Dark Imperium
Chapter I - The Unraveling
A/N: Okay, so this is a rewrite of my 40K work, Dark Imperium, with a lot of changes and a bit of refinement. Hopefully this will make it a bit better and all you people perusing the Warhammer section on here will find it to your liking!
The Inquisitorial Journals of Inq. Simeon Jaeger, Entry February 3rd 999.M41
In my years as an Inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus I have encountered many horrors. I have seen the hordes of Khorne, savage and brutal to the last and with a relentless appetite for warfare. I have seen the monstrous servants of Nurgle, all-devouring, pestilent, and with shocking resilience, and the terrifyingly agile and merciless warriors of Slaanesh. I have even been a witness to the most terrible of our myriad foes, the vile legions of Tzeench, who rend the very fabric of reality. In these annals, I shall reveal to you the struggle of myself and my compatriots against an insidious cult, led by a most unexpected demagogue.
On the orders of my master, the great Inquisitor Torquemada Coteaz, I was tasked to pursue a rogue psyker through the depths of the underhive of Epsilon Regalis. This planet had been the site of an infamous purge by the famed Witch Hunter Tyrus many years ago, but evidently some of the heretics had slipped his net. The prey was elusive, I would give him that, but unluckily for him the servants of the Emperor are relentless. I engaged his men in a firefight among the hissing machinery of an automated manufactorum.
As I dived through a heavy steel door already opened, a renegade fired at me with his autorifle, but I took cover behind a stack of ceramite armour plates which absorbed his fire. Unhooking a grenade from my belt, I tossed it into the heretic's hiding place, where it detonated and blew him to smithereens. Another dead heretic plummeted from the catwalks above, cut down by rapid fire from my Storm Troopers, who advanced on the enemy from above. Two more secessionists waited ahead, with makeshift barricades of twisted metal and bolted plates of steel, but I dared not perform a frontal assault for they were entrenched with a heavy stubber.
"Kaelen!" I signalled with my vox-link, "Deal with that gun nest!" Brother Kaelen of the Crusader Order, a figure clad in ornate blue robes and wielding a fearsome Power Sword, had served with me for a good decade. Positioned on the catwalk, he gestured to a storm trooper, who threw the crusader his grenade launcher. Kaelen launched a volley of frag charges onto the gun position from above, and with a deafening roar of Krak charges and an explosion of metal fragments the two enemies were swiftly dealt with. I ran past the burnt out stubber nest and kicked down the door to the manufactorum proper, sighting the mastermind behind this scheme, the rogue psyker himself! His twisted form, clad in desecrated flak armour, moved swiftly through the clanking machinery and hissing pipelines. Taking aim at him, I moved to pursue.
"Give yourself up, heretic, and your death shall be swift and painless!" I roared. The traitor replied with a hail of lasgun fire, prompting me to duck for cover behind a whirring turbine housing.
"Die, Imperial dog" growled the renegade, firing again. I cursed loudly as his fire kept me pinned in my hiding place.
"Kaelen, Garent, I need support now!" I exclaimed into my vox-link. The psyker, hearing my with his warp-enhanced senses, panicked and threw a roiling burst of psychic lightning in my direction, which I evaded barely, casting aside my overcoat as it became ignited by the conflagration of warp-lightning and hellfire. Not a moment too soon, Garent sprang through a window with a cacophony of breaking glass and the yells of surprised workers from outside.
"Eat this, you traitorous bastard!" he roared. The ex-guardsman blasted away with his storm bolter, striking the heretic and obliterating both his lasgun and the arm that held it in a gory detonation. Garent Blackthorne was once a decorated sergeant of the Elysian Drop Troops, and joined my forces after being left for dead when a mission against the Tyranids went badly. The renegade fell to the ground with a scream of agony, bleeding heavily from his tattered stump of an arm. Drawing my trusty combat blade, I approached the downed enemy and proclaimed,
"You are a vile heretic, and by Inquisitorial edict I declare you Excommunicate Traitoris. Die now knowing you have sinned against the righteous Emperor, and pray for salvation before your judgement". The psyker scoffed.
"Death to the false Empe..." I silenced his heresies with a blade to the throat before he could complete his curse. Garent approached me.
"Sir, the heretic's fellows have been dispatched in accord with the plan, but we captured one alive and have prepared him for interrogation". I grinned; Garent and his men were as efficient as always.
"We shall question him at once" I declared, "sweep the area for more evidence then return to the ship".
Several minutes later I arrived in my ship's brig for the interrogation. The man we had captured wore the garb of an undercity ganger, but on his arm was tattooed a sigil of Chaos. My interrogator and apprentice, Lukas Byron, was waiting for me. A man of both learning and battle, Byron had a sharp mind and even sharper aim with his trusty laspistol. He arrayed a great variety of tools upon the table, preparing to begin the grim process. I turned to the subject.
