|
|
| (7 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown) |
| Line 1: |
Line 1: |
| {{Story}} | | {{Story}} |
|
| |
|
| The bastard progeny of [[User:Someone else. | Someone else's]] piece of Writefaggotry Bleeding Out.
| | Sunday. Once a day of rest and worship in many different faiths, before the rise of the Emperor and his successful effort to remake the day into just another secular day with no added significance. But in one small corner of Startseite Hive, voices were raised in praise of their god on their holy day. |
| | Sitting in among the small congregation, Julius Pius raised his voice in song, proudly singing a hymn. The loudness helped make up for the dearth in numbers. There only eleven people there, twelve if you included the priest. His father may have won back some rights for Catherics, but that did little to attract more believers to the faith. Every person here was hardcore, willing to accept discrimination and worse so they could believe openly. Julius was proud to be among their number, though his situation was far better. He had friends who didn’t mind the fact he was religious, and he had a girlfriend he cared deeply for who didn’t mind either. His future was mapped out, and he had finally made a choice he had been agonising over for many years. There were few men in the galaxy, he reflected, who could be as content as he was at the moment. |
|
| |
|
| == Part One ==
| | He smiled as the hymn ended, and the Priest rose to the pulpit. This week’s sermon was on the dangers of fundamentalism, a topic dear to Julius’s heart. |
| ===The Shot heard round the World===
| | “Fundamentalism is the enemy of all, and an abomination in the eyes of God. He gave us all the ability to not believe blindly in everything we read or see. Even His holy scriptures passed down to us through the ages is a guide to living life in His way, not an unbreakable set of laws all should follow. The Emperor sees all religious people as fundamentals, which is why he tried to outlaw us. But we will show him he’s wrong about us.” the sermon ended with a scraping of chairs and shaken hands. Everyone here knew everyone else; they were united by shared convictions. Julius shook hands, inquired politely about friends and colleagues, the usual norms. |
| Professor Ahzek Ahriman sat at his writing desk, a pile of essays on Warp Translation sitting untouched at his side. He’d already gone through them mentally, and it filled him with dismay. Barely half the class had done it right, and he despaired ever succeeding teaching them about the Great Ocean. It was their birth right as an evolving race, and these kids couldn’t even master the basics. Grunting, he reached down to pour himself a much needed cup of Wine.
| |
| As he reached down, he felt something tugging at his body of light and next thing he knew his vision was full of Light, flickers of fire that burst briefly to life and then vanished just as quickly. What had happened to him? He had to be in the Great Ocean, for where else could he be, and yet he had not gone through the enumerations or anything of the sort. His Lord Magnus could sail the Great Ocean better than anyone save the Emperor, and he wished his lord could be here to explain what had just happened to him.
| |
| His vision cleared, and he found himself in a bare concrete cell-like room, with one steel door and a single open window, an example of hab building at its most horrific. Before him stood a man, fitting together a stub rifle with a telescopic scope. Thoughts went through that man’s mind as he examined it. It looked good. Useful. Ready. | |
| Ahriman tried to recover his bearings and make sense of what was going on around him. Was this the future or the past? It was impossible to tell with any certainty. Visions in the aether were shaped as much by the viewer as they were by the Great Ocean. Judging by the poster of the Emperor shaking hands with Eldrad Ulthran across the road outside, it was post crusade at least, and given the architecture, it seemed to be somewhere within the Imperial Palace on Terra.
| |
| Ahriman let his spirit float outside the cell-like room, in order to find out more about this vision. Outside, across a busy ground road was a small café, one of many which had sprung up across Terra now that the Crusade was over. The day was warm, as warm as it could be in the smog-choked atmosphere of Terra, and Ahriman felt a sickening chill cross him. He knew exactly where it was, across the Atalantic plains from the Palace where he had left his physical form, half a continent away. It was then he noticed the two figures seated at a nearby table. He knew exactly who they were, and in that moment he knew exactly what was about to happen.
| |
| Spiteful laughter and a deep phlegmy cackle wove around him in a symphony of hate as some unseen monster glorified in what was happening. The laugh chilled Ahriman to the bone, it felt like the call of some dark power beyond his comprehension.
