40k: Midnight Blade

Chapter 628 11. Past Events in Sovet (Part 3, Bad Guests Meet Bad Guests, 9k)

"We'll set off immediately." Cyrano van der Leff said decisively.

She sat at the edge of a long gray-white granite table, wearing a black ceremonial robe. There are many nobles in the empire who like to wear this style of clothes, but I'm afraid not many of them like black, Cyrano is one of them.

She is very thin, and her shoulders under the robe seem to pick up the soft cloth like two daggers. Her cheeks are deeply sunken, making her cheekbones look extremely sharp. Her eyes are the only part of her face that can be called human, but there are not many.

Those brown eyes are embedded in deep eye sockets, making her gaze look as if she has some kind of magic.

I don't like her looking at me like this.

I'm Rentar Sable, this stupid surname comes from my father, Ivanov Sable.

He is a bounty hunter, so Sable is actually his title. This is not a peaceful business, so even if he is a cautious person, he still can't spend his old age in peace.

I once wanted to inherit his legacy, take up a gun, and become a bounty hunter like him. However, after meeting Cyrano van der Leff, this plan was shelved indefinitely.

As for now, I am a follower of an inquisitor, or to use the official statement: I am one of the armed guards she can recruit freely, serving her until she dies.

Does this mean that I am close to her? Maybe, anyway--

"--Rental, what are you still doing here?"

Ah, the mistress has spoken.

I really wish I still have the ability to smile, so that I can express my opinions without speaking, but my facial nerves don't listen to my own commands.

This is a sequelae, just like the five criss-crossing scars on Cyrano's face. The difference is that I hope I can recover, but my mistress refuses to do so.

I don't understand what she is thinking. She can be a very beautiful woman as long as she is willing to remove her scars. This is true. After all, she is a descendant of the nobility. Even if she is terribly thin now, she is still a beauty with a little makeup.

For our work, if she is willing to do this, maybe the attitude of those nobles and governors will be better, and they will not let the guards put their hands on the guns as soon as they see us. Humans are like this, willing to pay special attention to those beautiful people.

I am different. Anyone can see that I am a dangerous person, especially since I am usually fully armed--

"--Renthal!"

Fuck, she started to roar, which is not a good thing.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Didn't you fucking hear me?" my mistress asked angrily.

"I heard it," I told her. "But I don't really want to do what you said."

A red beam of light passed my face and missed, only a little burning pain. It hit the wall behind me, which means that several people will have to work for a few more hours. I mourn for them.

As for the beam of light. It came from a gun in Cyrano's hand. She carries a lot of guns with her, and I am very annoyed by this. She's so accurate, and she never listens to people's words.

She'll miss her target as a warning to me, but not to others, like the captain we met in Cato Gravel last month.

That asshole bastard smuggled a shipload of civilians from who knows where to take them to some slave trader, and he just happened to run into us in the middle of the galaxy.

He wants to make excuses, and I want to hear them. Seriously, I'd like to know what kind of shit he can come up with in this situation, it would be helpful for my book.

What? Didn't I mention that? Yes, I'm planning to write a book called "The Complete Excuses", and I hope he can come up with a good one. That way I can make the book better, which will be helpful for my retirement plans.

But Cyrano didn't give him the chance.

She shot the captain in two with one shot, and in front of the children in the cage. Although he deserved to die, I was still upset.

"Reason?" my mistress asked coldly.

I sighed and she frowned.

She knew me well, and she knew that once I started sighing, it often meant that I was about to start a long speech.

And I also knew that she knew this, so every time I sighed, I was actually testing whether she could accept the long speech I was about to start. If she didn't say anything, then I would continue. If she showed more impatience, then I had to be careful.

And this time, she didn't say anything, just frowned slightly.

So I said: "Forgive me, my lord. But according to the regulations, shouldn't this matter be reported to the Master of the Seal first?"

"You have become smart, Rentar, you have learned to do things according to the rules and regulations." My mistress said sarcastically. "But please use your suddenly enlightened primitive brain to think carefully, how can we rush back to the Tribunal to report now?"

