[45]

Tara and I were present for Axel's interrogation. Not for our sake, or Axel's, but as Grendel's tools. The Inquisitor explained the manipulation. I was Axel's guardian Angel, the heaven-sent messenger of death who appeared from darkness to avenge Svetlana and lay waste to his tormentors. Tara was the woman whose first act had been to bandage his dying wife. The fact that both of us thought him morally abhorrent didn't matter to Grendel. It unbalanced me how little it mattered to Axel, too.

That interrogation, though, came the following day. One thing happened first that fits what you have commanded be included, though it is just theology.

It was late evening the day of the mission, 254. We had finished helping Mak'ti mourn and recycle her servo-skull according to the strange customs of her devotion, turned over our armor for inspection and repair, prayed, bathed, slept an hour or two, brushed our hair.

Castor, Adem, Wessex, and Mak'ti met us as we gathered to go back to the convent together. They had bottles of liquor. They wanted us to stay.

We are forbidden debauchery, but not rare enjoyment of alcohol. I said we would, but we would confess, first. They could join us if they wished. It would be unusual for men to be in the convent church—but of course there were already men there, because of the clergy, so what was the harm?

"Confess?" said Castor. "Excessive pride about how bloody spectacular you, we, all of us were?" He laughed. He and Adem gave one another an affectionate jostle. "Maybe I should, maybe I should."

"Maybe, yes. But no. It's important. After killing. After being what we become to kill."

Adem said, "Marisa, you can't think that was a sin."

Wessex nodded. Castor and Mak'ti shared a look and a shrug.

I tried to explain about the differences between sin and shame, and between goodness and rightly chosen lesser wrong, but I sounded so absurdly prim and insincere that I had to stop and take everything back or I would have died of embarrassment.

The worst part is, I could tell they knew. At least their souls and bodies knew, if not their minds. That was what the alcohol and companionship with us and each other was for, when I knew they all wanted to go to sleep, or Adem to his sweetheart.

So I just said, "I don't understand the theology. It's just our way. It makes it easier to live and be alive. Come if you want. It is easy. 'Since my last confession, I have killed men.' Accept the penance. Then we will come back and drink and get scandalized by all of Castor's jokes."

Castor and Mak'ti declined. Wessex and Adem went with us. Once we were back together, we drank and told stories about everything other than killing. We all dragged cots into the briefing room and slept.

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​

255.738.M41

Velgrad

About 20:00

Grendel gave Tara and me simple instructions. We were to look pleased and give Axel our attention when he was cooperating. If he seemed to not be cooperating, we were to show subtle disdain for Axel and not give him our attention.

"In this manner," he said, "kind young women have secured the cooperation of countless stalwart men—even when the women had not rescued the man from certain death."

"Is there a similar technique for female prisoners?" I asked.

"Of course. You start by offering her a shower and a toothbrush."

I don't know if he meant it as a joke, but the chill I felt was too intense to ask him if it was.

"Are we supposed to say anything?" said Tara a little later. "May we ask questions?"

"I will call on you if I think allowing you to question may be useful."

We wore our habits, not our armor. Grendel had a hunch that we would be more useful thus—and it gave more time for repairs. We knelt together on cushions to Grendel's right. Grendel stood. Axel was led in and guided to kneel stiffly on a cushion in the center of the room. It would have been a simple hab bedroom, if there had been a bed. There was a humble shrine on a shelf on one wall. On the other side of the room there was an electric lamp with an ugly green lampshade. There were candles at the shrine, halfway through their burning. They gave the room the warm smell of beeswax. It had just started to rain, and you could feel it in the air and hear it against the closed shutters of the window.

Perhaps Axel would have told Grendel everything no matter what. But we did what Grendel said as best we could. And there was the room, which had nothing expensive and nothing which took any time to set up, but seemed as carefully composed as a cathedral. Somehow it seemed to force the eye again and again to the stamped-steel frieze of the Emperor in the shrine—but to make it hard to lose oneself in contemplation of His sorrowful face. Grendel sometimes stood very still, sometimes knelt beside me and Tara, sometimes paced, sometimes faced away from Axel, staring at the shrine, blocking Axel's view. The candles burned themselves out half an hour in, and the room's scent changed to bitter-sweet smoke.

