Chapter 9: Debriefing Protocol
The silence in the spherical chamber was absolute, save for the low, menacing hum of the unstable core. Rutaba’s words hung in the air, a diagnosis of impending doom delivered in the flat tone of a logistics report. The kill-team leader, codenamed Kael, moved to his side, his helmeted gaze switching between Rutaba and the pulsating crystal heart.
“Explain,” Kael’s vox-grille demanded.
Rutaba didn’t look at him. His eyes were glued to the feedback loop, tracing the flow of destructive energy with a dreadful clarity. It was all there, in the schematics burned into his mind. “The black energy. It’s a parasitic buffer, not a stabilizer. It’s leaching power from both systems, but it’s volatile. Corrupting. The Imperial plasma regulator there,” he pointed, “is operating at one hundred eighteen percent capacity. The wraithbone lattice is attempting to compensate by channeling more psychic energy through this primary conduit.” His finger moved to a glowing, graceful line of alien crystal. “That’s creating a resonant feedback in the buffer. The decay is exponential. You try to disconnect the core, you disrupt this fragile, terrible balance. It all goes up.”
“Can you stabilize it?” Valerian’s voice, cold and clear, came through the team’s shared vox-link. He was watching, listening from the lander.
Rutaba’s mind raced ahead, through the diagrams. He saw it not as a miracle, but as a machine. A broken one. “Maybe. Not from here. The adjustment needs to be made at the regulator itself. And the wraithbone flow needs to be manually dampened at the conduit junction. Simultaneously.”
“Two-man operation,” Kael stated.
“A suicide mission,” Rutaba corrected, finally turning to look at the faceless helmet. “The regulator is hot enough to cook armor. The conduit junction is psychically active. It’ll… feedback into the operator’s mind.”
A pause on the vox. Then Valerian, decisive. “Do it. Kael, take the regulator. Rutaba, you handle the wraithbone junction.”
A cold laugh escaped Rutaba’s lips, dry and hollow. “You’re sending the unarmed, sensor-suited key to fiddle with psychic alien wiring? Brilliant.”
“Your mind has already been interfacing with the core’s patterns,” Valerian replied, utterly logical. “You are the most compatible tool. Kael will assist you. Move.”
There was no choice. Kael gestured, and two of his team moved to a heavy console, their armored hands gripping mammoth levers. “On your mark,” one said, his voice tight.
Rutaba approached the conduit junction. It was a node where sweeping curves of wraithbone met, glowing with inner light. The air around it shimmered with heat and a psychic pressure that made his teeth ache. He could hear a whisper, a melody of infinite sadness and sharp, cruel beauty. It scratched at the inside of his skull.
Kael moved to the regulator, a blocky, riveted mass of Imperial engineering now fused with glowing crystal veins. The heat radiating from it was visible, wavering the air. His armored gloves gripped the main control wheel.
“Ready,” Rutaba whispered, his hands hovering over the smooth, warm wraithbone. He didn’t know what to do. But his hands did. They settled onto the crystal, and his mind, full of stolen schematics, pushed. Not physically. He imagined dampening the flow, picturing a valve closing, visualizing the energy redirecting through a secondary path he could suddenly see in his mind’s eye.
The wraithbone responded. It grew warmer under his palms. The whispering melody spiked into a screech inside his head. Images flashed: a city of impossible spires burning, laughter like shattering glass, a grief so vast it could drown stars. He gasped, his knees buckling, but he held on, mentally wrestling with the current of ancient, alien power.
“Now, Kael!” he screamed.
With a grunt of effort, Kael hauled the massive wheel counter-clockwise. Metal screamed in protest. Rutaba saw the pressure gauge on the regulator dip slightly. The black buffer energy flickered wildly.
“More!” Rutaba yelled, forcing his will into the wraithbone. The psychic feedback was agony, a scalpel carving through his memories, dragging up images of his humiliation on the slab, playing them alongside the eldar memories of destruction. He was sobbing, but his hands remained locked, his mind visualizing the pathway, forcing the flow to obey.
Kael heaved again. There was a deafening CLUNK. The regulator settled into a new position. The violent hum of the core lessened by a fraction. The pulsing light grew steady, rhythmic.
Rutaba snatched his hands back as if burned. The whispers faded to a distant echo. He slumped to the floor, his nose bleeding freely, dripping onto the sensor suit.
