Elsa, I can’t say for certain whether or not these words will reach you, but if they do please know that I love you and Dad will all my heart, and that everything I have done and will do is driven by one undeniable reason. I want to live. They’ll tell you I am a criminal, a traitor, and maybe worse. Whatever crimes they accuse me of I want you to have the truth of it in my own words. I’ll be honest with you, even though you’ll hate to know what I’ve done, I hope you’ll understand that I only did what I did because I had no choice. Dad always said honesty made a man, and though they will tell you I am less than a man I want you to know I’ve always been truthful to you. You and Dad always knew I was a little different, but I don’t think you or I realized just how different I actually am. When I think back to being a kid and remembering all the times I used to get beat up by the Jakob and his friends, and how clumsy I was, it was probably obvious to Dad that something wasn’t right when I started winning all the fights. It’s not like I had any training, or I was bigger than all of them. I could operate a harvester but couldn’t throw a punch for the life of me. You remember how scrawny I was when I was fourteen. I barely weighed fifty kilo soaking wet. Yet, it was like a switch had been turned on and I saw the world in a whole new way, always one step ahead of everyone else. Everything became too easy, too fast. I needed a challenge, something greater than growing grain.

When I think back to how Dad wanted me to work the farm with him and I saw how I crushed him when I told him I was volunteering for the Guard, I think even then he knew. The last words Dad said to me were ‘Keep low. Don’t get noticed. Stay alive son.’ At the time I thought he just wanted me to not be a dumb-ass and get myself shot, but I know now he was trying to warn me. Even though he couldn’t bring himself to admit what I was, he knew deep down what I had become.

My first action out of boot camp I really started to become aware of it. We had been sent out to a planet on the Eastern Fringe called Holbak. It was an agri-world just like home, but it had been invaded by orks. I had never dreamed of such horrible monsters as these orks. They’re giants, all of them, bigger than the biggest man you could think of, and sickly green with tusks coming out of their mouths. And the war cry they scream freezes you down to your Emperor loved soul. They charge you in the thousands with giant guns belching black smoke and death in one hand and axes as large as a man in the other. They couldn’t hit the broad side of a harvester if their life depended on it, but they seem to mostly just shoot off the guns to make enough noise to scare you so they can charge and hack you to bits.

They’re not like us in any way. They didn’t invade Holbak to expand their empire, or because it was rich in farm land. They don’t want to enslave humanity, or absorb us into their culture. They only want to destroy. I can’t even describe to you the horrible things they did to the villagers on that world. Bodies so hacked to pieces there was no hope of burying anyone with all their parts.

At first I hadn’t realized what I was doing when I started using my ability, I mean really using it. It was all subconscious. I’d be in the thick of hellish firefights. Lasguns flashing, shells hammering down and dust and smoke so thick in the air you can’t see the next trench over, but still things happened, lucky things. I’d step to the left just as an ork bullet would rip through where I had been standing. More than a few times I turned and shot those ugly monsters as they were charging up our trenches. With all the screams, and explosions there’s no way to know left from right, or front from back, but I always knew where the danger was coming from. Just enough time to save my life.

What really started me thinking about it was when one of those bastards threw a grenade in the back of the trench. None of us saw it through the gunfire and smoke, but something went off in me. I knew it was there and that I had to get out of that trench or I was dead, so I jumped out. The explosive went off, my whole squad was wiped out and I was left standing out in the open, and then it was like taking the first gulp of air after a deep dive.

It’s hard to explain what happened next in words that anyone could understand, but it’s like suddenly knowing everything around you. And I don’t mean knowing Dad’s tell when we play tarot. I mean knowing what cards Dad will draw, how he’s going to bet, and what everyone’s cards are going to be. It was an amazing feeling. Battle is a very hectic thing. Your sergeant can plan for the squad to sweep left, but if the area is mined you don’t know that until you’ve stepped on one, and imagine seeing your friend stepping on a mine and not knowing if you’re in the middle of a minefield or not, and then have hundreds of giant monsters shooting at you. What do you do next? That’s what a battle is like. A thousand things could kill you at any second and you don’t know which way to step to save your life. Except at that moment everything was so obvious. The path of every bullet that would come near me, where the next shell was going to land, even when and how those greenies were going to swing at me with their giant cleavers. I could see a thousand and more possibilities and paths that linked to me, and all of it so instantly obvious. In that moment of knowing, I saw the end of the battle. I didn’t think. I didn’t stay low, I just went for it. Sometimes I wished that I had just stayed in the trench and let the grenade end things. I shoulda not ‘got noticed’ like Dad said.

I bolted straight for the ork charge and blasted two of them straight off their feet with shots to the head just as they were about to jump into a trench with a commissar and his unit. The commissar waved his thanks and backed up to make room for me, but I just leapt clean over it making my way for the ork line. Something about that fired the commissar up. I heard him scream ‘For the Emperor!’ and he leapt up after me dragging his unit straight along. I snapped off four more shots with my las rifle, taking down two more and knee-capping the other two. They fell tripping up the mob behind them. The commissar’s men had some heavy weapons and someone let off a melta cannon into the pile of orks. A mess of smelly, scorched ork meat sprayed over me as I leapt the pile and was in their ranks.