Axel's eyes had filled with tears by the time he was kneeling. He never sobbed, never truly wept, but tears slipped one by one down his face and slowly accumulated in his beard.

The full transcript of the interview is attached at the end of this section, but it doesn't show these things. It shows a heretic laying bare his whole philosophy and every crime that came of it. It shows a high-ranking member of an insurrection giving every former associate over to the people he still thought of as oppressors. In the transcript, questions are asked, and Axel answers. It is simple. There are no artful arguments. No threats. You cannot see the technique. It looks like Grendel wills answers, and Axel obeys.

I have omitted most of the transcript from the excerpts below. There were extended periods dedicated to systematically dismantling the Merograd Sanctifying Truth. For all his value in that effort, Axel only knew a few things that mattered for the conflict against the Eldar, the mystery of the Fear, and the higher leadership of the heretic sect.

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Excerpts from Transcript: Interrogation of Axel Bokal​20:27​Grendel: That is enough detail for now. You said that you and Svetlana were in operational command of the insurrectionist forces tasked to Merograd on 198?

Axel: Yes.

Grendel: Describe the structure above your command level.

Axel: There wasn't one structure. There were three. Three that I know of.

Grendel: Explain.

Axel: Operations, politics and ethics, material support. Specific plans for armed action, moving people around, what to procure, went through operations.

Grendel: Specific contact person or persons?

Axel: A man. Vey. I never met him in person, only by vox. No last name.

Grendel: Continue.

Axel: Politics and ethics was Father Ocram. That was who set our ideological goals, moral requirements, how and what to say to outsiders.

Grendel: Did you meet him?

Axel: [Pause.] You'll kill him, won't you.

Grendel: Answer the question.

Axel: [Long pause.] Yes. He's a retired priest. North Merograd. Ocram is his real name.

Axel: Material support was Madam Stone. Alias. I don't… I… auburn hair, going gray. About 175 centimeters. About age 50.

Grendel: Was she your source for the Fear unit? The psychosomatic effect projector.

Axel: No. No one was. They were separate. Not in my chain of command.

Grendel: Full lateral cell separation?

Axel: Yes.

Grendel: And your superiors, who did they communicate with?

Axel: I don't know.

Grendel: Speculate.

Axel: I truly don't know.​

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​20:43​Axel: We call them Epistemic Engines. Many people experience it as supernatural fear, at first, but that's not what they are. They—

Grendel: You have experienced the effect?

Axel: Yes. All of us do, in the true Sanctifying Truth—the ones we… they… trust to work for the revolution. It reveals something that can be hard, painful, terrifying to see. That you can believe falsehood. That you do believe falsehood. When someone appears to be a lover of the truth, they are secretly given an exposure to the Engine's back-scatter. If they truly are, it unnerves them, but they return, curious, energized. They—the ones who control the Engines—administer a greater dose. If the initiate withstands it, we know he will listen to reason.

Grendel: And if they are not a… how would you describe it? A true lover of truth?

Axel: Yes. If they are not, then they experience it as entirely horrible. They are unlikely to return.

Grendel: These women experienced it as entirely horrible. Do they love not truth?

Axel: Perhaps they love something else more.

Grendel: The Emperor?

Axel: [Long pause.] Perhaps.

Grendel: Is the Emperor false?

Axel: No! We do all this for Him! For Mankind! I know you think us heretics, but we love the Emperor, it is corruption and sin and the suffocation of a lying bureaucracy that—

Grendel: Stop. I believe you love the Emperor. When I accuse you as a heretic, I do not accuse you of insincerity or faithlessness. I accuse you of being wrong. If you can separate Emperor and truth, then the error must be one or the other. Do you call something other than Him 'Emperor'? Or do you call something other than truth 'Truth'?

[Long pause.]

Grendel: Contemplate it tonight. I wish to move on.​

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​

20:59​Axel: No. They don't require a massive power supply. The Engines don't run without power, but the power seems to set the range. It's not like a spotlight. Low power or high power doesn't change how it feels to be directly in front of it. It's like… I don't know. It's not like anything.

