11 Soviet Past (III: A Vile Guest Meets a Viler Guest, 9k)

"We'll depart immediately," Serano van der Leyef said decisively.

She sat at the edge of a long, grey granite table, draped in a black ceremonial robe. Many nobles in the Imperium favored this style of clothing, but few probably preferred black; Serano was one of them.

She was very thin, and her shoulders beneath her long robe seemed like two daggers piercing the soft fabric. Her cheeks were deeply sunken, making her cheekbones appear unusually sharp. Her eyes were the only part of her face that could be considered human, but even that was few and far between.

Her brown eyes, set in deep sockets, gave her gaze a certain magic.

I don't really like the way she looks at me.

I am Lental Black Sable, this silly surname comes from my father, Ivanov Black Sable.

He was a bounty hunter, hence the nickname "Black Sable." But it wasn't a peaceful profession, so even though he was a cautious man, he still couldn't enjoy a peaceful old age.

I once thought of inheriting his legacy, picking up a gun, and becoming a bounty hunter like him. But after meeting Serano van der Leyef, that plan was put on hold indefinitely.

As for now, I am an attendant of Inquisitor, or to put it more formally: I am one of the armed guards she can freely recruit to serve her until death.

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

" --Lental, what are you still standing here for?"

Ah, the mistress has spoken.

I wish I still had the ability to smile, so I could express my opinions without speaking, but my facial nerves don't really obey my commands.

This is a lingering effect, much like the five crisscrossing scars on Serano's face. The difference is, I wish I could recover, while my mistress refuses.

I don't understand what she's thinking. She could be a very beautiful woman, if only she were willing to erase her scars. That's for sure; after all, she's a descendant of nobility. Even though she's terribly thin now, with a little makeup, she'd still be a beauty.

For our job, if she were willing to do so, perhaps the nobles and governors would be more polite, and wouldn't have their guards put their hands on their guns the moment they saw us. That's human nature; they tend to pay special attention to beautiful people.

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

" --Lental!"

Damn, she started yelling, this isn't a good thing.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Didn't you fucking hear me?" my mistress asked angrily.

"I heard you," I told her, "But I'm not really keen on doing what you say."

A beam of crimson light grazed my face, missing me but leaving only a burning pain. It struck the wall behind me, meaning several more people would have to work for hours on this, and I felt a pang of sympathy for them.

As for that beam of light, it came from a gun in Serano's hand. She carries a lot of guns with her, which annoys me. She's too accurate, and she never lets people finish speaking.

She would deliberately deflect my shots as a warning, but not others, like the captain I met in the Kato Rubble Zone last month.

That bastard with no anus smuggled a whole ship full of civilians from who-knows-where, intending to take them to some slave trader, but of all people, he just happened to bump into us in the vast Milky Way.

He wants to defend himself, and I want to hear it. Honestly, I'm curious to know what kind of nonsense he can come up with in this situation; it would be very helpful for my book.

What? Didn't I mention that? Yes, I'm planning to write a book called "The Complete Book of Excuses," and I hope it will contain a decent excuse. That way, I can improve the book, which will be helpful for my retirement plans.

Serano simply didn't give him that chance.

She shot the captain in two with a single shot, right in front of the children locked in cages. He deserved to die, but I was still very upset.

"Reason?" my mistress asked coldly.

I sighed, and she frowned.

She knows me well; she knows that once I start sighing, it usually means I'm about to launch into a long-winded explanation.

I knew she knew this, so every time I sighed, I was actually testing whether she could handle my upcoming long-winded explanation. If she didn't say anything, I would continue; if she became more impatient, then I had to be careful.

This time, she didn't say anything, only slightly furrowed her brow.

So I said, "Forgive me, my lord. But, according to the rules, shouldn't this matter have been reported to His Sigillites first?"

"You've become clever, Lental, you've actually learned to follow the rules and regulations," my mistress said sarcastically. "But please use your suddenly enlightened primitive brain to think carefully about how we're going to get back to the Inquisition for our report now?"

Oh shit

Her insults were a bit harsh, weren't they? And she didn't use a single swear word; it's truly an art of language. If she hadn't been insulting me, I would definitely have studied this technique carefully.

In short, I used my suddenly enlightened primitive brain to control my mouth and vocal cords, making them produce sounds.

"It's still faster than rushing to the Misty Sector now."

My mistress laughed, and to be honest, I would have preferred her to put on a stern face. Sure enough, I heard her sarcastic sneer again.

"Then set off again to reach the Misty Sector? How much extra time will be wasted on the road? What will happen then?"

"Your Throne, Lental, sometimes you truly embarrass me. If others knew that my deputy was such an idiot, they would surely laugh at me with the door open."

