Let The Galaxy Burn

by Marc

  ‘You thought that you could encourage these rebels, make it possible for them to destroy the Emperor’s forces stationed here on your little world.’ Averius could barely keep the scorn from his voice. ‘Then when they were victorious, you thought you would take your place at their head. Your ambition thought to lead an army across the galaxy, carve out your own empire.’

  The governor gazed into the assassin’s eyes, and he could see the fires of his betrayal burning. His imagination spiralled out into the vast distance of space. Torlin’s mind became full of an unshakeable image: his Emperor and erstwhile master seated on the Eternal Throne of Terra. His heart ached as the assassin forced him to confront his betrayal.

  ‘But why should you not be annihilated along with the rest of your rebellion?’ Averius pressed on. ‘Death is the easy part. Anyone can die – every day countless thousands die on countless thousands of worlds. As a human being, you are less than nothing. We could have launched a strike from space, bombed your palace, destroyed you in an instant. You would have died without ever knowing why. But as a heretic you are never beneath our notice, and every heretic who dies unrepentant is a failure of orthodoxy. I am here to accept your repentance.’

  In the assassin’s eyes, Torlin saw the Emperor hold out his hand towards him, saw the hand getting bigger and bigger until it threatened to engulf him. As he watched, it withered, became a claw, a raven’s claw, and then fell to dust.

  ‘You have sinned most grievously against the Emperor, and I am here as his judge and executioner. You will die, but you must die repenting your faults.’

  The governor began to weep, great welling tears.

  ‘I repent, I repent.’ he wept over and over. Eventually his voice fell to a whisper. ‘Forgive me.’

  The assassin flexed his fingers, feeling the sharp needles fill with toxins from the bio-engineered pump inside his hand. He turned to the craven governor.

  ‘Torlin, Imperial Governor of Tadema’s World, you have sinned against the Emperor. I accept your repentance and grant you the Emperor’s mercy.’

  He held the governor’s head still with one hand, cradling it as one would a child’s, and pressed the fingers of the other against the man’s face. The needles slid through the soft flesh of the governor’s eyes, piercing nerves and tissue, passing the deadly poison into the man’s brain. After a wile, the hand holding him up opened and Governor Torlin fell lifeless to the floor.

  Absolved.

  The assassin stroked his hand over the penal tattoo on his forearm. The letters morphed gently into arcane runes, and he knew that they would transmit a signal through the ether to the Callidus temple. Far off in space, the Imperial reinforcements, held back until his crucial mission was completed, would swing into action and White Scar Space Marines would start dropping onto the planet. His mission was over, and he could now return for debriefing.

  Pressing his thumb against the governor’s forehead, he activated a bio-implant buried deep within his hand. He felt a brief flare of heat, as if he was passing his hand over a lit candle. When he removed the thumb, a mark was burned into the cold skin of the man’s head. The stylised mark of a bird.

  A raven.

  EMPEROR’S GRACE

  Alex Hammond

  THE BURNING FLAMES leapt high, throwing long shadows about the vault. The cold floor beneath his feet refused him comfort. Light robes adorned his body, clinging to him, providing little warmth. Streck stared into the dark, eyes straining to pierce the gloom. Above and all around him, a thick silence suffocated anything that dared to make an impact on the stillness.

  A noise. Streck turned, his sleep-clogged eyes still trying to get their bearings amidst the flickering shadows.

  The flames flared into monstrous life. The dark corners shrunk, betraying the shape of the room. High arching supports held aloft a roof of unimaginable height. Shining steel pipes funnelled the flames into the hall, their light revealing a man in black, military medals peppering his coat. A soft buzzing became apparent; it had always been there, echoing through the halls.

  The man, dark-eyed and swathed in the coat and sacred insignia of the Cult of the Emperor, approached. The flames grew, casting light upon a huge lexicon, the Imperial seal burnt into its cover. The dark man stepped forward and opened the book, its pages reflecting flickering light onto his face. Streck stared into his own eyes. The halls erupted with flame. The buzzing grew shrill and flung Streck into the howling consciousness of a warzone.

