darkness, she struggled to remind herself that thousands of people were killing and dying in pursuit of a new human empire.

 

It wasn’t that she was unfamiliar with the battlefield; she had been fighting for Terra’s unification – and now for the conquest of Sol – for the better part of twenty years. Yet this was the first time she had ever felt quite so detached; an idle spectator, watching on without thought or emotion. She had felt things once. She remembered how she had wept when they discovered full extent of the Atlan Ur-queen’s crimes; a thousand upon a thousand orphans vivisected in the gutters. She remembered how disgusted she had felt when they stormed the decadent spirecities of Western Ydonesia; to discover the rulers of the supposedly pious slave kingdoms were fattened opioid-eaters drunk on their own harems. She remembered the despair she had felt, when the crimes of Ararat finally came to light, and she had found her trust betrayed.

 

But somewhere, at some point, she had stopped feeling. There was the odd flash of anger, such as when Chiriyu had spoken out of turn, or when the eshak Kasakos had snubbed her, but those emotions typically boiled somewhere far, far below the surface. And it was only now, watching blankly as a fresh war unfolded below her, that she finally noticed just how dulled she had become to the realities of war. Yet as swiftly as the thought arose, she cast it from her mind. She could dwell on such things another time, for now, it was perhaps better not to feel.

 

“You did well, khatan.”

 

She heard a voice from behind her, and she turned to see Arbarius Lhenk approaching. The portside gallery aboard the Pride of Albia was reasonably large, stretching across an entire middle deck of the frigate, and various off-duty naval crew, army soldiers and administrative staff had come to observe – perhaps for the first time – war from their high vantage point. As such, she hadn’t noticed the gangly, balding Lhenk approaching from amongst the crowds – even though every other occupant of the gallery was keeping a nervous distance away from her.

 

My thanks, she signed to him, as he took a seat next to her, casting his gaze down to the moon below. He winced slightly, and took a few deep breaths. She had seen him do it many times, and he had become more practiced at disguising it over the years, but she still noticed it every time. It certainly wasn’t the worst reaction to her inhumanity she had ever had the misfortune to suffer, and she supposed she should be grateful he was still willing to interact with her so, but seeing his pain still stirred a certain, ephemeral sorrow somewhere deep in her; although it spoke more to her own loneliness than to any sense of true empathy. When his attention returned to her, as if she hadn’t noticed his discomfort, she added: but it was really nothing special.

 

Lhenk smiled. “You’re too modest khatan. Without you, none of this would have been possible.” He gestured to the silent symphony of death and destruction playing out below them, vicariously sharing in the pride he assumed her to have.

 

We just did our duty, she replied. As the Emperor commands.

 

It was relatively simple to communicate with Lhenk. He was, after all, a linguist. Or at least, he had been, at some point in his short life; brought up in the prestigious Merican scholam system, he had studied languages, before finding work in the burgeoning Imperial bureaucracy. He had been drafted aboard the Pride of Albia some years previous as a simple administrator, but his expansive knowledge of languages had more often than not led him to smoothing out relations between the various multi-lingual combat groups and personnel that came and went through the halls of the ship. Whilst Gothic was the de facto language of the Imperium, many of the Emperor’s soldiers were still uneducated and illiterate, being conscripted in their droves to fuel His growing warmachine. Co-ordinating Urshians, Francs, Ceylonians, among a hundred others, was no mean feat, and it was taking its toll on Lhenk. He was much thinner now than he had been when she had first met him, and his blonde hair was disappearing rapidly. He couldn’t have been older than twenty five, yet he looked nearly twice that sometimes.

 

She was grateful to him though. An element of her cadre, the Fire Lances, had been stationed aboard the Pride of Albia since the liberation of Mars, and communicating with the other soldiers and staff aboard the ship had been frustrating those first few years. However, Lhenk’s arrival had made things easier, and his natural talent for translation had made many a strategy meeting go a lot faster. Whilst he spoke many more languages than he signed, he was fluent in the sharp, barbed sign language of Urshian – the lingua franca of most of the Central Terran steppelands – which made him one of the few people, outside of her sisters, with whom she could communicate near-perfectly.

 

“I wish my duties were as exciting,” he sighed, contorting his fingers into the shape of a gun and firing off an imaginary shot at the moon below. Shirin smiled to herself, although it wasn’t a smile that reached her eyes. To be young and naive, she thought wistfully. The war for Terra had seemingly robbed her of both, she felt. There was an honour to be found in combat still, but it had been many, many years since she had felt the kind of excitement Lhenk was imagining.

