Inspirational Friday 2017: The Black Legion (until 1/5)

[Azekai]

The Scion Dolorous

A tremor ran through the creche, making the cool electric lights flicker like guttering candles. War had come to Xana.

++The soul of the Machine God invests thee++
 

The unconcerned sacristans continued performing the final hymns, anointing the waking beast of adamantium and steel with augmented precision. Clad in darkly gleaming cybernetic armor, Scion Dolorous Hera Moirai swayed slightly as the bay was rattled by another distant explosion. Like the sacristans, she continued to mouth the rote, formulaic prayers of the Omnissiah without losing tempo.

++The power of the Machine God surrounds thee++

 

Arrayed before her, carapace open and yawning wide, was Pax Iator. The Peace Wielder, the Void-Maker; her favored and terrible mount. The Cerastus pattern Atrapos was ancient beyond reckoning, predating House Malinax and probably the rest of Setna forge. Like a hoary old god it stood, hunchbacked and forward heavy, the Cog Mechanicum emblazoned on its chest. Only fully visible from below, the symbol was a clear and concise message to those crushed and dismembered by the tread of House Malinax. By dint of birth and ability had Hera rode this fearsome beast across a dozen worlds. Now, she had the privilege of defending her home from Astartes interlopers. The prospect made her almost giddy.

++The hate of the Machine God drives thee++

The Scion Dolorous tensed her hands and felt the cool metal sockets of her fingertips press against her scar-calloused palm. After a decade and a half of merging with the machine-spirit of the Atrapos, Hera often felt like she was sleepwalking when separated from her knight, her experiences muted and dull. Only when she was at the reins did she feel joy or anger or loss.

++The Machine God endows thee with life++

The final benediction was uttered, and Hera was delivered unto her steed, lowered smoothly into place via graven chains and silent pulleys. Even before her weight settled, the Scion’s neurolinks were already threading out of her fingertips, eagerly taking root in the dataports of her command throne. Hera’s mind slowly integrated with the deep-running instincts of her mount, an ancient spirit gleaned from the collective impulses, emotions and reactions of all those who had come before. The raw sensation of the Atrapos' dimensions washed over Hera, and the Scion divorced herself from her body in favor of a hallowed frame of adamant and ceramite. She reveled in the glorious heft of her weapons: the dexterous lascythe and sinister graviton cannon, primed and consecrated, yearning to be fired in anger. She felt the weight fall from her limbs as servitors and flesh-serfs toiled to remove the half-ton gravitic restraints that held her in place. She relished the unshackling, glorying in the anticipation of battle. Beneath her, the avatar-machine shifted ever so slightly, anticipating her first step before it came. Hera welcomed its submission and took the lead in the beautiful terrible dance between her psyche and the eternal machine.

The creche shook again, but now due to her hallowed footsteps, not some distant barrage. The towering knight strode past the genuflecting sancristans and prostrate serfs and exited the Malinax fortress-house, Pax Iator instinctively advancing toward the encroaching front. Fully submerged with the machine-spirit of her mount, Hera felt the phantom pain rise slowly in her gut, though it did little to blunt her hybrid excitement. The sympathetic feedback was the price she had to pay for her exaltation, and the Scion Dolorous had resigned herself to the familiar, dull ache years ago. Such was the honor of climbing astride the Atrapos and uniting, embodying the wrath of the Omnissiah.  

It was the starving hunger of the void, and Hera embraced it even as she saw the first ragged pack of Astartes spill into the streets of her beloved fane. Guided by countless memories that were not her own, she chose an endpoint scant meters above the rapidly advancing foe and fired. A dark pinprick burned in the empty air, and within the span of a few dilated seconds each armored body had warped and bent upward to meet it. The Astartes were impossibly and grotesquely stretched as their limbs, heads and torsos were simultaneously elongated and crushed before fading from view, the corpses utterly devoured by the void. All that remained was a shallow crater where the microsingularity had scoured away the asphalt.

Hera took in the brief but mesmerizing display; with her mind conjoined to her Atrapos, the Scion imagined she would never tire of it.

War had come to Xana; and though Pax Iator could never be sated, Scion Dolorous Hera Moirai would have her fill...

  Edited October 6, 2017 by Azekai

[Honda]

In Search of Knowledge -
 

 
Magos Dexlan stared out at the enormity of the universe.
 
His chronographic timer continued to count down his remaining power availability...28.047%...28.046%...28.045%...
 
It wouldn't be much longer now.
 
+++
 
As soon as the long range mass spectrometer arrays identified the anomaly, the Explorator fleet immediately went to battle stations.
 
As the fleet closed, auspex scanners showed a small moon sized planetary body, devoid of any other threat indicators outside of  the  mass anomalies. Of curious note, a barely measurable CO2 leak manifesting as a white fumarole on one end could be seen from several kilometers out. Intrigued by the presence of CO2, a boarding party was tasked to investigate.
 
Given the belief that the boarding parties were approaching a dead rock, they were surprised when at the 1 kilometer remaining phase line, the outlines of a docking station embedded deep into the massive rock slowly pulsed in a pale blue light as if preparing for an expected welcome.
 
The docking area was empty.
 
Magos Dexlan, escorted by five of his personal Skitarii guard, exited their shuttle and entered the docking area along with ten other Skitarii teams. Once the perimeter was secured, the threat level was reduced, but forces remained at a high state of alert.
 
Mapping servitors were launched to begin the cartographic analysis of the interior.
 
The station appeared to be abandoned.
 
+++
 
Magos Dexlan turned down yet another long corridor, when much to his surprise, the door at the end opened.
 
Framed by a soft light from the doorway, stood a tall, frail looking figure with a mane of jet black hair.
 
Almost whispering, the figured hissed, "Welcome distant travelers! I am Biologis Prime Hermes, the custodian of this marvelous installation. You may call me Dr. Hermes. With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"
 
+++
 
As the small group moved down a dimly lit corridor, they came upon a section where the left side was made of a clear, thick glass, approximately ten meters high. The glass wall revealed an area, heavily forested with tall trees, vines, low, rolling hummocks, and an occasional stream.
 
Puzzled, Magos Dexlan said, "This is quite an extensive...terrarium you have. I'm not sure I've seen one this large supported by an installation of your size. It would seem that amount of space could be dedicated towards other endeavors."
 
"Actually, this area is for research project, outside of my primary interest. I found the most interesting species of Gastropoda while on a recent foraging expedition. Initially, I thought I had found two new species, but it turns out that the two species are one and the same. Very odd. If I ever end up publishing my findings, I think I'll name them Astraconus Hermes, after myself, of course. After all, why not grab a little bit of immortality when you can, eh?"
 
The Magos and his bodyguard offered no responses.
 
Dr. Hermes looked back at the Magos and his bodyguard in anticipation of a response. None was offered.
 
"Where was I? Oh yes, what I find most interesting about them is how one species could have evolved two completely different forms with related, yet different functions. The minor form seeks out prey and brings it back to the larger, slower major form to be digested."
 
Magos Dexlan interrupted, "Although it is possible that you find this discussion intellectually stimulating, I am not able to extract any usable content from our exchange."
 
Dr. Hermes continued, "Of course you haven't, I haven't related the most important parts yet. Have patience my good man. What is most interesting is how the minor form conveys the prey back to the major form. Upon securing itself to the prey's back, which I might add, it can do quite rapidly, it then punctures the prey's brainstem with an armored proboscis and in some manner I have yet to discover, takes over the involuntary muscle system of the prey. Then it uses the prey's locomotive abilities and transports the prey back to the major form. Now the question you are probably asking yourself right now is, "How does it know where the major form is?" The answer of course, is "It doesn't!" The major form continues to move as well as it has quite a ravenous appetite and must keep searching for sustenance."
 
Dr. Hermes looked  back again expecting a response, but none was forthcoming.
 
Continuing, "At first I suspected that there was some sort of pheromone-based tracking mechanism at work, but I have eliminated that as an option. Which leads me to suspect some sort of psychic interaction between the two forms. This would be quite extraordinary."
 
"Lastly, there appears to be some evidence that the prey remains conscious and cognizant throughout the digestion process. Again, very odd and I've no real explanation for that either."
 
"In any case, shall we move on Magos?"
 
Magos Dexlan sniped, "Yes, let us move on, we have wasted enough time expounding upon useless biological trivia."
 
D. Hermes merely nodded. "Yes, yes, of course."
 
Suddenly there was a shrieking cry from the terrarium that stopped as quickly as it started. The Magos and his bodyguard looked back at the terrarium while exchanging com set clicks.
 
Dexlan turned to Dr. Hermes and snapped, "What sort of animal makes that sound? The audio profile could clearly be within human vocal ranges."
 
Dr. Hermes looked up absently and said, "Oh, I have no idea what that could be. Shall we keep moving?"
 
+++
 
After touring the fifth laboratory complex in succession with no sign of whatever of what had made the previous cry, Magos Dexlan asked suspiciously, "What exactly do you do here doctor?"
 
More than a little irritated, Dr. Hermes replied, "Well if you had been listening, you would have heard me say that this machinery you have been shown, is some of the most advanced of its type in this segment of the galaxy..
 
"YES! I heard you say that innumerable times," the Magos interrupted, "But what  do you do with all this equipment? What exactly takes place here?"
 
Dr. Hermes clearly annoyed, faced the  Magos and said, "Genetic  research. I conduct experiments into the mapping, injection, and recalibration of human DNA for the purposes of increasing performance of the human engine in desirable areas."
 
"Something your machine cult has never truly understood Magos, is that the most powerful machines are in fact made of flesh and blood. More importantly, they are made "by" flesh and blood.  In the end, I fear this will be the Mechanicum's undoing."
 
There was a long pause in conversation as neither Magos Dexlan nor Dr. Hermes made the effort to resume the discussion.
 
Finally the Magos interjected, "I have endured enough of your tiring and blasphemous spewings. I am placing you under arrest and you will accompany me under guard back to my ship to stand trial by a tribunal of the Ommnissiah." By silent command, the Magos guard lowered their weapons and took aim at the doctor, five red dots tightly grouped on his chest.
 
Dr. Hermes, appeared to be amused and responded, "Do I need to point out, my good Magos, that you have absolutely no authority here?"
 
'My presence here grants me all the authority that I need. It is not lost on me that this abomination you call an experimental station appears to be serviced by yourself and a cadre of servitors, all of which have been catalogued and targeted for decommissioning by my command. I should also point out that poised above your "station" is an Explorator fleet ready to initiate a catastrophic bombardment upon this planetoid also upon my direct command."
 
Dr. Hermes smiled. "How perceptive of you. Unfortunately for you, "Life" is not always as...obvious in its behaviors. Initial appearances can be quite deceiving. For example, a frail organism might use its frailties as a trap, not revealing its true strengths until the trap is sprung."
 

The Doctor and the Magos  stared at each other in silence.
 
"Ah, I can see by your countenance, that you think I am bluffing. Please feel free to try and contact your other boarding parties, or for that matter, any of your ships."
 
Both the Magos and the Skitarii-Prime silently submitted status request packets to the onsite teams, as well as the orbiting fleet. No  responses returned.
 
"By now, you will have discovered that your, hmm, what do you call it, your noospheric connections have all been disabled. In fact, while you were being entertained by me, your fleet was infiltrated and your ships are no longer under your command."
 
"That is patently impossible", the Magos blurted. "One cannot merely board a Mechcanicum vessel so easily. It is not a human-led ship, it has Machine interfaces and protocols  requiring levels of interaction that border on the infinitely complex. That would require a level of sophistication unavailable to you, something that only-"
 
"-Mechanicum trained adepts would be capable of? Yes, I imagine my benefactors would have taken that into consideration.", replied the doctor.
 
Staggered by the implication of Dr. Hermes statement, the Magos fell silent.
 
"Your" fleet is now "our" fleet, he concluded.
 
Anticipating the next logical command response before it was issued, the Dr. Hermes looked at the Skitarii Prime and softly said, "bang!", causing all five bodyguard figures to drop to the ground, each with a circular hole in their chests. The outward bursting  of the chest, reminiscent of the effects of a small shaped charge.
 
Smiling, Dr. Hermes continued, "I must say that when we first observed "your" fleet approaching, I was quite excited at the potential to increase the size of our gene pool. Imagine my disappointment to discover that there's so very little..."meat" in your passengers and crew except in your bond servants. Thankfully, this exercise isn't a complete loss."
 
"Your soldiers and other guardian machines are obviously problematical, so they have been dealt with in a similar fashion to your bodyguard. The remaining servitors shall receive new orders from the new owners of your fleet. I must profess a profound ignorance in these Mechanicum matters, I am after all, only a man of flesh and blood. The bond servants will be shuttled  down in short order."
 
Stunned at the outcome of events, the Magos asked weakly, "And what of me?"
 
Well, you don't have to worry about participating in any research sadly, there's not enough meat in you to make it worth my while. Instead...I think I shall provide you with an opportunity to contemplate your place in the "grand scheme of things."
 
+++
 
His punishment was rather simple.
 
A trio of unmarked Astartes giants first disabled all his suit operation protocols, then violently removed his arms and legs. All communication links and data stores were ripped from their  settings.
 
There wasn't even a long monologue to endure. They carried him to the airlock where he was brutally ejected into space. Like trash.
 
Floating out in the great void, Dexlan  looked out into  the expanse.
 
His god was nowhere to be seen.

 

 

EDITED because English is important :P

Edited October 6, 2017 by Honda

[Colonel Schaeffer]

Designation: 309213909032-Gamma 

 

++Praise The Omnissiah++

++Form: 42-B

++Classification: Forge World Status Report

++Sender: Forge World Theon-Alpha, Fabricator General Helenias -- [Noosphere ID: 1̘̖̘̻̤̯̏͋ͭ̎͊̀9̩͉͈͙͕̯́̃̈̔̆͛̏2̝̪̋8̬͇̻̝̎8̼̪̥͕̋̒ͪ̽ͦ͡7̻͔̺͓̂̉ͯ̀͋8̩̞2ͯͥ͒̅ͣ3͓͕̩̞͐͂9̜̤̲̲̠͔4͚̩ͥ0̭̩͕ͩ͛̓̂́͌9̙̜̹̗1̦̌ͧ̿ͧ̃7̛̥͉̲̞ͯ̋͂͌2̍͆ͪͩͣ̓̾͝9̿̈ͨͤͭ̄̚8̤͖͖̲̲̼̾̒͛͒͂̚̚4̫̩̮̟̹̎͒̐̾]
[Designation 231992-a]

++Recipient : Martian Telepathica Server 230199240293040G

++Production Rate: 99.234% Maximum Efficiency

++ Population Census:

Civilian : 20,345,582,023

Servitor: 10,345,123,340

Skitarii: 50,000,000

++Add. Notes:
None
++

---------------------------------------------

++Praise The Omnissiah++

++Form: 42-B

++Classification: Forge World Status Report

++Sender: Forge World Theon-Alpha, Fabricator General Helenias -- [Noosphere ID: 1̘̖̘̻̤̯̏͋ͭ̎͊̀9̩͉͈͙͕̯́̃̈̔̆͛̏2̝̪̋8̬͇̻̝̎8̼̪̥͕̋̒ͪ̽ͦ͡7̻͔̺͓̂̉ͯ̀͋8̩̞2ͯͥ͒̅ͣ3͓͕̩̞͐͂9̜̤̲̲̠͔4͚̩ͥ0̭̩͕ͩ͛̓̂́͌9̙̜̹̗1̦̌ͧ̿ͧ̃7̛̥͉̲̞ͯ̋͂͌2̍͆ͪͩͣ̓̾͝9̿̈ͨͤͭ̄̚8̤͖͖̲̲̼̾̒͛͒͂̚̚4̫̩̮̟̹̎͒̐̾]
[Designation 231992-a]

++Recipient : Martian Telepathica Server 230199240293040G

++Production Rate: 98.264% Maximum Efficiency

++ Population Census:

Civilian : 20,345,582,023

Servitor: 10,345,123,340

Skitarii: 50,000,000

++Add. Notes:
Recent reports of Traitor Astartes in the system has led to significant decrease in the productivity of the menial labour force, will increase work hours to meet expected quota.
++

---------------------------------------------


++Praise The Omnissiah++

++Form: 42-B

++Classification: Forge World Status Report

++Sender: Forge World Theon-Alpha, Fabricator General Helenias -- [Noosphere ID: 1̘̖̘̻̤̯̏͋ͭ̎͊̀9̩͉͈͙͕̯́̃̈̔̆͛̏2̝̪̋8̬͇̻̝̎8̼̪̥͕̋̒ͪ̽ͦ͡7̻͔̺͓̂̉ͯ̀͋8̩̞2ͯͥ͒̅ͣ3͓͕̩̞͐͂9̜̤̲̲̠͔4͚̩ͥ0̭̩͕ͩ͛̓̂́͌9̙̜̹̗1̦̌ͧ̿ͧ̃7̛̥͉̲̞ͯ̋͂͌2̍͆ͪͩͣ̓̾͝9̿̈ͨͤͭ̄̚8̤͖͖̲̲̼̾̒͛͒͂̚̚4̫̩̮̟̹̎͒̐̾]
[Designation 231992-a]

++Recipient : Martian Telepathica Server 230199240293040G

++Production Rate: 70.567% Maximum Efficiency
+ERROR! THIS LEVEL OF EFFICIENCY WILL RESULT IN MISSION PARAMETERS NOT BEING FULFILLED!

++ Population Census:

Civilian : 20,345,582,023

Servitor: 10,345,123,340

Skitarii: 50,000,000

++Add. Notes:
Confirmation of Chaos Forces converging on Forge World has led to production being diverted to the defence of Theon-Alpha.
Estimated Time before return to previous efficiency unknown.
++

---------------------------------------------





++Praise The Omnissiah++

++Form: 42-B

++Classification: Forge World Status Report

++Sender: Forge World Theon-Alpha, Fabricator General Helenias -- [Noosphere ID: 1̘̖̘̻̤̯̏͋ͭ̎͊̀9̩͉͈͙͕̯́̃̈̔̆͛̏2̝̪̋8̬͇̻̝̎8̼̪̥͕̋̒ͪ̽ͦ͡7̻͔̺͓̂̉ͯ̀͋8̩̞2ͯͥ͒̅ͣ3͓͕̩̞͐͂9̜̤̲̲̠͔4͚̩ͥ0̭̩͕ͩ͛̓̂́͌9̙̜̹̗1̦̌ͧ̿ͧ̃7̛̥͉̲̞ͯ̋͂͌2̍͆ͪͩͣ̓̾͝9̿̈ͨͤͭ̄̚8̤͖͖̲̲̼̾̒͛͒͂̚̚4̫̩̮̟̹̎͒̐̾]
[Designation 231992-a]

++Recipient : Martian Telepathica Server 230199240293040G

++Production Rate: 50.290% Maximum Efficiency
+ERROR! THIS LEVEL OF EFFICIENCY WILL RESULT IN MISSION PARAMETERS NOT BEING FULFILLED!

++ Population Census:

Civilian : 14,325,588,723

Servitor: 9,355,156,348

Skitarii: 42,457,092

++Add. Notes:
Traitor Forces have made planetfall. Bypassed Orbital Defense Systems via warp-touched scrap code. 20% loss of efficiency due to code scrubbers required
and lost facilities. Hereteks are among them. Additional reinforcements arrival date unknown.
++

---------------------------------------------

++Praise The Omnissiah++

++Form: 42-B

++Classification: Forge World Status Report

++Sender: Forge World Theon-Alpha, Deputy Fabricator General Sakro -- [Noosphere ID: 1̘̖̘̻̤̯̏͋ͭ̎͊̀9̩͉͈͙͕̯́̃̈̔̆͛̏2̝̪̋8̬͇̻̝̎8̼̪̥͕̋̒ͪ̽ͦ͡7̻͔̺͓̂̉ͯ̀͋8̩̞2ͯͥ͒̅ͣ3͓͕̩̞͐͂9̜̤̲̲̠͔4͚̩ͥ0̭̩͕ͩ͛̓̂́͌9̙̜̹̗1̦̌ͧ̿ͧ̃7̛̥͉̲̞ͯ̋͂͌2̍͆ͪͩͣ̓̾͝9̿̈ͨͤͭ̄̚8̤͖͖̲̲̼̾̒͛͒͂̚̚4̫̩̮̟̹̎͒̐̾]
[Designation 231992-a]

++Recipient : Martian Telepathica Server 230199240293040G

++Production Rate: 45.276% Maximum Efficiency
+ERROR! THIS LEVEL OF EFFICIENCY WILL RESULT IN MISSION PARAMETERS NOT BEING FULFILLED!

++ Population Census:

Civilian : 12,334,648,563

Servitor: 8,332,453,399

Skitarii: 9,789

++Add. Notes:
Fabricator General Helenias no longer operational. Current battle cogitations indicate that enemy repulsion is unlikely unless drastic actions are taken.
Contingency Warheads have been armed and Labour Conversion Doctorine Seption will begin.
++

---------------------------------------------

++Praise The Omnissiah++

++Form: 42-B

++Classification: Forge World Status Report

++Sender: Forge World Theon-Alpha, Magos Dominus Treft -- [Noosphere ID: 1̘̖̘̻̤̯̏͋ͭ̎͊̀9̩͉͈͙͕̯́̃̈̔̆͛̏2̝̪̋8̬͇̻̝̎8̼̪̥͕̋̒ͪ̽ͦ͡7̻͔̺͓̂̉ͯ̀͋8̩̞2ͯͥ͒̅ͣ3͓͕̩̞͐͂9̜̤̲̲̠͔4͚̩ͥ0̭̩͕ͩ͛̓̂́͌9̙̜̹̗1̦̌ͧ̿ͧ̃7̛̥͉̲̞ͯ̋͂͌2̍͆ͪͩͣ̓̾͝9̿̈ͨͤͭ̄̚8̤͖͖̲̲̼̾̒͛͒͂̚̚4̫̩̮̟̹̎͒̐̾]
[Designation 231992-a]

++Recipient : Martian Telepathica Server 230199240293040G

++Production Rate: 37.542% Maximum Efficiency
+ERROR! THIS LEVEL OF EFFICIENCY WILL RESULT IN MISSION PARAMETERS NOT BEING FULFILLED!