| |
| Ahriman tried to extract himself from this vision, but try as he might; it had an impenetrable hold on him. He could only watch in bullet time as the heavy stub round slowly sailed across the void, heading for its target with deadly precision. For what seemed an eternity it sailed along. The gunshot, though many thousands of miles away, echoed throughout his mind, throwing Ahriman’s subtle body back into his physical form. He found himself sprawled out on the floor, the wine glass smashed at his side. In a flutter of papers he pulled himself up, grabbed his Heqa staff and sprinted for the door as fast as his transhumant body would allow him.
| |
|
| |
|
| | He waited for all the others to leave, until it was just him and the priest. The priest, Pulandio was from the Talian peninsula where Cathericism had once dominated and flourished before the age of the Imperium, where Julius’s mother had come from. His father had met him shortly after he had moved to Terra, and from then on he had been the family priest. Julius had known him his entire life, and there were few people outside his family both biological and those he saw as family he trusted more. Most of the students at Imperator went to Councillor Celestine with their problems. Julius went to Pulandio, who now gestured for him to sit down. |
|
| |
|
| | “Are you here about that thing we discussed?” he asked, his heavy lidded eyes glancing over Julius. For the first time Julius noticed how old Pulandio was, he must have been nearing his two hundredth year. God would be calling him soon, and Julius didn’t want to think about that. |
|
| |
|
| Julius Pius sat at his writing desk, composing a datafax on the Jzhao Li campaign of the Great Crusade for Professor Qrutz. He had the house to himself for once, his father had been sent on a war bond tour of the Cadian Gate after the latest Daemonic Incursion on the world of Malin’s Reach, and Isis was off searching for a University to study at after graduation along with Lyra. She’d already messaged him a few times, and he smiled at the memory of her last one from Alye University in Merica. She seemed to be dragging her heels, her heart was not quite into choosing a University, be it on Terra or offworld somewhere. Wherever she went, he would go too; to spur her on and keep them both at the peak. Theirs was not the steady relationship of Jake and Venus, or the passionate one of Michael and Angela. Theirs was based on two people, both living in the shadow of their famous fathers and striving to live up to their example, both wanting to be the best and pushing the other as hard as they pushed themselves. In a way, it was almost as masochistic as Kevin and Furia.
| | “Yes ser. And I’ve made my choice. Graduation night.” |
| Grumbling, he finished the final entry on the siege of Zhaoi Fortress, and closed the Datafax. He’d done enough work for today. He got up and went over to check his Vox, see if there was anything more from Isis. Glancing down at it, he sighed to notice another message from Faith Aurelian. Someone, and he blamed the Twins, had given Faith the idea that not only was his father the most famous non-Astartes in the entire Imperium, but he was also a biological son of the Emperor, a so-called Perpetual. For weeks she had been pestering him about it, until it became almost unbearable being in her presence. Worse, the twins were joking that if Faith was correct, then he himself was a grandchild of the Emperor in the same way as the daughters, making his relationship with Isis incestuous, something which made him deeply uncomfortable. It couldn’t be true, another attempt by the Twins to mask the fact they were very bad at relationships.
| |
| The videlink screamed out, breaking his trance. Muttering under his breath, he got up and went over to answer it. He idly wondered who would be calling him at this time of the morning.
| |
| “Julius?” It was James, Farah’s current squeeze and a gearhead of the highest magnitude. He was breathless, and spat words out like a Punisher Gatling Gun on full auto. But those words were every bit as damaging as the bullets of a Punisher. “Turn on the Holovision quick, one of the Daughter’s has been shot!”
