The Gray Shark, day three.
Chaplain Manu brought Utak to the ancient hall personally.
Three days was less than Nolan had expected. The Dracon who stood before the metal throne now bore a distant relationship to the figure who had looked down from the cruise ship's upper deck with polished disdain. The eyes were the most obvious change: too much in them, too visible, the expression of someone who had been alone with themselves for an extended period and had found the company intolerable.
Nolan rested his chin on one vibranium palm and regarded the Dracon without adjusting his expression.
"Three days," he said. "I had the Pale Nomad half-convinced to make a wager. Fortunately I declined. I would have lost."
Utak straightened, pulling something together with evident effort. His voice, when it came, had the particular quality of someone deploying charm as a structural support rather than a tool.
"Dear sir, there was surely no need for such extreme measures to secure my cooperation. If entertainment was the objective, I know several Wytches who make no distinction between species. Considerably more comfortable for all parties than..."
Manu's boot connected with Utak's midsection and put him on the floor.
The Chaplain looked down at him.
"You will address the Primarch correctly, Xeno, or I will return you to the room. See if you enjoy day four more than day three."
The word landed with a specific weight.
Utak rolled onto his back and looked up at the throne. Then he looked more carefully at the figure on it: the scale of the vibranium armor, the purple glow of the Ten Rings in their resting formation, the quality of presence that a Primarch produced in an enclosed space at close range.
The Dracon's composure, already compromised, lost the remainder of its structural integrity.
"Lord Primarch." He was sitting up now, trying to find a position that communicated something other than what the floor communicated. "You... you are a..."
"You know what I am," Nolan said. "Good. That saves time."
He leaned slightly forward.
"I am looking for something called the Void Stone. An ancient relic your Kabal took. You are going to tell me where it is."
Utak's response was not a considered reply. It was the sound a creature makes when the calculation of its options resolves very quickly and very clearly.
"Lord Primarch." He was fully upright now, kneeling on the metal floor, his thin hands pressed together. "I will tell you everything. I will tell you more than you ask. Please do not kill me."
"Then speak."
"I know where it is. I handled its transfer personally. I delivered the Void Stone to Archon Golmor of the Pierced Rose." He looked up at Nolan's face and held it, the look of someone trying to read whether truth was working. "Golmor is in Karmor, in Commorragh. I know where the nearest Webway gate is. I can take you directly to him. Your enemies are mine: if Golmor is removed, my path to advancement in the city becomes considerably clearer. You would be doing me a service as much as demanding one."
He had recovered enough to notice how that sounded, and added: "I say this only in the interest of full honesty, Lord Primarch."
Nolan looked at him for a moment.
The desire in the Dracon's face was not entirely concealed: the want to be back in Commorragh, to return to the environment that Dark Eldar were built for, was stronger than the fear of death in the way that thirst was stronger than the fear of water. The hunger for sensation that the silent room had stripped from him was a need, not a preference, and the offer of return to a city built entirely around providing that need was not something a Dark Eldar's psychology was designed to decline.
He was telling the truth. Not all of it, possibly, but the useful parts.
"Your life is preserved for the moment, Utak. If I find later that any of this was fabricated..."
He let the sentence carry its own conclusion.
Manu pulled the Dracon to his feet and directed him out of the hall.
Nolan sat back and let the hall be quiet for a moment.
"Commorragh," he said, to no one in particular. "I hope this goes well."
He added, after a pause: "The Emperor's blessing."
The assembly deck, some time later.
The force was gathering in loose formation, checking weapons and supplies with the particular focus of Astartes who have been told the parameters of what is ahead. Tyberos stood at one end, reviewing the hunting team's equipment loadout with the attention of a man who expects to find something inadequate and is prepared to say so directly.
Kahurangi crossed the deck and stopped beside Nolan. He bowed slightly, then stepped close enough to keep his voice below the general noise.
"My Lord Primarch. The boy Jonah showed no detectable psychic ability in standard assessment. However." He paused in the way of someone giving weight to what follows. "His behavioral patterns during the assessment deviated from what our instruments have a framework for. It may be that the assessment tools are insufficient, rather than that nothing is present."
"And?"
"My prophetic reading indicates that the boy must accompany us into Commorragh. If he does not, we will not recover the Void Stone. Beyond that, we will encounter dangers whose nature I cannot specify." He met Nolan's eyes directly. "I give you this with the honor of my rank and the standing of the Carcharodons Chapter behind it. I am certain."
Nolan looked at him for a measured moment.
Taking a mortal child into Commorragh, the labyrinthine Webway city of the Dark Eldar, on a raid to lift an artifact from an Archon's possession: this was not a risk profile that resolved comfortably from any direction.
"You are certain," Nolan said.
"I am certain."
The silence held for a few more seconds.
"Find the mother and son. Equip them with everything a mortal can carry and wear. Then you and Chaplain Manu have one responsibility from the moment we enter that city: their lives. Both of them. With everything you have." He held the Chief Librarian's gaze. "Is that understood?"
"Completely, my Lord Primarch."
Kahurangi turned and moved off the deck without hesitation.
Nolan watched him go, then turned his attention back to the assembly.
The raid composition had formed itself naturally around the constraints. Commorragh could not be approached with the full Chapter: the noise of that scale of operation would bring every Haemonculus and Kabal warrior in the city down on them before they reached the first interior district. A surgical entry, a specific target, a fast extraction.
Nolan and Tyberos leading. The hunting team under Manu. Kahurangi and his brother. Five Lamenters in Terminator plate. Utak as guide. Ilaya and Jonah.
Tyberos had issued a separate order, quietly, to the rest of the Carcharodons Chapter: full standby, immediate deployment authorization, one objective in the event that things did not go as planned. Nolan's safety.
Every Astartes in the Carcharodons Astra would go to Commorragh and die there if that was what it required. The Chapter Master had not framed it as a question.
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