“Stabilized,” Kael reported, his voice showing the first hint of strain. “Core integrity is holding. Extraction possible.”
“Proceed,” Valerian ordered.
The next hour was a blur of controlled terror. Using Rutaba’s ongoing, suit-broadcasted shame to pacify the vault’s sentinel shimmers and psychic traps, the team carefully decoupled the core from its housing, placing it in a massive, black-stone containment cylinder lined with hexagrammic wards. The thing felt alive, and hateful.
The journey back to the surface, then the shuddering warp-transit back to the Valkyria, passed in a exhausted haze. Rutaba was aware of being led, of the sensor suit being peeled off him with a sticky, tearing sound, of a bone-deep chill that had nothing to do with temperature.
He awoke in the debriefing cell.
It was a cube of polished chrome, blindingly bright. Holographic displays flickered on one wall, streaming encrypted data. The air smelled of ozone and the distinctive, clean-scorched-metal scent of spent plasma. Mounted high on the far wall, like a brutalist trophy, was a Necron warscythe, its blade glinting with a green, unnatural light.
He was sitting on a plain, metallic stool, bolted to the floor. He wore a simple, grey prisoner’s smock. His body was a tapestry of aches: the deep, bruised feeling in his core from the wraithbone junction, the lingering, raw tenderness between his legs, a pounding headache centered behind his eyes.
The door hissed open. Valerian entered, alone. He had shed his powered armor for a stern, black body-glove and a long coat of some lustreless fabric. He looked like a scholar, save for the hell-pistol on his hip and the cruelty in his crimson eyes. The door sealed behind him. The silence was heavy, expectant.
Valerian stopped a foot away, looking down at him. “The core is secure. Initial analysis confirms your assessment. The buffer is parasitic, a stopgap measure made by a desperate, dying mind. Your actions prevented a catastrophic containment failure.”
Rutaba said nothing. He stared at a point on the gleaming floor.
“Your performance was unexpected,” Valerian continued, his voice analytical. “The schematics in your mind are more than mnemonics. They are… operative. You interacted with xenotechnology on an intuitive level. This changes your classification.”
“What does that mean?” Rutaba’s voice was hoarse.
“It means your utility has increased. And so has your risk profile.” Valerian leaned closer, his scent of oil, ozone, and cold stone washing over Rutaba. “A tool that can interface with archeotech is invaluable. A tool with its own will, its own traumas, is a liability.”
Suddenly, Valerian’s hand shot out. He didn’t slap. He grabbed Rutaba by the throat, his fingers digging mercilessly into the fresh bruises left by the armored gauntlet in the deprivation chamber. He hauled him up from the stool and slammed him back against the cold chrome wall. The impact drove the air from Rutaba’s lungs.
“You think your usefulness protects you?” Valerian growled, his aristocratic face inches away, his breath hot. “You think because you read a diagram, you have leverage?” His other hand came up, pressing against Rutaba’s chest, pinning him. “You are a repository. A piece of stolen, fragile flesh. Everything you are, everything you know, belongs to the Ordo Malleus. To me.”
Rutaba struggled, clawing at the Inquisitor’s wrist, but the man’s strength was immense, augmented. Valerian leaned in, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “The vault’s defenses violated you to make a key. Do you think that transaction is complete? That your shame was merely data?” He pressed his hips forward, grinding against Rutaba. The hard, thick line of his erection was unmistakable through the body-glove. “It left a stain. A psychic stink. And it is mine to purify. Or to exploit.”
With a brutal shove, Valerian forced him downward. Rutaba’s legs gave out and he crumpled to his knees on the cold floor, a position of utter submission. He looked up, his vision blurred with pain and rising fury.
Valerian looked down at him, a predator assessing its prey. His hands went to his belt. There was a soft click, the rasp of a zipper. He pushed the body-glove down just enough to free his cock. It was already fully hard, thick and veined, the head flushed a deep red. It stood out arrogantly against the black fabric.
“You opened a door with your degradation,” Valerian said, his voice regaining its cold control. “Now you will open yourself. This is not reward. It is reclamation. Your body learned to translate pain into pleasure for the mission. Now it will learn to translate service into survival.”
He grabbed a handful of Rutaba’s hair, not painfully, but with absolute authority, guiding his head forward. The musky, masculine smell filled Rutaba’s nostrils. “Take it.”
