Mankind is supreme.
That is what they teach us at a young age, that the sea of stars is our destiny—nay, our birthright—and any who get in the way of it are simply minor impediments. Ask the greenest recruits of the Guard, and they will espouse mankind’s supremacy like a recited verse. Some will cite the Primer, for that is as its authors intended. Ask the Ecclesiarchy, and they will shout from their citadels of mankind’s absolute authority in the cosmos. Ask the Inquisition, and we will shoot you dead for entertaining the possibility of otherwise. But the truth is far more harrowing than these ignorant or propagandized deceptions.
The truth, unfortunately, is that life is frail. All life, everywhere, hangs on by but a thread. The knife that slits your throat is the same that stops the beating heart of the most brutal of Xenos horrors. How many hundreds of billions of Imperial citizens have succumbed to the overestimation of their vitality? And has it always been this way? When the Xenos warred through the galaxy before man’s upbringing, had they believed themselves invulnerable? Are we, then, destined for their same destitution if we fail to recognize threats to our existence for what they are?
I am sure there are many of my Inquisitorial and Commissariat peers alike that would not waste a thought to shoot me for such questions. I may have been one such blind zealot long ago. But time and countless losses force ugly truths down one’s throat if they live long enough. And even now, I hypocritically detest the sharing of individual Inquisitorial philosophies, myself being unwilling to entertain a glance toward the works of the likes of Ravenor, for instance. Not only do I believe studying the philosophies of other Inquisitors to risk an infectious view that may taint one’s duties, but I also worry about the effect we, in our positions of unmatched power and absolute authority, may have on the Imperium for sharing our beliefs. It would do no one any good to hear of my understanding of their weaknesses and frailty. It would not behoove the Imperium to listen to what I have to say. I would not ask it to.
Nevertheless, as I dwell on this in the wake of untold death and carnage, as medicae units pick steel and scrap shrapnel from my timeless body, I am painfully reminded of my grimly mortal existence. An existence shared, and for some recently lost, by all I know.
***
A psychic tinnitus rung through my head, unheard by many around me. But the sudden incineration of tens of thousands of souls on the lower decks reverberated in my body, while the last-ditch efforts of my command staff to save the enflamed Coldbreed were but a murmur to my ears. I had consigned the deaths of millions before, sure—Hestia Majoris being the best example, and Thantalus before that. But these thousands were mine, and I had thrown them to the wolves of the profane Warp. And for what, exactly? The purchase of moments more for the Dawnshadow?
It dawned on me, then, in that stunned and overwhelmed state of mine, that I would likely not be the one to remove Mortoc’s head from his shoulders. It would need to be someone else. As fires ran rampant across my ship, missile after missile pounding the lower decks and creating soul-sucking shudders through the vest of the vessel, death at last seemed far closer than ever it had earlier in my life. And yet more intangible—would I even see it coming, or would I find it in the vacuum of space as we suddenly lost hull pressurization? Certainly, far too many of those who answered to me were caught unaware.
Cal?
Lucene, standing before me. Trying to snap me from stunned stupor. I recognize it now, in retrospect, but in the moment, I barely processed her presence or action. My eyes were too focused on the scene of self-destruction beyond the viewport, and when her body blocked that, my mind instead looked on ahead to behold the tragedy I had wrought upon us.
Cal!
And then the smack came.
And with it, the rush of sound, overpowering and deafening as the cries of the dead vanished from my head, to be replaced by the panic of the living.
“—tasked to fires on Decks 13, 15, and 22,” ordered Captain Vakian, some distance to my right. He was not trying to speak to me, thankfully, but I heard his voice first and foremost. “We need immediate repair crews on all hull ruptures! Reactor is stabilizing, void shields expected to return in twenty-three minutes, mark.”
“Lucene,” I muttered, finally acknowledging her existence. “Where are we?”
“I do hope you do not mean spatially, as I had not intended to hit you that hard,” she answered.
“The deck of the Coldbreed, yes. Where are we with the battle?” I clarified, heaving out a long, deep breath to get air flowing into and out of my lungs once more. “I’m afraid I’ve grown a bit lost in all the action.”
“Understandable, Cal,” she agreed, and then revealed the scene ahead to me by returning to my side, keeping an arm wrapped over my shoulders all the same. “We are crippled, here. The Echoshroud and Lord Orthus are struck as well, and both are boarded. We do not know their internal status. We have lost 24% of our fighter craft—Mirena not included, worry not. The other vessels of our fleet have taken considerable damage, but are keeping up the fight.”
“Quintus? Dawnshadow?” I asked.
“Intact. We have taken the brunt of the enemy’s wrath upon our shoulders, shielding the rest. Battlefleet Ixaniad moves to support, but are some time out,” she answered.
