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SYNOPSIS – The Cadian 18th Division has been annihilated, its advance broken like a wave by the Cult of the Eye Unblinking. As night falls on the now-silent battlefield, a lone Chimera by the name of Salvation rumbles amidst corpses and wreckage, looking for survivors… and answers. How did it all go so wrong, so fast? Is it still possible to salvage victory from the ashes of this inexplicable defeat?


PREFACE – The word count for this one got waaaay out of hand, as it usually does when I start writing without a clear plan. I was aiming initially for around 5,000 to 7,000 words, and ended up with almost 11,000. Still, I had a lot of fun penning this story, and there is no part I would delete (at least without being very sad about it). I hope you enjoy.



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The fog of war was quite literal that day. Fed by the exhaust gas of a thousand vehicles and the blast of countless bombs and grenades, it was yellow-brown in color, and so thick you could almost cut it with a knife. Between this, the disorderly movements of both Imperial soldiers and blue-robed Chaos cultists, and the conflicting orders buzzing through the comm system, Avram could not tell how the Petra Offensive was going. It was not his duty to know the big picture. His duty was only to deliver his payload of men to the front lines, then drive his battered Chimera Salvation back to base to fetch more.

“Where are we now?” asked Sergeant Mercer from Squad 106, stooping to peer at the ongoing battle through the vision slits.

“Warp take me if I know,” drawled Avram with a shrug, wiping sweat from his brow. “Or care, for that matter.”

The sergeant blinked, taken aback by his cavalier attitude. He was as brave as any Cadian, but it could take a soldier several decades to acquire Avram’s brand of jaded fatalism.

“But how far are we from Hive Petra?” insisted Mercer.

“Too far,” replied Avram. “We’re not reaching it today, not in this… weather. And I have more squads to carry, so now’s a good time to get off.”

The way ahead of him was so clogged with burning wreckage and collapsed earthworks that even the oversized dozer blade affixed at the front of his vehicle was barely sufficient to clear the way. Avram did not intend to get his vehicle stuck in the middle of a battlefield.

A hail of bullets pinged harmlessly against Salvation’s thick hull. The Chimera’s turret responded with a long burst of bolter fire, punctuated by the gunner’s enthusiastic stream of expletives at the heretics. At least one person in this dark, sweltering hunk of metal was having the time of her life.

Mercer snapped out of his indecision and turned to the nine soldiers of Squad 106. “Right, lads,” he said, “let’s have at ‘em.”

The men grabbed their lasguns and stood up, clumsily bumping into each other in the close confines of the transport. Not used to traveling in Chimeras, Avram thought with a snort as he brought his vehicle to a halt. He hoped for their sake that they were good at everything else. He did not envy anyone who had to leave Salvation’s relative safety.

“Rook?” he called his gunner. “Give Mercer and his lads some covering fire.”

“You got it, old man.”

The turret came alive again, spraying the nearest group of Tzeentch worshippers with a hail of explosive bullets. The quicker ones took cover; a couple did not and fell where they stood. Before the enemy could recover, the back doors of the Chimera flew open and the Cadians poured out, lobbing grenades at the cultists’ foxholes as they advanced. Avram turned his gaze away from the fight. Squad 106 was no longer his responsibility. His one concern, now, was to return safely behind friendly lines to bring in the next squad. He pressed the gas pedal and steered Salvation towards the base.

“Almost out of ammo,” reported Rook.

“You’re too trigger-happy, lass.”

Overhead, roars of jet engines and gunfire heralded the start of an aerial battle, hidden from view by the yellow fog. Avram focused on driving his Chimera between a wrecked Imperial tank and the burning remains of an enemy war machine that looked like a patchwork of several vehicles. The voices coming through the comm system sounded more frantic than earlier. Lots of yelling and swearing. It sounded like things had taken a turn for the worse for the Imperial Guard, but it was difficult to make out the details. His wide brow furrowing with an uncharacteristic level of worry, Avram changed the frequency three times, only to hear more of the same.

Up in the turret, Rook let out a curse. “Incoming!” she yelled. “Nine o’clock!”

Avram looked through the vision slits to his left and saw it tumble out of control from the smoke-filled skies — a Valkyrie-class craft of the Imperial Guard, wreathed in flames and missing most of a wing. The loser of the dogfight, about to slam into the Chimera. The driver threw himself to the floor, curled into a ball and braced for the impact.

The Emperor protects, he thought.


.

By the time the orange sun of Argos Secundus sank below the horizon, the Cadian 18th Division was all but annihilated.

The fog dissipated, and the moons shone on a battlefield turned to a graveyard. Tens of thousands of corpses from both sides littered the muddy ground for as far as the eye could see in every direction. Smoke and fire still rose from hundreds of wrecks; once in a while, an upturned vehicle went up in flames as its promethium tank ignited. Most of the Cult of the Eye Unblinking had moved on, chasing after the broken remnants of the Imperial forces, but a few roving bands of cultists remained behind to finish off the wounded and scavenge what they could. Every few minutes, desperate gunfire echoed in the distance as scattered clusters of Imperial soldiers gave one last fight. It never lasted long.

When Avram awoke, he lay on a stretcher under the stars. A young Cadian soldier with the white helmet of a combat medic was wrapping his forehead in clean bandages. The tag on his uniform identified him as Osiah Sinclair.

“Don’t move,” instructed the medic in a low voice, putting a hand on the Chimera driver’s chest to keep him lying down. “Almost done.”

Osiah cut the strip of gauze and fastened the loose end with a safety pin. Avram blearily propped himself up on one elbow to take in his surroundings.

His young gunner leaned lazily against the crashed Valkyrie, her bad leg stretched out in front of her for better circulation. Her face and uniform were smeared with soot and oil, and her short dark hair was disheveled, but she seemed unharmed. Avram breathed out in relief. He had outlived far too many gunners over the years, and had sworn to keep this one alive until his own death or retirement.

“Welcome back, old man,” said Rook, a smile playing on her lips. “I’m afraid the Emperor has denied us our rest. For now at least.”

Avram snorted. “I don’t look forward to martyrdom. Unlike you.” His words came out as a croak through his dry throat.

Rook’s teeth gleamed in the moonlight. “You misjudge me. I’d much rather make martyrs than become one.”

The sky lit up with yellow flashes of lasgun fire, too close to their position for comfort. Yells rang out. Then a blast; most likely a grenade. It all ended almost as soon as it began.

“A lot of martyrdom still happening out there,” murmured Osiah in a nervous tone. “We should find somewhere to hide and wait it out.”

“Let’s get back inside Salvation,” Avram urged.

“Yeah… About that…” Rook jerked her chin at something behind Avram. “I’ve got some bad news.”

Avram sat up with a grunt and turned. Salvation lay on her right side in the mud, looking even more battered than before.

“…Oh.” The driver paused. “Let’s see if we can get her upright again. We have some chains and pulleys…”

The gunner and the medic stared at him as if he had gone insane. “Just how hard did you hit your head?” asked Rook. “Upright or not, she’s not moving again.”