++ Population Census:

Civilian : 10,534,638,523

Servitor: 8,310,423,004

Skitarii: 4,325

++Add. Notes:
Deputy Fabricator General Sakro has been relieved of his position and operational capicity due to illogical actions. Skitarii fighting capicity reduced to less than 10%.
Menial Labourers have been relocated further from the frontlines, leading to a 8% decrease in efficiency. Staging Servitor Refit Doctorine Beta.
++

---------------------------------------------

++Praise The Omnissiah++

++Form: 42-B

++Classification: Forge World Status Report

++Sender: Forge World Theon-Alpha, Adept Zestra -- [Noosphere ID: 1̘̖̘̻̤̯̏͋ͭ̎͊̀9̩͉͈͙͕̯́̃̈̔̆͛̏2̝̪̋8̬͇̻̝̎8̼̪̥͕̋̒ͪ̽ͦ͡7̻͔̺͓̂̉ͯ̀͋8̩̞2ͯͥ͒̅ͣ3͓͕̩̞͐͂9̜̤̲̲̠͔4͚̩ͥ0̭̩͕ͩ͛̓̂́͌9̙̜̹̗1̦̌ͧ̿ͧ̃7̛̥͉̲̞ͯ̋͂͌2̍͆ͪͩͣ̓̾͝9̿̈ͨͤͭ̄̚8̤͖͖̲̲̼̾̒͛͒͂̚̚4̫̩̮̟̹̎͒̐̾]
[Designation 231992-a]

++Recipient : Martian Telepathica Server 230199240293040G

++Production Rate: 30.234% Maximum Efficiency
+ERROR! THIS LEVEL OF EFFICIENCY WILL RESULT IN MISSION PARAMETERS NOT BEING FULFILLED!

++ Population Census:

Civilian : 10,002,178,942

Servitor: 3,450,421,099

Skitarii: 23
++Add. Notes:
Skitarii force no longer operational. Magos Dominus Treft no longer operational. Servitor Refit Doctorine Beta Complete, fighting capability reduced significantly.
Menial Labourers are running low on supplies neccessary for operation. 7% decrease in maximum efficiency. 23 other ordianed have been rendered no longer operational
by Heretek virus' and scrapcode. 5 ordianed remain operational.
++

---------------------------------------------


++Praise The Omnissiah++

++Form: 42-B

++Classification: Forge World Status Report

++Sender: Forge World Theon-Alpha, Adept Zestra -- [Noosphere ID: 1̘̖̘̻̤̯̏͋ͭ̎͊̀9̩͉͈͙͕̯́̃̈̔̆͛̏2̝̪̋8̬͇̻̝̎8̼̪̥͕̋̒ͪ̽ͦ͡7̻͔̺͓̂̉ͯ̀͋8̩̞2ͯͥ͒̅ͣ3͓͕̩̞͐͂9̜̤̲̲̠͔4͚̩ͥ0̭̩͕ͩ͛̓̂́͌9̙̜̹̗1̦̌ͧ̿ͧ̃7̛̥͉̲̞ͯ̋͂͌2̍͆ͪͩͣ̓̾͝9̿̈ͨͤͭ̄̚8̤͖͖̲̲̼̾̒͛͒͂̚̚4̫̩̮̟̹̎͒̐̾]
[Designation 231992-a]

++Recipient : Martian Telepathica Server 230199240293040G

++Production Rate: 29.284% Maximum Efficiency
+ERROR! THIS LEVEL OF EFFICIENCY WILL RESULT IN MISSION PARAMETERS NOT BEING FULFILLED!

++ Population Census:

Civilian : 5,521,434,516

Servitor: 50,677

Skitarii: 2
++Add. Notes:
Servitor forces significantly decreased, beyond sustainable fighting capabilities. Menial Labourers supplies now below sustainable threshhold, despite recycling
of inoperative population. Labour Conversion Doctorine Seption activated. They will serve the Omnissiah with maximum efficiency.
++

---------------------------------------------


++Praise The Omnissiah++

++Form: 42-B

++Classification: Forge World Status Report

++Sender: Forge World Theon-Alpha,  Novitiate Herlon -- [Noosphere ID:Null ]
[Designation 231992-a]

++Recipient : Martian Telepathica Server 230199240293040G

++Production Rate: NULL% Maximum Efficiency
+ERROR! THIS LEVEL OF EFFICIENCY WILL RESULT IN MISSION PARAMETERS NOT BEING FULFILLED!

++ Population Census:

Civilian : 0

Servitor: 5,321,693,278

Skitarii: 0
++Add. Notes:
Adept Zestra is dead. Only me and Shelton are left, and she's been gibbering like a madman after the Hereteks corrupted the Noosphere. Praise the Omnissiah I don't have my
implants yet, or I'd be the same. Before she died Adept Zestra activated some sort of automatic protocol.The servitors turned on the others in the bunker complex
and began tearing them apart. Omnissiah, the screams!

I'm not ashamed to admit I ran. I ran and hid and only came out after I checked the pict screens to see it was clear. Adept Zestra activated some sort of conversion program in the
servitors, there's no one left unconverted as far as I can tell. They're just sitting there, in perfect silent little regiments, all 5 billion of them.

With a force like this we could have at least held out for a little longer. But I'm just a novitiate, I don't have the access catechism needed to control them. All I can do now
is stop them from falling into those bastards' hands. I saw what they did to the bodies they capture, if there is even a shred of their former selves left in those things,
I dont want to think about what they'd do to them.

Omnissiah fogive me.
++

---------------------------------------------

++Praise The Omnissiah++

++Form: 42-F

++Classification: Forge World Status Report

++Sender: Forge World Theon-Alpha, Automated Machine Spirit #827293020192 -- [Noosphere ID:Null ]
[Designation 231992-a]

++Recipient : Martian Telepathica Server 230199240293040G

++Contingency Warheads Activated

++The Motive Force is eternal and cannot be destroyed, it merely changes form

 

Edited after proof reading it again.

Edited October 6, 2017 by Colonel Schaeffer

[Warsmith Aznable]

Something Hateful

 

Hidden Content

Lorelei hurried into the ship’s Forge room, her excitement straining her abhuman physical limits. At close to 2.25 meters tall Lorelei could speak with space marines eye to eye. But being from an abhuman population adapted for zero gravity, a strain of homo sapiens longinus, she was exceedingly thin. Her long, graceful bones were delicate, and her muscle density was too light to bear standard gravity for more than a few minutes without her exoskeleton.

 

Her exoskeleton, a gift from her master, was a gold chased work of art. The work of a master craftsman, it originally had been designed to be light, slim, and unobstrusive. Once it had allowed her to wear fashionably tailored clothes without revealing the titanium support structure. Now, just a few short years later, it was covered with tool holders, diagnostic computers, various adapters, and a machine she had designed herself to oxygenate and filter her blood and inject and monitor several different kinds of chemical stimulants. Her somewhat crude augmentations let her live and work for weeks without having to return to the station’s null-grav decks where her people were quartered.

 

“Vol!” Lorelei called out as she scanned the cavernous room. Among the work tables littered with half finished projects, experiments, and junk, she spotted her destination, and she slowed to a cautious, respectful pace when she saw he was not alone. “Master Volundr!”

 

The two Iron Warriors turned to look at her. Forgemaster Volundr was, as always, unreadable behind his skull-faced helm. Lorelei was one of the few who could interpret the subtle movements of his servo-arms and mechadentrites to read his mood, but today she was too excited to remember. Standing next to him was one of the lesser Tech Marines who piloted an attack craft in one of the Grand Company’s flyer squadrons. He wore a large handlebar moustache in imitation of the leader of Skull Squadron, but she did not know his name. He did not, the sudden thought popped into Lorelei’s head, pull the look off nearly as well.

 

“I am aware of the situation.” Volundr waved away the space marine pilot who hurried off with the manner of someone just given a mission, leaving Lorelei alone with the Forgemaster. “Pull it up on the holotank. Give me your recommendation and I will tell you why you are wrong.”

 

Lorelei activated the Forge holotank with a neuro-implant pulsed thought, then manually called up data feeds and files. A live satellite image of the ground war on the planet below dominated the dataflow, and Lorelei highlighted a battlezone near the planet’s capital city.

 

“The Martians have landed a coffin ship.” She excitedly narrowed and zoomed in the feed, adding a stream of her own notes to the picture. “The Storm Sired squadron managed to force it into an inefficient atmospheric entry. It came down far into No Man’s Land, and the erection system is damaged. They are standing an Imperator-class walker, but at around forty-percent speed. The coffin ship is only partially under their air defense umbrella, and no significant units from either side are immediately available. There is a four hour window that the Imperator is vulnerable. If we do some creative realignment of the squadrons in orbit we can get enough of the smaller ships past their defense platform and destroy the Imperator with a saturation bombardment before it walks.”

 

“You are too eager.” Volundr came to stand beside Lorelei. “The idea of destroying a high prestige target and the perception of urgency has caused you to ignore the death of thousands of our voidsmen.”

 

“Replaceable.” Lorelei said quickly, then immediately felt a pang of shame.

 

“Needlessly wasteful.” Volundr said. There was no reproach in his voice; he stated everything matter of factly. “Give me your secondary.”

 

“It’s a standard feint.” She ran the scenario file without enthusiasm. “We rush a couple of air assault regiments to isolate the coffin ship, send a fast column of light infantry and auxiliaries in trucks toward the target kicking up a lot of dust, then when the defenders shift to support the titan hit the wall in Zone 5 here with breachers and a Predator spearhead in a bid for their back-up void shield generators.”

 

“The Novuroskan campaign.” Volundr identified the exact historical notes Lorelei had hastily copy-and-pasted on her way to the Forge to satisfy the requirement of a secondary to any offered plan. “I am disappointed in your lack of imagination.”

 

Lorelei clenched her fists, wanting to argue again for her initial plan. Instead she sighed and brushed some loose strands of her bangs back behind her ears. Her hair should have been long and woven into elaborate braids to signify her eligibility as a bride, but she told anyone who asked she was married to science.

 

“Then how?” Lorelei demanded. “We can’t let that Imperator stand. Even if it doesn’t link up with the active maniples the Martians have in Zone 3 it can threaten our entire left flank by itself if it makes it just twenty klicks deeper under their air defense. They have superior numbers, superior position, and will gain unstoppable momentum once that bastard is walking. We won’t lose just the city, we’ll be pushed off the continent. What are we going to do?”

 

“Something hateful.” Volundr replied, and Lorelei imagined she could hear his cold smile through his helmet’s modulated vox.

 

*************

 

BX-2 had been sleeping. Perception returned. There was the dreaded moment when sleep turned to waking, when the chemical inputs of which BX-2 was completely ignorant took a second to cycle, leaving the vat grown human brain to reel in terror of withdrawal, followed finally by the euphoric wash of drugs that maintained the pleasant state of existence that was all the formless personality within that brain knew as normal.

 

BX-2 had no eyes, and did not see as normal humans did. Probes and electrified clips attached to the truncated nervous system, feeding randomized, rhythmic stimuli to the brain. From its artificial birth through its years of maturation, the malformed person that was BX-2 experienced its life with a severely limited perception. An empathic psyker attempting to read BX-2’s mind would have no frame of reference for anything BX-2 experienced, thought about, or wanted. Only the most primitive, basic emotions would be understandable. BX-2 perceived a melange of sensory stimuli, and the patterns and structures formed by the brain for BX-2’s consciousness to experience could only be guessed at. BX-2 lived in an isolated world all of its own.

 

But there was purpose and design to the rhythm that the stimuli was initiated by the machines that kept BX-2 alive and thinking. BX-2b was a multi-purpose interpreter of sorts. For years the BX-2b computer passively measured the electrical patterns created by the sympathetic firing of the individual bundles of nerves, matching those patterns with brain-wave models and referencing micro-second snapshots against the external stimulus timecodes. These were continually fed to a very powerful processor that turned each snapshot into a mathematical forumula and filed it in an immense database, tagged and annotated in a variety of ways.

 

There were dozens of brains such as BX-2, each with its own server. A dedicated artificial intelligence sifted through the network of databases and continually updated a master language, of sorts, that each beta unit, when activated, could use to instigate desired neural activity from the pitiful slave consciousness in any given brain.

 

BX-2’s day started as any other day. Mornings were exciting, yet refreshing. Midday was satisfying and rewarding. Sometimes BX-2 would take an afternoon nap if there was nothing else interesting, but this day there was something interesting. BX-2 was excited. There was an anticipatory feeling. BX-2 was experiencing things not just out of sequence, but in novel combinations. BX-2 was distracted by memories of younger days for a while, when many things were novel, but then some of the new experiences began to be worrisome.

 

BX-2 began to perceive an emptiness, spiked with angry intensity. BX-2 panicked and willed experience to be pleasant again. BX-2 desperately needed the complacency of an afternoon. BX-2 would have settled for boredom. BX-2 wanted a pre-sleep excitement like the kind BX-2 enjoyed during adolescence, but lately had looked less forward to. BX-2 recoiled from the strange intensity, pleading for happiness. Eventually BX-2 became angry that life would suddenly become so strange and unpredictable and unpleasant and for the first time BX-2 could remember BX-2 was uncertain about what would happen next.

 

Then, in BX-2’s mind’s eye, as uniquely strange and incomprehensible to others as it was, BX-2 pictured a goal. The mind within struggled and grasped, reaching in an abstract, impossible to describe way. BX-2 would reach that goal. BX-2 would be certain about life and satisfied with existence again.

 

BX-2 would be happy.

 

*************

 

The supersonic rocket craft streaked through the flakk choked sky. It was sleek and silver, marred here and there with burns from atmospheric entry, with aggressively swept wings and compact control surfaces. Of a dozen that had been launched, only this one remained.

 

It arced low, hugging the terrain. The sonic boom and disturbed air flattened trees, knocked weary, trudging soldiers from their feet, and shattered the glass windshields of transport trucks. It danced away from smart missiles, and threaded the needle of interlacing las-fire. The adamantium hull barely registered the comparatively soft steel clouds of flakk that were thrown in its path. It maneuvered as if it had an insane need, and nothing could stop it.

 

The Imperator was clear of the coffin ship, but had only taken forty-two steps. The crew of the massive titan were only then being alerted to a possible airborne threat, but it was too late. The princeps in her neural tank only had time to yell her rage into a turbulence of amniotic fluid for a short moment before the impact.

 

The sleek projectile impacted the upper left thigh of the god-machine. In a flash of blue arcing static discharge the hull disintegrated, not by the force of impact but by design, and millions of needle-like probes propelled at incredible velocity penetrated into the interior of the titan. Trailing behind each needle-probe was a liquid-metal filament that cooled into a highly conductive wire at more or less the moment the probe it was attached to expended its kinetic energy. The core of the projectile liquefied into a semi-plastic gel which splattered and then wrapped around the exterior of the titan. The remaining kinetic energy realized through microscopic networks of converters and flowed into a push battery, powering the post-impact processes of the weapon.

 

Of the millions of probes that penetrated the titan, mere dozens connected with the god-machine’s internal networks. The millions of probes that were unconnected withered in seconds as energy was diverted into the established connections. In less than a minute hundreds of more lines had wormed their way into the network, guided by those already functioning.

 

The princeps of the Imperator began perceiving incomprehensible models of impossible experience. There was no recognizable form, no words for the concepts overpowering her mindscape. Her own brain began to suffer cascading neural failures, and as her moderatii screamed in sympathetic terror she suffered a massive, fatal aneurysm. Her last coherent thought was paradoxically an overwhelming joy and sense of accomplishment.

 

Without the princep’s firm guidance, the machine spirit of the Imperator raged, then panicked as the same assault of alien sensations battered its wounded artificial psyche. The princeps had been weak flesh, retreating into the oblivion of death. The ancient, hardened network of the Imperator had no such relief. The machine spirit mentally disassociated, and rose to full locomotive power.

 

The war for the capital city briefly stopped as millions of people watched in terror as an Imperator titan thundered across No Man’s Land in a fugue state.

 

*************

 

Lorelei and Volundr watched the scramble of the aftermath take shape via live satellite feeds on the holotank. The Imperator’s mad flight led it many kilometers from the battlefield before it collapsed in mechanical catatonia. The Adeptus Mechanicus forces that had anchored the defense of the city abandoned the walls, regrouped, and made a reckless drive to recover the god-machine. Warsmith Barnabas was quick to exploit the sudden confusion among the enemy, and was over-running Zone 1 and Zone 4. Lorelei calculated that the city could not be permanently captured, but the mayhem the Iron Warriors would cause would end its active involvement in the war even after the defenders rallied.

 

“How did you know it would do that?” Lorelei asked, impressed at the extent of the chaos below. When Volundr did not answer she saw micro-twitches of his secondary servo-arm and grinned at him. “You didn’t!”

 

“My simulations suggested it would attack the city.” Volundr admitted. “The real surprise is the lack of warp emergence. I expected at least a Class II manifestation. Most curious.”

 

“Why don’t we do that all the time?” Lorelei asked. “How many of those do we have?”

 

“Too many.” Volundr said. The turned to face her. “The Warsmith would not be pleased to learn the details of this weapons program. That is why it is housed on board this ship, and never on the Child of Calamity.”

 

Lorelei was stunned.

 

“Since when do we keep secrets from the Warsmith?” She asked, nervously looking behind her, searching the shadowed recesses of the workshop. The warm exhilaration of a victoriously executed plan and discovery of something new instantly gave way to a cold, clammy feeling of dread.

 

“Since we scraped the orange and black paint from our armour and returned to the fold of the Legion.” Volundr said. Lorelei touched the back of his arm, underneath where his shoulder pad hung, and felt the familiar contoured remains of the imperfectly removed orange paint. “Since she was given a senior seat in the Isarnhauld.”

 

“Vol,” Lorelei whispered fearfully. “What are we doing?”

 

************

 

Warsmith Barnabas tramped heavily down the Stormbird’s ramp. The old warrior was covered in soot, dried blood, and mud. His armour was pitted, torn, and cratered. His weapons were battered and worn. And yet he removed his helmet with an uncharacteristic jollity, tucking it under his arm in antiquated formality and not bothering to hide his good mood.

 

Barnabas, his lieutenants and champions hurrying to keep up, approached the reception group and saluted jauntily by banging the back of his power axe against his plastron.

 

“It is good to know that some of the old guard still respect the old ways!” Barnabas all but roared. He seldom took his helmet off, and in a legion as famously paranoid as the IVth this was considered unremarkable. Few knew of the vanity that caused him to hide his face, which he considered to be profoundly ugly. His eyes were small and too close together, his nose was large and bumpy, and his forehead was ridged reminiscent of an ogryn, accented by his very large eyebrows.

 

His host aboard ship was none other than Queen Yseult, the Warsmith Bolverk’s fourth wife, from a Drukhari cabal that controlled the webway nexus deep in the bowels of Warsmith Bolverk’s spacehulk. Once she had been the head of her own Wych-cult, and was a highly skilled assassin, gladiatrix, and huntress. The centuries she had lived aboard the Child of Calamity as the wife of a mad Asartes warlord had changed her.

 

She was no less beautiful, and certainly no less deadly. But her eyes made even the jolly Barnabas stop in his tracks. Her face showed a strain that no one, not even her brother Archon Ythwnn could guess at the origin of. But her eyes. On the odd occasion when other Drukhari were called into company, even they balked in her presence.

 

“Great gods.” Barnabas exclaimed quietly.

 

Where Yseult’s eyes had gone was a mystery. In their place, shining with a writhing inner light, were lavender soulstones.

 

“They were not anyone you know, Barnabas.” Yseult informed him distantly.

 

“Undoubtedly.” Warsmith Barnabas agreed awkwardly, then pressed the subject to practical concerns. “I have been told the Child of Calamity is en route, and that Bolverk will be leading the bulk of the 49^th Grand Company personally. The recent sack of the enemy capital city gives us time, but without Bolverk’s commitment to reinforce me not even that could be considered a turning point.”

 

“He is coming, as promised.” Yseult said airily. She turned to leave the flight deck, and Barnabas fell in pace beside her while their attendants Legionnaires merged into an honor guard escort.

 

“I am told Princess Maya has grown into a superb commander.” Barnabas said conversationally. “Bolverk speaks with great pride of your daughter.”

 

Yseult stopped, and the hackles on Barnabas’ neck rose in warning as the air around her chilled suddenly, a hint of frost forming on the should pad of his nearest to her.

 

“That thing is not my daughter.” Yseult said calmly, almost wistfully, and Barnabas wished he could tell where her grotesquely macabre eyes were looking. She turned her face toward his. “I don’t know what it is.”

 

For an awkward moment the legionnaires waited, unable to read the sudden mood shift and too cautious to act. After a moment Yseult simply continued, prompting them to follow along.

 

“Come, Barnabas.” Yseult motioned toward a lift. “I expect you’ll want to clean up and rest a bit before we move on to new business.”

 

The 49th Grand Company post-Cadia - Part One

[gunnyogrady]

Thank you all for your stories! I am excited to see so many pieces come in, I was getting a little worried!

 

I don't know when Kierdale will officially close the competition, but in the mean time I'll settle in to read all of your work, and have a judgement soon.

[Kierdale]

Thank you for your entries in Inspirational Friday: The Primordial Annihilator versus the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Half way through I was worried that we didn’t have many entries, but Thursday night we got three more!

Heliomanes gave us Apameia, a tale of a young adept racing to spirit his master, an archmagos, to safety. But all is not as it seems...

I gave you a couple of entries (and an idea), in Machinations I fleshed out what I started in Damnatio Ad Bestias, showing the growing corruption on Alceforge, the coming of the Psychopomps and the death of magos Chi-Eta...and survival of his closest ally(?).

And I was inspired by the Lexicanum entry on the Adeptus Mechanicus to write There will be no more.... The entry mentioned about members of the Priesthood of Mars not accepting the Emperor as the Ominissiah. I thought I’d take one of these groups and twist it’s beliefs.

