This is my background for my Black Crusade character, a mortal renegade. I'm a little excited (okay, a lot) about Black Crusade. I'm a pretty die-hard Imperial Guard player, all glory for the Emperor, die standing and all that jazz so I really worked hard on the background to resolve with myself how a loyal guardsman turns from the Imperium. I've checked it against a few people to make sure it's not unrealistic trash. Hope you enjoy:
I am the Jilted.
Once, a long time ago, I was Ailyia Branson, though for a very long time I didn’t think of myself as anything other than Sergeant Branson but that came later.
When I was fifteen, the Minitorum came to Parron Quintus in the Callixus Sector to raise a regiment and I signed up, marrying myself to the Imperium and the Emperor, rather than marrying Eroc Maynson who worked at the lumber mill down the road and picked his nose when he thought noone was looking.
So I left behind the vast forests culled in the name of luxury for the well-to-do, and sprawling amasec breweries, watching them grow smaller and smaller as the shuttle drove itself higher and higher into the upper atmosphere. With the diminishing view I left behind my childhood and my innocence.
The Parron XXIX were deployed all over the Koronus Expanse, against separatists, recidivists and the occasional ork warband. It was half way through my first encounter with an ork warband that in my youthful fear of the hulking green monsters and my greater fear of being a coward on the battlefield that I took up the dodgy quartermaster’s offer to give me a stimm implant on the sly, under the skin where the commissars would never notice. There have been many times I’ve regretted the artificial aid to my fighting prowess but many more where it’s been my second best friend on the battlefield.
We were the Parron Red Foxes and a more cunning group of bastards you never hope to meet in a theatre of war.
I fought for regiment, I fought for Parron Quintus, I fought for honour, but above all I fought for my collective husband, the Emperor and Imperium.
By eighteen, I had made sergeant. I was still young perhaps and not long into my career in the Guard but felt I’d been fighting my whole life. I had already faced many foes, seen many wonders, and a great deal more horrors.
I practised endlessly with the chainsword granted to me upon my promotion to sergeant and the training served me well. Our platoon regularly charged head on into the enemy, my squad barely a step behind the lieutenant and his men. Meanwhile, the other platoons used our distraction to sneak around the back, as it were. Whilst we fought in bloody close quarters they would cut off supply lines, detonate enemy ordinance and ambush reinforcements. Second platoon, or the Fox’s Teeth as we became known, were no simple distraction however. We did more than our part. We decimated those we faced in close combat. Never a battle did I enter that my chainsword didn’t become so drenched in enemy blood that my squad named the venerable weapon Red.
Two years after I became Sergeant Ailyia Branson, we were deployed against recidivists in a dim, isolated patch of the Koronus Expanse. This planet, this entire planet, had chosen to divorce themselves of my loving husband. Such an affront, such treachery, could not go unpunished.
The recidivists we fought were well organised and fought hard. We weren’t expecting that. And they weren’t really recidivist. Intelligence had let us down. Sure, their daily life was in villages that seemed to have no more tech than a grox cart but their soldiers were armed in flak and those guns sure as warp weren’t made of wood.
Either way, in the past, those we had battled who had seen fit to throw their loyalties to the wind had been primitive and pathetic uprisings with little in the way of organisation, supplies or reinforcements. If anything of worth I have ever learned from the blustering sermons of the Ecclesiarch, it is never underestimate your foe.
They fought hard and our losses were heavy but they were no match for the Hammer of the Emperor. We would have had them to rights and the rebels crushed before Maillix Prime’s winter had the reinforcements not stopped arriving six months into the campaign. Three months after that, supplies stopped coming, too. It wasn’t long after that what stores we did have ran out. It was then that I truly came to appreciate my blades. Even without a modicum of promethium, they are fearsome weapons but a gun of any size without ammunition is just a club.
We fought as best we could, thinking at first that a warp storm or some such disturbance was preventing the Imperial ships reaching us but our psykers and astropaths reported none. Their pleas for help went unanswered.
Captain Drayce and the lieutenants tried to hold the regiment together. But then Drayce’s regimental command squad were ambushed by the rebels. Tales at the time told that their attackers were screaming berserkers, frothing at the mouth with fire coming from their eyes and blood on their lips. I thought then that these reports were gross embellishments fuelled by fever and starvation. These days I suspect some truth to the matter of what was seen.
Regardless of the manner of their deaths, the regimental command was butchered to a man.
Lieutenant Ross of fourth platoon, who had witnessed the deaths but was too far away to lend aid, devolved into madness over the course of the following week. She took her pistol and one of her three remaining bolt shells and in a moment of lucidity, decorated the inside of her tent with what had been her brains.
Lieutenant Mace took those of us that remained of the Fox’s Teeth up into the hills to fight a war of guerrilla tactics until help arrived. So few remained of third platoon that they folded into the fourth under the command of third’s lieutenant who took them to the mountains to wage a similar campaign.
First platoon unanimously agreed to make a final, frontal charge, sacrificing themselves so that we could make good our escape from under the noses of the separatists.
We made it to the hills and made our homes in the caves we found there whilst first platoon was mercilessly slaughtered. Once there however there was in truth little we could do of effect.
With the might of the Imperium no longer a real threat and only a ragtag band of guardsmen left to deal with, the organisation of the rebel army fell apart and the inhabitants of the almost feral, primitive world of Mallix Prime went quickly back to their ordinary lives of growing food, raising stock, building cottages, squabbling in petty inter-village wars and general, mundane, low tech life.
Mace tried to keep us motivated and strong in our faith. He did an admirable job for some months until he took fever. Quietly, he simply didn’t wake one morning and passed into the Emperor’s light. Or so I felt at the time.
