Main Menu

News:

If you are having problems registering, please e-mail theconclaveforum at gmail.com

Codename Turncoat

Started by Baraltax, December 30, 2009, 12:24:58 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Baraltax

"Knowledge is not the key to justice. It is the swift execution of punishment that warrants safety and order. In the delay of judgment, the hunter shall become hunted."

Long hidden in whatever deep crevices the human brain accommodates, these sage words, once uttered by Commissar-General Kansdinsky whom he had served decades ago during the disastrous Bellum Potareporoin, were dragged into conscious thought by the sheer force of association as if the elder Commissar had phrased prophecy rather than wisdom. If he'd kept a biography, Zapolyarny would add to it, despite his inferior eloquence, a sentence that summarised the end of his life:
"Knowledge always comes too late to prevent the transformation into prey."

The Primaris Psyker of the Adeptus Arbites limped through the endless wastelands south of Spike City. It was a desolate land, its flatness an illusion born out of its vast extent. Dried out, hostile to all forms of life, the ancient land had lost its innocence and its clemency and had been a scornful witness to countless deaths through the ages of its long existence. Yet, the hungering soil had absorbed more blood in the past years than in the millennia before and it drank the life of the violently slain eagerly and without discrimination.

Despite the apparent desolation, Zapolyarny knew his death would not go unwitnessed. Entities, primitively called djinns by the local nomads, dwelt these lands and the psyker had discovered –one of those facts which came too late for his salvation- that they were more than local myth. So ancient, they must have survived the Great Scouring, maybe they were even older than the Emperor himself.
God, the implications!
He could feel the energy of the warp singing through him, could feel its hunger.  It was so close here, so strong. He feared the paper-thin barrier was on the verge of breaking. 
And what then? What of the petty games played by men upon this petty planet?

Zapolyarny's jeering ended in a convulsive cough. He spat blood as he sank upon his knees. Unwittingly, his fleeing stumble had brought him to a scene of slaughter. The warp was stronger here, near the spilling of blood. Carcasses, flesh gnawed off by scavengers, lay sprawled around him. Imperials besides Gedaski, neither force willing to claim their fallen: the Gedaski because it was the heretic funeral custom of their tribe to leave the slain behind for the djinns, the Imperials due to mere negligence and laziness.
His eyes suddenly level with the ironstone surface, he saw his blood pooling beneath his dying body and running through small rills eroded in the rock outcrop. The djinns would feed copious of his death.

*

Three men in Imperial uniform, strangers to these hostile lands, encircled their prey. Lasgun pointed suspiciously upon the seemingly breathless corpse, one kicked the body with his polished black boots.

'Is he dead?' The largest of the three asked.

'Quite so,' the other replied after he had spat mucous spittle on the dead man.

The three simultaneously lowered their guns and looked around abstractedly. They had followed the dying psyker into the wastes, leaving the completion of their assignment to the ruthless elements. Single handedly, the weakened man had more than halved the squad during the purchase in the ruins south of Spike City, before eventually fleeing with bullet-riddled lung. Arbitrator Yaroslav and his scribes had proven more cooperative to their own extermination than this psyker attached to the now erased Adeptus Arbites group.

'You think he came this way for a reason?' The third asked.

The tall one, apparently the leader, shrugged and, after adding his own portion of spittle, signed departure by cocking his head.

'We couldn't have thought of a better disposal of his corpse,' he said, looking to the numerous dead filling the valley. One more wouldn't attract notice. 'Let's go, before one of those Gedaski riders comes peeping around the hill,' he added and suited the action to the word. The other two nodded in agreement, following their lieutenant hurriedly back to Spike City.

Baraltax

The day's work at an end, Yatzudake, also known under his administrative name as Civilian CE#0037811, trailed his way from his office at the Magisterium Interanei to his home: Spike 16, level 11. Since the monorail had ceased to function, he went the 3 miles separating his apartment from the seat of planetary governance where he presented himself daily at his desk, empty though it was, on foot. Like with many of his colleagues in the administration –those who had not defected-, his current job consisted of silently musing and looking absent-mindedly into the void, concrete corridors.

The absence of work had precipitated with the arrival of General Möngke's Imperial battlegroup which brought with it, beside war and bloodshed, accusations of subversion, heresy and treason. It was proclaimed that an unorthodox cult had infiltrated into the highest branches of governance, which somehow justified the indiscriminate rounding up of a diversity of competent, loyal subjects.
The journalists baptised it, with a sense for the apocalyptic, "Judgment Day". Judgment Day had lasted approximately a month, a long month in which Möngke's troops occupied state buildings, closed down the complete Administratum and methodically investigated each individual of influence –the governor, parliamentarians, magistrates, judges, officers- many of which had subsequently been transported to penal colonies on distant planets.
The question of guilt had been only secondary to suspicions.
The purification of deviant elements, as the general phrased it, had left the planetary government crippled, virtually powerless and literally decimated. Hence, work had been none-existence ever since the reopening of the Administratum. Instead, General Möngke was empowered the supreme rule of the planet for as long as the war was rampant, and the war had been waging far too long.

Yatzudake woke up with a start from his historical reflections as the electrical shock of the Annotator Viritim coursed through his brain. It was not painful, nor was it strictly electrical, but it felt like the irritant tickle experienced after release of static voltage. A quick reminder that his identity and whereabouts were scrupulously recorder by a rapidly expanding intelligence network.
The scanners had appeared shortly after the field of battle had moved away from the centre of Spike City and had conquered the street corners with appalling speed.
All in the name of personal freedom and safety, of course, although the frequently recurring suicidal bombings were proof that the system had but little palpable impact.

A salty gust of wind played with Yatzudake's ponytail and picked up his simple grey robe as he passed the bomb crater which allowed him a fleeting vista over the southern districts. Though no quarter had remained untouched by the war –testimony the bullet-riddled walls, the scorched burns, the cave-ins- the region squeezed in between Möngke's base and the wastelands had suffered most severely.
Spike 21 had simply collapsed. 3223 feet of stone reduced to a pathetic heap of rubble, merely reaching up to level 11 where Yatzudake was standing. Spike 43, to the east, had half crumbled, its eastern face standing tall like the branches of a scorched tree between the ruins. Sand, travelling on the wind, had filled up the crevices and holes left by the passing of war, turning a once teeming part of the city into an extension of the desert, jutted with the relics of civilisation.

The public servant's steps had not faltered on passing the vista and they carried him swiftly passed it, back into the entrails of Spike 16, lest anyone should see the longing, hopeful sparkle in his otherwise dull and bored eyes as he glanced to the distant wastelands.

The streets were relatively crowded at this time of the day. Commuters attempting to assert a renewal of normal life, returned home, beggars and pickpockets crawled out of their hidings in the lower levels to live off the passers-by. Yatzudake quickened his pace. A motorcycle passed him by.