Carrack, as I did, built on his entry for the `Mutants` theme with Backwards. I really liked both the description of Calebra Hive at its peak, and particularly the observations on the Mechanicus and the Imperium.

But what was in that bunker?? I’m sure we’ll find out.

Shinespider gave us a clash between an inquisitor and a member of the Mechanicus, puppets dancing to another’s tune...

Azekai’s work gave us an excellent description of a knight pilot, their engine and the relationship between them. I haven’t read such a great and detailed description. Too short!

In Search of Knowledge was Honda’s piece for this theme. A great an intriguing intro. I liked the character of Dr. Hermes and Magos Dexlan’s growing irritation. A great twist and that much was left unexplained was good.

Colonel Shaeffer gave us Designation: 309213909032-Gamma, describing so much in so little words: simple status updates from a forge world. The reduction in efficiency (far more important than lives lost. How very Mechanicus, nay, Imperial!), the changes in leadership (with rank dropping). And that final entry

…and I was very pleased to see a homo sapiens longinus in Warsmith Aznable’s Something Hateful. I had hoped to see some of the less-common human strains in people’s entries for the last theme, so it was nice to see one now. I loved the premise: an enemy titan undergoing a problematic deployment in no-man’s land. A tantalizing target or prize! I also really enjoy your occasional comments that help to flesh out the culture of your characters (about Lorelei’s hair, etc.). The references to past campaigns, making it more than a stand-alone, self-contained story but rather clearly part of an on-going narration. These small things really add to the background. And, for those who have been following the 49th Grand Company, there were some interesting developments there...

Thank you so much for your great and varied pieces!

I hereby close that topic but if anyone has more stories on that theme, at any time, please post them here with a suitable title.

And here begins our nineteenth challenge of Inspirational Friday 2017:

The Primordial Annihilator versus the Astra Mi- Imperial Guard

Though they are but mortals in a galaxy of gods and monsters, the Imperial Guard combine vast numbers, mighty armoured vehicles and good honest human courage to win bloody victories in the Emperor’s countless wars.

-Imperial Guard codex

With regiments raised on countless worlds, the Imperial Guard are the Emperor’s most numerous forces. From the orphaned Cadian regiments whose very planet broke before they did, crying out “Remember Cadia!” as they march into battle; to the massed cavalry charges of the Attilan roughriders; the hardened jungle fighters of Catachan; the innumerable conscripts of the Valhallans; the proud Mordian regiments from their twilight world, the battle-hardened Armageddon Steel Legion; the Vostroyan firstborn with their fur hats and fine arms; the Tallarn raiders, striking and fading like desert wind; the grim Death Korps of Krieg to the Elysians dropping onto the battlefield from upon high...the regiments of the Guard are varied and not limited to infantry as armoured companies grind the battlefield and the enemy beneath the treads of their chimeras, Leman Russes and superheavy tanks such as the Baneblade and Shadowsword.

Tell us this time a tale of the forces of the Primordial Annihilator against the Imperial Guard.

The Primordial Annihilator versus the Imperial Guard runs until the 27th of October.

Let us be inspired.

And who shall judge this new challenge? That decision lies with our current judge: gunnyogrady.

The champion chosen by gunnyogrady, shall claim the Octed amulet:

Or, for the cannon fodder loyal troops of the Emperor’s Hammer:

[Honda]

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This was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I shall be obligated to borrow it at some point...for a friend.

[MyD4rkPassenger]

It's been quite some time since I've written here, forgive some errors I am on lunch and will fix them when I get off work, I just had to get this one down while it was fresh!

 

Excerpt from – “An Account of a Solider” by Commander Alphron Joheseke […///REDACTED…ORDO MALLEUS AUTHORIZATION///…]

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.
And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee."

56.301 – M41
I had been sent on the command of General Quintos to Phyraxia, a small agri world on the edge of the Cinuptos stars. The planet was considered semi vital (meaning the administratum wanted a symbolic victory), its production of grain was part of the larger tithe sent out to the greater hive worlds in system, but by no means was this the epicenter of all grain in system. What was really at play here was the revolt by the population. In all the years the Cinuptos stars had been a part of the grand machine, not once had any hint of rebellion or discontent been found. Naturally with the advent of this rebellion the local planetary defense force was ill equipped to deal with organized revolt, thus warranting a response from the higher ups and the deployment of my regiment.

56.321 – M41
When we arrived on Phyraxia our forces immediately moved to secure the main city and thoroughfares, such actions would provide an able staging ground to launch strikes at the outlying settlements. I was then tasked with meeting with not only the pdf general, but also the planetary governor. Commissar Jerek, the leaders of 1st and 2nd platoon, and myself were en route to the govenor’s palace when a horrendous screeching wail boomed out of all speakers in the city, lasting only a few moments. This should have been the first sign to us.

56.322 – M41
The meeting with the leaders of Phyraxia was more unnerving than I had anticipated. Not only had the rebellion nearly reached the capital city, the pdf was in shambles, vandals had been sabotaging key systems, and grisly atrocities were being found in the darkest alleys of the city. I felt as if I had walked into a disaster.

56.350 – M41
Fighting has escalated immensely; the rebels have assaulted our position in the city and made headway into the streets. We’ve cordoned off whole sections of the city. The rebels are not behaving like most I’ve quelled, the many I’ve seen in firefights rush headlong at our lines screaming, drenched in bloody ichor, I would be lying if I said I hadn’t been somewhat shaken. A few had to have even been teenagers, we did our duty nonetheless. I had ordered forays into the hotzones by our more seasoned squads. Their reports continued to prove disturbing. Whole hab units were covered in blood, their occupants flayed alive and hung by chains to the ceiling, strange dielects were written in blood alongside low gothic phrases such as “we have come.” Many of the veterans are outright refusing to go on these missions at night, as one squad deployed three nights ago vanished, the last contact was a screaming vox message drowned out by thunderous booms and what curiously sounded of chainblades. Commissar Jerek has already bestowed the judgment of the Commissariat upon 4 members of the regiment attempting to get offworld. By my estimates we’ll lose the city in a month.

56.352 – M41
We fired upon the civilians today, I did not hesitate in my duty for I serve with utmost loyalty, yet I don’t have to relish in it. The murders and atrocities were now occurring past our lines. Civil unrest was at its highest, and swathes of citizens moved to surround the govenor’s palace where our command center was kept. Apparently, apparitions of large creatures were being reported, with eyes of burning hellfyre that seemed to melt into the shadows. These apparitions were now “striking” at key habs and factories within the city. We dismissed these as hearsay, conjurations of a terrified population. At the apex of this protest a gunshot rang out in the night, and we acted with swift precision. Many of our own were terrified at the size of the crowd, which added to the vigor that went into the slaughter. The crowd dispersed, and I had felt no better than the rebels who had pushed these people to protest. I looked out to the city skyline and caught a glimpse of red coals staring at me from a nearby hab, I was tired, the only explanation… more correctly, I was scared.

56.354 – M41
What occurred tonight was beyond my comprehension. The day prior, high command declared the planet forfeit as of now, we were to evacuate and regroup with a larger force and deploy in a more decisive assault. The wonton slaughter had continued behind our lines. Grisly displays were hung everywhere seemingly during the night. Whole squads disappeared during night patrols, so we halted all patrols and grouped up at the departure zone. I had received word this morning that the governor’s palace was attacked, his flayed corpse was hung by the gargoyles along its ramparts. To add to our misfortune an incredible storm formed over the city during our muster that was too turbulent even for our lifters to navigate, and blocked all communications to our ships. By now I came to believe we were cursed, or haunted by some evil. It was when night came that we received communications from our cruisers, while this meant we could leave, the messages also contained warnings of immediate threat. Dark and angular ships had cut through the void like oceanic predators, undetected to our vessels, and began their assault. I mustered our troops with my platoon leaders and Jerek around the staging site for battle. We formed a defensive perimeter around the landers while they powered up. The naval fighters had been ordered to clear airspace for us and our evacuation was now considered extremely hot, as the troopers said.

From the darkness however came the boom of thrusters and something terrible descended from the cliffs above us. The first landed on a trooper from 4th platoon and raised a meltagun at one of our Russes. Instantly it was obliterated in an explosion that threw me off my feet. More descended in a roar of engines and chainblades. They were utterly and truly terrifying, great armored forms that moved faster than any of us could, let alone the fact they were in this hulking warplate. Lightning cracked across their forms as they slaughtered their way into my men. More appeared from the treelines advancing forward and firing salvos of bolters and heavy bolter shells. These were the angels of death, I had heard stories of them, but why were we under attack? I saw Jerek firing his bolt pistol at a nearby warrior who was crushing a man’s skull with one hand. The thing turned around and its faceplate was set in a mask of death. It launched itself at Jerek, ignoring the hail of rounds thudding against its chest. I had been too busy trying to rally the men and move to the landers to see what befell Jerek, but the scream he emitted drowned out even the din of the battle.

I looked in horror as these great warriors advanced through hails of las fire to engage with our troopers. One brave trooper leveled his plasma gun at a warrior who was sawing his squad mate in half and fire. Both of the combatants died and the gunner’s eyes brightened for a moment, knowing he ended an angel of death, before another came from behind him and rammed a chainblade through his chest. I was firing my pistol out of show now, I knew their armor was too thick for my laspistol to do much of anything, but I had to attempt to keep my men together. I turned to see a group of warriors run into a lander about to take off and tried to ignore what I knew was happening. My own lander was ready for liftoff and I made no hesitation in ordering the ramp shut and immediate emergency takeoff. I could hear pounding fists and the bite of chainblades on the ramp as I buckled in and prayed to the Emperor I would make it to our cruiser.

We did in fact liftoff, I knowingly left over a third of my troopers and all of our vehicles behind in our mad rush to escape. No one on the lander blamed me. We were hailed by naval fighters to follow in tight proximity as we rocketed to the ship. They reported great drakes of metal tearing through the void alongside ships radiating malice. By the grace of the throne we reached the Sword of Terra, and I exited the lander and ran to the command center.

All of the readouts were flashing red, damage reports scrolled on every monitor and a dull servitor was counting down from 5 minutes. I was about to inquire about the status of our systems when our vox hail exploded in a burst of screams and blood curdling cries. I turned to see the vox operator had soiled himself and was weeping tears of blood. The wail cut off and was replaced by a deep, predatory voice distorted by a helm vox. “Ave Dominus Nox, we have come for you, let your final moments be narrated by the screams of your friends and the cries of the populace. The VIII legion has come to Cinuptos, and this is but a taste of the terror you’ve yet to drink.

I will never forget this voice, it still wakes me from my dreams accompanying visions of the midnight clad reapers eviscerating my men. I had found out later our navigator had disobeyed orders and jumped us into the warp moments after the comms had returned to the screams. While he had saved us all, he had died of wracking seizures screaming about a rift as we exited the warp in safer space. We had reported this event to command, and an assault force was sent to Phyraxia only to find no signs of the enemy and the remains of shattered Imperial ships.


56.360 – M41
I’m told we are being grounded by order of the holy Inquisition, due to the events of Phyraxia. I do not know if I will be allowed to return to duty, however I intend to keep writing.

[.../// END EXCERPT///...]

Edited October 11, 2017 by MyD4rkPassenger

[Kierdale]

gunnyogrady, there’s still a week to go in the IG theme but I wondered if you have made a decision on the winner of Chaos vs. AdMech? :)

[Kierdale]

I’m extending the deadline for Chaos vs. IG by a week to 10/27.

A. Gunnyogrady hasn’t judged the last challenge yet (and hasn’t checked in since 10/12. If no judgement come this weekend then I’ll do the honours).

B. We’ve only had one entry so far.

C. This weekend I’ll be rather busy!

[Kierdale]

Well, there has been no sign of gunnyogrady since 10/12 so it falls to me to pass judgement.

There’s a reason why I don’t judge IF every week anymore...I hate having to choose a winner!

 

However, after reviewing the entries again I’ve chosen one which, thought it didn’t feature the Chaos-side of the theme much, I do feel it exemplified the Adeptus Mechanicus.

 

The winner of The Primordial Annihilator versus the Adeptus Mechanicus is Colonel Schaeffer.

Congratulations!

[Honda]

Well done, Col. Schaeffer! Congratulations on your excellent story!

[Carrack]

Duty

Port LeCroix, Level 45, Calebra Hive Ruins

 

"Heretics, 9 O'clock, 60 meters! Do your duty!" Main Gunner quickly swiveled the turret and poured a stream of His holy Wrath into a squad carrying a stubber up the exposed staircase of a ruined two story building. Left Sponson added in a burst of heavy bolts to finish off the scum that survived Main Gunner's punisher cannon fire. Loader cursed from beneath the turret, as another hot brass casing missed its makeshift catch-bag and found its way underneath his armor and overalls, somehow finding its way to sear the sensitive flesh near his armpit. I'd have to look up Loader's real name to report him to the confessor for extraordinary repentance for his particularly foul mouth. I stopped learning their names after Minos V. My driver's name however, Trooper Larvence, I had the misfortune of already knowing all too well, as did most officers of the regiment. Miraculously without having to be told, he accelerated through the alley to the entrance of the square, braking just before exposing us to any potential ambush.

 

Penny's Square was the objective of our squadron's mission. It was a broad open square that was situated along the border of Port LeCroix and the Contested Zone, the dividing line between what was within the Light of the Emperor, and what was in shadow on level 45 of the ruins of Calebra Hive. Port LeCroix included most of the southern half of the level, from the gaping breech in the outer wall to the barricades and concertina that bisected the level, cutting through the north side of Penny's Square, the same barricades that the heretic had overrun and pushed a salient into the ruins on the south side of the open square. Port LeCroix was where the rogue trader by the same name had landed his launches and lifters directly through the outer wall breech, in order to exploit salvage and recovery efforts in the devastated mega hive without having to land in more established, and tariffed, landing zones. The port teemed with sleazy businessmen looking to strike it rich, eager colonists hoping to start their new lives, and us, the members of the Cadian 112th who were pledged to LeCroix for seven years following our rescue from the fall of Minos V.

 

In contrast the Contested Zone was a tribal region of local scavengers, savages who at one time were beholden to various outside benefactors like agents from one of the world's lesser hives, or a rival rouge traders competing with LeCroix over recovered art and salvaged technology. Whoever their original masters were, the gangs all had a new one now, the Arch-Enemy of Man. Where the gangs used to steal, raid, even occasionally trade with Port LeCroix, now they were laying an organized siege. Where they used to be motivated by greed, now they cared only for our deaths. Where they used to be a motley collection of gangs clad in tribal colors, now they were uniformly dressed in black and gold. Penny Square could not be allowed to remain in their hands.

 

 

 

As I crept into the square, it was obvious that the Emperor had given me plenty of heretics to slay. Lines of them were hustling chunks of rubble, plastiboard, and spools of wire across the square to fortify their newly seized buildings on the south side of Penny Square. Desultory fire was being exchanged between heretics in those buildings and our infantry from further south. None of the heretics in the square were even looking in our direction. We had outflanked the enemy. I gave the command to fire at will. Main Gunner let them have it with long bursts that walked along the lines of heretics like a well worn path. Nothing in His arsenal was as satisfying as a good burst from a punisher cannon. Main Gunner diligently lingered the cannon on clumps of heretics, and jerked it quickly over the more sparsely spaced sections of their line. His control was beautiful. With less artistry, but equal effectiveness, Left and Right Sponsons started digging out the enemy from the buildings, shooting heavy bolts through open doorways, broken out windows, and boarded over gaps in the walls. Even Loader added to the fray with the hull mounted heavy bolter, although it was unclear what exactly he was shooting at. He would need some remedial training on target acquisition post mission to go along with his extraordinary repentance.

 

As the heretics were scattered and cut down, the call came across the vox that 1st and 2nd platoon were advancing north into the occupied buildings. I shifted our fire to protect our infantry, and directed Trooper Larvence to move along the edge of the square to cover the streets the heretics had been entering from. He gave it a little extra promethium to get to the first street, Pennymar Lane, braking the right track first at its entrance, so my tank would pivot into position with my front armor to the enemy. The turn wasn't fast enough. A pair of melta beams hissed into my right track and slagged road wheels, and fused tracks and suspension, fixing us into place mid-turn. It was a mobility kill for us, but my duty was not yet done, for I still had guns with which to hammer His foes with.

 

I Ignored Trooper Larvence's impious language, and rotated the turret to face up the lane. Right Sponson was franticly firing with a complete lack of discipline. He would melt the barrel on the heavy bolter if he kept it up much longer. I didn't have time to instruct Right Sponson, because what appeared to be a battalion sized element was moving down the lane towards our now fixed position. The heretics closest were carrying tools and materials to fortify the south of the square, like the ones we had just wiped out, but the ones behind them were pushing up crew served weapons and field artillery carriages. There were hundreds of them. The Emperor had blessed me with abundant targets.

 

Main Gunner started playing the punisher across the front ranks of the heretics, cutting them down like 50 meter targets in front of a shock trooper's qualification range. Some of the rounds would pierced straight through the lightly armored pioneers and into the men behind them, felling both with a single shot. While Main Gunner worked the closest ranks first, Loader used the hull heavy bolter to start in on the crew served weapon teams further back, mostly heavy stubbers, but at least a few missile teams as well. I yelled for Trooper Larvence to assist with the main gun, as Loader was busy and their was no further need for a driver, then tried to calm Right Sponson. He was unresponsive to my commands for distance and direction, he just ignored me and kept blasting large caliber mass reactive shells out of his weapon. I think he was fervently praying. I popped my hatch to take a look myself.

 

I breathed in a cloud of acrid gun smoke as my ears were assaulted by the whine of the cannon cycling retribution one to the heretic. Maybe it was the glare of the flashing cannon and heavy bolters, but I could not identify whatever target Right Sponson was shooting at. As I reached inside for my handheld optics, Trooper Larvence threw open the driver's hatch, shouting that the crawl space from behind his seat to the turret was filled with brass casings. He pulled himself onto the tank, keeping his head low to avoid the heat pouring off the barrels of my cannon, and started to scurry over the turret to the loader's hatch. Something hit him in the side of his head underneath his helmet and showered my face with blood and flecks of skull. I was momentarily stunned by the loss of my latest driver, and watched in fascination the lazy arc of a grenade being tossed into his hatch. I snapped out of my daze as I recognized what was happening and tried to leap out of my own hatch. The cord from my vox headset yanked me back awkwardly in time to hear the "krumping" of the krak grenade, but thankfully the rapidly growing heaps of brass casings that had filled the crawl space between the driver's seat and the turret, contained the blast enough not to kill me or keep my gunners from firing. The neck wringing from my vox cord had clearly been a sign from the Emperor to remember my duty, so I called in the enemy position and numbers across the regimental net.

 

"Hold the line!" Was the command from the Old Man, as expected. The rest of his instructions were broken up by the sound of two more melta beams sizzling into my tank, one hitting the base of the turret just above the hull, and the other somewhere into Right Sponson's position. I called for crew status and only heard Loader's cursing. Main Gunner, Right Sponson, and unexplainably, Left Sponson were all silent. That's when I noticed the searing pain and smell of burning flesh coming from my hip. I glanced down and saw bone, it was bad, probably not survivable without immediate evacuation to the regimental medicae. Yet in spite of the pain, the sounds of battle, my impending failure to hold the line as ordered, and the utter hopelessness of the situation, a sense of calm overtook me. For the first time since the ambush I thought clearly. I had been attacked with melta beams, and krak grenades, and lost Trooper Larvence to what must have been a bolt pistol shot. This meant two things; the enemy was better armed than the autogun and stubber armed rabble I had faced so far, and that they were in close range.

 

My tank was destroyed, most of my crew killed, my mission had failed, and myself mortally wounded, yet my resolve was unbreakable. My body wasn't, my hip gave out and I fell to the deck of the tank, losing a few teeth on the edge of the turret on my way down. I burnt my fingers on the piles of hot brass that had not ejected into the punisher's catch bag, and as I slid my fingers away to find a cooler purchase I gripped a heavy bolt. The bolt must have been a rare misfire, because it's rocket had never fired, even though its warhead was clearly armed. The Emperor provides. I spun the bolt in my hands to fool its machine spirit into thinking it had traveled far enough to safely detonate, then hurled it back towards the engine access hatch. It struck true, but didn't explode on impact, it merely fell to the deck next to the engine access hatch. I looked up to Him on Terra and instead saw a monstrously sized black armored gauntlet, trimmed in gold filigree, reaching down for me from the opened commander's hatch. The thrown bolt then exploded a second late, catching leaking promethium afire and flashing flames into the turret of the tank, burning me alive in agonizing flames. The last thing I heard was the drums of ammunition from our magazine cooking off from the heat and shooting in every direction, and hopefully into my killers. My duty had ended.

Edited October 25, 2017 by Carrack

[Warsmith Aznable]

Here is my entry. It is very long, and I apologise for that. I have broken it into different parts to make reading it seem maybe less overwhelming.

 

The Mercy Song

 

Part One

Hidden Content

Yannis closed his eyes and concentrated on the familiar noise of the ancient monorail system, willing the pressing mass of humanity to fade away. The commute to the burbs was time-consuming and uncomfortable, but it beat living in the high arcologies. Their safety from the changing planetary environment and the threat of invasion was entirely theoretical, as far as Yannis was concerned. Everyone knew that life anywhere inside but the highest spires was nasty, brutish, and short.

 

The packed-in manufactorum workers and mid-grade servants, Yannis included, swayed in time to the clatter and hum of the mega-city’s crumbling mass transit. The smell of oil, grease, sweat, desperation, and indifference was usually in the background of their lives, unnoticed but ever present. Pressed together like crackers in a ration tin the lives of workers and their varied jobs concentrated into a noxious miasma. Yannis breathed into his high collar and counted the number of times the monorail stopped and opened its doors. The announcement system crackled unintelligibly at every stop; it was an oft repeated joke that all of the transit speakers had been blow out centuries ago, but the proper repair request paperwork should be reaching the appropriate authorities imminently.