  Screeching attack sirens. His narrow stretcher bed. Bolt pistol in his hand. Streck rose, smoothed his commissar’s uniform, placed his peaked cap on his head and rushed upstairs to his command post.

  STILL. THE CHIRPING of the large, homed insects had stopped when the bombardment began. Lieutenant Lownes could still see their multicoloured wings, like stained glass windows, fluttering as the creatures darted desperately between the thick mangrove patches.

  ‘Intelligence of a cat,’ Lownes whispered to the young Guardsman next to him.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Those insects have the intelligence of a cat, soldier.’ A pair of kaleidoscope wings hovered close by the man’s head. The Guardsman raised his lasgun.

  ‘Steady, son. It’s just taking a look at you.’

  Olstar Prime. Recent Imperial colony in unclaimed space; a jungle planet rich in deep ores and petro-ethers. Lieutenant Lownes and his squad had been brought in specially from Catachan. Similar climate, similar terrain – High Command figured they’d be perfect for helping in the defence of the main colony installation. The problem was that ‘perfect’ needs ground support, covering fire and capable shelling, something the last functioning elements of the Valis Fifth Guardsmen and the local garrison on Olstar Prime were a little hard pressed to supply when the word ‘Eldar’ crackled over the airwaves.

  ‘The orders are clear. We’re here to destroy their commander and weaken their position. The local garrison and colonists will try and keep the bulk of their force at bay.’ Lownes whispered to his squad huddled in the ebbing shallows of the mangroves. The heat and mist had covered brawny arms and combat knives in a dewy sheen.

  ‘So the rumours are true?’ Sergeant Stern asked, batting an insect from his pack with the back of his huge hand.

  ‘Yes, we face eldar. No one’s come in contact with them yet, might have something to do with their technology, but they’re definitely out there. The alien devils have the colonists terrified while the local defence forces have no taste for battle – although facing down those sorcerous weapons doesn’t appeal to me either.’

  ‘Shuriken catapults, sir.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Lownes looked up, scanning his men.

  ‘Sir.’ It was the new Guardsman, a young, bullish lad with close-cropped hair. ‘Shuriken catapults, they use magnetic impulses, fire spinning discs.’

  In mock horror, Lownes made a religious symbol in the air. ‘Didn’t know we had an eldar expert amongst us. What kind of heretic are you?’ He laughed and a cloud of insects rose from the ferns around him. ‘Glad to have you along.’ Not even a chuckle from his squad. They were apprehensive, and Lownes knew it. ‘Make it clean and we’ll make it through, Emperor willing. See you all at base camp.’

  The Jungle Fighters each gripped their nearest comrade by the forearm, in a brief, silent display of camaraderie.

  ‘Alright.’ Lownes released the young soldier’s arm. ‘Let’s move out.’

  There is a skill to moving in waist high water and ignoring the strange movements brushing past. The Jungle Fighters of Catachan had got it down to a fine art – that and at least four unarmed fighting styles and extensive weapons training.

  The bulbous mangrove trees sat still, the only things with sense enough not to try and move about in the quagmire. Lownes led his squad into cover behind a vine-swathed clump of the trees. Spiny trunks scratched at the exposed flesh of the fighters. A cocktail of combat drugs staved off all but the most extreme of injuries. Many a fighter had lived to see another d
ay thanks to the potency of the Imperial chemists’ brews.

  A splash in the water to the left of the squad brought their honed reflexes into action. As silent as nightfall, Stern raised his lasgun. Lownes grabbed his infra-red scope and peered through it. An eldar, with a long, fluted pistol-like weapon strapped to its steel-slender body armour. It moved gracefully through the water; the swamp seemed to have little effect on its movement. Soft, discordant sounds, like an unearthly wind, came from the alien’s respirator. Two, three… four in total. Outnumbering them and unseen, Lownes had the drop on them. Yet the men shuddered as the beings came into view.

  Three sharp gestures from their commander and the squad went into action. Lownes tugged on two grenades and timed them long. They splashed into the water beside the two eldar on point. One moved close to the ripples in the water and stared upwards, assessing where they had come from. A second too late. The frag grenades cracked loud over the swamp. Burning body armour, flesh seared to metal, splashed into the water about Lownes’s squad. Waves rushed about the grove. The Jungle Fighters leaped into the thick grenade smoke as the remaining eldar sprayed humming death from their shuriken catapults.

