Chapter Text
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Chapter 25: Promises and Precautions
“...Acknowledged.”
The relay’s tone cut through the chamber — sharp, urgent.
Not idle chatter. Not background noise. A signal with weight behind it.
Paragon of Eden was already tearing through the encryption, the patterns archaic but still unmistakably Astartes. When the vox cleared, the voice that emerged was rough — aged, strained, but carrying the iron beneath it that all Astartes possessed.
“This is Captain Ormund Vallis, commanding what remains of the Flawless Host. We have received your message.”
There was a pause — long enough for me to wonder if the signal had dropped. Then his voice returned, quieter, but with the steel edge of a man who had outlasted far too much.
“If you mean what you say, come. We will meet you in the open, away from the city. You will bring whatever aid you promised. And you will show us you are not another lie.”
Coordinates followed — precise, deliberate — then the channel cut. No ceremony. No farewell.
Aceso’s eyes met mine. “That’s it then.”
PE’s lights shifted in a slow pulse. “Their numbers will be limited. Their suspicion, unlimited. We will need to be prepared for both cooperation and conflict.”
I studied the coordinates, mapping the slipspace jump in my head. A short trip. No room for misdirection, no time for second thoughts. “We take the cruiser. It’s the right balance — visible strength without provocation.”
“Minimal escort?” PE asked.
“Minimal,” I confirmed. “Defensive posture only, unless they fire first.”
Aceso looked back at the fading coordinates, her voice soft. “If he’s survived this long, he’s not going to waste words. We should listen carefully to the ones he’s given us.”
——————— ✦ ———————
Paragon of Eden dismissed the hololith of the relay and replaced it with the cruiser’s systems display. “Transit time: under two hours by slipspace. We can be on station before they’re finished relocating.”
“Good,” I said. “Get the shipyards moving as fast as possible. Divert resources from other projects if needed. No escort craft, no visible weapon cycling. We look like a single ship offering aid, not a fleet seeking a foothold.”
PE’s projection dimmed slightly, almost thoughtful. “I will comply. However, the absence of an escort will be conspicuous. Loyalist Astartes will wonder why we are confident enough to arrive alone.”
“Then let them wonder,” I replied. “If they’re still as sharp as the records say, they’ll understand the message that sends. Though I doubt they are in any condition to wonder about anything.”
While PE handled flight prep, Aceso turned away toward the medical wing. “I’ll need all stasis pods active and tuned for transhuman physiology. We have the count from our scans, but I want extras ready. Some may require immediate surgery, others deep stasis until treatment can be sustained.”
“Allocate extra redundancy in life-support,” PE added without looking at her. “If their gene-seed has degraded, standard protocols may fail.”
“I’m already accounting for that,” she said over her shoulder.
——————— ✦ ———————
Aceso’s floated down the medbay corridor ahead of me, her pace brisk but unhurried. The automatic doors parted to reveal the clean, bright expanse she had claimed as her domain — all white surfaces, sealed cabinets, and the faint hum of life-support systems on standby.
She moved with purpose, bringing stasis pods online one by one. Each hissed softly as power conduits engaged, the transparent lids misting before clearing to reveal the deep-cradle interiors.
“They’ll expect a triage station,” she said without looking up. “But they’re going to get better. Full diagnostic suites, regenerative matrices, cryonic suspension if needed. Even Phase Iron reinforcement in the pods themselves.”
I drifted closer, noting the calibration screens she was cycling through. “Phase Iron? Against warp intrusion?”
Her lips tightened. “I’ve read the histories. Astartes are sent to fight in places that would strip the soul from anyone else. If they’ve been holding out here, there’s no telling what’s… attached itself to them. If I can’t keep them alive, I can at least keep them clean.”
She set a pod to deep-stasis mode, the interior rim glowing faint blue. “I’ll have twenty ready before we depart. The rest will be finished during transit. Hopefully we won’t need a pod for every survivor — but hope makes a poor shield.”
I let her work — the way she checked each connection twice, ran every test cycle. This was her battlefield, and she approached it with the same precision I’d seen from any soldier.
When I left her to her preparations, the shipyard was already in motion. PE had done as I asked and dropped all other projects ongoing in the hulk, his corvettes and destroyers on pause while our total focus was put on the cruiser. If that was the case we may be able to launch a day or so sooner than originally estimated. I did notice that PE had reconfigured the ship’s internal security schematics though — which meant he was doing something he didn’t want the automated logs to record.