 

At the forty-second stop since leaving the industrial district Yannis became aware of the extra room in the monorail car. With every stop the passengers had shuffled about, rearranging to create the most comfort, but it took many stops before one could actually stand without rubbing shoulders with someone.

 

With a hiss of shutting doors and the garbled crackling of the PA system, the monorail lurched back into motion. Just seven more stops, Yannis thought to himself. As the hum of the electro-magnetic propulsion system rose to travel intensity, Yannis heard another another, more musical hum. He opened his eyes and looked about, still hanging from the strap, and spotted an old woman sitting at the back of the car, dark but for the sickly yellow glow of the emergency exit sign.

 

The woman was frighteningly thin, clad in ragged, old clothes. Her dirty grey hair was long and stringy, and her leathery skin was creased and wrinkled. Her bony hands clutched a beat up canvas satchel, at second glance an frayed and faded military map case. Despite her advanced age and wretched condition, the old woman rocked gently back and forth, not in time with the transit system but with the song she hummed to herself. Her face was a mask of serenity, the skin of her eyelids stretched tightly over the eyeballs protruding from their sunken sockets. She rocked and hummed her half remembered hymn, whispering very few of the words every now and again as they rose from her memory.

 

“Mercy… oh, have mercy…”

 

The words caused a chill to corkscrew down Yannis’ spine. The only mercy he knew was the Emperor’s Mercy. Nervously he looked around and saw his neighbor Petros leaning into the center pole by the door, and moved to stand near him. The two exchanged concerned looks, then resumed silently counting the number of stops until the monorail stopped at their platform.

 

Later, Yannis and Petros turned at the bottom of the concrete steps from their neighborhood platform to the street and watched the monorail lurch and glide away into the dusk. Not able to say exactly why, the two men both laughed, then clapped one another on the shoulder and made their way to the small hab block they shared.

 

***********

 

“Melika!” Yannis called out to his wife as he opened the door of their small apartment. He closed the flimsy plasteel door and wearily hung his heavy canvas work jacket onto its wall hook next to hers.

 

“Just in time,” Melika answered him from their kitchenette. Their apartment was small. They had no children so they counted themselves lucky that they even had a separate bedroom. Most couples with no children made do with only one room, but this far from the city center the housing authority was less rigid.

 

Yannis sat upon the floor and kicked off his thick rubberized canvas boots, heaving them toward the corner by the door before laying down and stretching painfully. Their front room was spartan, as were those of most couples they knew. Melika ferried two bowls of steaming protein stew and sat them upon the two shoved together footlockers that served as their only table. A brightly coloured but flimsy plastic pitcher came next, and Melika poured simple, clean water into their PDF issue canteen cups.

 

“Anything on the video?” Yannis sat up, hungrily spooning the stew into his mouth.

 

“It’s thirdday.” Melika poked her stew with her metal PDF issue mess spoon, fishing for steamed vegetables. “Nothing good comes on until Fifthday.”

 

“Hmmm.” Yannis agreed disinterestedly. He looked up at Melika then, suddenly remembering how attractive he found her, overcome by a sudden nostalgia for something he couldn’t put his finger on. He watched her eat, her dark brown eyes fixed onto her shallow spoon lest her prized vegetables tumble back into the stew. The way her natural brown curls framed her face beguiled him, and even her somewhat large nose, slightly crooked from a work mishap, was charming to him.

 

“Why don’t we go to Seventhday Service?” Yannis suddenly asked.

 

“We go every Seventhday.” Melika looked up at him, confused. Attendance at the neighborhood mission was mandatory on service days.

 

“No,” Yannis said, “I mean at the Cathedral.”

 

“It’s a difficult and long trip for our only day off.” Melika, not impious, but extremely practical, frowned at the thought of spending hours on the monorail to stand in line for hours again to get even close to the Cathedral. “It would be better to wait for a Feast so we’d have three days off in a row. Better chance of getting inside if we did that, if we chose the right one.”

 

“It was just a thought.” Yannis said glumly. “I don’t know why I said it.”

 

Suddenly the telescreen on the wall activated, startling the two mid-meal. Yannis and Melika dropped their spoons and jumped to their feet, facing the telescreen as the seal of the Astra Militarum faded into view and triumphal marching music blared from the vox.

 

+++Attention Citizen-soldiers… Attention Citizen-soldiers… Stand ready to receive local activation instructions… Failure to watch the following broadcast is equivalent to desertion in the face of the enemy and is a capital offense… Stand ready to receive local activation instructions… Insert localised video here in 5… 4… 3...+++

 

Yannis and Melika spared one another a quick, nervous glance, then came to attention and saluted as the double-heade eagle of the Astra Militarum was replaced by a live feed of their local Mobilisation Officer. His dress uniform was wrinkled and ill-fitting, obviously thrown on only moments before he was called to read his announcement live on-air. He fumbled nervously with several papers on a clipboard, staring at the words for a moment before taking a deep breath and looking directly into the camera.

 

“247^th Infantry Battalion…248th Infantry Battalion… 173^rd Motorised Rifle Company... 72nd Field Artillery Battery… 101^st Armoured Auxiliary Detachment… 4077^th Mobile Medicae Unit… 6-6 Light Recon Company… the entire Northern Zone Transportation Division… and the 1^st through 7^th Support Companies of District H1Z1… uh… and any retiree officers and Reserve Listed specialists… report to duty stations immediately. All secondary and tertiary PDF members report to your neighborhood Ready Reserve Officer for headcount by 2230. Full alert kit for all members.

 

… Was that good? OK, set it to repeat for recall on-demand and-”

 

“Well, that’s me.” Yannis reached out and muted the playback by confirming his acceptance of the orders with a touch of a button.

 

“Lucky you.” Melika hurriedly removed their half-eaten dinner from their PDF footlockers. Yannis pulled his trunk slightly out and threw open the top, quickly removing items, many he hadn’t looked at since his orientation training and initial issue. Melika quickly sanitized their dishes (even soldiers weren’t exempt from bio-waste law without a direct order) then opened her own trunk.

 

“Lucky me?” Yannis grinned at her as he adjusted the straps on his webgear, letting it out to accommodate for the softer physique he had gained since basic.

 

“Sure.” Melika said. Yannis saw through her forced smile, however bravely she put it on. “I have to stay here counting and recounting my issued wargear and lining up for head count three times a day until whatever this is is over. You get to ride on a Chimaera and eat fresh rations.”

 

“This is just a drill...” Yannis, gripping his las-carbine still in its canvas dust cover, locked eyes with her. “I’ll be home tomorrow, probably with a medal for not having sold any of this junk for stimms.”

 

“Or maybe a commendation for having gained the least weight since indoctrination.” Melika adjusted Yannis’ collar so that one side was not awkwardly trapped under his webgear. “Now you hurry. I have another hour, you move, don’t be late!”

 

Yannis hesitated, kissed Melika on the cheek and hurried outside and merged with the mass of humanity again. Instead of the unorganized pressing of flesh he routinely experienced during his commute, Yannis fell in with route-stepping citizen-soldiers. Their training had been brief, but intense. Yannis felt a surge of eerie time displacement in his mind, brought back by the sound of tramping boots and the smell of fresh issue uniforms and the canteens and other gear bouncing against his sides with each step.

 

“Yannis!” Petros fell in beside him as they descended the hab block stairs. “I didn’t even finish dinner!”

 

Part Two

Hidden Content

“Alright lads, over here. Over here.”

 

Yannis lined up with the rest of his platoon where Sergeant Drakey indicated. Usually he was Mr. Drakey, or “Opa” Drakey, gaffer of the local corner shop where everyone bought tobacco, pastries, and ABC liquor. But today, and for the foreseeable future, he was Sergeant Drakey.

 

“I think Opa should stay with the neighborhood reserve.” Petros said from close behind Yannis. “These gangers won’t care he’s a nice old man.”

 

“I wish they let him make our rations.” Yannis said, not for the first time. “Our field desserts are like sawdust.”

 

“What is sawdust?” Pertos asked.

 

“Forget it.” Yannis waved him off as they shuffled forward, one step at a time, to receive new gear. Yannis’ grandfather had been from the northland, where actual trees still grew row upon row in farms to be harvested for luxury items, but Petros’ people had come from the coast. Of course Yannis had never seen a tree or even wood, and Petros had never seen the ocean or even a fish. Yannis had seen sawdust, though. His grandfather’s work utilities had always been covered with the stuff.

 

Finally it was Yannis’ turn at the front of the line. He stepped forward to a stack of crates, in front of which stood a pair of specialists from a supply detachment. On the concrete expanse of the assembly area were dozens of supply trucks lined up, each with open cargo compartments and stacks of crates, and line upon line of soldiers receiving gear.

 

“One flak vest. One helmet-”

 

“I already have a helmet.” Yannis interjected.

 

“Now you have two. Don’t interrupt me again.” The bored supply specialist continued heaping wargear from the crates into Yannis’ arms while another ticked off marks on a dataslate. “Seven lasgun ammo packs. Only take one out of the plastic packaging, leave the others in. One new issue bayonet. Two field covers...”

 

Later Yannis and Petros sat arranging their new gear.

 

“What are we supposed to do with two helmets?” Petros grumbled.

 

“You’ve been issued two helmets.” Yannis replied, repacking his at the bottom of his rucksack. “Remember: having less than two helmets is now heresy.”

 

“Hey now.” Sergeant Drakey stood over them and waved an admonishing finger. “Do not say such things when the Lieutenant comes. Heresy is nothing to laugh about.”

 

“Sorry, Opa.” Yannis and Petros both made the sign of the Aquila.

 

“You are good boys, I don’t want to have to tell your wives I had you shot.” Sergeant Drakey shook his finger at them. “The Lieutenant will be here soon, though. We are going out then. So you keep your damn mouths shut, yes? Yes!”

 

“Yes, Opa.”

 

***********

 

Yannis did not like the sinking feeling of the industrial lift. He sat with his squad, all of them sitting on benches in the troop compartment of their open topped Goliath armoured truck, backs against the armoured hull, knees touching the soldier opposite, lascarbine clutched between their thighs. The red light of the industrial lift began blinking, then shut off as the lift thunked to a stop. Yellow lights on the wall began spinning and an air horn blatted out crush warnings as the heavy metal doors of the lift slowly ground open. Yannis, and everyone else in his squad save the Lieutenant, hunkered down, trying to get their head and shoulders below the top of the armoured sides of their truck.

 

“We had Chimaeras at my indoctrination exercises.” Petros grumbled quietly, so that only Yannis could hear him. “I hated it then, but I’d give anything for an armoured roof right now.”

 

“We had one too,” Yannis told him. “But we only had one, and they wouldn’t let us go inside. We had to sit in a plasteel mock-up and pretend to fire the las-array.”

 

The armoured truck’s promethium engine roared, and the soldiers in the back were all rocked toward the rear, leaning heavily into one another as the Goliath moved off the lift and into the cavernous darkness of the underhive. All of the quiet conversation of friends and neighbors ceased, each of the soldiers suddenly gripped with anxiety. Two weeks of roll-calls, gear checks, field rations, and guard duty hadn’t really seemed like an actual military activation. Even their convoy to the hive had seemed like a drill. Yannis and most of his comrades had been enjoying the break from the routine of their work schedules and sometimes brutal realities of the work itself. But as their platoon separated and took different lifts down for patrol, the novelty had worn away more with each meter they dropped.

 

“How are we supposed to see anything?” Yannis complained.

 

“You want to see something?” Petros asked.

 

“I want to see something before it sees me.” Yannis answered.

 

The Goliath drove through the vaults and halls of the underhive. Sometimes Yannis heard the roar of the engines echo off the ceiling as it dropped close. When this happened the oily smoke from the exhaust stacks swirled through the troop compartment, and the soldiers stuck their faces down into their uniform tops and tried to breathe through their undershirts. Other times the Goliath’s engine whined and the truck rumbled side to side, the soldiers grimacing as their helmets cracked together or banged off the armoured walls of the troop compartment. When this happened they sometimes heard things crunching or cracking beneath the Goliath’s great wheels, and they reckoned they were driving over debris.

 

It was dark. Yannis did not know how the drivers knew where they were going. Sometimes the Lieutenant, standing next to the heavy stubber gunner behind the drivers compartment, activated the large spotlight and shined it into the darkness. When this happened the soldiers all quickly shut their dominant eye, just as their Imperial Infantryman’s Uplifting Primer instructed, so that they could maintain nightvision with their aiming eye if they had to. It was too dark without the spotlight to see anything, there was no nightvision to speak of, but they did this anyway because that is what they were supposed to do.

 

The anxiety and terror of the patrol had long since faded into a tense boredom when the buzzing noises came.

 

“What is that?” Petros asked, looking up and seeing only darkness, then hunkering down again as a loud buzzing noise sounded overhead again.

 

“Insects?” Yannis said, remembering his grandfather describing the large flying beetles that sometimes descended from the hills to threaten the tree farms. “Flying insects?”

 

“Quiet in the back.” Yannis had spoken loud enough to draw the ire of the Lieutenant, who switched on his spotlight and swept the bright beam to the sides.

 

Suddenly Yannis heard another buzzing noise, louder than before, followed abruptly by a metallic clinking. Something rolled on the deck next to his boot, and he reached down to pick it up.

 

“What is that?” Petros asked, not certain of what Yannis was doing.

 

“It’s a chunk of metal.” Yannis held the soft lead slug in his hand, gently rolling it around in his palm to keep its warmth from burning his flesh. “It’s hot.”

 

“Do what now?” The Lieutenant turned, still hanging onto the spotlight with both hands, peering back into the gloom toward Yannis, who held up the slug.

 

The side of the Lieutenant’s face exploded in blood and bone, with a large flap of skin peeling back to reveal a ruined mass of teeth and muscle. The soldiers in the squad let out a collective gasp of horror, not understanding at all what had just occurred. A tumbling solid slug buzzed into the Lieutenant’s upper chest, missing the top of his flak vest and burrowing into his throat with a wet smacking sound. The Lieutenant dropped down to the deck, clawing at his throat while wet, gurgles of blood poured forth in the place of his astonished words. Yannis stared in horror as the Lieutenant lay thrashed, then lay still, eerily lit by the wash of the spotlight reflecting off the top of the driver’s compartment.

 

“It’s shooting!” Someone shouted. “They’re shooting at us!”

 

A steady stream of incoming fire began to plink and pop against the side of the Goliath. The heavy stubber gunner, who had not seen the Lieutenant go down, suddenly swore and swiveled his weapon to port. The heavy gun began chugging away in crashing bursts of fire. Each round spat a jet of fire out of the end of the barrel almost as long as a man was tall, illuminating the stygian darkness in periodic moments of eerie hellfire.

 

Yannis did not know what was out there, but infantry drill took over. He and the rest of his squad turned around in their seats, placed their lascarbines over the edge of the truck’s side armour, and began snapping rounds out into the darkness. They stopped temporarily and held on tightly as the Goliath swung around in a long, high speed turn.

 

“Bloody plastic packaging!” Petros tore at the packaging of a fresh ammo pack for his lascarbine. Yannis joined him in cursing the supply specialists who had insisted their ammunition be returnable to stores should they not use it. The long term, water proof packaging was difficult to tear, stretching great length before finally ripping, then requiring great effort to expand upon said openings enough to extract the battery pack within.

 

“Cease fire!” Someone commanded, and after a couple of more commands Yannis withdrew his lascarbine and ducked his head below the rim, looking for whoever was taking charge. Someone he could not see was giving directions from near the front. “The driver says we’re through a different vault, now. No heat signatures anymore, whatever that means. Save your ammo.”

 

Yannis was breathing hard, and his heart was hammering in his chest. His hands were shaking, still fumbling to insert the fresh battery pack. He felt momentarily as if here were not in his own body, or as if he were floating several centimeters above himself. He looked around at his squadmates, wide-eyed. He saw the same expressions on everyone else that he felt himself.

 

“Gangers?” Someone asked.

 

“Had to be.” The heavy stubber gunner called back to them.

 

“Did you see any of them?” Petros raised his voice to be heard.

 

“I saw muzzle flashes,” The gunner said, then indicated the large, barrel shaped device on top of his heavy stubber. “Then heat signatures through the optic.”

 

“Did you get any of them?” Another voice asked. “Did we?”

 

“I think so.” The gunner replied, shrugging in his carapace armour.

 

The ride back to the next lift was tense. Yannis and the others remained quiet, listening for the sound of incoming slugs. Every rock that kicked up and pinged off the undercarriage made them jump. Every time the Goliath turned they were afraid they were for some reason going back. Nobody noticed that Andris and Marcus were also dead, slumped down in their seats as if they were simply ducking for cover, until the red light of the lift raised visibility.

 

***********

 

The Goliath slowly cruised though the low-hive neighborhood. The ceilings were a couple dozen meters high in this section. There were freestanding structures much like the illegal settlements on the fringes of the burbs. The lights mostly worked here, too, though the ever present barrel fires on every corner made their contributions to visibility as well.

 

The local hivers seemed unable to resist coming out of their hovels, stimm flops, and off-license establishments to gape at the PDF patrols. Settlements that appeared largely empty on approach were teeming with throngs of locals by the time the column of Goliaths were driving through them. The locals reacted with a myriad of emotional responses, none of which seemed of any logic to the soldiers who had to dismount and walk alongside the trucks in populated areas. It slowed the column down, but it also kept ganger juves from sneaking bombs onto the bottoms of their trucks.

 

“Yannis.” Petros called, then pointed toward an alley opening the column was coming to.

 

“I see it.” Yannis in turn indicated the potential ambush point to the soldier walking behind him.

 

It had been little more than a month since Yannis’ squad had lost the Lieutenant and the others, but it felt like a lifetime ago to Yannis. More and more they patrolled areas that were theoretically under control, but the rioting of hive citizens was usually far more deadly and disruptive than the active hostility of the underhive gangers. The death of Sergeant Drakey was still fresh in everyone’s minds. He was burned to death by a petrol bomb thrown during a food riot, and the thought of kindly old Opa being murdered, who sometimes let him pay for his morning caff and pasties later if he did not have enough chits on him, made his blood boil.

 

“What is that?” Petros pointed again, this tie with his lascarbine.

 

“Where?” Yannis raised his own lascarbine, trying to see what Petros saw. “Where?”

 

Before Petros could answer the gunner of their Goliath shouted. “Bomber!”

 

Yannis, his lascarbine pointing in the general direction his comrade had called his attention to, immediately pulled his trigger upon hearing the warning. The other PDF soldiers on his side of the Goliath fired in the same general direction, and Yannis saw several people in the crowd drop.

 

“Where, Petros! Where!” Yannis demanded, pausing to acquire a target.

 

“There!” Petros cracked off a shot and Yannis searched the surging, screaming crowd to see where it went. “In the red! In the red!”

 

Yannis could not see exactly who Petros was shooting at. He picked out any member of the local hiver crowd wearing any article of red clothing or carrying anything coloured red, and put a crack of las into them, sometimes two. For a few mad minutes the squad fired at the fleeing locals, and were rewarded for their efforts when a satchel one of the slain had been carrying detonated.

 

“Mount up!” Came the command, and Yannis was pulled into the Goliath’s troop compartment, then turned around to pull Petros up after him. The column sped through the now clear streets, taking advantage of the momentary panic of the locals. They knew from experience that the civilians would return soon, angry and violent over what they would definitely view as an atrocity, and against all logic would hurl chunks of masonry and bits of steel at the heavily armed troopers.

 

“What is even happening?” Petros asked Yannis, who shrugged like he always did when Petros asked.

 

“They have not told us why we are doing any of this.” Yannis said, repeating the old joke without any humour, “This means that knowing what is happening is heresy.”

 

Part Three

Hidden Content

Yannis and Petros walked together down the concrete steps of the neighborhood monorail platform. The monorail was military use only now, and had been filled with supply personnel and crates of materiel. Yannis and Petros were in transit to new units, and had been authorized to resupply their consumables at their own neighborhood armoury.

 

“This is a grim sight.” Petros said to Yannis. From many of the streetlamps and traffic signals hung the bodies of heretics. Slates of hard plastic were hung around the necks of the corpses, each detailing a capital crime.

 

“Looters.” Yannis read each heresy as the two made their way toward their hab block. They stopped and stared at Opa Drakey’s corner store for a moment, then silently continued into the open square that their hab block faced. People, mostly military people, were moving down every street they had seen, doing whatever their duties required them to be out and about for. But in the square was gathered a crowd of civilians, those too old, too young, too infirm, or too necessary to local functions to have been activated by the local PDF. A fair few of PDF secondary and tertiaries were also mixed into the crowd.

 

At the center of the crowd, on a platform made of discarded artillery containers, a ragged band of street preachers were haranguing the crowd, whipping them into a raucous frenzy. The object of their sermon was a pathetic scarecrow of a man with a sign around his neck that read “food hoarder.”

 

“I will meet you here in fifteen minutes.” Petros told Yannis. “If you are not here I will meet you at the platform. It is not good to linger.”

 

Yannis merely nodded and hurried up the stairs to his own level of the hab block. On his way to his and Melika’s apartment he passed several doors that had the Imperial I spray-painted on their exterior. One had its front window broken out, and soot from flames trailed up the concrete exterior and stained the ceiling black. Yannis was relieved when he reached his own door and found it closed and locked, just as it should be. He spared a glance down to the square, and grimaced as the heretic was whipped toward a lamp post, apparently to be hung, pleading for mercy.

 

Mercy.

 

That word lingered in Yannis’ brain as he unlocked his door and stepped inside. He was not sure why.

 

Inside he was disappointed that Melika was not waiting for him. Disappointed but not surprised. She was merely tertiary PDF, but Yannis was certain that her medicae detachment would have been called into active duty by now. The riots in the arcologies were getting to be a daily occurrence, each seeming larger and more destructive than the last. The official word was that outside agitators were responsible for arranging and instigating the violence, but once a crowd was panicked things took on a life of their own. The military often found itself in strange turnarounds, either shooting at the very people they had come to protect, or providing aid and evacuation to rioters they themselves had forcibly surpressed.

 

Yannis had stopped trying to make sense of any of it after Opa had been murdered.

