Chapter 51: Elder Silas
Kian Voss trekked deep into the tangled woods where the Secessionists kept their hidden warren. He reached a specific landmark—a massive, ancient tree ringed by jagged gray stones. This was the designated signal point.
The rebels were wound tight. They lived in constant fear of PDF stormtrooper teams or specialized assassination squads slipping through the brush to slit their throats. The forest was a web of tripwires and hidden sentry posts. If Kian simply walked in, he'd be turned into a sieve before he could say "Praise the Emperor."
He leaned against the tree, took a deep breath, and let out a series of rhythmic calls, mimicking a Gilded Harrier—a common raptor on this planet.
"Caw-caw-khh! Caw-caw-khh? Caw-caw-khh-RAAA!"
Moments later, the ferns thirty meters ahead rustled. Two rebels emerged from the foliage, their rusted autoguns leveled at Kian's chest, their eyes narrowed with suspicion behind grimy goggles.
Minutes later, in a fortified wooden shack deep within the camp, Kian sat across from the rebel leader.
He placed an autogun on the table and slid three full magazines toward the old man.
"As agreed. One rifle, three mags, and sixty rounds of military-grade propellant. Now, where is my starch?"
The leader picked up the weapon, field-stripping it with the practiced ease of a veteran. He checked the rifling and the bolt-carrier before looking up, his expression unimpressed.
"I asked for PDF-issue Kantrael-pattern hardware. This is a sanitized rebel frame."
Kian didn't take the bait. He reached into his rags and pulled out three glass vials filled with a fine, chalky white powder.
"This is Refined Narthecium Antiseptic. Medicae-grade. One vial is enough to treat twenty men with festering gunshot wounds. Consider this a 'New Client' bonus. After today, every vial costs you one ton of grain."
The Elder's eyes widened. His pupils dilated as he stared at the vials.
In the Secessionist camps, infection was a greater killer than the PDF. A man could survive a bullet, only to die screaming a week later as his limb rotted from trench-fever. This powder wasn't just medicine; it was the power to keep an army standing. And it only cost him a resource he had in abundance: dirt-grown starch.
The Elder snatched up the vials, his suspicion replaced by a flicker of genuine gratitude.
"Thank you, Scavenger. Whatever the future holds, these vials will save the lives of my brothers."
[DING! MISSION COMPLETE]
[Reputation: Elder Silas (Secessionist Cell) Rank 0
→\to→ Rank 1]
[Unlocked Trade Goods: Raw Grain, Basic Tools, Industrial Scraps]
Kian tilted his head. He didn't care about the tools. He cared about the name that just popped up on his HUD.
"Silas... right? We've been trading for a while, but you haven't officially introduced yourself."
The old man nodded. "The men call me Elder Silas. You may do the same."
Kian's expression turned heavy with irony. Silas. This was the man. Lieutenant Winchester—the noble-born brat Rudolphson wanted dead—was planning to "Purge" a rebel cell led by an 'Elder Silas' to secure his promotion.
Silas noticed Kian's sudden change in mood. "What? Have you heard of me?"
Kian gave a slow, deliberate head-shake. "No. Just thinking about the market. Now, show me my grain and get your boys to move it to the extraction point."
Silas led Kian to a low-slung storehouse. Inside were dozens of woven fiber sacks filled with tubers—potatoes. Each bag weighed forty kilos. Kian's single rifle had bought him seventy-five bags. Three tons of fuel for his brewery.
As the rebels began loading the haul onto five bio-construct horse-wagons, Kian wandered through the camp. He saw patches of vibrant, green vegetables and pens full of Grox-fowls—squawking, multi-legged alien poultry.
His mouth watered. To an Underhiver, fresh organic food was a myth. He reached out to touch a leaf, and Silas, noticing the scavenger's hunger, grabbed a few sacks. He filled them with fresh greens and grabbed ten live fowls by their scaly necks, tossing them toward Kian.
"Take them," Silas said. "We're just simple country folk. We don't have gold or fine silks to offer a traveler from the Hive. Only what we grow with our hands."
Kian accepted the gift without a hint of modesty. "You people have no idea. This stuff? These 'agri-greens' and 'fowls'? In the Spire, you're eating at the same level as the Planetary Governor."
Silas scoffed. "Impossible. I heard the Governor eats from plates of solid gold. A single meal in his palace could buy the lives of a hundred of my men."
"The plates might be gold," Kian countered, "but the food on them came from a patch of dirt just like this. He might sprinkle it with 'Sacred Spices' from the segmentum-core, but the protein is the same. You're eating like kings and you don't even know it."
Silas frowned, his mind turning over Kian's words. "If our produce is so valuable to the stars... why are we so poor? If we could sell this to the Industrial Worlds, couldn't we change our fate?"
Kian laughed—a dry, rasping sound. "In theory, yes. In practice? Never.
"Transit between worlds is a nightmare. To reach the neighboring system, a voidship has to dive into the Immaterium—the Sea of Souls. It can take months, or a year. And that's assuming you don't run into a storm and get spit out ten centuries later. Or worse."
Kian leaned against a wagon. The Imperium had a million worlds but no reliable way to connect them. It was a rotting corpse of an empire, held together by sheer inertia.
"If you tried to run a private trade fleet, Silas... out of every ten ships you sent out, you'd be lucky if eight came back. And if they encountered daemon fleets, xenos fleets, alien fleets, pirates, or the Empire's own armed forces wanting to make a windfall, then not a single one of those 10 ships would ever dream of returning."
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