My swim was not uninterrupted either. Silverman pursued, and the Nest had coilguns mounted to its exterior. Both were for naught, as beyond its walls, my mind opened up to clarity at last, and I again subjected my Phaenonite pursuer to the pressure of an exponential depth. Furthermore, I was able to successfully shield myself from any subsurface gunfire, and at last emerge upon a rocky shore. I took cover behind a large, black, sharp rock for a time, coilguns still firing up unto the coast from the depths below. But, then freed, I could feel all around me, and thus knew I was safe. For a time.
While I gathered my breath, I took in the scene of the world ahead. Smoke rose from flame across the horizon, and lights danced in the skies above. A dogfight of fightercraft was visible at the far edges of my view, though I could not discern who the victor was, only that one craft met a fiery demise. The once dark and dreary world of Amnes Minoris had heated to an orange hue from the flames of war, engulfed from all directions by Inquisitorial assault. I wasted no more time against the slick side of my jagged cover than I needed to, and trudged forth onto drier land when I was able, knowing well what would soon be coming for me.
There were, however, two things coming for me, and the first I was far happier to see than the second. Not long after leaving the coast before the Nest, a swarm of transports—the Bird included—touched down before me. My augmetic, damaged though it had been from the fighting in the Nest, still served to give away my location to my allies of the 9th, as I had asked of Varnus. I paused again as they landed, to better compose myself and catch my breath. My Crusaders, Anwar and Sven, jumped out from the Bird accompanied by Lucene and the Mission of Sororitas under her command. They hurried for me at once. Silas, Luther, and Zha, meanwhile, emerged from a nearby, non-Thunderhawk transport ship.
“Throne, Cal, you’re shot,” Lucene noted at once, the first to reach me by far, as ever. “Are we extracting you?”
“Negative, I’ll manage,” I replied, trudging on toward the Bird. The plan, as originally devised with Caliman, was for me to distract the Stalker while Caliman’s Astartes emptied the world of other opposition. “Is my equipment aboard?”
“Yes, all prepped and ready to go for you,” Lanto Sven replied. “Right this way, sir.”
“Excellent, thank you. Silas, secure the area. We will not have long,” I instructed, turning to him as he neared. He nodded and took Luther and those under his command to do as I said. I made for the Bird, striding on board and taking to donning my arm as hastily as I could.
As I did so, as soon as my vox was in my ear, Mirena called to me, “Cal, did I hear right that we’re not getting you out of this shithole?”
“Not yet, Mirena,” I replied. “Not until the day is won.”
“And win it we shall,” Lucene added. “For the Glory of the Emperor and all in His domain.”
“Glory is great and all, but what exactly should we prepare to be up against?” Luther chimed in.
“Something psychic, powerful, and potentially unkillable,” I answered. Lucene’s helmet turned to me, and though the inanimate headgear bore no emotion or expression, the deadpan look spoke volumes all the same. “I have a plan. Or, part of one. If something seems unkillable, you’re just not using a large enough gun. What’s the void looking like? Do we have a point of contact up there?”
“My voxcaster is configured to help us speak with Tech-1 and Psyk-1, both remaining up top, per your instruction,” Silas reported. I did not want to flood the surface with psykers against a Maletek Stalker. One—myself—was bad enough. No, Gradshi and his organization could provide surfacelevel assistance at an orbital distance the way no others could, and it was not worth risking them further when they may just make our foe stronger in the process. And Varnus was, likewise, where I wanted him, surveying the full extent of our battle in the skies and on the ground. His mind was best tasked to that, and to the cleanup afterward.
“Perfect, thank you,” I answered Silas, donning the final pieces of my equipment—being my helmet, my power sword, and Drepane. I then headed for the exit of the Bird, joined as ever by Lucene at my side. “Command heading out. Aerial units depart when your packages are deployed, and fly safe. Fly far. Do not respond to requests for air support from our unit.”
“Cal, don’t…,” Mirena started, but bit her tongue. “Happy hunting.”
“You too, Law.”
As our transports departed, I turned to Sven, Anwar, and Lucene. They were the closest at the time, and I did not have the opportunity to instruct everyone I could see. “When it comes, when our foe arrives, do not trust your eyes. They will lie to you. Trust only in your instinct, that it may be the voice of our Blessed Emperor, even if it seems like you are aiming at or defending from nothing. It could save your life.”
We trudged on as a large contingent of soldiers together, for a time, to no particular goal but to be bait. We were well spread out, but not so far removed from each other as to isolate anyone. Our unit ran into occasional light opposition from what appeared to be the local militia of Amnes Minoris. That militia was inherently confused, unsure whose side to take, but appeared to err on the side of the Phaenonite, as the traitors were likely poised as locals to the world, and we the invaders. I suppose that much was true, yes. Their confusion did not matter; whenever we ran into detachments of that militia, they were too ill-equipped and ill-prepared to face my elite forces, and were mulched in seconds as a result.
“Blackgar, confirm status?” Varnus called to me through our vox, some few minutes from our initial departure.
“Alive,” I replied dryly.
