Editing Story:ROAD TRIP! (Warhammer High)/Part Two (section)

===Wining and Dining===

“I surprise you?” the Marine asked.

“Somewhat.  I had expected to be notified of your presence, Master,” Venus said.  “Do not mistake that for displeasure.  It is an honor to be in the presence of he who keeps the souls and discipline of my father’s Legion to task,” she added, genuflecting with her hand across her heart.

“The honor is mine, Princess.”  The ancient war cleric closed his eyes for a moment.  “I was overjoyed to hear of your return to us.  You were the size of my hand when you left us,” he said with the ghost of a smile on his coal-black lips.

Venus nodded ruefully.  “Indeed I was.  I have found my time on Terra to be both surprisingly trying and greatly rewarding, however.  I deem it time well spent,” she said, effortlessly switching to the Old Nocturnean tongue.  Fletsun nodded his approval of her mastery of the language.

“Good.  You have had the luxury of formal schooling?”

“Some.  I will return to Terra to complete it.  Or, rather, gain more.  I am genuinely considering graduate school here.  Medicine, perhaps, or the sciences.  I have the luxury of time as well,” Venus admitted.

“A luxury the Emperor’s gifts grant, and one few embrace properly,” the man said.  He smiled once more.  “Your Old Nocturnean sounds of recent practice.”

“Father insists that I maintain total fluency and literacy alike.  There are approximately ten speakers on Terra, however, so practice is elusive,” Venus confessed.  “I do not deny it.”  She raised a hand to her lips.  “It is a beautiful language.”  Her gloves were clasped to her belt for the duration of the meal.

“Indeed.”  The Salamander eyed her hand.  “A ring of engagement, my Princess?”

Venus laughed aloud.  “Were it but so!  But it is not.  A purchase of mine.  On Terra, ancient jewelers and artificers tied times to stones for luck and beauty.  The one that corresponds with my time of birth is the aptly-named bloodstone.”

“Fitting,” Fletsun said.  “You bear it well.  Do you pursue your father’s taste in artifice?”

“Vigorously!” Venus said proudly.

“As you should.”  Fletsun bowed again.  “I do not monopolize your time fairly.  Go.  Enjoy the adoration of your people.  I will be here.”

“Thank you, Venerable Shepherd,” Venus said, bowing deeply in return.  She turned back to the room with a spring in her heel.

Isaac watched her go.  “She has become strong and wise, Master.  She has defeated me outright in battle.  She has found a family to die for.  To live for.”

“Indeed.”  Fletsun watched her go as well, eyes burning like torches in his face.  “A fitting heir to her father.”

“No.  Not yet.  But when she is one, the galaxy will be bettered for it,” Isaac said quietly.

“You may be right, Isaac.”  Venus was chatting with a senior noble of the Skarokk mines now, projecting an easy confidence that only the soul-speaker and the warrior teacher could see was fraught with nerves and uncertainties of youth.  “But she will be soon.  Her father’s concern for her is the concern of a parent who feels his job unfinished.  That is a relief.”

“Oh?”

“Better he feel he has much left to teach her, at her youthful age, than nothing more to do,” the Chaplain said.  Isaac bowed his submission.

Alex finished his second beer and listened to the background noise in the steakhouse grow louder.  “I missin’ something?” he asked.

“No, people are talking about a rad alarm outside.  We’ll be fine if we’re indoors,” Freya said, her hearing providing the answer.  “How’s your sauroch?”

“Awesome.  These people know their grills,” Alex said.  “You want a bite?”

“Oog, no, I’m stuffed, thanks.”  Freya leaned back and tapped her belly.  “How about you?”

“I’m good.”  Alex watched as a pair of Enforcers walked past the entrance, yellow lights on their uniform vests flashing.  “They must be clearing the streets.”

“Sure looks that way.  I hope Remilia and Jake are all right.”

Alex nodded.  “So…am I crazy, or does Remilia like Jake a bit too much?”

“It’s just you.  He helped her get through some bad shit, remember?” Freya said.

“Right, that thing with her dad.”

“My advice?  Let it go,” Freya counseled.

“Done.”  Alex finished his entrée and sat back in his seat.  “Man that was good.  You want dessert, or should we head back before this radiation thing?”
“We should go,” Freya said, flagging the waitress.  The woman bustled up and deposited the check, bringing a few plates back with her.  Freya signed the check without even looking, dropping a card on it as she did.

