Few trusted the Chaplains as much as Aster Lore.

 

They were, admittedly, an enigmatic bunch; looming shadows cast across the halls of Aurea Base, quiet promises of steadfast observance of the Faith in all, including one another; adjudicators and providers of corporal punishment for those who found themselves lacking in sacramental orders or similar practices. They maintained the Chapel, the Church proper, and the Tombs below - where resurrection occurred. 

 

Aster had been there, once; she was but a babe, then. She’d been a screaming, waylaid thing, preoccupied with memories that barely-existed, fleeting thoughts of a life that she’d lived that was over the minute Meraniel Gallo had cracked her cabin and shown her the Stars. They had been patient with her, and soft; she barely remembered the cut of a Chaplain’s whip, or the burn of their Brand, unless she had made it absolutely necessary. Even if the scars they’d given her still marred her skin, she was an Aritimean - scars and burns were to be expected on her form. 

 

She trusted them almost absolutely - and as such, when Father Meredita requested her presence in the armory’s adjoining Chapel, she went, with head bowed and hands clasped across her stomach. She was a strange thing, physically; spared the regimented gene-seeding of even the most poor worlds of the Imperium, she was gaunt and gangly, a storybook ghoul with a perpetually mussed head of hair, streaks and bangs hanging haphazardly over her eyes. She was almost able to vanish into the pilot’s coat she wore, which provided some level of camouflage; the world outside could not so easily hurt her if it could not see her. 

 

It’d only made sense that she’d have been asked to the Chapel; it was the space that she felt safest in, the only space within Aurea where she didn’t have to worry about cups of coffee or bowls of nutrient gruel being slung at her, the only shelter where she could let down her everlasting hypervigilance in the face of hands that wanted to punch her, grope her, destroy her. It was the role of an Aritimean to provide stress relief to other pilots - especially Thracian - as they requested it; her former role in the Times Before only meant that she got it threefold. 

 

Alas, the Chaplains forbade violence of any sort within their Sanctuaries - and as such, she trusted them. 

 

Her haunt concluded on her arrival, removing the coat from her shoulders and hanging it on a loose hook by the entryway. She kept her eyes low, foot over foot across newly-sullied carpet, lowering herself at a prayer bench between the two rows of pews. She spoke the First Hound’s Creed three times, crossed herself, and looked up - 

 

- to her horror, the Chapel had been stripped. The gold inlays that had adorned the paneling and borders of the room had been ripped out - seemingly with force, given the substantial chunks of structure missing alongside them. The Thracian crosses and elaborate candelabra that lined the walls around the Pieta had been removed, leaving only absence and outlines in their place. The altar, too, had been stripped of gold and cloth - leaving it as a barren block of scarred marble. 

 

Mercifully, the Pieta was still intact - and before it, Father Meredita stood. She was a gravitational well, pulling all of the focus from any space to herself, an imposing height and frame adorned with sacred vestments, one could’ve fathomed a Halo rung around her head with minimal usage of the imagination. She tilted her head toward Aster, who held back her horror at the recent reconstruction of the space, and murmured, “I am glad you have not yet forgotten your Faith, little one.” 

 

“Have many?” She asked, quietly. Meredita looked away; she stepped from the altar to a ravaged bank of candles, igniting the tip of a rod and lighting each in sequence. Aster rose from the bench and joined her, looking across them. “What has happened here, Father? I was unaware that-” 

 

“Hush.” Meredita growled, and Aster obliged; she inclined her head downward, seeking forgiveness. The Chaplain eyed her for a moment, before returning to her work. Within moments, the candles were lit, and she looked to Aster. “Your strong proclivity toward the Faith makes it hard for you to be anything but adherent; for others, it is merely a symptom of their allegiance toward the Imperium at large, something that waxes and wanes with the Empress’ decrees.” 

 

“And?” Aster blinked, unknowing. Meredita smiled at her, briefly, but Aster knew that smile; one you’d give to an especially dull child. 