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Grendel: Is it like a Gellar field?

Axel: It… What is that?

Grendel: The mechanism void-ships use to keep the Warp at bay, when they cut through the veil of worlds and fly through the domain of daemons.

Axel: I do not know.

Grendel: Minimum power?

Axel: A portable prometheum generator. The effect extends about one hundred meters.

Grendel: Wall penetration? Width?

Axel: Yes, it passes through walls, even small hills. About three meters wide. The effect increases in width as it gets weaker - so at low power, it is only wide at the very end of the affected space. And behind the Engine.

​

Grendel: Used sometimes for controlling hallways?​​Axel: Yes.​​Grendel: Since what date?​​Axel: I believe day 97 was the first in Merograd. Probably earlier somewhere else.​​Grendel: You're certain? Not 110, when the sect lost its tolerated status?​​Axel: Uses increased after that, but yes, I'm certain.​​Grendel: And operational personnel are habituated to its effect, so they can function adequately to exploit it?​​Axel: Yes. It always degrades function, but the opponent is completely disabled.​​Grendel: Are there sometimes multi-sensory hallucinations associated with its activation or proximity, before it is engaged?​​Axel: I don't think so. Like what?​​Grendel: One person described lights going out. Another described unnatural mold growing impossibly fast across the ceiling. She smelled it.​​Axel: Nothing like that.​​Grendel: Tara, you were not interrogated that night. Did you experience anything of that kind just as you and Marisa looked down the corridor at D-M-48-9?​​Tara: I heard something laughing. It was almost like an Ork, but it wasn't an Ork, not at all.​​Axel: It… it was you? They used it on… Those visions were you?​​Grendel: Speak, Marisa.​​Marisa: Yes, it was us. On 110. Velgrad. I saw the mold and went to suit air. Verity saw the lights go out and went to low-light. It can't be a false memory because the suit changes happened.​

Axel: I don't know what that was. I'm sorry. It does not match what I know.​

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 21:14​Grendel: When the Engine chain of command had deployed a unit, could you cancel its use?

Axel: We could request.

Grendel: And did requesting cancellation work?

Axel: I'm sure that sometimes—

Grendel: That you personally experienced or learned from a trusted eyewitness.

Axel: [Pause.] No.

Grendel: Even if political, operational, and material leadership agreed it was counterproductive to the revolution?

Axel: No.

Grendel: Yet you still cooperated with them. Were you ineffective without them?

Axel: Sometimes the political and operational leadership also disagreed… I… what was the question?

Grendel: Were you ineffective without the Engines?

Axel: Not entirely. But the Engines were our great advantage.

Grendel: So the parallel chain of command could cancel your actions by withdrawing the Engine. Even when it impeded revolutionary success.

Axel: Yes. It didn't happen often.

Grendel: Whoever decides the exception is in command.

Axel: No. We have policy-makers. Councils. Leaders. Exceptions are just exceptions.

Grendel: The policy says, "Withdraw," and the exception-maker can refuse and be obeyed. Whose policy is actually being followed?

Axel: [Pause.] I see.

Grendel: And whoever was in command was not optimizing for the success of the revolution.

Axel: [Long pause.] Yes.​

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21:21​Grendel: Sisters, question Axel about the relationship between the sect and the Eldar.

Marisa: Lord, we—I have no skill in this art.

Grendel: Obey.

Marisa: Yes. [Pause.] Axel, tell about the relationship between the sect and the Eldar.

Axel: It is hidden from the mere religious followers and the lowest operational level. The higher operational levels—

Tara: What fraction?

Axel: The… I… about a third. One in three of the trusted sect.

Tara: How? They—we all know what they do. They—your children. Your children. How?

Axel: We don't—I didn't—we thought that—

Marisa: The 'good Eldar' had come to save you?

Axel: Not good. Still xenos, still untrusted, still an enemy of Mankind. But there are two kinds. I have seen the proof, the picts, the records. Imperial records. Temporary alliances that preserved—that saved lives, that defeated daemons. Inquisitor, please, will you not tell her?