"Who was your employer?" I asked calmly. The rebel spat on the floor.
"Our glorious lord shall soon come upon thee!" He wailed, "the old ways will fall, the Dark Imperium shall rise and all shall be under its dominion!" I sighed. The subject had clearly been touched by the madness of the warp, making this far more difficult.
"Do not make this hard on yourself, we can inflict such terrors on you, that you could not imagine" I said, my voice deadly calm, "your death will be clean and painless should you confess".
"I...the Dark Imperium!" he hissed, "our lord is mighty, and you shall see him not!"
"Mental conditioning?" mused Byron.
"Quite possibly" I replied, "take him to Caius for a Mind Scrub, if he won't tell us willingly". Two uniformed Navy Armsmen in my employ entered the room on my command and took the handcuffed cultist away.
"He spoke of a Dark Imperium, what could that mean?" questioned Byron. I looked at the prisoner. Upon his neck was a curious tattoo. It bore a resemblance to the Aquila, but had a draconic aspect, as if warped by unknown powers into something far more sinister. A cult symbol, perhaps?
"Search local databases for this symbol, it may hold the key to this plot" I ordered. Byron nodded and left the room. This may be a false lead, but I could not ignore a possible threat of a secessionist, heretical movement of Chaos worshippers gaining a foothold in this sector. I would have Erwin, our data analysis technician, search relentlessly through Inquisitorial records for cult symbols matching this one.
Several hours later, Erwin called my staff to the command deck of our ship, the Angel Bullet, for a briefing. Erwin was an elderly man who had served under Torquemada Coteaz for many years, and my mentor had assigned him as my aide. Tapping a few keys on the console in front of him with his slender fingers, he brought up a holographic display of the Formosa Sector.
"Here, is Epsilon Regalis, where we are currently in orbit" he indicated, pointing to a glowing sphere, "and here, is the Dagon system, where we maintain our standing base". Then, he pressed another key, and several planets lit up red, laying a crimson trail to Dagon.
"These planets are ones where recent cult activity has been quelled by associates of Lord Coteaz, and many of them displayed the iconography of our heretical captive" he continued. Caius Mille, a thin, gaunt looking man in hooded robes, stepped forward.
"I have concluded a Psychic Mind Scrub of the prisoner" he said in his hoarse voice, "he was a lowlife gangster from the underhive of Epsilon Regalis, recruited from those destitute surroundings into the cult, by a man known only to him as 'the recruiter', who was some manner of leader".
"Any idea of how we can find this recruiter?" I asked.
"Before the subject expired from the mental trauma, I was able to tear a location from his brain" continued Caius, "an asteroid belt on the far outskirts of the system, beneath notice in this distant edge of Formosa".
"Shall we investigate?" asked Mason, our shuttle pilot. A seasoned veteran of the Imperial Navy, Mason was a well built man with a chiselled face and short, cropped black hair.
"Yes, that would be prudent" I replied, "we should approach the area and perform a scanner sweep before acting, however".
The Inquisitorial Journals of Inq. Simeon Jaeger, Entry February 11th 999.M41
Asteroid fields are horrific to navigate, any helmsman will tell you so. As we approached the edge of the belt, our scanning picked something up. A particularly large asteroid gave off strange readings.
"Erwin, what do we have?" I asked our tech expert.
"Preliminary scans indicate a network of tunnels within the asteroid, but there's no telling what you'll find down there" replied the aged magus. I grimaced. Tunnel fighting was always bloody and difficult.
"Byron, prepare an away team in the shuttle bay, close quarters equipment" I instructed over vox-link. As I entered the bay, I saw my team arrayed before me.
Garent stood at the head, only his black stubble, mouth, and chin visible below the visor of his enclosed Elysian helmet. When we deployed, the helmet would be completely sealed for void combat. Byron's blonde crew cut was concealed beneath an armsman's void suit, and in his hands he carried his laspistol and trusty sword. Beside him was Kaelen, his robes traded for a void suit, but his power sword and Storm Shield at the ready. Mason stood by the shuttle, ready to provide us with a short ranged jump, and next to him were half a dozen Inquisitorial Storm Troopers, silver carapace armour adorned with the seals of Lord Coteaz and the Formosa Sector.
After loading onto the shuttle, Mason launched from the shuttle bay. From a small viewport, we could see the asteroid we would be landing on. It was marked by small craters, but on closer inspection, concealed arrays of communications equipment could be faintly seen. Mason's expert hand guided us in, and the interior of the shuttle depressurised as the door slid open.