 

“Our Empress has decided that secularism is our best path forward, that we should abandon the tenets that held us together for the last few decades in favor of…” She rolled her eyes. “Avoiding another Reformation War. The stripping of gilding from the Chapels is, I’d assume, one step of many in reconstructing the frontier outposts to best fit their new design.” She paused, and looked over her shoulder. “Has the Inquisitor come to speak to you, yet?” 

 

The Inquisitor hadn’t, but Her shadow was still felt; she’d arrived a few months after Meraniel’s departure, bringing with her a small detachment of pilots and soldiers from the Imperial Core, as well as their machines. A missive delivered on her arrival had claimed that she was simply assuring compliance with the Imperial Standard for facilities such as this one, but rumors from the various corners of Aurea spoke differently; that the pilots who’d ‘deserted’ or ‘ gone missing’ in the past few months following interviews with the Inquisitor had not necessarily done so on their own accord, and, really, hadn’t left base at all; they’d just shuffled off their mortal coils at the jaws of Her Hounds.

 

And what of Meraniel, herself? They’d celebrated her departure - Aurea’s finest, uplifted to a more proper place - and heard little beyond that. Aster’s hope held that she’d been inducted into the Ordo Pax, that one day she’d return with war stories and, perhaps, if she was very good, share a bed with her little sister to tell all about them - but rumors from the more interconnected pilots festered like shit in well-water. They claimed such fallacy that she’d run afoul of the Imperial High-Rank, that she’d ended up in the Kennels, among the degenerate masses for whom the Core’s most strict punishment was reserved. Some claimed to have photographs of Gethsemane on the front, adorned differently - but they found themselves at the ends of Aster’s knuckles before they could share. 

 

Still, the arrival of one of the Imperium’s adjudicators to her former home didn’t bode well for her fate. 

 

“She hasn’t.” Aster mumbled, quietly. “Why do you ask? I can defend myself-“ 

 

“Hush.” Meredita commanded, and Aster listened. “You are proficient, Aster, and you are among my favored Aritimeans, but you are still a fool. I’d not like to see you perjure yourself to someone who has full permission to end your life at her discretion, and her discretion alone. If she requests your presence, return to me immediately, so that I can ensure my presence - at the very least, make sure that you’re not enduring such barbarism alone.” The Father inclined her head, as if waiting for Aster’s response - and she nodded, slowly. 

 

“Yes, Father.” 

 

“Good girl.” She motioned to the prayer bench, and Aster returned; she bowed, pressing knees into the fabric below, and Meredita anointed her with incense and holy water as she finished her prayers. When the process concluded, she met Meredita’s eyes once again, and found her voice, albeit briefly. 

 

“Has the Inquisitor come to kill us, Father?”

 

Meredita seemed to search for a response, looking down at Aster, cupping her cheek in her right hand. Instead of immediately speaking, a sigh slipped through her lips, and she rolled her eyes. 

 

“I think not, but preparation will always be our best method of survival. Ensure that your blade remains ready, little one. It is not our duty to know when it will be needed; we simply must ensure that we are prepared.” 

 

“Yes, Father.” Aster whispered, and as she was dismissed, she departed; vanishing into her jacket once again.

 

-

 

We Suffer and We Suffer was rudimentary, but effective; in a world of precise tools, it was simple and efficient, a hammer to whatever nail might’ve stood in its way. It was boxy; a heavy chassis with stocky limbs that supported it; a monodirectional viewport on a head buried in an armored collar, armed with a tethered harpoon on its left arm and an automatic shotgun on its right. It was a brick shithouse, in the absence of more ornate terms to describe it. 

 

Getting used to it had been a growing pain all its own for Aster - in a past life, she’d been familiar with a machine that was much lighter, more nimble, able to maneuver in and around masses of hostiles to pick off the targets of highest threat at a moment’s notice. Doing such a thing in We Suffer, however, would be tantamount to suicide; she might as well have powered down and let the unwashed masses rip her vessel apart. 