As if the senses anticipated a future unforeseen by thought, time seemed to stretch out, progress slowed down. The man parked his motorbike in front of a shop a little further on the road. In slow motion, Yatzudake saw him dismount and look, at the same time as he removed his half helmet and hitch it to the handlebars, over his shoulder, locking, so it felt, gazes with Yatzudake. It was a Gedaski rider dressed in leather and sheep skin, his facial features hidden behind a scarf.
Before he was hit by a wall of displacing air which threw him back with the force of a Space Marine's fist, Yatzudake saw in gruesome details how the Gedask's flesh was rendered from the inside out, his body bursting like the crust of bread during fermentation. A tongue of flame shot upwards, then outwards, catching up with the blood and pieces of flesh thrown around.
Hurled away by the explosion, Yatzudake's world crumbled down to a roaring whistling in the ears, a compressive pain all over his body and floating garish dots against a black background.
Before that extinguished as well.
Leaving him nothing.

Baraltax

Belated intervention seemed their speciality, launching them invariably into the slog. This latest campaign was no different. The worst quack knew a festering infection was best cut out before it grew bigger. Hell, cleansing the wound sufficed. By the time they arrived, the taint was doomed to be beyond amputation. It had gotten into the blood, coursing through the artery system to corrupt body head to toe.

Were there no men with foresight in the Imperium?
As if nothing was to worry until it was too late.

I'm not supposed to think such thoughts, sergeant Stauernberg chided, while he drudged along in the dust track left by the Leman Russ, inhaling its oily emanations. Readjusting his mouth mask –kept most of the stone-dust out of his lungs but not the familiar smells of war-, he cast an eye on his bedraggled squad crouching behind.
Crouching, yes, that was the right word, they all crouched these days. The huddle of tense guardsmen was like a bunch of frightened kids eager to crowd together but too proud to indulge in such childish expressions of sentiment. Their eyes rocked nervously in their sockets. Fear had settled heavily upon their shoulders.
And upon mine.

Hit them fast, hit them hard, but above all, do it soon.
If such doctrine had never been invented, it was time someone did. It'd kept them out of trouble.

Stauernberg's gaze trailed off to the urban landscape arising beyond the cloud of dust in the tank's wake. They were crossing a vast labyrinthine complex of streets, squares and buildings. Layer upon layer. The organic growth of the lower levels of Spike City had turned it in a confusing, three-dimensional maze riddled with ambush opportunities and obscure hide-outs. Not surprisingly, it was there and not in the more methodically organised and more spacious upper levels that most of the fighting took place.

It was known among the soldiers as the catacombs.
Attacks could come from anywhere, anytime.

The blast of a detonation was followed by a rattling, metallic sound. The Leman Russ stagnated, wheeling, and crashed with its front corner into the wall to the right. One continuous track lay stacked, broken within its casket. Stone-chippings rained down from the grated and holed wall.
At the instance the shot of a sniper rang, Stauernberg ducked, hurling himself behind the protective corpse of the lumbering tank. One hand holding to his helmet, the other groping for the lasgun around his shoulder.
He rolled over, shouting orders against the desperate snore of the Leman Russ as the tank's driver tried vainly to get some movement in the crippled machine.
His men sat hunched against the sidewalls of a street maybe ten paces wide. Overhead ran two bridges and, higher, a dark vault roofed the street. Dozens of windows of abandoned and burned out houses gave out to it.
At least one of them housed a sniper.

Where remained the simplicity of a frontline? Two forces opposite, facing each other. Locking gazes. A straight, fair match of strength and tacticum.
The worst enemy one could face was the native with the guts to take the war to his home.

Stauernberg cursed.
The turret of the Leman Russ slowly turned round. But the street was too narrow, too high for it to be of much use.
He got up, yelling to take cover. His men fled into doorposts or crawled through broken windows. Following, he watched private Birnfeldt. Helplessly, the soldier lay in the middle of the street, groping the bleeding calf where the sniper had hit. There was nothing to be done. Birnfeldt disappeared under a cloud of black dust and an avalanche of falling stones as the opposite house crashed down under the insane fire of the Leman Russ.

Had the driver discerned the enemy or had he just panicked?
Stauernberg would never know.

The whimpering of a child penetrated the numbness of his ear drums. Vague figures moving in the dust, like ghosts clad in mist, coming out of houses -coughing. Some desperately clasped possessions to their chests.

Yes, there were still civilians in the grey zone –surprisingly many actually-, refusing to leave their petty possessions and take flight to one of the refugee camps.

The sergeant had his finger on the trigger, the barrel fleeting from one indistinct figure to the next. Sweat trickled down his forehead. One shot, a figure tumbled. The parcel in its hands, crushed between the falling body and the ground, emanated the indignant cry of a baby.
Sergeant Stauernberg wanted to shout to hold, but the words died on his lips as the squad opened fire. He wasn't even sure if they were shooting or if they were shot on. His trigger finger tensed, unleashing bolts.
Figures rained down.

When the shooting was over, the dust cleared, the scene gradually dawned.
Bodies sprawled in the street.
He didn't want to know. He didn't.
All was silence.
Emperor, let it stay that way.

Baraltax

#3
Three campaigns he had served under General Möngke, a veteran commander of many more than them three.
This could well be his last.
He had never doubted the man's genius, never his resolve to employ all means –conventional or other- to crush the diverse enemies of the Imperium. Never, indeed, his true judgment.
Fighting on three fronts, however, demanded much of the tired commander whose ripeness of age brought with it the dangerous indecisiveness, unnecessary caution and slacking reflexes plaguing old men the galaxy round.
But that, something told him, was just why none other than General Möngke with all his experience had been relocated to this bloody mud pool and had been assigned the liberation of Pretaloka from subversive tendencies. A challenge which demanded the rigidness of conviction and a conservatism bordering on religion in which the general was certainly not lacking.

Chief Comms Officer Valschleben could not, however, shrug off the sticky suspicion that there was more to it.
And that could cost him his life.

He set aside his dangerous contemplations and averted his attention to his surroundings.

'Contact made. Grey zone R34i. Reconnoitre squad Stauernberg IV. One Leman Russ: pint. Enemy count: unknown. Support: under way.'

It was just one singled-out voice in the cacophony drowning the communication hall in a chaotic polyphony. Vox-casters were lined against the outer wall, a tangle of cables jutting out and a squad of operators wearing headsets arrayed behind them with their backs to the Comms Officer. Sometimes Valschleben thought them eight-limbed, as their arms danced about them to pull out and reinsert coloured cables with the precision and self-evidence of a spider spinning its web. Their voices droned as they answered calls, passed on commands and kept contact with a multitude of platoons deployed in the field. Others ran about, messages in their head, victims and threats reduced to coordinates, numbers inserted in machines; lives turned into statistics, into dots on a map.

In the centre of the oval room stood a large horizontal screen embedded in the tabletop of a cumbersome oblong table. The chairs that surrounded it were empty, their abandoned state testimony of the annoying constancy of warfare. Status-quo had been achieved and maintained for far too long. It seemed they were unable to push the enemy beyond the battle zones established in the first months of combat.
Valschleben leaned with the palms of his hand on the table, looking to the virtual model of Spike City which was projected onto the screen.
An achievement which continued to challenge their best mapping techniques, and that in an area where the enemy exploited the advantage of terrain familiarity to exhaustion.
A detailed grid ran through it, with shifting dots depicting the deployment of troops, the supposed locations of enemy forces and the whereabouts of marked citizens as far as the Annotator Viritim was operative, which was only in parts of the white zones or Imperial enclaves and not within the grey zones: front number one and Valschleben's jurisdiction.

