aspiring-bl-writer

[aspiring-bl-writer]

No Sacrifice Wasted

We fall like a meteor into the grave of a dying world.

The drop pod rattles and creaks as it pierces the skies of Ixion, hurtling through the moon’s stratosphere. I am pressed into the crash harness, my spine locked straight by heavy armor and force of will. Gravity claws at my organs. Static chatters in the vox like the muttering of daemons. I recite the Canticle of Steel beneath my breath, a long tradition of mine. Fire licks the pod’s underbelly. Something detonates far below—too near, perhaps. It does not matter. The Emperor protects. We will soon arrive.

The retro-thrusters ignite with force. The pod’s hull groans as it struggles against gravity. The impact comes, an earth-shattering boom that heaves me against the harness before everything snaps into silence. Explosive bolts detonate in a concussive bloom, ripping the hatch into saw-toothed petals of scorched metal. I vault free, ceramite joints locking into motion as snow and ash whip across the frosted ground. Bolt rifle at the ready, I feel my auto‑senses flicker alive. Heat signatures spiking, motion trails spooling behind every piece of cover. Fading sunlight bleeds across the boreal tundra.

We move away from the pod, establishing a perimeter. In my visor, the chrono‑bead flickers: four hours, forty‑five minutes. The display is small, but my vision keeps coming back to the digits’ slow descent. Ahead, the remains of the Pyroclast‑Kappa‑9 refinery loom, its fractured towers bristling with vented promethium pipes. The walls of the complex are colossal piles of rubble. The barren, frost-covered landscape is a wasteland of jagged granite spars, broken crags, and sinkholes transformed into toxic mires by centuries of industrial exploitation and chemical spillage. The Departmento Munitorum has left its mark in rusted lattice walkways, lumen globes, and a labyrinth of habs and processing plants stamped with Administratum warnings to obey and endure. Massive engines and corroded pipework coil like entrails, half-swallowed by the desolate terrain.

Now, in the early stages of a Tyranid invasion, spore clouds and biological monstrosities deface the environment a thousandfold. While the northern sky broods in sullen greys, the southern horizon roils with a purple-black storm, threaded with sickly yellow veins. It is a clear sign that spores are corrupting the atmosphere. Beneath this sickly sky lie signs of violence: broken machinery, collapsed structures, corpses sprawled in the sludge. Some are flensed to the bone, others dismembered to various degrees.

A low, subterranean rumble shivers through the ice beneath my boots, and my auto-senses flare with sudden urgency, tactical overlays erupting with heat-blooms crawling toward the landing zone at speed. Dozens of them, too erratic to be machinery, too coordinated to be mindless, each one a flickering pulse of raw aggression. Cracks in the permafrost exhale the monsters. I do not hesitate. In one seamless motion, my bolt rifle swings up, the stock locking against my vambrace. The action is as natural as breath.

Behind me, the Kill Team fans outward in a practiced arc, hulking, obsidian-armored giants stepping from the still-smoking pod with purpose writ in every motion. Weapons raised, helms swiveling, each one is a blade forged for a single, sacred purpose.

On the nearest ridges, movement flits across the upper gantries: not the scuttling tread of gaunts, but something heavier, something calculating. The swarm is not charging yet. It is stalking, encircling with a hunter’s patience, biding the moment to strike. We will not provide them with the luxury of choosing when to bring the battle to us.

“Kill Team,” I bark through a piercing buzz of psychic interference, “attack!”

Ulfgar rockets forward on columns of flame, propelled by his jump pack. He lands in a crouch, power sword igniting in his hand with a crackling halo of disruptive energy. The edge hums as it slices through a gaunt’s midsection, bisecting it midleap. In his other fist, a plasma pistol burns the air, each shot melting through throngs of gaunts in blistering beams of blue-white fury. Renowned among Sven Bloodhowl's Great Company, he earned his place in the Long Watch with his actions on Haedorn II. His salt‑and‑pepper hair streams behind him, a battle‑scarred grin splitting his grizzled features. He wears the heraldry of Russ’ sons with pride. A predator in ceramite.

A gaunt leaps at him, aiming to bury its talons like hooks into his broad chest. The Wolf is too quick. With effort so languid one could almost call it lazy, he raises his sword.  The Tyranid’s arc falls directly onto the blade, dividing it at the midsection. Ulfgar laughs with rapturous joy as he hurtles upward again, hunting for another group. His apathy to unit cohesion would be anathema to my Chapter, but to him, it comes naturally.

Varis steps forward next, a hero of the Purging of the Ymgarl Moons. His crimson lenses flash as he raises his beloved pyreblaster, its massive barrel glowing molten red, coils humming. Before him, an oncoming tide of Termagants spills over fractured girders, low‑slung chitin glistening with acid ichor, symbiotic toxin‑shooters writhing at their forearms. With a loud click, his pyreblaster erupts in a thunderous roar. A tongue of white‑hot flame surges forward, engulfing several ranks of gaunts in a torrent of intense flame. Xenos limbs curl and collapse, bodies combusting in a mass as the tide ebbs and recoils. The blast’s afterheat ripples across the ground. The draconic emblem of the Salamanders on his right pauldron scowls toothily in the fiery glow.

“Burn, aliens, burn!” he intones in his deep bass voice. “Let the flames cleanse you!”

I advance with them, pausing long enough to check the retinal display for information on the facility. A web of service roads leads through a matrix of clustered refineries, and up a ridge to the command tower, our nominal rendezvous for extraction. But the Magos’s last ping came from the wreckage of his crashed shuttle to the south. The datacore needs retrieval first, then, if the Magos still lives, we escort him out. Every second wasted bleeds into the time limit: five hours until the main swarm arrives.

Boots grind on frost behind me as Creon slips into position. While the rest of us wear solely black, his helm and power pack are pure white. His right shoulder displays a red scorpion centered within a white circle. The aquila-helix gleams on his chest, and a standard-issue chainsword and bolt-pistol hang from his waist. His attention is on his wrist‑mounted medicae unit: laser scalpels, adamantine‑toothed saws, and syringes loaded with carefully calibrated drugs. Normally, he would be scanning his auspex, but the shadow of the Hive Fleet prevents any such inspection. So extreme is their psychic power, the xenos disrupt any attempts to utilize any gifts from the Machine God, along with astropathic communication through the Warp. I cannot hear it, but I have heard it described as a perpetual shrill squawk with a tendency to drive humans insane.

“How are you feeling, brother?” Creon asks. “How is the discomfort?”

“I faced Tyranids in the Aurelian Crusade. This is not new to me.”

I feel Gaelan’s presence before he steps into view, a near-imperceptible tremor at the edge of my mind. He emerges, robes trailing psychic filaments that ripple around him like heat‑shimmered air. His staff, adorned with purity seals and crowned with a resplendent golden solar disc, taps the ice. Shockwaves erupt from the contact, knocking back a wave of Tyranids, leaving them simple prey for Ulfgar. As a Librarian of the Deathwatch, Gaelan carries the burden of Warp sensitivity, a battlefield psyker born to stand against enemies and wield his mind as shield and scourge. He is quiet, but his calm intensity always hums in the air. I do not trust the Blood Ravens due to their interest in forbidden lore and propensity for larceny, but Gaelan, I have heard, is reliable. I trust in his iron will to resist the influence of Chaos, even if others may not.

Hive Fleet Behemoth was more than my baptism of fire. It was my instructor, teaching me far more about the Tyranid menace than I ever desired to know. I recognize Ixion as still barely touched by the poison. After their token resistance, the gaunt broods retreat, their more advanced breeds lurking, observing. While Orks may be brainless brutes apt to rush into headlong charges, these aliens cannot be baited against us. They are still too few, which is the only reason we are not overwhelmed as we travel to the crash site.

We reach the crater’s edge and the jagged scar in the blackened earth yawns before us, a trench ripped open by the shuttle’s violent descent. Rusted hull fragments and twisted struts lie half‑buried in oily sludge, like the carcass of some great adamantine beast. No reactor flare remains. The seals did not break. No datacore pulse, no heat signature.

I enter the crater first, heavy boots skidding on cracking ice. Ulfgar and Varis fan left and right, weapons raised. Creon follows, covering their advance. Inside the demolished shuttle, mangled servitors lie in a grotesque scene, their limbs torn, circuits sparking in flickers before dying for good. Four crewmen rest where they fell. Their bodies are broken against bulkheads, their void‑suits ruptured, faces frozen in the agony of their final moments. I kneel beside the pilot’s hatch, tracing the scorch marks that tell of last‑second thruster burns. No one aboard reached the escape pods.

The control compartment’s door hangs at a bizarre angle. Inside, I find charred wiring and burnt consoles, vox arrays salvaged with makeshift repairs, cables rerouted into spindly loops. The broadcast unit’s crystal emitter is devastated, with glass shards embedded in the console. Whoever patched this did so in an act of desperation.

Gaelan’s voice speaks inside my mind. “This is the source of the Magos’s last call.” He touches a holo-slate still clipped to the frame, and a mechanical masculine voice speaks over the vox-link, barely audible due to substantial static in the background:

“Attention, Deathwatch vessel The Last Judgment. This is Magos Biologis Kull Yamuna. My conveyance has been fatally damaged and forced to crash‑land. I survive, the datacore survives. I require immediate extraction from this location. The swarm approaches, crash site unsafe. I will seek shelter nearby until your arrival. The datacore must survive and be retrieved. Location Encarta follows. I will set this message to repeat while the anima endures. Hail the Omnissiah. Message ends.”

A stuttering pause, then binaural whines and chanting weave beneath his words:

“Five hours. Five hours and counting. And not long after that, Ixion will be devoid of all life. That biological lifeforms should be capable of such efficiency is… irregular.”

The holo-slate flickers out. Silence blankets us again. The datacore is not here. It lies somewhere beyond the wreck, no doubt with the Magos, dead or alive.

“It’s the message we heard during the briefing,” grumbles Varis through the static.

Outside, Ulfgar reads the ground around the shuttle. He does not need sensors to hunt his quarry, whatever it is. “Mud and rocks, brothers, mud and rocks!”

“Can you track him?”

Laughing without mirth, Ulfgar grunts an affirmative, the words unintelligible. Even in twilight, the old Wolf can find the ghosts of tracks. He pauses, then beckons with a wave.

