(A/N: Hey everyone, a bit of a shorter chapter for today. Ive got one of my Nieces over for the day, and i start my 3rd semester of college tomorrow, so things are a bit crazy! But i promise to make it up next chapter as the battle for Vulkan begins!!!!)
=== Maximus ===
The strategium of the battle barge's hololithic star charts drifted lazily in the air like ghostly constellations when the doors suddenly slammed open. A Mandalorian burst inside as if chased by death itself, sprinting straight past the guards before dropping hard to one knee in front of Raxor, breath ragged and visor cracked from his survival with the sith, holding up a glowing datapad with shaking hands as though it were a sacred relic.
"Lord Raxor," he gasped, voice echoing in the chamber, "I've decoded the encrypted messages from Palpatine's underground office. I've found him. Vulkan. His true location." Every voice in the room fell silent, even the machine-spirits of the hololiths seeming to dim as Raxor stepped forward and took the pad, his massive gauntlet dwarfing it as he read, and when his eyes finished scanning the first lines something in him changed, like a forge flaring from embers into roaring fire.
"Lah'mu," he said quietly. "Palpatine moved him. The Kaminoans have him. They're… experimenting on him." Without another word he turned and barked orders toward the bridge, his voice cutting through the chamber like a thunderclap. "All ships, change course immediately. New destination: Lah'mu. Full burn. I want us in orbit yesterday!"
Maximus took the datapad when Raxor thrust it into his hand, and as the Ultramarine read the encrypted correspondence, now brutally laid bare between Chancellor Palpatine and Lama Su, the air seemed to grow colder with every line, with clinical notes about Vulkan's regenerative abilities, his apparent immortality, and the Kaminoans' eagerness to dissect the very nature of a Primarch's divinity, until Maximus slowly lowered the device, jaw set so tight it could have cracked ceramite. "They've been carving him apart," Sebastian snarled.
"Running tests on a son of the Emperor like some lab animal." His storm-shield flared faintly, reacting to his rising fury. "This is heresy beyond measure. This is a crime that can only be answered with annihilation! Give the order, Maximus, Exterminatus! Burn Lah'mu from the stars and let the Kaminoans' screams be a warning to every other xenos who dares lay hands on a Primarch."
Maximus lifted a hand, forcing the room to still. "You're not wrong about what they've done," he said, his voice iron-steady even as the words themselves carried his outrage. "but we don't know the full scope of what's happening on Lah'mu, and we won't until we see it ourselves." Sebastian rounded on him, eyes blazing. "They're torturing a Primarch, brother! What more do you need to see?" Maximus didn't flinch. "I need to know where Vulkan is, what condition he's in, and who else is involved before we start erasing planets from the map." He turned to Raxor then, the Salamander's face a mask of barely restrained grief and fury, and asked quietly, "What do you think, brother?"
Raxor stared down at the datapad again, as though the words might change if he looked hard enough, and when he finally spoke his voice was thick, heavy with something far more personal than simple anger. "They took him," he said. "My Primarch. They put him on a slab and pulled him apart to see how he works, how he heals, how he endures." His fists clenched until servos whined, crushing the pad. "For that alone, the Kaminoans have signed their own death warrants. I won't argue that." He looked up, eyes burning. "We go down there, we find him, we get him out. Then, if Lah'mu has to die for what they did… we make that call with his fate no longer hanging in the balance."
For a long moment no one spoke, the only sound the distant thrum of the barge's engines as it began its violent turn through the void, until Maximus gave a single, sharp nod. "Agreed." Sebastian scowled, but even he couldn't argue with that logic when Vulkan himself was on the line. Maximus turned to the gathered commanders. "Prepare for a full ground assault and extraction. I want drop plans, strike routes, and contingency after contingency. We are not losing Vulkan a second time." Around him, officers snapped to attention, orders already being relayed through the ship as the Imperium's war machine shifted its full, terrible weight toward Lah'mu, and somewhere deep within the battle barge, the guns and launch bays began to wake, eager for the storm that was coming.
=== Nira ===
Nira sat alone in the dim, softly humming quiet of her office, the vast battle barge sliding through hyperspace beyond the reinforced viewport, stacks of glowing reports around her desk, detailing casualty counts, logistical projections, encrypted transmissions from Imperial cells across a hundred systems, and the endless red lines of loss and escalation that never seemed to end.
