Four years later
If I were still a flesh-and-blood person, I’d have dropped like a rock from exhaustion and lack of sleep by now.
But being a machine, those weaknesses of organic beings simply don’t affect me, which, at times like this, counts heavily in metal’s favor.
A lot happened over these last four years, but to catch up: the girl named Lunaria caused more than one misunderstanding.
The first time Marcus introduced her to his family, the reactions were all over the place.
Charlotte’s sisters welcomed her with open arms, Charlotte just looked at her father in confusion, but Victoria’s expression was a whole different story: her glare was so intense it could literally have melted ceramic without the slightest effort.
At first she thought Marcus had cheated on her: it wasn’t the first time he had traveled to Earth, and his last trip before this one had been exactly eleven years earlier.
Lunaria was ten.
Too much of a coincidence to overlook.
To save Marcus’s hide, and to keep his wife from ripping his head off right then and there, I explained the girl’s true circumstances, which finally calmed Victoria down.
Marcus wanted to adopt her and make her an official part of House Sorofia, but another voice in the room beat him to it: Amelia Helion, who had come with her family to organize the wedding of Charlotte and Abel, who had finally decided to get married and set off together on the expedition.
Amelia would also be coming on the exodus, as the Helion family’s representative, along with her partner.
She had always wanted a little sister to spoil and raise almost like a doll, but her parents had only given her brothers, something that, while she treasured it, never quite fulfilled that particular wish.
She fell in love with Lunaria’s looks immediately; that silver hair and those blue eyes seemed to come straight off a porcelain doll, and as soon as she heard the girl’s circumstances, she wanted her in the family even more.
No one present objected; well, almost no one: Marcus deflated a little, because he really had come to love her like his own daughter.
In the end, Lunaria became part of the Helion family, and would be raised by them from then on.
Only one thing left me with a lingering doubt: the way she looked at me in that moment, almost pleading, as if she expected some terrible fate ahead.
I didn’t really understand why, so I chalked it up to a simple error in my perception systems.
Even so, just to be sure, I discreetly monitored her activities for a while.
I found nothing out of the ordinary: she received the best care and the best education possible, being groomed as a proper high-society lady in every sense.
Once I’d confirmed there was no real problem, I turned my attention to other matters.
A year later, Charlotte and Abel’s beautiful wedding took place.
Everything went perfectly, and the patriarch himself personally blessed them in front of all the guests.
When it was the father of the bride’s turn to give a speech, Marcus got all sentimental, talking about how his daughter had grown up, and how much it hurt him to see her leave.
In the end, his other daughters had to step in to calm him down.
Charlotte, in her white-and-gold wedding dress, looked beautiful, with an almost royal air about her.
I had a hard time reconciling that image with the little girl I had watched grow up all these years, whom I had come to love as if she were my own sister, and who was now, at last, getting married.
When I see her smile like that, I wish this moment of peace could last forever.
But with everything I know is coming, all I can do is give it my best to protect the people I care about.
For now, all I can do is wish Charlotte and her husband all the happiness in the world, and may God protect them on their way.
Year M19.877
Today, in the main square, all the officers and leaders of each expeditionary group gathered to hear the speech to be given by the highest authorities of each family involved.
Bruce, patriarch of House Sorofia, would be the official spokesman.
“Sons and daughters of Reach,” he began.
“Today we mark the start of a new chapter in our history.
You will be the pillars on which the destiny of this galaxy will rest, and that of your own families.
On your shoulders lies not only the future of your loved ones, but that of all humanity.
“The path you are about to take is unknown, a road full of dangers and trials.
But the human spirit knows neither defeat nor retreat.
We face the shadows of tomorrow with the firm conviction that there is only one acceptable outcome: victory.
We will face every trial with our heads held high, steel in our hands, and courage in our hearts.
“We will forge our own path, with metal and with blood.
The very stars will tremble before the strength of our will, and anyone who dares stand in our way will be mercilessly eradicated.
There will be no room for doubt, nor for fear.
We accept only one destiny: victory, total and final.
“You are the pride of our people.
Each of you represents the hope of millions.
You will fight not only for your own survival, but for the future of our entire species.