 

“Hello Melika.” Yannis called to the empty apartment. “I am home, my love.”

 

He gathered a few personal items and stuffed them hastily into his rucksack. In the bedroom he retrieved a fresh supply of socks and underwear. He felt guilty dumping his old, filthy socks and underwear in a pile at the foot of their bed, but he needed to make room in his pack. He paused to smell the pillow that Melika laid her head upon, drinking in her scent and truly missing her for the first time in weeks. As he choked down the urge to drop everything and go look for her, he noticed writing on the mirror hanging on the door to their necessary room. Printed in her neat, tidy hand in black marker upon the mirror:

 

Activated, being deployed to Manufactorum District, finally will get to see where you work I guess, stay safe, love Melika.

 

Yannis cast around, then pulled a grease pencil from his flak vest he kept for marking maps, and wrote under her message:

 

Sorry I missed you. Petros and I going to new unit. Sorry about the dirty laundry. Stay safe. Love you.

 

The zealous crowd outside in the square roared in a crescendo of hysteria, then began singing a triumphant hymn. It shattered the tempting illusion of normalcy that being back in his own home caused. Yannis took one last look around, then hurried to meet Petros after locking the front door again.

 

***********

 

Yannis sat upon a duffel bag. Petros too, and so did everyone in his new company. The duffel bags were arranged in long lines, the air technicians had called them chalks. The new “special troops” brigade (neither Yannis nor Petros could say what that meant) waited patiently on the tarmac, lined up to the side of the runway at the military spaceport to the east of the megacity. The last five days had consisted of little else but sitting in these boarding chalks, perched atop their duffel bags, wondering what they might be waiting on.

 

Valkyries and Arvus lighters came and went, though apparently nothing to do with them. Rumours and speculation ran wild. The two most popular theories held they were either going to be ferried directly to the spire district of one of the hive arcologies, or to one of the orbital platforms. The officers that prowled through their ranks every so often only scowled at them and barked commands at their senior NCOs. None were forthcoming with any rhyme or reason for their wait.

 

“Hey, Yannis.” Petros said, patting his duffle bag. “I think mine is ready to hatch.”

 

Yannis laughed, in spite of how bitterly frustrated he was with the situation.

 

“I missed Melika by maybe a day.” Yannis complained, not for the first time. “Because we had to wait so long at the Gate Zone.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah.” Petros said, bored of this line of thought. “I haven’t heard from my Marietta since the alert. Not even writing on a mirror.”

 

Two days later, without explanation, the brigade was ordered to leave the duffle bags where they were, board a group of buses, and travel to a different district entirely.

 

***********

 

“What a kak thing to make us do.” Petros complained. He and Yannis carried each a pail of whitewash and a long handled rolling brush. “This will get paint on our uniforms. Having paint on our uniforms is heresy, they will say.”

 

“At least there are no gangers out here.” Yannis said. The two walked through a warehouse district. They were far from any of the population. There were no riots in that vicinity of the city. Everyone moved with a purpose when in public, behaved themselves, worked quickly and efficiently, or otherwise made themselves invisible.

 

“Then what is this, eh?” Petros pointed at the cinderblock wall as they reached their destination. “Kak heresy, you know, that kak gangers come out here to do.”

 

“Yeah.” Yannis put his pail of whitewash down and readied his roller brush. “We are like confessors. They confess their heresies on these walls, and we absolve them with paint.”

 

“Do not talk like that.” Petros said sullenly, getting to work covering up graffiti that had hastily been sprayed on the wall of a warehouse. “To talk like that is heresy they will say.”

 

“Wait.” Yannis said, reaching out and putting a hand on Petros’ shoulder.

 

“No.” Petros said. “Reading heresy is heresy they will say.”

 

I will find him, and I will show him mercy!

 

“Who?” Yannis read the graffiti anyway. “Who will this person find?”

 

“It does not mean anything.” Petros quickly covered up the words in front of Yannis with a long sideways stroke, then went back to whitewashing his own area of the wall. “If it did mean anything, understanding what it meant would definitely be heresy. They don’t have to tell me that, and I shouldn’t have to tell you that, adelfe.”

 

“Do you remember that old lady on the monorail?” Yannis asked as he began to methodically cover over the graffiti.

 

“No.” Petros said vehemently, eyes piercing Yannis with his glare. “And neither do you. You think we saw a heretic before this started? You know what they will call it if you tell them now after waiting all this time?”

 

“Yeah.” Yannis finished covering up the graffiti, pushing the strange words out of his mind with thoughts of Melika.

 

Part Four

Hidden Content

Yannis dropped the battery pack from his lascarbine and slammed a fresh one home before the spent one had even hit the deck. His squad sheltered behind a concrete planter, something he had never seen before their air assault of the spire. Beta squad was maneuvering to the cover of a bank of personnel lifts, and Yannis’ Alpha squad was providing cover fire.

 

“Yannis, these do not look like gangers.” Petros observed in between volleys of fire.

 

Yannis had not bothered to think about it. They had air assaulted the top level of a spire; anything shooting at them from a lower level was a heretic.

 

“Maybe they looted an armoury?” Yannis found the fastest, most convenient explanation.

 

“Alpha squad, ready to move!” Corporal Georgios commanded, and Yannis tensed up, ready to sprint. “Go! Go! Go!”

 

Yannis and the rest of Alpha squad leapt over the concerete planter and sprinted forward. Yannis was not certain what their destination ultimately was; cover seemed to thin out toward the Grand Stair where the heretics in PDF wargear were shooting at them from. Another concrete planter offered itself, though lower and shorter than the previous one. An overturned stone bench provided further cover for the trailing members of Alpha squad.

 

Yannis cracked off a couple of las shoots before throwing himself down to slide across the polished marble floor and into the cover of the stone bench. Automatically he looked for Petros. Petros was still sprinting to Yannis’ position, and Yannis watched with dismay as a las beam cracked into Petros’ shoulder. Petros spun to one side and dropped down on one knee, stunned by the pain. Yannis and Petros locked eyes momentarily, and then a second and third las round cracked into Petros’ head and neck.

 

“Grenades out!” Corporal Georgios called out. “Cover fire and assault!”

 

Yannis reached and tore a grenade from his webgear, pulled the pin to prime it, and lobbed it alongside the rest of Alpha squad. There was a mixture of krumping frags and popping smokes, and Yannis became aware of Beta squad charging past his position, firing as they moved.

 

“Follow me!” Sergeant Kritikos urged Alpha squad, waving his chainsword at them as he sprinted past.

 

Yannis leapt over the toppled stone bench, his bloodcurdling battlecry joining the howling madness of the rest of his platoon. He drowned his anguish and despair with anger and righteous fury, outpacing his fellows of Alpha squad, hitting the line of heretic defenders at the top of the Grand Stair bayonet first with Beta squad.

 

***********

 

“I have never seen such a place.” Corporal Georgios wondered at the remains of the shopping mall. “I had no idea that people lived like this.”

 

Yannis picked his way through toppled display stands covered in the tattered remains of once fashionable clothes. Broken glass crunched underfoot.

 

“People maybe should not live like this.” Yannis said. “Maybe this decadence led them to their rebellion.”

 

“Is that what this is?” Private Mikael asked, stopping to look at a human shape made of plastic, wearing bright coloured clothes of fine material. “A rebellion?”

 

“What else could it be?” Yannis said, angrily. “Or do you think gangers came all the way up from the sump to put on the uniforms of the 1^st Infantry Battalion?”

 

“Shut up.” Sergeant Kritikos called from ahead, irritated. “No idle speculation.”

 

“Idle speculation is heresy.” Yannis said softly to himself. Petros had been dead for four days.

 

***********

 

It was definitely a rebellion. The vox casters blared the call to overthrow the rule of Terra for a full fortnight as Yannis and his platoon made their way down the spire toward the hive shaft. In every stairwell and down ramp they encountered an ambush. At every landing they stormed a defense barricade. Dozens of other platoons moved in parallel, and the special troops brigade advanced more or less on line. They took hatchets to every vox cast they found, silencing the threats and curses their enemy heaped upon them between the pleas for their defection.

 

They did not take prisoners, but any heretic soldier with communications gear was kept alive long enough to be thrown from the spire from the nearest outside access. Yannis fought with hot blood, but did not relish the idea of execution. He avoided the details sent to defenestrate the captured officers and other suspected leaders of the rebellion, but could not do so indefinitely. Yannis found himself marching a hive noble to an outside access at bayonet point, seventeen days after Petros had been killed.

 

“Right. Through here.” Sergeant Georgios (Kritikos has been killed) waved the laspistol at a large door, and the execution detail filed out onto an observation balconey. The ground-dwellers were stunned by the view. Yannis fought the urge to drop to the deck and hold on for dear life. Others in the detail were not so self-controlled, and one man vomited.

 

The prisoner, a haughty fellow with a perpetual sneer, laughed cruelly.

 

“Worms.” The prisoner sneered. “Fit only to crawl about the ground, never thinking to look upward and aspire to more, only ascending to these heights in the slavish devotion to following orders.”

 

“Pull yourself together lads.” Sergeant Georgios barked at the detail. “Don’t give this kak the satisfaction.”

 

Yannis thought of Petros, and regretted that his friend from the neighborhood could not be here to see such a thing. He forced himself to look at it, to remember it for the both of them. He felt the emptiness of his loss, and filled it with resentment for the selfish ones who engineered the rebellion in which his friend had died.

 

“I will do it myself.” Yannis said.

 

The prisoner turned to regard him, but the thought that this wretch might dare respect his righteous determination fueled his contempt even more. He moved quickly, not wanting to give the prisoner time to face his imminent death, time enough to come to terms in the face of it.

 

“There is no mercy for you.” Yannis said vehemently, grabbing the prisoner’s hands, which were bound behind his back, and yanking them upward. “No mercy here and now, and no mercy to come.”

 

The prisoner twisted to look at Yannis with intense scrutiny, his expression and demeanor betraying no terror of death, even as Yannis heaved him over the waist high railing. Yannis looked over and watched him tumbling slowly in the free air. Before his features became indistinguishable the prisoner, even plummeting to his doom, pierced Yannis with his stare.

 

“What was that?” Sergeant Georgios asked.

 

“Petros died for this.” Yannis felt light headed, outside himself, his heart hammering in his chest. Very much, he thought, like the first time he had been shot at. “We don’t even know why.”

 

***********

 

Yannis and the survivors of the special troops brigade were formed into loose boarding chalks. No duffle bags to sit on, each stood disinterestedly in only his wargear, lascarbines slung over their shoulders. Many had lost their helmets and wore only their soft field covers, bandannas, or even nothing at all upon their heads. Yannis had lost his helmet during a mad climb over enemy makeshift barricades. This was shortly before the final battle to seize control of the hive, where the companies fighting their way down had finally met the companies fighting their way up. The 2^nd and 3^rd Infantry battalions, hive battalions who had rebelled on the orders of the hive nobility, lay heaped in a smoking pile in the center of the Connective Level’s Grand Concourse.

 

The junior commanders and NCOs of those battalions had proclaimed their innocence and attempted to surrender. Yannis felt very angry when listening to their broadcast pleas of ignorance of their commanders motives, their livid statements of loyalty to the Emperor, and, above all else which raised his hackles, their desperate pleas for mercy.

 

Yannis had lost his helmet shortly before that fight, but he had not lost his rucksack until after that fight. The last of his clean socks were with him, as was the second helmet he had been issued during his initial muster.

 

“Alright lads, we’re next.” Sergeant Georgios informed his platoon as a trio of Valkyries roared into the large hangar bay. Yannis put one hand on top of his helmet and carried his lascarbine with the other, and jogged into the wash of the Valkyrie’s thrusters, then tramped up the rear ramp. One of the first ones on board he took one of the jump seats normally reserved for the door gunners, who were absent on this flight.

 

As the engines of the Valkyries gunned and the trio of craft nosed out into the open air, Yannis saw the mouths of Georgios and some of the others moving but could not hear them. Instead he looked outward, letting his feet dangle over the side of the aircraft through the open side doors. Yannis didn’t know where the brigade, now hardly more than a company in strength, was being relocated to. He found he did not care. The rumour that had excitedly spread through the ranks prior to his departure was that not only were the bulk of the rebels defeated in the battle for the capitol arcology, but that the Subsector Fleet had arrived in-system with reinforcements.

 

Yannis took off his helmet, held it in his hands for a moment, then released it. He thought he might watch it drop into the ruins of the rail yards at the base of the hive, but just then the Valkyrie banked. Yannis watched his the ground sweep downward and saw the clouds beneath his feet. As the Valkyrie leveled off, the secondary arcologies came into view. Yannis felt peaceful for a moment, but only a moment.

 

Bright streaks of fire shot down from the heavens and lanced through the hive structures. Even more played across manufactorum, shipping, and military districts of the megacity. Explosions and fire erupted everywhere across the ground. The Valkyrie Yannis was riding in made a gut wrenching turn and dive. A series of disorienting turns followed, and Yannis’ view alternated between the megacity and clouds. He noted, with a strange clarity, that the bombardment seemed to be over, yet even more ominous signs filled the sky.

 

He was witnessing an aerial invasion.

 

Part Five

Hidden Content

The remains of the monorail line lay mostly twisted and scattered about the streets. The uprights from which the magnetic track had hung were white metal bones standing at odd angles here and there, or bent and broken, scorched as black as their fire ravaged surroundings. The platforms were generally the same, however, being for the most part simply great lumps of concrete and steel.

 

Yannis was startled when he recognized the number on the platform his unit came across.

 

“49-H-IV-Q.” Yannis read off the designation stamped into the plates bolted to its sides and stenciled onto the rain shelter. “This is my platform.”

 

“You live around here?” Georgios asked.

 

“Just down that way.” Yannis said, pointing down the street that he and Petros would walk home along everyday after work. “With my wife, Melika.”

 

“Right.” Sergeant Georgios motioned the squad to halt. The squad halted in place, squatting down with the lascarbines held ready. “We’ll stop here for a bit, cover in that enforcers station over there.”

 

Yannis continued to look down the street, his mind drifting from the present.

 

“Corporal Yannis.” Georgios snapped his fingers to get Yannis’ attention. “Off you go.”

 

“What?” Yannis asked.

 

“Go and see.” Georgios said. “Go and see if Melika is there.”

 

A few minutes later Yannis found himself standing in Opa’s corner store. The doors were gone, the windows were gone, and even the roof was gone. There had been a fire, maybe more than one. Nothing remained of the shelves of goods, everything long since looted. Opa’s sales counter was turned over, its thin metal sides stove in. Yannis was transfixed by the runny black spray-painted words on the wall behind where Opa used to stand doling out the small comforts of their lives daily:

 

I will sing to him a new song.

 

Yannis thought for a moment he could hear singing. He shook his head, knowing he needed sleep. But the singing did not stop, and he raised his lascarbine to the ready, and crouched next to one of the broken out windows to peer out into the square. Perhaps two dozen ragged civilians stood, joined hand in hand, raising their voices in hymn to the Emperor. The zealous fury long since burned from them, they sang a mournful sounding song, reciting lines of High Gothic by memory, their provincial mouths mangling the unfamiliar sounds of unknown words sung by rote.

 

Yannis had seen enough to know that any situation could change in the span of a breath, and absolutely anyone could be a danger to him. He watched them for a little bit longer, then crept out one of the broken windows, one on the far side of the little shopette. He moved from cover to cover among the broken masonry and burned out ground vehicles until he came to the stairs of his hab block. Using their concrete walls as cover he crept up to his apartment’s level, then moved cautiously toward his home.

 

His apartment door was off of its hinges, laid out on the terrace. He followed the muzzle of his lascarbine inside.

 

“Melika.” Yannis whispered. “I am home, my love.”

 

The footlockers that had made their humble dinner table were missing. The telescreen had been pulled off the wall, and small shards of black, broken glass told Yannis it had most likely been destroyed. The pots and pans of their kitchenette had been taken, but the flimsy, brightly coloured plastic bowls and cups were scattered about the living room. The cooler door hung open, but the light was off inside, and the food that had been inside was long ago looted, along with the wire shelves. The Adeptus Ministorum approved wall hangings Melika’s mother had given them on their wedding day were also torn off the walls, nowhere to be seen.

 

Yannis heard a sound from the bedroom, and quickly swung his lascarbine to cover the door. His initial fear of ambush passed, he allowed himself the wild hope that his wife was actually in there, waiting for him. Yannis pushed up the bedroom door, sagging on one set of hinges, and followed his lascarbine into the room.

 

A woman yelped, but Yannis did not see her at first. What he mistook for a pile of laundry turned out to be a rag covered woman, painfully young, starving, and frail. It was not Melika.

 

“Please.” The woman croaked with cracked, discoloured lips. “Mercy.”

 

But Yannis was not looking at her. His eyes were drawn to the mirror. Their previous messages to one another smeared away, a scrawling, shaky hand unsettling similar to Melika’s had written:

 

I will find you, and I will show you mercy.

 

“Please.” The diseased, starving woman pleaded. “Please...”

 

From the square Yannis could hear the ragged zealots singing a new hymn. The melody was hauntingly familiar, though he could not quite make out the words. The memory of it crept up Yannis’ spine like a cold, dead hand. He walked out of the bedroom, through the living room, and out onto the terrace with stiff legs. His lascarbine dangled in his numb, unfeeling hands. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end, and he shivered though it was not cold.

 

Down below in the square there were a dozen or so ragged penitents. From his vantage point on the fourth floor Yannis could see then what he had not seen when squatting in the ruins of Opa’s corner store. What he had mistaken for colourful debris before was corpses. Dozens and dozens of corpses, all of them laid out in an inward seeking spiral. Hundreds. Maybe more than a thousand. All laid shoulder to shoulder, face down, heads pointed toward the remains of the preacher’s makeshift platform. They were shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, with their arms around one another, draped comfortingly over shoulders, across the small of the back, hand in hand. Here and there the corpses of mothers held lovingly close the bodies of dead infants. Here and there a large family, children arranged from tallest to shortest.

 

The bodies at the furthest end of the spiral were putrid, bloated, and black. Fat, white maggots wriggled over a few. Over all of the lost souls shiny-bodied green flies strutted possessively. Boils, lesions, and running ichor stained the clothing of the middle recent. But most horrifyingly, Yannis saw that the newest addition to the gruesome display still heaved and gasped for air, their dying bodies struggling to live against whatever plague they were stricken with. At the very center of it all, the singing penitents, led by a ragged confessor, continued the macabre service. One by one they knelt before the confessor. One by one they imbibed something unspeakable from his defiled chalice. And one by one, singing that dreadful hymn as they did so, laying themselves shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, next to their predecessor and wrapping their arms comfortingly around one another.

 

Yannis watched on in dumbstruck horror as a young mother held the chalice to her infant’s lips, discouraging the babe from recoiling at the taste. The infant was limp before the mother had finished her own taste of the draught, weeping black bile from its tiny eyes, nose, and mouth. Still singing, the woman lay down among the others, all the while the confessor exhorted those remaining to continue.

 

“Please...” Came a rasping voice behind Yannis. He turned and saw the skeletal woman slowly, excruciatingly dragging herself from his bedroom, reaching a yellowed hand toward him in supplication. “Please… have mercy...”

 

Yannis stumbled backward, nearly fell, then fled down the terrace toward the hab block stairs. Down in the square the chant droned on, seeming to grow stronger even as one by one the voices choked and died.

 

Mercy… Oh, mercy… Give me mercy, sweet lord… Oh, my sweet lord… Mercy, my lord… I have to know you, my lord… Sweet mercy, my lord… I really want to see you… Mercy… Oh, mercy… I really want to know you… Oh, do not forget me… Mercy… Oh, mercy… See me reaching, my lord… Mercy… Oh, mercy… Do not leave me, have mercy… Take me there, oh, take me to you...

 

Yannis ran when he reached the bottom of the stairs, and he did not look back.

 

***********

 

When the hives began to drop, all Yannis could think about was water. There was precious little, and they were rationing their stores. The world shook with unceasing thunder as the hives dropped, and the only thought Yannis gave to it was to comment that the dirty brown clouds their ruination caused to fill the sky looked like they were terribly dry.

 

Every now and then the group had the good fortune to find a broken water pipe amongst the twisted debris that used to be the burbs. Hab water tanks, situated on rooftops to provide pressure, could be got to and had water in them, but they learned the hard way that any easily accessible water carried the weeping plague hidden inside. It was a grace that the disease killed so quickly, otherwise none of them would still be alive. The unfortunate soldiers sent to collect water greedily drank their fill before returning with their report, and collapsed in a bloody, ichor covered mess shortly thereafter.

 

Yannis had not had good, clean water in days.

 

One by one the arcologies of the megacity collapsed, shaking the planet, killing untold numbers beneath their massive bodies, and sending great plumes of noxious miasma into the sky. Yannis, many kilometers out in the burbs, lived through that terrific catastrophe, and only thought of water.

 

Eventually Yannis, and everyone else still alive in the megacity, took note that the capitol hive did not fall. Its lights shone through the choking clouds of dirt and toxic metals, like will-o-wisps beckoning the shambling citizens deeper into the destruction of war.

 

The special troops brigade, like every unit of the PDF, was no longer an extant organization. Groups of survivors came together, bound by the goal of reaching whatever might be left of civilization. But the Enemy was out there in the suffocating darkness too. Coming upon new people became a wild-eyed dance of suspicion and sudden violence. The chatter of stubbers and the crack of lasguns was a constant. It was white noise to Yannis and the others. Someone, somewhere was always killing someone else.

 

Yannis gradually became aware of a low rumble. He stopped and looked to the others he traveled with. Their faces were covered with makeshift scarfs, and most had scavenged goggles and safety glasses from local small manufactorums. The group stood stock still, looking to one another for threat cues. This was new to Yannis’ experience, but something about it tickled his memory.

The rumble became louder, and the ground began to vibrate, then shake.

 

“Track.” Someone nearby said, almost to himself. Then, looking about to raise the alarm. “Track! Armoured Vehicle!”