 

She’d grown to love it, in its own way. 

 

The cabin of her machine was well adorned; an Aritimean statue, given to her by her sisters-in-worship, hung from the left side of the viewfinder. Below it, a smattering of button-activated prayer candles that she would light in times of prayer, before throwing herself unto the breach. To the right, a series of photographs and documentation; a ripped page from a prayer book given to her by Father Meredita, an ink drawing of the Pieta from one of the other pilots on base, and perhaps, most importantly, a photograph of Meraniel Gallo. 

 

It was official; a photocopy of the image attached to her piloting record, simple and professional. She was clad in her dress blacks, although Aster found them less-than-fitting; each memory of Meraniel saw her clad in a plugsuit, or nightdress, or a longcoat all her own. Her memories of the woman that she called ‘older sister’ were few, and hazy, but they were potent; Meraniel was dressed in glory and crowned with starlight. She was her progenitor; without Meraniel Gallo, there would be no Aster Lore. She had great affection toward her - not just for that reason, but for the aspirational truth that Gallo represented the most that a fanatic from Aurea Base could hope for - a chance to prove oneself, to achieve fame and recognition, to return to the Core successful. 

 

Unless the other rumors were true, of course. 

 

Her trance was broken; she’d nearly forgotten where she was, settled into the comfortable cabin of her vessel, eyes locked with the photograph to her right. She’d meant to start some simple diagnostics, a basic systems check - but her distractibility was always her most prominent flaw, and as such, she’d found herself lost in a dream - 

 

“Ahem. ” 

 

-and she wasn’t alone, either. She shifted her chair toward We Suffer’s entrance panel, eyes catching the unmistakable shape of an officer’s jacket and flatcap - the adornments of the Inquisitor. She swallowed, remembered Father Meredita’s words, and punched in the combination to grant the officer access to her rig - and slowly, the layers of metal separating them gave way. 

 

Inquisitor Xera would’ve been beautiful, had she taken into consideration any other career path. She was a tall, merciless woman with a strong posture and domineering expression - rumors she’d overheard from other pilots whispering around her had placed her as a former Handler, an Intelligence operator, or some local Politician before being brought into the folds of the Imperial’s elite peacekeeping operation. Her face was unmarred by scars; a length of straight blonde hair falling from either side of her cap, framing nicely her soft features and crystalline blue eyes. 

 

Something beyond them, though, killed any chance of her being called beautiful; an ephemeral darkness that persisted for only the first moment you met them, a brief warning that whatever persisted inside her skull was not-entirely-personable. Her expression never exceeded the absolute minimum placidity required for a given interaction; her handshakes both forced and forceful. 

 

And, of course, there were the Dogs. Identical in physical appearance, augmentation, plugsuit and auto-affixing muzzle, they sat on their haunches at either side of Xera, eyes following her glare, wherever it may’ve chosen to go. They were firm bodies, with shaven heads and focused eyes, titanium teeth glinting on the rare occasion that their mouths were visible. Other pilots at Aurea had called them twins, but Aster felt that she knew better; once you knew the exact shape of a broken person, it became much easier to repeat the process exactly as you’d done it the first time. 

 

Still, they were deeply unnerving. 

 

“Can I help you, Sir?” Aster blinked up at Xera, who looked upon her like she was what she was - filth and refuse and waste. 

 

“Your chaplains have been cagey about your location, little pilot.” She mused, motioning to the outside of We Suffer. Hesitantly, Meraniel stepped forward, onto the catwalk, while the Inquisitor continued. “Eager to protect you, for some reason. Forgive my language, but you don’t seem worth the effort; pretty things like you would be party favors for the rank and file back on the Core Worlds.” 

 

Aster blinked. “I don’t understand, I haven’t been in hiding.” 

