The Nature of Man
Never forget you are the walls of steel and iron, between Mankind and a thousand horrors too unspeakable to name. You are the walls of Hell.
+++ Preacher Eran Gudi, address to the Cadian 17th Armoured Regiment +++
Fear. Terror. Despair. All these feelings hit Commissar Kilian like the hammer of the God Emperor and she knew that she would die. There was no way she could parry the hellblade wielded by the bloodletter, it's red skin glistening with freshly spilt blood and it's sickly, yellow eyes shining with black hatred. She would die by this thing's hand. Her heart thudded in her chest so loud that it drowned out the noise of the apocalypse all around her and her nose was filled with the stench of fresh blood and burnt flesh. The razor sharp blade descended with unimaginable speed. It was just a black blur before her eyes. She felt the sharp edge touch her neck, drawing blood as it parted her soft, warm skin.
The daemon was suddenly jerked away in an explosion of gore as some rapid fire gun tore it to pieces.
Kilian blinked in astonishment, feeling the warm blood slowly flow down her long neck from where the blade cut the skin. Her power sword slid from her shaking fingers, falling in a puddle of gore at her feet. She too would have fallen had her back not met the burned out hulk of a Chimera armored transport and slid down until she was sitting in the gore, a scorched skull missing its lower jaw glaring accusingly at her. Everything around her was nothing but death and chaos.
Chaos.
The Chaos Lord Ahrank had asked for aid from the vile gods of the Warp and, while he did not have the favor that Abaddon the Despoiler benefitted from, he had received it. The Ruinous Powers had granted their aid, for Ahrank had turned the war for Reshik Secundus into a great sacrifice to his gods. Now Reshik Secundus was engulfed in a massive warp storm that sought to rival the blasphemy of the Eye of Terror and daemons and heretics relentlessly threw themselves at the rapidly diminishing Imperial force. Hell had been unleashed and the laws of reality had been swept aside without any effort. The brutalized sky was a crazed mass of red and purple, blood and pus raining from its malevolent glare in a merciless torrent that threatened to drown the world. The battle for the Governor's Palace had degenerated from a carefully planned assault into a frenzied bloodbath with little to no structure which had quickly obliterated any form of order. Guardsmen and Space Marines where engaged in brutal combat with traitors, heretics, Chaos Marines and foul daemons. Neither side showed any mercy, gleefully spilling the blood of its enemies, driven mad by bloodlust, adrenaline and sheer hate.
The Space Marines of the Shadow Warriors Chapter tried to fight a desperate rear-guard action while the Imperial Guard stormed the Palace. The combat was brutal, desperate and ultimately pointless for not even the mighty Adeptus Astartes could hold the line against the insanity of the Warp. The curse of their gene-seed overcame many of the genetically enhanced Space Marines and they threw away their bolters and hacked at their enemies with chainswords, tore them apart with their bare hands and pummeled them into the ground with their power armored fists.
In the outskirts of the city, the mighty god-machines of the Legio Martia Victrix blasted large swathes of destruction through the surging hordes of the Archenemy's soldiers. They casually fired their huge guns and sent apocalyptic doom at their targets, their very presence terrifying the hordes that assaulted them. But even if men wanted to run from the monstrous scale of the violence they unleashed, they couldn't, so great was the press of bodies. The Titans themselves didn't seem to care, they strode forward without worry, crushing all under their incredible weight, smashing through walls and buildings as if they were made out of paper. They showed nothing but contempt for their foes.
Agile sixteen meter tall Warhound Titans formed a defensive perimeter, their Princeps pouncing upon the enemy infantry and reducing them into an unholy mess with their vulcan mega-bolters. Behind them were fifty meter tall Reaver Titans, turbo lasers and inferno guns blasting apart tanks, APCs and command vehicles. Sixty meter tall Warlord Titans held the center of the formation, sweeping through the enemy with disdain, their powerful void shields absorbing what shots where directed at them. With each step they crushed tanks and platoons alike, each salvo of their huge guns obliterated whole companies of heretics but more always surged ahead. There was no end to the vile enemies of Mankind, not with the warp storm raging around the planet in all its awesome fury. And before them, standing like fortresses of despair and doom were the Chaos Titans of Legio Fire Lords.
The level of chaos and destruction around the Titans increased to unimaginable levels as the air was filled with lasers and projectiles fired from guns the size of buildings. The impacts were cataclysmic, the noise so painful it hit the human body like a shockwave and men fell to the ground, some with their internal organs turned to pulp and the lucky ones with hands to ears, blood leaking between their fingers. The void shields of the Warlord Attero Dominatus fell under the combined firepower of the Chaos warmachines and explosions blossomed on the body of the Titan. Return fire of such force that it could pulverize entire cities slammed into the Chaos Titans but they refused to falter, the daemons inside them pushing them forward. The loyalist battle group suddenly split and let another Titan reach the combat.
