When Vitaly walked into the d-bay, he found he wasn't the first to arrive.
Sebastian was occupied with a bed, lying still with a damp cloth over his eyes. The psychic backlash from the Patriarch's death had left him with a localized hemorrhage and a migraine that felt like a power-drill to the temple; he was under strict orders to rest.
Bellator and Truen were nearby, tending to lacerations on their limbs earned while hunting down the feral Purestrains. Fortunately, the wounds weren't deep enough to bypass their Larraman cells for long, though the sharp, dicinal tang of disinfectant gel clung to them like a second skin.
Varangis sat silently in the far corner, hunched over a tray. He was using a small blade to carve a peeled ploin fruit into intricate shapes. A few abstract, edible animals already sat on his plate.
Further down, a few of the uninjured Astartes had pushed several rolling tables together and were engaged in a spirited ga of cards—a popular pasti among the ship's mortal ratings.
But one person was missing from the main ward.
Vitaly scanned the room, eventually spotting a silhouette behind the frosted glass doors of the sterile lab.
Enkidu stood before a workbench crowded with diagnostic spirit-servos and scanners. He was ticulously transferring several samples of purplish, xenos flesh into containnt canisters. Low-temperature mists curled from the cryo-vats, giving the small lab an ethereal, ghost-like atmosphere.
Sensing Vitaly's gaze, Enkidu offered a calm nod. He finished sealing the canisters, locking the remains of the Patriarch behind several layers of reinforced plasteel. Vitaly noticed imdiately that Enkidu was wearing a new circlet—a silver wire band holding the white crystal resonator firmly against his brow.
"Who made that for you? It looks... regal."
"Androda, Paul's granddaughter." After a thorough decontamination cycle, Enkidu stepped out of the lab. "The lower decks beca too dangerous, so Paul brought her up for safety. I tried to find her a different post, but she was adamant about staying here."
"Of course she was. Staying with you is safe, prestigious, and she gets to boss the other servants around."
Thinking of the blonde, bright-eyed girl, Vitaly offered a knowing smirk. Before being remade into an Angel, he had been one of those slaves; he knew exactly how they thought. For a mortal, being the personal attendant to an Astartes was the equivalent of ascending to godhood.
"Enough talk. Give your arm; let's see the damage."
Enkidu gestured toward the operating table. Vitaly's arm had been struck by a Magus's psychic blast, twisting the limb at an unnatural angle. Even with Astartes resilience, if the bones knit incorrectly, it would cause permanent combat degradation.
Vitaly obeyed, hoisting his arm onto the table. The movent triggered a flare of white-hot agony, but he gritted his teeth and said nothing.
Under the brilliant glare of the shadowless surgical lamps, a high-grade anesthetic was pumped into his vein, bringing a cold, spreading numbness. Enkidu's scalpel parted the skin, revealing the mangled ss of muscle and bone beneath.
It was grisly. The ligants were shredded, held together by nothing but stubborn fibers. The hurus was fractured in multiple places, the jagged shards perilously close to the primary artery. Small, clotted hematomas were scattered throughout the tissue like dark stars.
"Next ti, don't be a hero. If you see a psyker, you fall back."
"It's just a broken arm. I've learned how they move now."
Enkidu gave a cold snort and pressed the blade down with unnecessary firmness.
Vitaly let out a sharp hiss of pain.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Vitaly groaned, his bravado vanishing. "I'll rember next ti, I swear. Just... please stop lecturing ."
"If you're still talking back, you clearly haven't learned enough," Enkidu said, rapping him on the forehead with a knuckle. Thump. "Psykers aren't bound by the laws of physics, Vitaly. One might only be able to light a candle with his mind, but another can stop ti, crack a continent, or snuff out a sun. Never underestimate them, because you never know what they're hiding."
"Besides," Enkidu added, his voice dropping an octave. "I won't be around forever to stitch you back together. You have to learn to survive on your own."
Vitaly caught the subtext. A cold spike of panic flared in his chest. His eyes went wide as he stared at Enkidu.
"What do you an? Are you leaving us?"
"Temporarily," Enkidu sighed. He began picking the loose bone fragnts out of the wound with tweezers before applying a grey composite paste to the fractures. "Telax is 'dissatisfied' with the structural damage to the deck. He's sending to The Velvet Abyss to reflect on my mistakes."
"He has the gall to be dissatisfied?!"
Thinking of the two monsters they had slain, Vitaly found it absurd. Those xenos would have slaughtered Telax's ship from the inside out. They had saved his vessel, and he had the nerve to be angry?
"Because of the explosions. This ship was pillaged; it has no spare parts, no supplies, and zero Tech-Priests. We can't dock at Imperial ports, and most black markets won't take our coin because the master of this ship is a branded heretic. To fix a hole in the hull, we either have to find a rogue Dark chanicus forge or go raid soone else."
Enkidu adjusted the bone and picked up a bionic ligant from a sterile dish.
"The day of reckoning is coming, Vitaly," Enkidu said quietly. "Adelina told the prothium reserves are low. We only have a few months of fuel left. If we don't find a way to resupply soon, this ship will beco a drifting tomb."
"That's impossible."
"It's inevitable. As long as our 'Lord' has a functioning brain, he'll have to launch a raid soon. Sooner or later, we'll have to pick up our blades and do the work of pirates."
"Pirates, then. I don't care. My farm overseer was a 'faithful' servant of the Throne, and he still whipped every day. I just want to know—are you truly leaving?"
Enkidu paused, then let out a helpless sigh.
"Only for a short while. I'm coming back."
"Good." Vitaly relaxed, leaning back to watch the scalpel dance through his flesh. "I thought you were going to stay on The Velvet Abyss. That place is cursed."
Even now, the mory of the flagship made Vitaly shiver. It was a place of madness. Compared to that, The Lash of Agony was a sanctuary—at least they didn't have floors made of human skin here. And the Warband Leader was there... the freak they had seen at the start, a thousand tis more depraved than Telax.
"Don't worry about that. If those freaks try anything, I'll handle them."
"Does Truen know you're going?"
"Of course. I've briefed them all. We have ti before the transport arrives... how about I cook a final al for the squad before I go?"
The words had barely left Enkidu's mouth before a drowsy Vitaly snapped into full alertness, his face contorted in sheer terror.
"Thank you, Enkidu, but that won't be necessary! We'll have Bellator cook! Truly! If you really want to cook, go do it on The Velvet Abyss! Let the Warband Leader taste your 'talents'!"
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