“Good. My sensors suggest a Warp Storm is heading for you, but my visuals betray me and I do not see as much from up here. Can you confirm anomalous contact?” Varnus requested.
I ignored that request, because it was then that I knew our doom had arrived. +Everyone take cover!+ I messaged the whole extent of our unit. Our unseen foe could be coming from anywhere, and I was sure they knew it, but chaos ensued all the same. I ran for what I had once known to be the shielding of a fallen, wooden shack, but where it once had stood was then replaced by the horrors of my past, a power of Gradshi’s Coraline, stolen and devoured by our terrible foe.
I was back on Hestia Majoris.
And where the shack had been instead stood Hans Okustin, a full—if nude—Astartes. “Boss,” he sighed in whimsy, as though relieved to see me.
I knew he was not real, I knew he was dead—unlike the Phaenonites, I knew Hans Okustin would not come back from the dead. Yet all the same, I froze, frozen to my core before the memory of my former Interrogator. Some distance away, Luther was asking what Czevia Gao was doing here, and elsewhere Jack Harr was held at gunpoint by Bliss Carmichael. Everyone was haunted by the menaces of our pasts, and immaterial though these ghosts were, like much with the Immaterium, they were all too lethal.
“Boss,” Okustin repeated, and took a step toward me. “You sent me to my death. They made it such a horrible end, why did you do that? You had to have known.”
“You understood the risks,” I panted, my voice empty. “You went on ahead willingly.”
“That is what you do, isn’t it? Love us, care for us, get us to be your perfect little buddy-buddy soldiers, and then send us to our gruesome ends in your stead,” Okustin pressed, taking another step closer to me.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“I have been denied my death at every turn, Hans. Your fate was of your choosing when you chose to enter my service,” I protested.
“Voidshit! My fate was of your making!” Okustin roared. “You could have killed the world when Scayn had died, and spared us of our ends! I would have avoided my fate, and now, since you hadn’t, you could have avoided yours,” he growled, and at last lurched for me. An Astartes, even a ghost of a puppet of one, was far too great a foe to escape from even if I was not within the grip of fear. As it was, Okustin reached me without issue, and as I recoiled in terror, grabbed my right arm and flung me head-over-heels in the direction he had charged me from. My backside slammed through the unseen shack, sending imperceptible splinters in all directions, before I then landed on the rocky, artillery-pummeled terrain of Hestia Majoris. A nonexistent Skorpius burned in the distance.
That, at last, sufficed to spur me from my terror.
Okustin jumped for me again, but I met him with as great a psychic blast as I could muster, greater in strength and might than had once pasted Silverman or Espirov, the Heretek. This blast served only to push the ghost-puppet Astartes away, though he did burn to cinders, as he had on Hestia Majoris. My psykana would not have done that, but it may have been the psychic projection’s interpretation of two psykers’ effects meeting. “Look at the agony you wrought! You spoke of the Scarus Inquisitor’s heresy in the condemnation of one’s surety, but what of yours? What of this?” Okustin demanded, gesturing to his now-burnt self. “This is only ever where your path will lead!”
“That is your path, daemon, not mine!” I protested, punching a ceramite fist into the ground. I knew I was not speaking with Okustin at all, even if it looked and sounded like he would have. I would not address this thing as if it was my beloved Interrogator. On instinct, I reached for my Boltpistol, and then reminded myself of what I had told Lucene and my Crusaders—that this projection was not real, and that Bolts would not suffice for it. That hesitation baited Okustin in again, and though that was not my intent, it did provide me the opportunity to slam him back once more with another wave of my psykana. That sufficed, it seemed, to disperse that psychic projection for the time being, though it took a ton out of me.
I paused for a moment, trying to get my bearings, but when I did so I could hear naught but the screaming of my allies around me as they suffered from equally haunting visions themselves. I reached a hand to my vox bead, but as I did so two black, carapace-armored arms wrapped around my neck from behind, trying to choke me out. I rammed a ceramite shoulder into the head of my assailant, knocking them off me, and then stumbled forward and pivoted to face my attacker. Silas. It was actually Silas, in the flesh, but whatever he was seeing me as was something worth killing, to him. I did not imagine he would be able to hear me speak or let my mind in, either.
The two beady, red eyes of his skull-patterned helmet lurched for me the moment he drew a power knife from his waist. I ducked under one slash from him and then caught the downward, stabbing plunge of a follow up attack by placing one hand on his wrist. Even so, Silas was strong, incredibly so, and forced me to my knees despite my power armor. I raced a hand up to his head, thumbing over a crimson eyepiece, but he responded to that by jabbing his free fist into my exposed neck as I looked up to him. And remember when I said Silas was strong?
I stumbled away, gagging and wheezing for breath, while my masterful Scion remained tricked into pursuing me further. His knife whizzed and whirred around me, threatening to lop any stray limb it could find from my body—power armor was no protection from powered weapons in kind.
The very last thing I could want was to need to kill Silas Hager, but I would if needed.
I engaged Drepane, my Nemesis Falchion.
