Conversion [Iron Gauntlet 2024]

[bloodhound23]

CONVERSION

 

 

Malvero could feel his blood pulsing in his ear, in his jaw even. The explosion meant that the slowly depressurizing hallway remained breathable for now, but sensors in his armor warned him to remain within the confines of its vacuum seal. It would be less than a minute until hypoxia would take care of him if he didn’t. He might have longer than the average human, no doubt, but  there could be no rescue—not now. 

 

The smoke from the aftermath of the explosives cleared rapidly as the ship’s pierced hull loudly vented into the void. Active noise reduction masked the roar, and as he walked past the rips in the ship’s side, he could see the stain of the Eye of Terror itself, always watching.

 

He was alone now, the rest of his squad destroyed by an improvised explosive system in the outer ring of the ship. It had done more than intended, it seemed, and there was almost nothing left, and that likely included the prisoners they had intended to capture.  

 

The fates can be damned if this is what they demand, he murmured to himself.  

 

The circumstances of this mission strained his trust in their purpose as much as any had before. 

 

The enigmatic council of diviners and prophesiers that ruled the group of apostate Astartes known as the Violent Gods had gotten them this far, he had to admit. Now, however, the remaining members of the loose warband that had formed in the aftermath of a mutiny aboard an adrift Silver Skulls cruiser all those centuries ago seemed to be working with less information than ever. Elaborate rituals and vague pronouncements were relatively unimpressive to those, like Malvero, who were not present for the events that served as their inception. Without something tangible, at least, their prognostications were just empty words. By extension, he had his orders, but he had questions, as well. Of course those questions were off-limits, and he scoffed thinking about the absolute authority with which the council made their plans. Perhaps it was not the Imperial authority from which they had released themselves, but now, again, they found themselves governed by layers upon layers of secrets and—even worse— a new kind of blind allegiance. 

 

Maybe it wasn’t the old faith, but what they had now was arguably riskier. What passed for a principled interest in the truth had become a faith that the very fact of the Imperium being so wrong was enough to make them right. Was their way any more reliable than that of the Emperor’s? Would being right allow them to survive extinction? Perhaps knowing the truths of the universe wasn’t all he had thought it would be. Now they were hatching whole campaigns based simply on the pronouncements of the babblings of mystics, authorities whose words were inscrutable. Hindsight would either vindicate them, or it wouldn’t. 

 

He would hold his tongue, and he would do his part. He didn’t have to trust their methods, and he wouldn’t blame anyone else if they didn’t trust them, either.  

 

He would do his duty, however, as he always had, no matter which masters he served.

 

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The veteran sergeant had been floating in space, near an asteroid belt deep in the galactic east on the northern fringes of Segmentum Pacificus. Arrival from warp-space had been disastrous, their strike cruiser translating directly into the surface of a huge asteroid itself, wrecking the hull of the ship and causing near instant decompression. A half company of his Dark Sons had been jettisoned into the belt, most unarmored and killed nearly instantly. Malvero had been combat training in a simulation hall within the deepest confines of the ship, and he and a few others were lucky enough to be armored for this scenario. As unlikely as it was, such malfunctions did happen. Warp travel was notoriously unreliable, even with every precaution taken. It could have been a Navigator frying from their dubious connection to the Warp energies with which they so often communed, or it could have been something as simple as the system’s homing beacon being faulty, but it didn’t matter now. The “why” of it all couldn’t help him figure out what to do now. Only his training could do that.  

 

A loud, constant crackling became his new acquaintance. Fine-grained debris from the exploding cruiser rained against his armor, and he could feel the heat from the explosions on his face through his helmet’s lenses.

 

Runes and symbols representing data flows and vital statistics streamed across his field of vision as his armor provided direct neural overlays, all in real time. Oxygen levels were sufficient, but the constant battering of small particles would cause enough pitting that some of the components would be at risk if he stayed put. The soft joints, in particular, could be torn, and he needed to get out of the way of the explosion as quickly as possible.

 

There were asteroids large enough that floated in the belt that could provide seclusion from the void-elements, and Malvero’s armor could ferry him there, but all he could do was wait once he made it, and that was only if he was even able to get to it. Huge molten chunks of the ship continued to whizz past him through space like volcanic ash. 

 

As he spun gently, careening through space, his backpack hissed stabilizing fuel injections occasionally against sound of his armor eroding, and he plotted his route to an nearby rock with a calm precision. Astartes were nearly unable to feel panic, and disasters such as these were commonplace among the myriad lifetimes lived by someone like Malvero. All he could do was use whatever resources he had left to figure out what could be done next, and right now, getting onto solid ground was his only option.

