40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 628 11. The Past of Sovet (Part 9, Bad Guests Meet Bad Guests, k)

"We'll set off immediately," Cyrano van der Leff said decisively.

She sat at the edge of a long gray-white granite table, wearing a black ceremonial robe. There were many nobles in the empire who liked to wear this style of clothing, but not many of them liked black, and Cyrano was one of them.

She was very thin, and her shoulders beneath her robes pierced the soft fabric like two daggers. Her cheeks were deeply sunken, making her cheekbones look unusually sharp. Her eyes were the only part of her face that looked human, but there wasn't much.

Those brown eyes were set in deep sockets, making her gaze seem to possess some kind of magic.
I don't really like her looking at me like that.

My name is Renthal Sable, a silly last name that comes from my father, Ivanov Sable.

He was a bounty hunter, so Sable was actually his title. It was not a safe profession, so even though he was a cautious person, he still could not spend his old age in peace.

I had thought of inheriting his legacy, picking up a gun, and becoming a bounty hunter like him, but after meeting Cyrano van der Leff, this plan was put on hold indefinitely.

As of now, I am an Inquisitor's attendant, or as the official term is: I am one of the armed guards she can recruit at will, serving her until death.

Does this mean I'm close to her? Maybe, anyway -

"——Renthal, what are you still doing here?"

Ah, the hostess has spoken.

I really wish I still had the ability to smile so that I could express my opinions without opening my mouth, but my facial nerves don't really obey my own will.

This is a sequelae, just like the five criss-crossing scars on Serrano's face. The difference is that I hope I can recover, but my mistress refuses to do so.

I don't understand what she is thinking, she can be a very beautiful woman, as long as she is willing to remove her scars. This is true, after all, she is a descendant of the nobility, even if she is terribly thin now, as long as she puts on a little makeup, she is still a beauty.

For our work, if she is willing to do this, maybe the attitude of those nobles and governors will be better, and they will not let the guards put their hands on the guns when they see us. Humans are like this, they are willing to pay special attention to those beautiful people.

I'm different. Anyone can tell I'm dangerous, especially since I'm usually fully armed.

"——Renthal!"

Shit, she started to growl, and this was not a good thing.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Didn't you hear me?" my mistress asked in great anger.

“I heard you,” I told her. “But I’m not really interested in doing what you said.”

A red beam of light passed my face, missing, with only a little burning pain. It hit the wall behind me, which meant that several more people would have to work on this for a few more hours. I mourned for them.

As for the beam... it came from a gun in Cyrano's hand. She carries a lot of guns around with her, and that annoys me. She's so accurate and never listens to what people are saying.

With me, she would deliberately miss the target as a warning, but not with others, such as the captain I met in the Cato Gravels last month.

That asshole bastard smuggled a shipload of civilians to take to some slave trader, but he had the bad luck to run into us in the galaxy.

He wants to defend himself, and I want to hear it. Honestly, I really want to know what kind of bullshit he can come up with in this situation. It will be very helpful for my book.
What? Didn't I mention that? Yes, I'm planning on writing a book called "The Great Excuse Book" and I'm hoping he can come up with a good excuse. That way I can make the book a little better, which will be helpful for my retirement plans.

But Serrano didn't give him this opportunity.

She shot the captain in two with one shot, right in front of the children in the cage. Although he deserved to die, it still made me feel bad.

"Reasons?" my hostess asked coldly.

I sighed and she frowned.

She knew me well enough to know that when I started sighing it usually meant I was about to start a long speech.

And I know she knows this, so every time I sigh, I am actually testing whether she can accept the long speech I am about to start. If she doesn't say anything, then I will continue. If she shows more impatience, then I have to be careful.
This time, she didn't say anything, just frowned slightly.

So I said, "Forgive me, my lord. But according to the rules, shouldn't this matter be reported to the Master of the Seal first?"

"You've become smart, Rental, you've learned to follow the rules and regulations." My hostess said sarcastically. "But please use your suddenly enlightened primitive brain to think carefully about how we can rush back to the court to report now?"