The earth, already shaking like an earthquake from the tread of the god-machines, wailed and screamed in protest at the thundering steps of this god of war. Towering above the battlefield like a mountain the Emperor Class Titan Ferrata Mortis advanced upon its hated foe. The Emperor class was the single largest mobile battle unit that could be deployed to a planet's surface and its presence promised nothing but annihilation to its enemy for Titans didn't take prisoners – they simply obliterated their foe and left the mop up to the ground forces beneath their notice. Its princeps grinned evilly in his amiotic tank as his moderati announced firing solutions on the enemy engines. With a thundering noise that sounded like the planet cracking apart, the Ferrata Mortis fired its guns in a single salvo of unimaginable destructive force. Two enemy Reavers wailed their death cries as their shields and armor were stripped from them like flesh from a skeleton. The Warlords at their back lost their void shields in the torrent of firepower and they began backing away, firing occasional salvos to discourage pursuit. The enemy infantry and tanks that had been crowding near the Chaos Titans were even more unlucky, scattered ashes being the only evidence that they once existed. The Titans of Legio Martia Victrix begun their pursuit of the enemy, heedless of the destruction the wrought on the city they fought in – widespread collateral damage was as common in an engine war as fools were among the nobility, it was simply an accepted fact.
In the plains beyond the capital city, where once herds of grox had been raised and slaughtered, entire regiments of the Imperial Guard and the Planetary Defense Force fought a losing battle against endless waves of daemons and heretics. Tens of millions of men and thousands of tanks fought upon an earth which had split open and gushed forth torrents of blood and pus. Creatures to horrible to contemplate burst into existence through bleeding wounds in reality and slaughtered men indiscriminately, while the wind howled alive with the hysterical chatter of ensnared souls and hundreds were dragged down beneath the brutalized earth and fouled rivers where creatures of unimaginable strength and ferocity lurked. Whole waves of Guardsmen died under the tide of heretics or from the sudden poisons in the air, their bodies left to be trampled under the madness. Soldiers, old and young, men and women, screamed for help as they desperately sought to stem the tide of blood flowing out of their ruined bodies but no one could bother to help them – because of the rain of blood the medics couldn't even tell who was wounded or not.
Some men went insane and attacked their comrades, desperate to feel blood flowing down their throats. They fought in trenches filled with blood and decaying matter, sudden plagues sweeping across platoons and companies and turning the men into steaming piles of decomposed organic matter in a minute, their screams and howls haunting those who heard them. Some daemons caused insanity simply with their presence, their bodies covered in tortured and insane faces struggling to pull free of their fleshy prison. Soldiers desperately clawed their own eyes out in a vain attempt to purge themselves of what they had seen – but what has been seen cannot be unseen. Other soldiers were blasted apart by the raw power of Chaos, their bodies bursting into fountaining pillars of blood and gore which acted as rallying points for the heretics. Daemons of incredible evil manifested themselves with an intense psychic explosion that fried men's minds, leaving them standing on the battlefield as drooling idiots. Hordes of bloodletters of Khorne hacked bloody paths through terrified Guardsmen while plaguebearers of Nurgle, surrounded by swarms of buzzing plague flies, stalked among them and turned them into decaying corpses with a mere touch, smiling and joking all the while. To the horror of many, the disease ridden copses did not remain on the ground for long, their bloated and decaying forms rising to kill their former brethren. Soldiers desperately turned their guns on these living dead and felt nothing but sick dread as they were forced to mow down their former comrades.
A sweet, cloying smell drifted across the battlefield. The air was rent asunder by screams of anger, fear and torment, by the chattering and booming of guns, the thunder of explosions, the roar of chainswords and the sounds of flesh and bone torn asunder. Everywhere one looked, a new horror would imprint itself on the retina, like a burning brand upon the memory, a merciless bombardment upon the senses. And over it all, like a sick cackling god, loomed a sense of despair and futility as all Order and Reason seemed to be no match for the power of Chaos.
This was war unleashed in all its blood drenched glory. It was horror beyond man's comprehension where only blind violence and insanity thrived. This was the religion of the Imperium of Man, though they knew it not.
Through the insanity of combat stalked the Imperial priests, their eviscerator chainswords roaring with hunger and their shotguns blasting heretics apart. Covered in blood and with bloodlust and zealous fire shining in their eyes did the priests shout their prayers to the Emperor.
"O Glorious Master of Mankind! O Shining Light of the Imperium! We, your humble servants, beg thee to grant us strength that we might drown the thunder of our guns with the screams of our enemies! That we might cover the battlefield with their wretched corpses! That we might bring down their armies, their citadels and their kin in a whirlwind of fire and death! That we might drown them in a wave of destruction delivered upon them by our righteous wrath! O Master of Mankind, in the name of hatred, grant us Fury so that we might smite our enemies and light our way in the darkness with the pyres of their burning corpses!" So did the priests stalk the battlefield, filling men's hearts with hate and wrath.
"In the Emperor's name!" cried the Imperial soldiers in response, their voices filled with hate, fury and madness and the bloodshed and insanity escalated to ever greater heights.