The grey zone was a broad band running along and enclosing the Imperial enclaves. The latter key positions captured and liberated in the wake of their arrival. The former formed an inconveniently extensive area contested by both the Imperials and the cultists.
Their enemy, despite their provocative denomination –one of Möngke's subtle weapons to goad the zeal of his soldiers-, was an amalgam of rivalling factions unified behind their common hatred of Imperial meddlesomeness and interference, including, among others, the PEIRL -Party for Equality under Independence and for Righteousness by Liberation-, the Devotees –a true cult rumoured to meddle with forbidden powers-, unemployed who saw no other way to give their life meaning and victims of collateral damage seeking retribution. Add to that the probable alliance with the Gedaski riders and the deluded mass of plebeians who knew no better. The corrupted and defected planetary defence force formed the major opposition however.
Möngke's first and only misjudgement, as far as Valschleben was concerned, was to give them the time to organise.
Political purification given priority above military conquest.

Valschleben did not eye the Commissar who lifted his boots from the chair on which they had been slumped and who stood up to follow in the wake of the Chief Comms Officer as he left the communication hall. When the door shut behind them, the hubbub of Vox-casters was suddenly cut off, leaving an uncanny silence in which the clatter of footsteps following in his stead resounded ominous.

He stopped at a balcony overlooking the interior of Spike 13. Giving his eyes respite by observing the servo-skulls floating through the large conical space criss-crossed by slender bridges, Valschleben took out a cigarette and brought it to his mouth.
Before he placed the cigarette between his moist lips, he changed his mind and turned to proffer it the Commissar who stood rigidly a few paces back. Accepting, the man approached to lean on the banister.

Side by side, they stood comradely gaping into space. Each a cigarette in his mouth.

Soon, Valschleben thought, I will feel the barrel of this man's gun against my skull. And I will know failure in that last moment.

Smoke whirled from his mouth. Upwards, to vanish in invisibly small particles.

Baraltax

He knew of animals which had turned blind over generations of subterranean life, rudimentary organs which had granted their ancestors the blessing of sight still incorporated, yet now functionless. They could not have regretted such a loss, indeed probable did not remember the days when their kind had slithered freely over the earth's surface to enjoy in light the bliss of discovered beauty.
Had they found different beauty in blindness?

Half-Gedaski, his mother's nomad blood coursed through his veins. It remembered horizons as broad and extensive as the wasteland itself and sang of vistas of space, of a panorama-wide sunset above rolling seas of brazen rock.
He knew beauty lost.
Crawling through unchecked, unmapped tunnels deep below Spike City felt like contemptuous betrayal of his mother's legacy. A rejection of affinity that could as well be his distant kin's, the Gedaski riders'. He was as much a child of his father and therefore an object of scorn for both parties. The facade of tolerance had abruptly dissolved in mutual bloodshed and he had tumbled into the black hole left behind.
Cast beneath the modern city, into the ancient ruins known these days among smugglers as the Sett.

He knew, contrary to his comrades in crime, the history and origin of the Sett so unaffectionately exploited for the transfer of contraband: weapons, explosions mostly; and people. Few were the fugitives who in their distress and preoccupation paid attention to the slabs of ancient stone momentarily illuminated by the harsh light of his electrical lantern –to be swallowed up in darkness again -, even fewer those who marvelled at their apparent incongruousness as he led them on cavernous routes from A to B.

The current group consisted of a mother and her two children. Father had been arrested on suspicion of sabotage and, despite innocence asserted, they had lost him to Möngke's police force, never to ascertain his fate. Taking preservation above the delusion of a prospective return, mother had faced the more-likely truth and, giving him up, fled the malicious eyes of her husband's captors which she suspected now turned gluttonously on herself. Unable to evade the Annotator Viritim, they had arranged clandestine transportation to take them to distant family on the farmlands north of Spike City where they might find repose between extensive irrigated fields and lumbering harvesters.
So he took them through the Sett.

He could have told them that these tunnels actually treaded the surface of the earth, despite now being buried underneath tons of concrete, and were all that remained of an antediluvian megalithic city which had been inhabited by a people more ancient than the nomad tribes, who where commonly regarded as the original inhabitants of these lands. When the first Imperial colonists had landed, they found among the windswept ruins of the decrepit city only the provisional tented camps of pilgrims who had descended from the wastelands to visit the holy grounds.
The mysterious builders long gone, the nomad tribes congregated among their legacy to worship and praise. It was said that the priests of this forgotten civilisation had been able to summon djinns in the flesh, an achievement afterwards never matched, not even by the most potent shamans.
He knew of places where the ground was still caked with the millennia-old blood of human sacrifices, petrified layers as thick as his thumb.
The colonists had chased off the heretic worshippers, as much by force as with galactic diseases brought along unwittingly, and had built their great city atop holy ground. Layer upon layer of houses and streets, ever higher they built, until the lowest levels were abandoned due to lack of light and air and became home to the outcasts of society.
History books stood full of catastrophes following the collapse of these neglected burried levels, but in their hubris the citizen raised their city ever higher, clinging to a silly conviction that the remoter from the earth one dwelt, the more prestigious one's life.

An-Sadíd knew many things, but he kept them locked inside. Indeed, many of his charges thought him mute until at the end of the journey.

'Estfan will guide you from here,' An-Sadíd proclaimed.

Mother started, her two daughters clinging to her frock. They looked bewildered, ragged and with dirty faces. But underneath was sufficient beauty for Estfan to conjure up his most sympathetic smile as he nodded agreeable and took over his charge.
Mother threw a last pleading glance over her shoulder, as if Estfan's smile had disclosed her disagreeable true destination and she now appealed to An-Sadíd's sense for compassion and decency before she disappeared in the streets of Spike City's lower levels.
They had successfully crossed the Sett.

An-Sadíd groped his waistcoat-pocket, feeling the swelling caused by money's presence.
He knew the harsh fate of his three protégés.
Abuse. Molestation.
If they proved strong forced into soldiery for the growing army of the cult, if lucky then a quick death.

Did the worm care for the bird flying high above in the air? No, he did not. As long as the bird did not descend to make dinner out of him.

He turned his back to it all and descended back into the Sett, extinguishing the light.
Granting himself blindness to the world around.

If not beauty, darkness undeniably did possess something poetic.

Baraltax

'Why is it that he never requested another arm?'
'I told you: I do not know. He lost it to the bite of a Nob.'
'And I told you I do not care for your speculations on the matter.'

Razdnyevich turned abruptly, his hands locked on his back, his boots firmly grounded on the floor of the rocking ship. Cocking his head, a deep frown broke upon his stern features. The muscles of his large hands strained and relaxed alternatively, the knuckles' white protrusions contrasting strongly with the reddish depressions.

'Nervous, Inquisitor?'

Razdnyevich sighed, forcing himself to relax his strained shoulders. As if shrugging off tormenting worries burdening him since times indefinite, he even managed a faint lifting of one end of his narrow lips while a mechanic chuckled erupted from Encyclopaedia.

'Does it eat at your self-esteem not to know your enemy's profoundest motives?'
'I hear misplaced frustrations filtering through every question. Keep your budding opinions for yourself,' Razdnyevich retorted. 'Let's go through it again.'

