Editing Exterminatus High (section)

==Chapter Three==
Zane woke up in the infirmary again, but by the Emperor, he woke up smiling. It would take more than a running reverse punch (and a very good one, he admitted) from a spitting Cyrene to dampen his spirits. They had won the scrumball championship, and they had done it in style. Zane paid no heed the odd glowing-eye trick Cyrene had pulled: they had won fair and square.

1:0

Zane grinned and wandered off to join his team for the post-game celebrations.

Cyrene, who had gone from abject terror at what she had seen to blinding rage (hence Zane’s hospitalization) and back to abject terror, was currently in the Arch-Confessor of Klysus IV’s personal chapel. The Arch-Confessor’s name was Morus, and he was a formidable man in many ways. His age was unknown, but he (very) rarely remarked that he used to be a Steel Legion Stormtrooper who had fought in the First War for Armageddon over a century ago. As he appeared to be a man in his early fifty’s, this claim was looked upon with some skepticism. However, few brooked the subject with him willingly. Whenever the First War was mentioned in his presence, he reacted badly. Out of respect for the grizzled priest’s position, the issue was avoided.

Morus was dressed in a combination of military and Ecclesiarchal dress that looked any good only on him, and his glowing Rosarius completed what was quite an impressive effect. As both the head religious and civil official of the Schola, Cyrene had decided he was the first person she should talk to her about her vision. Morus sat her down, offered her a drink that was politely-but-firmly declined, and then sat at his large desk.
“Good game. I especially appreciated your knocking Zane out after that dreadful move he pulled. I was rooting for you by the way, I’m past the point where I get wrapped up in all the gender business.” Cyrene gave a rough smile.
“I had a vision.”
“From the Emperor”
“From who else?”
“You tell me. Judging by that hit on poor Zane, it could have been Khorne.” Cyrene frowned.
“Oh come now sister Cyrene, nowhere in the Adepta Tactica does it say Sisters cannot have a sense of humor.” 
“I don’t have time for humor. Let me tell you what I saw.” Morus’ eyes flashed curiously, but Cyrene missed it as she recalled the vision.
“I saw the Emperor, and he was slashing his fiery blade through the air. He made a pattern with the trails of fire”. Morus’ jaw shifted noticeably. Cyrene made to continue, but Morus stopped her and pulled a piece of paper from one of his many drawers, and passed it to her.
“Did it look like this?”
The pattern on the paper was rather elaborate, but when it was drawn so clearly for her, it was clearly a Chaos glyph sharing many artistic similarities with the symbols of the four chaos gods. But it was different, more like the Undivided symbol with a number of alterations and a further star-shaped symbol in the middle. It was the symbol she had seen.
“Yes, that’s it!” 
Morus rolled his eyes.
“The Emperor and his visions. I find it more personal to, say, write a letter when I want to tell someone something they shouldn’t know”.
He produced a firearm from a hidden place on his person and fired it, stunning her.
“Oh Malus? Sometimes you fail to amuse me with your games.”


