They loaded us onto the ship on Friday.
They did not explain where. They did not explain why - in the system, nothing was explained: an order appeared, and you went. Three hundred people in new uniforms, in the hold of a transport ship that smelled of fresh metal and something else. Something unfamiliar.
We sat down.
Twenty minutes later, people in gray coveralls came in and started handing out food.
I did not immediately understand that it was food.
Not gray rations. Not a thermal slab with synthetic protein. Real food - hot, in containers, with a smell that had layers. Something meaty. Bread that did not crumble. Something sweet on the side - small, dark, I did not know what it was called.
I looked at Iskhak.
He was staring at the container. The expression on his face was the expression of a man who has found a part in a mechanism where no part should be.
"Eat," I said.
"I am," he said.
He was eating. Slowly. With the same face.
I ate quickly and did not think. I just ate. It was good - truly good, unlike anything I had eaten in the dome.
Then I sat and looked through the porthole at the stars and thought: there it is. It has started. We are part of the Empire now - the real one, not the one they drew on the classroom diagrams. They feed us. They carry us. We are needed.
Maybe this is what paradise feels like - not all at once, but gradually. One step after another.
"Kael," Iskhak said quietly.
"What."
"Why do you think they fatten pigs."
I looked at him.
"Are you serious."
"Think for yourself," he said, and turned toward the wall.
I thought.
Then I stopped - because the food was good, and the stars outside the porthole were real, and something inside did not want to let Iskhak's thoughts in there.
Sometimes you just want to eat. Just watch the stars.
I let myself do that.
It took thirty hours to reach Sanctum.

The planet was white.
Not snow - stone. White flat stone to the horizon, and above it a sky the color of old metal, and structures - low, broad, windowless.
Landing fields one after another. Ships - hundreds. People in gray uniforms came out of each one.
Not three hundred people.
Millions.
They led us across the open field to the main complex. I walked and looked around - to the right, a column from another transport; to the left, another one; ahead, more were already standing, waiting.
Different domes, different numbers on the chest plates, the same face - not a face, an expression. Eighteen years old. New armor. Eyes that had not yet seen.
Iskhak walked beside me.
"That is a lot of us," I said.
"Yes," he said.
"From all over the galaxy, probably."
"Probably."
He was not looking around. He was looking ahead - toward the podium rising over the square. White, like everything else here. An officer stood on the podium.
No - not an officer.
Something else.

He spoke for twenty minutes.
Did not shout. Did not read from a sheet. He spoke the way people speak when they know words are also a tool, and can be worked with as precisely as anything else.
You are soldiers. You are the future of the Empire. Not just soldiers - the first generation born for victory, made for victory, ready for it. Each of you has passed through what kills. Each of you has survived. That is not chance - it is the will of the God-Emperor, who sees each of you. Remembers each of you. Has prepared a place for each of you.
Stand. Fight. Die if necessary - because He remembers those who die in His name.
Paradise exists. And it belongs to you.
I listened.
I believed - just as I had believed in the dome, just as I had believed every morning for six years. It was not an effort. The words settled where there was already room for them.
Around me were millions. The same gray uniforms, the same white stone underfoot. Everyone listening. Everyone believing.
And I was among them - not a number in a file, but part of something greater than any dome, greater than any planet.
I looked at Iskhak.
He was looking at the podium. There was nothing on his face. Not skepticism, not agreement. He was simply watching, the way he once watched a broken servo: registering.
The officer finished.
The square was silent for a second.
Then someone started - and the rest took it up: not words, just sound. Millions of voices at once. I did not expect it, and for a second I just stood there while it rolled around me.
Then I, too - quietly - said it with everyone else.
Iskhak said nothing.

That evening they placed us in barracks - clean, spare. Food again. Good food again.
We lay on our bunks and stared at the ceiling.
"You did not shout," I said.
"No."
"Why."
Iskhak was silent for a moment.
"Because shouting is expenditure. And why waste it on something already decided."
I turned toward him.
"You do not believe in paradise, or any of this."
He did not answer right away.
"I believe in what I can see," he said at last. "Right now I see good food, new armor, and millions of people who have been told that dying is right."
"We have always been told that."
"Yes." He closed his eyes. "Before, they told us in the dome. Now they tell us here. Later they will tell us where they are going to kill us. The words are the same. The place changes."
I lay there thinking about it.
About the square. About the millions of voices. About how good it had felt - truly good - for one second, when it seemed that we were all together and that it meant something.
"Iskhak," I said.
"Mm."
"If they kill you - I want to know."
A long pause.
"You will be there," he said. "You will know anyway."
"And if not."
Another pause.
"Then they already killed you earlier," he said. "And it will not matter to you."
I looked at him. He was lying there with his eyes closed - calm, steady, as always.
"That is not comforting," I said.
"No," he agreed. "But it is true."
I looked back at the ceiling.
Beyond the barracks walls - the white stone of Sanctum, the landing fields, the ships. Beyond the ships - what they had remade us for, fattened us for, brought us here for, and explained was right to die for.
The food was good.
That was true too.
We were eighteen years old and four days.