The storm troopers carried weapons suited for close range combat, shotguns and flamers aplenty. Erwin had calculated the optimal breach point. Amidst the cratered, dull grey rocks, we made our move. One of the Storm Troopers, Silver, a heavyset recruit of the Schola Progenium, planted a breaching charge.
"Prepared, take cover!" came his warning over the vox. Our party sheltered from the blast behind a rocky outcrop as the charge blew a hole in the asteroid's surface. A quick look out saw that it had exposed a tunnel within, empty of any signs of life.
Upon entering the tunnels we saw the extent of the corruption. The walls were marked with sigils of the Dark Gods and blasphemous scripture was written on many a surface.
"We must purge this unholy place" I growled, "burn the heretic!" We advanced down the tunnel, weapons armed and ready for resistance.
Erwin warned us over vox-link "there are heat sources in the next room, possible hostiles". I readied my weapon of choice, a pair of Bolt Pistols, and signalled Silver to use a breaching charge. The veteran Storm Trooper clamped the device onto the reinforced door and our team took up position.
"Engage!" came Silver's signal. The charge went off, a focused blast demolishing the ceramite door and sending a cloud of debris into the room beyond. The cries of panicked cultists from beyond were heard, followed by a burst of confused lasgun fire from the enemy. The infra-visors of our void suits allowed us to see clearly in the confusion, marking out five hostiles armed with basic lascarbines.
Silver opened up with a shotgun, catching one enemy in the shoulder and throwing him back, heavily wounded. A second and third hostile were cut down by the roaring fire of Garent's Storm Bolter, and the remaining two opened up wildly with their carbines. Kaelen advanced slowly into their line of fire, catching incandescent bolts of energy with his broad shield, which absorbed them harmlessly. As the heretics realised their attack was ineffectual, they closed in to attack with bayonets, but Kaelen swung his sword in a great arc, cleaving the two down in a single sweep.
With the resistance quelled, we checked the room. Across the chamber was another door, not reinforced, but marked with an eight-pointed star. I signalled to Garent, who booted the door in, revealing the enemy within.
A table was arrayed in the style of a war room, and a huge flag hung from the ceiling. The flag of the Dark Imperium! The arch-heretic lounged on his command chair.
"Ha, I knew the Imperium would find me eventually" he scoffed, "but know this dog of the emperor, my master shall tear you down and bring your empire to ruin!" Silver knocked him unconscious with a riot maul, ending his monologue.
"Take him to the interrogation chamber" I said, signalling two Storm Troopers to grab the downed leader, "we shall search this place for any leads". Upon investigation of the chamber, Byron found a store of shipping manifests and other documents that needed to be examined. Other information was yielded from the command console of the cultists, and we found a star map detailing possible strongholds for the cult, as well as a letter from a 'Mr. Bern', who seemed to be some sort of arms dealer. Bern was the most obvious link, so we would investigate him first.
Upon returning to our ship, I tasked Erwin with extrapolating Bern's location from the data we had recovered. He was the next link in this conspiracy, I was sure of it, and if we found him we could trace this plot to its source. In the meantime, Byron and I would interrogate the heretic commander. I entered the interrogation chamber to find Byron had already prepared the prisoner and layer out the necessary tools. I picked up a neural scalpel and showed it to our victim.
"If you want a painless death, you'll tell us what we need to know" I threatened, "who is the leader of the Dark Imperium?" The cultist was unfazed.
"Fool!" He cackled, "he is beyond your understanding, and he shall end you and your corpse emperor!" I sighed.
"Well we'll try something simple" I replied, "who is Bern?" The heretic responded,
"He is a rogue trader, but you shall never find him, my master has already hidden him away!" He broke down into an uncontrolled fit of insane laughter. I signalled to Byron, who tapped a key on the vox link, summoning Caius to the chamber. Before long, the gaunt psyker entered the room. Fear was evident in the eyes of the heretic at the approach of the ominous-looking man.
"Begin the process of extracting information" I ordered Caius. The psyker stepped towards the captive, his hands crackling with psychic power.
"Wait!" cried the panicked prisoner, "I...I can tell you where Bern is, please, don't let him near me!"
"That wasn't too hard, was it?" I grinned, "tell us everything you know!"
After a lengthy explanation from the prisoner, in which he detailed Bern's dealings with his cult cell, and their mission to Epsilon Regalis to steal military equipment. He did not know the exact location of the arms dealer, but his information gave us the lead we needed, and Erwin began his deduction. As the prisoner had cooperated, we gave him the mercy of a quick death, a laspistol shot through the head.
After a few hours of scanning, survey, and elimination, Erwin had found Bern's likely location, and we made all speed to locate the arms dealer before our enemy could conceal him from us.
A/N: Well, I hope that was something worth reading. I'd like whatever feedback I can get from you all, so please if it's not much trouble, leave a review?