65: Chapter 65 The Cold Shoulder to the Blue World

"This doesn't seem like the Warp?" she murmured in her heart, her fingertips unconsciously tightening around the prayer beads in her palm.

There was no cacophony of screams, weeping, curses, or blasphemous words here.

Even the slightest psychic touch there would make one feel the agony of their soul being torn apart.

Just then, she caught a few clear whispers that pierced through layers of white noise and struck her perception.

"...Throw them off..."

An irritable voice, like the roar of an engine, carrying a hint of impatience.

Before Vera could think further, another name reached her ears: "...Elena..."

Those three syllables were like a thunderclap, making her heart skip a beat.

She instinctively focused her mind, trying to catch more information, but the next two whispers made her go cold all over.

"...Dead..."

"...Doesn't remember..."

Immediately after, a blur of sound followed, like countless thoughts intersecting and colliding in a very short time, finally reaching a consensus so quickly that she couldn't catch the logic at all, or even distinguish if it was a voice or pure conscious resonance.

Then, everything returned to tranquility.

A door gently closed in front of her, excluding her from this world.

It refused her access; it felt that she should not be connected there yet.

Vera snapped her eyes open, her pale gray pupils momentarily blank.

Those whispers echoed repeatedly in her mind, refusing to fade.

Then, she instinctively turned her head to look at Elena—the woman sitting silently in the corner, her right hand resting on the melta cannon, her gaze fixed outside the firing slit.

"Elena"... "Dead"... "Doesn't remember"...

What did those words mean?

She opened her mouth, wanting to ask.

But Elena was looking out the firing slit, her expression as calm as someone who wasn't alive.

Vera hesitated.

She couldn't say why, but there was a vague fear, like an underwater current, dragging her down.

She felt that if she just spoke, if she asked that question, Elena would shatter, as if she had never existed.

Vera swallowed the words at the tip of her tongue.

But she didn't look away, quietly staring at her two sisters.

Elena remained silent, staring at the world outside the firing slit.

Her right hand holding the melta cannon was no longer as tense as before; her fingers rested lightly on the grip, like someone accustomed to the weight who had found a suitable way to relax.

Her gaze fell upon the running children, a very faint trace of daze flickering in her eyes.

Ever since arriving on the surface of this world, such images always surfaced in her mind: the neural interface at the back of her head was connected to a battered Strike Cruiser; the sky was filled with the fires of explosions, the roar of macro-cannons echoed in her ears; and there was what seemed to be the last command she issued: "Weapon systems online, secondary batteries calibrated, target locked—Ork fleet vanguard! Engage!"

After that, she saw a massive Ork battleship and saw herself, along with this crippled Strike Cruiser, firing lances in a final death charge toward it.

At that moment, her heart was full of regret; she had failed to intercept those rampaging engines of war in orbit. Despite giving it her all, she still hadn't been able to protect that world.

The images in the command bridge gradually blurred; she vaguely remembered there was also a mute Navigator, and a silenced machine spirit that didn't belong to the cruiser? They had fought side by side, but their names and faces, no matter how she tried to recall, remained a blank.

What was the name of the world she had desperately protected? Was it IV? Or something else? She couldn't remember. She only knew that an Ork invasion of such scale had never left a planet surviving in the Imperial records; that planet had likely long since perished in the fires of war.

Elena looked down at her right hand; this hand had once gripped a melta cannon, but now a slight tremor appeared.

She gently touched the back of her head; it was smooth and flat there, with no trace of a neural interface plug.

She remained silent, continuing to watch the world outside through the firing slit: young people singing, old people basking in the sun—peaceful and serene.

Gluck scanned these three Adepta Sororitass.

Three women, three kinds of silence.

Sister Superior Ludmilla gripped the Aquila on her chest, her knuckles turning white, like a drowning person clutching the last piece of driftwood.

Vera curled up in the corner, her eyes rimmed with red; she had just realized there were truths she was not yet qualified to know, and everyone seemed to be carefully hiding secrets.

Elena gazed out the window, her expression as stiff as someone who had died once. It seemed her awakening memories were creating a cognitive conflict?

He didn't speak.

He only needed to watch quietly, waiting for Elena's return; she had given her life for Vulcan-IV.

Just then, he sensed a stir in the machine spirit network. Just moments ago, the Indomitable Truth had, within the machine spirit network, given the Land Raider—which was currently instigating #0042 to "throw the sisters off the vehicle and teach them a lesson"—a beating.

The machine spirit of the Archmagos's melta cannon, which had named itself Lucius, called out from the side: "Stop fighting!" while simultaneously sneaking up and giving the Land Raider a heavy blow.

"Pfft," Gluck chuckled.

This was good. In this shitty universe, only Vulcan-IV could still bring smiles to the faces of machine spirits and people.

Outside the vehicle window, Icarus's conveyor belt bus continued to extend eastward. The red roofs became denser, the singing young people more numerous, and the "melody" of the machines that didn't need prayer played louder and louder.

Sister Superior Ludmilla's prosthetic limb began to vibrate again.

It was keeping pace with the singing of the people outside, the low murmur of this metal river, the pulse of this world.

The same beat, the same rise and fall.

In that instant, she suddenly thought of a possibility, one she didn't dare speak aloud, or even dare to continue thinking about.

Perhaps... the Emperor had guided them here not to correct their faith.

But to let them learn.

The light inside the vehicle flickered.

It was #0042 greeting her.

Vera felt it.

The corner of her mouth twitched; the Psyker's perception heard a clear voice this time.

She replied, "Hello, #0042."

The vehicle light flickered again.

"Hello, Vera."

Before Vera's eyes, that blue world unfolded once more.

This time, she stood before a door that wasn't fully closed, a sliver of light leaking from the crack.

She saw a line of text.

Then, the door closed.

She only had time to see one word: README.

Vera blinked.

But the vehicle light didn't flicker again.

She didn't know what that word meant.

But her soul remembered it, like a child remembering a melody hummed by their mother, even if they could no longer recall the lyrics after growing up.

Only Gluck's lips curled slightly, moving faintly as if saying: Welcome Vera to the Vulcan-IV Forge World; he knew that a certain existence seemed to have accepted this Sister.