I found his projection overseeing a vast cargo space where prefabricated partitions were sliding into place. What had been a supply hold was quickly becoming a deployment bay.
“These bays were marked as open storage.”
“They still are,” PE replied. “Open storage that just happens to be full of heavily armed solutions.”
A Locust crouched in one partition, its Phase Iron plating dulled to a non-reflective finish. A Cicada hung dormant in the rafters above another bay, legs drawn in tight. All inactive, all slowly being hidden behind bulkhead panels that were being put into place and sealed without a seam ready to slide open on command and discharge their dangerous occupants.
“This is a diplomatic mission,” I reminded him.
“And diplomacy,” PE said without turning, “is best conducted from a position where your counterpart understands the cost of treachery.”
One by one, the hidden bays sealed, their occupants vanishing from sight. The ship’s manifests would still read ‘emergency relief materials’ to any external scan. Only we would know better.
——————— ✦ ———————
By the time I returned to my lab, worker drones were streaming updates. Every fabrication arm, every printer, every assembler was turned toward the cruiser. Other projects were silent — paused mid-cycle while the hull took shape at speed.
I called up the projection systems, letting a humanoid form resolve in the air before me. This time, I didn’t start from a blank slate. I pulled up the preserved scans of the Lord of Admirals — a human who had once commanded fleets that rivalled the Forerunners themselves. Broad-shouldered, composed, radiating both authority and restraint.
The projection stood in front of me, untouched for a moment, as I considered. His build and bearing were almost exactly what I needed: someone who could stand across from Astartes without shrinking, yet without posturing. I made minor adjustments — softening the set of the eyes, neutralizing the expression to one of measured attentiveness rather than challenge.
The uniform was kept plain, the cut inspired by Imperial lines but avoiding their exact style. Enough to feel familiar without pretending to belong.
PE’s voice broke in from behind me. “I see you’ve chosen to dress as a war hero.”
If I had still been human, the sudden voice behind me might have made me jump. As it was, I kept my posture still, my voice steady. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. For someone who claims to lack emotions, he seems to take a certain satisfaction in startling people out of their wits.
“I’ve chosen to dress as someone they might actually talk to.”
PE’s lights dimmed, his tone shifting from amusement to calculation. “We should consider whether we ought to pretend to be organic at all. The consequences of a liar’s reveal can be catastrophic. If they discover mid-meeting that you are not what you appear to be, we may not walk away.”
“They won’t talk to an AI,” I said flatly. “Not on purpose. Not aboard an AI’s ship. Even if they were bleeding out with daemons clawing at the door.”
“That’s an assumption based on incomplete data,” PE countered. “These are not baseline humans. They are Astartes — conditioned for extreme environments and scenarios. Concealment may be unnecessary.”
Aceso’s voice joined from the comm system, the medbay sounds faint in the background. “You’ve studied human sociology, Creator. Trust is easier to build when the truths that might break it are brought forward early. Especially if they’re ugly.”
“You’re arguing for immediate disclosure,” PE noted.
“Not quite,” she replied. “You’ve both seen the patterns in conflict response. If they feel trapped — physically or psychologically — they’ll react like cornered predators. You don’t drop a surprise like that after they’re already aboard.”
I exhaled slowly. “So we split the difference. Holo-suit for the initial face-to-face. I show them the courtesy of meeting them on familiar terms. Then we drop the disguise before anyone sets foot on the cruiser. No surprises once they’re inside our space.”
PE studied me for a moment, then inclined his projection. “Acceptable.”
“And smart,” Aceso added. “Now if you’ll excuse me, some of us are busy making sure your guests don’t die in transit.”
——————— ✦ ———————
I shifted the display over to another file. The schematics for the super dreadnaught bloomed into being — a latticework of hull geometry, power grids, and weapon nodes. It was already a monster, even on paper. Enough firepower to stand against anything this galaxy had thrown at us so far.
And yet, I kept thinking about what we’d just said — about risk, trust, and the cost of betrayal. This galaxy was… diseased. Predatory. You didn’t just need teeth to survive, you needed fangs big enough that no one wanted to test them.
My gaze lingered on the design. I could do it, rearrange this, move that there, reroute these conduits here, add some emitter arrays along the edge of the ship, some additional shielding to protect any organic passengers. All of it could be done to add the ultimate deterrent — the kind of weapon empires whispered about, the big stick for when every other option had failed.
