Fresh-Faced New User
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This story I am working on is a combo of WH40k and the Hunger Games, so apologies to both GW and Suzanne Collins. Enjoy.
Rueprimesis hive buzzed with activity as the Founding festival began.
The creation of a new regiment for the Astra Militarum was a heady time for the Mellarkon system, as it's proud sons and daughters would enter the fires of another of the Imperium's wars.
The 774th Mellarkon Sharpshooters, "The Sagittarans", would carry on the ten thousand year legacy of it's forebears, Petraeus Mellark reflected as he stood at the massive rose window at the front of the gubernatorial palace.
His own daughter was to lead this new regiment, Colonel Katrina Mellark.
Petraeus was proud yet sorrowful at losing her to the Imperial Guard, he would've gone in her place but he'd already led a regiment in his time and is now heir to the Lord Governor Cephas, his own father.
"M'lord?"
Petraeus turned,
"Yes."
He drawled as he turned, not a little surprised at the sight of a gold chased servitor, it's head bowed before him.
"You are wanted in the Great Hall, Lord Petraeus."
It buzzed, waiting expectantly for a response from it's master.
"Tell them I'm on my way."
He said curtly and then followed the servitor out into the corridor towards an elevator down to the Great Hall level.
Petraeus was dressed in the black and red dress uniform of his former regiment, decked out in gold frogging, his cap tucked under his arm. The unit patch on his right shoulder showed a golden bird, akin to a ancient bird from Terra, surrounded by a laurel wreath and the legend "Mellarkon 768. For Terra. For the Emperor."
He bowed curtly to the old man lolling on a great throne in the back of the hall, eyes glazed over as if from taken drugs, Cephas Mellark the 474th of the name, Imperial Governor of Mellarkon, lounged backwards into his massive seat and slowly nodded to his son. He drooled into his long white beard,
"A glorious day for my granddaughter and the wider Imperium, is it not? She'll be looking forward to the wars she'll win in our name and that of the God Emperor."
Petraeus looked to his father, who just laughed.
"I'm sure I've won victories for the Emperor beyond peer, even almost to the same of the Macharian Crusades."
The younger man snapped, but then he relaxed as his daughter arrived in the Great Hall.
Katrina Mellark stood to attention as she faced her father and grandfather. Slim, dark haired and grey eyed, her hair tucked in a simple plait under her black and red Munitorum issued peaked cap, dressed in the black, red and gold uniform of the 774th.
"Father, Grandfather. Wish me well as I go on to glory in the Emperor's name."
She said stoutly, her eyes shining and her thoughts whirling as to when and where she and her regiment would be sent next on the path her ancestors blazed through the Imperium.
Two other people were in the hall alongside the Mellark patriarch and his family. A grizzled man with a shock of blonde hair and dressed in the black, red and gold livery of the Mellark family and its regiments, and a makeup laden and extravagantly dressed woman. Rumor told that these two were clones, something frowned upon by the Imperium but indulged in by many noble houses throughout Imperial Space. No one knew who these two were, only that they were known simply as Abernathy and Trinket.
Abernathy now stepped forward,
"The main navigator from the fleet has arrived, my lords, my lady."
He said this in a rough voice, almost slurring but not quite. Fumes of alcohol dripped from his clothing. The Governor and his family sniffed and turned up their noses at the smell.
"God Emperor! Have you been drinking again, Abernathy? Don't lie, the stink is rolling off you like fog."
Petraeus grumbled and his father nodded.
"The only pleasure I get is serving you, my lord, as your butler. But I take a drink when I can."
Abernathy said dryly. Cephas chuckled,
"Enough. You can go, Abernathy. See to the feast we will have for this... navigator. Trinket! Stay with me, I need your counsel as my amanuensis."
"Of course, my lord." Trinket replied in a musical voice which buzzed slightly, a sure sign of extensive augmetic work underneath the outrageous wig and makeup.
She then leant forward to whisper into the Governor's ear while Petraeus and Katrina stood awkwardly next to each other, one nodded to the other in silence. Father and daughter shared a somewhat strained relationship, occasioned by Petraeus's time offworld as a Astra Militarum officer and too many governesses to Katrina's taste.
"My lords and lady. Her excellency Lady Lucia Baird de Grey, Chief Navigator of the flagship Mellarkon's Glory and representative of the Navis Nobilite. With her I have Canoness Blasilla of the Adepta Sororitas Order of Our Martyed Lady."
Abernathy reappeared through the doors at the end of the hall, with him were two women. One tall and willowly, dressed in the familiar blue robes of a house of Imperial Navigators, the eye and aquila of the Emperor stamped on a bandanna around her forehead. The other, short yet muscular, draped in the red and black habit of the Order to which she belonged, a set of rosary beads around her neck and her white hair shorn to her shoulders, an augmetic arm and hand grasping a gold and black iron force hammer.