We follow him up the crater’s far edge and into the broken ground beyond. The terrain quickly turns treacherous: notched black rocks lie like broken teeth in the frostbitten soil. The rivulets of runoff trickle through oily furrows and chemical pools. Worn vehicle trails crisscross the ground, some fresh, some half-erased by recent snowfall. The wind wails low between the granite bluffs. No sign of more gaunts, at least for now.

Ulfgar moves ahead of us, his every step oddly graceful despite his bulk. “See here,” he says, pointing to an indentation in the earth. “Boot treads. Wide spacing. Running. Carrying weight. Human, but modified, likely bionic replacements.”

“The Magos,” I say.

“Aye, Gracchus.” His voice is hard and guttural. It is his tone that irks me. It is familiar, bordering on patronizing. While he may be my senior in age, my rank and tenure in the Deathwatch outstrip his. I decide to let it go as he moves onward. “Someone tried to flee the crash site in haste. Alone. I reckon he tried to go to ground.”

I glance toward the horizon. The purple-black maelstrom is closer now, a roiling curtain of bio-plague and atmospheric decay. As if I needed another reminder of our deadline.

For nearly twenty minutes, we follow the Wolf, weaving between rusted scaffolds and long-abandoned promethium tanks. A sloping ridge leads us to a natural hollow between two shelves of broken stone, and Ulfgar stops mid-step.

“Here,” he says.

Despite the filters in my helm, I taste the telltale metallic ozone of plasma discharge. At the center of the ravine lies the broken body of a combat servitor, its torso still spasming with futile muscle commands. One machine-driven arm flails listlessly against the rock, the other missing entirely. The lower half of its body is gone, stumps hissing steam into the snow. Nearby lie two more bodies, a pair of naval crewmen. One has his side torn open, viscera spilling in ribbons over his void suit. The other is missing most of his head.

A servo-skull lies mangled between them, its pict-lens cracked, leaking oily fluid into the slush. I crouch beside it and lift the remains. The skull’s vox-array stutters, spitting distorted binaric phrases, then dies completely.

Creon studies them without his auspex. “All three killed within minutes of each other,” he says. “The servitor and one crewman by xenos claws. The second crewman bled out from human-inflicted wounds. Stabbing, close range. A breakdown. Or a mercy.”

A mile from the bodies lie two larger shapes. Hormagaunts. One is blown nearly in half, its upper body a melted husk, limbs fused in a hideous sculpture. The other lies curled in a final, feral pose, throat split wide, as if the victim had tried to bite even as death took it. Its tongue still spasms in the death throes of disconnected nerves.

Varis approaches, helmeted gaze fixed on the creatures’ remains. “Melta burn. That servitor was armed. Probably the Magos’s last protection.”

The Hive Fleet has deprived us of our auto-senses, but we do not need them to recognize what thousands of battles over centuries have taught us. This was no ambush. This was an attempted stand. The Magos and his escort fought here, with the latter sacrificing themselves to slay two of the Tyranids and buy their master time.

“No sign of the Magos,” Ulfgar observes. “But dead, most likely.”

“Not so.” Just a few drops of dark, almost tar-black blood smeared across a slab of rock. It leads away from the fight but vanishes within ten paces.

“Wounded, but not slain,” Varis says. “How did you miss that, Ulfgar? Are you getting negligent in your old age?”

“Bah!” The Wolf scoffs. “The sergeant was lucky.”

Pride is unbecoming of the Adeptus Astartes, but it is a common flaw. The human warriors of Fenris are fulsome, boastful, as are the Wolves of Fenris, who recruit from their stock. A more esteemed leader would deliver a lecture on humility, but I must be careful in my words. The Wolves also have a tradition of questioning authority. I am not accustomed to defiance, yet I know Ulfgar is keen to challenge me. I have commanded countless units, but they were always made up of my fellow Ultramarines. If I am to serve faithfully as a Deathwatch sergeant, I must remain aware of this fact.

“Magos Yamuna fled,” I say. “And he took the datacore with him.”

“If it still exists,” Gaelan adds flatly. “Or if he does.”

“He does.” Ulfgar’s voice is certain, almost fierce. “I’d wager it. That one survived a crash, an ambush, and this little xenos welcome party. He’s still crawling about out there. Probably talking to himself in hymns to his Machine God.”

“Then we find him,” I say, rising to my full height. I glance back at the Kill Team. “Chrono-check. Four hours, fifteen minutes. We keep moving.”

We crest the escarpment and drop into cover. Below, an overturned cargo hauler lies in the narrow gulch like a toppled beast, its hull scorched with las-burns and gouged by claw marks. Around it, a ragged cordon of defenders holds the line, military or paramilitary. Their flak armor is cracked and singed. Sixteen, maybe seventeen of them still breathe. The rest lie scattered in blood-pooled heaps, limbs torn and twisted.

Twelve Shrikes prowl the gulch. They are winged nightmares, thin-limbed and fast, hooked claws slick with gore, mouths shrieking in tones too high to be natural. They slash through the air in swift, looping arcs, dodging las-fire with agility. Each swoop is a dance of death. Las-beams cut across the sky, futile against their speed. The Shrikes flit between the shots, their wings blurring, their movements too fast for the eye to follow.

Amid the blood and chaos stands a single officer, commanding by sheer force of will. She’s straight-backed, shouting through the din. Her long leather coat is torn and crusted with blood. One arm is limp at her side, but the other holds a las-pistol high. “Stand firm!” she cries. “Die well, and the Emperor shall remember you!”

“Shrikes,” Creon mutters. “Only scouts. But more than enough to slaughter mortals.”

“They held them,” Varis observes, his tone marked with quiet respect. “Bloodied, dying… and yet they stand.”

“It is futile,” Creon replies coldly. “Our mission is the datacore and the Magos Biologis, not the final stand of a broken PDF platoon.”

The two are like fire and ice. Varis, ever the Salamander, sees worth in the courage of mortals. Creon, a true Red Scorpion, sees only inefficiency and expendability. Their philosophies are irreconcilable: one forged in the fire of duty to humanity, the other hardened in the unfeeling logic of ideological purity and zeal for the Imperial Cult.

I could end the discussion easily. But I am no tyrant, making arbitrary decisions for the sake of unity. I am their sergeant, and it behooves me to trust in the counsel of their collective wisdom and knowledge. There must be deliberation, within reason.

“They’ll die without us,” Varis says, his voice low but unwavering.

“Then let them die,” Creon answers. “They fulfilled their purpose. They stalled the Tyranids. Let us honor that sacrifice by completing our duty.”

This is my first Kill Team command. I feel its weight behind every word I speak, every hesitation. The Codex Astartes echoes in my thoughts: mission first, always. The Magos and the datacore are our objectives. Billions may hang in the balance.

And yet—

“We were made to serve mankind, not abandon it,” Varis says. “They stood against the xenos. And they still stand.”

Two centuries of war hone my instincts. Psychic interference is clouding our sensors. Vox and auspex are unreliable. The Magos’ beacon could be a phantom. We need unfiltered, human intelligence. And the only ones who’ve seen this sector with their own eyes are those bloodied souls below, doomed to demise no matter what we do.

“Spare me the idealism, Vulkanite,” Creon snaps. “My duty is to the Imperium. Not to flak-armored martyrs.”

“Enough.” My voice is sharper than I intended. Even the wind seems to hold its breath. I inhale slowly. The Codex preaches discipline and clarity. I cling to that.

“They’re local,” I say at last, more to myself than to the others. “They know the terrain.”

Ulfgar turns, a sneer in his voice. “You’d have us rely on those wretches?”

“Not rely, brother,” I reply. “Utilize.”

Creon’s vox clicks, sharp and disapproving. “They’ll hinder us. Dead weight.”

“They may have seen where the Magos went,” I answer, locking eyes with him through our visors. “Without scanners or psychic augury, we are blind. They are not.”

Gaelan speaks up, his voice like still water over stone. “We don’t know where the Magos fled. But he would seek shelter. These locals might know where such places lie.”

“That is speculation,” Creon snaps.

“No,” I say. “That is actionable intelligence. Either we descend and extract it, or we wander blind while time runs out.”

Creon does not respond. He cannot refute my operational logic.

The officer levels her las‑pistol and fires twice, rallying her troops behind the hauler. Both shots miss, and in that instant, a winged horror dives through the air, driving razor-sharp spikes between the shoulders of an unlucky defender. His scream is cut short as the monster swiftly dismembers him. The remaining militia scramble for cover, las‑rifles cracking with desperate discipline. Their fire is uneven but controlled.

“They won’t hold long,” Varis murmurs.

“Then we descend,” I say.

No one questions the order.

“Ulfgar,” I command.

He leaps from the escarpment, his jump‑pack gouging tiger‑stripes of fire across the dusky sky. He lands among the fray, the disruptive glow of his power sword cleaving a Shrike’s head clean from its shoulders. Varis follows in his wake, torrents of promethium‑fed flame surging from his pyreblaster. The PDF militia fall into rhythm, their las‑guns carving ragged arcs through the alien onslaught. Gaelan skirts the rear of the hauler, psychic wards budding around him as he dispatches stray gaunts with precise bolt‑pistol shots. I take up position on the hauler’s flank, my bolt rifle hammering a staccato funeral for the shrieking wings. Creon’s warning echoes in my mind: this victory costs us time we cannot spare. A grim stillness settles over the gulch.

Then the earth trembles.

Rocks shift along the ravine’s edge as the ground beneath us sighs. Something great and sinuous bursts from beneath us, its body a coiling, scaleless serpent of fossil‑white muscle, enormous bone spurs ripping through ice and rock with ease. It moves with terrifying speed, tunneling through permafrost only to erupt beneath the militia’s firing line. Defenders topple as it whips through them, its maw opening to reveal writhing tentacles that seize and snatch. Men fall screaming into the widening breach or drop their weapons and flee in heedless panic as the creature crashes through the line.

Varis spins, unleashing a wall of flame that turns its hide to steaming crust, but the thing only recoils, snarling in contempt before surging toward the wrecked hauler. Ulfgar intercepts, power sword flashing, but the beast ducks under his blade and coils around his legs with bone-crushing force. Ulfgar’s war cry turns into a gurgle.

At that moment, Creon strikes. The engine of his chainsword drones to life. In one fluid motion, he slashes with the churning teeth of his weapon until it becomes clogged with chitin and meat. With a powerful yank, he wrenches free the blade, taking with it the creature’s constricting tail. The beast whips free, claws raking the frozen earth, and falls to a bolt‑pistol round, the shot tearing through its skull with a resounding crack. Creon steps over the motionless body, the tip of his pistol drenched in its corrosive blood.