Remilia stood in the doorframe of the restaurant, listening to the Enforcer beyond.  “Ma’am, the city is under rad-lock.  You may not exit the building,” the Enforcer said patiently.

“What’s a rad-lock?” Remilia asked.

The Enforcer bit back a sigh.  “It’s a lockdown because of a radiation alarm.  You’ll be perfectly safe in any building with a stone roof, but you may not go outdoors.”

“All right, we’ll wait it out.  Thank you, Officer,” Remilia said, walking back to where Jake and a number of other guests were gathering.  “Sorry guys, the lockdown won ‘t lift for a while.”

“Blast,” one man who looked like a merchant grumbled.  “We’re stuck here.”

“Seems it,” Remilia said.  Jake shrugged and pulled his vox out, flipping it on and booting a game.

“Might as well make the best of it,” he said.

Venus was making her way through the crowd, impressing various nobles, when the psyker she had noted before made his way over to the Governor again.  “Sir, the radspike is beginning.”

“Sound the alarm,” the Governor murmured, looking apprehensively out the window.

“Yes, Governor,” the psyker said, his eyes flashing.  For an instant, nothing happened.  Then, outside, yellow beacons lit, all across the city.  Venus’ eye wandered across the sea of yellow lights, reminded incongruously of images her father had once shown her of Nocturne before the Mechanicus had uplifted the Cities to their current grandeur.

The sky turned black, for just a moment.  Darker than the night that was coming, the sunset vanished behind a turbulent atmosphere.  Several guests grimaced and shielded their eyes.

Venus braced herself, unsure of what to expect.  Her skin prickled as the radspike hit.  She felt her heart pounding like a hammer in her ribcage, and the world turned a bit redder as her eyes grew so bright that the reflection overwhelmed her contact lenses.

Power surged through her.  Her armor felt constricting where before it had fit like a glove.  The weapons at her side seemed to sing to her.  The world around her sharpened.  She could hear the heartbeats of guests nearby accelerate as their bodies dealt with the radiation’s lingering heat.  The tiny cracks in the varnish in the floor refined themselves before her sight.

Her blood raced to her stomach, her arms, her legs, her eyes, her back.  She was ready to fight.  She was back in the ring with Isaac and spinning in Ir’Sem’s arms, and she was back before No’dan and in bed with Jake watching her world twirl on the wall.

Her breath was loud, unsteady.  A hand fell on her back as Governor Erd’Chel moved up behind her.  She had heard his breath and heartbeat as he had approached, and it unnerved her.  She normally couldn’t do that, at least not in a room so crowded.

“Princess?  Are you all right?” he asked, a note of distinct worry in his even voice.

Venus straightened up.  Erd’Chel took a step back from the raging inferno in her eyes.  “I am well, Governor.  Thank you for your concern,” she said.  Her voice was rich and resonant.  Her concerns melted away.  She projected an absolute confidence she had never felt, and found it real.

“Good, Princess, I was concerned when you nearly dropped your plate,” the Governor said, eyeing the plate that teetered on the edge of the table next to her.

“Sorry.”  Venus’ suddenly radiant eyes searched the room, casting red across it.  The other guests were all back to normal, talking, snacking, dancing.  None seemed to share her exhilaration and power.

She turned back to Erd’Chel and saw every weak point in his posture.  Every place she could hit him to cripple or kill.

She smiled.  “I’ve never felt that before.”

“It’s a fact of life around here,” Erd’Chel sighed.  Behind him, Fletsun stared at Venus, his own eyes suddenly ablaze.

Alex walked out of the restaurant as the beacons died.  “Glad that’s over,” he said, a faint slur in his words.

“Yeah, that was a whole lot of no fun,” Freya said, following him down the street.  “You nauseous?”

“Naw.  Little drunk, but I’m good.”  Alex walked carefully down the empty streets as night lamps kicked on overhead.  “I am so full right now.”

“Yeah.”  Freya walked up beside him and squeezed his hand playfully.  “Not too full, I hope?”

“Not even a little,” Alex happily said.

“Good.”  Freya released his hand and pointed up into the sky.  “You see that?”