She scrolled through them, eyes cold and distant, trying to bury herself in numbers and probabilities rather than the images still burning behind her eyelids of broken Astartes, of Sanguinius shielding her from the surprise attack from the Sith. The air shifted without a sound, the way it always did when something impossibly powerful entered the room without bothering to announce itself, and when she finally glanced up, Sanguinius was there, seated in one of the chairs across from her desk, his wings folded in close.
She didn't acknowledge him, not even with a flicker of her eyes, simply continued reading and signing off on data slates, her voice silent but her posture rigid, a quiet wall of hurt and frustration between them. Sanguinius watched her for several long seconds before finally breaking the stillness. "They found him," he said softly. "Vulkan. His true location. We're on our way to him now." Nira didn't look up. "I know," she replied, her tone clipped and distant. "The entire fleet knows. If that's all you came here to tell me, you can leave." He hesitated, then leaned forward slightly. "That's not why I came."
Silence stretched between them again, thick and uncomfortable, until he finally spoke, his voice carrying something fragile beneath its divine resonance. "I'm sorry for how I spoke to you earlier." Nira's hand paused on a data slate for half a heartbeat, but she still didn't turn to face him. Sanguinius exhaled slowly. "Vulkan is my brother. One of the few who still live. I haven't seen him in over ten thousand years, and now I find out he's been… imprisoned, dissected, studied like a thing. Nothing can come before finding him, Nira. Nothing. He's not just family. He's vital to the Imperium, to the Emperor's design, to everything we're trying to build in this galaxy." His eyes softened, and he repeated the words as if they might somehow explain everything. "He is my brother."
That was when Nira finally spoke again, her voice barely more than a whisper, yet sharp enough to cut. "And i thought I was your daughter." She rose from her chair, the reports dissolving into motes of light around her as she turned and walked toward the door, her back straight, refusing to let him see the crack that had opened in her. "Enjoy your reunion," she said quietly, and then she was gone, the door sliding shut behind her with a soft, final hiss.
Sanguinius remained seated, staring at the empty space where she had been, wings drooping slightly. He rubbed a hand across his face and let out a long, tired sigh, half bitter, half resigned. "Across ten thousand years and two universes," he muttered to no one at all, "Women are so complicated."
===
Nira walked the long, cathedral-like decks of the battle barge with no real destination in mind, the polished black metal beneath her boots reflecting the dim glow of overhead lumen-strips and the distant shimmer of the void beyond the armored viewports, while her datapad scrolled endlessly in her hand.
She wasn't really reading any of it, not anymore, because her thoughts kept circling back to the office she had just left and the look in Sanguinius's eyes when she had turned away from him, that mix of sorrow, guilt, and exasperation. She slowed without realizing it, then came to a full stop near one of the massive observation windows, stars streaking past the ship. She finally let the datapad fall silent in her hands as she stared at her own reflection in the glass, pale and tense and far more tired than she wanted to admit.
A long breath left her, and with it some of the anger that had been coiled in her chest since before the Senate attack. She replayed his words, the way he had spoken of Vulkan not just as a Primarch but as a brother he had mourned for ten thousand years, and suddenly her own sharp reply felt smaller, more petty.
He had been wrong to snap at her, she knew that, but he had also come to her, unprompted, and apologized, something most beings of his stature never would have bothered to do, and the more she thought about it, the more she realized she had lashed out not because he had hurt her, but because she had been afraid of what his priorities meant for her place in his life. Slowly, painfully, the truth settled in, and she felt a knot loosen in her chest as she accepted that this time, she was the one who owed an apology.
"I'm being an idiot," she murmured to the empty deck, setting her datapad down on the narrow ledge beneath the viewport as she turned back toward the corridor that would lead to her office, already forming the words in her mind.
The stars outside the window that stretched into blazing lines of light snapped back into focus as the battle barge tore itself out of hyperspace, and Lah'mu filled the viewport in a sudden wash of blue-white clouds and swirling storms, its oceans and green grasslands illuminated by the distant sun. A heartbeat later the ship erupted into motion, deep alarms howling through the decks as red warning lights flared to life, and the calm, humming quiet was replaced by the roar of engines, the barked orders of officers, and the unmistakable vibration of a warship preparing for battle. Nira closed her eyes for a brief moment, letting the regret sit heavy in her chest, before opening them again with renewed resolve.
"After," she whispered, picking up her datapad and turning back toward the heart of the ship as the first Thunderhawks began to deploy. "I'll fix this after."
===
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