The five surviving PDF soldiers recoil in the aftermath. They have time to take us in. One trembling trooper’s grip tightens on his las‑rifle until the officer’s fierce glare stills his hand. The officer is a lurid sight, soaked in the blood and guts of her unit. Her eyes grow wide underneath the brim of her cap. Around her, the other mortals watch in rapt wonder and reverence as we loom above them, towering mythical paragons. While we are genetic cousins, they see us as a different species, as Astartes often view them. The galaxy teems with humanity, but a Space Marine is a rare sight, Firstborn or Primaris.

“Astartes,” she gasps.

“You command?” I ask.

She straightens. “Major Rachelle Fel, 19th Ixion Defense Cohort. I do now, my lord.”

“Report.”

“Those things,” the major says, the word dripping with contempt, “started attacking the refinery six or seven days ago. Those with the Departmento Munitorum who didn’t die evacuated the day before last. That just left the security forces and a large population of convict labor. In the absence of any central command, the situation deteriorated rapidly. First, the prisoners started rioting, then the xenos became more brazen. There were around a thousand of us, my lords, and now we are the only ones who are left—”

I interrupt her. “We require information. We are looking for a priest of Mars.”

Confused, she blinks a few times and shakes her head. “A tech-priest? I haven’t seen one in months. Like I said, it’s just been the PDF or convicts for the last two days.”

“Quickly, Major, where might someone seek shelter locally?”

She pointed to some large structures to the southeast. “The safest place would be the central command bunker. It was meant to endure a prolonged local rebellion, not an alien invasion. However, there are still sections the creatures haven’t breached yet. That is where I was leading my unit, before we were ambushed.” She hesitates before deciding to plow ahead. “My lords, is it too much to hope you are here to rescue us? I’ve been searching for news of a regroup, of a counter-attack—”

Gaelan interrupts her. “Ixion is lost,” he says coolly, “and so is your unit. We are here to extract the data that the tech-priest has. Nothing more.”

The reactions range from shock to resignation. Only the officer seems unbothered. “I see,” she says through gritted teeth.

“All we can offer you,” Varis says, “is a quick death.” He hefts his pyreblaster.

“No.” The officer shakes her head slowly, as if waking. “No, we’ve… We’ve made plans. If it isn’t too much to ask, my lords, we’d like to die in the ways we have chosen.”

“Three hours, forty-five minutes,” Creon notes to no one in particular.

“Permission granted,” I tell the major. “I will mention your loss in my report.”

“Thank you, my lords.” Without another word exchanged, she turns to return to her handful of subordinates. Some, like her, remain images of stoic stamina. Yet I could see a few of them are, at last, succumbing to the depths of despair—the death of hope.

We leave the ranks of PDF survivors behind, their grief reverberating in our ears as we stride southeast. The valley narrows and then opens onto a stretch of halved terrain, where the world flattens into a bleak manmade plateau. Under the dull wash of flickering emergency lighting, two parallel metallic loading platforms rise above piled earth and compacted rock, each one half a mile in length and crowned with rusted railings. Between them runs an elevated mag-rail track, its thick power conduits still and silent as it stretches east to west. The ground here, though littered with detritus, feels almost spacious compared to the steep and pitted crags of the ravine.

We move silently upstairs to the closest platform. The bracing gusts of wind carry the tang of oil and the noxious miasma of spreading Tyranid spores. At the far end, a squat station-post stands a lonely sentinel, an angular prefabricated booth of corrugated ferrocrete with a single-entry hatch framed by a lambent red beacon. The lumen globes sputter in and out, creating splashes of intermittent crimson light on the platform.

A flicker of movement at the edge of the pulsing catches my eye, a ripple in the shadows where none should be. For a heartbeat, I glimpse a shape: long, serrated limbs folded tight, chitin that shimmers with shifting hues as though the air itself were painting it into invisibility. It perches atop a battered crate, unnaturally still, every sinew coiled. Then lightning‑quick, it slips back into the gloom, its footfalls swallowed by the wind.

We enter the station-post in a disciplined stack. Inside, the air is stale and grimy. A single fist-thick window looks out onto the rail siding. A battered control console stands off-center, its screens dark. Behind it, a lone figure rises from a crouch. It is a middle-aged woman in tattered, stained overalls, lean and mud-smeared, gripping a shotgun.

She waits until we cross the threshold and fires in frightened fury. The blast is loud, but the shell detonates harmlessly against Ulfgar’s breastplate, scattering black powder across his armor. Her jaw drops as this happens, eyes wild beneath unkempt hair.

She lowers the shotgun, voice choking, before collapsing to her knees. “A-Astartes… I’ve heard stories! You’re here to save us!” She clings to the hope of life, like the PDF.

Varis steps forward, raising a hand to stop her. “We are not the Imperial Guard,” he intones gently. “We seek a Magos Biologis—”

“Praise the God-Emperor! Praise him! I prayed for deliverance! A second chance!”

Ulfgar picks her up by the collar with surprising deftness, considering the size of his massive hands compared to her emaciated frame, a giant lifting a starving child. “Get a hold of yourself! We’re looking for a Magos! Have you seen a Magos?”

“A what?”

“A priest of Mars! Have you seen one?”

She shakes her head, showing us her hollow cheeks. Her voice sounds haggard, gravelly. “I don’t know anything about no priests! I just work here! All the big shots left on the last mag-train car two days ago. They left us here to die!  We tried sending distress calls to the cities to the south, but our signal was jammed!”

“You were one of the convict laborers.”

“Yes!” She extends her arms and grabs for Varis’ outstretched hand. I can see crude prison tattoos on her wrists, visual references to criminal underworlds on a dozen planets. “I regret my crimes, my lords! I only stole rations to feed my family!”

After scanning her and checking the Imperial records, a short profile arises in my retinal display: Marina Bincal, thirty years old. Her record does include the theft of rations, but also myriad other convictions: assault, forgery, burglary, selling narcotics, sedition, vandalism, conspiracy, arson, and multiple homicides. Her sentence is a lifetime of hard labor on Ixion. I am sure the rest of the Kill Team sees the same information.

“Please, take me with you!” Her voice is breaking. She seems too exhausted to sob. “Take me out of here! I can’t go on like this! I don’t want to die!”

Creon interrupts her with finality. A single, mechanical click echoes in the confined space. His bolt pistol emerges from his hip holster, gripped and steadied in his ceramite gauntlet, and aimed at her scrawny form. Before anyone can speak, he fires.

The convict erupts in gore almost instantly. Fragments of bone, liquefied organs, and copious blood splashes us and the walls. Varis and Ulfgar receive most of it, being nearest to her. What remains are feet, clad in leather boots, on either side of the room.

“Why, brother?” Varis asks, perplexed.

“Her sentence for her crimes was to serve the Imperium until death. Her service was no longer required. Such is the fate of all those who dare defy the Golden Throne.”

“We are Astartes, brother, not common executioners.”

“Your sympathy for the mortals extends to recidivist scum? I can understand some paternal compassion, but I did not think the Salamanders were so… tender.”

Their voices are not raised. Standing in their suits of armor, they are emotionless and motionless. Yet I am no fool. Tension is again filling the small space between us. I am about to admonish them when one of the Tyranids intervenes before I do.

The air above us rips open in a shower of sparks and torn metal. The ventilation grating overhead splinters, and in the darkness, I see it slither through the gap, a terrifying outline, long‑limbed and curved. Its skin shimmers, folding into the shadows, but the betraying click of its claws against the console alerts our heightened senses.

It drops with feline grace, body coiling as it lands behind us. The creature’s head whips toward Gaelan, and before I can warn him, one of its fused‑bone talons arcs in a flash and rakes across the Librarian’s face. The beast comes away with what looks like a substantial chunk of Gaelan’s head. Blood wells through the crystal filigree of his psychic hood as the Blood Raven staggers away, clutching for balance with his force staff.

Instinct takes over. I spin, bolt rifle cracking twice, bullets biting into chitin, but the Lictor’s reflexes are too quick. It darts past me, closing on Varis, who brings the pyreblaster to bear with a thermal torrent. The blast washes over the monster, searing scales and releasing founts of green acidic blood, but the Tyranid only lurches, half‑driven by its animosity for us, half by the Hive Mind’s relentless will.

Ulfgar’s pack ignites in a burst of flame that scorches the walls, and before the alien can twist away, he’s on it. The power sword snaps out, its disruptive field flickering in the choking light, and he slashes the creature’s flank. Its exoskeleton cracks under the blade, curling like peeling bark, but the monster’s other spiked limb lashes backward, finding a gap in his armor to stab him beneath the neck. There is a wet thud as the Lictor’s claw buries itself around a foot deep into the old Wolf’s body, but Ulfgar does not relent.

Gaelan totters, hand pressed to his wound, vision half‑blinded. He reels toward cover, sweeping psychic wards in trembling arcs, but without both eyes, his wards falter, and the creature lunges again. I intercept, shouldering my rifle into its side, forcing it to pivot. My last round shatters a leg joint, and the Lictor crashes onto a pile of crates.

Ulfgar does not wait. He vaults onto the creature’s back, his power sword raised, and drives the blade into its carapace. The moist whistle of melting flesh echoes through the booth as the Wolf wrenches his weapon free. His eyes are wild and triumphant as he tears sinew and frees one of the creature’s bulbous bone claws from its joint.

The Lictor twists beneath him, mandibles thrashing like snakes. Ulfgar squats over its head, and then he rams the broken bone spur into the creature’s face, impaling bone‑hooks and feeder tendrils in a single, savage thrust. The beast’s body spasms, convulsing as though every nerve is fire, before a flurry of twitching settles into stillness.

The stench of burned chitin fills the cramped space as the creature’s pheromones—once a beacon to draw the swarm—fade into nothing. Gaelan sinks to one knee, his wound bleeding heavier now. Creon is already at his side, laser scalpel flicking open and clamps snapping as he presses a mesh‑seal over the wound and injects synapse stabilizers. He helps the Librarian to his feet, closing the sealant over the wound with exactitude.

“You’ll need a bionic replacement for the eye,” Creon informs him, “but it did not penetrate too deep. Damage to your nervous system is unlikely.”