 

He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, and the hum intensified as his power pack’s jets carefully propelled him towards the closest hurtling asteroid that he could intercept. Remote scanning had indicated a few shallow caves in its pox-marked surface, and even though he didn’t know what he might encounter, there was no way he could go anywhere else. Malvero had survived ingestion by a Xenos asteroid wyrm once, cutting himself out its stomach with his chainsword in a mess of innards to the shock and awe of his men who had thought him gone.

 

It was no moon, but was larger than average for this particular belt, and a few more well-placed pushes of carefully timed propulsion placed him directly overhead of a crater roughly the size of a battleship’s main hangar. A few more allowed him to carefully lower himself into it, and he sighed in relief as his boots finally made contact with the rocky, metallic surface of the asteroid. 

 

The crater was overwhelming in size, with deeply sloped sides leading up for nearly a mile as far as one could see. Pebble-sized regoliths and silicate dust had built up like puddles inside of the crater, sheltered by the topography of extrusions and pockets formed by its own encounters with space debris. Hundreds of meters away, he could see what looked like it could be a cave entrance. 

 

Remote mass spectrometry scans quickly confirmed. He hurried, now trying to make it before the asteroid’s quick rotation exposed the crater to more raining matter. 

 

A glow caught his eye as he approached the entrance as scans alerted him to trace radioactivity emanating from within. 

 

His boltgun had remained maglocked to his back throughout the entire of this debacle, and he quickly retrieved and readied it, training it on the entrance as fresh data streams poured in and he continued his measured approach. 

 

It was certainly no ordinary cave. 

 

At this far corner of the crater, sheltered behind an array of boulders that looked a bit too haphazardly arranged, he saw what seemed to be a closed bunker door. It jutted out at an almost flat angle into the base of the wall, akin to what would be a bomb shelter on an inhabited world. While clearly human in origin, it bore no signs explicitly denoting Martian or Imperial allegiance, but Malvero could tell from certain details of the construction that he was looking at Mechanicum handiwork. 

 

Hazard stripes and tightly-toothed cog details were unmistakable, and it looked to still be in use. Lights still glowed from the control panel, and a hum that would have been inaudible to unenhanced humans suggested it was currently occupied.

 

Malvero’s armor had been constantly transmitting rescue coordinates and seeking out other survivors, but with no response as of yet.

 

Looks like I’ll have to figure this one out myself, he mused.

 

Walking over to the control panel, he looked down in surprise. He was conditioned to be able to read various forms of Imperial and Mechanicus writing, but some of these were unfamiliar. They certainly did not register as any known form of Xenos character, but that didn’t provide him with anything helpful, either, given what was now the clear implication that the markings must have been invented to be used idiosyncratically, like some sort of ciphered genobinary. 

 

Heretek. 

 

Was this connected to the circumstances of his ship’s destruction? Curiosity obligated him to investigate as much as duty, even moreso now that he knew he was dealing with something that desperately wanted to remain as hidden as this thing did. The Astartes knew better than anyone that the proverbial wisdom of the cynics was true. The Imperium was full of bad actors who wanted mankind’s riches for themselves. Mechanicum or Imperial, it was all the same. If there was money to be made, anyone could be capable of anything, even heresy. He would find out what was going on here, and he would root out whatever corruption was housed within this damned bunker. 

 

Sergeant Malvero sighed deeply as he carefully planted a krak grenade on the panel, and proceeded to take cover behind a curved rock feature a few meters away. 

 

He was unafraid of making a loud entrance, and he simmered with the very possibility that whoever was down there was involved in whatever betrayal had put him on this rock. Coded language kept secrets, and he wanted to destroy whatever vile heresy was housed there. If it took his life, then so be it. There was no more glorious a death once could imagine than to give it in service of the destruction of the enemies of the Imperium. 

 

The explosion sent shrapnel roaring overhead, and the blaring of klaxons and billowing of smoke turned the site into a raucous haze. His helmet’s auto-senses allowed him to see through the smoke, and light beamed out of the wrecked bunker door, the hue of the lumens suggesting a research station or medical bay, or possibly both.

 

Auspex readings showed movement, and infrared suggested life, although from the shapes alone it wasn’t clear what kind. A thud rang out as a huge, servo-loaded leap landed him on the floor of the ramp leading down into the bunker’s outermost antechamber. White paint suggested a medical bay to the right.