Hatice burned in Rutaba’s throat. He wanted to spit, to bite, to scream. But he saw the Necron blade on the wall. He saw the utter, unshakeable certainty in Valerian’s eyes. This was the economy of this universe. Pain was currency. Humiliation was a tool. His body was a ledger.
He opened his mouth.
Valerian shoved in, not waiting, sheathing his cock to the hilt in one smooth, forceful thrust. Rutaba gagged, his throat convulsing around the sudden, overwhelming invasion. Tears sprang to his eyes. Valerian held himself there, buried deep, his grip tight in Rutaba’s hair.
“Suck,” he commanded.
Rutaba obeyed. He moved his tongue, bobbed his head, trying to remember the mechanics from a lifetime ago in a world that felt like a dream. It was clumsy. He gagged again, saliva dripping down his chin.
Valerian frowned, a flicker of impatience. “Useless.” He pulled out, dragging his slick length over Rutaba’s tongue, then pushed back in, setting a slow, deep, punishing rhythm. He wasn’t seeking pleasure, not yet. He was establishing dominance, measuring compliance. Each thrust hit the back of Rutaba’s throat, making him choke and splutter. “Your mouth is as untrained as your mind was. We will correct both.”
After a few minutes of this brutal face-fucking, Valerian pulled out entirely. Rutaba coughed, sucking in air, his lips swollen and wet.
“Stand up,” Valerian said.
Trembling, Rutaba got to his feet. Valerian turned him roughly to face the wall, pressing his chest against the cold chrome. He yanked the simple smock up to Rutaba’s shoulders, exposing his ass. The air was cold on his skin. He felt terribly, utterly exposed.
He heard the sound of a vial being uncorked. Not warm oil this time. Something cooler, slicker. Valerian’s fingers, slick with lubricant, probed between his cheeks. They pushed inside, a sudden, sharp intrusion. Rutaba winced. He was still sore, tender from the dildo, from the violent fucking. The fingers worked quickly, efficiently, scissoring, preparing him. It was not gentle. It was a check, an assessment of a tool’s readiness.
The fingers withdrew. He felt the blunt, wide head of Valerian’s cock press against him, nudging against his tight ring of muscle.
“The vault took its due,” Valerian whispered, his body pressing against Rutaba’s back, his mouth near his ear. “Now I take mine.”
He pushed forward.
It was a slower, more deliberate breach than the artificial tool. The stretch was familiar, a re-opening of a wound. Rutaba cried out, a short, punched-out sound, as Valerian sheathed himself fully in one relentless, continuous motion. He was bigger than the dildo, hotter, alive. The feeling of being filled, claimed, was overwhelming.
Valerian didn’t move for a moment, letting Rutaba feel every inch of him buried deep inside. Then he drew back and plunged in again.
And he began to fuck him.
This was not the mechanical, rhythmic pounding of the deprivation chamber. This was personal. It was angry, and possessive, and terrifyingly intimate. Valerian set a hard, deep pace, his hips slamming against Rutaba’s ass with wet, fleshy smacks that echoed in the sterile room. Each thrust drove Rutaba against the unyielding wall, rattling his teeth.
“You are a tool,” Valerian grunted, punctuating each word with a drive of his hips. “A witness. A stain. And you. Are. Mine.”
Rutaba’s mind fragmented. The pain was bright and sharp. But beneath it, his body, treacherously conditioned, began to respond. The ache of penetration began to morph, echoing that converted neural pathway. A low, unwanted heat pooled in his gut. His own cock, trapped against the cold wall, began to stiffen, a traitorous betrayal of biology.
Valerian sensed it. His hand snaked around Rutaba’s hip, calloused fingers wrapping around his erection. He began to stroke him, his grip tight, in time with his own thrusts.
“See?” Valerian hissed, his breath hot on Rutaba’s neck. “Your flesh knows its purpose. To be used. To serve.”
Shame, hot and liquid, joined the cocktail of pain and building pleasure. Rutaba moaned, a sound of utter defeat, as Valerian pistoned into him, hitting that deep, sensitive spot with brutal accuracy. The Inquisitor’s hand on his cock was masterful, rough, demanding. The twin sensations—the deep, fulsome penetration and the tight, pulling friction on his cock—drove him toward a climax he didn’t want, engineered by a man he hated.
“Come for me, tool,” Valerian commanded, his own rhythm becoming ragged, his thrusts harder, faster.
