#daelus

The words came out breathier than she intended. The garden was too bright; the air was too warm. The soft murmur of water through the narrow hydroponic channels and the faint rustle of leaves under lumen-suns made the whole place feel like a dream someone had hidden inside the ribs of a warship. And in the middle of it stood the Tetrarch of Vespator, vast and composed and unhelmed, his grey eyes on her in a way that made her feel seen far more keenly than she wished.

Felix stepped fully into the chamber and let the door sigh shut behind him, sealing them within the quiet green pulse of the Hortus Node.

For a moment neither of them seemed certain what ought to be spoken next and by whom. And so, they stood, Felix staring at the smaller form of the serf and Samira intently studying the way her feet looked against the flooring of the garden.

Samira was the first to break beneath the strain of it, as she dipped her head further down into a bow,

“I was ordered to report here, my lord,” she said, as if he could possibly be unaware of that fact. “At third bell.”

“Yes,” Felix replied.

They fell into another silent pause. It was not an unfriendly silence, even if it felt heavy, the kind that gathered when two people were aware of standing on the edge of something neither had prepared words for.

Felix cleared his throat, the sound low and almost unnecessary. “Your reassignment was confirmed,” he said. “Effective immediately. You will henceforth be attached to the Tetrarchal office.”

Samira blinked and looked up before she could stop herself.

“To the… Tetrarch’s office?”

Felix gave a single nod. “Yes.”

Her fingers tightened on the docket cover. “My lord, I… I do not understand.”

“That is evident,” he said, then seemed to realize how cold the words sounded. His expression altered by a degree so slight most people might have missed it. “You will be assigned to the personal archival department attached to the annex. The records there require care, discretion, and someone with a reliable memory.”

Samira now stared openly, her mouth slightly agape.

Assignment to the Tetrarch’s personal archival department wasn’t the worst of occupations one could find themselves in. Far from it, there would be serfs who would kill to be placed in such a cushy role. And to hear her assignment be declared aloud by the man who governed this vessel made it feel even stranger, more intimate, as if she had been told she was to be entrusted with a very important reliquary and she must accept it with open arms. Not that she had much of a say in the matter.

Her voice dropped.

“Why me?”

There it was.

Small, anxious, and entirely sincere.

Felix, who could discuss troop movements across three systems without once searching for a word, found himself stilled by a question asked in almost a whisper.

Why her indeed? Some voice inside him ventured the reason, if only to himself.

‘Because you remembered a thing I had not realized I needed remembered.’

‘Because you set figs and candied ginger by my table and yet, never once asked for notice.’

‘Because your name lodged itself somewhere behind my discipline and refuses to leave with the dignity required of it.’

He smothered that little voice with an iron hand, and instead, stood there like a man who had been handed the wrong weapon in the middle of a battlefield.

Samira watched him, alarm beginning to gather in her eyes, as if she thought perhaps, she had overstepped merely by asking.

As he saw her panic, Felix chose the first answer that presented itself and despised it even before it fully left his mouth.

“You were in the right place at the right time.”

The moment the sentence existed between them, it became obvious for the flimsy thing it was.

Samira’s brows drew together slightly, looking not particularly offended nor especially reassured. She looked merely puzzled, in that earnest way of hers that Felix felt more acutely than any accusation she could level at him.

“The right place…” she repeated softly.

Felix folded his hands behind his back, if only to hide the slight tremor that had set into his digits. “Yes.”

“And the right time.”

“Yes.”

Samira hesitated, then ventured with all the innocence of a woman placing her hand in the mouth of something huge because she had not yet realized it could bite, “Was the Tetrarch kind enough to induct every one of his serfs personally, my lord?”

Felix stared at her. Was that a witty quip? From the woman who dared not stare at him too long?

No… There was no mockery in her voice. No slyness. No attempt at boldness. She truly seemed to be asking.

That, somehow, made it worse.

A flicker of something bristled through him. Not anger exactly. His temper did not ignite so cheaply. It was more akin to the sharp discomfort of having a private absurdity held up to the light by the one person from whom he most wished to hide it.

“No,” he said, a shade too quickly. And the word landed with far greater severity than he strove for.

Samira’s eyes widened at once. “Forgive me, my lord. I did not mean to presume.”

“You did not presume.” Felix exhaled once through his nose, steadying himself. “You asked a question.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Her gaze fell again. She seemed prepared to disappear into the floor if propriety permitted it.

Felix looked at her for a long second.

She stood with her shawl wrapped close, the docket held like a shield, and there was something almost unbearable in the care with which she tried to occupy as little space as possible in a chamber built for growth. The leaves trembled faintly in the conditioned air around them, the water whispered through the channels. Somewhere above them the lumen globes cast a false gold over green things that had never seen a real sky, and Samira, against all reason, looked as though she belonged among them more than he did.

He should have corrected the course of this interaction at once. He should have kept it clipped and administrative, finished the formalities, and left her to her duties.

Instead, he heard himself say, quieter, “Your memory is useful. Your conduct has been consistent. You have shown care with small things.”

Only after the words left him did he feel the weight hidden in them.

Samira looked up again, startled.

Small things.

The phrase stirred some faint understanding in her face, though she did not seem to know what to do with it. Her lips parted, then closed. A blush, very slight and very human, touched her cheeks before vanishing again beneath caution and propriety.

“I only did what anyone should do, my lord.” she said.

Felix almost answered, ‘Then why is it so rare?’

He did not. The discipline of the years held much to his confused disappointment.

“You will find,” he said instead, “that what anyone should do and what anyone actually does are not always the same matter.”

Samira absorbed that in silence, unsure how to react.

A tiny insect droned past one of the planter rows. She tracked it for half a heartbeat, perhaps grateful for the interruption, and then looked back toward him with a nervousness that had not entirely settled.

“And what,” she asked carefully, “would my duties be, my lord?”

A practical question. Blessedly practical.

Felix inclined his head toward the deeper reaches of the node, where the garden pathways curved around planters and vanished toward a set of recessed doors half-hidden behind trailing vine and latticework. “The archival rooms lie beyond the inner beds,” he said. “You will assist with indexing, retrieval, cross-referencing, and preservation. Personal correspondence, campaign annotations, logistics supplements, local records from compliance worlds, requisition histories, sealed memoranda requiring physical organization. Materials of varying sensitivity.”

Samira blinked several times.

It was almost comical, the way each new duty seemed to settle on her one by one like birds choosing a branch already burdened beyond reason.

“That is a great deal, my lord.”

“It is,” Felix said.

Her grip shifted on the docket. “And… if I err?”

“You will be corrected.”

The answer came at once, firm and clean. Yet perhaps because he saw her shoulders draw tight at it, he added after a beat, “Preferably before the error becomes catastrophic. And gently.”

To his surprise, the corner of her mouth twitched.

It was a tiny, reluctant thing, gone almost before it existed. And Felix felt the absurd urge to preserve it like a line from a valuable text.

He was about to continue when the claxons began.

The sound tore through the garden with brutal suddenness.

Gone was the illusion of sanctuary. In its place came the hard metallic shriek of alarm, reverberating through the bulkheads, through the water channels, through bone. Samira jumped as though struck. The docket slipped in her fingers. Her breath caught sharply, and for one flashing instant her face emptied into the pure startled panic of someone whose body remembered danger faster than thought.

Felix moved before deciding to.

His hand came down on her shoulder, broad and steady, instinct driving the gesture with the clean immediacy of battlefield reflex.

“Steady.”

The word was low, almost swallowed by the alarm.

Samira froze beneath his touch.

So did he.

Her shoulder under his palm felt slight, warm through the rough cloth of her shawl. Real. Entirely too real. The contact lasted no more than a heartbeat, perhaps two, yet in that sliver of time the shrieking claxons seemed to recede behind the far more dangerous awareness that he had laid a hand on her as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Samira lifted her eyes to him.

Shock moved through them first. Then confusion. Then something softer and more undefended that neither of them had any business witnessing.

Felix withdrew his hand at once.

The absence of it felt immediate.

“It is likely a drill,” he said, though his voice had gone more formal than before. “Or a transit warning from a neighbouring deck. There is no cause for alarm.”

Which, he realized, was an absurd sentence to utter while alarms screamed around them like tortured souls seeking release.

Samira swallowed. “No, my lord. There isn’t.”

Felix knew instinctively that she was lying for his sake, or perhaps for her own dignity. Her fingers were trembling where they held the docket, now more precariously than before. Felix noticed because it seemed of late, he was becoming very observant, almost offensively aware of every movement she made.

The claxons continued for a few moments longer, then shifted tone, settling into a lower repeating cadence that sounded less like imminent catastrophe and more like procedural warning.

Felix seized upon structure with visible relief.

“This way,” he said.

He turned, then paused just enough to be certain she followed.

Samira did, though not before stealing one tiny, bewildered glance at the shoulder he had touched, as if she could still feel the imprint of that impossible steadiness there.

They moved along the stone-lined path between the planters. The claxons rang at intervals now, distant enough to feel less vicious, though Samira still startled faintly each time the sound rolled through the chamber.

Felix noticed that too.

