One Thing After Another

As the finest craftsmen on Manros refitted the armor according to their own designs, Lu Jin planned the order of the new Manros.

Slavery would be abolished.

The nobles' property would be given to the locals to help develop the hive world.

There was famine on Manros, but the nobles had hoarded a great deal of food. Distributed properly, it would feed the people for more than a decade. There would still be some left after they weathered the Warp storms between the Imperium and Manros, enough for the Ragefang to make long Warp voyages.

For several days, Lu Jin stayed with Kao at the governor's mansion, learning about local conditions on Manros and planning its new order.

"Perhaps we can recruit locals."

Kao thought of the Chapter.

The Chapter had been through a lot. It had already been short on people before Lu Jin joined. Then they ran into the Cunning Hounds and Ahriman, and their numbers dwindled even further.

There were only fifteen of them, not counting Lu Jin.

Recruiting new members was urgent.

Lu Jin had considered recruitment before, such as recruiting from among the ship's crew.

But the problem was that the Ragefang was short-handed everywhere. The crew had gone from handling only their own specialties to filling several roles at once. They were desperately understaffed, so pulling more people from the crew to recruit as Space Marines wouldn't be appropriate.

And the Space Marine transformation might not even succeed...

"I agree that we can recruit on Manros." Lu Jin put down his pen and paper, fully on board. "Manros is outside the Maelstrom. Although it's been affected to some extent, the people are still relatively untainted apart from the nobility."

Kao immediately stood up, ready to get started.

But Lu Jin spoke again. "There won't be anyone who can serve as Apothecary anymore, though. I can't perform the surgeries with my psychic powers the way Ninos can. And besides, we might not have enough Gene-seed, either."

To him, the biggest problem was still the Gene-seed.

It was essential to the transformation.

Every Space Marine had two. One could be extracted—usually to recruit a new Space Marine or as a tithe for the Imperium.

The other could only be recovered after death. Otherwise, the Marine would die.

"Ninos's previous Chapter Master—the one in command during the attempted assassination—realized something was wrong before he took the Chapter to meet that Inquisitor. To be safe, he stored the Gene-seed away, so there's no need to worry about running short."

"As for the Apothecary... The previous one only knew how to give injections. He didn't know how to perform the transformations, either. The Medicae has automated equipment. It was damaged during the Hounds' attack, but I'll see if I can repair it."

Only then did Lu Jin nod. "The communications jamming device on Manros has been shut down, right? While you're at it, study its technology and see if we can replicate it."

Kao promptly left to make the necessary preparations.

Lu Jin flipped his notebook to a fresh page and began drafting a recruitment plan.

The traditional selection process recorded in the Chapter's tomes was already quite good.

After thinking it over, Lu Jin couldn't find anything wrong with it. He simply wrote down: Recruit new members according to Chapter tradition.

"Chapter Master."

A voice came through the communicator in Lu Jin's ear.

His helmet had been smashed along with the upper part of his armor in battle, so he had to use a communicator to speak with the ship.

It was Carly.

She had previously been locked in the slaves' dungeon. After the revolt began, the people guarding her cell joined the slaves in rising up.

The mother and child she had taken down there to save were rescued, too. No matter how badly she had been beaten, she had never let go of them. She had held on until the revolt began, and they were all saved.

"The Navigator wishes to see you," Carly said.

Lu Jin immediately set aside his work and ordered the ship to teleport him back.

The Navigator's Sanctuary.

Lu Jin set his Warhammer and Battle Axe beside the door, then pushed open the sanctuary's entrance.

The sanctuary was quiet and cold, and somewhat untidy.

With the ship short on crew, Onaas's servants had all gone out to work. There was no one left to attend to the esteemed Navigator.

When Lu Jin entered, he saw the Navigator huddled in a corner, her back to him.

"I'm sorry. I couldn't kill that Inquisitor, but I'll find him and finish him off later."

Onaas heard the voice behind her and felt Lu Jin sit down at her back. All at once, she felt safe.

"I'm sorry."

Lu Jin frowned when Onaas suddenly apologized in a small, choked voice.

"Am I too weak?"

"One psychic lost control and blew his own head off, and that scared me. I only saw that Inquisitor in a vision, and... I... I feel like I'm not as good as anyone else in the Chapter."

The Navigator sobbed and choked on her words until she could no longer speak, leaving only her sobs.

Lu Jin was silent for a moment, then spoke slowly. "To be honest, when I fought my way through the Greenskins and into the Navigator's Sanctuary, I saw you for the first time and thought we were done for. I figured you'd be useless, because you were so young. I even thought the ship's real Navigator—your parents, or your uncle, or someone—was probably dead in some corner somewhere."

At those words, Onaas fell silent for a second, then sobbed even harder.

Then came a string of hard-to-understand remarks about how Lu Jin should ask Huron for a Navigator, and how she wasn't worthy of being a Fierce Angel.

Lu Jin chuckled and tugged at Onaas's shoulder. "Hey! Hey... Let me finish, okay? Just hear me out."

Onaas continued to sob, her back to Lu Jin, without saying a word.

"But you've done nothing but surprise me."

"I said the same thing before, didn't I? When you helped me deal with Aels, and when you used your psychic powers to observe Tyrant's Gate. You always know what to do before I even say anything, and you always exceed my expectations."

"When I was as young as you, I was a complete idiot. The only thing I liked to do was sit under a tree and play in the mud."

"Anyone would've been scared by that guy blowing his own head off."

"Turn around and look at me."

As he spoke, Lu Jin took a palm-sized round box from his clothes.