It was the voice, the absolute authority in it, that pushed Rutaba over the edge. With a choked, broken sob, he came, his release striping the gleaming chrome wall in front of him, his body convulsing around Valerian’s invading cock.
The clenching spasms triggered Valerian’s own finish. With a final, deep grunt, he buried himself to the root and held, his hot release flooding Rutaba’s insides in pulsing jets. He stayed there for a long moment, hips pressed flush, breathing heavily.
Then, with a sound of disgust or satisfaction, Rutaba couldn’t tell, he pulled out.
The sudden emptiness was a shock. Rutaba slumped against the wall, his smock falling down, spent and soiled. He heard the rustle of clothing, the click of the belt.
Valerian stepped in front of him, fully dressed again, pristine. He looked down at Rutaba, a crumpled, used thing on the floor.
“The archeotech core will be studied. You will be studied with it. Your mental integration with xenotech patterns presents… fascinating possibilities.” He adjusted a cuff. “Rest. Your next calibration begins in six hours. We will explore your limits with the eldar interface further. The pain will be more precise.”
He turned and walked to the door. It hissed open, then sealed shut, leaving Rutaba alone in the bright, silent cell with the smell of sex and his own humiliation.
He lay there on the cold floor, staring at the Necron warscythe on the wall, its edge gleaming with a light that had outlasted stars. A cold, hard knot formed in his gut, cutting through the shame and the ache. They had broken his body. They were mining his mind.
But as he replayed the brutal fuck, not the violation itself, but Valerian’s words—“You are a witness.”—the knot tightened into a resolve.
He had seen the systems. The flawed, failing systems of the archeotech. And now he was seeing the systems of the Inquisition. Of this universe.
A tool could be used. But a tool could also understand the hand that wielded it. And understanding was the first, quiet step toward something else.
He closed his eyes. Not to sleep. To plan.
To plan.
The cold floor leached the warmth from his bones, but the fire in his gut burned hotter. He replayed the brutal mechanics of his violation, not as a victim, but as an analyst. Valerian’s actions were data points: the strategic application of pain, the conversion of shame into a weapon, the post-mission reassertion of dominance. This was the Inquisitor’s system. It was brutal, but it was logical.It had rules. Rutaba’s mind, fortified by a grim, new clarity, began cataloging them. His body ached, his ass felt raw and stuffed with the ghost of Valerian’s cum, but his thoughts were colder than the chrome beneath him.
The door hissed open.
He didn’t move. Boots echoed on the floor, stopping before him. He expected Valerian’s polished armor, his scent of ozone and cold stone.
Instead, he saw worn leather boots and the stained hem of a Mechanicus adept’s robe. A mechadendrite, tipped with a syringe, whirred quietly. “You will come,” a mechanically modulated voice stated. It wasn’t a request.
They took him not to the deprivation chamber, but to a medicae bay. It was a stark contrast: blinding lumens, the smell of sterilizing agents and burned flesh. A bulky, crimson-armed servitor stood dormant in the corner. In the center was a familiar, hated chair. The neural interface throne, a nest of wires and needles. Zynth stood beside it, his optic lens whirring as it focused on Rutaba’s naked form.
“Subject shows elevated stress markers and minor physical trauma,” Zynth buzzed, speaking to the room. “Psychic residue from the wraithbone interface is pronounced. It clings to his neural pathways like static.”
Valerian stepped from the shadows near a diagnostic array. He held a data-slate, his eyes scanning its readouts. “The residue is the priority. It is a conduit. We must see if we can direct it, force a deeper synchronization without a physical catalyst.” His gaze lifted, landing on Rutaba.“Strip him. Secure him.”
Hands pushed Rutaba toward the chair. He didn’t fight. He let them manhandle him onto the cold, contoured surface. Plasteel restraints closed over his wrists, ankles, and forehead. The posture was one of absolute vulnerability, his body splayed open. A different kind of exposure.
Zynth approached, a slick, clear gel on his organic hand. He smeared it over Rutaba’s chest, his touch clinical. The gel was cold. Then the adept’s metal fingers pinched a nipple, rolling it roughly. Rutaba flinched, a gasp hissing through his teeth.
“Physical stimulation can awaken dormant psychic channels,” Zynth droned. “We will map the response.”
Before Rutaba could process that, Valerian was there. He had discarded his coat. He placed a hand on Rutaba’s other side, his palm searingly hot against the cold gel. His grip was firm, possessive, his thumb rubbing circles over Rutaba’s nipple until it peaked into a stiff, sensitive nub.