“The inner archive is climate-controlled,” he said, giving her facts because he wanted to fill the silence with something other than the claxon clangs. “Some of the materials stored there predate my current appointment. Others are active records. You will be shown the seal protocols. Access beyond your clearance will remain restricted unless otherwise authorized.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“There are handling rites for certain parchment stocks. Some inks react poorly to excess heat. Some bindings are older than the men who guard them. You will not rush.”

“No, my lord.”

“And you will ask when uncertain.”

That made her glance up again. “I may ask?”

The question struck him almost harder than the earlier one.

Felix looked forward as they walked, because looking directly at her while answering felt unwise. “You may ask when the matter concerns your duties.”

A brief silence.

“That seems fair,” Samira said.

There was such earnest acceptance in it that something in him nearly gave way into laughter, or despair, or some hybrid of the two.

At the far side of the garden the recessed doors came fully into view, framed by climbing ivy that had been coaxed with impossible patience around iron supports. A pair of discreet sigils marked the entrance. Beside the doors stood a narrow cogitator column, its surface lit by waiting runes.

Felix stopped beside it and keyed a code into the plate.

As the lock disengaged, he spoke without looking at her.

“You will carry on from here.”

Samira stood very still. The alarms had faded further now, leaving only the hush of water and the ever-present hum of the ship beneath everything.

“My lord,” she said, hesitant.

Felix turned slightly.

Her eyes were lowered again, though not entirely. There was still confusion in them, and caution, and something gentler he did not dare name.

“Thank you,” she said. “For… showing me.”

The archive doors slid open with a quiet mechanical sigh.

Felix held her gaze for one fraction too long, then inclined his head with all the restraint he could gather around himself like armour.

“It is an induction,” he said. “Nothing more.”

Samira nodded, though something in her expression suggested she did not wholly believe him. Then, clutching her docket and her composure with equal care, she stepped past him into the archival rooms beyond, while behind them the impossible garden continued to breathe in the heart of a warship, and Decimus Felix remained standing at the threshold like a man who had just crossed one of his own.

When the archive doors sealed behind Samira, Decimus Felix remained where he stood for one heartbeat longer than necessary.

Then another.

The garden breathed quietly around him, the gentle murmur of the hydroponic channels the more immediate ambient sound now. The claxons had dulled now into the lower, procedural cadence of a vessel correcting its own pulse. Nothing in the chamber suggested disorder, or that anything had occurred beyond the induction of a reassigned serf into her new duties.

And yet Felix stood at the threshold like a man who had just survived a skirmish no one else would ever think to name.

Her question had lodged itself under his armour with indecent precision.

Why me?

It had been asked with no artifice, no calculation, no hidden barb. That made it far more dangerous than accusation would have been. Accusation he could have answered. Suspicion he could have parried. But innocence, offered plainly into his hands and left there, demanded a kind of honesty for which he was not prepared. Not yet.

He exhaled once, slow and controlled, and turned away from the archive doors.

The path back through the Hortus Node seemed shorter than before. He passed beneath the false gold of the lumen-suns, through the orderly green of planters and trellised vines, past a narrow channel where the water caught the light and broke it into trembling lines across the stone. Somewhere overhead, a ventilation unit hissed and settled.

He strove to carry on his way, without once looking back.

The access door irised open at his approach. Beyond it, in the narrower corridor outside the annex junction, Cominus was waiting exactly where he had been ordered to wait.

He stood with Troncus and Cadmus flanking the corridor at measured distance, the three of them arranged with that effortless geometry Astartes seemed able to assume without discussion. As promised, they had not intruded, choosing instead to become a wall in transhuman form. They held the perimeter around their lord’s absurd administrative indulgence as if it were a battlefield objective.

Cominus’ helm was clipped to his belt. His face, as ever, looked as if it had been carved from some dour mountain range and had only occasionally been taught to smile.

His eyes flicked once past Felix’s shoulder toward the sealed door to the Hortus Node. Then back to Felix.

“My lord,” he said.

Felix adjusted one cuff of his glove. “Sergeant.”

A moment passed in silence, as Troncus and Cadmus had the sense to become scenery.

Cominus’ gaze remained steady, and maddeningly unreadable. “The alarm was a transit discrepancy on Deck Nine. Resolved. No threat to the annex.”

“I assumed as much.”

“I also assumed,” Cominus said, in the same flat tone, “that your important archival duty would require fewer minutes.”

Felix looked at him.

Cominus, to his credit, did not so much as twitch. Only the faintest roughening at the edge of his voice suggested he was allowing himself a degree of insolence strictly earned through years of brotherhood and loyal service.

“I had not known,” he continued, “that inducting new serfs into your employ had become a matter requiring such personal attention.”

Cadmus’ eyes fixed themselves very firmly on the opposite wall while Troncus developed an immediate and consuming interest in a lumen strip.

Felix gave Cominus a long, level look.

It was the sort of look that, from another commander, might have promised censure. But the many years of brotherhood between the two men made that look something with a much deeper meaning. A voiceless plea to not probe into it, if he can help it.  The silence stretched on for a moment longer, acquiring the necessary weight it needed.

At last, Cominus inclined his head by a fraction, the barest acknowledgment that he had pressed as far as duty allowed and would go no further.

He was, after all, good at his work.

As Felix stepped past him, Cominus’ eyes moved once more to the sealed garden door. His expression did not alter, but his mind was plainly already turning over the necessary calculations. A reassigned serf had been brought into proximity with the Tetrarch. The serf had been personally met. The Tetrarch had taken longer than expected and emerged quieter than he had entered.

That was enough to become a matter of record.

Cominus touched two fingers to the vox-bead at his gorget, his voice dropping into the private register of command.

“Cadmus,” he said, without taking his eyes off the corridor ahead, “pull the personnel trail on the new archive reassignment. Full background. Prior stationing, disciplinary marks, surviving attachments, references, if any remain.”

Cadmus turned his head by a precise degree. “Name?”

Cominus’ mouth flattened. “Samira.”

There was no embellishment in the order. No implication, nor malice. It was simply the clean instinct of a warrior who had buried too many lords and brothers to leave coincidence unmeasured.

Felix heard every word, but he did not break stride.

If Cominus wished to know who had been allowed near the edges of his liege’s orbit, then Cominus would know. Such caution was as natural to him as breathing. Felix had neither the energy nor the authority of conscience to object to a man doing the duty for which he had been chosen.

Besides, part of him understood the instinct too well…that understanding did not make it any less disquieting.

They moved away from the annex junction together, the Honour Guard closing around him with practiced subtlety. The corridor lights shifted gradually from the warmer glow of the Hortus access passage to the colder lumen clarity of the command arteries. The ship’s hum strengthened underfoot. Crew moved at the edges of their path, flattening instinctively to the walls or bowing their heads as the Tetrarch and his chosen passed.

Felix acknowledged none of it beyond the minimum required by awareness. His mind had already turned inward, retreating into the one place on the vessel where it could become an adversary. Around that one question.

Why me?

‘Because you remembered figs.’

The thought came unbidden, absurd and immediate.

‘Because you left ginger on a table with no expectation of thanks.’

‘Because there was kindness in you that no system had ordered, and therefore no system had accounted for.’

He crushed that particular line of thought before it could gather shape.

By the time he reached the bridge of the Lord of Vespator, his face had resumed the full stillness expected of him. The command sanctum opened before him in tiers of lumen, slate-glow, and disciplined motion. Officers bent over tactical hololiths. Vox-adepts murmured to their stations. Servo-skulls traced preassigned patrol arcs between data lecterns. The vast forward displays gleamed with the ship’s vital readings, even as it cut through the empyrean with decisive precision.

This was the proper shape of his world.

Numbers. Vectors. Reports. Munitions inventories. Atmospheric recycling ratios. Planetary correspondences from Vespator awaiting his review in tidy stacks of urgency.

Here, no one asked why me? without meaning something strategic by it.

Felix crossed to the command lectern and placed both hands lightly on its edge. Instantly the nearest attendant activated his queue. Slate after slate lit to life. Current orbital harmonics. Fleet spacing. Readiness indices from subordinate captains. Vespatorian infrastructure summaries awaiting cross-reference against prior quarter reports.

He began issuing orders with the calm efficiency of long practice.

“Patch Captain Lyras through on secured channel three.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I want updated assessments from the Master of Vox and the chief logisticians before fourth bell.”

“At once, my lord.”

“Deck Nine’s transit discrepancy. Cause?”

A lieutenant turned from his station. “Failed lumen regulator during post-translation stabilization. Minor panic in adjacent hab corridor. No lasting damage.”

“Record it and have Daelus inspect the chain personally. If one regulator failed, others may follow.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Duty flowed over him like cold water. Briefly, it worked. Each instruction placed a stone atop the turbulence within, building structure where for a moment before, there had been none. Minutes passed in useful sequence as the bridge bent itself around his command and the ship answered, great and obedient.

Yet even as Felix spoke of patrol dispersals and civic assessments, a corner of his mind remained fixed in a garden under false sunlight, hearing a soft voice ask a question he could neither accept nor dismiss.

Why me?

