Hi everyone, this is another piece of 20K fiction. 20K is my prequel series to Warhammer 40,000 and the Horus Heresy, charting the rise of the Terran Empire as it returns to the stars to reclaim long-lost colonies. We all know the Golden Age of Technology ended in an Age of Strife, but nobody really knows anything about these legendary times. Here's what really happened.
You can also check out my 20K Timeline.
[20K] The Man Without a Past
PART ONE
“Get in there!” the alneran barked as it flung Tessa into the cell. She hit the ground hard. The stone was cold and bruising.
“Bastard,” she spat back.
The alneran sneered, its doglike face appearing to snarl, then it stepped back and activated the laser grid. They’d already upgraded parts of the Terran colony with their own technology. Tessa looked around. She was sealed into a small stone room, its only doorway barred by laser lines.
“Food and water will be brought to you,” the guard snarled, trying to force Chinasian English from its jaws. “Make no further attempts to escape and you will come to no harm. The war is over for you, Colonel. Accept that you are beaten.”
“I’ll accept another chance to kick your arse around this cell,” the woman retorted. “Get back in here, you coward, and I’ll finish what I started.”
The alien touched the rounded, flared socket of its left eye. Colonel Gray couldn’t see a bruise – alneran physiology didn’t work like a human’s – but her roundhouse kick had left its mark.
“Hunh,” the guard snorted. “You have a strong spirit. That is good.” The alien walked away without elaborating. Tessa was alone with only the hissing of lasers to listen to.
They hadn’t supplied her with a bed or a chair. The fabric of her ochre-coloured Air Force uniform would regulate her body temperature despite its somewhat ragged condition, so she could last without other comforts. She looked around in more detail. There was nothing beyond four blank walls, one laser-barred doorway and a series of tiny, raised windows along the top of each wall, which let in enough of the afternoon light to see by but offered no chance of escape.
Tessa paced the room, ignoring pain as it flared in her legs and – more worryingly – her spine. When she was unable to keep up this activity, Tessa sat against the wall of her cell opposite the doorway. It had been two days since she had slept properly. Her period of unconsciousness courtesy of the alneran stun weapons didn’t count. It had been a pummelling, bruising unconsciousness where it had even hurt to dream.
This had once been a store-room. There was a thin layer of dust on the floor and across the lower quarter of the walls. She could smell super-wheat, its genhanced flavour making her hungry despite the super-food’s bland taste.
Her guards had taken her via armoured transport-skimmer to the agricultural zone. They were fifty minutes away from the supposed front line. Colonel Grey didn’t believe much fighting would be going on now. It had been over from the moment the Navy had withdrawn, leaving Fort Latin to its own defence.
Tessa rolled her shoulders, then her head and neck, trying to uncramp muscles that she’d over-exerted in her last escape run. They’d hit her several times with neural fusers, peculiar stun weapons used only by the alnerans. That many hits might have killed or permanently disabled a less determined human. As it was, the Colonel didn’t trust her body to hold up to one more hit. Escape would have to wait.
She didn’t wait for long before the scrape of alneran footpads came to her ears. The guards were coming back in force. There were other sounds too, much heavier: the clatter of boots and voices, human voices, variously pleading and cursing. Tessa’s heart began to hammer.
“Let us go!” one man was shouting. “I represent the Terran Administration. I demand to speak to someone in charge!”
His voice was cut off by a warning roar from one of the guards.
An alneran soldier appeared behind the bars of Tessa’s cell. It was carrying a fuser. Tessa looked at the rifle, wishing she could somehow will it to leap from the guard’s paws into her hands.
“You have company, Colonel,” the soldier barked. The laser grid powered down. Tessa wasn’t stupid enough to take this poor chance for action. Her body wouldn’t have responded at any rate. She realised she needed a doctor.
More guards appeared, including the one she recognised from earlier. They were dragging three humans with them.
A woman whose facial fatures marked her as Tokyan, with a red tattoo above her right eye which looked like a birthmark or a battle-wound at first glance, but was actually a mark of Earth’s Herosheema stack city.
Another prisoner, a young man who swore at his guards with a Merican accent, wearing civilian clothes that would once have been expensive. They were dusty and ragged in places. The man was handsome, with blond hair that hung down over his left eye. He looked like he’d taken all of his guards on at once and lost.
The final prisoner was an older man wearing the robes of a civil administrator. He had a bald head which showed a faint colouring of stubble and blue eyes that were as big and beautiful as a baby’s. He was the one protesting the loudest. His accent was of the Britannic Kingdom, the same as Tessa’s. The population of Fort Latin was almost entirely Earther.
