Chương 6: Whispers in the Dark

Although I had a wealth of experience, having lived more than one life, there were still things capable of exciting and impressing even me. One such thing was an actual spaceship, which the Inquisitor had brought me aboard. Unfortunately, I missed the grand parade where all the mustered troops were supposed to march, but what I saw was far more interesting.

Generally speaking, after I told Zerbe about Necromunda and the horde of criminals who had seized control of the STC, he questioned me for quite some time, trying to catch me in a lie. He failed to find one, for I was telling the pure truth. There was no point in me lying, as this would only bring benefit to all of humanity, of which I am obviously a part. If they manage to gain control over it, it's hard to even imagine how many lives will be saved.

Therefore, he temporarily settled the matter with me by sending me to his personal spaceship, which would depart this world as soon as he dealt with the heretics. I am sure they will ask me to point out the cultists again, but unlikely right now. Most likely, Lord Zerbe is weaving some complex schemes, still beating information out of the Chaos worshippers and those simply tainted by various crimes. So, I had time to be the young boy I essentially was, and learn everything I could about a real spaceship.

As I managed to pry from some crew members, whom I had already annoyed with my constant questions, I was currently aboard a Dauntless-class light cruiser, bearing the proud name Seeker. Created at the end of the thirty-eighth millennium, they were practically brand new by local standards. Five kilometers long from prow to stern, and eight hundred meters from port to starboard. A colossal giant capable of moving through space and fighting off those lurking in its darkest depths.

Yes, it was nothing compared to the Ark Mechanicus, ships of literally continental proportions, but the size still staggered my imagination. Now, more than ever, I felt I had been thrust into the far future, where humanity truly ruled the stars. Yet the galaxy was still full of secrets, begging to be explored. Except I knew full well that some of those secrets were lethally dangerous. And therefore, travel requires special preparation. The ship had one advantage that particularly attracted me.

It was not some ancient relic, but a brand-new creation incorporating all the discoveries that had passed Martian verification. Yes, no matter what many believe, progress within the Adeptus Mechanicus does not stand still. It simply moves very slowly, so slowly that they manage to forget things during its hesitant baby steps. The blame lies entirely on the bureaucratic and religious issues plaguing the cult.

Practically every Forge World possesses its own unique blueprints and developments, which they do not share with the cult's upper echelons, for within the cult, knowledge is literal power. If you can produce some unique contraption, your significance is vastly greater. A unique industrial world will be defended better than an ordinary one and will not be abandoned to the enemy. It was precisely this logic that the idiots on Necromunda used, screwing humanity over in a way not even a Greater Daemon could manage.

The Imperium simply cannot afford to lose such a world, so they will fight for it to the last drop of blood. I hope, however, that the Inquisitors will sort this out and the geniuses will experience their full wrath. These ships, though relatively young, form the backbone of the Imperium's naval fleets. They possess great speed and maneuverability, but are also capable of inflicting significant damage upon the enemy. It was a gargantuan machine, serviced by over thirty thousand people.

I was not allowed to speak with the serfs, who made up the bulk of the crew and primarily populated the lower decks, but I saw everything on their faces. Tired, filthy, and devoid of any hope. These people were taken from a random planet, torn from their familiar lives, and then simply taught how to perform basic maintenance tasks on the cruiser. They knew that if they died, they would be replaced at the next world, yet they still did not rise in rebellion.

Since this was an Inquisitor's ship, something far worse than merely becoming a Servitor could happen to you here. And they, I must admit, terrified me far more than any daemon ever could. Lobotomized cyborgs who had once been ordinary people, reduced to will-less, soulless tools. This horrific combination of machine and flesh embodied everything unnatural that repulsed me. Their bodies were incredibly mutilated, replacing inefficient parts like lips, ears, tongues, and other organs with cheap augmetics.

But the most horrifying part was the replacement of the brain and the removal of the unnecessary parts responsible for reason, emotion, and consciousness. Yes, some of them might have deserved such a fate, having previously been brutal rapists or traitors, but what about all the innocent ones? Some brilliant freethinker whose words displeased a higher-up, turned into a babbling husk who had lost their very self.