‘Because I saw you.’

That answer was worse now, and it almost made him wince.

Felix straightened imperceptibly, as if posture alone might force the thought back into silence.

He had built a life from discipline. He had survived war, crusade, rupture, and millennia of a galaxy intent on collapse, and it was mostly because he understood the necessity of order. The self was a thing to be governed no less firmly than a world.

And yet he had smeared ink for her.

He had altered a docket trail with his own hand.

He had laid a palm upon her shoulder without thought.

This was no longer a passing irregularity. It was the beginning of something that might one day demand speech.

That was what unsettled him most.

Not the feeling itself, though that was trouble enough. It was the growing suspicion that, in time, she would ask again. And if she asked again with those grave, earnest eyes fixed on him, he might be required to answer truthfully.

The thought made his jaw tighten by a degree so slight only a brother of long familiarity would have caught it.

Which was precisely why the amused voice at the sanctum entry said, “Well then. I see the bridge has not yet exploded. A personal disappointment, I admit. I was hoping for a more theatrical welcome.”

Felix did not need to turn to know who it was.

Daelus strode in with the easy self-possession of a man who belonged equally in a reactor chamber, a shrine of machine rites, or the sanctum of high command, provided he was permitted to complain in all three. Sacred oils clung faintly to him beneath the metal tang of the ship. One servo-arm shifted behind his shoulder with insect precision before settling again. His expression, as usual, wore irreverence like a ceremonial cloak.

He offered Felix a shallow bow that somehow managed to be both respectful and faintly mocking.

“My lord Tetrarch,” he said. “Ship systems remain intact. Against all odds and several of the crewmen’s best efforts.”

Felix accepted the report with dry gravity. “You disappoint me. I had been promised catastrophe.”

“I contained it in the spirit of professionalism,” Daelus replied. “The enginseers are offended but functioning. Plasma balance is steady. Deck Nine’s regulator failure was isolated. I’ve assigned a maintenance rite and two lectures. One technical, one spiritual. The second generally frightens them into better habits.”

A few nearby officers suppressed smiles without daring to show teeth.

Felix allowed the slightest inclination of his head. “Good.”

Daelus’ gaze, sharp beneath all the humour, lingered on him half a second too long.

Then drifted, almost lazily, to Cominus.

Cominus stood to the side of the lectern in full command stillness, which was to say he looked exactly as he always did except perhaps for the microscopic stiffness that came when he was refusing the temptation to be entertained.

Daelus lifted his brows in silent inquiry.

What has happened?

Cominus’ face remained a masterpiece of disciplined vacancy. If marble could have chosen disapproval as a vocation, it might have resembled him in that moment. He did not answer the look. He did not so much as blink differently. The only concession was the faintest narrowing of one eye, which in another man might have meant nothing and in Cominus meant, with exquisite precision, Everything and nothing. Ask me later if you truly wish to know.

Daelus’ mouth twitched.

And Felix saw it.

His two battle brothers conducted mischief the way other warriors conducted a weapons drill, with fluency born of practice and the irritating confidence that they were more subtle than they actually were.

He set down the slate in his hand with exact care.

“Techmarine,” he said.

Daelus straightened at once, though his eyes still glimmered with barely concealed amusement. “My lord Tetrarch?”

“You have delivered your report.”

“I have.”

“Excellent. Then continue your duties.”

Daelus’ expression became one of injured innocence. “You wound me with the thought that I would do otherwise.”

Felix turned his gaze to Cominus without moving his head. “And you, Sergeant, will refrain from communicating by expression in the middle of my command sanctum like a schola child avoiding a proctor.”

A pause.

Then, because even discipline could not wholly strangle it, one of the bridge attendants coughed suspiciously into his sleeve.

Cominus bowed his head. “As you command, my lord.”

Daelus, to his credit, did not laugh aloud. The effort of not doing so made his face briefly resemble a man swallowing a live electrical component.

Felix let the silence sit long enough for the both of them to understand that the matter was closed.

Then he reached for the next slate and activated the planetary report stack. “I will now be catching up on the current status of Vespator,” he said, his tone making clear that this was both statement and dismissal. “Captain Lyras will have my response within the quarter cycle. The rest of you will spare me creative interpretations of my schedule.”

“Yes, my lord,” Cominus said.

“Gladly, my lord,” said Daelus, which was plainly untrue.

Neither of them moved immediately. They knew evasion when they heard it. They also knew better than to press him while he wrapped himself back into office and obligation.

Cominus was the first to yield. He inclined his head once, then turned to resume his station with the grave patience of a man filing questions away for later retrieval.

Daelus lingered only long enough to give Felix one last measuring glance. There was humour in it still, but beneath the humour lived perception, old and annoyingly kind. Then he, too, withdrew, leaving behind the faint scent of oil, iron, and withheld commentary.

The bridge settled around Felix once more.

Reports unfurled once more in ordered streams across the lectern. Vespator’s grain tallies. Manufactorum output. militia readiness. labour fluctuations in the lower districts. Weather control deviations in the northern habitations. All useful things, measurable… containable things.

He bent over them as if the whole weight of the world could be borne in figures and directives.

Yet somewhere beneath the orderly avalanche of duty, the question remained.

Why me?

Felix read the first line of Vespator’s current civic assessment and did not see it.

He saw instead a small woman in a false garden, clutching a docket to her chest, looking up at him as if he might say something that made sense of the world.

And for the first time since he had taken up the burden of command, Decimus Felix found himself fearing not the weight of an answer, but the day he would have to voice it out loud.

Aaaaand there we have it! I'm sure Daelus and Cominus are going to stage an intervention soon enough! But imagine Daelus' surprise when he puts two and two together and has the quintessential light bulb above his noggin go off! Oooooh Felix, you'll never hear the end of it, bud!!

The deck plates vibrated faintly beneath her boots, a steady tremor like a pulse heard through a wall. The sensation was familiar enough that her stomach clenched in anticipation before her mind could scold it.

Calphor, whispered something inside her.

No, she answered silently. Not Calphor.

This ship was whole. This ship was relatively free of screams. This was a ship blessed by magi and attended by men who wore their competence like armour. She repeated it like a mantra as she followed the glowing guidance glyphs along the corridor.

Cargo Deck Three.

The designation sounded blunt; unromantic. A place where things were stacked, counted, shifted, secured. A place that expected obedience and compliance from everyone and everything that was within it.

She passed a shrine alcove set into the wall, narrow and flickering with lumen-candles. A small Aquila gleamed behind protective glass. A crewman paused there, crossed his palms in reverence, and moved on without looking back, as if he had deposited his fear like a coin and could not afford to check if it had been accepted.

Samira wanted to do the same. Instead, she kept walking. Her fear didn’t feel like a coin she could throw away. It felt like a thread woven into her nerves.

And as she descended into the lower decks, the ship’s sounds changed.

Up top, there had been space. A sense of breadth. Even in a corridor, there was the illusion of distance, because the ceilings were higher and the lights kinder. Down here, everything narrowed. The passageways were tighter, built for efficiency. Pipes ran along the ceilings like veins. Conduits and cable-bundles hugged the walls in disciplined lines. The lumens hummed, steady and faintly impatient, as if irritated by her very human hesitation.

A servitor trundled past, its gait mechanical, carrying a crate almost as large as its torso. It did not glance at her, and she was grateful. Being ignored by machines was strangely comforting. Machines did not gossip. Machines did not decide your face meant something.

The lift to Deck Three was crowded. Bodies pressed in, shoulders brushing, the air warm with shared breath. A woman beside Samira smelled of antiseptic and starch, hands clasped around a rosary of polished bolts. A man on the other side carried a small data-slate and stared at it as if he could will himself through the bulkhead into a different life.

Samira stood still through the descent, the shudder of the lift’s locking clamps, the momentary weightlessness as the mechanism shifted and caught. She had learned long ago that showing discomfort invited attention. And so, she endured.

The lift opened with a sigh that felt like a hatch sealing behind her.

Deck Three greeted them with sound.

A deeper thrum lived here. The ship’s engines did not roar, not yet. They sang under their breath, a low vibration in the walls. The air was warmer, thicker with the ship’s labour, and the hum in the deckplates felt closer to the bones.

A set of doors loomed ahead, marked with the blocky stencil of a designation code. A security lamp above it burned amber, steady as a watchful eye. Samira’s clearance token felt cold in her pocket, heavy with official certainty.

She produced it and pressed it against the reader.

The lock chirped. A small sound. Still, it felt like a declaration.

She stepped through the open doorway.

Cargo Deck Three was not a single room, but an empire of corridors and compartments, stitched together by rails, lifts, bulkheads, and an unspoken law that everything must be in its proper place. The deck smelled of metal and sealed crates and the faint tang of fuel that clung to everything like a second skin.

Somewhere nearby, men shouted over the hum of machinery.

“Careful with that sling.”

“Watch your footing.”

“By the Throne, it’s not a pillow, Damien! It’s a crate.”

The last voice sounded half exasperated, half amused. It startled a small smile onto her mouth before she could stop it. She swallowed it down quickly, as if laughter was contraband.

A painted sign pointed her onward.