| |
|
| |
|
| | “It’s a big commitment; you can only give it once. Are you sure she’s the one?” |
|
| |
|
| | “Yes. God has spoken to me father; he has shown me she is the one. We complete each other, and I can’t imagine being with anyone else but her.” Earnestness and the intensity of his conviction were written all over his face. He had prayed, asked for God to show him the right path, and He had done so. |
|
| |
|
| “Look, I can assure you I’m fine. Terra is strange and amazing, and the Imperials treat me well. The Daughters of the Primarchs in particular have been most kind, especially Miss Isis.” Johor Tull’s Aria whistled and hummed as he talked on the Videlink with his father Mithras, showing his honesty in pure binaric, to reassure his father further that he was fine. Six months he had been on Terra, and in that time he had absorbed a lot about the customs of the Imperium, and absorbed many lessons he would take back with him to the Interex. He was sitting in the Astropathic Building of Hive Tetra, one of the small hives which had sprouted on the plains between Merica and the Europan Hives, which had once been an ancient ocean now long since boiled away. This particular Astropathic block was set up against the side of the hive, an Armourglass window looking outside the hive towards the outlying suburbs. For a few seconds he idly stared out at the view. For a planet choked in thousands of years of pollutants and rampant global warming, it sure was beautiful.
| | “Very well my son. May she make you happy, as your mother made your father happy. Someday you’ll have to introduce her to me, so I can judge her for myself.” |
| Suddenly there was a sharp ‘crack’ which cut through the air. His father, thousands of light years away, reacted immediately.
| | Julius smiled ruefully as he took his leave. He knew as well as Pulandio did that the old priest would never get the chance to meet her, her ‘minders’ wouldn’t let her anywhere near a known religious leader. |
| “Was that a gunshot?”
| |
|
| |
|
| The Disk Speeder hummed as it made its way through the continent sized behemoth that was the Imperial Palace. Seated in the Cockpit, Ahriman could see redoubled patrols of Arbites on the ground, and in the air squadrons of Ravens, Thunderbolts and Firelances flew in lap after lap around the tall towers. Nothing like this had happened on Terra since the Unification wars, over three hundred years previously, and very few were left who could remember those dark days. | | The space his father rented for services was on the other side of the Hive from the hab they lived in, nearly an hour’s journey by hoverbus. Julius had long grown used to that, and he spent the time flicking through his notes on the Kurdash Compliance campaign during the Great Crusade, his chosen topic for the senior project. He wanted to prove to the selectors for the Imperial War Academy that he could get in based on his own merits, and who his father was meant nothing. The rumour was he had already been accepted out of hand, and he hated the implications that he would get in due to nepotism. |
| For the first time since the end of the Great Crusade, he had donned his Battleplate, a suit of Mk 2 Crusade Armour in the livery of the XV Legion. His body felt weird as his black carapace interacted with a suit of armour for the first time in over a century, his strength augmented and his senses sharpened by the armour. For nearly an hour he had been split by headaches and body spasms as his body reintegrated with the armour, but he was fine now, more than fine, ready for anything. The vision he had still haunted him, the spiteful laughter, the feeling of some monstrous power, the way he felt powerless, the gunshot echoing throughout the Great Ocean. This was no mere terrorist act, it couldn’t be.
| | Suddenly the hoverbus ground to a halt, and settled on the ground. Julius looked up from a passage describing the Acerbus offensive on thirty-six eight, and he could see black-uniformed Arbites on the road, shotguns held at the ready as hundreds of cars settled to earth around them. That was unusual. |
| He landed on a platform carved into the side of a mountain, and swiftly he went inside and began to navigate the complex series of corridors and passages which thread their way throughout the palace until he reached an armoured door with vacant angels carved into it.
| | One of them came up and rapped on the door of the hoverbus. The driver opened it, and the Arbite climbed aboard. |
| The door was flanked by a pair of Custodes, Halberds held in an X covering the door. For several seconds he stood before them in silence. Finally, remembering the protocols, he cleared his throat and said “Ahzek Ahriman, Former Chief Librarian, XVth Legion.” For a few more seconds there was silence, until Ahriman began to feel ridiculous. Just as this feeling latched onto him the two Guardian Spears were lifted aside and the door hissed open, allowing Ahriman to pass. Ahriman passed sheepishly, remembering a similar occurrence at Ullanor during the triumph. How had he forgotten after all this time? | | “Ladies and Gentlemen. One of the royal daughters has been shot by an unknown sniper. The road ahead has been closed off, expect delays. We apologise for the inconvenience.” |
| Within the armoured sanctum of the command centre stood the Primarchs, the Emperor and assorted others from the Arbites, the Navy, the Army and even a shadowy figure from the Officio Assassinorum. Though it had been many years since he had attended a meeting like this, he fell straight into place.