 

“Oh, yes, I’m sure. You seem too stupid to try to hide on your own. Regardless of the why, you’ve delayed my audit significantly, so let’s get this handled so we can both go…about our lives.” Xera closed the admittedly-small gap between herself and Aster, the dogs rising up behind her - blocking off any chance of escape back into her rig. The Inquisitor turned her attention toward it, both dogs breaking the line of sight they’d kept with her and focusing instead on Aster, teeth bared beneath muzzles. She hummed, thoughtfully. “Quite a machine, you know. Many pilots would kill for the opportunity to operate something like this.” She ran her fingers along the metal railings of the external catwalk. “Do you remember your last one? Your file says this is your second.” 

 

“I…” Aster blinked. “No, I-I don’t. This is my first machine- HNF! ” 

 

A kick to the chest; Xera’s boot found home in her sternum, the steel-plated tips threatening to crack the bone with a single blow. She crumpled, and felt Xera’s boot place itself at the back of her neck, holding her head in place, the racking of a service arm above her unmistakable. She wondered, absently, if she’d make history as the first ‘disappearance’ not fed to the dogs - if Xera would tell a different tale about what she’d done to deserve a bullet in the head. 

 

“Filthy, impure, and a liar, too. I told the Chaplains they should’ve executed you on the spot, but they’re preoccupied with sentimentality. With the faithful mission. They’ve let you run roughshod around this base under the guise of idiocy, granted you a new rig and everything - and for what? Two times in the field, and what have you to show for it?” 

 

“Three downed rigs- HRK! ” She grunted, trying to push herself up at least slightly before Xera’s boot forced her right back down into the accumulated spit beneath her chin and cheek. “I’ve done n-nothing wrong!” 

 

“ Incorrect. You were born outside the Empress’ Grace, and regardless of any sacrament you’ve received since, that wrong cannot be so easily righted - no matter how many times they wash the innards of your skull with waves of Stardust. ” The words left Xera’s mouth with such fervor that one may’ve thought they caused her physical pain to say. “They cannot remove the seed of heresy from your heart. You are not of Imperial cloth, nor flesh, and you’ve been broken improperly - prone to relapse, I’d imagine. Removing you from this realm would simply be carrying out a task that the overseers of this facility have found themselves unable to do - for whatever reason.” 

 

Aster remained quiet; she kept her teeth locked, the shifting back-and-forth of Xera moving in place above her the only noise that filled the empty halls of the sacred Hangar . The Inquisitor sighed. 

 

“Well? Anything to say in your defense?” 

 

“What is there to say?” Aster laughed. “You have already ordained my fate, have you not? You’ll execute me now, as you have the others, and pass forth some rumor of my betrayal, or my desertion. They will forget about me, in time; but know, with every pilot you depose, you draw forth a path to your own destruction. Lady Thrace and the Sainted Hounds- HGGH! ” 

 

Xera’s boot crunched down on the back of her skull, now; her face was driven into the catwalk’s steel , and Xera’s boot twisted to grind her nose into it. Warm blood joined the gathered saliva beneath her jaw, and she tried to push back - but was discouraged entirely by the rattling laughter echoing from Xera’s mouth. 

 

“Gods.” She sighed. “You truly are one of them, aren’t you? I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose; zealotry flows like water in a hall of fanaticism such as this.” She lifted her boot - albeit slowly, so as to keep a firm reminder of Aster’s place beneath it - before she placed it just before her head. Aster forced her eyes upward, watching as the Inquisitor holstered her pistol, and the Dogs’ muzzles showed no signs of opening. Xera took a step forward, clutching Aster’s chin and hauling her to her knees, before releasing her. 