A few strides took him to a window behind which the infinitely cold and dark interstellar space gaped mockingly upon mankind. A few distant stars bespeckled the vast expanses. The Saint Arabella had just broken out from her turbulent visit to warp-space and swagged bewildered as she entered the void reality.

Segmentum Obscurus, Calixis Sector.

'A veteran of many battles,' Razdnyevich stated as if to invite the other to speak.
'He fought the four corners of the galaxy. One of those survivor types who make it into the command.'
'To general.'
'Regiments drawn from different planets, but they have been reorganised and reinforced so many times that the overlap of regiment and planet is least said somewhat irrelevant.'
'Loyal?'
'A few have been following him for decades, through all of his battles. Most of the command structure has been with him longer than just this campaign.'
'Surrounded by friends then.'
'Every man dies alone.'
'Who did you get that from?'
'It's an epithet, Inquisitor.'

The Saint Arabella must have turned. A body had come into view: a huge ball capped with ice.
Did the records say something about a death moon around Pretaloka?
Ignoring irrelevant gaps in Imperial vigilance, Razdnyevich turned his back to the thing that should not be there and stepped back into the smallish, almost bare cabin.

'Arbitrator Yaroslav, Encyclopaedia. The last of the Adeptus Arbites sent for investigation.'
'A strict man, said to have the Lex Imperia written on the inside of his sunglasses.'
'And he vanished into thin air?'
'He disappeared. As did the rest of his company.'
'How?'
'Pretaloka is a heartless world consisting of desert, dry steppe, ice fields and inhospitable mountain ranges. And with the fighting in Spike City and all.'
'You're developing a sense of humour. I've always been anxious about what the Adeptus Mechanicus made you.'
'Thank you, Inquisitor.'

Inquisitor Razdnyevich glanced to the built-in door as it swung open noiselessly. He buttoned the top of his cloak and drew it close, burying his hands behind the cloth, before turning to receive the incoming man.

'Duke,' he welcomed the visitor.
The Duke looked around before fixing his eyes on Razdnyevich.
'I thought I heard talking,' he said.
'There's no-one here,' Radznyevich replied without moving his gaze.
'No there isn't.' The Duke straightened, shaking off his confusion.
'We've come out just fine,' he stated, 'near enough to Pretaloka to set you off in no time.'
'Pleased to hear so.'
'Hmm, yes. Well. Off I go!'

When the door had closed, Razdnyevich turned again, his gaze on the floor.

'So,' he said, 'basically we're up to a veteran commander with extremely loyal troops who probably kills off the investigators sent against him and who stands in the middle of a beehive on an extremely labile world. Add to that the fact that he might somehow be corrupted by the taint he's fighting, and you have a potential explosive mixture.'
'Yes Inquisitor,' Encyclopaedia confirmed.
'Murdering him won't do.'
'No, Inquisitor.'

Baraltax

The tattoo had expanded to places harbouring sensitive skin, intimate spots of the warrior's brawny body: it evinced his experience and proved just how eventful his mere 25 years of age had turned out to be. He wouldn't call it a blessed life, unless the accumulation of kills weighed disproportionately upon the final judgement, but a life given freely to serve his people was a life well spent.
He resigned to the fact it would soon come to an end. A lost bullet, a moment of faltering reflexes, a wrong step of the horse underneath him. By the virtue of Chance, things like these happened -fatal, exuding stupidity and humbling at the same time. They were unable to plan around and the war wasn't looking upon ending any time soon.

The tattoo machine in his hand minutely trailed the lines of preparatory paint drawn upon the inside of his groin. For all his pretended toughness, he had to blink away tears, had to fight off the pain as his blurred vision witnessed the birth of a stylistic three-headed snake at the edge of a dozen other animals previously imprinted upon the skin of his leg and torso.
He understood now the value of this ancient tradition. It was not to brag or boast about one's successes, instead it functioned as a chastening of the soul. To inflict harm upon oneself was to deliver a punishment no one else but the warrior himself could impose, to be taught a lesson no one else would heed.

Of course he stood alone with such pathetic notions of the obsolete ritual of tattooing killed enemies upon Gedaski skin. He had once been one with his brothers and sisters in the belief that the Imperials weren't worthy of such an honour. To tattoo an enemy, was to show him posthumous the respect he deserved. It was said to capture the soul of the slain and bound it to the slayer who would drag the spirit with him until finally death came and he would offer the hungering djinns his own life together with those he carried.
Fighting the Imperials had changed things, however. He had come to respect these hardened warriors from outer space, come to see them as equals, maybe even superior.
In defeat, he had come to know humility.

The arrival of Möngke and his troops had changed many things.
The Gedaski had been coaxed in supplying the southern flank of the anti-Imperial war which had consequently erupted and had infested the city borders to beat back the unwelcome invaders. Unable to exploit the mobility which had won the Gedaski riders so many battles, Möngke had succeeded in driving them out, but not without the expenditure of many lives on both sides and the destruction of a large part of the city.
The nomads had found pride in that.
But decimated and crippled, they had limped into the wastelands howling like bleeding dogs, licking their wounds. Bringing the war back to the city with erratic bombings, the Gedaski had invited the Imperials to pursuit them to their homes. In the familiarity of the open wastelands, the Gedaski riders where better equipped to challenge their might, but the enemy fought on courageously, pushing ever further, obstinately smoking them out of their hide-outs.

He and his brothers had sprung a trap upon one of their convoys this morning. Two Chimeras full of guardsmen had been driving passed, leaving an elongated dust trail. They had laid in wake close to a landscape of jutting rock which not only supplied them cover but also forced the Chimeras to slow down.
He had killed three, venomous like snakes.
The Chimeras were now burned out carcasses of melted metal, the corpses diner to scavengers and feed for the djinns.

Grim-faced, Masjed rubbed the mutilated flesh of his groin, stimulating the blood flow. He disposed of the tattoo machine and took a satisfied look to the latest addition of a three-headed snake before lowering his knee-length tunic and wrapping tight his shash.
He got on his feet and wheeled to the man sitting wearily on a nearby rock projection. Fiddling abstractedly with the combat helmet in his hands, the man exposed his Imperial features to the light illuminating the primitive chamber, his pale skin contrasting with a week old black stubble. He was wearing the uniform of Möngke's troops and looked up with relief as his long wait seemed to have ended.

'I'm ready,' Masjed stated.

The guardsman nodded and stood up, placing his helmet on his head. Following Masjed, he walked out of the electrically lit cave and into the gloom of an early evening. The wind blew chill above the wasteland mountains. Tufts of obstinate haulms waved between steep rock.

'Let's see what you got this time.'

The guardsman signed to follow. A truck, flanked by two of his colleagues, waited in the valley below and as they descended, he started to complain about how difficult it was to keep purloining from the arsenal, that he'd soon need to look for other resources since suspicion burgeoned within higher circles of the command and summed up a list of explosives, weapons and equipment stacked in the truck.
Masjed nodded throughout the monologue while making swift calculations in his head of the contrabands' worth and how much he'd offer.

Limping slightly due to the fresh pain in his groin, he knew his brothers and sisters getting into position, hidden in the surrounding landscape, barrels pointed at the Imperials.
Though the traitorous guardsmen had served them well over the months, they had become too much of a liability.

Once dead, he doubted whether one of them would make it into a tattoo.

