Recruitment – a short story set on Nostramo Quintus

[Lucifer216]

The recruiter moved through the dark city without a sound, drawn to the rattling and whooping echoing off dilapidated ferrocrete and dirty, blood-stained asphalt. Despite his inhuman bulk, he slid from shadow to shadow with boneless ease. As he did so, the pools of darkness began to give way to the fizzle-spit illumination of cheap lumen-strips. Almost immediately his all-black, all-pupil, eyes picked out his prey. The youths, like so many that called Nostramo Quintus home, were pallid, scrawny creatures. Some already sported gang-tats and the flashes of colour on their clothes that stood in stark contrast to the vast monochrome cityscape.

 

He observed them as they skateboarded, executing tricks with varying levels of success. Those that messed up were met with harsh jeers from their peers, while those that pulled off the most demanding of manoeuvres did so to appreciative hisses. Even amid the play, the recruiter could see their eyes warily flicking back and forth. The incautious, the inattentive, did not reach manhood here in the slums of the sunless world.

 

A few moments passed as he appraised them. Despite his past and his former humanity, he did so with a winter's warmth. His gaze flickered here and there, seeking signs of deformity, mutation and the traits that long experience had taught him to be associated with gene-seed compatibility.

 

Satisfied, he broke cover, letting them hear his footsteps. The clatter of skateboards trailed off until there was only silence. He could almost hear their thoughts as they took in his post-human bulk. Some straightened, puffing out their chests in a vain attempt to appear more worthy of ascension. He strode forward, reached into the depths of his robes and pulled out a long stretched oval of midnight blue, decorated with a crimson winged skull. As he set it down, he stroked its edge and caged lightning crackled across its surface. It spurned the ground's presumptuous embrace, bobbing slightly before coming to rest a few inches above the floor. It was the most precious hung they'd ever seen.

 

Before he had taken a single step back, knives and jagged glass splinters had made their way into young, pale, hands. 

 

Boys who had run, fought and played beside each other as long as they could recall busied themselves with burying their blades in each other's backs. The melee quickly went to the floor, the rhythms of feint-stab-counter devolving into desperate, rabid, butchery. Already a dark slippery puddle was forming, more black then red in the sputtering light.

 

The recruiter's attention was divided between two figures: one in the fray and one without. One was a blur of motion - his strikes faster and more assured than those of his brawling, dying brothers. The other, slighter, figure was motionless, standing just outside the pile of squirming, bleeding, bodies - their face hidden behind straggly torrents of lank black hair.

 

The pace of the brawl began to slow, a clockwork child's toy winding down. Many of the boys grew still, as they bled out on the uncaring ferrocrete floor. But still the quick-moving youth's blade rose and fell, while the other watched on - taking in the way his breaths came in ragged gasps.

 

A last stab, a last death-rattle, and it was done. Despite his exhaustion and the many cuts adorning his scrawny form, the boy stood and kicked the bodies clear of the hover-board. His gaze locked with that of the little one who had been patiently waiting for this moment.

 

The boy laughed, not quite able to keep the edge of fear from his voice. "It's mine."

 

"Not if I kill you," came the reply in a pure alto. 

 

"You? You're just a girl." He laughed again. "Do you want to join them?" he asked.

 

She answered by moving closer, sharp little hands clutching sharper blades.

 

The recruiter frowned. This was not what he had intended. The girl darted forward with a right lunge. The boy side-stepped, but the blade clasped behind her back was waiting for him. She rammed it home with a wet thump and was just about to pull it out to slit his throat, when a hand the size of the boy's skull clamped down on her matchstick arm with vice-like pressure.

 

"You've done enough damage -"', He began in a heavy rumble.

 

"See if I care. It's mine. Now let me go!"

 

"- to the Night Haunter's property." That shut her up - for about five heart-beats.

 

"It's still mine!", she retorted.

 

The recruiter pulled back his hood to reveal a hard cliff of a face, eroded by the years and the best efforts of countless foes.

 

"That it is. But for how long?"

 

The dirty girl scowled. She knew exactly what he meant. Others would kill for the board and like everyone else, she had to sleep.

 

The giant let go of her and as he did so, she relaxed her hold on the knife.

 

Without a word, the recruiter scooped the wounded boy with effortless ease and strode away.

 

She followed, making good use of her prize. The hoverboard made keeping up with him easy, despite his loping, massive strides.

 

"What's your name?"

 

"Kel Vhazor"

 

"I'm Jazca. Why do you only take boys? It's stupid. I'm better than any boy."

 

"It's complicated. And I think in your case, we're going to make an exception...."

 

Edited March 14, 2018 by Lucifer216

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Not bad. Will the girl serve the Night Lords as an armed auxiliary, maybe a naval armswoman aboard their ships, or a death cult assassin? Or are you writing about a Female Space Marine's ascension?

[Lucifer216]

Cheers - I was going to have her become a spy for the VIIIth Legion. After all, there's no way that non-Imperial cultures would have known to wet their breeches when the Night Lords turned up on their doorstep without a very carefully managed interstellar PR/marketing campaign.

 

I came up with the idea of Jazca being assigned to a secretly Tzeentchian world only to be quickly discovered and turned into a psychic nonopus (think an octopus with an extra tentacle). She'd then escape with a warning about the Heresy only for that warning to backfire and take a loyalist force out of the fight (it means that they're caught re-embarking their vessels when the now traitorous Night Lords turn up, etc).