- crazypeltast52
- May 5, 2010
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Part 2 of this post:
Since you've all been good sports about the poo poo I've thrown at you thus far from the threads of old, the promised 40k cross over fan fic is here:
Kylaer, Beloved of the Emperor posted:"Now that's a job well done. Or half of one, at least." Captain Solaron straightened from peering through his surveyor's auspex on its spindly brass tripod, nodding with approval. The bridge was a shade over half built, the most recent pylons standing in the middle of the swift-flowing river - the Green Fork, as the locals called it. With nightfall approaching, the piledrivers had fallen silent, and were now receiving their evening blessings. Wisps of incense drifted from dangling censers as the tech-priests moved among the machines, soothing them to sleep and anointing them with their sacred oils.
The machines were preparing to sleep; the human members of the engineering company, on the other hand, were preparing to eat. The two hundred and fifty men under Solaron's command had been performing their jobs well, as the bridge's progress proved. The thousand-odd native auxiliaries were useful too, he had to admit; he wouldn't let them near the construction process, of course, but a few overseers and a bag of silver coins would have them hauling building materials all day without complaint, and that freed up his men for the real work. Not all of the natives were drudge-workers, though; a team of them had had fires burning all day, preparing food for the entire labor force.
"Captain Solaron?" The captain turned away from the river at the sound of his name, wondering who the newcomer was; it wasn't a voice he recognized, certainly not someone from his company. The man wore the fatigues and light armor of a recon trooper, with sergeant stripes on his sleeve, and a dozen more dressed like him stood back at a respectful distance. The sergeant saluted.
Solaron returned the salute, nodding for the soldiers to stand at ease. "Yes, sergeant? What brings a recon team to a construction camp?"
"We've been patrolling for the past twenty days, looking for bandits, recalcitrant natives, and any other troublemakers. And showing the aquila, of course, making sure the locals remember who's in charge, all the usual for a newly-claimed feral world." He gestured behind him; indeed, one of his men carried a banner with the double-headed eagle of the Imperium emblazoned on it, certainly not normal practice for a reconnaissance squad. "Permission to make camp inside your lines for the night, captain?"
"Permission granted. We've already got watches assigned, so your whole team can sleep. There's space for you to set up over there," he gestured at a spot where piles of building material had previously stood before being added to the bridge, "and by the time you've set your tents, there should be food ready."
"Greatly appreciated, captain." The sergeant turned smartly and gestured to his squad in the direction Solaron had indicated. As they marched off, Solaron turned the other direction and made his way through the encampment, around the shelter built for the vox sets and between the neat rows of tents, heading for the dining square.
The sergeant and his team were welcome guests. The engineering company hadn't had a problem with bandits, none would dare to approach the camp's lines of wire and guard towers, but some of the locals had grown belligerent. A week ago, a party of riders with a twin-towers design on their surcoats and shields had ridden up to the gates of the camp and rudely demanded to speak with the "local lord." Orders from on high were to refrain from killing the natives without sufficient reason, and Solaron decided that "They pissed me off" probably wasn't good enough, so he'd met them at the gate.
"This is the land of House Frey," the leader of the band had told him. "House Frey of the Crossing - the only crossing. No bridges besides ours are to span this river. Who are you to violate our laws?"
"I'm Captain Solaron, 8th Rihak Engineers, by the grace of the God-Emperor of Man. Who are you?" He posed the question with contempt dripping from his tone; in the briefings, he'd heard of House Frey, and knew they were a middle-weight local power, but he wouldn't give them the satisfaction of acknowledging that.
The horseman had perhaps realized that he was making a mistake by staying near the camp, and had growled something about needing to inform his lord before riding off hastily. Threats from natives didn't bother the captain; he had patrols on guard and four watchtowers securing the camp, each of which was mounted with a multilaser capable of tearing through any force the natives might send against them. The bridge would be built regardless of what any local said, so that heavy equipment could cross the river without being ferried by air.
Reaching the dining square, an area near the edge of the camp delineated by marking posts and filled with pop-up polymer tables and benches, Solaron found that the evening meal had just begun. Lines of Imperials and natives snaked past the serving tables, the workers collected slabs of bread, wedges of cheese, local vegetables and fruits, and cuts of roasted meat. Each Imperial also received vitamin supplement pills; the natives received none, as they'd obviously lived this long without them. He made his way around the edge of the square, to the officers' table, where he found a plate laden with food already waiting for him. Rank did have its privileges, and one of them was not having to wait in meal lines.
The camp lights clicked on as the sun sank away. Solaron found the meal enjoyable, and was telling the quartermaster lieutenant that he'd done a good job in arranging supply lines from the natives when he was interrupted by a commotion from a nearby table.