Go to hell with you.

I stormed out, leaving her dimly lit office. As I closed the door, I heard her coughing inside.

This means that her old injury is still bothering her. To be honest, given her enhanced self-healing ability after the surgery, this old wound can no longer be simply called a "stubborn ailment" or something like that.

I actually know the truth, or at least part of the truth.

As I walked to the bridge, I kept thinking about this. I hoped my expression wouldn't look too scary when I was thinking, but I probably failed, because none of the sailors who passed me dared to look up at me; they just greeted me as usual.

I understand, but I really want to tell them—even a Glaxus Beast wearing the black uniform provided by the Inquisition would appear cold and ruthless.

I am not the inhuman executioner people imagine, who would kill children along with their parents for the sake of trivial matters. I am not such a beast, nor are the Inquisitor.

But people don't believe it; they prefer to believe what they've imagined.

No, perhaps everyone is like that.

I approached the captain, whose name was Kaplin. He was a seasoned captain, a former navy officer who had served forty-one years. He was sixty-seven years old and had been assigned to work for us after retiring.

Of course, this is just the official statement, used to avoid some troublesome political procedures. He himself is still serving in the military, and even has an entire group of officers under his command, stationed around the main bridge.

I like him very much; there aren't many people like him left in the Imperium.

"Setting sail again?" Kaplin asked with a humorous tone when he saw me arrive.

He had a pipe dangling from his mouth, and the aroma of the navy-supplied tobacco wafted into my nose. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of tobacco, but this stuff smelled so good that I immediately understood why the guards disliked the navy.

If one person spends all their time rolling in the mud and eating bland energy paste and protein bars, while the other person has no worries about food and clothing, can take a hot shower every day, and even has an endless supply of cigarettes.

I nodded to him.

"Alright, where to?" Kaplin asked, stubbing out his pipe and adjusting his hat.

"The Misty Sector, the Banjo System," I said.

I guess my expression must have been very distressed when I spoke, otherwise Kaplin wouldn't have suddenly laughed after just one glance at me. The old man shook his head and patted my shoulder. He didn't say anything, but he said everything.

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

It took me about half an hour to get back to my mistress's office, at least half of which was wasted looking out from a porthole.

There's a space station where we're docked called Black Diamond. The name isn't great, but it's actually a pretty good place.

There are laws here to restrain good people and ordinary people. There are also rules to tell the sons or daughters born of certain bastards and bastards not to go too far.

There aren't many places like this in the Milky Way anymore; most of the time, even simple things like axioms don't exist.

I hope there is justice in the place we are going to.

As for justice, I wish it good luck.

I opened the door to Serano van der Leyef's office and saw my mistress sprawled on the floor, groaning. I closed the door, went over, and helped her up, feeling as light as a feather.

She was too thin; even with the guns hanging under her robe, she wouldn't be considered of a healthy weight. Therefore, she was not in good health. Consequently, whenever her old injuries flared up, she had to rely on medication to get through it.

I placed her on a black sofa, then went behind my desk, unlocked the combination lock, took out three medicine bottles, and began preparing her medication.

These medicines were provided by the Jairzinho Guzman Medical Association and were very effective, but the raw materials were questionable—no matter how you looked at them, these glowing pills didn't qualify as "normal" medicines in my understanding.

But they were given to me by the medical association, and those doctors were among the best I've ever met in my life.

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

"No!" She lay on the sofa, curled up in pain, and looked at me, drenched in sweat.

I ignored her pleas and just stood by the sofa, staring coldly at her. A few seconds later, I forcibly pried open her jaw and forced the medicine down her throat.

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

It's unbelievable, isn't it? An Inquisitor, actually, has things he's afraid of. But we're all human, and humans experience fear. There's nothing shameful about that. I don't consider myself a particularly intelligent person, but when it comes to facing fear, I have a lot of experience.

She was far more experienced than that woman who was already asleep but whose face was still contorted and whose muscles were taut.

I took her hand, sat on the ground, took out a vial of anesthetic from my belt and injected myself; sleepiness washed over me.

I opened my eyes not long after, and once again saw the blood-red sky over Soviet.

Orks are invading this world, or, to put it another way, slaughtering it. Countless Orks monsters arrived in junkyard-like ships and set the place ablaze.

They spared no one, treating everyone equally, from powerful Dark Angels to disciplined Doomsday Guard. They were born to fight, and they didn't care who they fought or why they fought.

In their words, as long as there's a fight to be had, that's all that matters; the so-called "Gork" and "Mork" would be very happy about it.

But we humans aren't happy about this.

