Chapter 368: Beneath Throne Mountain
As Luca kept talking, Kian started piecing the truth together.
The Emperor lived ten thousand years ago. There was no way a Freeblade alive today could have seen Him with his own eyes.
So "seen Him firsthand" meant something else. It came through a very particular channel.
Piloting a twelve-meter Knight suit required a specialized rig called a Throne Mechanicum.
The pilot sat within it, every nerve in his body wired directly into the throne.
Once the neural link completed, pilot and war machine became one, a single fighting entity.
And the Throne Mechanicum, being an extraordinarily refined neural interface, had a particular quirk: it recorded the data-streams of every pilot who'd ever sat in it.
Call it an electronic ghost if you liked. Call it a Machine Spirit. Either way, the current pilot would occasionally slip into visions, glimpses of his ancestors at the controls, ten thousand years gone.
And this particular Knight suit, Luca's own, had once carried its most illustrious pilot into the Emperor's Great Crusade, ten thousand years past.
That campaign belonged to the height of the Imperium's power, back before humanity had sunk into the decay and despair of the present age.
Back then the Imperium of Man stood like a man in the prime of his life, experience and strength both at their peak.
It surged out into the galaxy, scoured away every alien horror and daemon in its path, and reclaimed a million worlds, laying the foundation for everything that stood today.
What glory that must have been. The Master of Mankind, riding to war alongside His divine sons and countless mortal soldiers.
Ten thousand years ago, this very Knight suit's pilot had charged into battle at the Emperor's own side.
That memory had branded itself into the Throne Mechanicum like a thought-seal, passed down generation after generation, shaping thousands of pilots since.
Once Luca finished recounting his ancestor's glory, he drew a whistle from his belt and played a mourning song, a prayer for the hundred and fifty thousand souls who'd died in the city.
Kian turned to look at the Knight suit standing outside the walls.
A white-painted Cerastus-pattern, kept in immaculate condition, clearly through countless overhauls.
If Luca hadn't told him, nobody would ever have guessed this was a ten-thousand-year-old holy relic.
And yet this ancient war machine had ended up a Freeblade, its history and glory set aside.
Over the following days, Kian and Luca's column pressed on, making straight for Throne Mountain.
No enemies along the road. The group made good time.
From inside his Knight suit, Luca had a question for Kian.
"My Enginseer told me, when they found you, you were carrying a Rosette. My lord, are you an Inquisitor?"
By this point Kian had his power armour back on, freshly repaired by the Enginseers, and was back at full combat readiness.
"Not an Inquisitor. I work for one, though. Contract labor, you could call it. 'Void-deputy,' by my own reckoning."
"Something wrong, Lord Luca? Not a fan of Inquisitors as a profession?"
Secret police were unpopular everywhere, no matter what world you were on.
The Inquisitors of the Imperium had a long history of monstrous behavior: persecuting loyal men, slaughtering innocent civilians for no reason, burning a perfectly good administrator alive just because he'd missed a tax quota.
All told, Inquisitors didn't have the best reputation across the Imperium.
Luca said, "Count, if I travel with you, will I owe service to your Inquisitor?"
Kian shook his head.
"No need. What I have with him is a contract, nothing more. If he happens to die, or once I've served him a hundred years, the contract dissolves on its own."
"And honestly, while I say I work for him, really I'm just using his fleet to get out into the void and rack up experience. My actual goal is to own my own ship. See if I can make it as a Rogue Trader."
"That takes experience, so I stay in the Inquisitor's fleet, working for him and working for myself at the same time. I pick up plenty of side jobs along the way, building up my own strength."
"By the time I have a chance to leave his fleet, I'll already have my own warship. And an army to go with it."
Kian laid the whole plan out for Luca, and it caught his interest.
"So the Count is still in the startup phase. Attach yourself to an established firm, soak up the experience, and break off on your own once the timing's right?"
Kian laughed. "Exactly that. Ground floor opportunity, Lord Luca. Get in now, and you're holding founder's stock."
Privately, Kian figured he was the one who'd hit the jackpot. A ten-thousand-year-old holy relic, walking right into his portfolio.
In this godforsaken universe of Warhammer 40,000, the older a thing was, the deadlier it tended to be.
This Knight suit had ten thousand years behind it. Who knew how monstrous its Machine Spirit had grown in all that time.
Maybe one day that thing would pop off entirely and start hurling Warp daemons around for fun.
"In that case," Luca said, half joking and half serious, "if I'm putting my entire fortune into the Count's company, I'd better be holding at least half the shares."
Kian nodded immediately. "Of course, of course. We'll share in the glory together!"
A few more days passed. Half a month now since Kian had arrived on Glory. Fifteen days left before Trasolh's fleet reached orbit above the planet.
Luca's world tour was almost over. Tomorrow morning, the column would reach the seat of Glory's government, the base of Throne Mountain.
There, Luca would take a handful of soil, and formally become a Freeblade for good, free to fly out among the stars.
But the moment the column crossed into Throne Mountain's jurisdiction, a bad feeling settled over the whole group.
The sun rose the next day, and the column pushed forward.
By now Throne Mountain was visible in the distance, a peak rising over four thousand meters.
Legend said the first colonists had landed on this planet in their colony ships, and set down right on Throne Mountain.
A vessel dozens of kilometers long, punching into a planet's atmosphere, caught by gravity, never to fly again.
The hundreds of thousands of colonists aboard had used the beached ship as their foothold and built an iron fortress around it. That fortress became today's Throne Mountain.
The area around it was densely populated, no surprise for a planet's political and military center.
Luca's army hadn't gone far when they spotted a mass of people on the muddy road ahead.
Whole families, dragging their belongings, faces stricken with fear. Refugees.
And with good reason. Kian could see it now: several six-meter squire-suits were hunting them down.
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