Winter was fast approaching. The nights became bitter chill but we didn’t dare light fires, so instead huddled together in our caves like stupid, wild beasts.
I tried to keep myself as clean as possible but in truth I was a filthy as an underhive whore. Our only water source was a stream that trickled through the back of the caves so washing was done in pitch black darkness with water so cold it numbed your skin as soon as touch it. My hair became a matted mess and I took to keeping it short with my combat knife, chopping off chunks, a habit I have kept up to this day.
Food was another matter. It’s true that we came from an agriworld but there were precious few grape vines in the hills of Mallix Prime and lumber tress aren’t generally known for being edible. Food came in ration packs and paste tubes. We didn’t know the first thing about gutting and skinning a carcass. Eventually we figured it out and would cook a brace of the large burrowing rodents we found over low fires in the dead of night, well away from our caves. Mostly we subsisted on nuts and berries we found that were edible. Determining which ones were and weren’t edible resulted in some stomach sickness and fevers, through no fatalities. We were lucky in that regard.
Still, we were malnourished and starving, what we collectively ate every day not enough to keep a child healthy, let alone a squad of guardsmen. For that’s all we were now; little more than a squad. Thirteen souls left from an entire platoon, perhaps from an entire regiment.
I wanted to keep everyone together but necessity makes for hard decisions and I sent Private Griston, the hardiest and fittest of us, to the mountains to see how fourth platoon were faring and if, hope against hope, they’d managed to make contact with the Imperium.
He returned two weeks later, much the worst for wear and reported he could find no trace of our comrades at all. Nothing.
Winter was on the doorstep and I knew none of our ragtag band would survive it. We barely had enough to eat day to day, let alone to put aside for the snow season, and no way to keep warm. I, their leader, barely had strength enough to lift Red and we were reduced to eating moss and lichen.
Then one day my corporal returned from a foraging trip with a packet wrapped in white cloth in his hands. He brought it directly to me and said he’d found it at the foot of the hill, not far from the heretics’ village. Inside was glorious, wondrous, amazing food. We all sat around and stared at the packet. Why would they do this? We came to their planet with the view of crushing their designs and bringing them back under the heel of the Imperium. It escaped noone that as weak as we were, a little poison now would wipe us all out. The last remaining vestiges of the Imperium on this Emperor-forsaken planet removed in one fell swoop. Private Brown, or ‘Sticky’ as he was affectionately known, volunteered to test the food. I looked into his eyes and saw that he would rather die an agonising death in a day than live another week in these hills. I gave permission. He took a very little of everything: a little bread, a little meat, a little fruit, a little vegetable. His eyes lit up as he tasted the last but restrained himself, only taking the morsel he required to ensure that the food was free from sabotage.
We waited and hour. Sticky was fine. We waited another hour and still he failed to fall over into convulsing spasms. Smiling for the first time in over six months, I gave the order to dig in. The next morning I told Corporal Oversea to take the empty white cloth and leave it where he had found it.
Over the next few weeks we would find these packets of food every three or four days at the base of the hills in various locations.
We were blessed with the luck of a warm day, so we were all sitting in the sun outside our caves, soaking our frail, cold bones with perhaps the last warmth before a cruel, cold winter. We should have had sentries posted and made at least some attempt at concealment. Discipline was failing at a fast rate but as I looked at what was left of my men, I let it be. Let them enjoy such simple pleasures whilst they could; they’d earned it. I am glad now that I was so lax. Had we maintained standard Guard operating procedure for a camp behind enemy lines, things would have been much different, and not for the better.
Sticky stretched his emaciated muscles and said he was going to see if there were any new packets. He’d only gone a few metres down the hill when he squealed and shook his hand vigorously. He swore fiercely, clutching his hand and fell over, clean unconscious. At first I thought he was dead.
We all made to run to him but before we could reach him, two old ladies appeared from out of the forest and knelt over him. One felt his forehead whilst the other tied a tight tourniquet about the wrist of his affected hand. In their haste to reach Sticky, they had dropped white packets.
As they looked up and saw a squad of Imperial Guardsmen bearing down on them, they paused in their ministrations. So did we. Noone quite knew what to do, whilst Sticky lay dying. I thank the Powers that Be that the older of the women had the presence of mind to break the tableaux.
“Ee an arp ‘m. Boo ee must umm wiv us,” she said briskly, looking at us. “Icky, Noh much temm. Spiddy.” At this last she made a creepy crawly motion with her hand.
We can help him. But he must come with us. Quickly. Not much time. Spider. It was Gothic but heavily accented in their local tongues.
I was torn by indecision. Accepting aid and comfort from the enemy in the form of the food packets was enough for a commissar to put a bolt through my head with no questions asked. This however, this would damn us all forever; giving an Imperial Guardsman into the hands of heretics, no matter the circumstances. But when it came right down to it, what had the Imperium done other than turn us into its soldiers and abandon us without the training we needed to have even a chance of survival? Slowly I nodded my head.
“Come!” the old woman said briskly. “You all come,” she motioned to encompass the whole squad. I was finding it easier to punch through her accent now. She rolled her eyes when we hesitated. “We’re two old women. We can’t carry him,” then she eyed us. “And if any of you want to live to see spring, you’d better come with us, anyway.”
I looked at the boys, once so strong and proud, now starved, cold and broken, living day to day for six months and reduced to eating lichen off rocks.
I made the decision.
“Yes. Yes, we’ll come.”
Errolson kicked up a stink. He called us all heretics. He was right of course. Told us that there was no way we could leave with these people, or allow them to administer to Sticky. I told him that the Imperium had abandoned us, that the Emperor had doomed us all to this fate, and that as their sergeant it was up to me to see to it that my men survived, and if that meant accepting the aid of supposed rebels, then so be it.