HAB-ROW THIRTY-TWO.

The corridor that led there narrowed again, quieter, more private. The walls were plain, the lumens dimmer. Doors lined both sides at regular intervals, identical slabs of metal with small cogitator plates inset beside each. In the lower decks, even privacy was standardized.

Samira walked slowly, counting the numbers until she reached hers.

Thirty-two.

She paused with her hand hovering near the panel, listening. No voices. No footsteps nearby. Only the ship’s heartbeat, constant and vast.

She pressed her palm to the plate.

The door relented and slid aside.

Her assigned berth was smaller than her cell at the Fortress of Hera.

That surprised her. The Fortress had been a place of stone and marble and ancient pride. She had imagined a flagship would be grander, somehow. Yet the ‘Lord of Vespator’ seemed to not waste space on sentiment.

Inside, the room was clean enough to feel unfamiliar. The metal surfaces were wiped down, corners sharp, edges precise. A narrow bunk sat flush against the wall with straps neatly arranged at the corners for acceleration and turbulence. A locker stood at the foot of the bed. A washbasin was recessed into the wall, its controls marked with plain icons and a warning about water rationing.

On the far side, a small shelf was built into the bulkhead. Bare. Waiting.

That shelf did something strange to her.

It wasn’t much. A rectangle of space no wider than her forearm. Still, it felt like the ship had offered her a single sentence of permission.

You may place your history here, it seemed to say.

Only here.

But here, yes.

She stepped fully inside. The door sealed behind her with a soft sigh that sounded like relief.

For a moment she simply stood, bag in hand, letting the quiet settle around her like dust. The ship’s vibrations threaded through the soles of her boots, through her calves, into her bones. The sensation reminded her she was moving even while standing still. A life carried forward by forces that did not require her consent.

She set her leather bag down and unfastened the clasp with fingers that had begun to shake.

It wasn’t panic. It was the body remembering how it used to survive.

She drew out her shawl first, the plain grey fabric worn soft from years of use. She held it for a breath, letting the familiar weight calm her. Then she folded it and laid it on the bunk.

Next came her uniform linen. Two changes, neatly rolled. She placed them in the locker, aligning the edges without thinking.

Then she reached into the deepest pocket of her bag and found the brass charm.

It was small. Brass and wire, shaped crudely, the kind of thing someone had made in a moment of stubborn hope. She had carried it since Calphor. It had lived in her palm when the alarms screamed. It had pressed into her skin when she clung to a ladder rung in smoke-thick air. It had been with her in the silence afterward, when the stars stared back and she wondered if the universe had finally decided it was done with her.

She held it now, and the ship’s clean metal walls seemed to recede, as if giving the memory room to breathe.

Her throat tightened. She swallowed hard and closed her fingers around it with a possessiveness that felt like prayer.

Then she placed it on the small shelf.

The charm sat there like a tiny defiance.

She added the cracked glass bead beside it, then the strip of faded silk she used as a bookmark. The silk looked almost obscene against the ship’s sterile order, too soft, too human.

She stared at the three items for a long moment.

This is me, she thought.

This is what survived.

Somewhere outside her berth, a bell rang.

Deep. Solemn. A sound that rolled through the bulkhead and into her chest, vibrating against her ribs.

The ship’s lights shifted, dimming slightly. A faint amber hue seeped into the room, bathing the metal in warm warning.

Her mouth went dry.

A vox-voice spoke, calm as a blade.

“All decks. Stand by. Translation rites to commence. Gellar field sanctification pending.”

Translation.

Warp.

The word made her stomach clench even before the fear rose properly. Her mind flashed back to Calphor again, to the moment the viewport cracked, and the air had turned into knives. That memory did not involve the warp, yet her body did not care. The void was void. Darkness was darkness. The instinct to survive did not bother distinguishing.

She sat on the edge of the bunk and pressed the heel of her palm into her thigh until she felt pain.

“Here,” she whispered, barely audible. “I am here.”

The ship answered with another tremor, deeper now, as if the engines had drawn a deliberate breath.

She looked around the berth, cataloguing it like a manifest. Bunk. Straps. Locker. Basin. Shelf. Door.

Containable. This space was containable. That thought comforted her more than it should have.

A small chime sounded from the cogitator plate near the door. Text scrolled across it, crisp and impersonal.

Designation confirmed: SAMIRA

Attachment: Logistics and Archives

Deck: Three

Clearance: Amber

Amber again.

She wondered if someone in the Administratum had a sense of humour. Perhaps they did. Perhaps the galaxy was full of clerks laughing quietly behind ink-stained hands while they stamped other people’s fates.

She rubbed her palms together once, briskly, as if friction could chase the cold away.

She tried to picture the ship’s shape, to make it less monstrous in her mind. Miles of hull. Spires. Gun batteries. Cathedrals of iron. Somewhere far above, command sanctums and viewports and officers speaking in confident tones. Somewhere, perhaps, a man whose name the crew said with reverence and fear stood steady as the planet shrank behind them.

She didn’t know what to do with that thought.

It made her feel simultaneously safer and more exposed, which was an unpleasant combination. Like wearing a cloak that was too thin and too heavy at once.

Another bell rang, and Samira’s breath caught.

She rose too quickly, then forced herself to slow, as if haste might summon disaster. The bunk waited against the wall, narrow and hard-edged, its mattress thin enough to remind the spine it was not owed softness. The sheet was rough-woven and smelled of lye soap, the sort used to scour oil from hands and hope from fabric. At the foot lay a folded cover, heavy and coarse, more like a service tarp than a blanket. Broad stitching ran across it in square sections, the thread thick, utilitarian, meant to survive abuse.

Samira sat and rubbed her thumb against the fabric. It rasped her skin in small, honest bites.

She lay back carefully, staring at the ceiling. The room was too clean, the air too dry, and her body wanted to remember other metal rooms where alarms had screamed, and the void had tried to take its due.

Don’t, she told herself. Not now.

She pulled the cover up anyway. It dragged across her uniform with a dull scrape and settled over her like a weighted thing. Not comforting, exactly. Containing.

Only after it lay across her hips and ribs did she find the ship’s practical little trick: the hem held small toggles, dull metal tabs sewn into the edge, each meant to hook into matching slots on the bunk-frame. Not a harness. Just the bedding doing what the bedding did on a voidship.

Her hands moved without drama, as if they’d practiced this before her mind could object.

Hook.

Hook.

And then, a final tug to tighten the slack.

The cover pinned her down with stubborn certainty, holding her down, refusing to let her drift away, if the ship were to come apart.

No… Not this time.

The deck plates shivered again, deeper now, as the ship gathered itself for rites and translation and whatever waited beyond.

Samira exhaled slowly through her nose.

“Hold,” she whispered into the rough cloth, the word catching slightly on her throat. “Hold.”

She didn’t know if she was speaking to herself, to the ship, or to the thin line of blessed force that would keep the warp outside.

When she finished, she leaned back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling.

The lumen above her flickered once, then steadied.

She listened to the ship’s heartbeat. She listened to the distant footfalls in the corridor. Someone hurried past, boots quick, then slower again.

She swallowed and tasted metal.

Then, just as the fear began to find new places to settle, the corridor outside her berth changed tone again.

She heard heavy footsteps outside that got closer and closer until they seemed to pause outside her door.

Samira’s fingers curled around the edge of the weighted blanket.

A knock came, brisk and certain, as if whoever stood there expected the door itself to obey.

Samira held her breath.

The knock came again, brisk and certain, as if the corridor itself had learned impatience.

Samira lay very still beneath the coarse cover, the toggles biting into their slots along the bunk-frame. The fabric rasped against her cheek when she turned her head. She could taste lye soap in the air, the scent of something scrubbed clean for function, if not for comfort.

A third knock followed, softer, almost perfunctory.

Then the cogitator plate by the door chirped.

The panel slid aside, and an enormous silhouette filled the doorway.

For a heartbeat, the room felt smaller than it already was.

The visitor stepped in with the calm of a man who belonged to corridors, bulkheads, and the ship’s hidden anatomy. Red-edged work-robes, darkened by oil and sacred residue. Small sigils stitched into the hem like quiet oaths.

Astartes… a Primaris.

Even without full plate, there was no mistaking it. The way the air seemed to gather around him. The density of him. The controlled economy of his movement. The faint scent of metal warmed by prayer.

He did not look at Samira at first, his eyes looked past her half-hidden form, scanning the berth with the blunt expectation of someone searching for a person who should have been here and was not.

His voice followed, pitched toward the room as though addressing a familiar figure.

“Kellan,” he called, his voice betraying the dry humour in his tone, “If you have decided to hide from me inside your own mattress, I will assume you require medical attention or an exorcism.”

Silence.

Samira swallowed. Her throat was tight enough to hurt.

The Techmarine’s gaze finally dropped, landing on the narrow bunk, on the rough cover pinned down to the frame, on the slender fingers and the top half of her face that peeked out of the covers, like she were a mouse hiding from a very persistent cat.

His eyes flicked to the toggles. To the tucked corners. To the way her shoulders seemed raised to her ears underneath the covers, as though she were bracing for an impact that had not yet come.