"Hey, look at the cogboy," a drunken voice called. Solaron recognized it; it belonged to a supply clerk named Badguy, who had obviously done a little side-dealing with the natives. Alcohol was available in the camp, but tightly rationed; Badguy stood from his seat, waving a skin of local wine, his red face and slurred speech showing that he had managed to circumvent that ration. He pointed his free hand at a tech-priest, sitting further down the table, who was sucking at a bowl of nutrient broth through a thick metal straw built into his augmetic throat. "Poor cogboy, bet you wish you could eat something real. That looks worse'n ration packs." He waved the wineskin in the robed adept's direction, paused, then tried to raise it to his mouth. It refused to move.
The tech-priest had reached out with his shoulder-mounted mechadendrite and seized the wineskin. Badguy cursed and the men surrounding him laughed as a tug-of-war ensued; the clerk was dragged halfway across the table before he finally let go of the skin. Accompanied by whoops of encouragement from the soldiers, the tech-priest poured the entire remainder of the wineskin into his bowl and began drinking, as Badguy finally regained his seat. Solaron was laughing too, although he reminded himself to see how exactly Badguy had gotten the wine; if it had involved trading stolen Imperial property, the clerk would spend the next month or two breaking rocks all day. The engineering company didn't have a commissar assigned to it, so Solaron tended to handle minor punishments himself, by simply assigning the offender to pointlessly-hard labor.
Having finished the wine, the tech-priest stood, tossed the empty skin at Badguy, and bowed with great ceremony, bringing another round of laughter. Tech-priests assigned to the Imperial Guard, Solaron had noticed, tended to be less...uptight, that was a good word, than the average Mechanicus adept. He'd figured it was the result of spending so much time around soldiers, and had mentioned it in one of his infrequent letters to his cousin, who had joined the Cult of the Machine. She had written back to inform him that he was wrong; quite the opposite, tech-priests who weren't sufficiently uptight to begin with were assigned to the Guard, where their skills were needed but their gravitas was disposable. He turned to mention it to his second-in-command, hearing a twanging noise off in the darkness as he moved.
"Those te-" he began, then a scream from behind him sent him spinning. A lieutenant two places down was writhing on the table, with a short wooden shaft protruding from his right shoulderblade.
"Snipers!" someone roared; more of the bolts fell among the men at the tables, wounding and killing. Solaron dropped to the ground and rolled under the table, pulling his vox unit from his belt and snapping out orders.
"Towers 2 and 3, shred the woods to the east, we've got shooters! Mortar team, flares up, give us some light!" The heavy weapons in the towers turned and unleashed their fury, sending sprays of glowing las bolts into the darkness. Moments later, he heard the thump of the mortars, and the night vanished as the illumination flares rose into the sky.
As suddenly as it had come, the rain of bolts ceased. Solaron got to his feet, assessing the scene; at least two dozen of his company were down, most of them yelling in pain, a few with the terrible silence of the dead. The multilasers were still raking the treeline; he ordered them to stop as the recon sergeant came running up.
"Captain! Permission to take my squad and pursue?"
"Denied. Take your squad and join up with our security teams, secure the area around the camp. Do not chase them down. Were any of your men injured?" The sergeant shook his head. "Then it's our affair. We'll settle it our way." And I already know who did it, the captain thought.
Medic teams carried the wounded away; they were more accustomed to dealing with mechanical injuries and construction accidents than combat trauma, but they were still Imperial Guard first and foremost. By the time the recon sergeant returned, with two of his men hauling a groaning figure between them, Solaron knew the tally; four killed outright, two more who had bled to death before their wounds could be fixed. The soldiers threw the groaning man down before the captain; he'd lost his right leg below the knee to the multilaser fire, blood trickling through cracks in the burned flesh. No markings on his clothes, no badge of allegiance, he noted.
He leaned down and grabbed the man by the collar. "What house do you serve? Tell me and I'll let you go," he grated. He already knew the answer, it could be none but Frey, but he would have his answer - and he would have his justification. The man just blinked and groaned again. Solaron balled up his fist and hammered it into the man's leg-stump; he howled, and Solaron repeated his question. Another strike, and finally the man answered, giving the reply he had expected. "You can confirm what he said - House Frey?" he asked his second-in-command, and the man nodded. Solaron jerked his thumb towards the river. "Take him to the end of the bridge...and let him go." The Frey soldier was dragged away, his pleas for mercy unheeded.
"Sir, we have to report this," the recon sergeant said bluntly. "A bomber flight can level the Frey castle straight out, show 'em what it means to attack the Imperium."
"We'll report it. Just not quite yet. It's the 8th Rihak Engineers they attacked, and it's the 8th that will have its revenge. The bombers can finish what's left."