With those words I sealed our fate. In the eyes of the Imperium I had damned us all. To me though it was salvation and as the words left my lips I felt a sense of liberation I had never before experienced.
I told Errolson that he was welcome to stay in the caves and freeze to death, if starvation didn’t claim him first. He turned on his heel and marched back to the caves as I knew he would. I opened the same offer to the rest of the squad, promising no recourse to anyone else who chose to stay. None of them did. Instead they carefully picked up Sticky and carried him down the hill and to the village, following the bustling pair of women.
We were now down to an even dozen. Sticky pulled through, though it was a near thing for a few days. The villagers provided us with food and clothing and above all, the one thing that really sold me to these simple folk – hot water to bathe in. The women tutted over my scraggly, chopped hair but I waved them away. I’d grown used to it and continued trimming it with the edge of my combat blade.
It was with surprising rapidity that ordinary, everyday village life became our ordinary, everyday life. All they asked, and indeed expected of us in return was that we help them with their daily tasks. They showed great patience in teaching us how to erect fences, patch roofs, to always check and crack the ice to the animals’ water sources.
What really struck me, and certainly impressed me most, was their religion. They would offer simple little prayers as they went about their business, without pomp, without great ceremony, without fear or fanatical, life-consuming devotion. If you slaughtered a grox you sent a prayer to Nurl that what was not used would return to the earth to feed more grox. As you bled the beast, you offered its blood to Kho. Before you went to battle, (for the villages were part of larger dominions who went to war against each other), the warriors prayed to Onn for a strong arm, or to Slass for a swift arm. When a child recovered from illness, you thanked Gley for sparing them. Before making a pot to give as a wedding present, you prayed to Anesha that it might be worthy. Brewers gave thanks to Zeen and village leaders who formed the council sent prayers to Enthen that their decisions would be wise and cunning. It was a simple, unassuming religion that did not impact on daily life.
In the same way it is second nature to any Imperial citizen to recite a litany when cleaning their weapon or driving a vehicle, so too did we find ourselves reciting the offerings of the villagers.
The biggest difference between the gods of these simple folk and the God Emperor was that sometimes the villagers had their prayers answered. The answers would not be in the same way praying in a foxhole for deliverance, only to look up and see a squad of power-armoured astartes descending to the battlefield that requires pure faith to believe that the coincidence is a miracle. No, there would be a slight shift to the air, an actinic tang as though lightening had struck nearby or a pysker expressing their curse and briefly, for the merest fraction of a second you could feel the eyes of a god looking this way. Not always, but sometimes the simple devotions were rewarded. A man who slept with his wife and his wife’s sister the night before a battle whilst whispering the name of Slass may find his prowess the next day the envy of all on the killing field as he almost danced around his opponents. Another man might sacrifice a slave taken prisoner in a previous fight, offering the blood to Onn, stripping the skull of flesh and polishing it. Such a one might find the list of fatalities at his hands higher than any other the next day as he butchered his way across the field of war.
These practises didn’t disgust me, or even worry me. After all, weren’t thousands of Guard and Imperial citizens sacrificed in wars every day in the name of the Emperor’s Imperium? No, these things didn’t disturb me, even the sacrifice of human life. Though I would not admit it at the time, the first time I witnessed such a sacrifice I felt a stirring, hidden deep within me, and longed to taste the prisoner’s blood on my lips, on my tongue, filling my mouth.
The villagers accepted us forgotten wastrels into their lives and our strength slowly began to return as they fed us hot, thick soups over the long, dark winter. Come the spring I had energy enough to train again with Red. My men and I fought alongside the villagers in their domain wars; their allies becoming our allies and came to despise their enemies as did they. Armed and armoured as we were, we gained a reputation as being fearsome and effective warriors. I was pleased to see that a number of women would also join the fray and hold their own quite admirably.
As I walked across yet another field of victory, I saw shining in the sun, metal teeth just visible from beneath a corpse. I rolled the corpse over and confirmed my suspicion. A chainsword. I knew who it had belonged to – Lieutenant Greenway of third platoon. I knew, looking upon the blade, without a shadow of a doubt that we were the only survivors of the Parron XXIX Regiment. And all that survival had taken was to turn against the Imperium and embrace everything we had spent our entire lives fighting against.
I took the blade for myself and trained with both weapons until I could wield two as easily as one and double my capacity for slaughter. With Red and Crimson in hand, the blood flowed freely.
Curiously, I noticed on my new blade that the aquila had been heavily scratched and scuffed and over the top placed the spiked circle we saw everywhere. I shivered as I ran my fingertips over it and sensed a great, untapped potential. It felt ‘right’. I took Red to the village forge and filed away the aquila, fashioned a circle-star of my own and affixed it to my old friend. As I did so, I felt a sensation of power and possibility I still have difficulty trying to describe, even now.
The boys very quickly settled into village life, even the company’s pysker and social outcast, Private Carrick. I had never been overly fond of the annoying little man. He had always acted too desperate and eager to please, with the social awareness of an intoxicated ogryn. But this village had two pyskers. Two! In one village! They weren’t sanctioned, of course. But they did take Carrick in hand. It was an amazing thing to watch the weedy, pathetic little man grow in confidence, become more relaxed around people and hold his head high. The village’s rogue psykers taught him a few interesting tricks the Imperium certainly wouldn’t have and all was going well until he accidentally exploded his brain and set the grox shed on fire. Oh well, such things happen amongst their kind.
It did mean we were now eleven. Errolson’s remains had been found after the spring thaw. I shed no tears for the man who had split from his brothers and sister in arms.
