Solomon nearly choked on his own spit.
He had thought his own honest opinion was already dangerously heretical.
He had not expected Gaia's plan to be even more explosive.
With his keen eye for detail, he could tell that Gaia was not lying. This truly was what she had in mind.
That meant one of two things.
Either she was insane, or she really did know something.
Thinking that, Solomon gradually calmed the turmoil in his heart and asked in a low voice,
"There's actually something I've wanted to ask for a while now."
"Who exactly are you?"
There was a steady, arresting light in Solomon's calm gaze as he looked straight into Gaia's narrow, beautiful eyes, trying to read the most truthful answer from the smallest possible change in her expression.
His question made Gaia fall silent in thought.
Who was she?
A miserable transmigrator with a bizarre system?
A lucky survivor who had grown up in the Underhive?
An illegally modified Space Marine created by some unknown force?
Or perhaps...
"A naive and arrogant would-be reformer."
Yes.
She knew better than anyone how dark and hopeless this world was.
And yet she still wanted to change it with her own two hands.
She felt that in the eyes of any normal person, someone like her would look like Don Quixote charging at windmills with a wooden stick while riding a donkey. Mad, and hopelessly overestimating herself.
When Solomon heard that description, the corners of his mouth began to rise.
He thought of how Gaia had tried to change the lower deck through nothing but her words and actions. He thought of how she had risked her life on Klaurund for people who had nothing to do with her at all.
In this world, even preserving oneself was difficult.
Yet she wanted to save others too.
People who prided themselves on being practical would call that weakness or stupidity.
But in Solomon's eyes, it was a rare kind of purity and gentleness.
At that moment, he already had his answer.
Then he asked one final question.
"So then, one last thing. If I go along with your plan, what do I get out of it?"
Gaia considered it for a moment, then nodded with certainty.
"Vandire's rule will be overthrown. This will be a сменa of power, and a reshuffling from top to bottom."
"If my plan succeeds, then we will become a force in the rebellion that cannot be ignored, and afterward we will follow the new Ecclesiarchy into the Sol System."
"Don't you want to become a noble? That kind of contribution would be enough to make you one. Not just any noble either, but the kind with real power."
If those words had come from anyone else, Solomon would have thought they had lost their mind.
But hearing them from Gaia, he felt an odd sense of trust.
He felt as though he might be going mad too, to be moved by a plan like this.
A grin spread uncontrollably across his face, then turned into booming laughter.
After a long while, he wiped away the tears at the corners of his eyes that had formed from laughing so hard and said with a wide grin,
"You really are a lunatic... though I might not be much better myself..."
"I accept the plan."
That result left Gaia confused, and even a little lost.
She had been prepared to argue him into it.
But this man had simply agreed?
"Don't look at me like that. I just really want to become a noble."
Sensing the doubt in Gaia's gaze, Solomon answered in his usual teasing tone.
"Oh, and maybe I'm a little curious too."
"I'm curious whether you really can bring even the tiniest bit of change to this world."
He chuckled, then held out his right hand toward her.
"Then let our plan succeed."
Gaia froze for a moment, then could not help smiling too.
One large hand and one smaller hand clasped together and shook lightly in midair.
[Appeal to emotion, explain with reason. Achievement unlocked: {Persuaded Others Multiple Times}]
[Talent acquired: {Sounds Reasonable}: For some reason, everything you say sounds extremely convincing to other people.]
...
In the core section of the ship, Magos Lena stood before the Geller Field generator with her servitors.
An obscure binary hymn rolled from her mouth. As the devout ritual proceeded, the machine spirit of the generator gave off a delighted hum.
"Praise be to the Machine God. Praise be to the Omnissiah. Praise be to the Motive Force."
Lena chanted loudly.
The Geller Field was a surviving technology from humanity's dark age, one of the three essential components of Warp travel.
This bubble-like shield, made from countless unknown subatomic fields, could effectively block the bizarre powers in the immaterial environment that twisted both reality and the mind.
In other words, it could shield a ship from the influence of the Warp.
Now, with the Geller Field fully activated, the Spear of Destiny had reached the Mandeville Point.
On the bridge, Solomon took a deep breath and, following the habits he had learned during his Navy service, began assigning the crew to their stations. Once everyone was in position, he gave the order.
"Spear of Destiny, activate Warp translation engines."
With a mechanical roar, the Warp engines at the stern of the Spear of Destiny erupted with violet light. Under the surge of colossal energy, a裂口 between reality and unreality opened before the ship.
The elegant, streamlined hull of the Spear of Destiny began to tremble softly, as though it were thrilled to embark on a completely new adventure.
Its exhaust flared brightly, and it shot forward like a sharpened spear, plunging into the far side of reality at impossible speed.
From the prow, Gaia silently watched the twisted, incomprehensible sights outside.
Color, distance, time, volume. In this reverse side of reality, all things lost their physical properties. They became shapeless chaos, constantly writhing and changing form as they merged into the endless Sea of Souls.
Her heart was not calm.
Because the moment she followed the Spear of Destiny into this bizarre realm of the higher heavens, a yearning rose within her.
It had no object, no clear goal, but it burned inside her like fire, filling her with a restless heat and irritation.
A faint sense of foreboding rose in her mind. She tried to grasp its source, but it felt maddeningly intangible.
At the same time, in the Navigator Sanctum, Mitchell's expression became more serious than ever before.
Outside the Warp, he could see over a hundred possible routes for the Spear of Destiny at the same time, though admittedly most of them ended in destruction.
But now, when he opened his Warp-eye in the mutable heavens, only a single road appeared before him.
It was flat.
Clear.
Unobstructed.
Yet at its end, suffocating mist billowed and churned.
(End of Chapter)
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