 

“Listen well, waste. Were there more pilots of competency remaining, you’d be in a shallow pit beyond the firing range with little more fanfare than the sound of a bullet leaving my sidearm. I don’t trust converts - didn’t in the old days, and I especially don’t now.” She grimaced, pushing a boot forth and beneath Aster’s chin, holding her in place on the tip of her foot, holding her stare in silence. In her eyes, there was something more uncertain, and Aster clung to it with rapidly-slipping fingers; she’d heard rumors from the others, and seen familiar faces less frequently, but she wasn’t sure of the volume of vacancy until this moment. The truth of the moment seemed to germinate for her; this was less a corrective effort, more a liquidation; temporarily filling holes in ranks until the base itself could be scuttled for its worth and retrofitted into another replica of a frontier operation back in the Core. 

 

Then, it broke, and the Inquisitor continued. “Understand; you are allowed to draw breath out of necessity alone. The moment you prove yourself to be more trouble than you’re worth, I will feed you to the Hounds.” Her lips curled into a sneer. “Am I understood?” 

 

“Yes, Sir.” Aster murmured, in response. Xera’s boot left her chin, and she dropped to the ground with a thud. The Inquisitor didn’t bother to look back; instead, she stepped away from We Suffer, leaving Aster alone in a growing puddle of saliva and blood - something she’d assuredly have to clean later, when the pity felt less pervasive in her bones. For the moment, she just let herself lay there; let the shame wash over her, until she’d had enough and peeled herself away from the metal, stumbling from the catwalk back to her lodgings.

 

Diagnostics could wait. All she wanted to do now was return home - moving deeper into Aurea Base, beyond the chapels and general barracks, the mess halls and armories, into the Tombs once again. She’d attempted life on the surface in her first few weeks as an ordained Pilot - but the violence against her grew so intense even in times of rest that Father Meredita had made a space for her, here; a room that may have once been a storage closet beneath the stairwell leading into the Chaplains’ domain, dressed minimally for a level of comfort that would ward off complaint. 

 

She entered, stripping out of her coat and hanging it behind the door, before sliding her plugsuit off - inch by inch, leaving it in a moist pile on the floor. Her undergarments joined it shortly after - and her body, too, crumpled alongside them into her bedroll. She rolled onto her back, eyes drawn skyward, to the constellation she’d drawn above; something simple and childlike, done with a white marker that Meraniel had left in one of her visits. 

 

A breath slipped her lips, once again, and she whispered a quiet prayer; for her sister to return, and bring with her a wave of vengeance unlike any other.

 

Then, she lapsed into fitful slumber.

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-before sitting up into a panic; the blaring of alarms and the sounding of bells, flashing lights shining beneath the door to her hovel. She cursed, dragging her clothing back on and grabbing for her bag as she forced herself out of the supply closet, into a storm of clattering boots and the rushing march of pilots overhead. She forced herself up the staircase with quickness, searching for any familiarity in the face of the soldiers - just as panicked as she was - but finding none of it. 

 

She huffed, and pushed onward toward the hangar, through the stripped chapel and emptied armories, onto the catwalk - and into a bastion of smoke and flame. They’d been hit, directly - but through the worsening heat and smog, she could see that We Suffer was still intact, somehow. She pushed through the bodies before her, jamming her keycode into its entry-panel, and thrusting herself into its command chair once again. She snapped its uplink cable into place, ran a quick diagnostic to determine its functionality (as close to perfect as she could wish for), and set its nuclear heart ablaze as it broke away from the support structure holding it high. 

 

We Suffer and We Suffer entered into the howling dark and rippling heat of an ongoing battle; ahead of her, chaos and fire and IFF tags already reading destroyed or disabled. The attacking force was a scattered mixture of disorganized units; recalibrated Dorus, retrofitted mining rigs, old-style hardsuits strapped with whatever weaponry they could find - launched at Aurea Base like a human shotgun, bent on destroying whatever they touched without fear of damage to themselves. 

It was violent, brutal, wasteful - and exceedingly effective, judging by the volume of machines they’d managed to disable in the early stages of the exchange. 

