Sappho walked through the Fortress Monastery dressed in a pale purple Pepros Garment. She had tied up her hair with a ribbon, and wore an emerald necklace around her neck and pearl earrings dangling from her ears.
Purple had originally been a color reserved for the male nobility of the city-states, because its dye was the most expensive. In the past, making purple dye required workers known as "Sponge Divers" to cling to rocks and dive to the seabed to gather a kind of sea snail, from which the dye was extracted.
But dyeing a single purple garment required thousands, sometimes even tens of thousands, of snails. Repeatedly gathering them gave the workers diver's disease, drastically shortening their lives. Thus, every purple garment was dyed at the cost of several, sometimes more than a dozen, workers' lives.
Although the Tech-Priests from the heavens had now brought cheap dye-making technology, the Planetary Governor still decreed that only male nobles could wear purple.
Sappho was an exception, however. She was the chronicler of the leader of the Forged Steel Angels, and served as his voice. Her father relied on her to relay most of his communications with the Angel, making her a noble whose rank surpassed even the Planetary Governor's.
She clutched her Dataslate tightly. Her leather sandals slapped against the solid ground as she walked to Peter's office under the watchful eyes of the armed guards.
She reached up to adjust the hair behind her ear, trying to hide the wound left by the implanted cochlear device, even though she had already fixed her hair in front of a mirror.
She held out her palm to verify her biometric information, and the automatic door opened. When she saw the reception area beyond it, her body quivered slightly, but she quickly regained her composure.
"Greetings, Lord Anthony. Greetings, Lord Filon."
Sappho bowed deeply.
Two armored Forged Steel Angels were seated in the reception area, eating. Food was laid out on their table: just some nut bread, seafood soup, and cognac.
Anthony paid her no attention at all, while Filon nodded to her. Sappho grew even more afraid. Only half of Lord Anthony's face had been disfigured, but her father had told her himself that Lord Filon had eaten her distant cousin alive.
The two of them naturally had no intention of giving her a hard time. Anthony asked Filon about the day's menu:
"How does it taste?"
Filon wiped his mouth with a napkin before replying:
"Not bad. I just don't know how mortals eat these Calcium Biscuits. They're a bit sharp on the mouth."
Anthony was instantly confused.
"Biscuits? There aren't any biscuits on the menu today."
He looked down at his plate in puzzlement and inspected it. At last, he spotted the shellfish that needed to be pried open before eating.
"That's a shellfish..."
Filon pretended to realize his mistake.
"So it's a shellfish! Thanks for telling me, brother. Otherwise, I'd have been left in the dark."
Filon immediately burst into laughter at his own joke, which wasn't particularly funny.
Sappho didn't dare get involved in the Angels' teasing and banter. She hurried into the office to give her report.
Inside, she saw Peter, the Forged Steel Lord, without his armor. He was revising documents with a quill. Beside his desk sat the same bread, soup, and cognac as outside, but here there was also a plate of fresh figs, half of which had already been eaten.
"My lord, I..."
Peter didn't even look up.
"Go ahead."
Sappho followed his instruction.
"According to our census, Limnos III has a total population of 11.2334 million, including slaves. Men account for 51.24%, women 48.76%. The population under fifteen accounts for 19.9% of the total; those aged fifteen to sixty-four account for 72.49%; and those aged sixty-five and over account for 7.64%. Of these..."
Peter wasn't paying close attention to the figures that followed. He had already worked out the population of each age group in his head. He had always ranked near the top in mathematics.
"What about the other areas?"
Sappho hurriedly swiped through her Dataslate.
"Overall, food production is in surplus, and we've stored most of the Protein Bars and Corpse Starch. But the newly cultivated fields are short on rain, and the soil is somewhat barren."
Peter looked down and replied dismissively.
"Don't worry about that. The Dark Mechanicus will change this planet's climate, increase rainfall, and enrich the soil with fertilizer."
As Peter spoke, his pen never stopped moving. He trusted the Dark Mechanicus to keep its word on this. Restricting him from manufacturing tanks and Void fighters was one matter; their promise to transform the planet was another.
Peter continued reviewing the documents.
"One of the projects involves bringing in some asteroids from the asteroid belt and placing them in orbit around the planet. They'll collide and merge to form moons, strengthening the tides."
Sappho opened her mouth in surprise.
"You mean you're going to change the positions of the stars? Is that possible?"
She didn't dare question the Angels, but her education made it hard for her to imagine the stars being moved.
Peter cleared up the girl's confusion.
"It's not that difficult. There's no resistance in the Void, so it's easy to tow them away. The hard part is making sure the debris doesn't damage the planet."
Sappho looked at the Angel who was working so hard to improve their lives, and, gathering her courage, asked:
"Then, my lord, is it the God-Emperor's will that you're doing all this for us?"
Peter stopped writing. He realized the girl still held unrealistic fantasies.
He raised his head and looked directly into the girl's eyes. His answer was cold.
"No. I'm doing all this for myself. You're my slaves, my livestock. I'll give you better food, better homes, longer lives, and more children, so you can make armor and weapons for me, and arm yourselves to fight for me."
Noticing the girl's disappointment, Peter beckoned her closer and placed his thick palm on Sappho's head.
He spoke as sincerely as he could.
"Remember, Little Olive, aside from tactical deception, I never tell lies. I certainly won't lie to you."
Sappho was a little surprised. Only her parents called her Little Olive. She hadn't expected the Forged Steel Lord to have heard the name and learned it.
"My lord, have you never told a lie?"
Peter shook his head with a solemn expression.
"No, I've lied before. When I was a child, I was a habitual liar who stole and robbed."
Sappho asked curiously:
"Then what made you decide to stop lying?"
A trace of sadness flashed in Peter's eyes, so faint it was almost imperceptible.
"Because my mother told me that good children mustn't lie."
Peter gave Sappho no chance to ask further. He simply withdrew his hand and told her:
"Put down the Dataslate. I'll look at it later."
Sappho turned to leave, but Peter's modified ears picked up a sound. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump... It was a heartbeat, coming from a third person.
Peter called out to Sappho.
"Wait."
Sappho quickly turned around, standing respectfully and lowering her head slightly.
"My lord, what do you need?"
Peter rose, walked around the desk, and stopped in front of the girl. He knelt on one knee to bring himself to her height, then lifted her chin with his hand. His Gene-Modded brown eyes met her green ones again.
"You're pregnant."
As Peter looked at Sappho's face, he suddenly realized that the woman before him was no longer the young girl she had been seven or eight years ago. In just seven short years, she had gone from a girl to a young mother.
Peter looked down at Sappho's belly, hidden beneath her clothes, and asked:
"May I listen?"
Sappho's body trembled slightly. She hadn't expected the Angel to make such a request. Somewhat apprehensively, she reached out, trying to lift her skirt.
Peter stopped her and shook his head to show there was no need. He lowered his other knee to the floor, then turned and pressed his ear against Sappho's belly, listening carefully.
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