37: Chapter 37 The First Direct Dialogue Between the Empire and the Zerg

After the Brood Queen left Marcus Aurelian in the temple's core area, the Zergling swarm closed their perimeter ten meters away from him. There was no attack and no approach; they simply restricted his range of movement to an area with a radius of less than fifteen paces, centered on the blackstone engine's base. The creep writhed slowly beneath his feet, and the secretion of digestive fluids ceased—the Brood Queen had deliberately suppressed the creep's defensive instincts, allowing this human Inquisitor to stand rather than be corroded into a puddle of organic slurry.

Marcus's right arm still hung at his side, the dull ache in his shoulder joint having shifted from a sharp pain to a heavy throb. He used his left hand to unfasten the canteen at his waist, took a sip, and then placed it on the creep. The fungal filaments tentatively brushed against the canteen's metal casing without corroding it. He didn't know why he noticed that detail.

The Brood Queen crawled out from the shadows ahead. The wound at the base of her left forelimb was completely sealed with chitinous gel, the surface of which was hardening into a temporary carapace patch. She stopped opposite Marcus and crouched down, her orange eyes like two floating, non-radiating embers in the dim temple.

"Your Overmind sent you to ask me questions," Marcus spoke first. "Ask."

The Brood Queen's forelimb carved symbols into the creep. This time, the symbols were arranged slowly; as each stroke was finished, the filaments automatically repaired the edges of the marks neatly, as if preserving an incorruptible record for this dialogue.

—Dead Silence-42. What do your records call it?

"Dead Silence-42," Marcus said. "An Imperial designation. We colonized it thirty thousand years ago, but then Chaos swept through that sector, and the records marked it as 'Lost.' Your Swarm was the first xenos to gain a foothold on that planet—not the Tyranids, not the Orks, but you. After the Grey Knights first clashed with you in the catacombs, Bern wrote a sentence in the battle report that I still remember to this day: 'It does not fight on instinct; it thinks.'"

The Brood Queen did not respond immediately. Her forelimb hovered over the creep for a short while before continuing to carve.

—Your classification of The Swarm—what is written in your records?

"At first, it was 'Xenos Threat: Sector-Class,'" Marcus's mouth twitched slightly, forming a smileless arc. "After you took off from Dead Silence-42, I changed it to 'Xenos Threat: Exterminatus-Class.' After the orbital strangulation battle, I added another note—'This xenos civilization possesses tactical learning capabilities; its evolution speed exceeds all known Imperial assessment models.' That file is now in the Inquisition's central hub on Terra, with my personal authorization seal on the cover. If news of Metallis's fall reaches Terra, the next person to stamp it will cross out my note and replace it with two words."

He paused for half a second.

"'Xenos Threat: Terra-Class.'"

The Brood Queen's compound eyes flickered. Marcus didn't understand Zerg micro-expressions, but having interrogated countless xenos and traitors over the years, his intuition told him this reaction wasn't an accident—it was validation. The Swarm knew they were evolving. They were using every Imperial attack to measure their own rate of evolution.

—Are you afraid?

Marcus was silent for a moment. He looked down at his right arm; his eye, replaced by a mechanical Bionic eye, rotated slightly in its socket, making a faint whirring sound of gears. "I am," he said. "But not of you eating me. I'm afraid of how fast you learn. On Dead Silence-42, when the Brood Queen first encountered the Grey Knights, Bern's Power Halberd split her carapace. In that same battle, she learned how to cut through the Grey Knights' formation. Your evolution isn't generational—it's instantaneous. Every skirmish between my fleet and yours has been a lesson."

He raised his eyes and looked directly at the Brood Queen.

"Now it's your turn to teach me. Ask—what is it you want to know?"

The Brood Queen's forelimb carved a long string of symbols into the creep, each one etched deeper than before.

—The Emperor of Mankind. What is he?

Marcus did not answer immediately. Not because of hesitation—but because the question itself made him realize something. The Swarm wasn't asking about the Empire's organizational structure, fleet deployments, or anything that could be used as tactical intelligence. It was asking about the essence of the Emperor. This meant The Swarm was already assessing the core of human civilization—not evaluating how to win the next battle, but evaluating why humanity, as a species, had not yet perished. This was more dangerous than any tactical question.

"The Emperor," Marcus finally spoke, his voice deeper than before, "is the Overlord of Mankind." He paused for a long time, his left hand unconsciously gripping the empty holster at his waist. "We were once divided, once in civil war, once corrupted from within by Chaos to the point of near-extinction. The Emperor ended all that. He founded the Empire, he lit the Astronomican, and he allowed humanity to find a path through the darkness of the Warp. Then Horus betrayed him. During the Siege of Terra, the Emperor personally boarded the traitor's flagship and killed his most beloved son. The cost was that he was gravely wounded by Chaos. Since that day, he has sat upon the Golden Throne, sustained by the daily sacrifice of ten thousand Psykers' souls to maintain his last spark of life."

His voice broke for a beat.

"It has been ten thousand years. He sits there, neither dead nor awake, using his remaining will to hold the Astronomican steady so that all of humanity's ships can still see a light in the Warp. How long has it been since your Swarm fell into this universe from the Koprulu Sector? Less than a year. The humanity you see is a crumbling Empire, but you haven't seen what humanity was like ten thousand years ago. Back then, we thought we could conquer the galaxy."

"The Emperor is the Overlord of Mankind." Marcus's mechanical Bionic eye flashed with an unstable red light. His voice didn't rise, but every word seemed squeezed from the deepest part of his chest. "But our Overlord does not turn his own kind into xenos who know only how to devour. Your evolution is devouring, occupying, and transforming. Our evolution is sacrifice—ten thousand years of sacrifice. Every Psyker stuffed into the Astronomican knows they will die. Every expeditionary fleet entering the Warp knows they may never return to Terra. Every Grey Knight who picks up a Holy Hammer knows their soul will eventually be targeted by Chaos. But they go anyway. That is the difference between us and you."

Marcus stopped there, his chest heaving. He took a deep breath, steadying his voice. "I can tell you anything. The Emperor's strategies, the Empire's weaknesses, the internal factions of the Inquisition—you can dig all of that out slowly from captives and the Necron databases. But this—that our Overlord is sacrifice—cannot be told."

The Brood Queen's forelimb moved slowly across the creep, drawing only two symbols.

—You are hiding within his sacrifice. Hiding for ten thousand years.

Marcus fell silent. Not because he was stumped or refuted, but because when those two symbols were struck into the creep, he suddenly realized The Swarm was discussing an angle he had never considered. They weren't mocking or provoking; they were using an emotionless system of symbols to point out a doubt he had spent most of his life only faintly sensing: Was the Emperor's sacrifice a protection or a shackle? Was humanity lingering under the light of the Astronomican, or were they truly moving toward a better path?

The Brood Queen did not wait for his answer. She stood up and crawled toward the blackstone engine. Marcus spoke behind her. "The last time your Brood Queen clashed with Bern in the tomb, she spared his life. Now you are keeping me here and not killing me either. Why?"

The Brood Queen stopped. She turned around, her orange eyes slowly focusing on his face in the dim temple. Her forelimb traced the final symbol of this conversation on the creep. The stroke was extremely light, shallower than all the previous symbols.

—What you have dictated, we are archiving. You think you understand The Swarm well. The Overmind says we wish to understand you as well.