Annihilation squad, p.1
Annihilation Squad, page 1
WARHAMMER 40,000
It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
ONE
PUNISHMENT
The Immaterium. Warp space. It is a seething mass of roiling emotive energies, a kaleidoscope of colours and textures that reflect mankind’s passions and fears. Sharp red waves of anger crash against blue whirlpools of despondency and soft purple clouds of passion. It is scattered with flickering pinpricks of white, a firmament of souls, the spirits of the living that resemble tiny stars of energy: miniscule, fleeting and soon forgotten. Here and there, like a candle in an insane wilderness of crashing colours, burns the soul of a psyker. The turmoil feeds its fire, giving it strength.
Through the tempest of feelings surges a ship, its harsh lines obscured by a miasma of fluctuating forces. Its Geller Field pushes back the burning energies of the warp. Its eagle-beaked prow tears through hope and despair, the stubby wing shapes of its launch bays cut across love and hate, leaving wispy trails of rage and disappointment.
Behind the ship drifts a shadow, an empty tide of nothingness that consumes the disturbed energies, and feeds upon them. The cloud is more than a shadow; it is a shoal of emptiness made from thousands of warp-entities – daemonic sharks of the Immaterium that prey upon the energy of mortals. They gather around the ship, flickers of protective power flash along its length as they attempt to break through. But they are flung back by the psychic shield.
The Geller Field brightens and dims under the assault of the daemonic creatures; its power waxes and wanes. Around the vortices of its warp engines, a brief tear opens, and the energy of Chaos seeps in, a lone shadow flitting through the momentary break in the warding fields.
It passes effortlessly through the steel hull of the ship, seeking a host. It can feel its life-force dripping away, leeched from its invisible, incorporeal form now that it is cut off from the sustenance of warp space. It slips into a wide, low chamber, its unreal eyes spying the sleeping forms of humans. They look like grey, flat silhouettes. Their life force is weak, lacking in nourishment. A freezing black hole engulfs one of the rough pallets and the daemon veers away, terrified of the shadow that could consume it.
It then detects warmth, a glow of power, from further up the chamber. Drawn instinctively towards the source of energy, it speeds up, flitting back and forth, basking in the heat. Coiling around itself, it luxuriates in the sensation before dissolving itself into the energy until its whole being is fully encompassed.
Warp-dreams
It’s a dream. A nightmare, in fact. I can tell, because I know I went to sleep on my bunk as normal, wrapped in a thin grey blanket, and there’s no other way I could have ended up plummeting down a chasm into a roaring inferno. But it’s not really a nightmare, because I’m calm about the whole thing. I should have been terrified as I plunged down into the fiery depths, falling through smoke, my skin burning from my flesh, the flesh blowing away from my bones as ash.
It’s a warp-dream, horribly real in every sensation, more lifelike than life itself. Everything is sharper, clearer, more bright and focussed. Through eyeballs that have long since exploded into steam, I can see the cracks and crannies of the chasm wall, and small red eyes peering back at me through the fumes. The wind that screams into my cindered ears is sharp and loud. The flames that lick up from below, bursting forth from a river of boiling magma, are searing hot.
So why is there no pain? Why am I not afraid?
I don’t feel as if I’m dying, just changing. I was once a clumsy, pain-ridden, emotional husk of a body, but now I am unfettered by its restrictions and my soul is allowed to burst free. Wings erupt from my back, and suddenly I’m soaring on the thermals, swooping and diving amongst the rising flames.
I laugh, though there is no sound. I delight in the freedom, the ease of movement as I climb upwards through the smoke and then kick my legs back and dive headfirst towards the inferno. The heat washes over me like a soft caress; the blistering heat is like the warm touch of a lover awakening me.
It feels beautiful, and I feel beautiful to be experiencing it.
And then something shudders within me. Something casts me free in the same way that I freed my own body. It takes my wings with it and soars up out of sight, leaving me falling towards the flames.
The terror starts then. It wells up from the pit of my stomach and a scream is wrenched from my lips. My horror bursts forth in a wordless screech as the heat blisters my entire being. Unimaginable pain infuses me; every fibre of my soul suffers vibrant agony.
Perhaps this is damnation. Maybe this is the Abyssal Chaos that I am doomed to be thrown into once my mortal life is ended. To know joy, liberty, and then have it taken away as I am damned for my sins – that is true torture.
I wake with sweat coating my body. With a shuddering gasp, I take in a lungful of the warm, stale ship’s air. I hate warp-dreams. This one has been plaguing me for several weeks, although it’s the first time I’ve had the sensation of fear. Usually it ends with me soaring majestically out of the chasm and disappearing into a halo of pure light.
Reality crashes into my senses, and for a moment I feel a disassociation with everything around me. For a split second it feels like I’m watching it from behind my own eyes. And then everything feels normal again.