“Thank you, brother,” responds Gaelan dryly, his voice only slightly strained. “I know how you fret for my mind.”

“I will perform mental and cognitive diagnostics upon return to the Fortress.”

“I am sure that you will.”

Creon has already subjected Gaelan’s mind to rigorous research in the days leading up to this mission. No doubt, he is unconvinced that a genetically deficient Chapter like the Blood Ravens, with its notable cases of treachery, can sufficiently guard against cerebral contamination from the Ruinous Powers or otherwise. To his credit, Gaelan has greeted all of Creon’s probing with his characteristic serenity and straight-faced sarcasm. Even with a mutilated face, he somehow finds the patience to indulge the Apothecary.

“Can you continue, brother?”

“As long as I stand, I will serve. But, brothers, enough about me. Time is critical. Although there are no more trains, the mag-rail may still be of use to us.” He gestures toward the window. “The depression it runs over is flat and paved. We can use it to get to the central command bunker much more quickly. Also, it will hide us.”

“Hide?” Ulfgar spat the word. “We do not hide!”

“The better part of valor is sometimes discretion.”

Ulfgar growls his disagreement.

“We are down to a little more than three hours,” I say solemnly. “Gaelan is correct. The depression will indeed get us there faster. Enough talk. Let us go now.”

I lead the way down into the sunken mag‑rail depression, every footfall echoing on the cracked ferrocrete beneath my boots. A thin mist clings to the edges of the trench, swirling around the rail’s raised guide‑beam and hiding us from prying eyes and the Tyranid spores drifting across the surface. Here, at least, the ground is level and clear of the hills and valleys that could delay us. Even with Gaelan using his staff to walk, we make swift progress to the bunker, built into the cliffside of an ice-capped knoll.

The bunker is a reinforced block of armored ferrocrete ringed by coils of razor wire and faded warning placards. Scattered before its walls lie the shredded carcasses of bat‑winged creatures, the carnage evidence of the heavy bolters that guard this place. Those turrets, now cold and silent, crown the bunker’s roof like dormant sentinels. The single armored door is unbroken, its thick plating and reinforced frame offering the only sign that someone—hopefully our elusive mission target—chose to seal themselves within. I pause a moment, hand on the hilt of my bolt rifle, then I nod to the team.

Before any of us can approach the door, the heavy bolters come alive. Rounds land just inches from our helmets, sending shards of ice and metal spraying. Instinctively, we spring out of the encroaching line of fire as the turrets’ auto‑sensors swing down. The guns whine as they pivot, cross‑referencing our biometric codes against a dead database. The turrets click through a final validation cycle and fall silent once more. The door’s control panel blinks green, the armored barrier sliding open with a grinding echo.

Inside, the air is cold and fetid, the corridor lit by fluttering emergency strips. We enter, bolt rifles raised. Beside a ruined data terminal hovers the figure of Magos Biologis Kull Yamuna. One side of his face is matted in glistening burgundy, and a shattered mechadendrite arcs from his back like a broken limb, sparking in intermittent pulses. He sways drunkenly, only to pause and right himself with precise, surgical correction—an uncanny gait that jerks and smooths in the same instant. His ocular rebreather clicks as he regards us with vacant lenses. Above it, Mechanicus ergot escapes in garbled tones, not addressing our presence but echoing through the corridor’s stale air.

I take a cautious step forward. “Magos Yamuna,” I intone in Low Gothic, “we are here to extract you and the datacore. You must come with us now.”

He flinches, metal implants clattering, and shunts away from us in a slow pivot, the exposed wiring on his damaged mechadendrite hissing. His gibberish rises to a frantic tempo. When I raise my voice again, clearer, the Magos halts—but only to telescope his Infernus pistol from a holster. His remaining bionic tentacles twitch, their pincers flexing erratically. We freeze. Across the team, weapons hover but do not move.

If we destroy the Magos, we destroy the datacore and fail the mission. This cannot happen. I lower my bolt rifle. “I am Marcellus Gracchus, sergeant of the Deathwatch. My team was sent to retrieve the datacore in your possession. May we have it?”

Yamuna makes more clicks and whirs, nonsense upon nonsense. His head jerked at the mention of my name, however, or perhaps at the name of the Deathwatch. Despite the best impression of a malfunctioning servitor, I could discern some intelligence.

“Can you do anything?” Ulfgar asks Creon.

“I’m an Apothecary, not a Techmarine. But judging from that head wound, he shouldn’t even be mobile. His auto-repair systems are probably all that’s keeping his organic components alive. It wouldn’t be too hard to overpower him and take the—”

“M-M-Marcellus Gracchus,” the Magos blurts. “The Battle of M-M-Macragge.”

“Yes,” I say tentatively, “I was at the Battle of Macragge. Were you?”

“You d-d-don’t remember me.” His mutilated visage jerks. There’s a pang of sadness in his modulated voice. “I was b-b-but an ordinary tech-priest. The F-F-First Tyrannic War. The Lacrima D-D-Dolorosa Crusade. You were in F-F-First Company—”

Ulfgar scoffs. “This is no time for reminiscing! We have less than three hours!”

“T-T-Three hours?”

“The message you sent us, Magos, about the coming of the swarm!”

“T-T-The swarm. Y-Y-Yes.” His head shakes as if in emphatic protest. “Hive Fleet T-T-Tiamat. A splinter from L-L-Leviathan. Already 25% variation in their genetic code—”

“Magos, there is no time.”

“R-R—Right.” From underneath his scarlet robes emerges a heavily augmented appendage, in whose grip is a cube-shaped device. Only when the garment parts do I see that Yamuna has strapped a sizable amount of explosives to his person. “Alien or not, they are still b-b-biological. They can be k-k-killed. And d-d-defeated.”

I take the datacore. “Yours is not the only sacrifice, Magos, but we will make sure none of them are in vain. We will use what you have gathered to make the alien suffer.”

“Yes,” Yamuna says faintly, “p-p-pain. They are biological. They feel p-p-pain.”

I lead the way out of the bunker, the door groaning shut behind us as Ulfgar secures the latch. The raised heavy‑bolter turrets stand silent once more. We move swiftly into the mag‑rail depression. Our boots echo in the hollow trench as we pass deserted loading platforms, the skeletons of cargo pallets half‑buried in ice. Every so often, a flicker of ichor‑stained metal catches my eye—a fallen container box, a twisted girder bristling with chitin. Gaelan’s one good eye scans the darkening skies, now bruised in sickly purple and black. The Tyranid resistance remains sparse as we hurry on.

The depression levels off as the platforms fall behind us. I tap my gauntlet, plotting a direct route through the rail’s sunken spine. Moonlight lengthens between broken pylons and rusted cable runs, and overhead, the clouds coil into a living storm. Each bracing gust sends floating noxious spores dancing along the trench floor.

At length, the refinery materializes through the night: vast ferrocrete walls bristling with pipework and skeletal antenna masts. Breaches gape in its hull, open wounds of ripped‑open panels and malformed bulkheads. We emerge from the trench onto the scarred service road. It leads to a conical tower stretching into the frigid night sky. It is an ideal spot for an aerial extraction, high ground away from the main facility.

“Thunderhawk. Thunderhawk, come in.”

My calls are met only with the persistent screech of the Hive Mind.

“We must ascend.” Varis points up the tower to the uplink dish at its summit.

Inside, the structure is hollow, designed to keep the harsh weather from the automated machinery. The bodies of industrial servitors—larger, more simian, and far more augmented than most of their kind—lay among the remnants of gaunts and more convict workers. The clang of our boots is the only sound as we climb the stairway.

As we step back into the open air, all eyes search for our salvation. The sky is divided between a sea of stars and the roiling infection seeking to consume everything in its path. There is no Thunderhawk. The minutes crawl. We have just over an hour.

“Look!”

We follow Creon’s outstretched hand. They crest the refinery walls like a living tide. Dozens of Termagants, and with them, hulking Tyranid Warriors bristling with carapace and bone‑rifles. They spill over the parapets, all driven by that single, unthinking hunger. Behind the ground‑force deluge, a flock of Shrikes sweeps down, their bat‑wings blotting out the stars as they spiral toward the tower in a furious dive. It is the greatest concentration of xenos we’ve faced yet—and they pour in from every angle.

“Form up!” I bark.

Ulfgar wheels into position at my side, power sword slashing between the charging gaunts. Varis backs him on the left, pyreblaster leveled in a molten arc. Creon slides into the center as Gaelan plants his staff on the grated deck, manifesting a dome of crackling force. I anchor the right flank, bolt rifle braced against my shoulder.

The first wave crashes against our line in a tide of chitin and venom. Bolt rounds punch holes in gaunt ranks. Force-enclosed blades carve warriors in two. Varis’s firestorm scorches flesh as the smoke curls. Above us, the Shrikes swoop, talons whistling past my helm as Ulfgar’s sword finds one wing and tears it free, watching it cartwheel into the gaunt‑packed deck. Creon ends a charging warrior’s life with a bolt‑pistol round.

We do not break. We hold this narrow deck against the devouring darkness, a steel wall forged of the Emperor’s brilliance and our unbreakable will. And as the wave of xenos crashes against us, I know this line must stand… or all hope for the sector dies with it.

The sky ripples. A low-frequency thrum lances through my skull like a hot needle. From the breach behind the Tyranid advance floats a new form, bulbous and grotesquely cranial, its swollen head glowing with coils of warp-light. It drifts forward, cloaked in a halo of kinetic energy. The Hive Mind’s will incarnate: a Zoanthrope. As it crests the refinery’s lip, the gaunts around it pause, chittering in rapture.

A psychic scream tears the heavens. Gaelan stiffens beside me, his teeth bared as he strains to contain the assault, wards flaring blue-white around our line. The Zoanthrope's horned head ignites with amethyst fury, and a lance of Warp-light arcs from its brow, slamming into the Blood Raven’s shield. The force cracks the deck beneath our boots. Ulfgar is hurled back, crashing through a section of railing. Gaelan bellows, pushing back with his mind, but blood streams from his ears. “It’s anchoring the swarm,” he gasps over the vox. “A synaptic node… We must destroy it!”

Bolt fire dances through the night air, but the Zoanthrope weaves in slow, drifting arcs, wrapped in an invisible veil that bends the shots aside. My rounds detonate against its shimmering barrier, each explosive shell scattering shrapnel without finding flesh. Varis’s fire lashes skyward, but even the heat of promethium cannot pierce its Warp-hardened shield. Gaelan’s focus trembles under the strain of its presence, and every moment it remains aloft, the Tyranids grow bolder, their formation tightening.

