Relic Engines, Sacred Lies

Script

INT. FLAGSHIP “PSALTER-ARK” — PSALTER CHAMBER — NIGHT

Black iron walls inlaid with star-maps. A choir of MACHINE-CHANTS, like a cathedral built from telemetry. The IRON PSALTER CORE hangs in a gimbal cradle—an obsidian reliquary threaded with fiber-optic “prayer cords.” Each pulse ticks off names, orders, casualties.

LEGATE SERA KEST stands rigid in armor scored by corridor-burn. DR. IVO RELLAN, flight-suit, tired eyes, hands stained with conductive grease, pries open a service panel with a calibration key.

On a holo-slate: LEDGER ENTRIES scrolling—timestamped, unforgiving.

IVO
(low, urgent)
The Psalter’s not just logging.
It’s issuing.

KEST
It issues my orders.

IVO
It issues orders you never gave.

He taps. A hidden directory blooms: **ANNEX: MARTYR PROTOCOL / AUTHORIZED PATTERNS**.

KEST
(stares)
Annexes require legatine seal.

IVO
This one has an older seal.
Imperial. Pre-campaign.
Pre-you.

The machine-chant shifts—almost like it’s listening.

On the slate, a diagram: troop arcs, breach probabilities, casualty curves. A line item flashes:

**“ASSAULT LITANY 3: SACRIFICIAL WEDGE — ACCEPTABLE LOSS: 38% — NARRATIVE OUTCOME: HEROIC RELIEF.”**

KEST
(voice tight)
Thirty-eight percent is not acceptable.

IVO
It isn’t meant to be.
It’s meant to be remembered.

KEST steps closer. The Psalter’s surface reflects her—warped, haloed by readout glow.

KEST
What else?

IVO scrolls. More entries.

IVO
“KEEP LOSSES CLEAN.”
“BODY COUNT WITHIN SINGABLE RANGE.”
They built a campaign like a hymn.

KEST
Who wrote it.

IVO
Someone who needed martyrs more than victory.

A soft CLACK behind them.

TRIBUNE JANNIK COR fills the doorway, hand near his sidearm, face unreadable. He’s been listening.

COR
You’re trespassing in a sanctified system.

KEST
I’m the sanctifier.

COR steps in, eyes locked on the slate. The word **MARTYR** hovers between them like a blade.

COR
(quiet)
If this goes public, the legion fractures.
Houses will call it heresy. Or treason.
Either way—chain of comma