 

Yannis scrambled, not quite in a panic, but far from calm. The PDF had very few armoured assets, and Yannis had never served anywhere near any of them. The Goliath trucks his Motorized Rifle Brigade had used were repurposed civilian vehicles. The few Chimaeras the PDF possessed all carried specialized infantry raised from another part of the megacity, and they exclusively worked alongside the even more rare Leman Russ tanks. The planet produced generally only as much armour as the tithe demanded, and the PDF didn’t rate the extra effort beyond the token force.

 

All of that, Yannis instinctively knew, meant that an incoming tracked vehicle was probably not good. He sprinted away for as long as he thought he could, everyone else doing the same. When the rumble became too loud, too immediate, Yannis located a broken slab of concrete to hide behind. Evidently the remains of a set of stairs, Yannis seized the opportunity to go beneath street level. He found the rubble filled remains of a basement, wedged himself near a convenient hole in the masonry to watch the streetch from shoe level, and waited.

 

A large, boxing tank with a low profile turret with a long barrel roared down the street. Its armour prow pushed aside burned out hulks, concrete and rebar debris, and hapless soldiers alike. It never slowed down, but bullied its way forward without regard for anything else around it. The strange tank design was followed by a similarly armed variant, and then by obvious troop carrying versions.

 

 

Coaxial and side-sponson heavy weapons chattered, and the armoured unit moving through gunned down whatever people they saw. Yannis saw groups he considered friendlies and enemy alike rendered into irregular masses of blood, meat, and bone.

 

“They’re savages, Petros.” Yannis said to himself. “If they could see this, they would call it some kind of heresy.”

 

And just as soon as they had arrived, they were gone. Yannis could hear the distant rumble and firing from these unknown foes for a long while after, but they faded into the bad dreams of the remaining special troops brigade.

 

Part Six

Hidden Content

Yannis moved on-line with a large group of Loyalists, lascarbine at the ready. They picked their way through the brown haze, wound their way around oily black fires, and crawled over broken chunks of concrete, careful to avoid the rust flaked rebar jutting and bending at crazy angles. They found others.

 

There used to be loud challenges, desperate code phrases, angry yelling, pleas of innocence. But not any more. Yannis spotted a group of survivors squatting on their heels around a small fire. They were roasting small pieces of meat on a spit of rebar. Yannis fired as soon as he saw that they were cooking, and the other Loyalists around him immediately followed his cue. There was no time for conferring or confirming, killing was simply a reflex.

 

Loyalists did not eat fresh meat, for there was none to be had.

 

They scattered the fire, and placed the burnt human remains under a small pile of rocks. The Traitors they would have left to rot in the open air, but the death rot attracted Things. Already the shiny green flies were gathering.

 

Yannis rifled through their webgear and makeshift satchels for any kind of sealed food packaging, batteries, or hard ammunition. There was precious little, but any small amount increased Yannis’ personal store greatly. They found a promethium canister with water in it and shared it out until it was empty. The flavor was bitter, drinking it caused mild dizziness, and Yannis’ throat felt raw for hours, but they had long ago discovered that Promethium added to water killed the Weeping Plague. Not even the collected rainwater was safe since the murder of the hives had poisoned the sky.

 

But it was good to have water to drink.

 

***********

 

Yannis did not know what had caused the panic. Other Loyalists had hurried past him at a jog, looking back over their shoulders. He looked and saw others hurrying out of the dirty brown mist. There was a scream, a lone terrified voice. It was soon followed by more, and soldiers and civilians were sprinting, tumbling, crawling as fast they could. Yannis did not know what was happening, but he joined the panicked flight.

 

***********

 

The lights of the capitol hive were no longer active. They followed the broad streets of the manufactorum district. The layout was familiar enough to Yannis that he felt confident of their direction. What he no longer knew was why this was their goal, but moving mattered. Groups who stopped did not survive. Fear and desperation tore them apart, or the Enemy did. Moving on, forcing their way toward whatever happened next was the only thing keeping them alive.

 

The dust still hung in the air, choking and suffocating, but it was no longer as impenetrably thick as it once was. The heavier elements had fallen out to poison the ground instead. When the hot wind picked up they could sometimes enjoy pockets of relatively clear air. Other times it drove harder, limiting visibility to zero and forcing them to shelter among the broken foundations and dead machines.

 

Yannis, enjoying an opportunity to shake the dust from his face cover, breathed in warm fresh air. In the he saw flapping sheets of white plastic and dirty sheets strung on nylon lines. A handful of green canvas Militarum tents with the white and red Aquila design of the Medicae Corps were within. The sight excited Yannis, but not because of the promise of food and medicine to requisition. Melika was assigned to serve as a nurse. Yannis hadn’t seen her in months, since before the war started. Every time he saw the Aquila Medicae symbol he remembered her face, remembered her smell, and his heart beat faster in the hope he might see her.

 

“Yanni.” Someone whispered to him as he hurried incautiously forward toward the Medicae camp. “Hey! Wait!”

 

Even before he pushed past the white plastic he knew. He could smell the overwhelming fresh death. He could smell the hint of old rot. There were bodies lined up, row upon row. Mostly dessicated, paper thin flesh raggedly draped around shocking white bones. The greasy black stain of plague surrounded others. Few of the plague flies lingered, and the visible maggots were split open, empty husks.

 

Yannis gingerly stepped through the bodies, and pushed his way through the next set of sheeting. Fresh bodies lay torn before the entrance of one of the Medicae tents, clad in the filthy rags of civilian survivors. Looters then, not the nurses who one worked here. Their water parched blood still oozed from the long, vicious slashes. From inside the Medicae tent Yannis heard a metal cabinet crash to the ground, followed by the breaking of glass. Curses in a growling, gutteral language that Yannis did not understand punctuated the continued breaking of glass.

 

“Yannis.” Whispered one of the soldiers. His group (he could not call them a unit) crept quietly up to him. Yannis did not know why they followed him. He did not command discipline or issue orders. He dimly remembered being assigned the rank of corporal, but no symbols of authority or legal paperwork had accompanied this. It had merely been battlefield necessity. Yannis merely lived to survive, to keep moving forward, to perhaps find Melika one day. The others followed in his wake.

 

Yannis made a decision, and moved. Maybe another time he would have crept away, but this day he felt a hollow anger for the Traitor and the Heretic. Melika had once worked at a place, just like this, in the early days of the war at least.

 

One soldier pulled back the tent flap and stepped aside, Yannis plunged in followed quickly by the others, all leading with lasguns. They spread out, intent to kill, but stopped short.

 

The warrior within was enormous, and clad in thick, encompassing armour. The warrior was easily the size of an Ogryn, but the hatred on his face was intelligent and direct. It hissed an imperious word and raised a large bolt pistol in their direction, but did not fire. In its other hand it held a bundle of looted medicines. An enormous combat knife, more like a short sword to Yannis and the PDF, was stabbed into the ground between them. They hesitated, and so too did the armour clad warrior.

 

“Kill it!” Yannis shouted, pulling the trigger of his lascarbine and cracking home a bolt of light, straight into the warriors oversized forehead. To his surprise its head did not blow open, but the flesh seared away and the beam of energy charred the skull underneath. The warrior screamed and launched his bolt pistol into the chest of the soldier next to Yannis. The unlucky soldier collapsed backward with the wet crack of bones snapping. The armoured warrior attempted to carry through the motion and grab the combat knife between them, but Yannis and the soldiers in his group fell upon him. They screamed in terror and rage, jamming their bayonets into the warriors head and neck repeatedly. It died hard, breaking the legs of two of the soldiers and finally jamming his combat knife into the gut of a third, but the PDF soldiers were relentless, bringing the raging beast of a man down.

 

They did not stop stabbing their bayonets until the head rolled away.

 

***********

 

The spires of the capitol hive were on fire. The black silhouettes of leathery winged monsters circled the heights, illuminated darkly like shadow puppets. Unearthly cries skirled through the night.

 

Nobody slept.

 

In the morning one of their pickets was found decapitated. The head was nowhere to be found. Another soldier was simply missing. No one questioned either occurrence. The remaining wargear and supplies were shared out, and the group kept moving.

 

***********

 

Amidst all the ruin of the City Center, the old city near the footings of the capitol hive, the Cathedral still stood tall. Yannis stared at it four nearly an hour. The others believed him deep in thought, perhaps planning an approach. Finally, when Yannis was convinced he was not hallucinated or dreaming, he picked up his lascarbine and hurried toward the Cathedral to join its beleaguered defenders.

 

Barricades protected its bases, sandbags and scraps of metal and chunks of concrete from surrounding ruins. The burned out hulk of a boxy APC served as advance cover in the square, its metal tracks scattered and littering the ground, reminding Yannis of a victim of ganger violence he once saw, laying in the street with his own broken teeth on the pavement around him.

 

A motley collection of PDF, Ministorum acolytes, zealot civilians, and a small handful of red robed nuns manned the firing pits protecting the Cathedral. They exchanged desultory fire with an unorganized scattering of human refuse. The Heretics had few real weapons, little concept of cover, and no discipline. They hurled makeshift promethium bombs that fell far short of their targets, and wasted their precious battery packs burning scorch marks into the barricades of the defenders.

 

Yannis led his men to charge into the largest group, screaming incoherent, inarticulate rage as he did. The Heretics broke and ran, but paused to jeer and taunt them from a distance.

 

They promised an army was coming. They promised mercy to the defenders.

 

***********

 

“You are Corporal Yannis?” The red robed nun demanded Yannis’ attention. He had lived in the same fighting position for three days since they had arrived at the Cathedral. She held out a canteen of fresh water in one hand, and cradled a boltgun in the other. Yannis was angry that such holy women must sully their hands with weapons, but the woman carried her weapons with serene confidence.

 

“I am Yannis.” Yannis eagerly accepted the water. It took all of his self control not to guzzle the whole thing. Others he had seen greedily drink, only to vomit, or suffer cramps and diarrhea. They were no longer used to abundance, though they had never thought of themselves as blessed with abundance before the war. Their lives and seemed meager and oftentimes desperate, but now he dreamt of their simple lives as he had previously fantasized of riches and power.

 

“You were with the special troops brigade?” The nun asked him. Not idle chatter, or a guess, but a demand for confirmation of data already known.

 

“I was.” Yannis said. “Motorized Rifle Company before that, a truck trooper.”

 

“You are required.” The nun informed him, and left without waiting to see if he obeyed.

 

He levered himself out of the fighting position. More like extracted himself, really. He had soaked into the foxhole, and standing to leave with like pulling a scab from the flesh of the planet. Everything about him felt crusty and stiff. The bottoms of his pants were ragged, having torn away from the tops of his boots where had had kept them bloused. His feet felt like rocks inside those boots, and he barely registered the steps he took. He knew he had problems with them, but he no longer believed he would live to ever remove his boots again anyway.

 

Inside the Cathedral he met an unremarkable man. This man asked him a few questions that seemed random and nonsensical to Yannis, but he answered them obediently. After that, Yannis was stationed behind the metal Aegis works at the foot of the stairs leading up to the Cathedral front entrance. He had water, fresh batteries for his lascarbine, and most importantly he was relieved in shifts and allowed to sleep in the Cathedrals narthex.

 

He did not know what had happened to the soldiers he had led to the Cathedral. In honesty he would not have been able to tell the apart from any of the other PDF rabble that surrounded the outer defenses if he had bothered to try.

 

***********

 

The promised army did come. They were hundreds strong. They came in the night, bearing torches. But the singing… Yannis heard the singing long before their fire shadowed forms appeared at the edge of their perimeter.

 

They came as pilgrims would come. Joined hand in hand, or bearing torches or makeshift religious icons, singing as they marched in to surround the Cathedral. Many of the picket positions and observation posts were disoriented, confused, uncertain of the situation. These were overrun, disappearing behind the mob, never to be seen again. Others abandoned their posts and ran to take cover in the main defensive positions.

 

Yannis knew the song. He could sing it himself by now. He would never confess to anyone, but when he heard it now he had to fight the compulsion to raise his voice and join the chant.

 

Mercy… Oh, mercy… Give me mercy, sweet lord… Oh, my sweet lord… Mercy, my lord… I have to know you, my lord… Sweet mercy, my lord… I really want to see you… Mercy… Oh, mercy… I really want to know you… Oh, do not forget me… Mercy… Oh, mercy… See me reaching, my lord… Mercy… Oh, mercy… Do not leave me, have mercy… Take me there, oh, take me to you…

 

Yannis bit his lip, drawing a thick glob of blood. He focused on the pain, focused to make that his reality. The mob filled the Cathedral square, torches casting their dark world in flickering blood red. They packed in like penitents on a Feast Day, and they sang, eyes ablaze, rapturous smiles one and all.

 

The defenders were mesmerised. No one moved a muscle, except those who struggled to plug up their ears or cover behind the barricades. Most merely watched, transfixed.

 

Another song rose in challenge, flowing forth from the Cathedral doors like a golden flood:

 

A spiritu dominatus, Domine, libra nos…

 

The small group of nuns marched forth, bolters at the ready. Lips curled disdainfully, these women spat the lyrics of their hymn like accusations. They sang like judges directing the building of a gallows. Their eyes blazed with hatred, and Yannis felt himself wither momentarily under their gaze.

 

From the lightning and the tempst, Our Emperor, deliver us…

 

Yannis remembered the Emperor, and he had done in His name. He knew, for all his faults as a man, for all his petty wickedness, these women sang not to condemn him, but to rally his faith. His hatred for the Traitor, the Heretic, the Mutant, the Alien, the Witch, everything he had been taught to despise and revile since before he could even understand what those words meant, began to boil within his numb soul.

 

Yannis did not know the words, but he felt them, and he joined his voice to the other defenders in a sudden, violent battlecry. The square was filled with light and smoke, thunder and screaming, blood and pain, as the defenders broke the malicious glamour of the Traitor horde and let loose with their weapons.

 

The Heretics surge forward in a mad rush, despite their horrific rate of loss. They trampled their dead even as they received fatal wounds and began their own descent to be trampled in turn. They were as a tide of vile hatred washing over the outer defenses. The mass of wretched humanity crashed into the metal Aegis line, which buckled and rocked under their weight. Yannis fumbled and dropped his battery reload, but instead of stooping to retrieve it began plunging his bayonet into the wall of Traitors. Those at the front could not move, and their eyes bulged and the lungs rasped as the life was pressed out of them by the inexorable advance of those behind. Yannis stabbed frantically, but the Aegis was slowly giving way.

 

From the blasphemy of the Fallen, Our Emperor, deliver us,

 

Yannis pulled another battery pack from his webgear and slammed it home, firing precise, close range bursts of energy into the faces of the heretical zealots before him. He fired as he backed slowly up the steps, wary of being caught under the avalanche of human filth that rolled over the barricades and spilled toward him.

 

A morte perpetua, Domine, Libras nos.

 

But Yannis could not move fast enough, and the horde of Traitors washed over him. He fell back and bruised his back on the hard edges of the stone steps. The Enemy did not seem interested in killing him, but crawled, fought, and pulled their way past him, slithering up the steps in their eagerness to defile the sanctuary of the Cathedral.

 

Yannis was startled by a face he recognized.

 

“Melika.” Yannis breathed, reaching out to touch her face. She screamed, wild eyed, and clawed back at his. One word, over and over, as blood and spit foamed and gobbed from her twisted, cracked lips, in a frenzied mania.

 

“MERCY! MERCY! MERCY!”

 

That thou wouldst bring them only death, that thou shouldst spare none, that thou shouldst pardon none, we beseech the, destroy them.

 

Yannis sobbed, anguish gripping his heart. He pushed her chin back and away from him as she screamed and snapped at his fingers. With his other hand he changed his grip on his lascarbine to hold the barrel just behind the bayonet. Yannis then released Melika’s chin with his other hand. In her mindless drive to bite and gnash at his face, Melika impaled her throat on Yannis’ repositioned bayonet.

 

“Mercy...” Melika gurgled, blood pourined from her throat and mouth.

 

The crashing roar of boltgun fire brought Yannis back to his immediate situation. Sprays of blood and chunks of meat fell around him, and hot bits of shrapnel peppered his exposed skin. The nuns advanced down the steps, blunting the assault of the mob. They emptied bolt after bolt, changing magazines in turns to maintain a steady stream of devastating fire. Their stand rallied the defenders who had not been killed, and Yannis found himself kneeling on the steps beside the nuns, adding his precise, disciplined fire to theirs.

 

At the edge of their perimeter, the retreating Heretics streaming around her, Yannis saw an old woman. She was wraith thin, dressed in rags, with long, stringy hair. Her face was rapturous, and she held herself while she rocked back and forth, humming the now familiar song. Yannis cracked off a coupe of shots at her, but then she was gone. Yannis was left wondering if she had really been there at all.

 

For weeks after there was howling in the night, promethium bomb attacks, and constant sniping, but the Heretic horde never appeared in strength again.

 

***********

 

“Acolyte Yannis.” The unremarkable man called out. It did not sound like an order, though Yannis knew it was.

 

“Sir.” Yannis began a salute, but then remembered he had been ordered not to. “My lord.”

 

He stood before a gibbet, and the Inquisitor approached him, some concern upon his face. One of the Sororitas accompanied the Inquisitor bearing, as they always did, the menacing promise of swift retribution.

 

“We are leaving soon.” The Inquisitor informed him, but made no move to leave the scene. Yannis shifted uncomfortably under the intense scrutiny. Finally the Inquisitor indicated the corpse in the gibbet. “Who was this?”

 

“A Heretic, my lord.” Yannis answered, earning a grudging nod of approval from the Sororitas at the Inquisitor’s side.

 

“Indeed.” The Inquisitor agreed. He took on a sympathetic aspect, one wholly convincing, though Yannis believed he knew better. “As a favour to you, for your steadfast loyalty, I can order another corpse be fastened into that gibbet. We can bury your wife in a real grave.”

 

“No.” Yannis answered vehemently. “No mercy.”

 

The Inquisitor looked at Yannis long and hard, then shared an inscrutable glance with the Sororitas at his side.

 

“Come one then, Acolyte Yannis.” The Inquisitor said. “We have a lighter waiting.”

 

The small group that Yannis was now a part of left the killing fields of the Cathedral square. They left behind row upon row of crucified and gibbeted heretics. They left the smoldering, greasy piles of corpses. They walked through the arriving throngs of Astra Militarum relief troops, the penal labour gangs, and the thousands upon thousands of desperate new colonists hoping to reclaim this dead world and restore its tithe status for the Imperium.

 

The rows of Valkyries and Arvus ships coming and going and waiting to be loaded and unloaded along the broad main avenue of the Old City was their destination. Yannis trudged alongside his new master, eager to shake the dust of this world off and forget himself in a new life of constant service, paused only to look at fresh graffiti that had hastily been scrawled on a nearby wall.

 

I will find him.

Edited October 25, 2017 by Warsmith Aznable

[Kierdale]

I’m submitting mine now, unfinished, as time is against me but more so I’ve lost enthusiasm for this piece. It continues the battle on Alceforge from my last two entries. Perhaps I’ll rework it sometime in the future.

Boots on blasted ground

Hidden Content

He watched at waves crashed against the cliff face far below the Crags. The seas of Alceforge were water only in name, in memory of what they once were, for they were now heavy with silt and the dross from manufactorums. His enhanced eyes automatically identified abnormalities, normally to aid him in finding weaknesses in targets but whoever had programmed his matrices hadn’t thought to log the planet’s befouled oceans as ‘Standard For Alceforge’. Hydrocarbons chains, heavy metals, biological waste, it all scanned across his visual field as he watched the waves slap at the rock face two hundred meters below. Over millennia they would eat it away -perhaps faster due to the pollutants they carried- for water was stronger than rock.

He looked back toward the column of black smoke rising from the west - the ruin of the late magos’ citadel - and thought of that which had proven stronger than water or rock.

Sound.

The enemy assault has begun with a crazed charge of mutants, the Imperium’s own conscripts seemingly turned against them too, masses of horned and hunched monstrosities throwing themselves in a mad rush. The Skitarii has opened fire, tearing into the masses with their rifles and their deafening barrage had then been eclipsed by the unleashing of the Ordinatus Ulator. Magos Chi-Eta’s most prized war machine, a relic of the Heresy: all sound had seemed to cease in the second before it had fired.

Even outside of the blast itself, Ranger Alpha-Zeus-4’s optics shook with the infrasonic waves, his targeting systems going haywire and forcing a reboot. The blast caused the air between the enemy to bulge as waves of sound met in constructive interference. Ears ruptured before the blast hit, lungs exploded as the air pressure rocketed and bodies were crushed and tossed about, the air detonating as if struck by a god. ‘The War Drum of the Omnissiah’ was a well-earned nickname.

The skitarii’s visuals had rebooted to reveal a field of carnage. Bodies torn asunder and those at the center of the blast rendered liquid. The near half of the forest was no more, trees uprooted and shattered. Those that still stood were adorned with the skewered bodies of those beastmen who had been lucky enough to be at the edge of the Ulator’s blast.

But then had come the renegade Astartes. In his ignorance of the ways of Slaanesh and the Dark Prince’s worshippers, the ranger Alpha had assumed the fallen Angels of the Emperor had driven their mutant stock before then as slaves, as fodder. But such was not true for the existence of Ulator had been known to the Psychopomps, indeed it had been the war machine that had drawn them to the forgeworld, and to die in an aural apocalypse, to have their arrival at their lord’s debauched palace heralded by such a call, was a great honour to the horned Children of Slaanesh.

While the cybernetic enhancements of the skitarii had been synchronised to shut off when the Ulator had fired, protecting them, such measures did not protect them from the sonic weapons of the enemy.

While most advanced beside their tanks and transports, some noise marines stood atop their vehicles, strumming hellish cords on their blastmasters. These perverted weapons tore into the skitarii ranks, the Aegis lines behind which they sheltered providing no protection whatsoever. The destructive sound passed through ceramite plate, and indeed what fleshy morsels remained within the liquid-filled tanks of the Mechanicus’ cataphract robots was pulverised as the waves of sound reverberated within the armoured bodies. The Shroudpsalm did nothing and the canticle quickly changed to the Incantation of the Iron Soul.