Alex squinted.  “That a space station?”

“I think it’s Prometheus Station,” Freya said, focusing her eyes.  “It’s big enough anyway.”

“Huh.”  Alex shivered.  “Is it just me, or did it get a lot cooler?”

“That bigass ball of fire over there is going away; yeah it’s cooler,” Freya laughed.  “You should have stopped after one beer, featherweight.”

“Oh, baby, that hurts,” Alex said, wounded.


Jake stuck his hands in his pockets and breathed the evening air deep.  “Everything smells so clean here,” he said.  “How, I don’t know, with all the acid in the water and radiation in the air.”

“I suspect it’s the absence of a trillion humans underground,” Remilia joked, joining him at the curbside.  “You ready to head out?”

“You bet.”  She grinned at her sidelong.  “Thanks for dinner.”

“My pleasure.”  Remilia’s own smile faded a bit.  “Do you think I should send a message home?”

“Absolutely.  Warp travel is scary as hell.  Let your parents know you’re all right,” Jake counseled.

“Yeah, I should.”  Remilia leaned sideways on Jake’s shoulder for a second, and Jake reached across to squeeze her back.  “I like your advice.”

“Make me first mate on your pirate queen flotilla,” Jake quipped.

“Hah!  You’ll be busy being Prince of Nocturne,” Remilia laughed.  Jake shook his head as they walked back to their car.

“Why do people assume that I’m already some sort of noble all the time?  I don’t even look like one.”

“And I do?”

“Yes!  Look at you!” Jake said.

“Hmph.  You should ask Venus about Nocturnean matrimonial law, Jake.  It might surprise you,” Remilia hinted.  Jake cocked an eyebrow.

Venus marched straight up to Fletsun and spoke.  “Master.  What is happening?” she demanded in Old Nocturnean.

“Your blood stirred when you felt the radiation from our sun reach you,” the old Master rumbled.  “We all feel it.”

“What IS it?” she asked urgently.

“The geneseed at the heart of you reacts with the radiation of our world, as it did for Lord Primarch Vulkan himself,” Fletsun said.  “You strengthen.  Our connection with our world is as real and visceral as our bodies themselves.”

Venus clenched a fist.  “I do not like this power.  It smacks of addiction and drugs,” she said coldly.

“You do not like it because it is unfamiliar.  No harm comes of it.  Your father drank of this world for three thousand, six hundred years, and he is no weaker for his time abroad,” Fletsun pointed out.

He rested a hand on Venus’ shoulder, speaking quietly.  “You are stronger here.  You are whole here.  The gifts of your father and grandfather can be used to their fullest here.  Do not be afraid of it.  Embrace it.”

The black-haired girl stared up at the old Master, and Isaac, silent beside them, and finally relented.  “No harm comes of it?  No drawback?”

“None whatsoever,” Fletsun said.  “Our Librarians have studied it for the length of the Crusade, and found no downside.  It is the blood of Nocturne pulsing within you.”  He stood tall and spoke faintly, but with infinite conviction.  “Child of the Forge, our connection to our people is more than mere altruism and pragmatism.  Our world is a literal part of us.  Our sun fuels our blood.”

“You can not accept your responsibilities until you understand that,” Isaac added.

Venus looked from one man to the other.  “I see.”

“That is why we are kin to the Nocturneans.  We are their brothers, not their masters,” Fletsun said.  “Their souls and lives are forged by the unrelenting cruelties of their home.  They rise above it, and become artisans, warriors, merchants.  We are simply the next of the paths of the Promethean Way: the apotheosis of the Nocturnean spirit of survival.  We express our world’s harshness on the fields of battle as the Emperor’s paladins, a bulwark against the ravaging of aliens and mutants, heretics and witches, daemons and thinking machines.”

Venus nodded.  “I…have never thought of it that way.”

“Then you must, Princess, before you take your icon back from No’dan and rise to become our rightful Queen,” Fletsun said.  “Do you understand?”

Venus clasped her hands together over her belt buckle and thought.  “I…do not know.  I truly do not know.”

“You will.  I have confidence in your ability to make good decisions,” Fletsun said.  “And no step in the process of learning is as great as admitting a lack thereof.”

“Thank you, Master Fletsun,” Venus said.  “I will reflect on your words.”