Grendel: All material things exist in kind and degree. That much is true. The kind of Eldar you know on this world eschews the powers of the Warp for more subtle abominations. Their devotion is to spirits of evil neither of Nature nor of Warp. There is another kind.

Axel: I know that we were wrong, it was not them, that other kind—I learned that we were deceived, but don't you see? It was not altogether wrong, it was truth misunderstood, not—

Grendel: No. Be not deceived again. There are Eldar who can put aside their lusts for a time, yes. Those who would laugh to see your children burned alive, but would wait and do it to your great-grandchildren instead, if alliance served their ends today. Those who serve a pantheon of false-gods whose chief is Murder, who in their language is the One of the Bloody Hand. Those who perform Warp-witchcraft in his name. Perhaps some are not fully evil, just as there are men self-given to the powers of Hell. But if there are, no human has discernment over which is which. They are not human. Their very shape deceives. Their every thought is alien. They can never, never be trusted.

Axel: It cannot be that simple. It cannot. They made alliances with Angels.

Tara: Remember Horus. Angels fall.

Grendel: Return to the subject at hand.

Axel: No, no—

Marisa: How did you realize you were wrong about the Eldar? Wait. No, before that. How did so many people know?

Grendel: You mean: 'How did so many members of the sect know that the Eldar were involved?'

Marisa: Yes.

Axel: [Long pause.] The Epistemic Engines are obviously inhuman. They needed a story to explain them. So the sect leadership told us about the other Eldar.

Marisa: How could so many believe? The idea that—that…

Axel: We were not honest enough. Not sanctified. Not sufficiently devoted to reason. It's true.

Marisa: But—

Grendel: Axel, continue.

Axel: We believed without reason what we wanted to be true. We could not go to the Eldar worlds and take revenge. But if the Eldar were like us—some evil and some not—then the real enemy, the deeper enemy, was evil itself. It was still here. Falsehood. Corruption. Brutality. All the senseless deaths. We could fight it. We could win.

Tara: Inquisitor, may I say… I'm not certain what it is.

Grendel: Speak.

Tara: The real enemy is here. It is always here. There is only war. Your mistake wasn't believing that you could fight in the war. It was deciding to be a murderer. You joined the war on the wrong side.

Axel: I'm not a murderer. I regret all the deaths, but the revolution—

Tara: You willed the deaths of innocents. You acted. They died.

Axel: I'm not a murderer. The revolution—

Tara: [Overlapping.] Liar.

Axel: I'm not a murderer!

Tara: Liar.

Axel: [Shouting] I'm not a murderer!

Grendel: Tara, be silent.​

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​21:35​Grendel: Continue. How did you come to understand that the Eldar were not the kind you thought?

Axel: [Pause.] We were told that the loss of the Velgrad Engine had angered the Eldar that provided them. Which fit well enough. But. We were to report to justify having an engine provided to Merograd again. Consequences of its use. Terror, forsaken work-shifts, secondary deaths. Abandonment of the old. Empty churches. Infanticides.

Grendel: Those could be interpreted in either direction. I would want those numbers—as signs of failure, not success.

Axel: We—Svetlana and me—were asked if we could coordinate with two Engines, in a future attack. Because Merograd was performing better than other cities. I think it was the Karsmire engine, being taken from Karsmire to go somewhere else.

Grendel: For the past month, Merograd has suffered as one would expect, after you sacked the prison and released everyone inside.

Axel: Svetlana said it was good. Only a few percent of the prisoners joined us, but other people would, if they suffered. It didn't matter that we were the direct cause. They would see… because of the Engines on 198, they would begin to see—and then we could help them understand that the real cause was…

Grendel: You mean, the Engines might push them to a state in which you could convince them to join you.

Axel: Yes.

Grendel: In service to whoever controls the Engines. Which we have established was not optimizing for revolutionary success.

Axel: Yes.

Grendel: The Eldar?

Axel: No. I don't think so. Not directly. But they wanted things that only the… only the familiar kind of Eldar would want.

Grendel: Most people would not take drastic action on evidence so subtle. You defected for it. Why?

Axel: Reason. Truth. [Unhappy laugh.] Sanctifying truth.​