Krieg Vignettes

[Norman Paperman]

Hi guys! I wrote two vignettes as fluff for my Kill Team, from the Knives in the Shadows challenge. They're too long to post in the main thread so I figured I'd make a thread here and post a link. Enjoy!

 

Everett

 

“Have you ever loved anything?”

 

The question startled him and the icy finger of dread crept up his spine. The Commissar was not smiling, they never did and the questions were always traps, but there was an edge of malice in his words that went beyond the usual evaluations. Everett 322738 swallowed and struggled to keep his breathing under control as his heart accelerated 25 beats per minute. Thump thump, thump thump, 65 beats per minute - the pace of a Tau Riptide barrage, thump thump, thump thump. His helmet and rebreather were on the table to his left, and he felt naked as the pale light of the interrogation room beat down on his face. The light hurt his eyes. The Commissar was looking at him, pupils narrowing by the millisecond. Thump thump, thump thump.

 

To the Warp with it, thought Everett 322738.

 

“Yes, brother Commissar”

 

The answer clearly unsettled the officer, who adjusted himself in his seat quickly and cleared his throat.

 

“The Emperor?”

 

“We all love the Emperor, brother Commissar” replied Everett 322738, “I have loved two other things in my life. I loved a cat that lived in my tent on Septhremis Nova, and-”

 

“A cat, Corporal?”

 

“Yes brother Commissar”

 

“Did you feed it?” The question was pointed, giving rations to any non-militarum life forms was strictly forbidden under regulations. Punishments ranged from floggings and reduction in rank, to shameful servitude, to battlefield executions in extreme cases.

 

“Yes brother Commissar”

 

The Commissar turned again in his seat, now fixing his gaze solemnly on Sergeant MacKenzie 978521, Corporal Everett’s superior. The Sergeant, helmet and rebreather still on, did not move or utter a sound. The Commissar flipped open the file folder in front of him, Everett knew it was his records, and began flipping through the pages. He settled on a bulk of papers near the bottom and began reading. This was all for show of course, the Commissar would know exactly what had happened on Septhremis Nova, though the cat would have been new. At the bottom of the page Everett could see the words “wiped out”. Thump thump. Thump thump. “Suits incoming!” The Tau bombardment had killed his cat.  As the Commissar read, Everett’s heart returned to normal. Thump, thump, thump. Thunderhawk.  Sergeant MacKenzie remained motionless. He was a veteran and superior to Everett, but he hadn’t been at Septhremis. Everett didn’t want to be in a regimental reconstitution for a third time.

 

Eventually, the Commissar raised his gaze back to Everett.

 

“What was the other thing, Corporal?”

 

“Breaking the line on Septhremis Nova”. Everett was completely calm now, staring beyond the Commissar and into the visions of fire, blood, and steel. He had fought in three campaigns in the eight years he’d been a Krieger, but it was the third battle of Septhremis Nova that consumed his every waking moment. He was but a tool of the Emperor’s Will, and as he lay in his bunk every night with cold sweat staining the sheets he concluded that the Emperor must will it that Septhremis Nova be remembered. Tau scream. Kriegers don’t. Everett remembered. All battles were glorious, but the bombardments and charges of Septhremis had been a glory beyond any other. An Adepta Sororitas Dialogus had addressed his division once, before the campaign on Orthimos XI, and had bellowed about the beauty of the Emperor’s Will. Everett had never thought that he or his brothers were beautiful in life or death, but the death on every inch of Septhremis, the sheer inevitability of victory and the price the Emperor paid for it was the closest thing to beauty he could possibly imagine. So he remembered. Thump thump.

On the Commissar’s face, the smallest of lines appeared next to his eyes.

 

“That will be all Corporal. Dismissed”

 

As he lay in his bunk that night, a servitor entered the room and deposited an envelope at the end of the bed. The orders inside were simple.

 

Application ACCEPTED. Hangar 72B - 0600 hrs.

 

 

Gillicutty

 

Gillicutty 324556 sighed and rolled over in his rack, unable to sleep. The noise and vibrations of the engines were just too much for tonight. He strained his ears and listened to the respirators of his comrades, barely audible above the low whine. A smaller birth was better than the massive dormitory of a Krieg company, but smaller births were sometimes in unfortunate places on a ship, such as sharing a wall with an engine compartment. Sergeant was asleep, as well as three or four of the others. Hermanson and Jones were almost certainly awake, but they lay flat on their backs, not moving a muscle. There were three empty bunks in the 10-man birth, the three occupants having covered themselves in the glory of death on the last mission. Gillicutty moved his lips in silent prayer to the Emperor and as if on cue, the door slid open and a replacement walked in. No one moved, introductions would wait until reveille, and the replacement knew to get into his rack quietly. Gillicutty listened for a few minutes and could tell this man was not a sleeper either. Closing his eyes and doing his best to ignore the ship’s rumbling, there was nothing to do this night but pray until morning. Holy Emperor, blessed be thy will, my life to thine command, my death to your purpose, forgive, forgive. Holy Emperor, blessed be thy will, my life to thine command, my death to your purpose, forgive, forgive. Holy Emperor…

 

After a time, he did drift off to sleep, where he dreamed of blood and thunder, death in waves and cries of triumph. He woke briefly, aware enough to remember that he hated the noise of the engines but was asleep again by the second run of the Redemption prayer. Forgive, forgive. Gillicutty knew that the only reason he could sleep was because he had been forgiven. Long ago, before he had accepted the assignment to this Veteran Squad, he had been a Night Keeper, a Krieger who couldn’t sleep, same as Hermanson, Jones, and apparently the FNG. He’d lie awake, full of rage at life for the pain of being born damned, son of a blighted and traitor world, for whom damnation was a mercy and redemption a myth. How could the Emperor forgive him when he was a speck, a lost soul being shuttled from system to system, a fraction of a percentage in a ledger?