Understanding moved over his face in a subtle shift, almost a courtesy. Quite like an artisan recognized a flawed weld.

His brows shot up as a subtle smile graced his rugged face.

“Ah,” he said, gently. “You are not Kellan.”

Samira managed a whisper. “No, my lord.”

Silence stretched between them, steady yet uncomfortable. Then,

“My apologies,” he chuffed, rubbing his nape, embarrassed. “I have committed the mortal sin of believing the cogitator signage would be accurate.”

His eyes flitted to the door plate again as if it had personally betrayed him. When he saw that the name there was indeed not ‘Kellan’, he made a small sound of displeasure in the back of his throat.

Then, like a man who knew how to right a mistake without making it bigger, he stepped backward, one boot crossing the threshold as though he would simply vanish and spare them both the embarrassment.

The ship trembled underfoot, low and heavy.

Somewhere in the vents, the smell of cleansing incense began to waft.

Samira’s breath hitched.

She felt it before she understood it. That gathering pressure in the air. The imminent shift. The bells. The vox-litany that had already crawled into her bones.

The Techmarine’s head turned sharply, attention narrowing on her.

“Translation rites,” he said, and it was not a question.

Samira nodded once. Small. Stiff.

He hesitated.

It was the most human thing about him, that hesitation. A single beat where he weighed duty against decency and chose quickly, as if he had practiced choosing.

He stepped back into the berth and let the door slide shut behind him.

“Very well,” he said. “We will make do with this confusion.”

Samira stared, unsure how to respond.

He moved with controlled quiet, not looming, nor crowding. Keeping a respectful distance from her, he stood near the foot of the bunk like a sentry.

His gaze returned to the toggled cover.

“I see,” he observed, “that you’ve all but tethered yourself to your bunk.”

Samira’s mouth opened, but no words came.

He continued anyway, his tone lightly sardonic.

“A blanket you can fasten down,” he said. “A bed that will not let you fall off reality, so help us, Throne!”

A strange sound escaped her, half a breath, half almost-laughter. It surprised her enough that she blinked hard, as if laughter might be seen as another failure of discipline.

The Techmarine seemed faintly pleased, as if a gauge had finally twitched toward the correct reading.

He inclined his head. “Good. Your systems remain operational.”

She found a little steadiness in that absurd phrasing.

“I… didn’t know any better way to… handle the stress of it, my lord…” she admitted, voice rough.

“If you feel the need to secure yourself,” he said, “you secure yourself. Anyone who mocks you can volunteer to sleep unfastened during a void storm and report their findings.”

Another tremor ran through the deck plates. The hum deepened, like a throat clearing before song.

Samira’s hands tightened on the rough cover.

The Techmarine’s gaze sharpened.

When he spoke again, his tone had changed very subtly. It was still dry, still controlled. Yet it was now threaded with something that sounded like care dressed up as instruction.

“Breathe,” he said. “Through the nose. Slow. The ship enjoys stealing air from your mouth at moments like these.”

Samira obeyed without thinking. In. Out. The cover scratched at her chin.

The Techmarine watched her for two breaths, then nodded, satisfied.

“There,” he said. “If the warp wishes to frighten you, it may do so in proper turn. You do not need to assist it.”

That landed. Not as comfort, exactly. More like permission to stop fighting herself.

She swallowed again.

His eyes flicked to her shelf. To the small brass charm, the cracked bead, the faded silk.

He did not ask. He merely registered them the way one registered a nameplate.

“Quite the inventory, you’ve got there, little one. I reckon they’re from wherever it is that gave you this phobia for warp translations?” he asked, quietly.

Samira’s throat tightened. She did not answer, because the answer lived too close to the edge of her composure.

The Techmarine did not press.

Instead, he shifted his weight slightly, robe hem brushing his greaves with a faint whisper of fabric and metal.

“I am Daelus,” he said, as if offering the simplest thing first. “Techmarine. Assigned to the Lord of Vespator. Regretfully.”

Samira blinked at the last word.

Daelus’ mouth twitched.

“Now, before you decide to file a formal complaint of insubordination, may I clarify I do not regret the ship,” he chuckled, “I regret the paperwork. The ship is magnificent. The paperwork however, is a daemon wearing ink.”

That did it. A laugh, small and involuntary, slipped out of her before she could cage it.

Daelus looked very mildly triumphant, as though he had tightened a bolt and heard the satisfying click.

“And you are?” he asked.

“Samira,” she said.

He repeated it once, precise. “Samira.” Then, with a faintly theatrical sigh, “Of course. In my haste, I would search for old Kellan, and the ship would give me Samira instead. This is how fate amuses itself.”

Samira hesitated. “… old Kellan?”

“A serf-engineer,” Daelus said, and there was real respect under the casual words. “Competent. Quiet. Offends the Machine Spirit less than most humans manage. He and I have been aligned on several maintenance rites since I boarded. I intended to locate him before translation and exchange the traditional pleasantries.”

He paused, dry humour sliding into place.

“Pleasantries meaning I tell him what he has done wrong, he tells me I have impossible standards, and we both pretend it is not affection.”

Samira’s eyes widened slightly. The idea of affection spoken so plainly, so lightly, and that too between an Astartes and a baseline, felt strange in this place of metal and litany.

Daelus seemed to read her expression and added, as if correcting a misunderstanding.

“Shipboard affection,” he said. “The variety that comes with insults and spare parts.”

Another smile crept up her face without her permission.

Daelus’ attention shifted to the door again, then back to her.

“You are newly assigned to Deck Three,” he said.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Do you know where you are meant to report?”

Samira’s mouth went dry. She had been given directions, yes, yet the ship’s corridors already felt like a maze designed by someone with a cruel sense of humour.

“I… have an induction,” she said. “I was told there would be a bell.”

Daelus made a faint sound of disapproval.

“Relying on bells aboard a warship,” he murmured. “A bold philosophy. I respect it. I will not adopt it personally, however.”

Another bell rang, distant and solemn, and the incense vents exhaled again, thicker now. The air took on that sacred sweetness that made Samira’s stomach tighten.

Daelus’ head tilted, listening, as if he could hear the ship’s deeper mechanisms through the wall.

“The rites are commencing,” he said. “You will remain here until the ship settles. Good. Your bedding is secured. Good again.”

He lifted a hand, palm outward, a small gesture that felt like a quiet order to stay.

“And you will continue breathing,” he added, tone flatly firm. “This is not optional.”

Samira gave a shaky nod.

Daelus turned slightly toward the door, then paused, as if something in him refused to leave a situation half-resolved.

“I entered without permission,” he said, as though the words were an unpleasant taste he had to swallow properly. “That was discourteous.”

Samira blinked. “You… knocked, my lord.”

“I knocked,” Daelus agreed. “But that hardly makes up for the intrusion, now, does it? I apologize.”

The simplicity of that apology struck her harder than grandeur would have. Astartes did not often apologize to serfs. They did not often admit error aloud. The fact that he did, here, in a room barely larger than a storage crate, made the ship feel momentarily less oppressive.

“It’s alright,” she managed.

Daelus’ eyes narrowed, amused.

“Do not absolve me too quickly,” he said. “I have an unfortunate habit of learning when corrected.”

Samira huffed a small laugh.

Daelus nodded again, pleased with having made her feel a little less like a liability for existing.

Then he reached into a pouch at his belt and drew out a small item, dull metal with a simple mechanism, like a clamp or a hook.

He held it up.

“A spare toggle,” he said. “Standard issue. Yours appear intact, yet spares are wise. The ship enjoys petty sabotage.”

Samira stared. “I… can’t take that, my lord.”

Daelus lifted his brows.

“You can,” he corrected mildly. “You will. It is either that or I am forced to return it to inventory, and inventory will ask me questions. Please don’t make me endure questions from inventory!”

Slowly, Samira lifted a hand from beneath the cover. The rough fabric scraped her wrist as she reached. She took the toggle from his palm. It was warm, as if it had been resting against his body.

“Thank you,” she said, quieter than before.

Daelus waved it off.

“Consider it a penance,” he replied. “For confusing you with Kellan.”

He glanced toward her shelf again, lingering on the brass charm for the briefest moment.

“And for whatever made you fasten your bedding like a lifeline,” he added, voice lower.

Samira’s fingers curled around the toggle.

She did not trust herself to speak.

The ship shuddered. A deeper, longer vibration, as if reality itself had been nudged aside.

Samira’s breath caught again, sharp.

Daelus’ voice cut through immediately, steady and faintly exasperated, the way a man spoke to a machine that insisted on misbehaving.

“There,” he said. “That was the worst of it. Your fear is late to the party, as is mostly the case.”

Her lips parted. A laugh threatened, strangled by nerves.

Daelus’ eyes gleamed.

“Yes,” he said, as though confirming a theory. “Ridicule works. It always does. The warp despises being mocked.”

Samira found her breath again, small and shaky, yet present.

Daelus turned toward the door, readiness returning to him like a mantle.

“And with that, I take my leave,” he said. “Still a Kellan out there to find!”

