Perry & her Opus

The starboard hangar of La Pucelle was a hive of activity, shouted commands, invectives, instructions, orders and camaraderie cutting through the promethum-haze. I ducked my head under the arch’s apex as I exited the chapel-like exterior of the Sororitas lander. I straightened and set my hat back on my head as Alicia stepped to the deck and stood beside me with a fair purr of servos. “You hungry?” she asked. “Place aft of forty-five on nineteen does a decent protein scramble and recaf.”
I shook my head. “I’m good, thanks.” I felt Alicia’s surprise - combat normally made me hungry - but the revelations in the suicidal tarot had troubled me, stirring aching memories of Anastacia more than worries, if the truth be told. I looked across the crowded deck, a line of sight opening for me like an alleyway. A deck officer - blonde and severely beautiful, braided hair lacquered beneath her peaked cap and her figure too-much for the fatigues to hide - was barking orders at a pair of scruffy pilots. They snapped and I stirred to attention.
She was not Anastacia, but she would do.
Alicia followed my gaze. She made the sign of the Aquila - warding and warning - and snorted. “You can get something delivered to her quarters,” she said with disgust. She bulled her way across the deck, the metallic stomp of her feet and the sweep of her wedge-armored shoulders cutting a respectful path.
I walked myself; toward the substitute, but my path took me past Perry and the Opus. She was kneeling by the landing gear, her slim hands busy with tools. She was still wearing her immaculate flightsuit under greasy overalls. As I approached, she turned and acknowledged me with a quick Aquila.
“How’s it going, Per?” I asked. She gave me a thumbs up. “She’s good - any damage?” She held her finger and thumb narrowly apart. “If you need help, I can . . .” She shook her head. “If you’re sure . . .” She nodded. “Alright. Well, be seeing you. The Emperor protects.”
She turned to me, actually set down the magspanner, beamed. “The Emperor protects,” she agreed.
Peregrine - Perry, Per - had come into my service during the waning days of the Indomitus Crusade. A scrawny urchin with a ragged pixie cut of adamantium-blonde hair, we had met while mutually incarcerated in the holding cell of Laertes spaceport on Ophelia VII. My presence was down to just one of the undercover parts of a complicated operation that was not nearly as exciting as you would think. She was there because Navy security had arrested her for (their words) “spying and snooping” at the Thunderbolts and Avengers hangared beyond the interdict line. She had refused - again, their words - to answer questions, only telling them “pilgrimage” when asked what she was doing and calling herself “pilgrim”.
She would have been an impish, elfin creature - diminutive and skinny, with glassbird-delicate bones and expressive eyes as wide and blue as a Cherenkov rift - but for the fact she was so laconic she could have fought in the Peloponnesian Rebellion. Then again, she might have done; she never said. That's kind of the point I am making; she said practically nothing, only speaking when simple gestures could not answer my questions. Her mind was not shuttered, but neither did it gape whorishly open - hers was a careful, route-smart, self-reliant and wary intellect ill-used by the galaxy. Despite my professional inqusitiveness, I let her keep her secrets until we escaped. I returned the favor, of course - she had no idea I was an Inquisitor until we were extra-atmospheric in a stolen (their words; I - as an Inquisitor - prefer requisitioned) Aquila lander.
She was a natural pilot - phenomenally skilled, even in the unfamiliar craft - but she nearly sent it into a tailspin when I told her. “Hand of Him-On-Earth, hand of Him-On-Earth,” she kept repeating, over and over again. “Mercy on one who has consorted with xenos. Execute me with justice but I beg you do not send me back.” A score of words, but it was the most I have ever heard her say.
She had been gue’vesa. Her ancestors - grandfathers and -mothers several greats removed - had been part of the Damocles Crusade, sacrificed to the xenos by Kryptman’s pragmatism. For generations, they had bent knees and shown throats to the perfidious T’au, betraying their species by accepting the so-called “greater good”. Their masters had let their slaves keep their religion, but had blunted it with careful control, systematically suppressing triumphalist doctrines and snuffing out even the smallest spark of the flame of humanity.