An hour later, the small boat powered itself quietly up to the bridge-castle of the Freys. Solaron and four others crouched inside, surrounding a cargo of heavy blasting charges. The Freys kept only a cursory watch on the river itself, particularly downstream; the boat nosed up to the primary support, and the engineers began placing their charges. The tech-priest, the same one who'd taken Badguy's wine although now sober, murmured prayers of activation as he fitted each charge with a detonator, one designed to be remote-triggered. The team worked with practiced ease; no more than twenty minutes passed from the time the boat arrived until it was headed back downriver. The entire bridge was wired and ready to explode.
Solaron pulled out the detonator and eyed it. He flipped the protective cover away and pressed the activator button.
The explosion was everything he had intended. Solaron hadn't always been a company captain; in his earlier years, he had been the lieutenant in charge of the demolitions section, and he had led by example. The great stone bridge, with its mid-river tower, blew skyward with a cataclysmic roar. The shockwave cracked a tower and sent the upper stories tumbling on the eastern castle, and the western castle partially collapsed as the bridge tore away. Pieces of stone - and a few pieces of what might have been Freys - rained down onto land and water.
Nodding in satisfaction, Solaron muttered "Now for the bombers. They can clean up the dregs."
_____________________________
By the time they passed the fifth dangling corpse, Sergeant Casao began to get the sense that they weren't wanted in the area. His soldiers didn't seem particularly nervous; they were alert, weapons at the ready, but showed no signs of fear. The natives, on the other hand, were scared.
"Ser," a man-at-arms named Wat remarked, leaning in towards Casao. "These raiders, ser, they are not just bandits. They're more. They're worse. They've been raiding around these lands since the War of the Five Kings started; killing Lannisters at first, then Freys, and now anyone."
"They'll die like any other," Casao replied, shrugging. "They were just breaking your king's peace until we arrived. Now they're breaking the God-Emperor's peace; that will not continue."
"They're not 'any other.' They're the Brotherhood." Wat shivered, hand clenching tight around his spear shaft. The natives were untrained with modern weapons - not to mention untrusted with the power a lasgun represented. The man stepped away and resumed his place in the column, head flicking back and forth like an auspex scanner, sweat running down his face despite the chill temperatures.
At the head of the column, trooper Josho held up a clenched fist, the signal to halt. The natives, following the simple orders that had been painstakingly drilled into them, stopped and turned outward, searching for threats on all sides. Casao's squad of guardsmen took their places interspersed in the native ranks while the sergeant hurried forward to see what the point man had found.
Silently, Josho pointed into a tree ahead of them, directly beside the narrow track the column was following. Yet another corpse hung from a low limb. Casao frowned. This one looked different, although exactly how he couldn't tell at this distance. Slinging his lasgun, he raised his binoculars, and the details of the corpse leaped into clarity.
The sergeant, a veteran of three military campaigns, with over a dozen confirmed kills and scars on his body from shrapnel and las burns, flinched away at the sight, dropping the binoculars to the ground. He blinked, trying to clear the image from his eyes, but it hung there like the aftereffect of a brilliant light. The body, not just hanged, but mutilated. He had seen mutilated bodies before, usually the result of artillery, but never one like this. Never one where the flesh had been carved into symbols, those horrible, stomach-churning designs that decorated the corpse ahead.
"You alright, sergeant?" Josho asked, surprised at seeing his superior so discomforted. Of course, he hadn't taken the full impact of the corpse, Casao thought; he wouldn't understand.
"The body...it's foul, the work of...Chaos. Go back and get on the vox, inform Command that we've located a pocket of the dark forces here. And send Zoom up here." Casao held the position, watching for any signs of the foe, until Zoom arrived, the soft hiss of the pilot light on his flamer alerting the sergeant to his approach.
"Orders, sergeant?"
"That body up there, see it? No, don't look too close. It's tainted, Warp filth. We have to burn it. The rest of the column's going to stay here, I don't want to get more people close to it than I have to. That means you, and me to watch your back."
Zoom nodded. "Got it." The tree holding the body was a little under fifty meters away from the head of the column, Casao thought, but now, with knowledge of what kind of evil was lurking in this forest, it was a good forty-five meters further away from the rest of his troops than he wanted to go. Gaze snapping left and right with each step, Casao led the way, lasgun held ready at his shoulder, set on full-auto. With the thick forest around them, visibility off the track was very limited, and Casao had a gut feeling that the forces of the great enemy were lurking somewhere nearby. Despite his hunch, they drew within range of the tree without an attack.
"Burn it good, Zoom," Casao muttered. "And for the love of the Emperor, don't get a good look at it. I nearly lost my lunch."
"And wouldn't that be a pity," Zoom said with false levity. He had obeyed, not looking at the corpse as they approached, but this close it seemed to be radiating some feeling of unease, the feeling of fragments of ice running down their spines. "Alright, cleansing time," he said, raising the flamer.
