After a wait of an hour, it was Cawl's turn. A legionary grabbed him without warning and shoved him through the double doors. The lights were off. The command chairs were empty and their systems powered down. The shutters were open and the planet shine of Etrian flooded the space.

The legionary departed, leaving Cawl in the dark with Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma.

'You have betrayed the Imperium,' said Cawl, when they were alone.

'It is a calculated betrayal,' she replied. 'Do you think I wanted to do it? I had no choice.'

'But we were winning!' he said, taking an angry step forwards.

'We would have lost. I can show you the calculations if you like The Warmaster would have diverted more resources to this system until it was overwhelmed, and we would all have died. Is that what you want, Cawl, to die?'

Cawl remained defiantly silent.

Aspertia clattered forwards. 'The creed of our people is the preservation of the past. The past's knowledge means nothing if it cannot be conveyed into the future.' She ran her hands over the canisters attached to her front. 'For that reason, I carry these. You know what they are?' she challenged him. The nature of the canisters was supposed to be secret, but it was widely rumoured throughout the system what they were.

'Clones,' he said. 'I have heard they are clones of yourself, kept in embryonic.'

She snickered. 'Yes. Yes. The whisper-mongers have that right. What else have you heard about my little babies?' She swayed from side to side. The canisters clicked together.

'That they are your bid for immortality.'

She rounded on him, her manner fierce. 'Wrong, wrong, wrong!' she said. Her words were overlaid by angry blurts of audible data cant. 'The preservation of my life is nothing.' She retreated a little from Cawl. 'But my part in the Great Work is irreplaceable. Within these canisters are no homunculi, but gene-perfect replicas of my brain. The rest is vestigial. Irrelevant. Why should I wish to replicate what I have already discarded?' She rapped a metal claw against her elongated skull. 'But the brain, that is the seat of the intellect. The clonelings are fed constantly with an update feed from my main cortex. The preservation of all I have learned is their purpose. Should I die, they will be force matured and implanted into a new body.