Damn

She cursed a little bit, didn't she? And she didn't use a single swear word, it was really an art of language. If she hadn't scolded me, I would have definitely learned this technique well.

Anyway, I used my suddenly enlightened primitive brain to control my mouth and vocal cords and made them make sounds.

"It's faster than rushing to the Misty Star Region now."

My mistress laughed, and to be honest, I would have preferred her to keep a straight face. Sure enough, I heard her sarcastic ridicule again.

"And then set off again to rush to the Obscure Star Territory? How much extra time will be wasted on the road? How will the situation develop by then?"

"Your Majesty, Renthal, you make me feel so ashamed sometimes. If others knew what an idiot my second-in-command was, they would laugh at me with the door open."

Go to hell.

I stormed off, leaving her dark office. As the door closed, I heard her coughing inside.

This means that her old injury is still bothering her. To be honest, judging from her enhanced self-healing ability after the surgery, this old injury can no longer be simply called a 'stubborn disease'.

And I actually know the truth, at least part of the truth.

I kept thinking about this when I was walking to the bridge. I hoped that my expression when I was thinking about something wouldn't look too scary, but I probably failed because the sailors passing me didn't dare to look up at me at all, as usual. Greet me the same way.

I understand, but I really want to tell them - even a Grax beast wearing the black uniform provided by the Inquisition would look ruthless.

I am by no means the inhumane executioner people imagine me to be, someone who would go on a killing spree and kill children along with their parents just for the slightest reason. I am not such a beast, and neither are the Inquisitors.

But people don't believe it, they would rather believe what they imagine.

No, maybe everyone is like this

I walked towards the captain. His name was Kepling. He was an experienced captain, a former navy, and had served for forty-one years. He is now sixty-seven years old and was assigned to work for us after he retired.

Of course, this is just an official statement, used to avoid some annoying political procedures. He himself is actually still serving, and he even has a whole team of officers under him, staying all over the main bridge.

I like him very much, and there are not many people like him left in the empire.

"Are we setting sail again?" Keplin asked in a humorous tone when he saw me coming.

He had a pipe in his mouth, and the aroma of the navy's special tobacco had reached my nose. To be honest, I'm not very fond of tobacco, but this stuff smells really good, and I immediately understood why the Guards hated the Navy.

If one party is wallowing in the mud all day long, eating bland energy creams and protein bars, while the other party has no worries about food and clothing, can take hot baths every day, and even smoke endless cigarettes.

I nodded to him.

"Okay, where are you going?" Kepling asked as he put out his pipe and adjusted his hat.

"The Obscurity, Banjo Galaxy." I said.

I guess my expression must have been very distressed when I spoke, otherwise Keplin wouldn't have looked at me and burst into laughter. The old man shook his head and patted my shoulder. He said nothing, but he said everything.

I gave him a gesture to tell him that I was actually in a good mood, and then turned around and left. I didn't want to compete with an old navy man who was more proficient in the so-called 'tactical gestures'.

It took me about half an hour to get back to my mistress's office door, and at least half of that time was wasted looking at the outside world in front of a certain porthole window.

There's a space station where we're docked called Black Diamond. It doesn't have a great name, but it's actually a nice place.

There are laws here that can restrain good people and ordinary people. There are also rules that tell the sons or daughters of certain bastards and bastards not to go too far.

There aren't many places like this left in the galaxy, and most of the time, something as simple as an axiom doesn't exist.

I hope there's justice where we're going.

As for justice, I wish it good luck.

I opened the door to Serrano van der Lev's office and saw my mistress slumped on the floor, growling. I closed the door, walked over and helped her up, feeling as light as nothing.

She was too thin to be considered healthy even for those guns hanging under her robes, so she wasn't healthy. Therefore, whenever an old injury flares up, she has to rely on medication to get through it.

I put her on a black sofa, then walked behind the desk, opened the combination lock, took out three pill bottles, and started filling her prescriptions.

These medicines are provided by the Jairzinho Guzman Medical Association. They are very effective, but the raw materials cannot be considered carefully. No matter how you look at them, these glowing pills are not what I know. 'Normal' medications.