The rebel Astartes bored onward into the valley, crushing the lush vegetation beneath their boots and treads. As more of their weapons came into range the crescendo mounted.

But all was not lose as the air began to hum with the recharging of the Ordinatus Ulator.

Ranger Alpha-Zeus-4 shook himself from his reverie. The ground had collapsed beneath them before the Ulator had been able to fire again. Old, disused mining tunnels from ages past. Overlooked in Chi-Eta’s hubris. They had been undermined by whatever passed for sappers in the enemy army. The very earth had erupted in a sonic blast before swallowing hundreds of skitarii, robots, walkers, a vast swathe of the magos’ once-prized paradisiacal gardens...and the Ulator.

Acting-magos Aleptaw had explained during the retreat that the enemy had not only managed to collapse much of the north field, but infiltrators had also managed to sneak into the citadel via those forgotten subterranean passages, and assassinate Chi-Eta.

But the war was not yet over. He turned his gaze from the cliffs to the plains at the foot of the Crags. Salvation had come in the form of Man. A task force from the Shrineworld of Kierdale’s World. The piety of these Guardsmen was as strong as those of Zeus-4 and his ilk, but while the ranger worshipped the Omnissiah, Kierdale’s World was a bastion of the Imperial Creed. He only hoped that they were stronger of spirit than the penitents whom had arrived only days earlier.

Within hours of the Guard making planetfall defences had been erected as the Mechanicus command updated the newly arrived brigadier on the situation. Networks of trenches had been dug, zig-zagging their way across the fields and about the camp. Zeus-4 watched the Guardsmen at work and at rest. He observed from his lofty perch in the Crags as they talked -his enhancements enabling him to read their lips and take into account their dialect-, jested and gambled. Activities alien to him. He saw no advantage in them. Another group knelt, heads bowed, before a hairless individual clad in robes of black with a vest of flak armour over it. A priest. This was something ranger Alpha Zeus-4 understood. Upon the survivors’ arrival at the Crags, the electropriests had given a sermon even as servitors began the process of constructing their own. The clerics of the Omnissiah had blessed those who had made it out of the debacle at the citadel and steeled their hearts for the continued defence of their world.

“RIGHT YOU ‘ORRIBLE LOT! The tin-can toy soldiers of Alceforge have failed in the defence of their world,” spittle flew from the lips of father ‘Invulnerable’ Bede. His cheeks were ruddy with shouting, almost the same colour as his lips. He towered over the kneeling Guardsmen and would have even if they had stood. He was a big man and rumour was he had been a Guard before he had taken his oaths. “So it has fallen to you, the chosen men of Kierdale’s World, to return your arms and armour to the world of their forging and use them in its defence! The Emperor,” he made an Aquila across his chest with his gauntleted hands, “knows that His Guardsmen will not fail him. That the muscle and soul of Man is resolute where technology has faltered.”

Lieutenant Bamburgh at his side took a hurried step forward, cheeks flushed, noting that the priest’s voice had carried as far as some of the Mechanicus personnel constructing defences nearby. He cleared his throat before speaking. “So be sure to say your prayers over your weapons and beseech their machine spirits to aid us in repelling the enemy from their birthplace.”

“The Emperor wills it,” Bed finished and the assembled humans echoed his words.

“The forges.”

The table cracked under brigadier Warkworth’s fist and he nailed the acting Magos with a stare. “You told us the forges were locked down by Chi-Eta before the enemy assault began, and that they could not be reopened or restarted until you were fully invested as magos.” It was not a question.

The hooded tech-priest nodded, his meat eye downcast, his others dimmed.

“I need answers, acting magos Aleptaw. How did the enemy manage to make orbit over Alceforge? How did they manage to land so many forces? How did they manage to destroy your predecessor and his citadel? And how the hell have they managed to restart the forges?”

It was now that Aleptaw resented his flesh, understandings the blessings of the Omnissiah on yet another level: the baseline human could not detect lies emitted from a voxbox as they could those from meatlips.

“Heretics have been discovered on Alceforge.”

“You don’t bloody say.” This from the big priest at the officer’s side. His eyes were bloodshot and Aleptaw wondered if it was just zeal pumping through his veins or some other concoction tainted his blood. Now was not the time for a scan.

Brigadier Warkworth had refused to lend the Mechanicus his forces until questions had been answered. And they had been given, to the best of the acting-magos’ ability. It was now clear that the hereteks on Alceforge has managed to infiltrate or convert the crews of a good number of the planet’s defensive bunkers, and once a map was plotted of those facilities known to be loyal, those known to be traitor and those suspected of treason yet unconfirmed, it was clear that the retaking of the planet would be severely hampered if assaults of each defensive laser emplacement and missile silo were necessary - and no orbital cover could be provided until these traitor sites were taken out.

So an ultimatum was given: acting-Magos Aleptaw would have the loyal sites turn their weapons -designed for shooting spacecraft out of orbit- upon their nearest traitor or suspect sites...or the forces of Kierdale’s World would proclaim Alceforge forsaken and leave, making a recommendation that the planet be scoured from orbit and the Mechanicus deal with Mechanicus heresy.

Thus towering lasers had risen to the extremes of their mountings so that they might be targeted out across the ash plains toward their fallen peers. The ground turned to sheets of glass as the cannons fired, the blistering heat of their discharges so close to the ground liquifying and melting the surface. Great missiles launched, their trajectories not taking them beyond the atmosphere, warheads falling back to earth upon the heretek positions. But word speak quickly, as the blasphemers utilised their own corrupted noosphere, and soon the rebel installations began returning the favour before they themselves were obliterated. Some even turned their arms upon the forges they had tried to seize.

In a matter of minutes the vast majority of Alceforge’s ASAT installations had destroyed each other. Columns of fire rose into the sky where fuel lines and ammunition dumps had been hit. Plumes of toxic smoke curled upward in places, and in others they crept ominously across the landscape, driven by the terrible winds whipped up by the explosions rocking the planet’s surface.

Noosphere and other more primitive communication nodes shut down under the EM conflagration and Aleptaw looked on in anguish as section after section of the holomap went dark. How much of a planet would remain for him to rule?

“Now I’ll send out my men,” smiled the brigadier.

Stealth was out of the question as the armoured fist kicked up such a cloud of dirt and ash in its wake that its approach could be detected from dozens of kilometres away. The Leman Russes and assorted Chimera-chassis drove at top speed and while a few guardsmen opened the top hatch of their APCs to survey the terrain - all were glad to have their boots back on the ground after the trip through the Warp - they did not do so for long as while the air on Alceforge had been rated as ‘breathable’ in their shipboard briefing, the torn, angry skies flashed and the silt storms grew heavier. Coughing, they battened down the hatches. More than a few smirked at the sighted the lasgun arrays on the squads of lancers advancing before the vehicles, watching the nobles on their horses getting steadily dustier and dustier.

As the hours wore on and the sun, barely visible through the cloud cover and smog, rose higher, the land began to gently drop, mountain ranges grew on the horizon, and their objective came into sight.

With a shaking hand he cut the vox feed but the screaming did not cease. It was deafening in his ears. It was coming from within his own tank. He blinked and shook his head, knowing it was the worst thing to do with a concussion, but it was a natural reaction. Equally naturally he sought out the source of the screaming, as the events of the last few minutes began to reform in his shaken mind.

Lasfire has landed out from the Mechanicus installation they had been tasked with securing. The shots had puncture the lead Russ and it had went up in a ball of fire, the broken body of commander Alnwick thrown from the cupola. The tank had rolled to a halt a couple of meters onto the bridge and Belsay had cursed, ordering his driver to keep on at top speed. They had to cross that bridge. Had to keep up the momentum. He’d say a prayer for Alnwick, his crew and his tank when all was done, but they needed to be pushed out of the way for the advance to continue. That had meant bulldozering them off the side of the bridge.

Belsay had just watched the wreck, flames still licking its armour, tumble over the edge when his own tank had been hit.

The enemy fire impacting the armour was like continuous thunder and he reached for his helmet, cursing the cheap construction: the chinstrap must have broken when they’d been hit. His hand fumbled in the darkness. The power was out and his mind was still so foggy. He reached for the outline of his helmet once again. His fingers slipped but then got round the front rim and he pulled it toward him. This brought him face to face with the source of the screaming with the tank.

Davies, the driver, continued screaming as Alnwick pulled at his helmet, his face burned away, the sockets of his eyes empty, the orbs boiled away.

A great ravine wound its way about the installation from 6 o’clock round to 1, and the fastest approach was across the bridge, spanning a hundred meters, at the 10 o’clock point. Capture the forge and it would be the first step in retaking the planet, they’d been told. The details, some bollocks about backup noospheric scrubbers and relay stations, had washed over the NCOs and junior officers. They knew all they needed to know. Rush across that bridge, take the compound. A Skitarii feint toward the refineries a few klicks south would draw away the bulk of any renegade forces...they’d been told.

As the artillery broke heavily and sought cover from which to fire from behind - which in most cases meant the Chimeras that had escorted them, the realisation sank in that the Skitarii feint had evidently failed. The enemy were dug in and well armed.

Metal slammed into the dirt as the rear hatches of Chimeras opened and guardsmen rushed out to set up heavy weapons. Within a couple of minutes of the lead Russ having been taken out, there were mortar rounds being launched from behind their APCs and this was soon joined by the fire from Wyverns and a Basilisk. Guardsmen rushed about, seeking cover from which to take shots with their rifles out across the chasm.

Figures could be seen in the watch towers at the corners of the compound, hardwired servitors in armourglas tanks linked to cannons. Others moved about the walls: the razormesh had been reinforced by stacking cargo containers along the compound’s perimeter and figures lay prone atop these. Most wore the colours of Alceforge - turncoat Skitarii and tech-adepts. The Skitarii sighted their arquebuses across the valley and skilfully picked off any guardsmen they could, though a cheer went up from those who saw a hail of stormshard shells come down on target, tearing three sniper teams to bloody ribbons before a Basilisk shell blew up the very container they had been atop, tearing down the mesh before it. Opening an entrance.

“Great! If only the Guard had jump packs!” Spat a corporal.

“Leave such lofty desires to the Astartes and Sororitas!” His sergeant retorted to a chorus of groans. “Form up behind the Chimeras and be ready to move out!”

There was nothing complicated to it, they had to push their way across the bridge, literally pushing wrecks out of the way, dozens of infantry hugging the back of the vehicle before them -but gingerly, not too closely- and advancing as fast as they could.

The three remaining Russes lead the way, cannons booming out across the chasm, blowing craters in the compound’s buildings -all but the central tower! Do not target the central tower!- and heavy bolters raking what enemy infantry showed their faces.

When lascannons took out one of the Russes the other two barged it over the edge. The same with the next.

Then the renegade fire took out a Chimera in the middle of the Guard line, penetrating its flank and throwing the bodies of nearby guardsmen, burning and screaming as they plummeted.

“Onward! On! On!” Shouted one of the surviving tank commanders.

NOTES: Attack on a forge. Armoured fist, air-cover. Cavalry flanking.

Daemon engines and heldrakes.

[Kierdale]

What do you know? I give up on the entry I’ve struggled with the last (nearly) three weeks, and then -the pressure off- an image comes to me I can work with.

Consider this a continuation of the Battle of Alceforge:

 

Inconceivable

Hidden Content

It was inconceivable.

Unconscionable.

Blasphemous.

Unheard of.

Mortals might turn from His light - base, bastards with no heart or faith. Madmen who sold their souls to the devils of the Warp.

But not Astartes.

Not the Emperor’s own Angels of Death.

So he had been taught. So he had been raised.

The Space Marines were Mankind’s aegis against the tyranny of aliens and the insanity of heretics and mutants.

Such had been hammered into him, day in and day out, by the preachers of his school back on Kierdale’s World.

Yet before him, clad in lurid hues, their weapons wailing like the banshees of legend, strode the towering figures of fallen Angels. They turned their horned helms to face third squad, stealing their way through the foundry ruins off to his own right in an attempt to flank these abominations, and then turned their fell weapons upon them. The ferrocrete walls of the Mechanicus installation offered no protection against the sonic blasts from the gargoyle-muzzled firearms - if such a term could be applied to their weapons - and men crumpled against the walls they had sought cover behind, blood pouring from the ears, eyes and mouths of those lucky enough to survive. Others fell and never rose, their innards ruptured by crescendos of sound. Only as the howl of the weapons died down were the cries of the survivors audible over the crack of his own squad’s lasrifles. The volley faltered.

“Steel your hearts and steady your aim!” Shouted Yohnovich, the bastard commissar from Valhalla. Their last deployment to that desert world hadn’t thawed him in the slightest.

“Have faith, men! Your weapons have come home to the world of their forging! Guide them in the defence of their birthplace as you yourself would defend Holy Kierdale’s World!” Invulnerable Bede punctuated his words with a booming blast from his shotgun.

It did not stop the relentless advance of the traitor Astartes, but did cause the nearest to falter.

That, the first, slightest halt in what had been an inexorable swathe of madness and destruction, was what they had needed.

The young lieutentant’s voice cracked as he rose from their hurriedly-dug trench, pointing his cavalry saver at the enemy.

“First rank, FIRE! Second tank, FIRE!”

 

And with the faith and arms of mortal men, the tide of battle was turned.

[Kierdale]

Thanks to MyD4rkPassenger (and welcome back!) and the ever dependable Carrack and Warsmith Aznable for their entries in Inspirational Friday: The Primordial Annihilator versus the Imperial Guard.

I was sad to see no entries from IG-forum members (except an ex-Mod of the barracks: yours truly ). Too busy coming to terms with the new near-Khornate bloodshedding of their commissars, perhaps......

I must admit I haven’t yet had chance to read the entries, having struggled with my own in the last days (and I don’t read anyone else’s until I’ve finished writing mine). I’ll do so as soon as possible.

I hereby close that topic but if anyone has more stories on that theme, at any time, please post them here with a suitable title.

Though the last couple of challenges have been tied to Codexes released at the same time, and Codex: Craftworld Eldar is next, I’m not setting that as the next theme as I fear players might be too caught up in digesting their new army book in the first weeks, so I’m going to try doing new codexes a month or so afterwards instead.

And here begins our twentieth challenge of Inspirational Friday 2017:

Images of Chaos

Every fortnight for Inspirational Friday I ask members to write prose on various subjects related to Chaos, to tell us a tale and conjure up images of the servants and pawns of the Chaos Gods, but this time I want actual images.

Images of war. Images of Chaos.

Submissions may be accompanied by prose, but the aim of this challenge is to give us one or more images depicting the forces of Chaos. I’d like to keep sketches and 2D paintings for another time, so this time I ask for photographs of your models, with suitable backgrounds/settings. For those with digital abilities, by all means go to town with filters and special effects. Get creative.

The quality of the miniature painting is not being judged, it is the overall image. In fact you might be able to get away with unpainted miniatures in a black and white image

IF2017: Images of Chaos runs until the 10th of November

Let us be inspired.

And who shall judge this new challenge? That decision lies with our current judge: ColonelSchaeffer.

The winner of IF2017: Images of Chaos shall claim the Octed amulet:

[Kierdale]

No word from Colonel Shaeffer and they haven’t read my PMs so I’ll judge IF: vs. IG.

Just give me some time to finish Warsmith Aznable’s entry :D

 

I hope to have chance to take some photos for the current theme tonight too. And hope there will be other entrants...

[Kierdale]

MyD4rkPassenger, I liked the build up in your piece, the narrators comments on the planet and situation and the steadily worsening situation. The pacing was excellent and it’s sadly rare for us to see Night Lords entries in IF. Yours was extremely well done!

 

Carrack, yours too was excellent. I liked that the tank commander no longer bothered to learn the names of three of his four crew. The descriptions of the battle were good and very easy to visualise. The mention of other units too helped to flesh out the battle and make it more believable.

 

And Warsmith Aznable’s The Mercy Song...

That a win.

Need I say more?

The chronicling of the fall (and recapture) of an Imperial world through Yannis’ eyes was excellent. The steady fall, the lack of information provided to the guardsmen, Yannis’ rise as he survived, his longing for his lost wife, the gradual darkening and that it took a good long time before Chaos really presented itself in the story was extremely well done.

I liked the inquisitor’s question to Yannis at the end and can’t help thinking that was a final test.

A pleasure to read. And perfectly grim dark.

 

At the moment we have no entries for the current topic. I hope to post my own tonight, though if there are no others then I’d like to ask you to judge the next IF instead.

[Warsmith Aznable]

Thanks for the kind words. I am glad that the length of this one didn't put y'all off from reading it.  The Mercy Song has a two or three things that I've been trying to get into words for a long time, so I'm happy that it was well received.

 

And yeah, Yannis absolutely would have ended up in that gibbet if he had taken the Inquisitor up on that offer to get his wife's corpse out of it.

 

The Mercy Song is also a callback to some other of my stories without being too explicit. That is, I don't expect people to remember where "the Mercy Song" that Yannis hears in the story was referenced in my writing before. I left it out because the focus is on Yannis, who has no idea what the song, or the graffiti, or the creepy old woman might mean because the destruction of everything he knows and loves is just collateral damage of powerful actors who would never even notice it. It was just a Wednesday in the Imperium when Yannis' turn to suffer came around.

 

Spoilers below:

The Mercy Song is the song that Warsmith Bolverk has taught to civilians on board The Child of Calamity. The religion he has created for his space marines tells them a deity that is enemies with the Ruinous Powers will take their souls to an everlasting paradise beyond the Warp if they impress him with a glorious death (in service to the Warsmith, of course.) The civilians only hope of their souls escaping the Warp and making it to that paradise is for that deity to have pity on them, so they sing the Mercy Song to petition him directly.

 

The Warsmith is, of course, doing something selfish and horrible instead of saving their souls.

 

Bolverk is intimately linked to the Eldar far beyond just having Yseult for a wife. For now I will just say that he was highly agitated when he learned of Yvraine and the Yncarne.

 

EDIT: I just did a word count: 12,827. Far beyond short story and well into novelette. I will work harder on keeping length down.

Edited November 8, 2017 by Warsmith Aznable

[Carrack]

@ Warsmith. Mercy Song makes my top five list for all 40K fiction, pro and am.

 

I went and wrote two prologues to Duty, my entry for last week. The World Marches

Level 45

 

We were marching on the Imperials this Feast of the All Saints. How fitting. In some ways it looked like any feast day march, only tonight, the whole World was marching. The World is what we called our level of Calebra Hive, for it might as well been the whole world to us. There was no way to leave The World except through death or by the far edge of the Level where the hive wall had been breeched, and that was controlled by off-world Imperials. One way or another, we would be leaving The World Tonight, either through the access points in the Imperial quarter, or through our deaths.

 

Our homes were decorated like a feast day. After the war, when famine gnawed on men's bodies and souls, people of The World would mark their homes with obvious warnings about how dangerous they were, in an effort to keep roving bands of thieves from stealing their food. The idea was that a house marked with gangers' signs would be less likely to be preyed upon than one that wasn't. Of course when every house was marked with gangers' signs, homeowners had to make their warnings more fearsome. Gruesome trophies, messages written in blood, and deliberate usage of bad luck totems like black felines and bats were used to make houses appear too dangerous to bother. Ultimately, in the never ending escalation of more fearsome warnings, many desperate people marked their homes with the symbols of the very enemy that had destroyed our hive; half opened eyes, eight-pointed stars, and black outlines of a great toothy maws, in order to have their house appear more fearsome than their neighbor's. Of course, no one really believed that sweet old lady Marabel was a champion of the Black Maw, no matter what the markings on her door said, so the custom died out, and was only revived on feast days as a humorous reminder of hard times. We would bring out our macabre trophies and dark symbols to decorate our homes on the days leading up to feasts. On nights of the feast days, we would gather in our tribes and march the streets, costumed in equally fearsome attire. We showed all how little we feared our neighbors' warnings by knocking on their doors to beg for food.

 

 

This feast day was different. The World had been changed by the arrival of the Imperials from off-world. They had flown their shuttles and bulk lifters through the breech in the hive wall and took up residence in The World. At first we weren't alarmed, the air near the breech was unhealthy, and we didn't go near it anyway. They were welcome to live on unwanted turf. For a while, we actually prospered from their presence. The scrubbers they set up near the breech not only cleaned their air, but that of the whole World, and the purifiers they dropped into the leaky main kept our water sweet and safe. They even started trading hydro grains for artifacts we might salvage from the ruins. At first they were a welcome addition to the World. If you let rats live in your crawl spaces, they will soon dwell in your larder and bedroom. The Imperials pushed out their quarter, and walled it off. They named their quarter Port LeCroix, and called the rest of The World the Contested Zone. They forbid all other buyers from accessing The World, and refused to pay fair prices for our salvage. They began raiding into our neighborhoods, killing entire tribes in retaliation for the thefts of a single member. This Feast of All Saints, we would adorn our blocks with fearsome warnings, and put on our most horrific costumes as we always did, but we would also take up arms, and march on Port LeCroix.

 

Set The World on Fire

Level 45, The World and Port LeCroix

A tooth flew from the mouth of the old king and struck me across the cheek, splattering my face with blood and saliva. Before I could even clean myself off, the tribe hailed the new king, Iko, King of the Scarlet tribe, long may he reign. The scuffle was over, command was changed with a knockout hook, and we resumed our march. It took a while for everyone to get with the beat, but our tribe was marching again and we had a new king. Unfortunately during the confusion of the brawl, Old Lady Penny had gotten ahead of our procession, and reached the bank of the Fuit Egou first. The Fuit Egou was the river that meandered through The World. Its source was a massive leak in the main aqueduct for Calebra Hive that had been damaged in the war. Damaged, but not destroyed, the aqueduct still pumped water from some unseen reservoir up the hive, and enough gushed out the leak to be called a river. Every feast day march, the tribes of The World would meet at the banks of the Fuit Egou and drink up salvaged bottles or homemade hooch before starting the "official parade". This Feast of All Saints was going to be different, we all knew it. We were going to war with the Imperials of Port LeCroix, and we hoped to get organized on the banks of the Fuit Egou before we started. Having volatile Old Lady Penny reach the meeting place of the tribes first was not ideal for our hopes of unity before battle. At least she was smoking obscura as we marched, so hopefully she would be in a stupor by the time she reached the Fuit Egou. She wasn't. True to form, the crone was getting into it with one of her rivals, Old Lady Marabel of the Emerald tribe.