I tried to interact with them as little as possible, for whenever I walked past them, I heard something akin to a whisper at the edge of my consciousness. It was impossible to decipher, but I had a very strong feeling that it might be the remnants of a personality entombed within the altered body. Unfortunately, I did not even know how to help the poor souls, so I simply walked past. I swept away extraneous thoughts and instead tried to better understand my new residence.

The ship's interior became more impressive the deeper you delved into the behemoth. Here, the typical architecture of the Imperium stood out in stark relief: monumental, grim, and merciless. Endless, dimly lit corridors where any human was merely an insignificant, pathetic insect crawling across a steel titan. But the sounds weighed on the psyche just as heavily. The screech of metal, the thunderous clatter, the noise of colossal machines grinding, and a quiet, barely audible hum.

At first, I didn't understand what it was, but by concentrating and completely clearing away extraneous thoughts, I managed to spot some sort of lights. They populated the entire ship, creating a network, communicating with each other in a manner unknown to me. I admired their work, but when I noticed a massive flame hidden deep within the cruiser, I immediately ceased my experiments. For a second, it felt as though it had looked back at me.

I had a feeling that I should not interact with it right now, and I decided to trust my instincts. Fortunately, I had other things to explore, as I was surrounded not only by a new and interesting environment, but by new individuals. My primary escort was an Acolyte, a close member of the Inquisitor's retinue, who called himself Khoron. He was a man wrapped so tightly in black robes that his face was invisible, with only a single grey eye that had clearly seen a lot peeking out from under his hood.

He rarely spoke to me, usually just summoning other people for me to converse with. Khoron was very closed off, but I suspected there was a reason for that. The fact was, he wasn't an ordinary human, nor was he a psyker; he was something much more interesting. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Near him, my psychic abilities became significantly weaker, and simply standing near him was unpleasant.

I was strong enough to withstand the effect of his abilities without completely losing my power, but there was still a certain discomfort. Khoron was a Pariah, or an Untouchable, as they are commonly called. He was a mutant with no reflection in the Warp, and his soul could even partially block psychic energy around him. An utterly fascinating ability that I would have gladly studied, if the timing wasn't so poor.

He was, in a way, my guard, and simultaneously an argument that I wouldn't go insane and slaughter everyone around me. If that were to happen, he would kill me on the spot himself. But, praise the Emperor, I wasn't planning on committing suicide anyway, so everything was proceeding smoothly so far. Besides him, I met a few other of Zerbe's Acolytes. Saviy, the Inquisitor's personal Tech-Priest, was more a walking building than a man.

A three-meter figure shrouded in crimson robes, from which only six grey metallic arms, gleaming slightly under the lumen-globes, were visible. Four mechanical mechadendrites, constantly busy with something, protruded from his back. Each looked unique and was easily distinguishable from the others, yet they all appeared archaic and gothic, grey-brown, with sharp, jagged features. His voice was anything but human. Synthesized and devoid of emotion, he sounded more like a soulless machine than any person.

And as a person, he was fitting. I, for obvious reasons, could not read Khoron's aura, but Saviy still possessed a more or less human soul. It was much dimmer and barely visible in the Warp, but it still existed. However, reading the Tech-Priest's emotions was utterly impossible because his cerebral implants accelerated his consciousness by orders of magnitude. He thought faster than I could even comprehend, and therefore, his faded feelings shifted far too quickly for me.

Saviy frequently asked about my well-being and requested to run a bunch of tests. It was a bit scary, of course, since I didn't know how he would use them, but getting a health check from a true professional would actually be nice. I hadn't been sick once in my entire new life, but I wasn't sure how natural that was. The use of psychic powers carries a risk of acquiring mutations, so such an examination was truly important.

The third member of the retinue, with whom I had the most conversations, was a woman clad in advanced black-and-white power armor resembling a knight's harness. A Sister of Battle from the Adepta Sororitas, Maria was a holy warrior with a sincere faith in the God-Emperor. Her face was covered in scars, making it immediately clear she had been through numerous battles. She also had short white hair and a heavy, cold gaze that she leveled at everyone except me.