“You don’t know that,” said Avram defensively. “Been driving her for almost forty years, yet she keeps surprising me.”

“Hmm,” said Rook with open skepticism. “Well, at least the turret might still work. I’ll look for ammo, we’re almost out.” She picked up her crutch from the ground and loosened her old Adepta Sororitas bolt pistol in its holster. “The two of you take care of the chains.”

She limped with surprising agility through the obstacle course of debris and blast craters, looking for a vehicle to scavenge bolter rounds from. Soon she disappeared from sight beyond the wreck of the Valkyrie.

Avram struggled to his feet with some help from Osiah. “Thanks for the care. You the only survivor of your squad?”

Osiah nodded. “It happened so fast. One moment we were doing well. The next, I’d lost all my mates. I… uh… I played dead after I was shot in my body armor. I knew it was hopeless at that point,” he said, looking down.

Avram climbed inside the Chimera through the top hatch, now vertical like a window, and quickly located the emergency gear compartment under the driver’s seat. He retrieved two chains and two hand-cranked reels. By the Emperor’s grace, they were undamaged by the crash.

“I won’t be the one to judge you for saving your own skin, lad,” he said. “I’m a survivor at heart, myself. Careful what you say around Rook, though. Bit of a zealot, that one. Used to be in the Adepta Sororitas… The Sisters of Battle…”

The medic looked up in surprise. “Used to be? Don’t they serve for life?”

“Most do,” said Avram. While speaking, he hooked two chains to the Chimera’s upraised set of treads; one near the front of the vehicle and one near the rear. “Rook got… retired against her will. Her leg was badly messed up by a grenade during the defense of Daedalus, a couple years back. I helped evac her squad when they called in an artillery strike. Later, the Sister Superior offered me Rook as replacement for my dead gunner. She said a militant order had no use for a cripple.” Avram tugged on the chains experimentally, a wry smile on his lips. “I also think the girl was too crazy even for them, so they jumped at the first excuse to get rid of her.”

Osiah winced. “How’d she take it?”

“Pretty well. She’s a simple soul. She only lives to gun down heretics, and she can do that in the Imperial Guard too. The Sisters gave me a medal for my help in the evac. They’re the ones who named my Chimera Salvation. Even held a ceremony to bless her for her faithful service.”

Rook limped back to Salvation, two hefty ammo belts wrapped around her shoulders like gleaming brass scarves. “Hey, old man. Still think you can get that pile of junk up and running?”

“We’re about to find out.”

Even with the pulleys, it took Avram and Osiah quite a bit of effort to get Salvation to budge, but at last she tipped with an almost ponderous slowness and fell on her treads, splashing both men with blood-soaked mud. Avram opened the back doors of the vehicle and took place in his seat, while Rook climbed in her turret to load the heavy bolter with a fresh ammunition belt.

Avram’s hand hovered above the ignition lever. Here goes nothing, he thought.

He lowered the lever.

The engine coughed, then rumbled to life.

“Incredible,” whispered Osiah. “We still have comm?”

Avram turned on the comm system. Nothing. Not even static, just silence. Osiah’s face fell in disappointment. There would be no calling for rescue.

“Hey boss?” came Rook’s voice from the turret. “There’s some fighting up ahead. Not far.”

Indeed, lasgun fire was flashing in the night sky, somewhere beyond the remains of a column of Leman Russ tanks. Faint cries could be heard.

“Right,” said Avram, scratching his stubbly cheeks. He paused, thoughtful. “Let’s go help our lads,” he decided at last, sounding more resigned than anything else.

“Yessss.” Rook’s enthusiasm for a good scrape was downright unhealthy at times.

Osiah looked much less eager. “Are you really going to—” he began, then, seeing there was no point in arguing, sighed and held his tongue. He was of course free to walk out of the Chimera if he wanted no part in this, but clearly he valued his chances better if he stayed.

The engine roared and the Chimera surged forward, rolling unsentimentally over the bodies of both traitors and martyrs. The grizzled driver negotiated his way between tank wreckages and crushed any debris he could not go around. The arrival of Salvation would draw a lot of attention, and so much the better; any cultists who chose to target the vehicle would not be aiming at the vulnerable infantrymen still fighting the good fight out there.

“Rook? Make some noise. Let our brothers know the cavalry’s coming.”

“Aye, boss.”

The gunner shot several bolt rounds at the night sky in the beat of the first verse of The Commissar’s Daughter, an old bawdy song of the Cadian army. In response, someone unseen fired their lasgun in the beat of the next verse. Avram grinned, and floored the pedal. It did not take long for Salvation to run into frantic enemy fire, but the cultists’ weapons could do little but scratch her dark green paint some more.

Avram turned on his Chimera’s searchlight, flooding the battlefield with a stark white beam. The cultists were easy to spot in their blue robes and their jewels, which they seemed to believe drew the favor of their dark god Tzeentch. There were maybe fifteen of them, positioned in a half circle around the Imperial dugout that was evidently their target. All had turned to face the Chimera, squinting against the blinding light. Some of the heretics leapt out of the way or flattened themselves to the ground, expecting Salvation to keep rolling straight past them, but Avram surprised them; he slammed on the brakes and brought the armored vehicle to a halt just a few steps away from the nearest cultist. Lowering a lever, he activated the flamethrower that protruded above his dozer blade. The air filled with screams of agony and the chemical smell of promethium as a gout of fire belched forth from the muzzle, baking a large area of mud to ceramic. Rook sprayed the remaining cultists with explosive bullets and sent them diving for cover.

One cultist did not succumb to her comrades’ panic. Gaunt and grey-haired, eschewing conspicuous adornments in favor of plain blue robes and a single pendant around her neck, she climbed on top of a wrecked vehicle well out of range of Avram’s flamer. She pointed her scrawny hand at Salvation and began to move her lips, though her words were drowned out by the gunfire. Blue lightning crackled around her like a halo and her eyes began to glow orange, as if the inside of her head were suddenly filled with embers.

Avram cursed. “Psyker at two o’clock. Rook! Kill her! Kill her!”

The turret swiveled towards the sorceress of Chaos, who waved her hand in an almost contemptuous gesture just as the heavy bolter opened fire. Somehow she weathered the storm without flinching, as if the bullets went right through her. Her crown of lightning faded to nothing and her eyes glowed brighter; she appeared to be absorbing the energy that surrounded her. The light in her eyes coalesced into a single blinding beam, aimed straight at Salvation.

Time appeared to stand still. The whole world fell silent, and for a moment Avram thought he had gone deaf. The moment passed quickly, and when it did, the sorceress stared wide-eyed at the intact Chimera with a look of utter shock.

“…What just happened?” asked Osiah, just as puzzled as Avram.

“The Emperor protects, is what happened!” Rook said fiercely.

She unleashed a new and perhaps wastefully long hail of bullets. This time, the sorceress was not quick enough to protect herself — or perhaps Tzeentch had abandoned her. The heavy bolter tore her body to bloody chunks. The remaining cultists turned and ran, but did not go far before suffering their sorceress’s fate.