| |
| Magnus appeared almost out of nowhere, and slapped Ahriman on the back, a blow which without his battleplate would have near broken him in two.
| |
| “Ahzek, glad to see you. It’s been a long time since you wore the armour of the Legion.”
| |
| “Disasters have a way of reminding us what we really are.” Ahriman replied, to which Magnus gave a sad nod. He directed him towards a man in legal robes.
| |
| “This is Sir Arthur Hane, Chief Counsel to the Emperor’s Courts, and he was the one present for the interrogation of the assassin.
| |
| Hane shook the proffered hand, his own hand tiny in comparison. Hane seemed to shrink before the most powerful Astartes Psyker in the entire Imperium.
| |
| “What can you tell me about the assassin?” Ahriman asked, breaking the tension.
| |
| “The man’s name is Ulysses Keiter. Hab Worker, volunteer for the Civil Honours Union. From what we can tell he has been a model citizen up until this point. His ramblings seem to have him affiliated with one of the anarchistic lower hive groups. Ever since the war ended, Terra has become more and more divided between the rich and the poor, especially in places like the Yndonesian Bloc and most of the Europan and Merican Hives. This has created a fertile breeding ground for discontent, and he seems to have fallen for it.”
| |
| Ahriman remembered his vision, remembered the evil laughter, like the cackle of thirsting Gods. It couldn’t be as simple or as clear cut as Hane thought it was, the idea of a simple Hab worker shooting at one of the Daughters for no reason seemed utterly preposterous, inconceivable. How could he have received his vision if other forces weren’t at work? He had to speak of it; maybe his Primarch could find the truth.
| |
| “If I may. This Keiter doesn’t seem to understand who he shot at, and yet he chose his target with perfect care and skill, and made a perfect shot. It can’t have been him, at least not entirely.”
| |
| “Ahzek, what do you mean?”
| |
| “I had a vision, just as the event was happening.” Ahriman carefully told them about what he had seen in the Great Ocean. Hane appeared disturbed, while Magnus betrayed no emotion. Ahriman finished. “No person could be stupid or deluded enough to mistake one of the Daughters for a ‘random greedy bitch at the café’, to use his own words. There is only one force which could have twisted that poor man’s mind, and make him into an instrument of assassination. The Primordial Annihilator.”
| |
| Silence.
| |
| Suddenly a regal voice spoke out. “I find your revelation disturbing. How can the Dark Powers affect a man here, on Terra itself, when I am shielding it?”
| |
| Ahriman stepped back before the Emperor, desperately reciting the Enumerations to keep himself calm. Passing over his mind, Magnus spoke for him. “The Primordial Annihilator is a master of deception and manipulation. We may have driven it back, but we did not defeat it. We can never defeat it. It still lies within the Great Ocean, waiting for a chance to strike. And here it seems it may have found an opening.”
| |
| Everyone present was visibly uncomfortable with the idea of the dark powers having a toehold somewhere on Terra itself. The Emperor stood at the eye of the storm, lost in thought. Finally he gestured at Magnus, who spoke.
| |
| “Ahzek, make no mention of this to anyone. The Emperor Himself will deal with it.”
| |
| “But My Lord…”
| |
| “This is the Emperor’s will Ahzek. Remember that. He will call for you again, but keep it to yourself until then. Much is now not understood, and we must wait for the clarity of knowledge before we can judge this Keiter.”