As contented as my boys were in our basic village life, fighting petty battles and spreading grox manure on garden beds, we weren’t completely ignorant to what was happening in the Koronus Expanse. Every so often rogues, rebels, castaways, and fugitives would pass through the village in groups of no more than three, sometimes just a single individual skulking quietly in. They would receive aid and succour, fresh clothes, a bath, drinking water, food, repairs to their arms and armour, staying no more than two or three days, and sometimes mere hours, before just as quietly moving on.
Some of these wayfarers I managed to speak to, finding out the fate of worlds enslaved by the Imperium or wrested from their rule, the activities of famous generals or the deployment of large scale forces.
I lusted for battle, for true battle, to taste blood and fear, adrenalin and sweat upon my lips once again with a true and worthy cause driving me on. I could not find it in my heart for that cause to be the Emperor’s though, He who had left me lost and alone. I wanted to hurt Him instead, my erstwhile husband.
One day, much to my awe and surprise, a space marine wandered into the village.
I watched in awe from a distance as the giant in his cracked, mustard yellow power armour strode to the town’s blacksmith, an unhealthy hissing coming from his giant boots. Surely, I thought, there was no way these people had the skills to repair something so sophisticated as power armour so badly in need of extensive repairs. To my surprise the blacksmith and the astartes entered the forge and some minutes later the genetically engineered giant left the forge wearing a voluminous robe. I tried not to stare as I cleaned muck from the gutters of the village’s communal hall but saw him enter the prime councillor’s cottage, ducking low and entering crabwise so as not to damage the doorframe.
I had only seen the Emperor’s Angels of Death twice before, both times from a distance. Being a lowly sergeant I had never cause to actually speak to one. They had always been a fearsome sight to lift the flagging morale of us squishies, but I never felt the same sense of menace coming off them as I did this newcomer, and he assuredly was no Emperor’s Angel.
Two hours later, I was down by the creek, washing the bedding of the old woman who had saved Sticky’s life when the traitor marine walked down to me. I instantly felt my will crumble before his overwhelming presence but remembered myself enough to bundle the sheet into the basket before I fumbled and dropped it in the fast flowing water.
“I wish to talk to you,” he said through a voice that sounded like he’d smoked an entire packet of lho sticks one after the other.
“To me, my lord?” I asked, surprised, instantly cursing myself for sounding like a star struck simpleton meeting a famous actor from a favourite holodrama. The astartes chuckled like he was choking on his own lungs.
“Yes, to you. Come and sit.” We went and sat on rocks beneath a tall shade tree. This close he stank like an infected wound. However after clearing battlefields of corpses that had lain in warm rain for three weeks, quietly rotting away, I was able to get used to his unique aroma and stop my gorge rising.
“I understand that you are the sergeant of the Imperial Guard living in this village.” I shook my head. His brow furrowed in irritation. “Then I have been misled and misinformed.” He made to rise.
“No, my lord! I am sorry for the confusion. I meant I was their sergeant, but they are free men now and I have no hold over them, nor right to issue orders to them or compel them. They still look to me though, come to me for guidance and follow my advice. I guess old habits die hard.”
“It is clear to me that you are as much their leader now as you were then, only now you lead them because they need you to, and you are the right person to do so, not simply because the Imperium told them that they have to follow you under pain of death. As such, I have much to discuss with you.”
We sat and he spoke for a very long time. He told me how the many, little gods and spirits the people of this world gave thanks to were all aspects of just four gods, the True Gods of the universe. He spoke of how the Imperium tried so vehemently to suppress this knowledge as understanding leads to acceptance, and acceptance of the existence of the four Great Gods was the first step towards Enlightenment on the Path of Glory. But the Imperium didn’t want this known, the Ecclesiarchy insisting that the Emperor was the only god, He went on to say how foolish that was because the Emperor was not a god but a man, powerful, to be sure, but a man, nonetheless. The Inquisition would destroy entire worlds to prevent the knowledge becoming widespread so they could continue trying to enslave the entirety of humanity to their yoke in the name of a mortal husk. Horus and those who stood with him knew the truth and should be lauded as heroes instead of decried as traitors. If anything, those who fought for the Emperor during the Great Heresy were the traitors as they betrayed mankind in their lust for power. The followers of Chaos sought to bring the truth to humanity and free them from the shackles of the Imperium. He explained how this world was a refuge. Its inhabitants refused to live under the strictures of Imperial rule so that they portrayed a front of mild recidivists and separatists, giving up a life of ease and convenience to be free of Imperial rule but put forward very little obvious threat to Terra’s administration. When the administration did turn its eyes to Mallix, he would lead his astartes and stage attacks and incursions on other worlds so as to draw the Navy and Guard away.
“So you’re the reason we were left to die here?” I asked, startled by the revelation.
“No, not at all. Certainly we attacked the hive world of Berrim close to here, spreading death and dissent amongst the populace to draw their attention elsewhere, but we never prevented them from retrieving you from this world. It was not us that had such little regard for life that we left an entire regiment of forces abandoned on an enemy planet.”
He went on to describe how individuals or small bands of fugitives who needed to disappear for a while could receive aid and supplies enough from the locals of this world to survive for a while in the caves, tunnels and huts hidden in the wilderness. Mallix was known mongst those dedicated to the Path of Glory in these parts as a safe place to cease to exist for a time in the eyes of the Imperium. He told me how my squad and I were risking the sanctuary that Mallix offered with our prowess on the battlefield in petty local wars. He explained how that if we kept drawing attention, then it wouldn’t be the Guard sent to try and subdue separatists but the Imperium would send the dæmon hunters with the full force of the Inquisition and Mallix would be rent asunder. He said that we needed to make a choice, either as a group or as individuals: hang up our lasguns and fully integrate into this primitive life, or go off world and take the fight to the Imperium, either alone or with other like-minded people.
