Road to Iphigenia

[Welcheren]

There was at least some peace, Hasan reflected, in knowing beyond any doubt that he was about to die. There was at least some mercy in being granted a little time to prepare. Nevertheless, although almost completely stifled by the tranquility of the Greater Good, he still felt a small measure of bitterness and incredulity at the vindictive arrogance of the Imperium. What else were our ancestors supposed to do?

 

The forebears of Hasan and the few warriors that now remained with him inside their last stronghold, had once been stranded on a benighted world. If only half the tales were true, it was miraculous that anyone survived long enough to stumble upon the helots. Like the humans, these aliens were desperate, beleaguered and alone: alike in circumstance, demeanour and even body. Only their skins were a different hue. How could fellow-feeling and mutual dependence be heretical? How could affection, unions and offspring be sinful? Yet, generations later, when Imperial pontiffs arrived to preach this invective, Hasan was appalled at how many humans listened. Had they been harbouring this bigotry all along? Nearly everyone in his generation were of mixed heritage! So it came that first blood was drawn among themselves, culling the suddenly-revealed xenophobes among them. This infighting was all the Imperium had been waiting for. That would have been the end of us, had not the tau succoured us.

 

But far stronger that this bitterness was a comforting relief born from the finality of Hasan's current situation. He was simply relieved that his part in the war would end now, because although faith is a fine armour against fear, it is inevitably chipped away by hunger, cold and relentless lack of sleep. He and his mixed detachment of human and helot warriors had been holding the orbital station over their home world for far longer than planned. Already they had mortified an Imperial army five times larger, artfully deploying the station's confines against the Guardsmen. Still the promised relief didn't arrive. Worse, five behemoths in black had boarded the station: fiends that proved beyond Hasan's tactical aptitude.

 

Abruptly, the blast-door in front of Hasan glowed red. It yielded a second later, reduced to a molten ruin, admitting a thing of terror. Without war-cry or challenge, the newcomer scythed through human and alien alike, charging with preternatural dexterity, and avoiding pulse rounds. During their briefing Hasan had been assured that this creature was mortal. There were human eyes, he had been told, within that otherwise inhuman face. But there was no soul there that could be reasoned with, or a mind that could be brought to question the justice of its actions. No, its entire being was the product of a vision that had failed one-hundred centuries ago. An armoured foot kicked Hasan aside, snapping his ribs. Before his vision blurred, Hasan saw Fire Warriors emerging from the last door behind him, and realised that the tau had concealed their presence all along, watching what he and his comrades endured.

[Welcheren]

This is a kick-off piece for an idea about a Deathwatch story that fleshes out the brief mention about Iphigenia and the Novamarines in Death Watch: Honour the Chapter. It starts from the perspective of a gue'vesa holding an orbital station over Iphigenia just before a Deatchwatch kill team boards the station.

 

It turns out that several Fire Warriors had been hiding on the station, charged with defending vital parts of the ship which the gue'vesa had no inkling of. The Fire Warriors had not declared their presence so as not to alert the Imperium to the actual importance of the orbital station. Far from just being an expendable part of Iphigenia's outer defences, the station was a linchpin in the trap that would incur casualties for the Novamarines contingent that landed on the planet (see page 55 of Deathwatch: Honour the Chapter).

 

The gue'vesa are placed between a rock and hard place - between the Imperium and the Tau proper - as a means of enhancing the GRIMDARK.

 

All critique welcome. 

[Welcheren]

I have attempted a little rewrite to ease the fluidity of the narrative.

[Llagos_Tyrant]

It reads well although I think the pause and '...' is jarring the first time and repetitive on the second. It would flow better without it.

[Welcheren]

Gotcha. Thanks Grim. Much appreciated. I wad curious about launchinh from the perspective of someone outside the Imperium who has never been expected to imbibe xenophobia as a moral/ethic principle, but is now held accountable for a xeno alliance simply because he is human. The view is supposed to come across ad incompatible with standard 40k morality.

[Llagos_Tyrant]

Gotcha. Thanks Grim. Much appreciated. I wad curious about launchinh from the perspective of someone outside the Imperium who has never been expected to imbibe xenophobia as a moral/ethic principle, but is now held accountable for a xeno alliance simply because he is human. The view is supposed to come across ad incompatible with standard 40k morality.

You did a good job and it was poignant when the Tau showed up at the end after letting the humans suffer for so long. Certainly grim dark. Looking forward to more.

[Welcheren]

There were human eyes within that inhuman face of cold armour plate. But it would not occur to the spirit that animated those eyes to doubt the virtue of the atrocities its hands were now committing. For like others of its kind this creature was the instrument of an anachronistic ideal, and it made war as a votive offering to that dream. Unlike his comrades, this one also fought to abolish an omnipresent guilt and a shadow of damnation that was faint but always at his heels.

"Ave Imperator," brother Cyth intoned inside his helmet; vox-caster deactivated so that only he could hear. "Ave Sanguinus," intoned the veteran of the order of the Blood Drinkers.

A flash of gunfire illuminated the stark planes of his black armour. The erratic, staccato light from other guns in the darkness made his movements seem spasmodic and abrupt. If a vid-camera had been watching, it would have created the impression that Cyth could use the dark to teleport further and further down the narrow corridor, closer and closer to his goal, butchering and breaking his opponents as he came. The volume of enemy fire grew fiercer as the kill-team under his command converged upon their objective. These were not the ineffectual beams of lasfire from traitor Guardsmen, but the pulse rounds of xenophile heathens.