 

The haze was clearing, but he was met with lasfire on his pauldrons as he turned the corner. He rolled left and across the hallway, ending up behind a flipped rolling cabinet that would now have to serve as his cover. Rising up to a kneeling position, he squeezed the trigger three times in quick succession, his auto-senses locking on to the thermal projections viewed through his helmet’s internal display. Three thuds answered back from down the hall, human-sized casualties sounding off as their lower halves—and as whatever was left after the boltgun’s explosive rounds did their job—fell to the deck. 

 

The klaxons continued blaring, and the screaming coming from further within rose to a constant roar. 

 

Carefully rounding the hallway’s turn, Malvero breathed calmly and carefully, as he had been trained to do over so many years of combat, real and simulated. He was alone, but little could dissuade him from accomplishing what was now clearly the task laid before him. Unless he was to encounter other Astartes, he would outmatch almost any threat he was likely to come up against: human, Xenos, or mutant. He would destroy what he could for as long as he could, as was his duty. He would purge whatever impurities lay here, come what may. 

 

Kneeling as he advanced, he could make out what appeared to be a gigantic med bay, wider than several landing pads, but it had been converted into some sort of biological research station. There were test tubes lined up across the work desks, terminals showing vital functions, and…bodies. 

 

There were hundreds of bodies, all suspended in chemical vats, likely in stasis. Many were human, or abhuman, but some were not. A web of metallic cabling connected to each vat, presumably keeping each subject fed with nutrient gruel. This hallway was a mess as well, and—between that and the screaming—it was now clear that he was not the first intruder of the day. Bodies were strewn about under the failing internals that leaked out of the ruined ceiling, including menials, servitors, and guards.

 

Through the glass walls and past the foyer of research subjects, he could see what looked like a meeting taking place. 

 

His heart sank as his target lock recognized that the group of silhouettes included several Astartes. Survivors, he hoped.

 

He zoomed in. 

 

He tensed as he saw that their armor was quite unlike his. Dark, metallic plate was marked by furs, totems, and even runes—not the Vlka Fenryka, The Space Wolves of Fenris, but someone else. 

 

Now the observations were making sense. The bodies in the hallways were largely wrecked by bolter fire and chainsword evisceration, and the faint smell of power pack waste was now becoming increasingly pungent. 

 

Then, the questions stabbed like a knife. Who are the traitors here? Which party here was responsible for the destruction of his vessel and his comrades? What manner of heretek research was happening on this rock?

 

He carefully returned his attention to the present situation, and he felt his pulse slow as the anger subsided. 

 

He would have his vengeance, and—as far as he was concerned—this was a meeting of traitors. Damned if he had time to figure out why loyal Astartes would congregate with unsanctioned xenos biologis researchers unless they were consorting with him. There were no innocent reasons he could imagine, but he certainly could imagine more than a few guilty ones. He loaded a clip into his bolter, the first sound he had made in minutes, now committing himself to entering this cursed medbay and blowing it and whatever else was in there back to the damned Warp where it belonged. 

 

As he did so, an array of tiny microphone-like appendages dropped from the ceiling above and behind him, and a mist began gently raining out of them, the gas condensing in real time as they bathed the wrecked hallway in an pale green-tinted wash that beaded on everything like a polluted layer of sweat. He noticed a tiny lens blinking in the corner of the hallway behind him. Perhaps it had been there all along, but it hadn’t registered.

 

His vision seemed to haze at the edges, and his extremities began to feel fuzzy, as if a blanket of soft needles gently tightened around him. He felt himself slumping backwards, his head bouncing upward as it hit the metal floor. It didn’t hurt, and he caught himself giggling as he fell. 

 

He smiled weakly as he lay in a puddle of limp limbs, staring aimlessly at the ceiling as the darkness closed in from corners of his eyes. 

 

A massive shadow just to his right heralded a gigantic silhouette, and he grimaced as he saw the uncanny proportions of an armored Astartes looming over him. 

 

The figure kneeled slowly over him as Malvero felt his consciousness slipping away.

 

“Did you find what you were looking for? Thought you’d solve the case?” the figure mocked.

 

The huge, dark-armored warrior was unhelmeted, and the damage wreaked by centuries spent on the seas of the void was hideously apparent in his features. At least half his face was bionic, and the part that was still organic looked only days away from death. 

 

“Traitor!” spat Malvero, now paralyzed from the neck down and using all the willpower he could manage. 