| |
|
| |
|
| ===The best laid plans...===
| | That news hit Julius like a bullet to the chest. One of the daughters, shot? They were his sisters; he had grown up alongside them his entire life. |
| | He scrambled for his vox and hit one. An apt number for the first and most important person in his life. Isis. Lady Lupercal. The woman he loved. There was no reply. |
| | Cursing, he hit two. Roberta Guilliman, his best friend among the daughters. He’d know her since they were three year olds, building the perfect city out of building blocks together, planning out the street grid and transport hubs the way no normal three year olds would ever have considered. Again, it rang and rang and there was no reply. |
| | A foul oath escaped Julius’s lips. If neither of them were answering, it meant his next three numbers, Remilia Venus and Faith wouldn’t be answering either. Andrew wouldn’t know any more than he did. That left one number, and this time there was an answer. |
|
| |
|
| Julius Pius was getting more and more frustrated. Ever since his excursion with Isis to seek some answers from the Warmaster, the lack of concrete information on why this one crazy man shot poor Morticia, and then straightaway expressed remorse for it was driving him up the bend and then some. He wasn’t the only one; several of the daughters were desperately seeking answers, a way to escape the pain of not knowing why their world had been turned upside down. Something serious was going on with poor Remalia, though he couldn’t get a thing out of her, and Kelly had been reduced to a nervous wreck. He’d grown up with them, they’d long treated him like family, and he couldn’t let his family suffer so.
| | “Jake? What in fug’s name is going on?! Something about a shooting?” |
| His rage and frustration had been bottled inside him for too long, and finally he decided do what he needed to do. His off-handed remark to Isis was about to become serious. Deadly serious. He would find out firsthand what was going on, why some madman had torn their lives asunder with a single Stubber bullet. He was Ollanius Pius’s son, and he would do his part for the daughters one way or another, find the truth that would help them all to understand and move on.
| |
| With renewed determination he went to his room and began to pull out several items from deep within his closet and put them on. When he was younger he often tried to dress up in his father’s uniforms, and he knew for a fact that Horus had a picture of him, Isis, Hana and Furia all dressed up haphazardly in his father’s uniforms, many years ago when they were all much younger. Now he had grown up, and had a uniform all of his own. One does not simply walk into (or through) the Imperial Palace, and there were plenty of unsavoury people and worse within the grimy depths of Terra. A black armoured bodysuit, the one he used for mandatory army training along with Isis and Hana. A pair of well made Grox Hide Boots, as tough as an Ork and far more reliable were the next to go on. A Carapace Breastplate went over the top; there were many dangers on the streets of Terra, including the dreaded Babuk, the most (in)famous of the many gang leaders. His father always told him to ‘be prepared’, and that was one lesson he had taken to heart.
| |
| Entering a key code into the safe beneath his bed, he reached in and pulled out a holster. Opening the flap, he drew a beautifully made Hellpistol, one of the many gifts from the Primarchs his father had. This one had been made for his father by the Primarch Vulkan after a successful compliance campaign, and was shaped like a snarling dragon, with the jaws forming the muzzle and the Power Cables clutched in its claws. He clipped the power cell onto his back and mounted the holster onto his belt. He knew that if the worst came to the worst, he’d rather be alive and in court rather than dead, but all the same the weight of the Pistol on his him was rather ominous, a warning of things to come.
| |
| Finally he reached under his pillow and pulled out his most precious possession. An amulet of lunar metal in the shape of a wolf's head, snarling at a crescent moon. It had been given to his father by Warmaster Horus at the end of the Great Crusade, and his father had given it to him when he started at Imperator High. It was an almost mirror image of the one Isis owned and the two had joked that it was deliberate, an attempt by Horus, the Emperor or mysterious others to draw them together. If it was, then it worked like a dream. He stared at it for several seconds, before slipping it into his pocket. It would lead him to her, and to the truth.
| |
| ‘You’d better be up for this Isis’ Julius muttered under his breath as he left the Hab. ‘I haven’t even got to third base yet and you promised me.’ He shook his head and inexplicably laughed at himself as he headed for the Mag-Lev station.
