"Tell me! What am I supposed to do?!"
Maccabeus all but sprang from his command seat, leaning forward and planting both hands heavily on the cold edge of the console, his knuckles whitening with the force.
His voice exploded across the cavernous Bridge, laden with long-suppressed anger, helplessness at their predicament, and a flicker of reckless excitement ignited by the sudden "possibility" that had appeared in this desperate situation.
He stared fixedly at the flowing mass of silver light on the screen, as though he could reach through the void and seize that last lifeline.
"The Servo-skull beside you," Silverheart's calm female voice sounded again, offering no urging, merely stating a fact.
"Pick it up, activate it, and carry it with you. That will be enough."
Maccabeus whipped his head around, his gaze shooting toward the side of the console.
A Servo-skull was indeed hovering there in low-power standby mode, standard equipment on the Bridge for recording navigational data or relaying simple orders.
It looked utterly unremarkable, its metal Shell slightly worn, with only a faint red standby glow in its eye sockets.
Pick it up? Just like that?
The "rescue" proposed by a Man of Iron, one who had just left the Primarch gravely wounded and plunged the Legion into crisis, was something this absurdly trivial?
The absurdity struck him like a bucket of ice water, yet another, fiercer, poisonous fire called "hope" burned in his chest. With the Primarch's life hanging by a thread and the Legion's future uncertain, what did he have left to lose?
"I really have gone mad." Maccabeus forced the hoarse mutter through clenched teeth, his voice filled with self-loathing and the despair of a man with nowhere left to turn.
He stared at the Servo-skull, conflict in his eyes.
*Trust a Man of