I had no real training aside from the basic close combat training you get at boot camp, but my knife was in my hand in a flash as I ran through the ork mob skipping left and right, staying low and darting up when the opening was there. I dropped another two of the monsters with slashes to the throat and rolled under the legs of a third as he swung a giant axe down at me. He missed by centimeters but it was enough of a gap for me, and I hamstrung him from behind with two sure cuts. The commissar and his crew had picked up more stray units in the charge and their mass of bodies had finally caught up with my weaving and dodging. That commissar was one crazy fool screaming curses at the orks you could hear above his chainsword as he hacked his way after me.

I didn’t stop, I didn’t look back. I knew I only had moments left to make it happen and I kept weaving through the orks. I had never felt so alive, so sure that everything was going to be alright so long as I kept on my path. Just as I knew it would, one giant ork managed to grab my jacket in a meaty paw. He picked me up off my feet and held me out at arm’s length as he leaned his other arm back to chop me in half with one of those ugly, pitted axes they carried. I balled myself up as best I could. His torso shielded me from the mortar round landing behind him. The ork absorbed the worst of the explosion. The shrapnel and heat ripped and burned away most of his back, head, and legs but still knocked me windless when what was left of him fell on me. It was as close I had ever been to an ork, and even though most of it has been blown away he was still a hundred kilos or more to push off me. I couldn’t hear a sound except a loud ringing in my ears. But I pushed and heaved, the precious seconds ticking by until I scrambled clear of the corpse. Behind me the guard units were getting hacked to pieces, but keeping the orks busy. In front of me was nothing but the mortar crater and bits of blasted ork and mud soaked in their green blood.

As the smoke cleared I saw the most frightening thing I had until that moment. It was the ork general. Ork generals aren’t like Guard generals. They call them warbosses, and they are the biggest, meanest of the bunch of them. They don’t give orders and have others carry out the battles either. These warbosses lead from the front lines. Like I said orks are big. Bigger than any man you could imagine, but this one was larger than them all, and armoured head to toe in plates that looked like they’d been ripped off a chimera tank and bolted onto him. What looked like some sort of engine chugged and vibrated on his back, and belched black oily smoke from a rusty exhaust pipe coming out of his left shoulder. His chest was covered in giant spikes and hooks that still had human arms and heads skewered on them. His jaw had been replaced with a giant saw toothed hunk of metal that looked like a wood thresher from back home. Both his arms ended in giant claws that sparked and arced with electricity. The sides of his arms had cannons riveted on so big it looked like he could take on a baneblade tank on his own.

He screamed that horrible war cry and I heard it clearly even through the ringing of the mortar explosion still in my ears, and charged me. For a moment I froze in place and the knife in my hand seemed entirely inadequate for ending a battle against a monster. Then what I knew was going to happen, happened. The commissar had lived through his charge and flashed past me chainsword roaring as he leaped at the warboss. It was a scene that would have been worthy of being immortalized in art somehow. The tails of his black leather great coat trailing behind him like a leather winged angel of the Emperor’s wrath, his chain sword slashing downward in a blow that surely would have cleaved any other ork in two. Sadly it was not the ending the commissar had hoped for, but it was the one I had knew was coming. The warboss backhanded the commissar with his giant metal claws. The blow knocked the commissar to the ground and off to the side. He turned and slashed the commissar into pieces with one swipe of those claws. The chainsword shattered, his head came off and chest ripped to shreds. Blood and organs sizzled and smoked from the electricity of his claws. But it was my chance, and I ran at the warboss.

With his back turned and momentarily distracted while he dismembered the commissar I leapt onto the giant engine on his back. His right arm reached up to grab me and I leaned left and caught a lungful of the hot exhaust coming out of his shoulder. I nearly blacked out but still managed to hang on as I stabbed my knife into the back his neck and gasped for air. It took three blows but finally the blade slipped through the neck joint and into his skin. This seemed to either panic the warboss or just piss him off because he started wildly flailing with his claws to reach me. I kept dodging left and right, burning myself against the hot engine each time, but living was more important than a few burns. My knife had hit his spinal cord but was stuck on the bone as pushed and heaved while the warboss’ claws kept slicing away at me while he scrambled and jerked left and right. His armour was far too bulky to for him to reach me, and finally the knife slid home as put all my weight down on the blade.

He collapsed instantly face first into the ground. I fell chest first onto the exhaust pipe, burning through my uniform and screamed as I ripped myself free of the engine leaving a strip of my flesh and clothes still smoking against the pipe. All around me there were orks stunned and silent and the will to fight drained from them in that instant. After what seemed like minutes of silence two groups of orks immediately turned on each other and starting firing at their own kin. Another group bolted into retreat, and then another, and another. It was a wildfire route that spread faster than vox traffic. In minutes scores of Lemun Russ’ and Salamanders were mowing down the ork retreat, Avenger and Marauder air support was mopping up far down the ork rear lines.

For leading the charge into the heart of the ork force and single-handedly felling the warboss I was awarded the Aquila Optimus. The commissar, and the units that had been massacred in the charge were posthumously awarded the Medallion Crimson. I received a field promotion to sergeant and was reinforced to a new platoon. Though the remainder of the campaign was a series of minor skirmishes my real trouble had only just begun.