Baraltax

They understood nothing. Nothing of it all.
He should forgive them, because they were blind to opportunity. He could negate their myopic doctrines since they were inexcusably simplistic. Human morality was to scope what the human eye was to light: it did not allow the infinite fan of possibilities continuously whizzing by. It had limited itself in early stages of development to what was manageable, to that spectrum which promised easy survival.
Selection brought confinements, confinements impotence: the risk of overall failure was inherent to immediate successes.

Yet, there was paradox in everything. Humanity survived on opposites.

He understood the subtle power that hid behind narrow-mindedness, the necessity entailed in ignorance was clear to him. He had exploited its invincibility day in day out. Acknowledging complexity availed soldiers nothing when locking gazes with death, knowledge proved a redundant burden when choosing enemies.
So he left them in their abject curtailment and selected adversaries for them, diffusing selective patches of minute information to direct their fuzzy thoughts to single-minded determination, blocking off compromising discredit in full acknowledgement of the lurking danger of cracks.

Cracks were notorious for expanding, never mending.
Cracks in conviction led invariably to rejection.
Once cracked, things tended to fall apart.

Not fear nor boredom, but self-doubt was the greatest enemy of soldiers. Resolution crumbled under its pressure. It made the army look inwards while its collective gaze should be directed the other way.

Kill him.

Somewhere in a remote barrack, a woman's mind received the psychic message. She had been awaiting such an order, patiently cleaning a long rifle's perfectly polished barrel. She stood up now, spat out the ball of leaves which had been bulging each chubby cheek alternately and stowed away the dismantled rifle in an oblong suitcase. Glancing down the barrack sentries, she walked out and entered the civil city beyond.

He was not pleased with such necessities. But they had to be done, in the name of the omniscient Emperor. He was the shield that protects from cracking, so that the fist would not unfold to disclose the vulnerable palm to thoughtful scrutiny.

He looked up from underneath his hood to the men gathered around the conference table.

Do you know what I offer you, General Möngke? Would you approve if you did, or would you sacrifice your life thinking it righteous yet condemning your army to death, dooming a holy duty to failure?

'Arkhveer,' General Möngke suddenly boomed, his gaze not lifting to see Arkhveer's arousal to his surroundings. 'I've decided to follow your proposal.' The finger at the end of his only arm traced a track over the city map projected on the horizontal screen embedded in the conference table. The empty sleeve of the other, amputated, arm hung lifeless beside his stout body. 'We'll spearhead to the east. The north flank has stabilised somewhat, so we redeploy and group sufficient power to push through eastwards.'

Chief Comms-Officer Valschleben turned round. The contradictory thoughts criss-crossing his confused brain were reflected in the calculating eyes which met Arkhveer's gaze. What awaits us in the east? But even without voicing the question, Valschleben knew they would give him no answers.

Arkhveer walked up to the table around which the officers had gathered, halting beside Möngke whose eyes turned to him full of purport. Arkhveer met his gaze.

He understands. He knows and cuts me loose. Free of confinements and restrictions at last. Free to exploit opportunity.

'I'll give you the fourth,' Möngke stated, his determined gaze burning into Arkhveer's sudden confusion.
The psyker almost physically backed off.

Not loose, he cuts me off. Completely. With no strike power left at home. He wants me gone.

Doubt slipped into Arkhveer's thoughts. The first minute cracks manifesting in his carefully constructed world of false certainties.

Baraltax

He had once read that true subtlety was the art of attaining your goals without anyone knowing it for your achievement, not ever. Like many things in life, the actual source of such adherent idea had long been forgotten to leave but the faintest trace. Yet what stuck was enlarged disproportionally, distorted by time and by piled layers of reinterpretation, embedded in experiences to which the same concept was applicable with different degrees of meaning, until the idea was made your own and the source no longer mattered, if indeed it had ever existed with such depths of portent.
Subtlety was one of those principles he carried with him and how much he'd like to pride himself with having mastered it, he could not attribute himself with true subtlety, nor, for all that mattered, anyone else he knew.
That was exactly the point about true subtlety. You never know, you're left with guesses.

The spider first weaves its web before lying in wait, invisible, for the unwary prey to get entangled.
A fitting metaphor, indeed.

If the Inquisition could operate like that spider, not only would it be attributed with many a calamity that was not theirs -adding to its omnipotent repute-, but people would believe themselves perpetual under surveillance and not feel unfettered as long as no Inquisitor was known to be near.
The absence of palpable Inquisitors would make the Inquisition more present in the people's minds.
Unluckily for dissuasion, there were those who would disagree, who believed that in overt intervention lies the source of fright and the accompanying docility which made up the Imperium's control on its disobedient citizens.

He had to admit that subtlety was just one way among many others to get what you want. None better than the other, perhaps. She had learned him that, or had it been written in the same fugitive source? No matter. Necessity would have taught him in the long run.
Fact was that, as Inquisitor, it was difficult not to stand out.

Hence, his arrival couldn't have gone by unnoticed.

He didn't need the glances of the guardsmen at the civilian checkpoints he had just passed, didn't need to see the Vox-call that was made or the conspiratorial smile on the customs officer's face as his false identity was minutely registered for the Annotator Viritim.

Or were such suspicions born out of his own paranoia?

The Duke had guaranteed him secrecy, as he arranged his passage passed the civilian checkpoints.
So here he was, assailed from the other side by envious glances of the less privileged throng which had huddled together, their hope of getting through clenched in a wild variety of excuses or in nugatory permissions for passage. Nine out of ten were turned away by the arbitrary judgement of the stern looking and whimsical guardsmen.
A group of them sat looking on to the one doing all the work, faint smirks on their otherwise bored faces. A pregnant woman with a belly as round as a kangaroo ball was pleading her way through, waving hospital papers, but she was pushed aside and dismissed with an apathetic wave of the soldier's arm. He watched her tear-stained face being swallowed up by the impatient throng behind her.

Inquisitor Razdnyevich turned away and found himself in what was once a teeming inter-galactic harbour but now a cluster of mostly abandoned warehouses, dilapidated residences and lumbering tank farms. Most structures were either ruined or confiscated for intermittent storage of an uninterrupted influx of military equipment, feeding the voracious war.
A strong wind blew the street clean of dust, sweeping detritus into corners and crevices. People ran along, mostly civil servants keeping up the bureaucratic paperwork which dealing with the Departmento Munitorum necessitated.

Calling up the directions of the Duke, he set off. The Duke knew people everywhere. If he hadn't visited in person, then his father had or another member of his extensive royal family. With a surname like his, you had a vast network at your disposal, one which Inquisitor Razdnyevich wasn't averse to exploit.

*

The suitcase sprung open with a soft click. She knelt beside it on one knee and reached out to pick out the long rifle's parts to reassemble them with the greatest respect. She had followed him from the checkpoint, through the streets criss-crossing the small Imperial enclave known as the harbour, had seen him getting passed numerous other control points teeming these parts of the city and had watched him enter the building now opposite her, knowing him for what he was: her target.
She knew the building and what was inside, but the curiosity that his entrance should have awakened failed to come. She but thought of how her familiarity with the place would avail her. Having hid the suitcase, she scaled the neighbouring rooftop and edged closer to a broken window in the building's side. Climbing through, she was greeted from inside by the roar of voices. She loaded her rifle and search for the face of her victim in the mass filling the hall below.

