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Inferno! Presents: The Emperor’s Finest – Extract

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It is right and fitting that I should recount this deed.

You know me to be a soul of integrity, a true servant of our Chapter. I have served His will and His word for two centuries, and in that time I have ascended to the rank of Sword-Brother. I have sworn my oaths before the Sword of the High Marshals itself, in the time when we were still blessed with the indolence of setting foot upon the Eternal Crusader.

Such days are a memory now.

Some have wondered if the galaxy burns now because our faith was too shallow, too hollow, too meek in the face of the Enemy.

I do not believe that. Perhaps it is not my place to say, for I am not a Chaplain, not a philosopher or a savant. I am a warrior. I was raised up to kill in His name, to stand as one of the Emperor’s angels. To be a crusader, born of the blood of Dorn and the sacred oaths of Sigismund.

Forgive me. This is not why you have asked me here; this is not the testament that I must make. You wish for me to speak of Mytra, and the fire that was kindled there. To tell you the tale of Ilicus, thrice-damned and accursed traitor of the blood of the Old Legions, and the fruits of his works.

I will tell you this, and you will understand. What came to pass has consequences, as well I know. This shall bear them out, and the decision shall be made. By His will. With His grace.

This is the sacred oath and statement of Sword-Brother Adhemar regarding the Scouring of Mytra, and the blasphemous ritual which unfolded there.

I am ready to kill.

That is nothing new. That is my purpose in life. My every waking moment has been spent in preparation for combat, in the readiness to act and to slay in His name. There is no greater service that can be expected of me than to bring ruin upon the enemies of the God-Emperor. Heretics who have turned from His light, xenos who presume a claim upon humanity’s domains, those who burn with the warp’s cruel fire.

I have cast them down, false idols all. I shall do so again.

This is the oath I have sworn unto Him, our God-Emperor, and it is the promise I shall keep.

The void trembles. It burns and seethes about us, till the Thunderhawk shares its palsy, clawing at us with the spite of a stunted atmosphere. Nyadus is not a kind cradle. It is a world of burning fire and heaving tectonics. Too near its parent star to bear life. Gravity’s talons wish to crack it like a skull, but it endures, spinning on through the cold dark, even as half of it burns with atomic hellfire.

And, of course, humanity has laid its hand upon it. Mining facilities. Ferro-sieves and macro-foundries are cut deep into the skin of the world. Delved and shaped in rockcrete and iron, and base human defiance. There is something beautiful in that madness.

I look around the crew compartment of the Thunderhawk. The vessel is called Gloria Mundi, and it has served the Chapter for generations beyond count. In it, the Eternal Crusade lives, just as it burns in our veins. As I gaze about the chamber, I am reminded of that devotion. In the squad, as they ready for war. By their deeds, and their faith.

They are sworn brothers, fine warriors, each and every one of them. Each of them serves the crusade in their own way, as I do.

Perhaps one day they shall stand as a Sword-Brother, as I do. Are there future marshals amongst our brotherhood, even now? Shall some bear the honour of serving amidst the Chaplaincy? Will the God-Emperor, glory and praise be upon Him, reach down and select a single soul to be His Champion?

I cannot know these things. I can only speak for the deeds that we shared upon countless battlefields. We have shed blood together, human and inhuman alike. I acknowledge each of them in turn as they kneel in prayer or tend to their armour. Godric regards me with the hollow crimson lenses of his helm and bows his head in reverence. Holdt does not look up. He continues to chant his prayers, whispers translated to a harsh burr by the vox. Osgar checks his weapons, over and over, as though seeking an error or failing that no one else can see. Alberic stands, struggling for stillness. It is not the yearning for peace that motivates him; his urge to slay the God-Emperor’s enemies is as strong as my own.

The youngest of them, Sigurd, merely watches. He has a scholar’s disposition. Always he watches. He absorbs. It is a fine trait for a Neophyte. His eyes drift over the ministrations of our brothers and find me. He nods, and I return the gesture.

They are Crusader Squad Invictus. They are my students. They are my brothers. Not my first brothers, not the squad I once served with.

I would die for them. Each and every one of them.

