Judgement suspended - advice and critique

[Welcheren]

This is intended as a self-contained short. I am specifically hoping for advice on style and plot.

All critique welcome.

 

 

 

Judgement suspended

 

 

 

 

Brother-captain Judical stood by the viewport of his personal chambers. There, suspended in the cold embrace of the void, was a damned world, at the mercy of his ship. Under his command, were weapons with the capacity to transform this planet into a lifeless blight. All that might lay impotent.

 

The stillness and the darkness of his chambers grated on his pride. He had anticipated the clamour of battle-preparation. Instead, all he could hear were the prayers of his personal serfs, praying to appease the spirits of his war-gear, and the sounds of a ship preparing to breach the immaterium.

 

Similar thoughts must be running through the enhanced minds of the hundred angels at his call. One hundred engines of retribution, animated by the purest of souls, stood elsewhere upon the Angels of Vengeance’s Strike Cruiser.

 

Captain Judical prayed that the Emperor would permit him time to return to this world; prayed that he would be elected to deliver its sentence. The base treachery of PDFs, mortals who had been succoured by his order’s protection, could not go without consequence.

 

For now, Judical whispered ancient litanies that would prompt the gifts of his augmented brain to calm his blood. Later he would summon the anger again. “The Hunt beckons.”

 

*****

 

Reva looked desperately at the grainy view-feed, willing the massive warship to depart. His PDF comm’s uniform was permeated with sweat, and worse. Bloodstains marked his torso and sleeves, but these he wore as badges of honour: evidence of his participation in the liberation of home. The ship remained implacable. More sweat crawled down his face. Like the tiny legs of an insect, it scraped over skin baked by the inimical atmosphere of his world.

 

Reva was acutely aware of his own weakness in the presence of the Liberator. The giant stood directly behind him, clad in smooth and beautiful plates of black armour. A noble device adorned the white tabard at his waist: a winged sword rendered in fine beads of onyx. Reva drew strength from the presence of the Liberator. Surely, such a being could not fail. By the Throne, he was the only one to survive the final attack upon the governor’s palace. He alone had emerged alive – and entirely unscathed at that – while every other member of the leading echelons of the rebellion had laid down their lives in the last assault. It was nothing short of miraculous.

 

It could be no coincidence that archaeologists had discovered, only six months ago, ancient ruins filled with runes predicting the arrival of such a being. The true divinity of their ancestors. Reva chided himself for having sworn by the Throne. Such anachronisms must now become a thing of the post. The Liberator had shared the truth with them. The Emperor was not a man. He was a concept. A set of ideals. And the Imperium had betrayed them all. In fact, the Imperium had lied to them all. It barely existed. It had no strength to enforce its brutality any more, stretched as it was beyond breaking. Reva remonstrated himself again for allowing his faith to falter. The Liberator was infallible. He stared at the ship with renewed zeal. Then, as had been predicted, the Imperial vessel departed.

 

“The epoch of freedom has arrived,” came the voice of the giant, and Reva allowed himself to turn and look upon that noble visage.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

In copying and then pasting from the text file on your computer, you accidentally duplicated it in the same post. Other than that, the story looks promising. Is the Liberator a Fallen Angel or a Word Bearer?

[Welcheren]

Whoops! 

 

Fixed it now. 

 

I was hoping to make the Liberator a Fallen Dark Angel from Caliban - hence the ironic twist of him engineering the subterfuge that uses the Angels of Vengeance's zeal against them.