“Let me see him,” the old woman demanded. The two guards stared at her, pitifully redundant. They had been assigned to guard the entrance to the Lord Commander’s state room. It was a privileged post on paper, a high military honor in their fledgling army. In reality, it was a dull, listless job, monotonous almost beyond belief. They blinked at her, confused.
“He is meeting with the Magos, ma’am. Perhaps another time?” The senior man shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The old woman’s milk-white eye made him uncomfortable.
The old woman turned to her companion, a muscular man with a lean, dangerous mien. “Do you hear that, Constantine? He’s busy. Too busy to meet with one of his generals. Too busy to meet with the person who gave him his damned command.”
“I hear, Suna,” replied the big man, not bothering to use the General’s title.
“I—” The guardsman made to respond, then halted as his belt’s vox unit crackled. “Sergeant, I’m picking up a pair of extra bio-signs on the other side of that door. Any trouble?”
The soldier unclipped his vox, raising it to his dry lips. “No trouble, Magos. General Absalom is here, she’d like to see the Lord Commander.”
After a moment, the vox buzzed again. “Send her in,” commanded a voice, deeper and more resonant than the first. The guards parted in front of Suna and she and Constantine stepped boldly forward.
The room was a large octagonal chamber constructed from square steel deck plates welded together. The Children, enamored with their own newfound confidence and ambition, called it a state room but, in truth, it was a cold and spartan military headquarters. A large holo-projector dominated the center of the space, a sickly green likeness of Luce Prime emanating upwards from it. A handful of rough metal chairs were strewn, unused, about the room, too small for the room’s most frequent pair of visitors to use. One of those inhabitants, Erastor Trismegistus, chirped pleasantly as Suna and Constantine entered the room. “My dear General Absalom! What a pleasure to see you. What news from your quarter?”
Suna ignored the Magos—no easy feat given its prodigious size—and fixed the other inhabitant with an icy glare. “He’s dead, Melancthon. My son is dead.”
The Space Marine turned his attention away from the holo and towards her. He looked so different outside of his battle plate. Dressed in a simple dark shirt and trousers, custom made by a sympathetic tailor to fit his giant frame, he somehow managed to appear even less human. His face, savaged months earlier in his now-famous escape from the ducal palace, had largely mended, although the skin that had grown over the prosthetic nose frame still shone a bright pink. He folded his arms, cable-thick muscles squirming over one another, and stared down at the shrunken form of Suna. He opened his mouth to speak. The Magos got there first. “Ahh, yes, the attack on Substation Alpha-Gamma-Chi-Nine. A rousing success on all accounts. Unfortunately—”
“A rousing success?” Suna seethed. Her sallow flesh trembled with barely contained anger, and she took an involuntary step towards the Magos, as if her withered body could inflict any punishment upon its cybernetic frame. “You had it in your kregging hand, Melancthon. The infiltration worked perfectly and the staff were eliminated with no losses. But you wanted to go for the throat. You wanted Derrida. Well, I hope you’re happy. Derrida lives and so does the Heart. Was that worth my son’s life?”
The Magos’s polished skull bobbed in a macabre parody of a nod. “Losses were well within acceptable parameters, I am happy to report.”
Suna blustered, too furious to speak properly. Constantine placed a hand on her shoulder but she flung it aside, the movement sending a jolt of pain rippling through her spine. “You are a monster, both of you, I am sorry that I ever—”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Miles is not dead,” Melancthon said.
She froze, still trembling. She stared at the Space Marine. “He is still alive,” he affirmed. “I saw him myself on the pict feeds. They’ve taken him to the palace. He will be interrogated, perhaps tortured. But they won’t butcher such a valuable lead. Not until they have something.”
“You saw this on the public pict feeds?” Constantine asked, his brow wrinkling in confusion. Marius usually kept the Children’s activities out of the news. Most incidents were ascribed to industrial accidents and system errors, some more believably than others.
“Not quite, my dear Captain Constantine,” hummed the Magos.
“Honored Magos, perhaps you should let me handle this issue,” Melancthon observed. The skull bobbed in acquiescence. “We saw him on a private feed from the palace. We’ve been keeping tabs on him. He’s fine, for the moment.”
“This is true, Melancthon?” Suna demanded, more weakly than before. Her voice was hollow, the fury drained from her body, replaced by an aching sense of dread.
The Space Marine’s chin rose ever so slightly. “You will address me as Lord Commander or Brother, General Suna.” A moment passed before Suna nodded. “On the outside, I recognize, the operation appears to have foundered, if only in part. This was…necessary. “
Suna’s head swam. She glanced at Constantine. The big man looked just as confused as she felt. “I…I do not understand.”
“Given that an operation of this scale was always unlikely to succeed,” thrummed the Magos, unable to contain his enthusiasm any longer. “The Lord Commander and I felt that we might maximize the sacred probabilities of success by adopting a dual-pronged approach. I found the idea most compelling, an admirable allegory for the synthesis of biology and the blessed machine.” The Tech Priest spoke in riddles, as he always did, and Suna could discern nothing from his cryptic speech.
Melancthon relaxed his arms and pointed to the holo, where a web of bright blue threads spidered outward from a red cube. “The Electric Heart is hardwired to a number of key technological systems across the planet, including the palace. A successful bombing would take those systems offline momentarily, but Marius would be able to reroute power from other substations within a day or two. As it stands, although the Heart’s capacity is much reduced, the system remains online.”
“Meaning?” Constantine asked.
“Meaning that rather than redirecting energy and data flows around the substation, the Duke has elected to redirect them through it.” Chimed Trismegistus.
“And how does that help us? Security will be tighter than ever around the Heart. We won’t get another chance.”
“We don’t need one,” Melancthon clarified. “Thanks to your son and the Honored Magos.”
Realization dawned on Suna. “You spiked the system, didn’t you? You implanted new code into the Heart’s cogitator systems?”
The Magos cackled. It was a disturbing, inhuman sound, like insects scuttling over paper. “I will not deny that the code was my own inspired composition, my dear General. I must give some credit to your very capable son, however, from inserting the spike into the system.”
“Then…we can see everything that’s happening across the planet? Their whole system?”
“Not everything,” the Space Marine said. “But the majority. We estimate our access level at sixty percent in toto. Ninety-three percent on the top sixteen sublevels.”
Suna shuffled over to a chair. She sank down on its hard surface. It was an inspired plan, and her son had accomplished it. The floor trembled slightly as the Space Marine strode over to her. He knelt down, placing his ugly face at eye level with hers. “I am sorry that he did not make it out,” he said, more gently that she would have thought possible. “He knew the risks. He knew everything.”
“Swear it,” she asked. She felt moisture on her wrinkled cheek.
“On my honor and the honor of my chapter, I briefed your son on the entire details of the mission. I would have done it myself, but I was needed here. So I sent him. I trusted no one else to go in my stead.”
“What happens now?” Asked Constantine.
The Space Marine rose. “Now, Captain, we go to war.”