With a snarl, Ulfgar ignites his jump pack and rockets toward the creature in a burst of fire. His blade hums with destructive energy as he rises, but the Zoanthrope meets him with a pulse of sheer psychic force. The Space Wolf is caught mid-flight, limbs splaying wide before he is hurled back, crashing into the tower wall with a roar of defiance and pain. Gaelan staggers, his eyes bloodshot and glowing as he summons one final strike. He lifts his force staff skyward, and a bolt of raw energy spears from his hand, bypassing the creature’s shield with precision born of desperation. The Zoanthrope’s immense skull bulges, veins glowing purplish-blue, and then bursts with a sickening pop, spraying neuroplasm and bright green ooze as the creature crashes lifelessly to the ground. The synaptic pulse fractures, and in that instant, the swarm falters and loses direction.

The moment the Zoanthrope falls, the sky itself seems to roar in reply, not with the screech of Tyranid wings, but with the thunder of Imperial engines. Through the corrupted clouds tears a wedge of light and fury: the Thunderhawk, its aquila-emblazoned prow glowing. Twin-linked heavy bolters chatter from the hull, stitching lines of fire across the horde. Shrikes spiral into the dirt as autocannon shells rip their wings to ribbons. Termagants burst like vermin caught under tank treads, and the few Warriors that remain are broken apart by las-cannon fire that melts their chitin to slag.

The extraction ramp hisses open as the gunship hovers just above the comms tower, wash from the retro-thrusters blasting the deck with hurricane force. I bark the order, and we move: Ulfgar clutching his side, Gaelan staggering but upright, supported by Creon. Varis lays down one last gout of fire, scorching the edge of the platform. I board last, turning back only to see the swarm’s advance descending into anarchy.

Inside the gunship, amid the hum of auspex pings and servos, I activate the encrypted vox-channel. “This is Kill Team Secundus,” I say, voice steady. “Datacore secured. Prepare for immediate exfil and containment protocols. Ixion is lost—but not in vain.”

We have slipped the grasp of death. Our vigil continues.

[aspiring-bl-writer]

After Life: 995 words

I stand amidst a green-skinned horde, blood-maddened monsters trampling over each other to reach me. I tower over them, a giant even among these hulking, howling brutes, my rune-encrusted polearm almost equal to my colossal height. I swing the ancient glaive in wide sweeping arcs before me, the berserk creatures rupturing against the blade. Yet the others rush toward me, ignoring their dead, showered in the blood and gore of their virulent breed.

Sitting on the floor of my home, I am holding my infant son, Pauric. I am not long a mother. I am still young, naïve, romantic. The child has my bright blue eyes and Aidyn’s thick chestnut hair. I am stroking the babe’s cheeks as he smiles, babbling, his intense love unspoken but nonetheless evident. Aidyn, joins us, his arm wrapping snug around my shoulders. I rest my head on his. I have not yet taken my first step on the Path of the Warrior, never set foot in an Aspect shrine. Really, I too am a child. Hopeful. Innocent.

The Infinity Circuit is my new home. My kindred welcome me. I am greeted by familiar fallen kinsfolk, as well as unknown ancestors. All are paragons of the Craftworld, fortunate to have their souls recovered. They greet me, try to comfort me, help me adjust to the afterlife. They tell me there is no war here, no fear of She Who Thirsts. They repeat the old proverb: Bonn dan nosh corinnid, “Only the dead know peace.” I am now part of a community. Not a military unit, but a harmonious society, bonded in understanding, united in values. Still, rest eludes me. I miss the war, the cause, the joy of cleansing the usurper races.

The Craftworld has bestowed upon me the title of autarch. I kneel before a statue of Kaela Mensha Khaine, his terrifying visage glowering. As a Fire Dragon I have fed on the fury inside. As a Dark Reaper I have destroyed simply for the sake of the destruction. Yet I have never succumbed to obsession. They say it is due to self-discipline, but the truth is there is a hollowness inside, an absence so cumbersome it keeps me forever grounded. I wonder if the God of Murder can perceive this fact, the gaping void at the centre of my soul.

Aidyn is lying in bed with me. He is on the Path of the Poet. I think he is so accomplished, so far along his path, not knowing that one day I will have walked all the Warrior Paths, then finally the Path of Command. He asks me to promise to die at the same time as him, so we will enter the Infinity Circuit together, and will never be apart. What if, I ask him, our souls are unrecoverable, not captured in a stone? This idea shocks him. He tells me not to think like that. I tell him I think about it all the time. A fate worse than death.

The Infinity Circuit is despoiled. Servants of She Who Thirsts attack a place meant to be inviolate, joined by deluded heretics enacting a rite. The former feed their deity and the latter claim to materialise another. How many gods will we Aeldari create, in our vanity? I am spared, but many of us, the best of us, are consumed, extinguished. I mourn, but in private, in isolation. What cruelty I am saved when I do not want to persist. We have made a prison for our blessed dead and call it an afterlife. I see that now. A paradise, a place of peace, is anathema to me. I am a bride of Khaine. I want to follow him. His example.

I am returning from my first voyage on the Path of the Envoy. A messenger greets me once I re-enter the Craftworld. He informs me, with flawless etiquette, that Aidyn and Pauric were slain by Ork marauders while visiting Aidyn’s parents. Their souls are unrecoverable. Lost. Destroyed. I am inconsolable. I curse myself, She Who Thirsts, we who created her. The next day I change to the Path of the Warrior, adopting the first of many Aspects.

The seers repeat my name like a mantra. “Unnail Sadh Keva of the Billion Battles, the Herald of Demise, Orksbane, Saviour of Laith Lauchlan, Martyr of the Aristech Reach.” They beseech me to pilot one of their wraith-constructs, to aid the evacuation of a Maiden World. They will guide me, shepherd me in battle. I tell them I agree, but on my own terms. They say their visions already told them as much. They do not ask me to reconsider.

They concede I have earned the right to choose.

I am a child sitting on my father’s lap. He is an aged, learned, wise. He tells me about the paths, the ways of our people. He insists the Aeldari will come back from extinction, that one day our civilization will conquer the galaxy as in days of old. I ask him how we can make tomorrow be like yesterday. He just smiles and pats my head. He never answers the question.

The evacuation is almost complete, the seers report. Waves of Ork warriors keep coming. All perish. They are fools jumping into open graves, thinking it will affect some great change, It will not. We Aeldari are more like them than we care to admit. We are not mindless as they are, but we are no less deluded. Some races should know when to die. As the last ships ascend into the stars, the seers bid me farewell, wish me blessings, sing my praise. I do not answer. I turn my glaive and embed its tip in the chest that is not my chest. There is no expression on my white featureless face as I sink it in farther, deeper, until, in one thrust, I shatter my soul stone. With a rush of relief, I plunge into waiting oblivion.

[aspiring-bl-writer]

Rage

Notice me.

I stride ankle-deep over mounds of corpses, heaps of offal trailing in my wake. My dual chainaxes sing discordant music as their teeth rend armour like flesh. My charred crimson plate is the same shade as the mists of blood bursting from every hack, every chop. I no longer recall who the enemy is, save that they are fools still in thrall to the carcass sat upon the Golden Throne. Their colours, their heraldry are trivial details. All that matters is my Primarch’s favour.

Notice me.

The Red Angel walks amongst us. He is a prince of the Lord of Rage, a behemoth of barbed bronze. Yet despite his daemonic ascension, his horrible and grotesque form, he is still essentially the same: wild, vicious, constantly consumed by heedless fury. With one swing his massive blade slices into a squad of our foes, cleaving their bodies in twain. He howls a guttural, dreadful roar, the stuff of nightmares. This is his calling: to lose himself in the hot passion of slaughter.

So ardent is his appetite for destruction that to steal his attention, just for the briefest of moments, is a highly coveted prestige among his children. A nod of respect, a growl of recognition implies a commendation tantamount to a blessing from the Blood God. It is a prize I have chased for centuries.

Notice me!

I must further increase the pace of my murder. I shove one of my brothers aside as I seek out more victims. We of the Grim Dawn are all World Eaters, each purified by eons of war, savage, reckless, bloodthirsty, brutal. We kill side by side, but truly, there is no kinship between us. Our weapons fall together, but without thought, without care. Camaraderie was just another emotion expunged sting by sting by the butcher’s nails. Even now I feel them whirring in my head, increasing my aggression, adding more and more momentum to my frenzy.

I spy a massive war-machine ahead. Its pilot is a maimed Astartes, an ancestor revered by his Loyalist comrades. Its armour is scorched black by innumerable dents and blasts. It lumbers toward us, a walking tank. It would make a fine prize.

Servos whine as its articulated power fist reaches for my swinging axe. I let the Dreadnought catch it, crumpling the metal blade in its grasp, while charging with my remaining axe raised. I aim for the nest of cables exposed underneath its elephantine metal chest suspended above a narrow waist and trunk-like legs. With revving ferocity, the teeth chew deep.

Notice me!

I duel the entombed warrior for… Hours? Minutes? Time is so subjective in the Warp. His strikes fly in sweeping arcs, chasing a death blow. He is plodding, precise. Meanwhile I am surrendering consciousness to the mechanical tendrils vibrating inside my brain. As my enemy grows exasperated, frustrated, I grow calm with the oxygen and adrenaline pumping in my bloodstream. The butcher’s nails are no torture device. They sharpen the senses and dull pain. They give clarity.

That is why our dead hearts so revere the Primarch. Yes, he is a privileged son of Khorne, but he gifted us serenity when he ordered the nails installed in all our heads. We will never know peace; that word is anathema to us. But the mental state induced by the thumping needles creates an ecstasy only the enraged can understand. The intensity of our fury is so great it washes everything away, lowers the volume, removes all distractions. I meander in a rose-tinted trance, a lullaby sung by the nails, the Taker of Skulls their conductor.

NOTICE ME!

At last, I have the upper hand. The goliath stumbles as it turns. I leap, axe lowered, and slam into the Dreadnought’s torso. My axe sinks far but not enough. As I hug the chassis I hack over and over, eliciting sparks and split wires until, finally, I find the Astartes revenant inside. I give him his overdue death, the mercy killing he was owed ages past.