Oh shit
Her curse is a bit harsh, isn't it? And she didn't use any swear words, it's really an art of language. If she wasn't cursing me, I would definitely learn this technique.
Anyway, I used my suddenly enlightened primitive brain to control my mouth and vocal cords and make them make sounds.

"It's faster than rushing to the Misty Star Region now."

My hostess smiled, and to be honest, I would have preferred her to frown. As expected, I once again heard her sarcastic laughter.

"And then set out again to the Hazy Star Region? How much extra time will be wasted on the road? How will the situation develop by then?"

"By the throne, Renthal, you really put me to shame sometimes. If the others knew what an idiot my deputy is, they would laugh at me with the door open."

Go to yours.

I stormed out of her darkened office, and as I closed the door, I heard her coughing.

This meant that her old injury was still bothering her. To be honest, considering her enhanced self-healing ability after the surgery, this old injury could no longer be simply called a "chronic illness".

And I actually know the truth, at least part of the truth.
I kept thinking about this as I walked to the bridge. I hoped that my expression wouldn't look too scary when I was thinking, but I guess I failed because the sailors who passed by me didn't even dare to look up at me or greet me as usual.

I understand, but I really want to tell them - even a Grax beast would look cold and ruthless in the black uniform provided by the Inquisition.

I am not the inhuman executioner that people imagine, who would kill children and their parents for a little thing. I am not such a beast, and neither are the judges.

But people don't believe it, they would rather believe what they imagine.

No, maybe everyone is like this.
I walked towards the captain, whose name was Caplin, an experienced captain, a former navy officer with forty-one years of service. He was now sixty-seven years old, and was assigned to work for us after retiring.

Of course, this was just the official statement, used to avoid some annoying political formalities, and he himself was still serving, and even had a whole team of officers under him, stationed in various places on the main bridge.

I like him very much. There are not many people like him in the empire.

"Setting sail again?" Seeing me coming, Caplin asked in a humorous tone.

He had a pipe in his mouth, and the aroma of the navy's special tobacco had already reached my nose. To be honest, I'm not really fond of tobacco, but this thing is really fragrant, and I immediately understood why the guards hated the navy.

If one person is rolling in the mud all day, eating bland energy cream and protein bars, while the other person has no worries about food and clothing, can take a hot shower every day, and even has endless cigarettes.
I nodded to him.

"Well, where to?" Caplin asked, stubbing out his pipe and adjusting his hat.

"Banjo System, Obscura," I said.

I guess my expression must have been very sad when I spoke, otherwise Keplin wouldn't have suddenly laughed after looking at me. The old man shook his head and patted my shoulder. He said nothing, but he said everything.

I gave him a gesture to tell him that I was actually in a good mood, then turned and walked away. I didn't want to compete with an old navy to see who was more proficient in the so-called "tactical gestures".

It took me about half an hour to get back to my mistress's office door, and at least half of that time was wasted observing the outside world from a porthole.

There's a space station where we're parked, called Black Diamond. Not a great name, but it's actually a great place.

There are laws here to restrain good people and ordinary people, and there are rules to tell the sons or daughters of some bastards and bastards not to go too far.

There aren't many places like this in the galaxy, and most of the time, something as simple as an axiom doesn't exist.

I hope there is justice where we are going.

As for justice, I wish it good luck.

I opened the door to Cyrano van der Leff's office and saw my mistress lying on the floor, growling. I closed the door, walked over to help her up, and felt as if I were nothing.

She was too thin, even with all those guns hanging under her robes, she was not a healthy person, so she had to rely on drugs to get through her old injuries.

I laid her down on a black couch, then walked behind the desk, unlocked the combination lock, pulled out three medicine bottles, and began to prepare her medication.

These drugs were provided by the Jairzinho Guzmán Medical Association and were very effective, but one should not dwell on the raw materials - no matter how one looked at it, these glowing pills were not what I considered 'normal' drugs.

But they were given by the Medical Association after all, and those were the best doctors I have ever seen in my life.