Grent was drunk. Impressively drunk. So drunk, in fact, that he was coming up with “great ideas” every few minutes that were proving difficult for him to be dissuaded from.
“Tah hell with this..sssss. Imma gonna go ask Sister Angrel if she wants sum of big ol’ Grent. She’s got legs like an ELDUHH.” Zane tried his best to look serious while Nayren laughed ceaselessly into his hands.
“You know what Grent? I think that’s a good idea”. Grent’s massive face lit up in such genuine excitement that Zane had to take a deep breath to stop from laughing.
“Mmmph…yes, go now…pffhhhh”
Grent staggered off as fast as he could to catch Angrel, a Sister Superior who had just passed their room and gave them a cold stare as she saw their alcohol.
Zane and Nayren stayed in the room, but leaned slightly around the corner to watch Grent approach the brisk-paced woman in a position Nayren remembered as the “Head slightly exposed” position from the Uplifting Primer. He laughed.
Grent was running down the hallway, bellowing for the Sister to stop. She did, and turned.
“Sistuh Angrul! I…uhhh…I was wondering…” Grent seemed to lose some of his confidence under her imperious gaze, but dug deep and summoned the strength he needed.
“You see Sistuh...the EMPRA needsh children to fill out his armies, and you got legs like them…uhh…Eldar! So ima-gin’ if we could make really TALL AND FAST SOLDIERSH-“
The Sister looked as if someone had hit her in the ovaries with a falcon-grade punchhammer. Nayren was worried she was going for her knife, but a Commissar-lecturer intervened.
“SOLDIER, WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE EMPEROR ARE YOU DOING? THIS BEHAVIOR WOULD WARRANT A STIFF FLOGGING BACK IN THE GUARD, AND-“
“Shur?”
“…WHAT IS IT, SCUM? YOU BETTER HAVE A GOOD EXPLA-“
“You look ghood in that uniform, can you teach me to look good?” The Commissar spluttered, and Nayren’s keen eyesight saw the Sister’s hand ghost to the Commissar’s, who immediately relaxed. Nayren then did something stupid.
He yelled: “WHOEVER COMES FIRST IN THE SERVICE OF THE EMPEROR SHALL BE BLESSED!”
Unfortunately, two sober people were perfectly capable of catching his drift. 

Kyandra knelt silently in meditation, ignoring the pain from her post-game bruising and exhaustion to venerate the Emperor. She was also thinking: what had happened to Cyrene? Kyandra was sure she could have scored, but something seemed to distract her. Speaking of which, where was Cyrene? She had left immediately for the Arch-Confessor’s office a while ago and had not accompanied her dejected team from the field. Whatever it was, it must be important. Kyandra allowed a flash of annoyance to cross her face. It had BETTER be important.
She allowed another distracting thought to cross her mind. How was Nayren? She shook her head, finished her prayers, and got up to leave the dormitory that she shared with Cyrene. As she did, a group of men that she recognized as the scrumball team she had just played run past the door, yelling and hooting rubbish as they made their way down the Sister’s accommodation along the lines of:
“WE WON, THE EMPEROR FAVORS US, LIFT YOUR GAME SISTERS!”
She could only imagine how aggravated some of the women closed in their rooms must be, but they made an impressive and successful effort to restrain their choler.

Except for Kyandra, who opened her door and hit the closest man in the face. The rest of his group just laughed and whooped, and left the man to pick himself up on the ground as they kept moving. The Commissar cadet wavered as he picked himself up, drunk as he was, and looked her in the eye with abject amusement. Kyandra frowned. It was Nayren.
“…Sorry, but yo-“
“S’all good!” Nayren grinned widely, and looked over her shoulder into her spartan dormitory. “Mind if uh come in? Never been in a sister’s room before!” Kyandra nearly blushed again, but restrained herself using one of the methods of body-control she had been taught in meditation classes.
“I don’t think that’s a good-“ Nayren pushed past her and cut off her sentence.
“Not much in here is there? In my room there’s uniforms, books, pictures, holovids, propaganda posters, porn-“
“That’s enough!” said Kyandra as she began to blush despite herself. What is the fascination of men with pornography? She found it repulsive and many Sister Superiors decried it as evidence of a weak will and therefore sinful. Nayren was not so drunk that he missed her reaction.
“Yeah, you sisters seem to really hate porn, no idea why. It’s natural, y’know? If the Emperor didn’t want us having sex, why would he give us those parts?” Kyandra was blushing wildly now and was acutely embarrassed.
“I th-I…perhaps you should leave before you are caught, males are not supposed to be here”. 
Nayren smiled and said: “It’s up to you, Kyandra.”, and then left. 
She got the impression that he had meant more than one thing by that. She would have to discuss this with one of the Superiors.

The next morning, the entire scrumball team was heavily hungover, only being allowed to partake in alcohol very rarely by the administration. Whenever they won the scrumball championship (not even once a year), grateful staff would provide them with considerably more alcohol than they needed for a calm celebration. Carnage always ensued, but the entire Schola was always in an uproar after the scrumball championships so it was overlooked.