Baraltax

+++Classified+++
+++Extract from Inquisitor Razdneyvich's unrecited lectures+++

There are two distinct kinds of power: the power to do as one pleases and the power to command others into doing as one wills. These two are in most cases mutually exclusive. Though there are exceptions, those who believe to possess both almost always delude themselves to create a false sense of satisfaction. It is indeed hard for someone empowered with the one to admit his utter impotence regarding the other and to do so would be to question one's apparent fulfilment.

The Imperium of mankind, as indeed every relevant society since the dawn of humanity, is firmly based on the latter power and regards the former as an abomination, a certain fall into anarchy and disorder and, indeed, experiences it as a threat to existence itself –perhaps rightfully so.

It is my conviction that each human being decides in a very early stage of life –say, before reaching adulthood- to which power he or she will aspire.

To maintain, rulers of all time have relied upon two instruments: Faith and Law. Faith is aimed at keeping those pursuing dominance under the established ruling body's thumb. Law serves to keep in line those endeavouring self-determination.
This is no different in the Imperium.

Why is it that this twin has been so successful?

Those pursuing dominance accept hierarchy as axiomatic. To acknowledging the power to command in some is to admit as a consequence obedience in most. Religion, institutionalised as it is intended, supplies the belief in the existence of a natural hierarchy among humans and teaches each to content with his place within that divine organisation.
Some may contest such determinism and succeed in ascending the steps of hierarchy or even in overthrowing the establishment, but such ambitions invariably adhere to the principle of the twin and will maintain it in their own interest and consequently the interest of mankind. A nuisance it be, they hence pose no real threat. 

Anarchists, on the other hand, refute the axiom of hierarchy and are therefore less susceptible to governance through Faith. I do not claim that they can not believe in the God Emperor, but they would tend by their very nature to mysticism, seeking to reduce Faith to a personal relation with the Divine. This knocks hierarchy off its pedestal and could well, if it were to become common good, drag along in its fall the Imperium as a whole.
Indeed, the worst thing that can happen to Religion is for it to be deinstitutionalised.

The problem of the Anarchist, however, is that he stands by definition alone and necessarily parts with the maintenance of his power and hands it over to the tolerance of the mob. Law provides the appropriate excuse for the ruler to guide the mob into carefully selected intolerance and the associated penal statute often enough intimidation to deter most aspirants of power of pursuing their aim at the expense of the twin.

The ability to attain and hold anarchistic power is distributed most sparsely among humankind. Few are those who can compete against the twin and fewer those who show the potential and the will to destroy them utterly. The prime concern of the Inquisition, in my opinion, should be to track down the latter individuals before they can falsify the standing immortality of the twin.

There is however a third kind of power of which I have not spoken yet. A most dangerous power in that it is a democratic one, that is to say: each possesses in equal share the intrinsic capacity to exert it and an equal chance to fall victim to it.
I am speaking of the power to kill.

Despite efforts of fellow Inquisitors to assert otherwise, it is this power and not the anarchistic kind, which constitutes the lure and the danger of Chaos.

+++End Extract+++
+++Return+++

Baraltax

The oblong hall of unidentifiable former industrial purpose sheltered a noisy, excited crowd which attention was equally divided between the elevated boxing ring jutting out of a ruffling sea of heads in the centre of the draughty hall and, on the other hand, the continuous exchange of volatile wages, of abuse and of brusque shoves.
A sultry wind blew over, through shattered lead-raster windows on both sides. Towering 7 storeys high, art-nouveau galleries rimmed the hall, the lower populated, the others too ramshackle to support any public.

The shouts and encouragements, the roar of voices and the hustle of bodies, they formed a surrealist contrast to the pall of perplexity which covered the world outsides the four walls enclosing the large, steaming hall. It was as if the shock of appalling disbelief at the collapse of normality and the sudden introduction of beastly brutality in daily grind –believed to belong to the impossible, yet now acknowledged as undeniable part of human nature- which subdued the appreciation of the futile joys inherent to life; as if that shock found release here, within the confinements of assumed isolation, found escape from harshness in gratuitous entertainment.

The stench of sweat and tobacco, of blood and urine saturated the sultry air. Two pugilists, stripped to the waist and fists swathed in drab bandage, circled round each other in the ring. The bystanders, mostly Imperial guardsmen off duty, pressed closer, enraged. One was bloodied, a red stream pouring out of a flattened, fractured nose, an eye swollen, chapped lips. The crowd was bloodthirsty, fights erupting and subsiding in the flicker of a moment, demanded satisfaction. He limped, his head lolling as he tried to focus on the opponent, who panted laboriously, glistening chest heaving. A fist shot out. It smashed into the ruined face. He was too slow, too far away to even raise his hands in defence. His head swung backwards, his neck pliable meat. He staggered. One step, two steps. Swaying, he received another sideways stroke. He doubled over, collapsing against the breast of the other pugilist. Pushed away, he landed into the ropes where the groping hands of frenzied bystanders held him on his feet. His opponent neared. You saw him waver, hesitate, eyes shooting from one corner to the other. But the roar carried him, drowned him. Adrenaline rushed through his veins. His fist rose. Madness. The public exploded in deafening screams.

Razdnyevich saw the arm of the spectator in front of him suddenly shattering in an explosion of gore. It had been raised in an obscene gesture when the upper arm was blown away. The agonising scream of the man was barely audible in the triumphant noise. Razdnyevich was forcefully kicked back at the same moment by an impact hitting his shoulder. When he looked, blood welled up from a perfect round tear in his coat.
Neither of them fell. They were held up by a dense crowd which but slowly realised it had wounded in its mid. He did not feel much pain, but his head dizzied. It was hard focussing. Feeling the pressure of bodies abate, Razdnyevich collapsed to the floor. He raised himself to his knee. He didn't understand what they were saying. His ears were singing. He tried to form words, but couldn't. They pointed upwards. He lifted his gaze. He didn't understand what they were pointing at.

Until he distinguished two figures fighting on a gallery high above the hall, fighting over a long rifle held between them. Dust and gravel rained down as the old, ill-maintained gallery shook dangerously under their violent struggle. One of the figures was smashed against the iron railing, which unhinged and tumbled down. Sudden panic grabbed the crowd below, of which only half realised what was happening when the gallery collapsed in a cloud of dust, taking the two figures with it.
Razdnyevich clambered to his feet, too late. The panicking crowd started to move, fleeing the debris which rained down with indiscriminate fatality. He was pushed over and disappeared into a trampling herd of boots.

Baraltax

#11
She was burdened with lavish hallucinations of luxuriant grasslands. Her homeland: it haunted her, stalked her. She recognised the dent in that hillslope, the gooseneck curl of that riverbed, the serrated crest of that mountain range, the way that smooth cliff face was banded in alternating layers of bleak sandstone and dark ironstone; she saw those as she flew over on swirling currents of warm air and knew them for the landmarks of her childhood.
Yet they were not.
Where she floated through waving seas of grass, there had been nothing but gravel and rock; where gnarled oaks flanked the river course, there had been only thorny bushes gnawed bare by the thirsty goats herded through the plains.
Luxuriance haunted her, unexplainable metamorphosis.