Then, as if remembering the existence of softer creatures, he added with an almost careful gentleness:

“If you need assistance reaching your induction station after translation stabilizes, you should ask the nearest crewman in work-grey for Hab-Row Thirty-Two. Don’t wander; this ship has corridors that loop. Blasted thing is almost smug about confusing people.”

Samira blinked. “Corridors that loop?”

Daelus’ mouth twitched, almost a smile.

“Do not look so surprised,” he said. “The Imperium’s greatest engineering achievement is building something that works while still being inconvenient.”

He placed two fingers briefly to his temple, a gesture that was half salute, half ritual.

“Samira,” he said, naming her again with that precise care, “continue breathing. The ship will finish its rites. You will remain intact. I will locate the serf who is ruining my schedule. Everyone wins.”

His gaze sharpened faintly, the humour taking on a protective edge.

“And if anyone on Deck Three troubles you,” he added, quiet as a blade, “tell them you have been briefly inconvenienced by Techmarine Daelus. I find that phrasing encourages better manners.”

Samira’s eyes widened.

Daelus looked mildly pleased with himself.

“It is not a threat,” he said, too innocently. “Think of it more an educational statement, alright?”

Then he opened the door.

Before stepping out, he glanced back once more, taking in her small berth, the rough cover clipped down like a stubborn promise, the relics on the shelf.

His voice softened by a single degree, almost imperceptible.

“Hold fast, little one.”

And then he was gone, leaving behind the faint scent of sacred oils and the strange after-quiet that followed an Astartes presence.

The door slid shut.

Samira lay still, the coarse cover pressing her down, the spare toggle warm in her palm.

Outside, the ship’s bells continued their solemn speech. Inside, in the tiny rectangle of space the ship had granted her, Samira breathed as instructed, one slow breath at a time, while the Lord of Vespator carried her forward into the dark.

The warp translation ended almost as quickly as it began.

And with it, the Lord of Vespator let out a sigh, a long grinding exhale as though it had clenched every bolt in its body during translation and only now permitted itself to loosen.

Samira noticed that the bells stopped first.

Then the vox-choir quieted, the last syllables of litanies dissolving into a hiss of static. She let out the breath that she had been holding in when she noticed the air lose the tang of the incense in it, returning once more to being merely air, thin and recycled and indifferent.

Samira lay still for a long time after the worst of the shuddering passed, listening for the next betrayal. Her cover remained clipped down over her ribs and hips, its coarse weight holding her in place. Not unlike how a good knot prevented a rope from snapping.

Her fingers worried the spare toggle Daelus had given her until her own heat warmed the metal.

A long moment passed and then, she unclipped the cover and sat up, her boots hit the metal flooring with a low thud as she swung them over the side and stood.

The room swam slightly, as she clung to the metal frame of her bunk. Warp translation always made it so. That, and the remembering.

The water that came out of the small metal washbasin in the corner was cold enough to sting. Exactly what she needed to bring her back fully into the present moment. She splashed her face twice before turning it off and looking up, her reflection stared back at her in the small mirror above the basin.

A face that was as plain as any serf’s. Eyes that seemed too bright in the harsh fluorescent lumen light from above. Slight lines when she scrunched up her eyes. Lips that were neither too full nor too thin. Hair that had escaped its tie in wisps that made her look both younger than she was, and older.

She had survived.

The word tasted like metal. Running her hand over her hair, in a valiant attempt at taming it, she returned to the bunk and began to make it; a small ritual that would return her mind from whatever vortex of thoughts she had been trapped into. She smoothed the rough sheet, folded the cover back down to the foot, checked the toggles and the bunk-frame slots, then left it all in precise order.

The little shelf drew her gaze again.

Charm. Bead. Silk strip.

A private constellation.

An almost pensive smile threatened her otherwise stoic composure. She placed the metal toggle that the kind Techmarine had given her next to the charm. One more symbol to let her know that someone saw her and didn’t pretend they didn’t.

Her throat tightened for no reason she wanted to admit aloud. She reached up and touched the brass charm with her fingertip, then withdrew her hand quickly, as if she had brushed a flame.

No time now to dwell on the past. Not when her duties lay in wait.

She turned away from her little ‘shrine’ when the cogitator plate by the door chirped softly as if it had been waiting for her attention.

A line of text scrolled across it.

ALL NEWLY ASSIGNED PERSONNEL: REPORT TO INDUCTION STATION, CARGO DECK THREE, SECTION DELTA. SECOND BELL.

There it was… the call back to the mundane.

She gathered her bag, checked her pockets for her clearance token, and wrapped her shawl tight around her shoulders. The rough cloth scraped her neck where it lay, yet it was hers, which made it better by a wide margin.

When she opened the door, the corridor welcomed her with its usual indifference. Lumen-strips buzzed overhead. Pipes ran along the ceiling like veins. Far down the passage, the lift shafts hummed.

Stepping out, she closed the door behind her and began to follow the painted guidance glyphs toward Section Delta.

Deck Three, now that translation was over, had become louder. The ship was awake, fully awake. Men and women moved with purpose, hauling crates, adjusting sling-lines, checking pressure seals. Voices rose and fell in arguments about measurements and schedules, the kind of arguments that kept a vessel alive.

Her eyes never left sight of the lumen strip on the floor as she moved through the bowels of Deck three.

Near a junction, she saw Daelus.

He was impossible to miss even when he tried to make himself small. Red-edged robes, oil-dark at the hem. A cluster of crewmen stood around him, holding tools, data-slates, and expressions of nervous concentration. Daelus spoke to them with the wry patient humour of a man explaining the same simple truth for the tenth time.

“You must tighten the coupling to the specified torque,” he was saying, “and please stop improvising! The laws of Physics don’t always take too kindly to that. And neither does the Machine Spirit in that reactor. Got a mean right hook, that one!”

Some of the crewmen let out a nervous chuckle while one of them mumbled an apology.

Daelus tilted his head and made a small sound that might have been a sigh, might have been a prayer.

“All good, Weylan,” he said. “Let’s sort it out, shall we? Plasma leaks won’t look good on your reports.”

Samira paused without meaning to, her eyes flitting to the direction of the gathered crewmen and the giant amidst them.

Daelus’ eyes flicked to her, and softened a fraction, when he recognized her. A microscopic shift. Still, it felt like someone had turned a lamp slightly in her direction.

When she passed, his voice followed her, pitched just enough to reach her ears and nobody else’s.

“Breathe,” he said, the same firm dryness as before. “It remains fashionable.”

Samira startled into a small, reluctant smile, and kept walking.

The induction station was a fenced-in area marked by metal rails and hanging banners. A navy-clad quartermaster sat behind a desk with two scribes and a servitor whose arms ended in stamp-tools. Crew shuffled through in lines, holding dockets. A cogitator terminal chattered softly as it processed names and attachments.

Samira stood in her place and waited, hands clasped in front of her the way she had learned to stand when being evaluated. Around her, people murmured about rations, about the rites, about how the ship’s corridor layout was designed by someone who hated humanity.

When at last, she reached the desk, the quartermaster looked up.

This one was younger than the woman in Hera, with the same sharp eyes and less patience. Her hair was pulled back tight. Her uniform sat perfectly on her shoulders.

“Name,” she said.

“Samira,” Samira replied.

The quartermaster’s fingers moved over a slate. “Designation?”

“Logistics and Archives.”

The woman grunted. “Clearance?”

Samira produced her amber token. The quartermaster scanned it, then tapped a few commands into the terminal.

A printer chattered. A thin strip of paper slid out, stamped with official marks.

“Archive Junction Twelve,” the quartermaster said, pushing it toward Samira. “Maintain manifests. Cross-check cargo codices. Daily audits. No errors.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Samira said automatically.

The quartermaster glanced at her once more, eyes narrowing.

“You were on Calphor Station,” she said, tone flat.

Samira’s stomach tightened. “Yes, ma’am.”

The moment of silence stretched on. And then,

The quartermaster’s gaze shifted away, uninterested in the story behind it. There were a thousand Calphors in the Imperium. A thousand disasters, all neatly filed.

“Right,” the quartermaster said briskly. “Report after third bell. Junction Twelve is behind the secondary lift bank. Follow the blue stripe.”

Samira took the docket, inclined her head, and stepped aside.

She should have felt relief. A posting. A clear instruction. A place to go where work would blunt the edges of fear.

Instead, a restless sensation crawled under her skin, as though something had not yet settled. Like the ship itself was waiting for an extra command.

The second bell rang.

It was closer now, bright through the metal.

Crew shifted. A servitor rolled past with a stack of fresh dockets. The quartermaster barked at someone to stop blocking the line.

Samira turned to leave, when the cogitator plate on the induction desk chirped again.

The quartermaster frowned, annoyed at being interrupted by a machine.

“What now?” she muttered, then tapped the terminal.

The printer chattered.

Another strip of paper slid out.

The quartermaster stared at it for a beat too long.

Her annoyance became something else. Confusion, perhaps. Then caution. Then the stiff, automatic obedience that came when a low-rank officer found herself holding an order from a level well above her pay grade.

She read it again, lips moving silently.

Samira’s mouth went dry.