The moments of awareness started coming to me more often. At first it was like the Emperor himself had blessed me. Every battle was a complete route of the enemy. My unit had taken to calling me “Charm” on account of my luck, and their victories. Valour medals and honours for exceptional actions kept coming for myself and my unit. I could do no wrong. Colonels and Lieutenants were specifically requesting me and my platoon on their missions because our success rate was one hundred percent and our casualty rate was near zero. But then the dreams started.

When they started I began to realize what I really was. At first I would dream moments of the next day before they happened, then the whole of the next day, and sometimes days or more in advance would come to me in my sleep. When I woke my cot was always soaked and freezing and I had a taste of copper in my mouth that would fade. I was a mutant! I was an Emperor-cursed psyker.

I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t turn it off. I couldn’t suddenly stop being the success that everyone believed in. My own men needed my power to live. Ask yourself if you knew where a bullet was going to be, could you let your brother in arms step into the shot? Would you knowingly step into its path? I wanted to live, and though I feared using the power I had no choice but to keep on the path and stay alive. But it was already too late for me to ‘keep low, and not be noticed.’

Six months after the death of the warboss I received a summons from command. The Lord-General himself had sent orders recalling me from the front with my unit. It took two days for us to pull out of the front lines to get back to headquarters, and I had the worst nightmares of being hunted by a faceless man with a red augmented eye.

Men in my unit thought they were getting some special award or honour but I knew different, and my worst fears came true when we stepped off the transport at the command post. A whole Emperor-damned platoon had hellguns aimed straight at us.

They separated me from my unit. I have no idea what happened to them after that, but I was led under guard to a cell in what looked like an entirely abandoned building except for armed guards everywhere. They left me there alone for two days. Two whole days without food or water. Not even a bed to sleep in or a pot to piss in. That stupid medal they pinned on my chest looked awfully useless when I was sitting in a room of my own shit and piss under armed guard.

When they finally came I was moved to another cell, clean and with a table and two chairs. A bald man stood in the corner, his back to me, but the light of a data-slate casting a glow from his chest. The guards said nothing and left. Just me and this stranger standing in the room together. ‘Sit.’ He spoke without turning to face me. His voice had an augmented, metallic echo to it.

As I sat he finally turned towards me, and my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. It was the faceless man from my dreams. The whole left half of his face had been replaced with silvered augmetics straight down to his throat. Where his flesh met the metal there was large, angry red skin and oozes of yellow pus here and there as though his whole face was warring against the machine part of him. A polarized lens grafted onto his skull covered his right eye and his left had been replaced with a nightmarish contraption of brass gears and lenses that emitted a dark red light. He wore a commissar’s black great coat but did not have the sash or any other Guard markings. When he walked towards me I saw some odd variation of a plasma pistol holstered to both his thighs, and something on him (or in him) hummed with a low bass note that I could feel rumbling in my chest.

He sat across from me and I noticed a heavy linked gold chain hung from his neck. A large pendant the size of a fist hung at the end of it shaped into a giant gold skull with a large ‘I’ behind it. He laid his data slate onto the table in front of me and I noticed both his hands were meshed in some other augments I had no clue the use for. On the data slate was my name and list of my battle commendations.

‘You are Sergeant Hektor Mable presently attached to the eight oh four Riflemen Guard Unit prosecuting the war against the xenos horde on this planet.’ He paused, his metallic voice still vibrating around the room. I wasn’t sure if he had asked me a question or was waiting for me to say something. I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off. ‘You have been in active duty for less than one terran cycle, and yet have managed to acquire fifteen commendations for valour and excellence in combat execution, four medals of heroism of varying degrees including the Honourifica Optimus, a medal of heroism so rare that less than four hundred have been awarded in the last thousand years.’

He paused again, this time I swear his hell-eye swiveled around in his skull and extended out of his face a little towards me. ‘The mortality rate of Guard units on active, front-line duty during the prosecution of this war is seventy-six percent, yet the mortality rate of men under your command is less than two percent. Every operation and battle you have been a part of has been a resounding success that always seems to revolve around you being the linchpin to victory. A trait that has earned you the fascinating sobriquet of Charm.’ I could feel the sweat rolling down my back, but still I had nothing to say.

His red eye swiveled again and I heard a few gears click into place as he leaned back in his chair and steepled his mesh covered hands together in front of his face. ‘Tell me Hektor how you explain this miraculous run of good fortune? How does a lowly guardsman who rated below average in rifle accuracy and close quarters combat training fell nine orks and a warboss with nothing but a knife and a single clip of your lasrifle?’ I licked my lips and swallowed a mouthful of air, ‘I got lucky I guess.’ He slammed a hand down on the table, and I jumped, ‘ Do you expect me to believe luck had anything to do with it? Do you think me a fool?’

He was angry as a bull-grox in rut. His metal voice was starting to grate on me, and the light from his eye felt like it was boring into my skull. My mouth was dry as a desert, and cold sweat poured down my back as he kept speaking.