The bunk throbs with the vibrations that come from the ship’s deck. The air is filled with a steady humming from the machinery that keeps us alive in this hostile environment. The snores and heavy breathing of the other Last Chancers accompanies the relentless droning of the ship’s systems, and I sit up and listen, trying to detect some oddity, some change in the eternal harmony that would have woken me. It all sounds normal though. I thought perhaps we might have dropped from warp, after all we must be somewhere near our destination.
We’ve been travelling for nearly a year now. A single, long, virtually impossible warp jump. I’ve never heard of such a thing before, I didn’t even know it was possible. Usually a ship will jump into warp space for a short time, and then jump back into the real galaxy a week, or perhaps a month later. Ships that jump further get lost, or are destroyed. I’ve heard tales of ships that got caught in warp storms, only to emerge five hundred years later, their crews aged by just a few months. And I’ve also heard of ships that have disappeared for only a week or two, and are then found drifting, the crew nothing but ashes, the ships’ logs showing that they died of old age.
Given a choice, I’d rather not travel in the warp. The strange dreams aside, it has got to be one of the most dangerous things a man can do.
But I don’t have the choice, do I? I’m a soldier in the Last Chancers. Known as the 13th Penal Legion to everyone else. We’re all here because we deserve to be. Each one of the thirty people sharing this chamber with me is being punished for their crimes. I murdered my sergeant because of a woman. Topasz, who lies to my left, is a thief who stole from the officers’ mess of her regiment. Keiger, the bearded man to my right, hung his own squad for supposed insubordination. Looters, heretics, mass-murderers, rapists, thieves and all the other scum of the Imperial Guard end up here, doomed to spend their short lives fighting to their grisly deaths in battle.
Well, most of them are. We’re different. We’re Last Chancers. Our commander, the ice-hard Colonel Schaeffer, has other plans for us. We’ve got one mission, and that’s it. It’ll be tantamount to suicide, mark my words, and there are some here who’ll wish that they’d chosen the firing squad or hangman’s company before we see the thing through. Death is almost as certain this way as it is on the executioner’s list.
But we’re here because we’re too good to waste. We’re prime meat for the grinder that is the Emperor’s wars. We’re specialists, survivors, experts in our fields, and that means the Colonel has chosen to give us our Last Chance. If we finish the mission, we’re free to go. Pardoned of all crimes, our souls absolved of our sins so that we might once again be part of the glorious Imperium of the Immortal Emperor of Terr
Except me, of course. Even amongst these miscreants and frag-headed stains on humanity, I’m even more special.
I’m the Last Chancer who never got away. I’m too stubborn to die, but too mean to stay out of trouble. I’m useful for the Colonel to have around, for sure, and though I used to make his life hell and cause him no end of trouble, I’ve kind of got over that now. I’m just like the lifers in the other penal legions, except that by following the Colonel I’ll see more fighting, more danger and more ways to end up dead than any long-serving veteran in other regiments. I had my Last Chance and I blew it. Now I have to live with it.
The lights flicker on to show that it’s now morning, ship time. Obviously it’s all artificial, and I swear the Colonel makes the days longer and longer so that we have to work harder. I know I did when he entrusted me with training the last squad. That didn’t go so well in the end, and so although I’m still Lieutenant Kage, the rank is now more honorary than it ever was.
The others begin to wake. The chamber is filled with groaning, yawning, stretching and farting. Another day begins.
Our days start with the slop-spilling contest that passes for breakfast, and a compulsory punch-up between Kein and Glaberand over the seat nearest to the heaters. On the way out I count the cutlery, including the spoons, to make sure nobody’s smuggled out anything that could be used as a weapon. It’s bad enough that we give them guns to train with. Who knows what they’d do if they were let loose with a fork.
After we’ve all completed the cautious obstacle course that is a spin around the ablutionary block, it’s back to the bunkrooms to see who’s stolen what last night. Topasz has managed to acquire half a field rations pack – which nobody owns up to owning since we’re not supposed to have any yet – a spare heel from a boot, two decks of playing cards and a small ball of string. After a year, everyone sleeps with their meagre valuables – the odd brooch, chain or ring – on their person or under their pillow. During the theft inspection, Goran and Venksin get into a fight, and Goran wins hands down because he’s a big brute of a man. I send Venksin down to the med-bay to see if it’s worth getting his ear stitched back on.
After this, and the odd argument, scuffle or backbiting comment, I lead the platoon down to the small stores room to gear up for training. Two commissariat provosts, even meaner and leaner than Navy arms men, guard the door to the armoury. They eye us through the black-tinted visors of their helms, shotguns held across the carapace armour on their chests. Anyone would think we were a bunch of criminals that might try and take over the ship. Nobody’s had that idea since Walken got his head blown off by these two about six months ago. I give them a wave. No reaction.
Behind his worn counter sits Erasmus. His bespectacled eyes peer at us across his stores ledger, his quill-skull hovers over his left shoulder. He’s not the fattest man I’ve seen, but there’s a definite softness to him, like butter that’s been left out too long and is starting to melt. His small, fidgety hands play with the corners of the ledger. I notice that his nails are caked in grease, and his fingertips smeared with red ink. He smiles at me as I walk in.
