Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Authors notes: I am not much of a writer. I try but I had this concept in my head while enjoying a beer with a couple of friends. I would love feedback as this is my first fan fiction post ever. This is just the first part of a multi-part story. If people enjoy it I will post the second part.



My name is Maritix Vitras. I’m a loyal citizen of the Imperium of Man and follower of the god Emperor who sits on the Golden Throne of holy Terra. This used to mean very little to me. Just a long title for an insignificant man, one of trillions. That is, until I met a bartender named Higgs. This man changed my life’s direction forever. His words instilled more in me than anything a commissar has ever barked.

I walked into The Busty Jenn after work. It wasn’t my normal watering hole. Too close to the refinery worker hab blocks. I had good reason to duck in. The sludge rain was thick over Demotis’s industrial sector and it was shelter. Closer than my regular haunt. I should have turned around the moment I walked into the smoke filled room. A local Arbite was standing above the lifeless lumps of two local gangers like a successful big game hunter. By the look of their clothing and visible tattoos, they were both Scum Dogs. These two dogs had bitten off more of the Arbite’s shotgun than they could chew by the looks of it. I could still smell the acrid gun smoke in the air when I made up my mind that the worst had already happened. At this point, who was going to act up? Not me, that’s for damn sure, and the dirty refinery workers already seemed to be shuffling back to their drinks, conversations and cards.

I found an empty seat at the end of the bar furthest from the Arbite. As I looked over the back wall behind the bar, a battered lasgun with the name Jenn scrawled crudely along the butt of the stock caught my eye. It clearly had seen better days, but for that matter, the bartender had as well. He stood at least two meters tall and built like an ox. The cigar didn’t even fall from his mouth when he yelled at the bar girl to get those “mutts” off his floor and into the street. As he turned toward me, I could see half the left side of his skull and the left eye had been replaced with augmetics.

“What will it be?” he barked, ashes falling on to the bar from is well-chewed cigar.


“Amsec” I stammered back. He grinned at me. Maybe it was due to his naturally joyful personality, but for some reason I could only think it was due to the fact he could see I was scared of him. He was everything to be scared of, unlike the two corpse being dragged out into the alley. He was a fighter and a killer as clear as I wasn’t. Now don’t get me wrong, in my more wild days I hung with a rowdy bunch of scum. But this guy had a look of trained death. And when he turned for the bottle of cheap amsec I could see the Aquila tattooed on his arm, the mark of a man in the guard.

Quickly, he pulled a glass from below the counter and spun it in one hand. I had seen a man who claimed to be a bounty hunter but was likely just another gang lowlife do something similar with a pistol once while bragging to a girl how he had killed a man. That display didn’t seem as impressive as the one with the glass strangely enough. After the glass hit the counter, it was filled with a haze of cigar smoke and cheap booze. “Enjoy” he said with a bit to much cheer for a man missing face his face. I smiled halfheartedly at him and lifted my glass.

From my vantage point at the bar, I could do nothing but look at Jenn taking her spot over cheap booze and chipped glasses, like a queen reining over her court. Her synthetic wood stock was warn in spots I could only imagine would be due to heavy use and the sling still had clips in its pouches. She was ready to fight still. I could only imagine killing unruly gangers and bashing the occasional drunk didn’t quiet quench her thirst. It’s only at this time did I break from my dreams of conquest on alien worlds with Jenn under my arms that I seen him looking at me from behind the bar.
“She isn’t for sale.” He said, as if this response has been given many times before. What would I, a clerk, need with a lasgun? A stub pistol, yeah maybe, to keep me safe from scum dogs but not a lasgun and, let’s face it, I would rather use the money to buy a new great coat to keep the sludge rain off my clothes. “I, I wasn’t appraising, more admiring it… Sir.” I managed to croak out.

"Admire away, boy-o, but I aint selling her. Rather sell the bar than her.” I thought wickedly to myself, why even muse about selling the “Busty Jenn” it being such a fine upstanding place.


“It has seen some scrapes clearly." This time I spoke with some confidence, clearly the weapon has been into battle.


“Aye, the bitch has been to war. She killed her a heretic or two, that is for sure.” He had a gleam in his eye like one the Arbite had standing over the two gangers.

“It was 25 years ago since I seen combat during the Tello 4 Cleansing.”


I knew this campaign it was close to here. I had friends who went into the PDF and then into the guard. They died toward the end. One I can remember running into outside my normal haunt. He was on the streets begging. I tried to talk to him, but when I got face to face with him, I could see the madness in his eyes. He wasn’t the same man who 5 year earlier set off to fight for the Emperor. I got off easy, I guess. No battles or glory for me. I got an internship as a clerk. Desk with lots of data slates and all the headaches of a cognator implant.