Everything happened at once. The flamer roared, sending its gout of blazing promethium fuel up at the hanging corpse; over the sound of the flames, with amazing clarity, Casao heard a sound like the tock of a clock; following that, a heartbeat later, came the harsh crackle of las fire.
He spun in place, and saw one of the native auxiliary troops face down, an arrow through the back of his head. Two of his soldiers were firing at the presumed source while the rest, as trained, watched the rest of the perimeter, guarding against a multi-pronged assault; the natives, to Casao's lack of surprise, were mostly cowering behind their shields.
"Cover our tracks!" he shouted to Zoom. The flame trooper triggered his weapon and swept it in an arc, leaving a barrier of flaming undergrowth in its wake. Both men took off, back towards the column. As he neared, he saw another arrow slice out of the undergrowth and into the face of one of his soldiers. The man fell, bonelessly sprawling on the ground. Another trooper fired a grenade launcher, the frag round exploding among the trees.
Then the attack began in earnest. Natives rushed from the trees on both sides of the track, brandishing swords, axes, knives, a whole array of primitive weapons. Casao shot one, a clean hit through the chest; the man staggered, took a few more steps, dropped to his knees, and almost managed to regain his feet before a native auxiliary buried a spearhead in his face.
The attackers showed no fear. Howling and gibbering, they flung themselves at the soldiers of the Imperium. Casao saw auxiliaries falling as he approached; a man came at him with an axe, a wild swing which he checked with the body of his lasgun. The axe bit into the weapon, and for a moment it was caught; Casao twisted, pulling the axe out of the enemy's hand, and tried to shoot him, but the gun's firing mechanism had been destroyed. Cursing, the sergeant spun the weapon, his vicious buttstroke taking the heretic under the chin as he lunged bare-handed, snapping the man's head backward and breaking his spine. Dropping the gun, Casao pulled the chainsword from his belt and ignited the motor, bringing the screaming blade up just in time to lop the head off an enemy spear. He pushed through, slicing the attacker's chest open, blood flying from the chain's teeth.
A wash of heat rolled over him as Zoom blasted a knot of heretics with his flamer. Somewhere behind him, another grenade went off. Casao knew he needed to assess the overall situation, to fill his role as commander of this small detachment, but he didn't have time; another heretic was charging him, a rusted sword held low. This one fought with less madness than the others, although no less fury. Westerosi steel scraped and rasped against whirring chain-teeth as the two traded blows. The man was skilled, but his skill was not matched in the quality of his weapon; Casao closed the distance, swinging at the man's neck, and on this attempted block the heretic's sword sheared cleanly through. His head went rolling, and Casao stepped back, snatching a moment to survey the battle.
The natives are doing better than I expected, he thought. Of the thirty he'd started with, his quick count showed at least twenty still standing. All of his own troops save two were also still fighting, and of those two, he knew that one of them had been the man taken down by an arrow at the beginning of the engagement. Emperor, receive his soul into your keeping.
Josho, with his bayonet mounted on his rifle, was anchoring part of the line of auxiliaries, keeping them in the fight by example. He shot at the foe as they approached and took them with cold steel when they drew near, showing the steady nerves he had developed in the lengthy campaign on Foris Beta. When the dead woman attacked, he didn't seem to notice her state, putting two shots through her chest and then impaling her through the abdomen with the bayonet as she pressed onward. But Casao saw. He saw the dead flesh of her face, saw the terrible wound at her throat, and saw her reach out with a dagger and slash it across Josho's forearm, even as he twisted the blade in her guts. Josho shrieked, letting go of of his weapon to clutch at the arm. Casao knew immediately that it was no mere metal blade the corpse-woman wielded; Josho would not react like that to the pain of a simple laceration. He fell, thrashing and gurgling. Poison. Warp-poison, Casao thought grimly, dashing forward.
The dead woman turned, dagger before her. She was not quick, not skilled; her lunge was clumsy, and Casao took her hand off at the wrist. Her expression never changed. She raised the stump of her arm and shook it at him, droplets of tainted blood flying; he felt some strike his cheek and neck, burning like acid. "Zoom!" he bellowed, sending the dead foe sprawling with a blow to the head with the flat of his chainsword. "Here and now!"
The heat of the flamer-wash felt like an answered prayer. The cone of burning fuel drenched the walking corpse, fire solving what las bolts could not. She tried to rise, but the blessed flames consumed her unholy flesh. For an instant, a half-exposed skull faced straight at Casao, then it slumped, the vile power fleeing.
Around him, the last of the other attackers were being struck down. An auxiliary toppled backwards, felled by a flung axe, but another lunged forward to spear the heretic who had thrown it. A few tried to flee; none made the escape, las bolts searing through their backs. It had been a hard fight, to be sure, but they were victorious.