‘Lieutenant Kage, how are you?’ he says in his thin, stammering voice. ‘Wh-what’ll it be today? Close quarters? Knives and bayonets? Or perhaps rifle drill? Or maybe heavy weapons training? I still have that Phassis-pattern grenade launcher for you to try out, but you’re not interested in that, are you?’
Erasmus, or Munitorum Armourer-scribe Spooge as he is known officially, has a way of making every sentence a question. I have no idea how he does it, or if he’s even aware of it, but it’s impossible for him just to make a statement.
‘Grenades and demolitions, dummies only,’ I tell him and his smile turns to a pout.
‘Dummies?’ he says. ‘No live charges? How will your men learn if they use decoys and dummies all the time? I mean, I know there was that poor business with Morgan the other week, but do you think the others will stop being so sloppy if they’re using dummies?’
The ‘poor business’ he’s referring to was the premature detonation of a faulty grenade Erasmus had supplied. Stephan Morgan, a first class soldier as far as I could tell, excepting his predilection for finding alcohol everywhere and anywhere and being drunk on watch, was blown into so many pieces it took four servitors to clean up the mess. I’ve got another scar on my ripped up face as a memorial to his bloody death. The only other thing that marks the occasion is a small entry into the ledger. I can’t read much, but knowing the Departmento Munitorium, it probably says something like, ‘Grenade, fragmentation Mk32, faulty, item unavailable for inspection.’
‘Dummy charges and fake grenades,’ I tell him again. He looks at me and nods, before whispering something to the quill-skull. It hovers over his shoulder, the polished bone gleaming in the yellow light of the storeroom, and a dripping pen extends from its whirring innards. The scuttlebutt maintains that the skull is actually from Spooge’s father, who died in service to the Departmento, and Erasmus inherited the position. Along with his father’s skull, of course, now refitted as an auto-scribe. At Erasmus’s promptings, it scribbles squarely across the ledger, leaving dribbling blots as it goes. Little wisps of smoke bubble from its machinery-filled eyes. When it’s finished, Erasmus gives it an affectionate pat. It returns to its position, hovering just above the armourer-scribe’s shoulder.
‘Please wait while your munitions are being prepared, if you don’t mind?’ says Spooge.
One of the provosts opens the armoury door and I see a servitor tottering away between the racks on six skeletal, artificial legs. Its arms have been replaced with a lifting hoist. Scraping and clanking, it works its way along the shelves, picking out crates and canisters. It loads them onto the flatbed back of another servitor, doubled up under a heavy plate. There are tracks where its legs were that grind across the grated floor. Its withered arms are bound across sagging breasts, life support tubes have been driven into its ribcage. The monotonous hissing of artificial lungs reverberates through the air. Drool hangs from its slack lips. The servitor’s blank eyes look straight through us as it trundles out of the door, coming to a halt just in front of me.
‘Load up,’ I tell the squad, trying not to wonder who the servitor was before she was changed, or what affront against the Machine God she had committed to earn the wrath of the tech-priests.
Geared up, we make our way back along the ship, passing through humid, pipe-filled corridors above the engine rooms to the training deck. It was a loading bay once, but as it is the largest space on the cramped ship, it was turned to a more useful purpose. Seventy-five metres long and twenty-five metres wide, it’s just about big enough to be a firing range, as well as a drill square. We ripped out most of the cranes and other machinery to make more space, dumping them before we jumped into warp space. With the help of the tech-priests we kept a couple rigged up for moving heavier objects around. They’re useful for days like today.
‘Get the tank ready,’ I say, and the squad falls out to their assignments. A year in the warp, and drill every single day, they must have done this fifty times already. Still, no soldier is happy unless there’s someone shouting at them, so the three sergeants, Blurse, Candlerick and Fiakir oblige, haranguing them for being slow and sloppy as they trot down to the far end of the chamber.
The ‘tank’ was devised by the Colonel. Made from welded-together packing crates and bits of old machinery, it’s a blocky, square replica of a real tank, complete with turret and a gun made from old cable pipe. We moved a set of rails, which had previously run into one of the side chambers, so that they stretch for three-quarters the length of the training hall. Pulled along the rails by a loading winch, the tank can actually pick up a good speed for about twenty metres. We also have a dummy aeroplane, made of wood, thirty metres up in the overhanging gantries, which we can use to simulate an enemy strafing run.
The air in the chamber is sweaty and thick with grease as the platoon gets to work; hoisting the tank onto the rails and hitching up the winch. Almost half of the air filters on the ship have now broken down, and the air is becoming so stale it’s difficult to breathe. Schaeffer, typically, sees it as part of the training. ‘Good for working at altitude,’ he says. I don’t mind it at all; in fact it’s almost welcoming. It reminds me of the rank atmosphere of the hive factories from my home on Olympas. I grew up breathing oil and stinking of sweat.