The djinn-world was known for its inconsistencies.
But this was different, too insistent, purposeful almost.
Vistas into past or future, or simply images of the possible. Promise?
Her memory had never been stolen thus before, so abused to torment her with resentments. Visions weren't supposed to be so, concrete, so particular.

She was old. So old that she had lost the count of years, lost even the memory of having lived up to old age. She remembered being a child. She remembered that well, to the absurd details of how she had felt under her father's stern glance, what she had thought when her mother initiated her in the secrets of womanhood or where to she had chased that crippled lamb which had eventually died from exhaustion and fright, the poor bleating thing.
Those recollections pleased her when she was not under the influence of hallucinogenic blends. She liked to savour them like a draught of fine liquor rolling over the tongue: strong, poignant and blissfully stunning given the time.
She did not know what happened afterwards, she only discovered again and again, to her resigned disappointment, that she no longer inhabited that young, spotless body, that she was now wrapped in toothless, wrinkled, sagging flesh.
That made her reach for the blends, the secret teas. Of which she needed to sup increasing portions before being carried away to the world of prophecy, the shaman's hide-out. A place to forget and be forgotten, to become one with the eternal existence of the djinns.

Maybe the world possessed regrets as well. Maybe it longed for youth and health as much as the human kin walking its surface. Maybe it had found a kindred spirit to share its idealised remembrances with, to project memories of days floated by, of times immemorial which only existed in the distorted recollections of a failing mind.

It was said that the ragged wastelands had once been lush, before the Imperial colonist came from out of space, before they built their city. The large river which transported mel[EXCOMMUNICATE]er from the northern ice sheets was put to use as irrigation water to feed a gluttonous agriculture, the groundwater was exploited to quench the insatiable thirst of a rapacious city and the winds that had carried rain from the western oceans dried out in smoke and smog. The droplets leaking out of the big city were poisonous and had killed the soil.

Maybe the world remembered such mutilations, maybe it had stood by helplessly, yearning for retribution. Like she had watched her bodily decay, like she cursed the gods who had given her this perishable flesh and the impotence to combat deterioration.

Yes, she thought, there is some satisfaction in this war. Some sense of justice.

What she didn't possess, the world did: a means for vengeance and a time eternal to await it.

*

They stood by. A warm but dry wind blew grains of sand against their exposed shins. Cloth fluttered around their brawny bodies. The sun baked their skulls.
One stood uncomfortable, brushing hairs out of his face with an impatient gesture. He was dressed in a long brown robe which hid a plate of bulky carapace, giving his figure a swollen impression. His right hand was covered with the scurfy, spotted skin of an old burn.
The other sat squatted at leisure, an almost indistinguishable smirk adorning his face as if amused by the nervousness of the other. A lasgun was slung upon his back, a machete stuck in his sash. The tanned skin of his bare torso was covered almost completely in tattoos, much like the dried out skins which were stretched upon canvasses and stood vertically in the quivering air, thousands scattered over the valley as pieces in an endless museum.

It was the valley of bones, where shamans sensing their death nearing went. When death found them, they would be skinned and their skin added to the collection. The never-abating wind dried them quickly so that the tattooed skins were preserved through the ages, telling their history to those who cared for reading.
The old woman, Arezoo, had dwelt this holy place for years.

'So,' the cultist said, 'what do we do now?'
'We wait,' the Gedaski answered.

And so they waited, until the old woman turned towards them, her face hidden behind long hairs whipped up by the wind, and signalled to sit with her.

Baraltax

+++Access Restricted+++
+++Archived: Prosecution against Katsurahama the Elder+++
+++Extract from undelivered sermons [preparations for]+++

Look into the faces of our so called false gods.
And see yourselves.
Of course you dare not steal a glance, for you are afraid of what you might see, fully aware of what awaits you in such vista yet denying it to burgeon into undeniable fact. To anticipate what you'll see, to look away and to pass your motive as falsity: I would almost call it a subtle form of doublethink. The Ecclesiarchy ultimately is an instrument of hypocrisy, and - I know what I speak of, for I come from within its organs - it is fully aware of its flawed foundations.
For those who have looked and seen clear, know the true faces of our false gods.
I invite you to take a look. Do not deny that what you see, it is what you are most afraid of.

Does it make us gods, to see our like?
False they are called, our gods, and false they are rightly named for we do not worship gods. There are no gods to worship. To think in terms of gods and blessings, of worship and divine intervention is to implicitly acknowledge the line of thought of the Ecclesiarchy. We would make ourselves heretics, supplying the Priesthood with its much needed enemy. Leave such self-delusions to the naive treasure hunter who thinks to find cheap acquisition of his petty conception of power; who seeks to make society his enemy.
That is not my conception, neither my goal. Neither is it, so I believe, anywhere near the truth.

Chaos, my friends, is like a mirror. It is a reflection of human nature.
What we worship, is Humanity. What we seek, is to shape its true form.

Those who turn their back to the mirror can't face what they are. Those who seek to shatter the mirror, engage in a losing fight for to battle one's image is to destroy oneself. It is the doubtful accomplishment of the Church to make us shy from our character, to turn it into a loathsome conduct, and to look away from the mirror.

But is it wrong to embrace our actual nature?
To come home?


It is where real power originates: in self-knowledge and the courage to take control. Power does not come from alien entities neither does it arrives in reaction to devotion. It is an illusion that you need to earn it –give, take. No, it is for the taking. It is part and parcel of ourselves, of every human being.
Chaos is within each of you.
It is the natural way of life. It is those desires you harbour but subdue because of a nourished sense of decency –and what is decency else but a gratuitous convention made to enslave?
Shed off such constrictions and be yourself.

+++End Extract+++
+++Return+++

Baraltax

Was it the name similarity or did the legacy of a father weigh so heavily on every son's shoulders?
He was not his father, even though he carried his name and had inherited his position, he was not him. But no matter how ostentatious he carried that motto with him, people kept seeing him as his father inferior, or at least compare his every action or thought to what, according to them, the old man would have done or thought.
But what did they know? Pretending to understand the whimsical mind of a mad genius whose every decision was legendary unpredictable and whose fatherhood was for the greater part interlarded with violent escapades –something which was never broached, if even known.
He was not him, he lacked the strength for that. His father believed in nothing save the hidden motives which drove every human being: the ambition to dominate –to enforce one's own existence upon the other by enslavement, abuse, torture or ultimately by killing- and which he manipulated for his own ends. It was a mistake made by many: to use one's own character as blueprint for every other human; and one which plunged Katsurahama the Elder into a paranoid existence.

He could not claim to have lamented his father's departure much, when finally arrested by the Magisterium Justitiarum. When the assassinations of supposed putschist in the cult had been ongoing. A case of betrayal, it was said. Which would fit right in Katsurahama Elder's portrayal of mankind. But he did not think it had been ambition which had led them to betray his father. There was a much stronger force in humanity which lay at the cause: the resolution to endure anything in order to survive.
Katsurahama the Younger understood such sentiments. They were his ever present companions: toil on to survive. The responsibility of leadership weighed heavy. But things were expected from him, things he couldn't shirk.
Yet he did not possess the strength of his father. Humanity was not enough. The mere material too meaningless. He needed to believe in something, something greater than himself, something which would give his life purpose, which would turn his suffering into something worthwhile.