I look up. The Red Angel has his back to me. His enormous bat-like wings lift his impossible bulk to convey him to some other corner of the battlefield. I watch in silence. All is now quiet. There are no more enemies here to slay. They all lay dead around me. It is only now that I survey them closer.

Their armour is covered in blood, or so it seems. I soon realize the armour is indeed painted the colour of blood, with subtle scorched trimmings of brass. Some of them wear Imperial insignia, but scratched, ruined, and not in battle. A good few wear the inimitable mark of Khorne. The Dreadnought is no different. It occurs to me these are fellow World Eaters. More than that, they are—were—my fellow members of the Grim Dawn.

In my mania I have killed my warband. There is no trace of Loyalist Astartes, living or dead. Had Angron presided over the massacre of his own children? Did he even still consider himself a father to us, or only Khorne’s chosen son? Had he been a product of my delirium, my ambition for his praise willing him into existence? These questions bring only pain.

I feel no remorse. I have felt very little for a long, long time, save for the perpetual hum of anger. All else is cauterized away, thanks to the nails. They permit me to feel the extremes of my default state. Rage is my religion, the calm at the centre of the storm, my paradise. I will never stop chasing it. Just as I will never stop chasing the blessing of the Red Angel who liberated me and my kindred.

I walk on. There are other battles. Of that, I am sure. Where blood flows, the Blood God looks, and where the blood flows deepest, the Red Angel appears. I will be there too.

You will notice me.

[aspiring-bl-writer]

Retribution

Hello! This was my entry for the Cold Open Stories monthly flash fiction contest with the theme of personal vendettas.

I decided to use one of the most famous rivalries in 40k lore between the Space Wolves and Thousand Sons. The story is set during the Siege of the Fenris System in the final days of M41, when Magnus the Red and his followers invaded the worlds of the Sons in Russ in retribution for the razing of Prospero during the Horus Heresy.

My story wasn't chosen by the COS judges for publication, but I'm still proud of it!

It is impossible to tell where reality ends and the Immaterium begins. The veil between dimensions is not just torn but tattered. The Architect of Fate is the undeniable master of the arcane arts, and his daemonic host is likewise skilled. They overrun the battlefield in dazzling sublimity, scorching the land with the coruscating fires of change.

With these infernal beings march my brothers and me. We are neither mortal nor monster, but warriors, once crusaders for human supremacy. We now fight for ourselves. Our motives are as many as the warbands present at this siege. We each have our reasons for being here. I can only speak for mine.

The Rubicae under my command advance with determined gaits, firing their relic bolters into the enemy ranks. They have no motives or minds of their own, only blind acceptance of my will. Ahriman turned them to soulless husks eons ago. I will make that wrong right too. But one vendetta at a time.

I know this pack of Wolves. I know their heraldry. I search for a familiar face. Granite-hewn features. Icy blue eyes. Braided tawny hair. A tattoo of runes on his forehead.

I have thought of this face for hundreds of thousands of years. I care nothing for the corpse sitting atop the throne on Terra. I do not seek the gifts and favours of Dark Gods. For me there was never a Long War or a Black Crusade. Just that face, forever burned into my memory, and revenge.

I see him. His hair is no longer tawny but grey. His left eye is now a red-glowing oculus implant. His face is still stone but heavily scarred. The tattoo of runes on his brow is now one part of an elaborate pictorial story running across his cheeks, jaw, and neck. He wears an immense charcoal-coloured wolfskin over his pauldrons. He locks his azure eyes on me, my face obscured behind the distinctive headgear of my legion. I sense no recognition on his part. A shame.

I point at him. “You.”

He hears me, even over the din of combat around us. The faces of his nearby brothers appear as bewildered as his does.

“On Tizca you slaughtered my mentor. A teacher and a friend. Today you answer for that. What is your name, dog?”

The warrior does not hesitate. “Rurik Fangs-First!”

“Know that Qadim Abydos is the one to kill you.”

He charges me before I remove my sword from its sheath. It is the blade of a sorcerer, intricately engraved with the glyphs of a long-dead language, the rare jewels in its hilt conduits of fell energies. Rurik hefts his two-handed axe and brings it down in a pulverizing arc. I parry the blow, the axe sizzling against the power field encasing my weapon. It takes all my concentration to resist the momentum behind the strike.

Rurik laughs. His aura is the same as it was over one thousand years ago on Prospero: unthinking brutality, a killer instinct. But it is the laugh that clinches it. That throaty, jeering laugh of contempt. This is the Wolf, to be certain.

I expect him to pull away, to back up and swing again. Instead, he keeps his weight of his axe upon my sword and kicks me square on my breastplate, causing me to stagger back.

I send images to his mind, memories I have relived over and over. My life as an aspirant, then my initiation into the XV Legion. My commander, my teacher, Xorias Typhon. As Tizca falls, he buys my brothers and I time to escape. To our shame we run, leaving him to die, cut down to the sound of Rurik’s laugh. I turned, and the Wolf’s face was the last thing I saw before the Crimson King transported us to sanctuary.

From then to this moment, from the burning of Prospero to the siege of Fenris, I have hunted him through the stars. At last, we meet again. I show Rurik all this through my psychic power, and slowly he understands the story I weave.

His face is contorted with rage. “Out of my head!”

“Xorias Typhon!” I cry.

He lets out a guttural grunt as he swings his axe wildly. Even with the distance between us I almost fail to dodge it.

“His name was Xorias Typhon!”

I can tell he is not listening. He is consumed by fury.

As he starts to run toward me, I begin to chant as I run a hand over my sword. A malign intelligence slowly awakens in the blade, which begins to radiate with a cerulean light.

Rurik freezes mid-stride. His every molecule is stuck in place, succumbed to an arcane paralysis rendering him helpless. A spectre emerges from my blade, a ghostly mass of twisting flesh and limbs. It lets out a psychic shriek that leaves me deafened before it swirls smoke-like around Rurik, gradually sifting through his mouth, nostrils, and ears.

I am grateful the Wolves tend to forgo their helms in battle, for it also means I can watch the confusion in his eyes. Astartes may know no fear, but Rurik demonstrates that we are capable of shock. I sense him searching for meaning as he becomes host to a being he does not comprehend, an eldritch wraith even older and more powerful than he, me, or any other of our kind. I have not just killed him; I have made his body host to a creature of Chaos, and a powerful one at that.

Rurik contorts and writhes, his body bulging and breaking underneath his armour. Soon the ceramite cracks, and Rurik is no longer Rurik, but a bulk of obscene and monstrous anatomy. Insane and mindless, he roars as he rampages among the Wolves.

I care not what comes. Fenris may fall. Terra may burn. Our war goes on. But I know this: I have had my retribution.

[aspiring-bl-writer]

Flash Fiction: Ork Mek

The convoy navigated its way through the canyons of the planet, massive battle wagons bristling with weaponry, each carrying several dozen green-skinned brutes. Behind these trailed multi-wheeler trucks with huge load-bearing beds, overflowing with a dozen of the beasts as well, their enthusiasm the only thing keeping them from flying from the tight turns and relentless acceleration. Ahead, behind and around the larger vehicles rode an assortment of bikes and buggies. Whatever their size, all members of the procession were ramshackle, crafted from slabs of steel, held together by thick rivets—and possibly some supernatural force, given the absurdity of their engineering.

Responsibility for the upkeep of the convoy fell to the renowned Mek Muzgash Gutwrench, who had been putting or keeping things together for Boss Grimtoof for as long as he could remember (which, admittedly, wasn’t long). He could not explain why he was able to make things work, and in fact, ruminating on it too long tended to cause headaches. He was no philosopher; he was a simple creature who loved going fast and making things explode. As it so happened, he was inherently and immensely talented at inventing functional engines, assembling rivet guns, even creating firearms from little more than scrap. He had made a reputation and earned the favor of the Boss himself, but at the moment, Muzgash felt that good will slipping through his fat fingers.

“Wus da problem, boss?”

Muzgash looked down at the grot at his feet. Diminutive and craven, the little blighters were never in short supply, but of dubious value. This one was called Dink.

“If I knew dat, Dink, dere wouldn't be a problem, innit?”

Dink considered the weapon on the bed of the truck. It was indubitably a high-caliber, fully automatic firearm, and—as was the case with most Ork weaponry—loud, big, and rapid-firing. It was extensively modified: barrels, scopes, and ammo belts were all crammed in or fastened to it. Shiny bits added a hefty amount of decorative charm.

“More dakka, boss?” Dink ventured.

Muzgash groaned and plucked up Dink from around his skinny neck. Annoyed, he tossed the grot out of the truck and into a passing rock formation.

Naturally Muzgash had thought of adding more dakka. He had also tried making it shootier and blastier, but to no reward. The snazz-gun was meant for Boss Grimtoof himself, but as of now, it was an ugly embarrassment, a source of endless frustration.

He noticed something move in one of the barrels. He snatched at it, but it squirreled away. It took some fishing with his meaty digits, but he pulled it out: a tiny green humanoid with protruding ears, a grot in miniature. It was a snotling, and they occupied the lowest rung of society. As such, Muzgash felt only relief when he popped the snotling inside his clenched fist, then wiped his hand clean on his trousers.

“That'll fix it! an' I just got an idea: an upgrade dat shoots snotlings!”

[aspiring-bl-writer]

Flash Fiction: Drukhari & Necrons

Hello again! I want to thank Tim aka TauMan over at Cold Open Stories for giving me a lot of helpful feedback on my last post. I also highly suggest checking out Cold Open Stories if you too are interested in writing or reading 40k fiction (they also have audio dramas). In today's story, a Drukhari raider stumbles upon a Necron tomb that has recently reawakened. With some of Tim's feedback in mind I tried to focus more on imagery and used a first-person POV to give the story a little more punch.

We gush forth from the Webway, a swarm of coal-colored locusts, our intentions cruel and wicked. We are the Kabal of the Flayed Skull, the raiders of the Poisoned Crown. I grip the controls of my Reaver white-knuckled and teeth-gritted, testing the limits of the jet-bike’s acceleration. The Reavers lead the war party and I lead the Reavers, both as their leader and in formation. To outdistance me would be to challenge my authority. I brook no dissent. I cannot show weakness. Only the strongest thrive in the Dark City.

