Thaddeus bowed slightly, and turned to leave.
'I do hope,' added Kolgo, 'that you are not planning on doing anything rash.’
'I would not dream of it, Lord Kolgo. You have made your position clear, and it is my duty to see that your commands are respected.’
Thaddeus left the audience chamber, head held a touch too high. Kolgo smiled and considered how Thaddeus had a great future ahead of him, if he survived.
SARKIA ARISTEIA WAS forty-three years old. She had been born in the hives of Methalor, a dark, hot place where generations lived out pointless lives in machine shops or sank into the nightmare of the underhive. Sarkia broke out. She had a keen mind and a keener sense of duty. The Imperium needed every single nut and bolt that Methalor produced, but Sarkia could do more for her Emperor. She was quietly religious, intelligent, and terrified of a life of mediocrity. She needed the Adeptus Mechanicus as much as they needed her, and recruits like her.
Sarkia was taken in by the temple of the Machine-God on Methalor and told the first truths about the Omnissiah, the spirit that permeated all machinery whose thoughts were pure logic and whose worship was the gathering of knowledge. She made a competent and useful adept, and by the time she had been transferred to the Stratix sector she was considered a potential tech-priest, on the verge of completing her apprenticeship as an adept inferior.
Then she had been given a post on the research outpost on Stratix Luminae, a tiny cold planetoid barely even visible above the dockyards of Stratix itself. The work suited her; it was away from the immense masses of humanity, and from here she could begin to believe that she was a part of something meaningful. In the rarified environment of the labs she could achieve something that would have some impact on the Imperium. She began to touch on the mysteries of the Omnissiah, and the religious power of unadulterated knowledge gained for its own sake.
Then the eldar marauders had made a daring raid into the Stratix system, running the gauntlet of the sector battlefleets in a cycle of attack and flight that seemed closer to a game than to war. The eldar, in their lighting-quick ships that sailed the solar winds, chose Stratix Luminae for the next round of their game. But this time, the Soul Drinkers Space Marines were in their way. The distress signal from Stratix Luminae found a Soul Drinkers strike cruiser at Stratix for repairs and the result was the mission which had been recorded in corrupted, incomplete files in the Chapter archives.
Sarkia Aristeia had lived through the eldar raid and the brutal reply by the Soul Drinkers. She had seen what had happened at Stratix Luminae and the horrors that followed it. Then, along with the few other survivors she had been granted a quiet posting at Eumenix. She had seen Eumenix die, too, die screaming around her until the same purple-armoured warriors of the decade before came and whisked her away. It was no wonder she had been found near-catatonic with fear and shock.
The room set aside for her interrogation had been made as comfortable as possible. The walls were draped in fabric to cover up the strange alien architecture. She had been given fresh clothes -loose-fitting Chapter serf garb, but at least it was clean. Pallas had examined her and fed her intravenously until her health was recovered and her cheeks less hollow. But she was still on an alien spacecraft, about to be interrogated. And it was still Chaplain Iktinos who was doing the interrogating.
Iktinos, as a guardian of the Chapter's faith and spiritual strength, had been at the heart of the Chapter war when Sarpedon led the Soul Drinkers away from the Imperium. He had sided with Sarpedon, for he had witnessed the treachery of which the Imperium was capable and watched as Sarpedon defeated Chapter Master Gorgoleon in ritual combat. The terrible events of the Chapter war had been orchestrated by the Daemon Prince Abraxes who had nearly turned the Soul Drinkers over to the purpose of Chaos - but the Soul Drinkers' faith had held nonetheless. Iktinos was one of the reasons. Even when doubt had been sown in the heart of every Marine, Iktinos had remained resolute. The Chapter followed the Emperor, not the Imperium, partly because of Iktinos's spiritual leadership.
He was sitting across a table from Sarkia Aristeia, dwarfing the woman completely. All Space Marines were intimidating to a normal human - and a chaplain's black armour and skull-faced helmet were more intimidating than most. Sarpedon watched from the shadows beyond the drapery and wondered if Sarkia was too deep in shock to be useful. Could anyone open up to an armoured monster like Iktinos? If Sarkia were to see Sarpedon it would probably kill her, but the skull-faced chaplain couldn't have been much better.
Iktinos reached up and released the collar catches on his helmet. He lifted it off his head and felt the breath of stale spacecraft air on his face for the first time in days. He hardly ever removed his helmet, and never in front of witnesses. Faith should be faceless and the battle-brothers should consider him the Emperor's hand guiding them, not a human being. Sarpedon had very rarely seen Iktinos's face, and it surprised him to see it now.
His face was the colour of dark polished wood. It was slim and open compared to most Marines, with large dark eyes, and was completely hairless. There were two silver studs in his forehead and two ebony studs, to represent twenty years of service as a battle-brother and twenty as a chaplain. Faith and confidence seemed to radiate from him, and Sarpedon understood why he kept his face covered. He wore the skull-helmet because he wanted the battle-brothers to follow him as a faceless icon of faith, not as a man. He could have been a charismatic leader, but that was not his job. He was there to guard the souls of the brethren - the leadership he left to Sarpedon.
'Sarkia.’ said Iktinos in a deep, sonorous voice that was normally a mechanical drone inside his helmet. 'You understand why we have brought you here.'
Sarkia was silent for a moment. 'Stratix Luminae,' she said quietly.
'Ten years ago my battle-brothers came to your lab on Stratix Luminae. Now we need to go back there, and we need to go soon. You were an adept, you had access to the upper levels. We need that access.'
Sarkia shook her head. 'No, that was ten years ago...'
'The Stratix Luminae lab was abandoned. You know that. Everything will be the same. We know what happened afterwards, Sarkia. There would have been no recovery teams sent. The same protocols that you knew will still work today and we need to know them.'
'Why?' Sarkia looked up suddenly, right into Ikti-nos's eyes. 'Why would anyone want to go back there?'
'We have no choice and neither do you.'
'It won't be enough. I was just an adept, only the magi knew how to get onto the containment levels and they never came out. We never saw them, we didn't even know a fraction of what they were doing down there. I'm useless, don't you understand? I only know the upper support and lab levels, there's nothing there...'
'We know all we need to, Sarkia. Just tell us, and when this is over, you will go free.’
Sarkia choked back a sob. 'You're renegades. You'll kill me.'
You don't know what we are. At the moment the only thing you have is my word as a soldier of the Emperor. Tell us what we need to know and you will eventually go free.'
Sarkia shrugged. 'I am going to die. Stratix Lumi-nae will kill you, too.' She paused, staring at the table. 'The grids are keyed to phrases from the revelations of the Omnissiah. There's a copy in every workshop and laboratory. There's an algorithm that'll pick out the code words, I can write it down. That'll open up the first level. The hot zone you'll have to get through yourselves.'