The Bison Six drifted through the Warp for ten more agonizing days.
An oppressive weight hung over the ship. The memory of the slaughtered colony remained an open wound in the crew's collective psyche; the old bravado had dissolved into a fermenting silence of fear and impotence.
Amidst this, Reinhardt remained the "ghost" intern—a non-entity in the engineering bay. He spent his hours tucked away in a cramped storage locker, his terminal devouring massive streams of data from the UEG network.
Star charts, jump-engine schematics, and centuries of history were absorbed and filed away with the cold precision of a processor. He no longer reached for the Emperor's whispers to steady his heart. Reality had become his scripture.
When they finally reached the Turanks Mining Belt—a grimy, lawless hive of smugglers and mercenaries—Reinhardt disembarked. No one noticed. No one cared.
He traded his sturdy boots and a clean undershirt to a smuggler for passage toward the core sectors. To an apostle of a coming crusade, such comforts were baggage.
Weeks later, Reinhardt stepped onto the polished, mirror-smooth floors of the Relay Station. He was barefoot, clad in rags, and entirely unmoved. The air was thick with the cloying mix of expensive perfumes and greenhouse flora.
On massive holographic displays, a human actress shared an intimate, manufactured smile with an alien model. Nearby, a gaseous entity shifted through a spectrum of brilliant colors, drawing gasps of delight from a crowd of tourists.
Reinhardt moved through the throng like a specter returned from the grave, his eyes dissecting this "paradise."
He watched a father lift his child so the boy could stroke the antennae of a giant, moth-like xenos. The alien's compound eyes glowed with a deceptive, "gentle" warmth. Reinhardt paused, but he felt no rage. There was only a cold, towering pity.
When the darkness finally falls, he thought, what will this father use to shield his son? His theories on coexistence?
These people were livestock, fattened in a greenhouse, their spirits eroded by a long peace. They had forgotten how to hate, and thus, how to survive. Their souls were terminal. He was the surgeon, and he had not come to offer a sedative; he had come with a branding iron to sear the rot away.
His objective was clear: he needed a ship.
In the port's administrative hall, Reinhardt didn't bother with the kiosks. He simply closed his eyes. The Emperor's grace rippled through his mind, turning the station's data network from cold code into a flowing, perceptible stream. He "heard" the digital pulse; he "saw" the threads of information.
He found his prey: the Stardust.
It was a Peregrine-class explorer—fast, compact, and outfitted with military-grade shielding. Its owner was a pampered playboy currently squandering his inheritance in an upper-level lounge. Perfect.
Reinhardt reached the private berth, where two bored guards blocked his path.
"Halt, private area, no—"
The guard's voice died. He looked into Reinhardt's eyes and saw not a man, but a monster in human skin. A primal, suffocating fear seized him; his limbs turned to lead.
"Open the door," Reinhardt commanded.
Stiffly, like a marionette, the guard turned and punched in the master override. The door slid open. Reinhardt walked past without a word.
The Stardust's interior was a gaudy display of leather and luxury, which Reinhardt ignored as he took the pilot's seat. He placed his hands on the console and let his psychic will surge.
"Identity scan failed," the computer chirped. "Initiating security lock..."
The golden light in Reinhardt's mind slammed into the ship's firewalls like a physical blow, crushing every protocol in a heartbeat.
"...Alarm deactivated," the voice smoothed out. "Welcome, Captain. All systems online."
Reinhardt charted a course that no UEG pilot would dare—a suicidal path through the Orion Arm, threading between unstable neutron stars and xenos-infested nebulae. It was a route through the black, "high-risk" zones of the map.
The Stardust slipped from its berth, registered by the station's sensors as a routine departure. As the ship cleared the docks, Reinhardt looked back one last time at the shimmering ring of the station and the lush, blue world beyond it.
He felt no nostalgia. This was not a home; it was a heresy that required purging. He would return, eventually.
"Jump engines charged," the computer announced. "Three. Two. One."
Reinhardt pushed the lever.
The stars stretched into white streaks. The Utopia vanished into the blur of space-time. The Stardust tore into the darkness, heading for the one place where the true heart of humanity still beat.
Toward the Terran Dominion.