But they were given by the Medical Association after all, and those people were the only good doctors I had ever seen.

I grabbed a handful of medicine and walked towards my mistress.

"Don't." She lay on the sofa, curled up in pain, and looked at me sweating profusely.

I ignored her pleas and just stood next to the sofa and stared at her coldly. After a few seconds, I forcefully opened her jaw and poured the medicine in.

She didn't want to take them because one of those pills would cause her to fall asleep, and that would mean she'd be dealing with that thing. In other words, she was afraid of that thing.

Unbelievable, right? A judge actually has something to be afraid of. But we are all human, and as human beings we have fears. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, I don’t consider myself a very smart person, but when it comes to facing fear, I’m very experienced.

At least she was much more experienced than the woman who had fallen asleep but still had a twisted face and tense muscles.

I held her hand, sat on the ground, took out a tube of anesthetic from my belt and injected myself, feeling sleepy.

It didn't take long for me to open my eyes, and once again I saw the blood-red sky over Sovet.

Orcs are attacking the world, or, to use another adjective, slaughtering it. Countless green-skinned monsters arrived here in junk-heap-like ships, and then set the place on fire.

They left no one behind, whether it was the powerful Dark Angels or the well-disciplined Doom Guards, they treated them all equally. They were born to fight, and they didn't care who they fought or why.

In their words, as long as there is a fight to be had, the so-called Brother Go and Brother Mao will be very happy about it.

But we - humans - are not happy about this.

I stepped on the hot mud and walked towards the depths of the pile of dead people.

This is a position, a corner of the burning jungle of Sovet. The Doom Guards were bleeding out here, and I don’t know the exact number because I have no right to know. I couldn't even come here without the permission of the Seal Holder.

Praise for his foresight, it would be great if 20% of the officials in the empire could work like him. I secretly hoped that this would happen, and I held the Aquila pendant on my belt as I chanted the Emperor's name.

I know where that thing is, I know it too well, after all, I've been here so many times. But finding it meant finding Serrano van der Lev, so I had to be prepared.

I held the Sky Eagle pendant in my left hand, and took off the emblem of the Tribunal on my chest with my right hand. I held it in my hand, then slowly closed my fingers together as if holding a short knife and walked towards the other end of the position.

I walked through three slopes and two trenches, then passed through the burning machine gun emplacement ignoring the flames, and met six people with frightened faces.

They knew nothing about my arrival. They just held the only weapons they had and stayed at the corner of this reverse slope, staring at the nightmare scene in the distance.

These six men are among the only remaining survivors of the Doom Guard, but I only know the name of one of them, his name is Hayid, a corporal.

I looked at him.

I wish he could see me so I could at least talk to this man, but I can't. He can't see me. This place is just a memory, and it will soon fade into nothingness.

I continued walking forward and passed through another flame. Finally, I found my goal.

I saw a thousand different faces, including anger, fear, lamentation and despair. The human faces were wailing on the knotted muscles, forming a huge monster about six meters high.

It was slaughtering a group of orcs, routing them all by itself. The extraordinary fighting ability is simply indescribable.

Damn, the fucking Emperor. Please look at me, please give me some mercy.

I took a deep breath - I can't help it, I really can't help it, please forgive me. No matter how many times I see it, I can never get used to it. I have never been a hard-hearted person. Even though I have been doing this for twelve years, I still can't get used to it.

Witnessing something like this was a complete torture for me, especially when I found out what it was.

Fortunately, my main target was not it, so I forced myself to turn around and walk towards the jungle on the side.

A few minutes later, I found two crashed airships, surrounded by Ork corpses. Some have melted, some have not, and all exude a pungent stench.

Their body odor is as harmful to humans as poisonous gas, but after being tempered by flames, it mutates into a green miasma visible to the naked eye.

I could smell this smell. Although I didn't understand why, I held my breath and walked towards the wreckage of the two huge machines. They are not shuttles or transport planes in the ordinary sense, but war machines that are a step above that.

