Of Rogues and Traitors

[Godspear]

I'm writing a story revolving around a Fallen Librarian and an Imperial Pilot gone rogue trader. I'm attempting to write the Astartes in something of a more comical light while maintaining their outlook toward duty and war. Here's the tentative start to it. The only problem I'm having is figuring out whether or not cigarettes exist. I used 'cheroot' as an interchangeable word, but I'm not sure that's right, and I can't find the answer anywhere. Anyone got an idea?

 

“Lieutenant Quintus Troy,” proclaimed Commissar Zorn as he swept back the tail of his great coat and turned, raising an accusing finger and stabbing it through the air as if desperately taking aim at some deranged, frothing heretic loosed to end his life. The sanctimonious frakker always did have a thing for melodramatically blowing things out of proportion.

 

“You are hereby charged with and found guilty of crimes against His Immortal Majesty’s Imperial Navy.”

 

Quintus winced. Zorn had never bothered with an investigation. The man was an idiot. In the five years that Quintus had served with him, he had realized just why it was that Zorn had been assigned duty aboard the Invictus Imperator. The Guard couldn’t stand him. He was a pompous, Emperor bothering windbag whose waste line did more to compliment the multitude of sweet meat wrappers that littered his desk than it did his projection of any semblance of military bearing. Zorn was quick to anger and overly impulsive; and, after summarily executing one of the most highly decorated majors in the 385th Vostroyan, a man that also happened to be the Lord General’s only son, a tribunal had been convened to figure out just what the Commissariat was going to do with him. See, they couldn’t just kill him. His father was the personal scrivener to one of the High Lords of Terra, and killing the son of the man writing your biography is, apparently, bad form. In hindsight, Quintus guessed that Zorn might have made a fine grunt, maybe after a few blanket parties, but the man had no grasp of social delicacy or even a semblance of common sense, and he was pietistic enough to be a member of the bloody Ecclesiarchy. No, Quintus thought, Zorn should have been shipped off to a penal legion a long time ago.

 

“The charges include sedition, failure to follow a direct order, desertion, and treason,” but he hadn’t been shipped off to a penal legion. He had been shipped to the Invictus Imperator, an Emperor Class carrier battleship that, at the time of that particular trial, if it could even be called such, had been pondering the giggling glimpses of stars roughly four hundred miles above Quintus’s head.

 

“How do you plead,” Zorn sneered, wrinkling his fat, flat nose, pursing his lips, and contorting his gelatinous countenance in an attempt at stern consideration but more resembling the face, Quintus guessed, an ogryn would make as it farted.

 

“You already said I was guilty, you fat son of a grox,” Quintus laughed. “What the Throne do you expect me to say?”

 

Zorn’s face purpled beneath the barbs in Quintus’s jeers.

 

“To the firing line then,” the fat man jumped up and down as he screamed, his belly jiggling as angrily as his chins, a sight that only made Quintus laugh harder. He was as good as dead anyway, might as well go out laughing. “I’d tell you the Emperor protects, but traitors aren’t extended that privilege.”

 

“If I see Him, I’ll be sure to tell Him all about you and the little boys on Gethryn Prime,” Quintus grinned as Zorn’s face went from violet to white and the commissar shoved Quintus into the less than comforting arms of the waiting praetors, who took him from the office.

 

The firing post stood ominously in the center of an empty gravel lot. Defiantly, it endured against the menacing portents of its career and railed against its loneliness with rebellious cries to the stars of “I am significant,” each syllable of which sounded remarkably similar to the crack of ionizing air that trumpets the firing of a las rifle. Quintus, cuffed but cogent, was tied to the post by a rather small Vostroyan conscript that must have been, at most, sixteen years old. The boy looked up at him with hate filled eyes and spat in his face when Quintus began to chuckle.

 

“I get one last cheroot, right?”

 

Even as the sentence left his lips, the frantic shriek of alarm sirens began to wail throughout Hive Faustus.

 

Cambriel pulled the black tank top down over his massive chest. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it would have to do. Lacing up his new boots, Cambriel cast a glance down at Rat. The Ogryn lay on the steel floor of the locker room, dozing in a severely skid marked pair of boxers upon whose otherwise white fabric were polka dotted dozens of imperial eagles. He’d be fine in an hour or two; as soon as someone reset his jaw. Stalking the locker room, Cambriel ripped flimsy steel cabinets from their hinges, tearing through the cubbyholes, and seeking the final, most vital component of his new wardrobe. Spying a strap of polished, mahogany leather, Cambriel quickly pulled it from the trooper’s locker and, still holding his stolen fatigues in place, fastened the belt around his waist. Terra, these Ogryn were fat. Snatching Rat’s dog tags and command cap, Cambriel stepped into the hallway. The disguise was far from perfect, but if he could just get to the vault he’d find it, and be gone from this place within the hour.

 

Cambriel inhaled, reaching beyond the stalwart bindings of physicality to grip the moiling insanity of the Empyrean. Without his psychic hood, he could feel writhing wraiths of insubstantial daemons and faceless creatures thrashing at his mind. He gritted his teeth against their attempts at invasion, pushing them back and plodding toward a single beacon of familiarity among the maleficent tempest that raged around him. Clouded passageways opened before him, betraying routes blocked by ghostly silhouettes armed with ethereal rifles and other airy weapons. Carefully, straining to keep back the prodding machinations of daemons, he mapped his way to the blessed power armour these crippled shadows of the Imperium’s former glory had confiscated.

 

“Attention! Attention,” several intercoms shrieked as Cambriel stepped into the hallway. “Prisoner designator Alpha-Alpha-Zero-Zero-One has escaped containment. All praetors report to the armory immediately for weapon issue and mission briefing. Prisoner is considered extremely dangerous.” Cambriel grinned as a middle aged captain approached him, his bushy, salt and pepper moustache wiggled as he shifted an impressive lump of chewing tabac across his lower gum line.

 

“Get your arse to the armoury, trooper,” He bellowed. “Those praetors are going to need all the help they can get. Throne, they breed ‘em big these days. Must be Valhallan, Emperor’s blessed bollocks, you’re a bear!”

 

Slowly, Cambriel inched his way around the babbling veteran and made his way down the first in the series of corridors he had planned to use.

 

“You must have been raised on the PT course,” Cambriel heard the man continue as he reached the end of the passageway and rounded the corner. “Only one system breeds warriors like that. Cadian. Must be Cadian. I should know, I fought in the last Black Crusade. Bloody savages, all those Chaos scum. You know, the thing about Chaos is that it’s bloody hard to bloody track ‘em. Liable to go mad just trying to figure out their strategy...”

 

“What the Throne is this supposed to do to a frakkin’ Space Marine,” asked Relius incredulously as he gaped in utter disbelief at the shock maul he had been issued.

[Tyrannicide]

I like it Godspear. It could be toned down an ounce with the comedic elements, but it's entertaining. I'm looking forward to the next chapter. As for the cigarette problem, have you considered Lho Sticks?

 

Lho Sticks - an addictive narcotic rolled into a compact tube and smoked by Guardsmen. Officio Medicae personnel have warned that they may cause respiratory illnesses and lung damage.