Captain Casell of the PDF saw a heretic charge him with a rusty, blood drenched axe and tried to fire his laspistol. The gun made a pitiful sound that told the Captain he was out of ammo. Hurtling obscenities at the heretic, he threw the pistol so hard it smacked the man in the face and threw him to the ground, a gash opening above his right eye socket – out of which wriggled a pale tentacle like some sort of worm feasting upon a corpse. Grabbing his helmet Casell proceeded to bash his opponent's skull in. The heretic cried out in pain and Casell saw the eyes staring at him from within the heretic's mouth. The Captain screamed in response to the horrid sight and proceeded with the bashing with a renewed vigor, screaming all the while. Somewhere behind him, Lieutenant Gabriel drew his power sword in a two handed grip as he prepared to fight one of the bloodletters. He raised the sword above his head, ready to slice down and cut his opponent in two as his dueling instructor had taught him. He never saw the grenade that took his face off, nor the knife that found his throat.
Two million men were dead in only twenty minutes of the most brutal combat the sector had ever seen. Like all battles that were destined to be remembered throughout history, this one would leave behind it a grisly collection of torn and savaged bodies, a sinister catalogue of the numerous ways a man could die. The ground would be coated several meters thick with blood and pulped tissue and not a single body would be left intact. They were burned to a crisp, deformed features twisted into expression of utmost pain and terror, others were burst like sacks of meat, trailing loops of yellow and blue intestines, parts littered every surface, a hand, a boot with a piece of bone sticking out of it, half a face with its single eye staring in mute horror.
In later generations men would say that the soldiers fought in a glorious battle, their bravery an inspiration to all men. Youngsters and naïve men would wishfully proclaim that they would give anything to have taken part in such a glorious battle. There was no glory on those fields that day, only savagery, pain and insanity.
The sky above them was filled with fighters and bombers desperate to destroy their foes. Marauders made strafing runs and carpet bombed whole kilometers of wide open plains, incinerating friend and foe alike. Lightning fighters hunted their Chaos adversaries ruthlessly, the pilots desperately eying the fuel gauge. They were running out of precious time but there was no place to retreat too. The airfields were overrun with carnage and the battleships in orbit had a war of their own against the reinforcements sent by Chaos. The fighter pilots inevitably found themselves running out of fuel and many pointed their plane at a cluster of enemy soldiers and dived into them. Many of them died in these suicide runs as they tried to take as many enemies into the grave with them as they could. The Warp storm and the Chaos battle fleet occupied the Imperial ships, turning space into a graveyard for many brave crews. The savagery and bloodshed was just as fierce, with boarding actions and insanity gripping many crewmen, some battleships resorted to ramming their foes in order to strike a blow that might just turn the tide against the onslaught.
The Chaos cruiser Agonizer tried to launch a wave a drop pods filled with Khorne berzerkers, the madmen frothing at the mouth in anticipation of the slaughter they would cause. Before it could fire the drop pods, the Imperial battleships the Majesty and the Sacred Flame interposed themselves between the ship and the planet. The Imperial ships bristled with crenellated gun turrets, observation domes and spires, antenna arrays, gargoyles and other features. The ships looked like nothing so much as giant cathedrals of war, their grim appearance promising only one thing. They began pounding the Chaos vessel with lance batteries, thirty meter-long torpedoes, plasma projectors, laser cannons, missile launchers, rail guns, fusion beamers and graviton pulsars. The spiteful creature that was the captain of Chaos cruiser launched the drop pods – straight into the Majesty. Most of the pods were destroyed by the impact or by point defense guns but a few managed to safely land on the hull or breach it altogether. The berzerkers poured out the pods, surprised to find themselves on a ship instead of the planet but it mattered little to them as long as they got to kill. Yelling "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" they carved a bloody path as they hunted down the crew. The Majesty was drifting and it was obvious she would be captured by the Archenemy. The Sacred Flame ignored the retreating and crippled Agonizer, who went to hunt down an escort ship –which would turn on it and destroy it in a stunning display of tactics and bravery. As the Chaos ship retreated, the Sacred Flame fired a full broadside into the Majesty. The huge shells tore into the vessel's flanks and ripped her armor apart, killing crewmen and invader alike. With tears streaming down his face, Captain Abantu of the Sacred Flame kept firing until the Majesty had been entirely gutted, its dead bulk drifting serenely among the chaos, debris and bodies spilling from her like blood. Abantu then turned to his second in command and, tears still streaming from his eyes, said "You have the bridge". With that, he put his laspistol in his mouth and pressed the trigger.
On the steps of the Governor's Palace, the Khazdor 707th fought on to reach the massive gates but the tide of the Enemy held them back. Their tanks were useless, for such was the savagery of the battle that they risked killing their own if they fired. As it was, the armored elements held back from the main assault and blasted at anything that moved within the range of their guns, their crews eager to spill the blood of heretics. Enemy tanks launched a lightning counterstrike and soon the two forces were entangled in a desperate battle at point blank range, their shells detonating against their targets in blistering explosions that hurled fiery debris in all directions.