“Tell as much to your men as you think that they can handle, and none of it to any you think may betray this world or those on the Path of Glory.”
“Though they aren’t guardsmen anymore, these boys will still follow me to the warp and back if I asked it of them. There was only one who I couldn’t trust, and he passed into the Emperor’s Li–” I just barely stopped myself. “He died alone in the winter.” I finished brusquely. The astartes chuckled his choking, wet laugh.
“It seems old habits die hard indeed, for all of us. Be warned though, there are many places where to finish uttering that sentence would mean that you would never utter another.”
“My Lord, why….. why are you being to nice to me, trying to help us? A year ago we would have gladly sold our lives just to try and inconvenience you with nothing but your destruction as our goal.”
“Do not get me wrong, a year ago I would have slain you and barely noticed, and even now if you are in the way of my quarry though we fight on the same side of the field, I would cut you down without thinking to get you from my path. However I am not one to cut off my nose to spite my face. Our cause is now a common one, though the followers of Chaos often do not agree and certainly fight amongst themselves, this is not one of those situations. Intelligence allows for a change of heart and mind and I believe in second chances – so long as those second chances are made with the correct choices! You have seen enlightenment and I feel that you will bring much inconvenience to the Imperium if you are to live, though I cannot see the path you will walk. That is something you will have to choose for yourself. The decisions we make speak much about us, far more than the success or failure of our actions. Never before have you been able to make choices, it is perhaps the greatest gift that Chaos has to offer those constrained by the Imperium, and ones that follow the wisdom of the Ruinous Powers take for granted. Use that gift wisely.”
“Yes, my lord. Ruinous Powers?”
“Ruin is not a necessarily negative thing, trooper. Ruin, chaos, death, leads to rebuilding, evolution and life.”
“I think I understand, my lord.”
“One last thing before I go to attend to other business – what is your name, soldier?”
“The Jilted, my lord.” I tried to hold his red, puffy eyes and hide my embarrassment. It seemed so fitting at the time but to this powerful and probably ancient warrior, it sounded a bit silly. Instead though he looked at me a moment then gave a grunt of approval. He made to rise.
“My lord, if I may, how are you known?”
“Brother Captain Tuberculus,” he replied and grinned, revealing rotted teeth stained with blood both old and dark and bright and fresh.
The Jilted.
I had not been Sergeant Ailya Branson for some time now. Not long after we came down out of the hills, I was helping to fix a plough for the spring planting. It was still unusual for us to see wood used for such practical applications in place of ferrocrete and plasteel instead of being reserved for luxury items. My corporal, having finished what he was working on, came to ask if I needed a hand.
“Sergeant? Sergeant, do you want help with that?”
“You don’t need to call me that, Oversea. We’re not in the Guard anymore, so I’m not your sergeant anymore.” None of us entertained the idea that even should the Imperium come back of us that we would return with them. His brow furrowed in consternation.
“Well, what do we call you then, ser…err…ma’am?” I chuckled and motioned for him to take up a spanner and help me loosen the bolts to take the plough apart. I had been about to say ‘Ailya’ but that wasn’t right. That was the name of an ignorant daughter of a lumberjack. Ailya was many years gone and I’d left Sergeant Branson up in the hills.
“I’m the Jilted, I think.”
“The Jilted?”
“Yeah. Well, when I signed up and put on the uniform, I married the Emperor and the Imperium. But they’ve left us at the altar, haven’t they? So I’m the Jilted.”
“I guess so,” he chortled amiably. As we chatted as we worked on the plough, we spoke together openly about things that would have had us up against the wall to simply whisper just scant months ago.
The locals in their dialect called me Da Jitteh. The boys accepted it and from my example began to slough off their old names like clothes they’d outgrown and chose their own: Forgotten, Groxman, Liberated and so on. Sticky kept his name, citing that it had always been a name for his brothers and sisters in arms, rather than for the Imperium, and if the Imperium did return to Mallix Prime then we’d all be in a sticky situation so the name still fit. Grumpy, my heavy weapons specialist tried to change his name to Flame Man but it didn’t stick and we all continued to all him Grumpy, which only made him more so. Grumpy fell in battle midsummer to an infected spear wound. Prayers were said to Gley to look after his soul and I inherited his flamer as the only other person trained in its use. I always meant to train one of the villagers and pass it on, I had weapons enough with my chainswords and Scarlet my lasgun, the very first weapon I had ever held, but I never got the chance. My corporal’s chosen name pleased me the most: Free.
So much had happened in the nine months since then that I hadn’t really thought about my self-given name until my conversation with Lord Tuburculus. I thought long and hard upon his words. This would not be a group decision, I decided ironically. I longed for battle, real battle; rats in the trenches, the smell of cordite, the tremble of earthshakers, the kiss of death from my lasrifle and the spray of enemy blood from my chainswords, the feel of armour and a sturdy pair of combat boots. I was a soldier through and through, right down to my marrow. I wanted to hurt the Imperium for their lies and deceit, for the disregard and flagrant abuse of the very people they relied upon and were meant to protect. Some of my men, I knew, felt a similar way and would follow me into a new war. But some of the boys were tired. For six gruelling years they had gone from warzone to warzone, battle to battle, with the only appreciable rest being the disconcerting travel through the empyreum, packed like sardines into the bowels of a starship. The only expectation they could have was decades more of the same, until we came to the village. They were ready to settle down and had been sharing shy smiles with the young, unwed women. Each man’s decision would be his own. We were ten strong now without Grumpy and I estimated that half would stay, and the others would come with me off world, though I would offer them the option of going off world alone, I knew they wouldn’t.