"God-Emperor of Man, we give thanks to you in this, our moment of triumph," Casao recited, his voice shaky. "We thank you for our defeated foes; we thank you for our lives, preserved that we may continue to serve you; we thank you for the valiant deaths you have given our comrades, for we know that they now stand at your side." It was a traditional prayer of the regiment, always heartfelt, but today especially so, with the horrors of the great enemy fresh in their minds. The other guardsmen echoed the prayer; the natives, stress making them forget their indoctrination, were saying their own prayers, calling on the various aspects of their god. Under the circumstances, he decided against chastising them. He made a head count; nine of them had given their lives for the Emperor in the few minutes the onslaught had lasted. Two of his own were dead, including Josho. Another was badly wounded, from a spear thrust to his unarmored thigh, severing the femoral artery; someone had applied a tourniquet, saving his life, but he needed the attention of the medicae immediately. Virtually everyone had one or more minor wounds.
"Vox operator, tell Command we have engaged a sizable force of Chaos-tainted bandits. Report..." he paused, counting the fallen enemy "...forty-eight of the enemy slain, and give our casualty reports. Tell them we are returning to base, barring counter orders, and need medical evac for our wounded." He glanced around. None of the enemy was carrying a bow. "Did we get that archer? Does anyone have confirmation?"
One of his men and three auxiliaries moved out into the woods, and returned dragging a body. The frag grenade had done its job well, but by chance the man's face had not been damaged. It allowed Casao to see the extra eyes that had grown on the right side of the man's face, on his cheekbone and forehead. No wonder he was such an archer, he thought. He dug the palm-sized pict recorder out of his backpack, which he had set aside before setting off with Zoom to burn the corpse, and snapped some images before ordering the corpse burned; the corpses of their own men would also be burned, but separately from the Chaos filth. He put the recorder back into his pack carefully; Command might want extra proof of the warped nature of the foe, if witnesses were deemed not enough.
"Sergeant, Command says that we are to return along the path, there's a clear space about two kilometers back that's large enough to land a dropship. They'll pull out the wounded and drop in a reinforcement squad in case there's another ambush on the way back." Casao nodded in acknowledgment of the vox operator's statements, then signaled for the column to form up again.
The first few minutes of the return march were tense, as the soldiers expected another attack, but when one failed to appear they grew cautiously optimistic. They were still watchful, every eye alert for signs of another ambush, but none appeared.
What appeared was quite the opposite. The man standing on the track ahead of them made no attempt to hide himself; he waited, planted in the middle of their path, back towards them as if he had no concerns whatsoever. His body was hidden by a heavy cloak, at the top of which the back of a steel helmet could be seen; he was big, that was certain, but nothing else was. The setup screamed "trap" to Casao. Well, he's not one of ours, that's for sure, he thought, surveying the patterns traced - in blood, almost certainly, from the color - on the yellow fabric of the cloak. They were not as mind-bending as the carvings on the hanged corpse, but they were bad enough; looking at them hurt, like trying to stare at a bright light.
Enough of this. Casao went to one knee and sighted Josho's lasgun carefully, aiming between the man's shoulderblades. No armor forged on this planet would stop a las bolt. He squeezed the trigger smoothly and the gun cracked in answer, the dart of energy lancing through the figure's torso.
The man turned. The helmet he wore was worked in the shape of a dog's head, snarling; his face was entirely hidden. Casao repositioned the gun to fire again, and this time the figure reacted, charging straight at him. What Casao had thought was a helmet opened its jaws, exposing a livid maw, ringed with cruel steel teeth. The man - the monster, the daemon, Casao thought, it was a daemon, not a man at all - let out a howl more terrifying than any sound he had ever heard. It was the siren wail of an incoming artillery shell mixed with the screech of clashing chain-blades and the cry of someone grievously injured. A sword appeared in the thing's hand, the steel notched and jagged.
Where Casao found the nerve to meet the daemon's charge, he never knew, but when it arrived he was on his feet, chainsword in his hand. Behind him, screams of panic and the sounds of flight told him that the auxiliaries - hopefully just the auxiliaries, he prayed, not my squad too - had broken and were fleeing. The daemon's blade lashed out - the beast wasn't that much bigger than Casao, but its strength was inhuman, and its blow nearly crashed straight through his block.
Casao backpedaled, frantically countering its strikes. He tried to think of way to beat the enemy, but the daemon was too strong, too skilled; it was all he could manage to keep himself alive. He had a brief hope that he could wear down his foe's sword simply by repetitive blocking, but the daemon's sword was no simple piece of steel, and after a dozen contacts it showed no signs of damage.
The daemon drove him back, into the treeline, then out again onto the trail. He hazarded a look behind him; his soldiers were still there, scrambling out of the combatants' way, each trying to get a clear shot and none of them succeeding. He caught a blur of motion behind him from the corner of his eye but couldn't risk looking. Nor could he risk looking down, and thus he didn't notice the discarded shield until he'd already caught his boot-heel on it and was falling. As he fell, he expected the daemon's sword to spit him to the ground. Instead, something else passed over him going the other way. There was a thud of impact, and motion ceased.