Silence returned on the wreckage-strewn battlefield. Even the sporadic combats in the distance seemed to have come to a lull. At last, there was movement at the bottom of the dugout, and three Cadian soldiers emerged in the spotlight — two men and one woman, each of them lightly wounded but mobile. The one in a sergeant’s uniform grinned from ear to ear as he waved at the Chimera. His smile slid right off his face when a bolt round hit the ground a hair’s breadth from his boots, splashing mud all over him. The soldiers stopped in their tracks and stared up in disbelief at Salvation’s turret.

“Rook!” Avram yelled over his shoulder. “What the Throne is wrong with you?”

“Ask them,” snarled Rook. “What’s this around their necks?”

The driver squinted at the three soldiers. Each wore several necklaces with a blue gem, similar to those worn by every Cultist of the Eye Unblinking. “Oh, come down, Rook,” he said, rubbing his temples. “They’re just trophies.”

“That’s right! Trophies!” stammered the sergeant, holding his hands up in the air. “We… my squad, that is… had a competition going. Most cultists killed in close quarters. We took their amulets to keep a tally.”

“You’re wearing the symbols of heretics,” said Rook. “Take them off at once. Then walk away with your hands where I can see them.”

“You take that gun off us, you bloody maniac,” yelled the female soldier. She was the biggest of the three survivors, and carried her oversized grenade launcher like a mere toy. “We didn’t hold up that long for rescue just to be left behind.”

“Oh, for the love of…” With the flick of a switch, Avram cut off the power of the turret. Rook had quite a few screws loose and may well be capable of mowing down allies. “Everybody calm down. Rook, these are our friends, and jewels aren’t going to turn them into daemons. You three, I’m sure you’re aware that taking trophies from Chaos cultists is forbidden.”

“Says who?” replied the woman. “Is a commissar is gonna pop up and discipline us?”

“No. But you’re not getting in my Salvation with these things on you.”

Neither side looked satisfied, which Avram took as a sign that it was the best possible compromise. The sergeant, the woman and the third soldier — named respectively Titus, Jaenice and Milo — left their pendants behind, but not before counting them to know who was winning the bet. They were then allowed inside the Chimera, where Osiah tended to their wounds. Avram drove away from the site in the direction that was the most clear of debris; there was no telling how many cultists were on their way to the dugout, drawn by the sound of gunfire.

“Still can’t figure out how the battle went wrong,” said Sergeant Titus, lighting up a lho-stick with trembling hands. “Our position was secure, we thought we could hold it for hours, but then things went to hell… damn near everywhere else. I saw a whole squad wiped out by our own artillery. Before we knew it, we were the only living Cadians in sight.”

Osiah looked troubled. “Sounds like the rest of my squad. Doing well one minute, getting butchered the next.”

“I think it was ‘em witches, like the one I just killed,” said Rook. She snatched a lho-stick from Titus’s pack without asking for permission, earning a half-hearted scowl from the sergeant. “They cursed us, or something.”

“Oh, come now,” scoffed Milo. “Our army was twenty thousand strong.”

“And we have psykers of our own,” said Jaenice. “They’re here to protect us.”

“Pfah. All psykers are in league with Chaos,” replied Rook. “Even our own.”

Avram was silent while the other occupants of the Chimera argued. He had been waging war for four decades, mostly against the servants of Chaos, yet had never heard of psykers from either side capable of anything of that magnitude. Then again… they were talking about Tzeentch worshippers here. The Warp favored them above all other Chaos cultists.

“You may be on to something, Rook,” he said at last. “We need to find out more.”

“No!” said Osiah. “We need to get back to safety.”

“Coward,” growled Rook.

Avram was a tad more tactful. “What safety, Osiah? The safety behind our lines? If we don’t know how they beat us, they’ll beat us again. Where will we be safe if we lose the war?”

Osiah pursed his lips. “At the very least, we should find a working comm system and get in touch with the base. They must know things we don’t.”

“Tried and failed,” Titus chimed in. “All channels are busy. Can’t get a word in edgewise.”

“Busy… Busy with what?” said Osiah. “Everyone’s dead.”

“Here, yes,” said Titus. “The storm’s moved on. But I gather our base is under attack right now. They got no time for stragglers like us.”

Avram swore softly. “When did you last try to call?”

“Maybe half an hour ago?”

“Time to try again, then.”




.

After a few minutes of driving, Avram came upon the vast wreck of a Baneblade super-heavy tank, bearing the fate-tempting name of Unstoppable Force. By the Emperor’s mercy, the tank’s unstable fusion engine had not exploded; if it had, there would be nothing here but a deep crater. Avram brought his Chimera to a stop and turned off the engine, pausing to see if any cultists would spring from the shadows. All seemed quiet, save for a few distant skirmishes. He counted to fifty, then stepped out of the vehicle, las pistol drawn. Titus and Jaenice followed him; the former holding a lasgun, the latter her grenade launcher. Many enemy bits and pieces — a few of which could even be charitably described as corpses or wrecks — littered the ground around the Baneblade. The mighty vehicle appeared to have given a valiant last fight before succumbing to sheer numbers.

The turret hatch had been annihilated by anti-tank grenades. The bodies of many cultists lay around it, most of them dead from stab wounds. Avram, Titus and Jaenice climbed down the ladder to the darkened bowels of the Unstoppable Force, where they found yet more slain cultists alongside the Imperial martyrs who had defended their fortress to their last breaths. In these narrow confines, it was impossible to advance without stepping on bodies or shoving them out of the way.

“Bad place to die,” murmured Titus.

“How so?” asked Avram.

“Any place where you can’t see the sky is a bad place to die.”

“Eh. If I had to choose where I die, I’d choose Salvation.”

The driver and the commander of the Unstoppable Force had died like Avram would want to. They still sat in their respective seats, their bodies bearing the stabs and slashes of fierce close combat. The corpse of a clawed mutant, its bulging muscles covered in ritualistic scars, took up most of the limited space behind the driver’s seat. Apparently both men had sustained lethal injuries from their fight with the creature before sitting down to die.

Not wishing to disturb the dead from their final resting place, Avram remained standing as he grabbed the microphone of the Baneblade’s comm system. He ran through the channels one by one, and as Titus had warned him, all was chatter, panic and confusion.

“…Repeat, we are losing air superiority! We need anti-aircraft support at once!”

“…Last call for Squad 81 to report to landing pad Bravo for evacuation. Please respond.”

“…No, for the last time, Colonel Hexter can’t be reached. Most likely dead.”

It took Avram a while to get a hold of someone. “This is Baneblade Unstoppable Force,” he said, hoping a super-heavy vehicle was important enough to get him an attentive ear amidst all this chaos. “Who am I speaking to?”

There was a pause at the other end of the line. “We thought we’d lost you during the advance on Hive Petra,” said a female voice. “This is Commander Tarah Morgen. Are you on your way to the space port?” She sounded harried, but there was a hint of hope in her tone.

“Um… no. Unstoppable Force isn’t going anywhere in that condition. We got a Chimera, though. Should we get to the space port?”

“Depends. Where are you?”

Avram rattled off a series of coordinates from memory.