‘We approach Nyadus,’ I say. They look to me as I speak the words. ‘The enemy besets this entire system, yet here I am certain the enemy will lurk. The marshal and our other brothers fight the system-wide war, but it is the few who shall bear the light of faith into the enemy’s heart. A sworn and sanctified blade.’

‘And what if there is nothing?’ Osgar asks, his chainsword held up but yet deactivated. True battle has not yet found us, and perhaps he thought to cut his teeth in debate, if not in conflict. ‘This could be a fool’s errand.’

‘Perhaps it is,’ I allow. ‘The ways of the enemy are madness and misdirection. There are a hundred sites more promising than this, yet I have faith.’

Osgar shakes his head, his fingers clench, and the weapon in his hand revs as the rune is depressed. It is almost subconscious. His desire to kill. His need to be purified in the blood of the enemy. That is the holiest of baptisms. Upon our sacred plate their tainted life is rendered sacrosanct. They are the sacrifice, and we are the altar.

‘If you have something to say, brother, then speak it plainly. I will not have you skulk around the edges of our mission filled with doubt.’ I am firm, as a leader must be, but I already know what gnaws at him.

Ilicus. To even think the name is to suffer pain. The pain of brothers lost and oaths long broken. Like chains, corroded by the passage of time. I remember. I cannot forget the wounds carved upon my flesh and within my soul. The same wounds that are picked out upon my armour, shamefully memorialised in gold. They are a burden. A reminder.

I must focus. Remember. It is Ilicus who makes this system dance to the foulness of his tune.

He is my weakness and they know it. They whisper it when they think I do not hear. They wonder at the fate of my long-lost brothers and the pain that echoes through me. The pain I endure and overcome, for there can be no weakness in the Eternal Crusade. Dorn was not unmanned by weakness. Nor Sigismund. I must be their heir. I must be their equal.

‘This is… not a common engagement,’ Osgar begins. ‘It is a holy purging. The entire system is in uproar and rebellion. We come in crusade force. Enough to shatter worlds and leave them as nothing but dust. We do not come merely to drive out. We come to annihilate. Who would stand against that force but the mad and the deluded? Or perhaps there is some other gambit that we do not perceive.’ He does not look at me. He cannot. ‘Whatever unfolds, we may be far from the apex of it. We chase shadows. Ghosts. All because of who sets their puppets to dancing. Because of your old foe and wounded pride. Your shame.’

He is bold, I will give him that. He speaks with fire and zeal, with an unyielding detestation of weakness, even if he feels that it dwells within his superior. I cannot fault any brother for such steadfast scrutiny. I check my choler, allow myself to exhale, and I answer him.

‘It is not shame to live where others have died, nor to endure in the service of the Throne. I despise Ilicus. I name him traitor and abhor the memory of him, of any who claimed to serve the Emperor and betrayed Him when He yet walked as a man. The blood of the Old Legions is poison in his veins, and I would see him cast to ashes upon the earth. There are none here who doubt that, no, but there are those who doubt me.’ My gaze turns upon all of them. None sully themselves by looking away. ‘Ilicus, may the Emperor damn and condemn him eternally, is my enemy. He is the killer of my sworn brothers, yet I do not surrender myself to petty vengeance. I would not defy the marshal’s will in order to see a reckoning. I trust to the Emperor I know my duty.’

Osgar falls silent. I do not think it is shame that stills him, nor is it true acceptance and contentment. No. It is anger blunted by a shield of faith. I will not be found wanting. Not even by my own. It is his right to question, of course. We are brothers. We must hold each other to account when we stand shoulder to shoulder upon the firing line. As a sword is beaten into shape, so too must we be shaped by our fraternity, moulded by our trust, purged of the corrosive touch of doubt.

Before I can say more, the ship shudders. There is not enough atmospheric resistance that it should be troubling us, not now. Oath papers and votive parchments shift against the iron hull, and in some places the wax begins to run. It should not be so. The purity seals bleed with the sudden heat, and I know that it is not the heat of the world. It is an unnatural, infernal imposition. The air shifts and ceases to be the idle howl of atmosphere. It becomes a tempest of whispers, building to a crescendo.

‘This is an omen,’ I breathe. ‘Behold the wiles of the enemy.’