Before the two armored forces could crush everything between them, a greater daemon ripped its way past the fragile veil of reality amid the haunted shrieks of a thousand tortured souls while blood and viscera spilled out of the opening around it. Its muscled body glistened with blood and a fine red mist seemed to surround the towering monstrosity, chunks of flesh orbiting it like some twisted parody of moons. Its head, too small for such a large body, resembled a human skull, bright lights dancing in its eye sockets and with nails driven into it in a random manner. A couple of Leman Russ tanks opened fire on it, their shells gouging chunks out of the creature's vile flesh, it's scream sounding like the cry of a baby. Captain Nevill, of the Leman Russ Executioner Divine Retribution, ordered his gunner to take down the daemon. Before the plasma cannon could fire, it was targeted by an enemy lascannon team. The other tank commanders saw the gun explode, taking part of the turret with it and knew that it was dead. To their amazement, the Divine Retribution suddenly charged, its engine howling like the souls of the dammed. They all knew that the magnetic containment field around the plasma reactor had probably collapsed as a result of feedback from the gun's destruction. Now they watched as the Executioner moved to ramming speed and charged the daemon. It collided with the daemon's right leg and it almost toppled the thing but the reactor didn't detonate. The other tank commanders felt their hopes for a quick end to this contest, wither.
The daemon, enraged by the audacity of this little machine, picked up the stricken tank and peeled away the front armor as if it were wet paper. It saw that the inside of the tank was full of dead bodies, badly burned, and it felt cheated of the chance to enact some measure of revenge upon them. Then it noticed the man in the driver's seat. At first the daemon had taken him for another corpse for he was burned, his face a red ruin and his left arm a mangled mess of flesh and bone. The man wore some insignia upon his collar but the daemon neither knew what it meant nor did it care. It saw the man smile, a horrid sight as his burnt flesh fell away from his face, the slight movement of damaged muscles shaking it free of whatever still held it in place. He raised a pistol and the daemon laughed. What did the small mortal hope to achieve with a pistol against a daemon that was the manifestation of Chaos itself?
Captain Nevill pointed the gun away from the daemon, toward the unstable plasma reactor. By the manner of our death are we judged, he reminded himself and pulled the trigger. The explosion that followed vaporized Nevill, the tank and the upper half of the daemon's body. The remains fell to the ground, crushing scores of heretics underneath it as the tank battle furiously raged around it.
The crew of the Leman Russ Fury died when an AT shell penetrated their hull and detonated their ammunition supply, shredding them all too little bits of charred flesh. A traitor tank – a lightly armored thing on six spider like mechanical legs - took a round that left a clean hole in the turret but failed to detonate. However, the coolant water for the engine began to spill into the compartment and the second it touched the broken cables that dangled near the rear end, the crew was electrocuted to death, their flesh charred black, their lips drawn back to reveal blackened teeth and smoke pouring from ruined eye sockets. Von Krieg's Leman Russ, the Eternal Strife, took a hit that blew the right track and immobilized the vehicle. Immediately, traitors and heretics began to storm the wounded tank. Von Krieg opened the top hatch, grabbed the heavy stubber and started blazing away at the approaching throng. Las fire and tracer rounds zipped past his head but he seemed not to care or notice, his scarred face split into an evil grin. Yelling "In the name of the Emperor, DIE!", he rained death down upon the forces of the Archenemy, black hatred burning in his heart and driving away all fear or thoughts of survival.
From where she sat in the puddle of gore, blood still flowing from the shallow cut, Kilian gazed in despair at the heroic, but ultimately futile, efforts of men she had known for the last ten years. Lieutenant Jones was holding the regimental standard in one hand and a bolter in the other, blazing away at any heretic who got near him. His face was drenched in blood from a scalp wound but his anger and resolve did not falter in the face of such opposition. He was screaming for his soldiers to fight "Our enemies cannot stop us. They can only test our faith, strength and courage! Advance warriors of the Guard, and die like the heroes that you are!"
Behind him was Lieutenant Decker, plasma pistol in one hand and power sword in the other, urging the Catachen soldiers under his command to press forward "To retreat is defeat. Advance! Advance! In our deaths lies victory." Those men needed no such urging, their huge blades ripping into the enemy with savage pleasure. They were the biggest men Kilian had ever seen, almost as large as the genetically enhanced Astartes. They showed nothing but hatred to the enemy, memories of the deathworld on which they were born surfacing to their minds. They had been bred in a hostile environment that wanted nothing more than to cleanse the human presence that defiled it and the current insanity was nothing new to them.
She saw Sergeant Harkov, the chainsword that replaced his right hand, cut down a plaguebearer that had eviscerated Corporal Ves. Off to the left, sheltering behind a fallen column, Lok was repetedly stabbing a heretic, his face and clothes covered in blood, while Simmers and Harper fired their weapons into the mass of heretics, Harper's melta gun punching even through the power armor of the Chaos Marines. Harper whooped with delight but his cries of joy were turned into cries of horror as his face was suddenly covered in Simmers' brains. Darron, Mander and Reims used their flamers to torch a pack of bloodletters that tried to rush them while behind them Vering threw his demolition charge and annihilated the Chaos Terminator that stalked toward Lieutenant Jones. Everywhere she looked, Kilian saw Guardsmen fight to the death or cower on the ground, begging for mercy or rocking back and forth in shock.
Fara lost his nerve, fear clawing at his heart with wickedly sharp talons with an insane intensity, and tried to run away but Captain Svenk, once a member of a Death Korps regiment from Krieg, turned around and blasted him in the back of the head. Fara's corpse toppled to the ground and Svenk resumed his suppressing fire of the heretics without giving the incident another thought. Svenk knew no pity or mercy, no despair or hope, he only knew the Cult of Sacrifice and the glory of the Emperor.