Another pause. “That’s… hours from here,” said Commander Morgen at last. “You won’t reach us in time for planetary evac.”

“Figured,” sighed the driver. “I imagine rescue is out of the question?”

“In your current area… you most likely are the rescue. I imagine there are other survivors out there?”

“Yeah. Picked up a few.”

“Keep doing so, then. The brass wants to know what the Throne happened to the 18th. The rest of us are retreating to orbit and waiting for the Adeptus Astartes reinforcements, so try to survive until they arrive.”

Avram’s jaw dropped. The latest bit of news was not something any Imperial veteran, no matter how jaded, was used to hearing. “The Space Marines? They’re coming?”

“So the rumor goes. A whole company of them. I’m a bit out of the loop about the details, they don’t tell us much. In the meantime, you have your orders.”

“Yes, Commander,” said Avram. “Over.”

He turned off the comm system and drew his flask of Elysian amasec for two swigs. First a swig of sorrow for the long and dangerous night ahead of him, then a celebratory swig for the imminent arrival of the Emperor’s finest warriors. This war would be won, of that he was now confident, but whether he would make it through was far from sure.

“I’d like a drink, too,” wheezed one of the corpses.

Avram, Titus and Jaenice bumped into each other in surprise. Slumped in his seat, the driver of the Unstoppable Force was still hanging on to life, in spite of a grievous belly wound that had spilled some of his intestines onto his lap. His trembling hand was reaching for the flask in a pleading gesture. Avram wordlessly brought the flask to the dying man’s lips and made him drink. Most of the amasec dribbled down the man’s chin or was coughed up, but enough of it made its way down his throat to get a contented smile out of him.

“What’s your name?” asked Avram.

“Ignatius.”

“I’m Avram. We have a medic, we can get him for you…”

“That won’t help. Only the Emperor can save me now.” Ignatius paused. “I tried to will myself to die, but all I did was pass out.”

Titus offered Ignatius his las pistol, handle first. “You can take care of that yourself. Or I can do it for you, if you prefer.”

The man shook his head. “While I was sleeping, I thought of a better way to go.” A slow smile crept across his face. “I draw cultists to me with noise, then I make the engines go critical. ‘Course, you’ll have to get far before the big boom.”

“That sounds fine by me,” said Jaenice, smiling back.

“We could use someone to draw attention away from us,” Avram agreed. “Let’s do this. Can you give us a bit of a head start, Ignatius?”

“Of course.”

“Good.”

Avram gave Ignatius one last swig from his flask, then hurried out of the Unstoppable Force with Titus and Jaenice in tow.

“Anything?” asked Osiah in a hopeful tone upon their return.

“We need to leave,” said Avram curtly.

While Titus explained the situation to Osiah, Milo and Rook, Avram wove the Chimera through battlefield debris in the straightest possible line away from the Baneblade. He cared little about direction, only distance. After a minute or two, the loudspeakers of Unstoppable Force came alive, blaring the anthem of the Cadian army loud enough to be heard for kilometers. Rook raised binoculars to her eyes and surveyed the Baneblade from her position in the turret.

“Lots of fish taking the bait,” she reported in gleeful anticipation. “Like lambs to the slaughter.” Osiah winced visibly at the mixed metaphor.

Just as the anthem reached its glorious apotheosis, the Unstoppable Force blew herself up sky-high in a crack of thunder. By then, the servants of Tzeentch inside the blast radius must have numbered dozens.

“May you drink amasec with the Emperor, Ignatius,” murmured Titus. The others nodded in assent.

The meditative silence that followed was broken by Avram’s businesslike voice. “Eyes ahead, everyone. Night’s still young.”



.

All night long, Salvation roamed the graveyard of the 18th Division, striving — and failing — to live up to her name.

Skirmishes were now few and far between, for the number of Imperial survivors dwindled with every passing hour. Salvation would always be too late, finding only Cadian bodies mutilated in the way of the Cult of the Eye Unblinking — their eyelids cut off, so that they stared up lifelessly at the stars. Every time Avram and his party stepped out of the vehicle to look for survivors among the lidless bodies, Titus would take a moment to tear off a sleeve from each dead soldier’s uniform and wrap it around their eyes like a blindfold. “It seems proper,” he explained to Avram when the driver gave him a quizzical look.

Sometimes, cultists would ambush the Chimera upon her arrival on the site of a skirmish, their low-powered rifles never posing much of a threat. Rook would respond with the turret while Titus, Jaenice, Milo and Osiah manned the lasgun arrays to either side of the vehicle. What the servants of Chaos lacked in training or discipline, they made up for in fanaticism, and rarely did a fight end until all attackers were dead. Over the course of the night, Salvation and her crew did quite a bit more killing than saving. Every hour or so, they had to stop to resupply in ammunition or fuel from the wrecks of Imperial vehicles.

Shortly before the break of dawn, the sky filled with the buzzing sound of the Hell Blades of the Cult of the Eye Unblinking. Avram stopped his Chimera while a score of the small, Y-shaped aircraft flew above the battlefield on their way to Hive Petra. The implication was clear to all inside Salvation: the Imperial base no longer existed. They had nowhere to go back to.

“What now?” asked Milo in a hushed tone.

Avram’s jaw tightened. “Now? Only one way to go.” He pointed towards Hive Petra.

“Are you out of your bloody mind?” protested Osiah. “That’s the Cult’s fortress.”

“Exactly,” said Avram. “Most of them left to attack our base. Now they’ll be returning home. We’re caught in the middle. Right now, the closer to Hive Petra, the safer.”

“Until their ground forces catch up with us.”

“Then let’s hope the Space Marines arrive soon.”

It was not much of a plan, but it was the best anyone could come up with. Salvation at last turned towards the original destination of the 18th Division — the gleaming towers of Hive Petra. With some reluctance, Avram chose to ignore any skirmishes that broke out in the distance, for he no longer had time to zigzag in search of survivors. His sole purpose was to protect the people inside his vehicle.

By dawn, Salvation was nearing the edge of the battlefield, where the vanguard of the Imperial army had broken like a wave on the previous day. Hive Petra rose straight ahead behind high rockcrete walls, somehow menacing in its unnatural stillness and silence. The only movement came from the blue banners of the Tzeentchian cult flapping softly in the wind, and the bonfires of many different colors burning on the roofs of several towers.

A man was waiting for Salvation.

His bony frame dressed in an officer’s long coat, he sat on top of an overturned Hellhound light tank, smoking a lho-stick with a contemplative look. He was well into his middle age, and his head was bald and covered with purple tattoos. There was a nasty cut on his left cheek. As the Chimera approached, he threw his lho-stick away in a casual finger flick and gave the Imperial salute, showing neither joy nor surprise at the sight of rescue. Only when the vehicle had reached him did he slide down his perch, picking up an ornate brass cane from the ground.

“Aaah, here’s salvation… and not a moment too soon,” he said in a conversational tone, looking up at the turret. At first Avram wondered how the bald stranger knew the Chimera’s name, before realizing he must have meant salvation as a concept. “Lieutenant Zavier Tresk,” the man introduced himself. “Primaris psyker of the 9th Company.”

