Archive of Our Own ^beta

The child is nine years old. Something is wrong with her, the maidservants charged with raising her say, the skinny too-pale child who never seems to blink, who neither laughs nor cries, nor makes much expression at all. They say she feels no emotion.

It’s not true. The words make their way to her, and a wrinkle creases her brow. She’s the planetary governor’s child, and could get them all terminated if she let slip to her father that the maids had spoken ill of her (or rather, their family). It wouldn’t help her though; the servants would get replaced by new servants, and they’d gossip just the same.

She sits at the edge of the platform at starport 773-1A. Salaal VII is a verdant jewel before her, bright jade-green oceans broken by emerald landforms. A feudal world, her instructor had classified it. In all her nine years, she’d never seen the surface. There was no need, her father had said. It was an unremarkable planet with primitive technologies and people. There was nothing of interest on the surface. And he’d told her not to interrupt his work with idle requests again.

Curiosity unsatisfied, she sits and watches the clouds form patterns over the dappled green. She sees her future unspool before her: governor after her father if she’s lucky. Married off to some cousin if she’s not, which, seeing as the governor’s wife is pregnant, seems the more likely option. A son, or even another daughter, would stand to inherit before a “bastard freak.” Her father’s words.

She watches a swirl of pale mist unfurl, licking at the coastline. Maybe she could slip an abortifacient into the governess’s tea. Maybe she could slip in a poison. Maybe she could catch her father in the net, pass the blame off to one of the half-dozen noble families with a grudge against hers. It’s idle daydreaming, nothing with intent, but she follows each thought to its logical conclusion, evaluating the methods by feasibility and ranking the projected outcomes by desirability and likelihood. It’s a game she plays with herself to fill the idle hours in between lessons.

In the highly improbable event that all her plans went off without a hitch, the planet would be hers. No one to stop her from descending to its surface, setting foot on the chlorophyllia fields, watching the tides crash against the high cliffs she’d only seen in picts. Salaal VII, as yet untouched by the industrialization of developed worlds, was a beautiful planet.

That? That’s nothing , something says, contemptuous, but not at her. Look beyond.

She does so. Beyond lies the cold black of space, dotted with stars.

Why settle for one planet when you could have thousands?

Why settle for lordship of a station when you could have the stars themselves?

She clutches the railing and stares up at those pinpoints of cold light, and wonders what secrets they hold. One planet below her for all of her nine years, and then for as long as the rest of her life lasts. She doesn’t even really know what’s on it. If it were a choice, of course she’d choose the thousands.

Of course , something echoes. You’re wasted here, on this station circling this backwater planet. Do you want it? Do you want the stars?

Yes , she thinks. She wants the stars.

***

When the heretics sweep through the upper levels of the station six months later, they leave no one alive save him. He hides in the vents too small for a grown human to fit in, and only reemerges when all below him is silent.

Something gloats in the back of his mind, and he ignores it, sick with an emotion he cannot name. He busies himself with survival, dresses in the garb of a servant boy, pawns off heirloom trinkets for ration bars and a battered laspistol. He entertains himself by practicing on the defaced busts of his ancestors that grace the halls of the manse, and the few scavengers who come to pick through the rubble. He’s as quick a study at this as he had been at his lessons.

When the militarum finally shows up to purge the cultists’ hideouts on the lower levels, he presents his father’s signet ring to the most important-looking man present (the commissar, the only rank he recognizes among the flak-armored troopers). He boards a voidship for the first time in his life.

He takes a last look at Salaal VII as the transport docks, and closes that chapter in his mind. He will never see the planet again.

***

The boy sits in a chapel, head lowered, listening to the plainsong rising around him. The sermon had been the same as ever: duty and loyalty to the Emperor, death to the enemies of Mankind, ad infinitum . He has learned the Imperial Creed by heart, though the drill abbot yet doubts his fervour. He will convince the drill abbot, the boy is sure. One year spent in the Schola Progenium has already taught him much.

He’s learned how to smile: a slash of bared teeth that never quite reaches his eyes. It’s not a friendly smile. It’s a warning, a challenge. It wins him no friends among the other boys, those that already jeer at him and call him voidborn for his white skin and unsettling gaze. Some of the more hateful boys gang up on him.

He takes the beatings as they come, but not passively. He jabs at pressure points and sinks his teeth into fingers until they meet bone, and once he jams a hidden needle under someone’s nail. He is punished, but he persists. For the most part now the other boys leave him alone, having decided that beating him is not worth the pain. He feels incongruously pleased at the small victory.

He observes his classmates. He observes his teachers. He learns everything he can, slots the information neatly into his memory, and molds his behavior into that of the model Schola Prefectus candidate.

He was promised the stars, once. It makes him shudder to remember it. Perhaps it was nothing more heretical than the internal dialogue of a bored and lonely child, but this is the one mystery he has no interest in picking apart, so he does not. He buries it and whispers prayers to the Emperor, and in time he thinks he can even believe them.

But his eyes still watch the transports take off from the dock, and track the glittering lights of the voidships in orbit.

Something watches the boy in turn, patient and amused.

***

He’s inducted into the Schola Prefectus, just as he planned. He’s also made a friend: a classmate a couple years his senior who has, for some reason, decided they are boon companions. Sometimes he finds it cloying, like having to deal with the attentions of an overeager hound, but he recognizes the value in having an ally, so he accustoms himself to this strange new situation.