  Tree bark and burnt foliage dropped down into the silent world of the swamp as Lownes swam in the shallows towards the unsuspecting eldar. Half his squad followed, respirators bubbling air to the surface the only sign of their passing. Chainsword spinning, Lownes exploded out of the water; the squad followed, lasguns firing controlled bursts into the mass of body-armoured warriors around them. The needle-sharp teeth of Lownes’s mechanical sword ripped into an eldar, removing wrist and weapon in one fluid motion.

  The aliens fell back in the face of the Jungle Fighters’ numerical superiority, standing behind the tallest of their number, dressed differently in flowing robes and a strange elongated helmet. A pair of green eye sockets glowed. The robed figure raised its hand. A spray of low-powered lasfire from the remaining eldar channelled into one massive bolt that swept through the Jungle Fighters. Stern and four other men fell to the beam, identification tags and flesh fusing in one. The remainder of the squad threw themselves away from the gunfire and found precarious cover behind what remained of the mangrove trees.

  The battlefield was still.

  ‘Their leader, it’s… it’s psychic.’ the new Guardsman stammered to Lownes.

  ‘I guessed, son.’ Grim faced, Lownes struggled to suppress the drugs in his blood that screamed at him to rush into deadly action against the eldar. ‘It doesn’t matter. They’re all the same when they’re dead.’

  FOR THE PURITY of the Empire, in deed and mind. Let my body be a machine of war. Let courage be my companion and never let it leave my side even in my darkest hour. Blood spilt in the name of the Emperor is glory; fear is the death of courage and the death of me.

  Commissar Streck prayed, staring down from the fire base at the jungle below him. Pitch floated on the shallow waters, blazing in the lasfire glare, only to show the deaths of more Imperial Guardsmen. The screams of the dying echoed through the low ridges. Many of the Valis Fifth would die in battle for the Emperor today. The dead were in their own realm now and had their own judges. It was not for Streck to judge the dead, but to monitor the living and see that they showed courage in battle. His commission was brief and to the point: Spiritual guidance necessary. Instil courage and condemn fear. Victory unlikely.

  A rocket screamed through the air and collided with the armour of the steel plateau on which Streck stood. The commissar grabbed hold of the railing but it came away, rusted at the joints. Streck rolled backwards towards the edge of the platform. Below him he could see the vile eldar closing in. The line of bases that acted as the first defence, out in the tangled jungle, were falling. Streck’s sinewy arms strained, muscles shuddering as he hoisted himself back onto the platform.

  The commissar stumbled through the smoking wreckage of the lower levels of the base checking bodies, and administering the Emperor’s Grace to those who could not be saved. He made for the remaining soldiers huddled beneath the main supports of the fire base. Pip-pupilled terror screamed in their eyes; shaking hands drooped lasguns at the floor. Because of the smoke they had not seen him yet.

  One of the Guardsmen stood and staggered out of the bunker. Streck prayed that he’d turn back. For fear is the enemy of man. It stays his weapon in anger and dilutes his potency.

  ‘State your name and rank, soldier.’ The Guardsman staggered round as Commissar Streck stepped out from the smoking wreckage.

  ‘I, uh, I need a medic.’ The Guardsman blinked, blurry-eyed, as the black overcoat and cap of the Imperial commissar swam before his eyes.

  ‘Name and rank?’

  ‘Retner Ganch, Guardsman, Valis Fifth, sir.’ The words dribbled from the slump-shouldered shape.

  ‘Are you aware of the punishment for desertion?’

  ‘Can’t fight… lost gun, lost fingers.’ Ganch wriggled the nubs of a bloodied stump.

  ‘And for each who has turned their back on battle there will be death. For they are dead already as weapons for the Emperor and lost to his halls of glory.’ As Streck spoke the sentence, the Guardsman dropped to his knees, tears streaming down from his bloodshot eyes. ‘Even worse are those who show fear in the face of judgement, for in death they have neither pride nor glory.’