But it was the top of the stairs that drew Kilian's attention. The members of the Shadow Warrior's First Company, all of them wearing Tactical Dreadnaught Armor, tried to advance through the daemonic horde while the stormtroopers of the Khazdor Annihilators provided support fire with their hellguns. But even the Terminators of the First Company were being halted, such was the opposition facing them. Grand Master Siegfried, his armor looking more like that of the Chaos Marines than the loyalists, held the center of the formation, his stormbolter blazing away explosive rounds that smeared the oncoming horde across the plaza. "There are no walls strong enough to protect the enemies of Mankind. Purge the Unclean in His name!" he yelled, his voice booming like thunder.
The Grand Master had once been a renegade himself, cast out of the chapter for some unknown crime, but he had returned to expose and destroy the corruption at the heart of the chapter. His faith and loyalty to the Emperor supreme, Siegfried had soon risen to command his Battle Brothers. He kept the once tainted armor as a reminder of whom he had been and used it to focus his hatred and loathing of all enemies of Mankind. Next to him were the two Inquisitors, the grim Serghar – his power armor covered in blood and his bolt pistol firing in tight bursts- and the secretive Kraal – her robes also soaked in blood, a gash across her forehead and her plasma pistol blazing away with utter contempt at the forces arrayed in front of her.
Suddenly a shape charged from the line of Astartes, leaving nothing but broken bodies in its wake. One Terminator gave it cover fire with his assault cannon, the multi barreled weapon tearing up the concrete and heretics alike, fist sized pieces of meat flying through the air. The figure used the cover fire to good use, advancing further than any other Imperial unit.
Wearing a black greatcoat over his black carapace armor, a phase sword strapped to his left wrist, an Executioner pistol in the same hand and a neuro-gauntlet on his right, he danced among the heretics and daemons and killed all who came into his reach. From time to time, lightning would shoot from his fingers and the flesh of his enemies would run like wax under his assault. Former Guardsmen, actually undercover Inquisitorial acolyte, Julius Henderson – code name Stryfe- led the mad charge to the Palace gates. He moved with all the grace of the Callidus and all the lethality of the Eversor. His face was contorted in hatred and his eyes shone with psychotic glee for he loved nothing more than killing the enemies of Mankind. Created by Inquisitors Serghar and Kraal, Henderson was the last surviving super-soldier the two inquisitors had worked on – a fanatical drug crazed killing monster, enhanced by bio-engineering and experimental surgical procedures. He was completely loyal to the Emperor and had zero tolerance for heretics and traitors. He had been trained to be a leader but in battle his body was flooded with combat drugs that increased his already enhanced strength and agility and that amplified his state of mind to turn a mere dislike for the enemy into raging hatred, or the wish to serve the Imperium into suicidal determination. His latest assignment as Serghar's acolyte had been to make sure the Khazdor Immortals didn't succumb to the taint of Chaos so that the regiment would be a fitting tool for Inquisitor Serghar's plan to defend the sub-sector from an incoming threat greater than this Chaos invasion. Kilian had sensed there was more to the man than he showed but never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined what he really was. And now it looked like his mad charge would succeed for he was near the gates. Just as he reached them, the massive bronze gates opened, a foul stench emerging from them like the last exhalation of death itself.
And with a roar to shake the foundations of the city the Bloodthrister of Khorne stepped out, a towering, muscular behemoth with a bestial, almost canine face, bloodied mane and sharp horns, clad in the Brass Armour of Khorne which protected it from psykers, great leathery wings adorning its back. In one hand it held an immense axe that had been forged in the heat of Khorne's wrath and bore the essence of a caged greater daemon while in the other it carried a long whip. A wave of pure terror swept over the troops as the daemon roared in joy at the coming bloodbath for its bloodlust extended beyond mortal comprehension. Jones had once seen such a daemon kick a tank, which had bounced away like a football. Henderson however didn't falter and continued his charge, his voice carrying over the noise of the armageddon "Fear me, for I am the incarnation of His wrath!" As he advanced on the daemon, Henderson was glad that he had lived to see this. To look into the Abyss. To see firsthand the evil they dedicated their lives to fight, pure and raw. It was a privilege few warriors were granted.
The daemon roared and tried to crush Henderson with its axe. Just then a krak round exploded in its left eye, showering the ground with gore. Trooper Vergas, both his legs torn to shreds by a bloodletter – who was lying next to him with a las hole through its head -, had fired his missile launcher at the Bloodthrister. Vergas, blood flowing from his ears, whooped and showed the daemon the finger, a stupid grin plastered on his face. Henderson leapt for the thing's throat but the daemon quickly swung its axe to swat the mortal like a fly.
Even as she saw the daemon attack, Kilian felt a terrible presence, like the very incarnation of the darkest evil, focus upon her. She looked up into the malevolent sky, blood and pus still weeping from it, and saw the flashes of the space battle in orbit. And she saw the eyes. Hundreds of eyes had sprouted in the sky, forming a huge eight pointed star, all of them hungrily watching the spectacle on the planet, all of them enjoying what they saw as the triumph of Chaos. She heard laughter, loud, dark and insane and she knew the Chaos Gods liked what they saw. For this world now belonged to them and this battle was a fine dedication to their might and a taste of what they had planned for Mankind.