Rook let out a hiss. Like most of the very pious, she hated psykers with a burning passion. If Zavier noticed her hostility, he made no note of it.

“What were you doing up there in plain view, fool?” Avram asked Zavier. “Trying to get yourself shot?”

Zavier ignored the question. “Who’s the highest-ranking in this vehicle?”

“That would be Sergeant Titus,” said Avram. “Technically. We haven’t been working with a strict chain of command.”

“Well then,” said Zavier, “I guess that puts me in charge.” He jerked his thumb at the city. “We have a job to do, and not much time to do it. So let me in.”

“You’d better do some explainin’,” snapped Rook, “or we’ll leave you right here.”

A smile touched Zavier’s lips. “No, you won’t. But fine. I’ll explain as soon as my wound, here, gets some attention.”

Despite his instant dislike of the psyker, Avram opened the back door of the Chimera for him and instructed Osiah to care for the man’s injury. As soon as the medic touched the psyker’s wounded cheek, Zavier shrank back against a bulkhead, a look of shock on his face.

“You,” he said, pointing at Osiah. “You’re a Blank.”

Osiah’s mouth opened and closed. “A what, now?”

“Not a true Blank,” Zavier amended. “A near-Blank, shall we say. The opposite of a psyker. One with very little Warp presence.”

“And… what does that… mean?” asked Osiah, looking as if Zavier had just diagnosed him with a disease he had never heard of. “For me, that is?”

“Well, it does explain why you’re still alive when others are not,” said Zavier. A thin smile stretched his lips. “But I can’t let you touch me. It causes me great pain.”

“Better start making sense,” growled Rook impatiently. “Why’s he alive ‘cause of this?”

The psyker addressed Osiah instead of Rook. “You survived the probability distortion ritual. The… curse of bad luck, if you will. What made everything go wrong in a thousand ways, everywhere, all at once.”

Rook’s eyes widened. “Oh. I knew it was the Cult’s witchcraft.”

“It seems the Cult’s whole strategy hinged on this,” said Zavier, while Milo volunteered to provide first care to his cheek. “Lure our army out, cast the ritual, smash our entire force in one day. The cultists seem to be protected from the curse by the amulets they wear.”

Titus, Milo and Jaenice exchanged looks. “Well, we used to have quite a few of those amulets,” said Jaenice with a sidelong glance at Rook, who scowled back, “but someone insisted we get rid of them.”

“No matter, you don’t need them anymore,” said Zavier. “The curse lasted only an instant; that’s all it takes to turn the tide of battle. But they can cast it again. I believe they have some kind of psychic-amplifying device in Hive Petra. We need to go there and destroy it.”

The prospect of entering the enemy-controlled city pleased no one, least of all Osiah. “I hear the Space Marines are coming,” he said. “Can’t they take care of it?”

The psyker shook his head. “The Cult will cast the ritual again and shoot the Space Marines out of the sky. I’ve seen it in my visions. It’s all up to us.” He rapped his knuckles on a bulkhead. “This old thing will be fine. It seems resistant to the Warp.”

“Of course, she is,” sniffed Rook with towering smugness. “My own order blessed her in the Emperor’s name after the Daedalus campaign.”

Zavier looked quizzical. “Your order?”

“Order of the Bloody Rose,” Avram said. “Sisters of Battle.”

“Ah. Yes, that must explain it.”

Osiah cleared his throat. “Lieutenant. With or without the Emperor’s protection… how do you suggest we drive through an enemy city without fighting for every inch of ground?”

Zavier grew somber. “You’re not going to like it.”




.

“I don’t like it,” proclaimed Titus. “That’s got to be a sin against the Emperor.” He looked around for support, and settled on Rook. “You. You’re pious. Why aren’t you saying anything?”

Rook just shrugged as she sawed through a Cadian’s neck with her knife. “I’m sure the Emperor would understand.” She snapped the vertebrae under the boot of her good leg with a sickening crunch. The head rolled free. “The needs of the Imperium come first.”

“This is a vile desecration.”

“A body without a soul is nothing but meat.”

Titus snorted. “Easy, for a cripple, to dismiss the worth of the body.”

Rook’s eyes narrowed. “What did you call me?”

Avram reluctantly stepped in to defuse the situation. “I don’t like it either, Titus. But many more will die if we fail. If you’d rather not take part in this, make yourself useful and see if you can contact an officer. Tell them to delay the counter-attack until our job’s done.”

Titus nodded vigorously, happy for a good reason to walk away from this slaughterhouse, and left in search of an Imperial vehicle with a functioning comm system.

Lieutenant Zavier counted the small pile of severed Cadian heads. “Nine. That’s enough. The number nine is sacred to Tzeentch.”

Without the slightest hint of queasiness, the psyker set about methodically ripping off the heads’ eyelids with his long nails, careful to keep the eyeballs intact. The crew of Salvation then used chains and ropes to dangle the nine heads from the sides of the vehicle, like morbid fruits. By the time they were done, the morning sun was high in the sky and a distant rumble heralded the approach of the Cult’s vehicles, returning from battle to Hive Petra. Maneuvering through battlefield debris, they would probably take the better part of an hour to get there, but it was still too little time for comfort.

Sergeant Titus returned from his foray with a couple of bolter ammo belts he had picked up on the way back. “No luck,” he reported. “I found a working comm system, but all frequencies are dead. I think we’re the only Cadians left on the whole surface.”

Zavier looked grim, but unsurprised. “Then we’d better be quick. We’ll use the northern gate, it’s more lightly guarded.”

“How do you know that?” asked Rook suspiciously.

“Diviner,” said Zavier.

Rook scoffed. “Must be convenient. ‘My visions told me you must do as I say.’ You ever use that line to bed a woman?”

“That’ll do, Rook,” snapped Avram. His nerves were fraying at the edges from stress and weariness, and it was obvious he was not the only one. “We’re all tired. Most of us haven’t slept in over twenty-four hours. But we can’t fall apart just yet. The worst is still ahead.” He gestured at the Chimera. “Let’s go. Keep your minds busy with the job.”

He sat down in the driver’s seat, buckled up, and passed his bottle of amasec around in casual disregard for regulations against drinking on duty. Zavier voiced no objection. It was empty in mere instants, thanks mostly to Rook. Avram lowered the ignition lever and the engine of the Chimera came alive again. Soon they reached the edge of the battlefield, where mud, craters and debris gave way to grasslands dotted with stunted trees. From there Salvation made far better time as she swerved north around the quiet city.

As Zavier had predicted, the northern entrance was almost unguarded. A couple of bored-looking cultists made a show of halting Salvation for a couple of questions, though they did not seem to believe that anyone would be so reckless as to just drive into the fortress of the enemy. Lieutenant Zavier talked to them through the loudspeakers without even showing his face, using the annoyed voice of a waylaid authority figure. For good measure, he also criticized them for the amateurish way they held their rifles and their utter ineptitude at projecting an image of strength. The cultists looked suitably impressed with both Zavier’s tone and the nine heads dangling wide-eyed from the Chimera. Salvation passed the gates of Hive Petra without a shot fired.