I grabbed a handful of medicine and walked towards my mistress.

"Don't." She lay on the sofa, curled up in pain, looking at me in sweat.

I ignored her pleas and just stood beside the sofa, staring at her coldly. After a few seconds, I forced her jaw open and poured the medicine into her.

She didn't want to take them because one of the pills would put her to sleep, which would mean she would be facing the thing. In other words, she was afraid of the thing.

It's incredible, isn't it? An inquisitor is afraid of something. But we are all human, and humans have fears. There is nothing to be ashamed of. I don't think I am a very smart person, but when it comes to facing fear, I am very experienced.

At least she is much more experienced than the woman who has fallen asleep but still has a distorted face and tense muscles.

I held her hand, sat on the ground, took out a tube of anesthetic from my belt and injected myself, and sleepiness swept over me.

It didn't take me long to open my eyes, and once again I saw the blood-red sky over Sowet.

The orcs were attacking this world, or, to put it another way, slaughtering it. Countless green-skinned monsters arrived here on ships that looked like garbage dumps, and then set it on fire.

They left no one behind, no matter if it was the powerful Dark Angels or the well-disciplined Doomsday Guards, they treated everyone equally. They were born to fight, and they didn't care who they fought with or why they fought.

In their words, as long as there is a fight to be fought, the so-called Go Ge and Mao Ge will be very happy about it.

But we - humans - are not happy about this.

I walked through the hot mud towards the depths of the pile of corpses.

This is a position, a corner of the burning jungle of Sowet. The Doomguards bled dry here. I don't know the exact number of casualties because I have no right to know. If it weren't for the permission of the Sigillite, I couldn't even come here.
Praise his foresight, if only 20% of the officials in the Empire could work like him. I secretly hoped that these things would happen, silently chanting the name of the Emperor and holding the Sky Eagle pendant on my belt.

I knew where it was, I knew it all too well, having been here so many times before. But finding it would mean finding Cyrano van der Leff, so I had to prepare.

I held the Sky Eagle pendant in my left hand and took off the emblem of the Inquisition on my chest with my right hand. I held it in my hand, then slowly closed my fingers and walked to the other end of the position as if I was holding a dagger.

I walked over three earthen slopes, two trenches, and then passed through the burning machine gun position as if the flames were nothing, and met six terrified men.

They were completely unaware of my arrival, and simply stayed in a corner of this reverse slope, holding their only weapons tightly, staring at the nightmarish scene in the distance.

These six men are among the last survivors of the Doom Guard, but I only know the name of one of them: Hayid, a corporal.

I looked at him.

I wish he could see me, so I could at least talk to this person, but I can't. He can't see me, this is just a memory, and it will soon become nothingness.

I continued to move forward and passed through another flame. Finally, I found my target.

I saw a thousand different faces, showing anger, fear, lamentation and despair. The human faces were trembling and wailing on their tangled muscles, forming a huge monster about six meters tall.

It was slaughtering a group of orcs, defeating them single-handedly. Its extraordinary fighting ability was indescribable.

Damn it, damn it Emperor. Please look at me. Please have some mercy on me.

I took a deep breath - I can't help it, I really can't help it, please forgive me. No matter how many times I see it, I can't get used to it. I have never been a hard-hearted person, even after twelve years of doing this, I can't get used to it.

It was pure torture for me to witness this, and it became even more so when I found out what it was.

Fortunately, it was not my main target, so I forced myself to turn my head and walk into the jungle on the side.

A few minutes later, I found two crashed flying boats, surrounded by piles of orc corpses, some melted, some not, but all of them exuded a pungent stench.

Their body odor is as harmful to humans as poison gas, and after being tempered by fire, it mutates into a green miasma visible to the naked eye.

I could smell it, and although I didn't understand why, I held my breath and walked towards the wreckage of the two huge machines. They were not shuttles or transport planes in the ordinary sense, but war machines that were a step up from that.

Twenty years ago, five Inquisitors and their respective guards boarded these two flying boats and tried to reach the ground at the last moment of the Battle of Sovet. They came here for a prophecy.