Even as she felt the despair overwhelm her, Kilian could feel the gore around her move, like tentacles, snaring her legs and waist, pinning her to the ground – helpless. She felt the gore soak her clothes and skin but it didn't matter for her very soul was now naked before the Dark Gods and they flayed her alive, stripping her of sanity, reason, life – taking her and tormenting her to their will, filling her with pleasure and pain, telling her soothing lies and horrible truths until she could take no more and her mind simply broke.
Suddenly she could feel no more and slowly, terrified of what horrors she might see, Kilian opened her eyes. And saw white. Wherever she was, it was a white wasteland with no features. She felt tears flow down her face, her body still wracked by the awful experiences the Chaos Gods had bombarded her with.
"Why do you cry?" asked a voice.
She turned around and saw Julius Henderson. He wore a suit of intricately-worked black battle armor, Imperial eagles forming the couters at the elbows and the poleyns at the knees, and the symbol of the Inquisition etched on the greaves and on his cuirass. His right pauldron bore the shape of the two headed eagle while his left was a grinning skull, the mark of the Inquisition on its forehead – though this was mostly obscured by the crimson paludamentum, a cloak fastened at one shoulder. His right hand was encased in a gauntlet that had silver eagle claws extending from the fingertips while his left was an augmetic. Beneath the sinister black plate, he wore a suit of black mail, each link shaped like a skull. His face was bared and she could his left eye was a blazing red augmetic while his right was the same chilling blue she had known. Over his shoulder, Killian could see the hilt of sword while at his belt hanged a couple of grenades, an auspex, a plasma pistol and a sinister skull helmet similar to the ones used by Space Marine Chaplains.
"Julius?" she asked, her mind yelling at her that this was some cruel trick of the Dark Gods.
"It's me" he replied, and then he shrugged. "Or better said, it's who I'll become."
"How…" words failed her as she gazed at him.
"Your mind snapped" he replied calmly. "It couldn't take the abuse the Chaos Gods threw at it. It's just as well really, otherwise I'd never had found you."
"I'm mad?" she gasped. "This is all some illusion in my head?"
"In a way yes" he replied. "We are in your head but I'm very much real, thank you." He paused for a moment, lost in thought, "Of course I still have no idea why you are seeing my future self instead of the present one but I don't think it matters."
"Your future self" she mumbled before grasping at the last straw she could find. "Does that mean that we drove the forces of Chaos from Reshik Secundus?"
"Yes" he replied. "And just in time to prepare for the true battle in this sub-sector."
"True battle?" she asked.
"You'll know when the time comes. It won't help you to worry about it just now" he smiled gently at her before his face hardened and his voice became stern. "Now then, tell me why you gave up?"
"Gave up?" she asked.
He nodded "You just lay there next to the Chimera, your spirit broken and your will to fight blown away on the foul winds of despair."
"There were too many" she muttered miserably. "There was no way we could beat them, not with the numbers they threw at us. Not with the bloodlust and insanity they climbed over their own dead with. It was sheer madness for them to advance but they did, there was no sanity to their tactics."
"You disappoint me Commissar" he said and she flinched from his words for they hurt her more than abuse of the Chaos Gods ever could have. "You gave up because you saw no victory" he shook his head. "Look behind you" he said.
She turned around and saw a vast army of souls, Imperial Guard, Adeptus Astartes, Adeptus Sororitas, Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Titanicus – all the militant branches of the Imperium of Man stood before her, their armor and flesh torn and soaked in blood, their expressions ranging from despair to exultation. "These are all the souls that have followed me into the cruel maelstrom of battle and died."
"There must be millions" she muttered, appalled at the sight of so many dead.
"Hundreds of billions would be more accurate" he said, his voice hard. With a wave of his hand the horde disappeared only to be replaced by another one. This one was larger, a thousand times the size of the first one, but this one was filled with an assembly of mutants, civilians, giants in power armor, all kinds of xenos and daemons and heretics.
"These are all the souls that have died either by my hand or because I ordered it so" he said. Kilian saw women and children among the souls, dressed in filthy rags and crying in fear and terror. Some looked insane, others malnourished and some had the foul marks of Chaos carved into their dirty flesh. Julius noticed her interest and said, his voice almost a whisper, "Exterminatus. There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush."
So he had ordered whole planets to be wiped clean of any trace of life. She almost expected to see rivers of blood flow from his hands but she knew that such rivers would drown more planets. He felt her disapproval of his methods and his voice rang out once more "Do not presume to judge me or the methods I choose to employ! You cannot comprehend the tasks I have undertaken or the colossal consequences we shall suffer if I ever falter in my determination. To the uneducated masses our wars are matters of flesh and territory, a battle fought against an enemy that bleeds and dies. They do not comprehend the magnitude of this conflict or that failure means extinction for the human race. Worse than that even, it means Chaos shall spill into this galaxy and consume all. We are fighting for the ultimate prize, the very survival of Mankind! If victory means we need to kill ten billion people, put whole planets to the flame and exterminate anyone who doesn't agree with us – THEN SO BE IT!" His cold gaze raked the civilians like a gun searching hungrily for its next target. "They were weak. They fell prey to the temptations of daemons or allowed others to do so. They helped –even by their lack of actions – our enemies to grow stronger. Thus their forfeited their lives and damned their souls for eternity. Offer them no pity for they do not deserve it and scorn their cries of innocence – it is better that one million innocents fall before the Emperor than one kneels before the Daemon."