Avram let out the breath he had been holding, and resisted the urge to floor the pedal. “Think you can find what we’re here for, Lieutenant?”

“Yes,” said Zavier. “See all the colored fires burning at the top of the towers? They redirect Warp streams towards a nexus. I just have to follow a stream and it’ll lead us there.” He moved as far away from Osiah as the small space inside the Chimera would allow. His brow wrinkled in concentration. “Take the street to your left.”

Hive Petra was just as quiet inside as outside. So high were the towers that, even at almost mid-day, sunlight never touched the streets. At ground level, the hive city was nothing like the polished chrome sculpture that it resembled from afar. Debris, broken glass, pockmarked walls and the remnants of barricades spoke of the fierce urban battles that had led to the fall of the planetary capital to the Cult of the Eye Unblinking, almost two years ago. The Cult seemed in no hurry to repair the damage. On those walls that still had smooth surfaces, hundreds of blue graffiti said only ‘OPEN YOUR EYES’, with the ‘o’ from ‘open’ in the shape of a wide-open eye.

“What is it with these people and eyes?” mumbled Rook.

Zavier’s directions through the labyrinthine streets eventually took Salvation to a steep, windowless grey pyramid with a flat roof. It was one of the lowest buildings of the city, perhaps a hundred meters or so in height. No bonfire burned and no banner flew at the top. Avram would never have believed it the most important place of Hive Petra. A rockcrete-walled passageway, wide enough for two Leman Russ tanks to ride abreast with room to spare, sloped downwards into the dark bowels of the building.

“No guards,” said Avram. “That normal?”

“I’m not sure,” said Zavier, frowning. “It does seem suspicious.”

“You’re a diviner, aren’t you?”

“Hard for me to divine much with a near-Blank around.” Zavier inclined his head towards Osiah, who seemed unsure whether to look apologetic or offended. “No matter. We have to get in regardless. Carry on.”

That did little to put Avram’s mind at peace, but he was not trained to question orders. He drove his Chimera down the slope, squinting against the darkness and not daring to use his spotlight. On both walls, on the ceiling and on the floor, strange runes began to glow blue. All of a sudden they flashed with a blinding light and went out. A lance of pain went through Avram’s head; and not only his, judging from the curses and moans of his passengers. Avram felt a wetness on his upper lip. He stopped his vehicle and looked over his shoulder. Everyone was bleeding from the nose, except Osiah, who seemed unaffected.

“Aaah… psychic bomb,” said Zavier in a tone of clinical interest. “Strong one, too. Explains why they didn’t bother with guards.”

“Should I be worried?” asked Avram.

The psyker shook his head. “Not anymore. Your Chimera’s blessings protected us. If it weren’t for them, our brains would have been turned to mush. Keep going.”

Eventually Salvation came to a large blast door, the kind against which bolter fire would have no appreciable effect. Avram was about to ask what to do next when the door opened by itself, sliding leftwards into the wall. Ahead of him was a large and dimly-lit room. The low ceiling, supported by wide square columns, was crisscrossed with exposed pipes and wires. The rockcrete floor was dotted with drains. The place apparently served as a parking area for the cult’s vehicles, but only a few of them were still there, most of them in various states of disrepair.

Telling himself that the door had opened thanks to a proximity detector, and definitely not because someone was watching them, Avram drove his Chimera forward into the parking area. The sound of his engines reverberating on the walls was far too loud to his taste.

“Take us there,” said Zavier, pointing at a small door bearing the pictogram of a staircase. “You and your gunner stay in the Chimera. The rest of us are taking care of the psychic amplifier.”

Avram stopped his vehicle in front of the door. Titus, Milo and Jaenice geared up; the first two with lasguns, the third with her grenade launcher. Zavier only had his bronze cane.

“Is… is it wise to take me, Lieutenant?” Osiah asked the psyker. “You say you have trouble using your powers when I’m near you.”

“I’ll take the lead,” said Zavier. “You’ll be at the back. It’ll be fine.”

“…I see.” The medic did not look happy to have his excuse to stay behind shot down.

Rook shot Osiah a scornful look and pleaded her own case with Zavier: “I can come, too. I’m handy with any gun you can name.”

The psyker shook his head. “We’ll have to climb hundreds of stairs, fast. You’ve got a bad leg. You stay,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “The others, save Osiah, never go more than five paces away from me. And trust me.”

“Cold day in the Warp when I trust a psyker for protection,” drawled Rook, slouching morosely in the turret seat.

Zavier did not seem offended. “I thought it’d be a cold day in the Warp when seven men and women from the Imperial Guard would get to save a whole company of Space Marines… yet that’s just what we’ll try to do.” His hand closed around the handle of the door to the staircase. “And the two of you,” he added over his shoulder, addressing both Avram and Rook, “don’t sit around drinking and smoking. You may see some excitement of your own.”

Avram arched an eyebrow. “Premonition, or just a general warning?”

“Yes,” said Zavier, pushing the door and heading up the staircase beyond.




.

Though the city looked empty, the tower was anything but.

The assault team fought their way up floor by floor, facing dozens upon dozens of cultists on their own turf. Outnumbered, outgunned and exhausted in unfamiliar territory, they never should have stood a chance. Yet against impossible odds, the five soldiers of the Imperial Guard carved their way through all resistance with a brutal efficiency, leaving a great trail of blue-robed bodies behind them. None of their shots went to waste. None of the cultists’ return fire seemed to find its mark. The attackers were as untouchable as ghosts, as swift and accurate as a bolt of lightning, as implacable as death itself.

At the front of the team strode Lieutenant Zavier, eyes blazing with the fires of the Warp, arcane words spilling out of his mouth. And those who walked near him knew exactly where to point their guns and when to pull the trigger. They knew when to dodge or duck, and they knew how to do it with minimal effort. They knew when to take cover from a grenade, and when to throw it back at the enemy. They knew when and where cultists lay in ambush. Like Zavier did, they saw with crystal clarity what would happen in the next second, and that single second of foresight was all it took to turn weary soldiers into avatars of war.

Osiah followed one floor behind, outside the reach of Zavier’s powers. Sometimes he paused to check a body’s vitals and make sure it would not rise up again. His caution was almost always superfluous; for every ten shots they fired, Titus, Jaenice and Milo claimed nine lives.

“Unbelievable,” whispered Milo, in awe at his twenty-third kill.

“Don’t start thinking you’re invincible,” warned Zavier, pointing at the bandaged cut on his own cheek. “You can predict the earthquake, but you can’t escape it.”

The truth of the psyker’s metaphor became evident halfway up the tower, when Sergeant Titus fell under a barrage of gunfire from six cultists. He saw death coming for him, but had neither the room nor the time to dodge. He expired in a windowless hallway, without seeing the sky again. A bad place to die, in his own words, but at least he did not linger very long. The rest of the assault team grabbed his leftover ammunition and pressed forward without delay. Mourning would come later, if they lived through this.

