A suit of battered Power Armor stood in the center of the hall. Even before its initial cleansing, it possessed enough presence to command the room's undivided attention.
"Congratulations," Sebastian said softly, clapping his hands.
"I feel the sa," Vitaly added, his envy tempered by genuine warmth. "I just wonder when I'll finally get my turn to wear the plate."
"An interesting configuration. It must have been glorious in its pri," Truen noted, his pale grey eyes scanning the surface of the ceramite for structural flaws.
"As expected of Boss Enkidu. Promoted already," Bellator said. A flicker of unavoidable lancholy clouded his blue eyes as he looked at the suit. "I suppose... we should all be calling you 'Lord' from now on?"
A heavy silence fell over the room. Enkidu felt the weight of their collective gaze pressing against his shoulders. He set down his crate of maintenance tools and looked at each of them in turn.
Truen. Sebastian. Bellator... dozens of nas flowed through his mind, accompanied by three years of shared blood, sweat, and survival.
"What nonsense are you babbling? Do you truly think that just because I have earned my plate, I am no longer your brother?"
"But..." Bellator stamred, the unease still clear in his expression. "Regardless of what we feel, we are still initiates. You are a true Astartes now."
You no longer belong to our rank. You belong to the world of Telax, Armand, and Virsuto.
The young recruit didn't finish the sentence, but the aning was clear. Enkidu pressed his lips together, feeling a pang of genuine sorrow.
Socially, everything had changed. A full Astartes could command an unarmored initiate like a slave, even ordering them to a certain death. In a warband where Power Armor was a scarce resource, only a few of them would ever likely be "gilded." The rest would either remain "consumables" for the rest of their short lives or perish in so fratricidal struggle for the next available suit.
It was exactly what he wanted to prevent, yet he lacked the words to fix the system.
He took a deep breath, pushing the complex emotions aside, and gestured to the floor between them.
"Bellator, tell . What is the distance between you and , right now?"
The youth was clearly caught off guard. He hesitated for several seconds before answering uncertainly. "The distance between an Astartes and an initiate?"
"Not that kind of distance. I an physically. How many ters stand between us, and how long would it take you to reach ?"
"Twenty-three ters. Less than a second." As the words left his mouth, the realization hit Bellator like a thunderbolt. His hesitation vanished, replaced by a surge of relief. "You an—"
"Exactly. The physical distance between us is the only distance that matters. Now, do you believe when I say I'm not about to turn into so high-and-mighty overseer?"
Bellator lunged forward, catching Enkidu in a fierce, crushing embrace. The others followed suit, their combined strength hoisting Enkidu into the air and tossing him toward the ceiling in a raucous celebration.
As the weightlessness took him, Enkidu finally let go of his worries and laughed with them.
"An excellent display of populism," Telax remarked cynically from the doorway, rapping his maintenance wrench against the armor's breastplate. "Brother Komnenos, our 'beloved' and 'valorous' Lord Varex has already finalized our next task. If you don't fix this junk and you die on the way, I'm the one who has to haul this scrap back."
"That won't happen. I'm just taking a mont to breathe; I'll begin the repairs shortly," Enkidu said lightly. He patted the arms of his brothers as they set him back down. "I'm planning a feast with my brothers tonight. Care to join us, ntor?"
"?" Telax let out a sharp, mocking bark. "Don't think I didn't see through that little speech of yours. And now you're inviting to dinner?"
"It was no offense intended. But I am your student; isn't it only natural for a student to host his teacher?"
"Hmph."
He began the ritual of maintenance: scouring the surface stains with prothium, checking the reactor in the power pack and the backup cells, cleansing and calibrating the augur arrays, sealing the micro-fractures in the plate with resin-bond, and finally applying the sacred oils.
Because the components were largely incompatible, the machine spirit humd with displeasure, spitting out a constant stream of error codes on his HUD.
Enkidu ignored them with practiced ease. This was a destitute warband. They had no Techmarines and no Priests of Mars. Getting a cobbled-together suit of Mark V "Heresy" plate to function at all was a minor miracle; he couldn't ask for perfection.
"How does it feel?"
"Better than I could have imagined. My strength and reflexes are amplified," Enkidu said, testing the range of motion. He felt several points of resistance. "However, the actuators in the right greave and the left abdominal plate are sticking, and the internal display is flickering. The machine spirit doesn't seem to like very much."
"Standard for a suit of that age," Telax said, gesturing for him to begin disengaging the locks. "The calibration of the fiber-bundle muscles takes ti. For now, 'functional' is all we can ask for."
"True enough."
He removed the helt and hung it on a nearby rack.
The aroma of roasting at drifted into the room. Enkidu turned to see Vitaly and Bellator hauling in a massive iron spit, upon which sat a Grox, roasted to a perfect, crackling bronze. Behind them, a steady stream of other dishes erged from the kitchen.
Looking at the food, Enkidu felt a rare flicker of non-combat-related lancholy.
In his previous life as a corporate drone in a culinary-obsessed nation, cooking had been his only hobby. After translocating to this universe, his first attempt at a al had resulted in a localized explosion. He hadn't given up; he had ticulously adjusted the ingredients, the tools, and the prothium lines, only to produce a spread that looked "creative" but successfully hospitalized half the squad.
Since then, he had been banned from the kitchen.
Tonight was no different. Vitaly and Bellator were the masters of the hearth; the others had spent the afternoon catching the main course in the grox-pens or prepping the vegetables in the corner.
"Boss! Get that armor off and co eat!"
Pius shook out a heavy cloth, draping it over the massive circular table in the hall, while Sebastian began placing gilded candelabras at the center.
"Coming."
Enkidu accelerated the removal of his plate. As he detached the left pauldron, his gaze lingered on the interior of the armor. There, etched in tiny, nearly worn-away Gothic script, was a motto:
Children of the Emperor! Death to His foes!
"Do not forget your objective, Brother Komnenos," Telax's voice said, sounding low in his ear.
"And what is that?"
"Resupply. Or to put it plainly: piracy."
"The location?"
"The Calixis Sector."
"I will be ready, Telax."
Enkidu gave his ntor a brief, neutral look. He set the final piece of his armor on the rack and strode toward the circular table.
As an armored Astartes, he was stepping into a more treacherous fate. But for tonight, he would simply enjoy the laughter of his brothers.
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