Twenty years ago, five Inquisitors and their respective escorts rode in these two airships and tried to reach the ground at the last moment of the Battle of Sovet. They came here for a prophecy.

I don't know the specific content of the prophecy, that involves another confidential matter. But I know that a prophecy that is enough to send out five inquisitors is definitely not a trivial matter.

They successfully broke through the blockade of the Ork fleet, reached the surface, and began fighting these space monsters. I don't think they came here to fight the orcs, but they were held back and suffered heavy casualties.

The orcs who appeared on Sovet belonged to a so-called warlord born in the Hadiran system. Its power was once so powerful that it almost swallowed up the entire Hadiran.

The Empire launched a siege against it, but this cunning beast actually left Haldiran with his own army without hesitation, and began to run around in the Obscure Star Territory, bringing massacre wherever he went.

They are very powerful, and each individual individual is very terrifying in size, so I can completely understand the failure of the Inquisitors.

Even for them, this galaxy is still cruel.

Very cruel.

I stopped and stared at my mistress in silence. She was squatting in the middle of the burning wreckage, watching a young woman in uniform crawl out of the ruins covered in blood.

This woman looked like her, but without the five scars on her face. She held a bolter in her left hand and a nearly completely rusted short blade in her right hand. The thing stung my eyes, so I looked away and looked at my mistress.

She looked at me with foresight, and finally showed the expression I was familiar with, without any weakness.

She looked at me sternly and asked, "Why did you come in again?"

I shrugged.

"You will be executed for this."

In the crackling of the flames, she whispered to me, the young woman was still panting, but her voice sounded unusually calm.

"If the Master knew you knew all this."

I didn't tell her that the Master actually knew it from the beginning, but just smiled and shrugged again. My attitude disgusted her, and she began to stare at me, but it only lasted less than a few seconds.

Then, she actually chuckled, and the five scars piled up ugly on her face, making everything inhuman, except for the eyes.

"I will be executed with you." She said.

I hummed to show that I didn't care - did I really not care? I think you know the answer.

I walked over and held her left hand, and took her to wait there. Three minutes later, the young woman left the ruins covered in blood. She walked with a limp, and the white bones at the knee of her left foot were horrible.

She gave herself a medical injection half a minute ago, but it still couldn't completely get rid of the pain. We caught up with her, and Serrano's breathing began to change, from steady to rapid.

I squeezed her hand and signaled her to calm down, so she began to try. The woman suddenly fell to the ground and coughed up a mouthful of blood.

There were no tears in her brown eyes, but sadness was still with her. She stood up with all her strength, holding the gun and the rusty short blade and walked towards the battle position. At this time, that existence had killed all the orcs.

The thousand faces on it - or ten thousand, I didn't count - were still wailing, and every pair of eyes looked so desperate.

The woman walked towards it.

As for what happened next, it's easy to describe. She sealed it, using the short blade in her right hand and the power of the five scars to seal it into her body.

Yes, my mistress, Cyrano van der Leff, is a psychic, so she can do this. But what exactly did she seal? Is it a demon? If so, how terrible is it that it can make the Inquisition pay such a great sacrifice?

With these questions that I always have, I opened my eyes and woke up to see a black muzzle of a gun.

"Name?" my mistress asked seriously.

"Renthal Sable." I said. "Your poor servant."

She put down the muzzle of the gun, her wet face was calm, and the five scars were still shining.

What is it?

This question has been hidden in my heart for twelve years. At first, I thought it was a demon. But as I entered that memory more and more times, I couldn't help but change my mind.

I have seen many demons. Their supernatural stench and forms always hover in the depths of my mind. To me, they are many kinds of nightmares.

But that thing is not, I know it is not.

Have you heard of the word "heroic spirit"?

I think you should have heard of it. Heroic spirit - what a beautiful word, the priests of the state church often use it to describe the souls of those soldiers or devout people who died bravely in battle.

They would say that the hero's spirits float above people's heads, watching their every move. All good will be rewarded on the Feast of the Emperor's Ascension, and similarly, all evil will be judged on that day.