I don't know the specific content of the prophecy, that involves another confidential matter. But I know that the prophecy that is enough to mobilize five inquisitors must be extraordinary.
They successfully broke through the blockade of the Ork fleet, reached the ground, and started fighting with these space monsters. I don't think they came here to fight the Orks, but they were indeed delayed and even suffered heavy casualties. The Orks who appeared on Sovet belonged to a so-called warlord born in the Hadilan galaxy. Its power was once so great that it was about to swallow up the entire Hadilan.

The Empire launched a siege against it, but this cunning beast actually left Hadilan with its army without hesitation and began to run rampant in the Hazy Star Region, bringing massacres wherever it went.

They are very powerful, and each individual is very terrifying in size, so I can fully understand the failure of the Inquisitors.
Even for them, the galaxy is still cruel.

Very cruel.

I paused, staring in silence at my mistress, who was crouching in the middle of the burning wreckage, watching a young woman in uniform crawling out of the ruins, covered in blood.

This woman looked very similar to her, except that she didn't have the five scars on her face. She held a bolter in her left hand and a short blade that was almost completely rusted in her right hand. The thing made my eyes sting, so I looked away and looked at my mistress.

She looked at me with foresight, and finally revealed an expression that I was familiar with, without any trace of weakness.

She looked at me sternly and asked, "Why did you come in again?"

I shrugged.

"You'll be killed for this."

She whispered to me over the crackling of the flames, the young woman still panting, but her voice sounded strangely calm.

"If the Master knew you knew all this."

I didn't tell her that the Master of the Seal knew it from the beginning, I just smiled and shrugged again. My attitude disgusted her and she started to stare at me, but it only lasted for less than a few seconds.

Then, she actually chuckled. Five ugly scars piled up on her face, making everything look inhuman, except for her eyes, which remained the same.

"I will be executed with you," she said.

I hummed to show that I didn't care - did I really not care? I think you know the answer.

I walked over, held her left hand, and waited with her there. Three minutes later, the young woman left the ruins covered in blood. She walked with a limp, and the white bones at the knee of her left foot were exposed.

She had given herself a medical injection half a minute ago, but it still couldn't completely relieve the pain. We followed her and Serrano's breathing began to change, from steady to rapid.

I squeezed her hand and told her to calm down, so she tried. The woman suddenly fell to the ground and coughed up a mouthful of blood.

There were no tears in her brown eyes, but sadness still followed her. She stood up with all her might, holding her gun and rusty short blade, and walked towards the battle site. At this time, that existence had already killed all the orcs.

The thousand faces on it - or ten thousand, I didn't count - were still wailing, and every pair of eyes looked so desperate.

The woman walked towards it.

As for what happened next, it was easy to describe. She sealed it, using the short blade in her right hand and the power from her five scars to seal it within her body.

Yes, my mistress, Cyrano van der Leff, is a psyker, so she can do this. But what exactly is it that she has sealed away? Is it a demon? If so, how terrible is it that it has cost the Inquisition such a great sacrifice?
With these questions in mind every time, I opened my eyes and saw a black muzzle of a gun.

"Name?" asked my hostess gravely.

"Renthal Sable," I said. "Your poor servant."

She put down the gun, her wet face was calm, and the five scars were still shining.

What is it?
This question has been hidden in my heart for twelve years. At first, I thought it was a demon. However, as I entered that memory more and more times, I couldn't help but change my mind.

I have seen many demons, and their supernatural stench and forms always linger in the back of my mind. To me, they are various kinds of nightmares.

But that thing is not, I know very well that it is not.

Have you heard of the word 'hero'?

I think you must have heard of the word "heroic spirit" - what a beautiful word, priests of the state church often use it to describe the souls of soldiers or devout people who died bravely in battle.

They would say that the spirits of the heroes hover over people's heads, watching their every move. All good deeds will be rewarded on the Feast of the Emperor's Ascension, and all evil deeds will be judged on that day.
Believe it or not, but I don't.