 

I couldn't hear what the two elderly women were shouting over all the drumming. It became thunderous as our tribe approached the Fuit Egou. the bass of our marching beat intertwining with that of the tribes already on the bank. Adding to the thunder of the bonafide drummers of the tribes, were the complimenting trebles of the second lines, the hangers-on, hermits, outcasts, and mutants that followed in the wake of our processions. In spite of the deafening beat, it was obvious by appearance alone that Old Lady Penny and Old Lady Marabel were shouting obscenities at each other. I ran forward to break up the two before it got out of hand, but arrived too late. Old Lady Penny had snatched up a bottle and thrown it at the banner of Old Lady Marabel's tribe, breaking the glass on the crosspiece and spilling fermented red drink all over their banner. It was an insult that couldn't go unanswered, and if it wasn't for the collective shock of everyone who witnessed her actions, would have immediately been answered with violence. During that moment of bewilderment when the music stopped and everyone gasped, Old Lady Penny threw her lit obscura joint at the alcohol soaked banner and set it afire. We all knew that our hopes for driving out the Imperials from Port LeCroix went up with the flames of their banner.

 

We were wrong, but it wasn't obvious at first, in fact it had looked pretty bleak. Our new king rushed past me and put a load of scattershot into the chest of The first Emerald warrior he saw at point blank range. I thought all out war would commence, and drew my pistol, but everyone was still stunned. We had been planning this war too long, and everyone wanted it. The Imperials were stealing our land and strangling our trade. We all had known there was no guarantee that we wouldn't squabble when we met at the river, we usually did, but it was typically insults and fist fights ending in broken noses and black eyes, not lighting someone's banner on fire and shotgunning one of their warriors. As we stood there stunned, the Emerald banner bearer was the first to react. Instead of attacking, he took two steps and thrust his burning banner into our own, setting our flag alight. I knew it was a fair response to Old Lady Penny's arson, but our banner represented our tribe, and lighting it afire lit my anger afire. I aimed at the Emerald banner bearer. I was ready to gun him down, no matter the cost.

 

The Emerald King calmed everyone down. He threw down his weapons and stepped in the middle of our tribes with his arms raised. He told us we were all fools, and that our enemies were beyond the barricades of Port LeCroix, not here on the banks of Fuit Egou. We breathed a collective sigh of relief. The Emerald king was earnest and eloquent enough to prevent widespread bloodshed, but we desperately needed a diversion from the present circumstances, or the fragile peace would shatter. Old Lady Penny provided such a diversion. The crazy old bat had stepped aside when the Emerald king had started speaking, but everyone had kept on eye on her, as she had started this mess in the first place. She had meandered off to the side and started pulling at an old tarp at the top of a pile of debris. The old crone turned and stared at me with a piercing stare that took me aback a pace with its intensity. She commanded, "Jokamo, come help me with this tarp. Now!" I went over to do as she said, and was amazed at what I saw.

 

Beneath the tarp was a stack of banners. The banners were of a material I've never seen, fine and billowy. They were black embroidered with gold and brass thread. They depicted an eight-pointed star on one side and an open fanged mouth on the other. Needless to say they were of a quality far exceeding Old Lady Penny's needlework. As I brought the first banner up to inspect, the crowds started gathering around me. Old Lady Penny announced to them, "We march on the Imperials behind the only banner to ever defeat them. We march behind the flag of the Black Maw!" The banners were passed around to the tribes and affixed to the standards of the tribes, even the singed ones. While the banners were remarkable, what was underneath them was more so. Sealed crates marked with letters foreign to Low Gothic, contained well oiled heavy stubbers, and belts of ammunition to feed them. These too were passed around to the tribes of The World. Tonight, we would march on the Imperials under potent arms and a united banner. Tonight, The World would tremble.

 

Note.

I've had the Rain Man soundtrack stuck in my head for a little while, and have unsuccessfully tried to exorcise it with a story.

 

My grandma and your grandma, sitting by the bayou,

My grandma says to your grandma, "I'm going to set your flag on fire.",

See my king all dressed in red,

I bet you give dollars he'll kill you dead,

My flag boy and your flag boy, sitting by the bayou,

My flag boy says to your flag boy, "I'm going to set your flag on fire."'

See my king all dressed in green,

He's not a man he's a loving machine,

 

Hey now, hey now, Iko Iko unday,

Jokamo fi an a day jokamo fi an day,

 

I hope the song doesn't seem too forced into the story. If not, a bunch of the characters get mowed down by a Leman Russ Punisher in Duty written above. :)

Edited November 8, 2017 by Carrack

[Kierdale]

Thanks for the additional posts/explanations. :)

And Carrack’s 40k-take on Halloween made me realise I missed doing the annual IF Horror-theme we always do around that time of year. Next year, then.

[Kierdale]

Phantom Herald

Hidden Content

FerroDeep Complex

Alceforge

One month prior to the Psychopomps arrival.

Smit rubbed his eyes as he punched in, aware of the servo-skulls hovering about the workshop, monitoring him and the other technicians in the small, dimly-lit chamber. The smell of dust and hot electrics permeated the still air, the one fan at the far end of the room providing little ventilation. One of the disembodied craniums orbited overhead, its glowing sensor eyes focused upon him accusingly. His card still held between his thumb and forefinger, he pointed to the chronometer upon the wall with his middle finger then raised that same digit toward the servo-skull.

“I ain’t late.”

He then trudged over to his cubicle, blinking his eyes hard, trying to get the dream from his mind. Smit yawned and rubbed the skin about his temple jack. He and the others down here all still had names: they were too skilled to be lobotomised, chipped and labelled, but not important enough to be clad in the red robes of the priesthood or to receive an Omnissiah-given name. Thus he was ‘Smit’, as he had been born, way over in the eastern habs. Throne, how long had it been since he had commed his folks, let alone made a pilgrimage back? He just hadn’t had time. Work, prayer, work, prayer. What free time he had he slept, and not well.

He sat down to find a servo-skull on the bench before him and was about to swat it away and tell it to bug one of his peers when he noticed the damage to it.

One of its lenses was hanging out, the eye socket and indeed the metal casing around it smashed.

He had sympathy for whoever had done it.

He blinked again and didn’t realise he had forgotten to open his eyes until a blart of binaric in his ear jolted him awake and he spun his head toward the source.

It was the mask. That jade mask. That visage as alluring as it was frightening.

He reeled backward, his hands flying up before his face for a moment but as soon as he lowered them to peek again, the mask was gone. It was Komez.

The shorter man tilted his head and looked at Smit with concern before speaking once more, his voice emitted from the brass vox grill implanted in the middle of his forehead. Where his mouth had presumably once been was a forest of jacks, some of them trailing cables ending in plugs, probes and monitors.

“You look tired again, Smit.”

“I am tired, Komez. Can’t sleep.”

“Same story yesterday, Komez.”

That got on his nerves. “‘s the truth, Komez! I ain’t going to the dens. I ain’t!”

Komez nodded slowly but Smit really didn’t care if his colleague believed him or not. Throne damn him. There were too many missing work these days - seduced by the simtech dens people said. But not him.

“I believe you.” Liar. And Komez tapped the bone and metal artifice upon Smit’s desk.

“This was found in sector 665, and th-“

“What was it doing there?” Smits blurted our the question as it coalesced in his mind.

Komez’s look answered it. They didn’t tell me. And I didn’t ask, so neither should you.

He continued, “And they want you to repair it. Not to perform a dump, just mend it so a dump can be done.”

Smit blinked his eyes several times and nodded absently.

* * * * * *

“There.” Hours later he set the servo-skull upon his bench and admired his handiwork. Whatever had hit it had cleaved through the frontale, cracking the left orbit and dislodging the optics there. It had also partially sliced through the feed cables and initial data buffer for both the left and right camera that were coiled up in the nasal cavity. He wasn’t sure how much it would have recorded, but at least he has fixed it.

As he sat there with the skull in his hands he allowed himself a thought he knew she should not think. A thought he had resisted on several occasions before, whenever he had had to work on these constructs or had been reprimanded by a functional one. He wondered if any of the original occupant - of that skull - existed, lingered, in the servo-skull. Komez had admonished him when he had once voiced the thought after too much synthahol. There was no meat. No grey matter, he had said. But surely full Abominable Intelligence was forbidden! That the servo-skull was a captious bastard was more an artifact of whatever captious bastard engineer had programmed it, Komez had said. He had eventually accepted his friend’s words. He had never opened the central chamber of a skull to satisfy his curiosity on the meat-issue. That was more than his life was worth. Someone would be holding his cranium.

But who had this been?

What words had they spoken at the end? Who had they kissed when those mandibles had had lips?

What had they seen in life?

What had they seen in death?

‘They’ wanted the skull repaired for a data dump. He had repaired it, but would a dump work? He didn’t know. He had reconnected what needed reconnecting, replaced what needed replacing. But he didn’t know.

It would be a trivial thing to check. No challenge to his skill. Equally no challenge to cover up that he had checked.

Gingerly, not taking his eyes from those of the servo-skull, he inserted a cable into his temple jack and slid the bronze plug into the atlas-port at the back of the skull before him. Footage of the skull’s patrol flooded his mind and froze on a final image.

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He unleashed a blood-curdling scream and fell back off his chair, his hands flailing before his eyes, dropping the skull only for the cable joining them to pull it with him as he fell to the floor, the image from his dreams burned into his retinas.

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* * * * * *

FROM: 3rd Battalion command, Kierdale’s World 32nd.

TO: [REDACTED BY =][= ]

Alceforge has been liberated, my lord, thanks to He upon Terra. Within this report I have attached images of the terrible Enemy the Guard of my regiment and loyalist Mechanicus forces overcame (at great cost in lives and particularly materiel, I must add).

Recordings show the assault upon magos Chi-Etas citadel was commanded by this individual:

Of additional note are the following images:

Note the self-inflicted injuries in the shape of the the mark of [REDACTED BY =][= ]. We present this as evidence of the impurity of Homo Sapiens Variatus and submit a plea for a pogrom of such strains found in the sector.

Additionally, the following was witnessed fighting alongside the mutants and warpspawn...

Your ever loyal servant, [REDACTED BY =][= ]

Inquisitor’s personal log.

Forward above communique to the 666th chapter for immediate action.

Order the immediate deployment of the liberators of Alceforge to warzone [REDACTED] for frontline service <projected casualty rate: 98.95%>

Thrown together on the train, using some photos I already had in my gallery (and Camera+ effects).

[Kierdale]

Well, I guess Inspirational Friday: Images of Chaos wasn't so inspiring I like to experiment a little with themes and I guess that one didn't grab people. Perhaps if I'd been able to post my own earlier as an example (not that I expected entries like mine, anything would have been welcome)?

Either way, we'll call that a no contest and move on.

I hereby close that topic but if anyone has more stories on that theme, at any time, please post them here with a suitable title.

And here begins our twenty-first challenge of Inspirational Friday 2017: If Horus had won...

In Legion, before the outbreak of the Horus Heresy the xenos Cabal presented the primarchs Alpharius and Omegon with a vision - the Acuity - of the fate of the galaxy. Two paths:

Excerpt from Legion, by Dan Abnett

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+ Regard, then, the future. Horus wins and Chaos triumphs, a terrible prospect, but likely. The Cabal sees a scintilla of honour remaining in bright Lupercal. He will secretly hate himself for the atrocities committed in his name. If he wins his fury will accelerate along with his self-loathing. He will immolate the human species inside two or three generations. The self-destructive, redemptive urge in Horus will deive him to exterminate mankind in shame. Even his closest allies will war against him in a final armageddon. Chaos will burn brighter than ever before and will then be extinguished. It’s great victory will flare and then gutter as the dying Imperium takes it to the grave. Races of the Galaxy will be spared, through the sacrifice of the human race.

Consider the alternative, Oregon Primarch. This is what we have foreseen. The Emperor will give his life to achieve victory. He will fall, at Terra, striking Horus down. This will be his destiny, see.

If the Emperor wins, stagnation will seize the Imperium. It will seek to perpetuate itself, over and again, across thousands of years, but it will decay, slowly and surely. It will decay, and gradually allow Chaos to seep back in and consume it.

If the Emperor wins, Alpharius, Chaos will ultimately triumph. Ten, twenty thousand years of misery and rot will follow, until the Primordial Annihilator at last achieves ascendancy.

The slow, inexorable conquest of Chaos, or a brief period of terror and frenzy. Creeping damnation, or a bloody century or two as the human race rips itself apart, and expunges Chaos from the galaxy. This is the choice we present to you. The human race is a weapon. It can save the galaxy or destroy it.

And as we all know, at the siege of Terra the (false ) Emperor was victorious, at a terrible price.

But what would have been the fate of the galaxy, in your opinion, had Horus slain his father and survived?

I ask you to tell us what you believe would have happened had fate taken a different path. Whether or not you follow what the (foul, never to be trusted) xenos Cabal predicted or not is entirely up to you.

IF2017: If Horus had won... runs until the 24th of November.

Let us be inspired.

And who shall judge this new challenge? That decision lies with our current judge: Warsmith Aznable (as mine was the only entry for Images of Chaos I’m calling that a No Contest).

The winner of IF2017: If Horus had won... shall claim the Octed amulet:

To prize as their gift from their patron god, or to hide it away from the forces of Chaos...

...and the honour of judging the next topic.

[Urriak Urruk]

From Ice and Iron

 

 

 

Cerberus looked at the map before him, and tried to make sense of the galaxy.

He had only been Warsmith for about a month now, and he was still getting used to his roles. With the Primarch secluding himself in his quarters, Cerberus had been made “de facto” commander of the entire legion. Of course, the Iron Warriors were much diminished now. He had looked over the casualty figures himself, multiple times. The legion had lost nearly two-thirds it’s number, in what was already being called the “Frozen Cage.” Only a few more than 24,000 marines still lived.

The galactic map was doing little to alleviate Cerberus’ fears. The map was covered in red, signifying the Warmaster’s enemies. Little progress had been made since Terra’s fall. The Imperium Secundus stood as a glaring bastion of hope against the new galactic dictator, one commanded by one of the greatest military minds in history. The Legions that had held loyalty to the Emperor did not surrender at his death. Instead they had redoubled their efforts to achieve retribution against the Warmaster. Worlds once thought loyal to new Imperium would rebel as soon as the legions had left, either declaring for Guilliman or seceding simply out of selfish desire for power.

Cerberus remembered the Triumph of Terra. Horus had looked like a god then, both mighty and terrible. Cerberus had seen the populace, the great swell of the crowd. They had cheered, but there seemed to be little warmth in it. He remembered thinking that as soon as the legions were sent to war again, these rabble would rise against the Warmaster out of sheer spite for his new order.

The Warmaster’s strategy to secure galactic peace had seen logical at first. Stamp out what was left of the Emperor’s legions, drive the Primarchs back to their homeworlds. Each legion and Primarch was given a brother to execute, to destroy their armies and worlds.

The strategy almost instantly fell apart. The Alpha Legion was somehow intercepted on its way to Deliverance, and was ripped apart by a joint force of Raven Guard and Ultramarines. Alpharius was presumed dead, and the Alpha Legion is no longer a cohesive force with many of its commanders forging their own conquests independent of Horus’ Empire.

The White Scars and the Space Wolves were also not content to wait for their doom. Those legions prosecuted a fearsome war befitting their savage nature, raiding and pillaging. The Thousand Sons and Death Guard pursue them in a game of cat and mouse, with the roles of hunter and hunted changing as each side fights for the initiative.

Guilliman was of course the most dangerous threat. With Sanguinius slain by Horus and the Lion seemingly destroyed with his home Caliban, both the Dark and Blood Angels swore fealty to Guilliman as Emperor of Imperium Secundus. Even though Horus himself leads the war effort, the alliance of these three legions refuses to bend.

But Perturabo would not surrender his given quest. He had been tasked with finishing the Praetorian of Terra, who had slunk back with his legion to his frozen empire.

Cerberus remembered feeling glad at the mission. Rogal Dorn had survived the siege, narrowly escaping the conquest. He had taken what was left of his legion back to his old home of Inwit, and it was there that Perturabo had meant to entomb his brother.

The Iron Warriors did not expect the challenge when they arrived in those worlds. They landed on the five worlds of the House of Dorn, each perfectly designed to kill. First the molten world of Ignax, where flows of lava melted the Iron Warriors in their armor. Then the jungles of Behemat, where the fortresses first needed to be found before they could be conquered, each second searching costing more lives. Vitryx was a jagged world of mountains and crevices, and Cerberus had watched the Warsmith Barban Falk be crushed as a boulder of diamond was thrown from fortifications. On the ocean world of Argentine, thousands of warriors were lost as the Imperial Fists decided to detonate the domed cities into the waters rather than allow them be captured.

It was on Inwit however that the true killing happened.

Inwit wasn’t formidable simply for being a fortress. Every world of the House of Dorn was a stronghold in its own way. It was that when the battle of Inwit began, the Iron Warriors themselves felt besieged. The local tribesmen didn’t care that there were Astartes were on their world, and they raided ever night anyway. Pursue the ants, and they would lead you onto ice flows, where tanks fell through in a white flash. The snows were relentless, freezing the joints of armor. The remaining human soldiers were all dead in a month, turned blue by climate alone.

And Dorn’s final castle, his last redoubt? A frozen mountain, a single solitary peak. Crisscrossed with caverns, every weak point strengthed by a wall or gun emplacement. The bloody thing needed to be climbed, and Cerberus watched his brothers’ hands claw at ice only to tumble off a cliff to their end.

In one of the first attacks, Warsmith Forrix was killed, bashed to a bloody pulp by Alexis Pollux with a wooden shield. In all of that siege he was the only enemy commander anyone had seen, as Dorn himself did not show his face to the Iron Warriors. Perturabo would not join the fight himself until his brother felt desperate enough to challenge him.

It wasn’t until the final storming of the frozen citadel that the Praetorian revealed himself. His armor was painted black in mourning for his lost father. When he stepped out, the fighting seemed to pause. And the Praetorian commanded, “Send forth my brother.”

And the Lord of Iron did appear, to do battle with the Blade of the Emperor. Hammer met chainsword, a duel so fast the two giants seemed to blur. Cerberus heard his father’s taunts. That the Emperor was dead, that the Imperium was dead. That everything Dorn fought for was an empty lie. That Horus was victorious.

A hammer blow struck Dorn, his helmet fracturing from the blow. The Primarch was driven to a knee, his brow drenched in blood. Perturabo loomed over him.

“I am victorious, brother! I have won, and you have lost everything!”

Cerberus saw the look Dorn gave Perturabo. The cold passion, the hard resolve… and what looked a little like pity.

“So have you, brother,” answered Dorn.

And then the ground shifted. The snows below moved, the mountain itself shook. Cerberus did not remember much of it, but the Imperial Fists had strategically placed explosives to rig the mountain into setting off a series of avalanches. Almost all the Space Marines, both Iron and Imperial, were buried. The bodies of both Perturabo and Dorn were found together, the Lord of Iron barely breathing and comatose, while the Praetorian’s spin had been snapped.

When Cerberus himself awakened, he saw the sky itself was on fire. He didn’t know it then, but the Iron Warriors fleet above was being attacked. A loyalist fleet headed by the Phalanx and commanded by First Captain Sigismund was destroying the remnants of the Iron Warriors invasion.

The only victory left was to escape, and they did. Cerberus and the few survivors took their father and Dorn’s corpse back to a transport, taking what ships they could to flee.

When Perturabo finally awoke, he was not enraged by the loss. He barely said anything at all. He asked for his brother’s body, and to be left alone.

And so the Lord of Iron was in his quaeters, and had been so for a fortnight.

“What is your name.”

Cerberus turned, dropping to his knee in one swift motion. “Cerberus, my lord.”

Perturabo loomed over him. “I see you are acting Warsmith. Were the bodies of your predecessors recovered?”

“No my lord. They were buried in the ice.”

A muscle in the Primarch’s face twitched slightly, but his face revealed no emotion. “I wish to make a pronouncement to my legion.”

Cerberus stepped aside, as Perturabo took up the ship’s vox. “My sons,” he said almost softly. “I have been in mourning.”

The Primarch paused, as if to let the gravity of his statement sink in.

“I have mourned my sons, your brothers, who were lost in this fruitless campaign. I have mourned for the men who accompanied us here. I have mourned for the countless innocent lives lost in this war, and the rebellion before, and the crusade before that.”

Cerberus could barely breathe. The word innocent rattled through his mind.

“I have mourned my brother, who could do no wrong. I have mourned by father, who I failed. I have mourned my family, who I betrayed on Istvaan.”

Perturabo breathed in, the air being sucked through clenched teeth.

“Most of all I mourn the dream of utopia, which I burned along with Olympia.”

Perturabo turned slightly, to look at Cerberus. He had fallen onto both knees.

“But I am finished mourning. We are warriors, Iron Warriors, and we are not meant to look behind us, but to slog ever forward. The only path forward is to avenge those we have lost, those we have slain. We can never be redeemed, my sons. We can never be forgiven. But we betrayed an Emperor once, and we can do so again.”

Perturabo put his hand on Cerberus’ pauldron. “From Iron, cometh Strength. From Strength, cometh Will. From Will, cometh Faith. From Faith, cometh Honour. From Honour, cometh Iron. This is our Unbreakable Litany, and may it forever be so. Down with the Emperor, down with Lupercal, rise my Iron Warriors!”

Cerberus could hear the cheers shake the ship itself.

 

 

This is my first attempt at something like this, don't give me too much flak! I got to expand on the murky fluff of Dorn's homeworld and try and weave a redemption in there if all the Primarchs are supposed to eventually turn on Horus.

 

EDIT: Fixed a typo.

Edited November 15, 2017 by Urriak Urruk