Believe it or not, but I don't believe it.

I have worked for the Inquisition for twelve years. I have seen enough corpses to fill an entire ship. I have handled thirty-six cases related to demons. I once had dinner with a cult leader, but I have not seen half a soul that fits their description.

So I think, either these hero's spirits are really fighting a very difficult battle far away from us as they say, or they don't exist at all.

I once believed that they didn't exist, but I abandoned this idea with my own hands after I saw the existence that my mistress sealed with her own life.

Heroic spirits exist, but they are not the same as we imagine, at least from what I have seen.

Now you know why I am afraid.

I thought - at least I thought - that the heroic spirits were heroes, but I was wrong. I hope I am right, even if it is just this damn time. But the facts tell me that I am wrong.

I stood up absent-mindedly and looked at my mistress. She put the gun back into her sleeve, wiped the sweat off her face, and looked up at me. She knew me so well that she could tell from just one look that I had some questions to ask.

I looked at her and she looked at me. For a while, I was sure that the tacit understanding that had been born between us for a long time was working, but it was a pity that it could not continue. I tore this tacit understanding apart with my own hands and threw the truth in her face.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Don't ask what you shouldn't ask." Serrano said sternly.

"Please, let me know." I begged her.

She raised her foot and kicked me hard, then pulled out her gun and started firing, kicking me out of her office.

At this time, the hull began to tremble. I held onto the wall, feeling that every part of my body was experiencing the pain of disassembly and reassembly, which meant that we were entering the subspace.

I began to hate Kaplin more than ever before - did you have to go in at this time? God damn it!

Many complicated pictures emerged in my mind, without any logic or rationality.

I saw corpses talking, and bloody faces floating above their heads and smiling at each other. Two hands with curled nails grabbed a steel brush and rubbed it hard on a woman's back, blood and flesh splashed, and she screamed with pleasure.

I felt that I was going to break, I couldn't bear these things. Just when my sanity was about to reach the critical point, a hand inside the office door saved me.

Cyrano van der Leff looked at me with pity, even though she was suffering the same torture.

"You didn't have to share this price with me." She murmured to me. "Why do you do this, Rentar?"

I wanted to call her an idiot. I also wanted to ask, can't you see why? I'm not your father.

But I didn't say it after all. Our trip was to find Corporal Haid who triggered the mark. He was assigned to work in the Veterans Association on Banjo-1. It shouldn't be difficult to find him, but I was worried that something might go wrong.

If something goes wrong, we'll all die.

Let's talk about it when we die. I thought to myself, and then held her hand. Skinny.

I smiled at her.

A few hours later, we left the warp, jumped out of Mandeville Point, and parked near the Banjo system.

Leaving the warp made me feel very excited, even energetic, as if I had taken a shot of the "war" potion. That thing can temporarily push a person's body functions to a certain limit, making people energetic.

It is said that the Astartes have the same potion, but their dosage is much larger and there will be no serious side effects. I really want to know how they feel when they leave the warp.

You see, I always have a lot of questions, one after another, one after another. This means I react quickly. I'm not bragging. I really react quickly. When a green light flashed outside the porthole closest to us, I looked over immediately.

I saw a Necron Shroud-class cruiser.

The muzzle of the thing was flashing.

"Fuck." I only had time to say this curse before pushing Cyrano into the door.

——

"What are you doing?!" Trazyn roared.

The object of his roar did not answer him. The one-eyed Necron just focused on smashing his right fist into the control panel of the cruiser, which had many runes on it to control various parts of the ship.

And Trazyn believed that it was no coincidence that Orikan hit the firing button without bias.

Any coincidence here is just the inevitable result of multiple calculations and reversing time. This idea was born in its mind. Then, Trazyn suddenly realized that similar things may have happened more than once.

How long has he spent here with Orikan? How much time had passed since this ship—his ship—was hijacked by Orikan in a crude trick?

It began to quickly check its memory units: starting from Sollemus, no problem. Taking a long detour to reach the Ghoul Stars and the Outer Black Region to confuse Orikan, no problem.

