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Codename Turncoat

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

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Baraltax

She, she was an Angel, of the avenging kind. Beautiful deliverer of Death, beautifully delivered. To see her perform, the Art of killing was to stand aghast in awe. She was liquid and balled wire at the same time; she was Intangible. But when you saw her eyes, her Eyes of ivory: that was when you knew how things stood.

This is a dream.

She, she was Passer of judgement, her own kind of law. Brought to justice, underneath the arched iron lattice, he whose ravaged throat gargles blood upon the greenish-black bridge. I watch Immobile, unsure of the Direction of danger. I followed, see her straighten up, her curved back lifting snakelike from over the victim, I had to sprint, to clamber. A shot rings, 1. The one she fired into that soft cartilage of the man's throat. The bullet clatters on the floor in unison with the spent cartridge.

This is a memory.
Distorted, fragmented and Un-finished, like memories are.

I see her from the back. The rust-coloured lank cut rises from within the high collared plating. Her medium length hair waves to one side. Her tight waisted carapace: black with a white streak marking her spine, accentuates her figure. The second skin around her hips and thighs disappears in knee-high boots.
Her enchanting face, momentarily: calm, deathly silent. Snatched in green lighting.
She advances, stubber dancing. Blinding streaks of light penetrate the iron raster over our heads, falling on the floor like stripes on the skin of a zebra. She is a dark shadow, a blot discontinuous flashing across the bridge.

We tower above the man. His throat is a mess, blood pools from a hole in the back of his skull. Other bodies lie sprawled. My gun is cold, hers Smoking and pointed at me. She kills them, one after the other. I see her dance. Shots ring. The barrel gapes me in the face. Cold and indifferent, much like her Ivory eyes. Our gazes lock. See turns a blank look.

I leaned over the dead man. My callous palms enwrapped its cooling face. My hands, his caked blood.

I froze Frightened. Her trigger finger tensed. A moment stretched in eternity, we looked one another in the eyes, me not recognising in a cold killer the woman I serve, she ignorant in her battle-blindness of the lover she aims at. Me, recollecting all the passed times she turned those ivory Eyes on me. On our friends.

That was why I left her.

Crow's-feet awakened as she squeezed her eyes. A smile broke upon her face. Life, warmth, returning in her sympathetic eyes.

This is memory.

A shot rings. A blast.

*

He awoke gradually, the world blossoming into form like an old TV-set flickering into a steady image. The sound of an oscillating pendulum preceded the awareness of shifting light emanated from an electrical lamp swinging from the ceiling, the impetus gone and not to be known. He found himself in a square room not much larger than the bed in which he was lying. Tubes disappeared into the eternal blind spot of his vision, but he could not feel them entering his nose or mouth. The flesh of his face felt swollen and was numb. He was aware, however, of sensation coming back to his body, like an old, reluctant companion, but was of now unable to move his body or feel the stunned torment which it suffered. He could only turn his head to look at the figure entering the smallish room.

'I see you're awake,' the compact man said agreeably. 'That's good news, we had a hell of a time to patch you up.'
He took a chair, swung the seating between his legs and set down belly to the chair's back.
'But for a friend of the Duke's, we're more than happy to oblige. No need to thank me.' He smiled an apologetic grin, fully aware of the patient's incapability to speak. 'You'll be up and running in a week time, but knowing your sort you'll probably be more up and limping in a day or three.'

He sighed.
'We found some clues in your personal belongings, Mr. Razdnyevich.' He winked. 'But don't worry, we deal things with the utmost respect and secrecy for anyone who had such a great introduction as yourself, Mister.'
He sighed again.
'I'll leave you to your rest now. Just call for Don if you recovered your voice. Then we'll have a little chat, me and you.'

Before he left, he turned and assured the still mute Inquisitor that he had come to the right place. Then he closed the door.
And locked it.

Baraltax

+++Labelled Subversive+++
+++Extract from unpublished broadsheet [ascribed to PEIRL*]+++

I believe in the Imperium; I believe in its genuine men and its righteous rulers; I believe in its eternal struggle for existence. I believe in the alien threat and place my hope for the survival of mankind upon the Imperium's shoulders. I believe in our benevolent Emperor, past man and now God; I believe in Him as our savour. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, He will guide us upon the one true path, even if that sometimes thorny path is unfathomable for mere mortals.

I believe,
Amen.

But, belief is not enough. Mouths cannot be fed by faith, bare skin not cloth in idle hopes, nor protected from the burning sun with umbrellas of ideals. The sick will not be cured by prayer and the old will always die lonely.

Still, I believe with all my heart.
But live with five more senses and a brain.

The Imperium demands to be questioned with faith, we must start questioning it with reason.
What is the legitimacy of an Imperium ruling millions of worlds?

The Imperium of men is the most fanatic nation-state in history. An Imperial is a human and every human is an Imperial. They identify themselves with humanity, and so humanity must identify itself with the Imperium. That is the undeniable truth: we cease to be human the moment we leave the high lords of Terra to their seat and go our own way.
A reasonable man would say that it is impossible to convert to humanity, that it is absurd to allow the possibility of renouncing one's own humanity and so would see clearly that such nationalist claims are ridiculous.
Yet such reasonableness does not seem to exist in the Imperial mindset and so there is no other way for these men than to equate human nature to everything else that comes with the Imperial point of view –they even refuse to acknowledge that there is such a thing as "an Imperial culture", as culture would imply non-absoluteness and diversity within the pool of humanity- and no other way for them than to charge any deflection from the norm with mutation and a deformity of human nature.
If we disagree with the burdens demanded of us, we are no longer human; if we adhere to a different opinion, we are no longer human; if we ask to negotiate and compromise aspects of governance, we are no longer human.
And this pervades every layer of society, from Terra, to the lowest bureaucrat who might be your neighbour (and, of course, everybody has its own interpretation of what a human –an Imperial- is, not in the least our governor).

I say no to such discrimination. I deny such oppression.  Indeed I cannot live in a system which adheres to such perverse, sick ideology. I would even claim that the Imperium, instead of uplifting, makes its citizens less than human. It dehumanises us. It makes the false assumption that equality can only come from uniformity and that uniformity brings with it a sense of belonging and thus loyalty.
The equality that we seek, however, is not in the end result. It is the equality of choice. Everybody must be allowed to make, in good conscience, his own choices. A human being is by my definition a free being. We are human because we can reason, because we can make a choice. The Imperium takes away our choice, it tells us what to think, what to feel, when to feel and how to react, all under the flag of humanity, of unity against the common enemy.
But humanity is not uniform, it is diverse, multi-cultural. Leave us, please, our choice. I am convinced that many will see the benefit and choose to work together, but not, I say, if that means abandoning our humanity.

*Party for Equality under Independence and for Righteousness by Liberation

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