His father had never understood much of man, except maybe at the last, just before his execution. Had there been a flash of revelation? Had he been willing to suffer any humiliation to spare his life, to simply continue, or had he searched vainly for satisfaction with the way his life had expired? Prayed to some god for an afterlife, maybe?

'Mother,' the voice of Ibn Basr, his Gedaski companion.
He addressed the old woman formally as he sat down, cross-legged, opposite her, 'I bring you Katsurahama the Younger, emissary of our allies in the city,' he said.
Katsurahama sat down, mimicking the pose of Ibn Basr clumsily as his carapace impeded him. He knew better by now than to initiate the conversation. Instead he waited till the Mother would speak, but she remained silent, patiently waiting for Ibn Basr to light the pieces of charcoal and prepare the hookah. Soon they were sitting in a cloud of fruity tobacco smoke as the hookah was passed hand to hand.
'I knew your father,' she finally spoke. She puffed from the hose, looking into his blank stare.
'He was a fool,' she added.
To that, he had nothing to say. He thought however to see a faint smile in the wrinkled face of the shaman. He averted his gaze.
'You feel something big is coming and you want to know what it is, yes?'
Katsurahama nodded, his attention fully on the Mother, his gaze locking with the woman's cataract eyes.
'I can't tell you that,' she continued, faintly smiling now for sure. 'Look down while keeping your gaze upwards, that's all. In the face of success, you will turn away from it anyway and make your enemies your friends. But to no avail.' She shrugged. 'Fate is governed mostly by luck. There's nothing much you can do about that. If you want to survive this, then simply stop searching. Walk away.'
He wanted to tell her to stop speaking nonsense. But he knew the conversation ended, so he thanked her and walked away, just as she said.

He cursed himself for his vain hope that these Gedaski shamans would be more than the fake priests at home, those imposters.
Stop searching. Right.
He halted and looked back, watching Ibn Basr nodding as the old woman said something to him. Then the Gedaski walked towards him. Nothing was said as they mounted their motorbikes and drove out of the valley of bones in a cloud of dust.

When the two men were gone, Arezoo leaned forward and reached out to the herbs left as payment. She set about to make some tea.

Baraltax

+++Access+++
+++Extract from Instructor Del Antonio's unfinished valedictories+++ 

Gentlemen -and the odd woman among you-, this day, this fortunate morning, I raise my glass to you. You came here to serve our blessed Emperor, and serve Him well you will. With your life, presumably; with your heart and soul, most assuredly. Bear Him in your heart and He will bear you in His divine mind, thus is His magnanimous kindness.
Face death with His name upon your lips, face His enemies without fear.

Today, gentlemen, I also say goodbye and fare thee well. You are the Emperor's now and your fate lies within His hands. You have forsworn your lives. You will forget your family, your home, the girlfriends you courted. Leave these memories to me for safekeeping and walk. Walk, my friends, for the Imperium watches you, looks upon your sordid faces with faith and hope.
You are the Imperium's last resort.
If anything, remember this –for the day will come when your flawed, mortal spirit will try to take over, will whisper blasphemies into your all-too-human mind and contaminate the divine with doubt and heresy, when your faith will falter and you'll find yourself mirrored in the traitorous eyes of the enemy. Such day is well nigh and upon that day, you will remember my words. Upon that day, know this: you are witnessed. You are watched. The Imperium relies on the decision you will make upon that day. It awaits that moment with anticipation and dread.
Do not disappoint.

Look upon your brothers now, gentlemen. Look around, go ahead. What do you see? What do they tell you, the faces of your comrades? I don't think further words are necessary, words are but fleeting things, impalpable illusions of the mind. I can only repeat: do not disappoint.

So, I raise my glass, guardsmen, to the Emperor.
To the defence of the Imperium.
And in so doing, I raise my glass to you.

+++End Extract+++
+++Return+++

*

There was blood pouring out of his right ear. The explosion had left him with but a wheezing rustling to listen to. A sudden cold came over him, and a veil of black dust. He was more aware of the rise and fall of his chest than ever, as if he breathed only through conscious instruction. Inhale, exhale. Think about that. Or stop thinking completely. Air full of stinging stone dust. He coughed, or tried to. His body convulsing. A face appeared. Blurred. A beard underneath a helmet. Did he know this beard? There was some yelling, but no sound. He asked what had happened. More silent screams. He followed the gaze of the beardman. A leg with black boot, ending in torn flesh, lay off to the left. There was a stump of bone protruding from its centre. It confused him, this disconnected leg. When he looked back, he found himself staring into the barrel of a gun at the end of beardman's outstretched arm. He raised his hand to block the shot, but discovered his arms unwilling to obey this simple command. Suddenly, he knew whose leg that was. He screamed, if he hadn't been screaming before. Had he? The shot penetrated his skull. Cold, so cold.

*

One. A headlight passed, illuminating the ceiling as it came and went. Two. He was counting. Another light passing the window. He was praying as well. Three. The rough wall of the house shaved his back. His hands clenched around the hilt of the gun. Four. The roar of the tanks rolling over the street below. It was almost time. There were shouts as well. Five. He broke from the wall and sneaked to the window, on all fours. His breathing hastened. Six. The gun was ready, he checked it to make sure. Hunched, he waited in front of the window. Seven. Shots rang, too soon. The shouts below grew louder, urgent and desperate. He had stopped counting, instead he sprang to his feet and looked out. Below his window, a column of soldiers was passing, swathed grey in dust. A man in the centre was pointing and commanding. Guns aimed upwards. He raised his, his finger reaching for the trigger. Suddenly the wall exploded and he was hurled away in a cloud of dust. Sharp shards of stone tore his cloth and flesh. He landed against something hard and rough. All sensation of his body suddenly gone, he found himself staring to the big hole blown into the side of the room. Laser beams sailed through the cloud of dust. Two men scaled the hole, their faces covered in masks and goggles. They instantaneously saw him and did not hesitate to shoot.

*

They looked each other in the eyes and knew what they saw for their own thought. They nodded to each other and to themselves, acknowledging the necessity of surrender. They had no other choice, they had wasted the last opportunity long ago. They looked back to the others. Hard faces. Bloodied bandages, contorted expressions. Pain and desperation to be read on each. There was a library to fill with the story of this moment.
That one had cut off his shredded fingers but had tied the gun's barrel to the crippled hand with a swathe ripped off his cloth. Another had seen his sister blow to pieces by a grenade and was now burdened with that mad sparkle in his otherwise jovial eyes. He hadn't said a word since, his jaws only moving by compulsive chewing, his hands kneading the hilt of his gun. There was one who had lost the upper right fourth of his head, but once the bleeding had more or less been stemmed behind a thick layer of bandages, he didn't seem to suffer from the wound which had sent half his brain to oblivion, except that his helmet no longer fitted his swollen head.
It would be a library of insanity and futility. They averted their gazes and nodded again, if they had stopped nodding at all. Madness, indeed. The initial thought now obliterated. They locked gazes and saw the other had changed his mind as well. A grin broke upon their faces. He lifted his hand and signed the others to get ready. There was more killing to be done, more enemies to riddle with bullets. No time for surrender.