Editing Eternity (Warhammer High) (section)

=== Julius Moves up in Life ===


Julius settled nervously into his seat in the little conference room in the core of the Palace.  Several other people were already gathered, chief among them his friend and former Best Man, Jake.  Also present were Michael Grecco, Nathaniel Romanvene, and one man he didn’t know in a loose tunic and green leather pants and vest.  The door closed behind him as he sat, and Mike took a moment to click the lights higher.  “Good to see you, Julius.  Bit closer than last time, too,” he chuckled.

“Ugh.”  Julius shook his head.  “The formal ceremony was absurd.  Aren’t weddings supposed to be private, intimate events?”

“Not when the participants are famous,” Nate said drily.  “But congrats anyway, Julius.”

“Thanks.”  Julius turned to look at the man he didn’t know.  He was the youngest man there by a fair deal, with a gruesome scar protruding out from under his left lapel.  His tousled blonde hair and light green eyes said a bit about his origins.  “Have we met, ser?” Julius asked him.

“Thangir Russ, and no, we haven’t,” the man said.  Julius nodded.  He had thought as much.  Freya’s wedding had been even more private than his real one.

“I only got here a week or so ago, myself,” Thangir said.  “It’s been…a shock.  You know?  Buildings this size…” he shook his head.  “I thought the Fang was huge.” He shrugged self-effacingly as he said it.  Julius was struck by how much younger than the others Thangir was.  Nate, by the look of him, was the eldest in the room by a few years at least.  “I’ve been on void platforms and such…but you never see those from the outside, if you’re lucky,” he finished.  The others chuckled.

“Quite.  Although the Palace doesn’t see many viewers from the outside unless you’re on the roof,” Julius said.  He cleared his throat as Nate sat back down beside him.  “So, gentlemen…why exactly are we here?”

“Well, you and Isis just tied the knot, eh?” Nate asked reasonably.

“Yes…what is this, some kind of fraternity initiation?” Julius asked.

The smiles vanished from every other man’s faces.  Nate’s eyes flashed blue for an instant.  “Who told you?” Mike asked darkly.

Julius blinked.  “W-what?”

The others held the silence for a moment longer, before, nearly as one, they laughed.  “We’re just fucking with you, Julius,” Mike said, waving his hand dismissively.  “Trust me, we put Thangir and Jake through the same song and dance.”

“I nearly fell for it, too,” Thangir said, shaking his shaggy blonde mane.

Julius sighed.  “So why am I really here?”

Mike reached into his pocket and extracted a piece of metal on a small chain.  “Do you have one of these?” he asked.

“Sure, I do,” Julius said.  “It’s an access token, isn’t it?”

“Yes.  For the garages, but also for the interior security system,” Nate put in.  “Have you tried it for the elevators yet?”

“What, the lift network in the Palace itself?” Julius asked, surprised.  “Er, no.”

The others stood.  “Then you have to see this,” Nate said.

Julius stood, bemused, and followed the others out of the room and into the corridors.  The hallway outside was bustling with workers, scuttling about and no doubt doing something important or other.  Nate pressed a button for a lift and the Royal husbandry piled in, closing it before the people outside could enter.

Mike held up his token and pressed the bottom to the button panel.  The panel was three-phased, with programmable buttons, so that lift cars could travel from different wings of the structure as well as different floors, and even a third set of buttons for controlling clearance levels.  The token didn’t react to being pressed against the panel, but the panel did.  The tiny LCD screens next to the buttons flashed clear.  Mike pressed a button at random, and the tiny screens started displaying the names of the various wings of the building, as they usually did.  Mike pressed the one for the northernmost wing, the one they were in at that moment.  The screens blanked and filled with block numbers.  One of them was a different color than the others, Julius noted, curiously examining the token again.  He hadn’t noticed that the bottom had a computer port in it.

Mike pressed the colored screen’s button, and now all of the options the buttons displayed were blue.  He pressed the button for the fifty-second floor, and the car was off.