I trudged through the scalding mud deeper into the pile of corpses.

This is a battleground, a corner of the burning jungle of Soviet. The Doomsday Guard bled their blood here; I don't know the exact number of casualties, for I have no right to know. I wouldn't even be here without the Sigillites's permission.

I praised his prophetic vision, wishing that twenty percent of the Imperium's officials could work like him. I secretly hoped this would happen, and silently recited the Emperor's name, clutching the Aquila pendant on my belt.

I know where that thing is; I know it all too well, having been here countless times. But finding it means finding Serano van der Leyef, so I must prepare in advance.

With my left hand I held the Aquila pendant, and with my right hand I took off the Inquisition emblem from my chest, held it in my hand, and then slowly closed my fingers as if holding a short knife, and walked to the other side of the battlefield.

I walked across three earthen mounds and two trenches, then passed through the burning machine gun emplacement as if the flames were nothing, and encountered six terrified men.

They knew nothing of my arrival, simply clutching their only weapons, standing in a corner of this reverse slope, gazing at the nightmarish scene in the distance.

These six men are among the only survivors of the Doomsday Guard, but I only know the name of one of them, Haide, who is a corporal.

I looked at him.

I wish he could see me, so I could at least talk to this person, but alas, I cannot. He cannot see me; this is merely a memory, and soon it will vanish into nothingness.

I continued forward, passing through another patch of flames. Finally, I found my target.

I saw a thousand different faces, each displaying anger, fear, lamentation, and despair. These faces writhed and howled on bulging muscles, forming a gigantic monster about six meters tall.

It was slaughtering a group of Orks, single-handedly routing them. Its extraordinary combat abilities were simply indescribable.

Damn it, you damned the Emperor! Look upon me, spare me a little Mercy!

I took a deep breath—I can't help it, I really can't help it, please forgive me. No matter how many times I see this, I can't get used to it. I've never been a heartless person, and even though I've been in this line of work for twelve years, I still can't get used to it.

Witnessing something like this firsthand was utter torture for me, especially when I learned what it actually was; the torment intensified dramatically.

Fortunately, that wasn't my main target, so I forced myself to turn away and walk into the nearby bushes.

A few minutes later, I found two crashed airships, surrounded by piles of Orks corpses. Some were already molten, some were not, but all of them emitted a pungent stench.

Their body odor is already harmful to humans, just like poison gas, and after being tempered by flames, it mutates into a visible green miasma.

I could smell it, and although I didn't understand why, I held my breath and walked toward the wreckage of the two enormous machines. They weren't ordinary shuttles or transport planes, but war machines on a higher level.

Twenty years ago, five Inquisitor and their respective guards attempted to reach the ground in these two airships at the final moments of the Battle of Sovet, having come here in response to a prophecy.

I don't know the specifics of the prophecy; that involves another confidential matter. But I do know that a prophecy strong enough to mobilize five Inquisitor is definitely no ordinary matter.

They successfully broke through the Orks fleet's blockade, reached the ground, and began fighting these space monsters. I don't think they came here to fight the Orks, but they were certainly bogged down and suffered heavy casualties.

The Orks that appeared on Soviet belonged to a so-called warlord who originated within the Hadiran System. Their power was once so great that they almost swallowed up the entire Hadran.

The Imperium launched a campaign to annihilate it, but this cunning beast led its army away from Hadran without hesitation and began to roam the Misty Sector, bringing slaughter wherever it went.

They were incredibly powerful, each individual being terrifying in size, so I could completely understand the Inquisitor's failure.

Even for them, the galaxy remains cruel.

It was extremely cruel.

I stopped and stared silently at my mistress. She was crouching in the middle of the raging wreckage, watching a young woman in uniform crawl out of the ruins, covered in blood.

The woman looked a lot like her, except she didn't have those five scars on her face. She held a Boltgun in her left hand and a nearly completely rusted short blade in her right. The object stung my eyes, so I looked away and gazed at my mistress.

She looked at me with uncanny foresight, finally revealing the expression I knew so well, with not a trace of weakness remaining.

She looked at me sternly and asked, "Why are you back in again?"

I shrugged.

"You will be executed for this."

Amid the crackling of the flames, she whispered to me; the young woman was still panting, but her voice sounded unusually calm.

"What if the Sigillites knows you know all this?"

I didn't tell her that the Sigillites actually knew from the beginning; I just smiled and shrugged again. My attitude offended her, and she started glaring at me, but only for a few seconds.

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

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

I hummed in agreement to show my indifference—but did I really not care? I think you know the answer.

I went over and took her left hand, leading her to wait where we were. Three minutes later, the young woman left the ruins covered in blood. She walked with a limp, and the white bone of her left knee was exposed.