Rutaba’s purification was a relentless cycle of heat and sweat; Valerian’s grip on his breast was a brand in the cold room.
“Focus on the resonance,” Valerian commanded, his voice low. “The feeling of the alien crystal. The song it left in your skull. I want you to find it.”
A needle pressed against Rutaba’s temple. The familiar, screaming intrusion of the neural feed slammed into his mind. Eldar runes, schematics of impossible machines, the weeping grief of a dead civilization flooded him. But this time, Valerian’s hands were on him, his touch a violent anchor in the psychic storm. Zynth’s mechadendrite hovered, injecting a sharp, chemical warmth into his neck.
His body responded traitorously. His cock, soft and defeated against his thigh, began to swell. The rough attention on his chest, the memory of violation, the overwhelming psychic torrent—they merged into a single, overwhelming sensory overload. Valerian watched him, his crimson eyes noting every reaction, every twitch.
“The physiological and psychic responses are interlinked,” Zynth observed, his optic lens clicking. “Shame, arousal, and psychic receptivity share neural pathways. Remarkable.”
“Amplify it,” Valerian said.
Zynth’s mechadendrite moved. It wasn’t a syringe now. A soft, silicone-coated tip emerged, slick with conductive gel. It traced down Rutaba’s stomach, past his navel, and encircled the base of his hardening cock. It tightened, a cool, unyielding band. Then it began to vibrate, a low, insistent hum that traveled straight to his core.
Rutaba cried out, arching against the restraints. The neural feed burned. Valerian’s hands pinched and pulled at his nipples, sending sharp jolts of pain-pleasure through him. The vibration on his cock was relentless, pushing him rapidly toward an edge.
“The song, Rutaba,” Valerian snarled, squeezing his breast hard enough to bruise. “Find the fucking song in the noise.”
In the maelstrom, Rutaba grasped for it. He let the sensations wash over him—the pain, the unwanted pleasure, the psychic scream of the eldar.He stopped fighting. He plunged into the memory of the conduit, the weeping melody. He didn't just remember it. He hummed it, a broken, tuneless sound through his clenched teeth.
The holographic displays around the room flickered violently. The schematics solidified, rotating with clean, precise clarity. A waterfall of fresh data, previously encrypted, streamed across the screens.
Valerian’s eyes lit with predatory triumph. “There. He’s forging a link. The arousal lowers his innate psychic resistance. It makes him… porous.” He leaned close, his mouth near Rutaba’s ear. “Come for me. Let it go. I want to see the data spike.”
It was a command he couldn’t disobey. His body, supercharged by chemicals, vibration, and brutal manipulation, convulsed. His orgasm ripped through him, a silent scream as his cum shot onto his stomach and the buzzing mechadendrite. At the peak of the physical release, the psychic channel blew wide open.
The holograms displayed a perfect, three-dimensional schematic of the Glyphon core’s interior, layers peeling back to reveal a delicate, spinning prism of blackstone at its heart—a stabilizer they hadn’t known existed.
As Rutaba shuddered through the last waves, spent and hollow, Valerian finally released his bruised chest. He studied the new schematic, a slow smile touching his lips. “Fascinating. The key wasn’t just in your mind.” He looked down at Rutaba’s ravaged, gasping form. “It was in your flesh. Your climax unlocked it.”
Zynth retracted the mechadendrite. The neural needle withdrew. The silence was sudden, ringing.
Valerian picked up a cloth, wiping the gel from his hands. He looked at Rutaba not with disgust, but with the fervor of a collector who has discovered a new, mutable property in a prized specimen. “Clean him up. Let him rest for four hours. Then we begin the next phase. We will see how deep this conduit goes.”
The servitor clanked to life, its cold, rubbery hands beginning to wipe the sweat and spend from Rutaba’s skin.
Rutaba turned his head, his eyes finding the reflective surface of a blank monitor. In its dark glass, he saw his own reflection: pinned, used, gleaming with sweat. But deep within his own eyes, behind the shame and exhaustion, a new understanding flickered. They needed his capitulation to mine the data. His pleasure was their tool.
A plan, cold and sharp, began to crystallize. If his surrender was the key, then he would learn to control the lock. He would give them exactly what they wanted.
He would make his own body a weapon.