Near the top of the tower, the assault team began to encounter psykers of the Cult of the Eye Unblinking. All appeared to be trainees and novices, too green to take part in the Cult’s major battles. Multicolored lightning arced and strange shapes moved at the edge of onlookers’ vision as Zavier met each of them in psychic duels. It never lasted long. These Chaos sorcerers controlled the Warp via instinct and raw emotion, and were no match for the iron discipline and long training of an Imperial battle psyker.

Jaenice was the next one to fall. She took longer than Titus to bleed out and was still alive when Osiah reached her. His hopes of saving her evaporated when he saw the bullet hole in her lung, and all he could do was inject her a painkiller to ease her passing. With her rasping last breaths, she taught him how to rig several grenades to detonate at the same time, should the psychic amplifier — whatever it looked like — prove too large to destroy with just one charge.

Osiah was still kneeling by Jaenice, two floors down, when Zavier kicked in the door leading to the roof. He and Milo emerged from the dimly lit staircase into the noon sun, wind whipping in their faces. Clamors and the roar of engines rose from the streets below; clearly the Tzeentchian forces had returned to Hive Petra while Zavier and the others were fighting their way up the tower. At the center of the roof was a low, broad, nine-sided altar that appeared to have been carved in a single piece from a dark blue crystal. Only one person was there; a tall, hooded man in a plain and unadorned blue robe. He leaned on the railing, gazing down at the returning Chaos army, and did not immediately turn towards the newcomers.

Milo hesitated, perhaps wondering if there was something amiss. It seemed almost too easy. Throwing his doubts aside, he shouldered his lasgun and fired six times at the stranger’s back from less than twenty pace away. All of his shots went wide. The hooded man snorted, whipped out a las pistol, and fired once over his shoulder. By all rights, such a shot did not have a chance in ten of hitting the mark, yet it struck Milo right between the eyes. The soldier was dead before he hit the ground.

The man turned to face Zavier. He had a wrinkled, sallow face with a weak chin, almost no lips, and a nose as long and crooked as a raptor’s beak. His amber eyes had no lids. His head appeared to be entirely hairless, lacking even eyebrows. He looked half man and half vulture.

Zavier felt a sudden surge in the Warp; so strong that he reeled from it, as if struck by a mighty gale. It came from all the bonfires burning on the rooftops of Hive Petra. A song rose from the altar; a dissonant psychic chorus that was heard not with the ears, but with the mind. Zavier called the currents of the Warp to himself for protection, but they writhed out of his grasp like eels, gathering instead around the altar before being absorbed by the robed man.

The man — the sorcerer — fired twice at Zavier with his las pistol. He aimed not for the head, but for the knees. Zavier never saw the shots coming, and did not have a chance to escape them. He collapsed, the smell of his own burning flesh filling his nostrils.

“Fellow diviner,” said the sorcerer in a calm, mocking tone. “You did not think you could take me by surprise… did you?”

Zavier gritted his teeth against the pain and looked up at the robed man. “You wanted me to reach you, I take it.”

“You? Not especially,” said the sorcerer in a dismissive tone. “I’m impressed you even made it that far. No, I want Salvation, the Chimera that the Warp cannot touch. You’ve already delivered it to me. My men must have taken control of it by now.”

If the primaris psyker was dismayed or worried, it did not show in his expression. “May I ask what you need it for?”

“You may,” said the sorcerer. “But I see no reason to answer you.” He cocked his head to one side, a motion that made him look even more birdlike than he already did. “You killed all of my apprentices. That’s inconvenient for us both. My altar is fueled by psyker souls, you see, much like the throne of the false Emperor. So I must enlist you to take the place of the dead. Our time’s running out…”

He seized the primaris psyker by the front of his shirt and slammed him on the top of the altar with surprising strength for one so scrawny. He then drew a small knife of ice-blue glass and methodically began to destroy each of the nine tethers that tied Zavier’s psychic soul to his body. He put out both of Zavier’s eyes, severing the Tethers of Sight. He cut out Zavier’s tongue, severing the Tether of Speech. He stabbed both of Zavier’s palms, severing the Tethers of Deeds. He castrated Zavier, severing the Tether of Desire. He sliced open Zavier’s stomach, severing the Tether of Nourishment.

Writhing and screaming in pain, Zavier knew what came next: the Tether of Thought, located in the brain. He prayed that the sorcerer’s aim would be off and that the knife would kill him prematurely, causing the Ritual of Severing to fail. No such luck. The blade went in and out of the psyker’s left temple with surgical precision, leaving him alive.

The sorcerer raised his bloody knife to stab Zavier’s heart and sever the final tether; the Tether of Life. The knife never came down. Something the size of an apple slammed into his back, rocking his body with a shockwave that almost liquefied his organs. He looked down at his chest, opened his robe, and saw the tip of an unexploded krak grenade protruding between his shattered ribs. He turned around unsteadily, reaching in vain for Warp currents that had gone quiet. Before him stood a pale-faced Osiah, holding Jaenice’s grenade launcher. To a psyker’s senses, the young man was like a void in human form; a tear in the very fabric of the Warp.

“You,” wheezed the sorcerer in disbelief. “I did not… predict you.”

Lying on the altar, Zavier let out a raspy laugh, blood bubbling out of his mouth from his severed tongue.

The krak grenade popped, and the sorcerer’s chest burst open with a hole large enough to see the sky behind him.



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At the bottom of the staircase, Avram and Rook sat in the Chimera in tense silence, listening to the sounds of gunfire receding as Zavier’s assault team fought their way up the tower. Eventually it all dwindled away to nothing. Against Zavier’s final advice, Avram lit up two lho-sticks and passed one to his gunner. He was used to waiting while others did the fighting; it was part of the job as a driver. Over time he had learned to remain both relaxed and ready. The same could not be said of Rook, who fidgeted in the turret seat for twenty minutes straight.

“Girl, calm down,” said Avram, annoyed.

“I haaaaaate waiting,” she complained petulantly. “If there’s trouble happening, I’d rather be right where the trouble is.”

All the ceiling lights went out, plunging the parking area into pitch darkness.

“Careful what you wish for,” grunted Avram.

He looked down at the several screens on the dashboard and set the cameras in infrared mode. There was nothing at first, but he did not have to wait long to see movement. A dozen human shapes, appearing orange on the screen, filed out of the same entrance Salvation had used on the way in. Each carried a rifle. The surefooted way in which they moved in the dark suggested they wore night vision goggles.

“Eleven hostiles at seven o’clock,” Avram informed Rook.

The turret swiveled in a creaking noise of old machinery. On the screen, the newcomers halted in obvious apprehension.

“I’ll shine light in their eyes,” said Avram. “Three. Two. One.”

The turret’s searchlight tore through the dark room. The blue-robed cultists cried out and took off their night vision goggles, shielding their eyes from the white-blue beam. Avram turned off the light. Without missing a beat, Rook fired the heavy bolter at the darkness, aiming at the afterimage of the cultists printed on her eyes. The flash of each shot painted a split-second-long tableau of confusion and death, soon replaced by the next. Under this low ceiling, the sound of the bolter was loud enough to split eardrums, making Avram glad for the thick steel separating him from the outside.