For some reason, she addressed me with particular gentleness and genuinely worried about my fate. I might have suspected something, had I not seen her pure, white soul, harboring nothing but fanatical faith and a desire to help me. So I simply asked her a bunch of different questions, taking advantage of my reputation as a naive child. I have to admit, I was genuinely interested in learning about everything around me, and she answered me thoroughly, explaining everything in detail.

And finally, the most unusual member of the retinue, whom I had not expected to see at all, was two and a half meters tall and always wore a massive brown robe. His gaze seemed to pierce the soul and turn it inside out. He looked taller and more robust than even the Blood Angels, but it was his face that left the strongest impression on me. He did not wear a helmet, and I could clearly see his sharp, flawless features, like those of an antique god, weathered by the passage of time.

His hair was completely grey, but this only emphasized his image as a wise old man. I would have pegged him at over sixty by human standards, which was particularly surprising, as, to my knowledge, the Astartes could not die of old age, meaning his lifespan could be measured in millennia. So how old was he, if even a divine organism had begun to fail with time? Atreus, clearly, was a Space Marine, but an exceedingly strange one. He did not speak, nor did he display in any way which Chapter he hailed from.

He did not elaborate on why he had joined the Inquisitor, and literally nothing but his name was known to me. The other Acolytes didn't gossip about him either, which only made me more nervous. But what unsettled me most was how he treated me. He silently observed me, as if assessing me. Not the most pleasant feeling, honestly, especially realizing his power. Atreus's soul shone very brightly, but he was unequivocally not a psyker.

I could not read his emotions, as he also possessed some sort of defense against psychic intrusion, appearing as an unbreakable monolith in the Warp. A couple of days after the gala, Khoron was in the room, glaring darkly at Atreus, who practically never left my side. The two of them heavily disliked each other, but fortunately, it had not come to open conflict.

And so, as I was once again coaxing tales of space travel out of Maria, who eagerly shared details about the slaughter of Orks on some asteroid, Zerbe finally entered. He was accompanied by Saviy and an unknown Space Marine in crimson armor. He was currently helmetless, allowing me to see the face of a blond-haired man whose eyes radiated pride and dignity. I also felt this in his soul, which contained only a purifying light. He immediately looked at me, but soon shifted his gaze to Atreus.

The gazes of the two transhumans met, assessing one another.

"Get ready, boy, we need to conduct a full examination of your body, after which your fate can be decided." Zerbe enunciated every word as if delivering a death sentence. He was entirely serious now, and I had absolutely no desire to cross him.

"Is this safe?" a powerful, deep voice rang out from the side, though it wasn't harsh. Atreus sounded like a wise old man who had seen more than just war in his life. Honestly, he would have made an excellent artist and could have recited simple poetry in a way that would stick in your soul forever.

"The chance of a lethal outcome is below the statistical margin of error, as in my entire career, there has not been a single instance where a patient perished during the examination process." Saviy sounded like a machine; no emotion could be discerned in his tone.

"And this statistic includes even those cases where the subjects desired death themselves." I wondered what the point of that was. He clearly had a synthesized voice, so why not make it at least sound somewhat human? I suspected there was some sacred meaning outlined in the tomes of their cult, but I was curious if there was any practical purpose to it, like many of their other traditions.

"I advise implementing heightened security measures." Another oddity Atreus displayed was a fanatical desire to deflect any danger away from me. In theory, this was a good thing, but it was somehow... creepy, maybe? His motives were unknown to me, and he didn't look like a noble Samaritan in the slightest.

"Do not worry, Lord Atreus, nothing will happen to me." Though I didn't particularly enjoy it, I continued to act like the perfect child for now. Maria immediately offered me a warm smile, but no one else in the room reacted. Atreus merely shifted his gaze to the Inquisitor, then gave a slight nod, signaling his permission for me to proceed with the examination. And that action confused me even more. Who could he possibly be, that even a Lord Inquisitor needed his permission to do something?

Even other Inquisitors supposedly didn't hold that kind of authority over their peers. And were there even Inquisitors among the Space Marines? I couldn't recall a single character like that. Alright, I admit, this won't be easy. But I dealt with Chaos cultists; how much worse could an Inquisitor's retinue be?