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

I squeezed her hand, signaling her to calm down, and she began to try. The woman suddenly collapsed to the ground, coughing up a mouthful of blood.

There were no tears in her brown eyes, yet sorrow remained ever-present. She forced herself to her feet, gripping her gun and rusty dagger, and walked towards the battleground. By then, that being had already slaughtered Orks.

Its thousand faces—or ten thousand, I haven't counted—are still wailing, every pair of eyes looking so desperate.

The woman walked toward it.

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

Yes, my mistress, Serano van der Leyef, is a Psyker, so she could do this. But what exactly is she sealing away? Is it Daemon? If so, how terrifying is it that the Inquisition would make such a sacrifice?

With these same questions lingering in my mind, I opened my eyes and woke up to see a dark, gaping gun barrel.

"Name?" my hostess asked seriously.

"Lental Black Sable," I said. "Your poor servant."

She lowered the gun, her wet face calm, the five scars still gleaming.

What is it?

This question has been lingering in my mind for twelve years. At first, I thought it was a Daemon. But as I delved into that memory more and more, I found myself changing my mind.

I have seen many Daemons, and their supernatural stench and form linger deep in my mind; to me, they are many kinds of nightmares.

But that thing isn't it; I know very well it isn't.

Have you ever heard the word "heroic spirit"?

I think you've heard of the term "heroic spirits"—what a beautiful word! The priests of the Ecclesiarchy often use it to describe the souls of soldiers who died bravely in battle or the souls of devout people.

They would say that the spirits of the fallen float above people's heads, watching their every move. All good deeds will be rewarded on the Emperor's Ascension Day, and likewise, all evil deeds will be Judgment on that day.

Believe it or not, I don't believe it.

I worked for the Inquisition for twelve years, and I've seen enough corpses to fill an entire ship. I've handled thirty-six cases involving Daemon, and I once had dinner with a cult leader, but I've never seen a single soul that matches their descriptions.

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

I once firmly believed that they did not exist, but I abandoned that idea after I saw the being that my mistress had sealed away with her own life.

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

Now you know why I'm afraid.

I thought—at least I once thought—that the heroic spirits were heroes, but I was wrong. I wish I were right, even if only this once in a million years. But reality has shown me I was wrong.

I stood up absentmindedly, looking at my mistress. She tucked the gun into her sleeve, wiped her sweat, and glanced up at me. She knew me so well that she could tell I had some questions just from that one look.

I looked at her, and she looked at me. For a while, I was certain that the unspoken understanding that had grown between us over time was working, but unfortunately, it didn't last. I shattered that understanding with my own hands, throwing the truth in her face.

"What exactly is it?" I asked.

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

"Please, let me know," I pleaded with her.

She raised her foot and kicked me hard, then drew her gun, fired, and kicked me out of her office.

At this moment, the ship began to shake. I held onto the wall, feeling every part of my body undergoing the painful process of being disassembled and reassembled, which meant we were entering the Warp.

I began to hate Kaplin more than ever before—did you have to go in at this time? Damn it!

Many complex images flashed through my mind, devoid of logic or rationality.

I saw corpses conversing, their bloodied faces floating above their heads, smiling at each other. Two hands with curled fingernails gripped a steel brush, scrubbing it vigorously on a woman's back, blood and flesh splattering as she cried out in pleasure.

I felt like I was going to shatter; I couldn't take this anymore. Just as my sanity was about to reach its breaking point, a hand from inside the office door saved me.

Serano van der Leyef looked at me with pity, even though she herself was going through the same ordeal.

"You didn't have to share this cost with me," she murmured as she asked me. "Why did you do it, Lental?"

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

But I didn't say it out loud: our mission was to find Haide had triggered the marker. He was assigned to work at the Veterans Association on Banjo-1, so finding him shouldn't be difficult, but I was worried things might go wrong.

If anything goes wrong, we'll all die.

"Let's talk about it when we're about to die," I thought, then took her hand. It was so thin and bony.

I smiled at her.

Several hours later, we left the Warp, jumped from Mandeville Point, and docked near the Banjo System.

Leaving the Warp filled me with excitement, even a sense of boundless energy, as if I'd been injected with a "war" potion. That stuff could briefly push a person's physical functions to their limits, giving them inexhaustible energy.

It's said that the Astartes also have the same potion, only their dosage is much higher, and they don't have very serious side effects. I really want to know what it felt like when they left the Warp.

You see, I always have a lot of questions, one after another, one after another. This means I react very quickly, and I'm not bragging, I really do react very quickly. When a green light flashed outside the nearest porthole, I looked over immediately.