Wat the auxiliary stood beside the fallen sergeant, spear held in both hands, the steel head buried in the daemon's chest. He may not know the Emperor, Casao thought, but the Emperor knows him. Casao would never have an opportunity to congratulate Wat for his bravery; the daemon's sword whipped upward, chopping through the spear shaft, and then it lunged itself forward, jaws gaping, and bit through Wat's head like a ripe fruit.
"Away, sergeant!" It was Zoom's voice. Casao needed no encouragement; he was already rolling, trying to get enough space to regain his feet. The flame blast engulfed the daemon, which screamed again - and flung its sword, with enough force to send Zoom flying backward, tumbling to the ground with another fitful spurt of flame.
Casao was back on his feet before Zoom came to rest. His chainsword came down in an overhead strike with every ounce of strength he could muster, straight onto the daemon's forearm. Foul blood sprayed as the limb was sheared through. It swung at him with its other hand, fingers hooked like claws, but he dodged away.
The krak grenade hit the monster square on the chest. The armor-piercing charge detonated, splattering most of the daemon's torso contents across a dozen square meters. Karter fired another from his launcher as Casao sprinted away. The daemon was down. Not dead; it still stirred, with the awful persistence of its kind, but it wasn't going anywhere. Casao looked at Zoom, loyal Zoom, with the daemon's sword sticking through his chest. The flamer he had carried was undamaged.
Two minutes later, the last traces of the daemonic taint had been successfully purged. Casao stood amid the smoke, breathing raggedly, the aftereffects of the fight hitting him as adrenaline wore off. The members of the native auxiliary who had run were returning.
They had done it. They had cleansed this little portion of the world from the infestation of Chaos. They had paid the price in blood.
The price, Casao knew, was fair.
_____________________________
"Calm yourself, Ray. Remember, this is an assessment, not an arrest. And certainly not a raid."
The soldier raised his gaze from the rifle he was meticulously checking over and looked across the passenger compartment, meeting the inquisitor's eyes. He nodded in acknowledgment, then returned his attention to his weapon.
The inquisitor leaned back in his seat. The dropship wasn't even close to full capacity, carrying only the flight crew, a handful of guards, and a pair of servitor scribes, plus himself and Ray. As he'd said, it wasn't a raid.
Here I am, an agent of His Divine Majesty's Inquisition, conducting job interviews, he thought, laughing quietly. Of course, it was all about the context. Long experience had taught the Imperium that the easiest way to exert initial control over a feral world like this was to keep most of the home-grown power structure intact, simply adding the Imperial layer as the new top of the social pyramid. Then, trickling into the planet's societies from offworld, would come the Ecclesiarchy priests, the educators, the civil engineers, the Mechanicus adepts, and the Imperial Guard recruiters, and within a few generations the world would be as devoted to the God-Emperor as the next. The necessity was to choose local rulers who would make good Imperial vassals, and that was where he entered the picture.
Ever since locals had started bowing to the Imperial armies, he had been flying back and forth, performing his assessments on those who offered their fealty. Some had been so incompetent, or so duplicitous, that he had signed writs for their execution. Most, he judged, would make useful vassals, with the standard precaution of keeping a watchful eye on them. And a bare handful had been truly useful; Stannis Baratheon, one of the claimants to the crown in the war that the Imperium's landing had interrupted, had such a rigid sense of duty that the inquisitor had recommended making him the territorial governor for the Westerosi continent.
The inquisitor had his reservations about the man he was currently flying to meet. By all accounts, he was extremely clever; by those same accounts, he was entirely self-serving. Such individuals were rarely useful in the long term; he had no interest in coming back to this world in a few years to scour out corruption that could have been prevented from the start.
The pitch of the dropship's engines changed as it began its descent. The inquisitor tapped the needle pistol holstered at his waist, assuring himself that it was in its proper place. It was unlikely that he'd need it, but he'd seen too many unlikely things in his life. He noticed that Ray was gripping the fastener toggle of his harness, ready to deploy as soon as the dropship landed, as if they were coming in hot; it was useless to remind him that such things were not always necessary.
The dropship's bay rumbled with the sound of deploying landing struts; a few moments later, the craft settled to the ground. By the time the inquisitor had risen to his feet, Ray was waiting beside the exit ramp, rifle at the ready. The trooper had been part of his retinue since the disaster on Tanskir; his killing instincts were as honed as those of an Astartes warrior, but subtlety was not part of his vocabulary, except as applied to stealth infiltrations. "Sling your weapon, Ray, and do not reach for it unless we are facing imminent hostilities." The soldier's mouth became a thin, hard line, but he obeyed.