Three days after the astartes left the village to be about his business, I decided to broach the topic with the boys, but I didn’t get the chance. I was already too late.
“Free, can you please assemble the – ” just then the village’s sirens began wailing. Free and I, along with everyone else, ran for the communal hall. When all two hundred souls were packed in, Prime Councillor Cole raised his hand for silence.
“It is with regret that news has just come to us over the vox that only two years after their last incursion, the Imperium has once again come to our world. This time however they bear the mark of the dreaded ‘I’.” I heard fearful whisperings around me and my blood ran cold. “The orders of Domain Lord Dyllanisis are the same as before, give them nothing to find, nothing that will lend veracity to their cause. Remove all signs of our allegiance and go about your lives as though you are ignorant, simple folk, the role our ancestors tasked us to. The cities will mount resistance as separatists and the witch hunters should, it is hoped, soon lose interest as not being worth their attention. It will be weeks before their armies come this far, if they do at all, but you all know the preparations you need to make.”
“All right men,” I called out, “form up!” Instantly my men were around me. “It sounds like the Fox’s Teeth are going to war.” This earned a cheer from my boys. “Now, if we’re going to the cities to join the armies – ”
“NO!” Cole bellowed, cutting across me. “No, you must not!”
“With all due respect, Prime Councillor,” I challenged, “we are soldiers, and soldiers fight.”
“If you join this fight,
De Jitteh, then you respect nothing. If any single one of you are found living safe and well on this world, or worse, serving in the armies of Mallix Prime, then we are all undone and this entire world will burn because the hated Inquisition will know they were right to come here. No. You will return to the caves, like all refugees all over the planet are doing, but this time you will be provided with supplies aplenty to stay safe, fed and above all, out of sight. You are all part of this village now, and this is my final word as Prime Councillor, and the orders of the Domain Lord. Do you understand?” We glared at each other from across the hall. I was furious at being denied this chance to fight a worthy opponent, to hit back at the Imperium. More so, I didn’t want to back down, especially in front of all these people and in front of my squad. That Cole was right only made it worse.
“Yes, Cole,” I eventually said, dropping my eyes.
Later that night, Cole apologised privately to me, sympathising that we were being hidden away whilst our warrior blood boiled but it was a matter of shear survival for an entire world. What disturbed me more was how easily we had fallen back into our old Guard days, command coming so naturally and the boys following my lead without question, a year after we had eschewed such things. Two days later we made our way back to the caves. This time we had months’ worth of dried and preserved food, drinking water, blankets, medical supplies and even rechargeable heat coils that gave off no light. We were more comfortable but hiding in the caves whilst a real fight was going on without us rankled and it wasn’t long before tempers frayed. Not only did I find myself breaking up arguments but I myself was becoming quite snappish.
The days dragged and they turned into weeks that dragged whilst we waited, starved for news. Every mind-numbingly inactive day I posted my best scouts as sentinels to watch the roadway entering the village. All we learned was that the usual traffic had stopped, not even traders were risking travelling between villages.
Three weeks after our relocation to the caves, with two hours before sundown, Sticky hurried into the cave where I was trying to explain to Groxman why sending someone to review the situation at the port was a bad idea. We were becoming quite heated when I saw the look on Sticky’s face. He and Liberated were exceptional scouts and I’d sent them out earlier that afternoon. He told us that half an hour ago a small Inquisitorial force had marched into the village. By ‘small’ it was a force of three hundred – one hundred and fifty Sororitas and one hundred and fifty Inquisitorial Guard. The total number on the march was more like three hundred and fifty if you included elements from the Mechanicum, psykers, astropaths and auxiliary staff. He’d left Liberated out there to keep watching. I sent Sticky back to watch for any developments in the village.
We moved back into the caves after erasing all signs from the front and mouth of the caves that anyone was living there. In the dark we spoke in hushed whispers, when we spoke at all, cleaned our weapons and donned our armour, whilst praying to any gods that might happen to be listening that the Witch Hunters would find nothing and move on, sparing the village.
At dawn’s first light we could hear shouting coming from the front of the cave. I sent Free to see what was going on. He came back minutes later and even in the dull gloom I could see he was white and shaking.
“They’re here,” he said, his voice trembling, “and they have Sticky. He’s dead. Very dead. More than dead. They’ve splayed him open, nailed to a tree.”
“Get it together, Corporal,” I said harshly, trying to snap Free out of his rising panic. I myself tried very hard not to think about the sweet, young boy whose mishap with an arachnid had been our salvation, who just a month ago I’d seen sneaking wildflowers to the blacksmith’s daughter to wear in her hair.
“All right, men, do you want to die like rats in a cave, or would you prefer to die in battle like the soldiers we are?”
“Sir! Yes, Sir!” they replied with military precision.
“All right then, squad – form up. Fix the faces of your loved ones in your minds if you have one, and a glass of good beer if you don’t. We meet them head on, for today we die.” I sent a silent prayer to Khorne to lend me the strength and ferocity to spill as much blood as I could before I was myself taken down. “Squad, move out!” We marched to the cave entrance, heads held high and weapons ready. I had Scarlet slung across my back so my hands were free to wield both Red and Crimson. We emerged into the dawning light and we could now hear the bark of bolter fire coming from the village. I could see the remains of Sticky now, slit nape to navel. I’m not entirely sure he was already dead when they’d nailed him to the tree.
At the forefront of the force of perhaps a hundred combatants stood the armoured form of an Inquisitor. He wore no helmet and the light of religious fervour shone insanely in his eyes.
“You are rogues, heretics and traitors to the Imperium. You have eschewed your oaths and honour. Surrender now for redemption and your deaths will be swift and clean,” he lied.