Perhaps the faithless would be torn from the heavens and dashed against the earth. We are proof against such trickery.

‘For the Emperor! For His triumph!’

‘For the Emperor!’ my brothers cry in echo. Our devotion drowns out the storm’s scream, a scream composed of other stolen voices, twisted refractions of mortal suffering.

‘Take us down,’ I growl through the vox, and the pilot’s voice choruses assent. Down and into the heart of madness. Torrents of debris claw at us, and the thunderheads boom and roar.

Still we descend. Upon wings of fire and against the spite of a world.

Even the most righteous of souls can be stymied by adversity. The annals are full of such. Crusades that the warp has risen up to swallow, saints struck down in the prime of their faith and made martyrs. Such things are the coin of the realm. A hallowed humanity, beset yet unbowed, raging forever against the darkness and the sin of the galaxy.

The Emperor, blessed be His name, drove out from Terra to unify the stars. To banish the consumptive night and place new stars in the heavens. Lights by which the masses of humanity would be led and warmed. We were the inheritors of the cosmos, surpassing all the other civilisations which had gone before us, even the other iterations of human society.

We were strong where others had faltered. We had a purity of faith that protected us from doubt and fear. The warriors of the Adeptus Astartes are but the tip of His sword – not the mightiest weapon of humanity but a mere aspect of it. The Imperium is the great victory of the Emperor, for He has annealed together a thousand warring creeds to create a singular vision, one that has endured ten millennia of test and struggle.

One that can pass through these ages of fire and blood without shirking or diminishing.

We emerge into the storm.

Already the ashen sand scratches at us, as insidious and as constant as the ocean. It tries to pour in through our armour, to swallow us in its leaden grip. I can taste, even through the helm and its filtration systems, the blood-iron tang of mineral-rich soil and air. The world convulses around us as though in reaction to our presence upon its burning skin.

I am already shaking off the grit and grime, looking to my brothers to ensure that they are prepared. I thank the Emperor for His guidance, His divine plan. I catch Osgar’s notice and he merely nods. His helm is impassive, but I can sense his disquiet at this world. We have been singled out for grim purpose, spited by the whims of fate.

‘Brother…’ he begins. I raise a hand. Now is not the time. Not when there are other duties to tend to. Godric’s cold silence is gone as he rages and curses all the lackeys of false powers. The air is burning with false signs and portents. They taunt him. They mock.

Alberic is a blur of motion as he tries in vain to secure our landing site before the world’s choler rises again and swallows it whole. Only Sigurd seems to have even a semblance of peace amongst the madness. The young Neophyte gazes skyward, as though lost to etheric contemplation.

He watches as the ship rises from the earth and recommits itself to the heavens. There are battles yet to be fought. System-wide and spreading. Everything in the void is aflame, like burning oil upon water. I see it. I understand the cruel beauty of it. I let it pass over me as Sigurd cannot.

‘Neophyte Sigurd,’ I say. He does not hear me. I repeat his name. ‘Sigurd. Brother!’ He snaps around to look at me. He looks down at his gauntleted hands and shakes himself.

‘Forgive me, Sword-Brother,’ he says.

‘There is nothing to forgive. This cannot unman you. You are a Templar of Dorn’s blood. You are a son and a scion of the Eternal Crusade. The wiles of the enemy cannot slow or stymie us. Not with faith in our hearts and prayer upon our lips. That has ever been so. It shall be no different here.’ I look to the others. ‘Has there been any word from the crusade fleet?’

‘The vox is occluded,’ Osgar growls. ‘No signals in or out of this wretched world.’

‘It could be the atmospherics. Mineral saturation. Or it could be the hand of the enemy,’ I say. My hands have already knotted into fists. Gripping my sword’s hilt between fingers already white with the effort. There is power in hate. Respite in fury. To burn with kindled wrath when all else is set against you.

I hate our enemy with every spark of my soul. Every fibre of my being cries out to avenge the wrongs done to us.

‘By the Throne,’ Sigurd breathes to my right, and we all turn. We follow his gaze to the horizon and its line of sudden flame.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

‘The Last Word’ first published in Deathwatch: The Long Vigil in 2020.
‘Cargo’ first published in The Helwinter Gate in 2020.
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