Onaas obediently turned around to face him.

Only then did Lu Jin notice that the young Navigator was clutching a book to her chest.

"What's that?" she asked.

"A vanity case, I think." Lu Jin examined the exquisitely made box, which was set with all kinds of gems. "Maybe Carly can teach you how to put on makeup sometime."

Onaas turned back around to face the wall.

"I'll teach you. Believe it or not, I know how to do makeup." Lu Jin turned Onaas back around. "See if you like this."

Onaas took the vanity case and looked it over before tucking it into her clothes. "Before my parents and I left the family, even plain things like this were for the maids."

Lu Jin was about to say, You're just a kid. How can you brag like that?

But then he thought better of it.

The Navigator was indispensable to Warp travel and was among the highest of the high nobility in the Imperium. Maybe she really wasn't bragging.

Lu Jin said nothing. He picked up the book and examined it closely. A line of text was stamped on the cover, and the words "Khorne's Beloved" made him pause.

He turned to look inside.

It recorded the events on Manros from an observer's perspective, with the implication throughout that "the most virtuous are wise, and the most wicked are foolish."

Ahriman hadn't died beneath Khorne's axe—a thought exploded in Lu Jin's mind.

"Who gave this to you?" Lu Jin asked.

"I don't know. I woke up with it in my arms a while ago. I don't know where it came from, but holding it makes me feel safe."

Onaas recalled...

One time, she had woken up and found a book in her arms. In her dreams, a voice had echoed, telling her a few things.

Lu Jin was sure Ahriman had altered Onaas's memories.

For the most powerful psyker, that would have been child's play.

Even the ship's safe arrival in the Manros system had been the result of Ahriman navigating in Onaas's place.

As for the book...

Lu Jin thought Ahriman really was a man of culture. The title alone managed to disgust both him and Khorne. Impressive.

"Confiscated." Lu Jin tucked the book into the back of his waistband, then stood to leave.

Onaas suddenly grabbed his sleeve.

Lu Jin thought she wanted him to stay a little longer. But then he saw her gaze grow deep and shadowed, and the third eye on her forehead slowly open. Only then did he realize something was wrong.

Onaas's gift of prophecy had activated beyond her control.

"The Fierce Angels incident was my fault, but it was your fault as well. Abaddon hasn't even emerged from the Eye of Terror, yet you've hurriedly deployed most of your forces to Cadia's defenses. Isn't that a bit premature?"

The Inquisitor who had killed Onaas's parents faced the black-armored Space Marine and tried to argue his way out of it.

"That's why I brought the entire Chapter. Our new orders from the High Lords of Terra are to join the fleet that's already assembled and strike at the Maelstrom," the Space Marine said.

Huron entered the war room in his armor and leaned over the tactical table.

"Then I'll build a meat grinder. That meat grinder will be the world of Manros."

"You will die in battle, and Manros will pay blood tithes to us."

A gray-armored Space Marine looked down at the one-armed Fierce Angel before him.

A bloodstained white shark was emblazoned on the Marine's arm guard.

A series of fragmented images appeared before Onaas. She opened her mouth. "War is coming! The Manros system... the surrounding area... and even the Maelstrom itself... will become a battlefield!"

"Stay calm." Lu Jin held Onaas by the shoulders. "Take your time. Tell me everything you saw."

Onaas then described everything she had seen.

From her seemingly delirious words, Lu Jin pieced together the entire prophecy:

The Inquisitor was merely a vanguard. His appearance on Manros wasn't a coincidence or a stroke of luck. He was there to carry out a mission assigned by the Imperium's upper ranks.

The mission concerned a military campaign by the Imperium against the Maelstrom.

More than ten Chapters, several million Astra Militarum soldiers, and countless Planetary Defense Forces would arrive alongside an Imperial fleet outside the Maelstrom to launch a strike against the Red Corsairs.

The Inquisitor would return to Manros, and so would the Mercy Emissaries. Even a Chapter called the Space Sharks would come to Manros.

From Lu Jin's perspective, the Thirteenth Black Crusade was about to begin. In theory, the Imperium shouldn't have been committing forces to a large-scale military operation on the Maelstrom front.

But from the Imperium's perspective, the idea that Abaddon, the Chaos Lord, would leave the Eye of Terror on a crusade was just an unproven rumor spread by psychic lunatics. For now, plague was spreading beyond the Eye of Terror, which looked more like some warbands devoted to Nurgle were preparing to spread plague throughout the Imperium by waging war.

And if Abaddon really was going on a crusade, striking the Red Corsairs to stop them from supporting him—or from using the opportunity to come out and seize territory—would be a sensible move.

The Imperium didn't even need to assemble forces now. It had already gathered an expeditionary fleet to reinforce the territories near the Eye of Terror, and that fleet would pass through the Maelstrom.

"Could this really be true?" Onaas's eyes were full of confusion.

Based on past experience, Onaas's prophecies usually weren't very accurate. Just as when she had once foreseen that Aels would take everyone, including the crew, away, but in the end...

"..." Lu Jin was silent.

He knew the details of the Thirteenth Black Crusade inside and out, but all he knew about the Maelstrom region was that there probably wouldn't be any major battles. That was because every story had its focus. But now that he was truly in this universe, everything was happening at the same time. There was no "focus of attention."

Just as the records of the Thirteenth Black Crusade wouldn't mention what people on some agricultural world in the Imperium's fringe had eaten or drunk.

"If it's false, then that's a blessing."

"If it's true... then my plans to rebuild Manros's order and recruit new members for the Chapter here will all come to nothing."

Lu Jin forced out those two sentences.