When I snapped out of my thoughts the barkeep was staring at me with his one good eye, the other mechanical always stared unblinking. “Are you listening boy-o or dreaming of naked ladies?”

This set me back a moment, but I replied quickly and this time excited to hear what he had to say “I am listening, sir."

"Good. Listen up, boy-o. I am no hero. I met men without faces in trenches, filled with the dead during that campaign that can be called heroes, if heroes are what we call killers.”

“I was a member of the PDF when I was shipped off to fight for the imperium. I had never seen more than riots after the food shortages when they gave me my Guardsmen kit. I wore the green uniform of Demotis 301st infantry army with pride. Hell, boy-o, we all thought we were heroes. We marched off that lander and mustered into our combat groups like well trained soldiers, or so we thought.” His voice gained a somber note. "After our first battle and half of us were gone, we had completely different thoughts. I took a mean shot to the face, that’s why I’m so pretty now." He smiled sinisterly. “That bastard came at me, half crazed and frothing at the mouth and with half the skin on his face peeled off in a pattern that hurt the eyes to behold. Before this, boy-o, we had been shooting the scum our Commissar told us were traitors to mankind from afar.”


At the mention of Commissar, I allowed myself a brief moment to remember the holo vid I had seen of one of those grim faced men executing a “Traitor to mankind." The hair on the back of my neck stood up at the vivid memory from all those years ago.

As I listened, he went on. "They said they worshipped some blood god or something. All I know is they went berserk and often broke their own lines to charge our emplacements and the drums and chanting all night, I guess to make some men go crazy. That worked sometimes. Anyway, when the traitorous scum got close and I could see his mutilated face, I froze and he fired. When I woke up two weeks later, I was promoted to Sargent and had some metal replacing half my face.” He again grinned creepily. "It was a month in the rear with the gear, boy-o, learning to shoot with this new eye and another training myself to lead and a bunch of boys to follow.”

"After two months, the powers that be at the Departmento Munitorum decided we couldn’t hold back the heretical tide much longer. They sent for reinforcements from outside our sector. The word is the High Lord General wanted to win at all costs. I hadn’t seen them yet, but I heard they were as scary as the freaks we had been fighting. During the siege of the second largest hive, I had first laid eyes on the “heroes” of the imperium. I had commanded my squad after getting garbled vox commands to charge the walls. As I left the trench ahead of my men, the shell hit. It blew me 30 meters away and incinerated my entire squad. When I opened my eyes, a soldier clothed in a blue grey greatcoat and a skull faced rebreather stood above me. He had his las pistol drawn and was pointing it at my face. His voice could be heard, empty as a tomb, but with the clarity and cant of any imperial preacher I have heard reciting the rites of the Emperor’s Mercy. When he saw my eyes open, he said clearly and with no joy in his voice, “this one still lives to fight." Then he turned and walked to another soldier lying on the battlefield. A line of servitors followed him. One of those half dead approached me and over the crack of gunfire and the slap of shells hitting the battle field, the vox replacing its lower jaw said “For the Emperor! For Krieg!” as it handed me Jenn.

I took the old girl in my hand and turned to the battlements and walls of the hive, now broken in several spots due to the constant bombardment of earth shakers and colossus. I could see the bunches of soldiers mustered around the gaps in the walls, fighting and winning. Those men were not dressed in the Demotis 301st infantry army greens, but in what I now know is the blue grey of the 110th Death Korps of Krieg mobile infantry and city pacification forces.” He took his eyes off Jenn and looked at me with a grim face while he spoke. "They call them the Emperors punishment, boy-o, and for good reason.”

After the fall of that hive, I expected prisoners. Other than what I seen some important guy I was told was an Inquisitor take and the ones tortured in front of the troops to boost moral, none were ever taken. We left the hive with men hanging from the parts battlements and walls that still stood, all 140 miles worth. What I didn’t understand was they weren’t even the traitors. They were the survivors of the hive. The Commissars said that “it should stand as a warning” but to whom? No one was left alive to see it.

I went back to my command group after losing my squad. I received 19 lashes for the loss of my squad, one for each man and 10 for the Emperor. I took 'em cause I deserved 'em. I was issued a new squad. This squad was all veterans leftover from squads who had suffered the fates close to mine, or worse. I made a decision after watching those killers in rebeathers fight, if I wanted to survive I need to have faith like them, and I needed to fight as hard as they did.

Good job. Keep writing things.

Read it all. Liked it. Good job! You should continue it

Good stuff mate. You may not claim to be a writer, but you can tell a story.

Thank you for giving me feedback. I am currently polishing up the next part of the story.

Ill keep an eye out for it mate.