Training Day
The Callidus way is not an easy one. Every year millions of gifted children are taken from their families by the Inquisition to be tested. I was one of those children, and despite the best efforts of the temple’s political staff I can still remember being taken. It was Inquisitor Harald Moorhagen of the Ordo Sicarius who came for me on that day.
It was he who told my weeping parents that I was to go with him to the temple six hundred miles away. It was he who shot my mother when she broke into hysterics and tried to stop the stormtroopers. It was his seal on the official documents authorising my father’s execution on trumped up charges of heresy. Assassins have no family save the gun, the sword and the Emperor. The Inquisitors of the Ordos Sicarius consider it their duty to ensure this.
I remember turning to see my parents one last time before I left. The mental image of my father kneeling beside my mother’s corpse while a stormtrooper raises his rifle to strike is the only memory I still possess of my childhood. From that day on I was an assassin. For me the hassles of youth would also be things that happened to other people.
Of course I should be grateful for what my recruitment gave me. The training I received has made me one of the most potent physical forces in the galaxy. My physical form is as much a thing of will as fate and I can turn any seemingly harmless object into a fatal weapon – both are handy little tricks when trying to get a drink at a bar or when high command stuffs up and a battlefield ends up enveloping me.
But that power and sheer survivability comes at a high price – the training program is a killer. Literally.
Pyramid
== 22 October 2220
Sir,
We recently received this transcript of an archaeological survey conducted in the Antax system, eighteen light-years from Earth. The first part of the original document is fragmented since the data pad was damaged during the explosive decompression. The rest is clean. As you may recall, Antax was discovered only two years previously despite its proximity to Earth, shielded as it was by a radiation cloud of unknown properties whose dissipation prompted the discovery.
The survey team was a group of mostly British experts, along with Dutch and French personnel, transported by the Trafalgar class frigate HMS Dauntless. A small group of Royal Marines accompanied the dig. The Dauntless is still missing in action and until now, no-one had heard anything from the expedition.
As of this moment, the Brits don’t know we have this document. I have no idea what to do with it; the implications (and I mean all of them – you know what I’m saying about the Sarasota) are terrifying to say the least. I think we may be better off destroying this and putting the whole thing behind us.
Their families won’t thank us for going public – to say the least. I can’t imagine what they’re going through, but it’s better than how they’ll feel if they find out what really happened.
Yours,
Albert Lamm
UAC Extrasolar R&D
Aftermath
I can’t see the Thor-class Chimeras from where I lay, but I can smell them burning. I gag on the cooked meat smell of their crew.
Twin-linked bolters which spat ferocious hatred at our enemies are now silent. The men who poured from within their holds roaring battle cries will not see another day. They can’t join me in our usual post-fight ritual, looking up at the sky, steaming mugs of caffeine in our hands, staring at the stars. Now they stare ahead with blank eyes. I suppose each one is looking into their own heaven or hell.
I can’t see any of my platoon. However, I hear the buzzing of flies. Human blood is splashed across the walls, black in the darkness, vermilion in the day.
Vermilion - that’s it. Vermilion. That’s why we were sent here. The reason everyone died here. Our Emperor wasn’t watching when those creatures rose from the blood-slicked mud to gouge men’s eyes out. The horror went on for quite some time. We got them all, wiped out every last one of the filthy things that lurched howling into the teeth of our firepower. They got all of us too.
Even me.
A Hero Awakens
As Sister Ophelia walked down the streets of her home city she couldn’t help but take a moment to soak in the beauty and serenity it conveyed. The city itself was constructed using primarily concrete and white-washed marble, providing for a lovely contrast against the backdrop of powder blue skies and large forests that her home world was known for. Every street had been lined with magnificent trees and each one stood as a testament to the age and resilience of the city and its people. Open door café’s added to the feeling of tranquility as patrons sat in the sun, drinking their morning beverages and conversing with their friends and neighbors over breakfast.
The Schola Progenium, however, stood in stark and defiant contrast from the rest of the city, almost as if its builders did not want its occupants or its visitors to gain any sense of peace from its imposing visage. The building itself was constructed from black plasteel, like a miniature fortress inside the city, or even a world of its own hidden inside their pristine home. High on the wall, above the imposing steel doors, sat an impression of the double-headed Imperial Eagle. Leading up to those large double doors was the long set of wide sweeping stairs that Sister Ophelia now found herself standing at the bottom of, again.
Liar
The dying planet - Atlantis if I recalled the name correctly - orbited an equally dying sun. From where I stood on the Chaos vessel, looking out one of the crystal windows from the briefing room, I could see the desolate landscape. With my augmented eyes I could make out on the surface the massive cities, now nothing more than shattered wrecks, which had long ago gone to war with each other. The people of Atlantis had brought about their own demise without the aid of outside influence. A rather remarkable feat for such a civilization, given the state that the galaxy was in, had been in for almost ten thousand years.
Furrowing my brow, one armoured hand massaging my forehead, I shut my eyes and tried to blot out the noise around me. Unnerving as it was - the hum of the archaic machines, the orders quietly being relayed back and forth between officers, the sounds of chairs creaking as the occupants shifted about - it was not as unnerving to me as was the situation I found myself in right now.
I have a problem. Or, to put it more precisely, society has difficulty with my problem. In truth this supposed problem is not a hindrance to me in my profession, more of an asset than anything else. It is something that is coveted by my fellow sorcerers, sought after by those who wish to learn it, and in terms of the Imperium, something that is feared and thus, hated.
Like Lionus Vern
It had rained earlier in the morning, leaving droplets on the grass, in front of the perfectly aligned rows of grey tombs. Black clouds still hung in the sky, but they were moving away, letting the sun shine through to provide a pleasant warmth.