With another wave of his hand, an even larger horde appeared in the midst of a storm of fire and blood. It consisted of all the enemies of Mankind; hate spawned daemons, cursed traitors, deluded heretics, foul mutants and vile xenos; and it stretched into infinity.
"Is there no end to them?" she asked, despair once more clawing at her heart like a rabid beast.
"No" was the short, brutal answer Julius gave her. "These are all the enemies Mankind will face until the end of time itself. They are infinite."
She turned to look at him and saw that his face was hard. "There is no end to our enemies" he said. "The Warp alone is full of infinite daemons – though no one can say for sure since the Warp is nothing more than a constant paradox. Mankind has been fighting this brutal war for ten thousand years and there is no end in sight. Can you even try to contemplate the number of human lives lost in all this time? Can you grasp the number of lives lost in a war that might last a billion years or eternity itself and never be won?"
She felt more despair overwhelm her then. He was right. There was no possibility for victory. The horrifying carnage would never end. A million worlds, five hundred thousand wars. There was no respite, there was nowhere to hide. Across the galaxy there was only war and Man seemed destined to drown in his own blood.
She dropped to her knees and wept for all the sacrifices that had been made. Faced with extinction, Mankind had resorted to the most extreme of methods and ways to ensure its survival against the darkness. Attacked by enemies from all sides, Mankind had lashed out at anything different from it, exterminating entire races and warring with ancient empires that were now nothing but dust, ground under the merciless heel of Man. All they had ever known was dead, all they had ever dreamt was dead – destroyed by Man's fury. Faced with the terror and darkness of an inimical galaxy, Mankind had used the most extreme weapons it could dream up and unleashed them upon all it encountered. Its population was suppressed in order to prevent heretics and traitors from appearing but even so they managed to infiltrate like weeds until Mankind had to turn the same terrible weapons of war against itself – trying to remove a tumor or amputate a diseased limb in order to stop the contagion and survive. Paranoia and mistrust had seeped into the mindset of Man where everyone was suspected of taint and religious dogma was the letter of the law. Every action they could take to save themselves was taken, nothing was too extreme or vile if it meant survival. But there was no way they could win, no way they could beat the enemy, no way when –some say- the enemy's greatest asset was the very darkness residing in Man's soul. Sooner or later, extinction would grab Mankind by the throat and never let go. Killian wept as she realized what the thoughts that had been tormenting her these past months were, as she realized why she gave up the fight.
Because she saw no point in going on when only failure waited at the end of the road. All the sacrifices, all the cruelty, all the lengths they went to where in vain for there could be no victory, no future – only death and damnation.
Julius knelt beside her and reached out with his left hand. Taking her chin in his hand, he gently raised her head and asked "Why do you cry?"
"Because it's all in vain" she replied, her voice shattering like glass, just like her will to go on in the face of such overwhelming despair.
"Of course it is" said Julius. "The time for peace is over and now it is time to die. It is the age of war and our last days must be lived amidst the sound of our own destruction. Now the great wheel of human existence turns almost full circle. In the light of day we have flourished and spread our rule far across the stars. Now as night descends we enter a time of death and corruption as fate turns her back upon us."
"But if you know there can be no victory" she began before he gently put a finger to her lips to silence her.
"Victory or defeat does not matter. We cannot hope to break the back of the Warp for it feeds off the dreams and hopes of every living thing in the galaxy" he paused and looked at the endless horde before them. "What is victory?"
"Is it to defeat your enemy on the field of battle?" she responded, quoting from the Tactica Imperium. "Is it to simply repulse his armies and slay his misguided warriors? No, this is only the beginning! True victory is to crush your foes utterly, to shatter his armored legions and run down his fleeing troops as they scatter. Pursue them to their lairs and burn them out. Burst into his unholy temples, smash down his icons and topple his foul idols. Burn his heretical works and leave no stone upon stone. Slaughter his followers, their families and their livestock lest any of their taint remain. And when that is done, put the ruins to the torch. Any that have dealt with them or given then succor must be obliterated, for memory is insidious and though you have crushed their will and their bodies they may yet return. Send warrior scribes to excise the records of their name, expunge their deeds from the annals of history and remove even the memory of your foe's existence. Only then have you truly won. That is the meaning of victory."
Julius smiled. "That's one way of looking at it but victory is simply greater Perseverance." He saw the confused look in her eyes and continued "No matter what end awaits us and no matter what sacrifices we must make, we must keep fighting this war. We must fight as brutality and as savagely as we can."
"Why?"
"For Mankind" he replied. "For the future of our race depends on us fighting the enemy every step of the way, never giving up, never giving in. Survival is no birthright, but a prize wrested from an uncaring galaxy by forgotten heroes. We must make sure that even if these are our death throes then the galaxy stands up and takes notice of it for we shall murder all who come near us."
"Why fight against the impossible odds stacked against us? Why should we sacrifice more lives – entire generations- in a fight that we cannot hope to win no matter how hard we fight and how hard we struggle? All the sacrifices that have been made were in vain for we shall all perish and the galaxy shall not mourn our passing."