  Commissar Streck raised his pistol to the Guardsman’s head, distancing himself so that the deserter’s blood would not stain his clothes.

  ‘If we must die, then we will die with courage.’ Streck turned and bellowed at the remaining men. Another rocket struck the base, tearing through both plascrete and armour plating, but he did not flinch. ‘The Emperor rewards those who show courage. They will join him at his halls and be recorded for ever in the annals of our heroes.’

  Streck looked across the faces of the men before him. Youths, none more than two decades old, stared back at him. Mass-produced helmets rested loosely on their heads; the fit was almost always imperfect and required firm straps to provide any protection. Giddy-eyed and silent, the Guardsmen sat ineffectually in the mud. Streck was sick with rage. These men had not even caught sight of the aliens that assailed them, yet they were terrified.

  ‘Do you not fear the death of a coward? There is no place for them. They will be spurned and hated by their fellow men, for they did not fight to better humanity. They lie slack-kneed and stupefied as the daemon weapons of the eldar come closer, every second making the last moments of their life those of a coward!’

  Streck fired his pistol into one of the trembling Guardsmen. A brief shriek was all he relinquished. The dead man slumped forward, helmet tumbling into the blood-slick mud.

  Shaking hands now readied weapons and began to release rapid volleys of lasfire through the fire-slits in the remaining parts of the bunker. Streck, pleased, set himself against a supporting beam and began to fire into the undergrowth, praying that his shots would ring true. He knew they were being surrounded. He could sense the unholy beings gathered in the swamp about them. Dusk was coming and they would renew their assault in the night, their alien eyes penetrating the darkness.

  LOWNES, KNEE HIGH in swamp water, fingered his last grenade.

  ‘They can’t give us any support. The Basilisks are tied up shelling their main strike force.’ the new Guardsman said, closing the console of a communicator.

  ‘I need cover, all of you. And make it clean.’ Lownes stripped off his pack and readied his lasgun. ‘On my mark.’

  ‘One.’ Lownes twisted the grenade’s pin. ‘Two.’ The squad raised their rifles. ‘Three.’ Thrashing through the water like a charging beast, Lownes ran for an embankment close to the eldar. The squad fired in unison, lasers slicing jungle vines and igniting small gas pockets. The fury of their renewed assault scythed through the eldar. They shot down all but the robed eldar, the dead aliens’ body armour cracking open to reveal pale skins glistening like shelled oysters.

  An immense geyser of swamp water reared into the sky. Low
nes had almost stood on his own grenade. In the second that the water spouted, Lownes tumbled out from behind cover and started firing at the robed eldar. Lasfire crackled about it. Lownes threw himself at the eldar psyker, chainsword sending rapid pulses up his arm. The eldritch being brought up its thin staff to parry the blow. Sparks danced around crackles of energy. Lownes reeled within the electrical maelstrom. Death only a heartbeat away, the seasoned Jungle Fighter threw down his lasgun and snatched at his combat knife. On his knees, Lownes plunged the simple blade into the eldar’s side. The field dissipated. The chainsword shattered jewels and mesh armour. Like a burst of air rushing forth from a vacuum seal, the psyker expired.

  THE SWAMP HOWLED with the sounds of the night creatures, their shrill, staccato voices beating at the air like tiny hammers upon a discordant chime. Streck found some solace in the noise. He had heard that the eldar possessed keen senses, their hearing unmatched. These night calls would make them uncomfortable. As if on cue, a shot rang out in the darkness and the screeching stopped, only to start again a few seconds later. Streck chuckled. He had long since learnt to find pleasure in his enemies’ pain.

  What remained of his command force lay scattered about the wrecked bunker. Eyes downcast, each man sat contemplating his fate. Some men looked over the personal possessions they kept about them: gang bandannas from their home world, farewell gifts from lovers, trinkets and keepsakes of all descriptions. Others simply stared at the mud, or shivered in the swamp water. Only a few talked. In one instant it occurred to Streck how far these men had been gathered from to defend this jungle planet. How each had come from the far distant world of Valis to die together in defence of the greater cause. The power of the Emperor was vast. He prayed the Great One would smile on them tonight.