“Here he is!”
The murmur spread through the crowd faster than a wildfire, making everybody turn towards the entrance of the military cemetery where a black personal transport with tinted windows was stopping. Enforcers disembarked with professional haste to form a security line along the cemetery’s main alley, weapons at the ready, and the crowd fell silent as the transport’s main passenger exited the vehicle in turn.
Documenting a Chaos Invasion
I wandered for days over a bleak and hostile land with no food or drink, driven onwards by memories of the madness I was leaving behind.
My clothes hung from my body in tatters. Congealed blood turned black as my wounds were infected by the twin taints of death and Chaos that filled the air like a mist. I rambled to myself as I walked. Even now I do not remember the words I spoke during those dark and evil days. Perhaps I sang hymnals which had been ingrained in my subconscious mind since the days of my childhood. Or I may have been entreating the aid of the Emperor, pleading for the survival of my sanity, my soul. All I can recall is the strained droning of my own voice, cracked and thin to my ears.
I stumbled across plains covered with the bones and skulls of the fallen. Poisoned rivers of daemon blood slouched their way across the land. Ravens swooped and cawed, bodies skeletal beneath their feathers.
Many times I roused to semi-alertness as I passed a wrecked Chimera or a burned-out Leman Russ. More than once I came across bunkers or emplacements that had burst from within as the defenders chose to commit suicide rather than face what waited outside. Bodies lay everywhere, some full of bullet holes or laser scars, many mutilated and hacked to death by claws and chainswords. Blood drenched the ground. There were no survivors.
The Wars
The world has lost its color.
A long time ago, my eyes started to fail me. Not just my eyes, I suppose. My mind too. Colors started to fade. I don’t know why. Things happened the way they happened. I wouldn’t want to go back, though. I wouldn’t want to change things. At least, not everything.
There are some things I regret. Things I wish I could change. I think it was one of those things that made the color start to drain out of my life. It started with the first war. If I could, I would go back and stop the war. Or at least, I would stay away from it.
I was a real fighter back then. They say I killed more than five hundred men. Every one of those men had a family back home, wherever their home might have been. Or at least, I bet they did. A wife, maybe kids, who knows? Every one of them was a real person, somebody with a soul and a mind. Somebody just like me.
Inquisitor
I can smell it, the arid stench of Delo’s blood, dripping onto my brown jacket. It reeks of tainted putrescence, of an innocence long gone, of an unspeakable rot, and as I twist my blade free of Delo’s disfigured body, the weapon cutting its way out of his chest like a scythe out of dirt, I can smell the blood splash across my jacket. It stains the vest, burning into the seams and weaving down to the red shirt underneath, puddling up around my boots as it drips to the floor and through the wrinkles of my torn black pants. Drip-drop. Drip-drop.
Delo gazes at me unforgivingly, his dead eyes as vacant as the hall we stand in, his cold face rippled with the abborations of a bygone deity that had long since abandoned the maddened collectorate. Once, Delo had been a man, as much a human as the young girls heaped in piles at the back of the hall, the dead children whose pallid skin reeked of death as much as their murderer’s blood did now. Once, Delo had been a respected official, a servant of the Emperor and the government of Estios. Once, but that was a long time ago. A very, very long time ago. He made his decisions, he made his choices. And that is why he is dead now, an erect corpse wobbling on boney legs.
Delo topples to the floor as his legs finally give way to the most literally dead weight above them; the dead weight they had carried for however many years the lanky abomination had been wandering, cast aside by the very power he had turned to like some sort of deformed, unwanted child. His body cracks as it connects with the dusty wooden panels, blood welling in a pool around him, the gaping hole in his chest revealing a twisting labyrinth of empty veins and defunct arteries.
A shriveled heart wilts, barely visible within the hole, its pulse still. That heart had stopped beating a very long time ago, the blood in Delo’s veins long since dried out. Ever since he made his choices, ever since he grew ambitious, grew the idea, grew it much like the cold bodies at the back of the room might have once grown plants or animals or cotton, to foresake his Emperor. My Emperor.
Carry the Torch
One black-clad figure dashed from cover, his mesh-armor shaking as his feet pounded the ferrocrete floor. Three others moved after him, sprinting from behind the barricade, shotguns aimed at the door. Neal, the fifth, ran towards the door as his squadmates moved to the sides of the entrance, pressing up against the wall, preparing for the next move. Neal unhooked the demo-charge from his belt, and he slammed it against the steel door. He thumbed the activation rune, priming the bomb; then moved aside quickly. Boom. The explosion was loud, and Neal felt the force of the blast through the ground, but the earpieces in his helmet blocked the sound.
The Arbites squad leader tossed a gas-grenade into the room as the noise of the demolition faded. Neal heard the hiss as the gas escaped the grenade. His helmet sensors interpreted the sound and the thermal scan of the room, and his HUD lit up with a view of the room, a warning indicator showing the location of the gas grenade. The ancient manufactorum was massive, and the tiny map in the top corner of Neal’s HUD betrayed the room’s real size.
The squad leader-a man of great reputation, Captain Brandt-entered the room, his swift movement representative of his penchant for “shock-and-awe” tactics. Brandt’s HUD would show him a very accurate picture of what the room held, but there was still no comparison to the feeling of seeing a room filled with the yellow glow of a floodlight.
The squad switched on their helmet-lamps, and the room was washed with light. This way, any occupants would be blinded, and if they couldn’t see, they were more likely to miss if they took a shot at the squad. Of course, the auspex hadn’t detected anything, but it always paid to make sure. Especially when one’s life was on the line…