I do not know this world’s name. I do not care. We raided it long ago, then left it to recreate its wealth and population for our future plunder. Most of it is underground, built into caverns, the great halls and corridors of this subterranean race. For all their skill and knowledge of excavation, their weapons are woefully primitive, all but useless against our own. Even more brazenly than is characteristic for me, I dive and glide low over rows of what this species calls “soldiers.” Their globular heads fly off in fountains of magenta-hued blood as the blades attached to my bike slice through their necks in one pass, my conveyance unimpeded by even the slightest resistance. I let out a whoop as we fly deeper into the recesses of the subterrestrial city, taking breakneck turns around tight corners, weaving through compact lanes and passages. The further we go, the fewer defenders we see, the streets empty, the buildings abandoned. Everything is silent.

“They’re hiding!”

“No!” I shriek. “We came in too fast!”

They could not know we were coming. Even with the odds in our favor we never surrender surprise. There is something else amiss here. My curiosity spurs my bravado.

Then I see it. The streets end and buildings conclude where a wide fissure begins, a fracture that is miles across and even deeper. As we circle it, I see an eerie yellowish shade of green emanating from below. I assume it to be coming from some natural gas, but there is no vapor, but patterns, glyphs carved into rock by some strange intelligence.

I see the result of the shot before I hear the blast. One of my followers explodes in a flash of bright light, his bike detonating beneath him. Rising from the crevasse are two floating figures, skeletal heads, arms, and torsos lodged onto hovering platforms. They hold energy weapons alive with the same vivid yellowish-green as the glyphs, pulsing with destructive power. They stare at us with cold contempt on their metal visages.

I veer to avoid another blast, only to steer into another. I jump clear, and the cries and shouts of the other Reavers fade as I fall into the crevice. I plummet, limbs flailing without purchase. Only briefly do I glimpse the grandeur of a throne room. A lord, old, terrible, angry, patient. I feel relief that I will not live to see the doom he brings.

[aspiring-bl-writer]

Flash Fiction: T'au Empire vs Tyranids

Hello! This piece is set during the invasion of the T'au Empire by Hive Fleet Gorgon around 899.M41. I find the contrast of these two species interesting: both are hierarchical and aggressive, but the T'au embody a futuristic optimism while the Tyranids are biological predators driven by an unthinking imperative to consume. (And, yeah, a Riptide battlesuit flanked by Broadsides against a Hive Tyrant is just badass.)

It was over twenty feet tall, akin in size to a Hammerhead gunship, the hover-tanks of the T’au military. Yet while a Hammerhead epitomized T’au science and innovation, the creature was organic, a commixture of biology’s most vicious and lethal inventions. Its body was covered in a chitinous carapace over an insectoid exoskeleton, its tubular head primarily made up of rows of fangs. Around it roamed swarms of lesser monsters, smaller in scale but just as gruesome and deadly. They skittered around the talons of their colossal master, armed with razor-sharp claws of their own. Shas’O Ka’eldi had seen those scything blades tear through her T’au kindred, military and civilian alike.

“The size of it…” The voice belonged to Shas’ui Kais, the newest of the pilots within the detachment of XV88 Broadside Battlesuits Ka’eldi now led. There were six of them, ten feet tall weapons platforms in the form of walking war machines, wielding heavy rail rifles capable of firing high-velocity rounds that could penetrate the thickest defenses. Ka’eldi herself wore the XV104 Riptide, twice as tall as the Broadside, yet just as swift as the smaller model, with an even larger and more formidable arsenal: a heavy burst cannon, twin-linked smart missile systems, and a state-of-the-art shield generator. Around the entire squad darted shielded missile drones, each guided by advanced AI.

All of them were veterans, warriors of renown drawn from the proud T’au Fire Caste, but none of them had fought anything like Hive Fleet Gorgon. It had come from a place of nightmares, consuming all bio-mass in its path as it ravaged across the empire. These Tyranids were even more adaptative than the T’au, their physiology evolving in real-time response to the weapons they faced, each new brood possessing a range of new resistances. The T’au had reacted in kind, using a variety of ammunition and weapons, including equipment long antiquated to the empire, but new to the endless horde of voracious invaders. The Tyranids did not slow in their alterations but had to create a large number of the more plentiful but less intelligent broods, as the larger Tyranids—believed to direct and organize the swarm—took longer to form and mature. Eliminate them, it was theorized, and the swarms would revert to purely feral behavior.

“Fire!” Ka’eldi shouted to the others. Inside her suit the flickering data broadcast in bright neon colors reflected against her pale azure skin. Outside her armor the sky filled with projectiles and precision missiles that blew apart the multitude of minor Tyranids. The titanic over-fiend, wounded, let out a psychic scream that left Ka’eldi stunned. Her mind soon cleared, however, and before long, the giant Tyranid lay dead at her feet.

Ka’eldi watched as the surviving swarm fell into instinctual flight, fleeing before the T’au forces, even the mobile drones that hounded them with far more agility than the battle-suits could achieve. Only now did she allow herself some taste of hope.

[aspiring-bl-writer]

This is a short story set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, detailing a Death Guard attack on an Imperial world. The story is told from the perspective of an Imperial Guard lieutenant as his unit is saved by Adeptus Astartes from the Red Scorpions Chapter, who are obsessed with maintaining the purity of the Imperium and protecting humanity from any possible contamination.

They lurched forward in waves, unnatural and rancid figures, resembling the Adeptus Astartes, but their countenances blighted, sullied with the stench of decay. Swarms of flies clustered around them as the figures shuffled on deformed limbs. Their rusted suits of armor were greasy with a mucus oozing from pocked carapaces diffused with sores. They held oxidized, grime-coated weapons in twisted limbs disfigured by foul disease.

Despite their decomposing appearance, these disgusting parodies of Space Marines were formidable enemies. Wherever their weapons hit, the Imperial Guard fell, strains of crippling sickness spreading through their bodies. Weapons barely even fazed them, blasts and bolts absorbed into gnarled fusions of tissue and ceramite plate. Although the Guardsmen outnumbered them many times over, nothing seemed to interrupt the lethargic, scattered march of the Plague Marines. A discordant symphony of piercing shrieks, guttural death-rattles and the buzzing of warp-spawned pests followed them.

Lieutenant Selwyn Barras cursed the day he had ever set foot on Ephesos. His regiment had come to the feudal world in response to bombastic claims that the dead were rising and slaughtering the human population. Barras’ superiors had put down the preliminary reports to the superstitious hysteria of barely-civilized serfs toiling in dark lowlands, growing meager rice in paddy fields. Following their deployment, however, regimental commanders soon assessed the blunt reality. Epidemics had ravaged Ephesos for months, but rather than alerting Terra to the outbreaks, the planetary governor had remained doggedly focused on ensuring that the world supplied its regular tithe of rice bushels to the Imperium. The governor and his staff had been the only ones off-planet to know about the hastily-dug mass graves containing the hundreds of thousands of peasants claimed by the spreading pestilence. The governor had broken his silence only when reanimated corpses had clambered out of their crude, shared tombs, ravaging all living things discovered in their paths. Fortunately, the mindless undead could not hope to match the exceptional training and veteran leadership of an Imperial Guard regiment. Rot rendered once-human bodies into soft meat easily torn apart by laser fire. Defeating the zombie hordes had proved more time-consuming than challenging, and in a matter of weeks, most of Ephesos’ key cities had been reclaimed by the Astra Militarum.

Nature had not borne the plagues, nor their horrific creations. Unbeknownst to everyone, a Death Guard warband had instigated it all, and they were none too pleased at the disruption of their plans. They had attacked the Imperial forward positions overnight, hobbling across the horizon, a slow but thorough razing of all opposition. Regimental headquarters had instructed Barras to defend a dilapidated fortification along a stone wall running from a great river to a small inlet of a distant sea. The primitive masons who had constructed the barricade, with their limited knowledge of the larger universe in which they lived, would never have fathomed that their bulwark would someday be a citadel for the Imperial Guard against infernal demi-gods.

“Not much we can do without plasma weapons, much less armored support,” Barras murmured to himself, chewing on his lower lip. He let out a troubled sigh.

Commissar Aelia Tremelle, an ever-present face on the frontlines, could read the concern on Barras’ face as they observed the Plague Marines easily routing the forward positions. “The Emperor protects!” she yelled over the din of battle. What Tremelle lacked in persuasion she made up for in force of will. She was an ardent believer in the Imperium, and it was not hard to share her certainty, to emulate her zeal and unquestioning loyalty. Usually when Barras spied Tremelle’s peaked hat and fancily decorated coat, it bolstered his morale, reminded him that the all-powerful God Emperor safeguarded humanity, against enemies both material and immaterial.

This time was different. He reckoned by morning it was more probable he and the rest of the unit would be host to maggots rather than Tremelle’s unflappable passion.

He buried his pessimism, though, knowing he could not risk revealing it. Tremelle would have used it as an excuse for a summary execution, but that was not Barras’ main fear. He was more afraid that his despair would dishearten the rank-and-file, the men and women who depended on him for strength and guidance. Tremelle inspired them with moral purity, but it was from Barras they looked for leadership. If they saw him wavering, giving in to doubt and fear, they would resign themselves to annihilation. It was unlikely they could win against heretic Astartes, of course, but victory was not the goal now. Their objective was to offer the strongest resistance they could muster, to not give a single inch freely to the approaching traitors and their Chaos overlords.

He grabbed the Aquila necklace he wore and pressed it against his lips. Readying his bolt pistol, he turned from Tremelle to face the soldiers who had fixed their wide eyes upon him, their las-rifles primed. His heart thudded in his chest in anticipation as he searched for the words. “Have no fear! We will never surrender! We fight for humanity and the Emperor! All of you: die standing! Be ready to greet the Emperor with pride!” Tremelle cheered first as he finished, a booming hurrah, which the enlisted ranks copied with raucous shouting of their own. The speech, as brief as it was, had done its job.

Barras lifted himself up, aimed toward the Plague Marines, and fired. Lasers flashed past him, hitting their targets with great accuracy, but with minimal effect. The Death Guard traitors kept up their relentless march, cascades of shells spewing from their filth-encrusted weapons. Beside him, the side of Tremelle’s head exploded in a gory mess. Her corpse toppled over seconds later. A determined Guardsman took her place. Tremelle had often spoke of her demise in hallowed, sacred terms, promising it would be a noble sacrifice. In truth, Barras saw nothing poetic or dignified about it. Instead, he just wished that he would meet his death as quickly and unexpectedly as she had.