| |
|
| |
|
| | “Julius? I don’t know man; Venus and I were heading for the park when the beehives came up, spouted something about code red before taking Venus away.” |
|
| |
|
| | “That can’t be good. Listen, if you hear anything, you’ll tell me right? I’m stuck on a hoverbus in the middle of Startseite; I’m not going to get anything from here.” |
|
| |
|
| Johor Tull once again sat at an Armourglass window, staring out over the landscape of Terra. But that landscape was irrevocably altered, and not just because he was now in the security of the Imperial Palace. In one moment, the glorious Imperium had been wounded in its very heart, and for the last few days, everyone was seeking an answer to the one question, Why? His own future here on Terra seemed to hang by a thread. After the shooting, a number of high ranking members of the Interex wanted to withdraw him from Terra and send him home, very much against his wishes. What is more, he now had a permanent bodyguard, two members of the royal guard, calling themselves by the rather ridiculous name of the Treasury, currently outside his door. For several hours he even had a member of the Custodes shepherding him around the Palace. His vox rang out, and he answered it.
| | “Sure. Listen, I’m in traffic, I have to go, but I’ll call you back when I get home.” Jake hung up. Julius sat back down, tried to get back into his notes, but found he could not. Instead he reached down, quietly brought out his Catheric Crux, checked to see if anyone was watching, and when he was confident they weren’t he began to pray, pray that everything would be alright. |
| “Tull.”
| |
| “Johor, its Farah.”
| |
| For a few seconds, he stared at the vox in shock. “Farah, how did you get my vox number? I thought it was unlisted?”
| |
| “It was. I need someone to talk too, and you’re the only one available. If I have insulted you…”
| |
| “It’s fine. To be honest, I’m glad to hear from you. You can guess what my first question will be.” the information blackout was affecting everyone, and it frustrated him immensely. He was not the only one, he’d rang Julius, Jake and several others and none of them knew any more than he did.
| |
| “She’s stable, at least. Some internal damage, she won’t be up and about for a while. I’ve made her something which will hopefully help with her recovery. What about you, I heard you’re returning to Interex Space.”
| |
| “The Interex Council wants me to return home. It’s ‘too dangerous’ for me to remain on Terra any longer, according to them.”
| |
| “And are you leaving?”
| |
| “No.” he stated emphatically, his aria whistling beneath his voice. There were jokes around Imperator High that he was the only person there with a soundtrack to his life, a joke which often went over his head, leaving him bewildered at why they were laughing every time he spoke.
| |
| “We need to prove that no matter what, they cannot stop us from living our lives. I don’t know who did it, or why, but we must defy them. The Imperium is far greater than the sum of its parts. I should know that.”
| |
| | |
|
| |
|
| [[Category:Warhammer High]][[Category:Stories]] | | [[Category:Warhammer High]][[Category:Stories]] |
 The following article is a /tg/ related story or fanfic. Should you continue, expect to find tl;dr and an occasional amount of awesome. |
Sunday. Once a day of rest and worship in many different faiths, before the rise of the Emperor and his successful effort to remake the day into just another secular day with no added significance. But in one small corner of Startseite Hive, voices were raised in praise of their god on their holy day.
Sitting in among the small congregation, Julius Pius raised his voice in song, proudly singing a hymn. The loudness helped make up for the dearth in numbers. There only eleven people there, twelve if you included the priest. His father may have won back some rights for Catherics, but that did little to attract more believers to the faith. Every person here was hardcore, willing to accept discrimination and worse so they could believe openly. Julius was proud to be among their number, though his situation was far better. He had friends who didn’t mind the fact he was religious, and he had a girlfriend he cared deeply for who didn’t mind either. His future was mapped out, and he had finally made a choice he had been agonising over for many years. There were few men in the galaxy, he reflected, who could be as content as he was at the moment.
He smiled as the hymn ended, and the Priest rose to the pulpit. This week’s sermon was on the dangers of fundamentalism, a topic dear to Julius’s heart.
“Fundamentalism is the enemy of all, and an abomination in the eyes of God. He gave us all the ability to not believe blindly in everything we read or see. Even His holy scriptures passed down to us through the ages is a guide to living life in His way, not an unbreakable set of laws all should follow. The Emperor sees all religious people as fundamentals, which is why he tried to outlaw us. But we will show him he’s wrong about us.” the sermon ended with a scraping of chairs and shaken hands. Everyone here knew everyone else; they were united by shared convictions. Julius shook hands, inquired politely about friends and colleagues, the usual norms.
