‘It is wrong,’ she said as they reached the door and it hinged open. He stopped and looked at her. ‘This is one of thousands, of tens of thousands of front-line loss reports. There will be others, Lord Regent. Who knows how many millions waiting for news that has already become lost in history. That is wrong.’

He nodded.

‘War makes the simplest failings cruelty, admiral.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It does.’

She lifted the pistol out. Its weight, once so familiar, now felt different. She looked at it, sitting on her palms.

Captain Khalia Su-Kassen Hon II; killed in action, Isstvan. That is what the updated record would read. An end of sorts, she supposed.

‘Admiral, the rating of the signals has increased to Vermillion-Aleph-four,’ said Archamus. ‘Your presence and response are required.’

She took the ammunition cylinder from the case, opened the breech and snapped it into the pistol. A single smooth movement readied it and pulled the safety off. One squeeze of the trigger and a blizzard of metal shards would rip anything closer than twenty strides into tatters. Not a clean way to die. She hefted it. In her mind she saw Khalia accept its twin from her hand, and felt the awkward silence deepen as she tried to find something to say and her daughter tried to find a way of responding.

‘Admiral…’

She looked around the shadow-filled room, released the safety catch and unreadied the weapon.

‘That belt and holster, there on the door. Hand it to me.’

Archamus blinked once and then did as she asked. The weight of the pistol settled on her thigh as she walked from the room and mounted the stairs back up to the Bhab Bastion’s command chamber.

‘I am proud of you,’ she had said, at last. Khalia had looked at the weapon, a thing that had spent more time in her mother’s company than she ever had. Su-Kassen had thought her daughter was about to say something. Then Captain Khalia Su-Kassen Hon II had come to attention and bowed her head.

‘I am honoured, admiral,’ she had said, her voice perfect in its formality.

She reactivated her direct vox- and data-link. Messages and command-grade transmissions began to ping in her ears. She cut them off and looked around at Archamus. The Space Marine would have been monitoring the communication flow and parsing the situation while he waited.

‘Situation precise,’ she said.

‘The First Sphere fleet has begun the counter-attack at the Khthonic Gate,’ he said. ‘The crown of Pluto’s moons is burning.’

Eight

Rule of slaughter
An end to duty
Oathed to this moment

Strike Frigate Lachrymae, Pluto