I saw a Necrons's Shroud-class cruiser.

The muzzle of that thing was flashing.

"Damn it." I only managed to utter that curse before pushing Serano inside.

--

"What are you doing?!" Trazyn roared.

The object of his roar did not answer him; the one-eyed Necrons simply focused on slamming his right fist into the cruiser's control panel, which was covered with numerous runes used to control various parts of the ship.

Trazyn believes that it was no coincidence that Orikan struck the fire button precisely.

For the astrologer Orikan, any coincidence was simply the inevitable result of multiple calculations and time reversals—this thought originated in his mind. Then, Trazyn suddenly realized that similar things had likely happened more than once before.

How long has he been stuck here with Orikan? How much time has passed since Orikan clumsily hijacked this ship—his ship?

It began to rapidly examine its memory cells: from Solemnace, no problem. Taking the long detour to reach the Ghoul Stars and the Dark Realm outside the galaxy to confuse Orikan, no problem.

They were discovered near Nuceria by the Chapter War Hounds, who found out that the damned Orikan had anonymously sent them a provocative message. No problem.

Abandon ship, discard body, activate backup body using transmission protocol, and set off again, arriving at the Banjo System in the Misty Sector of the Imperium of Man. Along the way, they discovered traces of Fallen, briefly distracting them.

The problem lies here, in the instant it reclaimed the Fallen. Its sensors momentarily malfunctioned, which it initially assumed was a normal, permissible error, but now it appears not to be; rather, it's that damned Orikan is reversing time.

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

It grabbed the astrologer by the neck with its Iron Hands, trying to suffocate him, and Orikan laughed heartily.

"You won't get away with this!" the astrologer shouted, laughing. "Just wait and tell the council your crimes, Trazyn!"

"The great Solemnace Dynasty has used force without provocation and declared war on the Imperium of Man without permission! The council is about to Judgment you for your war crimes!"

Its words nearly gave Trazyn a fright—if it could even sweat. It had traveled halfway across the galaxy to get here not for something like this.

But what Orikan mentioned really bothered it: how could it be a war crime? What kind of war crime could firing into uninhabited deep space create?

Trazyn turned to look at the control panel and saw a dark shadow that had suddenly appeared on the dark green rune matrix, with distorted text marking it: Imperium of Man, Gothic-class Cruiser.

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

Trazyn's once steady hands began to tremble, while Orikan continued to laugh.

"You—" it roared. "—It's over!"

"It's not over yet!"

Trazyn roared back with an even louder volume, the transmission protocol activated instantly, and a wisp of its consciousness slipped into the helmsman's body, directly taking control. At the same time, it raised its hand and slammed it hard against the acceleration rune.

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

The small shroud-class vessel immediately began to move, leaving its original position at a speed that completely surpassed that of any other race's ship in the galaxy.

Enraged, Orikan broke free of his restraints and rushed forward to pin down the helmsman, who was being operated by Trazyn, in an attempt to turn the tide. However, Trazyn's main body also rushed forward and instead pinned Orikan to the control panel.

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

"Go talk to me from the nineteenth century ago!" Orikan replied. "Only the me of that time would listen to you, you shameless liar!"

It raised its hands, about to unleash a time spell to reverse the flow of time once more. Trazyn, with lightning speed, swung the helmsman's left elbow and struck Orikan on the side of its head, causing it to stagger and interrupting the spell's preparation.

But that wasn't the end of it. The guards, finally recovering from the poorly executed kidnapping agreement in Orikan, swarmed forward and pinned the astrologer to the ground.

Trazyn then snatched its staff and limbs, and smashed its vocal cords with a powerful punch before panting and announcing his victory.

"What are you going to do now? What are you going to do now?! Great Orikan, oh astrologer! prophet!"

Trazyn waved his arms and roared at it. Its guards instinctively lowered their heads and shut down their hearing.

"I sped away from where I stood. You rewound time so many times and still didn't think of this solution? It's so simple, so effective! You idiot, any weapon needs time to hit its target, and you didn't even press the aim rune before firing!"

The ship shuddered, and lightning from the arc generator surged forth, striking into the distance. A few seconds later, the control panel reported in a cold voice, "Unknown target hit."

Trazyn turned around abruptly.

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

Orikan's mangled body swayed back and forth, emitting a silent mockery; its voice reached Trazyn's ears through the communication runes.

"You really think I went through all that time reversal just so you could blast apart a tiny cruiser? You're naive, Trazyn."

The console says, "Imperium of Man, Opalon-class battleship, designated as the Edge of Reason."

Trazyn's vision went black, and he suddenly let out a loud scream.