‘You are something. But you are no charm. Do you think the Emperor has reached up from His throne and blessed you with a wondrous run of good fortune?’ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He laughed ‘Really? Should we laude your achievements and lift you to greatness as you lead the Imperium of Man into a new age of enlightenment? Will there be millions of souls braying for your notice as we tear down the temples of Him and raise new ones to you? This is not a future I will let come to be!’ His hands slammed down on the table and a spark leapt down his left arm, arced to his right and disappeared into his great coat.

‘I don’t want any of that Sir. I’m just an ordinary grunt who got lucky a few times. That’s all.’ ‘How long have you known you were a mutant?’ I could feel my eyes widen with horror, and I swear he smiled as I finally tried to defend myself. ‘I’m no mutant Sir.’ ‘You are a mutant.’ ‘No!’ ‘Your genetic legacy is corrupt.’ ‘No.’ ‘You are unfit to call yourself human.’ ‘No...’ ‘You are cursed.’

I broke down, and balled my eyes out right in front of him. I laid my head on the table and wept like a baby. The only sound was the bass note humming from him. He leaned in to my ear and I could smell cloves and oil on his breath as he whispered to me. ‘You’ve been to the temples Hektor. I know even a back-water farm boy from an agri-world knows the teachings. Tell me Hektor what is the warning every Imperial citizen knows?’

I knew what he was talking about. Everyone knows the words. Every school day ended with it. Every sermon ended with it. ‘Fear the Alien. Fear the psyker. Report all aberrations.’

My reflexes took complete control over me, and I fell away from the table as the smell of melted metal filled the air. The stranger was standing now, both plasma pistols in his hands and a melt mark on the table where my head had been a moment before. A small trail of vapour rose from his red eye and a look of vindication covered the half of his face that was still flesh.

‘Not even an Adeptus Astartes could have avoided that shot. No normal man (or elevated one) has the reflexes to avoid a killing blow they don’t see or know is coming. But a mutant might. A psyker who can see into the future could. A psyker like that might avoid any number of certain deaths, might find victory in certain defeat, and might even single-handedly kill an orc warboss with nothing more than a standard combat knife. I’m no fool Hektor, I see you for what you are. It is my duty to seek out mutants like you for the protection of all mankind. ‘

The temperature in the room plummeted, and tang of copper filled the air and I saw a flash of my far future. My life and thousands of others like me boiled down in a great furnace built to consume us. My entire essence distilled down, extinguishing not only my life, but me, my soul, my body all gone. All that would be left would be fed through tubes into a giant, rotting being frozen in a horrible scream on a throne of gold.

The moment was gone and small layer of frost began to melt across the room. Steam rose from the stranger’s pistols as his one red eye clicked and whirred and extended out of his skull a few more centimeters . ‘What did you see?’

‘My soul being fed to a horrible being.’

He nodded slightly and holstered both his pistols. ‘There is no greater honour than death in service to the Emperor. I will have that same honour someday too.’ ‘Who are you that you have power to command a Lord-General?’

‘My name is Andross, and I am the will of the Emperor. ‘

It was already too late. I knew what was going to happen but could see no escape. There was nothing to do but flinch. The low hum built to a loud roar in a split second and overwhelming sound and light burst from Andross’ chest.

I woke in a cage in a converted APC rumbling along to who knows where. My cage was just big enough for me to sit on the floor with my knees folded up. A strong barbed wire mesh wrapped around the bars so that I could not even lean. Every bump and jostle pricked my arms or back as I fell against the sides. Two men played at cards at the end of the APC. They were not Guard. They weren’t wearing any uniform that I could see. Just a motley collection of bits of armour and weapons that looked like highly modified versions of lasrifles and solid slug throwing pistols. They were both hulking, thick bodies with clear, coiled tubes than fed from a small pack on the back of their necks into their arms, and torso. heavily tattooed arms flexed with muscles too numerous to be anything other than stim induced. One of them noticed me and gestured to the other. ‘Look, it’s awake.’

He leaned over and kicked the cage once with his combat boot and held out a handheld activator and pressed the button. I was instantly shocked with the most horrible pain I had ever felt around my throat. Stunned, I fell into the side of the cage, cutting my face on barbs, but too weak to do anything about it. ‘Hey, Mutie. That is what you get if you try any of that wytch crap out. The moment you try anything, the moment you look at me wrong, the moment I get the slightest itch that something’s out of place, I’m going to zap you until you shit yourself.’

Several painful moments passed before I had the strength to pull my face off the barbs. My skin tore and blood ran down my face, dripping on my clothes and the floor the cage. He laughed if you can believe it. I felt the collar they had placed on my neck, suddenly aware of an ominous beeping coming from it. ‘Why are you doing this to me? I came here to defend this planet. To be part of the Imperium. I’ve saved lives, thousands of lives with my power. How can any of this be wrong?’

‘I ain’t debaitin’ anything with you. Boss says you stay in a cage, then you stay in a cage. Boss says we zap you if you psyk up or something, then that’s what we do. What the Boss says goes. End of story.’

‘The Boss? Is that Andross? Who is he? What rank does he have?’