They both bowed to Cephas, the Navigator grudging so.
"Your Excellency, thank you for this opportunity to bring honour to Mellarkon and it's people."
Lady de Grey spoke, her tuneful voice ringing out and stopping the whispering going on between the Governor and his servant.
Cephas turned his red eyes to the Navigator and gave a perfunctory nod,
"Welcome to Mellarkon, the both of you. It is indeed an honour to see both Ministorum and Navis Nobilite work together, even though you have your differences of opinion of course."
He slurred, slumping down in his throne yet again.
The two women winced at this, but the canoness recovered first,
"All for the Throne, my lord. I'm proud to be a part of the Sisters of Battle, for St. Katherine's sake."
She answered stoutly, a brief smile flickering across her scarred features before disappearing into a familiar look of both awareness of her surroundings and piety that came with being a member of the Ecclesiarchy.
Cephas smiled at her words,
"Well said for a member of the Adepta Sororitas. Come, what are the plans for our glorious entry into the Sabbat Worlds Crusade."
The Navigator raised an eyebrow,
"Our psykers have made it clear that two demons will follow this regiment into the war, as they have dogged this very system's regiments ever since the beginning. Should we discuss such matters so openly when their agents are afoot perhaps in this very palace?"
Governor Mellark waved away her concern with a fluttering hand,
"Only my son, granddaughter, Abernathy and Trinket know anything about our entry into Macaroth's Crusade, secrecy is practically guaranteed in my palace and amongst my court."
"My lord, you are aware of those demons then?"
The canoness asked, bemused at the laconic air Cephas was putting on over the obvious drug stupor he was in.
"They've been thorns in my family's side for millenia. They were human during Old Night, my own investigators within Ordo Malleus tell me. Their names as humans are lost to history but we call them Niavek and Almass. One is Nurgelite, the other is Tzeentchian, from what I've been told."
Cephas answered her, looking uncomfortable at sharing this knowledge with outsiders.
"Niavek, Demon Prince of Nurgle. Two forms, one an elderly man in full beard, dressed as a priest of the Imperial Cult and adorned with a white rose. The other, a great greenish-white lion covered in blood pustules underneath its fur. Additional names include Poisonspitter and Bloody Mouth, true name unknown."
Trinket repeated back in a metallic voice, her eyes closed.
"Enough!"
The Governor thundered somewhat feebly from within his throne, de Gray raised a hand in agreement,
"Indeed, my lord. I have contacts within the Inquistion that have kept me up to date with these demons as soon as I was assigned to Mellarkon's Glory. As long as they are kept in the warp and don't manifest in realspace, the happier I'll be."
"I hope not."
Katrina mumbled to herself as the serious business began.
Later, at the feast in honour of their two guests, Katrina was regaled by tales of actions taken by the company of Battle Sisters that Canoness Blasilla was in command of, battles on shrine worlds associated with Saint Sabbat herself over the past 45 years, even since the inception of the Crusade by Old Slaydo.
In turn Katrina told tales of her officer training and the training of her regiment, specialising in assassination and long range fire.
An Archmagos Latier sat nearby, politely listening in as he drank a quart of mechanical fluid to keep his fantastically designed metallic body, swathed in the rust red robes of the Mechanicus, lubricated.
"Omnissah forgive me, my ladies. I couldn't help but notice the sacred technology used by both of your respective units. Allow me to give you a detailed breakdown."
He said in an obviously augmetic voice, and he proceeded to tell them about the various weapons in use by both the Adepta Sororitas and the Astra Militarum, only stopping to take a swig of fluid.
"With respect, archmagos. We know a lot of this already but I welcome your superior insight."
Katrina responded politely, the canoness nodding in agreement alongside her.
The archmagos nodded his silver head, his eyes dark glasses in a skull like mask.
"Of course, my lady. Forgive me, I blather on when excited. Are you happy to go to war at your age?"
"Yes, your reverence. I am 19, old enough to take on such an important post as this."
The young Colonel answered, surprised at her response.
Gallus Hawthorne, heir to the Hawthorne Estate and hunting concern in the system, sat next to her. A young man with aspirations of greatness, even governorship of his own planet one day. Dark haired and grey eyed, tall and strong in his own quiet way. He smiled at Katrina fleetingly, she was never quite sure about him, rumour suggested that he'd had a crush on her since they'd been children at the Ecclesiarchy school together.
Beside him, Alice O'Dair, daughter of the Governor of the nearby water world, Finnicus, laughed softly. Red haired and green eyed with a chiseled jaw, not conventually pretty. She had been to the same school together, Alice's mother had died in childbirth with her and Gallus' mater had died of a wasting disease brought by Nurgelite cultists. Katrina's mother was still alive but pined away at the Cathedral Shrine of Saints Katriana and Cephas, the most important figures of the Imperial Church on Mellarkon other than the God Emperor Himself.
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