 

Aster tried to take up a position among the remnants of the Imperial regiment set on defending this place, but noted two things making such a task more difficult; firstly, two Imperial-designated tags of H-33 and H-55 - the Inquisitor’s dogs - fought beyond the entry to Aurea, pushing the rebel tide around them in a divergence, toward the lesser-prepared Doru operators. The second was the sheer amount of opposition rigs pushing toward them; stumbling over one another, armed to the teeth with whatever munitions they could find, ready to slaughter anything that stood in their way regardless of the cost to themselves. 

 

They’d spotted Aster, now, and so they focused; in response, she locked her jaw, and became one with We Suffer. 

 

Her shotgun belched bursts of flame and shrapnel, flechette and sabot, spending and replenishing magazines as quickly as she could, turning the tide of slapshod steel into a field of shrapnel. She’d bought the Doru time, but the masses were shifting their attention once again, and Aster hammered her communications link open, pushing a message through the formal Imperial Network Array. 

 

 

She received no response, so she continued fighting; the barrel of We Suffer ’s shotgun began to glow red from continuous exertion, and her compatriots were struggling to hold back the wave of scrap-rigs. She punched another message through.

 

 

A simple response - it said absolutely all it needed to.

 

 

Unparalleled fury filled Aster Lore’s chest as she watched H-33 and H-55 vanish off her IFF radar - offline, severed from the framework entirely. She considered trying to hold the base - to hold her home - but that fury continued to fester and metastasize.

It changed shape; a trumped-up desk-jockey who’d ordered the deaths of so many of her basemates would get to leave scot free while Aurea Base burnt to cinders?

 

That, she could not so easily accept. 

 

She broke rank; the shouts of other pilots in the area rang out through her communications array, but she couldn’t bother with them now. We Suffer broke into a sprint, pushing beyond the chokepoint at the mouth of Aurea and into the surrounding area - where her eyes caught the first of the two Hounds sprinting away. 

 

A magazine slammed into place, but she wasn’t angling to use that now - not with the bulk of the machine she operated. She put We Suffer’s shoulder forward, ramming heavy armor plating into the beast’s midsection, sending it off all fours and crashing into the ground. It managed to pull back to its feet just quickly enough to avoid a salvo of shotshell punching into its cabin - instead taking it into its side - before it pushed forward in a charge, teeth scraping aimlessly against Aster’s shoulder plating. She drove it downward once again, seeking a killshot - but the bulk of the second Hound crashed into her from behind, sending her rig stumbling. It scrambled over her - titanium claws scraping against armor - and clung pressurized jaws into her front plate, punching in without penetrating the cabin. 

 

For a brief moment, her ocular lens caught view of the frothing mutt in the opposing frame’s cabin, and Inquisitor Xera behind it - before it pulled back and slammed a paw into the front of Aster’s frame, denting it inward without breaching. Aster fought back, shoving her shotgun into the belly of the beast and loosing a point-blank round into it, forcing it away before dumping the rest of her magazine fruitlessly against the beast’s most-armored bits - serving only to daze it. She attempted a quick-swap to armor-piercing munitions, but H-33 leapt at her, claws and jaw free, digging into her machine’s collar. 

 

She faltered, giving H-55 an opening, priming jaws to punch through the dent it had already left. It charged - and Aster swung H-33’s still-latched form with all of her strength into its sibling, both rigs colliding with a concussive crash that sent the larger wolf stumbling while the other broke its hold, falling to the ground before her. Aster brought We Suffer’s boot down on the lesser wolf’s neck, and dumped an armor-piercing shell through both of its shoulder-joints, effectively crippling the rig. A warning on her radar stole her attention again - the other wolf in a dead charge, recovered from the collision with its sibling. 

 

Aster didn’t hesitate - she brought her weapon up, and put a single shell into its right shoulder, blowing the limb apart and sending it stumbling, trying to recover from a missing forelimb. H-33 struggled beneath her feet, and she dropped her shotgun barrel downward, lining up with its cabin and destroying the vessel’s head - and the pilot within. 