He waited for all the others to leave, until it was just him and the priest. The priest, Pulandio was from the Talian peninsula where Cathericism had once dominated and flourished before the age of the Imperium, where Julius’s mother had come from. His father had met him shortly after he had moved to Terra, and from then on he had been the family priest. Julius had known him his entire life, and there were few people outside his family both biological and those he saw as family he trusted more. Most of the students at Imperator went to Councillor Celestine with their problems. Julius went to Pulandio, who now gestured for him to sit down.
“Are you here about that thing we discussed?” he asked, his heavy lidded eyes glancing over Julius. For the first time Julius noticed how old Pulandio was, he must have been nearing his two hundredth year. God would be calling him soon, and Julius didn’t want to think about that.
“Yes ser. And I’ve made my choice. Graduation night.”
“It’s a big commitment; you can only give it once. Are you sure she’s the one?”
“Yes. God has spoken to me father; he has shown me she is the one. We complete each other, and I can’t imagine being with anyone else but her.” Earnestness and the intensity of his conviction were written all over his face. He had prayed, asked for God to show him the right path, and He had done so.
“Very well my son. May she make you happy, as your mother made your father happy. Someday you’ll have to introduce her to me, so I can judge her for myself.”
Julius smiled ruefully as he took his leave. He knew as well as Pulandio did that the old priest would never get the chance to meet her, her ‘minders’ wouldn’t let her anywhere near a known religious leader.
The space his father rented for services was on the other side of the Hive from the hab they lived in, nearly an hour’s journey by hoverbus. Julius had long grown used to that, and he spent the time flicking through his notes on the Kurdash Compliance campaign during the Great Crusade, his chosen topic for the senior project. He wanted to prove to the selectors for the Imperial War Academy that he could get in based on his own merits, and who his father was meant nothing. The rumour was he had already been accepted out of hand, and he hated the implications that he would get in due to nepotism.
Suddenly the hoverbus ground to a halt, and settled on the ground. Julius looked up from a passage describing the Acerbus offensive on thirty-six eight, and he could see black-uniformed Arbites on the road, shotguns held at the ready as hundreds of cars settled to earth around them. That was unusual.
One of them came up and rapped on the door of the hoverbus. The driver opened it, and the Arbite climbed aboard.
“Ladies and Gentlemen. One of the royal daughters has been shot by an unknown sniper. The road ahead has been closed off, expect delays. We apologise for the inconvenience.”
That news hit Julius like a bullet to the chest. One of the daughters, shot? They were his sisters; he had grown up alongside them his entire life.
He scrambled for his vox and hit one. An apt number for the first and most important person in his life. Isis. Lady Lupercal. The woman he loved. There was no reply.
Cursing, he hit two. Roberta Guilliman, his best friend among the daughters. He’d know her since they were three year olds, building the perfect city out of building blocks together, planning out the street grid and transport hubs the way no normal three year olds would ever have considered. Again, it rang and rang and there was no reply.
A foul oath escaped Julius’s lips. If neither of them were answering, it meant his next three numbers, Remilia Venus and Faith wouldn’t be answering either. Andrew wouldn’t know any more than he did. That left one number, and this time there was an answer.
“Jake? What in fug’s name is going on?! Something about a shooting?”
“Julius? I don’t know man; Venus and I were heading for the park when the beehives came up, spouted something about code red before taking Venus away.”
“That can’t be good. Listen, if you hear anything, you’ll tell me right? I’m stuck on a hoverbus in the middle of Startseite; I’m not going to get anything from here.”
“Sure. Listen, I’m in traffic, I have to go, but I’ll call you back when I get home.” Jake hung up. Julius sat back down, tried to get back into his notes, but found he could not. Instead he reached down, quietly brought out his Catheric Crux, checked to see if anyone was watching, and when he was confident they weren’t he began to pray, pray that everything would be alright.