“So I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now, but the tokens are passcards for the Guest Wing,” Mike said.  “You can use them to get to the VIP area, the access-restricted one, with the push of a button.”

“Ah.”  Julius glanced over the buttons as they reset to their normal requests for input.  “And…why is this?” he asked.

“I’m sure you know that not all members of the Royal Family have homes on Terra,” Nate said with a shrug.  “Where better for them to stay?”

“The Imperial Fists-controlled starport to the south of the Palace?” Julius guessed.

“True enough, but sometimes they come here for formal duties,” Jake said.  It was the first time he’d spoken, Julius noted, and his friend’s face was a bit drawn.

“You all right, Jake?” Julius asked him.

“Some small trouble sleeping,” Jake said, shrugging.  Thangir’s eyebrow twitched at that, even if he was pretending not to be listening.  Was Jake lying, then?  Another time, Julius decided, as the floor dropped out from under them.

“Fffff, I hate that feeling,” Nate groused.  “Dropping into the core of the Palace in a metal coffin…”

Mike nodded ruefully.  “Yeah, I know.  How the Palace could even have any room to work in with the office blocks being broken up by the tubeways is beyond me.”

“Architecture in general is beyond me,” Thangir muttered, wincing as the car took a whiplash-inducing turn to the right.  “Bloody hell, why do you Terrans make your buildings so large?” he asked.

“To administrate an Imperium of many, many trillions,” Mike said.  “Trust me, you should see how hives look on worlds where they weren’t planned out in advance.  Absolute pigsties, every one.”

“Mine was no picnic,” Jake grunted, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck.  “Anyway.  We’re here.”

The doors swung open as the car coasted to a halt.  The quintet emerged into a completely different atmosphere.  There were no people besides them that he could see.  Where before the air had been flat and recirculated, here it felt crisp, even fresh.  A neat trick, Julius thought, and the reason came clear moments later.  The entire corridor beyond the tube block was lined with small, flowering trees.  The hallway wended its way, curving around conversation nooks and small, decorated tables.  The walls themselves were free of ornamentation beyond a variety of large mechanical clocks, with the names of famous planets beneath them, each set to wildly differing times and hours.  It was a nice effect overall; at once a subtle reminder of the Imperium’s scope, and a boost to the morale of the people seeing it.  They were important enough to witness it, after all.

“So, do I get to know why we’re here?” Julius asked.  Mike pushed a door open and gestured in with a smile.

“Of course,” he said.  “Come on in.”

Julius walked in and glanced about.  There was a huge table in the middle of the room with a variety of mystifying electronics set into its surface, and a whole row of holoscreens and flatscreens along the walls…but the room was decorated like a sports bar, with homey lighting and comfortable chairs.  The table was piled up with buffet-style food, too, real food, not reprocessed protein.

“Okay, I give up,” Julius said.  “What’s going on?”

The others laughed, save Jake, who seemed to have vanished.  “My friend, we can’t let this occasion go unremarked!” Mike said.  He took a plate off of a small rack of them near the table, and began piling it up with food.

“Wait, so it really is some kind of initiation?” Julius asked.

“I guess you could say that,” Nate said.  “Grab a plate.”


An hour of conversation later, Mike brought out a small plastic cask.  “Here, gents,” he said, placing it on the table.

Julius craned his head forward.  “What is it?”

“Three thousand credits of scotch,” Mike said, putting a tiny plug in the bottom and pouring a cup.

Julius stared.  “Huh.”

Mike and Nate filled goblets and slid one down to Thangir.  The younger man grabbed it and tipped it in gratitude, as Jake waved one off.  “I’m done, thanks,” he said, indicating the empty glass in front of him.

“You guys did all this for me?” Julius asked.  “I’m flattered.”  He accepted a cup and swirled it in his hands.  It even smelled expensive.

“We’re brothers-in-law now, man,” Mike said.