 

Your services to the Emperor are far more valuable than mine, she told him. Without you, and the other administrative staff here, our armies would never have left Terra. I am just a lance, to be thrust against the breastplates of our enemies, until I eventually shatter.

 

“My, my, aren’t you melancholic today?” Lhenk laughed.

 

Shirin frowned. She hadn’t really meant to sound upset or self-deprecating. It was the trouble of communicating in sign language, one couldn’t always convey the precise tone or emotion as easily as one might if they were speaking. That aside, all sign languages were different; embodiments of thousands of years of culture and history and linguistics. Urshian, for example, had very few natural idioms without militaristic roots. Shining spears, broken bowstrings, galloping warhorses – such tropes comprised the majority of Urshian metaphors. The one she had employed was not particularly melancholic – as Lhenk had phrased it –, but rather it represented the inevitability of combat, and of death. Replaceable, but not without the glory, honour and nobility every weapon might exemplify throughout its life. It was a nuance a foreign speaker – even one of Lhenk’s pedigree – could still miss.

 

She merely shrugged and watched him out of the corner of her eye as they sat together in the gallery. Emaciated and sunken-eyed, he cast an entirely different figure to the one she had first met at the beginning of the Sol Crusade. His Imperial uniform, a white tunic pinned with the Aquila, hung loose off his thinning frame, and it was rough and crumpled at the edges where he hadn’t had time to press it properly. For all his carefree and youthful bravado, Shirin could see his health failing. She had seen it across a dozen battlegrounds, soldiers on the lines for too long, refugees going without food for weeks, even her own sisters, called upon day upon day, hour upon hour, to counteract the psykspawn foes that only they could best.

 

Her mind snagged on the last point. Her sisters; erstwhile comrades of the Fire Lance Cadre, now dead and buried beneath the ash and rubble of the Terran hellscape. Migeki, Choen, Keriza, Jansale, Tamira. She remembered their names, remembered their faces, as if it had been but yesterday they last fought together. But they were long gone now, their corpses littered about a planet she herself might never see again; their bones waiting to be exhumed by some intrepid Conservator. They were a part of an old history now, chapters in a book already written. Yet surrounded by new faces, new places, entirely new planets, Shirin could not help but think back to more familiar times.

 

Her eyes glazed over as she watched the endless shuttling of ferries to and from the moon below, interrupted by the occasional flash of light as a suborbital canon sparked into life, detonating against the hull of an Imperial ship and vaporising countless thousands of lives in an instant. Although the backdrop was different, she had seen such deaths a hundred times over. Such was war. Perhaps it really was no different, no matter where you travelled in the galaxy.

 

“Are you okay?” Lhenk asked, tapping her on the shoulder. She bristled at the touch. Few people ever dared to touch her, it was a strange sensation. She looked over to see him recoil, as if he had been stung by some electric shock. He smiled sheepishly in apology, and she returned something of a pained grin in response.

 

It has been a long war, she signed absently. He nodded. Even though he was not a soldier himself, he understood all too well. They all did. The Sol Crusade had been raging for nearly five years now; even those who hadn’t fought in the unification of Terra were wearied. Luna, Ceres, Jupiter, Leith, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto. Millions had died already, and despite how close they were now to Sedna – to the final pacification of Sol – they knew, each and all, that this was just the opening preamble to a galactic war which would burn bright across the stars for centuries, if not millennia to come. The Emperor’s grand vision. It was magnificent, but the sheer thought of it was enough to tire even the most unswerving of them sometimes.

 

“Anyway,” Lhenk continued, recognising that her good graces – such that they were – had worn thin, “you’re needed back at your barracks, or so I hear.”

 

The barracks? Shirin signed back, eyebrows raised in surprise. We’re not due to be deployed.

 

Lhenk shook his head, before turning to gaze back down at the battle unfolding below, waving an errant hand in lazy farewell. “It’s not a deployment. I just overhead something has come up. I think Arenak is already there, but you should probably check it out.”

 

She scowled. For such a prodigious polyglot, Lhenk could be entirely too cryptic for her liking sometimes. A playful smile tugged at the edges of his chapped lips, which she knew didn’t bode well. Last time she had seen that smile, he had just caught wind of a senior fleet officer’s intent to romance her. That was certainly something she couldn’t be doing with again. Although, she thought wryly to herself as she got up to leave, if it was Arenak who was dealing with it, perhaps she didn’t have anything to worry about after all...