I've worked for the Inquisition for twelve years, I've seen enough bodies to fill an entire ship, I've handled thirty-six demon-related cases, I've had dinner with a cult leader, and I've never seen a soul that fits their description.

So I think, either these heroes are really fighting a very difficult battle far away from us as they say, or they don't exist at all.

I once firmly believed that they did not exist, but this idea was discarded by me after I saw the existence that my mistress sealed with her own life.

Heroic spirits exist, but they are not the same as we imagine, at least from what I have seen.

Now you know why I'm scared.

I thought - at least I thought - that the Elves were heroes, but I was wrong. I wish I was right, just for once. But I was wrong.

I stood up absentmindedly and looked at my mistress. She put the gun back into her sleeve, wiped the sweat off her face, and looked up at me. She knew me so well that she knew from just one glance that I had some questions to ask.

I looked at her and she looked at me, and for a while I was sure that the tacit understanding between us, which had been born for a long time, was working, but it was a pity that it could not continue. I tore this tacit understanding apart with my own hands and threw the truth in her face.

"What exactly is it?" I asked.

"Don't ask questions you shouldn't ask," Serrano said sternly.

"Please, let me know." I begged her.

She raised her foot and kicked me hard, then pulled out her gun and started firing, kicking me out of her office.

At this time, the hull began to shake. I held onto the wall, feeling every part of my body undergoing the pain of disassembly and reassembly, which meant that we were entering the subspace.

I began to hate Caplin more than ever before—did you have to go in now? Damn it!
Many complicated images emerged in my mind, without any logic or rationality.

I saw corpses talking, bloody faces floating above their heads, smiling at each other. Two hands with curled nails grabbed a steel brush and rubbed it hard on a woman's back, blood and flesh splattered, and she screamed with pleasure.

I felt like I was going to break, I couldn't bear this. Just when my sanity was about to reach its critical point, a hand inside the office door saved me.

Cyrano van der Leff looked at me with pity, even though she herself was suffering the same torture.

"You didn't have to share this cost with me," she murmured to me. "Why do you do this, Renthal?"

I want to call her an idiot. I also want to ask, can't you see why? I'm not your father.

But I didn't say it after all. Our mission was to find Corporal Hayd, who had triggered the mark. He was assigned to work at the Veterans Association on Banjo-1. It shouldn't be difficult to find him, but I was worried that something might go wrong.

If anything goes wrong, we'll all die.

I'll tell you when I'm about to die, I thought, and held her hand. She was skinny.

I smiled at her.

A few hours later, we left the warp, jumped out of Mandeville Point, and parked near the Banjo system.

Leaving the warp made me feel very excited, even energetic, as if I had been injected with a shot of "war" potion. That thing can temporarily push a person's body functions to a certain limit, making people full of energy.

It's said that the Astartes had the same potion, only their dosage was much larger and without the severe side effects. I really wonder what it felt like for them when they left the warp.

You see, I always have a lot of questions, one after another, in an endless stream. This means that I react quickly. I'm not bragging, I really react quickly. When a flash of green light flashed outside the porthole closest to us, I looked over immediately.

I see a Necron Shroud-class cruiser.

The muzzle of that thing was flashing.

"Fuck." I only had time to utter this curse before I pushed Serrano into the door.
-
"What are you doing?!" Trazyn roared.

The object of his roar did not answer him. The one-eyed Necron just focused on smashing his right fist into the cruiser's control console, which had many runes on it to control various parts of the ship.

And Trazyn believed that it was no coincidence that Orikan hit the firing button so accurately.

Any coincidence was the inevitable result of multiple calculations and reversal of time for the astrologer Orikan. This thought was born in his mind. Then, Trazyn suddenly realized that similar things might have happened more than once.

How much time had he spent here with Orikan? How much time had passed since this ship—his ship—had been hijacked by Orikan in such a crude trick?
It began to quickly check its memory units: starting from Sollemus, no problem. Taking a long detour to the Ghoul Stars and the Black Region outside the system to confuse Orikan, no problem.