The Nemesis weapon seemed to drive pause into Silas’s flurry of attacks, but only for a moment before he resumed his onslaught. However, where once I had been on the backpedal from him, with Drepane in my hands I could at last go toe-to-toe with him. And, eventually, I demonstrated that even Silas Hager was, with a knife, not a match for a Pyrran with a sword. It took cleaving a finger from my friend and smacking his blade aside to manage it, but I did at last achieve dominance over my Scion. Apparently able to feel that torturous pain, he recoiled from me, and I gave him what mercy I could in sheathing my own blade, but only in the same motion that I rammed a fist into his carapace-covered gut. As he lurched forward over his stomach, I rose my other fist into his skull, and in an uppercut, leveled my Scion against the ground at last.
Ever the tenacious one, even then Silas was not defeated. In a panic, he reached for his largest weapon, his Ryza Pattern Hellgun, and trained it on me. I kicked it aside and forced his first shot wide, after which I planted a knee on his sternum and buried his Omnishield-protected head beneath another fist of ceramite. I then took his Hellgun for myself, immediately pivoting to shoot a Harakoni—not Luther, but one of his Strike team—and then a Sister of Battle, both of whom sought to flank me, Silas’s Hellgun being the only ranged weapon I had that could hurt but not instantly kill either of them. Even so, it was of such power that I may have critically wounded them all the same. Silas, somehow still conscious, then reached up to my neck and tried to strangle me, but I at last put him to rest with another pair of ceramite fists.
I then flipped Silas onto his front, that I could operate the voxcaster on his back. Thankfully, it had not been damaged in our fighting. I reached for the amplifier dial and, in my haste, spun it with such ferocity and strength that I broke the thing off completely. “To any receiving vessel in orbit, this is Command-1! Full weapons strike two kilometers north-northwest of my position immediately! Mission Critical!”
“That is too danger close, sir,” Gradshi objected.
“Do it now!” I shrieked in response. “We are Exigent Calamity! Full strike, two kilometers, now! And Throne-1, I need you.”
“Priming forward batteries,” Varnus confirmed for me. “Recommend achieving reinforced bunker in thirty standard seconds or anticipate annihilation.”
“Confirm,” I replied, and finally rose from my unconscious Scion’s body. As I did so, I found my once-heated surroundings to be almost entirely pitch-black, as though night had fallen and been emptied of combat. In an instant, I reached for and engaged Drepane again, and in the process created psychic light amidst the treacherous shadows. A wall of brass hung, barely illuminated, at the edges of my vision, the barking hiss of a steam engine serving for the low growl of my impossible foe.
I leapt from Silas’s body, scared shitless yet possessing a modicum of instinct yet, and dodged a Bolt round in the process. A mechanized claw screamed through the air toward me, missing my face by inches. And I do mean screamed, as the cries of the Warp suffered through my surroundings at its pass. I flung psychic lightning from Drepane toward my brass assassin, but his barely-humanoid visage simply collapsed upon itself, letting my attack be swallowed up by the endless shadows beyond. When the Stalker recoalesced, it did so with its claw already embedded in my augmetic arm, whereupon it flung me away, tearing my arm to shreds of scrap metal. I landed, hard, against the ground, dazed and—Throne—still catching my breath from when Silas had punched me in the neck. That had been mere seconds ago.
The Stalker fired a pair of Bolter shots at me as it approached. I psychically detonated the first in midair before it reached me, but only barely managed to deflect the second. It spun into the ground near my head, where it then detonated on its own in a splintering shower of jagged stone. I sent another blast of my psykana toward the Stalker, and again it phased out of material existence. This time, I scurried to my feet and dove forward, barely dodging its reappearance, where it seemed to have been clawing for my heart. I turned to face it, and in so doing sufficed only to have my breastplate slashed off my torso, the Stalker’s claw cleaving through my armor as though it was not there in the first place. But in that same attack, I finally caught its claw against Drepane, and with both my arms to its one—even if my augmetic was sorely damaged—, combined with Drepane’s Warp-suppressing nature, I was able to hold the beast back at last.
For all that was good for, anyway.
It pointed and aimed its wrist-mounted Boltgun to me, and I had to duck under its aim, surrendering my block of its claw in the process. Its hand—not its claw, praise the Throne—lurched forward and plucked me from the ground by my face. Its claw, meanwhile, loomed at the edges of my vision, glistening in the light given off by Drepane. In one frantic, final attempt to save myself, I rammed Drepane through this monster’s face.
The hiss of steam chuckled in reply, and the claw descended upon me.
However, it was then that time froze. Not in the literal sense, but our sense of it was shattered as something far faster than myself or the Stalker at last arrived. And no, I do not mean Lucene—the Stalker was well beyond her haste, or even that of any Astartes I had known or faced. No, instead, it was the shockwave of orbital bombardment, upon which time the Stalker realized it had not done as I had in shielding myself solely from the north-northwest, the full extent of my psychic power pointed in that direction for myself and my allies. Psychic shield or not, everything in sight was leveled and blown away all the same.
I heard their cries in the Warp.
I heard the pain I had caused for my allies. The catastrophic deaths I had ordered.
I heard the furious rage of the Phaenonite, as they commanded all their available units descend upon my last known location.
I heard the hissing of steam, surviving even still.