V3 Chapter 87: Lotara Sarrin's Fragment of Humanity
Duvette found his own state strange right now.
His mind had never been clearer. His consciousness kept spreading out along the white light and the Conqueror's core network, and every purified control circuit, every corruption node still fighting back, showed up plainly within his perception.
He could even confirm, at the same time, exactly where his physical body was.
Yet against all that clarity, his body was nearing its limit.
Duvette was shaking all over, his breathing growing harder by the moment, his lungs seemingly unable to draw enough oxygen from the thin air. Sweat ran down his cheeks, and his undershirt was already soaked through.
A Gloriana-class battleship was staggeringly vast.
Even though this time he only meant to purify the core machine spirit and the most critical control areas, the scale of it still dwarfed the Men of Iron STC he'd purified before. The main cogitator array, the reactor control core, and the ship's internal network were all interconnected, and just these portions alone were dozens of times larger than that facility had been.
Duvette could tell his own ability had grown stronger.
Had this still been the old version of [Purification], he would already have lost consciousness. As it was, though he was barely holding together, he could still stay conscious, and still guide the white light's spread according to his will.
The Conqueror's warped machine spirit was wailing.
That fury, that hunger, that malice built up over ten thousand years, was being stripped away, layer by layer, from deep within its core. The daemonised consciousness tried to fight back, but could only lose its footing further beneath the weight of absolute order.
The white light finally swallowed that layer of warped will whole.
The original machine spirit hidden deeper still did not vanish along with it.
It remained, but it had taken a heavy blow. That vast consciousness had lost the dominant personality it had used to think and express itself for ten thousand years, leaving behind only chaotic instinct and broken fragments of memory.
Just then, Duvette's awareness, scattered throughout the ship, noticed a presence all at once.
He turned his attention to the hidden bridge.
At the entrance, now entirely covered in white light, stood a young woman.
She wore a neat white captain's uniform, a scarlet cloak falling from her shoulders, that same familiar blood-red handprint marking her chest. Her young face matched the rotting body on the throne exactly, except her eyes carried confusion and exhaustion instead.
"Huh?"
Duvette paused for a moment.
The next instant, his awareness had already appeared before her.
The young Lotara Sarrin looked at him with a complicated expression. She seemed to know what had happened to the presence on the throne, and could sense, too, the change the Conqueror was undergoing within the white light.
"I'm what's left of her humanity."
Lotara said quietly.
"When she decided to stay on the Conqueror forever, and to kill anyone who tried to leave it, she gave up her last hesitation as well."
She looked down at her own hands.
"By then, the true Lotara Sarrin had already fused completely with this ship."
"I became the weakness, the doubt, the desire to escape, that she cast out of herself."
Lotara raised her head.
"All I could do was wake again and again inside this warped warship."
"Then fade away, wailing."
"Now, I'm finally free."
Duvette remembered what he knew about the Conqueror.
The corrupted Lotara had never been the whole of her.
When she cut away the last of her own humanity, she'd left part of her true soul behind in the Conqueror as well. The fact that the ship kept waking this young figure from deep memory, over and over, meant that part of her soul had never truly died.
Duvette looked at her. "So, you want to be freed now?"
Lotara went quiet.
She gave no answer, but her eyes already said enough.
Duvette felt little pity for her.
Held within [Purification]'s state, he was more clear-headed than he had ever been. Every guilt, every choice, and every consequence that might follow from it, he weighed in an almost cold, dispassionate way.
"You really are the fragment of humanity Lotara Sarrin left behind."
"But that doesn't mean you carry no guilt of your own."
The young Lotara raised her eyes.
Duvette went on. "Long before the two of you split apart, you had already followed Angron and the Twelfth Legion in betraying the Imperium of Man."
"You piloted the Conqueror to destroy Imperial ships. You killed, with your own hands, anyone who tried to leave this ship."
"Those orders came from Lotara Sarrin too."
Duvette watched her, his face without expression.
"Death would be the final mercy, Lady Lotara."
"But you still have to atone."
Lotara's head snapped up. "So what is it you want?"