The guard ignored the question and looked back at his handful of cards and played one. The other one threw his hand down in disgust and an explosion rocked the APC onto its side. I was thrown against the side of the cage, cutting my hands and arms. The driver managed to steer it back down onto all wheels, and gunned it. I laid myself flat on the floor trying to keep away from the barbs.

Both the guards set switches on their belts and a glowing, green, viscous fluid started chugging through the tubes and into their arms and chest. Immediately they were moving faster that I thought was possible. Hands and arms flashed around too quick to follow. In seconds they were both fully armed, and had strapped themselves into additional pieces of chest, and helmet armour.

Two more explosions wracked the APC and we flipped onto the side and slammed to a halt. I screamed as the barbs cut me all over. I could feel myself pinned to the cage, bleeding and helpless. Loud banging, and then the bending and tearing of metal came from the floor of the APC (now the wall). A giant two-pronged claw ripped through making a hole big enough for a man to squeeze through. The claws seized the sides of the hole and ripped the entire side of the APC off.

An ork sat in a giant metal contraption that resembled a treaded cargo lifter. The lifting arms had been modified, replaced with giant claws clearly capable of ripping an APC apart, and what looked like a heavy auto-cannon mounted into the chest. I could swear the ork started to laugh as the auto-cannon spun up to fire, but my two guards were already out through the hole and each gunning the ork down in his seat. The sounds of slug throwers, boltguns, and las filled the air for a few brief moments, and then there was silence.

The rear of the APC opened and Andross stood there flanked by the two guards. They unlocked the cage and ripped me off the barbs, dumping me onto the ground screaming and crying in pain. I could feel the blood running down my back and sides as they grabbed my arms and handcuffed my hands in front of me.

Andross hauled me to my feet with one hand, his augmetics arm whirring with unnatural strength. That hellish eye spiralled clockwise and locked onto me as he held me close to his face. He waited until I quieted down.

‘Hektor, Ork reinforcements have joined the Waagh in this system and Rocs are bombarding the planet as we speak. We have hours at most to get off this planet before the star port is lost and we’re stuck here. You have two options. You can cooperate and we can get to the star port, and off this planet, or I can shoot you dead right here and now. You must choose, but immediately.’ He drew one of his modified plasma pistols and held the barrel so close to my face the light of the barrel was blinding even with my eyes shut, and the heat singed my skin. ‘I’ll cooperate.’

Andross nodded and holstered his pistol. ‘Good, this way’ as he started down the road without a second look at the APC and bodies of orks strewn about the wreck. The two guards both shoved me in the back after him as we all started walking.

We hadn’t been walking more than a few minutes when one of my guards spoke, ‘It ain’t right boss taking the wytch and leaving Ilias for the greenies.’ Andross didn’t look back or slow his pace as he responded, ‘Gregor, Ilias was helpful but for this one I would sacrifice a thousand Ilias’, and both you and your brother. Ilias is dead, Hektor is not.’

‘Yeah, but look at him. He’s all bleeding out. A blind ork could follow the trail we’re leaving. He’s just being fed to the Machine anyway. What’s one more dead Mutie? Let’s shoot him and be off.’

Andross stopped and turned around. Gregor reached out and grabbed my shoulder to keep me still. His brother, on my left, was scanning the horizon through the scope of his rifle. Andross tore my shirt from me and examined my cuts on my arms and back. He nodded to Gregor ‘shut him up.’ And Gregor clamped both his hands on my head and mouth.

Andross placed his hands on my back and I felt a white hot shock of electricity burn down my back where he touched me. I screamed, or tried to scream, but Gregor held my mouth shut tight. The pain was unbearable, and just as the world started to go black Gregor slapped me back to consciousness. My back and arms burned with a pain I could not describe, and I could smell the horribleness of my own cooked flesh.

Andross turned and started walking towards the star port again. ‘Eventually, yes he will be distilled down to sustain the Emperor’s stewardship over all of us. But first the Order will want to examine him. A psyker who can see into the future is a rare resource. He may be harvested for knowledge before his body is rendered down.’ To hear him talk of me so casually, as though I was nothing but a pit of stone to be mined for all usefulness before being destroyed. My stomach turned at the thought of being treated so cruelly but I would not give them the satisfaction of seeing that weakness. Almost as an afterthought he added, ‘No more bleeding. He’ll live assuming we make it to a medicae facility in the next day or so we’ll be able to keep the infection he’ll surely have from killing him too.’

As we closed to sight of the star port I could see Andross visibly diminish. The port was in flames, black oily smoke rose in columns so thick it made the day seemed like dusk. Ork rocs had managed to land nearby and the entire port was swarming with them. Screams both Ork and human could be heard along with bolter fire and that chilling ork war cry. Gregor’s brother (whom I learned was named Fyodor) was sent to scout ahead while the rest of us waited in the lee of another destroyed APC.

Fyodor’s news was grim. The orks had control of the port, though they didn’t seem to care much, and were destroying sections of what they had already captured. There seemed to be a few sporadic pockets of Guard resistance but the orks were overwhelming the area. ‘Right then,’ said Gregor ‘we’re screwed.’