The ramp lowered; with Ray at his side, and the scribes trailing behind, the inquisitor strode down. An array of courtiers and local knights awaited them, but not the man he'd been sent to meet. The most ornately-dressed courtier introduced himself and offered to lead them to the lord's solar, where the meeting would be conducted. A calculated move, the inquisitor thought. He's showing that he doesn't fear me, doesn't respect me enough to meet me as I land. He's...playing games. The odds that the end of the day would see a writ of execution being signed were growing by the minute. As their escorts led them through the halls of the castle, the inquisitor wondered idly if it would be worth dealing with the extra commotion to simply shoot the man on the spot. Probably not; if he did, Ray would likely end up killing half the population of the castle.
On the top floor of the castle, as they approached the solar, the inquisitor began to feel uneasy. Something felt wrong; worse, it was something he couldn't identify. He knew the feeling of the psychic disturbances caused by Warp entities, and the strange signatures of xeno minds. This was neither. This was something he had never felt before - and the source, he realized as he approached the door, was inside the solar. Unbidden, his hands began to twitch, and he fought the urge to reach for his pistol.
The pair of armored guards at the solar's doors pulled them open, and the courtier strode through, announcing their presence. The inquisitor spotted his subject - looking just as he had in the briefing picts, a small man dressed in silver and grey - and his eyes slid straight past him, locking on to the other occupant in the room. A girl, in her early teens, with long dark hair and a very solemn expression. Quite attractive, he thought...if you were a pedophile, which he wasn't.
And if you weren't a psyker, which he was.
"My lord inquisitor, welcome to -" Petyr Baelish began.
"Send her away," the inquisitor rasped, concentrating very hard on pronouncing each word correctly. He felt as if his mind was a sheet of parchment that had been crumpled up and thrown away.
Lord Baelish was obviously surprised at the interruption, but he covered it well. "I'm sorry, my lord, is there a problem?"
"Now!"
Realizing that there was no room for debate, Baelish motioned towards the door. "Well, Alayne, the man from the stars must not think our conversation will be suitable for your hearing." The girl stood and curtsied, then headed for the door. She had to pass within arm's length of the inquisitor to leave; his vision blurred and he felt himself sway. An instant later, Ray was at his side, steadying him.
"What is she?" he hissed. "Is she a witch? She's done something to you, I can tell. Shall I take her down?"
"No," the inquisitor replied, slowly. As the girl retreated down the hallway, the sensations faded. "No, she's not a witch." She's exactly the opposite, he thought. The girl was a blank, a psychic null; not only was she not connected to the Warp, but she blocked the connections of others around her. Normal humans might notice nothing unusual in her presence; psykers, on the other hand, were debilitated. They were so rare, the inquisitor had never encountered one before in person, although he knew of them by description.
"Are you well, lord inquisitor?" Baelish asked, obviously watching for any clue as to what had unnerved the other man.
"It was nothing." How true that is. The inquisitor flicked his fingers, dismissing the concern. "Now, let's begin," he continued, motioning towards the table set up in the middle of the solar. He noticed that it was strewn with various dishes, and spotted a tray of lemoncakes. They were his favorite. Was it random chance that they were available, he wondered, or had Baelish done a little background digging of his own?
The interview took several hours, as servants came and went with flagons of water and wine. Ray lurked in the background, eyes never still, as Lord Baelish danced around the verbal traps laid for him by the inquisitor. He may be a primitive, but he's no fool, and he's trained himself well not to show his true thoughts. Of course, the best tarot-playing face in the galaxy didn't help much when you were talking to a psyker who could tell exactly when you were and were not telling the truth. The inquisitor was, admittedly, fairly weak as psykers went, and could not actually read someone else's thoughts, but lie-detecting was another matter entirely, and he could do that without flaw.
At last, the inquisitor had no more questions. He rose from the table and began to walk towards the balcony set on the far side of the room, motioning Baelish to join him. He looped an arm around the shorter man's shoulders and leaned in conspiratorially.
"Lord Baelish, I'm going to let you in on a little piece of wisdom handed down from inquisitor to inquisitor throughout the millennia. It goes like this: 'Keep your friends close...and your enemies dead.'" He felt the man's shoulder muscles tense, although just what he expected to do was a mystery; the inquisitor could have snapped his neck before he could even reach for a weapon, thanks to his augmetic enhancements. "So all that's left is to determine whether you are friend or enemy. You're clever, perhaps even brilliant, but you've been playing the same game your whole life - and now the rules have changed." The inquisitor's eyes narrowed speculatively. "Can you adapt, and work for the good of the Imperium, or are you going to keep working solely for yourself? You could be quite useful, if you kept your priorities straight. And there would be rewards for you...but if you can't be satisfied, if you seek to go beyond your appropriate station, if you seek to scheme against the will of the God-Emperor as you once schemed against the will of your king, then it would be best just to kill you now. Convince me."