“A moment, please,” I requested in response, and she obliged, letting me step away from her, nearer to the viewport. I closed my eyes and tried to listen, not to the deaths around me, not to the panic around me, not any physical or psychic audio of the scene. I wanted to listen to my own understanding of battle. I wanted to hear Valeran Mortoc’s stratagems again, as I had hours earlier. I had ignored the voice of my opponent since. I needed to know what Mortoc was up to, to know how he would capitalize on our error, intentional though it was. “Boarding,” I muttered to myself after a time.
“Cal?”
“In our first battle, Telgonus wanted three people alive: myself, Caliman, and van der Skar. They still want us even now. They’ll know of my fleet—this fleet—but they won’t know on which vessel I am located. So they’ve boarded Lord Orthus and Echoshroud. They’ll board this ship soon, or try to,” I explained. “Pray that this battle may be won before the foe learns where I am or, rather, where I am not. Such would be the doom of our friends.”
And then it stung me, that baleful divinatory sensation in the back of my mind. My gaze was pulled to my lower left, where I beheld the ordinary adamantium that comprised my vessel, but I sensed tremendous danger from it. I could not discern the source of the danger, only its imminent location. Hull breach? I wondered. It did not seem likely; the command bridge was isolated and defended well enough that an immediate breach of its hull seemed doubtful, and I had just discerned that continued fire upon us was equally unlikely given Mortoc’s M.O. behind this invasion.
“Inquisitor,” Captain Vakian called for me, to my right, at last turning my gaze away from my sensory threat. “There is a voxcast for you. From the Lord Orthus. I can direct it to your personal line, if you’d prefer.”
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
“Please do, thank you, Captain,” I nodded to him, touching a hand to my ear to engage my voxbud. “This is Command-1, come in Lord Orthus,” I spoke then, assuming I was likely to speak to Xavier Gradshi, but maintaining formalities for the time being in case the Iron Warriors had broken our vox encryption.
There was a long pause, most of it occupied by static, and then a heavy sigh on the other end of the vox. Then, finally, my suspicion was correct, and Gradshi answered me. “We’re not the fighting sort like you are, Inquisitor,” he said, which was an opening declaration that I did not much see the need for, until he furthered his explanation. “Which I suppose is just a shitty excuse for failure. We cannot hold the ship. They fielded nulls among their infantry. Not many, but enough to make a difference, perhaps some handed over to them from the long-dead Phaenonites. Doesn’t matter, I suppose—the point stands.”
“Xavier, I…we can—can you scuttle it remotely?” I offered, finding myself at a loss of words even though the orders, and warnings, were my own. I refused to accept the reality of what he was telling me, even though I had imposed that reality upon him.
“Not in the way you envision,” he answered, and I heard Bolter fire in the background over his voxcast. “We—the detonator for the device Varnus set up has been lost. A grave failure. But you gave me a mission, and it is one I intend to complete.”
“Xavier, there’s still time. We could lead a countermand, board your vessel ourselves and extract you and the Psyk unit,” I suggested, but was quickly cut off.
“No. You can’t. I know you can’t. The resources aren’t there. Callant Blackgar, you and I have not maintained the closest of relationships in your retinue, but you have always been kind and respectful to me. And you have given me greater latitude to be a human of the blessed Imperium, not merely a psyker. I have always valued that greatly.”
He had taken a breath and seemed to mean to continue, but I interrupted him then, a broiling fury in the back of my throat—albeit not directed his way. “Shut up, Xavier, we’ll win this damned fight and retake your vessel after the fact. Just stay alive,” I seethed, also waving a hand the way of Captain Vakian, who was trying to get my attention about something. But my ire was, likewise, not directed toward him or any other of mine.
“I don’t think I can do that, Inquisitor. Not long enough. But I know what I can do. Tell Silas and Luther…tell them to hold the Crown. They’ll know. Thank you, Callant Blackgar, for everything. End this war, and make it all worth it. That’s all I need. Emperor be with you,” Gradshi answered.
“Xavier, don’t—Xavier!” I barked. But there was no response. My eyes shot past a still-protesting Captain Vakian toward the viewport once more, from which I beheld the Lord Orthus, damaged but not irreparable. Impossible, from my vantage, to know the horrors that existed in its many long, darkened halls. Impossible to know the valor that stood defiant. But, after a few moments, I could see Xavier’s plan; the restart of the battered vessel’s void shields, before a great psykana—it was not his alone, and must have been mustered by much of the Psyk unit—thrust those void shields on, toward the enemy. Whatever they were doing ruptured a hole in the engine block of the Lord Orthus, enflaming the already-injured frame of the ship. But the projection of the void shield continue on, and flattened any enemy fightercraft it flew upon while being ineffectual to allied vessels. One final gasp of furious defiance against the enemy, and though it was not sufficient at damaging any capital vessels, it punched a wide hole in the many varied fighter squadrons in the greater theatre of the battle.
“Callant!” Lucene shouted to me from my rear, and despite my awe at Xavier’s sacrifice, I spun on my heels to face her given the suddenness and insistence in her voice. In doing so, I found the bridge mostly evacuated, with only a few stragglers remaining, which was all I got a glimpse of before Lucene pulled me into her grasp and dove into a tackle to the side. The back of my head was on fire—metaphorically—and at last I understood all the signs, from my own divination to Captain Vakian’s desire to speak with me. As Lucene and I hit the floor of the deck, an Iron Warrior’s boarding torpedo punched through the floor, shattering the command bridge entirely.