‘Not yet.’ spoke Andross as he looked at me. His skin was weeping pus still from where his flesh met metal, and his eye clicked and spun in its socket again.’ ‘Imagine what a man who can engineer victory against an ork horde with just a combat knife can do with three of the best armed warriors on the planet as his guard.’

Fyodor licked his lips as though tasting freedom. Gregor spat on the ground in disgust. ‘You can’t trust it. It’ll turn on us the first chance it gets.’ I looked at Andross, staring back into his one red eye. ‘I suppose this is what I am to you. A tool to be used? A resource to be drained until I’m empty? Not a man, not a citizen of the Imperium, just a thing.’

Andross didn’t hesitate in his answer, ‘All of us are tools of the Empire. All life is a cup to be drained in service. What is life if you are not in service of a greater ideal? I would, and have ordered the deaths of billions of citizens whose only crime was to exist on the same planet as someone else. Sometimes there are threats too great, too grave, and too powerful to do anything other than bury it under a mountain of destruction and death and hope that no one ever finds it again. Everyone one of us is expendable if it serves the greater good of the whole.’

I could feel the tears well in my eyes, ‘I had a life. A life of service to the Emperor. To His people, defending them from this.’ I waved my hand towards the star port.

Andross rested his meshed hands on my shoulders, ‘Hektor, we all serve as the Emperor calls us. We rarely get to choose our path to service. If you come with me, if you help us escape I can promise you the life you have left will be spent in the best possible service to Mankind.’ ‘But I want to live.’ I pleaded. ‘I know you do Hektor, but the promise I give will never be more than what I have offered.’

I wiped the tears from my eyes and nodded, coming to terms at last with what I had to do. ‘Alright Andross, I will help you escape this planet.’ He glanced at Gregor who spit once more and then unlocked my collar and handcuffs. Andross pulled out his pistols and glanced over the side of the APC towards the port, scanning for orks. ‘Okay Hektor, get us off this planet.’

I took a few slow breaths, feeling the life return to me. Power filled my lungs and heart, and greasy taste of copper swam in the air. Frost wreathed our breath as I pulled more and more power into seeing the paths open to us.

I looked at all three of them in turn. ‘This will not be easy. There are exactly ten possibilities where everyone makes it off planet alive, and all of them rely on perfect coordination.’ Andross listened as I laid out the plan, detailing the semi-ordered ork patrol movements, and the gaps that would allow us momentary passage without notice. The events we would see that would let us know when to move and when to stay put or split up.

‘Let me be clear. The near future, seconds ahead of now is certain, but minutes forward is not. If even one of you miss an action window all futures will change and everyone will have to take immediate orders from me. No matter how outrageous they may seem, it will be imperative for everyone otherwise no one leaves the star port alive.

As night fell and the fires raged across the port, we snuck up to a gap torn in the defences. Approaching piecemeal, one covering the other as orks milled about outside. Everyone moved exactly as I commanded, not a moment hesitation. We slipped from the wreckage of ork and Guard vehicles until we were inside the port walls near some storage sheds which still smoked and reeked of promethium and oil.

Andross would not arm me, I could easily see that in all the probabilities, he would rather we all die than give me a chance to defend myself against the hundreds of monsters roaming around. Every path I described to them he insisted he remain within sight of me at all times.

A mob of rioting and screaming orks began to pass by the sheds. Twenty or so of them surrounding a couple of their larger kin who were madly hacking at each other with a pair of axes each. We slipped to their left as the mob passed working our way through the wreckage, deeper into the port. We halted at the foot of the first tier of the port. I looked to Gregor and Fyedor, ‘Wait here. You’ll see an ork lugging a bag filled with various mechanical parts across the first tier that way,’ as I pointed towards the fuel depot across the port. ‘Just like I told you, wait six seconds after he disappears around the corner, and another group of orks will pass by in the same direction. Wait another thirty seconds and then head to the fuel dump. Remember, exactly like I described it. You have thirty seconds for questions before Andross and I have to move onto the next objective.’ Despite their chem addled bodies they were clearly professional operatives of some kind. There were no questions, just last minute checks to make sure all their gear was strapped down tight and an ammo check.

Andross and I continued up to the next tier of the port. The structure up that far was more or less intact. It’s where most of the surface transport and cargo shuttles were parked. I saw what I guess may have been the ork equivalent of a tech priest on this tier. He had a giant multi-tool that looked to be crudely worked in place of its left arm. There were three piles of parts surrounding him separated into semi-logical sets of what looked to be armour plates, munitions and guns, and everything else. He was engrossed in removing some armour plating from a heavy cargo hauler with a torch that flamed from dangerous intensities to sputtering sparks at random moments. The ork would smack his multi-tool with a hammer every time the flame went out, occasionally screaming at it in their guttural language.

I held up my hand to Andross signalling him to hold position, while I snuck towards the ork. I stopped when I reached the Everything Else Pile of parts and slowly fished out a four litre tank of promethium from the pile, and gently opened the cap and set the container on its side, and then made my way back to my captor.

