Chapter 279: Riding Out
The broadcast ended. Kian had three days.
On the first day he went to the radiation zone and visited the hospitals. Fifteen million patients remained. The original twenty million had already been reduced by death, and the number would keep falling: down to ten million within the week, under three million within six months. The radiation was doing the work so the Aeldari warrior didn't have to.
Kian was a public figure now, and he used the time deliberately.
In front of a camera, he held up a black credit card.
"This is my personal account. Everything I have. One billion Agri-Scrips. I'm donating all of it to the children affected by the radiation. I know it isn't enough. But it's what I have, and every life it saves matters.
The Hive authorities have posted a bounty of one hundred billion for the Aeldari warrior's death. If I come back alive, I swear here and now: every single Agri-Scrip of that bounty goes to radiation treatment. All of it."
The reaction across the Hive shifted. What had been pure hatred now had hope mixed into it. People wanted him to win not just for vengeance, but because they genuinely needed him to. After the broadcast, citizens across every level of the Hive were on their knees in prayer, asking the Emperor to bring Kian back victorious.
On the second day he went to the Forge Temple.
He turned over every piece of equipment he intended to bring, including his power armour, to Enginseer Antonius for blessing and maintenance. The Forge Temple treated the request with full ceremonial weight. Thirty senior tech-priests received the weapons and disassembled them to individual components, cleaning each part and placing it within a ring of sacred candles and incense, chanting binary litanies over every piece.
Simultaneously, Kian underwent a modification procedure. Antonius drilled twelve interface ports into his body and installed neural connectors, each one fabricated from cartilage and nerve tissue cloned from Kian's own cells. Biological material, not metal. The soul stone experiment had confirmed the principle: cloned tissue integrated as part of himself and came back on resurrection. The ports would come back with him.
With neural interface ports installed, he could now wear neural-feedback power armour rather than standard force-feedback armour. The difference was significant. Force-feedback introduced a small delay between intent and motion. Neural-feedback followed his movements with zero lag. At his current level of development, that difference mattered enormously.
Once the modification was complete, the assembled tech-priests gathered around him and helped him into his armour with reverent care. The powered skeleton first, then the servo-actuators, then the outer armour plates and the reactor pack, each component fitted and sealed in sequence.
When the last piece was locked in place, Antonius stepped forward holding the power sword, freshly maintained to a mirror finish, and raised it above his head with both hands, head bowed.
"My lord. Your blade."
Kian took it, drew it, and activated the field. Blue disruptive energy crackled along the edge.
The tech-priests arranged themselves in two rows and began to chant, some swinging censers, others holding candles.
Blood becomes current. Muscle becomes servo. Bone becomes steel. Will becomes unbreakable.
In the name of the Omnissiah, iron warrior, blessed blade in hand, let heretic and xenos alike be brought low.
A long binary invocation followed.
This was Astartes-grade ceremony. The kind of ritual weight normally reserved for a Space Marine going to war. But Kian was going out to fight for all of humanity against a xenos that had killed millions, and the Adeptus Mechanicus were human too. They gave him everything they had. Antonius looked like he was seriously considering getting on his knees.
That was what righteous cause did for a man's reputation.
If Kian won, he would return to this world as something close to a living saint. Even the Planetary Governor would think three times before moving against him. This was the gamble, and it was what had driven four months of daily death and grinding, brutal training.
From the Forge Temple he went to the Ecclesiarchy chapel in Mid-Hive.
Confessor Pious was waiting in the prayer hall with his full complement of priests, all in their highest ceremonial vestments, bearing the most sacred instruments of the faith. The pews on both sides were filled with nobles and prominent citizens from across the Hive, all of them wanting to see the man who had challenged the xenos face to face.
Kian walked in fully armoured, weapons across his back, metal boots ringing against the marble floor with each step.
He stopped before the Confessor.
"My lord. I would like to make one final prayer before I ride out."
The Confessor nodded.
"Warrior of the Emperor. Kneel."
Kian went to one knee.
The Confessor raised the holy scripture in one hand and placed the other on Kian's brow.
"In the name of His Most Sacred Majesty, I grant you strength: strength to bear arms, strength to shatter what stands against you. I grant you wisdom: wisdom to read your enemy, to find the crack in their defence. I grant you speed: speed to move with purpose, to turn aside the blow that comes for you. And lastly, I grant you faith: faith that forges the will into iron, faith that does not break."
With each blessing, he pressed a Purity Seal to Kian's armour. By the end, the armour was covered in parchment seals inscribed with scriptural text.
"Rise, Warrior of the Emperor. The Emperor watches you. Bring Him victory."
Kian stood and walked toward the chapel doors. Ten missionaries put their weight against the great doors and pushed them open together.
He stepped out.
Before him, the broad plaza spread out under the glow of the Hive's artificial sky. The Emperor's statue stood at the far end, immense and radiant. Beneath it and across every centimetre of the plaza stood tens of thousands of people, packed shoulder to shoulder, every face turned toward him.
Kian drew his power sword and raised it toward the vaulted ceiling of the Hive.
"For the Emperor! For humanity! Mankind forever!"
The crowd detonated.
The chant rolled outward and kept going, echoing up through every level of Hive Tenebris, and did not stop for a very long time.
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