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

===A Moment of Silence===


The group walked into a lift and dropped down to the central levels of the gigantic structure, pausing outside a room Freya knew very well.  She opened the doors with a respectful nod to the pair of guards outside, who clasped their Power Swords to their ceremonial leather armor with reverence.
“This,” Freya said, taking in the room with a gesture, “is the Recollections Chamber.”

The wide room was filled with images of the sky.  Not just Fenris’ sky, with its massive moon and wide starscape, but alien skies.  Massive rings shimmered like vertical lines in some of the still photographs and holos on the walls.  A complex moonrise of five tiny satellites orbiting a single massive moon filled one corner of the room.  Directly above them, the white disk of Fenris’ own moon, in a partial eclipse leaving it looking like a platinum wedding ring, completely filled the ceiling.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Freya asked.

“It’s amazing.  What words are these from?” Alex asked.

Freya gestured, and the lights of the room went out, save a single spotlight over a graven plaque on a chunk of marble in the middle of the chamber.  The plaque had numbers and names all over its surface.  “The holos all have numbers next to them, if you switch them on,” she said.  She tapped one of the numbers on the plaque, and the seemingly inert surface *ticked* slightly.  One of the images of starscapes over them blinked once.  “So…that one was taken in the final year of the Arceba Wars, from the roof of the capitol building the aliens built over the human colony there, before Dad’s men burned it down.”

“So these are commemorative victory trophies?” Venus asked.  Her eyes swept beams of light over the holos until she slid her mirrored sunglasses on.

“Sort of.  These were taken any place the Rout won a campaign without losing any Astartes,” Freya said.  She gestured at a small shot of the Milky Way from deep space.  “We leave the spot next to that one picture there vacant.  In that campaign, the Wolves won without losing any Marines, but an entire battalion of Army troops was lost to the Warp.”  She pointed at another, very large image on the farthest wall, of a fiery red moon hanging over a tiny white one.  “That’s the oldest.  Fiftieth year of the Crusade, I think.  Dad was there for that one in person.”

“These are incredible,” Venus said.  She reached her hand through a hologram of an inky, black night, with only a few faint stars.  “I bet this was taken on a hive world, but far from the hives."

“Sure was.  How could you tell?” Freya asked.

“The light pollution.  There are few clouds, but the stars are so faint.”  Venus pulled her hand back and looked over the plaque.  “This is very cool, Freya.”

“I’m glad you like it.”  Freya crouched down before the marble block and sketched a quick symbol over the stone.  She sat down at its base and crossed her legs, drawing her cloak up around her.  “I used to sit in here and listen to Dad tell stories for hours as a kid.  Closest I’ve ever come to inactivity,” she said with a self-deprecating chuckle.

Remilia tapped a rune on the plaque and watched an image flicker.  “This is almost like a shrine,” she said.

“It is a shrine.”  Freya looked up at the moon of Fenris overhead.  “We honor our most significant victories.”

Remilia nodded.  “It’s humbling.”

Alex sat down by the door, looking at the stars flowing overhead.  “You ever sit here and try to make the star patterns line up?”

“A few times.  It’s kind of useless without a reference point.  There’s a few obvious ones,” she said, gesturing to two that looked nothing alike to the mortals in the room.  “They were taken on two planets in the same system.”

“…Uh huh,” Alex said.

Venus crouched beside Freya and looked over the plaque.  Freya looked over at her and saw the faint red ovals of light under the reflective surfaces widen and shift as she read.  Of course, with no irises Freya couldn’t see them move side to side.  “Six…seven…eight hundred image keys,” Venus said under her breath.  “Are all of the Wolves’ major zero-casualty campaigns here?”

“Not even half, but these are the ones where they had time to stop and record them,” Freya said.

“Cool.”  Venus glanced sideways through her glasses.  “Do you guys have a shrine to your members of the Great Ninety, too?”

“We do, but it’s not here,” Freya said.  “It’s in the Hall of the Giants.  I can’t get you guys in there.”  She paused.  “Well.  Yes…I could, but it’s the most sacred room in the star system.”

“I understand, Freya, I didn’t take you guys into the Hall of Deathfire, either.  Can you describe it?” Venus asked.

Freya thought.  “The Hall of Giants is where the Legionary Dreadnoughts rest.  You can understand its significance,” she said.

“Sure, I get it.”

“Right.  It’s a statue of a hooded Vlka, nobody specific, standing over two sleeping Fenrisian Wolves, with one hand over his secondary heart, and the other making the symbol of the Fang in mid-air over the sleeping Wolves,” Freya said.  “The names of our four members of the Great Ninety are carved into the base of the statue, and the words filled with sapphire dust.  In the light of the room, it looks like fresh paint, of the same color as the paint scheme on the original Legion Terminators,” Freya said.  “It’s just a coincidence that all four of our Great Ancient Ones have Terminator Honors.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that.  That sounds very cool,” Venus said.  Remilia listened in with interest.  The Fists had a much simpler monument to their five members.  “You’ve seen our public one on Nocturne, in Themis.  Dad also built a private monument on the grounds back home.”

“I remember.”  Freya drew her knees up to her chin and stared at the plaque, reminiscing about her youth in the Fang.  Venus stood and walked away, as much to give her cousin privacy as to see the rest of the room.

After a time, a guard at the entrance to the room coughed under his breath, drawing Freya’s reluctant attention.  “Princess, Lord Ackur Redwind has instructed me to inform you that your room has been prepared for the evening meal,” the skjald said quietly.  He didn’t enter the room as he said it.
Freya nodded.  The guard turned around to relay a reply.  The teenage girl’s eyes drifted back to the plaque for a moment before rising to her booted feet.  She brushed dust from her leather skort.  “Well, guys, dinner’s ready.”

“All right.”  Jake stood from his own seat and walked out.  As Venus and Remilia followed, Alex paused.  Freya was standing still, watching the simulated stars all around her.  The legacy of her pack’s most hallowed and unilateral victories shimmered around her in a tapestry of history, one as lasting as her father himself.  Alex didn’t need to ask why she liked it so much.

He waited for her.  After a few more seconds, she shook herself awake and walked out, pausing to squeeze his hand and offer him a toothy grin.  “Hell of a thing, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Sure is.”