The guards flung their prisoners into the cell. The Merican man tripped and landed on Tessa. Pain arced along her spinal column like electricity earthing from a damaged field generator. There was a buzz as the guards re-activated the laser grid.
“Food and medical treatment will be brought to you,” said the guard Tessa had clocked earlier on. The alnerans were nothing if not diligent and this one seemed to have assigned himself responsibility for the Colonel. Then the guards simply left, leaving the humans with only each other and the buzzing of the laser grid.
“Hi,” the Merican man said as he climbed off of Tessa. He gave her a smile so charming she felt herself grinning like an idiot.
“Hi,” the Tokyan woman said to Tessa. “I’m Hoshira. Hoshira Katamuri. Thanks for trying.” She offered her hand and Tessa shook it, surprised to be thanked for her part in Fort Latin’s losing battle.
“I’m Devin Ray,” the Merican man said. He also shook Tessa’s hand.
The other man looked at his fellow prisoners but remained silent. He moved over to the far corner of the cell. In this case, the ‘far corner’ was less than six feet away.
“I’m Colonel Tessandra Grey of the Terran Air Force, Fort Latin First Squadron. I’m sorry we weren’t able to stop those bastards.”
“Forget it,” Ray and Katamuri said together. They looked at one another. Ray grinned and turned back to the Colonel.
“There was no stopping the alnerans,” he said. “The little bastards must have planned this years in advance. They seemed to know exactly where to hit us.”
“Well, I hope they like the taste of genhanced wheat,” Tessa said. “They boldly captured the Empire’s biggest farm.”
The man in the corner, the administrator, stared at the Colonel with shock and, moments later, contempt.
“What’s the matter, baby blue?” Tessa asked him. She coughed, the motion painful. “Nothing to say?”
“I wouldn’t push him,” Katamuri said quietly. She knelt beside Tessa, looking at her face, then at her slumped form.
“See anything you like?” Tessa said, wary.
“Actually, I see someone who looks like they’re about to die of cramp.”
“You a doctor?”
“A nurse. The alnerans told me I’d have a patient. I’m guessing that would be you.”
“What happened to you?” Ray asked.
Tessa coughed again. The pain was getting worse.
“Shot while trying to escape… on more than one occasion.”
“Lie down,” Katamuri said. She and Ray had to help the Colonel to comply. Tessa’s muscles were starting to bunch up. Her body wasn’t obeying her commands.
“Is she gonna be okay?” Ray said.
“She’ll be fine,” said Katamuri. “Her nervous system has been overloaded by sustained fuser fire. I saw this a few times before the alnerans moved me here. The weapon is keyed to work on alnerans rather than humans -”
“That makes no sense,” Ray said, confused.
“It makes perfect sense,” Tessa wheezed. Fear started to prickle at her. She could hardly move her mouth to speak. “Every species builds weapons that they themselves fear. Give an axe to a human and he can kill other humans, but a Croatalid wouldn’t give two damns. You can’t -”
The rest of her sentence was lost in a coughing fit.
“Just lie back,” Katamuri said, stroking Tessa’s hair. “You’ll be fine. Give your body time to recover. The cramps will pass.”
The cramps did pass, but it seemed to take days of pain. Tessa slipped in and out of consciousness, sometimes jabbering nonsense, other times screaming. Occasionally she prayed, during those moments when she was halfway lucid.
Finally the Colonel opened her eyes to find that she could turn her head without resistance from spasming muscles. Her body was exhausted and her uniform soaked with sweat despite its environmental properties. There was a sense of peace, as if some soothing balm was flowing through her veins and cleansing the lactic build-up in her arms, legs and torso.
“Welcome back,” Katamuri said. The Tokyan nurse looked as exhausted as Tessa felt. “It isn’t easy to go through the re-assertion process. The worst is over now. Your body is under your control again. Just try to take it easy.”
“How…” Tessa said. She felt weaker than a newborn. “How long?”
Ray, whose face displayed the definition of concern, glanced at his wrist chron. The Colonel was vaguely surprised he’d been allowed to keep it.
“About an hour.”
“An… an hour?” Tessa was amazed. Time had lost its meaning while she’d been under but it had seemed like days unending. She glanced at the window-slits. Fading gold blazed against the tops of the cell walls. The sun was setting.
“They brought us some food,” Ray said. “Can you manage anything?”
Tessa realised she was hungry beyond anything she’d known before.
As her new friends helped her to sit up, Colonel Grey locked eyes with the administrator. He was sitting hunched in his corner, sipping from a metal cup. She didn’t like the look in his eyes.
Betrayer, it said. You let this happen to us. You were supposed to protect us.
I wish the aliens had killed you. Maybe they still will.
