Less Than Nothing

[Dammeron]

He stops. A hundred voices clamour in his ear for attention, rattling off data, reports, demands for direction. He is all but deaf to them. All he hears is the voice of one; she who was less than nothing.

 

A brilliantly burning orb dominates the vid-screens, blossoming with flowers of red and blue that wither in a heart beat, carrying countless souls to extinction. She isn't down there anymore, he thinks. Her body will have long since been charred to nothing; gone back to the star dust from which all matter was composed. Alien thoughts, deviant, such that hadn't polluted his mind since his days as an initiate.

 

Canticles tattooed into both flesh and memory flare to burn the weed of heresy at its root, but today their fire wavers, today the conviction that is their fuel runs scarce.

 

"Captain," The voice is hateful next to hers; its slurred hatred, its presumption of authority...how easy it would be to reach out and silence it forever...

 

"Inquisitor?"

 

"I believe we are done here. Order the withdrawal."

 

What was it that brought them here? No more than whispers. And on whispers, they had murdered a world.

 

And a thousand before.

 

Her again, the girl with the burning eyes, eyes that mirrored the fate of her world, and his soul.

 

Why should this be of concern to him? He understood the nature of corruption, why it was essential for the survival of humanity to eradicate even the possibility of such. Yet this world and its people...they were different. Such words they'd sung in the face of bolter and chainsword, such strange, beautiful song...

 

"Captain, I am growing impatient. Need I repeat myself?"

 

Worlds burning, men, women and children ground to dust beneath his heel...

 

"Emperor..."

 

"Yes, captain. He sees our manifestation of His Will and calls it good. Now, if we could kindly get along continuing His business..."

 

The blow disintegrates the Inquisitor's masked and hooded face, Askal's fist suddenly buried in the broken meat of his mind.

 

Roaring behind his eyes, the mounting cacopohony of apocalypse; fire, wind and water; earth heaving, shattering beneath his feet. the bridge suddenly erupts into chaos, las-bolts pinging harmlessly from his armour as the Inquisitor's paltry retainers open fire. They are quickly cut down. His warriors respond to the threat to their commander without thought or question; it is the way of his chapter. The first step... she whispers through the storm.

 

He never looks away from the world he helped put to torch, even when the last foe lies dead and bleeding over their console. They do not speak. they only wait, each locked away in his own thoughts. Any one of them could run him through now, he thinks; any could raise his bolter and put an end to this insanity.

 

But they don't.

 

Instead, the fires continue to rage, licking out into the surrounding void, eager to set every inch aflame.

[Cale]

I'd buy it. The Imperium is a dark and repressive place, and it's not too difficult to imagine a particularly humanistic or benevolent Space Marine commander becoming outraged at the treatment of civilians by the Imperium as a whole and deciding just to be done with it--to go and try to save people in a less totalitarian manner, eventually falling to Chaos as he is forced to fight off the Imperial minions which are sent to stop him.

[Brother Nihm]

That is a very compelling piece.

I only wish that there was a tiny bit more on who "she" was and why she has this effect on the 'good' Captain.

[Lord Mad Balrog]

Very well-written for such a short piece. Flesh it out, give us some more background, and you'll have a whole short story there. Kind of iffy on the woman, though - if there's anything sexual about his relationship to her, I don't think that's appropriate for a Space Marine, after all the castrating and mentel discipline and whatnot. If it's just him being empathetic, then go for it!

 

... though now that I think about it, empathy is a touch out of place among Space Marines, too...