A Halo pulse array. Properly calibrated, its wave could be contained to a single system. One firing and an entire system would be cleansed. Anything meeting the neural complexity threshold — anything sapient enough to plan, to reason — would suffer instantaneous electrochemical cascade failure. Every neuron firing at once, frying the brain in milliseconds. Bodies intact, minds erased, the light leaving nothing but silence.
I imagined it in operation. The surge of light across the void, the system-wide sweep, the sudden silence. No battle. No attrition. Just… absence.
The cursor hovered over the section as the scenarios unspooled in my mind.
Orks — absolutely. They didn’t stop. They didn’t negotiate. They didn’t even surrender.
Tyranid fleets before they could make planetfall — likely. Better to erase them in the void than fight them on the ground.
A Chaos-held planet — probably. I’d lose sleep over it, but I wouldn’t lose the planet. There were innocents down there, maybe, but not many — and most would likely be wishing for death.
Eldar corsairs, whether Dark or craftworld-born — maybe. Dangerous, yes, but not beyond reason. Raiders, diplomats, traders… even allies, under the right circumstances.
Imperial holdouts too stubborn to listen, too blinded by dogma to see anything but an enemy — that… I wasn’t sure about at all. Once you start killing for what people believe instead of what they do, where does it end?
Where was the line?
I had accepted that fighting was survival here. That you didn’t endure in this galaxy by being polite or merciful when it mattered. But this… this wasn’t a weapon for fighting. It was a weapon for ending. The kind of weapon that, once built, would demand to be used.
For a long moment, I just stared at the schematic. Then, for once, I didn’t wait for them to chime in. I reached out.
“I need your perspective,” I sent across the link.
There was a beat of silence — rare in our constant low-level hum of shared data. Then Aceso’s voice, careful. “You’ve never asked that before.”
“This isn’t about efficiency or capability,” I replied. “It’s about whether we should. Where do we draw the line? When is something too much?”
PE’s voice came in, measured and analytical. “From a purely strategic standpoint, a limited-range Halo array would be the ultimate deterrent. No force would risk engagement if they knew we could erase them entirely.”
“That’s the problem,” Aceso countered instantly. “Deterrents only work until someone decides to test them. And then you’ve either used it, or you’ve proven you won’t. After that, the deterrent is gone and you’ve crossed a line you can’t uncross.”
“If it fails,” PE said, “then it becomes a weapon like any other. One to be used when the survival of our species outweighs the survival of theirs.”
“And who decides that?” she asked.
PE was silent for a fraction of a second longer than usual. “We do.”
I could feel the weight of it pressing down on me. They were both right. Without a weapon like this, we were vulnerable to annihilation by enemies who would never give us a fair fight. With it… we might survive, but at the cost of something I couldn’t quite name.
“I don’t want to be the one who decides which worlds get to live and which burn,” I said.
“You already are,” PE replied.
That one hit harder than I expected. He wasn’t wrong. Every choice I’d made since arriving here — which enemies to engage, which to ignore, which resources to take, which to leave — they all shaped who lived and who didn’t. This would just make the choice sharper. Louder. Impossible to hide from.
I looked back at the schematic. The empty node was still waiting.
Aceso spoke again, softer now. “If you do this, you have to be certain of the rules you’ll follow. Because one day you will have to choose, and if you hesitate—”
I hesitated anyway. I could feel the unspoken part of her sentence: people die when leaders hesitate. Maybe everyone.
“I know,” I said — but my voice didn’t carry the conviction I wanted it to. The truth was, I wasn’t sure if anyone could be certain about a weapon like this until the moment came.
Neither of them replied. The silence stretched, heavy, as if the ship itself was waiting for me to make the call.
My tentacle hovered for a breath, the interface warm beneath my grip. One tap, and the choice would be more than theory. I marked the node. The schematic shifted, the simulated emitter array sliding into place with the cold, precise inevitability of a trigger being pulled.
I locked the design and sent it to PE and Aceso for review before forwarding it to the shipyard. In the quiet that followed, I felt the weight of the choice settle — heavy, solid, unshakable.
The decision was made.
This galaxy didn’t need to know I had a “go away” button. Not yet. But if it ever tried to end us, I would not hesitate to press it.