The quartermaster looked up.

“Serf Samira,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The quartermaster’s eyes were suddenly very careful.

“This is for you. New orders.” she said, and her voice had lost its bark. It had become clipped, formal. Like someone had walked into the room and everyone had straightened without seeing them.

She held out the new docket.

Samira took it with both hands.

The paper that held the facsimile of her new orders was different from the induction strip. Thicker. Older stock, slightly rough at the edges. The stamp at the bottom was crisp and dark, yet the ink above it had a faint smear, as if the document had been handled too quickly before it dried.

There was a seal impressed into the corner.

Not the full pomp of a public edict. No lavish wax. No ornate ribbon.

A simple, pressed mark that carried more authority than decoration ever could.

Samira’s eyes tracked the text.

ORDER OF REASSIGNMENT

To: Serf Samira, Logistics and Archives, Deck Three Attachment

From: Office of the Tetrarch of Vespator

Effective: Immediately

Instruction: Report to Personal Archival Department, Tetrarchal Annex

Location: HORTUS NODE, ACCESS POINT SEVEN

Time: Third Bell

Her heart thudded once, hard, like a fist knocking from the inside.

Personal archival department.

Tetrarchal annex.

Hortus node.

She stared at the word as if it might change if she looked long enough.

The quartermaster cleared her throat, as though the silence in front of her desk had become uncomfortable.

“You will follow that,” she said, carefully, and the sentence was not a suggestion. “Archive Junction Twelve is superseded.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Samira whispered.

The quartermaster’s gaze flicked over Samira’s face, sharp and quick, searching for the usual signs. Pride. Ambition. The kind of greed that made a serf preen when given proximity to command.

She found none of it.

Samira stood very still, holding the docket like it might burn her.

The quartermaster’s mouth tightened. She leaned forward slightly, lowering her voice.

“This order came through without a routing trail,” she said.

Samira blinked.

The quartermaster tapped the smudged ink with one finger. “It should have been filed, registered, countersigned. It was not. Which means either someone in command made a mistake…”

Her eyes hardened.

“…or someone in command decided speed mattered more than procedure.”

Samira felt her throat close.

“I didn’t request anything,” she managed.

“I know,” the quartermaster said, and there was no warmth in it, only certainty. “Requests are loud. This is quiet.”

Samira’s fingers tightened on the paper.

“Will… someone ask questions?” she whispered.

The quartermaster’s expression turned faintly grim, like a woman remembering how questions traveled.

“Questions always exist,” she said. “Most people do not ask them aloud.”

She straightened, voice returning to official cadence.

“You will go to Hortus Node, Access Point Seven at third bell,” she said. “You will present that docket. You will do as you are instructed. You will speak only when spoken to.”

Samira nodded.

The quartermaster’s gaze held hers for a moment longer than necessary.

“And serf,” she added, lower, almost begrudgingly human, “do not wander. If you are lost, find a guard post and present your clearance. The upper annex does not enjoy surprises.”

Samira swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”

She stepped away from the induction station on unsteady feet.

The corridor felt louder now, as if the ship had turned its volume up. Voices. Footsteps. The groan of moving cargo. The creak of sling lines.

Samira could hear her heartbeat underneath it all, steady and terrified.

She walked slowly, forcing her legs to obey.

A personal archival department… That phrase carried a strange intimacy, even in the Imperium’s language of ranks and functions. Personal. Not general. Not communal. Not one of the thousand rooms where paper became law.

Personal meant: someone’s hands touched these things. Someone’s eyes read them. Someone kept what mattered close.

And then the other word.

Hortus.

It meant a garden…

The sheer impossibility of it made her dizzy. A garden on a voidship. Green and growing things in a place built from iron and prayer. The Imperium’s wealth made the absurd ordinary.

Yet it also felt like a challenge, thrown at her by fate.

Here. Walk into something alive.

She stopped at a junction where three corridors split.

The painted stripes on the floor changed colour here, branching like veins. Blue for archives. Yellow for supplies. White for upper access.

She looked down at her docket again.

HORTUS NODE, ACCESS POINT SEVEN.

Her fingers found the edge of the paper where the ink had smeared faintly. Her mind snagged on that detail.

Smudged.

Orders did not smudge. Not when scribes handled them. Not when routing systems printed them cleanly and sealed them with machine precision.

Smudging implied haste.

Haste implied a hand.

A hand that was not meant to touch such things directly.

A small crack in impeccable planning.

The thought sent a chill up her spine.

Samira folded the docket carefully and tucked it into her bag, as if to hide it from the world around her.

Third bell.

She had time to report to Junction Twelve first, to look sensible, to pretend she belonged among manifests and cargo audits. Yet the quartermaster had said superseded.

Immediately.

The word echoed in her mind.

Her feet stepped along the white strip, her decision made.

As she walked, she became aware of the subtle change in architecture. The bulkheads were cleaner, the lumen lights were steadier, and the corridors were less battered by the constant traffic of crate and boot.

The ship’s belly gave way to a middle layer, still functional, yet less brutal about it.

Samira passed a checkpoint where two armed astartes stood in navy plate, helms clipped to their belts. Their eyes tracked her automatically.

She slowed, throat tight, and held out her amber token.

One of them scanned it, then looked at her docket when she produced it.

His eyes narrowed slightly at the seal, but he said nothing. Stepping aside, he let her pass.

Samira walked on, her breath shallow, feeling the strange weight of being permitted.

Behind her, the astartes resumed their watch.

And then, all was quiet. And that was its own kind of intimidation.

A bell rang again, distant.

Not the third bell yet. An intermediate chime, perhaps. A warning that time was moving.

Samira paused at the next junction and looked up at the signage.

HORTUS NODE.

Arrows pointed toward a corridor that disappeared into softer light.

Green signage.

A ridiculous detail, yet it made her stomach twist.

Green.

She put a hand to her chest, feeling her own heart, and whispered a single instruction to herself the way Daelus had instructed her.

“Breathe.”

She did.

In. Out.

The ship hummed around her, immense and steady.

Samira stepped forward again, following the arrow toward the Hortus Node, toward the place the docket had named.

Toward a garden that should not exist, waiting somewhere in the ribs of a warship.

And somewhere far above, in sanctums of command and discipline, a choice had already been made.

Quietly.

Imperfectly.

As if someone had reached out too quickly, then remembered himself only after the paper had been stamped.

Decimus Androdinus Felix stood in the command sanctum, his unhelmed face showing the stoic control he exercised on everything within and without.

When the ship came out of warp translation with a final shudder, and the vox-choirs dimmed back into a background hum, his eyes flicked to the command lectern beside him where different screens showed the various statuses of his ship. He took one of the slates and checked on the various reports flipping through the screen: Gellar field harmonics, crew stability indices, oxygen cycling, munitions lock integrity.

Numbers were calmer things than names. They merely enumerated. They didn’t make his twin hearts beat fractionally faster when a particular name flicked through the list of crew members, like he could recognize the one drop that now hid within the ocean.

Samira.

The name sat in his mind with an irritating persistence, soft as dust and somehow heavier than steel. It had been a mere line among thousands. He had told himself it was nothing, a simple note of reassignment, a practical correction, a serf with useful memory and a steady hand.

And a kindness within, his heart offered.

Felix let out a sigh, as if to absolve his mind from the traitorous trail his thoughts took, and tapped the corner of a different slate, bringing up the internal docket log. A clean system. A righteous one. It displayed what had been entered, what had been approved, what had been archived.

One entry was missing the expected branching approvals; an order that should have taken three desks, two countersigns, and a tidy routing trail through the ship’s bureaucracy.

A blank space in the digital facsimile report where procedure should have been.

His own seal pressed and plain. The ink faintly smeared.

He remembered that smear with clinical clarity.

He had touched the paper too soon.

He had been in a hurry.

Decimus Felix did not hurry.

A crack, then. Small. Human, if he was being honest. An imperfection you might miss unless you knew where to look.

He closed the docket log before he could stare at it any longer. Staring was a kind of indulgence.

A tone sounded at the sanctum entry. The door iris parted, and his Honour Guard entered like a wall deciding it could walk.

Cominus walked in first.

A Primaris Veteran Sergeant, and one of the Sons of Orar, Cominus was surly the way ancient mountains were surly. In a galaxy where many men carried their strength loudly, Cominus was quiet, which made it worse for anyone who planned foolishness.

He bowed, crisp and correct. His helm was clipped to his belt, his face set into the familiar expression of a man who trusted nothing that had not been thoroughly tested and then tested again.

“My lord Tetrarch,” Cominus said.

“Sergeant,” Felix replied, voice even.

Cominus’ eyes flicked briefly over the sanctum, taking inventory of the various exits, shadows, angles. He did this the way others breathed. When he was satisfied with what he assessed, his gaze returned to Felix.

“Post-translation security sweep is complete,” Cominus reported. “No anomalies detected on the primary routes of the ship. Secondary routes remain under watch. There was a fluctuation on Deck Five, lumen surge. It has been contained.”

“Casualties?” asked Felix, a little amused.

“None,” Cominus said. “A servitor lost an arm. It failed to complain.”

