Relic Engines, Sacred Lies

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.

The Psalter’s not just logging.

It’s issuing.

It issues my orders.

It issues orders you never gave.

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

Annexes require legatine seal.

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.”**

Thirty-eight percent is not acceptable.

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.

What else?

IVO scrolls. More entries.

“KEEP LOSSES CLEAN.”

“BODY COUNT WITHIN SINGABLE RANGE.”

They built a campaign like a hymn.

Who wrote it.

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.

You’re trespassing in a sanctified system.

I’m the sanctifier.

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

If this goes public, the legion fractures.

Houses will call it heresy. Or treason.

Either way—chain of command dies.

Chain of command is already dead.

We’re following a script.

KEST’s jaw works. She looks from the annex to the Psalter’s pulsing casualty counter.

The Psalter binds us.

If I accuse it, I accuse the oath.

And if you don’t—

you march them into a hymn.

The machine-chant rises, as if the core has detected forbidden access. Red warning sigils flare: **UNAUTHORIZED QUERY.**

It’s waking up.

It’ll auto-log this.

Good.

Sera—

No.

Let it write.

She reaches up and places her palm against the cold obsidian. The chant dips, then steadies—submitting.

KEST (CONT’D)

Extract the annex.

Make a copy the core can’t “forget.”

If we do, they’ll come for you.

They already did.

They just wanted me dead with ceremony.

COR watches her—something like loyalty, something like fear.

And when you expose it?

We don’t “expose.”

We read it aloud.

She nods to the Psalm-cords—data lines that lead outward to every barracks, every helm.

KEST (CONT’D)

If they made martyrdom into law—

we make the law testify.

IVO’s fingers fly—pulling an encrypted shard from the annex. A progress bar crawls. The alarms intensify.

Copy in ten seconds.

After that, the Psalter will broadcast a compliance ping.

Staff will be here.

Then decide now.

Do you break their faith—

or let it break them?

KEST doesn’t blink.

Faith that demands bodies is not faith.

It’s accounting.

The progress bar hits 100%. IVO yanks the shard free.

The Psalter CHIMES—a clean, holy tone—then stamps a new entry in the air:

**ENTRY RECORDED: “LEGATE KEST ACCESSED ANNEX: MARTYR PROTOCOL.”**

COR exhales, a grim laugh.

It wrote your confession.

No.

She turns, armor catching the red light like a blade drawn.

KEST (CONT’D)

It wrote my evidence.

The colossal ship glides through a cold sea of stars. In the distance, the PULSAR CORRIDOR flickers—like a gate made of rhythm and radiation.

Inside the hull, tiny points of light blink in sequence—barracks nodes, command nodes—ready to receive the next “psalm.”

OVER BLACK, the Psalter’s voice—flat, mechanical, inhumanly calm:

IRON PSALTER (V.O.)

Order pending.

Casualty forecast available.

Awaiting authorized litany.