He’s not sure why his friend was chosen for the Prefectus. Yes, the other boy is tall and strong, robustly built, and handsome; he will grow into the kind of man who looks good on the propaganda posters, a model Hero of the Imperium. The boy is certain of this, in the same way he’s certain he himself will never be. But his friend is soft. He hides it well under zeal and charisma, but he is hopelessly honest and will never be able to pull the trigger on one of his own.

He chides his friend, schools him in keeping a poker face, in dissembling, in ruthless practicality (his friend’s words, not his). He’s not sure why he does it, except as fair exchange for using the other boy as a bulwark against the classmates who’d marked him as a rival. If his only ally doesn’t survive the Schola, he’d have a much harder time of it, or so he tells himself. He doesn’t notice at first when his smile begins to soften. One day, his friend cracks a joke so stupid it startles a laugh out of him. He slowly learns the power of camaraderie.

He uses it, two years later, when he’s given the execution order. A glimpse of a rarely seen emotion on his face makes his friend believe his lie and turn away.

He shoots him in the back of the head. The life of a friend for a commissar’s cap. For the first time, he stops to wonder if the stars are worth it.

It will be , something that’s long laid dormant tells him, and his heart freezes in his chest.

And besides, it’s too late to back out now.

***

He graduates from cadet to commissar amidst a whirlwind of conspiracy. He’s made allies in the Commissariat, even a few friends, but the grudges spawned from the politicking of superior officers and even his time in the Schola Prefectus persist. He has a track record for “getting things done,” they tell him, so this operation is perfect for him.

He is assigned to the Elios 9th Penal Regiment. It’s hastily-assembled and poorly-trained, deployed on a mining planetoid with no real strategic value but enough paltry resources that the Administratum refuses to let it fall into the hands of the heretic force besieging it. No one expects the 9th to take it back, only to delay the cultists long enough for the real soldiers to finish up on the more glorious warfronts and provide reinforcement.

The convicts are not stupid. They know what their lives are worth: a few days’ worth of bought time, at best. After a year of tunnel warfare in the fume-choked mines, morale is nonexistent. The colonel, Throne damn him, has all but deserted, holed up in the control center with his handful of tacticians. The last three commissars assigned to the regiment died to friendly fire.

He wonders who, exactly, has sent him here to die, and vows to live long enough to make them regret it. And then he sets to work.

He wins the regiment over slowly, with deeds first, and then with words. He’s a lucky bastard , some troopers say. He is Emperor-blessed , say the more devout among them. It is his bullet that pierced the heretic psyker’s vile sorcery. It is the Emperor’s whisper that warned him of the ambush.

He laughs to himself and engineers more little miracles for the troops. It’s easy once he’s convinced the tacticians to report through him, worth even the flattery he’s forced to lay on the cowardly excuse for a colonel.

Any bad taste left on his tongue is washed away with the first victory of the entire campaign. He shares it with the troopers with a rousing and well-spun speech, and they cheer, even the most distrustful among them desperate for any reason to celebrate. He promises them more, and feels a shift in the mood of the regiment.

He makes allies among the convicts, with studied charm when he can, and insidious threats when he cannot. He rallies the men and tells them he’ll do everything he can to get them off this rock. Many believe him, and some do not. When it comes time to spend lives like bullets, he makes sure the dissenters are at the forefront. He shapes the regiment to his liking, feeds the men hopeful lies so he can order them to their deaths. He watches and waits for his chance.

When it comes, he pulls victory from certain death, and doesn’t think too hard about the lives sacrificed to achieve it. With the heretic commander assassinated, the cultists are left without their most powerful psyker, and the remaining rabble is easy to fend off. He directs the cleanup, and surprises the Administratum with one planetoid wrapped up in a neat little bow.

When the dropships come to collect the remains of the Elios 9th, barely eight hundred men remain of the three thousand that had been deployed. It’s eight hundred more than was projected, and he knows he’s won their loyalty forever.

The commissar honors the fallen with a somber speech before boarding the voidship with his regiment, and heads once again to the stars.

***

He stands at the balcony overlooking the chapel in the most magnificent vessel he’s ever set foot on, the Sword -class frigate Invictum Irabus . No more rattling troop transports for him, picking him up from war-torn hives and depositing him in stinking mud-slogged trenches. Nearly two decades dedicated to war, to building his career and reputation one battlefield at a time, and a word from the esteemed Rogue Trader had eclipsed it all. He can’t bring himself to feel grateful, but he’ll take what’s offered all the same.

The man next to him smiles just as coldly as he does. It’s like looking into a distorted mirror, and he knows immediately the two of them will never be friends. He sees that the Master of Whispers recognizes it as well. Which of them will prove to be the reflection is yet undetermined.

Voigtvir doesn’t keep him in suspense, at least. Perversely, he does feel grateful to the Master of Whispers for giving him this prime opportunity to establish himself among the crew. He’s always thrived where there’s a problem to be solved, a game to be played. One move at a time, he eliminates heretics, shepherds crewmembers to safety, sends warpspawn back from whence they came. When he sees Theodora’s fate, he is surprised, and yet not.

The stars themselves. And how else would he ever have them in his grasp?

If this is the new game, he would play it. No matter who the opponent may be, no matter that it is his very soul on the line. To do otherwise would go against his very nature.

He casts his gaze over his new subjects, takes in the fear, the uncertainty, the nervous whispers. But there is hope as well, and he would answer that hope. He makes a simple, silent vow: to win.

Silas von Valancius takes his throne.

Somewhere in the void between the stars, something laughs.