I laughed, looking down upon the forces assembled before us.
“We were abandoned! We fought, bled and died for the Imperium – it was you who betrayed us, and only through the Imperium’s treachery did we learn the truth of the universe. We were cast away like the aftermath of an abortion and the Emperor turned his face from us. There are gods in the galaxy that actually listen to us, unlike Him. And that is the truth of it. And you expect us to repent, to lie and say we were wrong?”
The Inquisitor opened his mouth to continue the banter but I didn’t give him the chance. I gave the last order I would ever command of my squad.
“CHARGE”
As we ran forward, my chainswords growling with their hot lust for blood and flesh, I felt a stirring deep within me, a tingling that started in my gut and worked its way outward. It was similar to the feeling I had when I saw the prisoner sacrificed to the Lord of Skulls. I had felt it on the battlefield many times before but had never given in, holding it at bay for fear that to embrace it would mean losing my presence of mind and tactical acumen. This time I embraced it wholly and willingly, like a lover returned after years away. As I felt the frenzy come over me I could feel spittle running down my chin as I began frothing at the mouth, unbidden I repeated the name of the Blood God over and over as I flew into the berserk rage – filled with desire to spill blood.
I had very little memory of the battle after that beyond the rise and fall of my gore-stained blades, only snatches here and there. I remember seeing my corporal’s head explode as a bolt shell detonated inside his skull, and the shocked look on a Battle Sister’s face as my blades found the chinks in her armour and her life blood bled out. I have no idea how many I felled but so outnumbered by elite forces, success was never an option, no matter the ferocity and death we delivered unto them. The ground shook like an earthquake and I broke from my fugue. I recognised the sound of an earthshaker shell detonating from the thunderous rumble that accompanied the tremor and knew that they had just flattened the village. I had kept my feet and realised that I now stood before the Inquisitor. We glared at each other for the briefest moment with nothing less than mutual, pure spite, the battle raging around us. I revved my chainblades, ready to meet this deadly foe. However, the vibrations from the nearby ordinance had loosened the rocks atop the caves and I was struck with some force on the head by the falling debris. If not for my helmet, my skull would have been crushed. As it was, I was driven to my knees. Immediately I rose back to my feet but the concussion was too much. My vision swam and I fell into darkness at the Inquisitor’s feet.
I awoke. That in and of itself was something of a surprise. I was in a white gown, the same they make you wear in the medicae. I had so many tubes and wires hooked up to fluids and machines, I briefly knew what it must be to be of the Mechanicus. I felt some token satisfaction at what a danger they obviously felt me to be – they weren’t taking any chances. I was tightly strapped down to the bed and could move no more than to wiggle my fingers and toes and move my head from side to side. There were two armed guards in my room, and one, upon seeing that I was awake, spoke into a microbead. A chirgeon entered and checked the drips and machines without saying anything before leaving again just as silently. I could see two more armed guards standing watch outside my room. I was also drugged with sedatives. My head felt full of cotton wool and mere thinking seemed to take an age. I looked over at the guard who’d alerted the medicae that I was awake.
“I’ll bet you would never have thought – ” I croaked a whisper, my voice rough and harsh. And fell asleep. I still don’t know what I was actually going to say.
I woke up an indeterminate amount of time later. There were no windows and no chrono on the wall, of course. Some people become distressed if they don’t know the passing of time but hours or days, I knew it didn’t matter. I still felt fuzzy from sedation but they had clearly been giving me pain suppressants which were now stopped. I could feel aches and pains from a dozen minor injuries. My muscles ached harshly from inactivity and I tried to flex them but only succeeded in sending my back muscles into spasms without alleviating the discomfort in my arms and legs. A short time after I had awoken a man dressed in form-fitting black leather and a full length leather trench coat covered in silver aquila and the Inquisitorial “I” walked in with the two guards posted outside my room behind him.
“Her presence is required,” he said to the guards inside the room. They began to remove my restraints whilst the new Inquisitor in black, for he had not been at the battle where I fell, unhooked me from the machines. The other two guards kept their weapons trained on me without wavering as I was sat up and my hands shackled behind my back. I considered attacking them, forcing them to end me there and then before I could be submitted to their ministrations but the sedatives ensured that such a gesture would be paltry and ineffective.
I was marched along faceless corridors, my gown was open at the back, a ploy I suspect to make the prisoner feel vulnerable but when you’ve spent months in trenches, modesty is a forgotten luxury. I recognised the walls as being those of a mobile command
HQ. We were still on Mallix then. I shambled along with two guards in front and two behind. Every time I stumbled I silently cursed my weakness, feeling more like I was convalescing from a long wasting illness rather than a soldier who honed their skills and body every day.
I was led into a room covered in symbols that made me feel slightly uncomfortable and was sat in a harsh metal chair that had been bolted to the floor. It was the room’s only furnishing except for a small table in the shadows of a corner of the room. I didn’t need to see it to know it held instruments of torture. Metal cuffs on the chair’s arm were tightened around my wrists and the guards exited the room.
There were three people left, all looking at me as though I was some exhibit in a museum; the man who had escorted me here, the robed Inquisitor who I had fallen before on the battlefield, and leaning comfortably against a wall was a green-robed astropath. The Inquisitor from the caves began the proceedings.
“Sergeant Ailya Branson of the Parron Twenty-Ninth, known as the Parron Red Foxes.”
“No,” I said calmly.
“What?” he asked, blind-sided at being interrupted.
“No,” I replied. “That’s not my name. I am the Jilted.” He looked questioningly over at the astropath.
“Not possessed, my Lord. She simply decided to change her name when she changed her loyalties.”