 

Her attention was drawn back to the hobbling beast before her, adjusting quickly to the absent front-leg, giving her just enough time to reload as it lunged at her once again - ducking to the right and slicing into We Suffer’s hull. Warnings flashed on screen, and she brought her knee up into the beast, but it had evaded - coming back around for another slash, sinking into We Suffer’s jointed knee. Aster let out a roar from within her cabin, and took a step back, hunching, weapon high, as H-55 found an opening and charged. It leapt, impressive for a machine of its size, and clamped those same pressurized jaws down on her left shoulder, severing coolant tubes and lubricant pipelines. Now, her screen lit up with timers, warnings, flashing lights - another blow like that, and she’d be food for the dog and little else.

 

She stumbled back, and H-55 stood away, head held high, proud. Plans fomented in her brain, and she ran - baiting the machine forward, causing it to do the same, teeth angled for her shotgun-laden arm. 

 

She shifted, slightly, to the left - catching the beast on the arm it had already pried half-off. It tried to sink teeth into her once again, tried to sever the last few remaining tubes that held the machine’s lifeblood - it took the bait. 

 

Hanging on by a thread, the harpoon-arm of We Suffer could barely turn properly, the barrel of its gun pressing against the underside of the Hound’s chin; directly below the cabin. Aster prayed for a miracle - and pulled the trigger, sending an explosively-propelled harpoon through the hound’s head, shattering the cabin in a belch of fire and shrapnel. Chunks of flesh and steel fell free as Aster dumped the machine’s remnants onto the body of its sibling - and took a step back, exhaling. 

 

Backlit by the fire of what was once Aurea Base, she watched the Imperium’s grip on this frontier world fade. A world they’d carved into nothingness - had pressed for every resource, human and otherwise - had a chance to go free, away from conflict. She imagined that there were pilots remaining somewhere on this world - Imperial or otherwise - but they’d find nothing left for them. 

 

Her eyes turned toward the sky, looking for the stars, the constellations, to guide her; instead, she found an empty, gray-smog expanse, as empty and hopeless as her chest felt. 

 

Without another thought or path forward, Aster Lore opened We Suffer’s cabin, letting the smog-filled air wash over her; a scent of burnt flesh and scarred metal and sulfur. She undid the top of her plugsuit, and slunk back into her jacket, reaching to the space next to her command chair - coming up moments later with her caliver. She slid the weapon into her lap, and considered her future. 

 

What she’d done was something that would, assuredly, cost her any position or hope within the Imperial ranks. Killing an Inquisitor - especially in an act of rage, regardless of its cause - was something that she wouldn’t ever live down. Returning to one of the various militias across the system would only be a more certain death sentence; if they even allowed her to cross their walls, they’d identify her as being compromised, and they’d destroy her entirely - through an attempt to rehabilitate her, or whatever gallows she found herself before. 

 

She primed the weapon, and considered what someone had told her, long ago, in her Life-Before-This-One; to place the weapon at a proper angle below the chin to ensure minimal pain and suffering. Surely, in this moment, it felt like the least painful way out. She slowly lifted it toward herself…

 

…and the moment it tapped against her chin, her communications array lit up with an incoming message. Her eyes narrowed - had Xera survived, somehow? Was the Inquisitor going to warn the gathered forces in earshot of what had happened here, so they could hunt any survivors to the ends of the world? 

 

She swallowed, and opened the link - and at the message therein, her eyes widened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her dream was given reason, her purpose renewed. Aster Lore was not meant to die on a world such as this one; she was meant to return home, to join in an effort to craft a new age to subsume the old. 

 

She fired We Suffer back up, its heart beating once again despite its wounds, and she ran diagnostics. While waiting for their results, she searched; a few taps on its panels routed a signal through Imperial systems, seeking all routes off world, any means to return home. 

 

As she worked, a smile grew across her face, and she grew giddy with excitement. They would be reunited soon enough. She’d sit at Meraniel’s side, and all would be as it was meant to be. 

 

Forevermore.