“Look!” Barras swung his head around and saw a trooper pointing heavenward. Following the upturned finger with his eyes, Barras noticed a trail of fire blazing across the sky. It looked as though a meteor storm had suddenly broken out over Ephesos, another ominous omen to go along with the dead rising and demonic corruption. He could not long take his gaze away from the oncoming scourge; their drumming bolters would not permit them to be ignored. Each concussive shot that landed sent dirt, blood and viscera flying. It took every ounce of willpower to take decent aim and fire, and every fiber of his courage not to lose his nerve when he saw a Plague Marine disregard the shot when it landed. The only weapon he possessed still serving its function was his faith, faith in the Emperor, for it was that alone that kept him rigid to where he stood.

Providence appeared to reward that faith. As the apparent meteoroids drew nearer, gaining ever more spectacular speed, it became clear they were something else entirely. They were drop pods of the Adeptus Astartes, and with ear-popping booms they plunged into the earth to the west of Barras’ position. Rocks and rubble sailed high in the air. Almost immediately pod doors whisked open, releasing their enormous occupants.

The head of every soldier in Barras’ unit, the lieutenant himself included, had turned to gawk at the Space Marines with awe. In their power armor, they stood just over eight feet tall. To call them colossuses would barely do them justice. Despite looking their human appearance, they were nevertheless alien and threatening, exuding auras of overwhelming violence. Their faces were hidden behind their helms, muzzle-mouthed and skull-faced, with piercing red lenses. Their armor was a pale tone of gray with yellow trim, and on their left pauldron a red scorpion raised its stinger menacingly against a white circle. In fluid motions, they smacked their bulky gauntlets on the stone eagle emblazoned over their breastplates before breaking out into sprints toward the Plague Marines. It seemed absurd that giants could move with such amazing celerity.

Barras’ eyes were fixed on the goliath leading the charge. While his brothers mostly fired bolters, he carried a two-handed maul with two heads, each swathed in a powerful disruptor field. Letting out a growl that sounded distorted and wolfish through his helmet speakers, the Marine swung his gigantic hammer and pounded an unsteady Plague Marine square in the chest. The sparking force field around the hammer’s head flashed on impact, amplifying the already inhuman strike to insane levels of strength. The Plague Marine flew backwards, landing and skidding around twenty yards away. Not dwelling on what he had just done, the maul-wielding Marine shouted to his comrades: “Let free the retribution of the Emperor, my brothers! Purge the unclean!”

Unbelievably, the fallen Plague Marine rose again, a crater on his chest, dazed but not nearly incapacitated. It took a few more steps before being engulfed in a searing fireball. Many of the Marines wearing the scorpion heraldry carried flamers, and were using them liberally to submerge their Death Guard foes in infernos. The consuming blazes did little to dismay their shambling targets, and most of the Plague Marines continued firing their bolters and swinging their blades even as the flames scorched their armor and burned away their fetid flesh. Rather than seek their survival, they seemed to welcome death once it was credibly offered to them, as if it were some cherished gift.

One of Barras’ soldiers let out a whoop of deliverance, sparking a chorus of additional supportive yells. With renewed dynamism, the Guardsmen resumed firing volleys, even if it was a weak supplement to the strength and firepower of their godlike saviors.

A small quantity of Plague Marines had died, but more were closing in on the attackers. Methodical salvos of bolter, flamer and plasma fire from the loyalist Marines thrashed the ranks of the Death Guard reinforcements, but few were stopped, and eventually the two forces met. A helmetless heretic, his head resembling a moldering shriveled prune, grappled with the Space Marine commander, a humming chainsword gripped in one tremendous fist. His dark moss-colored armor leaked with an unknown sludge. The Space Marine commander tried to shove him away, but his gauntlet slid clear due to the slimy gunk. The Death Guard warrior lunged, slashing his chainsword across the commander’s shoulder and blood sprayed where the chain found purchase. The commander did not cry out; instead, he slammed his elbow into his opponent’s belly and leapt backward, trouncing his maul onto neck and head. Like the rotted fruit it resembled, the Plague Marine’s head broke open, bone and brain obliterated in an eruption of sopping carnage. The decapitated body fell away as more enemies loomed.

The scene became a festival of massacres, a carnival of blood and brutality. Barras watched as a Space Marine died, an axe plunged into the space beneath his helm, and he fell to the sound of his own gurgling blood. One of his battle-brothers swept up his dead comrade’s bolt pistol and emptied the magazine into the killer. He was instantly set upon by a Traitor Marine carrying a combat knife, which in Barras’ much smaller hands would easily have been a broadsword. The Chaos-corrupted Marine drove the serrated blade into the gap between breastplate and helmet before wrenching it out. He stabbed repeatedly, laughing a sick wet giggle, until the Space Marine collapsed. The heretic was so caught up in his mania he did not even notice the Astartes commander swinging his maul until it landed on the Plague Marine’s back, shattering his spine. The hammer rose and fell over and over, quickly turning the soldier of Chaos into mere pulp and slush.

The battle was even, with the Space Marines winning slightly, but Barras wondered how long that would go on. The Death Guard Marines, though few in number, were only stoppable by extreme use of firepower or overwhelming brute force. In a conflict of pure attrition, the advantage lay with the nigh-invulnerable plague-bearing juggernauts. They were, Barras thought to himself, avatars of the inevitable entropy in the universe, the unpleasant but nevertheless harsh truth that all things, no matter how glorious or precious, would someday collapse and congeal, falling to ruin. Even the Imperium of Man, for all its splendors and righteousness, would at some point vanish from the universe, just as the brightest suns in the galaxy would someday be extinguished….

He was shaken from these heretical thoughts by the rumbling sound of Thunderhawks howling above him, their wing mounted guns blasting away. As the shells landed, the Plague Marines exploded in a series of detonations. With almost stoic passivity, the more distant Death Guard survivors were also torn apart by over-sized battle cannons spewing high-explosive rounds, others shredded by the shrapnel created by the rounds’ shell casings. The aircrafts banked around as they passed overhead, coming in low to the ground. When they landed, they unloaded streams of Space Marines, around twenty in each. From one, an enormous war machine strode clumsily down an exit ramp, roughly thirteen feet tall and just as wide. It moved in thumping, lazy steps, and its arms were weapons: the left was a steel arm capped by a wide chainsaw fist the size of an adult human, and the right was a long cannon with coils along its length that glowed dull blue.

The battle ended soon thereafter. Barras’ men, exhausted and mortified by their brush with certain death, relaxed their discipline and slouched against the walls, some leaning on their firearms. The only thing keeping them warm and energized was the relief of surviving, of having won a gamble with fate and come out the victor. They had earned their rest. Barras felt the urge to join them but stopped when he spotted the Space Marine commander with the maul moving towards him. He snapped to attention, as nervously as he had done in the officers’ academy. He did his best to remain composed, but reflexively blanched at the noisy bluster of servos from the Marine’s armor joints.

The Astartes set aside his maul and with gauntleted hands removed his helm. Beneath it, his head was bald and leathery tan, marred with crisscrossed scars. His eyes were a light and watery blue, blank, unfocused. Barras smiled softly, hoping a relaxed and warm expression would obscure his uneasiness before one of the God-Emperor’s chosen. Of course, he knew the galaxy contained more futile tasks. “I’m Lieutenant Selywn Barras, my lord,” he managed, “and we’re extremely glad to see you…”

“I am Brother-Captain Creon Mindarus,” the Astartes interrupted, “of the Red Scorpions’ Fourth Company. My orders are to purge this quadrant of the planet. Inquisitor Xanthus of the Ordo Malleus informed us that the traitors of the Fourteenth Legion were attempting to summon a powerful daemon, a harbinger of rot and ruin.”

Barras nodded. “Well, it would appear your mission was accomplished.”

“Not yet,” Creon said quickly. “Our orders were to cleanse this planet of Chaos taint, Lieutenant, and for us, that means all who were exposed to the corruption on Ephesos. Your unit has been deployed on the planet for several months, has it not?”

Barras arched an eyebrow. “Y-Yes, my lord, to wipe out the walking dead…”

“A task you did satisfactorily,” Creon replied with a cold monotone. “Yet, it was an error sending your regiment here. Despite its many commendations, you have one inherent flaw: you are mere humans.” He titled his head to one side briefly and clicked his tongue. “Well, most of you, at least. Your regiment has squads of abuhumans, yes?”

“Y-You mean the Ogryns?” Barras stammered. The Imperium of Man believed in the supremacy of humanity over the universe, but it nevertheless utilized near-human creatures in parts of the Imperial Guard. This included the gigantic mutants known as the Ogryns, as loyal as they were big and stupid. They made excellent shock troops, even if their very existence suggested tolerance of genetic mutation, which in turn may have invited spiritual corruption. “My lord, I have nothing to do with…”

The Astartes captain raised a hand to halt the protest. “It is irrelevant. Even without the presence of abhumans among your units, your regiment has been exposed to plagues and poxes your unmodified immune systems could not resist with guaranteed success. Rather than risk allowing you to leave Ephesos and potentially infect others, spreading the Chaos taint, we will have to liquidate your regiment as part of our operations.”

Barras went ashen as the blood drained from his face. His jaw dropped several centimeters and his eyes grew wide. “T-This is wrong! We did our duty!”

“As was appropriate,” Creon responded with indifference. “Nevertheless, you cannot claim direct descent from the Emperor himself, as we can. Even few Astartes chapters truly do.” There was no pride on his lips; he spoke matter-of-factly. “To protect the Emperor’s faithful, we must cull those susceptible to the insidious corruption of Chaos. You have always been told you may give your life for the Emperor; today, you will.”

On instinct, Barras moved to run. Obviously the Astartes was faster. He reached out and clutched Barras’ neck in his gauntleted fingers. The Guardsman struggled in the grip, choking for air. Creon tightened his hold, crunching bone and cartilage with barely a tensing of his muscles. Lifted off the ground, Barras’ feet kicked for solid contact, but soon went limp. The Astartes dropped him to the ground, where he fell with a thud.

By this time, the worn and weakened soldiers of Barras’ unit had noticed the execution of their commander. As they struggled to process what they had witnessed, they failed to notice that the charcoal-clad Space Marines had encircled them–and were now pointing their bolters, flamers, and plasma guns in their direction. Creon made a small motion with his hand. The Marines fired, cutting down the surviving Guardsmen with no mercy.

As las-fire and flame reflected in his blank blue eyes, Creon said: “Purge the unclean.”