“Simple as that, huh?” I scowled at the astropath.
“Silence, child,” the Inquisitor said. “It will go more easily for you if you cooperate. I am Lord Inquisitor Aronus Parkin, and this is my apprentice, Interrogator Augustus Merrinway,” he said, motioning to the man clad in black. He didn’t introduce the astropath but I didn’t except him to.
“The more you cooperate, the easier your time with us will be, the less I will need to call upon my apprentice’s skills, and the sooner you will be allowed the release from your pain into death. There will be pain, I assure you. You have committed great acts of treason and heresy, and courted with the Archenemy. Your soul needs to be cleansed so that you can embrace redemption.”
“And what if I don’t want redemption? What if I refuse it?” I asked.
“All humans want redemption. They all wish to be brought back to the Emperor’s light, whether or not they realise it.” I laughed.
“I spit upon the Imperium and the Golden Throne. He turned His light from us, so now I turn from him.”
“Such blasphemy out of one so young,” he said matter-of-factly whilst slowly driving a long needle into my shoulder joint. I’ve been shot, stabbed, broken bones, but this pain was quite excruciating. I gritted my teeth against the pain, determined not to scream as he continued to speak. “I wonder if it was your impressionable youthful mind that left you so easily manipulated by others to choose such a dark and evil path? Or was it simply your lack of maturity and experience and it was you who led your men to their ultimate doom? Tell me which it was,” he said as though asking a botanist what type of orchid he’d found, whilst twisting the needle into the muscle.
“You’re an Inquisitor,” I began, fighting to keep any gasping from the pain in my shoulder out of my voice. “You have seen much more of the galaxy than I, far more horrors, depravity and cruelties the like of which I could not imagine, even were I so inclined to try. I’ll bet there are many times you have had to walk alone, to cut yourself off from the Imperium, from your allies and support with no fall back except yourself.”
“Hmm, yes,” he nodded, slowly removing the needle as painfully as possible. “Get to the point.”
“I’m also guessing that you had more years of training before you did those things than I’ve been alive. I’ll bet my last throne that if you were stranded and called for help or extraction that every effort would be made to recover you, to lend you all and any aid possible. We were at the height of a campaign and warp dammit, we were winning! But the Imperium abandoned us – no ammunition, no food, no supplies, no reinforcements, no training on how to survive on our own in the wilderness, nothing, our cries for help unanswered. We married ourselves to the Imperial Guard, to the Emperor, we thought of nothing but fighting for His glory. We bled for Him, we died for Him. And when we needed Him, when we needed the Imperium, we were left at the altar like a jilted bride. Do you have any idea what that feels like? Can you possibly have any idea what that’s like? To be treated like a whore by those you sold your life to defend? It feels a little like this,” I hissed through clenched teeth, and kicked Lord Inquisitor Parkin hard in the groin. He went down hard like a sack of grox gak. It was satisfying. But then came the pain.
I can remember little of the following days except pain. Merrinway really was very good at his craft. People say, with much bravado, that pain is all in the mind, that to feel pain is a weakness, and that pain can be overcome by shear willpower. I can quite safely state that none of these posturing fools have ever been in the hands of the Inquisition’s torturers. I am not ashamed to admit that I did scream.
I am not sure what I told them, who I sold out, who I betrayed, but I do know that I never recanted.
The chair became my existence. I slept in the chair, was fed and watered in the chair, my bodily excrements removed whilst I was in the chair, I was interrogated and tortured in the chair. I could no longer move my legs, they had quite quickly chained my feet to the chair’s legs.
A week later, or it may have been a week and a half, Merrinway entered with six armed guards. My fastenings were undone and I was stripped of my filthy gown and they replaced it with a thin white shift. At least it covered my arse. My legs collapsed out from under me from lack of use when they stood me up. I was roughly dragged back to my feet and marched from the room and through the faceless corridors. I was fairly sure that they’d finally had their fill and were going to execute me. The movement gave me some of my strength back as the blood began to flow into my abused and aching limbs. I was put in the back of a chimera, which surprised me. I dared to ask where I was being taken. I should have known better and the question earned me an armoured backhand across the face and was told to be silent. I was disembarked at a landing field and escorted up the gang ramp of a waiting guncutter. As the shuttle took off I could see that the city was teeming with Imperial activity. Mallix Prime was no longer a safe haven and I only hoped that I wasn’t to blame.
I couldn’t fathom what the Inquisition wanted with me now or why I was being transported off world. When we arrived in the starship’s hangar bay, I was taken without preamble through twisting, long corridors that I’ve come to associate with the city-sized ships, up stairs, down ramps, in a dizzying maze until after almost an hour we came to yet another medicae bay. The Lord Inquisitor was waiting there with a chirgeon.
“Give her the injection,” Parkin said and the robed doctor came at me with a large syringe filled with a garish green liquid whilst two of the guards held me still. I was damned if I was going to stand there and take that, or any more of their gak for that matter. I cried out in protest and struggled, and with a burst of strength threw one of the guards clear across the room with a bellow of anger. He thudded against the wall and instantly three guards were on me, holding me fast, but not before they delivered a quick knee to my guts and a blow to my head. A fifth guard stood nearby, powering up a shock maul. I wasn’t going anywhere though. As determined and fiercely angry as I was, there was no escaping the grip of three Inquisitorial guards. One of them wrenched my head to one side, exposing my neck. I cried out again, more in frustration than pain as the chirgeon plunged the syringe into my neck. An iciness quickly spread from my neck throughout my body and I felt myself falling.
After that, nothing.
Until the claxons began to sound.
(the flash washed out the mini's facial features and then the battery went flat)
Ave Dominus Nox 
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