Being discovered by the War Hounds near Nuceria, it was discovered that it was the damned Orikan who anonymously sent them a provocative message, no problem.

Abandoning the ship, abandoning the body, using the transmission protocol to activate the backup body, setting off again, arriving at the Banjo System in the hazy star field of the human empire. On the way, it found traces of the Fallen Angel and was slightly distracted.

That's where the problem lies, at the moment it retrieved the Fallen Angel. Its sensors reported an error for a moment, and it thought it was a routine error, but now it seems that it was not, but the damned Orikan was reversing time.

Amid the dangerous hum of the arc generator, Trazyn pounced on his friend.

It used its iron hand to strangle the astrologer's neck, trying to suffocate it, so Orikan laughed.

"Don't try this time!" The astrologer shouted while laughing. "Wait for your crimes to be explained to the parliament, Trazyn!"

"The great overlord of the Solomus Dynasty used force without reason and declared war on the human empire without permission! The parliament is about to judge you for war crimes!"

Its words almost scared Trazyn into a cold sweat - if it could still sweat. It crossed half of the galaxy and came all the way here not to let this happen.

But what Orikan mentioned really made it very concerned. How could it be a war crime? What kind of war crime could be created by firing into the unmanned deep space?

Trazyn turned his head to look at the control console and saw a black shadow suddenly appearing on the dark green rune matrix. The distorted text marked it next to it: Human Empire, Gothic-class cruiser.

This line of text was printed impartially on the silver forehead of the ship's helmsman, creating a very absurd effect.

Trazyn's steady hands began to tremble, but Orikan was still laughing.

"You--" it roared. "--It's over!"

"It's not over yet!"

Trazin roared back with a louder volume than it, and the transmission protocol was immediately activated. A ray of its consciousness slipped into the helmsman's body and directly controlled him. At the same time, it raised its hand and hammered the acceleration rune hard.

The consequences of this move appeared in front of it and Orikan at a speed a hundred times faster than the arc generator gun's preheating.

This small shroud-class aircraft immediately began to move, leaving its place at a speed that completely exceeded that of any other race ship in the galaxy.

Orrican broke free from the restraints angrily, rushed forward and held down the helmsman's body operated by Trazin, trying to reverse the situation, but Trazin's body also rushed forward and pressed Orican on the console. .

"Don't even think about it," Trazin said through gritted teeth. “I’ve waited so hard for this opportunity, don’t even think about it!”

"Go ahead and talk to me nineteen centuries ago!" Orikan replied. "Only then will I listen to you, you shameless liar!"

It raised its hands to release the time spell and reverse the flow of time again. Trazin quickly swung the helmsman's left elbow and hit Orikan on the side of the head, causing it to stagger, and the spell preparation was interrupted.

But it wasn't over yet. The guards who had finally recovered from Orikan's shoddy hijacking agreement swarmed forward and pinned the Astrologer to the ground.

Trazin snatched away its staff and limbs, and punched it hard, destroying its sounder, and then breathlessly declared his victory.

"What will you do now? What will you do now?! Great Orikan, O astrologer! Seer!"

Trazin waved her arms at it, yelling and roaring. Its guards lowered their heads in tacit agreement and shut down their hearing systems.

"I sped up and left the place. Didn't you think of this solution when you turned back time so many times? It's so simple and so effective! You idiot, it takes time for any weapon to hit the target, and you didn't even press the aim button when you fired. Rune!"

The hull vibrated, and the lightning from the arc generator rushed out and struck into the distance. A few seconds later, the console reported in a cold voice: "Hit unknown target."

Trazin turned around sharply.

"What is an unknown target? Explain, explain." It asked in a trembling voice.

Orikan's remains swayed up and down in silent mockery, its voice reaching Trazin's ears through the communication runes.

"Do you really think I turned back time so many times just so you could blow up a tiny cruiser? You're so naive, Trazin."

The console said: "The Human Empire, Opal Dragon-class battleship, marked as the Blade of Reason."

Trazin's eyes darkened and he suddenly let out a loud cry.