Discovered by the War Hounds Chapter near Nuceria, it was discovered that it was the damn Orikan who sent them a provocative message anonymously, no problem.

He abandoned the ship, left his body behind, used the transmission protocol to activate his backup body, set out again, and arrived at the Banjo Galaxy in the hazy star field of the Human Empire. He found traces of the fallen angels on the way and was distracted for a while.

The problem was right here, right at the moment when it retrieved the fallen angel. Its sensor gave an error for a split second, and it thought it was a normal allowed error, but now it seemed that it was not, but the damned Orikan was reversing time.

Amid the dangerous hum of the arc generator, Trazyn lunged at his friend.

It grasped the Scryer's neck with its iron hands, trying to suffocate him, and Orikan laughed.

"Don't try this time!" the Scryer shouted, laughing. "Wait till you present your crimes to the Council, Trazyn!"

"The great Overlord of the Sollemus Dynasty used force without cause and declared war on the Human Empire without permission! The Parliament is about to try you for war crimes!"

Its words nearly made Trazyn break out in a cold sweat—if it could still sweat. It had come all the way across half the galaxy to get here not for something like this to happen.
But what Orikan mentioned really concerned him. How could it be a war crime? What kind of war crime could be committed by firing into an unmanned space?
Trazyn turned his head to look at the control console and saw a black shadow suddenly appear on the dark green rune matrix. Distorted text was marked next to it: Human Empire, Gothic-class cruiser.

This line of text was printed squarely on the silver forehead of the ship's helmsman, creating a very absurd effect.

Trazyn's steady hands began to shake, but Orikan continued to laugh.

"You—" it roared. "—It's over!"

"It's not over yet!"

Trazyn roared back at a louder volume than it, and the transmission protocol was immediately activated. A wisp of its consciousness slipped into the helmsman's body and directly controlled him. At the same time, it raised its hand and hammered the acceleration rune hard.

The consequences of this action appeared before it and Orikan a hundred times faster than the preheating of the arc generator gun.

The tiny Shroud-class ship immediately began to move, leaving its location at a speed that completely surpassed the speed of any other species' ships in the galaxy.

Orikan broke free from his restraints in a rage, rushed forward and held down the body of the helmsman operated by Trazyn, trying to reverse the situation, but Trazyn's real body also rushed up and pressed Orikan on the operating table.

"Don't even think about it." Trazyn gritted his teeth. "I've waited so long for this opportunity, don't even think about it!"

"Go talk to me from nineteen centuries ago!" Orikan replied. "Only then would I listen to you, you shameless liar!"

It raised its hands, ready to cast a time spell, reversing the flow of time once again, but Trazyn quickly swung the helmsman's left elbow and hit the side of Orikan's head, causing it to stagger, interrupting the spell.

But this was not the end. The guards, who had finally recovered from Orikan's shoddy hijacking protocol, rushed forward and pinned the Scryer to the ground.

Trazyn snatched away its staff and limbs, and then smashed its voice machine with a punch, then breathlessly declared his victory.

"What will you do now? What will you do now? Great Orikan, oh, astrologer! prophet!"

Trazyn waved his arms at it, yelling and roaring. Its guards lowered their heads in tacit agreement and shut down their hearing systems.

"I sped up and left the spot. You've gone back in time so many times, but you didn't think of this solution? So simple, so effective! You idiot, any weapon takes time to hit the target, and you didn't even press the aiming rune before firing!"

The hull shook, and lightning from the arc generator surged out, striking into the distance. A few seconds later, the console reported in a cold voice: "An unknown target has been hit."

Trazyn turned her head sharply.

"What is an unknown target? Explain, explain." It asked in a trembling voice.

The remains of Orikan shook up and down, making a silent laugh, and its voice was transmitted to Trazyn's ears through the communication runes.

"Do you really think I went back in time so many times just so you could blow up a little cruiser? You are so naive, Trazyn."

The console said: "Imperial of Man, Oberon-class battleship, marked as the Vanguard of Reason."

Trazyn's eyes went dark and he suddenly let out a loud scream.

(End of this chapter)