***
[Fan out, check for survivors. Mortoc wants some alive, especially those who possess Iron within.]
[As you command.]
The platoon obeyed, spreading through the battered command bridge while warning sirens blared through the ship, red lights flickering in irregular oscillation from a damage beacon. One Iron Warrior moved over to a fallen Sister of Battle, her hands stretched out over a piece of scrap metal one of his feet rested upon, and tipped her onto her backside with his other leg. Unconscious, but alive. He raised his Boltgun over her torso, knowing that Mortoc wanted no Sisters and that they would be unlikely to surrender in the first place. Moments before his Boltgun roared, however, the scrap at his feet flung up into the air, crushing the traitor Astartes into the ceiling in a splattering of crimson flesh and grey ceramite. I rose to meet our invaders within the shower of his congealed gore, and immediately caught two or three dozen Bolts in the air before me.
[That’s Blackgar! Mortoc wants him alive!]
+THEN HE SHOULD COME FOR ME HIMSELF,+ I roared in response, then thrust their Bolts back upon them before the micro-rockets exploded in my face. The Bolts instead detonated on their armor, which was sufficient at giving them all a good battering, but did not fell a single one of the traitor Astartes. I instead reached for the nearest to me as they all drew various powered weapons, and crushed that fallen ‘Angel’ into a perfect sphere, another splash of red slamming out from the newly-made ceramite orb. My psykana then rammed that sphere through the chests of half a dozen of our intruders, electrifying them all as it went. But even that was insufficient at killing them. +TWO HEARTS. RIGHT.+ So I pulled the Astartes-sphere back to me, cleaving through the other side of their torsos and dropping the six of them to the ground as a result.
[Callidus! Put her down!] shouted an Iron Warrior some distance to my left, and I glanced to see him eviscerated in a green blur. I could not visually see Bliss, on account of her synskin blending in to the darkened room, nor did I know the exact details of her armament that I could view, but I knew it was her even without feeling for her mind. And my mind was omnipresent in the remnants of the command bridge. A green blur—it was some kind of blade on her arm, I gathered—sliced through the room, shredding through the once-Astartes as it went. I decided to entrust Bliss to her own slaughter, and it was good that I made that call when I did, as I found another Iron Warrior much nearer to me when I refocused my attention away from Bliss.
I thrust him away from me in response, but in my fury wanted to see the bastard for myself, with my own—one—eye. So I did. He did not scream at first, but as my psykana ripped his physical body out of his ceramite armor and heavy augmetics, the rueful bastard did roar in agony. I relished it, and I still do as I record this transcript. I pulled his armor into the air behind him while he, still partly attached to it via extended—if damaged—bionics, was pulled from its shell nearer to me. +YOU DON’T LOOK SO GREAT TO ME NOW. YOU ARE NOTHING WORTH THIS BATTLE. A THOUSAND OF YOU ARE NOT WORTH HIM!+ my mind screeched, overpowering his own mind and those of other ‘Astartes’ in the room. +YOU ARE FLESH AND BLOOD, WEAK OF MIND IF STRONG OF BODY. AND EVEN THEN, NOT STRONG ENOUGH!+ And then I pulled on that which was within him, and his screams reached new heights, an intensity that exceeded even that which my once-Interrogator Hans Okustin had endured in my service.
They did not last nearly as long as Okustin did, though that may have been due to me killing the damned Iron Warrior too soon. But he at least survived for a few moments after I had extracted his skeleton and inner organs from his outer flesh, performing a live, full-body dissection via my psykana. Veins still pumped blood around his skeletal interior just as pipes and wires still fueled his exterior corpse attached to the suspended power armor behind him. I got a good look at his insignificance for a few moments before crushing a hand, extended, into a fist, slamming his body back together with force violent enough to explode the fallen Angel into yet another shower of crimson gore.
I then turned toward my next victim before feeling a heavy weight smack into the back of my head. The discombobulation that followed made me fall to the floor, which involved a greater drop than I anticipated; apparently in suspending my dissection off the ground, I had also raised myself into the air as well, unbeknownst to me and completely unintentionally. When I did land upon the ground again, my head—and my mind with it—swiveled around to get a look at my assailant, finding it to be Bliss Carmichael. I had the time to process her presence before she rammed a fist into my face, knocking me out cold at once.
And I was more thankful of her aid, then and there, than when she had busted me out of prison long ago. She had spared me from losing control of my psykana, and in the rage birthed of Xavier’s loss, I think I had wanted to. And not only that, but at long last, she provided me a form of freedom from this damnable, wretched battle - a freedom I would not have otherwise volunteered for.
***
You were more of a fighter than you know, Xavier Gradshi. Emperor be with you.