The bolter went quiet and utter darkness returned.

“Is that all? That’s… disappointing,” said Rook, already forgetting Avram’s earlier warning about tempting fate.

A single gunshot rang out from the darkness, and Avram knew from the sound of broken glass that Salvation had just lost her searchlight. He looked down at the screen and saw it filling with a score of cultists… and counting. Learning from the mistakes of the first group, they spread out around the room in small teams of three or four, using columns and parked vehicles for cover as they shouldered high-powered rifles.

Luckily Salvation still had a light source remaining: her flamethrower.

Avram’s fingers wrapped around the gear stick. “Let’s brighten this room.”



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With an almost solemn slowness, Osiah sank the needle in Lieutenant Zavier’s arm and flooded his veins with enough painkiller to kill an adult grox. The psyker could no longer speak, but he managed a grateful smile that lingered on his lips after life left him. He knew all along he would not survive this day, Osiah realized. And he also knew he would need me to finish the job. Oh, and speaking of the job…

Osiah rigged his six remaining krak grenades as Jaenice had told him and placed them around the altar. He stepped away, put his hands on his ears and waited for the explosion. When the altar split apart, the bonfires on every rooftop burned higher and brighter for an instant, then began to die out as the web of Warp currents unraveled. Though Osiah neither saw nor felt it, the psychic backlash reverberated across the entire city. The psykers of the Cult of the Eye Unblinking never knew what hit them. Most died outright. Others stood vacant-eyed and drooling, alive only in the most technical sense. A few went insane; collapsing in a gale of laughter, sprinting in a random direction until they ran into a wall, or going on a fratricidal killing spree.

The Cult was in disarray by the time the Space Marine drop pods began to dot the sky, incandescent from re-entry friction. Osiah counted ten of them. They aimed for the rooftops, as the streets were too narrow for a safe landing. The cult’s anti-aircraft guns opened fire, but in the absence of the curse of bad luck that had taken out the 18th Division, most shots did not even come close. Noticing that one of the drop pods was about to land on his head, Osiah wisely retreated from the roof and went down two floors, to sit beside the late Jaenice.

The entire building shook when the drop pod landed. A minute later, ten hulking Space Marines in black and silver power armor clambered down the stairs, holding boltguns and plasma guns. They bore the sigil of a white mechanical hand inside of a cog. The one who appeared to be the leader turned his helmeted head towards Osiah. For a moment he seemed to contemplate the notion of shooting him just to be on the safe side, but when the medic made no threatening move, the Space Marine lowered his gun.

“Guardsman,” he said in a scornful tone. “What are you doing here?”

“You won’t believe me,” said Osiah with a weak smile, “but I saved your whole company.”

The Space Marine snorted. “Not bloody likely. Just stay out of the way, alright? The real warriors have a job to do.” He and his men filed down the stairs.

Osiah rolled his eyes. Do the dirty work, bleed, save the day, get no glory, he thought. The story of the Imperial Guard. He rested his head against Jaenice’s shoulder and tried to get some well-deserved sleep.



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The room was all fire, smoke and noise. Most of the Cult’s parked vehicles were burning, providing illumination where a minute earlier there was only darkness. Blood spattered every wall and pooled on the floor, where it flowed towards the drains. The columns were half eaten by bullet holes. Blue-robed bodies piled up, to the point where the rockcrete underneath had all but disappeared. And yet the cultists kept coming and coming from several entrances; clearly the bulk of their forces had returned from the front lines. Whenever he could, Avram ran them over to save ammunition, or herded several of them into corners where he could slay many with a single gout of fire. Rook followed Avram’s example with uncharacteristic restraint, only firing her bolter in short bursts and when she had several targets lined up.

Salvation was beginning to take serious damage from the cultists’ anti-vehicle rifles. Her left tread was damaged, making her movements choppy. Three of her cameras were down, giving Avram several blind spots. Her steering was less responsive than a minute earlier. Her fuel tanks had been perforated at least twice, and only their self-sealing design had kept all the promethium from leaking out. Her most vital systems were still functional, however, and the most damaging hits seemed accidental. Avram suspected that the cultists were trying to capture the Chimera for their own use by killing her crew, though he could not fathom why they would sacrifice so many men to achieve this. By the Emperor’s grace, they did not seem to know where exactly the driver and the gunner sat, and most of their shots were only wild guesses.

“Rook?” called Avram. “If I die before you do, drop a krak grenade on the dashboard. We can’t let them capture Salvation.”

“You got it, old man.” She fired at one of the last intact vehicles in the room, blowing up its fuel tank and killing the two cultists using it as cover. “But neither of us is gonna die, you hear me? Help is on the way.”

Avram used one hand to steer Salvation left, and the other to press against his blood-soaked side. Up in the turret, Rook could not see his wound, and he had not yet burdened her with that knowledge. “Rook, listen,” he said. “Even if we assume the Space Marines are landing right now, there’s no way we can hold out long enough.”

Rook was silent for a moment. Her bolter was not. “But… what if we can?”

From the way she said it, Avram could tell she was grinning. That, in turn, made him smile. “Yes indeed,” he conceded. “What if we can? We won’t know until we do it.”

“Told you before… I’d rather make martyrs than become one.” Rook emphasized the point by mowing down four cultists. “I seem to be better at it, too.”

“Chances are we’ll get to do both.”

“Eh, I can live with that.”

A new wave of cultists rushed inside the room, some of them carrying heavy weapons; man-portable lascannons, missile launchers, and more. Clearly they had given up on capturing the Chimera in one piece. Survival seemed even less likely.

Salvation pivoted to face them, and whatever fate awaited her.






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My printer hates me right now. I just transferred this all onto WordPad and printed it off. I was actually wondering when you'd post again. I re-read Silver Wings a couple days ago and was hoping you'd return... And my god, what a glorious return it was!

Thanks a lot, Benny! That means a lot to me.

Unfortunately, stories of this length greatly limit the number of readers. In the future, I'll probably follow Ezra's example with my own thread of flash-fiction.

Now this is the sort of lengt I like in a story revolving around such an enviourment as an APC, nice pacing and overall feel and taste so to speak

Yes! This is awesome! Love the whole concept. I know what you mean about long reads putting off readers. Its hard to strike the right balance. But you know, when you're doing it well the story just pulls me along and I don't even notice the size of the thing till I've hit the bottom of the page.

Some great themes at play; inside/outside, light/dark, the efficacy of the blessings/curses.

Good dialogue too, nice blend of natural conversation and the occasional pulpy line for punch. Very neatly wrapped up too, a full beginning to end tale, with a good pace and very enjoyable characters. Especially Salvation herself.

I'd really like to see a whole host of Salvation stories, spanning the centuries of her service in countless environments and with diverse crews and missions. Not that I didn't enjoy Avram and Rook, I really did but making your main character a transport opens up some unique scope for sequels.

Great work Guardsmen, truly. The length and pace as well as the detail and characters pull you along and entrap you in the tale. I'm hungry for more.