 

It all changed on Eronosis, where his platoon had spearheaded the final assault on the capitol citadel. Engineers had blown a portion of the wall and his platoon had charged in, twenty of them being martyred in a single swing of a blade from a massive ork who’d emerged out of the dust, but the platoon had ground on, inch by inch through the blood and ichor. His platoon’s job was not to win the fight, that honour belonged to the Ultramarines who marched through the wall after the first three waves of Krieg companies, but they’d had the honour of first contact. Gillicutty had been part of the platoon fire base, a squad deployed immediately left once inside the entrance, who’s task had been to lay down continuous lasgun fire at anything that moved towards the main brawl the rest of the platoon and the following companies engaged in. The main body of his platoon had been wiped out to a man, just five of the fire base survived. After the marines entered, he’d run after them, knowing it was duty to engage the enemy wherever he could, and what more sign of the Emperor’s will is there than a marine? But there had been no foes left to conquer in the wake of the Emperor’s holy sons, only ork blood was shed from that point and the stone floors had run with rivers of green and black.  He’d charged out onto a parapet, expecting to finally find a foe, but instead he’d seen a group of marines on a higher parapet hoisting the blue flag of Ultramar high above the ramparts, where it blazed brightly against the dull grey skies. The fight was over. As he gazed on the flag, lasgun hanging limply in his hand, another marine emerged from behind him onto his parapet. His blue armour was slick with green blood and a massive gouge ran diagonally through the faceplate of the red helmet. Sparks fizzled from severed electronics, but the armour had maintained its integrity. Silently the two soldiers, the damned and the blessed, stood and looked at the flag flapping in the light summer breeze. After a moment, the marine reached out a massive hand and gently patted Gillicutty on the back a single time. “Well done, son” Then he turned on his heel and receded into the darkness of the fort, leaving Gillicutty alone.

 

It had taken him months to figure out what exactly had happened in that moment that so thoroughly changed him, but he’d been assigned to a recruit training centre on Krieg in the aftermath of Eronosis, and that had given him time to think. He had started sleeping during the nights and that flummoxed him so thoroughly that he’d been uneasy during the days. He simply could not shake the feeling of that marine’s hand on his back, the manifestation of the Emperor’s will acknowledging him, congratulating him, the nobody, the damned, the survivor. Him. One morning, in a moment at breakfast so startling that he’d almost cried out, the feeling rising in his breast and nearly exploding out through the top of his skull, that he realized he had been forgiven. Of all the sons of his damned world, the billions of soldiers who had died in the Emperor’s name, he had been forgiven. It was impossible that it should happen to one still alive, or one who was mediocre; he’d been a good soldier, but there were millions who had been and were better. Even among the trainees he was instructing in marksmanship, he saw better shots than him, better discipline, firmer resolve. But the impossible had happened: a marine, the manifestation of the Emperor’s might and power itself, had touched him with tenderness and pride. The rage that had consumed him his whole life disappeared in an afternoon as he realized that the Emperor in his boundless power could see the single soldier, and thus the Emperor knew him, Gillicutty 324556, and that forgiveness was not only possible, but that it had been granted to him. Redemption for Krieg would not be given freely, the Emperor’s will was clear that the blood price of duty must be paid, but redemption was not the lie as Gillicutty had so wretchedly feared it was. As he looked at his trainees and comrades, his brothers in arms and damnation, he no longer saw damned men, he saw men for whom through their resolve they might feel the same forgiveness that now soothed his soul.

 

He'd sought out a transfer to the Veteran Squads in hopes of finding others like him, men who’d been through the fires of such devastating combat to have found their forgiveness, but he’d been bitterly disappointed to find that they were as steely and as damned as every other Krieger he’d ever known. When he tried to speak to them about the reality of forgiveness, they just shook their heads at him. The damned, they’d say, were still damned until the orders said they weren’t. Yet the way they teased him for his fanaticism was not unkind, he could tell they were happy to have someone who so stridently believed that the Emperor’s grace was close at hand, and so he easily settled into the routine of the squad. They’d been on three missions in two years, and having survived thusfar he was now a veteran among veterans.

 

Gillicutty awoke with the reveille and enthusiastically led the singing as they marched away from their rumbling birth towards the gymnasium for physical training,

 

The Emperor wills that I fight and die

Sounds about right to me says I

Look at all the places in this big galaxy

So many lands on which I can bleed

Forlorn rock with xenos to purge

My shooting finger feels the urge

To pursue the Emperor’s will…

It’s just too bad that the coffee’s swill!

 

Even the FNG, Everett 322738, belted out the last line. He would fit in just fine, as would the two others who they would undoubtedly pick up over the next months as they travelled towards the next mission. Gillicutty would sit with Everett at breakfast and ask him about forgiveness, and maybe he’d finally find a soul who understood what destiny held for Krieg, and if not, he’d try again and again with every Krieger he met, so long as he lived. And when the day would come that he died gloriously on the battlefield, he envisioned the eye of the Emperor seeing his soul, his sacrifice for his will, and almost so slightly as to be imperceptible, the Emperor would nod in acknowledgement. Gillicutty prayed for forgiveness every hour of every day in anticipation of that moment, but he was mostly praying for his brothers.