As the puddle of fuel pooled around the hapless ork his cutting torch went out again. The frustrated ork ripped the torch straight out of his own augmetics arm and threw it down at his feet, straight into the puddle. The heat from the still hot torch was all that was needed and the ork’s oil soaked clothes quickly caught fire in the burning promethium puddle. In seconds he was completely engulfed and screaming for its pathetic life. His death screams drew a crowd orks from the next tier. The laughed cruelly, watching him slowly cook and scream.

We slipped passed them and made our way up to the unguarded control tower entrance. The door had been ripped from its hinges and inside were bodies torn and butchered beyond what was needed to kill an enemy. Blood, and other fluids coated the walls and floor of the hallway, and I gagged on the stench as we made our way through the mess of sorrow. If Andross was moved by the sacrilege done to these men there was no visible sign that I could see. Just a coldness that chilled me. I imagine to him these honourable solders were nothing more than a rounding error on an after-action casualty report. He even had the gall to kick a few of the body parts aside as we made our way down the corridor.

‘Have you no respect for the honour of the dead?’Andross stopped and looked at me, his hell-eye all the more prominent in the darkness of the hall. It cast a scarlet reflection across the silvered half of his face. ‘These men and women performed their duty, and died for the Emperor. There can be no greater honour than giving your life for His greater glory. The fact that their bodies impede my progress towards doing my duty has no bearing on how honourable or not they were when they were alive. I’m sure if they could grasp the magnitude of my mission they would forgive a few post-mortem bruises.’ His eye whirred and clicked and telescoped in and out a few times before he continued, ‘There is no line that I cannot, or will not cross to bring about the success of the mission. My needs are the needs of the Emperor, therefore they are to be considered above all else. Be it the gentle rest of the honoured dead, the death of a few thousand orks, or the discomfort of a damn mutant, I will not be denied.’

As if to highlight his point he pulled one of his pistols and pointed it at me. I heard the low bass rumbling in his chest of the stun weapon building power. I shook my head in disagreement, ‘Turn off the stun. The noise will send vibrations down the hall and it will draw the orks back.’ He nodded and the bass disappeared. He waved his gun down the hall, ‘Continue. Gregor and his brother will be in position soon.’

I began climbing the emergency stairs to the tower control command room. I could feel the heat from the plasma pistol on my back and his cold eye boring into me as we ascended. ‘You never did tell me your rank Andross.’ ‘I have no rank as you would understand it.’

‘The chain you wear around your neck is a badge of office of some kind isn’t it? It’s important. I saw it in my dreams before we met.’ ‘No doubt you did. Dreaming your small dreams, squandering your power, and recklessly inviting dangers you have no concept of to take your soul. You’re a selfish man Hektor, and though your dreams may show you dangers, they do not show you the truth.’

I stopped halfway up the stairs, Andross’ pistol pressed firmly into my already scorched back burning it further. I turned on him, and I think that was probably not the smartest thing to do as he already had his other arm on my throat lifting me off my feet. I gasped at him through choked breaths, my arms feebly trying to loosen his hand around my throat, ‘I’m a hero... of the... Imperium. I killed the warboss. I saved lives.’

Andross dropped me and spit as though a bad taste was left by my words. ‘What lives have you saved? They’re all dead. Look around you Hektor. This war is lost. This world crumbles to ruin in the clutches of the xenos horde. When are you going to admit to yourself that the only things you did or have ever done have been just to stay alive? You’re no hero of the Imperium. You’re an Emperor-cursed parasite surviving off the blood and sacrifice of others. Tell me Hektor, could you have killed that ork if Jonas had not attacked him first?’

I had no idea who Jonas was, and my confusion seemed to satisfy him some, ‘Jonas, the Commissar who so heroically led the charge of four whole companies of Guard straight into the guts of the ork line. You remember him don’t you? The one who distracted the warboss just long enough for you to get lucky. Jonas had no knowledge of how that battle would play out, but I’m sure that had he known he still would have done it without question had he been ordered to. I’m sure had he any foreknowledge that his death and four score others would lead to the death of the warboss and route of the enemy that he would have volunteered for the opportunity. Could you say the same? Hmm? Would you willingly lie down and die so that I could kill the Enemy?’ I had no answer for him. Still gasping for air from his brutal, cold grip how could he expect me to answer? I could barely breathe.

He reached down and wrenched me to my feet by a fistful of my hair as he shoved me forwards ‘You don’t have it in you to be anything but a selfish parasite, living off the deaths of others.’ The rest of the climb was in bitter silence.

I still had no idea what his rank, or job was, but it was high enough that he had override codes for the command lectern. Three clicks came over the vox bead to signal Gregor and his brother were in position. Andross looked to me, ‘Which bays, and how long?’

I turned away from him, suddenly feeling very anxious, and just needing to look anywhere but into his eye. ‘Bays three, ten, and forty-six.’ I could hear Andross punch in the commands, and out across the port I could see the star ships beginning to rise out of the storage beneath the port structure. Some of the orks were noticing and grouping around the shuttles, looking around and firing into the air at an unseen menace. ‘Hektor, how long?’

I took a slow, deep breath and turned to face him, no turning back. ‘They have forty-five seconds to make for shuttle pad three. Any longer and they must bypass and proceed to shuttle ten. Wait for my mark to blow the fuel dump.’