Your courage and your sacrifice will be engraved in the annals of history.
“I wish you all a glorious journey, and may God bless you all.”
After the speech, everyone said goodbye to family and friends before boarding their respective ships.
The expeditionary fleet numbered seven thousand four hundred and fifty ships in total: four thousand of them colony ships, and the rest divided among cruisers, frigates and carriers tasked with escorting them to their destination.
I was on the bridge of the Infinity, supervising all the final preparations along with the other AIs before the journey began.
Our destination was a region that would eventually become known as the Segmentum Ultima, in one of its many systems.
“All ships: by order of the admiral of the expeditionary fleet, prepare for the cryo chambers.
We are officially beginning the exodus.”
“Understood,” the AIs of every ship replied, almost in unison.
As soon as the order was given, alarms rang out throughout the fleet, and the entire crew began entering the cryo chambers for the journey.
Once that process was complete, a blue portal manifested in front of each ship, its size varying with the size of each vessel, allowing them to enter slipspace.
Seconds later, the hundreds of thousands of portals vanished completely, leaving behind only the vast void of space.
Banfield Fleet.
Helion Fleet.
Sorofia Fleet.
Three banners, a single fleet, advancing together toward a destiny yet to be written.
In another corner of the galaxy, long before any of this happened
“Okay, okay, okay.
Somebody, anybody, explain one fucking thing to me,” Black said out loud, addressing a starry sky that was definitely not Earth’s, as if the entire universe owed him a personal apology.
“I die playing Total War in my room, with a half-finished bag of chips and without having leveled up all afternoon, and this is my reward?
Warhammer 40,000?
Seriously, fate, out of ALL the possible multiverses, you sent me to the worst one of all with a big fat smile?”
Nobody answered him, of course.
There was no one else there.
But that had never stopped Black from talking as if he had an audience, because deep down he always did, even if it was an imaginary one.
He let out a short laugh, almost admiring, at the absurdity of his own situation.
The smile faltered halfway for an instant, without him quite realizing it.
Because, if he was honest with himself, neither Total War nor any of those games had ever been just a hobby for him.
It all started the day his two younger brothers came home in two flag-draped boxes, almost together, barely a few months apart, and his mother just stood there in the doorway, not crying, not saying a single word, as if something inside her had gone out completely along with them.
He was the oldest.
It was supposed to be his job to look after them, and yet there he was, breathing, while the two boys he had taught to ride a bike would never walk through that door again.
No one ever properly explained to him what that particular war had been for, or who it had really benefited.
All he knew was that one day he had two brothers, and the next he had two folded flags on a shelf and a hole that never quite filled.
After that he started devouring military history books, campaigns, treatises, anything that gave him the illusion of understanding why people decided, again and again, to sacrifice the ones they loved most for causes that almost never ended up being worth it.
Strategy games became his way of playing at having the control he never had in real life: there, at least, every death on the map meant something, every loss had weight, a consequence, a reason.
It was never for free.
So no, this wasn’t some whim freshly invented in the middle of an existential crisis under an alien sky.
It was, at bottom, the same question he’d been carrying since he was twelve, except that now, thanks to a cosmic joke in poor taste, he had a real chance to do something about it.
He shook the feeling off as easily as he’d shake off dust, forcing the crooked smile back on, because crying at the universe wasn’t going to bring anyone back, and because sarcasm, for him, had always been cheaper than therapy.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” he went on, pacing back and forth with his hands in his pockets, as if giving a motivational talk to an invisible audience.
“It has its charm.
It’s THE most brutal lore ever written.
But it’s one thing to read it in your armchair with a beer, and a very different thing to have to LIVE it.
It’s like somebody saying ‘hey, did you like that World War II movie?’ and out of nowhere you show up in Stalingrad without a coat.”
He brushed the dust off his clothes, still smiling, with the kind of calm only people have when they’ve already decided, without telling anyone else, that they’re going to get their way no matter what.
“But hey.
Here we are.
And before anybody tells me this sounds like delusions of grandeur, let me clear up a couple of things.”
He sat down on a nearby rock, as if he were about to give the most important talk of his life to a packed auditorium, and not alone, talking to the stars.