Duvette didn't answer right away.
The scene around them shifted with his will.
The next moment, the two of them stood together inside a broad, sanctified chamber, bathed in white light.
Lotara recognised it at once.
The Conqueror's machine sanctum.
The main cogitator core lay deep within this space, the point where nearly all of the ship's control network finally converged. Across ten thousand years of Warp corrosion, this place had long since been buried under flesh, brass, and daemonic structures.
Now, that corruption was gone.
White light covered the ancient machinery. The exposed metal still bore ten thousand years of wear and battle damage, severed cables still hung silent, and the melted interfaces had not been restored, but this place had finally reclaimed something of the order that belonged to an Imperial warship.
"What do you want me to do?" Lotara asked.
Duvette clasped his hands behind his back and looked around the machine sanctum.
"This is the ship you once commanded."
"I only want you to take responsibility for it again."
Lotara's expression changed at once.
"You want me to fuse with the Conqueror's machine spirit again?" Her voice carried both anger and disbelief. "Aren't you afraid I'll turn against all of you once more..."
"You're welcome to try, Lady Lotara." Duvette turned to face her. "I can promise you, you won't succeed."
Lotara fell silent.
Duvette continued. "You'll be granted part of the authority needed to manage the Conqueror, enough to let you communicate with whoever captains this ship going forward. But you won't hold the authority to defy my ultimate command, and you won't be able to turn this ship back into your own flesh."
"You'll become nothing more than the core machine spirit's human face. The one who speaks between me and this old warship."
Duvette walked slowly toward her.
She still wore the white captain's uniform marked with the blood-red handprint. Even reduced to a fragment of her soul, her eyes still carried the pride of the captain she had once been.
"Look at this broken realm."
Duvette said. "Mankind once had a brighter future ahead of it. In the end, it was people like you who crushed it with your own hands."
"You may never have truly believed in the Emperor, but you once served humanity loyally."
"In the end, you placed your loyalty to Angron, to the Twelfth Legion, to the Conqueror, above all of humanity."
Lotara's lips moved slightly, as though she wanted to say something.
"I know you only meant to carry out your duty. Unfortunately, duty doesn't absolve you of guilt." Duvette cut her off before she could speak. "Loyalty given to the wrong cause only ends in betrayal and ruin."
"You'll spend what amounts to an eternity making up for what you've done."
Lotara still looked as though she wanted to say more.
Duvette had already raised a hand, resting it gently on her shoulder.
"Think it over, Lady Lotara."
"Perhaps one day, when everything is truly finished, you'll have your release at last."
The white light within the machine sanctum grew purer still.
The young Lotara's form began turning translucent.
She turned her head on instinct, looking toward where the main cogitator core lay. The Conqueror's wounded, original machine spirit sensed her in that same moment, its low, disordered pulse beginning to steady.
The old captain and her ship reconnected.
This time, a clear line stood between them.
Lotara remained Lotara.
The Conqueror remained a warship.
And Duvette held ultimate authority over both.
The young woman's figure finally broke apart into countless faint points of light, merging into the newly purified core network. The main cogitator array came alight, one bank after another, and the ancient machine spirit found itself with a voice of its own once more, one capable of expressing its own will.
The next instant, Duvette's awareness returned fully to the hidden bridge.
His eyes snapped open.
All that clarity of perception rushed back into his body at once, and the sudden, overwhelming weakness nearly buckled his knees, nearly sent him sprawling before the throne.
Markus caught him at once, steadying him with an outstretched arm.
"Commissar."
"I'm fine."
Duvette drew a few deep breaths, forcing himself back onto his feet.
His face had gone pale, and his body still trembled faintly, but the malice at the Conqueror's core had vanished entirely. Deep within the ship, plenty of corruption still remained, but those sections would have to wait for another day.
Duvette steadied his breathing, then raised his head toward the shadows a short distance away.
The yellow marker on his strategic map had stayed fixed in that same spot the entire time.
"Come out, Trazyn."
Duvette leaned against Markus's arm plate, his voice still calm.
"There's no point hiding there."