Andross relayed my commands over the vox, ‘If they can’t make shuttle three, how long do they have to reach shuttle ten?’ I looked deep into the red hell and I thought for a moment I saw a reflection of myself in his eye. ‘Sixty seconds.’

I turned again to the window and looked out onto the burning star port, overrun with a horde of xenos. What difference had I made on the lives of this planet? Would there have there been a different outcome if I had stayed in that trench and accepted fate? Would this world, or the guardsmen under my protection have been better off had I just died? Andross was right. I thought too small. I couldn’t see past extending my own life. I took one last deep breath as the temperature plummeted and I grabbed hold of the future and confirmed the paths that would lead off this forsaken world. ‘Andross, mark!’

No sooner had Andross spoken ‘Engage. Engage. Engage,’ than the first explosion was set off across the port. A plume of flaming promethium mushroomed into the sky. For a few seconds the night was banished, and the heat of a noon sun brushed against me. A second explosion rocked the star port, and another giant pillar of fire rose into the sky. The orks that had been sniffing and growling around the rising starships immediately cried out in rage and charged towards the smoking ruin of the fuel depot. ‘Let’s go Andross, now!’

We bolted down the flights of stairs, Andross’ enhanced frame taking entire flights of stairs in single leaps while my scarred body fell behind his inhuman pace. Bolter fire and ork war cries could be heard as we exited the corpse strewn hallway and sprinted for the nearest star ship. Three orks were still milling about and started charging us the moment we left the control tower. Before I could blink Andross had his pistols in hand and fired a single shot into the first ork. It was like no plasma bolt I had ever seen. The shot was like a miniature blue star streaking from the pistol’s barrel towards the lead ork. His aim was true and the blast seemed to set the ork ablaze for a moment in blue-white plasma before he disintegrated. The shot did not stop there and caught the second ork full on too, evaporating him in another flash of blue-white star fire. The third ork caught a glancing blow in the shoulder, but it was enough to vaporize his arm, face, and most of its chest. It fell forwards, steaming and spilling boiling fluids onto the ground as we ran by.

‘Five o’clock!’ I yelled and Andross whipped a second shot almost directly behind us into another mob of orks. The star fire wreaking total destruction as it consumed another three orks. Another ork mob came rushing at us, this one led by a larger ork covered in thick armour plates. Nowhere near as heavily armed as the one I had faced, but still a monster to be reckoned with. Andross swiftly holstered both pistols and met the lead ork with his bare hands. He caught the ork’s giant axe with both hands and an immediate bolt of electricity surged from Andross, down the axe and into the fully armoured ork. It fell, immediately incapacitated by a charge that I had no doubt would be lethal to any human. A large bass note built as Andross let loose a stunning blast of light and sound at the remaining four orks who stumbled and fell in their charge. Another mob of orks had taken notice of the fight. They were rushing up the stairs of the tiers to stop us as Andross let loose another two shots from his pistols, incinerating most of the orks in a flash of blue fire and smoking xenos flesh. Two more groups of orks began charging up the tiers. Some of them had sense enough to fire off hails of bolter fire. The shots were wild but got Andross’ attention as he loosed another plasma bolt off towards them. His pistol screamed in alarm as it overheated. It was the first real emotion I had seen out of him since we first met as he cursed and tossed the pistol to the ground. The distraction was enough for the remainder of the first group to make it up the tier and charge. They didn’t even glance at me as they charged past. Entirely intent on being the ork that killed the most lethal foe they’d seen in a while. I slipped away. The last I saw of Andross was his silhouette as a flash of blue plasma incinerated a small pack of the overwhelming mob.

Yes sister, I ran. I abandoned Andross. I used him and his mercenaries, leading them into a trap that would let me escape. What choice did I have? Elsa, could you knowingly step in front a bullet? Would you willingly die when you knew there would be no purpose to the death?

It’s true what I told Andross of my future. Being distilled down into my psychic essence and fed to a hideous monster on a throne. But I saw more than that. I saw what Andross truly wanted me for. I would have been lobotomized. An automaton, locked into a machine, reading my bleached thoughts, awake and never really alive. They would have imprisoned me in my own body. And then, when my body was drained, and I was a lifeless husk, they would take the last bit of me that was any use, my soul. And they would feed it to our Emperor.

Andross was right. I want to live. What crime is there in that? I won’t lie and say that I was innocent of his death. I did not swing the axe that killed him, but make no mistake I led him into his fate. His blood is on my hands, but I hope you understand that I had no choice. To kill a man who can order a Lord-General, and order the enslavement of a hero of the Imperium can only mean one thing, being labelled a traitor. For not reporting my gifts, I will be hunted. For killing such a man as Andross I will be chased to the ends of Imperial space and beyond. I’m haunted now by dreams of others like him hunting me, coveting my power for their own. My only future now is to stay alive, running, and hiding. I’m on a rogue trader vessel now heading into xenos territory, away from Imperial law that would see me unjustly and inhumanly imprisoned. I hope that one day I’ll be able to return, but the rogue trader told me a community of xenos that would welcome someone like me. I’ll be safe there, welcomed, and cared for. Someday I’ll be home, but for now know that I’m safe, and alive.