“One, and let’s be crystal clear about this: I don’t doubt for a second that the Emperor is a god.
He is, in every sense of the word, a real one, the kind that moves the fate of entire species just by existing.
That’s not up for debate.
What I don’t believe is that he and I could ever be buddies.
No grabbing a beer together, no getting on his good side man to man.
And that’s fine.
I don’t need his friendship.
I respect him all the same, and then some: anyone capable of holding on for ten thousand years on sheer willpower, rotting from the inside while carrying half an empire on his back, earns respect without having to ask for it.
My thing with him isn’t blind faith or closeness.
It’s professional admiration, from a distance, expecting nothing in return.”
He paused, almost theatrically, as if he needed the silence so the next part would land with more weight.
“Two, and this is the one I really care about: I don’t want to be a god of war in the Warp.
That throne’s already taken, thanks, and I’m not interested in competing in that league.
What I want is to be the god of human war itself.
The flesh-and-blood kind, the real kind, the kind that lives in every soldier’s head before some daemon sticks its nose in.
And I want that job for one very specific reason: I want to steal it from Khorne before he claims it.”
He laughed, without humor this time, something sharper.
“Because that’s how this shit works, right?
Every time a human gets a thrill out of killing, every drop of blood spilled in his name, all of that is an open door straight into the human psyche, and Khorne just walks right in like it’s nothing, without asking permission.
As long as that part of us has no owner, it’s going to stay free hunting ground for him.
But if I plant myself there first, if human war starts answering to something other than a starving daemon on the other side of the veil, the door slams in his face.
No access to that part of our heads, no way to corrupt us from there.
He’s left ringing the doorbell of a house that isn’t his anymore.”
“And three,” he added, holding up three fingers with a smile that had nothing friendly left in it, “I can’t stand daemons.
Any of them.
But Khorne in particular I despise with all my soul, and it’s not just the blood and skulls thing, which is exhausting enough on its own.
It’s because they’re fucking cowards.
A mortal puts his life on the line every time he goes into battle: he loses, and that’s it, no rematch, no respawn.
A daemon loses, and what happens?
He goes back to the Immaterium fresh as a daisy, to wait for the next summoning, without having actually risked a damn thing.
That’s not war.
That’s cheating with house rules.”
He stood up again, dusting off his hands as if he’d just closed an important deal.
“So that’s going to be my first amendment to the rulebook: if a daemon comes to fight in the material plane, it bets the same thing we bet.
Lose a battle, lose real power.
Lose the war, and it’s over, zero reincarnations, zero second rounds.
If we mortals play with our whole lives on the table, so do they.
No more running off crying to the Immaterium every time things get ugly.
Let’s see if they still find it so much fun when they actually have something to lose.”
He clenched his jaw for a second, and for the first time in all that while his voice came out without the joke filter on top.
“Because somebody has to pay the real price, even if it’s just once.
My whole life I watched people play with other people’s lives like they were pieces on a board, without ever risking their own skin.
That’s over.
If something’s going to cost a human being their life, it had better cost the one who took it something real too.”
He had no army.
He didn’t have a single credit, or an ally, or even a decent map.
But he had something that neither the Emperor, nor the Primarchs, nor the most veteran Custodes possessed yet: he knew exactly what came next.
Year by year, heresy by heresy, every mistake humanity was about to make, he already knew by heart, like someone who knows the ending of a show that everyone later would pretend they hadn’t seen coming.
“No more being a spectator,” he announced, stretching his arms toward the sky with the theatricality of someone who knows perfectly well the effect his words are going to have, even with no one there to hear them.
“If this galaxy needs a god of war who isn’t a dog on a dark god’s leash… well, what can you do.
I’ll throw my hat in the ring.
And I promise you one thing: when I’m done, even the damn Necrons are going to have to admit I’ve got charisma.”
He laughed to himself, heartily, as he started walking toward nowhere in particular, whistling a tune that didn’t exist yet in this universe.
His story, the story of a rude, insufferable guy impossible to ignore, with enough nerve to try to rewrite the entire destiny of a galaxy, was only just beginning.
Thank you for your understanding!