"I swear on my life, my lord, you can trust -"
The inquisitor shook his head ever so slightly, silencing Baelish in midsentence. With a faint rattle of chain-links, his Inquisitorial rosette came sliding out of the collar of his robes to dangle in midair between them, chain swaying slack, untouched by any hand. It was a parlor trick, a minor bit of telekinetic manipulation, but against someone unused to psykers it was greatly intimidating. "Lord Baelish, I can tell when you're lying. Every time." The rosette lit, glowing an eerie green; at the same time, the inquisitor reached out, mind-to-mind, finding the sparks of fear in Baelish and fanning them into full panic.
"I'll be loyal," he whispered, eyes wide in terror, all duplicity gone. He had been the master of the Westerosi game...but the Inquisition held all the trumps.
The inquisitor let go of his shoulder and walked a few steps away, leaving him to recompose himself. "Remember this moment of fear, Lord Baelish. Cling to it. Cherish it. It will keep you loyal, and thus keep you safe. If you forget it, and return to your old ways, you will die." Baelish was taking deep, shuddering breaths as he brought himself back under control.
"One more thing," the inquisitor added, turning to face the shorter man again. "I want the girl."
"What?" Baelish said, an entirely different note of shock in his voice, matched by a burst of jealousy running through his mind, so bright that the inquisitor could feel it. "Why do you want her, my lord?"
"Do you know what she is?" She's a blank. She's totally immune to the corruptions of Chaos. She can drive out daemons by her mere presence. Once I can train her, she'll be a potent weapon in the defense of the Imperium, he thought.
"She's my natural daughter." The inquisitor's eyes narrowed. "She's...Sansa Stark, the heir to Winterfell. The daughter of the woman I once loved more than anyone in the world." His voice was brittle.
"I said 'what,' not 'who.' Do you know?"
"My lord, what are you talking about?" His confusion was genuine. He had no idea of the child's ability, much less of its rarity. "What do you want from her?"
"Something different than what you want, Lord Baelish, I will assure you of that. Do not question me further. Tell her to gather any personal items she cares for, and send her to my dropship. Remember, you serve the Emperor now, not yourself. Unless you are having second thoughts," he added, pulling back an outer flap of his robe to expose the handle of his needle pistol as he spoke. Baelish turned away, fists clenched, but made no further reply.
Twenty minutes later, the dropship lifted, having added to the contents of its passenger bay two chests of clothing and one psychic-blank child. The inquisitor found that continued exposure to the nullifying effect lessened its impact on his thought process; it cut him off from the Warp, and still made him highly uncomfortable, but he was no longer disabled. He unfastened his restraints and moved down the bay, taking a new seat opposite the girl, whose face was still terribly solemn. She had not spoken since entering the vessel. He could not feel her emotions - something he had come to rely on, in dealing with most people - but there was sadness in her eyes.
"Sansa?" he said, in as kindly a tone as he could manage. "Welcome aboard. Do you know what is happening?"
"I'm a pawn," she said, her voice tiny, eyes fixed on infinity. "Just a pawn, always a pawn. The only thing that changes is whose pawn I am. Forever." She shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again. "I'm sorry, my lord. I don't mean to displease you."
The inquisitor reached for the chain looped around his neck, and pulled his rosette out of his robes. The stylized "I" was slightly smaller than his thumb; the details on the skull embossed on the front were exquisite. He handed it across to Sansa. "Do you know what this is?" She took it, looked carefully, then shook her head. Only on a feral world, he thought. "It's the symbol of the defenders of humankind. The symbol of the Inquisition. Across the stars, we guard against enemies from within and without. It's a symbol that you, I think, will soon be wearing." She looked up sharply, and he continued. "You have an ability, Sansa Stark. An amazing ability. I might search a whole planet and not find someone with power like yours."
"I don't know what you're talking about, my lord. I'm sorry, but I don't have anything special. I don't know how I can help you."
"I promise you, you do. I'll show you."
The dropship arced through the atmosphere, heading back towards the city known as King's Landing. Inside, the inquisitor was giving the first of many lessons on Imperium, its history, and the role of the Inquisition. Sansa was listening intently; she suspected that he, too, was attempting to use her as a pawn, albeit for this strange power he was convinced she possessed rather than the status of her birth, but what he was describing was tantalizing - a future in which she, too, might have true power. The kind of power that could overturn all of Petyr Baelish's painstakingly-laid plans in a single afternoon. Power to stand against evil, like in the songs.
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May 17, 2012 09:25
but he threw him anyway".
"
. Hope we get to see more of Gerris and Arch when Winds of Winter comes out.
This is my favorite part.