"The galaxy shall not mourn, true" he said. "And every human life is but a spark in the darkness. It flares for a moment, catches the eye, and is gone forever. A retinal after-image that fades and is obscured forever by newer, brighter lights, meaningless in the greater scheme of things. But the sacrifices have not been in vain for we still stand and we shall continue to stand as long as men and women are willing to fight the enemy no matter how terrible he might be. We shall fight against impossible odds and even fate itself if we have to because of what we are."
"What we are?" she asked.
"Humans. Impossible odds are made to be beaten and it is our nature to fight on no matter how hopeless it seems. The Eldar have largely given up any hope for they know that victory is not possible, the Tau do not understand yet what they face and the Orks live only for battle. Other races, whether they deserved or not to be annihilated by us have always given up hope in the end, sensing that victory was impossible and thus the fight was pointless. We know better" he continued, his eyes full of determination, his voice lifting her spirit, his conviction astounding her "we know that the fight is important, more important even than the outcome."
"We fight because we are humans and it is our nature to deny the inevitable and struggle against the impossible. In war the single greatest deciding factor is will: without the will to do so, no sacrifice is made, no initiative seized, no objective taken, and no enemy vanquished – all the guns in creation are useless without the will to pull the trigger. And in the face of eternal damnation and with despair and defeat hounding our every move, Perseverance is all that will keep us fighting. That is the true beauty and glory of our race, our refusal to lie down and accept defeat."
His voiced dropped to a mere whisper and he seemed to be staring through her eyes at her very soul. "The only question you ever need ask yourself is this: Do I have the will to go on, knowing that there is only darkness and despair at the end of the road? I think you know the answer to that question."
As his voice filled her ears, Kilian felt the oppressive weight of despair lift from her like a cloak, a darkness vanishing under the light. She opened her eyes once more and saw the apocalypse raging around her, the battle as fierce as ever. But the men were fighting hard, not giving an inch to the enemy without a bitter struggle. Tearing at the blood tentacles holding her in place she picked up her peaked cap and set it on her head, blood trickling down the winged skull on the front. She looked for her power sword, which was lying in a puddle of gore. Picking it up and activating the energy field around the blade she advanced into the fray. As she felt her hatred rise like a phoenix from the ashes she repeated to herself: I am an Imperial Commissar. I will spark the flame of rage in the weak, put iron in the backs of the wavering and show the lost and confused were best to direct their wrath. It is my sacred duty to rouse the men and light the fires of hate in their hearts.
Corporal Dussen fell down next to her, a heretic wrapping his diseased fingers around the man's throat, desperately trying to squeeze the life out of him. With hatred and contempt armoring her soul against the tide of despair, Kilian decapitated the heretic with one chop of her power sword. She picked up the fallen soldier, noticing the bulky vox-caster on the man's back. She picked up the transmitter and selected a general frequency that was –thankfully- not cluttered with the insane chatter of Chaos. She looked into the Dussen's eyes, scared by what they faced and yet determined not to falter, and said "Men of Khazdor hear me! It was during the reign of the traitor Vandire that the greater part of this regiment wanted to support the traitor. It was only 10th company that refused to betray the Emperor and for their loyalty their brothers tried to kill them. Even though they were only three hundred men, 10th company fought in the Emperor's name. They were outnumbered and outgunned as even the troop transport's crew turned on them but they did not falter. They knew that the outcome was meaningless, the only thing that mattered was that they remained loyal to the Emperor and that they made the traitors pay in blood for every inch of ground they gained! When the transport reached Holy Terra and was boarded by the Black Templars Space Marines, even the mighty Astartes were astonished to see 10th company still grimly holding on. Major Geyer and the Black Company, as they became known, had let their hatred for the enemy fill their hearts and they won against insurmountable odds. So let hatred into your hearts men of Khazdor! Let rage guide your weapon and strike down the foul enemy of Mankind! Show them fury! Show them pain! Show them their DEATHS! In the Emperor's name, EXTERMINATE THEM ALL!"
She looked up, at the gates to the palace and saw the Bloodthrister topple to the ground, its head gone and a jet of blood and gore streaming out of the stump of its neck. Behind the body stood Julius Henderson, holding his weapons high in the air, white light streaming from his eyes and burning any daemons he looked at. Kilian gasped in awe as she saw the huge double headed eagle sprout from Henderson's back. The translucent, golden Imperial Eagle raised its wings proudly and its two heads yelled their defiance at the malevolent sky. Henderson's eyes met those of Commissar Kilian and he smiled, glad to see her back on her feet, her spirit restored. As the psychic light of the God-Emperor of Mankind filled him, Julius Henderson used it to strengthen the fighting spirit of every man on the battlefield, uplifting them from their despair and fuelling the fires of hate until they burned strong. Stronger than the wind of terror that the Chaos Gods could send.
With a last look at the battle raging around the Palace, Julius Henderson entered it, knowing it was up to him to kill Ahrank and end the Chaos storm engulfing the planet. For Mankind would never bow down to the inevitable, it was Man's nature to fight on until he either won or he lay broken upon the ground, drowning in his own blood.