Perry had somehow slipped through their net. The xenos insisted their charges speak their degenerate pidgin and printed expurgated and bowdlerized pamphlets for use during worship, but her family had retained - perhaps without realizing what they were - a few yellowing copies of common Astra Militarium texts; the Uplifting Primer, Lives of the Saints, even a copy of the Lectitio Divinitatus. Perry had devoured them, learning Gothic from her grandparents so she could read beneath the blankets of her cot after lights-out.
The texts did their work on her better than they did on whole regiments of the Guard; she saw the teaching the gue’vesa received for what it was - heretical propaganda - and rejected the false xenos ideology of the Greater Good. Intelligent and patient enough to realize those descended through generations of indoctrination from cowards and traitors would never come to love the Imperium as she did, she bided her time and planned her escape.
She became a dutiful worker, a model slave, quick and quiet in her obedience. With the right attitude and a mind like a sponge, her aptitude overcame alien prejudice and she caught the eye of an Earth-caste aerodynamicist and became his apprentice in all but name, learning everything she could of aeronautical engineering. She jockeyed within his organization, edging out other underlings for prime positions and becoming indispensable to him. He indulged her, giving her greater access to his work, granting her more authority and autonomy.
If you think the fact she left him with a knife in his heart and his manufactorum in flames shows ingratitude or cruelty, you don’t understand the perfidy of the alien, the vileness of the xenos. Nor do you understand what Perry - a mere girl raised by aliens amid heretics and traitors - understood almost from the moment she could walk; that the manifest destiny of humanity is to rule the galaxy and that all who stand in the way of the Emperor’s vision must be crushed.
She became part of my entourage then, joining us on La Pucelle and dividing her time equally between the chapel and a large workshop just off the hangar deck that was the only luxury she ever asked of me. She must have had a name - her parents probably gave her one, and if they didn’t the T’au would have - but she shook her head when we asked. It was Wayland who realized why; that would be in the T’au language and reminded her of slavery and oppression. He took to calling her “Pilgrim” or - in the Martian-accented High Gothic the Primaris Council preferred - Peregrine. She smiled and gave a thumbs-up of thanks, introducing herself in that manner - or, rather, pointing at herself and saying “Per” when the other said his name.
She and Wayland became fast friends, communicating less with words or even gestures and more just in the shared language of design and engineering. She allowed the Salamander into her sanctum, securing the doors with maglocks of her own design, encrypted with equations outside of Imperial mathematics and which my Rosette’s omniclavis could not open. She confronted me about that once, simply saying “just ask”. I never did.
What we did ask her when we met for meals in the refectory was just what she was doing in there. “Work,” she told us, and then tucked into plain, honest, Imperial food with a gusto that belied her waif-like appearance. We joked about it - Perry’s Work. She was so taciturn - to her, Imperial Gothic was a sacred language, the tongue of not her liberators, but the utopia she had struggled her whole life to be part of, and so to waste words of it was tantamount to heresy - and so reverential when she spoke of “the work” it became an inside joke. We started to refer to it in High Gothic; Opus Peregrinas.
Eventually, she and Wayland revealed “the work” - a gift to me, to all of us, really. An air-to-ground attack aircraft and dropship, built to insert myself and my chosen strikeforce into the heart of a warzone. It was her design, a reinterpretation of STC blueprints she had requisitioned using the authority I’d given her as an Inquisitor’s personal engineer. It was a blocky but sleek piece of reverse-engineered tech-heresy, a violation of the Mechanicus’ stranglehold on technology. She had learned her discipline at an alien workbench and saw no reason to offer incense to anything except the Emperor. It was skinned in raw adamantium, a gleaming silver brick with looming wings, studded with weapons, countermeasures, sensors and VTOL thrusters, a pragmatic monster of a craft. The only concessions to Imperial whimsy were ceramite rosettes bolted to the tails and doors, and a gilded version of the same writ large on the dorsal surface.
Perry came to my elbow. She had a bottle of wine in one hand and a pot of black intumescent paint with a liner brush stuck in it. The wine was from my own cellar, and the purpose of it and the paint were clear to me - she wanted me to name the vessel; painting the appellation on and breaking the bottle against the hull. It was obvious to me. “What else?” I explained, painting the name on the prow and smashing the bottle into a thousand foaming fragments against the assault ramp.
Tinkling pieces of glass dripped from the ceramite scroll, the name Opus Peregrinas peering through the rivulets of wine.