"I'm tellin' ya, man, this 'Emperor' chad is a fraud." Dalton spat bits of food as he talked, partially rehydrated globs of wheat-bar and the crushed remains of the quartered nuts which had been embedded in his ration.
Hiro's lip twitched as he fought the urge to sneer in disgust at his spotter's eating habits. Instead he took a draw from his Slickoil vape stick, causing the use-alert lumen embedded in a blue-crystal housing at the base of the device to shed a cool cerulean glow.
"Dawg, all you told me was the Emperor ain't one kind of magic, he's only pretendin' to be, while also sayin' he's not, he's ACTUALLY another, and its all a big secret to keep us 'plebs' down! You're as nutty as these dry-ass rations." Hiro replied, his words infused into the clouds of green-lined vape smoke that escaped from his lungs.
Dalton shook his head and the last third of his nutri-brick at Hiro, swallowed, almost choked, swallowed harder, cleared his throat, took a drink of water, and then said, "No, no, no, man! Ya aren't gettin' it! The Big E keeps tellin' everyone religion is bullshit, right? So why in the name of Terra's saggy old tits is he lettin' those red-robed robo-freaks call him 'The Allssiah' or whatever?" Dalton had an infuriatingly smug grin on his face, as though he had just presented some irrefutable evidence, and Hiro suppressed the urge to slap him.
"I'm still not gettin' where this 'fraud' shit comes in. The dude's supposed to be like, fourteen feet tall and wearin' gold armor and glowin' and shit. That's pretty Godly to me. Maybe the cigar is just a cigar." Hiro looked back out over the Sprawling Wastes of Sa'Seed Chi-to. The outpost they were perched atop was watching a stretch of desert hundreds of kilometers in all directions broken only by the occasional shattered remnants of truly ancient hive spires. These hosted all kinds of shantytowns, filled with gangers, crime families, and horrible mutant populations.
"Nah, man, maybe the cigar is a giant, sorcerous, lyin', gaudy, gold-plated dick! Look, all I'm sayin' is there's no way that Easy Money didn't do some sneaky shit, man, there's no way he could've just known that bullshit language before he met 'em!" Hiro had zoned out and taken up his machine-sniper to gaze through its tech-assisted sighting array at the surrounding wastes. It was a clunky, aging, worn-out, belt-fed affair that used chemical propellant and heavy metal slugs to open the minds of raiders, miscreants, and rebels to the idea of submitting to the Emperor's rule.
"Damn, there's really nothin' out here, Dalt. D'ya think we'll ever see action again like we did when we were fightin' the Porwahsogen Anarchs?" In truth, Hiro was simply trying to change the subject, but a not insignificant portion of him missed that campaign. Five years spent deep in the cavernous, ever-night belly of the Porwahsogen Hive Super-Cluster, taking part in dense, urban combat with nothing but street lights, neon signs, tracer rounds, and lasfire to see by. It had been the best years of Hiro's life, so far.
"Huh? Uh... I guess we might, if we get redployed to the outer belt like the Captain said we might. I dunno, man, I don't really wanna go to space." Dalton's face fell, and his tone became morose. Hiro felt a twinge of regret in his stomach and cleared his throat.
"Yeah, right, we're gonna be just fine, bro. Look, hey, run your thinkin' by me one more time." His quick diversion had the exact effect he'd wanted, and Dalton's face lit up with a surprised joy.
"Oh! Okay, look, so the servant robots that the Big E uses here always used a computer code called 'Binaric', ever since he started makin' 'em a long-ass time ago. Y'know who else uses Binaric?"
Dalton paused with an expectant grin on his face.
"Um, the Mechi- Mechanicult? The robot dudes from Mars, right?" Hiro was unsure of the exact details, but he knew Mars had been taken into the newly-trans-planetary Imperium recently, and surprisingly without a single shot being fired.
"Right. That's wild! So wild that the Robots in Red decided that he must be the human version of their god, 'specially after some 'miracles' he did when he first showed up there, like healin' broken mecha-walkers just by touchin' 'em." Dalton's eyes were alight with a mad flame, and Hiro fought the urge to laugh.
"Okay, so?" Hiro asked, the edges of a giggle creeping into his voice.
"So? Ain't it obvious? He used magic to look at Mars from Terra a long-ass time ago, read all their books, spy on all their deep secrets, an' then he made himself look exactly like their All-siah dude!" Dalton's tirade had gotten so loud that he could have been marginally quieter if he had spoken it into a megaphone.
"So... you're sayin' he's not the one kind of magic, but he is the other?" Hiro lost his composure as he watched the crinkle of Dalton's brow. He belted out a powerful string of laughter that afflicted him with such intensity that he suffered from a series of dry coughs at the end.
Dalton rolled his eyes, sighed angrily and went back to his nutri-brick. Both remained in silence for almost ten minutes before the quiet was sundered by the entrance of their platoon's lieutenant.
The hatch in the floor of the sniper's nest flew open and slammed hard against the metal floor. The man who clambered out was tall and lanky. He bore the overconfidence of middle-management, and an expression he would have likely called 'dignified', but his men typically called 'pretentious' or 'douchey'.
He straightened out his uniform, adjusted his las-pistol in its holster, and then addressed the sharpshooters, "Well, boys, what have we got to report? Say, Hiro, that wouldn't happen to be Slickoil, would it?"
Hiro slipped the vaporizer back into his coat pocket. "Thank you."
"No problem." Hiro replied, an undertone of sass woven into his words.
"Excuse me, Specialist?" The officer's eyes narrowed, and his head tilted back slightly. Hiro tried to reply, but found himself unable to cobble a response together.
"No, Lieutenant Toxx, Hiro an' I don't have any contraband on us an' ya won't find any in our shit back at the barracks if we have a surprise inspection tomorrow." Dalton interjected with a nervous waiver in his voice.
"Thank you, Corporal. Now, status updates. What have we seen as of late?" Lt. Toxx's expression softened, and the tension under the tin-roofed pavilion dissipated.
"Just dust, sir." Said Hiro, the previously defiant confidence sapped from his voice.
"Thank you. I will see you boys at the meal hall for supper."
"Yes, sir." Came the unison reply.
"That is all. As you were." With that, the trio saluted simultaneously and Lt. Toxx turned about to climb back down the ladder. He paused just before his head disappeared below the lip of the ladder shaft to nod sternly over his shoulder at the two of them before he grabbed the hatch and pulled it closed behind him.
The pair waited silently for the hatch to latch shut and lock. Then, Hiro slowly and deliberately withdrew his vaporizer to hand it to Dalton, who took it and hit it, all while the duo stared angrily at the hatch.
"What a dick." Dalton muttered, his mood soured by the confrontation.
"Right?" Hiro replied through a dry cough. Their words hung in the air just like the green-tinged smoke that had been emitted with them.
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