‘Up and at them!’ Seth screamed, ‘For the Emperor!’
Master Seth sprinted through the fog which crawled across the battlefield, hurdling shell craters and the bodies of the fallen. Shells and laser bolts whined blindly to either side of him; now and again a scream or a call for an apothecary would sound behind him, announcing another casualty.
They call me Splinterjack. I am number forty-six.
I am going to tell you a little something about myself. To begin with, I will explain, in a roundabout way, the nature of my existence.
I am a creature of immaculate terror, a horrible thing conceived in fear and borne of nightmares. I stalk the darkness, filling the void of night with the screams of my victims.
I am a nasty, spiteful thing, really I am. But I am not without my virtues. You see, I’m a rather conflicted being at my core. I suppose we all are, when it comes down to it.
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The disease of mutual distrust among nations is the bane of modern civilization. I object to teaching of slogans intended to befog the mind, of whatever kind they may be.
- Ferdinand von Boaz before his execution by Inquisitor Habert of the Ordo Xenos
—
I think I was given this task to be out of Magos Ehrenrei’s way.
Actually, I know I was. I might not know much about technology, and sometimes I daydream about going home to the grox farm, but it doesn’t mean I’m a halfwit.
Nobody wants the adept from the Administratum Anthrologos running around and under their feet. They get annoyed being asked too many questions, and I know I’m viewed as a nuisance. Some fear I’m an auditor or an undercover arbiter, or worse yet, an agent of the Holy Inquisition. But I’m not. It is my sworn duty, as part of the Anthrologos, to ask questions in order to gain answers. It’s a risky business, trying to identify with people from all walks of life. This might be a heretical approach to some, but to others, it’s a way of life.
III: A Kiss for Daddy
But now let us descend to greater woe
-Inferno (Canto VII)
Wansaman had two eyes, which he considered fitting, though each looked out upon a different vastness.
Wansaman was fairly sure of other body parts, too. He was dimly aware of a beating heart, for instance. He probably had ears… or at least one, as, every now and again, he sensed a high chattering noise truncated by rhythmic and rather wet mastication that became apparent -he was sure- through means other than thought. On rare occasions he was conscious of a citrus-like odour that rapidly intensified into what he decided must be flavour, before fading to nothing – somewhere, and probably in the same locality, he sported a conglomeration of taste receptors and epithelia. And he still had a brain, obviously, otherwise whither awareness?
Wansaman liked to believe there were more parts strewn about, his remaining organs, perhaps even limbs; but he could find no connection to them, try as he might to induce one with the ghostly memories of what it was to be whole. Moreover, where all these parts might be situated -both those he was certain of and those he only hoped to exist- he had no idea. For all he knew, his disparate bits were strewn many kilometres apart, those he was conscious of interconnected with monstrously elongated nerve fibres or some other medium…
Xenos medi- No! I’m still human! I’m just exploded.
Yevenov shuffled through the mud. He was nearly blind in the pre-dawn gloom. The sky was just starting to lighten from midnight black to the ruddy grey that promised a light drizzle for the foreseeable future.
He was exhausted to the point that he occasionally fell asleep while the column of troopers slogged their way through the murk to their next fighting position. Despite the uncomfortable helmet, the sling of his lasgun cutting into his shoulder, his cold wet feet, and all the other minor annoyances that are a standard part of the infantryman’s life, he still managed to doze off while keeping his feet moving, one after the other. Sometimes he would bump into the man in front of him.
Even when he wasn’t sleepwalking, his eyes would cross with fatigue, leading him to stumble on the uneven ground or bump up against another trooper with the clack and clatter of equipment. He wasn’t the only one, and occasionally the sergeant leading the column would turn and swear quietly at them to keep the noise down and pay attention.
And then are the screams. There’s always the screams, next. They take me out of my nostalgia, my thinking. It doesn’t matter what kinds of screams. The bellowing Orks from Isendor, or the cackling monsters on Everos Prime, or the screams of Corporal Violet as she writhed on the ground, clawing at the spikes embedded in her stomach. The screams would some, and I would look away from the vastness of the sky, the stars, the moon. I would return to reality, to the mission; there was rarely time to enjoy the stars. Unlike the universe they inhabited, I lived in a much different reality. Where time was endless in the vast basin of existence itself, down here, on the surface of whatever world I was stationed on at the time, there was only war.
The lander thundered through the skies of the Groden Moon, sweeping over the swampland below with the sound of screaming ram-jets. Its escorts, two similar painted grey-blue Lightenings peeled off and arced back into the sky. The Aquila class lander kept on going, powering barely three metres above the forest canopy. Strange reptilian birds and furry winged mammals fluttered angrily into the sky, squawking at the new predator invading their territory.
“This is nothing short of heresy!” Interrogator Rufus Thracken growled from inside the cockpit, peering with disgust at the green-grey swamps below. The swamp-forest covered the moon as far as the eye could see, a vast snot-green ocean of overgrow fungus spewed under a sickly ochre sky. “We should simply kill this witch and have done with it! Not consort with the fiend!”
“Hold your tongue Rufus, or I will have Orgustos cut it out. That’s strike one. Your words are beginning to sound a lot like insubordination.” Exander purred with a half-smile, giving his subordinate a sidelong stare with cold eyes as he tightened his gloves. His yellow irises almost made the Interrogator shudder. Almost.
What makes a man truly a man?
In the innermost sanctuary of the NorthKern fortress, a lone sound still could be heard. A ragged sound, the heavy breathing of a man. In the darkness, near the shattered glowglobe on the desk, a body still tried to cling to life. Starving, old, tired, it was slowly losing its battle, but it could resist a few more minutes. The mouth was trying to form words, a last prayer maybe, but only a croaking sound emerged. The left hand tightened on an autopistol.
Is a man already a man when he is, and always will be, alone?
Shakingly, the arm rose, to rest the barrel of the gun on the temple of the officer. With feeble strength, the right hand gripped the aquila sitting on the desk. A flare, and the gun thumped, smoking, on the carpet. Silence.
Is a man already a man, if his world lie within a little tribe, a few hundred fellows, without a true society?
“What do you think about that weird Christmas song, ‘A Spaceman Came Travelling’?”
“I think it should be illegal to write Christmas songs while on drugs, sir.”
- Marneus Calgar and Dick Bannerman
*
It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth, waiting for Gran Turismo 5 to come out. He is the master of mankind by the will of the Prophets, and master of a million worlds by the might of Andy Chambers (sob, come back Andy) and Jervis Johnson. I mean, JERVIS, for feth’s sake? That’s not even a real name, it sounds like something from Dungeons and Dragons, no offence.
The Emperor is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from technology invented during NoPoet’s forthcoming 20K series. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium (the Emperor, not NoPoet) for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die. We’re sure he is really happy about that.
It was already past midnight when Interrogator Malik Joon arrived at the House called Evermont. The bright beams of the limousine’s headlights swept across the tall hive mansion.
The Evermont lurked behind leafless trees, implanted long ago to add colour to the oppressive High Gothic architecture of the large, rambling buildings. Joon thought it looked typical of the sort of hab-houses you might find nestled into the mid-hives, full of the character the middle classes exude into their homes. He didn’t need to be a psyker to sense the mix of snobbery imbedded in the very rockcrete, as if the buildings wedged between the upper and the lower hives found themselves disdainful of one class and resentful of the other.
A faint light gleamed from the walk-level lamps as the private car swung into the drive past two deactivated servitor-sentries guarding the Evermont’s approach, their flesh slowly decaying with disuse.