Vitus took out his newly issued officer's data slate and set it on the table.
It was a light, silver-white little thing, utterly unlike the brick-like devices he had grown used to using at the academy. It even possessed the delicate beauty of a mechanical watch, and he did not much care for that—anything too delicate was bound to be fragile. If he had a choice, he would rather go back to the old, clunky models. At least he could use one to smash a few skulls when necessary.
Still, new things naturally had their advantages, or the Imperium would not have promoted them so vigorously.
Vitus tipped back his head and drained the scalding stimulant in one gulp. Some kind of boiled plant root left behind a brilliantly bitter taste, while his right hand swiped twice across the data slate.
When he lowered his head again, its screen had been filled with stern black lettering: the new xenos species known as the Tau had been personally exterminated by Jaghatai Khan and his forces; the Orks of the Storm Sector had been successfully driven out and were currently scattered and on the run; the Imperial Research Institute had introduced a new medicine capable of curing tens of thousands of diseases.
He opened each item in turn and slowly read the news—news that, in the past, might have taken years or even decades to be published. It still felt unreal to him, yet the world before his eyes was undeniably real, as real as it could possibly be.
He understood that the Imperium had indeed acquired some means of efficiently transmitting information. It still could not do so in real time, but it was already vastly better than before.
"Hey, academy boy."
Vitus looked up and saw, in the empty mess