Correlai Seven
The soldier stood at the top of the giant stone wall, looking down a thousand feet at the plains below. He watched as traffic flowed along the Main Line that led into the mountains towards the capital, becoming absorbed in the lights twinkling up at him.
As soon as he was aware of this he shook his head and blinked and looked away. Behind him towered guns large enough to reach out across the planet, their barrels nearly five-hundred feet long. The shell weights weren't measured in pounds but in tons.
As a slight wind whistled in from the edge of the plain the soldier thought he could hear voices, whispers in the darkness. As he listened he looked up at the twins moons and stars up above.
The voices got louder, calling out the soldier's name.
Then he heard it, his mother's voice calling out for him to join her. In the backdrop he could hear something else, though, something terrifying.
He could hear the abyss.
Every night for the past twenty nights he had been assaulted by these noises and feelings, and every time his longing for his mother increased.
Tonight was the night that he gave in.
The blackness fell from the sky, washing out the stars and the moons and dissolving the plains. The lights below each winked out and the wall beneath him simply ceased to exist - he stood on nothing, now.
And the noise, oh Emperor, the noise! He clawed at his face with changing hands as a beast loomed before him and the noise, the noise-!
And it was gone. There was nothing. His soul was gone with it.
Behind him another soldier walked up, a sergeant with a pale face and a ragged uniform, his las-rifle hanging loosely from a sling.
"I see you've finally joined me like I said you should," the sergeant whispered into the soldier's ear. "Did you hear it, the abyss beyond, the swirling mass of chaos? Wasn't it beautiful?"
The soldier stood there, swaying in the night. His pupils dilated quite suddenly before coming back into focus. "Yes, sir, Sergeant. I have seen. We are wrong. They are wrong. There is no God-Emperor. There is only the one true God."
"You are right, my boy," the sergeant replied back. "Now, come with me. You're just in time to join in the fun."
The soldier followed as the sergeant walked towards one of the many doors that led out of the hangar that housed the guns.
As the door clicked behind them the entire wall shook and the soldier was thrown into the ground as first one and then the other were fired, lighting up the night sky like lightning.
On the other side of the planet a magnificent tower stood in the early morning light, nearly four thousand feet tall and shining brightly. It was this entire section of the Galaxy's only connection to the Empire.
As the sun shined on it it was beautiful.
As it exploded into a million shards of glass and metal it was beautiful.
As it fell down upon the city below it was beautiful.
As everyone died it was still beautiful.
The lieutenant watched the planet below as he sipped his coffee. Poking out from the smooth plains and rolling seas was the Tower, visible even space. As he lifted his thermos of grosh to his lips to drink he could see as it exploded in a brilliant puff of glass.
His jaw dropped and the warm liquid spilled onto his lap, giving him a faint burning sensation that he couldn't feel.
He jumped up from his seat in the lounge to try to find his superior - and ran face first into a beast of a man nearly seven feet tall.
"Sit down," the man growled in a primal, guttural voice. "Now."
The lieutenant did as he was told and sat back down on the arm of the chair.
"Now, go to sleep," the man said.
"Wait, what? No, I have-"
The lieutenant's sentence was cut off as a small pistol shot cracked through the air.
There was a thud as his body his the floor.
Outside the lounge in the space docks that sprawled above the planet a small frigate tried to escape, speeding past rows and rows of ships. It was going too fast to stop when a derelict freighter was pushed in front of it.
There was no noise. Only death.