Unfortunately for Zane and Nayren, being hungover was not an excuse to miss their duties and lectures. They would be performing conditioning, combat exercises, firing range practice, and sitting through hours of classes like any other day, and they were not looking forward to it.

But the day would actually turn out to be very interesting.

Their first joint class for both Commissar and Stormtrooper cadets was “Imperial-Xeno relations”, and the Commissar-lecturer was adamant in both in his hate for the xenos and his respect for them as the sort of challenge that makes mankind stronger. He was one of the more well-read and scholarly Commissars one could expect to find, and he was currently lecturing on the Tau.
“The Tau are an interesting race in that their arrogance, in a manner of speaking, outweighs that of even that of the Eldar. They are so convinced that the Greater Good is the only way any race can prosper in the galaxy and they believe so strongly in their strength at arms that it cannot be described as anything but naïve. Recent research suggests that their race is under some sort of psychic domination by their Ethereal caste, but I’ll go more into that in our next module.”
“Relations between the Imperium and Tau have always been strained, not just because the Tau are dirty xenos, but because they have a strength of belief in themselves that rivals our faith in the Emperor. However, unlike the Emperor, the Greater Good is not a powerfully-binding force but rather a lie that will eventually collapse in the face of a hostile galaxy. The Tau’s military, while advanced, is rated as a non-threat to the Imperium. If you will begin reading screens 49-50-“, the students in the class flicked the buttons on their personal monitors to move to the appropriate screen, “-you will see the results of the latest surveys of Tau military strength. As you can see, the sum total of their entire military is a sub-Rho level threat. Current statistics suggest that the Tau Empire could be completely annihilated by roughly 0.4% of the entire Imperial Guard. Their Navy ranks no better, but that is another issue ent-“
“Commissar, I have something to say.” The lecturer’s eyes narrowed at the student’s impudence.
“Speak, and make it good or I’ll have you kicked out of the Schola before you can make a plea to the Emperor”. The student was not intimidated, and Nayren suddenly wished he was not sitting next to him.
“Your remark on the Ethereals having domination over the Tau Empire got me thinking: what if the Emperor does the same thing? Or even more, since we are a more advanced psychic race than the Tau, what if there was no Emperor and he was simply a concept equivalent to the Greater Good?” Many of the students gasped, and one look at the Commissar’s face made Nayren gulp nervously and shift his seat slightly further away from the rebel. The student continued:
“It just occurred to me that the Imperium is as much of a lie as the T-“
“QUIET!” the Commissar bellowed.
“No! I will not be quiet, it is men like you that are the reason we live in a web of lies! I have seen the truth, it has been shown to me and me only, and I know that the Emperor is dead and he will never return, and I know that the Imperium is doomed, and I know that, for all intents and purposes, the Emperor and everything we believe in is a lie!” The student continued to rant as if possessed, and Zane could not help but note the Commissar-lecturer had drawn his laspistol.
“YOU WILL CEASE YOUR HERESY AT ONCE!” roared the Commissar at the top of his lungs, drawing glances from passer-by’s in the hallway. Some stopped to watch. The blaspheming student, however, had no intention of stopping, and approached the Commissar aggressively while still ranting.
“THE EMPEROR IS A LIE, AND YOU WILL SOM-“. The student’s words were cut off as the Commissar gave him a powerful backhand across the face, leaving the fallen cadet’s face bloody. The Commissar put a foot on his chest as the cadet fell.
“For unforgivable blasphemy against the Immortal God-Emperor of the Imperium of Man and in accordance with the Schola heresy-discipline policy, your life is now forfeit. May the Emperor have mercy on your soul.”
The Commissar shot the fallen man in the chest, but before he died he spoke a single word:
“Malus…”
Zane leaned over to Nayren:
“Dibs on his chronometer, but you can have his religion essays.”