Felix’s mouth threatened the smallest of smiles. He however, kept his face composed.

“Good,” he said. “Continue monitoring. I want a second sweep before third bell.”

Cominus hesitated.

It was the only warning Felix received. Cominus rarely hesitated. When he did, it meant the man was about to object.

“My lord,” Cominus began, carefully, as though he was lowering a blade onto a table instead of speaking, “your schedule.”

Felix’s fingers stilled against the slate.

“What of it?” he asked.

Cominus’ expression did not change, yet Felix could feel the disapproval gathering, quiet and inexorable.

“You have been requested in the strategium by Captain Lyras,” Cominus said. “Also, by the Master of the Vox. Also, by the senior logisticians. Also, by me.”

Felix lifted his eyes. “You are already present.”

Cominus’ jaw flexed once. “I request you remain so.”

If anyone outside thought it to be insolence, they did not know the history between Tetrarch and the head of his honour guard: the Chosen of Vespator.

Felix set the slate down with deliberate care.

“Speak, brother.” he said.

Cominus stepped closer by half a pace, as if proximity might prevent an assassination.

“The ship has completed translation,” he said. “The crew will settle. That is when accidents occur. That is when opportunists attempt foolishness. You will not move through the vessel alone.”

Felix met his gaze.

Cominus held it without blinking.

Behind him, two other members of the Honour Guard remained still as statues, Troncus from the Praetors of Ultramar, and Cadmus from the Scythes of the Emperor, their eyes watched the room with the same predatory patience. They would kill without asking why. They would die without asking whether it was worth it. Surly loyalty made of adamantium.

Felix inhaled slowly.

This was the problem with competent men. They noticed shifts in the air. They felt cracks before they widened. Cominus did not know about Samira, he did not know about a serf’s name sitting like a thorn under Felix’s skin.

He only knew that his lord was about to do something that did not fit the pattern.

And so, Felix chose his words with care.

“I am moving to the Hortus Node,” he said, as if the statement itself were unremarkable. “Tetrarchal Annex, access point seven. There is an archival matter requiring personal oversight.”

Cominus’ eyes narrowed.

“A garden,” he said, tone flattened by suspicion, “requires personal oversight.”

“The Hortus Node is attached to the personal archival department,” Felix replied, calm and precise. “The archive requires oversight. The garden is incidental.”

Cominus looked unconvinced.

“My lord,” he said, the words edged with restraint, “you may call for scribes. You may call for adepts. You may call for your Chosen. You do not require a solitary walk to attend paper.”

Felix felt something like heat rise in the back of his skull. Irritation, perhaps. Amusement at the absurdity. The faint embarrassment of being understood too well by someone who did not understand the cause.

He let none of it show.

“You assume solitude,” Felix said evenly. “I assume efficiency.”

Cominus’ mouth tightened. “Efficiency that you intend to practice in solitude then.”

Felix leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice. He did it as though sharing a strategy note, and not a refusal.

“I will be in the Hortus Node for a brief interval,” he said. “I promise not be beyond vox range. I will not be unarmed. You can secure the route and hold at the annex junction. Your men will remain at the outer access points. All I ask is that the interior remain undisturbed.”

Cominus’ gaze sharpened. “Undisturbed.”

“Yes,” Felix said. “The Hortus Node is a controlled environment. Your armour carries oils. Your boots carry dust. Your presence carries… weight. And the things that live within are so easily startled, Cominus.”

Cominus blinked once.

Felix allowed the faintest hint of dryness into his voice.

“I would prefer the plants survive my administrative indulgence, at least past the first day cycle.” he said.

A beat of silence.

One of the Honour Guard behind Cominus made a sound that might have been a suppressed snort. It vanished immediately, as if ashamed of its own existence.

Cominus remained stone-faced. “You are concerned about the plants.”

“I am concerned about everything under my governance,” Felix replied, and the line was true enough to serve as shield. “And the plants also seem to be in scope.”

Cominus stared at him for another long moment. Felix held his gaze without flinching, projecting the calm authority of a man who had never once been irrational.

Inside, he felt the shape of his own ridiculousness.

A serf, a name, a garden. A docket with smeared ink.

What are you doing? he asked himself, with clinical scorn.

He did not answer. He did not need to. His feet were already committed.

Cominus finally inclined his head, the smallest concession possible.

“As you command, my lord,” he said, and the words carried the weight of a promise and a warning both. “We will secure the route. We will hold at the junction.”

Felix nodded once. “Good.”

Cominus still did not move.

Felix lifted a brow. “Sergeant?”

Cominus’ voice dropped, rough as a grindstone.

“If you insist on this,” he said, “then allow me to assign two men in civilian cloaks to shadow you at a distance. They will not disturb your plants.”

Felix felt the urge to exhale sharply. Instead, he kept his face composed.

“No,” he said, gentle and final. “Hold your men at the annex junction. That is an order.”

Cominus’ jaw set. The man disliked orders that contradicted his instincts, yet he obeyed orders the way a bolter obeyed its trigger.

“Yes, my lord,” he said.

Felix picked up his cloak from the back of the command chair. It was a practical thing, dark and plain, the sort of garment a man wore when he wished to pass through his own ship without drawing unnecessary attention.

He glanced once at the strategium request queue, then dismissed it with a flick of his finger. The messages would wait. His officers would grumble. The ship would continue breathing without him for a handful of minutes.

He turned back to Cominus.

“You will tell Captain Lyras I will attend him after third bell,” Felix said. “You will tell the Master of Vox to compile his report and send it to my slate. Tell the logisticians to stop gathering in anxious knots. If they require comfort, they may read the Codex.”

Cominus’ eyes narrowed. “That will not comfort them.”

“Then they will become stronger,” Felix replied.

This time, Felix let himself a fraction of humour, thin as a knife’s edge.

“It is good for them,” he added.

Cominus looked as though he would like to argue that comfort was also good for them, and that his lord was being suspiciously witty.

He instead bowed again, stiffly as Felix walked out.

The corridor beyond the sanctum was quieter. Servitors passed in disciplined silence. Crew stepped aside with bowed heads and lowered eyes. No one spoke unless spoken to. No one asked where he was going.

That, Felix realized, was part of what made this possible.

Power granted privacy, even when one did not deserve it.

He moved at an even pace, and as he approached the annex levels, he felt the air change.

It was subtle at first. Less oil. Less metal tang. Then, at a junction marked with clean signage, it became unmistakable.

Moisture.

A faint, living scent, as if the ship had hidden a breath of earth inside its ribs and kept it there like a secret.

Hortus Node.

Felix’s steps slowed by half a fraction.

Ridiculous, he thought again. Absurd.

He had seen battlefields where men drowned in their own blood. He had watched planets burn in the distance. He had stood in council chambers where the wrong word could doom a thousand lives.

And here he was, adjusting his cloak and checking a docket like a nervous junior adept.

He felt a pulse of annoyance at himself.

Yet he kept walking.

At the annex junction, Cominus and his men were already in position, as ordered. They stood rigid, watchful, eyes scanning every approach. Cominus’ gaze met Felix’s. It was the look of a man who would remember this moment and revisit it later with unpleasant questions.

Felix offered him a nod of acknowledgment and continued past without pausing, not giving Cominus the opportunity to speak.

He crossed into the Hortus access corridor alone.

The lights shifted here, faintly yellow-tinted. A choice made by some long-dead architect hoping to recreate life giving sunlight. The hum of the ship softened, muffled by thicker bulkheads and insulation. The air was warmer, damp in a controlled way.

Ahead, access point seven waited: a sealed door with a small cogitator plate and a discreet seal impression.

Felix approached and paused.

On the other side of that door, he expected to see a serf.

A newly reassigned crewwoman. Competent. Useful. Someone who remembered unspoken aches and left kindness on tables, unasked.

He also expected to feel something he could not name without insult to his own discipline.

He keyed the access code.

The door sighed open.

Bright light spilled across the threshold.

And there she was.

Samira stood just inside the node, where the corridor opened into a small garden chamber that should not exist within a warship. The Imperium’s resources had conjured it anyway: a pocket of living growth under lumen-suns, planters arranged in precise rows, hydroponic channels murmuring softly through stone-lined grooves. Leaves trembled faintly in the conditioned air. Somewhere, a small insect droned, absurdly alive.

Samira looked like she had stepped into the wrong world.

She held her docket against her chest with both hands. Her shawl was wrapped tight, the rough fabric making her seem smaller than she was. Her posture was straight with effort, as if her spine were keeping her upright by sheer will. Her eyes moved too quickly, taking in the space, the door, the seal, the man in front of her.

Nervous. Out of place. Braced for punishment, even in a garden.

Felix saw all of it in the space of a breath.

He stopped at the threshold, letting the door slide shut behind him with a quiet finality.

Samira’s gaze lifted and met his.

For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.

The ship hummed around them, immense and indifferent. The garden breathed quietly, a soft rebellion of green within iron.

Felix kept his face composed.

Inside, he acknowledged the absurdity one last time, like a man recording an error in a log before continuing the mission.

Then he stepped forward.

“Samira.”

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