 

“Ugh, I often forget how your world is just depressingly uncomplicated. It must be nice.”

 

The figure sighed, and carefully lowered his narthecium gauntlet, placing it near Malvero’s neck. 

 

“What happened to make you spit on your oaths, heretic?”

 

A gentle click was the last thing Malvero heard as the needle pierced his skin.

 

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A second chance at life was reserved for only an ordained few.

 

Malvero knew that, and he knew that he was grateful. Or, at least he knew he was supposed to be. 

 

His conversion had been full of insights, cosmic secrets that shook his old beliefs to the core. He had been so wrong about the Imperium, the Astartes, everything. He remembered fondly the hope with which he had begun his new life in the Violent Gods, but that enthusiasm had dulled with time, as anything new eventually did. 

 

What was all the knowledge of the universe worth if it left him so empty still? 

 

He would die here, on this wreck, for a cause that would have to be vindicated after his death. 

 

Would it have been better to die in ignorance than to live again with this knowledge, to be cursed with living in despair until his own bitter end, to never know how their grand intellectual project was finished?

 

Of course, he wouldn't know the answer. If he was lucky, he might get to know after he died—this time for good. If so, there was only one way to find out. 

 

He was the only one of his squad that had survived, just as he had managed to do so many times in his long life. The ship they had boarded had turned out to have been rigged with improvised explosives, and their own detonation charges had been vented with the bodies almost immediately upon their arrival. He cursed as he realized their chances of success now boiled down to him making it to the bridge in one piece.

 

He would have to destroy this ship before anyone here had a chance to give away their position, but now he’d have to do it by melting down the ship’s reactor, and there wouldn’t be enough time for a rescue rescue. Escape pods wouldn’t escape the blast radius, either, on the slim chance there would even be any left. 

 

He stepped over the threshold of an ash-covered bulkhead door and pressed the button to close it automatically behind him. The door malfunctioned and the gears whined loudly as they pushed against themselves, the door jerking rapidly every few seconds as the mechanism gained and lost temporary purchase.

 

The outer hallways were now completely ventilated. Torn cables and ruined components hung on for dear life in the hallways, and he noticed the roaring again as he advanced past the hull’s jagged perforations that opened into the cold of space. 

 

He smiled with relief as he approached what looked like a working bulkhead and slammed the back of his fist on the terminal as he passed through. It zipped shut, the force of the impact yielding the familiar clang of closing motorized doors, and the ship began to seal off and pressurize the remaining intact internal compartments of the ship. 

 

Bodies stuck in the mess of wreckage or not attached by magboots dropped to the floor as artificial gravity came back on, and he could see that the ship’s bridge was essentially unmanned now. He was not likely to find the prisoners they had been send to retrieve. The improvised explosive system that the ship’s crew had rigged up had not been particularly well-planned, and it seemed that even the bridge had suffered from the effects, too. 

 

Auspex scans showed a single blip ahead of him as he advanced over the causeway to the ship’s command dock. 

 

It wasn’t supposed to be a suicide mission, but the rigged explosive system—presumably to defend against boarding actions—had been poorly researched and was overpowered. It had doomed the entire ship, including the crew. By blowing out both the outer layer of hallways as well as killing power to the first internal set of doors, they had dug their own graves with their carelessness. 

 

Even worse, they had dug Malvero’s, now, too. 

 

He was surprised to see a frantic deck lieutenant in a void suit, hurriedly typing out the final characters to a distress call. He raised his weapon, but it was too late. 

 

She slammed the keyboard triumphantly, broadcasting it in her last act. 

 

Her head exploded inside her helmet as his round hit home, and he sighed with a bit of relief. There was only one way to shut it off, and it needed to be done as quickly as possible before anyone could pick up the signal. 

 

He turned slowly, taking a few extra moments to himself before walking over to the half-open panel behind the ship's primary nav-terminal screen.

 

He closed his eyes as he carefully finished turning the two keys that had already been desperately placed into the failsafe override for the ship’s reactor. 

 

He breathed in and out slowly, counting upward carefully and controlling his heart rate as he had first been taught to do as an aspirant all those centuries ago. Every little bit of panic was a waste, even in the end.

 

Searing white light glowed around the edges of his vision as gleaming rays pierced through the colossal prow window above him, and the metallic humming became deafening as the ship’s reactor core began to overheat.

 

Fates be damned, he thought, and it would be his last. 

 

Edited Thursday at 04:16 PM by bloodhound23